Eliot's Silas Marner

As I picked up Eliot’s Silas Marner over the weekend, I kept referring back to our class discussion on the pros and cons of the city. We listed (among other things) that isolation, money, and machinery are key components to city life, and that each of these concepts can negatively impact the spread of urbanization. Although for some moving into a large city provides endless opportunities of freedom and monetary growth, others might easily feel lost and alienated by the complexities of city life. 

In Silas Marner however, I noticed that in the beginning of the novel, the main character has a very different experience with the city. When we are first introduced to Silas, he is a well respected and an active member of the community. He maintains close relationships with many community members, and he is heavily involved with the church. In fact, he is engaged to be married and maintains a fairly decent living as the local weaver. He does not harbor any feelings of isolation until he is accused of a crime he did not commit and is forced to leave town. 

When he relocates to the countryside, I was struck by his odd behavior. His life becomes very mechanical; he locks himself up in his cottage working sixteen hour days and never attempts to befriend his neighbors. I was surprised that a man who used be very friendly and affectionate, now only communicates with people through business interactions. His emotional attachment to others is completely turned off; he resigns himself to living as a hermit. During his first twelve years in Raveleo, Silas’s only trusted companion is his “brown earthenware pot” (15). He has grown so attached to this object that when he accidentally breaks it, he is grief stricken. Silas even goes as far as putting the “bits together and [props] the ruin in its old place for a memorial” (15).  His distress over the pot suggests that although Silas is quite capable of being affectionate, he continues to be haunted by his past, and it prevents him from moving forward. For the most part, the country offers Silas a place of solace, but it also allows him to hide from his past and his future. By keeping to himself, he does not have to confront any further possibilities of being betrayed by his community.

His change in behavior not only limits him from establishing friendships, but it also fuels his new obsession with work and money. I was caught of guard by the way Silas throws himself into his work. Now, I understand that this may be his way of avoiding his past and current situation, but I did not expect that he would also become hungry for money. The more he stays away from others, more diligent he is with work,  and the more he focuses on acquiring wealth. I can’t quite figure out the reason behind his greed? What does the money replace? The text suggests that his obsession is an “incipient habit” (14), but I think it goes beyond a simple habit. Perhaps the wealth provides Silas with a sense of security he never had before? I’m not sure...either way, his fixation on the guineas is very daunting. He is so attached to the money that he would “not exchange [his] coins, which had become his familiars, for other coins with unknown faces. He handled them, he counted them, till their form and color were like the satisfaction of a thirst for him” (14). Furthermore, Silas is not only consumed by money, but he also does not use it to his advantage. He lives below his means, keeping the bags of money within arms reach as if they were meant to be his companion and nothing else. His determination to work and make more money, does not fit my idea of the a man living in the country. I would imagine that anyone who moves away from the city would be more inclined to slow down rather than work their life away. 

Reworking Rousseau: Frankenstein as a Critique of Rousseau's Emile

Frankenstein  is most commonly celebrated as a cautionary tale about the dangers of science that allows mankind to transgress the natural order, a warning that humanity may be overreaching with its ever increasing ability to manipulate nature. The understood danger is that mankind may, like Victor Frankenstein, lose control of our scientific creations and may thereby unwittingly cause our own destruction. While such a tale may have seemed fantastic in the Romantic era, today the creation of life is an apple just beyond our grasp and the warning seems well-grounded in reality. The splitting of the atom, the invasion of the heavens as we begin our exploration of space (with the implied colonialism and exploitation of resources that will accompany said exploration), and the decoding and manipulation of the double helix are all marvels of human ingenuity that could conceivably lead to the demise of the human race - and quite possibly, all life on this planet.

At the Water’s Edge with the Ancient Mariner

                                                                                                                                       5,150 Words

New Academic Review

At the Water’s Edge with the Ancient Mariner   

June 13, 2013

William Cooper

“Unspeakable Discovery: Romanticism and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

by Matthias Rudolf

March 2013

European Romantic Review, 33 pp. $0.10

“Striking Passages: Memory and the Romantic Imprint”

by Ashley Miller
Spring 2011
Studies in Romanticism, 23 pp. $0.10

When Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner first appeared as the first poem in The Lyrical Ballads of 1798, the reception was less than enthusiastic. Critics judged the 800-line anonymous poem’s complexity as obscurity, its inventiveness as weirdness, and its commanding strength as flamboyance. In fact, Wordsworth, the sole listed author of the Ballads, seriously considered dropping what was to become Coleridge’s most famous work from subsequent editions. So the 1800 edition of the Ballads saw position of the Rime was changed and much of its purposely archaic language modernized. Its title was recast as The Ancient Mariner, a Poet’s Reverie—last thing to  say in order to create a reverie among your readers.

The Reality and the Idea: Thoreauvian Science and Transcendentalism in Walden

Johnny Mendoza

Professor Garrett

English 560- Romantic Natures

June 8, 2013

The Reality and the Idea: Thoreauvian Science and Transcendentalism in Walden

            Towards the end of “Economy” in Walden, Thoreau writes of the “customs of savage nations” who once a year burn their excess amounts of clothes, “having previously provided themselves with new clothes” (62). The clothes, along with furniture, pots, pans, and other household utensils that have accumulated, are gathered together in one great heap and set on fire. Thoreau learns of this practice through William Bartram, an American botanist, who upon his travels through South Carolina documents the Mucclasse Indians engaging in what they considered to be a purification act. As Thoreau in this chapter is considered with living economically and not going beyond an inordinate amount of provisions, he wonders whether this practice might be profitable to adopt or not. Nevertheless, he credits this ritual, similarly practiced by Mexicans “at the end of every fifty two-years,” as the truest manifestation of an inward spirituality he has ever heard (W 63). These customs, Thoreau says, reveal “they have the idea of the thing, whether they have the reality or not” (62). The idea refers to the inspiration received “directly from Heaven,” and the reality consists of some form of documented record to show evidence of such a revelation (W 63).

“Purgatory Now: The Motif of Transgression and Expiation in the Poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge”

ALFRED C. VALRIE JR.

Thursday, 13 June 2013

Frances Ferguson, in her essay entitled “Bathos of Experience,” argues that we should consider the Romantics in terms of a “redeemed phenomenology” (39) which strikes a balance between human interactions with the world being cast as solipsistic, or quintessentially singular, and the world imposing its own preternatural, nonhuman being, or essence, on the subject.  Because, in recent Romantic criticism, each, the world and the subject, runs the risk of, in Ferguson’s words, “doing one another in” (39), we must reinterpret the Romantics as, first, beholden not to the mind or the world, but to the discovery of truth, and secondly, that once this truth—this transcendence—is reached, becoming cognizant of the poem and poet himself as message and evangelist, respectively.  In ancient and Medieval epics, the discovery of truth dealt more with righting an Everyman’s relationship with an angry pagan god or reckoning the full measure of salvation with the aloof Christian God.  When Ferguson calls the sublime a concern with power greater than our own, we can draw a line from Homer and Dante directly to Wordsworth and Coleridge by reason of the latter two’s fascination with the death of innocence and a ‘waking up,’ as it were, to the power of truth immanent in nature, whether that be human or environmental.  In Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth encounters his former, idealistic self in Dorothy and in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the main character arrives at newfound innocence through a process of exploration.  In the case of each poem, whether the exploration is internal, external, or both is a matter of profound interpretation.  What we must realize is that only by examining each poem can we begin to know, first, the totality of the word ‘nature,’ and secondly, the importance of sublime notions in commonplace discourses.

Zizec's Eco-terror

          Zizec in his essay explores the various types and uses of fear in relation to environmental policy, or ecology. Early on a distinction is made between terror and fear. Zizec argues that the only true remedy for fear is to be terrorized, to assume the worst has already befallen us. He says we should not search for safety but that we should do the opposite. Next is a Nietzscheian "death of god" pronouncement in which Zizec argues that the thought of a great "other" is equally as horrific as the thought that we are alone in the universe.
          The following section focuses on scientific advances and globalization. Zizec argues that the fear perpetuated by religion, which has up until now been nullified by science, is no longer containable by the latter. Furthermore he states that the rapid advance of technology and access to the human genome will forever change nature, resulting in an absence of what we consider nature: "there is no nature." This he believes will form an alliance between religious groups and environmentalists, who both stand to gain from a concrete and objective definition of what is natural.
          Zizec ends with four steps to revolutionize this earth's ecology: Strict egalitarian justice; terror (ruthless punishment of all who violate the imposed protective measures, Inclusive of severe limitations on liberal "freedoms," technological control of prospective law-breakers); voluntarism; and trust in the people.  

Gothic Will

This is another book I really enjoy. I’ve read it several times for various classes and I’ve taught it once to an Honors English class. Until this seminar I didn’t even realize that there was an earlier version. The versions I’ve read and worked with have always been the 1831 version. I know that some people have a problem with the overblown language and the general perceived faults that come in a Gothic and  Romantic work. I like how the book incorporates so many different issues and themes. No matter how many times I work with it there is something new or different to focus on. I especially groove on the links between this and Paradise Lost. Like so many other people, I’m a little in love with Milton’s character, Satan, and seeing echoes of him throughout the novel is amusing.

Of all the themes and motifs that the book contains one that hit me harder than normal was the idea of “will”. This time, and it may be the difference in edition, it felt like the book was a novel about will. Frankenstein gets into trouble because of his desire to go further than any other man in science (natural philosophy?). He essentially brings the monster into being through an excess of will. After Victor rejects the monster that excess of will then rebounds on him through the monster’s attacks on his loved ones. At the end of the novel, when Walton confronts the monster about his heinous actions, the monster replies that he was in agony as he committed those crimes yet something still urged him on. To my mind that “something” could only be his will. This reminded me of two things from other books. One was the character of Clithero from the novel Edgar Huntly by Charles Brockden Brown and the other was The Lord of the Rings. In Edgar Huntly, the character Clithero is this man who through an unfortunate event becomes obsessed with killing his benefactress and her daughter. When he thinks them dead or out of his reach he behaves fairly normally. Once he realizes that they are living nearby he turns into an unstoppable fiend bent on their destruction. He has less motive for causing  pain than Frankenstein’s monster but the idea of unstoppable drive is what reminded me of him while I was reading Walton’s interview with the monster at the end of the novel. The other thing the willful monster reminded me of was the part of The Lord of the Rings where Saruman’s operation for creating the Uruk-hai is discussed. There is a stark contrast in LOTR between Sauron’s forces who use “unnatural” means to gain the advantage in the war for Middle Earth and the “good guys” who are more aligned with the “natural” world. The scene at Isengard brings to mind the archaic definitions of the word “machine”: 1a. a constructed thing, 1c. a military engine. It is senseless, mindless, ceaseless industry and activity. This too seems like an embodiment of an excess of will, although I’m guessing it has much to do with Tolkien’s criticism of the industrialization of the modern world.

One other thought that kept popping up was that I wonder what a post-colonial reading of the novel would look like. The other times I read this book was in my high school AP English class and during my undergrad work so my exposure to the criticism of Frankenstein isn’t extensive. For some reason the idea of reading this book in terms of colonizer and colonized was smacking me over the head like a two-by-four. I was also seeing parallels between the framed narrative in this novel and in Wuthering Heights. I was wondering if the story-within-a-story trope was especially popular during this general literary epoch or if it’s just a popular form for weird English women who like to write weird stories. 

Week 10 Blog Review by Ryan Briggs and Johnny Mendoza

Mr. Cooper: “Frankenstein Meets The Rime-Man”
Bill touches on Shelley’s and Zizek’s text via a discussion of Coleridge's navigation through human history of what we would describe as the ideology of "liberal optimism," which represents a view of human progress that owes much to the Rousseauian belief in humankind's natural benevolence. Bill indirectly asks us to recall how Shelley herself represents her own rejection of this ideology in Frankenstein with the catastrophe that is Frankenstein's rejection of the monster and the monster's own subsequent hatred and perusal of Frankenstein himself. In another point addressed in the blog, Bill argues that Zizek would agree with the progressions of Coleridge's own tracing of modernity's origins to ultimately what Bills terms "the fractionalization of knowledge into specialization." Bill ends his post by arguing that Coleridge’s Rime is a poem that addresses modernity. He cites the work of Matthias Rudolf, who argues that Rime allegorizes Coleridge's theory of criticism.

Ms. Vales: “Solitude in the Wilderness”
Yuliana argues for a certain thematic connection between that of an article she one day "stumbled across," and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. According to the story in the article, to avoid persecution at the hands of the Russian Bolsheviks, the Lykovs, a Russian Orthodox couple, abandoned their home in 1936 and were thought to have died somewhere unknown thereafter. However, in 1978, much to everyone’s surprise, the couple were found living 6,000 feet up a mountain with four children in tow. Five members in all, (the wife had died), the Lykovs had managed to live on their own despite their being completely severed from civilization. A sad story, shortly after the family’s discovery by scientists, three of the four children would end up dying from exposure to outside diseases. Yuliana speaks of her fascination with the story, writing how inconceivable it is to think how these events happened not in the remote past but rather just relatively recently. The connection she makes between the Lykov story and Shelley’s Frankenstein is in her speculation as to how lonely the family members must have felt living by themselves for so long and the similar feelings of loneliness expressed by Shelley’s monster. Yuliana ends her post by pointing out how similar to the family’ alienation on the mountain, the monster also had no one but himself to rely on.

Ms. Cacace: “Zizek and Ecology”
Rosanna outlines the ideas of Zizek’s article, but not without adding her own comments. For example, she thinks much of Zizek’s point about how deceptively insignificant it is about the world’s dwindling honeybee population, agreeing the crisis to be something we are unlikely to consider, only to then find ourselves struggling later with due to the several unforeseen consequences. Also, she initially found Zizek’s idea about the worldwide implementation of egalitarian justice as a solution to our ecological problems to be attractive, saying that if “king of the world” herself she would have to consider it. However, after giving it more thought, she doubted (wisely, if you ask me) the wisdom of such a plan, wondering, for instance, as to who would be responsible for the overseeing of the world. She argues that anyone with such power would likely “exploit” the situation for their “own political agenda.” 

Mr. Ross: “Hypothesis Regarding Safi’s Love Letters”
Scott offers his theory as to why Safi’s letters are missing in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, as they are in many ways at the center of the novel. For Scott, the central question revolves around the veracity of the letters and how we as readers might feel confident about what they say. After providing some background information about the letters themselves, Scott argues that the key to the letters’ significance lies in a certain novel by Rousseau called: Julie, or the New Heloise, a book that had been originally titled Letters of Two Loves Living in a Small Village at the Foot of the Alps. Scott’s argument, in brief, is that Safi’s letters bear what Rousseau in Julie might identify as the marks of real passion, (i.e., boring, unremarkable repetitions), and that marks such as these self-authenticate their own veracity. Scott ends his blog by reminding us that “the position of the letters at the center of the novel gives them additional importance. In concentric narratives, also known as chiastic narratives, the center of the narrative is emphasized as a key that provides an understanding of the greater work.”

Mr. Ross: “Books for Bones: The Intertextuality of Frankenstein”
Scott argues that Frankenstein is Shelley’s romanticization of the popular philosophical arguments of her day. He finds evidence within the novel for Rousseau’s Emile and Julie, Milton’s Paradise Lost, the Bible, William Godwin’s Political Justice and Caleb Williams, as well as her mother Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women. He notes Frankenstein’s intertextuality in particular with Rousseau’s Emile, specifically in how the novel

presents the subject of education. Walton, Victor Frankenstein, the creature, and Felix, not to mention the minor characters, are what Scott calls “variances of the course of education laid out in Rousseau’s seminal tract.” He makes an interesting connection between Emile and Shelley’s gothic tale in the form of a single sentence from Rousseau’s text stating the following: “The rebellious angle who fought against his own nature was weaker than the happy mortal who is living at peace according to nature.” This certainly describes the creature well, and makes sense as something Shelley might have had in the back of her mind while writing. 

Jeff Anderson: “Splintered Identity: Franken-monster”

 Jeff begins his blog by focusing on Zizek’s comments that biotechnology has created a divide between the so called first and second natures: first nature is described as that which is comprehensible and beneficial to humanity, while second nature refers to anything that is genetically modified or enhanced, and could create a problem for humans to have control over. Jeff links these ideas to Frankenstein, particularly at the point in which Dr. Frankenstein crosses the line between first and second natures, by creating life, but a life out of his control. Jeff refers back to Zizek’s point that safety is not necessarily the opposite of fear, but rather “pushing on to the end and accepting the nullity we are afraid to lose.” Jeff then says that this is what fuels the rest of the novel, as seen through Frankenstein’s pursuit of the monster and his unquenchable anger towards the monster.

Alfred Valrie: “Zizek’s Follies”

Alfred’s post explores more deeply the relationship between religion and economics, as Zizek briefly mentions. Alfred claims fear, as a negative motivation, can be a good and necessary thing. Religion and environmentalism both share the principle, respectively, of improving the country’s safety, but are seen as evil, according to Zizek. Then Alfred makes a distinction between the Christian narrative’s views of spreading prosperity versus Zizek’s views. The former has helped other people flourish and thrive, while recognizing that a utopian vision of total equality is unattainable: “Some will have much, others not so much.” But this is not inhumane. The latter, Zizek’s vision, “terror would reinforce the State’s governing of egalitarian resource utilization,” without allowing people to independently arrive at the motivation of helping one’s neighbor, and by extension, the natural world.

Dimitrios Sotiriou: “From ‘Nihilism’ to ‘Justice’”

Dimitrios focuses on the main outlines of Zizek’s argument, which is his denial in the existence of a “Big Other,” or reality. Despite this nihilism, Zizek, similar to what Nietzsche did by privileging the will-to-power, fills the void with a worldview of his own. To elaborate, science and technology, capitalism, and even evolution have, arguably, shown how nature is unnatural. Dimitrios then discusses Zizek’s critique of ecology as a false alternative to capital forces, because of its actual resistance to change. While Zizek challenges these ideologies (science, ecology, religion) and refuses to think of science as holding absolute authority, he no less acknowledges that these ideas have become objective realities and incapable of being dismantled. His solution, as Dimitrios notes, is that we should act as if this eternal Idea of egalitarian Justice is real and objective, while being conscious that it is an invention. But in doing so, Dimitrios asks, won’t we be reinventing the collective or spiritual super-Subject, which Zizek says does not pertain to individual human beings? More importantly, if the collective Subject and Justice are inventions, who gets to define them? And at what or whose expense? 

Hypothesis Regarding Safi's Love Letters

The letters that Safie sent to Felix while the smitten young Frenchman orchestrated the prison escape of the Arabian beauty’s father are offered on two separate occasions as proof of the veracity of the concentric narratives that make up the Frankenstein.  The creature offers transcriptions of the letters as proof of his tale, and those transcriptions are then shown by Frankenstein to Walton, who accepts these letters as the ultimate proof of Frankenstein’s story. Presumably, these letters are eventually shown to Mrs. Saville, Walton’s sister, as "proof" of the entire three-tier narrative.
 
Yet these letters are notably absent from the text, leaving the reader to wonder about the content of those letters and how they could possibly establish the veracity of the creature's tale. What little information there is regarding the content of the letters is found within the creature's summary of those letters, which takes all of two paragraphs. While this information will be examined in great detail in the paper itself, for now it is sufficient to affirm that there is nothing within the letters that relates to the story of the novel.  Why then has such emphasis been provided to letters that seem inconsequential other than the fact that the three main narrators (the monster, Frankenstein, and Walton) believe the letters to be of such significance?  Or rather, what possible information could such letters offer that could be so convincing?

 The answer to this lies in another of Rousseau’s works: Julie, or the New Heloise, an epistolary novel that was originally titled Letters of Two Lovers Living in a Small Village at the Foot of the Alps. While the De Lacey cottage is located in Germany rather than the Lake Geneva area where the titular lovers in Julie live, which is also where much of Frankenstein takes place, the De Lacey’s live on the outskirts of a village in foothills of the Alps. In an introduction to Julie, Rousseau answers hypothetical objections to his work by discussing the nature of love letters:

“A letter really dictated by love, written by a lover really under the influenced by a real passion, will be tame, diffuse, prolix, unconnected, and full of repetitions: his heart, overflowing with the same sentiment, constantly returns to the same expressions, and like a natural fountain flows continuously without being exhausted. Nothing brilliant, nothing remarkable: one remembers neither the words nor phrases; there is nothing to be admired, nothing striking: yet we are moved without knowing why.  Though we are not struck with the strength of sentiment, we are touched by its truth, and our hearts, in spite of us, sympathize with the writer. “ (italics mine for emphasis)

The complaint that Rousseau is addressing in advance is that the love letters fail to meet most expectations of good writing; they are meandering, repetitious letters that make for poor reading. Rousseau’s defense, one of his favorites for any of his peculiarities, is that he is simply following the model that nature has provided him, i.e. that the letters are written in this manner because that is the nature of real love letters.

So then, Shelley playfully excluded Safie’s letters from Frankenstein because, as real love letters, they “nothing to be admired,” and aren’t really worth repeating. The creature must summarize the contents of the letters because “the sun was already far declined” and the love letters would have been “diffuse, prolix…and full of repetitions.”  In other words, the love letters were rather long-winded. This is what led the creature to helpfully condense the information verbally – but it wasn’t the information in the letters but the letters themselves that were convincing proof. This is why the creature transcribed the letters in whole, despite the poor writing style, or rather, because of the poor writing style of the letters; it was the flawed writing that affected both Frankenstein and Walton to be “touched by its truth.” Walton proclaims the letters “brought to me a greater conviction of the truth of his [Frankenstein’s] narrative than his asseverations, however earnest and connected.” Contrasting the letters to Frankenstein’s “connected” stories implies that the letters having an “unconnected” line of reasoning, in line with Rousseau’s description of a real love letter.

The position of the letters at the center of the novel gives them additional importance. In concentric narratives, also known as chiastic narratives, the center of the narrative is emphasized as a key that provides an understanding to the greater work. No, I'm not going to explain that for you.

Books for Bones: The Intertextuality of Frankenstein

In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley can be viewed as romanticizing the philosophical arguments of her day, translating the philosophical discourse of the Romantic era into narrative in a dialogic manner consistent with Menippean satire. More specifically, the form Shelley has structured to hold the fruit of her invention is essentially a patchwork of intertextuality, a dialogic work assembled from some of the most influential books of her time. While Frankenstein combed through graveyards to find the parts needed to form a bride for his creation, Shelley combed through the pages of several influential works of literature to provide the materials that her imagination brings to life:   Roussseau's Emile and Julie, Milton's Paradise Lost, the Bible, her father William Godwin's Political Justice and Caleb Williams (which romanticizes the philosophies Godwin puts forth in Political Justice) and her mother Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women.

At the time Shelley wrote her novel, the books she used to structure her story were popular, at least within the literati. Today, they require a tour guide. This intertextuality centers on Rousseau's Emile, which valued experiential education over a classical approach to education through books and lessons and mandated that children be allowed to follow their own interests. A person familiar with Emile will recognize that Shelley is taking a cue from Rousseau's own words:

"Thus one kind of education would be practicable in Switzerland and not in France; another would be right for the middle classes but not for the nobility....Others can concern themselves if they want, each for the  country or the state they have in view."

The education of the characters in the novel - most notably that of Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein, the creature, and Felix, but also of the minor characters as well - are variances of the course of education laid out in Rousseau's seminal tract. Felix,  a French member of the landed gentry, is the only character who has been educated well; Walton, left to his devices, is an idiot (perhaps this is a satire of Byron, who was also from a nautical family - but Byron was educated in the traditional manner which provided him with the ability to be a poet), Frankenstein is raised in Switzerland and something goes very wrong with his education (it was his mother's fault).

Emile is the source of several important parts of Frankenstein. For instance, consider the scene where Felix comes upon the creature kneeling before his father and throws him with “supernatural strength.” The creature is supposedly an eight-foot tall being with superhuman strength of his own, therefore a being with considerable muscle mass. Worse, the being is kneeling giving it a lower center of gravity. Yet Felix “flings” him across the room. It seems rather expedient and is sometimes thought of as one of the novel's problems.

However, this exact moment is a manifestation of a single sentence in Emile where the themes of education and creation collide (not coincidentally, this is the exact center of  Frankenstein): “The rebellious angel who fought against his own nature was weaker than the happy mortal who is living at peace according to nature.” The rebellious angel is the creature, who self-identifies with Satan, and by seeking help he is going against Satan’s prideful nature. The happy mortal is Felix, whose name means happiness. While his educational background isn’t really given, his character exhibits many traits of Emile, the titular student of Rousseau's work.

Frankenstein Meets The Rime-man

Growing up in the Godwin household, Mary Shelley was exposed to parlor conversations between her father and some of the brightest intellectuals of the day. In 1806 she and her stepsister hid under the sofa while Coleridge recited "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Ten years later Shelley began writing Frankenstein. Her book, as we know, deals with discovery, predominantly scientific discovery (through Victor) and to a lesser extent geographic discovery (through Walton). It also poses the same questions as Zezik about the ethical implications and possible real consequences of creating an artificially intelligent human being. In fact, Zezik uses Frankenstein as a model for what can happen when scientists lose control over their creations.

It’s less widely known that Coleridge was also concerned over the ramifications of science and discovery, particularly their historical development. According to Thomas Pfau, Coleridge considered modernity a “miscarriage.” In league with several German Romantics—Goethe, Schlegel, and Schopenhauer among them—modernity, which he traced back to the Cartesian method of rationality, ushered in an age of fractionalization and specialization. The result was the abandonment of the ancient notion of knowledge as the fortuitous fusion of theoria [contemplation] and eudaemnonia [human flourishing] in order to produce the vita contemplativa [the contemplative life]. Zizek says essentially the same thing when he refers to the “incessant activity” of scientists and technologists whose lives are run by the “objective constraint” of Progress.”

I’ve always had an underlying, unspoken belief that science and technology would save us. I guess that was my unknown known. There’s as much substance for believing in science as our savior as there is in believing in a talking snake as our nemesis. I agree with Zizek and Dupuy that the only way to confront the catastrophe is to first, accept that it’s unavoidable, and then govern our actions by what we would have done if we had known then what we know now. That’s the only way Zizek’s Four Points would have a chance of being implemented. But there’s another step that has to be taken: vote the tea party out of congress in ’14. 

Solitude in the Wilderness

     I stumbled across an interesting article in The Week magazine titled “Alone in the taiga.” The article is about a Russian family that fled into the Siberian wilderness in 1936 to avoid persecution. The Lykov’s were members of the Old Believers, a Russian Orthodox sect, that was being persecuted by the Bolsheviks in the 30s. In 1978 a group of scientist flew over the taiga and discovered a clearing 6,000 feet up the mountainside and a human habitat. Four geologist who were in the district were sent to investigate and found Karp Lykov and his four children Savin, Natalia, Agafia, and Dmitry living in a hut. Lykov’s wife, Akulina, died of starvation in ’61  when a hard frost killed everything in their garden. Agafia and Dmitry were born in the wilderness and all they knew of the outside world they learned from their parents. Akulina used the Bible to teach her children how to read and write; they used sharpened birch sticks dipped into honeysuckle as pen and ink. The Lykov’s had taken with them modern amenities such as kettles and a spinning wheel but in time the kettles rusted and they had no way to repair or replace the metal parts of the spinning wheel. The family struggled to survive in the wilderness and ate potato patties mixed with ground rye and hemp seeds. When Dmitry reached adulthood he began trapping and hunting animals but, more often then not, there was no meat. Interestingly, the scientist found Dmitry and Agafia, the two born in the wilderness, “more approachable and open to change” (41). Agafia is noted as being “markedly intelligent” and took charge of keeping time. Dmitry was described as “an outdoorsman who knew all the taiga’s moods” and was greatly intrigued by the technology he encountered, especially the sawmill, at the Soviets’ camp. Initially, the family only accepted the gift of salt, which Karp said had been “true torture,” but overtime the family acquired “knives, forks, handles, grain, and eventually even pen and an electric torch” (41). Unfortunately, after establishing contact with the outside world three of the four children died within a couple of days of one another. Savin and Natalia died of kidney failure and Dmitry died of pneumonia which most likely began as an infection he contracted from the scientist. Karp and Agafia refused to leave the wilderness and when the geologist helped Agafia bury her father she return to the wilderness. 

            The Lykov’s story was fascinating because it was not in the remote past. It seem inconceivable that a family would abandon the comforts of the “modern world” or “civilization” and flee into the wilderness, but I guess the “modern” and “civilized” world was proving to be hasher and more dangerous than the wilderness. The family adapted to the harsh conditions of the taiga and managed to survive. They were able to survive because they had each other. I find myself wondering about Agafia and her life alone in the wilderness. How long did she manage to survive by herself? This lead to think about Frankenstein’s creature and how lonely he was. The creature had no one to sustain him or rely on.    

Zizek and Ecology

      I found Zizek’s overall argument quite interesting. He is right in that although we are aware of the realities of global warming, our common sense makes it difficult for us to believe that something catastrophic will ever occur. According to Zizek, part of the problem is that we assume that the “world is part of reality as an ordered and seamless Whole” (444). When we look outside and see the trees swaying in the wind and hear the birds chirping, we see the sublimity of nature, but as Zizek points out, we are blind to many of the ecological changes (and its affects) to the environment. Part of the essay briefly mentions the mysterious disease that caused a huge decline in our honey bees, although many of us may have heard something on the radio or on the local news regarding the problem, I don’t think most of us seriously thought about how this will directly affect our lives. Until it becomes a catastrophic event, we continue to move on without giving the problem a second thought. And, when something horrible occurs, the desire or urgency in finding a solution to the problem quickly declines. For some reason, we cannot seem to sustain the public’s interest long enough to contend with the ecological crisis we are faced with today. 

Zizek’s first call to action is to follow Dupuy who suggests that we should first submit to the idea of a possible catastrophe and “perceive it as our fate, as unavoidable, and then, projecting ourselves into it, adopting its standpoint, we should retroactively insert into its past (the past of the future) counterfactual possibilities...upon which we then act today” (459). But  how do we know which “doom” to submit to? There are numerous scientific arguments that suggest we should focus on one potential catastrophe over another, which are we to chose? Also, when he argues that we should then “mobilize ourselves to perform the act,” it sounds as if there is one act in of it self that would fix the problem. Now, I’m not at all an expert on the details of our ecological crisis, but it would seem necessary for us to take on multiple acts simultaneously in order to evoke some kind of substantial change to the natural environment. Even if we were to attempt to solve the problem “retroactively,” there is no guarantee that the solutions we would come up with would work. 

He ends his essay with Badiou’s theory, the “eternal Idea” of revolutionary-egalitarian Justice (460). The first part argues for a strict egalitarian justice. Initially, this sounds fantastic. If I was king of the world, I would consider it, but I would first need to understand its meaning. What would be its guidelines and who would be responsible in overseeing this kind of policy? Would it be an international collective body? If so, then more than likely the same world powers would intercede and exploit it to serve their own political agenda. 

Splintered Identity: Franken-monster

“In Defense of Lost Causes,” by Slavoj Zizek, advocates the notion that developments in science have taken aim at not only understanding life, “but generating new forms of life that will surprise us [as well as] greater and stronger forms of life” that will eventually surpass us (435). The author also comments that there has become a disjunction between, what he calls, the first and second natures in scientific developments. The first-nature of organisms is confined to interpreting natural development whereby we can understand and utilize them for the benefit of humans. Second-nature involves the development of “natural monsters,” such as genetically enhanced or modified crops and other creations that may be problematic for humans to exercise control over. It seems the problem, as discussed by Heidegger, is the “interdependency of man and nature: by reducing man to just another natural object whose properties can be manipulated, what we lose is not (only) humanity but nature itself” (435). It’s arguable as to how “nature” functions in this sentence, but I’m inclined to believe Heidegger might have intended the meaning to be an extension of humanity or the essence/ origins of human beings against other creatures.

                Frankenstein is quick to reveal the pitfalls of manipulating life or what we can assume was intended to surpass human life. I’ve always been perplexed by the notion that Frankenstein was instantly horrified by a creation he painfully endeavored to create. Upon creating the monster, Frankenstein remarks, “How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavored to form?” (35). Here, we notice a transgression or what I’ll call the true realization of a perversion of nature. It appears the doctor has, in a sense, violated his own conceptions of human life. He is no longer bound to the benign practice of manipulation or experimentation; he has become a creator.  At some point unbeknownst to him, he crossed the line between first and second natures.  There are probably dozens of avenues to explain this classic scene, but it seems this moment is emblematic of two irreconcilable realities; Frankenstein has become both the master of human creation but he has also created something far beyond his control. Frankenstein is stricken with fear and awe, but as Zizek points out, “one can break out of fear not through a desperate search for safety, but, on the contrary, by pushing on to the end, by accepting the nullity we are afraid to lose” (433). Such an idea is paradoxical, yet it is this same contradiction of sorts that fuels the rest of the novel. After expounding his horror, the doctor runs out of the room to collect himself, and by then the monster has already managed to allude him. Frankenstein seems to pursue the monster out of a desire to understand another side of himself, but a side that both repulses and consumes him. Perhaps Frankenstein’s unquenchable anger to destroy the creature is both a reflection of his own discontent and an admission of his own frailty.

Žižek’s Follies

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.  With great respect to those whom adore Žižek, fear is necessary for mankind to embrace new philosophical systems or re-embrace old ones, whether that be religion or environmentalism.  The Church by and large is averse to embracing new ecologies because the existing nature of creation must be respected.  In other words, any sublimated “superstitions,” however outlandish, can be evaluated but ultimately must be sustained for the entire body of believers to feel included.  Žižek’s “unknown knowns” fall into this category: religion (and environmentalism) in Žižek’s narrow estimation is established as that accessible only to the most intellectually attuned but not those who hear the word, understand that they are saved, and unconsciously embellish their faith with various glittering trivialities.  These trivialities in the aggregate represent in Žižek’s mind a danger because where a “great” leader—Bush II or Leopold II—might have the imprimatur of the evangelical church and the Catholic Church, respectively, any foreign enterprise embarked upon to improve a country’s safety or privilege it economically is, indeed, systematically evil.

Žižek is unafraid to take on religion or the new religion, environmentalism.  Human beings are reactive, nay reactionary, by nature and the Lord understands it.  Negative motivation is necessary, for without a counter-joy, real joy would be taken for granted and counted as an exclusively human purview.  Real joy, however, comes from the Lord and must also be shared.  Isolationist Christianity, for example, is an oxymoron which fails the basic tenets of loving one’s neighbor.  If America were to shut its borders as did seventeenth century Japan, many countries the world over—including Canada—would suffer.  The economic benefit American provides is important along with missionaries various church organizations send all across the globe.  Am I digressing?

Do economics and religion still go hand in hand?  When we spread prosperity, are we also spreading the gospel?  Heavy-handedness like the Iraq War is wrong, yes, but is the world safer with Saddam gone?  I would like to think so for the sake of the lives lost.  Are the atrocities committed in the Congo Free State important that they be remembered such that they not be repeated?  The answer to this is also yes.  I don’t understand why the spread of prosperity means, for Žižek, that resources must be purposed equally for all peoples.  The arc of the Biblical narrative does not reflect this: some will have much, others not so much.  But in no way is this inhumane.  In Žižek’s world, terror would reinforce the State’s governing of egalitarian resource utilization.  So there would emerge a totalitarian state to replace our current set of nation-states all fighting for hegemony.  Hmm….

The beauty of Christianity is that there is the hope that we will get to a point where all will feel inclined to volunteer to help and love one’s neighbor.  But that is not violent reinforcement.  In fact, the negativity of Hell is not a reinforcement but a warning, a heeding.

From "Nihilism" to "Justice"

            The selection from Zizek's In Defense of Lost Causes is fascinating, insightful, frustrating, and surprising.  Above all, I found it intellectually exciting.  However, I want to explore the main outlines of his argument because I believe it has some problems, avoiding his interesting digresssions, like those on science, Christianity, and free will.  One of the main arguments that underlies his discussion is that "there are no background coordinates of our world" -- that is, there is no "Big Other" (God, Nature, or any creative, ordering principle) (445).  Reality is "a meaningless chaotic manifold" (444).  Nietzsche said much the same about reality, denying God and order, but ended up positing a kind of "Big Other" -- the will to power.  Zizek makes a similar move, denying one thing, on the one hand, and positing something else, rather obliquely, on the other.  The end of absolute nihilism can only be suicide or selfish hedonism.  As Yvor Winters said to Robinson Jeffers, if he really believed it was better to be a rock than a human being, he should kill himself.  Zizek turns out not to be an absolute nihilist.

            Throughout the selection, Zizek returns to various forms of "an anonymous Fate beyond social control" (459).  These include the process of capitalism, the development of science and technology, the destructive natural processes set in motion by human beings.  As Marx and Engels observed of capitalism, "All that is solid melts into thin air, all that is holy is profaned."  Science and technology (with genetic engineering, cloning, and nanotechnology) has shown that there is no natural order, no human nature, no Nature at all.  The study of evolution demonstrates that there is no evolution as a progressive development.  Rather, species have evolved because of "catastrophes" and "broken equilibria" (442) Any equilibrium is secondary; disequilibrium is primary. 

            The concern to prevent the runaway destructive natural processes from destroying the earth and the human race -- ecology -- Zizek identifies as "the predominant form of ideology of global capitalism" (439).  Although ecology purports to attempt to change humans' relationship to the earth, it is actually resistant to change and has "the anti-totalitarian post-political distrust of large collective acts" (440).  Thus, ecology is a false alternative which does not fundamentally challenge capitalist hegemony.  While dwelling on catastrophe, it hopes deep down that it will not really happen, and in this it is reinforced by our common sense, which is habituated to everyday reality and does not believe this reality can be disrupted (445). 

            Zizek, at moments, challenges these anonymous, seemingly uncontrollable processes.  He resists the absolute authority of science.  He discusses "the way science functions as ... an ideological institution" which provides certainty and stamps out or marginalizes "heretics" (446).  He expresses discomfort with tinkering with the human genome or attempting to create a synthetic cell.  Instead of deeming 90 percent of the human genome "junk DNA," he wonders if this "junk" is important and we just don't understand how life works  -- how "an 'infinite' (self-regulating) organic structure arises" (441).  He also balks at seeing the human being as completely empty and without agency, as a "blind circuit of neurons" (446). 

            Given such challenges, we might expect Zizek to offer some replacement "Big Other" or at least some principle for action.  And he does this in a rather sly way.  Zizek argues that the various forms of the "Big Other" stop us from acting in the face of possible destruction.  The Big Other as a "'reified' social system" or a natural process cannot be stopped because it has become an unconquerable reality -- an In-itself (453).  This reification of abstract processes comes about through prosopopoeia.  Through personification, the processes -- whether capitalist development, scientific progress, or natural processes -- become objective realities.  However, he makes sure to defend Hegel's "objective Spirit."  This Spirit is objective and real, independent of individuals, but it is not related to a "collective or spiritual super-Subject"(454).  There is no collective Subject beyond individual human beings.  But the objective spirit is related to individuals in so far as it is the "presupposition of their activity" (454). 

            His sly move occurs rather abruptly at the end of the chapter as a rationale for action. The ecological challenge should be met by reinventing and reviving what Zizek ironically calls the "'eternal Idea' of revolutionary-egalitarian Justice" and later "egalitarian terror" (460, 461).  Since there is no Big Other for Zizek, but rather a "meaningless chaotic manifold," he is not positing this Justice as an In-itself, a reality.  But, we can suppose, we should act as if this Justice existed, fully conscious that it is an invention.  Furthermore, if we act as "a people" with "large-scale collective decisions," are we not also reinventing the "collective or spiritual super-Subject"? (461, 454). Will this subject act with reference to a Hegelian "objective spirit"?  And most important for the implementation of his proposals, if the collective Subject and Justice are inventions, who will define them and, therefore, make the collective decisions?  The "terror" is presumably necessary, according to Zizek, in order to avert catastrophe and save human lives.  In the process of administering justice through terror, some people will have to receive "ruthless punishment" and perhaps die in order for the majority to be saved.  Is Zizek, then, promoting a kind of totalitarian utilitarianism?

A Braver New World?: Thoughts on Zizek's "Uneasiness in Nature"

“What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.” - C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1944).

“Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.” G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World? (1910).

No wonder Zizek is called the most dangerous philosopher today. He makes “egalitarian terror” sound like a water-downed version of totalitarianism combined with an improved version of democracy, when really, we shouldn't forget, that in order to be terrorized, someone or something has to do the terrifying- meaning they will be the ones presumably free from terror.

Zizek is interesting to read because he is difficult to pin down. That means that his Lacanian-Marxists views sometimes hook onto Chesterton's distributivist politics, but are released before they are latched onto his Catholicism. He carries the torch for Hegelian dialecticism to an extent, but is cautious about scientific progress, referring to it as an “ideological institution” that also needs to be checked (445). Because of these and other seemingly paradoxes, Zizek can be both a friend and enemy to a variety of worldviews. That being said, I find myself agreeing with him on some points, but largely disagreeing with him overall.

His problem, as I understood it, is finding a solution to the imbalance of scientific progress with the fallibility of our common sense, our will to believe against our notions of freedom and autonomy. In the realm of science, biogenetics has enabled scientists “with interventions into man's genetic inheritance, the domination over nature reverts into an act of taking-control-over-oneself” (435). But I'm not so sure about this. Isn't the case that someone always takes control of someone else? On a larger scale, a world-state, wouldn't this mean the power of one nation over another?

Zizek says the price we pay for curtailing science is the split between science and ethics. But this should be viewed as a good thing, for why should science be the only one to tell us about autonomy and freedom? Aristotle's magnanimous (great-souled) man is self-sufficient. Socrates proposes that we seek freedom in the city, even if the city will ultimately deny us both dialogue and life itself, for the unexamined life can profit nothing. In other words, science doesn't hold the keys to our ultimate notions of freedom and necessity. We need another Kant to critique the “scientism” of today.

Zizek shows how up-to-date science says it will soon create “a brain more powerful than a human brain.” And perhaps I am one of the ones whom Zizek blames for having my common sense interfere with scientific data, but I at least pose this question: For human intelligence to create an intelligence more intelligent than itself, wouldn't it have to be more intelligent than itself to begin with?

In terms of Zizek's critique that the Church's message of hope is defending life against death, it is here, that I find agreement and disagreement. Zizek should know (because of his admiration for a good ol' Chestertonian paradox) that the Church's message about life and death has been two-fold: It is the guardian of life and nature, because God created it and saw that it was good, and so has built hospitals, healed the sick and helped the poor, and blessed marriage, among other things. But it is also a religion that has its God, as its central image, dying a slowly death on the cross, has glorified martyrs and martyrdom, and entrusts its followers to bid all their cares to another world. Is then science the only one occupied with this so called death-drive?

As I am reaching my max word count, I'd like to skip over all the other points and questions of agreement and disagreement (Zizek neglects to mention for example that Darwin posited God as an alternative for the evolutionary process, regarding somethings he had difficulty explaining, such as the human eye). Zizek's solution to the problem of our ontology and scientific endeavors (and I think he goes beyond the ecological movement) is his egalitarian terror. Here is where philosophy, the wisdom of the past, “the democracy of the dead” (as Chesterton calls its), can offer an alternative. It is to replace Hegel's notion of “earth” with that old idea of “soul.” Today, the body has attributes that once belonged to the soul, and so is better understood as a mechanism, something that can be manipulated. This reduction of complex mental phenomena to mechanical models is what drives science to dissect and explain the human away. In the end, we may even find that it is no longer “man's control over nature,” but nature's control over man, as Zizek also mentions.