GLIM, Spring 1996, volume 2

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prin

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Volume 2















GLIM 1996-97
Editor & Founder
Catherine Rose
Assistant Story Editor
Jessica McFarland
Layout
Catherine Rose—Da Rest
Nevin Katz—‘The Analysis of Catastrophe Causation Verbs”
Laura Smid—‘‘The Evil of I and Thou”

Thank yous to: Sam Schulhofer-Wohl for his help setting up the Master
Page, Audree Penner for the use of her office after the huge scanning
disaster, Jeff Lott for solutions to last minute problems, Adam Preset and
Jonathan Seitz for their help lugging a monitor up to Parrish Sth. To all
those friends who gave second opinions and edited— you know who all
you tortured souls are. Thank you to all those who contributed their pho-
tos and papers.

Attributed material copyright ©1996 by the respective authors. Unattributed
material copyright ©1996 GLIM.
Swarthmore College Student Publications
500 College Avenue




Dear Reader,

Well, about Glim... actually in true Swattie character by telling
you “about Glim” I also want to tell you a little about where my
approach to Glim is coming from. Yeah, roundabout, philosophic...
the turmoil that comes maybe from getting older, maybe from a
humanities requirement.

Recently, I’ve become increasingly absorbed by the concept of

cca chai religion (err... the hesitancy to continue commences.) Though a large
number of people no longer believe in religion, this does not mean religion’s role in society
has been left unoccupied. Rather, it is possible that a more widespread belief has substituted
the function of religion. For instance, in the past when something happened that a person
couldn’t handle, s/he could put it in the context of religion until s/he was prepared to broach
the events implications i.e. my friend died, s/he’s in heaven. Today, people often deal with
difficult times through intellectualization. These are not necessarily negative methods of
avoidance, there are times when people need a space they believe in to place issues until
they’re strong enough to handle them. When religions of the past don’t serve as effective
mechanisms, people are likely to find alternatives.

This religious disbelief can occur for numerous reasons. Often though, conflict arises
from a growing gulf between social norms and religious values. Among the difficulties aris-
ing from the God we’ve created today is that no matter how often people say “he’s” gender
neutral, as “God” he’s not. Words do not simply lose their connotations, and as the central
religious figure, God’s gender cannot merely melt into the background. Furthermore, though
religion says God is simultaneously within us and exterior to us, the image we have con-
structed is almost always exterior— a power outside of life and ruling down over it. Perhaps
we merely need to substitute the term “God” with “Life.” Imagine replacing all religious fig-
ureheads with “Life.” “Go in the name of the Lord,” would become: “Go in the name of
Life,” etc.. Life has not lost its definition of existence. It is within all of us and outside of us
too, and “life” is gender neutral. Incidents like death, falling in love, forming friendships,
instances of conflict— incidents of life— provide life’s teachings. Also, life alters as times
change. Or maybe, we have always broached issues from the standpoint of “Life” only pos-
sibly in the past reality was more tightly interwoven with religion, whereas now life has
become more tied to academia.

If academic institutions are capable of providing people with a believable structure in
which to place events in their life (with subjects that are updated to accommodate changing
times), it is important we carefully consider the approach of these institutions. Glim is a
contribution towards what I see as important in an educational arena. This semester, one of
my friends committed suicide. While grappling with his conscious choice, I spent a lot of
time reflecting on my own decision to live. Among various incidents and reflections that
helped me incorporate my friend’s death into my life, a small but significant one involved a
Glim submission. The paper dealt with the limited nature of the mind, the conflict that stems
from how the mind remains only part of the body, while the entirety of the body is involved
in the act of living. The paper reminded me to take into consideration the bodily drive to eat,
to sleep...to survive, something which I had been disregarding in a more wholly philosophi-
cal approach to why one chooses to live.

As I become more concerned about keeping events in perspective within a larger
framework I am increasingly affected by the specialization that occurs in college. Yeah,
there’s an element of truth in the idea that specialization eventually comes full circle to
reveal the “larger picture,;’— after all everything occurs within the same universe of ques-
tions. Nonetheless, contact with other subjects and their theories remains important. Each
subject has its own flavor and such specifics remain important in relating to the specifics of
the moment. Hopefully, Glim will act as one of many contributors to a more balanced learn-
ing.

Take care,

Z Ly, a

Catherine Rose


CONTENTS

Olfaction: from Odorant Molecule to Smell

By Erte LCT ieee eee ie pases ictlencctncnenenenccetsetlrecsceccrsceseswssnsseoncronscercnenererere IBY 0) OPEN cccdacoccxscuonocodotcnc p.4
Cognitive Mechanisms & Evolutionary Psychology

by Dan Gallant... ec ecscscscsssssesssesesenenencsenecensceesceresseesecesessesessvosescsenescccesasserenenegnansecereces PSY ChOlOS Yates cstcesee: p.12
The Analysis of Catastrophe Causation Verbs: Accounting for the “Scrod Phenomenon”

By CCU aU SU ei ce a e ct le cee eter ener cases cate ctnsdtge wens ro ces sntasrersueczaeec deny reese! GIN CUISUICS ee p.14
The Great Fish Fiasco

DY SOSH SIV CLs ears, cee cleric cstece grec daon seer re ctetes teseataate cates ors Ves situs erstaceelireceeseceres PhysicSie een. p.18
Anatomy of an Illness

by Bun-Shil Abn ........c.-.eeececeseceseesetaccecserecnseseccororeneneseteetonoronersosasssensanevtoneasnssreneacucnereensecee®® Social Anthropology......p.21
Responding to Rupture: Isaac Luria, Emil Fackenheim and Tikkun Olam

by Mike Bernstein <..c-.-.cccecccdsesecetevccsesesentsetoneneneveccngeactnceccscscsanstsrenenstbascorsssneqeneeanererengtecscess IRelicionemes eis. p.24
The Suburban Front Yard

by Rob(@armichaeln, (672i. es terete sncres se eceseeetecnges senate: ip SEG ORES, «eee iat sch Englishes eres p.31
The Interaction Between the Physical Environments and Socioeconomic Systems in Post-Industrial Philadelphia
by. Dam Clowes... ce sececsseeccrpetscecstoseteceeesceeecenecerent ioecsrersneaqirsrsssssusnencussnrersneseueasarsranterse=- Social Anthropology......p.34
Manet and the Intersection of the Impressionists

by Laura Christian...........ccccssssscseseseseserenesessenencsenerensesesssessssssesesesensneereesseneseaceeatensacasacseseee® JTL TISTIOTA Yococcccococcoogocen: p.42
The Evil of I and Thou

By, Stat GLGCeM ees. ieees ete cscscecsscspenencenaetarecycctescneceneteoeverestssseseocecnsncnnaecewsnenereqerezereiss 1G NERIO TT coccaacenoscanadeodaoce p.46
Natural Ingredients: Parody,Theory, and the Tension of the Referent

Dy, dam La Sue eee cccscecctocnen eset erety gts secon sce icst natch secant ddcasesees Ae ee Ns Gis heer eee p.50
Memories

by Noah Oliveira-Susswein ..........cccceceeeceececeseeeeeeesseeseeenssesesenesesesesesesescsesereneeeseeennenseenenees BSV.ChOlO py nese ese ss p.57
Thinking in 3D: Processing Communication and Creation of Spatial Ideas

by Alyosha MoInar ........ccccssssessseseseeeseseneeseeceeeeeenererersnsssnsssesenenenenssensseseseneneneenereneecereceges RSV CHOLOSYa-ssseree sce p.59
American Defense

Dy Jorge Ramirez ..........ccccceseecssesesesseeceecensterenenenenserececacesesecesnsesesceteceesserentanesaneserscanenencesascens Political Science............ p.64
Factual Fictions: Night and Fog, and the Artist as Historian

by Jennifer Barager ..........cessssesssessseseeseseneneceeeeseeseensesesesessssnsnenenenenenesesenenescenseneacecscasssie! eitenatne wee p.68
Exact Modal Analysis and Optimization of NYY1 Cascaded Waveguide structures with Multimode Guiding Sections
by Erik Thoen ..........cccccscscssssssesesesenenenenerecesecenncncecscsesenosssssosonsacseseacsenesssesnsareneranensocosococaeseees IENSINCELIN DE tee ees p./2
Play Analysis of Adrienne Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of a Negro

by Sabrina Moyle .........c.ccsescssesesseseseseeteeneseeeneseseeenssesesesessessenssseeeneneseeseneneeeesnsncnsenenanensess IDESTOM Zest eres nrcsene p.77



IMAGE CREDITS
(in order of appearance)

cover — Catherine Rose
page 1—Marianne Yeung
page 2—Jean-Philippe Chabot
page 4—-Catherine Rose
page 13—-Catherine Rose
page 15—Starr Glidden
page 18—Lloyd Walmsley
page 20—Lloyd Walmsley
page 21—Catherine Rose
page 22—Starr Glidden
page 25—Catherine Rose



page 26—Kate Ellsworth
page 29—Kate Ellsworth
page 31—Sarah Jaquette
page 32—Catherine Rose
page 36—Jen Cox

page 38—Jen Cox

page 39—Jen Cox

page 40—Jen Cox

page 43—-Catherine Rose
page 44—Catherine Rose
page 46—Marianne Yeung
page 47—Nicole Breazeale
page 48—Deena Suh

page 49—Deena Suh

page 50—Catherine Rose
page 51—-Catherine Rose
page 54—-Starr Glidden
page 57—Catherine Rose
page 59—Catherine Rose
page 60—Deena Suh

page 63—Matthew Trebelhorn
page 68—Starr Glidden
page 69—Starr Glidden
page 70—Starr Glidden
page 72—Marianne Yeung










OLFACTION: FROM ODORANT MOLECULE TO SMELL

Ceocccececccccscococcccoccce COCCCOOOOOEEOOOOOEEOT OOOO OOOOH OSOS OHO HOSE O SE OOOO OOOO OSOOOLOOOHS HOLL EEOHHOSHOHLOSESOOOHOEOOOTOOOOOOOOOEOEOS

he sense of smell is

critical for many

organisms’ survival
and plays an important role
in our daily lives. The
process by which individ-
ual odorant molecules give
tise to the perception of a
particular scent has been a
topic of research by scien-
tists for many years. New
techniques in molecular
biology and neurophysiolo-
gy have given rise to many
exciting discoveries in the
field of olfaction. The
process by which molecules
bind to individual recep-
tors, utilize second messen-
gers which open ion chan-
nels and eventually leads to
desensitization has become
much clearer in the last
five years.

Just as there are recep-
tors for neurotransmitters
and hormones, there are
receptors on olfactory neu-
rons which bind odorant
molecules. The first evi-
dence for olfactory recep-
tors came from optical iso-
mers of odorant molecules.
For instance, L—carvone is
perceived as smelling like
carraway while D-carvone
is perceived as smelling like
spearmint (Dodd &
Castellucci, 1991). The
fact that optical isomers
could produce different
smells suggested that the
separate isomers bound to
different receptors. Prior to
the cloning of the recep-
tors, researchers noted a
rise in cAMP levels in rat
olfactory cilia in vitro
(Breer et al., 1993B). A rise
in cAMP upon exposure to
a ligand suggested that the
olfactory receptors proba-
bly belonged to the super
family of G linked recep-
tors which span the mem-
brane seven times. Indeed,
by screening a cDNA
library made from rat olfac-
tory cells using other Ga




subunits as probes, David T. Jones and
Randall R. Reed were able to clone a
unique G protein which they designat-
ed Gig Vones & Reed, 1989). G.,
which is the G protein that activates
adenylate cyclase in most systems, has
88 percent of its sequence in common
with Goj¢ and therefore the two G pro-
teins are very similar in structure and
mechanism of action (Jones & Reed,
1989).

By assuming that the receptors
belonged to the G protein family, Linda
Buck and Richard Axel, in what was
one of the most important advances in
the field of olfactory research, cloned
and described the first receptors (Buck
and Axel, 1991). Buck and Axel used
PCR to amplify the conserved regions
of G-protein coupled receptors and
then used those fragments to screen a
cDNA library made from rat olfactory
epithelium cells. The cloned receptors
shared many features in common with
other members of the G protein linked
receptor family including, the position
of several cysteine residues, which form
sulfide bonds in the first and second
extracellular loops, a potential palmi-
toylation site in the C terminal as well
as other sequence similarities (Buck and
Axel, 1991). Within the group of olfac-
tory receptors, the largest differences in
sequence occurred between the third,
fourth, and fifth transmembrane span-
ning regions. Thus, these parts of the
receptors are probably involved in lig-
and binding (see figure one, page 11)
(Buck and Axel, 1991). Northern blot
analysis in which RNA from all major
organ systems of the body was examined
revealed that the receptors were only
found in olfactory epithelium (Buck
and Axel, 1991). Nevertheless, just
because these receptors were expressed
exclusively in the olfactory system, it
did not mean that the receptors Axel
and Buck found were olfactory recep-
tors. One could argue that what Axel
and Buck found were some type of
receptor that just happened to be in the
olfactory epithelium, but which did not
actually bind odor.

In order to counter these possibili-
ties, a team led by H. Breer and his col-
leagues using the same methods as Buck
and Axel cloned more putative olfacto-
ry receptors and expressed these recep-

tors in Spodoptera frugiperda (Sf9) cells

BY ERIC ELENKO @ PROF. SIWICKI @ NEUROBIOLOGY, Bio. 29 @ SPRING “95

SOOOCOOOL COE EO OOO OOOEOEOO SOOO OO OOASOO OOOOH OOOOH T OOS HHHHOOHOSOOOHH OHHH HOOOOOESEOH OO OOOOOOEE ESO SOLOS ESOOOEESHSOSOOHOOOSOOEOOSOS HOODOO

using baculovirus as a vector (Raming
et al., 1993). After exposing the trans-
fected cells to oderants, the researchers
found a large increase in the amount of
inositol triphosphate. Since there was a
change in a particular second messenger
in response to being exposed to a lig-
and, the cloned putative receptors had
to be true odorant receptors (Raming et
al., 1993).

In addition, Breer found that the
transfected receptor (odorant receptor
five) was able to produce an increase in
the amount of intracellular inositol
triphosphate in response to several dif-
ferent odors. Thus, one receptor
appeared able to bind many different
ligands (Ramming et al., 1993).

Breer’s findings were significant,
since a long simmering controversy in
olfactory receptor research is how olfac-
tory neurons are able to bind and
process the millions of diverse ligands
involved in olfaction. one side has
argued that each olfactory neuron
expresses many different types of recep-
tors and each receptor has a narrow
range of ligands that it can bind; the
other side has argued that each neuron
only expresses one type of receptor
which is capable of binding many differ-
ent ligands (Lance, 1994). Thus, Breer’s
findings support the idea of one recep-
tor type on one neuron. In addition, in
situ hybridization of rat cells in the
olfactory epithelium with probes specif-
ic to odorant receptors found that there
was only a minuscule number of cells
which bound probe specific for two
olfactory receptors (Lancet, 1994). A
third line of evidence came from a series
of elegant experiments performed by a
team of scientists led by Richard Axel.
The researchers showed that for recep-
tor 17, only the maternal in a given
paternal allele is expressed but not both
(Chess et al., 1994). If there is inactiva-
tion of one of the alleles, which is usu-
ally accomplished by cis acting tran-
scriptional factors, then the two alleles
replicate at different times during the S
phase of the cell cycle. In fact, Axel
found that there was asynchronous
reproduction of several receptors, indi-
cating receptor 17 (Chess et al., 1994).
If only one allele was expressed on one
chromosome, then this suggests that
only one receptor type would be
expressed per neuron.









































Nevertheless,
it is extremely hard to prove that each neuron only
expresses one receptor type. Although in situ hybridization
never revealed double labeling of any cell for probes with
two different receptor types, it could be because the exper-
imenters used the wrong two probes. The experimenters
only tried using probes for a few of the thousands of differ-
ent receptor types that exist. Perhaps, had they used
probes for different receptors types, they would have
observed double labeling. Just because the researchers
failed to find something, it does not mean that the some-
thing they were looking for does not exist. In addition,
allelic inactivation, as shown by Axel, only provides a
mechanism for how one receptor type might be expressed
on one neuron, but it does not mean that only one recep-
tor type is necessarily expressed on one neuron. While the
one neuron, one receptor type theory has a lot of evidence
to support it, the debate is still far from settled.

Like other G—protein linked receptors, the olfactory
receptors are capable of activating two pathways, the
cAMP mediated pathway and the phosphatidylinositol
inositol bisphosphate pathway. After an odorant mole-
cule binds to the receptor, if the cAMP pathway is
utilized by that ligand, then Goj¢ is activated
(Anholt, 1993). Goj activates an adenylate
cyclase specific to olfactory neurons known
as adenylate cyclase type III, which utilizes
ATP to make cAMP. In order to
explain why the olfactory system
uses a unique G protein and a
unique adenylyl cyclase, some
scientists


















olfactory
system must

be capable
Oo ti







detect-
ing very
weak signals
against potentially
very strong background
noise and thus, the unique G
proteins and adenylate cyclase help
overcome these problems and are espe-
cially good at amplifying very weak signals
(Anholt, 1993). ;
If the cAMP pathway is not utilized, an olfactory
neuron might use the phosphatidylinositol bisphosphate
pathway. No one has found a neuron that generates both
cAMP and inositol trisphosphate in response to oderants,
suggesting that these pathways are mutually exclusive in
olfactory neurons (Breer, 1993A). Although one might
expect that odorant molecules that elicit cAMP all are
structurally related and the molecules that elicit inositol
triphosphate are all structurally related, in fact there is
nothing obvious that molecules that elicit a particular sec-
ond messenger pathway have in common (Breer, 1993A).
For the PIP7 pathway to be utilized, a G protein must be
activated. At this point, it is unknown whether G5 j¢ acti-
vates a phospholipase C or whether a G protein that has
not been discovered is responsible for activating the
enzyme. As in other cells, eventually calcium is released
from the endoplasmic reticulum and a protein kinase C
gets activated. Some have argued that the calcium actual-
ly binds to calmodulin which then activates adenylate
cyclase and thus the PIP7 pathway ultimately generates
the same products as the cAMP pathway (Anholt, 1993).
If both pathways generate cAMP, then why olfactory cells
generate cAMP through a less direct method via the PIP
pathway is unclear. Figure two summarizes these pathways.
There is some evidence that nitric oxide acts a second
messenger in olfactory cells. Nitric oxide is a gas that acti-
vates the enzyme Guanylate cyclase which produces
cGMP from GTP (Vincent & Hope, 1992). Nitric oxide is
thought to act as a second messenger in a number of dif-
ferent systems in the brain (Vincent & Hope, 1992). In
situ hybridization of rat brain using a probe for mRNA of
nitric oxide synthase, the enzyme that catalyzes the forma-
tion of nitric oxide, showed that the greatest amount of
nitric oxide synthase is located in the olfactory bulb and in
the cerebellum (Breer & Shepherd, 1993C). In addition,
other studies have indi-
cated that there is a
rise in CGMP in both
purified olfactory
cilia and olfac-
tory neurons
after exposing
them to oder-
ants (Breer









































(Breer
& Sheperd,
1993C). However, this
rise in CGMP was inhibited
if nitric oxide synthase ¢
was inhibited, indicatin
that nitric oxide wa
probably responsible for
the observed rise in cGMP

(Breer & Sheperd, 1993C).
. The reason that cGMP might be generated is
because it effects the channel which operates in olfac-
tory neurons. The channel was cloned by a team led by
Randall R. Reed in 1990 (Dhallan et al., 199O). Since
previously, scientists had gathered evidence indicating
that cGMP was a second messenger involved in gating of
the channel in olfaction, Reed’s team took advantage of
the homology with other cGMP gated channels. The
researchers used PCR to amplify part of the bovine rod
channel, which is gated by cGMP, and subsequently used
the PCR fragment vo screen a cDNA library made from rat
olfactory cells (Dhallan et al., 1990). Northern blot
analysis revealed that the channel was expressed in the
olfactory epithelium and not in any other system and
therefore the channel was probably the channel which
opens and closes when oderants binding to receptors.
(Dhallan et al., 199O). However, there is a small possibil-
ity that the cloned channel is not the olfactory channel,
but just a channel that by chance is found exclusively in
olfactory neurons.

After being cloned, the channel was transfected into
human embryonic kidney cells and patch clamping was
performed. Not only did the channel open in response to
cGMP, it also opened in response to cAMP and cCMP
(Dhallan et al., 199O) The biggest difference between the
channel found in rods and in olfactory cells is that the rod
channel is only gated by cGMP and the rod channel poses
an affinity for cGMP that is about ten times that of the
olfactory channel’s affinity for cGMP (Anholt, 1993).
This difference in interactions with cyclic nucleotides is
believed to be due to the existence of a threonine in the
rod channel instead of an alanine which is present in the
olfactory channel in the region of the channel that binds
cyclic nucleotides (Anholt, 1993).

Based on the reversal potential of the channel of 4.5 mV
and data gathered from manipulations of extracellular ionic
concentrations, Reed concluded
that the channel is per-
Ameable to sodium,
potassium and cal-
cium (Dhallan et
alee 1990).
Pou? tyhy eng











































































research has indicated
that ions probably do not just pas-
sively pass through open channel to
get from one side of the cell to the
other. Rather, when the channel is

open, the ions probably chemically
interact with amino acids in the
pore of the channel that allow the
ions to pass through it (Anholkt,
1993).
Even though an odorant mole-
cule might bind to a receptor
and open up a channel, if neu-
rons are continually
exposed to a particular












smell, the perception of

smell will decrease to the point where the smell is
not detected. This decrease in response to continu-

al exposure of an odor is generally referred to as
desensitization. The process of desensitization
appears to be due to intracellular enzymes and pro-
teins which interact with the receptor so that it is no
longer capable of binding oderants. The b—adrenergic
receptor has been one of the most studied G protein
linked receptors and knowledge about the b—adrener-
gic receptor has been applied to homologous receptors.
Inactivation of the Fadrenergic receptor occurs when it
is phosphorylated by the enzyme b-adrenergic receptor
kinase (bark) or when the protein b—arrestin binds to
the receptor (Dawson et al., 1993). Further research has
revealed that a homologous enzyme to bark, bark-2 exists
and that there are two other arrestins, b-arrestin-1 and b-
arrestin-2 which inactivate receptors (Dawson et al.,
1993). A team led by Gabriele V. Ronnett demonstrated
using immunohistochemistry that there is a large con-
centration of b-arrestin-2 in bark-2 in the dendritic
knobs of olfactory neurons in the cilia of the olfactory
epithelium. Furthermore, incubation of olfactory cilia
with antibodies to either bark-2 or b-arrestin-2 result-

ed in continual increased levels of cAMP when the
cilia were exposed to the odorant citralva and there-
fore a loss of desensitization (Dawson et al., 1993).
Likewise, when cilia were given antibodies against
bark-2 and b-arrestin-2, there was an even higher
level of cAMP that maintained when the cilia were
exposed to oderants (Dawson et al., 1993). Thus,

there is clear evidence

for the importance of
bark-2 and b-arrestin-2 in
desensitization.

Inhibition of protein kinase A
resulted in continually high levels
of cAMP in response to an odorant
and therefore a loss of desensitiza-
tion (Boekhoff & Breer, 1992).
Likewise, inhibition of protein
kinase C resulted in continually
high levels of inositol triphosphate in
response to oderants and therefore a
loss of desensitization (Boekhoff &
Breer, 1992). However, inhi








of protein kinase C had no effects on cAMP levels and
inhibition of protein kinase A had no effect on sustaining
inositol triphosphate levels (Boekhoff & Breer, 1992). The
target of the protein kinases is not clear. However, Axel
and Buck noted when they first cloned the olfactory recep-
tors that there were possible phosphorylation sites in the
third cytoplasmic loop (Buck & Axel, 1991). However,
one must take into account the potential
role not only of protein kinase A and C,

but also the role of bARK—2. Breer and

his colleagues have proposed several possibil-
ities. The protein kinases might phosphorylate the recep-
tors themselves so that sites on the receptors are exposed

to bARK—; the protein kinases might activate bARK—
2 by phosphorylation; the protein kinases might inactivate

bARK—2 inhibitors by phosphorylating them

(Schleicher et al., 1993).
» The system of activation and
© desensitization is able to remain in
© balance because the more odorant
=> that bind to receptors, the greater
the amount of cAMP or diacylglycerol
and calcium that accumulates and therefore more protein
kinases will be activated which will
desensitize a greater number =
of receptors. Thus, .
the greater

amount of the

odorant,
tah Siew
greater 4

the

number of receptors are phosphorylated and inactivated.
Likewise, there is a negative feedback loop so that as more
receptors get phosphorylated and inactivated, less protein
kinases will get activated which will result in fewer recep-
tors getting activated (see figure three)

. (Boekhoff & Breer, 1992).

In addition, inhibition of the
yprotein phosphatases, which
removes phosphate groups from pro-

teins, results in low levels of cAMP in olfactory cells
exposed to oderants (Boekhoff & Breer, 1992). If phos-
phorylation of receptors inactivates those receptors, it is
logical that removal of those phosphate groups results in
reactivation of those receptors. For no receptor or situa-
tion are the second messenger pathways that regulate
phosphates known (Petty, 1993).

Not only can modification of the receptors lead to
desensitization, but changes to the channel also can result
in desensitization. Yau and his colleagues, using a gel—
shift assay demonstrated that a calcium binding calmod-
ulin protein (Cat2—CaM) is capable of binding to the
olfactory channel. In vitro mutagenesis revealed that the
Ca*?—CaM binds to a stretch of amino acids in the N—
terminus of the channel (Liu et al., 1994). Patch clamp

recordings of the channels subjected
to both cGMP and Cat2—
CaM revealed that the
calmodulin dramatically
decreased current flow
through the channel.

The Ca" =2e1M
appears to decrease the
channel’s affinity for

cyclic nucleotides; if

cyclic nucleotides cannot
bind, the channel cannot
open and therefore there is a
decrease in current through the

channel (Liu et al., 1994).

In addition, Zufall and
Firestein have shown that in
vitro, external divalent
cations are capable of block-
ing the channel. The exact
physiological relevance of
the channels being
blocked is unclear, but
might represent anoth-
er way of controlling
whether or not an olfac-
tory neuron fires and
therefore another mech-
anism by which the olfac-
a tory mechanism can be fine
tuned (Zufall & Firestein, 1993).
In fact, the purpose of the entire second messen-
ger system which is activated is to excite neurons in the
olfactory epithelium; the purpose of the enzymes and
other proteins involved in desensitization is to prevent the
olfactory neurons from firing. By doing in situ hybridiza-
tion using probes for specific receptor types, Buck’s team


iwas able to determine where the axons from neurons
expressing one particular receptor type projected since the
mRNA for the receptors is located along the axon. The
researchers found that neurons expressing the same type of
receptor in the olfactory epithelium all synapse onto the
same glomeruli cell in the olfactory bulb (Ressler et al.,
1994). Thus, Buck hypothesized that the reason that sev-
eral different glomeruli cells fire in response to different
oderants is that the different glomeruli cells are connected
to olfactory neurons whose receptors are distinct, but
which are capable of binding to the same oderants (Ressler
et al., 1994).

One possible objection to Buck’s model is that it fails to
take into account odorant specificity. How could the
incredible ability of the

each odorant

elicits a unique

or semi—unique

pattern of different glomeruli firing; one odor might cause
some of the same glomeruli to fire as another odor, but the
two different odors will never cause all of the same
glomeruli to fire (Ressler et. al., 1994). Given that there
are about 2OOO glomeruli in the mouse (Ressler et. al.,
1994) and probably at least that number in the human, the
number of possible different combinations of glomeruli
that could fire is huge and therefore Buck’s model would
account for the ability of our olfactory system to distin-
guish many closely related odors.

Clearly, Buck’s model is a good one. However, one
must bear in mind that it is unproven. one problem is
the limited number of probes that she tried out.
Perhaps, had she tried probes for many more receptor
types, she would have found two different receptor types
that go to the same glomeruli. The fact that several differ-
ent glomeruli are excited by any one odor could fit in
either with Buck’s findings or the competing theory that
each glomerulus receives input from neurons which have
different receptor types.

Glomeruli cells synapse onto mitral cells which form
circuits which extend into the cortex (see figure four)
(Meisami, 1991). Studies in rats as well as other animals
indicate that mitral cells are either excited or inhibited by
different odors. The excitation is probably due to signals
from the glomeruli cells; the inhibition is caused by gran-
ule cells which are another type of cell in the olfactory
bulb. Thus, the final pattern of mitral cell firing is a result
of both excitation of some mitral cells and inhibition of
other mitral cells (Meisami, 1991).

The perception of olfaction is probably due to process-
ing that occurs higher up in the cortex. Exactly what hap-
pens in the cortex is unknown. Gilles Laurent and his col-

leagues studied the olfaction process in the locust
Schistocerca americana. In the locust, the

antenna lobe is the equivalent of the

olfactory bulb in vertebrates and the

mushroom body is equivalent to the part

of the vertebrate cortex that receives

olfactory information (Laurent &

Davidowitz, 1994). The researchers found that different
odors evoked different spatial—temporal patterns of firing
in the mushroom body. Thus, perhaps in humans, different
odors are distinguished by their ability to produce unique
patterns of cellular firing in the cortex (Laurent &
Davidowitz, 1994). Nevertheless one must be cautious
since what applies to invertebrates does not necessarily
apply to humans.

There is a great deal unknown about olfaction.
However, the following model of olfaction has emerged.
An odorant binds to a receptor which leads to a second
messenger cascade. This cascade results in excitation o
the olfactory neuron. Several olfactory neurons expressing
the same receptor type converge on a single glomeruli cell.
Several glomeruli cells in turn excite a mitral cell. Mitral
cells pass their information to the cortex where there is a
unique firing pattern of cells for every odor. The olfactory
system results in the incredible ability of humans to dis-
tinguish thousands of closely related odors.






FIGURE 1



A depiction of a typical olfactory receptor. Each
dot represents an amno acid. The white dots repre- :
sent aminao acids that all olfactory receptors share Le FiGuRE 2
P while the black dots represent aminao acids that the A partial outline of the second messenger sys-
olfactory cessls do not share. (Buck, 1991) ) : witems employed in olfactory neurons (Breer,

P1993A)

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anholt, Robert R. 1993. Molecular Neurobiology of olfaction. Critical Reviews in
Neurobiology. 7: 1—22.
Boekhoff, Ingrid and Heinz Breer. 1992. Termination of second messenger
signaling in olfaction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. 89; 471—474.
Buck, Linda and Richard Axel. 1991. A Novel Multigene Family May Encode
odorant Receptors: A Molecular Basis for odor Recognition. Cell. 65: 175187
Breer, Heinz. 1993A. Second Messenger Signaling in olfaction. Ciba Foundation
Symposium. 179: 68—72.
Breer, H., Raming, K., Krieger, J., Boekhoff, [., Strotmann, J. 1993B. Towards
an Identification of odorant Receptors. Journal of Receptor Research. 13: 527—540.
Breer, Heinz and Gordon M. Shepard. 1993C. Implications of the No/eGMP
System for olfaction. Trends in Neuroscience. 16: 5—9.
Chess, Andrew, Simon, Itamar, Cedar, Howard and Richard Axel. 1994. Allelic
Cett ?
Inactivation Regulates olfactory Receptors Gene Expression 78: 823—834.
Dawson, Ted M., Arriza, Jeffrey, L., Jaworsky, Donna E., Borisy, Felice E,
Attramadal, Havard, Lefkowitz, Robert J. and Gabriele V. Ronnett. 1993. j»bAdrenergic
Receptor Kinase—2 and bArrestin—2 as Mediators of odorant—Induced Desensitization.
Science. 259: 825—829.
Dhallan, Ravinder S., Yau, King—Wai, Shrader, Karen A. and Randall R. Reed.
1990. Primary structure and functional expression of a cyclic nucleotide—activated channel
from olfactory neurons. Nature. 347: 186187.
Dodd, Jane and Vincent F Castellucci. 1991. Smell and Taste: The Chemical
Layers
SPthe

Activation of olfactory ee
Protein Kinases b lb aes

u y To lateral

olfactory

Granule tract

cell layer

Granule
Tee

Odorant binds to Receptor no longer itral/
binds odorants \ ed cell

Mitral f
cell layer!

the receptor

External

Blexifaxm Pen
ayer

glomerular

Gl tul
Proten Kinases Le slaver 4
are no longer Olfactory +.

active nerve layer |
Cribrifprm ee
plate;

Olfactory ann
epithelium! { f
sensory
neuron

FIGURE 3
The negative feedback loop involving receptors and pro-

tein kinases. Note that phospahtases are not included in FIGURE 4

theis loop, but are probably part of the process in a way that An outline of the basic anatomy of the olfac-
"has not yet been elucidated. (Based on Boekhoff & Breer, tory system showing the major cess types.

91992). (Efstratiadis, 1995)

Senses. In Principles of Neural Science. Kandel, Eric R., Schwartz, James H. and

Thomas M. Jessell eds. Appleton GLange. Norwalk, Connecticut.

Efstratiadis, Argivis. 1995. A new whiff of monoallelic expression. Current Biology. 5: 21—24.

Jones, David T. and Randall R. Reed. 1989. Golt: An olfactory Neuron Specific G Protein Involved in odorant Signal
Transduction. Science. 244: 790—795.

Lancet, Doron. 1994. Exclusive Receptors. Nature. 372: 321—322.

Laurent, Gilles and Hananel Davidowitz. 1994. Encoding of olfactory Information with oscillating Neural
Assemblies. Science. 265: 1872—1875.

Liu, Mingyao, Chen, Tsung—Yu, Ahamed, Basheer, Li, Jess and King—Wai Yau. 1994. Calcium—Calmodulin
Modulation of the olfactory Cyclic Nucleotide—Gated Cation Channel. Science. 266: 1348—1354.

Meisami, Esnail. Chemorepection. 1991. In Neural and Integrative Animal Phvsiologv. C. Ladd Prosser Ed. John
Wiley & Sons, Inc. New York.

Petty, Howard R. 1993. Molecular Biology of Membranes. Plenum Press. New

York.

Raming, K., Krieger, J., Strotmann J., Boekhoff, I., Kubick, S., Baumstark, C. and H. Breer. 1993. Cloning and
Expression of odorant Receptors. Nature. 361: 353—356.

Ressler, Kerry J., Sullivan Susan L. and Linda Buck. 1994. Information Coding in the olfactory System: Evidence for
a Stereotyped and Highly organized Epitope Map in the olfactory Bulb. Cell. 79: 1245— 1255.

Schleicher, Sabine, Boehoff, Ingrid, Arriza, Jeffrey, Lefkowitz, Robert J. and Heinz Breer. 1993. A Fadrenergic recep-
tor kinase—like enzyme is involved in olfactory signal termination. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
90: 1420—1424.

Vincent, Steven R. and Bruce T. Hope. 1992. Neurons that Say NO. Trends in Neuroscience. 15: 1O8—113.

Zufall, Frank and Stuart Firestein. 1993. Divalent Cations Block the Cyclic

Nucleotide—Gated Channel of olfactory Receptor Neurons. Journal of Neurophysiology.69: 1758—1767.



















12

volutionary —_ psychology
focuses on biological results
of the conditions and situa-
tions that defined our ancestors’
existence. It is a discipline that
seeks to explain how human psy-
chology is influenced by mecha-
nisms that evolved to deal with
factors our ancestors faced, and
many of which we have out-
grown as human life has
changed. Furthermore, evolu-
tionary psychology is the study
of how the brain turns informa-
tion into adaptive behavior.
The mind is the product of the
brain’s information processing
mechanisms, which in turn have
been naturally selected over
time because they made effective
sorts of adaptive behavior possi-
ble. Evolutionary psychology is
the study of the connection
between long-term adaptive
changes and the psychological
mechanisms that contribute to
human behavior.

Most present-day psychologi-
cal mechanisms, according to
the tenets of evolutionary psy-
chology, began existence as ran-

om variations in the psycholog-
ical structure of some of our
ancestors in the distant past.
Natural selection made the
mechanisms most beneficial to
our ancestors a part of our own
genetic makeup. Humans born
with certain psychological
mechanisms, like humans born
with other random attributes,
gained certain advantages; indi-
viduals endowed with successful
psychological mechanisms stood
a greater chance of survival and
of fruitful procreation than did
individuals not so endowed. On
average, those who possessed
beneficial mechanisms procreat-
ed more frequently, took better
care of themselves and their kin,
were attracted to more fertile
mates, and generally behaved in
ways that made their genes more
likely to survive than did other
humans. So the most successful
randomly evolved mechanisms
were passed on, through the
process of natural selection.

These cognitive psychological
mechanisms have shaped the



















2 pe ents J een, O Prof. : Durant o) ean 1995



ABSTRACT
This paper is based on the definition and goals of Evolutionary Psychology. The
assignment for this particular piece was as follows: How is the concept of nat-
ural selection by adaption involved in the creation of cognitive psychological
mechanisms? What is your opinion of this enterprise? Support your position
with a brief “logical” explanation.



ways that we respond to information—organisms that can use informative
stimuli to further their own well being will live relatively long and pass their
genes on to the next generation, while organisms who cannot will eventually
die out and cease to have an impact on the gene pool. So the psychological
mechanisms that have survived over time have been those that helped
humans process information from their environment to accurately further
their biological interests. Of course, the situations and conditions which
many such mechanisms evolved to cope with have long ceased to be relevant
to human life in general. Since we have developed artificial methods—med-
icine, machinery, technology in general—to help us control many of the nat-
ural urges and problems for which adaptive cognitive mechanisms were natur-
al solutions, the original functions of many such mechanisms have become
obsolete. Our artificial developments have also interrupted natural selec-
tion—the overall human genetic structure does not change much from gener-
ation to generation, since it is no longer true that humans more genetically
“fit” tend to pass on their genes more successfully or often than do other
humans.

The present-day result of our cognitive mechanisms’ evolution is behavior.
Evolutionary psychology dictates that human behavior is in fact the collective
functioning of the psychological mechanisms that make up the human brain.
A wide variety of specialized cognitive mechanisms guide and influence our
behavior and response to stimuli from birth onward. The cognitive mecha-
nisms with which we are inherently endowed allow us to process information
and to extrapolate in certain ways without having to learn how—we have
inherent knowledge and inherent common ways of using it to gain further
knowledge. Each mechanism evolved in response to a different set of circum-
stances, and so each is responsible for a different aspect of the human
mind/behavior. Since these mechanisms are common to most modern
humans, we have a baseline of common behavior and psychological structure
that distinguishes us from other organisms. But the mechanisms manifest
themselves differently in each individual—we are endowed with very different
minds and personalities even though our brains have similar physical struc-
ture. Psychological mechanisms are, theoretically, what give us distinct indi-
vidual thought.

However, in spite of what evolutionary psychology preaches, I think the
concept of psychological mechanisms is unnecessary and perhaps misleading.
To think of the brain as a machine composed of many parts that have been












“market tested” for effectiveness through natural selection seems like the
wrong approach to understanding the specific functions and potential of the
human brain. By looking at the brain the way we look at machines, which are
themselves man made attempts to duplicate or better what nature does on its
own, we limit our view of the brain and the mind. We impose organizational
structures we are familiar with, and which are in fact the products of the very
organ we are studying rather than products created directly by the natural
forces that shaped that organ, on our analysis of the brain. We think perhaps
in doing so that we can understand the brain the way we understand a watch
or a dishwasher—by dissecting its working parts and studying their individual
structures, functions, and origins.

But perhaps natural forces did not and do not build everything up from dis-
creet, distinguishable parts. Perhaps what we see as “mechanisms” do not
exist and do not operate in functional isolation from each other—perhaps the
levels and layers of the human brain are connected in ways that the machine
model cannot explain to us. We clearly do not understand or know how to
use a large percentage of our brain mass; is it possible that a more open-ended
model of the brain, one less focused on traditional conceptions of machinery,
could help us expand our understanding of the human brain and perhaps even
help us expand our mental capacity?

I do not at all believe that the
theories and concepts involved
with evolutionary psychology
and the study of cognitive psy-
chological mechanisms are irrel-
evant in any way to meaningful
study of the brain. I simply
wonder whether a less rigidly,
artificially constrained frame-
work in which to evaluate the
brain and its evolution might
not allow these theories and
concepts to be of more use to us.








14



THE ANALYSIS OF
CATASTROPHE
CAUSATION

AA eee

Cecilia Tsu

Linguistics 40——Semantics
Professor Ted Fernald
Spring 1995





ABSTRACT

This paper examines the linguistic implications of verbs that
can be deemed “catastrophe causation” verbs- to *mess up,
screw up, and screw over* are such verbs which denote a
pressing situation has occurred to the speaker or subject
referred to. Through analysis of the lexical semantic vari-
ances associated with these verbs, the author will account
for the evolution of a newly-invented catastrophe causation
verb, *to scrod* and explain why it has become permanent-
ly adopted into individuals’ lexicons.













he English language contains a multitude
of verbs which can be deemed “catastrophe
causation” verbs; they are used in expres-
sions to connote some pressing predicament has
come over the speaker or the subject he or she is
referring to. Often these verbs employ a mandato-
ty preposition in their usage. This paper will
address how three such verbs serve the function of
denoting catastrophe causation, primarily
through analyzing their lexical semantic vari-
ances, truth conditions, and argument structures.
The analysis will serve as background for explain-
ing what I have termed the “scrod phenomenon,”
the prolific evolution of a newly invented, all-
encompassing catastrophe causation verb
amongst a group of individuals. Finally, a propos-
al as to why this new verb has essentially been
adopted permanently into the léxicons of the
individuals introduced to it will be discussed.

The three verbs selected for analysis are mess up, screw
up, and screw over. All of these verbs are commonly used
to express the causation of some sort of catastrophe or
predicament. Each contains a preposition necessary to
the respective syntax and semantics of the contextual
usage of the verb; the verb taken without the indicated
preposition either has a bizarre interpretation, or a mean-
ing unrelated to the catastrophe causation function
under examination. It should also be noted that these
verbs are often interchangeable in everyday conversa-
tion, though closer analysis will show that subtle vari-
ances prevail, and it is these variances that could possi-
bly account for the “scrod phenomenon” which will be
later discussed.

The verb “mess up” generally describes a state
or process of disarray and turmoil occurring, usu-
ally (but not necessarily) as the result of some
agent.

(1) a. Nixon messed up.
b. Nixon messed up the country.
c. The country was messed up.

These example sentences suggest the following
argument structures (active and passive construc-
tions):

mess up: A. Agent <(Theme)>
B.

As we can see, the truth conditions for “mess
up” in active construction require an agent
(“mess-upper”), while leaving theme (the “messed
up”) syntactically optional. Though not always
obvious, the theme is semantically obligatory and
entailed in the universe of messing up. In La, for
example, there must be something which Nixon
exercised the act of messing up upon (the country,
politics, his life), even though it does not exist
syntactically. No matter how vague, a theme is
mandated by semantics in this case, so that when
someone speaks of messing up without specifying




a theme, it is still understood that he or she is referring to
some entity or event.

In the passive construction, the theme becomes syntac-
tically and semantically obligatory. Recall that according
to the passive rule, lexical entries for a transitive verb’s
passive counterpart are created by making an argument
structure just like it except that the external argument is
listed as optional inside the brackets. We know that all
components within the brackets cannot be optional, and
thus it follows that the theme is obligatory. Also notable is
that two meanings can be inferred from the passive con-
struction (1c): the speaker, using the adjectival passive, is
making a descriptive observation about the state of the
theme at a certain point in time, or he is employing the
verbal passive and referring to some “messing up” event
which took place, perhaps with an agent.

The second verb under analysis, “screw up,” essentially
follows the patterns of “mess up.”

a. I screwed up.

b. I screwed up the data. (I screwed
the data up.)

c. The data were screwed up.

The argument structures for this verb coincide with “mess

up.”

screw up:

A. Agent <(Theme)>
B. < Theme, (Agent) >


































Again, in the active construction, a
“screw upper” (agent) is required,
though a theme is syntactically
optional and semantically
necessary. When some-
one speaks of having
“screwed up” without
specifying a theme,
it is nonetheless
entailed; the per-
son “screwed up”
through __ per-
forming an
unwise action,
saying some-
thing carelessly,
or generally
causing some
sort of eventual
or perceived cat-
astrophe. Such
verbs are often
used to size up cer-
tain situations, sum-
marizing them briefly
without having to give a
detailed account to the lis-
tener. The verbs do not give
much information as to exactly
what catastrophe has occurred, but are

functional in denoting that some catastrophe has
occurred.

In the passive construction, “screw up” only requires a
theme, as “mess up” does. The adjectival and verbal pas-
sives work as previously described as well.

It seems that we could conclude that “mess up” and
“screw up” are syntactically and generally semantically
interchangeable. Examine the following:

(3) a. The Sharks messed up.
b. The Sharks screwed up.
c. Rick messed up the cake.
d. Rick screwed up the cake.
e. She messed up the kids/ messed the
kids up.
f. She screwed up the kids/ screwed the
kids up.

Semantic variance may lie in the intuitive insight that “screw
up” refers to a more specific, more purposive action. If there are
variances in meaning between these two verbs, it might be that
“mess up” is associated more with carelessness and being foolish
than with malicious intent as “screw up” may be. It seems intuitive
that Rick “messing up” the cake in 3c can be overlooked because
he was just careless about it; perhaps it is his first birthday and he
got a little “messy” with it. On the other hand, a verb like “screw
up” might more often be used to denote intention or specific (med-
itated?) action. Little Rick would normally not be said to have
“screwed up” the cake by getting his fingers in it; he instead inno-

cently “messed it up”. When the theme refers to people
as in 3e and 3f, the same variance can be
seen. By being generally negligent and
; careless, she “messed up the kids.”
By being purposely sadistic
and calculating — she
“screwed up the kids.”
Again, though the
variance in mean-
ing is extremely
subtle and debat-
able, it should
be noted.
Additionally,
we shall
observe that
the latter
verb may not
always be an
acceptable
expression for
some speakers
of English, who
would tend to see
it as a more vulgar
version of “mess up.”
“Screw over,” the
third verb in this analysis,
follows slightly different
patterns.

. ...truth. conditions Koy

mess up” in active
construction require an
agent (“mess-upper”),
ott (cum (ochvabeleamaetonte
(the “messed up”) syn-
tactically optional.

(4) a. The administration screwed

15




16

b. The administration screwed me over.
c. Dad screwed the fresh peas over.

d. The people were screwed over.

e. The book was screwed over.

These example sentences suggest the following argument struc-
tures:
screw over: A. Agent

B. ,

where Theme is usually an animate human entity.

This time we see that along with a required agent in the active
construction is a syntactically required theme. We cannot speak of
an agent “screwing over” without specifying the “screwed over”—
a theme is not entailed in 4a, and the sentence is just not compre-
hensible. Besides that, the theme must be of a specified set, the set
of animate human entities, as it is often strange for inanimate
objects to get “screwed
over” by an agent.
Although what is hap-
pening in 3c might be
understood, it is a bizarre
reading; Dad could possi-
bly have dropped or
burned or smashed the

“screwing them over.”
Even saying he “messed
up the fresh peas” (by
adding too much salt) or
“screwed up the fresh peas” (by leaving them out in the sun) makes
mote sense.

Similarly, in the passive construction, a theme is obligatory, and
must usually be taken from the aforementioned set (3e is bizarre in
the same way 3c is). While the people could have been “screwed
over” by a bad president, the press, etc., the book could not be
acted upon in the same way. This verb intrinsically suggests a
manipulative action which can only be accomplished by a think-
ing and reasoning individual upon another such individual who
could presumably react to this action (a person will not usually put
effort into maliciously manipulating fresh peas or books, which can
have no observable reaction to being “screwed over”). Even if
there is no agent involved, we do not usually describe inanimate
objects as having been “screwed over,” in the verbal or adjectival
passive. There are some exceptions; for example, “The country was
screwed over (by Nixon)” is perfectly legitimate, even though
“country” is not an animate individual. It is, however, presumably
a collection of them, and therefore an entity which could react and
be affected by the catastrophe of being “screwed over” in a way
inanimate entities could not.

We can now conclude that “mess up” and “screw up”
differ from “screw over” in some cases of lexical analysis,
argument structure, and truth conditions. Yet all three
verbs are often used interchangeably, putting the more
unusual circumstances discussed aside.

(5) a. His teacher messed him up. (by
giving him a bad grade)

b. His teacher screwed him up.
c. His teacher screwed him over.

It seems intuitive that Rick “messing
up” the cake in 3c can be overlooked
because he was just careless about it;
that doonit constnne Perhaps tt 1s has first birthday and he
got a little “messy”

The sentences above essentially connote the same cat-
astrophe causation, with perhaps slight semantic variance.
Each version is as likely to be uttered as the next under the
same given context. Confusion in deciding which verb to
employ may even arise due to this, since the verbs, as
demonstrated, are really not identical. How, then, does a
speaker choose between the verbs in this group when con-
fronted with a situation calling for denotation of catastro-
phe causation, given that such overlaps and confusion
exist? Put another way, since the variances in meaning for
these verbs are significant yet slight, would it thereby be
advantageous to bypass this family in favor of some verb
which does not produce such overlaps?

This brings the discussion to the “scrod phenomenon,”
the permanent adaptation of a newly invented catastrophe
causation verb in the lexicon of many individuals intro-
duced to it, something I have witnessed first-hand. The
scientific extent of
this phenomenon can-
not be precisely tabu-
lated, but I estimate
that 10-12 students on
campus __ (including
myself), and an addi-
tional 20 individuals
associated with these
students (family,
§ 2 friends, etc.) are part
with tt. of it, meaning that

they engage in proper
everyday usage of the verb “scrod.” It all started with a
paragraph I found highly fascinating in The Language
Instinct by Steven Pinker:

In Boston there is an old joke about a woman
who landed at Logan Airport and asked the taxi
driver, “Can you take me someplace where I
can get scrod?” He replied, “Gee, that’s the first
time I’ve heard it in the pluperfect subjunc-
tive?

I proceeded to share this linguistics joke with several of
my friends early last year. Being from out west, they had
initial difficulties deciphering why the joke was funny,
though after I explained that “scrod” was a seafood spe-
cialty in Boston, they decided it was at least somewhat
amusing. Thereafter, we somehow discarded the lewd con-
notation of the word (addressing that issue would likely
result in another paper), and began using “scrod” almost
purely as a catastrophe causation verb. Some versatile
usages of “scrod”:

(6) a. You scrod my shirt. (by spilling
paint on it)
b. The cops scrod me. (by giving me
a speeding ticket)
c. I was scrod (by the cops).
d. That movie was scrod. (it was

poorly. made)




When I came to college in the fall, I told the joke again, and
actually encountered individuals who comprehended it the first
time around. The same phenomenon occurred, on an even larger
scale: friends began to regularly use “sctod” to connote catastrophe
causation; these individuals in turn told their family and friends,
who also adopted the verb. As of now, people have repeatedly told
me that they do not know what they would say in certain situa-
tions without the verb “scrod.” I have even witnessed someone
inadvertently use it with a salesclerk while purchasing shoes (“Um,
I can’t take this pair; look, they're scrod.”).

From a linguistic standpoint, | find this truly intriguing, a real
“phenomenon,” because the permanent incorporation of a basi-
cally made-up term into the lexicons of a diverse group of individ-
uals is certainly not a common event. Nevertheless, it is something
[have attempted to account for in analysis with the following pro-
posal: The verb “scrod” essentially encompasses all aspects of cata-
strophe causation, combining them into one verb which can be
used with both versatility and ease. For this reason, it is quickly and
smoothly incorporated into the lexicons of individuals soon after
they are introduced to the term.

First, “scrod” addresses the problem of the multiple overlaps in
meaning among the three catastrophe causation verbs examined
by integrating those meanings into one verb. The semantic vari-
ances of “mess up,” “screw up,” and “screw over” are successfully
combined by “scrod.”

scrod: A. Agent
B.

It appears that “scrod” follows the same argument structure as
“Screw over,” with one major difference: “scrod” does not require a
specified theme. Something that is “scrod” does not need to be an
animate human entity as necessitated by “screw over,” just as any-
thing that is “messed up” or “screwed up” does not have that
requirement. “Sctod” does not discriminate against themes, a def
inite asset for many speakers, since it would not be necessary to go
through one’s mental lexicon checking what verb could be used
with what theme. In addition, no longer is a distinction made
between what is entailed by “messing up” and “screwing up.”
Recall that earlier I pointed out the former referred to a careless,
unplanned action, while the latter denoted a more specified, inten-
tional one. With “scrod,” this variance no longer exists, and in fact,
both readings are entailed for 3c and 3d, and 3e and 3f. It may be
a question for psycholinguistics, but for some reason, this reduction
of “mess up” and “screw up” to “scrod,” which would presumably
limit what can be connoted by language, does not seem to bother
anyone | have encountered. No matter what the situation, a per-
son introduced to “scrod” will use that verb and no other, and be
satisfied with the reading produced. It can be concluded that
“scrod” is an extremely flexible verb, which often makes it ideal in
expressing catastrophe causation, more so than the three verbs pre-
viously discussed. As mentioned, these catastrophe causation verbs
are mostly functional in simply denoting that a predicament has
materialized—speakers are not as interested in connoting exactly
what happened or how. Versatility and the capability to denote a
wide range of catastrophe causation is a true asset in this family of
verbs.

Another feature of “scrod” is its “user-friendliness’—the ease
with which it can be learned and employed in everyday English.
We already noted how its nondiscriminatory semantic nature
makes for an ideal catastrophe causation verb. By not requiring a

preposition as the three verbs examined do, “scrod” allows for more
ease and simplicity in usage; an invented verb requiring some
preposition may not be as readily incorporated by speakers.
Perhaps it can even be said that “scrod” transmits the same amount
of information as the other verbs, but with more efficiency due to
the lack of preposition. Also, using “sctod” eliminates the problem
of verb splitting to accommodate a direct object, which is only a
problem in compound verbs containing prepositions.

Because it bypasses some of the obstacles encountered in using
catastrophe causation verbs, “scrod” has found a permanent place
in the lexicons of individuals exposed to it. The verb is essentially
a more versatile, more “user-friendly” version of “mess up,” “screw
up,” and “screw over.” Our lives being what they are, there are
many instances in which speakers would employ verbs of catastro-
phe causation in a non-obscene manner (expletives-not the gram-
matical structure kind-were purposely not included in this exer-
cise), and an ideal such verb should definitely be generally incor-
porating as well as simple to use. Thus, the “scrod phenomenon”
can be accounted for through examining why it is advantageous to
use this verb instead of the commonly employed ones already in
the English language. Perhaps “scrod” is the epitome of a catastro-
phe causation verb, one that encompasses all features which best
depict catastrophe.

Notes

'This is equivalent to “Nixon messed the country up.” The
splitting of the verb in the presence of a direct object is often done
in English. I am assuming this arises due to dialect differences and
varying ideas of sentence fluency.

2Note that in this case, the verb must be split to accommodate
the direct object. “The administration screwed over me” would be
awkward in most dialects of English.

3Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct. William Morrow and
Co., Inc.: New York, 1994. p. 140.

17




18




Great - )
ABSTRACT The current king, Besalumuel, had caught
The following paper was written for the % , lay a fish measured at 75 meters long. When he
Character of Physical Law on the topic of 1S accomplished this feat, people were certain
relativity. The author let his sordid imagi- that he could never be challenged until his
nation go to work and came up with the death, for clearly no one could catch a fish
following product. longer than 75 meters. And so Besalumuel

nce upon a time, there existed the tuled his kingdom securely, confident that he
thickest wood ever known to would do so for the rest of his life. He was a
humankind. People believed that

fair king, treating everyone justly. But many
no human being could ever live in this

people felt he was unexciting. His parties
wood, as the trees let little light in, and never matched those of his predecessor, as









Fiasco

surly there were vicious beasts waiting Josh Silver he did not have much of a taste for music
inside to attack. But if some one should Pe and dancing. His feasts also lacked, for he
happen to try to penetrate this great wood, VS ASO es was a vegetarian, which was unheard of in
and should do so successfully, they would The Fillovia. The Fillovians craved meat, but
find, in the center of this dense forest, the Character of never received it at the royal banquets. So

loveliest, most beautiful kingdom that ever heat the citizens were sorry that the mark of 75
existed. The name of this kingdom was Eee eee meters was impossible to pass, and knew
Fillovia. Prof. Doc they would have to wait until Besalumuel’s
Surrounded by the clearest, bluest river J Brown death before they could again have real fun.
in the land, Fillovia was a town which eed One day a group of men were fishing in
rarely saw conflict. Fillovians lived happy 7 the river. Amongst them was Gelahel, a
and carefree lives, worrying not of politics or young man greatly respected by the citizens.
the worlds affairs. Theirs was a simple king- All the kingdom knew him to be a good
dom, full of simple pleasures: kids chasing man, honest and true, who also knew how to
chickens in the dirt streets, dances every have a really good time. His parties were the
night, grand feasts for all the kingdom. best in the kingdom, and no one served bet-
Indeed, no Fillovian concerned himself with ter steak at their banquets. It also happened
anything more than a good dinner or a cheer- that Gelahel was an excellent runner, able to
ful tune. run near the speed of light. His physical skills
Nonetheless Fillovia was ruled by a king. and amiable personality made him the most
Like his subjects, this king dealt with only the popular Fillovian in the kingdom.
simple joys of life. And so, unlike in other And so fortune must have been shining on
kingdoms where a king’s claim to the throne Fillovia this day, because their favorite citizen
might be determined by a family line or politi- was about to receive a stroke of luck. As Gelahel
cal credentials, the Fillovians picked their king sat on the bank of his river with his line drifting
in a much more unique fashion. You see, as a about the water, he suddenly received a jolt
beautiful river filled with the biggest fish ever unlike any he’d felt before. He was pulled 5 meters
recorded surrounded the kingdom, fishing was the towards the river, and surely would have been
most popular Fillovian pastime. And so, ascent to dragged straight into the water had he not crashed
the throne was decided based on fishing: whoever into a tree, which stopped him. Now Gelahel was
caught the biggest fish recorded had claim to the never one to give up a fishing duel, though clearly
Fillovian throne. this he’d never met a beast like this one. So, bracing






against the tree, Gelahel regained his balance and began
pulling with all his might. The monster began swimming
away, and Gelahel let the reel go, until it reached the end.
Gelahel held on tight, and began pulling on the rod. The
fish yanked furiously, but was unable to gain any more
ground. Slowly Gelahel began to win the struggle, tugging
the beast towards him. However, he was using all his
strength, and becoming increasingly tired. The fish began
pulling him towards the water again. Coming closer to a
watery grave, Gelahel had to act fast. Now remember,
Gelahel was a champion runner, with the strongest legs in
all the land. Turning around, Gelahel began running away
from the shore. He used every inch of leg muscle he had to
pull himself back to land and the fish out of water. Slowly
he built up momentum and began to move. He pulled the
fish backwards. For what seemed like forever, Gelahel
pulled and tugged, until with one last step he pulled the
mighty beast out of the river and onto dry land.

However, the fish began to hop around furiously, des-
perately trying to get into the water. Gelahel tied the wire
to a tree, giving the beast no slack. The fish flopped until
his last breath of air, and lay dead, having lost a mighty
battle.

Gelahel, exhausted from the struggle, looked at his prey
from afar. Never before had he seen such a glorious fish. It
lay on the shore a good 100 meters long. He had never
seen a taller fish, this one being at least thrice Gelahel’s
height. Gelahel walked around the fallen monster. Was it
true? Had Gelahel really caught this fish? He pulled out his
tape measure and found out, sure enough, that the fish was
100 meters long. That meant Gelahel was the new king!!
All his friends verified that the fish was 100 meters long
and bowed to him, saying, “Long live King Gelahel!”

The custom was, that when the fish had been captured,
the new king must then take the fish and run with it all
over the kingdom to show that indeed he had the right to
the throne. Running was Gelahel’s forte, and so he got
beneath the beast, and with all his strength lifted it from
the earth and over his head. Then he ran, starting slower
than he was used to because of the increased weight.
Slowly he accelerated, till he was traveling at about .8 of
the speed of light. Thus he headed to the kingdom to dis-
play his prize.

All was normal in Fillovia. People were walking in the
streets, tending their farms, washing their clothes, doing
chores, and going about their lives. Then from the hills
came a mighty sight, a blur of a figure (all knew it to be
Gelahel, for only he could run so fast), carrying a huge
load on his back. He whizzed through the streets, by every
house and store. He ran past all the citizens who were out,
and straight to the palace. the king stood out in the court-
yard . He had seen Gelahel coming from far away and
wanted to time just how he could run. He knew that
Gelahel was the favorite of the town, and so wanted to
find a way to disgrace the runner. He’d heard Gelahel brag
that he could run from the borders of the kingdom to the
palace in 3 Fillovian clicks. The king never believed it,
and wanted to see for himself. So, when he saw Gelahel
come from the border, he started his clock. 5 Fillovian
clicks later the runner arrived at the palace, and ran by. As
he ran the king saw that he was carrying a large fish, and

heard people behind shout, “Hail, King Gelahel, defender
of Fillovia!”

“What?!” screamed Besalumuel. “Stop that! I am king,
not him!”

“Can't you see,” said one of Gelahel’s followers,” that
he has caught the biggest fish ever? We saw it and mea-
sured it. The fish is 100 meters long.”

“No it’s not!” retorted Besalumuel. “I saw it go by, and
it was clearly no bigger than 50 meters long. My fish was
75 meters, so I am still king.”

At this point Gelahel came back, after leaving his prize
in the royal fish vault, to assume the crown. “Besalumuel,
1 am king now. I caught a fish 100 meters long.”

“T saw the fish,” replied the king,” and it was only 50
meters long. What’s more Gelahel, you have claimed that
you can run from the outskirts of the kingdom to the
palace in 3 clicks. I clocked you, and it took you 5 clicks,
see,” and he showed him the timer.

“Clearly your timer is broken, Besalumuel,’ responded
the runner. “I always wear my timer, and I started it at the
outskirts, and here, it shows 3 clicks.”

“Gelahel, I am the king, I have caught a fish 75 meters
long. Do you doubt my intellect? Clearly you are a liar. You
are trying to usurp my throne, with lies about a 100 meter
fish, and you question me saying you run at 3 clicks.
Guards, take him away!”

Some of the king’s guards began to move forward, but
the citizens stepped in the way. “You shall not take him.
He is the king. We measured the fish, and it was 100
meters long.”

“Guards, take them all away!” shouted the king. It
seemed as though a great battle was going to break out,
and perhaps it would have been the downfall for blessed
Fillovia. Now, fortunate for all, a young lad by the name of
Dan stepped out from the crowd. He was known for being
a very bright boy, having studied many things which most
Fillovians did not understand.

“If it please your majesty, I think I understand what is
going on here,” said Dan.

Besalumuel had always been very fond of Dan, as he was
the only Fillovian who seemed to truly enjoy the king’s
parties, and he was also a vegetarian.

“What do you mean, Dan?” said the king. “What is
there to explain?”

“Well, your majesty,” began the boy, “It is actually very
simple why this misunderstanding has occurred. If ] may be
permitted, I would like to explain it to you.”

“Okay, Dan, but then I will have these people dealt
with,” Besalumuel answered.

“After I have spoke, you do what you see fit, your
Majesty.”

With that, Dan walked to the center of the group and
pulled out a small chalk board. “Now, it is well known,”
began the boy, “ that Gelahel can run at .8 the speed of
light. Do you agree with that your majesty?”

“Yes, I do,” he said. “I have myself measured it as such.”

“Very well,” continued Dan. “Here | will draw a space-
time diagram,” and he started drawing on his chalk board.
“Here is the light line, which has a slope of 1. Here is
Gelahel’s world line, with a slope of .8, since his velocity
is .8 the speed of light. Does everyone agree so far?”


“T agree,” said the king.

“As do I,” added Gelahel.

“Okay. Now, your Majesty, this is your world line, as you
are at rest. Your line moves straight up with time. Now,
you clocked Gelahel at 5 clicks, so we will mark 5 on the
time axis. Now, pay attention carefully. We will call the

ratio of Gelahel’s speed to the
speed of light B.

So he got beneath the There is

another

beast, and with all his quantity,
strength lifted it from which

we will
the earth call" ay,
Now, y_ will
show us two things.
One, Y is the ratio at which your
time, your Majesty, moves in relation to Gelahel’s. y also
represents what we call the stretch factor. You see, your
Majesty, you and Gelahel are in different frames when he
is running. You do not see the fish at its normal length, but
shorter than it actually is. You will see the fish at its length
divided by y. At the same time, because Gelahel is moving
so fast compared to you, time appears to move slower for
him than for you . That explains why the clocks show dif-
ferent times. Does everyone see that on the diagram?”

“I can see what you have drawn, Dan,” said the king,
“and I do not wish to doubt you, but I still don’t believe
that this liar is telling the truth.”

“Tam no liar!” shouted Gelahel.

“Please, let me finish,” said Dan. “Your Majesty, I will show you
through math why this diagram is true. We have yet to find y. Now,
it is well known that ‘is equal to 1 divided by the square root of 1-
(B’). In this case, B is 8, or 4/5. Therefore, 1-(B°) is 9/25, the square
root of which is 3/5. 1 divided by 3/5 is 5/3. Therefore, your time,
Besalumuel, moves at 5/3 Gelahel’s time. And so, when 1 click
passes for him, 1.67 clicks has passed for you. When 2 clicks have
passed for him, 3.33 clicks have passed for you. When 3 clicks have
passed for Gelahel, 5 clicks have passed for you. Therefore your
clock reads 5 clicks while his reads 3. Do you understand”

“I do,” said Besalumuel reluctantly.

“Now, remember that 7 is also the stretch factor, which means
that you see the fish at its actual length divided by 1.66. Could we
bring the fish and have it measured?”

“Very well,” said Besalumuel, and he ordered the guards to fetch
it. When they returned, Dan measured the fish with his tape mea-
sure,

“100 meters,” he reported. “Now, 100 meters divided by 1.66 is
60 meters. So, your majesty, you saw the fish at 60 meters, but it is
indeed 100 meters long.”

With that, Besalumuel said, “Dan, you have shown me that I
was wrong. Gelahel, | am sorry that I questioned you. Indeed, you
were right to state your time at 3 clicks, just as I was right. You also
did catch a fish of 100 meters long. And so, I hand over the crown
to you, King Gelahel.”

Besalumuel crowned Gelahel to the cheers of all the citizens.
Dan was named a Knight. Fillovia once again became a happen-
ing place, with the best parties in all the world. And at the ban-
quets, where meat was eaten again, Gelahel always made sure that
there were vegetarian dishes for Besalumuel and Dan.






e motivation behind
Noman Cousins’ writing of
Anatomy of an Illness was

a desire to present a rare truth
about out human condition, a
truth that others might not
receive considering the present-
day attitude of the chemical and
technology oriented medical sys-
tem. Sickness taught him that the
regenerative power of healing
comes from within rather than
from without. The capacity of the
human mind and body is often
limited by the boundaries set by
modern science: only that which
can be empirically proven is truth,
mysticism is antediluvian quack-
ery. Caught in the self-limiting
circle of their own intellect, most
lead narrow lives of quiet despera-
tion, never knowing what won-
ders lie within the confines of
their skin. “It is possible that these
limits will recede when we respect
more fully the natural drive of the
human mind and body toward
perfectibility and regenera-
tion”(48). This natural drive is
one of the most elusive and mys-
terious powers there are; no one
can predict its outcome be it
physician or plumber. This truth is
the great equalizer between the
doctor and the patient, something
that the former is slow to admit,
and the latter might benefit from.
This book is a testimony of
Cousins’ personal encounter with
the natural drive, the contents of
which will hopefully serve to
expand the limits of our minds.
Perhaps the single greatest
point of this book is that the key
to combating sickness and disease
is found in the patient’s will to live
and the effect this mental
strength has on the physical. The
concept ‘of the sick body as a
human being afflicted by a disease
rather than a disease housed in a
random body is a renewal of an
old concept shoved aside by the
Age of Enlightenment. During
this period of iconoclastic decon-
struction and rebirth, changes in
religious attitudes towards dissec-
tion allowed doctors to physically
probe into bodies. The critical
gaze of the medical field narrowed
in on the disease, away from its



‘Wie oe

habitat, the body. Therefore,in the new
order of the gaze, the many observations of
a sick patient were marked as a series in a
blueprint of a pathology that could be
reproduced in any other patient suffering
the same symptoms (Michel Foucault,
Birth of the Clinic). This is exactly the
opposite of Cousins’ argument. Disease
does not float in the carbon cycle, waiting
to pounce on any random individual(s).
Everyone’s uniqueness causes him or her to
experience sickness differently. Because of
individuality, disease comes to us and leaves
us in unique and different ways depending
on our constitutions. Cousins uses his own
illness with a breakdown of events that



occurred before the actual succumbing to
ankylosing spondylitis to prove this point.
How many others would have experienced
the plane exhaust, the fatigue of an inter-
national conference, and the poorly venti-
lated Russian accommodations in the same
way as to contract the very same disease in
a body similar to Cousins’? It is a general
American trait to be egocentric and think
of oneself as distinct and special in our
composition. A group of sufferers from the
same condition would probably comprise a
motley crew of personalities and life styles;
the wise doctor recognizes the importance
of selfhood and helps the patient utilize it
in beneficial therapy. Self definition leads

21




Ze

to self-reliance which leads to self-respect which fosters a liking
of oneself, hence a desire to live.

“Recovery depends on the mobilization of the patient's
mechanism of resistance”(16). Mobilization comes from three
sources: the patient’s willingness to take an active rather than
passive role in combating his malady, a doctor’s sensitivity to
the patient's self—interest, and a trusting communication chan-
nel between the two. All of the aforementioned items appear to
incorporate and coddle the mind rather than the body. This is
as it should be, for Cousins believes in an inevitable link
between mind/emotions and body/health. If endorphins are
released when hugging and cuddling (as I read in an article sev-
eral months ago), and these hormones are supposed to have a
soothing effect on our senses,
then would it not be reasonable
to suggest that an isolated and
alienated patient’s anxiety over
a negative condition would
inhibit their endorphin release
thereby increasing stress, pain,
and a lowered immune system?
This is the cost of negative emo-
tions. “Creativity, the will to
live, hope, faith, and love have
biochemical significance and
contribute strongly to healing
and to well-being. The positive
emotions are life-giving experi-
ences”(86). The doctor can
make or break a sick patient’s
confidence, a scary thought in
the present state of medicine.
The book declares that the med-
ical profession has become too
authoritarian, the role of healer
too mystified. Technological
advances is the principle factor
in the stratification of the doc-
tor-patient relationship.
Gadgets condense time, short-
ening the interaction with the
physician and increasing the
laying on of machines; “technol-
ogy pushes the patient away
from the physician’(135). It
decreases the attentiveness
required of the healer and
replaces it with impersonal
mechanized devices that evaluate the value and worth of the
subject. This is not a forum for positive emotional support.
Patients need dialogue, human contact, and warmth. The wise
doctor is not condescending but treats the patient as an equal
partner in the fight against sickness. The wise doctor engages
and directs the patient’s positive emotions rather than scroung-
ing for empirical evidence. The healer’s greatest role is to
encourage the body’s mental and physical natural resources to
conquer disease. ‘The will to live is not a theoretical abstrac-
tion, but a physiological reality with therapeutic characteris-
tics’(44).

Doctors do not have a monopoly in the life-giving and tak-
ing process. Every decision one makes about the maintenance



of one’s life is factored into the equation of one’s existence. This
attitude requires a long term perspective rather than a short
one, difficult to do in our instant-food, instant-gratification,

existential culture. Speed and quantity is valued more than!

quality and perfection. This results in both physical and psy-

chological constipation: “our experiences come at us in such’

profusion and from so many different directions that they are
never really sorted out, much less absorbed. The result is clutter
and confusion. We gorge the senses and starve the sensibili-
ties”(65). This described life is not so different from the ones
that are often led here within the hallowed halls of our beloved
institution. Some joke proudly about the caffeine consumption
that will most probably take off five years from the end of their
lives; the caffeine consump-
tion is directly proportional
to the amount of blood,
sweat, and X tears shed for
this paper, that exam. We
succumb to viruses en masse,
eat horrible food in vast
quantities, have nervous
breakdowns, conduct nasty,
brutish, and short love affairs
in search of our identities,
break a few hearts to pad our
battered egos, communicate
via tiny messages through
impersonal computers, and
drug ourselves with numbing
alcohol at social events so as
to hide our insecurities and
absolve ourselves of anything
stupid we may doe When |
posited this seeming mass
suicide to another student,
he replied, “Hey, we’re only
human.” Could this be true?
Was The Terminator correct
when he said oh-so-adroitly,
“Tt’s in your nature to destroy
yourselves?” Doctors are
members of the human race
as well; do they deliberately
go against human nature to
save the anonymous victims?
Do we unwitting trot, lem-
ming-like, to them for a
quicker, more sophisticated
means of death (pills, diets, tests, drugs, etc.)? We would be the
foolish ones, paying for our own executioner. overcoming my
initial dismay, I found my notes from the section on Pablo
Casals in which he says, “Each man has inside him a basic
decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is, giv-
ing a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not com-
plicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a man to lis
ten to his own goodness and act on it. Do we dare to be out-
selves?”(79). If one understands the body’s natural tendency to
heal itself without synthetic prodding, then one will also under-
stand the importance of listening to the true human within,
devoid of peer pressure, fear, panic, and stress. It is amazing how
much people appreciate an opportunity to speak freely of how

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they truly feel about their lives.

Without seeming too presumptuous, I’d like to say that I’ve
taken to heart what Cousins says about the patient apprecia-
tion for doctors who will carry on a dialogue with them. This
therapeutic effect of speech I’ve applied to people I care about;
I consciously try to set a tone to my voice that will encourage
them to open themselves up, laugh, scream, and cry. I watch
their physical movements as well as my own; | try to find their
sphere of “personal space” and maintain it. My women friends
and I have developed a habit of kissing and hugging each
other hello and good-bye. We say “I love your in several dif-
ferent languages during the course of a conversation. The
result is a wonderful reciprocity that is a reaffirmation of our
identities. I don’t believe I’ve ever sustained my independent
self in an extended state of happiness before. Why should we
have to suffer to get our just reward? The goal of becoming a
good human being is a quest for perfection, the joy of which is
found in the trials of questing, the testing of one’s moral forti-
tude. Being kind to oneself and to others is not suffering. The
more people I speak to about this, the better I understand it
myself.

The most monumental effect this text had on me occurred
after I read the chapter on Casals. The conclusion | will
presently explain came to me as I was lying on the floor two
weeks ago, reading this book. one of the reasons | want to
become a doctor is to gain a better knowledge of this body of
mine that sees to give me such grief. It was my ambition to
become a concert violinist since I was five years old. From
then to age seventeen, my life was drenched music. Some of it
was my own doing, some was my parents who dedicated most
of their time driving me about, buying instruments paying for
lessons, and scheduling concerts. They never let me forget
how proud they were of me, how much they invested in me,
and how it was my duty as a dutiful daughter to show my
appreciation by winning many competitions. It was a real
love-hate relationship that escalated into something of a war
when I was sent to The Juilliard School for the duration of
high school. Called The Jail Yard and other clever names, | was
introduced into a fierce battle zone where I am convinced the
strength of my ego and pride kept me from killing myself in
shame. Maintaining a level of excellence was difficult; meet-

ing the expectations of famous teachers and loving parents was
even harder. Music became a chore and an obligation. | recall
that for every single performance I gave between ages fourteen
and seventeen I was physically ill. Two weeks before each con-
cert I’d catch a cold; I always carried a bottle of Afrin Nasal
Spray in my violin case.

In the summers, the students of my teacher went to a sum-

mer music festival in Aspen. The summer before my senior
year I was scheduled to enter a competition for the Prokofiev
Violin Concerto; my father said I must win, my teacher said I
most likely wouldn’t win but it would be a good experience.
Between the nervousness and the stress of practicing seven
hours a day, I came down with a whopping case of tendinitis
and couldn’t practice for half of the summer. The same thing
happened the following spring when I had college auditions,
recitals, and another competition that everyone expected me
to win. I passed the auditions and lost the competition. I was
so discouraged I quit playing for a month and then gave the
performance of my life on the night I was asked to the senior
prom. It is amusing to me that I didn’t make the connection
of my own ebullience with the success of that night until years
later. For the past four years I’ve just assumed that my muscles
are weaker than most people’s and it was just never meant to
be. But the interesting relationship of cause and effect that
both Dr. Siegel and N. Cousins speak of caused me to question
my judgment. With time and distance from those strange and
wonderful years, I find it not entirely unreasonable to con-
clude that I made myself get tendinitis. Can I say it again? I
took refuge in sickness. With tendinitis I had the injury of the
studious student: I practiced too much. I took being a good stu-
dent a step further. I would not disappoint my teacher or my
parents because the injury would be seen as beyond my con-
trol. I avoided their expectations without losing their love or
their respect. In the meantime I could get some stability into
my life; practice time could be spent on other things like try-
ing to graduate from high school.

After making this recent connection, it is inexplicable how
the role of music has changed for me, seemingly overnight. I
am not as frustrated with myself for being so weak. Playing is
less like fighting and (incredibly enough) more like breathing;
I am almost in a different state when I play. It fills out my day
and clears my mind, it makes me much happier rather than
meaner. I believe discovering this in my past has set me on the
path of curing myself, something that sports therapists, mas-
sage therapists, and acupuncturists could not do. At times of
stress when I try to force myself to play, just opening the case
up is enough to make my arm twitch and ache! I’ve tried
telling this to my music friends and they think it’s merde : the
vitamins I’ve begun taking and this course, they are just a
placebo they say. Maybe so, but people in this class take me
seriously, and I believe it myself. So the internal doctor must
be doing something right.

23




RESPONDING TO
Re Oe Peres es ee (gore Reet

ISAAC

YUE

ow D

ABSTRACT
Throughout history, theologians
have struggled to understand
why God permits widespread
human suffering. The following
investigation, written during the
fall of 1995 as part of the
Comprehensive Examination in
Religion explores the work of
two Jewish theologians: Emil
Fackenheim and Isaac Luria, who
dedicated themselves to this very
issue. The author of the paper, a
Religion major, offers his own
perspective on this theological
dilemma and reflects upon his
identity as a modern Reform Jew.



There is really only one question
for the Jewish theologian to ponder
when contemplating the relation-
ship between God and the Jews:
How are Jews to maintain faith in a
God whose presence is so difficult to
discern? Indeed, countless thinkers
throughout history have contem-
plated this very question, which I
refer to as “the Jewish dilemma.”
While no answer to the question has
withstood the test of time, several
answers have temporarily satisfied
the Jews of particular generations. In
this paper, I will compare two o
these temporarily _ satisfactory
answers and will conclude with my
own response to the Jewish dilem-
ma.

TIKKUN

AO NIY
FACKENHEIM
OLAM

Let us begin by asking ourselves when the need for an answer
to the Jewish dilemma is most urgent. I propose that during or
after periods of widespread suffering Jews often begin to wonder
why God does not or did not intervene in order to save them.
Such periods confound Jews and force them to reevaluate their
relationship with God. To use Emil Fackenheim’s language, we
might say that these periods are “disorienting” and constitute a
“rupture” in our ordinary way of thinking about God (Roth and
Rubenstein, Approaches to Auschwitz: The Holocaust and Its
Legacy, 319, 326). Typically, Jews reorient themselves by respond-
ing to God’s failure to intervene, or what we might refer to as
God's “silence,” in one of three ways. Many Jews, such as Richard
Rubenstein, conclude that the personal God of the Hebrew bible
is dead. Others insist that the God of the bible is still alive, and
understand the silence as a test by which God gauges the faith o
the Jews. There are still others who believe that through silence,
God punishes Jewish transgressors who have been unfaithful.

Isaac Luria, the leading Kabbalist of the sixteenth century, was
an unusual Jewish thinker in that he responded to the “rupture”
of his generation - the Exile of the Jews from Spain in 1492 - ina
completely novel manner. He explained that the event repre-
sented a rupture in the actual body of God and called upon Jews
to attempt to heal that rupture in order to restore God’s unity. For
Luria, the Exile represented a challenge to the Jews. Not only
were they to retain faith in the historical God of the bible, but, as
God’s chosen people, they were commanded to help restore God
through the process which he referred to as Tikkun Olam -
“mending the world.”

With this brief overview in mind, let us attempt to place
Luria’s response to the Jewish dilemma within its historical con-
text. The exile of the Jews from Spain was a major catastrophe
which, according to Gershom Scholem, affected “every sphere o
Jewish life and feeling” (Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 244).
Rendered homeless after almost a hundred years of persecution,
the Jews of Spain understandably began to question their rela-
tionship with God. Some of those who maintained faith in God
believed the Exile marked the beginning of the Messianic era.


Subsequently, they began to prepare
themselves for the upcoming final
apocalyptic struggle (Scholem 247-8).
Others were deeply discouraged by the
Exile and began to doubt much of the
rational, classical Jewish thought
which attempted to make sense of
prior Jewish suffering (Scholem 249).
In short, the Exile constituted a
major rupture within Spanish Jewish
theology. More than ever, Jewish life in
peer hete
Diaspora
seemed full

of “para-

(Scholem
249). Pious
Jews, who
faithfully
obeyed the
laws of the
ortah.
could not
understand

appeared

“Self-contradictory,” “fragmentary” and
“unredeemed” (Scholem 249). Of
course, many Jews had felt this way for
hundreds of years, but the Exile from
Spain intensified these emotions and
forced Jews to confront what has
always been a painful dilemma, name-
ly, “How are we to maintain faith in a
God who could allow this to happen to
us?”

In a way, the Exile was a fortuitous
event, for it inspired a tremendous
amount of Jewish thought. In particu-
lar, it caused Jewish Kabbalists, or mys-
tics, to rethink their conception of the
relationship between humans and
God. This rethinking resulted in a
vision which, unlike that of earlier
Kabbalists, appealed to a large number
of Jews. Prior to the expulsion, Jewish
mystics were generally elites who were
primarily concerned with cosmogony
and theogony. According to Gershom

Scholem, they were also less con-
cerned with universal, or Messianic,
redemption than with their own per-
sonal salvations (245). By retracing the
steps by which God created the uni-
verse, these mystics believed they
could commune with God and find
individual redemption.

After the Exile, many Kabbalists
became increasingly concerned with
the final stages of the cosmogonic

process, for the Exile appeared to mark
the beginning of the end of time. In
this sense, the Exile was interpreted as

a pre-Messianic event. Many
Kabbalists for the first time began to
ponder the notion of universal salva-
tion and began to incorporate many of
the popular Messianic beliefs of the era
into their own religious visions.
Scholem notes that the Exile prompt-
ed a blending of “the apocalyptic and
Messianic elements of Judaism with
the traditional aspects of Judaism”
(246). This blending resulted in a reli-
gious world view which made sense to
many Jews, Kabbalists and non-
Kabbalists alike.

Isaac Luria is today considered the
“outstanding representative of later
Kabbalism” (Scholem 253). While a
detailed bibliographical sketch is
beyond the confines of the current
investigation, it will suffice to mention

that Luria was born in Safed, a town in
Upper Galilee, in 1534 and therefore
did not experience the Expulsion from
Spain himself. Nevertheless, the com-
munity of which he was a part consist-
ed primarily of Jewish Spanish immi-
grants. Therefore, the Exile had to
have been very much part of Luria’s
historical context. By the time Luria
died in 1572, Safed had become the
center of the later Kabbalah move-
_ ment, and

, Luria was

one of its

undisput-

ed leaders.

Luria did not necessarily create these
concepts himself, he developed them
to such an extent that they were forev-
er changed by him. Together, these
three concepts renewed faith in God
and chartered a new direction for Jews
to pursue. By following this direction,
Jews could actively help bring about
the Messiah, thereby ending their peri-
od of exile which, according to mystics,
began not with the Expulsion from
Spain, but with the mythical exile o
Adam and Eve from the Garden o
Eden. Thus, the new Kabbalism
offered Jews an unprecedented oppor-
tunity to enter into a state of commu-
nion with God which had not been
achieved since the beginning of time.
Central to Luria’s vision was the
notion of exile. To Luria, the exile
from Spain was not only historically
significant, but theosophically signifi-
cant as well in that it symbolized exile




26

within the actual body of
God. According to the
Kabbalists, creation did
not begin with revelation
or the expansion of God.
Rather, creation began
when God withdrew, or
contracted, within God’s
self. This process of con-
traction is what Luria
referred to as Tsimtsum.
Scholem comments that
“the idea of Tsimtsum is
the deepest symbol of
Exile that could be
thought of? (261). For
Luria, Tsimtsum was a
necessary cosmogonic
event in that it initiated
the process of creation, yet
it was also cosmologically
significant. Through the
process of retraction, God
imposed limits and set
boundaries and in doing so
established a natural order,
which Scholem refers to as
a “correct determination
of things” (263).
Following the contrac
tion, God emitted a ray of
light into the “primeval
space of the Tsimtsum”
which set the process of
creation in motion
(Scholem 263, 265). The
specific details of this
process are too complex to
relate here, but it must be
noted that this light was so
intense that it shattered
the bowls, or vessels,
which were created by
God for the purpose of
sheltering that light
(Scholem 266). The
Breaking of the Vessels,
according to Scholem,
teleased “the whole com-
plexity of the cosmologi-
cal drama” and deter-
mined “man’s [sic] place in
it” (266). Furthermore,
this cosmological rupture
identified “the cause of
that inner deficiency
which is inherent in
everything that exists and
which persists as long as
the damage is not mend-
ed” (Scholem 268).

Finally, the Breaking of the
Vessels was a crucial soterio-
logical development in that
it established a goal for
humans to pursue: restora-
tion of the ideal, primordial
order, or what we might refer
to as “restitution, reintegra-
tion of the original whole”
(Scholem 268). For
Kabbalists such as Luria, the
restoration of ideal order was
the secret purpose of life, the
process by which Jews could
achieve salvation and return
from spiritual exile.

I have been altogether too
brief concerning Luria’s bril-
liant and complex notions of
Tsimtsum and the Breaking
of the Vessels not because
they are unimportant, but
because I wish to focus pri-
marily upon the notion of
Tikkun, which I consider
most relevant to the present
discussion. — Luria’s_ basic
premise was that Jews were to
mend the rupture within
God by gathering the frag-
ments of the vessels which
were shattered during the
process of creation. This
process of Tikkun would not
only restore God’s original
unity, but would return all
things from a state of exile to
their normal state of order
(Scholem 280).
Furthermore, a Jew who
completed the process of
Tikkun would restore the
unity of his or her own “spir-
itual structure” which had
been fractured by the fall of
Adam (Scholem 278-9). In
this sense, the process of
Tikkun was polyvalent, for it
functioned on a number of
different levels.

With the notion of
Tikkun, Luria emphasized
that his was a practical theos-
ophy, as opposed to a merely
theoretical one. Scholem
writes that for Luria the
notion of exile was not mere-
ly a metaphor, but “a genuine
symbol of the ‘broken’ state
of things in the realm of
divine potentialities” (275).































Exile as a type of mission
(Scholem 284). Scholem notes
that this notion of mission
appealed not only to those Jews
who had been exiled from Spain,
but to all Jews who lived in the
Diaspora. In short, Luria’
Tikkun-based mystical interpre-
tation of Exile and Redemption
“gave expression to a world of
religious reality common to the
whole people” (Scholem 286).
Luria’s notion of Tikkun
eventually failed to bring about
universal, Messianic redemp-
tion, yet it succeeded by serving Zh
a more immediate need: healing
the rupture of the Exile which
threatened to forever sepatate
Jews from God. Tikkun helped
restore Jewish faith in God and
inspired Jews to lead religious
lives in the Diaspora. In this
sense, it renewed the biblical
relationship between God and
the Jews. The effects of this
renewal had such a dramatic
impact upon Jewry that the
notion of Tikkun was preserved
long after the Exile from Spain
had become a faint memory for
most Jews.
While the horror of the
Spanish Exile cannot be mini-
mized, the horror of the
Holocaust in the twentieth cen-
tury trivializes all prior Jewish
suffering by comparison. By any
account, the Holocaust is the
watershed event in the history of
post-biblical Jewry in that it
poses the greatest threat ever to
the classical Jewish conception
of the relationship between Jews
and God. Quite simply, the
Holocaust “appears to call the
very existence of God into seti-
ous doubt, if it does not make
God’s nonexistence perfectly
clear” (Roth and Rubenstein
291). Any theologian who, in
light of the Holocaust, wishes to
defend the existence of the per-
sonal God of the bible therefore
faces an unprecedented chal-
lenge, for as Roth and
Rubenstein remind us, “The
Holocaust was a boundary-cross-
ing event, one of those moments
in history which changes every-
thing before and after” (292).

Therefore, the process of Tikkun - mend-
ing - was a very “teal” activity. According
to Scholem, the purpose of Tikkun was
“not merely to perform an act of confes-

sion and acknowledgment of God’s
Kingdom, it (was) more than that; it (was)
an action. . .” (275). Luria instructed Jews
who engaged in Tikkun to fulfill the 613
commandments of God, pray, and live a
life “in close contact with the divine
through Torah” (Scholem 274). Thus, it
was through religious action that Jews
were able to heal the rupture in God,
thereby restoring all things to their proper
place within the natural order (Scholem

276).
Luria’s theology, and his notion of
Tikkun in particular, is novel on a number
of different levels, but it is perhaps most
remarkable in that it suggests that God
and humans are both responsible for com-
pleting the process of creation, which to
Scholem is equitable with the evolution of
God Him or Herself. He writes, “The
ptocess in which God conceives, brings
forth and develops Himself does not reach
its final conclusion in God. Certain parts
of the process are allotted to man [sic]”
(273). In a related passage he comments,
“The process of restoring all things to their
proper place demands not only an impulse
from God, but also one from His creature,
in its religious action“ (276). It is unclear
whether Luria believed God’s evolution
could be completed without human par-
ticipation, but for our present purposes it is
significant that Luria even suggested that
humans, particularly Jews, play an active
role to in the cosmic drama, for no Jewish
thinker before Luria had allotted humans
so much responsibility. As Scholem notes,

“The doctrine of Tikkun raised every Jew

to the rank of a protagonist in the great
ptocess of restitution, in a manner never
heard of before” (284).

Luria’s notions of the Breaking of the
Vessels and Tikkun redefined the popular
conception of the relationship between

Jews and God and also helped many Jews
make sense of the Exile from Spain. He
claimed that when the vessels broke, frag-
ments were scattered throughout the
world. Therefore, the Exile represented an
unprecedented opportunity for Jews to
mend the rupture within God by gather-
ing those fragments from parts of the
world never before inhabited by Jews. In
effect, this concept transfigured popular
understanding of the Exile. Instead of
interpreting the event as a punishment for
their sins, Jews began to understand the






























































28

In spite of these inherent difficulties,
there have been several Jewish theolo-
gians who have attempted to defend
God’s existence in the twentieth centu-
ty. Emil Fackenheim is one such thinker.
Like Roth and Rubenstein, Fackenheim
recognizes that the Holocaust was a
unique and unprecedented epoch mak-
ing event in the course of Jewish history
(Fackenheim, The Jewish Thought of
Emil Fackenheim: A Reader, 157).
Never before had so many Jews, or even
non-Jews, suffered so miserably.
Therefore, Fackenheim considers all
comparisons to the Holocaust either
“odious or irrelevant” (164). The
Holocaust, he claims, is an utterly par-
ticular historical event which should
never be universalized (157). He writes,
“Auschwitz is a unique descent into hell.
It is an unprecedented celebration of
evil. It is evil for evil’s sake” (162).

Unlike Luria, Fackenheim does not
attempt to understand or find purpose in
the Holocaust, the greatest rupture of
all. “No purpose, religious or non-teli-
gious, will ever be found in Auschwitz,”
he writes. “The very attempt to find one
is blasphemous” (163). Fackenheim
cannot accept the belief that the
Holocaust was a type of divine punish-
ment. By the same token, he does not
believe the Holocaust symbolized or sig-
nified a rupture within the body of God.
Quite simply, Fackenheim believes the
Holocaust “resists both rational and reli-
gious explanations” (114) and insists
that it will be years before Jews can even
begin to comprehend the “world-histor-
ical significance” of the event (157).

While he believes they cannot seek
to understand the Holocaust,
Fackenheim insists that Jews must
respond to it if they are to remain Jews.
This response, he claims, cannot be
grounded in understanding. Rather, it
must be based upon commitment, and
perhaps even faith (Fackenheim 157).
Furthermore, an authentic Jewish
response to the Holocaust, according to
Fackenheim, also must be characterized
by extreme stubbornness (157). In light
of a mountain of evidence denying the
existence of God, how else can Jews
maintain faith in God after the
Holocaust?

Fackenheim insists that this stub-
born, authentic Jewish response to the
Holocaust must be two-fold. First, it
requires a commitment to Jewish sur-
vival. Second, it requires a commitment

to Jewish unity (Fackenheim 158).
Fackenheim denies that this commit-
ment to Jewish survival and unity is a
form of Jewish biblical tribalism. To the
contrary, he considers it the only viable
contemporary response to a crisis which
threatens to send Judaism into a state of
total disarray or complete despair
(Fackenheim 158-9). Those Jews who
have made a commitment to respond to
the Holocaust in this manner “have
made the collective decision to endure
the contradictions of present Jewish
existence. .. [they] have collectively
rejected the option, either of ‘checking
out’ of Jewish existence altogether or of
so avoiding the present contradictions as
to shatter Jewish existence into frag-
ments” (Fackenheim 159). Fackenheim
is therefore quite similar to Luria in that
he believes that responding to the rup-
ture of his era necessarily entails con-
fronting the fragmentary, contradictory
nature of Jewish existence in the mod-
ern world.

Fackenheim believes it is indeed pos-
sible for Jews to respond to the
Holocaust with a stubborn commitment
to Jewish survival and unity because
even during the Holocaust Jews
responded this way. Those Jews who, in
the very midst of the Holocaust, main-
tained a commitment to Jewish survival
and unity are the ultimate source of
inspiration for Fackenheim, for they
demonstrated that it was possible, even
then, to wrest hope from “the abyss of
total despair” (Fackenheim 164). Not
only are such Jews fascinating to
Fackenheim, they are confounding as
well in that they did not despair of God
when it would have been natural to do
so. This apparent irrationalism suggests
to Fackenheim that such Jews must have
been divinely inspired to act as they did.
He therefore concludes that God must
have been present in the death camps.
In fact, he believes it was there that God
issued his 614th commandment, which
forbids Jews from granting posthumous
victories to Hitler (Fackenheim 165).

According to Roth and Rubenstein,
Fackenheim’s elucidation of the 614th
commandment “struck a deep chord in
Jews of every social level and religious
commitment” (319). One who reads the
commandment cannot help but concur
with Roth and Rubenstein that it is truly
remarkable in its power and passion
(320). It states:

We are, first, commanded to survive

as Jews, lest the Jewish people perish.
We are commanded, second, to remem-
ber in our very guts

and bones the martyrs of the
Holocaust, lest their memory perish.

We are forbidden, thirdly, to deny or
despair of God, however much

we may have to contend with Him or
with belief in Him, lest Judaism perish.
We are forbidden, finally, to despair of
the world as the place which is to
become the kingdom of God lest we
make it a meaningless place in which
God is dead or irrelevant and everything
is permitted. To abandon any of these
imperatives, in response to Hitler’s vic-
tory at Auschwitz, would be to hand
him yet another: posthumous
victory.(Roth and Rubenstein 319)

The commandment, at root, is a call
to endure and resist the cruelty of the
Holocaust. However, it is also a call to
maintain faith in God, no matter how
difficult that may be. Finally, it is a call
to preserve Judaism at all costs. In short,
the 614th commandment, like Luria’s
notion of Tikkun, strengthens a sense of
Jewish solidarity and renews faith in
God.

The 614th commandment empowers
Jews and guides them in the wake of the
Holocaust, yet it does not specify how
Jews are to respond to the rupture of the
Holocaust. For Fackenheim, the Jewish
response must be real, or practical, as
opposed to merely cerebral or theoreti-
cal (Roth and Rubenstein 322).
Consequently, he believes Jews must
actively affirm their commitment to
Jewish survival by resisting the
“Holocaust universe” (Roth and
Rubenstein 324). In order to guide this
Jewish resistance to the Holocaust,
Fackenheim adopts Luria’s notion of
Tikkun and uses it to encourage Jews of
his own generation to mend the rupture
of the Holocaust. He believes that, due
to its size, the rupture of the Holocaust
can never be fully mended. However, he
insists that Jews must attempt to engage
in Tikkun, if only because those few Jews
in the death camps were brave enough
to do so. Thus, post-Holocaust Tikkun is
for Fackenheim the “impossible necessi-
ty” (Fackenheim 188) since it is a never-
ending task on the one hand, while on
the other it is the only viable, authentic
Jewish response to rupture.

Fackenheim believes that creating
and supporting the State of Israel is an
authentic, albeit imperfect, form of


Tikkun for the modern Jew. The State
will never be “complete,” just as the rup-
ture of the Holocaust will never be fully
mended, yet Fackenheim insists that for
now this is the best Jews can do. To
those who question his desire to create a
Jewish state in response to the
Holocaust, Fackenheim responds that
the Holocaust was such a radical event
that it calls forth a radical Jewish
response (Fackenheim 197). Therefore,
he finds it perfectly just that Jews should
be able to return en masse to Israel for

call for endurance and resistance in light
of the inherent contradictory nature of
Jewish life. Neither Fackenheim nor
Luria is willing to conclude that the per-
sonal God of the bible is dead. However,
both thinkers reject the traditional bib-
lical notion that Jewish suffering is a
form of divine punishment. In sum, rup-
ture causes each thinker not to abandon
faith in God, but to reformulate his con-
ception of the relationship between Jews
and God.

I would now like to turn away from

Luria and Fackenheim in order to dis-
cuss my own conception of the relation-
ship between God and the Jews. Just as |
believe Luria’s and Fackenheim’s histor-
ical contexts greatly influenced their
conceptions of the relationship between
God and the Jews, I believe my histori-
cal context has had a great impact upon
my own thinking. As a Jew born more
than thirty years after the Holocaust, I
have known many who experienced the
horror of the Holocaust, yet I have never
been fully capable of understanding












































the first time in over two thousand years.
In many ways, Fackenheim’s response
to rupture is completely unlike that of
Luria. First, whereas Luria was primarily
concerned with healing the rupture
within God through religious acts of
Tikkun, Fackenheim concentrates par-
ticularly upon healing the rupture of the
Holocaust through the creation of the
State of Israel. Second, Luria was opti-
mistic in that he believed the mending
of God could be completed whereas
Fackenheim insists that the mending of
the Holocaust can never be finished due
to the size of the rupture. Third, Luria
saw the rupture of his generation - the
Exile of the Jews from Spain- as a chal-
lenge presented by God to the Jews,
whom he believed were God’s chosen
people. Thus, he believed in the biblical
God as well as the Kabbalist notion that
God selected the Jews to help collect all
the scattered fragments of the bro-
ken vessels. While Fackenheim
believes Jews must retain faith in |
the biblical God, he refuses to
accept the Holocaust as God's chal-
lenge to the Jews. Furthermore, he
denies that the Holocaust proves
that Jews enjoy a privileged posi-
tion among the peoples of the
earth or have been given a spe-
cial task by God. Fackenheim
does not believe we can
make sense of the Holocaust
and therefore is unwilling
to attempt to find any pur-
pose in it whatsoever.
Despite these differ-
ences, Luria’s response to
rupture is in many ways simi-
lar to that of Fackenheim. Both
responses are, of course, centered
around the notion of Tikkun.
Furthermore, both responses gained
widespread acceptance among the Jews
of their particular generations. Finally,
both are stubborn responses in that they




30

their pain. I have often wondered why |
feel so distanced from the Holocaust,
when at the same time I know that it
occurred only a short while ago.

Reading Fackenheim, I have come to
believe that my feelings of separation
from the Holocaust are directly related
to the long period following World War
II in which Jewish thought was for the
most part “paralyzed” (Fackenheim
184). As Fackenheim notes, it is only
now that Jewish thinkers are beginning
to confront the terrifying implications of
the Holocaust. It is my opinion that this
long period of silence had a somewhat
undesirable effect upon Jews of my own
generation. More specifically, I believe
that this silence has allowed many of us
to become detached from the greatest,
most terrifying event in the course of
post-biblical Jewish history. It has
allowed us to shrug off the event as a his-
torical anomaly, a freak accident which
could never happen again, especially in
America.

I am not trying to define the Jewish
Generation-X here; I honestly believe
that Jews my age are not fully aware of
horror of the Holocaust. How does this
influence our conception of the rela-
tionship between God and the Jews?
Speaking for myself, I believe it allows
me to be more naive, more complacent
with a classical biblical notion of God. It
is somewhat embarrassing at this point
for me to admit as much, but J still
believe in a personal God who can and
does intervene within history. I read
Fackenheim and I wonder why I have
not completely abandoned faith in such
a God already. I conclude that it must be
due in part to the long Jewish silence in
regard to the Holocaust.

In every respect, I am part of what
Fackenheim refers to as an “accidental
remnant” of Jews (Fackenheim 195).
My ancestors were fortunate enough not
to have lived in those countries occu-
pied by Germany during the war, and I
myself have enjoyed a life relatively free
of anti-Semitism in America. I therefore
consider myself incredibly fortunate. I
am doubly fortunate in that I have not
yet experienced the loss of a dearly loved
one. For all these reasons, and more, I
have never despaired of God. While this
has allowed me to maintain faith in the
God of the bible, it has also dulled my
passion for God in some respects.
Because I have never experienced true
rupture in my thinking about God, I

have never confronted the painful con-
tradictions of Jewish life. Consequently,
I have never had to overcome rupture
through a firm commitment of faith.

What I am suggesting here is a
Kierkegaardian notion that true faith in
God can only arise following rupture, for
it is rupture which forces us to confront
our relationship with God. Furthermore,
I believe that the greater the rupture, the
greater the potential faith. For obvious
reasons, I am hesitant to develop a crite-
tion by which we can measure rupture,
yet I believe it is safe to say the Exile
from Spain in 1492 and the Holocaust
in the twentieth century constitute two
of the greater ruptures Jews have experi-
enced since the Dispersion from
Palestine. Consequently, those Jews
who, like Isaac Luria and Emil
Fackenheim, confronted and responded
to these ruptures without despairing of
God often developed authentic faith in
God. It is far less frequent that a Jew who
has lived a life of relative complacency
has developed a comparable sense of
faith.

Sadly enough, I am one such Jew who
has not developed a strong sense of faith.
I find my faith in God quite ordinary,
even rote. Had it not been for my par-
ents, I probably would not believe in
God at all. While I am utterly thankful I
never had to experience the horror of
the Holocaust, I feel that I will never
develop a true passion for God unless |
am forced to confront rupture. Of
course, I realize that at some point in my
life this pain undoubtedly will come, but
for now I feel as though my faith is
grounded in little more than habit.

Perhaps it would be possible for me to
try to develop a stronger sense of faith by
confronting the rupture experienced by
others. Indeed, I believe that Emil
Fackenheim wrote his book To Mend
the World hoping that Jews of later gen-
erations would be able to relate, even
partially, to the horror and senselessness
of the Holocaust. I would like to believe
that this is possible, yet I am afraid it is
perhaps too late, at least for Jews like
myself. I am already too detached from
the Holocaust to experience its horror
vicariously through Fackenheim, or
even Steven Spielberg. In fact, the only
time I can recall feeling as though I, too,
were part of the “Holocaust universe”
was during my visit to Yad VaShem, the
Holocaust memorial museum in Israel.
After staring at actual photographs and

hearing the endless list of the dead recit-
ed, I experienced, for the first and last
time, the rupture of the Holocaust. And
then I returned to America and again
everything was fine.

Painfully, I admit that I am insensi-
tive, even to the suffering of my own
people. Much of this insensitivity is due
to my complacency, or decadence, as
Nietzsche would say. However, I also
believe that part of this insensitivity has
developed during my experience at
Swarthmore. I do not wish to implicate
Swarthmore in particular here; I wish to
implicate academia in general. It is my
opinion that academia has rendered me
insensitive to the suffering of my own
people by introducing me to the suffer-
ing of so many others. In short, it has
allowed me to deny the particularity of
the Holocaust. For me, the Holocaust
has become just another example of
incomprehensible brutality in the twen-
tieth century.

It is somewhat ironic that even
though I am so jaded I continue to
believe in God. Perhaps it would be
more natural to abandon faith in God
altogether, yet if I were to do so I would
feel utterly defeated, for I believe part of
being a Jew is to maintain faith in God,
regardless of circumstances. Having
studied biblical Jews such as Abraham
and Job and more modern Jews such as
Isaac Luria and Emil Fackenheim, I real-
ize that any doubts I may have about my
relationship with God are relatively triv-
ial; Jews have withstood far greater trials
and ruptures without despairing of God.
Thus, it is in honor of all those Jews of
ages past that I stubbornly maintain my
faith in God and my belief that there
exists a relationship between God and
the Jews. While this sense of faith is per-
haps not as strong as that which devel-
ops after confronting true rupture, I
believe that for the fortunate Jews of my
particular generation it is the only
authentic Jewish response to the age-old
Jewish dilemma which asks how Jews are
to maintain faith in a God whose pres-
ence is so difficult to discern.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fackenheim, Emil. The Jewish
Thought of Emil Fackenheim: A
Reader, Michael L. Morgan, ed. Wayne
State University Press: Detroit. 1987.

Roth, John K. and Richard L.
Rubenstein. Approaches to Auschwitz:
The Holocaust and Its Legacy. John
Knox Press: Atlanta. 1987.




Rob Carmichael
English 94
Critical and Cultural Theory
Professor Patricia White
Fall 1995



ABSTRACT

The object of this assignment was
to examine a cultural artifact and
uncover whatever subtle social
meanings might lie within. The
author chooses to investigate the
signification
of one of the
more banal
aspects _ of
suburban
culture, the
front yard.

\uburban
home-
owners |

spend a great
deal of time
concerned
about the

front yards of |
their homes.
Many spend
several hours
a week planti-
ng, trimming
and pruning
to make their
Ward.) jpree
sentable.”
Those with
less time and
more money
often hire people to care for the yard
in their absence. Strange decorations
can be found in front yards as well:
gnomes and porcelain animals
abound and plastic flamingoes and
sunflowers are placed in conspicuous
spots. The front yard is as important
an expression of middle class values
as is one’s clothing or choice of car, if

~ not more of one. This semi-conscious

expression of one’s personality and
sense of taste through one’s front
yard is universally, if tacitly, under-
stood. Beyond that, however, the
suburban front yard is a mythological
object signifying two important con-
cepts: those of control and morality.
The front yard is, of course, the
most immediately visible aspect of
middle class life. Unlike the inside of
the house itself, the yard is open to
the gaze and subsequent judgement
of any and all passersby with no more



than a casual amount of effort. This
is primarily due to the fact that front
yards are traditionally unfenced.
When barriers are found in the front
yard, they do little to conceal the
conditions therein and are, for all
intents and
purposes,
simple terri-
torial mark-
ers. The tra-
ditional
white picket
fveene eae
springs to
mind _ here:
it clearly
_ defines the
width and
breadth of
the proper-
ty, but the
spacing
between
planks and
the waist- or
chest-level
height allow
a more than
ample visual
| access to the
yard. The
same may be
said of other
typical front yard fencing devices:
chain link is used to keep animals
either on or off of the property, but
allows the outsiders to gladly gaze in,
while low shrubs and/or hedges
demarcate only physical, but not
visual boundaries.

In the rare cases that hedges do
obscure visual access to the front
yard (or, for that matter, if a gaze-
restricting fence is put up), we as
passersby are taken aback and deem
the owners “weird,” “antisocial,” or
“overly private.” A complex mythol-
ogy might sprout up around such res-
idences, especially among younger
neighbors, about “Old Man/Lady So-
and-so” who supposedly somehow
deviated from social or sexual norms
in the past (i.e. killed their child, had
sex with young boys, etc.) and
remain behind the barrier in order to
shield themselves from the world

ot




32









that they
broke from
so long ago.
Beyond
these horror
stories cre-
ated by
children, a
vais aa bly,









him/her-
self.

A n
unrestrict-
ed front
Vo at. d
includes
those resi-
dents of



closed off house elicits a reaction
much the same as an unanswered let-
ter. That is, an unfenced yard express-
es very important information, that
begs reciprocation. If a neighbor does
not respond with a similar level of
expression a tension develops once

the more open homeowner senses the
unbalanced nature of the expressive
relationship.

It might be illustrative to compare
front yards to backyards from the
standpoint of visibility. In almost
every case, the backyard is hidden
from sight. While the house itself is
the reason for much of this (as it
stands between the street, where the
most potential viewers are, and the
yard), it is quite common for suburban
residents to erect a much more
obscuring system of fencing than they
would in the front yard. Presumably
this process will shield the more pri-
vate sphere of the backyard and
restrict the gaze of those who live
next door. Backyard barriers often
take the form of plywood or a similar-
ly opaque fencing structure that
restricts all but the most determined
voyeurs from looking in. In addition,
this serves to seal off the backyard in
those areas that the house does not
block a view from the street. Whereas
the front yard is public visual space,
the backyard is private visual space.

What, then, are we to make of this
dichotomy between front and back
yards? What does the visual freedom
of the front yard accomplish? Why is
there a negative association with
obscuring the gaze of those who wish
to assess the front yard? The simple
answer is community, or rather com-
munity opinion, of the homeowner

the property within the neighborhood
or community group. The front yard
becomes a strange amalgamation of
trophy and telephone. Conversations
between homeowners often begin by a
comment on the beauty or cleanliness
of the yard. The conversation might
then grow so as to include local gos-
sip, news, and the like. The home-
owner, by means of this process, is
drawn further in to the network of the
neighborhood and the societal struc-
tures that rely on such a tightly knit
community are retained. Clearly, one
can also use the space of the backyard
as a gathering place (i.e. barbecues,
block parties, etc.), but it is in no way
the same seemingly casual experience
that a similar encounter in the front
yard might be.

On another level, the front yard is,
in many ways, one of the few remain-
ing outlets for a show of power that
suburbanites have access to. A front
yard pacifies the aggressions stemming
from a lack of power in modern soci-
ety by hearkening back to times when
(some) individuals still retained some
measure of control in their world.
That is, the front yard is an expression
of many of the fundamental feudalis-
tic values. Land equals power. “A
man’s home is his castle.” And the
suburbanite becomes like the king,
who exercises complete dominance
OVER every t-aspect. 9 of) the
kingdom/yard. The decision to mow




ee i

or rake or rototill is entirely up to this
suburban monarch and there is no
one who will question his/her deci-
sions concerning the kingdom’s
upkeep. When the yard meets com-
munity standards, it is the ruler who
gets the praise; the power is not
shared by a democratic group (i.e. the
family or political community) or
even by a bureaucratic hierarchy. In a
sense, the presence of a front yard
pacifies many of the built-up aggres-
sions present in the general populace
of America today. And while this
dominance can be and is frequently
exerted within the space of the back-
yard, such an action would have little
or no effect within the community as
a whole.

By the sheer nature of the lack of
visual obstructions around most front
yards, yard work becomes an entirely
conspicuous act. Working in the front
yard means working in public. This
type of public work satisfies the tradi-
tional moral codes of both the United
States (hard work leads to a better
life) and of Calvinism (hard work
leads to salvation). In satisfying these
two codes, the homeowner is brought
even further into the community as
he/she is seen as hardworking and
practical and therefore a benefit to
the social group as a whole.

It is not a coincidence that most
yard work takes place on the week-
ends. Such timing serves two distinct
purposes. On one hand, the home-
owner is saying “Hard work is so
important to me that at the end of my
traditional work week, I choose to
continue to work, in the hopes of bet-
tering myself and my property.”
Without such a public display of work
ethics, the community would be
unable to judge the moral character of

the homeowner in question. The sec-
ond purpose of such a schedule is that
it expresses this morality at a time
when it will be received by a much
greater audience. Presumably, others
will be working in their respective
yards, or at least will be within sight of
the first homeowner, and will be able
to understand the strong morality that
is on display.Just from this very basic
analysis, it is clear that the front yard
is a very important aspect of social
and psychological life of suburbanites.
While on casual observation it seems
that the front yard allows a means of
personal expression not unlike choos-



a

ing socks to go with an outfit, a closer
examination reveals that the yard is
both a strategic tie to the community
and an expression of power within it.
The homeowner can express his/her
mastery of their own situation at the
same time they connect themselves to
the neighborhood and community
surrounding them. And this stems
directly from the fact that the front
yard is commonly left open to the out-
side gaze. In many respects, the front
yard is both the most tightly held
aspect of personal autonomy and the
greatest connection to the outside
world.





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DAN CLOWES
Soc. ANTH. 62

HUMAN DEVELOP- oo. STOAT MNVIRONMENT. |
MENT & ECOLOGY ANT SACTAGCONOMIC &VeCTEVIC

PROFESSOR LEGESSE

an eee) : iN Oo INDUSTRIAL PHILADELPHIA a |




ABSTRACT

This paper is an attempt to understand the position of the Kensington Welfare
Rights Union, an organization of poor people which the author has become relat-
ed to through work with Empty the Shelters. The paper attempts to link within a
conceptual framework issues of poverty, post-industrial change, suburbanization,
the condition of the physical environment, and the self empowerment of the poor.
Tthe photos are all of people involved in Kensington Welfare Rights Union.

processes of industrialization, immigration, and suburbanization. Today
Philadelphia is in the midst of a conversion from an industrial economy to an
information and service oriented economy. These shifts to a post industrial condition
and the legacy of suburbanization have together caused the displacement and isolation
of formerly working class neighborhoods in north Philadelphia. The economic and
social developments have both affected people directly and shaped the environment in
which they live. The condition of the built environment affects individuals who live
in contact with it, as well as creating a context from which further economic and social
trends emerge. Individuals involved with the built environment, themselves, affect

both the economic and social systems and directly modify the built environment.
I offer a triangular model for understanding these interrelationships. The points of

Passes, is one of a number of north American cities which has undergone
the triangle represent socioeconomic
policies, human behavior, and the
physical environment. The sides of
the triangle represent the two direc-
tional relationships between the
points. Each of the three points is in
relationship with the other two.

be studied by environmental sociolo-
gists:

Not only must environmental soci-
ologists recognize the complex man-
ner in which environmental condi-
tions influence human behavior and
social organization, they must also
recognize an even more fundamental

O CzO) OM DLS Nn societal-Cnvi-

Catton in their discussion of the ori-
gins of environmental sociology:

...we can summarize the impact of
these disciplinary traditions on sociol-
ogy’s treatment of the physical envi-
ronment as follows: The Durkheimian
legacy suggested that the physical
environment should be ignored, while
the Weberian legacy suggested that it
could be ignored. Should one violate

these traditions and suggest that the
physical environment might be rele-
vant for understanding human behav-
ior or social organization, one risked
being labeled an “environmental
determinist” (Dunlap and Catton
118).

ronment relationships, they do so in
the context of a discipline which
already recognizes the individual
<—> socioeconomic system relation-
ship. Thus, Dunlap and Catton
implicitly recognize the three points
of the conceptual triangle and the
relationships between the points.
This triangular conceptual model
DrO

o7-

remains today: many streets of two
story row houses which feed conve-
niently into larger avenues (see Figure
2). The avenues are wide, designed to
accommodate large numbers of vehi-
cles transporting labor and resources
to the factories. American Street,
with its six lanes and its boarder of
deserted warehouses and loading
docks, is a reminder of the industry
that once supported the region. Many

buildings are empty, some with gaping
windows and doorways. Most street
level surfaces are vandalized with
‘tags’ (street names spray painted onto
the sides of buildings). The area has a
scarred, weathered look.

.

jobs have been growing in number.
The shift in the economy from an
industrial to an information and ser-
vice base has created a gap between
the physical structure of the city and
the current skills of it’s people and the
structure and skills which are required
in the new economy. Carolyn Teich
Adams of Temple University explains

Cd NOV“ Ne St) ND The €COnoim

find) a place in the changing econo-
my.
The loss of jobs in the city of
Philadelphia has created a poverty
which has been made more intense by
the process of suburbanization. As
first trains, then automobiles
increased mobility, the wealthy and
middle class have sought housing in

suburbs where they could own a
home. The Mainline of Philadelphia,


with it’s costly houses and large prop-
erties, is an example of a wealthy sub-
urb formed around the railway which
connects it to center city (see Figure
3). More middle class suburbs may be
found around Philadelphia. During

the 1980's the city of Philadelphia’s

transferred wealth
from the city to
the suburb and
concentrated
poverty in the
inner cities. This
geographic strati-
fication of wealth
is reflected in fig-
ures comparing

of wealth and poverty into distinct
locations taxed by different local
authorities has led to the flight of
wealth from the city,

The tax capacity of the City of
Philadelphia’s residents, relative to that
of the residents of suburban municipal-
ities, decreased over the decade [1980's]
while its need for social services, as rep-
resented by the proportion of the met-

ropolitan area’s poor who reside in the
city, increased relative to suburban
communities. More importantly, any
attempts by the City to tax its residents
who are better off to care for its resi-
dents who are disadvantaged creates an
incentive for the better off residents

al, inner city neighborhoods such as
Kensington.

Fear plays a role in the perpetua-
tion of suburbanization. Historically,
fear of blacks has played a role in the
process of suburbanization. After the
Great Depression significant numbers
of blacks escaped the poverty of the
South and sought industrial jobs in
northern cities. Widespread fear of
African-Americans among whites

made possible a practice called ‘block
busting.’ By planting a few black fam-
ilies in a white community near black
ghettos, realtors could instill fear of
falling property values and of urban
blight (which included increased vio-

_lence and theft along with degrada-

loans or provide
coverage to
areas deemed in
danger of urban
blight. This
‘redlining’ made
it impossible for
the already
financially
overextended

of mugging or personal harm. The
self-fulfilling nature of this fear of
crime is clearly described in
Metropolitan Philadelphia: A Study of
Conflicts and Social Cleavages:

The fear of violence pervades the
city... The streets become more and
more deserted as increasingly higher
proportions of their users travel in
“automobile shelters,” reinforcing the


existence of vacuous spaces at the
expense of community life... In this
way a vicious cycle is formed: with-
drawal offers the opportunity for more
crime, which then causes further
lock-up, or, alternatively, more flight
from the city. Because fear of crime

north Philadelphia this fear has
resulted in some astounding behavior:
numerous cases of police brutality,
some cases resulting in death; police
routinely telling kids playing on side-
walks in their own neighborhoods to
get off the streets; and attack heli-
copters being added to the police arse-
nal. If the link between criminality
and poverty is real, then the increas-

one , in the 1950's. Over the same
period the suburban population
increased by 97% and the suburban

housing stock increased by 161%
(Madden and Stull 132).

Unfortunately the figures relating
the amount of housing to the numbers
of people are deceiving. The contra-
diction is that while there is plenty of
unused housing in Philadelphia, the

city has a large population of home-
less. William Parshall, Philadelphia’s
Deputy Managing Director for Special
Needs Housing, has estimated that
Philadelphia has 24,000 homeless
(Janofsky 16). Carolyn Teich Adams,

In The

end eoHeal tae ances fully

substituted for with new higher end
apartments. The increase in small
households may have to do with a
decrease in the number of two parent
families renting in cities, and a signif-
icant increase in the number of single
parent families fueled by rising
divorce rates. Statistics describing the
loss of cheap rental units during a

housing markets of cities like
Philadelphia may certainly describe
some of the situation, especially the
increase in small households and the
replacement of low cost rental units,
Adams’ factors do not adequately
explain the fate of the housing units
left behind by wealthy and middle
class who move out of the city. These
are the housing units which con-
tribute to the surplus of housing that,

because they are older, ought to have
satisfied the needs of the poor who
have been dislocated and isolated by
economic and social trends, but
which do not completely do so as the
number of homeless indicate. These

housing units ma be ‘maladjusted’ to

Commission in a 1985 report identi-
fied a “depreciation matrix” for arson:

...characterized by the long-term
erosion of mortgage availability and
the exodus of stable-income residents.
This leads to a steady decline in prop-
erty values and a sense of entrapment
for the remaining residents...In these
areas, arson is an easy solution to the

Since the late 1960’s, the declining
population in the city of Philadelphia
has created a perennial oversupply of
housing which cannot be rented or
sold. Their owners, unwilling to con-
tinue to pay taxes on and maintain
property with no economic value,
eventually abandon them.
Ownership then passes to the city
government which can do little
except demolish the most dangerous


structures and try to protect the oth-
ers from vandalism. The rate of aban-

donment seemed to slow in the
1980's, but ruined buildings and trash

filled vacant lots continued to blight

neighborhoods throughout the city
Madden and Stull 134)

live on the
streets and
make it diffi-
cult for them
to earn a liv-
ing, for
instance—and
which under-
mine the
structure of

suburban neighborhoods and found
jobs in other sectors of the economy,
leaving behind those too impover-
ished to move out of the region.
When driving down Lehigh Avenue
one may notice how run down the
buildings and streets are. The image
is of abandoned, gutted factories and
cleared lots, chaotically spray painted
buildings, and trash strewn sidewalks.
Human behavior in the area seems to

parallel the regions physical environ-
ment, most of it depressed and
gloomy, some of it desperately defiant,
and some of it defiant, but seeking a
brighter future. As Edward Hall
wrote, “...there is a close identifica-
tion between the image that man has

men selling the metal that they have
salvaged to a scrap metal dealer who
operates out of one of the otherwise
unused warehouses that line the
street. The men are as thin and hard
as the pipes which extend awkwardly
from their carts. When they are











which traveled by protected in glass
and steel. The man was so depressed
that he was unconcerned about the
danger of being hit by one of the mov-
ing vehicles.

With few opportunities to find
good jobs the people of this area have
had to support themselves in any way
possible. In the afternoon near the
corner of American Street and Girard
Avenue one can find a collection of













engers
leave
buildings
gutted of
t. hotest,
plumbing
and some-
times even
take the
man-



food and serious theft increase with
hunger; serious theft and prostitution
increase with problems of shelter; and
prostitution increases with unemploy-

ment (McCarthy and Hagan 623).

While this study was of youth in
Toronto, it establishes some basis for
the implied connection between con-
ditions of poverty and illegal activity
among the people living in depressed










urban locations in the United States.

Stolen and illegal cars are perva-
sive in north Philadelphia. A friend
of mine—a man known as Chicago—
has told me that the area is mostly
supported by illegal activity. He says
that probably ninety percent of the

steal a car it can cost as little as
fifty dollars because the addict
is only concerned with getting
the next high. The drug indus-
try and prostitution complete
the regular features of the illegal
economy in north Philadelphia.
Drug pushers work on the street
in gangs transferring millions of
dollars worth of drugs in_ the

by socioeconomic systems.

In The Hidden Dimension Edward
Hall investigates the relationship
between the physical environment
and the human individual. Hall
focuses significant attention on cities
and some of the spatial problems
found in cities. Central to his discus-
sion is an emphasis on crowding and
on the malicious effects of crowding.
Hall describes experiments by John

Calhoun which found. behavior
‘sinks’ associated with stress in rats.
Calhoun had found that wild
Norwegian rats living in a quarter
acre pen with plenty of food would
level off at a population of 150, but
that if the cage size were reduced to

of stress on the rats. He found a
‘behavioral sink’ that acts “to aggra-
vate all forms of pathology that can be
found within a group” (Hall 26).

Hall links Calhoun’s ‘sink,’ found
in rats, to humans by connecting the
crowded conditions Calhoun placed
his rats in with a sense of disorder
experienced by both rats and humans:
“It is clear from Calhoun’s experi-
ments that even the rat, hardy as he

describe

is, cannot tolerate disorder and that,
like man, he needs some time to be
alone” (Hall 31). To prove that
humans can, indeed, have a sense of
disorder, Hall examines various sorts
of human spatial perceptions and
differences between cultures

of Psychology and Psychiatry at
the University of Chicago,
addresses Hall’s perspective on
the problems of cities in a 1971
essay, Mental Health in the Slums.
Bettelheim argues that there are
serious difficulties with modeling
the behavior of humans with the
behavior of animals. Bettelheim
uses the cognitive abilities of the

through planning and design, can doa
great deal to counteract the devastat-

ing effects of overcrowding
(Bettelheim 32, italics are mine).

While both Hall and Bettelheim
state that they are concerned with the
negative effects of overcrowding in
cities, they each take a particular per-
spective on the problem. Hall places
emphasis on problems related to the


sensory involvement of individuals
when overcrowded in discussing the
structure of the ‘ghetto:’

The degree to which peoples are
sensorially involved with each other,

and how they use time, determine not __

focuses his examination on
the effect of the built envi-
ronment on the develop-
ment in children of a ‘psy-
chology of hope’
(Bettelheim 31). By focus-
ing his discussion on the
psychological conditions of
those within the built envi-
ronment Bettelheim ide

tion of economic class as a factor in
the ‘psychology of hope:’ ’

The dwellings are such an accumula-
tion of poor, disturbed and utterly des-
perate people that their attitude gives
the children an indelible image of utter
hopelessness (Bettelheim 43).

Although he does not pursue the
implications of the idea Hall hints that

economic conditions could effect the
problems he associates with crowding
by identifying the variable of stress:
‘When. stress increases, sensitivity to
crowding rises—people get more on
edge—so that more and more space is

uired | d less i ilable”

ful outer world be safely at hone

he will know he has a place in this
world. While the safely middle-class
family can manage successfully in apart-
ments, because of its built-in sense of
hope for the future, the ghetto dweller,
more than anyone, needs a place of his
very own to have and to hold, so that
finally he comes into his own
(Bettelheim 47).

In addition to understanding the
dynamic of class in the ‘sink’ behavior
of poor urban neighborhoods,
Bettelheim recognizes that the individ-
ual living in a poor neighborhood has
agency to directly affect the physical

environment in which (s)he live

tionship of our conceptual tri-
angle, and by recognizing the
agency of individuals, has
opened the possibility of rec-
ognizing the Individual
Behavior —> Social and
Economic Systems relation-
ship.

Individuals in poverty have

523). Adams presents the condition of
squatting in Philadelphia during the
1980’s, where the rental stock was
“nonexistent in most low-income sec-
tions of the city” (Adams 542) and
where public housing was inadequate
for the number of people on waiting
lists, and was falling into disrepair.
Squatters were able to successfully force
a political situation in which the city
administrators were unwilling to perse-


cute squatters who had occupied empty
HUD housing. HUD was not happy
about squatting but could not deny the
benefit of squatters who would occupy
housing units “...in the worst repair and
the most blighted neighborhoods...”
Adams 542) and would agree to

about economic justice.”

Take-over campaigns, using squat-
ting tactics, were carried out by the
KWRU in April 1992 for a community
center, and in 1994 for 50 vacant HUD
houses. The campaign for the commu-
nity center failed and KWRU demon-
strators were arrested, but the more
recent housing take-overs have been a
huge success. As well as getting housin:

the social and economic conditions

which have created their poverty.
Organizations like the KWRU serve to
channel the same defiance expressed in
much of the illegal activity of north
Philadelphia by poor people, toward the
more positive activity of changing the
economic and social systems which
have limited the futures of those in
poverty. The KWRU and organizations
like it push the social and economic sys-

tems to end the conditions of poverty
which have impoverished people and
decayed the physical environment of
neighborhoods. Through protest and
demonstrations, like the Tent City,
members of the KW/RU demand a place

in the system and draw sympathy for

involvement with the drug trade had

ended after he had been shot. He told
me that he had grown up angry, power-
less to stop his father from beating his
mother. As we drove through his com-
munity he said that he did not like the
neighborhood; he said that he had
caused the community a lot of harm.
Khalif pointed out the house he had

own up in. It was a unit in a series of

some of the smartest students in the

city. Inside the Supermarket, Khalif
ereeted old acquaintances with a big
smile and asked if things had changed
since he had been there. He clearly
wanted to recognize a connection
between himself and them. Khalif told
a friend that he was getting his life back
together. I assumed this had to do with
his recovery from the gun shot wound
and his membership with KWRU in its

occupation at St. Edward’s Church.
The way Khalif spoke with such dis-
like for the neighborhood in which he
had grown up contrasted with the pride
he had of his school and the enjoyment
he showed at being able to speak with
from the | ity indicating

The rehabilitation of these communi-
ties must include a rehabilitation of
peoples lives. The message of the
KWRU is that those whose lives are
part of the communities in which they
live must be included in the structuring
of the communities. The physical envi-
ronment must provide people with a
place in the social and economic sys-

ms of the worl readjustment _in

Man and his extensions constitute
one interrelated system. It is a mistake
of the greatest magnitude to act as
though man were one thing and his
house or his cities, his technology or his
language were something else (Hall
188).




42







LAURA CHRISTIAN @ MODERN ART

anet and the

lion of the Impressionists



dGYyOAUHONNH WOSSHAOUd





SEPTEMBER 24, 1995





ABSTRACT

The following is a seminar
paper that attempts to grapple
with a series of readings on the
19th century French painter,
Manet. The writer chose to
engage a Marxist reading of
Manet’s Canotiers
d’Argententeuil by art histori-
an T.J. Clark with a feminist
reading of the same painting
by Eunice Lipton. Her paper
submits both approaches to a
critique that points out the
blind spots stemming from a
failure to deal with codes of
gender, on the one hand, and
codes of class, on the other.
The illustrations in this article
are not representative of the
works discussed.
Unfortunately, the images
could not be reproduced.

riselda Pollock’s ambi-
tious article,
“Femininity and the

Spaces of Modernity,” cuts
across a vast range of critical
issues. Though it deals primarily
with the work of Berthe Morisot
and Mary Cassatt and the con-
ditions of female artistic pro-
duction, it also includes a cri-
tique of Clark’s arguments
regarding representations of
class in the Painting of Modern
Life. Pollock cites the literal
spaces of modernity mapped by
Clark as the territory not only

of class struggle, but of the commercialization of sex.
Pointing out that the encounters pictured in much early
modernist painting involve men endowed with economic
power and the privilege of mobility and women who work in
urban spaces selling their bodies, she asks questions about
the extent to which women’s bodies constitute “the territo-
ry across which men artists claim their modernity” (247).
Part of her project is to attempt to identify sites of articula-
tion between class and gender, and to insist on their inex-
tricability as categories of representation: indeed, we cannot
consider one without considering its intersections with the
other, for they are “historical simultaneities and mutually
inflecting” (Pollock, 247). From Pollock’s perspective,
Clark’s arguments suffer fundamentally from his tendency to
subordinate concerns of gender to those of class. Even where
he attempts to deal with the problematic of sexuality in
19th-century bourgeois Paris, he frequently subsumes issues
of gender asymmetry under those of class asymmetry.

I tend to agree with Pollock on this point in most cases;
nevertheless, I would like to give Clark some credit where
he seems thoroughly attentive to problems of gender. He
does manage, for instance, to locate the ‘shock’ and source
of intelligibility of Olympia in its modes of address to the
(male) viewer, its “disobedience to that ‘placing of the spec-
tator in a position of imaginary knowledge’ which was the
nude’s most delicate achievement” (Preliminaries..., 266).
Clark makes it clear that he considers this disobedience, this
refusal “to situate Woman in the space—the dominated and
derealised space—of male fantasy” an “admirable” (ibid,
271) feat (apparently he really would like to establish his
credentials as a male art historian sympathetic to feminist
concerns). And yet for him, Olympia’s disobedience merely
presents another problem, for it situates her, instead of in
the realm of fantasy, in “a fully coded, public and familiar
world” (ibid, 271) in which the positions of dominator and
dominated—i.e., of the bourgeois male consumer and the
courtesan—are all too reified. In other words, despite the
acute though perhaps insecure sense of self-possession she
projects—and despite the literalizing effect of her gaze, the
manner in which it exposes the transaction at hand as pure-
ly commercial—Olympia is still on display, an object to be
consumed. To be truly “subversive”—at least in the Marxist
sense of the word, the sense that Clark would most emphat-
ically embrace—Olympia would have to assume “a place in
the code of classes” (ibid, 271-2). This is Clark’s main point
in the “Preliminaries”: that in order to be a truly disruptive
presence Olympia would have to occupy an intelligible class
position. As it is, the instability of her social identity ren-
ders her susceptible to the myth of the courtesan, that dual-
istic creature whose forms oscillated between the abject and
the dominant, between the prototypes of the proletarian
prostitute and the femme fatale. Clark’s conclusion would
seem to be that the rupturing of gendered viewing codes
cannot stand on its own as a destabilizing mode of represen-
tation: without the attribution of a determinate class iden-
tity, the nude female subject merely relapses into a state of
immanent circulability.

Given the substance of his argument, it seems only fair to
acknowledge that Clark is quite capable of elaborating the
complex interactions of class and gender when they are
integral to his argument. For this reason | take issue with
Pollock’s sweeping assessment of
Clark: she notes, for instance, Clark’s
token gesture of commitment to fem-
inist concerns—his recognition of an
implied masculine viewer in
Olympia—but criticizes him for doing
so in a manner that “ensures the nor-
malcy of that position, leaving it
below the threshold of historical
investigation and theoretical analysis”

(246). This does not strike me as

Clark’s primary fault at all. Rather, it
is the inconsistency with which he
conducts his inquiries into issues of
gender that proves the most occlusive
in his argument and that ultimately
undermines his credibility.

The inconsistency, nevertheless, is
symptomatic. For it is not simply that
Clark fails to ‘incorporate’ a feminist
perspective into his own Marxist
viewpoint at each critical juncture: it
is that he fails to grasp fully the ways
in which the binary opposition under-
pinning the — significations of
“Woman” in the mid-19th century—
that of the fille publique versus the
femme honnete—represented a mys-
tification of what Pollock refers to as
“economic exchange...in the patriar-

chal kinship system” (259)1. Clark
recognizes the discursively produced
polarity between the “prostitute” and
the “lady” as a founding fiction in the
ideological construction of Woman,
but he does not fully recognize it as
operating in certain spaces to facili-
tate the commodification and
exchange of the bodies of working
class women and, concomitantly, to
ensure the domestication of bourgeois

women, their exclusion from (and
“ienorance” of) such transactions. As
Pollock points out, the spaces of cross-
class sexual exchange are significantly
the very spaces that provided the set-
ting for early modernist painting.
They are the spaces traversed by
Baudelaire’s flaneur, the mythical rov-
ing voyeur who remained both impas-
sive and invisible while assimilating
the fleeting spectacles of modern
life—among them, of course, the
many ‘types’ of women available to
his gaze. These same spaces of moder-
nity, however, largely represented a
risk for the respectable bourgeois
woman: as Pollock explains, entering
them meant possibly subjecting one-
self to the violating and compromis-

ing gazes of men. Hence the line of
demarcation in Pollock’s grids that
divides the realm of the lady from the
realm of the fallen woman “marks off
a class boundary, but [more integrally]
reveals where new class formations of
the bourgeois world restructured gen-
der relations not only between men
and women, but between women of
different classes” (259).

I have suggested, in effect, that



Clark leaves the traces of his own crit-
ical ‘aporias’ when he fails to account
for the interfacing of class and gender
in a system of sexual-economic
exchange. I find Eunice Lipton’s fem-
inist evaluation of Manet’s oeuvre
lacking for similar reasons,2 but in
this case her privileging of gender
over class produces the critical gap. In
the remainder of my paper I’d like to
examine both Clark’s and Lipton’s
arguments—the limits of their per-
spectives and the sources of their
insights—with a focus on the inter-
secting axes of class and gender, and
with reference to a specific painting,
Manet’s Canotiers d’Argenteuil, to
which both critics give some atten-
tion. Let me say to start out with that




I find Lipton’s argument less sophisti-
cated than Clark’s and thus difficult
to compare in any kind of a nuanced
way with the latter’s. Unlike Clark,
however, she does manage to notice
the female figure in the painting and
furthermore to recognize her sexual
specificity. By contrast, Clark in his
analysis merely reproduces the ten-
sion or discrepancy that emerges

when one attempts a “neutral”
description of the painting. As a crit-
ic quoted by Clark remarks,
“(Manet’s] Canotiers d’Argenteuil are
two, one of them a lady...” (The
Painting of Modern Life, quoted on
168). It struck me as I came across this
rather jarring phrase that the way in
which it renders the man a given and
at the same time an almost invisible

entity—the one ‘univer-
sal’ figure in the paint-
ing—is precisely sympto-
matic of the problem: the
woman does not quite
attain the status of a
generic being, and there-
fore requires specific
mentioning; she is one of
a pair, and yet the critic
can only define her in
relation to her generic
other, the man. Her dif-
ference is a difference
from, a derivative differ-
ence; it is not a difference
that endows her with
specificity, per se.
Nevertheless, as
Lipton observes, there is
something different or
unusual about the way she
appears in the painting,
and furthermore about
the way her relationship
to the man comes across.
Lipton explains it as fol-
lows: “Romantic conven-
tion has dictated that
men and women in close
proximity pay attention
to each other and more
specifically that the
woman provide erotic
possibilities....The real
moment between men
and women was frequent-
ly an awkward one, which
is exactly what Manet has
captured in his painting”
(52). Lipton’s simplistic
ascription of realism to
the painting is obviously
ahistorical; it fails to
address a single concrete
aspect of the figures’ con-
text or their class identi-
ties. Nevertheless, Lipton
picks up on one of the
striking features of the
painting, the source of its
departure from pictorial
convention: that is, that despite their
proximity, the figures do not look at
each other—in fact the woman looks
out of the picture and meets the spec-
tator’s gaze. Clark barely finds this
noteworthy, whereas he found it a
crucial element in Olympia: he per-
ceives the woman’s face as “animate
but opaque,” (168) and essentially


impenetrable. Beyond this cursory
description, Clark does not give the
woman much attention; he explains
the dynamics between the figures as
follows, starting with the male figure:

The man...is seemingly turned
towards his inscrutable companion,
no doubt in admiration; his body is
swiveled in space, half leaning back
from the picture’s surface. And that
obliqueness is half offered to the view-

er and half refused...(164).

I agree with Clark that the man’s
orientation towards the woman is
ambiguous and somewhat confusing,
but I’m not sure that he’s gazing at the
woman “in admiration.” In fact, it’s
unclear to me precisely what he’s
looking at: his gaze could be unfo-
cused, or it could project beyond the
woman’s face; it does not seem pattic-
ularly fixed on his companion, how-
ever. Instead the man seems at once
vaguely possessive of her and distract-
ed: the walking stick he’s holding
extends across his lap and in front of
her waist, forming a kind of bar that
blocks her from the viewer. His leg is
also crossed towards hers and extends
farther into the foreground, encircling
her lap. At the same time his right
arm and shoulder appear to box her in
partially from behind (although the
shoulder, as Clark observes, tends to
flatten and to accede to the surface of
the canvas). These things establish
the man’s proprietorship of the
woman while they give the impres-
sion of being innocuous, merely
habitual gestures. Certainly the man
does not seem particularly concerned
to intervene when it comes to his
companion’s gazing out at the viewer.
Lipton points out that the woman’s
gaze is not one of sexual invitation;
she also points out her seeming recal-
citrance, the rigidity of her posture in
relation to the man’s. How can we
make sense of the tensions these con-
tradictory gestures and expressions
generate? On the one hand, the
woman, by virtue of her awkwardness,
resists enclosure by the man’s body. ‘To
an extent she also renders herself
open to the gaze of another—the
artist, originally, and presumably a
male viewer—and consequently risks
being sexually compromised. At the
same time, however, her expression
offers itself as a kind of impervious-

ness. She does not seem particularly
bound to her companion, but neither
does she open herself tacitly to the
viewer. Lipton perceives the woman
as maintaining an appearance of
autonomy. Perhaps this is so; never-
theless, I find myself less optimistic
than Lipton about the significance of
this aspect of her demeanor. It seems
to me that the man’s habitual asser-
tion of his ‘rights’ to her is still neces-
sary to her containment, to the dis-
tance she keeps from the viewer.
Moreover, the opacity she exhibits in
her looking outwards is primarily an
index of her lower class status.
Whereas Lipton fails to account for
this aspect of the woman’s identity,
class is Clark’s sole concern. In his
interpretation of the painting he sug-
gests that the two figures, because
they did not offer the critics the signs
of their social inferiority, left the lat-
ter uncertain as to how to evaluate
them. He points out that the figures
are posing, “not as artists’ models do,
but as people might for a photograph,
as they might have done later in just
such a place. Their faces go blank,
their bodies turn awkward, they forget
how to look happy or even serious”
(168). The couple are members of the
petit bourgeoisie, and they have come
to Argenteuil to take their ease, but
they are not quite sure of how to do
so. What betrays their status is the
residual ‘unnaturalness’ with which
they claim their right to pleasure.
Manet captures this air of unnatural-
ness, but significantly, he does so
without any distancing irony: there is
no joke to be had at the expense of
the couple, no opportunity for the
bourgeois viewer to confirm his supe-
riority. Although one critic calls the
woman a “trollop...decked out in hor-
rible finery, and looking horribly
sullen” (168), Clark insists on the
contrary that the woman “resists the
critics’ descriptions: she is not quite
vulgar, not quite ‘ennuyé,’ not even
quite sullen” (168). Yet the derogato-
ry word “trollop” ought to provide a
clue as to what else is at stake in the
representation of the couple—Clark
fails to mention it at all. Surely the
jab the critic wants to take at the
woman has to do with both her class
and her gender. As a petit bourgeois
woman striving to present an appeat-
ance of respectability, she is potential-

ly a laughable figure, and vulnerable
to ridicule. Perhaps the stalwartness
of her presence prevents her from
being complicitous with the critic’s
joke. Still, questions remain: how are
we to understand her relation to the
man and her relation to the viewer,
the way in which she is in a sense sus-
pended between them? Does this sus-
pension cast her sexual status into
uncertainty, as the critic’s insult
would imply? In there a sense in
which this uncertainty is a function of
her class identity?

I don’t really have answers to these
questions, but I believe an adequate
interpretation of the painting would
have to address them; neither Lipton
nor Clark manages to do so.
Significantly, Clark situates the cou-
ple in the environs of Paris, a margin-
al territory where changing configura-
tions of class—and the changing bor-
ders between city and country—were
constantly negotiated. Like the urban
sites that Pollock begins to trace,
these represented another “space of
modernity.” If we are to understand
their historical significance, we must
examine them in terms not only of
the contestation of meanings sut-
rounding class inscribed in their rep-
resentation, but of their structuration
by the codes of a heterosexual matrix.

1 Here Pollock is most likely refer-
ring to Gayle Rubin’s “The Traffic in
Women,” which offered a seminal
feminist interpretation and critique of
Claude Levi-Strauss’s analysis of the
systems of exchange—of _ gifts,
women, and signs or meanings—that
support societal structures.

2 1 hope folks don’t mind my
returning to this article; I felt like it
deserved a revisiting.

45




46

iN

Fall 1994

é _Starr Glidden

i

elationship

is the nectar of

Our existence. AS
Buber says, the meaning of our lives
is felt through relationship. Relationship is not a
physical interaction between two wholly separate distinct
beings but an intimate connection that brings together
two whole beings in a paradox as two separate but also as
one whole. We are communal, communicating animals
meant to live together
both giving and receiving.
Our very ecology tells us to
enter into relation. In a
Kantian perspective he
believes in seeing people as






“HE WHO KNOWS GOD KNOWS ALSO VERY WELL THE REMOTE-
NESS FROM GOD, AND THE ANGUISH OF BARRENNESS IN THE
TORMENTED HEART; BUT HE DOES NOT KNOW THE ABSENCE OF
GOD: IT IS WE ONLY WHO ARE NOT ALWAYS THERE.”








Religion 1

it. We are, in
essence, the subject,
and the world around us
is the predicate. “The I which
stepped forth declares itself to be the
bearer, and the world round about to be the object of the
perceptions.” We need this world to live for without it we
couldn’t function as organisms: I-it food, I-it work, I-it
shelter. “without It man cannot live. But he who lives with
It alone is not man.”

The I— thou is the inti-
mate spiritual relation we
have within us that is real-
ized only with other
thous. The I-thou is an





ends not means, but it is
even more than that; it is
to love another as yourself
because s/he is yourself.
Cruelty between people
occurs when the relation is

skewed and corrupted. As guity of AN | FOR A THOU.”

7GOOD PEOPLE AND EVIL, WISE AND FOOLISH, BEAUTIFUL AND
UGLY, BECOME SUCCESSIVELY REAL TO HIM; THAT IS, SET FREE
THEY STEP FORTH IN THEIR SINGLENESS, AND CONFRONT HIM
AS THOU. IN A WONDERFUL WAY, FROM TIME TO TIME, EXCLU-
SIVENESS ARISES— AND SO HE CAN BE EFFECTIVE, HELPING,
HEALING, EDUCATING, RAISING UP, SAVING. LOVE IS RESPONSI-

intimacy that knows no

ivisions; it manifests
itself in loving people as
yourself because they are
yourself. There is no
longer the — relation
between two beings as I-it
where the I is the ego and



Buber’s philosophy says,
cruelty occurs when a per-
son is overwhelmed into
seeing everything, including all beings, as only its which
only purpose is to fulfill his/her desire. According to Buber,
we live a two-fold life; we live in the realm of both the [-it
and the I-thou both of which are necessary to us.

Living in the J-it is the world of empirical experience;
it is the world in which we see ourselves as individual “I”s
in relation to other beings and things as “It’s. After we are
born, we live our lives “experiencing” the world by seeing
the world as made up of completely separate entities. We
do not live in relation with the world but in opposition to

—Martin Buber, | and Thou, 1958

the it the object which
the I is interacting with.
The thou within is actualized in its relation with another
thou; there is a “divine spark” within everything which is
realized in the I-Thou relation. “The inborn thou is real-
ized in the lived relations with that which meets it.” The
thou cannot be experienced when it is solely within our-
selves, never meeting another; we need people to help us
realize who we are. Speaking of the I-thou is only an
attempt at explaining the inexplicable phenomenon of
living intimate relation, but when we do speak of it we
speak of it with our whole selves for it encompasses every












n knows, the’ universe, in “birt
e,conceptien of I-It within aimot
ipletely in the'1 hip with everything 4
touch everyone and








Wiese |Ga
« ‘. 2:
healed
ing: you
to you andgsgive

everywhere Mkt a fi
Vie vi

ing and startet 4]

fo Ni et




( "9) fesde Odi










































off God years bet ven WAS

that there was a! SRSA e

wasn’t what I was fein the diy

touching of the di ues Spack It

not help sustain you"iA

eternity.”
Buber believes, paradoxit ly

God will never find G6d
f
n

I-Thou. God cannot be tT d
or wholly external tu

G

rid

RNa
i










between two beings. \S ap 5 ofa.
the world. They do not, ig i m \ Five thie who kills, vk. he ats, beats ariit, for
He who goes out with Hiskwhele® leet his thou upol io be masochistic. Cruelty is
and carries to it all being kia t a ( hae y separa ‘ \ y Seeits;

who cannot be sought.” Thase
never find him because they ib
fulfillment of a desire for their Wt
most part the obstacle to a 1) Hin
People want to possess God AS. | th
becomes a means of “getting” OR
tation of desire which is a human é potent ft
Was.
part of the I-thou . y '
When people refer to God as the Ab of
they are reducing him to an It; l am k he nas
I named God, are not of this world, y@u LN
be worshipped as an icon. We seek | 4 ih nd

found only by Thous. “there is no suchieiins, as
!

God, for there is nothing in which le. cot
found.” Only when we abandon the it, the'é - ire
of our whole being to the thou can we se er
everywhere all we have to do is look, as an Teh vuln oi |
I-it, and we will see. vA tS ‘
Buber feels that the I-thou relationship s sbi 4
the very core of our existence. Relationship is NS (SO
thing that we create but something that is built Wi hi
(3 : : : . ” : A
In the beginning is relation.” He believes that'tg alte
ship is built into us from the time we are concet eu ‘

NAT ANY
AY ai
ALN eh
mselves, “[we] prefer to take upon ourselves the hell of
ndness, alienation, abuse, deception, subordination,
d loss of self rather than lose that place called paradise,
ich offers us security.” It is with the disintegration of the

eate a world in which such disintegration could make a
hild so needlessly suffer? Is the child’s suffering the toll for
’s sins? Is her

That there fy i. no evil at all 2. That there are moral-

ly sufficient reasons for evil (that we may or may not be
able to understand or know) 3. That evil is the byproduct
of free—will.

The belief that evil is an illusion runs throughout many
eastern religions and solves the problem of evil simply and
clearly: evil is not really evil. The argument is based on the
premise that we do not understand everything or as
Mackie defines the argument with the Pope’s belief that,
“disorder is harmony misunderstood”. The theory is that
people are placing their own value systems upon an action
and pronouncing it “evil”, but they don’t know whether or
not it truly is “evil” or whether they just don’t understand
Lite

There are many different answers supporting the
grounds that there are moral reasons for evil. The first of
which is the “greater good” argument which is typified by
Leibniz, “it is possible that the evil may be accompanied by
a greater good.”. Humankind is gaining a sum total good-
ness that is greater than the sum total evil. The flip side
supporting this argument is that we gain a moral structure
by witnessing evil; humankind recognizes good by seeing
evil and therefore, gains the ability to discern between the
two. As Mackie puts it, “Evil is a necessary means to any
good.” Yet, there is no way of qualifying this; it rests on
“what ifs” and assumptions. “A world with evil may be bet-
ter than a world without evil.”, but there is no way of
resolving these arguments for we know of no world with-
out what we consider evil.

The third argument which runs closest to Buber’s is that
God gave us self—will, and he must live by that gift. We

tiny but greets it and lives it. A free person knows both th
I-thou and the J-it and realizes that s/he must live in both.

Of all the arguments concerning evil Ivan in
Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov has a very different, yet
compelling argument because it isn’t God he doesn’t
accept but the world created by him. 31 He understands
the theory of the need for evil in order to have harmony,
freedom, and knowledge, but he does not see the need for
the suffering of children. “If everyone must suffer in order
with their suffering to purchase eternal harmony, what
have children to do with it?’ Ivan returned his “ticket” to
the world for he didn’t want to be a part of any world
where there was forgiveness for a person who made a child
suffer:

..at the moment of eternal harmony, there will
occur and become manifest something so pre-
cious that it will be sufficient for all hearts, for
the soothing of all indignation, the redemption
of all men’s evil—doings, all the blood that has
been shed by them will be sufficient not only to
forgive but even to justify all things that have
happened to men...I will not accept it and do
not want to accept it!

Forgiveness of evil cannot be accepted in Ivan’s per-
spective for how can we forgive those who torture an inno-
cent child, but this is precisely the ultimate act of faith to
forgive that which you never could forgive, to believe that
which you cannot know.

Buber even contends that a person in suffering can


actually have a thou relationship with the being that is
hurting them. For this is the ultimate potientiation of lov-
ing your neighbor as yourself. To love the thou who is rap-
ing you and to understand why they are, is the point at
which you truly have been encompassed by the I-thou. It
is not acceptance of the act but forgiveness of the person.
Yet, when I was a child 1 was abused, and I did not think
of I-thou but rather, I am awful because I deserve this. Yet,
children become adults, and learn to question and decide
for themselves. But this where the paradox of forgiveness
fits in for we must forgive actions which we would never
do and can never accept. In the unconditional love of the
I-thou is unconditional forgiveness.

The [thou is where god lies for me because it is within
the I-thou that we feel the hands of God. The I-thou
saved me from the abyss of suffering and the solitude of
being surrounded by people who treated me as an object.
Suffering overwhelmed my childhood, and I hid it within
me. I let it pervade into my soul; the evil I felt made me
not eat, sleep, and always hide.

_.shuddering at the alienation between the |
and the world , come to reflect that something
is to be done. As when in the grave night hour
you lie, racked by waking dream— bulwarks
have fallen away andthe abyss is screaming—
and note amid your torment: there is still life, if
only I go through with it, but how, how?

The. [-thou that I felt through love enabled me to
purge the pain from me and accept suffering and start to
live with my whole being. I didn’t see God in my child-
hood because I couldn’t see a thou, but when I saw thou, |
saw that within the gift of free will God could attach no
strings but only try to help those who are suffering by
touching them in the I-thou. | accepted that I would not
always understand. We all go about our lives trying to
explain why things are they way they are, but how can we?
We have only been apart of this scheme for a short time;
we only think we know that which we say we know. I for-
gave the man who tortured me because to hold onto hate
is to be consumed by it and by holding on to that hatred |
was letting what he did to me hurt me every day. My
hatred was a desire and to be freed I had to conquer my
desire. I did not accept what was done to me and what is
done to many children, but I forgave the man who did it
for in forgiveness and love lies salvation.










50

&

‘ AND‘ THE TENSE

ABSTRACT
The idea behind this paper was to
juxtapose several texts from the
week’s reading (Feminism Il) in
order to work through a number of
questions about the status, function
and reproduction of gender in patri-
archal culture. Specifically, do dam-
aging structures of difference get
reproduced in culture because they
keep making convincing claims
about the ‘reality’ of that difference,
or is it because they tap into a set of
quite conspicuous dominant fan-
tasies —about being able to under-
stand and transcend difference as an
analogue, derivative, or appendage
of the self? If we claim the latter,



i
hit

what implications does this have for
the ‘subversion’ of such structures
using techniques like parody,
metaphor and theory itself?



It is better to be threatened by
even a female monster than to be
possessed by a theory whose com-
bined insubstantiality and self-suffi-
ciency are those of delusion.

-Mary Jacobus, “Is There a
Woman in This Text?”107.

‘Take your desires for reality!’
can be understood as the ultimate
slogan of power, for in a non-refer-
ential world even the confusion of
the reality principle with the desire

principle is less dangerous than con-
tagious hyperreality. One remains
among principles, and there power is
always right.

-Jean Baudrillard, The Precession

of Simulacra , 43.

What can then be asked, I think,
coming back to theory, coming back
to male feminism, is whether that sex-
ual system, that togetherness, is not
always in danger of being replayed:
contemporary theory as the rebonding
of men round “the feminine”...male
feminism as getting hold again—for
the last time?—of the question of ‘the
woman”...feminism that becomes an
object for me, another way of retriev-
Yj
_

SS

a

ing her, very nicely, as mine, whether
there is not in male feminism, men’s
relation to feminism, always potential-
ly a pornographic effect?

-Stephen Heath, “Male Feminism,”
in Men in Feminism, 4.

In “Quand nos levres s’écrivent:
Irigaray’s Body Politic,” Jane Gallop
highlights an “unusually suggestive
tension about the referent”(TB 82)
that inheres in discourse about the
human body. For Gallop, anatomical
language aggravates a certain referen-
tial compulsiveness in us, a need to
“read to learn about the world”(TB
78) and to secure our place in it as
autonomous, discrete subjects. Thus it

Ian Lague
Theory of Criticism
Professor Langbauer

April 2, 1995

Feminism II

not only reifies the self-suturing, uni-
tary projections of the human psyche,
as it “reconstructs anatomy in its own
image”(TB 79), but also makes it diffi-
cult for us to read the morphological
language of philosophers like Luce
Irigaray as indicative of anything but a
“naturalistic belief in a real, unmediat-
ed body available outside the symbolic
order’(TB 78). While never entirely

dismissing this more literal, ‘embar-



rassingly’ Anglo-American reading of
Irigaray, Gallop goes on to propose an
interpretative | compromise with
Irigaray, which reads her as maintain-
ing “a feminist investment in the refer-
ential body’(TB 80) while simultane-
ously offering a “re-metaphoriza-
tion’(TB 83) of female morphology—
one that consciously departs from both
the universalized male corporeal expe-
rience produced by phallocentric fan-
tasy, and female corporeal experience
“itself,” where it has been produced as a
sexually indifferent analogue to male
sexuality and male bodies. It is in this
poiesis of the differential possibilities
of female bodily experience, that
Gallop finds a symbolic contestation of






52

Lacan’s and Freud’s cultur-
al Law of masculine culture
and (phallic) power. In its
subversive deployment of
new bodily signifiers, she
contends, it crosses the
infamous ‘bar’ of Saussure’s
sign so as to provisionally
recondition the realm of
signified concepts—pro-
ducing a new ‘body’ of
metaphors independent of
phallocentrism’s “compul-
sive repetition of the
saimevGlB) 203). Bute
Gallops warns, this libera-
tory fictionalization of the
body is necessarily tran-
sient; “[v]ulvomorphic
logic, by newly
metaphorizing the body,
sets it free, if only momen-
tarily. For as soon as
metaphor becomes a prop-
er noun, we no longer have
creation, we have paterni-
ty’(TB 80-1). Thus, while
lrigaray’s alternative
metaphorization of corpo-
reality provisionally extri-
cates the body of ‘Woman’
from its culturally natural-
ized ‘symptoms,’# Gallop
suggests that the bar of the
sign will soon redescend,
reifying and reappropriat-
ing the vulvic metaphors
of ce sexe qui n’est pas un
into the reified (yet equal-
ly figurative) economy of
the phallic un.

It is this symbolic reap-
pearance of the

metonymic ‘reality principle,’ which
institutionalizes the metaphor as a
proper noun with a stable signified
and an ostensibly ‘real’ referent, which
I'd like to take as a starting point in
the examination of ‘theoretical priori-
ty’ and ‘parody’ which is supposed to
follow. For as an example of the ways
in which a ‘referential’ standpoint
tends to reassert itself in self-con-
sciously ‘metaphoric’ discourse and
the ways in which that standpoint is
itself conspicuously constituted by the
reified metaphors of phallocentric fan-
tasy—Gallop’s warning may compli-
cate the ‘parodic subversion of the
natural’ advocated by performative

like Judith Butler. In the
first place, Gallop’s analy-
sis of ‘compulsory referen-
tiality’ suggests that a gen-
der troublemaker’s “disso-
nant and denaturalized
performance,” designed,
says Butler, to expose the
“performative status of the
natural itself’(GT, 146),
may all-too-quickly be ‘rei-
fied’ by her or his audi-
ence, and interpreted as
simply an alternative con-
figuration of the natural,
(the condition of the
‘woman trapped inside the
man’s body,’ for instance).
More problematic _ still
however, is the way in
which Gallop’s analysis of
the patently metaphorical
origins of ‘proper nouns’
like ‘phallus’ and vaginal
‘lips’ suggests not only that
referential ontology is
never far from its fictional
constitution, but also that
a parodic exposure of that
constitution as a performa-
tive ‘illusion of substance’
may not ruffle anyone’s
feathers. Indeed, in a cul-
tural tradition where terms
like ‘Woman,’ ‘Man,’
‘Primitive’ ‘Natural,’
‘Erotic,’ etc., are already so
hyperbolically infused with
the fantasies and paranoias
of white masculinist het-
erosexuality, what makes
‘parodic excess’ subversive
besides perhaps the paro-

dist’s ‘radical’ intentions? If, as Jean
Baudrillard suggests, we are living in a
radically ‘non-referential’ culture,
where the ‘truth’ of signs depends
more on their simulation as “hyperreal
events, no longer having any particu-
lar contents or aims”(SS, 41), does a
factor like parodic intentionality even
matter? I’m not sure if it does or does-
n't, but in tracing out (and contrast-
ing) the arguments of Baudrillard and
Mary Jacobus, I would like to look at
the ways in which the male subject’s
‘knowledge’ of the Woman—as a nar-
cissistic exercise in his own theoretical
priority—has traditionally been so
myopically fixated on the ‘effect’ of

her derivative ‘reality,’ that
ontological justification is
rarely at issue. Indeed, the
history of gender that finds
its triumphal moment in
Freudian theory seems to
be so much about men’s
desire to have our own fan-
tasies and fears ‘confirmed’
as the ‘truth’ of women, so
much about the desire to
fill the “empty signifier?(S
75) of the Other or Death
with a female body—that
even the plethora of ‘disso-
nant and denaturalized’
contradictions in Freud
hardly seem to prevent an
easy conflation of phallo-
centric ‘theory’ and refer-
ential ‘life.’ In this context,
where the strategic igno-
rance of masculinist cul-
ture to anything which
cannot be incorporated
into the tenuous ‘real’ of its
simulacra is so well-
ingrained, I wonder if a
parodic ‘exposure’ of the
phantasmatic status of sex-
ual and gender identity can
really be received as a new,
contradictory insight—
and won’t simply be taken
up in our culture’s frantic
rehearsal of its regulatory
fantasies. In some ways, it
would seem that Irigaray’s
work, with its poetic ten-
sion between essence and
metaphoric construct,
remains a more threaten-
ing strategy vis-a-vis our

dominant cultural fantasies—fantasies
that maintain their hold on us not
through verified claim to biological or
natural reference, but through their
aesthetic and moral ‘rightness,’ their
thetorical performance of ‘the way
things are meant to be.’

Nevertheless, I think Butler pro-
vides a compelling analysis of the way
in which those fantasies function. By
theorizing all gender as “a kind of imi-
tation for which there is no original ;
in fact...a kind of imitation that pro-
duces the very notion of the original
as an effect and consequence of the
imitation itself,’(GT, 21) Butler
undermines the status of the predis-
cursive epistemological
“I” of the Cartesian tradi-
tion, and paves the way
for a Derridean analysis
(pursued more thorough-
ly in Bodies that Matter )
of how a subject’s ‘identi-
ty’ is imbricated in the
constitutive exclusions of
différance. This broad
critique of all identity as
flawed performance also
allows her to isolate the
functioning of a preposi-

tioned ‘heterosexual
matrix’ which implies
that drag, or

butch/femme dynamics
in gay and lesbian identi-
ties are somehow only
bad copies of naturalized
heterosexual gender
norms. Indeed, Butler not
only contends that “drag
enacts the very structure
of impersonation by
which any gender is
assumed,” but suggests
that the supposedly stable

“subject” that might
impersonate a gender role
is only constituted

through that imperson-
ation, and only achieves
the illusion of a coherent
“subjectivity” by the rep-
etition of acts based on a
phantasmic ideal—just
like Baudrillard’s simu-
lacrum. Because this ideal
is just that, it means that
the repetition can never
be consistent, and there-

fore heterosexual gender (and the
homosexual ‘derivative’ by which it
instates itself as original) is inherently
anxiety-ridden, an “incessant and
panicked imitation of its own natural-
ized idealization.”(GT, 23) In the
Butlerian schema, the “psychic
excess” is that which cannot be con-
stituted (and therefore is not appro-
priated) by this process, a surplus of
the unconscious which cannot be
inscribed in the ontological différance
of subject-verb formation (where the
verb constitutes the subject itself ).
While this notion of performative
identity would seem to answer Diana
Fuss’s deconstructive challenge to the-

ories of difference, to dis-
cuss the ways in which
“identity always contains
the specter of non-iden-
tity within it”(ES, 103),
it also seems to confirm
her worry that recent
constructionist theories
of identity (like that of
much New Historicism)
fail to account for psy-
choanalytic questions
like “how desire comes to
be articulated within a
particular social forma-
tion”(110). Indeed, it is
Butler’s limitation of the
psychic to that which
cannot be constituted in
the performative elabo-
ration of identity which,
in its failure to allow for
the possibility of distinct
gendered evolutions of
psychic structures, seems
to underestimate the ~
intractability of mas-
culinist fantasy struc-
tures, and their resis-
tance to parodic ‘expo-
sure’ as such. Unlike
Irigaray, Butler sees the
impetus behind the
assumption of all cultural
identities to be the need
for the unitary illusion of
“a substantive identity
[of] intractable
depth”(146)—a position
that seems inadequate to
account for the psychic
impact of the asymmetri-
cal ways in which ‘sub-

jecthood’ itself is alternately rigidified,
standardized, derived, or deemphasized
in the binary, sexually indifferent pro-
duction of men and ‘not-men’ in our
culture. While the theorization of
those fantasies might run the risk of
naturalizing “the figure of the femi-
nine, awaiting the inscription-as-inci-
sion of the masculine signifier for
entrance into language and cul-
ture”(GT, 147-8), their potential col-
lapse into a neuter urge for performa-
tive mastery in différance seems more
dangerous at this cultural moment.
Instead, a careful consideration of the
ways in which phallocentric language
and culture have mediated our experi-

ences of identity (perfor-
mative or otherwise) and
sexual corporeality seems
essential to any ‘exposure’
of gender’s illusory ontol-
ogy. In this consideration,
the work of Jean
Baudrillard is useful both
for its analysis of and
complicity with the signi-
fying economy of pres-
ence that Butler seeks to
dismantle.

Aer fist glance,
Baudrillard would seem to
share Butler’s faith in the
radically subversive
potential of parody to
achieve this task. As he
writes in Simulation and
Simulacra, “[p]arody
makes obedience and
transgression equivalent,
and that is the most seri-
ous crime, since it cancels
out the difference upon
which the law is based. In
Baudrillard’s neo-Marxist
conception of late-capi-
talist signification, social
exchange is an act which
produces and projects its
referent, its metaphysical
origin, even its use value,
as effects of social signifi-
cation. In this alienated,
fallen culture with no
materialist garden to
return to, this social
forgery that presumes the
existence of an original,
the Law of capitalism is
thus a performative one,

and in this sense “simulation is infi-
nitely more dangerous [than transgres-
sion and violence] since it always sug-
gests, over and above its object, that
law and order themselves might really
be nothing more than a simulation”
(SS 38).

But while Butler looks to simula-
tion and parody, as the ultimate
‘sround’ from which to subvert the
performative laws of cultural identity
and sociality, Baudrillard points to a
phenomenon, roughly analogous to
Gallop’s ‘compulsory referentiality’ by
which the Law side-steps the threat
posed by parodic recontextualization.
Offering the example of a simulated

53






54

hold-up, Baudrillard points out that
even though one may not be punished
for the ‘real thing’ the punishment
that one does receive is never for ‘sim-
ulating’ a hold-up, but for some other
reified transgression (e.g. obstructing
justice, reckless endangerment, etc.).
As he writes in Simulacra;

In brief, you will unwittingly find
yourselves in the real, one of whose
functions is precisely to devour every

attempt at simulation, to
reduce everything to some
reality—that’s exactly how

ical ground of dominant cultural iden-
tities, Baudrillard sees those identities
and the power that supports them, as
fundamentally blind to anything that
doesn’t fit into the signifying structure
that constitutes them: “The challenge
of simulation is irreceivable by
power”(SS 40).

This fundamental blindness on the
part of power structures to their paro-
dic recontextualization is aggravated

by the increasing abstrac-
tion of the signifying sys-
tem, even from the pre-

tasies of American culture as vivid,
absurd anecdotes. They, like the ‘sim-
ulations’ of Rescue 911, and NBC
News, seem more ‘real’ precisely
because they are fictionalized anec-
dotes, because they tap into our cul-
ture narratives of ‘how things ought to
be,’ not the way things are. It is in this
environment, of ‘contagious hyperreali-
ty’ that Baudrillard would like to intro-
duce his own ideological grasping for

the real however—not sur-
prisingly, through the figure
of the feminine Other.



the established order is,
well before institutions and
justice come into play (39).

Like the reification of

metaphoric poiesis into the the proper
nouns of the metonymic Law,
Baudrillard’s capitalistic “order always
opts for the real. In a state of uncer-
tainty, it always prefers this assump-
tion (thus in the army they would
rather take the simulator as a true
madman)”(SS 41). Parody is ineffec-
tive because the dominant culture
“can only see and understand in terms
of some reality, because it can func-
tion nowhere else”(SS 40). Thus,
while Butler sees ‘unnatural’ perfor-
mance as an erosion of the metaphys-

sumption of the real that its
signifiers constitute. In this
increasingly ‘non-referen-
tial’ cultural economy, we

are frantically trying to produce and
reproduce a real that ‘sticks,’ with the
result that ‘truth’ begins to be located
in the ‘hyperreal’ where the intensity
of the signifying performance deter-
mines ‘credibility’. Thus it is Rush
Limbaugh’s rhetorical force and perfor-
mative claim to divulge the ‘outra-
geous truth’ hidden by the liberal agen-
da that makes his show a hit, rather
than the factual basis of any kind of
statistical evidence. Rush is right
because he knows how to ventiloquize
the paranoia, the fears, and the fan-

Indeed, for Baudrillard,
the only escape from this
constricting profusion of
signs without referents is

through recourse to a “principle of
uncertainty’ that breaks down the
alienated meaning structures of hyper-
reality through the ‘seduction’ of
‘meaningless’ signs. In his reinterpre-
tation of two folk tales, Baudrillard
provides two examples of men who
become ensnared “in a web of stray
signs’(S 74) not even addressed to
them. Obsessed with interpreting
these signs (the uncertain gesture of
Death in the marketplace, and the
fairy’s command not to think about
the ‘red in a fox’s tail’), these two men
demonstrate the fact that “the mind is
irresistibly attracted to a place devoid
of meaning...the void, as in a physical
vertigo of a chasm, or the metaphysi-
cal vertigo of a chasm, or the
metaphorical vertigo of a door that
opens onto the void”(S io
Predictably, for Baudrillard this “pre-
destination of the empty sign” turns
out to be the domain of women, who
exercise a ‘seduction’ of Western cul-

ture that brings it back to
an awareness of itself. This
notion of men’s ‘irresistible
attraction’ to the “pure
seduction of the null signi-
fier’(S 75) not only has
resonance with our cul-
ture’s unspoken philosophy
of rape, but also indicates
Baudrillard’s investment in
the sex/gender system as
the last repository of refer-
entiality that can uphold
his theoretical system. As
he writes in Simulacra,

‘Take your desires for
reality!’ can be understood
as the ultimate slogan of
power, for in a non-refer-
ential world even the con-
fusion of the reality princi-
ple with the desire princi-
ple is less dangerous than
contagious _ hyperreality.
One remains among prin-
ciples, and there power is
always right (43).

While Baudrillard clear-
ly doesn’t associate his
desire (for theoretical
authority through and over
a figure of a feminine dis-
ruption) with the perfor-

mative ‘desire principle’ he critiques
in this quotation, this contradiction is
indicative of the way in which
Baudrillard’s invocation of the femi-
nine allows him to claim a position of
authority in a ‘ritual state’ that cease-
lessly unravels its metaphysical mean-
ings. Indeed, as Jardine writes in
Gynesis,,

The only recognition that can help
us return to this ritual state, according
to Baudrillard, is that of “femininity as
the principle of uncertainty’—femi-
ninity as seduction . And, according

to him, it is women who are blindest
to this fact; it is women who are work-
ing against the possibilities for true
cultural renewal. For women to
demand autonomy or recognition of
sexual difference is for them to desire
power, to act as men, to lose the
female power of seduction regarded by
Baudrillard as the best way to master
the symbolic universe(67).

This citation is instructive because

it exemplifies the ways in
which, even in a performa-
tive or deconstructive text,
Woman tends to function
as the metaphysical ‘site’
from which a new mastery
is to be achieved, or, as
Mary Jacobus might put it,
“the mute sacrifice on
which theory itself may be
founded; the woman is
silenced so the theorist can
make the truth come out of:
her mouth”(WT 85).

In “Is There a Woman
in This Text?” Jacobus
analyses Sigmund Freud’s
Delusions and Dreams in
Jensen’s Gradiva (1907), as
a prime example as the way
in which women, as the
reified confirmation of
theory, serve not only to
consolidate the theorist’s
personal subjectivity, but
also bolster the status of
theory itself—to confirm
its accurate description (or
even anticipation) of
“life.” In Gradiva, the ulti-
mate foundation of this
‘life’ is the hero’s lost child-
hood playmate and would-

girlfriend, Zoé. The problem however,
is that he has displaced his desire for
the lost object into the obsessive study
of a Roman bas-relief of a graceful,
walking woman whom he dubs
“Gradiva,”( which, it turns out, can be
translated into Zoé’s German pater-
nym ‘Bertgang’). While Freud’s origi-
nal intent seems to have been to cri-
tique the hero’s neurotic projections
and vindicate Jensen as a forefather of
psychoanalysis, something very differ-
ent happens over the course of the
text. What becomes more and more

apparent in Jacobus’s study is the
Freudian theorist’s need to achieve a
kind of theoretical priority over his
subject matter produces in turn “an
uncanny priority of the representation
over what it represents”(WT 91).

At first, Freud reads the hero,
Hanold’s conviction that the Gradiva
embodies “something ‘of today’...as
though the artist had had a glimpse in
the street and captured it ‘from the

life’’(SE 9:11) as a trans-
parent projection of desire
onto “an ostensibly scien-
tific problem”(SE 9:11-2).
But as the textual ‘analysis’
continues, Freud seems to
be having an increasingly
vicarious experience of
Hanold’s fantasies, even
speculating about a ‘plausi-
ble’ explanation of the
Bertgang/Gradiva equiva-
lence (e.g. Zoé’s family
emigrated to Germany
only after being named for
her foremothers’ equally
graceful walking style). It
is this conjunction of the
insistent desire to antici-
pate the motivated refer-
ent of such a sign, at the
same time that one ‘decon-
structs’ the delusional
structure of other, ‘perfor-
mative’ signs, which seems
to make ‘parodic recontex-
tualization’ seem like an
overly optimistic approach
to the ways in which
“men’s fascination with
[the] eternal feminine is
nothing but fascination
with their own double, and

the feeling of uncanniness”(WT 95),
as Sarah Kofman puts it. Indeed, this
seems to bring us back to the problem
of difference in Western metaphysics
itself, which Irigaray traces in terms of
gender and sexuality. For if, as she sug-
gests, masculinist culture has founded
its ability to ‘know’ (and thus largely
‘produce’) female experience through
its own derivative fantasies of what is
‘not male,’ then its truth claims about
what is sexually Other to it and differ-
ent from it, can only be made, under-
stood, with reference to this masculine

5S.






56

Same.# This claim to knowledge of
the Other by analogy, derivation, pro-
jection from one’s image of oneself, is
thus clearly dependent on fantasy for
its truth value, and must constantly
guard against the irruptions of differ-
ence as produced by the potentially
incomprehensible/uncontrollable
experience of the ‘Other of the
Other.’ It is, so to speak, a hyperreal
knowledge whose credibility lies more
in its self-coherence, its fantasmatic
completeness, than in its referential
fidelity to what Freud called the ‘Dark
Continent’ of female experience.
Thus, if the chief function of sexual,
racial, religious Others in our culture
(to name a few) has been to serve as
complementary, derivative images of
a primary subject—an obverse mirror
of his wholeness, identity, autonomy,
potency, purity, civilization, piety,
rationality, etc.—then does a parodic
rendition of that image, highlighting
the fact that it is an image, shake
things up? Or rather does the claim to
know the Other definitively, always
already float—like Irigaray’s, re-
metaphorizations—between essence
and construct, deriving its power not
from referential validity, but from its
familiarity, its rightness, its common
sense? In this case, | wonder if it is
not more effective to, like Irigaray,
fight fire with fire. For indeed, when
the choice is between a hyperreal fan-
tasy of comprehensibility, stability,

universality, and comple-
tion, vs. a. ‘reality’ of
incommensurable_ differ-
ence, epistemological
fragmentation, and par-
ticularity, our culture
seems to have insistently
chosen the former—even
as the choice becomes
more and more clear as
such. As Jacobus writes of
the Freudian text,

While seeming to test
Jensen’s ‘phantasy’
against reality, Freud ends
by suggesting that what is
uncanny about his sci-
ence of the mind (as
about the unconscious) is
that it is something we
have always known but
have forgotten, just as
Hanold has forgotten his



childhood playmate. Ostensibly, theo-
ry turns out to be life itself(WT 93).

This theoretical self-vindication,
while more or less transparent in its
Freudian incarnation, is by no means
incompatible with post structuralist
criticism or post modern parodic prac-
tice—as Jardine’s book, among others,
documents thoroughly. After all, isn’t
the anticipatory scramble for theoreti-
cal, preemptive knowledge of the sex-
ual Other at the heart of so many male
adventures in feminist criticism itself,
our hopes of winning confirmation by
female ‘experience’? Indeed, if such
criticism has any future, it seems that
it must be constantly interrogated, to
see if it challenges the indifferent
structures by which theoretical, like
popular discourse seem to quite com-
fortably ‘take their desires for reality.’
Otherwise, it may turn out to be
another way of asking and answering
the old, Oedipal riddle, whose answer
is always ‘man.’



Bibliography:

Baudrillard, J. . Seductions. New
York: St. Martin’s Press,1990.

Baudrillard, J. . Simulacra and
Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of

Michigan Press,1994.

Butler, J. . Gender Trouble. New
York: Routledge, 1990.

Fuss, D. . Essentially
Speaking: Feminism,
Nature, and Difference.
New York and London:
Routledge, 1989.

Gallop, J. . Thinking
Through the Body. New
York: Columbia
University Press, 1988.

Irigaray, L. . Speculum
of the Other Woman.
Ithica: Cornel University

Press,1985.

Irigaray, L. . This sex
which is not one. Ithaca:
Cornell University

Press, 1985.

Jacobus, M. . “Is There

a Woman in This Text?” New Literary
History(1982) 14: 117-41.

Jardine, A. A. . Gynesis. Ithica:
Cornell University Press,1985.

Jardine, A. and Smith, P. Men in
Feminism. New York and London:
Routledge, 1987.

Lacan, J. . Ecrits/A Selection. New
York and London: W.W. Norton &
Company, 1977.




ABSTRACT

Recent psychological experiments highlight the extent
to which connect and social circumstances influence the
content of subject’s “memories.” The traditional “store-
house”conception of memory is being replaced by the
notion of memory as a pragmatically varied process.
Rather than simply being “recalled,” memories are con-
structed, created through dialogue and social interac-
tion. The therapeutic implications of this new concep-
tion of memory are enormous. In the following essay, a
student reviews and responds to recent interrogations
of “social memory “” and suggests how this radical new
notion of memory should be integrated into psy-
chotherapy.



urrent social psychology asserts the salience of con-

text and social environment in the process of
memory. In keeping with the postmodern concep-

tion of the socially constructed self and the eradication of
autonomy, the concept of memory has been displaced as
an act of individual cognition and entered the ambiguous
arena of culture and context-specific phenomena.
Attempts to localize or quantify “memory” are severely
misguided within the postmodern paradigm, which char-
acterizes “remembering as [an] organized social action”
(Middleton and Edwards, 43). Our conventional concep-
tion of memory as a “storehouse” is deconstructed by the
notion of memory as an interactive, interpersonal process.
But the assertion that memory is an exclusively social



phenomena is both counter-intuitive and unsubstantiated
by interrogations of “collective” memory; it is the reac-
tionary inverse of the reductive essentialism which char-
acterized our search for meaning in the modern era. We
can navigate the thesis-antithesis-synthesis process at
breakneck speed through a careful consideration of the
data and conclusions presented in recent social psycholog-
ical essays.

Michael Billig is correct in his assertion that “it is nec-
essary to distinguish between memory as a process and
memory as an object of thinking” (61). This assertion de
stabilizes our (thesis) “storehouse” metaphor of memory as
an “object” containing those experiences we remember,
and replaces them with the (antithesis) conception of
memory as a pragmatically varied social phenomena. But
the social aspects of the memory process do not negate the
importance of individual cognition in what Middleton and
Edwards call “conversational remembering” (23). Indeed,
some of the most important research on the social aspects
of memory provide evidence for the (synthesis) idea that
“memory” is a process rooted in both individual cognition
and social context. That “Bartlett’s subject was not mere-
ly remembering the story...[but] rewriting it” (35) asserts
that individual cognition plays an important role in the
process of remembering—the input was different from the
output, and the two accounts were separated by nothing
but the textural distortions and manipulations occurring
within consciousness of one individual. But the fact that
the“ rewritten “ account reflected culturally-determined

57






58

literary conventions and logic highlights the salience of
social environment in the memory process. The individual
and her environment, then, play equally crucial roles in
the process of memory.

As William James said, there “can be no difference
anywhere that doesn’t make a difference elsewhere”
(James, 25), so to highlight the paradigm shift represented
by a conception of memory as a social “process” rather
than an “object of thinking”, let us explore its therapeutic
implications. In today’s climate of near hysteria concern-
ing repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse and,
questions as to the “truth” and “factuality” of our memo-
ries are among the most pertinent and urgent issues which
academia can address.

If memory occurs in an “interactive environment” in
which individuals take “pains to elicit perceptions, memo-
ries and judgments from” others, “to examine and elabo-
rate upon them, to contextualize and assign significance to
them,” the process of recall can be seen as a method of
“joint problem solving” (41). Therapeutic attempts to
explore a patient’s memories can quickly diminish into
those “joint problem solving” sessions in which those
memories are actually constructed, or at least severely dis-
torted, and reconstructed according to the expectations of
both therapist and patient.

An individual who seeks therapy as a remedy for unfo-
cused anxiety and general malaise will undoubtedly be
very receptive to an idea, any idea, which localizes and
defines the source of her unhappiness. And a therapist,
through her interactions with that patient may, with good
reason, become convinced that her patient’s malaise is due
to repressed memories of sexual abuse. The interplay
between these two predispositions may result in the con-
struction of “memories” which never actually occurred.
Conscious and suggestive manipulation of a patient bya
therapist is a separate issue—these “false” memories can
arise through no intentional fabrication or distortion by
either therapist or patient.

If memories are “intrinsically structured and organized
to accomplish particular sorts of pragmatic actions” (36),
and the pragmatic action upon which the therapeutic rela-

tionship is based is the resolution or clarification of such
unfocused anxiety, then memories which surface in the
course of psychotherapy will undoubtedly be “intrinsically
structured” to accomplish just such an objective. Because
traumatic childhood sexual experiences are indeed a plau-
sible explanation for later malaise and discontent, patients
whose filial relationships and/or sexuality are problematic
may be inclined, irrespective, even, of a therapist’s input,
to construct false memories of sexual abuse.

Awareness of the pragmatically constructed and possi-
bly false nature of individual “memories” necessitates a
new approach to psychotherapy, one which accounts for
the social aspect of memory and the falsehoods it can cre-
ate. Acute awareness in the therapist of her influence over
“recall” and of the possibility of false recall irrespective of
her influence is crucial. And patients should also recog-
nize, or be instructed to do so, that what they remember
may correspond more to their current psychological situa-
tion than to events from their childhood. As obvious as it
may be, the most effective method of determining the
validity of repressed memories is to evaluate them as (1)
products of the therapeutic context and relationship, (2)
products of a needy individual’s imagination, (3) products
of possibly distorted interpretations of (4) actual life expe-
riences. The nature of future therapy should depend upon
which of these four aspects of memory emerge as most rel-
evant to the “memory” in question. Although this
method, embracing and evaluating memory as both an
individual and social phenomena, is clearly not a foolproof
plan for determining the validity of specific memories, this
cautious consideration of “repressed memories” represents
our most sophisticated and objective attempt to do so.

Works Cited

James, William. Pragmatism and other Essays. New
York: Washington Square Press, 1963.

Middleton and Edwards, ed. Collective Remembering.
London: Sage Publications, 1990.
an OO 2s:

eS

ABSTRACT

Three different ways of encoding and processing spatial infor-
mation about the world are looked at. Advantages and disad-
vantages of lingual, haptic, and imagistic representation are
looked at. It is suggested that objects and certain prototypical
spatial relations are in fact propositional phenomena rather than
spatial artifacts. It is finally proposed that generativity in various
areas of human thought arises from propositional generativity
that then is translated into other areas of reasoning.

INTRODUCTION
he world around us is tree dimensional, and we see it as
such, and interact with it as such, yet we do not seem to do
a very good job when it comes to speaking about it. As the
old adage goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words”, and it is true,
in order to communicate about many aspects of the world around
us, a great deal of hand—waving and drawing seems necessary.

Physiological evidence also suggests that spatial and lingual pro-
cessing are largely independent (Springer & Deutsch, 1981).
Nonetheless, we can talk about the world around us, albeit inex-
actly, so these systems must not be truly independent.

If language and spatial processing really are fundamentally dif-
ferent, how deep does this difference run? Are they simply differ-
ent intermediate steps between one’s environment and the final
decision-making process, or are they two different systems of
thought working independently, with some method of communi-
cation between them? A primary problem with investigating
non-lingual phenomenon is just that— they are non-lingual and
so impossible to test or describe with standard language-based
methods.

The goal of this report will be to review and investigate some of
the previous work done on the interactions between spatial and
lingual processing. Hopefully along the way some insight can be
gleaned into the ways lingual and spatial information are translat-

ed and processed, and perhaps into how these processes set human-
ity apart from other creatures.

THREE FORMS OF SPATIAL INFORMATION; LANGUAGE, IMAGERY,
KINESTHETICS
Before exploring the interactions and similarities between dif-
ferent forms of spatial encoding, it seems wise to look at several
(not necessarily all) ways in which spatial information can be
processed and encoded. The three different types of information to
be looked at are linguistic, visio-spatial and kinesthetic.

LANGUAGE
Language is primarily used to transmit information between
people. Along with other types of information, spatial data can be
encoded and passed on in the form of language. Because of it’s uni-
versal presence in human culture and because of various structures
that appear consistently in all the forms that it takes, language is






60

for the most part considered to be an innate tendency in
all humans (for a lot more evidence, see Pinker, 1994).

The function of language does not seem to be limited to
communication. Language, or some thought process close-
ly related to it operates as a method of internal represen-
tation (Miller, 1990, Bloom, 1994, Corballis, 1994). This
type of representation has been shown to be independent
of the exact words used, but seems quite closely tied to the
propositional meaning of the phrases used. I would propose
that this same ‘propositional thinking’, as I will refer to it
from now on, encompasses not only most of language pro-
cessing and production, but also includes most of con-
scious reasoning. Specifically I would propose that most
formal logic, symbolic mathematics, and conscious under-
standing of cause-and-effect relationships are handled by
this propositional facility. Some experts apparently extend
this reasoning to include all thinking (such as
Pylyshyn—Durgin class notes 1995).

One advantage of lingual, and therefore propositional
reasoning, over most types of behavior is that it is recur-

sive. This means that a given phrase can contain as one of
it’s components another phrase of the same type. This in
turn can contain another, and so on resulting in an infinite
number of possible phrases. The result of this is that an
infinite number of distinct phrases can be constructed
from a finite number of elements (words);Because lan-
guage allows for and encourages the creation of new phras-
es, it is said to be generative (Pinker, 1994, Bloom, 1994).

Similarly, propositions can use other propositions as argu-
ments (Anderson, 1995) meaning that, not surprisingly,
propositional thinking must also be generative.

Concepts that are available as arguments, relations and
qualifiers to propositional statements appear to generally
be stored via prototypes. What this means is that a given
example of some concept will generally be stored not by
what is necessary for membership in a given category, but
by what is typical for that category. As a result, people will
consistently grade some examples of a concept as better
than others, even though it is clear that both meet the def-
inition of that concept (Anderson, 1995, Hayward & Tarr,
1995).

Many spatial concepts are amenable to propositional
reasoning; take as an example the statement “the clouds
are above the mountain. ” As with all propositions, this
statement contains arguments (clouds, mountain) and a
relation (above). Such a proposition can be joined with
others to form the propositional networks that are associ-
ated with complex thought and language. Furthermore,



the elements of such spatial propositions appear to be
defined by prototypes. Not only are the objects (argu-
ments) categorized in this way, but spatial relations also
seem to be categorized according to prototypical examples.
Thus, a given object will be described as more or less to the
tight of a reference object depending on how far above
that reference it is (Hayward & Tarr, 1995).

Hayward and Tarr (1995) also found evidence that may
indicate that propositional thinking, or at least the proto-
typical categorization associated with it, operates in pure-
ly spatial tasks. Specifically it was found that objects in
prototypical relations to a reference object (that is, direct-
ly above or below, or to the right or left) were much more
easily differentiated than objects elsewhere. They are
quick to point out that this finding may also be interpret-
ed as an indication that perfectly vertical and horizontal
relationships are most easily detected in spatial processing,
and so show up as prototypes when translated to proposi-
tional form.

The main problem with linguistic coding of spatial rela-
tionships, at least, is that it is generally either inefficient or
inexact. Although good enough to suffice for most gener-
al decision making tasks, lingual, and probably proposi-
tional thinking, is insufficient to explain much of the spa-
tial processing that is done be humans every day.

KINESTHETICS

In direct juxtaposition to lingual/propositional encod-
ing of spatial relationships is kinesthetic or haptic process-
ing. For the purposes of this discussion, haptic processing
will refer to how one understands the placement and inter-
actions one’s body has with the external world. Unlike lin-
guistic processing, haptic processing is found in young
babies and virtually all of the higher animals. Haptic spa-
tial coding is also far more precise than lingual coding (try
explaining a dance move purely with words well enough
that someone else can replicate it). Furthermore, haptic
coding can often be significantly more accurate than lin-
gual description, such as in the case of estimations of the
slope of geographical land forms (Durgin class notes 1995).
It is not clear, however, that haptic “reasoning” is really
ever a generative process. It is certainly flexible, perhaps
even creative, since humans (and many animals) are well
able to deal with specific physical situations that they have
never before encountered. This flexibility, however, may
be nothing more than a combination of complex inborn
and learned rules for defining the relationship between
visual and kinesthetic information and corresponding
modifications on action. If it is nothing more than a very
complex set of stimuli and responses, then one might call
into question whether any real thinking is occurring here
at all.

MENTAL IMAGERY

Finally, what is probably most often thought of when we
talk about spatial processing, there is visualization. This
sort of thinking seems to have the same level of precision
as haptic reasoning, but with the generative capabilities of
propositional thought and the ability to operate of aspects
of the world not in direct contact with one’s body.

Evidence for there being a visualization faculty in
humans comes from several sources. First of all, many well
known thinkers, such as Einstein, Maxwell and others,
have reported that the insights for which they were famous
originated not simply from classical reasoning but from
some sort of mental imagery. The great advantage of such
a faculty is that it allows one to perform physical experi-
ments impossible in the real world, such as when Einstein
“imagined himself traveling along side a beam of light (at

186,000 miles per hour)” (Shepard, 1978, p84). A second
piece of evidence that strongly suggests that this faculty
exists comes from Shepard’s famous mental rotation task.
People were to determine whether or not two shapes were
the same when presented at different orientations. Not
only did people report feeling that they were rotating one
of the shapes in their mind to match the other, but a
roughly linear relationship was found between the amount
of time needed to do the rotation and the angle of rotation
needed. (Shepard, 1978). It appears then that the visual-
ization faculty, like it’s propositional and haptic counter-
parts, is capable of some sort of reasoning, and is capable
of certain tasks that neither of the other types of process-
ing can necessarily deal with.

Cross—OVER: NOUNS, OBJECTS, ACTIONS
Now that several ways of dealing with spatial phenom-
enon have been looked at, one may ask how these systems
interact, and how deeply the divisions between them run.

OBJECTS AS PROPOSITIONAL CONCEPTS

It is a commonly held view that language reflects an
underlying way of mentally representing the world, and
that it is only relatively recently that it was used for com-
munication. This underlying conceptual base was demon-
strated by famous experiment of Mary Potter’s. In this
experiment, sentences were flashed one word at a time at
a speed that could only just be read. Some of the nouns
were then replaced with pictures, without any change in
speed of presentation. People had no more trouble under-
standing sentences with a combination of words and pic-
tures than those with pure words. Presumably, if the pic-
tures had first to be translated into words before under-
standing could take place, the extra time spent to do this
translation would interfere with the comprehension of
words following the picture. The lack of confusion seems
to indicate that both pictures and words map to an under-
lying conceptual system (Durgin class notes, 1995). This
system, presumably, is the propositional system mentioned
earlier.

Further work has confirmed that there is a strong link
between words, concepts and pictures. Research on repeti-
tion blindness has been especially revealing. Repetition
blindness occurs when two very similar visual stimuli are
presented in close succession. It appears that perception of
one example of a stimuli takes a certain amount of time to
set up and stabilize in the brain, if a second similar exam-
ple is presented in the meantime, it cannot be processed.
This same effect applies to phonologically similar words. If
sentences flashed at high speeds contain the same word
twice in close proximity, people will tend not to perceive
the second appearance of the word, and so perceive a
non-sense sentence. For example the sentence “The
waiter replaced my dirty fork with a clean fork while mut-
tering apologies” (Bavelier, 1994, p234) would be per-
ceived as “The waiter replaced my dirty fork with a clean .

_ while muttering apologies”. It was then found that a
similar effect could be produced when one or both of the
repeated nouns was replaced by a picture of the object in
question. This would indicate interference at the concep-
tual level. However, it was also found that these results

61








62

could be replicated when the two nouns in questions were
homophones, so that while having different meanings,
they were phonologically the same. Repetition blindness
for homophones applied not only to words, but to sen-
tences where one or both of the nouns had been replaced
with pictures. This result would seem to indicate that pic-
tures are mapped to words after all. Strangely, however,
when the first of a pair of homophones is presented in writ-
ten form and the second in picture form, it is the word
which is lost. Finally, it was found that if subjects were
given a phonological load (having to repeat a nonsense
syllable while reading flashed sentences) repetition blind-
ness for homophonic pictures no longer occurred whereas
in trials with identical meaning and phonology, repetition
blindness was still present. (Bavelier, 1994)Taking these
results as a whole would seem to indicate several things.
First, both pictures and words map to some single concep-
tual system. Second, the mapping between pictures and
concepts is stronger than that between words and con-
cepts. Third, these mappings are bi-directional, so that
once a picture has been mapped to a concept, the concept
can be mapped to its word, at which point it may interfere
with still—stabilizing homophones.

Since pictures seem to map so strongly to propositional
arguments, more efficiently even than words, it seems
probable that the objects they represent also map in this
way. If this is true, then perhaps objects are not so much a
spatial phenomenon as a propositional one. Similarly, pro-
totypical spatial relations are probably more of a proposi-
tional phenomenon than visual. Perhaps, then, objects
and prototypical spatial relations are not the building
blocks of mental imagery, but instead are how one’s propo-
sitional processor translates mental images into a form that
it can understand.

If objects really are propositional artifacts used to trans-
late between mental imagery and the more formal reason-
ing of propositional thought, one may ask how mental
imagery actually works. It does not seem to be purely visu-
al, since there is evidence that the part of the brain used
for this type of reasoning is separate from that part
involved in purely visual tasks (Anderson, 1995).
Furthermore, since blind people, whose primary source of
spatial information is tactile, are quite capable of spatial
reasoning usually done using mental imagery, I would pro-
pose that mental imagery is heavily dependent on haptic
reasoning. By extending the same rules that apply to ones
own body to the world around us, and supplementing it
with visual and auditory information, a highly precise sys-
tem for representing and analyzing spatial phenomenon
could be produced.

And so we find that visualization really draws on both
other types spatial thinking. If information is initially
stored or communicated in lingual form, it must be
mapped through concepts to objects and rough spatial
relations. These blocks of information might then be
arranged in spatial imagery, and smoothly integrated so
that real spatial operations may be applied. In order to
carry out such operations, it is likely that many rules ini-
tially developed for kinesthetic processing are applied in a
more general sense. Note that if this synthesis is accurate,
it would probably indicate two fundamentally different

ways of thinking: a mostly serial type of processing for
propositional thought, and a mostly parallel process for
spacio—kinesthetic thought: if we could only deal with a
single part of the body at a time, we could never get out of
bed in the morning, let alone accurately process the many
simultaneous events in the world around us.

The propositional—spatial duality described above is
perhaps most evident in the way that we think about
mathematics. Most of mathematics is in the form of num-
bers and symbols, both of which are recursive and genera-
tive (Bloom, 1994), and eminently propositional.
However, many equations and operations in algebra and
calculus are more easily understood in graphical form. In
many cases, important mathematical information is more
visible in the spatial relations between curves
(objects?)than in the more abstract symbolic math that
describes them.

SYNTHESIS: GENERATIVITY IN MULTIPLE DOMAINS AND WHAT IT
MEANS TO BE HUMAN.

When humans are compared to other creatures, several
abilities are seen to set us apart. The two greatest of these
are generally considered to be language and tool—making.
An important question would be to ask what is so special
about these two abilities, and how separate are they really?
Tool—making is clearly a spatial task, whereas language is
propositional, yet both seem to be generative. Can the
relationships described above explain this combination?

Before seeing how generativity may have developed
across domains, it would probably be wise to see from what
it developed. Looking at chimpanzees, we find the first
seeds of generativity. It seems undeniable that chimps
have well—developed haptic reasoning, being that they
are able to move around and interact quite well with their
environment. Furthermore, this seems to have generalized
to some level of visio—spatial reasoning, as evidenced by
their prodigious problem—solving skills, such as figuring
out how two sticks might fit together to reach a distant
banana (Anderson, 1995). Finally, they seem to be capa-
ble of a certain degree of propositional reasoning, being
that they are able to generalize and identify concepts such
as instruments and the objects (see Premack & Premack,
1994). All the same, this is a far cry from real generativity.

It seems likely that propositional thinking arose first as
a way of representing objects and relations in such a way
as to make them more amenable to reasoning with cause—
and effect relationships and other such non—spatial rea-
soning. Furthermore, as Bloom (1994) and Miller (1990)
point out, it probably did not become related to language
until it had already reached a somewhat generative state.
Once applied to language, however generativity would be
reinforced, and so language and generative thought would
develop simultaneously(Corballis, 1994). This generativi-
ty could then conceivably be generalized to spatial pro-
cessing via objects and prototypical relations. It is suggest-
ed that advanced spatial reasoning developed only after
propositional generativity as a sort of internal simulator to
test ideas. It would be through the development of such a
generative simulator that advanced tool—making might
arise (Corballis, 1994). This would seem to indicate that
while mental imagery allows for highly advanced mental




processes, generativity can
only arise from proposi-
tional thinking.

CONCLUSION

Although the human
mind has many different
ways of processing data
that are more accurate and
precise than propositional
reasoning, no other type of
system seems able to gen-
erate wholly new ideas or
plan future actions in a
sensible way. It would
seem that what really sets
humanity apart from other
creatures is our capacity for
generative propositional }
thought.

63

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sally P. Springer and
George Deutsch (1981)
Left Brain/Right Brain,
Introductory Readings in
Cognitive Psychology,
Richard P. Honeck ed. ,
The Dushkin Publishing
Group, Inc. , Guilford
Conn. ,1994.

Roger N. Shepard
(1978), The Mental
Image, Introductory
Readings in Cognitive
Psychology, Richard P. |
Honeck ed. , The Dushkin. |pesssssmat
Publishing Group, Inc. , [a
Guilford Conn. ,1994.

George A. Miller ff
(1990), The Place of
Language in Scientific
Psychology, Introductory — =
Readings in Cognitive Psychology, Richard P. Honeck ed. perennial, New York
, The Dushkin Publishing Group, Inc. , Guilford Conn. Durgin class notes 1995— a whole lot of stuff that was
1994. said in class, but I couldn’t find the original sources.

Daphne Bavelier (1994), Repetition Blindness Between
Visually Different items: the case of pictures and words,
Cognition, 51, 199—236

William G. Hayward and Michael J. Tarr (1995),
Spatial Language and Spatial Representation, Cognition,
55, 39—84

David Premack and Ann James Premack (1994), Levels
of Causal Understanding in Chimpanzees and Children,
Cognition, 50, 347—362

Paul Bloom (1994), Generativity Within Language and
Other Cognitive Domains, Cognition, 51, 177—189

Michael C. Corballis (1994), The Generation of
Generativity: a response to Bloom, Cognition, 51, 191—
198

Steven Pinker (1994), The Language Instinct, Harper













American Defense Policy

Jorge Ramirez

Pol. Sci., Defense Policy
Prof. James Kurth

Fall *95



ABSTRACT

_ The topic of given for this paper was: “The best defense of the United States in the 1990's and

the future will be based upon a strong economy, not upon a strong military. And the most for-
midable threats to U.S. security will come from our economic competitors, not from our aah eel ay

adversaries.’ Discuss.” The author looks at the ways global interdependence may threaten the
future of American national security.



n the previous five decades, the greatest threat to American national security has come from the
nuclear arsenal and conventional forces of the Soviet Union. As the nation has recently entered
the post-Cold War era and the immediacy of the Soviet threat has diminished, policy makers at

all levels are still searching for a similar threat to replace the now defunct focus of fifty years of

American foreign policy. Will China emerge as the next superpower to challenge U.S. and Western
influence or will smaller but still dangerous threats arise from rogue states such as Iraq and North
Korea? Perhaps the great Russian bear will reawaken to lash out with its still potent nuclear claws?
While these and other military threats are plausible the most dangerous threat to U.S. security will
come from its economic competitors. Casualties will not be measured in terms of soldiers or civilians
killed but in the number of unemployed workers. The arms race will be replaced by the race for
emerging markets. Being on the cutting edge of civil technology will have more importance than
developing military technology. This is not to say that military adversaries will cease to pose a threat,
but it is a reflection of the global economy’s rise to preeminence and the ways in which dual—use tech-
nologies are more frequently emerging from the civilian sector,

INCREASING INTERDEPENDENCE (OR WHY IS MY MANUAL IN JAPANESE?)

It is often the case in liberal free market economies that the search for efficiency (i.e. greater pro-
ductivity, cheaper labor and capital) will lead a firm or an entire industry to branch out overseas in
search of the greatest comparative advantage. Military industries are no exception. While autarky is
desirable as a means to preserve national security, it is sacrificed for the sake of efficiency and replaced
by greater interdependence on foreign production and trade. This sacrifice of autonomy can be best
evidenced in the development of the aerospace industry.

The USS. aircraft industry took off following World War II. The industry was able to take giant
leaps forward due to technology transfers from wartime allies and the emigration of European scien-
tists. It also differed from other U.S. manufacturing industries by the existence of federally funded
programs for research and development of civil and military technologies. The programs were direct-
ed by the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) and after 1958, by the National
Aeronautics and Space Admintstration (NASA). The U.S. government also went as far as to inter-
vene in order to rescue military aerospace contractors facing bankruptcy while sighting the impor-
tance of the aerospace industry to national security. The McDonnell Douglas merger of the mid—60’s
was facilitated by federal loan guarantees and “favorable anti-trust reviews.” The federal government
also bailed out the Lockheed Corporation in 1971.



































66





tic market (i.e. computers, automobiles, high-tech prod-
ucts etc.) The dependence of countries on trade has come
a long way from simple raw materials (with the exception
of oil and a few rare metals.) The most rapid increases in
trade in the 1970's and 1980's were in data processing
equipment, transistors, telecommunications equipment,
and engines, along with measuring equipment and artifi-
cial resins. As these products have both military and civil
applications, could the U.S. in time of war be denied
resources vital to both the military and civilian industri-
al complex? Is this the price we pay for interdependence
and efficiency?

PROTECTIONISM AND NATIONAL SECURITY

Geo-economists and others believe that such ques-
tions are unnecessary arguing that the risk of military
conflict is actually lessened when countries become more
dependent on one another for trade and finance. They
look to Great Britain and Germany, who were once
adversaries and are now trading partners, as an example
of two nations in which trade has diminished animosities.
However, In 1914, when Germany and Great Britain
went to war, each was the other’s greatest trading partner.

And even now, greater interdependence does not pro-
mote stability but instead does the opposite. Greater
interdependence means greater complexity and conse-
quences. One country’s economic policy decisions will
have repercussions in several other countries.
Furthermore, the proliferation of dangerous technologies
is spurred on through uncontrolled international trade
and multinational corporations.

Interdependence creates a global version of game the-
ory. How will the U.S. protect its own industries while
trying to maintain access to global markets? How can the
U.S. keep down defense costs without leaking technolo-
gy or arming the third world? Will other countries react
aggressively to U.S. protectionism? Will it lead to global
trade wars?

The American government in the 1970’s and 1980's
did not take any significant steps toward defense protec-
tionism. The executive branch especially had been averse
to government intervention to protect defense industries
or research and development. This trend does not appear
to be changing in the near future:

Even in the late 1970's and early 1980's, in the pres-
ence of what was widely perceived to be a major military
threat from the Soviet Union, the United States was not
willing to pay the necessary price to preserve its self-suf-
ficiency in defense production. In the absence of a clear
external menace there is virtually no chance of a costly
concerted drive to restore military autonomy. Even with
an overwhelming military threat to national security, the
federal government seemed reluctant to equate econom-
ic interdependence with national security weakness.

However, there has been an increasing weariness to
the growing number of high-technology firms being pur-
chased by foreign companies. The annual number of U.S.
high-tech firms acquired by foreign companies quadru-
pled between 1981 and 1986, from 30 to over 120. There
was cause to worry considering that most of these firms

were involved in developing products with potentially
military applications. The Defense and Commerce
departments feared that the new owners might be
“unwilling or ineligible under U.S. security regulations”
to continue developing the latest weapons or communi-
cations systems, and that carefully timed purchases gave
them early access or control of “critical technologies” or
that the new owners might decide to dismantle the com-
panies and leave with their high-tech assets. More alarm-
ing was the fact that there was no clearly defined method
for blocking the foreign takeovers. Congress was finally
pressured in 1988 to create a provision authorizing the
executive branch to block takeovers if they threatened
national security. However, this protective legislation was
diffused in the White House and the responsibilities were
siphoned off to the Treasury Department.

If the U.S. were to become engaged in a war of global
proportions, it runs the risk of being denied critical tech-
nologies or even spare parts for airplanes and tanks. It is
estimated that 20 percent of the ingredients for
American weapons systems come from foreign sources.
The ability of the U.S. to increase weapons productions
or maintain military hardware in time of war could be
seriously hampered.

The solution is not to revert and sacrifice efficiency for
autonomy, a policy the government has not been willing
to take anyway, but to have multiple sources for critical
needs so that alternatives are present in times of crisis.
Less dependence on several countries can be safer than
critical dependence on a just few. Unfortunately, the
problem in developing multiple suppliers is increased pro-
liferation of technologies and weapons. A careful balance
must be struck between spreading out suppliers and leak-
ing out technology. The federal government will have to
be more willing to monitor foreign ownership of
American high-tech industries and foreign production of
high-tech goods and ancillary products contracted by the
U.S. In this way, the United States can safeguard against
“the lack of a horseshoe nail in wartime.” There is, how-
ever, one more major threat that has arisen from global-
ization: the potential loss of the technological lead.

THE HIDDEN DANGERS OF CiviL TECHNOLOGY

In a remarkable trend that has occurred in the past two
decades, civil technological development has out paced
development from military industries. In the 1950’s and
1960's, military industries were on the cutting edge of
technology. Spin-offs from the aerospace industry virtual-
ly created the commercial airline industry. Personal and
business computers evolved from a computer industry
created to aid the military in such activities as artillery
accuracy. But more recently, it has been civilian R&D
that has had the greatest successes in developing new
technologies, and more importantly, technologies with
potential military applications. Seemingly simple cable
television boxes contain highly sophisticated encryptol-
ogy technology useful in missile guidance. Extra—sensi-
tive detonators and pulse lasers were also first designed
for civilian application. Hundreds of R&D projects in
robotics are being conducted around the world for civil-








poses, but robotics has a large future in military applica-
tions.

In order for the U.S. to remain at the forefront of mil-
itary technology, it will have to remain at the forefront of
civilian technology. During the Cold War, the govern-
ment was willing to use protectionist measures to ensure
control of leading military technologies, as in the aero-
space industry. Recently, the U.S. has been reluctant to
protect civil industries from the global economy. If lead-
ing technologies developed abroad are not available to
the U.S. military, the potential exists that a foreign mili-
tary power in the future will have better hardware and
information than the American military. If the Japanese
decided to temilitarize, the technological level of their
armed forces could rival or surpass that of the United
States.

The U.S. government must be willing to protect those
domestic civilian industries which invest heavily in R&D
from predatory foreign investors, or from foreign competitors.
The long term answer does not lie solely in protectionist tar-
iff measures or regulation. The U.S. must cultivate a com-
parative advantage in high-technology goods and in R&D.
This can be accomplished through a more productive and
better educated work force geared toward these industries. It
is from these high-tech commercial industries that the mili-
tary will maintain its technological edge over its adversaries.

PRESERVING THE AMERICAN War MACHINE

The global economy manifested as foreign competition to
USS. domestic, high-tech, civil and military industries pre-
sents a greater challenge to national security than any one
nation in the world. Without some action or direction from
the federal government, the United States faces the menace
of interdependence and the possibility of falling out of the
leadership role in technological innovation. The U.S. must
address the vulnerability that dependenice on international
trade for its military industry has created. It must also respond
to the trend that is increasing the value of commercial R&D.
Without an appropriate reaction, it will not matter who the
enemy is. The American war machine will find itself lacking
the appropriate supplies and technology to succeed.





67








68

“Factual Fictions”:

Night and Fog,
and the Artist as Historian

ABSTRACT
The author addresses the
problems of documenting the
Holocaust, in general terms for
the historian or artist, and
specifically within the medium
of film. The assignment was
to analyize a film in terms of its
larger historical and/or cultural
context. Drawing on survivor
accounts, and essays on
Holocaust historiography, the
author reads Alain Resnais’
film, Night and Fog, as an
example of a work that suc-
cessfully mediates the com-

plex moral dilemmas _ of
Holocaust representation ~
treating the questions of

memory, testimony, artistic
responsibility, and narrative.

“When the Holocaust is the
theme, history imposes limita-
tions on the supposed flexibility
of artistic license. We are con-
fronted by the perplexing chal-
lenge of the reversal of normal
creative procedure: instead of
Holocaust fictions liberating
the facts and expanding the
range of their implications,
Holocaust facts enclose the fic-
tions, drawing readers into an
ever—narrower area of associa-
tion, where history and art
stand guard over their respec-
tive territories, wary of abuse
that either might commit upon
the other.”

~ Lawrence Langer

hat is the responsibil-

ity of the . artist?

Lawrence Langer
poses this question in his essay,
“Fictional Facts and Factual
Fictions.” He attempts to
describe in general terms the
inherent difficulties — if not
impossibilities — of represent-
ing an event as monumentally
horrific as the Holocaust. How

Jennifer

Barager
October 23
1995
Literature
54G: Post-
War German
Cinema
Prof. Chris
Pavsek

mented, and judiciously choos-
es material from that which is
documented, are just two of the
problematic aspects of repre-
senting the Holocaust — for
both the artist and the histori-
an. Specific to the artist, how-
ever, is the moral responsibility
of creating a relationship that
engages the viewer/consumer
without cheapening the event
through false empathy: giving
voice to that which is unspeak-
able, giving image to that
which cannot be known.
French filmmaker Alain
Resnais addresses these para-
doxical problems through his
“art documentary,” Night and
Fog, released in 1956. The
understated irony in the
voice-over narrative, juxta-
posed with the images of the
film, establishes a necessary dis-
tance between the viewer and
the Holocaust experience. This
estrangement through irony is
integral to Resnais’ attempt to
create a responsible documen-
tation of the Holocaust.

One can first look to the
writings of Primo Levi, himself
a survivor of the Nazi concen-





tration camps, for discussion of
the complexities of Holocaust
representation. “Human mem-
ory is a marvelous but fallacious
instrument,” he writes in The
Drowned and the Saved (Levi,
23); “the witnesses . . . who
remain . . . have ever more
blurred and stylized memories,
often, unbeknownst to them,
influenced by information
gained from later readings or
the stories of others” (Levi,
19). Levi presents the most
basic challenge to Holocaust
historiography; the individual
accounts which prove to be the
most gripping and vivid repre-
sentations are also the ele-
ments most subject to psycho-
logical distortion as the
decades pass. French writer and
survivor, Charlotte Delbo, elo-
quently describes this phenom-
enon: “. . . when I talk to you
about Auschwitz, it is not from
deep memory my words issue.
They come from external
memory .. . from intellectual
memory . . . that is why I say
today that while knowing per-
fectly well that it corresponds
to the facts, I no longer know if
it is real” (Delbo, 3-4).

The passing of time, the
need to intellectualize memo-
ries in order to survive the
aftermath, and the negotiation
of survivor’s guilt, are all factors
that must be taken into
account by the historian. This
should not be interpreted as an
attack upon the credibility of
survivor testimonies, for the
more important issue is how
one approaches the sheer vol-
ume of survivor accounts.
Historian Peter Haidu notes
that in the late 1950’s there
were already 18,000 recorded
survivors’ testimonies.
“German sources reveal the
bureaucratic complexity of the
~it

process of extermination, but they
deal with people only in the aggre-
gate,” he writes. “The situation is
reversed in the Jewish sources, which
tell of particular experiences, but
without grasping the larger process in
which they were involved” (Haidu,
280). For the artist or histori-

an, selecting material from
the available resources is an
overwhelming task. Hopes
for accuracy, objectivity, or
true breadth in representa-
tion are wishful at best.

The greater challenge
presented to an artist, how-
ever, is how to represent the
Holocaust in a morally
appropriate manner. Here a
paradox emerges: the urge
to disseminate information
about the event (i.e. knowl-
edge equals power and pre-
vention), is paired with the
compelling desire to protect
the victims from exploita-
tion. Haidu writes of the
“urgent need to curtail dis-
course, to impose silence,
about... the extermination
of the Jews (Haidu, 277),”
to shroud the lost ones in a
shield of respectful rever-
ence. Returning to Levi, we
must always be aware that
the Holocaust is incompre-
hensible to those who did
not experience it. Constant
attempts to explain only
diminish its true horror.
“What we commonly mean
by ‘understand’ coincides
with ‘simplify’... we are
compelled to reduce the knowable to
a schema” (Levi, 36), Levi explains.
Likewise, Delbo opens her personal
testimony with the simple but telling
phrase, “Explaining the inexplicable”
(Delbo, 1). Literature, individual
accounts, photographs, documents,
and film can create collectively a his-
torical narrative, but they can neither
recreate nor substitute the actual
experience in the minds of those who
have not been there.

Furthermore, it would be problem-
atic for the artist or historian to
assume that the thousands of survivor
testimonies automatically depict the
experiences of the 10 million who
were annihilated. While statistically

this seems to be logical, it is mislead-
ing to assume that the survivors speak
authoritatively for all who have died.
“I must repeat; we the survivors are
not the true witnesses . . . an exiguous
but also an anomalous minority”
(Levi, 83), writes Levi. In light of












what we know today about the hierar-
chical politics of the concentration
camps, it is clear that some prisoners
were marked for death instantly, while
the Nazis arbitrarily granted others a
few months to live. The Holocaust,
in its enormity, easily ~ and falsely ~
lends itself to perspectivism.

This historical dilemma transfers to
the artistic realm when survivors’
accounts are dramatized, or when
artists create a fictionalized, all— pur-
pose “victim” testimony. To attempt
to narrate the Holocaust artistically
through the eyes of one or a few char-
acters (as has been done in William
Styron’s novel Sophie’s Choice, and
Steven Spielberg’s film, Schindler’s

List, just to name a few) should be rec-
ognized immediately as historically—
and morally—problematic. Such a
technique is appealing, for it allows
the consumer of history to tackle the
Holocaust through a narrow, manage-
able lens. However, if an artist is not

self-conscious about his or
her motives, he or she can
introduce blatant subjectiv-
ity, and may manipulate the
viewer into identifying
with the anguish of some-
body’s fictionalized brother
or aunt or daughter.
Reducing the Holocaust to
a bite-size, consumable
family drama can easily
engender false empathy and
catharsis—for an event
that is morally outside the
realm of empathy or identi-
fication.

It is this very dilemma
that informs Resnais’s work
in Night and Fog. As one
biographer of the French
filmmaker argues, “Resnais’
position is that documenta-
tion is impossible. We for-
get. Therefore he drifts
towards an artistic compila-
tion film which subjective-
ly says, ‘objectivity can’t be
stated” (Kreidl, 47).
Resnais negotiates the diffi-
culties of Holocaust repre-
sentation by acknowledg-
ing his inevitable lack of
objectivity, and by prevent-
ing us from identifying with
the suffering of the victims.
He manages to create a
seemingly exhaustive documentary in
30 minutes, all the while reminding
the viewer that comprehension is
impossible, that memory is unstable,
that false empathy is not allowed.

Via the title of the film, which
refers to an undocumented class of
prisoners (“Nacht und Nebel”),
Resnais exposes the paradox of his
own project — the undertaking of a
documentary about the disappeared
and unrecorded. James Monaco,
another biographer of Resnais, writes
that Night and Fog “deals more with
our memory of the camps, our mental
images of them, than with the camps
as they actually existed, for the mem-
ories are real and present, as are the

69








70

physical remains” (Monaco, 20). In
Night and Fog Resnais creates a lay-
ered collage of old newsreel footage,
still photographs taken at the end of
the war by the Allies, propaganda
films of the Nazi party, and his own
color footage of Auschwitz in the pre-
sent day. He surrounds the nightmar-
ish images with haunting music, and a
lyrical narrative written by French
survivor Jean Cayrol. Spoken refer-
ences throughout the film to
Resnais’ camera, to the process of |
historiography, and to the
authorial presence of Resnais
and Cayrol at the site of
Auschwitz make the viewer
aware of Resnais’ direction
of the film. Rather than
purport to arrange the

images and text as an [|
“accurate” depiction of
the Holocaust, Resnais
candidly presents the
film as his own vision
of the Holocaust—a
vision of the horror
and madness of the F
Nazis, and a “warning

for the future,” as
another writer
describes the film”

(Sweet, 87). “How dis-
cover what remains of
the reality of these
camps, when it was \
despised by those who
made it, eluded by those
who suffered there? No
description, no shot can
restore their true dimension,”
Resnais and Cayrol declare in
the film.

Furthermore, Resnais refuses to
trivialize the survivors’ experiences by
opting for cheap empathy tactics. He
strays away from the fictionalized nar-
ratives and historical docudramas that
I discussed above, and instead uses his
film to compel viewers to recognize
that they cannot identify with the
Holocaust suffering. In a discussion of
modernist film practices, film critic B.
Ruby Rich explains “that a mix of fic-
tion and documentary modes will dis-
rupt genre conventions, throw the
elements of genre into dialectical
opposition, and throw into doubt the
notion of a fixed ‘truth’ representable
on screen, thereby securing the view-
er’s complete estrangement in the



labor of producing meaning” (Rich,
153). One of Resnais’ main tools in
achieving this viewer “estrangement”
is his juxtaposition of Cayrol’s narra-
tive with the sequence of images on
the screen. Cayrol’s lyrical, understat-
ed tone weaves the scenes together in







































such a way as to avoid the dry, statis-
tics-and—dates feel of a traditional
documentary, or the heavy-handed
melodrama of most dramatic recre-
ations of the Holocaust. He allows the
sequence of cinematographic images
to evoke vividly the horror of the
Holocaust, yet employs narrative
irony to distance us from it.

Resnais opens Night and Fog with a
wide shot of clear sky over a sweeping
field. Cayrol’s narrative matches the
seeming calm on the screen, as he

describes, “A peaceful landscape, an
ordinary field with crows flying over
it, an ordinary road, an ordinary vil-
lage, holiday—makers, a steeple, and a
fairground.” During the course of this
narrative segment, however, Resnais
pans the camera down and to the left,
revealing the barbed wire fence of a
concentration camp. The illusion of
calm and tranquility is lost. Resnais
heightens the disparity between
Cayrol’s serene monologue and the
grim cinematography by allowing
several seconds to pass from our
visual introduction to the camp
courtyard and Cayrol’s final
acknowledgement that, “This
is the way to a concentra-
tion camp.” The irony is
obvious; a peaceful land-
scape ought to lead to a
cozy village, to the “ordi-
nary” calm suggested by
Cayrol; instead this
“ordinary road” leads us
to the site of extraordi-
nary terror.

Resnais weaves the
camera around the
blocks of the camp,
showing how the “weeds
have grown where the
prisoners used to walk.”
Cayrol explains that in
the abandoned camp,
“No footstep is heard but
our own.” Again, Resnais
evokes a sense of disparity
between image and word;
before Cayrol even finishes his
sentence, Resnais introduces a
dim drum roll in the background,
and the sound of marching foot-
steps. He then immediately cuts to
fast-paced black-and-white footage
of Nazi soldiers parading across the
screen. This discrepancy in the narra-
tive undermines the viewer’s assump-
tions. Just as the viewer settles into
the abandoned calm and silence of
the overgrown camp, into the idea
that no one will ever set foot on these
roads again, Resnais thrusts us back
into 1933, and reminds us that a
change in time and mood could easily
erase the silence.

Resnais and Cayrol return several
times to the idea that nothing is as it
appears, exposing the innocuous as
potentially evil. “Buildings that might
be stables, garages, workshops; a piece
of land that has become a wasteland,”
Cayrol describes, as Resnais tours the
Auschwitz facilities. “An incinerator
could be made to look like a picture
postcard.” Later he slips in a dose of
dramatic irony, saying that, “What
looked like a shower welcomed the
arrivals.” The viewer recognizes
immediately that the showers are gas
chambers, a secret known to audi-
ences only through historical hind-
sight. Cayrol then describes the oddi-
ties that collected at individual camps
during the war: a full symphony, a zoo,
an orphanage, a green house, an
invalid bay, Goethe’s oak. “Then the
real world, the world of the past,
seems far—yet not so far?” Cayrol
asks, once Resnais has directed us
through these images. His words cap-
ture the disparity between camp life
and the outside world; the comman-
dant’s attempts to introduce beauty or
“respite” appear anomalous and inap-
propriate, and thus only further
expose the inescapable brutality of
the Nazi regime.

Further on in the film, Cayrol
introduces us to the surgical block. “It
almost looks like a nursing home,” he
says. Resnais leads us into the “nurs-
ing home” via black-and-white
images of mutilated, castrated,
burned, and otherwise tortured vic-
tims of Nazi medical experiments; he

cuts from the color footage of the -

block’s peaceful exterior to the stark
horror of its interior. The still photo-
graph of an S.S. doctor is shown,
looking smug and cheerful, after
which we see archive footage of a
Nazi nurse, speaking calmly and con-
fidently. The casual nonchalance of
the Nazi workers, and of Cayrol’s

voice, seems to suggest an atmosphere
of sterility and tranquility, as would be
found in a nursing home or clean sub-
urban hospital. Through Resnais’ jux-
taposition of the torture imagery,
however, we have already seen evi-
dence to contradict this peaceful
vision.

The theme that emerges by the end
of the film is Resnais’ desire for the
viewer to recognize not only the hor-
ror of war, but also its repeatability.
“War nods, but has one eye open,”
Cayrol tells us. Rather than striving
for empathy, Resnais wisely chooses a
format for his film that educates and
awakens. He recognizes that his
responsibility as an artist/historian of
the Holocaust requires that he move
beyond a simple, temporary catharsis.
The examples described demonstrate
his preoccupation with exposing the
simplicity of the apparatus of Nazi
warfare. The opening shot is discon-
certing precisely because it reminds us
that Nazi tools were simple and “ordi-
nary.” “The skill of the Nazis is child’s
play today,” Cayrol warns. “There are
those who look at these ruins today, as
though the monster were dead and
buried beneath them.” Cayrol’s use of
irony throughout the film not only
prevents the viewer from falsely
inserting him or herself into the
Holocaust story, but also demonstrates
how danger lurks behind benign
facades. Through his meditative doc-
umentation, Resnais evokes our mem-
ories of the past as a warning for the
future.

Bibliography
Delbo, Charlotte. Auschwitz and
After. New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1995.

Haidu, Peter. “The Dialectics of
Unspeakability.” Probing the Limits of
Representation. Ed. Saul Friedlander.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1992.

Kreidl, John Francis. Alain Resnais.
Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1978.

Langer, Lawrence. “Fictional Facts
and Factual Fictions: History in
Holocaust Literature.” Admitting the
Holocaust: Collected Essays. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Levi, Primo. The Drowned and the
Saved. New York: Summit Books,
1986.

Monaco, James. Alain Resnais. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1979.

Resnais, Alain. Nuit et Bruillard.
1956.

Rich, B. Ruby. “She Says, He Says:
The Power of the Narrator in
Modernist Film Politics.” Gender and
German Cinema: Feminist
Interventions. Eds. Sandra Frieden,
Richard McCormick, Vibeke
Peterson, and _ Laurie Melissa
Vogelsang. Oxford: Berg Publishers,
Inc., 1993. Vol. 1.

Sweet, Freddy. The Film Narratives
of Alain Resnais. Ann Arbor: UMI
Research Press, 1981.

71










v2



INTRODUCTION

emands on telecommunications systems have dri-

ven the development of a range of optical devices

for transmission, switching, and multiplexing.
Proposed systems to accommodate future demand
require splitters and couplers with wide optical band-
widths, while maintaining the very small dimensions
required for photonic integrated circuits.

One method to obtain the coupling and splitting
operations is through the self-imaging property of multi-
mode interference (MMI) waveguides. An input to a
multimode region excited a number of modes which
create an interference pattern, periodically reproducing
images of the original input along the guide [1]. For
example, a single-mode input, centered on the multi-
mode region, produces a symmetric pattern of two inten-
sity peaks one-half the distance between the original dis-
tribution and its image; four, eight, etc. intensity peaks
appear at one-fourth, one-eighth, etc. the distance,
respectively. The maximum number of images depends
upon the number of modes in the wide section.

Multimode waveguide devices have been demonstrat-
ed for a variety of applications. Simple center-fed multi-
mode devices have been fabricated for 1xN splitting
applications. More complicated coupling structures with
off-center inputs were also fabricated in a very compact
form in 2x2 and 4x4 devices [2]. Both splitters and cou-

aaa A leYon Independent Research in Engineering @ Professor Lynne A. Molter









_ ing operation:
oe

designed using a simple a paraxia ro.







Multimode device have



mation. This approximation assumes” the —

modes in the wide section are zero at the
boundaries of the guide and the oo aS

Ae the Sa approximation Bes
a simple method of estimating the occur-
rence of images in waveguides, it does not
provide the accuracy necessary to optimize
devices.

Here the results of an exact modal analy-
sis of a slab model of cascaded structures are
compared to those found using simple
approximations. This exact modal analysis
was previously used to model the intensity
distribution inside the MMI region of split-
ters and couplers, and the sensitivity of out-
put power to changes in the longitudinal
position of output guides for 1x2 and 1x8
splitters and 3 dB couplers [4]. Using the
same model, the sensitivity of 3 dB couplers
to width, lateral input and output guide
position, and wavelength were generated
along with a comparison of phase predic-
tions [5].

In this paper, the model is extended to
analyze and numerically optimize more com-
plicated cascaded devices for switching
applications. NxNx1 cascaded devices con-
sist of an NxN MMI coupler connected to
an Nxl MMI combiner (reversed splitter)











by single-mode guides with tunable phase shifters. Lengths of the MMI regions and phases in the interconnect regions
are optimized. Sensitivity to length, phase shift, wavelength, and width of the optimized structures is also presented.

These optimized parameters are compared to those predicted using two different approximations. In the first approx-
imation, the modes are assumed to have zero intensity at the boundaries of the guide and the length of the MMI regions
is determined by the difference between the propagation two lowest order modes. As will be shown, in this first approx-
imation only the first order correction term in the Taylor series is retained in the expression for the propagation con-
stants. A second approximation will be shown, in which the length of the MMI section is determined by the difference
between the two lowest order propagation constants when calculated exactly. Switching properties of these devices
designed with both of these approximations will be compared to those designed using the optimization of the exact
modal analysis.

THEORY
Using the effective index method, a three dimensional rib waveguide device is modeled by a two dimensional infi-
nite slab structure. A typical NxN MMI structure with i = 1, 2, ..., N single-mode inputs, m = 0, 1, ... modes in the guid-
ing region, j = 1, 2, ..., N single-mode outputs, and a step index difference from effective index, n, in the guiding region
to no outside is shown in Fig. 1. The width of the MMI region is W, and the length is zo. The electric field in each 73
region is given by





















Bei i{=1,2,..,.N Input Region
Eee m=0,1,... MMI Region
Eouj J=1L2,...N Output Region (a)
No
a
Ein, N N 1 Eout, 1
4
—’ eae
Eo En j Eu, j
——_—— Z —_
WwW
Ein, 1 1 N out, N
:
Input oS MMI dig Output
Region ¢ ue Region “a Region
0 Zo

Fic. 1. TWO DIMENSIONAL VIEW OF N X N GUIDING STRUCTURE SHOWING SINGLE-MODE INPUT AND OUTPUT GUIDE POSITIONS.

In the simplest approximation, the electric field modes in the MMI region are assumed to be zero at x = +W/2. A
correction to this approximation can be made by defining a mode-dependent effective width calculated using the Goos-
Hanschen shift, but for high-contrast guides the correction is quite small and often neglected. Using the actual width,
the dispersion relation may be written








B? _4n'n? (m+) 7?
moni de Ww’ ,(2)

where bm is the propagation constant for the mth mode and | is the free-space wavelength. This expression can be
further reduced using a paraxial approximation, which gives

g = 20 (m +1)’
2 nN 4nW? (3)

Using this approximation, the propagation constants are separated by multiples of pl/4nW2, and a beat length can
be defined from the propagation constants of the two lowest order modes

Tl





Oe
74 By te B, (4a)
where, using (3)
2
Oo. 4nW
3h (4b)

In general, when all modes are excited, self imaging will occur at approximately [12]

230
q (Sa)

where p is an integer greater than zero denoting possible device lengths, q is an integer greater than one represent-
ing the number of images, and the two share no common divisor. At L = 3W, the single image is mirrored around the
x axis, while at 6W the self image appears. Using the approximation in (3)



_ p4nw*
a ay

L
(Sb)

In the exact analysis, closed-form eigenvalue solutions to Maxwell’s equations are produced. As in the simplest

approximation, an effective index slab approximation to actual devices is invoked. For TE modes, the electric field takes
the form

Aom i"
Ea (A,,, cos(k x)+B,,,sin(k,,,x))e "9; [x|s ¥

xm

am (%F) ,-iBm2g Ww
e HC MEO) Xie

9

y
Wee
em (x+ 2 ) 7 iBm2 e X < -¥

>

2m

(6)

where kxm is the transverse propagation constant in the guide and axm is the decay constant. For symmetric modes
(m = 0, 2, 4, ...), Blm = 0 and for antisymmetric modes (m = 1, 3, 5, ...), Alm = 0. In the exact case the propagation
constants of all modes are calculated from the analytic determinantal equation using a hybrid Newton-Raphson and
bisection routine with derivatives. Using these propagation constants and calculating coupling through input and out-
put guides using overlap integrals the output fields in each output guide are obtained. |

The exact propagation constants obtained from the determinantal equation may be used in (4a) to formulate a sec-
ond approximation of the length of the MMI section.



RESULTS

Cascaded devices consisting of an NxN coupler connected with electro-optic phase shifters to a reversed 1xN split-
ter are considered. The phase shifters are assumed to be continuously tunable. Each device is modeled as an
InP/InGaAsP/InP deeply etched rib waveguide structure with an effective guiding index of 3.25 and a substrate index
of 3.20; device optimization is performed at | = 1.319 jm. The effective index outside the guiding region is taken as one
since the rib is assumed to be etched through the guiding region. A 2x2x1 cascaded device is considered. All input, out-









put, and connecting guides are designed to be single mode. Because the guides are deeply etched and the spacing
between single-mode guides is one guide width, crosstalk between the guides is neglected. Reflections in the longitu-
dinal direction and resonance within the MMI section are not considered.

In the optimization of these devices the two MMI section lengths and the phase shift values are considered to be
adjustable parameters. The final output intensity depends on several variables, and derivatives are not available to assist
convergence. A modified Powell method is therefore employed, in which the direction of largest decrease during the
previous iteration is discarded. The one dimensional directions selected with the Powell algorithm are optimized with
Brent’s method. Tolerances on all parameters can be adjusted to produced optimal parameters within specified error.

A. 2X2x1 CASCADED DEVICE OPTIMIZATION

The 2x2x1 cascaded device shown in Fig. 2 is modeled, where L1,2 are the lengths of the first and second MMI
regions, respectively, w is the width of both MMI regions, and g1,2 are the phase shifts in the interconnecting guides.
The simple 2x2x1 case is a three variable optimization problem in terms of the two lengths L1,2 and the difference
between the phase shifts 1 - 42 with w held constant. Because local maxima are sought in the optimization, approxi-
mations for the individual parameters from either approximation discussed in Theory can be used as seed values. The
small number of variables allows the generation of a surface of output intensity as a function of adjustable parameters;
the smoothness of the surface and location of maxima can therefore be observed. Only a single input guide (guide 1) is
excited, and by virtue of the symmetry, the response with an input to the other guide is identical.

1st MMI 2nd MMI





foligo t 2 { 8.0 pm
Rg | ra Ate UN a nea ety od

Fic. 2. 2X2xX1 CASCADED SWITCHING DEVICE WITH TWO INPUTS AT +2.0 UM FROM THE CENTER OF THE DEVICE.

To determine whether numerical techniques could be used to optimize the device design, the output intensity of the
device as a function of L1,2 is calculated with g1 - g2 held constant. One example surface is plotted in Fig. 3, where the
difference between the phase shifts is fixed at 1/2. The optimization surface is continuous with a single local maximum.
For a variety of fixed phase differences, surfaces with similar characteristics but lower peak intensity were generated (not
shown), so when all three parameters were varied, a unique local maximum remained. Therefore, numerical optimiza-
tion should be effective for this and similar models.



















AM

bf
hy

a)

MER
SEES
FARK







Normalized Intensity

: \y
LEROY trees
ZEIT
ZESOIRN\\
fs RKB
LESAN
ERS
SERN

RO

Sees

110





Le (um)

Fic. 3. OPTIMIZATION SURFACE OF L1,2 FOR INPUT INTO GUIDE 1; PHASE SHIFTS ARE FIXED AT @1 - @2 = 1/2 FOR INPUT INTO GUIDE 2.

L1,2 and gl - g2 have been optimized with the Powell algorithm for maximum output power in the single output
guide. The width W of the multimode region was fxed so that the desired number of single-mode input guides, with
spacings equal to the guide widths, could be accommodated. A more general optimization which takes into account
variations in the widths and separations of the different guides and sections within the constraints of single mode input,
intermediate, and output guides, overall device length, etc. is an area of future work.

B. 2X2x1 DESIGN APPROXIMATIONS
Because simple approximations of the self-imaging lengths are often used in device design, a comparison of the per-
formance of devices with approximated lengths to that of devices with optimum lengths is shown in Table I. As men-
tioned above, these approximated lengths were used as seed values in the optimization. A comparison between two

vo




76

approximations, denoted first and second, is made.
TABLE ONE
LENGTHS AND POWER OUTPUT FOR EACH DESIGN APPROXIMATION

1st Approx 2nd Approx Optimized

LI 315.39 325.94 324.17
ey 78.84 81.42 81.02
Pout(1)/Pin 0.6716 0.9283 0.9412

From Table I, the second approximation produces lengths much closer to the optimal length than the first approxi-
mation for both the coupler and the reversed splitter. Optimization of length and phase difference produces a 40.2%
increase in output intensity from results with the first approximation, and a 1.4% increase in output intensity from that
of the second approximation. For this particular device, the exact propagation constants produce a significantly more
accurate estimation of the optimal length of the device than the estimate made with the first approximation. The
approximation for the phase shifts varies only slightly from the optimized values, and any single phase shift affects the
output intensity only in proportion to the power in the particular guide.

CONCLUSIONS

NxNx1 cascaded waveguide devices with MMI sections have been modeled using an exact modal analysis in which
a deeply etched rib waveguide has been modeled as a dielectric slab guide using an effective index method. Operations
in which an input to any individual guide is switched to the single output have been analyzed. The output intensity of
a 2x2x1 device has been optimized by adjusting the lengths of the two MMI sections and the phase shifts. The opti-
mized parameters have been compared with the parameters found using a standard approximation of the lengths and a
more exact approximation of the lengths. In the 2x2x1 case, the length approximation using the exact propagation con-
stants produces parameters closer to the optimized parameters. Optimization of these devices has proven feasible, robust,
and relatively fast. Optimization to a unique maxima has been demonstrated for a three parameter problems, and can
provide an excellent tool in the design of complicated MMI devices.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was conducted in collaboration with J. P. Donnelly of that Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lincoln
Laboratory, Lexington, MA and was supported in part by the Department of the Air Force, grants from the National
Science Foundation (ECS 8958667), the Keck Foundation, DuPont Company, and General Electric Company.

REFERENCES

[1]R. Ulrich and G. Ankele, “Self-imaging in homogeneous planar optical waveguides,” Applied Physics Letters, vol.
27, no. 6, pp 337-339, 1975.

[2]R. M. Jenkins, J. M. Heaton, D. R. Wight, J. T. Parker, J. C. H. Birbeck, G. W. Smith, and K. P. Hilton, “Novel
IxN and NxN integrated optical switches using self-imagine multimode GaAs/AlGaAs waveguides,” Applied Physics
Letters, vol. 64, no. 6, pp 684-686, 1994.

[3]L. B. Soldano and E. C. M. Pennings, “Optical multi-mode interference devices based on self-imaging: principles
and applications,” Journal of Lightwave Technology, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 615-627, 1995.

[4]E. R. Thoen, L. A. Molter, and J. P. Donnelly, “Analysis of NxM waveguide splitters and couplers with multimode
guiding sections,” in Proceedings of the Symposium on Guided Wave Optoelectronics, Brooklyn, NY, Oct. 1994, to be
published.

[5JE. R. Thoen, L. A. Molter, and J. P. Donnelly, “Analysis of multiple input NxM waveguide couplers with multi-
mode guiding sections,” Technical Digest, Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics, Baltimore, MD, paper CThI21,
May 19




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FRONT ELEVATION



IE

SABRINA Moy-e Prof. WILLIAM MARSHALL, DESIGN 2

Funny House of a Negro takes place in the
present, during the moments preceding the sui-
cide of its protagonist, Negro-Sarah. The play
can be interpreted as a dream enacted in Negro-
Sarah’s mind by characters which represent her
conflicting selves. These characters are: The
Duchess of Hapsburg, Queen Victoria, Jesus, and
Patrice Lumumba. Raymond (the Funnyhouse
Man, Sarah’s white lover) and Sarah’s Landlady
(the Funnyhouse Woman) are additional “actu-
al” characters who, though also inhabiting
Sarah’s dream, tie the dream sequences to her
“real” life.

The play is composed of three types of
sequences, each of which requires a different
scenographic treatment. The first type of
sequence is the tableaux, horror-show gimmick,
pantomime. These sequences are visually jarring,
the characters appearing as apparitions inhabit-
ing no particular space or time. The second type
of sequence is the traditional “scene,” in which
characters engage in dialogue in a concrete set-
ting. These sequences require visual cues that
identify the space with the characters inhabiting
it. The third type of sequence is the monologue,
in which Negro-Sarah explains and analyzes her
behavior in a straightforward manner that










78



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£—_——the—— {=































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informs the more surreal dream
sequences. The staging, and particu-
larly the lighting of these sequences
should focus attention on the actor,
placing less emphasis on the coincid-

ing actions of other characters.
Overall, I envision the set as sug-
gesting a funnyhouse, which is the
metaphor Kennedy presents for
Negro-Sarah’s mind/reality. The

mood of the play — and therefore the
visual effect of the set combined with
lights — is jarring, disturbing, incon-
gruous. The theme of the play is the
impossibility of the experience of a






olvainum pipe

Balin

<2 * -@”-

'

































































g-__—_— ___»}















MECHANICAL DRAWING





black woman in a white male culture.
Negro-Sarah is tied down to her her-
itage; the difference between who
she is and who she aspires to be (a
white woman, preferably of royalty)

is irreconcilable and eventually leads
to her death.

The colors of the set are black and
white. In my design, I emphasize
what I see as the cause of Negro

Sarah’s state of mind — a rigidly
structured cultural narrative that
draws strict boundaries between
white and black and assigns
immutable definitions to them. I





79




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Audience Seating





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manipulate rigid planes into a struc-
ture that reminds me of a funny
house, not so much the pop culture,
horror show effects, but the psycho-
logical unease created by spaces sug-
gested beyond, and drastic shifts of
scale. The freakish qualities of the



show would be obtained through pro-
jections onto this structured back-
drop — using video images, casting
over-sized, distorted shadows, and
using stark lights.

The following are a plan, front ele-
vation, and mechanical drawing of

the various components of the set,
drawn on KeyCad Complete.