In the last episode of The Adam Carolla Show on KLSX, Adam made a promise to his listeners: he was going to transform his role on the show into a podcast.  He promised results the following Monday; this last Monday.  And, for the past three days, Adam Carolla fans like myself have been able to download the podcast on iTunes (here: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=306390087 ) or at http://carollaradio.com/ .

The moral of the story?  Adam has Risen.  IN POD FORM!

As Martha Nussbaum notes, in the essay “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,” debate between patriotism and pluralism is often narrowed to debate between national and sub-national identities.  We can define national identification as the feeling of being most suitable for definition as a member of the nation that one lives in, and sub-national identification as feeling more at home being defined for some other aspect of one’s life, be it regional-location, ethnicity or religion within the nation, or race.  She argues that constricting the field of debate in this way leads ultimately to the destruction of the values that both political modalities attempt to support.

It seems to be the case that both nationally and sub-nationally identified persons seek the same goals, if not for different sets of people: equality, justice, civility and fairness.  However, it is clear that both methods go about achieving this through different means.  For the nationalist-patriot, it is support of a just, equitable, etc. nation that assures his patriotism aligns him with the Right.  On the other hand, for the sub-nationally identified person, it is support of an underprivileged group that proves their love of the same values.  However, it is Nussbaum’s contention that both of these models fail to achieve their goal, and instead, result in idolatry and a failure to connect what is right to any substantive moral identity.

Instead of focusing on either a national or micro-identity, Nussbaum urges us to accept a macro-identity as members of the ‘human race’ (it is to the detriment of all that this phrase has become cliché); humans that value the same goals.  The cosmopolitan identifies herself with the sufferings and triumphs of people across the globe, making equity, justice, and civility intimate and meaningful.  In this way, cosmopolitanism is in stark contrast to the ideas of nationalism and ethnocentrism.  Moreover, the cosmopolitan points to nationalism and ethnocentrism as being inefficient in achieving the goals that all three political systems seek to achieve.

While the cosmopolitan view is mainly a prescriptive view for how society ought to be, there is at least one negative assertion that is critical to the viewpoint.  And, as this negative assertion makes room for cosmopolitanism in the increasingly narrowed field of debate between pluralism and patriotism, we feel that a preliminary discussion of this tenet, before moving to the more prescriptive elements, is in order.  The cosmopolitan attempts to make room for her position by arguing that Nationalism and Ethnocentrism (or other forms of sub-national identification) are, in fact, too closely related to be polar opposites in the debate between patriotism and pluralism, and that a third, further removed option is needed to make the debate reasonable.

Nationalism and Ethnocentrism commit the same logical fallacy, and in doing so they are, by measure of effects, the same.  Both the nationalist and ethnocentrist identify specifically with this or that group of people, in order to protect a series of values by focusing on their application within that group.  However, in focusing on these groups, and not the unbridled, universal promotion of the values themselves, the nationalist/ethnocentrist replaces what is truly valuable with an idol of their chosen group.  By idolizing the group, the nationalist/ethnocentrist creates a slippery slope of identification, through which they can continually buffer themselves from suffering in other parts of the world, thereby denying, in effect, the primacy of the value as valuable for all humans.  If one begins by saying, “I am an American first, a citizen of the world second,” what logically prohibits “I am a white American first, a citizen of the world second,” or “I am a rich, white, business-owning, Christian first, an American second, a citizen of the world third?”  And, we feel it to be imminently possible that, with increasing levels of specialized identity, with increasingly contingent primary identifiers, the agents themselves will be more likely to focus on application of their values within their identifying set, and not as a universal aspiration of all humans.  Nussbaum, in confronting this problematic, says “Only the cosmopolitan stance… has the promise of transcending these divisions, because only this stance asks us to give our first allegiance to what is morally good… [which we can] commend as such to all human beings,” (Nussbaum I).

Having established room in the debate for the cosmopolitan view, we should now turn to prescriptive elements of the cosmopolitan ideal in the field of education.  As Nussbaum points out, the nationalist/ethnocentrist (-centrist, from here on) will often make a concession in the field of education that is, in fact, damning for their entire policy.  They will often say that education should begin with information regarding the group that they have identified with (nation, race, ethnicity, etc).  However, they often concede that, to some degree at least, some form of humanist learning is beneficial.  In other words, after we learn that we are American first, we are supposed to learn that we are citizens of the world, second.  We feel that, here again, the -centrist is confusing and hypocritical.  In what way does aligning one’s self with a contingent identity support the auxiliary re-description as a citizen of the world?  It is the cosmopolitan’s claim that, in fact, a primary description as citizen of the world is the only means by which suffering across the globe can be made intimate and meaningful for those experiencing it.  This cosmopolitan assertion relates directly to the negative point made earlier; namely, that with continually increasing micro-description, one can easily create a boundary separating their suffering from our own.

Instead of increasingly narrowed descriptions of the self, the cosmopolitan argues that a unified human identity is the key to achieving the goals stated previously.  This, of course, has a large implication for what it means to be American, and the American identity, itself.  Contrary to what the reader may be thinking at this point, cosmopolitanism is not the absolute destruction of the American identity.  Instead, we solely ask for a reformation of the ordering structure of identities, giving world-citizen (or ‘human’) primacy.  Nussbaum here, again, provides a brilliant explanation: if we are surrounded by concentric spheres of involvement, ranging from the internal-self to the world-stage, the job of the cosmopolitan is to draw near to the self the most distant of possible spheres; to conflate our most intimate concerns with our most distant.  Only then will can we truly achieve the goals that both the -centrist and the cosmopolitan hold dear.  From this conflation of various spheres, we find two primary results: one concrete, one speculative and prescriptive.

First, if the primacy of identification as a human is agreed upon, then the values, and not the groups in which the values take place (save the general field of debate, qua humanity), take center stage.  I am persuaded by Nussbaum’s argument, and the cosmopolitan argument, in general, here, insofar as it is the only strain of argumentation to take seriously the values that are central to all three political modalities (cosmopolitan, -centrist, and Christian).  That is to say, for the reasons previously presented the -centrist ideal fails to recognize the centrality of the values and, instead, opts to focus on a group to which the values may be applied: this is a negative, self-centered, and hypocritical aspiration.

For example, recently in “University News,” the newspaper for the UMKC student body, Sam Sheffield presented an article relating the story of Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu, a black male educational consultant.  In the article, Dr. Kunjufu argues that it is the quality of teachers for black students, and not the family life of those same students that causes an imbalance in the educational success of black students.  In order to restore equilibrium to the system, he advocates the removal of teachers who are primarily “white females who grew up in white towns, went to white high schools [and] colleges, and were trained to teach at white schools,” replacing them, presumably with black teachers who are trained to teach at black schools.  The hypocrisy of such Africentrism is self-evident: providing teachers who mirror the racial background of the student is flatly contrary to the notion of equilibrium between pupils.  Instead, it promotes the notion that there is some level of difference between blacks and whites that cannot be overcome by understanding, or continued integration.  This, in itself, is the racist notion; that blacks are simply, and irrevocably, different that whites.  Moreover, the idea of focusing on one group to raise them to the point of equilibrium with the artificial standard of ‘the white student’ denies the primacy of the value of ‘a good education.’  It is in this way that the -centrist notion fails.  To the contrary, the cosmopolitan would argue that only continued integration of socio-economic s groups within the larger context of humanity will assure that all receive equal education.  One of Dr. Kunjufu’s central arguments was that ‘black schools’ receive lower funding that ‘white schools.’  He then proposes that a re-arrangement of this discrepancy would assist in solving the problem.  I, on the other hand, suggest that the destruction of ‘black’ or ‘white’ schools and the creation of ‘schools of humanity,’ (or equal and like schooling for all students) would void this issue.  Again, it is through focusing on the group that Dr. Kunjufu fails to realize that, first, giving more money to ‘black’ schools may take money away from ‘latin-american’ schools, which may need more assistance, and second, that it is education, and not the race of the educated that is valuable.  This is, of course, translatable to all stages of discussion, from immigration to national identity.  Only through the conflation of spheres of discourse can we manage to focus on the values.  And, only if our national identity, or our racial identity, or any other -centrist identity is put on the back-burner (so to speak) can we begin to achieve true focus on those values.

The second, more prescriptive result of cosmopolitanism on national identity is the ability to modify our national identity at will.  As I have said, cosmopolitanism does not inherently destroy national identity, per se.  Instead, it makes our national identity secondary to our identification as humans in a realm of humanity; as citizens of the world.  Arguably, the reason why national identity is important to humans, in the first place, is its providing of a stable base upon which we can build our character.  However, if we are to build our character on national identity, we must solidify this identity, making it unchanging.  And, as I have argued previously, if we solidify national identity to the point of an unchanging ideal, we are worshiping an idol, and not what the idol stands for.  That is to say, if America is a representative of all of the goals listed previously (equality, justice, etc.), then, it must be capable of changing to fit the promotion of those goals.  And, if we make concrete what it means to be an American, then America will lack the fluidity it needs to continue to represent the goals it was founded upon.  Thus, if we make America into an idol of bone and concrete, it will lack the human pulse needed to support the values that made it worthy of being idolized in the first place.  Only the cosmopolitan view allows for the fluidity necessary to conform national or ethnic identity to the values which the purport to hold dear.  Furthermore, if the American identity does not need to be sedentary and stationary, that is, if we can base our character on some other identity (namely, identification as a human in the human realm), then we can proactively change our American identity.  That is to say, if cosmopolitanism is accepted, we can actively change our American identity, without fear of losing stability.

At length, throughout this essay, I have discussed opposing views to cosmopolitanism, responses to these views, and the comparatively advantageous elements of the cosmopolitan ideal.  In doing so, I hope I have explained sufficiently exactly what is so persuasive about the cosmopolitan viewpoint, and why I find it so convincing.

1. Everyone hates you from the second they pick up the phone; It’s as if you called them on a Sunday at 6 in the morning.

2. People have the nerve to wait on hold before my call center opens; If you do this, you should ask yourself “How has my life come to this?”

3. When processing case work from lower Tiers, higher Tiers will always refuse to assist with an issue the first time, unless they’re Remote Support.

4. Office theft is rampant; If you don’t claim your desk early and often, and make a stink about the slightest thing having been moved, be prepared to say goodbye to your stress-ball.

5. The people you work with will always be great; but there will always be a  weird guy near by to tone down the workplace enjoyment.

More to come

While there have been many trade unions throughout the history of the Industrialized West, the IWW stands out as one of interest for three reasons:  First, the IWW blossomed in a time of great worker-unrest in America.  Second, women seem to have played a larger role in the IWW than in other unions of the time.  Third, the IWW is, in fact, not actual a “trade union”: instead, it relies on ‘global’ unionization of all “trades,” for the purpose of providing a solid foundation for workers’ demands.  Because of the IWW desire to organize all trades, the IWW included several primarily female ‘trades’ in its list of supporters, something which trade unions rarely did.  As a result of these three reasons, a careful examination of the role of women in the IWW will also provide great insight into the role of gender in political and worker power-struggles.

The history of the IWW began in late 1904, when eight men gathered in Chicago to plan a secret meeting for the creation of a society dedicated to the betterment of the working class.  For their second meeting, the first eight invited a total of 36 delegates (chosen for their previous demonstration of strength in the progressive/radical labor movement), of which 12 were women.  The women invited included Lucy Parsons, Mother Jones and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (St. John).  The manifesto for the new organization which sprang from the meeting of the 36 delegates, the Industrial Workers of the World, was drafted on July 27, 1905.  Shortly thereafter, the IWW shot into action.

The lives and political actions and beliefs of Parsons, Jones and Flynn, who became great leaders of the IWW, provide insight into the attraction, for so many turn-of-the-century women, of the IWW.

Lucy Parsons, an adamant socialist and ‘Wobbly’ (a term for IWW members), stands out as a great example of a woman in the IWW.  While little is known about her earliest background, we do know that she was born in 1853.  Her ethnicity was the convergence of African, Mexican and Native roots, and, because of this, she was keenly aware of injustices in society in respect to those groups to which she belonged (Bird, Georgakas and Schaffer).  Furthermore, it is supposed that she was born into slavery, which, again, gives her an interesting perspective in regards to the injustices perpetrated by the rich on the destitute.

Over the course the first few months of 1886, in America, a great movement in support of the “8-hour day” swelled.  Lucy, married to Albert Parsons, at this time, was very active, along with her husband, in the organization of strikes for those who couldn’t convince their employers to cut hours without cutting wages.  Organizers across the country decided that, by May 1, 1886 (‘International Worker’s Day’), workers who were so inclined would demand 8-hour days without pay decrease, and if their demands were not met, they would strike.  Shortly after May 1st, when the workers’ demands were refused, over 350,000 workers, nation wide, left their jobs in one of the earliest mass strikes (a signature move of later IWW efforts).  Lucy and Albert, who were living in Chicago at the time, were witness to one of the larger components of this major strike: 40,000 Chicagoan workers struck, making their’ city one of the most active parts of this mass strike (“Lucy Parsons: Woman of Will.” Hereafter LPWOW).  However, although some few strikers managed to get their demands met, the strike was not, by any means, fully successful.  For example, on the third of May, 1886, a large mass of unarmed Chicagoan strikers were fired upon by police, killing four and wounding others.  The situation in Chicago erupted, and an emergency organizing meeting was called in Haymarket Square (one of the largest markets in Chicago, at the time).  At the meeting, an unknown (to this day) party threw a ‘bomb’ at police officers, killing one of them.  And, despite the fact that they weren’t even in attendance at the Haymarket gathering, Albert was arrested in connection with the crime, and Lucy was placed under strict police-surveillance.

Albert’s court date was set for October of the same year.  Furthermore, the police department of Chicago started rounding up other known anarchists and socialists, and detaining them for questioning.  In October, Albert was sentenced to death by hanging.  Lucy attempted to gain clemency for her husband by starting a nation-wide tour of speaking engagements where she attempted to advocate for her husband’s release.  However, police departments in many of the places she visited barred her from entering meeting halls under the supposition that she was there to incite another Haymarket type riot.  On November 11, 1887, Albert Parsons was to be executed.  Lucy attempted to bring her children to the execution, so that she, and they, could see Albert one last time.  The police, however, had other ideas: they arrested her, forced her to strip, and left her naked with her children in a cell until after Albert’s execution.  This final injustice solidified the feelings of inequality in society that Lucy had been fighting against for her whole life.  She was primed to become a leader of the radical organization of fighters like herself that would develop nearly 20 years later, the IWW.

Another way to see the solidification of Lucy Parsons qua Radical Syndicalist is through the political battles that she fought within the labor movement, itself.  For example, the Knights of Labor (hereon KoL), who had organized the Haymarket meeting, actively denied involvement in the bombing, and condemned those members of their organization who were indicted in the incident (LPWOW).  The KoL leadership was very interested in maintaining a positive relationship between the government and their organization, and they therefore saw radical acts as divisive to their cause.  Thus, Lucy and the KoL took oppositional stands in regards to radical/militant protest: the KoL taking the side of liberal, government-interactive movement, and Lucy siding with her husband, and her own conscience, in choosing powerful, radical techniques for changing inequity.  This rift widened under the pressure of the elections of 1890: the KoL and other labor organizers attempted to hitch their organizations to the Democratic Party, in an attempted symbiotic relationship.  The Democratic Party received new voters, and, in return, the KoL was promised fulfillment for some of its demands.  However, Lucy saw this relationship as non-supportive of the overall goal.  As stated earlier, Lucy was a radical syndicalist, in part, due to her early experiences of class inequality, and the inability of her own person to transcend certain ‘roles’ she was given, in association with her class/creed/race.  Lucy often denied her own African roots due to the great stigma that was (and, unfortunately sometimes, still is) associated with such lineage.  One thing that she learned from her upbringing was that people of different classes had nothing in common: and, because of this belief, she viewed the blossoming relationship between the KoL and the Dem. Party as fraternization with the enemy.

A third political motivation for Lucy Parsons’ association with more radical syndicalist movements like the IWW was her realization, in 1890, that trade unions were simply too weak to combat the incalculably more powerful employment class.  During this same time, Lucy shifted from seeing individual successful strikes as victories, towards seeing them as signs of an impending, more overarching revolution.  This revolution, she supposed, would be an international movement of anarcho-communists who would, once and for all, destroy the class that had kept all of them down for so long (LPWOW).  Lucy Parsons’ early experience as an underprivileged pseudo-citizen, her later experience of injustice in the courtroom, her political conceptualization of the working-class struggle; all of these lead to her formation as a syndicalist and as a member and leader of the soon-to-be-formed IWW.

The tumultuous nature of labor/employer relations remained a central issue for several years after Lucy Parsons’ appearance, and, during these years, Parsons’ own position of international unionization gained support in light of the politically stunted abilities of trade unions that had gone to bed with political parties who promised assistance.

Mother Jones, or Mary Harris Jones, became another female leader of the IWW movement.  She had lost her family, early in their life together (four children and her husband), to yellow fever.  Shortly thereafter, all of her possessions were burned in the fire of 1875.  From that point forward, she dedicated her life to her new ‘family’ of industrial workers who had experienced loss and hardship in a way that she saw as similar to her own tribulations (Mother Jones: ‘Pray for the Dead, and Fight Like Hell for the Living,’ hereafter MJ).  Harris Jones was born in 1830, and born into a lineage of radical political activists.  Her parents were Irish separatists, and after her father was murdered by British soldiers, she and her mother were forced to move to Canada (Hawse).  She was raised in Ontario, Canada; however she began her professional life as a teacher in Michigan.  She left teaching, which she despised, to become a seamstress after marrying her husband, George Jones, an iron molder who was involved heavily in Iron Molder’s Union activities in Chicago.

There are two competing (although non-mutually-exclusive) views of what compelled her to move into unionizing activities after the death of her husband.  Some say that her experience as a seamstress for the hoi oligoi of Chicagoan aristocracy changed her view of the ‘working class.’  Harris Jones reflected on her experiences, “Often while sewing for the lords and barons… I would look out of the plate glass windows and see the poor, shivering wretches, jobless and hungry, walking alongside the frozen lake front…. The contrast of their condition with that of the tropical comfort of the people for whom I sewed was painful to me,” (ibid.).  In contrast, other historians see Mother Jones as developing interest in ‘the movement’ after the death of her husband, as an attempt to continue the work that he, like her father, so adamantly supported (MJ).  Either way, it is a fact that Harris Jones, shortly after her tremendous loss, became a prominent figure in the worker’s rights debate.  She was a self-proclaimed Socialist, and helped found the Social Democratic Party of America in 1898, before joining the KoL (ibid.).

The KoL provided Mother Jones with a sense of unity and singularity of purpose; it allowed her to keep going, in spite of her negative experiences prior to her membership.  So, even though her house was destroyed in the fire, she felt as if she was always at home in KoL protests and meetings.  She traveled across the country, visiting shanty towns and slums, and congregating with workers in an attempt to organize/unionize them.  For example, she organized for the Union Mine Workers of America in the 1880s, and also participated in a rail worker strike in Pittsburgh a few years earlier.  Most notable, before her actions as part of the IWW, must be Harris Jones’ “Children’s Crusade:” a strike consisting entirely of children textile workers from Pennsylvania in 1903, whom she led straight to former-President Theodore Roosevelt’s estate in New York (Hawse).   Again, in a way analogous to Lucy Parsons’ own experience, Mary Harris Jones was primed by her early experiences to join the IWW during its founding in 1905: She had experience as a socialist; she was adamantly for the working class; she agreed with international unionization (as opposed to trade unionization); and she had experienced loss which grounded her vision of the class struggle.  As stated above, Harris Jones was present at the IWW’s first meeting, and was one of the twelve women to sign the manifesto (Hawse).

An apparent trend in the women involved in early IWW activities seems to be a socialist, class-identified worker’s perspective.  It can be shown that this trend holds for another early and active, female ‘Wobbly,’ Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, as well.  Gurley Flynn was born in 1890 to a family of socialist, much as the stated trend would predict.  Flynn is reported as having an early-blossoming class-consciousness: as early as age 5, Flynn saw what separated her family from those families on the “right side of the tracks,” (Licht).  She said, for example, of her home town (an industrialized Manchester, New Hampshire), that it was “where the great mills stretched like prisons along the bank of the Merrimac River,” (ibid.).  Furthermore, her father’s active role in socialist politics promoted Flynn’s own role in the same field.  She reportedly gave her first public address to a socialist meeting at age 15, on the topic of women’s roles in socialism.  In fact, her father was a great influence in her life, and was one of the original signatories to the IWW manifesto.  Gurley Flynn, herself, joined in 1906 and became increasingly active in the movement.

An interesting, and slightly divergent, element of Flynn’s story is her own recollection, recorded in a speech to the University of Illinois, of how she came to focus more primarily on the IWW instead of the socialist movement.  Flynn felt that the socialist party was led by “professors, lawyers, doctors, ministers and middle-aged and older people,” (Gurley Flynn sic).  Moreover, she thought that a real movement capable of the changes she saw fit must rely in a completely different base-constituency: change for the worker, she thought, must be made by the work of the people.  She “felt a desire to have something more militant, more progressive, and more youthful,” and she found all three in the IWW (ibid.).  Even more interesting, given Flynn’s individual case history, is her perception of the workers that she toiled for.  She saw her core audience as “transients, [with] practically no roots in the communities of the areas where they worked,” (ibid.).  It is not hard to draw a connection between her perception of her audience, and her own personal experience of having little invested in her home town.  She saw clearly the privatized interests of the mill owners and how they had encroached on her and her families own portion of the town.  Furthermore, the sentiment Flynn is expressing is easily translated into Mother Jones’ experience, insofar as Jones’ connections to Chicago, the place where she lived and worked, were literally burnt, thus freeing her to see the town and its industrial barons as being in opposition to the interests of the disenfranchised, like herself.

Having established a similarity in purpose and origins between three of the ‘founding mothers’ of the IWW, it will be easy, now, to examine the early actions of the IWW, while continuing to keep an ear to the ground for the sake of rooting out what influence these women, and many other women like them, had in the formation and forward-action of the institution, itself.

The original manifesto of the IWW’s first conference cites the growing centralization of the wealth and power into a few hands as a reason to reject trade-unionization in favor of something more powerful.  The document goes on to suggest that the working class and the employing class are completely distinct, and that they cannot mix productively without some entity to protect the less powerful workers from the more powerful employers.  Whether or not the women cited above specifically suggested this is unknown, however their backgrounds (as described above) would have certainly predisposed them to agreeing with such elements.  Furthermore, one of the earliest and most influential actions of the IWW consisted of attempting, again, after the failed efforts of the 1880′s,  to reduce work hours without pay loss for the women and children in mills and textile factories.  In analyzing this, what they called the Bread and Roses strike, a few more strong women in the IWW came to the fore.

Work in the textile mills was hard.  Most of the workers were women, and most of them were under the age of twenty (let alone the smaller, yet sizeable contingent of workers under fourteen).  The job was low paying; in fact, debt was an everyday part of life for most of the textile workers.  Some were so indebted to their own workplaces that they worked solely to pay off the debt they had already accrued the week before (Women in Textiles. Hereafter WiT).  According to one historian, although the “national life expectancy was nearly fifty years, over a third of textile workers died before twenty-six.

In Lawrence, Massachusetts, a groundswell movement to change things began around 1908.  The women in textiles were tired of being tired (as the expression goes), and yet, they were unable to find good organizers to lead them in strikes or negotiations.  That is, they were without leadership until the arrival of IWW supporters and speakers on the scene.  The first organizers, working for the textile women, were Italian socialist journalists who also worked with the IWW.  They were met with harsh resistance in the form of police brutality and restricted ‘protesting areas.’  Things did not look promising for the textile workers, and their employers seemed to brazenly defy any demands that they made.  So much was this the case that, in 1912, several mill owners cut the salaries of nearly 25,000 employees (including a great deal of women).  This time, the employers had gone too far; a full on strike of nearly all 25,000 employees took to the streets.

Mill workers (mainly women) were blocked from striking directly at their places of business: instead, they formed a human chain and attempted to encircle the entire mill district (Spicuzza).  One protestor carried a sign that said “We want Bread… and Roses, TOO,” and people came to refer to the strike as the “Bread and Roses” strike.  And yet, despite the quaint name, the strike was all but pleasant. The police assumed that, owing to the fact that the majority of the textile workers were immigrants from Europe (including a largely Italian contingent), the strikes would end quickly, as they thought those immigrants were incapable of sustained, controlled, group action: they were wrong.

On January 29, 1912, police fired on one of these sustained groups of protestors and killed a young woman named Annie Lo Pezzo. (Spicuzza) Consiglia Rocco Teutonica, a mill worker who was only fourteen years old, at the time, remembered exactly how much Lo Pezzo’s death meant to her community.  Despite the general assumption that the women were unfit to organize, the Italian immigrants had, for quite some time, been meeting in secret to discuss the progress of the “Bread and Roses” strike.  And, Rocco Teutonica recalls an organized response to the police violence: a group of Italian, women, textile workers were on their way home one late January day when they crossed a solitary policeman’s path.  Livid at the wrongful death of Lo Pezzo, the women attacked the police officer.  They took his badge and gun, cut his suspenders, and removed his pants.  The pants removal bit was, in fact, a common technique that their ‘unorganizable’ group had planned to use in just such a case.  They proceeded to hang him upside-down from the side of a bridge, pants-less, in the freezing Massachusetts winter weather!  Clearly, they could organize if they needed to. (ibid.)  After the great unrest caused by the murder of Lo Pezzo, the two original organizers were indicted on charges of inciting violence: the IWW sent in backup in the form of Bill Haywood (whose nation-wide tour, after the success of the “Bread and Roses” strike, was run by Lucy Parsons), Carlo Resca, and none other than Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.  Teutonica writes that, after the arrival of the new IWW organizers, the women were filled anew with the energy to fight back.  She describes a second time in which police arms were drawn and aimed at protesters: a younger woman ran in front of the crowd, and, while “calling the soldiers ‘Cossacks,’ [she] wrapped an American flag around her body and dared them to shoot holes in Old Glory,” (ibid.).  The police and, more importantly, the employers realized that they were fighting against something they had drastically underestimated, and they conceded to the demands (in part, but in sufficient part) of IWW organizers and the strikers in general.  The success in Lawrence was the inspiration for a whole nation of activists, socialists, and simply women in general.  According to a newspaper of the time, it was “estimated that 438,000 textile workers received nearly fifteen million dollars in raises as” a result of the strikes and organization (WiT).  Socialist and humanitarian women saw the IWW victory as a victory for women, in general, and were quick to support the IWW for many years to come: Helen Keller voiced her support, as did Margaret Sanger and Mary Kenny O’Sullivan (ibid).

What can be said about the role of women in the “Bread and Roses” strike and the IWW movement?  Clearly, they were underestimated and, at least beforehand, underappreciated.  But, the more important idea is that the IWW, and the strong, influential women who helped form and found it, were able to put into practice the things that mattered most to them.  What mattered to the IWW, given its influences in women like Flynn, Jones, and Parsons, was the general rights of the worker, the absolute refusal of the employer’s attempts to segregate workers or to down-play, or make illegal the protests which IWW members saw as the only way out.  Furthermore, IWW members wanted the worker to have power in numbers and, it is clear that, at least in the case of the Lawrence strike, they and the female mill employees they organized, did.

The participation of well-rounded, powerful, informed, civilian women in the formation and early action of the IWW is evident.  Their influences, and their own political beliefs, make themselves evident in the policy and methodology of Wobblies in general.  Furthermore, one of the first successful strikes organized by the IWW consisted mainly of women workers.  Thus, it is fair to say that women played (and, to this day, still play) a large role in the formation and management of the Industrial Workers of the World.  Also, one could say that the Industrial Workers of the World gave bright, yet unlucky, women a chance to show exactly how well they could organize, and just how much they, as women, could do on their own.

Bibliography:

Bird, Stewart., Georgakas, Dan., Shaffer, Deborah.  Solidarity Forever: An Oral History of the IWW.

Lake View Press, Chicago, 1985.

Gurley Flynn, Elizabeth.  “Memories of the Industrial Workers of the World.” Northern Illinois University, DeKalb.

8 Nov. 1962.

Hawse, Mara Lou. “Mother Jones: The Miner’s Angel.” The Illinois Labor History Society.  23 Nov. 2006

<http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/majones.htm>

Licht, Mary.  “Rebel Girl: The Revolutionary Life and Work of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.” People’s Weekly World

30 Mar. 1996

“Lucy Parsons: Woman of Will.” IWW Selected Member Biographies. 11 Nov. 2006

<http://www.iww.org/culture/biography/LucyParsons1.shtml>

“Mother Jones: ‘Pray for the Dead, and Fight Like Hell for the Living.” Joe Hill: More Labor Leaders. 11 Nov. 2006

<http://www.kued.org/joehill/faces/mother_jones.html>

“Preamble to the IWW Constitution.”  IWW: A Union For All Workers.  17. Nov. 2006

<http://www.iww.org/culture/official/preamble.shtml>

Spicuzza, Mary.  “Bread Winners.” Metro Santa Cruz 10 Mar. 1999.

St. John, Vincent.  The IWW: History, Structure and Methods. Chicago: IWW PB, 1917.  11 Nov. 2006

<http://www.iww.org/en/culture/official/SaintJohn1.shtml> (Online Book)

“Women in Textiles.” The Lucy Parsons Project. 11 Nov. 2006.

<http://www.lucyparsonsproject.org/iww/women_in_textiles.html>

Soderbergh’s interpretation (which he both directed and wrote) of the Stanislaw Lem classic opens quietly.  Dr. Kris Kelvin, a psychologist played by George Clooney goes about his daily life, waking, going to work, coming home and cooking dinner.  However, the only times he speaks to other human beings he does so through technology: returning a phone call only to leave a message on an answering machine, buzzing someone into his apartment through a touch screen in the wall, even receiving a distressed message through video recording from Giberion, a close friend, asking him to visit the space-station Prometheus above the planet Solaris.  Even when the people who deliver the message from Giberion ask Kelvin to visit the station, the camera shows Kelvin with his back to the two messengers.   To fully solidify the early theme of isolation, Kelvin accepts the mission and there is a sudden jump-cut to a long, quietly scored sequence depicting his space-shuttle (Athena) docking with the Prometheus.  Even once aboard the ship, Kelvin is alone and wanders through the hallways encountering only two corpses.  This opening sequence shows how technology has isolated Kelvin from other human beings.  He is alone, and his contact with others is primarily recorded, flat, and dead.

Kelvin eventually contacts the two surviving crewmembers of the Prometheus, Gordon and Snow, both of whom have isolated themselves from each other.  They react with cold rationality to his presence, warning him that something is happening, but not panicking or allowing their emotions to take the best of them.  They function like a piece of equipment with a broken part: despite the futility of it all, the other parts keep moving and acting as they would if the one broken piece were still functional.  In fact, throughout the movie, Snow and Gordon remain distant to the seemingly terrifying experience they are undergoing.

Non-real, imagined, or dreamt sequences in Solaris are clearly depicted as being separate from or other to the ‘real’ world of the spaceship.  In the first sequence, we are shown Kelvin’s introduction to and courtship of his wife Rheya (Hari in the novel).  However, unlike the cold sterility of the opening sequence, the memory/dream is shot in a warm and vibrant style.  Kelvin is shown interacting with several people much more richly than he does in the barren environment of the space station, and eventually making love to his wife.  Several times throughout the movie, he remembers her in different settings, in different outfits, yet always with the same grinning expression, and always in the more vibrant tones.  And yet, even as the first dream sequence fades and the cold blues and silvers of the space station re-emerge, Rheya, Kelvin’s dead (as we later find out) wife remains next to him in his bed.  Not only does the creation of a corporeal instantiation of Kelvin’s memory of Rheya contrast greatly with his previous non-conversations with recorded entities, it also presents several epistemological and ontological questions.

Kelvin’s experiences on the Prometheus lead him to question how he knows and what he knows.  Profound questions about the nature of memory and the capacity to know the other are presented in the relationship between Kelvin and his ‘buddy’ (as Stanislaw Lem referred to them) or ‘visitor’ (as Soderbergh writes), and indeed in the relationship between Snow, Gordon and their visitors.  For Kelvin, the difficulty stems from an imprecise memory of his wife which terminated in her real suicide.  Remembering her in that way, she is drawn to attempt suicide several times throughout the movie.   Soderbergh does an excellent job of making sure that Rheya’s imperfect formation is not only a problem for Kelvin, in terms of his having to confront his conception of his wife in external space, but also a problem for Rheya, in that she is bound and determined by his construction of her in ways which make her feel less than human.  Kelvin experiences the problem differently; he becomes attached to his creation and uses her to attempt to resolve his issues with his ‘real’ wife by trying to fix the problem of his improper memory.  Rheya, on the other hand, feels angst and disenfranchisement with her relationship to Kelvin: the memories of who she was border her free will and force her to recreate the traumatic ending of their relationship over and over.

A classic theme of science fiction work is knowledge of the other, and even Stanislaw Lem, who was far from lauding of either of the filmic recreation of his work, notes that in Solaris he “only wanted to create a vision of a human encounter with something that certainly exists, in a mighty manner perhaps, but cannot be reduced to human concepts, ideas or images.” (Lem) While Lem criticized Solaris for straying from this aim, he admits that he never saw the movie.  Consequently, it is clear why he may have missed what I have already alluded to.  It is clear to me that the Soderbergh film attempts to address the question of knowledge of the other by playing with ideas of imperfect memory and the quality of mental images of our acquaintances.  The Solarian recreation of Rheya through Kelvin’s memories, and her eventually exposed imperfections relate the difficulty that Kelvin has remembering or even knowing in the first place who Rheya actually was on Earth.  There is always the problem of projection in relationships, one partner forming in their mind an idealized version of the other, and Soderbergh highlights a negative version of projection in the self-destructive image Kelvin creates of Rheya.  Moreover the recreated Rheya must deal with the difficulty of being other to herself.  She frequently is upset, confused, and embarrassed by memories of her past actions, and yet these actions are of a special sort, insofar as the currently existent version of Rheya had no physical part in them.  She must confront the unknowability of herself, and in one sequence while Kelvin begs her to return to Earth with him, she questions “Am I really Rheya?  How could I be sure?”

Another way that the movie returns to this theme after Rheya convinces Gordon to destroy her permanently is the discovery of the ‘real’ Snow, which proves to Gordon and Kelvin that the currently alive Snow is, in fact, a ‘visitor’ of himself.  Snow (the Solarian visitor), it turns out, was attacked by his earthling progenitor when he was first created.  Visitor Snow makes the quick decision to fight back and ends up killing himself.  He hides the body, but in order to remain undetected he must act like himself.  This brings up a common existential/phenomenological question about the nature of other’s knowledge of the self.  Visitor Snow must maintain the appearance of being who and what he is not (real and human), and yet, he cannot have the epistemological access to the opinions of others to determine if he successfully completes this task.

Solaris is a smallish planet (as planets go), and is surrounded and covered by a corona of large plasma trails.  In the beginning of the movie, the planet is blue and generally lethargic in the energies of its plasma tendrils.  All of the ‘panoramic’ shots of Solaris are accompanied by music cues that last from a few seconds to several minutes in duration, and the viewer is often shown Solaris at a distance with the leading man’s shoulders showing in the frame.  This positioning gives the viewer an agent to project their subjectivity into: they become, for a moment, the man watching this giant orb undulating in space.  And, as the movie progresses, the giant orb becomes more irritated, or interested, and begins to take on mass, changing from a cool blue to a deep red and becoming more violently active.

Many of the internal shots of the space-station orbiting Solaris avoid direct external views in favor of showing slivers of portal windows that mark the pace of the movie with their slow change in color.  Also, to further the feeling of the panoramic, the space station is suspended an impossibly short distance from the surface of the planet.  The station is a pillar of rational human technology juxtaposed on top of an incomprehensible mass of far greater power.  The station even maintains a look of fragility, of impossibility to exist in all but a weightless environment.  All of these elements function to pull the viewer through the exposition of plot and the introduction of characters.  They also, however, satiate a need of the viewer to feel in control of the movie, to put the parts together into a cohesive whole, and to have the capacity to view the events from the outside, even if the fine details remain unclear until the end of the film.

Moreover still, the panorama supports the main concepts of the movie.  The technologies of the Athena and the Prometheus seem cold and solid, distanced from each other by a cosmic stretch of Solaris.  Solaris isolates the crew, and as it isolates it questions them.  It asks them to probe their understanding of the other.  Not only does it function as a macrocosm of otherness, it also brings into existence the visitors which, as we have seen, function to recreate otherness in strange ways which question the very idea of identity and how we know ourselves to be who we are.  Finally, the course of Solaris’ movements, its acceleration arc, and the increase of activity in the end lead to one other question, that of the teleology of Solaris; of whether Solaris is benevolent or malevolent or simply indifferent.

The ultimate question for Solaris is whether we will ever know the purpose of our universe or the events that come about within it.  Throughout the movie, the tension between Kelvin’s previous life with Rheya, his solemn disconnected life after Rheya, and the hope and frustration alike that come with Rheya’s reincarnation (in whatever form she may take).  This tension is a mirror through which we may see the ultimate teleological question.  There are, as I see it, three options.  Solaris is malevolent, all was a dream, and Kelvin’s ultimate decision to remain aboard the Prometheus and be annihilated was for not.  Solaris is benevolent, and Kelvin’s ultimate decision is correct.  Solaris is indifferent, or inconceivable under the anthropomorphized and overly simplistic understanding of good versus bad.

We are given several hints that Solaris is not malevolent.  First, when Snow gazes upon his creator in the final sequence aboard the Prometheus in the film, he smiles (although he is filmed smiling upside-down which provokes many other questions about his and Kelvin’s shared destiny).  Second, when Kelvin collapses in a hallway, he has a vision of Giberion’s son extending a hand for him to take.  The scene is shot with religious overtones and clearly invokes the image of the fresco atop the Sistine Chapel.  Finally, in the closing sequence of the film, which ties Kelvin’s story into a Möbius strip and makes the story circular, we are shown Kelvin going through actions similar to those that he makes at the beginning, only this time he is not without his wife.  She watches as he cuts his finger in the kitchen, something he does in the opening moments of the film.  Only, this time, his finger heals immediately and the pain subsides.  She says to him, in the final shot, that they are forgiven all of their faults in this new existence.

The fact that Rheya says they are forgiven seems to give the planet’s actions a sense of motive and of presence of mind, something that is proposed throughout the film.  At one point, after Rheya has killed herself using the atomic charge-weapon that Gordon and Snow invent, Kelvin is visited by an apparition of Giberion.  However, Giberion here is not the same fun loving or even alone and scared Giberion that we are shown in either the dream sequences or the recorded message delivered to Kelvin (respectively).  Instead, this Giberion is a quiet, dark figure who tells Kelvin that there are no solutions to the problems he is experiencing.  Giberion explains that only choices matter now, and that the situation is beyond control, at least for the humans.  It is commonly accepted, and endorsed by the audio commentary recorded by Steven Soderbergh and James Cameron, that this Giberion is an active projection of the will of Solaris.  Nonetheless, the mercurial nature of the message given gives Kelvin no extra ground in the discussion of the epistemological inadequacy in representing ontological others.  He cannot piece together what Solaris is trying to tell him, and says “I can’t leave her; I’ll figure it out,” which shows that despite the newness of the situation, Kelvin is still trying to respond with rationality to a problem beyond his understanding.  And yet, it may also be said that his decision to do just what he said, to “not leave her,” is a choice that shows an emotional understanding of the incomprehensibility of the situation, and an emotional resolve to choose this over that, his wife over his own life.

Again, it seems, we are left with an existential conclusion: that we will never know the will of Solaris, even were it to tell us straightforwardly, and that we must therefore emote, reason, and create our reality, sticking with what we believe most strongly, and hoping beyond reason that what we have chosen is good in the way the universe would describe ‘good.’  Benevolent or Indifferent, the planet Solaris is abandoned, with Gordon as the sole surviving crewman.  And even this departure is symbolic of the problem of knowing: the Athena (goddess of wisdom) undocks and leaves behind Prometheus (a demi-god who brought fire to man, and who was, for this, imprisoned by the gods and tortured for eternity); the hope for wisdom and knowledge abandons the reckless emotional promethean hope of Kelvin.  Or rather, he abandons the former in favor of the later.

I have attempted to make the case here that Solaris is a text that highlights several critical issues of epistemology, ontology and teleology.  The film presents these mind-bending ideas effectively because it uses a very simple science fiction backdrop (the exploration of a new planet) to introduce and help expose the problems of each field.  Solaris is a macrocosm of the deeply intimate and interpersonal problems being discussed within the microcosm of the space-station.  Solaris is a constant other in a world where self and other have mixed; where the self may sublate the ‘other,’ and where one may never fully know one’s self.  And, despite Lem’s critical view of the movie, I feel that all of the themes are profoundly and interestingly discussed, and that the plot of the movie does not take second place to the CGI, but, instead, that the CGI forwards the plot and pulls the viewer through what might otherwise be a dry discussion of existentialism, epistemology, and telos.

Bibliography

Bukatman, Scott. “The Artificial Infinite.” Kuhn, Annette. Alien Zone II. London: Verso, 1999. 249-271.

Lem, Stanislaw. “The Kiosk.” 08 December 2002. The Stanislaw Lem Official Website.

Solaris. Dir. Steven Soderbergh. Perf. George Clooney and et. al. 2002.

Thomson, C. Claire. “It’s all about Snow: Limning the post-human body in Solaris and It’s All about Love.” Journal of Contemporary Film (2007): 3-21.

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer murió en diciembre de 1870 a la edad de 34 años.  Se dejó huérfano cuando tenía 11 años, el vagó de Sevilla, su ciudad natal, a Madrid en 1854 cuando tenía 18 años (Bécquer y Durán 209-210).  Empezó a trabajar como escritor independiente.  Fue encargado a editar algunos volúmenes de Los Templos De España, un libro dedicado a los templos históricos de España, donde empieza su interés con la espiritual y las místicas de lugares antiguas, olvidadas, y espantoso.  El trabajaba por algunos periódicos, como El Contemporáneo y La Crónica, a escribir ficción prosa y poemas (Rosado).  El se casó con Casta Esteban en 1861, el mismo año en que obtuvo una posición asalariado en El Contemporáneo (Bécquer, Gustavo Adolfo).  Publicaba algunos de sus poemas en El Contemporáneo y, unos años después recibió patrocinio de Luis González Brabo a coleccionar sus obras en un libro por publicarlas.  Desafortunadamente, la revolución en 1868 resultó en el saqueo de la casa de Brabo, y la pérdida completa de las obras de Bécquer.

En los años restantes de su vida, Bécquer intentó a reproducir sus obras, de memoria.  Frustrado, lejos de su esposa e hijos, y pobre, Bécquer desarrolló una enfermedad misteriosa.  Y, cuando su hermano murió en septiembre de 1870, su salud disminuyó rápidamente (Rosado).  Después de su muerte, su esposa y sus amigos tomaron sus obras y las colocaron en un volumen, Rimas y Leyendas, con esperanza que la publicación podría aumentar los ingresos de la familia Bécquer.

No está claro si Bécquer intentase a titular su obra Rimas y Leyendas, o si su familia concordase en eso, pero creo que el uso del genero “Leyenda” es problemático.  Pero, los elementos básicos de la leyenda, un personaje central, fantástico, y conocido (con nombre e historia aparte del cuento), un lugar real y concreto, y la posibilidad de universalización de la moraleja representado son ausentes en los ‘leyendas de Bécquer,’ y a causa de eso, el género de las obras de Bécquer están abiertas a críticas.

Las leyendas son específicas por su personaje central, y, a veces el personaje central es una persona real quien está representado en el mundo fantástico; por ejemplo, la leyenda en que Romulus y Remus, amamantado de lobos, fundieron Roma de sus manos (Legend).  Los personajes de la leyenda se distinguen de ellos de cuentos folclóricos en el grado en que son figuras conocidas, y en una palabra ‘legendarios’ (Legend).  Por ejemplo, la diferencia entre un cuento folclórico y una leyenda es como la diferencia entre un cuento de un ladrón enmascarado y el cuento de Zorro.

También, muchas veces, el lugar de la leyenda es real, para ser más creíble.  Los autores de leyendas enfoquen en los valores de la cultura del escenario para crear el personaje central como una representación de esos valores.  Además, aparte de un personaje reconocible, un lugar real, y actos fantásticos, las leyendas tienen en común que se acercan a tener una moraleja, en que el poder fantástico de los personajes usualmente represente una característica importante por la cultura en que lo fue creado, o se explican fenómenos fiscales con el uso del poder del personaje.  Según Tangherlini, la leyenda es “una afirmación de los valores, y representación simbólico [en los personajes y lugares] de creencias comunes de una sociedad” (385).

Todo los elementos funcionan a sostener la importancia de la características del héroe legendario: En la leyenda Zorro, su ingenio y valor en contra del gobierno son los valores importantes; En la leyenda de Paul Bunyan su fuerza física en el terreno áspero del noroeste americano; En Casey Jones, su determinación a ser un buen y puntual conductor de trenes, en un EE.UU. que estaba ampliando.

Pero, en “Los Ojos Verdes” estos lugares conocidos (con atención por los valores de la cultura regional), personajes fantásticos, y moralejas son ausentes.   Aunque es posible  tergiversa al cuento para conformarlo al molde de ‘La Leyenda,’ una interpretación alternativa es preferible.  Aparte de la narración de un autor hablando con sus lectores, explicando que ha visto una imagen de ojos que le provocó a escribir el cuento, “Los Ojos Verde” empieza en el bosque de la Sierra de Moncayo, la parte más alta de la Sistema Ibérica de montañas que desciende entre Cataluña y La Meseta.  Dos personajes, Iñigo y Fernando de Argensola, rastreaban un ciervo golpeado por Fernando en la caza.  Fernando, el más joven de los dos, había tomado su primero ciervo, o al menos eso lo pensó.  Pero, en la caza, el ciervo logró a escapar entre las zarzas del bosque, en un sendero que da a la fuente de Los Álamos.  Iñigo, quien primero vio la fuga del ciervo, de repente acabó de cazar, dejando perplejo Fernando.  Fernando exclamó que es su primer ciervo, e iba claro que el fue herido de muerte, pero Iñigo insistió que sería imposible a continuar en la caza.

Para ser una leyenda, es importante que el lugar, o el escenario, sea conocido, históricamente existente, y un hecho significativo a la progresión del cuento y la moraleja, como veremos despues.  Sigue el cuento, “Herido va el ciervo [...] Se ve el rastro de la sangre entre las zarzas del monte [...] se dirige  hacia la fuente de Los Álamos [en] las cuencas del Moncayo,” (Bécquer y Durán 76).  Está claro que el Moncayo, sino la fuente de Los Álamos,  existe en realidad, y en ese aspecto, el cuento resembla una leyenda.  También, Iñigo, el montero explicó, a una Fernando muy frustrado, que había caído a perseguir el ciervo porque en la fuente de Los Álamos “habita un espíritu del mal,” (Bécquer y Durán 77).  Fernando, es escéptico, intolerante de los mitos de Iñigo, pero durante una explicación larga por Iñigo de la fuente y el espíritu, de repente Fernando dice que hay un evento muy “extrañ[o], lo que [le] sucede,” pregunta el a Iñigo si ha “encontrado, por acaso, una mujer que vive entre sus rocas” (Bécquer y Durán 79).

Aunque el Moncayo si existe, no hay una referencia en “Los Ojos Verdes” a un razón por la presencia de la parte prohibida.  La mágica prosigue de la fuente de Los Álamos, más que todo, y eso fuente no es fijado en el terreno de Moncayo, sino en la imaginación del cuento.  Es decir, aunque Bécquer dice que la fuente de Los Álamos tenía ese espíritu, no es un símbolo de creencias comunes, sino una creación nueva de Bécquer en sí.  Además, Bécquer no se refirió a una tradición cultural de los monteros a evitar la fuente de Los Álamos.  La idea es que no hay nada de prohibir que haya otras fuentes similares en todas las montañas del mundo; el cuento no esta inseparable del lugar.  No es que el Moncayo sea la habitación de una bruja quien hace aparecer ese demonio de la fuente.  Además, no explica, el cuento, una cosa misteriosa, como desapariciones de jóvenes solteros en el bosque.  Finalmente, no hay evidencia que la leyenda de Moncayo es un compuesto de cuentos orales de los paisanos de Bécquer, ni una historia de fantasmas por esa región; al menos, Bécquer no refiere a esas historias inexistentes.  Sin el fondo en tradición y historia, el cuento de Bécquer no es como una leyenda.

La leyenda es una mezcla de creencias folclóricos de una región y una representación simbólica de los valores que prosiguen de los folclores en algunos elementos concretas (Legend; Tangherlini).  Pero, no se puede encontrar en el escenario fantástico valores ni creencias folclóricos, sino una creación de un cuento de nuevo de la mente de Bécquer.   En vez de ser significativo al cuento, el Moncayo es minimizado por el cuento de las experiencias de Fernando e Iñigo.

Aunque Bécquer se enfocó en los personajes del cuento más que el escenario, todavía es imposible a verlos como los personajes de una leyenda.  A primera vista, parece ser actores reales y verdaderos, o, por lo menos con la apariencia de importancia y estado, en el caso de Fernando de Argensola; los Argensolas eran notables en la creación de Aragón.  Sin embargo, Fernando, y su historia aparte del cuento no es importante a la progresión de la trama.  Bécquer no intentase en explicar poderes fantásticos por Fernando a través de su linaje históricamente importante.  El cuento empieza con los personajes ya en acción a cazar el ciervo; no con una explanación larga de la tradición de ellos como personas conocidos.  Sólo en su reacción a la situación es importante Fernando: el mismo personaje, con nombre diferente, podría cambiar papel con Fernando sin cambiar el cuento.

De otra mano, las leyendas usualmente empiezan, o al menos tienen, un trasfondo por los personajes que explican su carácter fantástico.  Y como la definición explica, el trasfondo y el personaje son integral por las leyendas.  Ellos son la parte que conecta el personaje con los valores culturales que examinan las leyendas.  Sin embargo, la única conexión a la cultura compartida por los lectores contemporáneos a Bécquer es el nombre de Fernando de Argensola.  Y esto repetía, en parte, solo dos veces: “Fernando de Argensola, el primogénito de Almenar,” (Bécquer y Durán 76, 84).  No hace sugiere que su posición como primogénito le proporcioné en un poder fantástico.  Al contrario, Fernando es retratado como nadie en particular, aparte de su papel en el cuento.  Es decir, en las leyendas, usualmente le parece del personaje fantástico tiene una vida aparte de la leyenda: Fernando, en vez, es solo un agente del cuento.

Ni el escenario ni los personajes representan las características critica al género ‘leyenda,’ y la última capacidad que existe para probar la afirmación que “Los Ojos Verdes” no es una leyenda es en el final del cuento.  Fernando ya ha dicho a Iñigo que había visto algo en los aguas de la fuente de Los Álamos; algo que, hasta este día no había compartido con nadie.  Todas las veces en el pasado en que Fernando había pasado por la fuente, experiencia una emoción solemne y rara.  Y, algunos veces, había visto un rayo de luz trémula en los aguas, algo que le parecía como ojos de un mujer, y que le llenaron con la misma sensación cada vez.  Finalmente, “por [una] tarde [encontró] una mujer hermosa” quien está emergiendo de los aguas en un carro de caballos hecho de y brillando como el oro (Bécquer y Durán 81).  Y esa mujer tiene los mismos ojos de los que aparecía brevemente en los aguas del fuente.  Iñigo responde intencionadamente que sus padres “al prohibir[le] llegar hasta [estos] lugares, le dijeron mil veces que el espíritu [...] tiene los ojos de ese color” (Bécquer y Durán 82).  En ese momento, Fernando empieza a expresar un amor profundo por la mujer, un deseo a ver los ojos otra vez.   Y, a pesar de los advertencias de Iñigo, insiste en ver los ojos una vez más, para que “Cúmplase la voluntad del cielo,” (Bécquer y Durán 83).

Cuando llegaba, vio de los ojos tan misteriosos, y explicó al espíritu que le amó y que quería que el sentimiento fuera mutual.  Sigue ella, “No soy una mujer como las que existen en la tierra; soy una mujer digna de ti, que eres superior a los demás hombres [quien creían en] las supersticiones del vulgo,” (Bécquer y Durán 85).  Con esta declaración el cuento tiene elementos de una leyenda: Fernando, que representa el valor de valencia, parece a punto de recibir el amor de una mujer mágica, con “todo el esplendor de diez mujeres mortales” (Bécquer y Durán 86).  Si ocurre el final famosa “y vivieron felices y comieron perdices,” o una variación de ella, definitivamente, “Los Ojos Verdes,” sería una leyenda.  Ella aun dice que “[le] daré una felicidad sin nombre.”  Pero, cuando besan, ella y el, el protagonista “sintió unos brazos delgados, y una sensación fría en sus labios ardorosos, un beso de nieve…, y vaciló…, y perdió pie, y cayó al agua con un rumor sordo y lúgubre,” (Bécquer y Durán 86)[1].

El mensaje, o moraleja, de la termina del cuento es incomprensible.  Ciertamente no es una representación del valor de valencia, sino un aviso en contra a ese valor.  También, si queríamos a describir la moraleja como un aviso en contra de la valencia, ¿donde es la leyenda? ¿En el cuento de Iñigo, el montero cobarde?  Evidentemente, no hay una manera en que podemos expresar la termina del cuento en cuanta a la definición de la leyenda.

Ni Iñigo, ni Fernando tenían sus propios poderes fantásticos, como en la descripción de una leyenda.  Y, la conclusión no refuerce un valor o concepto valuado por la cultura en que ocurre (teóricamente) eses eventos.  No es posible que una combinación de su poder y fenómenos físicos resulten en la promulgación de un tipo de carácter (valor por Zorro, determinación por Jones), o una moraleja.  Y por todos de eses razones: por la falta de un personaje famoso y reconocible con poder fantástica, un escenario no centra; en la manera usual de las leyendas, y por la falta de una conclusión que sostiene una moraleja, no es posible a describir “Los Ojos Verdes” como una leyenda arquetípica.

Si no es una leyenda, propongo que “Los Ojos Verde” debe de clasificarse como el género de ciencia ficción.  La ciencia ficción empieza como un género reconocido con la invención de la palabra centauro ‘scientifiction,’ en inglés, en algunos periódicos durante los años 1920 en los EE. UU., (Science Fiction).  La ciencia ficción que se ocupa con explicando las ramificaciones de las ciencias (que se presentan en cualquiera manera; realística o fantástico) en sociedad e individuos (Science Fiction).  Esto puede incluir invenciones, como en “20,00 Leguas Bajo del Mar,” o “La Máquina del Tiempo,” o puede ser un retrato de la vida diaria de extraterrestres inteligentes.  De todas maneras, el proyecto central de la ciencia ficción es examinar el ser sensible en un contexto nuevo, sea en cuerpos con tentáculos en el planeta Plutón, o en un vehículo nuevo, explorando terreno virginal.

Antes de decir como “Los Ojos Verdes” resembla la definición de ciencia ficción, me dirijo al criticismo más profundo de esta redefinición.  Según la definición que obras de ciencia ficción son separadas de ficción literario en el degrado en que ‘la plausibilidad es basado en las ciencias y no el sobrenatural,’ (Science Fiction).  Inmediatamente, hay una problema con la redefinición del cuento, porque el espíritu, ciertamente, no es un elemento científica, aun por un dejado voleando una imaginación.

Hay dos respuestas a ese criticismo.  Primero, aunque el espíritu no es una cosa científica (en el sentido que el cuento no así lo representa), ese detalle esta abrumado por la realidad de un proyecto similar.  Aunque el elemento fantástico o nuevo no es científico, el proyecto de examinar seres sensibles en nuevas condiciones todavía existe.  Y, de esta manera “Los Ojos Verdes” tiene más en común con ciencia ficción que la leyenda (motivo, proyecto), a pesar de esa diferencia insignificante en el sobrenatural.  En otras palabras, si he establecido que, primero, la leyenda tiene una fórmula estructural que consiste en un personaje fantástico que se usa para representar los valores de una cultura o sociedad, y segundo, que no es razonable considerar “Los Ojos Verdes” como un ejemplo de ese molde, pues hay espacio para presentar otra interpretación.  Y, si he establecido que el proyecto central de ciencia ficción es la representación del función de una inteligencia en un nuevo connotación de un mundo futuro, un cuerpo alíen, o simplemente con tecnología tan avanzada para cambiar la vida intrínsecamente, y si “Los Ojos Verdes” es un intento de hacer la misma cosa, el tiene más en común con el proyecto de ciencia ficción que la leyenda, y por eso, el problema de la sobrenatural en contra de las ciencias se minimiza.

“Los Ojos Verdes” no se representa como un proyecto del cuento para presentar el impacto de una nueva factor contextual en la vida de Iñigo o Fernando.  El texto contesta: al punto en que Fernando estaba explicando a Iñigo la primera vez en que él había visto el espíritu de la fuente, él usó lenguaje que explora la vida interna en la situación; de cómo reacciona su ‘alma’ a esa nueva presencia.  Por ejemplo, Fernando experimenta la sensación de ser en la presencia de otra ser inteligente, y posible de comunicación con ‘la fuerza’ de la fuente: “en el lago caen con un rumor indescriptible[:] Lamentos, palabras, nombres, cantares, yo no sé lo que he oído[. Y los aguas saliendo de la fuente] saltan, y huyen, y corren, unas veces con risas; otras, con suspiros,” (Bécquer y Durán 81)[2].  Además, el dice específicamente que “parece que nos hablan los invisibles espíritus de la naturaleza, que reconocen un hermano en el inmortal espíritu del hombre,” (Bécquer y Durán 81-82)

Se puede interpretar esa personificación de dos maneras: Primero, como hemos dicho, es una explanación de cómo Fernando experimenta la fuente y su poder, que podría decir es un ‘nuevo mundo’ de espíritus y duendes, y en ese caso, la obra Bécquer es como ciencia ficción, y la respuesta a la pregunta es si; Segundo, aunque es claro que “Los Ojos Verdes” es una obra sobre la vida de Fernando y Iñigo, también se puede interpretan como de una inteligencia puesto en un cuerpo inhumano.  La primera interpretación es suficiente a responder afirmativamente a la pregunta, pero creo que hay algo extra en la explicación de la segunda.

Lo que es interesante de la personificación de la fuente, aparte de si funciona en hacer una nueva estructura para Fernando, es que resembla el uso de alienes inteligentes en las obras ciencia ficción.  En poner una inteligencia humana en una forma inhumana, Bécquer alcanza buen punto en la Tierra lo que otros autores llevan al cielo.  En cuanto a la segunda respuesta al criticismo puesto antes, que sin algo científico, la obra no puede ser ciencia ficción.  Aparte de la falta de una explanación científica de la existencia del duende de la fuente, la obra tiene su propia alíen sensible, que le acerca el proyecto de la obra bastante al proyecto ciencia ficción.  Y, sostendría que hay muchas obras de ‘ciencia ficción’ que se trata de la existencia de alienes que faltan completamente una explanación científica de cómo llegar a existir.  También, es un hecho relevante que la inteligencia alíen en Bécquer es una mujer con poder fantástica, porque eso es un cambio total por su etapa literaria y histórica.

He dicho que si las obras de Bécquer son interpretado como ciencia ficción, y no leyenda, transformará entre algo solo divertido hasta algo con un sentido especifico.  Aunque esa parte es especulativa en carácter, es sola otra razón para interpretar Bécquer como un autor de ciencia ficción.  Como hemos visto, la interpretación de leyenda esta defecto en un nivel básico de los principios de poderes fantásticos, de personajes conocidos, y de una moraleja.  También, hemos visto que, como mínimo “Los Ojos Verdes,” usa algunos tropos de las obras de ciencia ficción.  Pero, he reservado una discusión de cómo transforma el sentido del cuento hasta este punto.  Con una interpretación de la obra tras gafas de “leyenda,” el sentido del cuento está enterrado: ¿es que debemos tener ganas de conocer el mundo hasta el punto en que descubrimos algo que nos consume?  O, ¿es Fernando un héroe trágico que representa un mal ejemplo, y la moraleja sea evita lugares embrujados?  Claramente, estos son interpretaciones irracionales, y no tienen relación con el texto, específicamente.

Con una interpretación del cuento como una obra de ciencia ficción, un mensaje simple surge.  Como ciencia ficción, la obra debe explorar la funciona de nuevas condiciones de sociedad en la vida humana, y creo que es posible definir la ‘nueva condicion’ en “Los Ojos Verdes”: En el cuento, y en contra de las condiciones sociales en el tiempo en que lo fue escrito, la mujer tenía el poder.  Todavía, el hombre y la mujer se acercan por atracción física, pero en eso ‘futuro,’ es la mujer que tenía la capacidad de capturar, controlar, destruir al hombre.  La parte sobrenatural es sólo una estratagema para llegar a ese punto de una cambia de estructura social, y en esa manera la obre tiene mucho en común con las obras ciencia ficción que usan las ciencias para hacer la misma cosa.

Referencias

“Bécquer, Gustavo Adolfo.” Funk & Wagnall’s New World Encyclopedia. 2002.

Bécquer, Gustavo Adolfo y Abraham Madroñal Durán. Rimas y Leyendas. Madrid: Punto De Lectura, 2001.

“Legend.” Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of Liturature. 1995.

Rosado, Miguel Pérez. “The History of the Spanish Liturature.” Spanish Arts. 3 March 2008 <http://www.spanisharts.com/books/masters/becquer.htm>.

“Science Fiction.” Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of Liturature. 1995.

Tangherlini, Timothy. “‘It Happened Not Too Far From Here…’ A Survey of Legend Theory and Characterization.” Western Folklore 49.4 (1990): 371-390.

[2] Énfasis sumado

From: Eric

Date: Dec 14 2006 4:14 PM

Hot Hot Heat sucks.

I dont know what the loveline staff is trying to do, but I just read a blog by DAG (for the lay-me person, that is David Alan Grier) explaining that for some unmentionable reason he will not be on the program “Loveline” any longer.

Now, I think the reason is obvious. Not one drop, one game, one tradition of loveline has survived into your reign. Furthermore, you compound my loss with your inane “Hey Drew, do you want to have a Jizz shooting contest” crap (Yes, you did ask him that… don’t play dumb). I think the reason DAG can’t be on the show any longer is because you want to make the show new and hip. Well, your terrible kiss-ass talk with every guest and your again INANE fixation with everything sexual is anything but hip. How about you go ask Drew a few more thousand times about altoids or maybe even “Head Candy?”

I don’t know who the target audience is supposed to be now, but I know it isn’t me. You don’t suck. You aren’t a bad person. You are simply turning the show in a direction that is hurting it. Drew mentioned something in an interview recently about how the show is much more caller oriented now: I disagree. First off, the screeners only let through “How should I get my girlfriend to have Anal sex” and “I got raped” calls now, and second off you have ZERO rapport with anything but the most base of callers.

Not that you will take my suggestions, but, I suggest that you calm down a little, grow a little cynicism, stop being overzealous with the ‘isn’t that funny’ dirty talk-crap-schtick, and, revoke DAVEY-G’s Suspension. He is the only guest that could even remotely keep each and every show you are on from coming to a screaching hault every time someone says boobs (by the way, its boobs with OOOs, not UUUs [or umlaut Os]… It isn’t BUUBS like you like to say it). Furthermore, he is just about the only thing that could make you entertaining. That, and perhaps the cast of MST3K.

Good luck Strike-Out,

Eric

———————————————————————————
The only reply i have for your ridiculous rant is ..do u think I have any say over who can or especially cannot be on the show?..that is insane and moronic.

i have only been here 7 months…of everything u wrote..that is the only thing that makes me mad. if u think I have that power?? crazy! , …not even close.

Also..dont listento loveline!!! . stay away. Allthough it seems like u do indeed listen just to find things you detest about me and the show. i very much appreciate that.

have a great day.

strike on.

dont write back.

you are a great guy.

———————————————————————————
You do have say because you can tell the people who are telling you what to do to stop it.

———————————————————————————
Not only that, but you are responsible now for the show. I think its great that you got the job, I never said in my argument that I think you shouldn’t have it. Instead, I want you to focus focus focus on content and avoid the tendency to talk about dirty things just because its naughty. Also, I see one change in the show and I see another. I know it is a fallacy (post hoc ergo propter hoc, to name it) to think that one caused the other without justification, however I don’t think my assumption is far off base. If it is really the case that you are powerless to change the show, then you should be very afraid as the co-host of a nationally syndicated program. On that note, is it really that bright to tell me to not listen to the show? I don’t hate you stryker, I just dont like the direction of the show, and I see you as solely responsible for that direction (Dr. Drew aside for the sake of argument, and because he doesn’t have a myspace… I would say the same to him). I am expressing that to you in terms I know you will emotionally respond to, but I think they are the best terms possible. Please, don’t alienate your veteran population (I have listened to over 7 years of the show, and listen to your segments regularly).

By the way, I really liked the ‘strike on’ part. Very clever. And, I am sorry for calling your banter inane. I certainly don’t think that I could fill two hours with talk, although this letter might beg to differ. Anyway, if you read this, then good luck. Please, don’t tell me not to listen to the show, or I might take your advice.

Sincerely–A dedicated fan,

Eric

P.S. Now I am highly interested in knowing what you have to say in response. Don’t take the high-road and refuse to justify my desires.

Before any critique, however, there must be support. MacKinnon describes, rather efficiently, her critique of the legal system and pornography in her article “Francis Biddle’s Sister: Pornography, Civil Rights, and Speech,” when she says “[the law and pornographers] having power means, among other things that when [they say,] ‘This is how it is,’ it is taken as being that way,” (164). She means, of course, that pornography “constructs the social reality of gender… [and that] the subordination in gender inequality is made invisible,” (ibid. 166). Thus, she seems to accept a view of the norms of society that is pragmatic in its evaluation: she sees the same lumps (that which gender names) under texts that may or may not be the right ones, and that, given their place of fabrication (pornography, law, tradition, etc), may not be adequate for the individuals which those ‘texts’ describe. Even Andrea Dworkin seems careful in her criticism of the accepted social norms to avoid essentialism: “…A first step in the process of liberation (women from their oppression, men from the unfreedom of their fetishism) is the radical redefining of the relationship between women and their bodies,” (Gynocide 116). ‘Radical redefining’ seems to be dead on proof that Dworkin is not attempting to prove the essential nature of the product of the redefinition. That is to say, it would seem that Dworkin and MacKinnon make room for the idea that their redefinition is just that, a redefinition and not an instance of pointing out the ‘emperor’s new clothes’ only to ‘see clearly’ that he is naked. However, regarding the piece of legislation that MacKinnon and Dworkin both worked on, things become slightly dicey. One must interpret exactly what the intention of a statement like: (Pornography and Civil Rights 4th paragraph Definition Chapter):

Under the Ordinance, pornography is what pornography does. What it does is subordinate women, usually, through sexually explicit pictures and words. Of all pictures and words, only sexually explicit pictures and words enter into sexual experience to become part of sexual reality on the deep and formative level where rapes are subliminally fantasized, planned, and executed; where violence is made into a form of sex; where women are reduced to subhuman dimension to the point where they cannot be perceived as fully human. But not all sexually explicit pictures and words do this in the same way. For this reason, the Ordinance restricts it’s [sic] definition only to those sexually explicit pictures and words that actually can be proven to subordinate women in their making or use.

Do Dworkin and MacKinnon mean by “pornography is what pornography does,” that they are able to inductively receive exactly what it is that pornography does? Do their anecdotal case-studies (Lovelace et al.) that they presented in front of the Minneapolis Courts prove, as they say (“restricts its definition to only those sexually explicit… that… can be proven…” above), that there are forms of pornography that they can identify that are verifiably detrimental and that, therefore, should absolutely be abolished, without question? When they say “what it does [pornography] subordinate women,” are they simply giving a voice to women who feel that way, as the pragmatic position that they espouse would have (‘redefinition’ being the key term), or, are they attempting to unveil the true nature of pornography? And what can one possibly make of the statement that “the Ordinance restricts its definition only to those sexually explicit pictures and words that actually can be proven to subordinate women in their making or use?”

To the author, it seems, Dworkin and MacKinnon walk a crooked line—a line which, perhaps might be to wide-fairing to go between pragmatism and crypto-realism, or to stay fully planted upon the former—upon which they criticize, with one hand, the societal conception, or the texts, which the legal system combined with ideas of free-speech and the institutions of pornography have established to define the lumps of the world, and return, with the other hand, ideas of ‘must’ and ‘real’ and ‘is’ and ‘wrong’ and ‘proof’ in regards to those same lumps. For example, in Dirt/Death, Dworkin says “for sex not to mean dirt… the status of women would have to change radically…” and that “change requires a… redistribution of power,” it seems very clear that she is indicating something like a pragmatic view insofar as she talks about how the definition of certain things relies on certain modes of operation within society; namely, the powerful and how they construct society. And yet, again, in defense of ‘the Ordinance,’ as she so clinically refers to it, Andrea Dworkin writes “Dehumanization is real. It happens in real life… Being turned into an object is a real event; and the pornographic object… is a target,” and, even more on-the-nose, “I am describing a process of dehumanization, a concrete means of changing someone into something,” (Pornography Happens to Women 2-3 paragraphs P. 1). It seems very much like unveiling past falsehoods, more so than redefining lumps, when Dworkin says “An argument can be made that men have to hurt us, diminish us, in order to be able to have sex with us,” for, how is it possible that the argument can be made that anything has to be anyway if it is true that the texts associated with lumps are there for the majority through the mitigation societal power-pressure (ibid 3rd full paragraph P. 3). Furthermore, and again, very on-the-nose, is the proclamation that “When one thinks about women’s ordinary lives… it is very hard not to think that one is looking at atrocity—if one’s eyes are open… the hurt is not exceptional; rather, it is systematic and IT IS REAL,” (ibid. 3rd para. P. 4). This last statement seems very much against a tendency towards denying realist approaches to argumentation, and gives merit to the author’s project to further investigate the consequences of realism being intermingled in pragmatism, and, furthermore, the possibility of other groups expressing what they would call real oppression that they feel from bills like ‘the Ordinance.’ However, before such an investigation can proceed, a repetition of what exactly is being contended is in order: MacKinnon and Dworkin, per the author’s reading, promote the view that pornography is the embodiment of “all the unspeakable abuse,” of women in pornography: “the rape, the battery, the sexual harassment, the prostitution, and the sexual abuse of children….Only in the pornography, it is called something else: sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, and sex….” (Francis Biddle’s Sister 171), and through such a belief the deconstruct sexual relations by showing their construction, and also that MacKinnon and Dworkin, again, per the author, use statements like “pornography has the weight and significance of any other historically real torture,” to indicate that they are, in fact, unveiling the truth that has been covered by previous social rediscription. One final statement of import to acknowledge, before beginning to analyze the authors position, would be the contention, in Pornography and Civil Rights, that “clouded by specious media reports and outright lies has been the direct evidence of a causal relationship between the consumption of pornography and increases in social levels of violence,” which all but spells out the fact that Dworkin/MacKinnon are presenting a view of pornography that relies on perfect induction from observation, and that is centrically focused on unveiling as opposed to rediscription (final full para., P. 1). That is to say, the author’s interpretation of the preceding quotation is that Dworkin and MacKinnon find ‘direct evidence’ of some ‘fact’ that is covered by the ‘social reality’ created by pornography and law. Excluding debate on the factual nature of the claim being made qua the sentence at whole, it is important to realize that calling something a ‘causal’ chain has the direct connotation of deriving fact from reality, something which should be impossible for one who has previously sided with pragmatism (especially when that yolking is part of the force that gives merit to the critique part of one’s argument)

To analyze such a contention (namely, that MacKinnon/Dworkin walk two sides of a one-sided line,) the author will focus on three key topics: A) that Dworkin/MacKinnon attempt to speak for women who have been ‘silenced,’ but, that their terms do not work for defining all women nor all women who have been silenced, B) that, insofar as A is true, it is fair to say that MacKinnon/Dworkin, in fact, do represent an ‘intermingling of realism and pragmatism,’ C) that the authors own criticism is not so limiting as to allow any forward movement in the pragmatic-feminist project, at all, thus defending the position that the criticism establishes fair basis for calling the Dworkin/MacKinnon position partial-realism. Having therefore established (through A) room for women to disagree with MacKinnon/Dworkin, and having reaffirmed that some authors view MacKinnon/Dworkin as creating a structure that is, in part, pragmatic, and, in other parts, realist, the author will establish as well a construction of pragmatic feminism that would fit the criterion with which the author criticizes current attempts, and, will conclude by arguing that a failure to fall within the criterion (given that it will be established to the best of the authors ability that the criterion is fair and that Dworkin/MacKinnon specifically fall outside of the realm of acceptable societal critiques from the view of the criterion established) results in the need for a closer examination of what, exactly, the female ‘voice’ is, and how, exactly, one might best liberate such a voice.

First, then, is the construction of an argument that defines Dworkin/MacKinnon’s terms for pornography as inadequate for the feelings some women have regarding such institutions. This will be a two part construction: first, the establishment of the charge that Dworkin/MacKinnon do, in fact, explain themselves as establishing what the author reads as a universal voice for women; Second, the establishment of the charge that there are some women who feel that the voice that Dworkin/MacKinnon establish is not there own, and that, in fact, the limited view of pornography which those two promote does not do justice to their reality (the women who disagree). So, is it a fair allegation that Dworkin and MacKinnon are arguing their ‘Ordinance,’ and, in general, their denial of pornography is construed, in their own works, as something that promotes the wellbeing of women in general, as opposed to solely women who agree with their redefining? In the description of the findings of the hearings that took place over the proposed ‘Ordinance,’ Dworkin/MacKinnon surely seem to be saying exactly what the author proposes they are saying: namely, that all women who experience pornography agree with them. For example, they write “in the hearings, women… spoke in public for the first time in the history of the world about the devastating impact that pornography has had on their lives,” and “the Ordinance… was written in the speech of what has been their silence,” (Pornography and Civil Rights 3rd and last para. Findings Chapter). It seems very clear from this that the discussion that took place that day, according to Dworkin/MacKinnon was, definitively, the exposition of feelings that have long been ignored. This may be true, but the question is ‘Whose feelings?’ MacKinnon/Dworkin seem to be saying in “the ordinance was written… in the blood and tears of these women… in the language of their violated childhoods and stolen possibilities,” that their description of pornography is definitively the voice of all women concerned with it. Further proof of the author’s interpretation comes through in the fact that not one of the parties mentioned as attending the hearing had anything positive to say about pornography. Further still is the quote, earlier presented, now repeated, in which Dworkin argues that “When one thinks about women’s ordinary lives… it is very hard not to think that one is looking at atrocity—if one’s eyes are open,” evidence of Dworkin/MacKinnon’s idea that they are dealing with a factual reality, and that, therefore, a refutation of Pornography, in fact, empowers all women (Pornography Happens to Women 3rd para. P. 4). Unveiling, and not adequate rediscription, then becomes the modality in which Dworkin and MacKinnon are operating. To give meat to the argument presented, perhaps it would be sufficient to note the plethora of available dissenters to the voice that Dworkin and MacKinnon raise qua the communal voice of women. Take, for example, Patricia Peterson, who, in an address to Brisbane I.C., described exactly what result she thought the ‘communal voice of woman’ being implemented as policy would have:

Making it more difficult for adults to access pornographic material is potentially hazardous for all women and children… When pornography was made freely available in Denmark in the late 60s… sexual violence towards women… droped markedly[:] This resulted in sex crimes in Denmakr which had been stable from 1958 to 1966 decreasing by 25 percent in 1967, 13 percent in 1968 and 30.5 percent in 1969. (28 May, 1999)

Clearly, Peterson does not agree with the idea that pornography is “very hard not to think [of as an] atrocity—if one’s eyes are open,” (Pornography Happens to Women 3rd para. P. 4). Clearly, Peterson does not think that her eyes are closed, and does think that illegalizing pornography would have, in fact, a negative effect. Insofar as this is the case, Peterson represents one example of a dissenter to Dworkin/MacKinnon’s view of the communal voice. Furthermore, insofar as she is an example, then she provides grounds for returning discussion to the ‘redefinition of truth’ as opposed to the ‘unveiling of masked truths’ (made so by society).

Another example of a woman who disagrees with MacKinnon/Dworkin’s conceptualization of pornography would be Pat Califia, a transsexual identified-male, who is quoted as saying “The things that seem beautiful, inspiring and life-affirming to me seem ugly, hateful and ludicrous to most other people… This may be the most painful part of being a sadomasochist: this experience of radical difference, separation at the root of perception,” (Radical Transformation). Quite clearly, Califia is laying out the groundwork for an attack of a denial of pornography on the grounds that it is degrading to some, or, as Dworkin/MacKinnon seem to believe (established above, and therefore assumed presently), degrading to all. Califia wrote a series of sadomasochistic short stories, entitled ‘Macho Sluts,’ in which he describes all sorts of behavior which would be preempted by the Ordinance for being the eroticizing of abuse. For example, “No Mercy,” another anthology of his “deals with barebacking—when people who are HIV-positive engage in unprotected sex, sometimes with the explicit intention of infecting the other person,” (ibid.). Clearly, this would not be allowed under the criterion which Dworkin/MacKinnon laid out for separating acceptable Erotica from pornography. The intention of removing such pornography from the shelves was clearly to empower women, and yet, Dworkin/MacKinnon’s legislation would clearly rip power away from at least two women (anecdotally). But, these women are simply not the only women affected by the ‘Ordinance’ in less than empowering ways. Robert Cavalier describes two women who felt the following ways: “Betty Friedan… voiced… concern over the anti-porn feminist movement: ‘I want to express my view, on behalf of a great many women in this country, feminists and believers in human rights, that this current move to introduce censorship in the United States under the guise of suppressing pornography is extremely dangerous to women,’” and “Sallie Tisdale struggled with the politicalization of [her] sexual desires: ‘I was… simply ashamed of my own unasked-for appetites and shockingly incorrect fantasies, which would not be still, and which seemed to violate the hygienic dogma of sexual equality,” (Feminism and Pornography: A Dialogical Perspective 2). The first of these women takes simple issue with the idea of censorship of anything, thus denying the ‘common voice’ which it has been established that Dworkin/MacKinnon are attempting to invoke in order to prove their efforts to be redefinition as opposed to unveiling. The second, however, takes the cake for best example possible of the repercussions of solidifying the definition of womanhood and what is healthy: namely, that, in doing so, the repression and removal-of-agenthood that Dworkin and MacKinnon so adamantly fight against are, again, placed on other women who have desires outside of what MacKinnon and Dworkin call acceptable ‘erotica.’ In fact, not only do some women imagine consequences of legislation like the ‘Ordinance’ as being counterproductive to their liberation, but, it is a substantive fact that sometimes such ordinances are used to stifle the liberties of groups that are silenced, and thus, that the Ordinance is counterproductive to its own aim of rediscription for the betterment of people without voices. For example, Cavalier quotes Califia as saying:

The [Canadian Supreme Court decision referred to as] the Butler decision [(which established, per Cavalier’s quotation of it, an imperative to not ‘ignore the threat to equality resulting from exposure to audiences of certain types of violent and degrading materials’)] has had almost no visible impact on the straight-porn industry… [In fact,] the first obscenity case under Butler was a prosecution of Glad Day Bookstore, a gay business… for selling lesbian S/M magazines… (ibid. 3)

Califia, in fact, has had several run-ins with MacKinnon herself, and has quoted her as saying “of opponents to her bill who call themselves feminists… ‘Someone should explain to me how one can be a feminist and be pro-pornography… they’re mutually exclusive,” (ibid 3). All of these examples amount to one thing: that what Dworkin and MacKinnon propose as a solution for all women, and as a way for women’s voices to be heard, may, in fact, limit the lateral freedom that some women choose to use in expressions of creativity that are, in fact, stifled by the Ordinance, and other movements like it. Furthermore, if Dworkin and MacKinnon argue that the women who disagree with them are simply misguided by society, or that they are expressing a view that is wrought with ‘mutual exclusivity’ of two or more parts of the belief, then they are covertly espousing the belief that their movement is ‘unveiling’ reality, and not, in fact, redescribing society so as to better the class of people that they want to better. This evaluation of the situation is fair, insofar as it would seem that any dissent (against the Ordinance) is met with abject rejection, while all support is seen as being clear to anyone with “open eyes.” Such a position certainly supposes correct and incorrect interpretations of experiences and, as much as Dworkin/MacKinnon argue about correct and incorrect interpretations of experiences, they are clearly within an essentialist/realist modality of thought.

Califia’s description of MacKinnon’s position regarding pro-pornography feminists is alarming evidence to the contrary of a pragmatic view of reality imbedded in Dworkin/MacKinnon’s work (specifically, the Ordinance). Rorty speaks to the inadequacy of a construction of feminism that requires the mixing of pragmatism and realism: “Different batches of both genes and memes are carried by different human social groups… but no gene ore meme is closer to the purpose of evolution or to the nature of humanity than any other—for evolution has no purpose and humanity no nature,” (Feminism and Pragmatism 9). Thus, at the center of adopting any program of action is a choice (made or forced, either way) between competing memes and genes. But, it is the author’s contention that MacKinnon and Dworkin do not, in fact, fall in line with the pragmatic claim that no meme is closer to the purpose of humanity than any other. Rorty says that it is “unfortunate” that often, “MacKinnon… defines feminism as the belief ‘that women are human beings in truth but not in social reality,’” (ibid 10). Rorty is concerned because, if what MacKinnon means by her statement is that in some “ahistorical empyrean,” of ethics, the human-status of women can be derived, then she must also be careful to “not criticize [the societal view of woman qua partial-humans] as a result of ideology or prejudice, where these are tacitly contrasted with [one’s] own employment of a truth-tracking faculty called “reason” or a neutral method called “disinterested observation,” (ibid. 22). The author charges that Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin are doing exactly what Rorty warns them not to do. This comes down to the interpretation of statements from Dworkin that imply that one need only open one’s eyes to see things the way she does. So too, can one see what Rorty describes as the fallacious attempt to “criticize [pornography] as ‘unjust’ if ‘unjust’ is supposed to mean more than ‘sometimes incoherent even on its own terms,’” insofar as Dworkin and MacKinnon work very hard to produce an image of pornography as an institution of social inequity that tips the scales largely towards men and denies any self-description for women.

Having established the authors position regarding whether or not Dworkin and MacKinnon fit their arguments wholly into pragmatic territory, it is important to ask a final question before reflecting on the arguments produced above: Does a criterion that denies ‘redescription’ in Dworkin and MacKinnon due to their inability to speak for all women leave any room for pragmatic feminism? The answer is yes; yes for two very easy to swallow reasons. First, the author would willingly retract his arguments and allow for the consideration of Dworkin and MacKinnon as pragmatic feminists were it not for the real-world harm that legislations like the Ordinance and the pathologization of ‘sadomasochism’ have led to. If it were true that Dworkin and MacKinnon’s position was their best attempt to create a voice for all women, then it would be fair to consider their position as a redescription under pragmatic guidelines. However, as it stands now, with Dworkin and MacKinnon seemingly espousing arguments that lead back to the real nature of the issues they address and the constructed nature of the positions regarding those issues that their opponents take, the guise of ‘speaking for all women’ that is the sheep’s clothing for the wolf that is their theory, in fact, is not a true attempt at redescription under pragmatic guidelines. Instead, it is clearly an attempt to ‘unveil,’ to undress society, and to show it naked and bare for what it really is. And, as Dworkin and MacKinnon say in their legislation, the author defines an acceptable redefinition as anything but what has been described above (by described above, it is meant that acceptable definitions would have to be more fully removed from covert forms of essentialism). Secondly, the author thinks that the presence of real-world harms caused by Dworkinian/MacKinnonian reviews of pornography, in fact, give ground for a secondary criticism of their (D/M) seemingly ‘pragmatic’ approach. One of the faults of any pragmatic theory that is taken literally, or that is used to ‘organize’ and form a solid base of believers is that the theory itself may, in fact, deny others of the same ability to redefine themselves. And, insofar as Dworkin and MacKinnon have/attempt to do something like the repression of other’s redescriptions (Califia, et al. in the previous portion of the work), they are not being fair to the groundwork of society that has allowed them to promote their own position. That is to say, pragmatism works something like an omni-directional teeter-totter. The only way all views can remain ‘in the air’ (or, under consideration) is for all of the views to allow equally for the upshots of each other, making sure not to push-off to hard, and sink their oppositional partner. And, when MacKinnon and Dworkin specifically start limiting the ability of some to describe themselves, they are specifically ignoring the balanced teeter that brought them to their position where they now totter. They are pushing to hard upwards and, in effect, sinking people which they hardly even begin to concern in their own work. Thus, the author feels certain that there is plenty of room for pragmatic feminist ideologies outside of the two simple concerns raised presently. Therefore, any refutations of the criterion established for denying the pragmatism of MacKinnon and Dworkin must be (repeat, must be) directed towards the author’s interpretation of the message behind the words in MacKinnon and Dworkin. The author proposes that, given the nature of the essay (short, undergraduate) and, given the prevalence of citations of authors agreeing with the author’s interpretation, such a refutation would be academic at best. Rorty himself expresses concern with some of the wording in MacKinnon’s body of work, and the author is simply continuing that view and analyzing other statements that resemble closely what Rorty warns against.

To restate the author’s position would be opportune at this moment. The author agrees with part of the critique of some feminist philosophy Rorty produces in his “Feminism and Pragmatism,” however, the author also disagrees with Rorty’s conclusion that MacKinnon’s words are not, at best, ambiguous, and attempts to also show that, in fact, given a wide variety of statements, MacKinnon and Dworkin’s words show covert realism. Similarly, while the author agrees with part of MacKinnon/Dworkin’s construction, namely that pornography socializes roles, he also disagrees with the attempt to establish a universal sentiment for the expression of womanhood under the guise of ‘women’s silenced voices.’ For the purposes of focus and clarity, the author has omitted any discussion of Mill’s arguments regarding the possibility of a free agent acting autonomously in its denial of its own autonomy. Clearly, such a debate would have a place in regards to certain cases cited above (Califia, etc), and whether or not they are demonstrably cases of autonomy squelched by Dworkin/MacKinnon or autonomy that never existed at all: however, this is not the purpose of the essay at hand. Furthermore, it is the author’s intention to have left all parties involved in the constructed debate “to their own devices,” as it were. The author has attempted to be fair to all parties by giving many examples of each position, and by citing from varied sources (which have various investments): he hopes that his project of fairness was realized. In review of all of the material discussed, the author repeats his call for a re-evaluation of the role of dissenting voices in the condemnation of pornography, and for the possibility of an anti-pornography standpoint to lead to the stifling of discussion under a covert-realism disguised in the misrepresentation of cases to the contrary in the works of Dworkin and MacKinnon. Insofar as those re-evaluations have merit, so to must the author think that re-evaluation might lead to the betterment (and not the abject dismissal) of what the author has called a moral imperative to act properly towards women that is, unfortunately, supported in a way that is not conducive to its (the imperative’s) final aim: that aim being the liberation of all women.

Works Cited:

Cavalier, Robert. “Feminism and Pornography: A Dialogical Perspective.”

Carnegie Mellon University Philosophy Department. 28 Nov. 2006.

Cusac, Anne-Marie. “Profiles of a Sex Radical: Lesbian, Sadomasochist Author Pat Califia,” The Progressive.

Oct. 1996. 27 Nov. 2006.

Dworkin, Andrea. Intercourse. Basic Books: 2006. pp. 169-193 (Dirt/Death)

-Woman Hating. Plume: 1991. pp. 95-117 (Gynocide: Chinese Footbinding)

-“Pornography Happens to Women.” U.C. Law School, Chicago. 6 Mar. 2006

Dworkin, Andrea., MacKinnon, Catharine. Pornography and Civil Rights. Minneapolis:

Organization Against Pornography, 1988. 27 Nov. 2006

-The preceding entry includes i) A transcript of the Ordinance; ii) A description of Pornography as a civil rights violation; iii) The ‘Findings’ of the hearing in Minneapolis.

MacKinnon, Catharine. “Francis Biddle’s Sister: Pornography, Civil Rights, and Speech.”

Havard Law School, Cambridge: 5 Apr. 1984.

Marech, Rona. “Radical Transformation Writer Patrick Califia-Rice has long explored the fringes. Now the former

lesbian S/M activist is exploring life as a man,” San Francisco Chronicle. 27 Oct. 2000. 27 Nov. 2006.

Rorty, Richard. “Feminism and Pragmatism.” The Tanner Lectures on Human Values.

Utilizing the pragmatic viewpoint which James generates produces a philosophy of the world which will never refer to essentialist notions for completion.  Pragmatism is completely contained in experience, and completely disconnected from any extra-experiential realities. An anti-essentialist understanding of existence requires that reality is vague insofar as it does not present itself in an essential way, nor can it be allowed that reflection provides an essential connection to absolute truths.  Pragmatism, then, is a middle ground of vague-intentions and contingent-idiosyncratic languages which do not relate to absolute truths on either side of the spectrum.

William James presents, in The Principles of Psychology, an example which (presumably) shows this middle ground quite effectively (James, W.  The Principles of Psychology. Dover 1950. P.267-69).  Mr. Ballard, James’s example and basis for his argument, is a deaf-mute who was language-less for his childhood and who gained language later in life.  As James presents the story, Mr. Ballard, having acquired language, was able to recount some of his pre-linguistic experiences.  These experiences included complex notions such as understanding the difference between animate and inanimate, questioning his brother (in a rudimentary sign-language) as to the origins of thunder and understanding his brother’s response of ‘lightning’ (in sign as well), and (most importantly) positing the origins of Man and understanding the life cycle of birth-growth-death.

Mr. Ballard’s pre-linguistic positing of the origins of Man came in the form of his questioning whether a “first man” had come from a tree-stump which he, at the time of the memory, was examining.  This example, in James’s understanding, would seem to show an essential truth-giving language is not necessary in order to comprehend the world.  Therefore, through this example, James has shown exactly the sort of vagueness which Pragmatism would require: or has he?

In Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein proposes two objections to James’s interpretation of Mr. Ballard’s experience (Wittgenstein, L. Philosophical Investigations: Third Edition. Pretence Hall 1999. Aphorisms 342-9, herein P.I.).  First, Wittgenstein realizes that, though there are two ways to argumentatively refute another’s memory, neither can be shown to be correct in Mr. Ballard’s circumstance: One can say “You are not remembering that” (a rejection of the memory as not being remembered) or one can say “What you remember as X was, in actuality Y” (a substantive correction of the memory, replacing one element with another).  Wittgenstein says that one could refute Mr. Ballard’s ‘memory’ of the positing of the origins of Man either by saying “No, you aren’t remembering those thoughts,” or “No, it was the origins of trees that you were positing.”  The first of these objections is not admissible for Wittgenstein, in that a memory is what is produced by a rememberer in his remembering: there is no memory which should be produced, only that memory which is produced.  Secondly, Wittgenstein objects to a substantive reformation of the memory (‘it was the origin of trees’), in that it would require Mr. Ballard having a language which describes his situation, and then being corrected later for using the wrong words.  Having a given language in a pre-world-language state is exactly the sort of situation which James will not allow, and so neither correction seems applicable.

Given that so far it seems that it is impossible to refute Mr. Ballard’s memory, Wittgenstein presents two ideas: First, that in order to have any way of ‘translating’ (which is a form of correction) Mr. Ballard’s previous experiences into English, if would be necessary that the world is already divided in a way fitting of translation which requires a language given by the world (Hustwit, R.  “The Strange Case of Mr. Ballard.” Philosophical Investigations. Jan, 1994. 17:1)

A second objection that Wittgenstein raises out of his understanding of the necessity language for translation regards thinking-to-one’s-self.  According to Wittgenstein, Mr. Ballard would have to have had a language in order to talk to himself referentially.  Again, Wittgenstein’s objection to self-thought (and his objection to translation) centers on the dissection of the world: thinking to one’s self requires a pre-dissection of the world in which one’s-self is a dissected part.  Furthermore, according to pragmatic understanding, and according to James himself, the world does not provide a dissection of itself pre-linguistically; experience occurs ambiguously.  As Quine shows, the concept of “Rabbit” is an idiosyncratic dissection of the world, as much as a native’s word “Gavagai,” which could mean rabbit-stage, stuff-to-eat, or white-fluffy-patch-of-experience (Ontological Relativity. Columbia Press, New York.  1969. P. 30).  Therefore, Wittgenstein’s objection here is that James cannot have his cake and eat it too: thinking to one’s self is inexorably linked to cognizing a background, isolating objective bits, and using logical relations between objects and backgrounds and self to create sentences.

Therefore, Wittgenstein’s criticism of Mr. Ballard’s example in James’s text could be summarized as follows: “How did Mr. Ballard isolate parts of the world in a way compliant with English in his non-linguistic state?”  The problem the remainder of this essay will attempt to address is the presence of said cognition in Mr. Ballard in a pre-linguistic form that will be translatable into English.  We will address Wittgenstein’s concerns in three ways, all of which will revolve around a pragmatic paradigm which will focus on experience.  First, we will show that William James understands reality as producing some basic constraints on languages (i.e. the way one dissects/interprets the world) while still remaining vague as to a conclusive and definitive language.  Second, we can show that James does not, in fact, distinguish between a perception and a conception, thus eliminating a dichotomy in which Wittgenstein places the wedge of his argument (this has not been explicitly examined so far).  Finally, we will see that, if we understand consciousness as truly unbroken (vague, pre-dissected), we can understand the translation of Mr. Ballard’s previous experience much more easily than when trying to reduce his experience into parts.

The first way we shall address Wittgenstein’s argument pertains to the question of whether Mr. Ballard completely reformed his pre-linguistic experience in translation, and is therefore not in touch with “its” reality, or whether Mr. Ballard did do justice to his experience through having proleptically acquired an understanding of the world in order to process it at all, and was, therefore, not without language when he had his earliest experiences.  The question we are addressing is whether reality is given or manufactured: Whether one produces a complete reformation of experience in one’s language, or whether there are some basic perceptions which are directly caused by the world, and which give us the ability to substantively translate our experience into a language.

As Sarah E. Glenn effectively points out, James seems to take both views, stating first, in “Pragmatism and the Meaning of Truth,” that, “Truth is what I feel like saying,” and then, in “Science of the Modern World,” that one needs to account for “irreducible and stubborn facts,” (“William James’s Conception of Reality.” International Philosophical Quarterly. June, 03. 42:2, p210, herein W.J.C.R.).  These two oppositional statements directly indicate the point which Wittgenstein is attempting to address. First, that if reality is completely reformed by language, and not substantively similar to pre-formatted experience, Mr. Ballard should have no way of translating his non-formatted experience into one now formatted while still doing justice to the former; nor should he be able to form complex ideas such as those he claims to have had pre-linguistically.  Second, if there are “stubborn facts,” Mr. Ballard is not an example of someone without language who formulated his own view, in that the basic principles of language are present in this “stubborn” state; his observations would only be the recognition of the “stubborn” truth, not new productions of a non-linguistic intellect.

If we analyze the first point (regarding linguistic reformation), we can see an internal dilemma in Wittgenstein’s position.  The question “How was Mr. Ballard able to think about Humans in the way English describes them if language completely reforms experience?” requires that English dissects the world in a way which is not perceivable pre-’linguistic-reformation.’ Wittgenstein’s question clearly leads us to the answer which he was attempting to promote, namely that languages are based on essential simple-word-perceptions which would allow Mr. Ballard to know Humans before he knew the definition in English.  We must, however, not accept this answer as the only way.  Instead, it can be shown that no knowledge of an essential nature of experience is required in order to cognize the event successfully.

We can see this issue addressed in C.S. Peirce’s “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” (Popular Science Monthly.  Jan 1878.  Issue 12.  P. 286-302).  In his essay, Peirce explains that “Il fait froid,” (French which, literally translated means “It MAKES cold”) can be translated into English’s “It IS cold,” and still have the meaning preserved.  Both have the same meaning, and yet, they are formed under radically different paradigms, one of which regards the world as a thing which makes its conditions, the other regarding the world as an occurrence which is noted for its presence not its creation.  This example can prove the point which James notes directly after Mr. Ballard’s example: those two different paradigms, with two different paths, occurring with similar starting and conclusive points in experience, can have the same resulting meaning.

Another example of the similarity (in cash-value/pragmatic value) results in the translation between the Bengali and English words for “Goodbye.”  In Bengali, the word is “Asheen,” which literally means “I am coming.”  The Indian Hindus have a paradigm which involves reincarnation, so they have paradigmatically defined the end of a conversation as just one interaction which is bound to be followed by others.  Yet, the translation holds between the English view of finality and the Hindu view of infinity.  It must be clear, by right of these two examples, that two languages (or non-language and a language) need not be formed on essential definitions of words before they can be translated.  The question of whether Mr. Ballard pre-linguistically thought of humans as Bipeds, thinking things, or hairy-top-fleshy-bottom does not matter in the least when it comes to his translation of his experience into English.  The paradigm may shift, but the meaning is intact.  It is therefore apparent that, contrary to Wittgenstein’s objections, language is not a completely radical reformation of experience which destroys the original nature of the experience.  Instead, it is only necessary that the two languages (or a pre-linguistic experience and a language reformed one) must have something which they share in order to be translatable in the way described above.  This je ne sais quoi will be seen to be co-terminality in experience, and not a sharing of essential dissections.

In addition, we must dismiss the notion that the languages discussed above, or Mr. Ballard’s pre-lingual and English language descriptions of the world are translatable because of their adherence to basic perceptions which come inherently from experience, and to which all experience can be reduced.  As stated above, seems to take several opposing positions on this issue, saying that, when facing experience, we are “in the teeth of irreducible and stubborn facts,” (Glenn 211) and, at other times stating that the world is malleable to our definition.  We can resolve this issue quite easily, however.  As it is so far, however, Wittgenstein might present the issue by saying that It is necessary to understand that James, as we have state above, does not think that any proposition is inherently correct in-itself, for “if truth is a property of ideas independent of the facts, then it is something beyond experience, which is entirely composed of facts,” (ibid. 211).  This may therefore seem like James forces himself to say that Truth is a property of the “facts,” or the radically empirical experience.  This would have the ramification that experience is not vague, and would defeat James’s use of Mr. Ballard specifically in that Ballard would not be forming a pre-linguistic understanding, he would only be cognizing that which is evident from experience.

To the refutation of this interpretation, James asserts that Truth is not in “reality” or in “ideas,” but rather exists as a mediating term between the two: that “the truth of ideas means their ‘agreement,’ as falsity means their disagreement, with reality,” (ibid. 211).  We must examine this statement carefully, lest we allow a cursory reading to interpret James as saying we can mirror reality.  Instead, if we remember our interpretation of translation earlier, we can understand that agreement means conterminal-with.  An Idea is true insofar as it is conterminal-with, as it is false insofar as it does not produce co-terminality, with reality.  If we understand James when he says that all meaningful differences are ones with differences in cash-value, it becomes easier to understand what he is saying.  The cash-value of a statement is wrought in its ability to become conterminal with the experienced reality.  In other words, an idea which predicts X experience is true insofar as X occurs.  What James understands here is what causes his statements about “stubborn facts,” in that some flights of fancy cannot allow for co-terminousness.  Statements such as “Men cannot fly,” and “Attempts at this are dangerous,” are experienced, and are not true in-themselves, nor are they true due to a mirroring of reality.  These two are true insofar as they relate to an experienced reality, and vague insofar as they only describe an experience.

To take another sentence, “It is painful to me when I attempt to fly,” we can see that all of these words have been created by an idiosyncratic language, relate to an experience, and are true insofar as the language’s rules of description (regarding the underlined) are followed (in regards to the experience of ‘me‘).  And yet, despite the truth of the statement, ‘I‘ am no more informed about the essential reality of the world, or the essential nature of Man, Pain, or Flying for that matter.  The language-game had its entire course in experience, never referring outside for verification.  The cash-value of my statement is only that it leads to an experienced result, and, insofar as it predicts that result, is true.  James says that “Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system.  Our thoughts and beliefs ‘pass,’ so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them,” (ibid. 213).

In application to Mr. Ballard, the understanding we have gained will illuminate two key elements: That Truth is a mediator between idea and reality, and that the only difference between ideas can be their predicted consequences in action.  Therefore, if Mr. Ballard’s pre-linguistic understanding of Man was man-and-the-air-around-him-and-his-shoelaces, his translation to an equally idiosyncratic English definition of Man would have little consequential differentiation (especially considering the question of origins that Ballard seems to have been considering), and that therefore both ideas can be translated without confusion, and without the need for a basic universal set of perceptions.  In fact, so long as Mr. Ballard’s English translation would predict the same sort of experience that his pre-linguistic idea predicted (whatever it may be), both are true.  In other words, insofar as “Gavagai” and “Bunny” predict similar experiences, they are translatable.  And, again, this truth does not extend referentially outside of experience; it is contained wholly in the pragmatic interactions of experience.

Now that we can see that translation can occur without reference to essential forms, let us turn to further a main philosophical position which we can refute in order to deny the point of entry in which Wittgenstein lodges his axe.  This is a pragmatic move, in that it denies an intellectualized bifurcation of experience which, itself, is not experienced.  As is obvious from his previous arguments a required part of Wittgenstein’s position is that there is a dichotomy in experience; that there are perceptions and conceptions which are of a differing nature.  Perceptions are unguided and non-focused, and this is the position in which Wittgenstein envisions Mr. Ballard.  In fact, the main claim that Wittgenstein makes is that Mr. Ballard should not be able to progress from this point without language derived from somewhere.  Secondly, conceptions are proposed to exist which reform the rich perceived experience into more “mediate” terms (Gavin, W. J.  “William James and the Interdeterminacy of Language and ‘The Really Real’.”  Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 1976.  Vol. 50. p. 209)  If these do exist, it would have to be James’s claim that they exist so through the mediation of language, and they must therefore only occur when language exists, for, as we have said, James does not hold that experience divulges itself in any clear way.

James does not, however, hold this intellectualized distinction between perception and conception.  If we remove this distinction, we can see that “it is impossible to draw any sharp line of distinction between the barer and the richer consciousness,” (James, W. Some Problems of Philosophy. Adamant Media Corp. 2005. p. 76, herein S.P.P.).  A ‘basic’ perception is only separated by degree from its linguistic counterpart.  Returning to Wittgenstein’s argument, we can see only problems for those who hold that there is, in fact, a dichotomy.

For, if he holds this distinction, Wittgenstein is subject to its ramifications as well, and we cannot explain how he is able to translate his perceptions into conceptions at all.  He can argue that he has been trained to reform perceptions into conceptions through his schooling in language, but, as he himself shows in Axioms 34-47 (P.I.) this teaching is impossible if the distinction is held.  In 34, he says “For neither the expression ‘to intend the definition in such-and-such a way’ nor the expression ‘to interpret the definition in such-and-such a way’ stands for the process which accompanies the giving and hearing of the definition,” (ibid.).  In other words, how can one define ‘Human’ to someone who does not already understand the definition?  The definer’s intentions mean nothing, nor can the will of the pupil. Take, for example, the definition of shape; as Wittgenstein shows in Axiom 36 (ibid.) “we cannot specify any one bodily action which we call pointing to the shape (as opposed, for example, to the color),” (ibid.).

Creating the distinction between perception and conception only leads to problematic situations which cause Platonic forms to stir about.  Wittgenstein himself sees that if the distinction is held the pupil must comprehend the definition before he is taught it, and so on.  Therefore, it must be that our perceptions and conceptions share something which is not gained or lost by moving between them.  Without reference to any previous knowledge this can easily be explained pragmatically.  As James puts this, “Perception gives ‘intension,’ conception gives ‘extension’ to our knowledge,” (S.P.P. p. 82, footnote).  While we have all the motivation to produce a statement in a perception, the conception modifies this motivation through connections to other experiences and linguistic dissection of the perception, both of them share the experiential origin, and they are both conterminal with the same experienced reality.  In other words, perception and conception both share cash-value, one is simply more clearly stated.

Returning to Mr. Ballard’s perception of man-coming-from-tree-stump-etc, we can see that this is no less true than his linguistically reformed English memory.  Similarly, the conceptualized version of the experience is no less real than the perceived, less clear version.  Mr. Ballard’s perception, while less guided shared entirely the truth which the English sentence had; the difference was only in degree.

Any way one cuts up a perception is idiosyncratic, and dependent upon the language used, and yet, it is still as just to the experience as the non-linguistic formation insofar as they are conterminal.  As we have said, Wittgenstein’s argument against Mr. Ballard’s translation is one which presupposes a bifurcation of experience which, in turn, requires that one knows the terms of conception a priori, and this highly convoluted.  Instead, and much less complexly, we can understand that Mr. Ballard feels the impetus for his English statement in his pre-linguistic ‘perception’ where both are real and true, and they only vary in clarity.  Furthermore, learning a language becomes much easier to understand here, when we see that a misinterpretation of a definition will result in conceptions and perceptions not agreeing when attempts to utilize new words are made.  And, we can explain all this without the use of extra-empirical devices.

The final way we shall address Ludwig Wittgenstein’s arguments regarding Mr. Ballard’s case is through an understanding of the previous two arguments as working in conjunction.  What we have learned so far will be translated into a schema through which we can accurately understand what William James intended to show through his example-and this schema will be Pragmatism.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel once wrote that, “The man who insists on seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides.”  This makes clear what we have been saying all along: that essential clarity and sameness is not required before an accurate translation can be made.  As we found earlier, experience is neither entirely given before language, nor is it entirely reformed by language.  Neither pole can be accepted, in that both require an a priori non-experiential knowledge of things in order to work.  Instead, it has become clear that while language reforms experience (sometimes drastically), it relates to experience and it is also conterminal with a pre-linguistic experience, and is therefore only a different (and perhaps clearer) route one can take to achieve the same result.  Furthermore, we saw that while we use language to dissect experience and highlight certain parts, we can never have access to the meta-reality which causes those things which we name in order to compare our understanding with ‘reality.’  The second thing which we found in our investigation was that there can be no schism between perception and conception.  It cannot be understood to be so, insofar as this requires another act of a priori magic, in which we know a part of experience before we learn the name of that part.  Instead, as we saw, ‘Shape’ is taught through the co-terminality of several attempts to use the word.

In the light of these two understandings we can see that James’s use of Mr. Ballard’s example provides us with two conclusions: That Mr. Ballard is accurately describing his experience through a self-justifying, idiosyncratic method, namely English; and, that Mr. Ballard does not need to cross a gap between experienced ambiguity, and finalized clarity in language.  Instead, Mr. Ballard was prompted by experience, and, upon learning English, he was able to reform the experience in a satisfactory (meaning conterminal-in-the-experience) English sentence which has no more validity regarding the experience than the non-linguistic ambiguous one.

Mr. Ballard’s translation requires the leap of faith that Amiel writes about: Wittgenstein is right that Mr. Ballard’s translation can never have complete justification from the experience or language itself, but neither Wittgenstein claim such complete justification for any argument that he, himself raises.  What must be understood is that all languages are self-supporting suppositions.  Whether Mr. Ballard had learned Bengali instead of English, or whether he had learned the language of the tribe depicted in Ontological Relativism by Quine, his translation of his pre-linguistic experience would be just as idiosyncratic.  Therefore the Bengali-speaking Ballard’s reports of his pre-linguistic understandings might require some dissections of experience not required in English, but both translations would be just as true insofar as they are conterminal on the same perceived experience.

James’s use of Mr. Ballard’s case does, in fact, describe a man without language who translates his experience into language.  The point at which Wittgenstein is lost is when he thinks that language should do any sort of essential justice to the experience, outside of co-terminality-with-it.  If Wittgenstein is to support this supposition, he must answer to the two problematic results which we have previously addressed; namely the pre-knowledge of a clarity shared between all experiences which allows translation.  If, however, we accept the pragmatic notion of truth-that it is a modifier between experience and ideas, and not present in either exclusively, we can much more readily understand Mr. Ballard’s Case and James’s position on the issue.  Allowing Glenn the last word in our redefinition of truth, “A true idea can act as the substitute for chains of external experience when it leads to the same real consequences to which the chain of external experiences would itself lead,” (W.J.C.R. p. 212).

Bibliography

(In order of appearance)

• William James. The Principles of Psychology. Dover 1950.
• Ludwig Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigations: Third Edititon. Pretence Hall 1999.
• Ronald Hustwit. “The Strange Case of Mr. Ballard.” Philosophical Investigations. Jan, 1994. 17:1.
• Willard V.O. Quine Ontological Relativity. Columbia Press, New York. 1969.
• Sarah E. Glenn “William James’s Conception of Reality.” International Philosophical Quarterly. June, 03. 42:2.
• Charles S. Peirce “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” Popular Science Monthly. Jan 1878. Is. 12.
• William J. Gavin. “William James and the Interdeterminacy of Language and ‘The Really Real’.” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 1976. Vol. 50.
• William James. Some Problems of Philosophy. Adamant Media Corp. 2005.
• Henri-Frédéric Amiel. “The Quotation Page.” http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Henri-Fr%E9d%E9ric_Amiel/ Accessed: Nov 30, 2005.