Apollon Digital Journal - Issue XIII - 2021

1

What’s in a Name? ap-ol-lon’ Our name at Apollon is derived from the Greek and Roman deity, Apollo, while the spelling more closely follows the Greek transliteration. Apollo is the god of music, poetry, art, light, and knowledge, making him one of the most complex deities in the

Pantheon. In tribute to his multifaceted existence, our journal utilizes various media to create and reproduce knowledge within the humanities and to encourage critical thinking through multidisciplinary inquiry. With Apollo as patron to our musings and his Muses as inspiration for

our content, Apollon seeks to provide our readers with thought-provoking, innovative ideas that explore the depth and breadth of humanistic inquiry.

2

Our Mission At Apollon, we strive to publish superior examples of undergraduate humanities research from a variety of disciplines as well as intellectual approaches.

Our goal is to engage students in every stage of the process, beginning with student-faculty collaboration in generating undergraduate scholarship and finishing with the release of a polished digital journal. Apollon strives to take advantage of the unique opportunity of venturing into the digital humanities by engaging with image, text, sound, video, and a variety of presentation platforms in the process of showcasing the many species of undergraduate research.

3

Acknowledgements Please take a moment to acknowledge our student editors, faculty advisors, and those who submitted for Apollon XII. We appreciate all of the hard work that has been put into this edition. Additionally, we would like to thank the Humanities Institute for their undying support. Of course, we’d also like to thank you, the reader, for taking the time to review and support undergraduate scholarship. Thank you to everyone who made this journal possible.

For more information on the people and organizations listed above, please visit www.apollonejournal.org

4

Table of Contents “Unsex Me Here: How Removing Markers of Eroticism Alters the Status of the Female Nude” By: Mary Gerhardinger, Kenyon College

p. 5

“The Philosophy of Pragmatism in the Politics of Democracy: A Method of Overcoming Dualism?”

By: Madhav Singh, Ashoka University

p. 15

“The Case for Soviet Prison Tattoos as Art” By: Lauren Diener, SUNY New Paltz

p. 25

“The Forbidden Existence: Anti-Homeless Architecture and the Regulation of Public Spaces” By: Ezequiel Indriago Perez, University of Ottowa

p. 39

“The Black Janus” By: Diallo Simon-Ponte

p. 53

“Rooms of Their Own: Spatialized Consciousness of Clarissa and Septimus in Mrs. Dalloway” By: Teo Chee Yan, Yale-NUS College

p. 63

“Call of the Distant Mountains” By: Zhi Zhang, Wellesley College

p. 73

5

Unsex Me Here: How Removing Markers of Eroticism Alters the Status of the Female Nude By: Mary Gerhardinger Mary Gerhardinger attends Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio where she studies physics with a minor in philosophy. Her essay was written in a class about the role of women in the studio throughout art history, focusing on female art makers, models, and patrons.

6

Atop a pile of boulders, an unclothed figure sits at the base of a tree. The tree’s upper branch reaches across the top part of the frame—the curve of the bough mimicked in the hunched shoulders of the human shape. The figure, with limbs folded so as to obscure their identity, blends in with the background rocks in both color and size. The stones dominate the composition; there is but a hint of geographical space suggested on the right side of the arrangement through a small, light, triangular shape indicative of a mountain in the distance.

Although the figure is nude, the human body is not sexed, an important fact once we learn the shape is a woman. Given the context of the female nude in art history, why is this representation of a bare feminine body in nature uneroticized? What is the impact of treating the figure as part of the landscape?

Figure 1

An answer to these questions can be found within the biography of the artist, Anne Brigman, who is herself the sitter of this piece, entitled The Lone Pine (Figure 1).2 A photographer and poet, Brigman is celebrated as “one of the first photographers to take the female nude in the natural landscape as a subject,” as opposed to an object in an indoor space.3 Brigman’s unclothed photographs of herself complicate the representation of the female nude as a trope in art history. In this article, I will examine how Brigman represented the feminine body through an investigation of how she celebrated her own feminine form as human rather than female. By focusing on the form’s humanity and emotional struggle as a universal experience, Brigman elevates the status of all women away from sexual objects. However, she also places the figures in an imagined space, and thus contextualizes their power as fictitious, thereby eroding their authority—yet also separating the bodies from a set of Western cultural values. In this way, I claim that her pieces are less about elevating female bodies as feminine and more about expressing a collective human identity of struggle and emotion.

First, we must examine a popular use of the female nude throughout art history, to understand how the feminine form has dominated portraiture. The use of the feminine body as an allegory for abstract ideas is a pervasive and oft-imposed concept in art making. Eugene Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (Figure 2), for instance, famously personifies liberty as a partially clothed woman grasping the French flag in a call to action. Art seems to insist upon the unclothed feminine figure as the way to represent

7

nonrepresentational concepts. Following in this tradition, Brigman’s nude compositions further enforce this connection between the female nude and allegories, maintaining the status of the feminine figure as a tool rather than a person. On the other hand, these personified ideas usually employ ‘idealized’ bodies, which conform to beauty standards of the time (a tradition continued from the time of the Greeks). Brigman, however, alters this idea by inserting her own body in place of the idealized feminine form. Despite having one of her breasts surgically removed after an injury, Brigman still chose to represent her body— something less than the ‘ideal.’4 Thus, while she continues to use the feminine figure as a tool for personification, Brigman challenges the idea of perfection and ideality.

investigations into formalist concerns of incorporating a figure into a landscape. Brigman took inspiration from the photographer Frank Eugene who manipulated photographs of women by “rubbing oil onto the negatives with his fingers and adding cross hatching with an etching needle [...] leaving only small portions of a picture recognizably photographic.”6 Similarly to Eugene, Brigman claimed that she sought not only to represent her subjects but also to “deal honestly with the medium” of photography.7 She was moved by Eugene’s productions and incorporated the method of retouching negatives to execute her artistic vision. Brigman viewed manipulation as “necessary to secure the result she ha[d] in mind.”8 Through her investigations of the feminine form as representative of a universal struggle for freedom, Brigman used her own female body to “evoke an imagined feminine sexuality.”9 In doing so, art historian Kathleen Pyne argues that Anne Brigman taught Alfred Stieglitz, the leader of the Photo Secessionists, how to more properly portray women naked.10 These representations indicate that Brigman was consciously thinking about how to portray feminine sexuality in a variety of contexts, both imagined and physical.

The fact that Brigman situates her nudes in nature, or “wilderness,” further complicates the Figure 2 idea of expressing feminine sexuality in a purely positive or negative manner. The concept of To what extent, however, did Brigman intend wilderness has a complicated history within for her compositions to alter the allegorical North American settler colonialism. By representational aspect of the female nude and presenting land as untamed and yet instead highlight femininity in and of itself? controllable, the term has been used as a means There are many possible motivations for the to suppress Indigenous people. Within that creations of these photographs—as celebrations context, wilderness was often portrayed as of femininity and feminine sexuality, feminine and described as ‘virginal,’ eliciting explorations of personal ideas on emotional both ideas of purity and the ability to be struggle manifested physically, or even simply managed.11

8

Colloquial references like those to ‘mother representing her own body in nature was radical nature,’ further link femininity and the for the time.15 environment—emphasizing nature’s procreative and nurturing characteristics as After the initial reaction of shock due to the inherently feminine. In situating her nudes radicality of these compositions, art historians within ‘wilderness,’ Brigman is connecting have also viewed Brigman as a proto-feminist, nature and primalcy to female sexuality and, at who laid the groundwork for ecofeminist art. Art the same time, reclaiming the power of nature historian Ann Wolfe examines Brigman’s use of to suggest strength in femininity. The the female nude through the lens of feminism placement of the nudes in nature, then, neither and draws connections between Brigman’s elevates nor suppresses feminine sexuality— proto-feminist landscape photographs with suggesting that Brigman’s intent was merely to works made by artists such as Judy Chicago, use female bodies as a form through which to Carloee Schneeman, and Ana Mendieta among explore her own emotional struggles. others. For example (see Figure 3), Chicago and Mendieta both photographed their own nude Audience reception, however, is never fully bodies in outdoor scenes, acting as “active aligned with artistic intent. Public reactions to agents of renewal and regeneration in nature.”17 exhibitions of Brigman’s work from 1904-1924 In a similar way to Brigman, they reference were varied, although they focused mostly either vulnerability or strength. Wolfe, in around the incorporation of the body into a addition to other art historians such as Nancy natural environment.3 In the first critical piece Kuhl, further elaborates that Brigman’s of Brigman’s photographs in the journal of the photographs are a type of performance art Photo Secessionists, J. Nilson Laurvik writes which is “antecedent to [...] experimental that in her work “the human is not an performance art that emerged in the art world alien...wherein all that nature holds of sheer in the 1960s and 70s.”18 beauty, of terror or mystery achieves its fitting Figure 3 crescendo.” 12 Many other critics echo this emotional connection to Brigman’s photographs, claiming to “grasp the very soul of nature” through them.13 These reactions exemplify how, at the time, Brigman’s work was considered in two contexts: both as depicting a subject in relation to nature as well as expressing her own emotional struggle.

Importantly, Brigman herself strove to “produce photographs that underscored her deeply held beliefs about the interconnectedness between humans and the natural environment.”14 Although critics responded well to Brigman’s themes of interrelation, not every audience has felt an emotional resonance with the work.

Historically, some pieces have been “dismissed as unabashedly romantic, dramatically staged, or overly idealistic” because Brigman’s idea of

9

Although the idea of ‘feminist art’ did not exist we can now understand how Brigman muted the until much after Brigman’s productions, the individual identity. Rather than occupying the artist’s own writings reveal that she derived focal point of the composition, the figure “power from [her] camera,” and sought to emulates other elements of the landscape, and express this power in her compositions.19 To thus the subject becomes part of the topography. impose the label of ‘proto-feminist’ on Brigman This trend is continued throughout the figure’s as an artist is thus fitting, as it acknowledges body—her folded leg echoes the triangular that she was conscious of both her femininity shadow created by a niche in the rock at the as well as her struggles as a woman. In contrast bottom of the frame, and the curl of the figure’s to “prevailing art practices of the head into her body elicits a weariness akin to the time...Brigman’s photographs of women in the heaviness of the rocks, grounding the figure to landscape seem radical,” as proposed by art the cliff. Furthermore, depicted emerging from a historians Olivia Lahs-Gonzales and Lucy crevice created by two rock faces, the centrally Lippard.20 The purpose of Brigman’s located figure in The Cleft of the Rock (Figure 4) photographing of women nude and outside moves beyond simply mirroring the landscape was twofold: one, it challenged the idea that towards integration into the scenery itself. men alone can inhabit the public sphere and, Brigman accomplishes this integration through two, that only they can depict unclothed both the arrangement and the physical women.21 In breaking out of these manipulation of the medium. First, the limbs of conventions, her pieces serve as a “celebration the figure continue the lines of the rock, of women’s development and self-assertion.”22 emphasizing the interrelation of the body with By investigating her work, though, do we nature. Further, diagonal stripes mold the body actually see Brigman as a feminist? into the terrain, mimicking the geographical striations of the rocks. These stripes were added A visual analysis of Brigman’s photos before after the initial exposure by the artist through a 1911 reveals here figures are portrayed as manipulation of the emulsion. In this way, objects within a landscape, rather than subjects “Brigman’s [figures] are of the landscape, not in against a background. In this positioning, the landscape.”23 Brigman elevates women beyond representation as sexual beings, using her body as a stand-in for Figure 4 the feminine form writ large. While it may seem counterintuitive to suggest that integrating the human shape into the landscape raises the feminine form’s power, this integration in effect de-emphasizes the body, thereby making it less sexed. Treatment of the bodies as objects rather than subjects is conveyed through the lack of heads within Brigman’s photographs. In contrast to portraiture, the figures in Brigman’s compositions are not meant to be seen as individuals but simply body-like forms.

Recalling the similarities drawn between the environment and the figure within the first example in this paper, The Lone Pine (Figure 1),

10 “ Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea

In these earlier photographs, by simply integrating commodo the figure into theconsequat.” landscape, Brigman subverts a typically masculine representation, that of a connection to nature. Art historian Deborah Bright claims that males often photographed landscapes as a way to claim their superiority over it as triumphant victors.25 By inserting feminine figures into the natural scenery, Brigman does not declare victory for these figures over their environment, and, instead, situates them as part of the topography—making them objects rather than subjects. When the audience learns these figures are feminine, we are able to view their integration into the landscape as an excision of erotic dimension, thereby elevating the status of the female nude from the position of an object which is sexualized to simply occupying the position of object.

At the same time, however, Brigman’s Figure 5 compositions after 1911 transcend depictions of the feminine body as part of the landscape while also interrelating the two through a After 1911, Brigman “retrofitted the narrative cycle representation of emotional struggle. Rather of her photographs away from the Sierran nature than merely melding their bodies into the spirits toward a saga that told of her personal environment, Brigman reclaims her figures’ struggle toward freedom of the body and soul.”28 humanity as emblematic of shared human This fact is emulated in a comparison of Ballet de experiences. These later pieces depict a Mer (Fig. 5), made in 1913 with The Lone Pine connection to nature which surpasses merely (Fig. 1), created in 1908. The former depicts a occupying this natural space and instead figure in motion—her movement so expressive it emphasizes the expression of the figure toward consumes her entire body. In addition to the freedom, as seen in the open-bodied motion of figure’s outstretched arms, which act as a counter the figure in the Ballet de Mer (Figure 5). Ballet balance to her movement, the turn of the figure’s De Mer portrays a figure standing on one leg on head away from the audience, as well as her bent a beach encompassed by looming rocks and a left leg implies that she is dancing in a circle or a breaking tide. Pyne asserts that the “circular line. Conversely, Fig. 1 portrays a static figure, rhythm of the dancer’s whirling pirouettes [...] whose downcast head sinks toward her knees, ties together the sea and rocks” that surround decidedly grounded to the cliff. Hence, after this her, in effect making the figure ‘one with nature’ time period, Brigman’s photographs reveal while simultaneously evoking a sense of grandeur feminine figures, whose bodies express emotions and majesty.26 and symbolize universal experiences, such as emotional struggle, rather than merely being a part of their surroundings.

11

However, in all of her compositions, Brigman’s figures are not represented as explicitly female figures, but rather as people who have a shared human identity—elevating them beyond a representation as purely sexed beings. The aforementioned lack of information about the figure’s head emphasizes that these figures personify a generalized humanity more than an individual identity. Additionally, Brigman removes the typical identifiers of sex, such as breasts and genitalia, through the use of soft focus and contrasting lighting. Even with a small highlight of the proper left breast, the figure in Ballet de Mer (Fig. 5) lacks clear indicators of the body’s sex. Instead, the body in motion becomes an expression of pure emotion. The lack of specificity about sex highlights the humanity of the figures and reenforces the theme of struggle and connection to nature as something universally experienced by all genders. Indeed the ambiguity of these bodies divorces the composition from a specific struggle (for instance women's liberation from the patriarchy) and allows the compositions to speak about struggle writ large. Moving beyond the representation of the ‘feminine’ as sexually available objects (such as Jean Leon Gerome’s Nude (Emma Dupont), Figure 6) or sexually ‘pure,’ yet eroticized beings (like representations of Venuses, for example in Figure 7), Brigman elevates the feminine body toward a depiction of humans who are not defined by their sexuality.

Yet, Brigman’s compositions also represent female figures in the position of objects within an imagined space. Several elements contribute to the creation of a mythical place within these photographs, including the lack of information about a specific place. Stark lighting removes any identifying features of the land, and somewhat tight cropping focuses the eye on the figure and the immediate region surrounding her. There is

no sense of the figure within the full space. For instance in Ballet de Mer (Fig. 5), the human form is pictured next to a hint of an ocean, while the rest of the space is left for the viewer to imagine. In The Lone Pine (Fig. 1), which is shot downwards from a place of high elevation, Brigman only suggests a location through the faint outlines of mountains on the right side of the composition. The arrangement also mutes the specificity of a spatial location through a tight frame on the rocks as the foreground.

Furthermore, the lack of connection between the figure and the ground in Cleft of the Rock (Fig. 4) emphasizes the artificiality of the depiction, suggesting that the body ought to be understood more as a floating creature rather than a human.

Kathleen Pyne argues that Brigman’s photographs “emerged from the dynamic between a corrupt urban topos and a redemptive wilderness not far away” and created “monsters and goddesses” each with their own mythology and emotions.31 Here, Pyne references the ethereal, almost otherworldy quality of the figures in Brigman’s photos. Brigman does this through detaching her scene from ‘reality’ via pictorialist techniques. Often she removes some of the emulsion left on the surface of the photograph, thereby physically altering the information originally captured by the machine.32 Through Pyne’s argument, we can understand how the imagined realm in Brigman’s photographs is inextricably tied to her own spirituality, which furthers the sense of other worldliness. In particular, Pyne claims that the figure in The Lone Pine (Fig. 1), which bears similarities to the tree, represents “the pine’s nymph-spirit in its rhyming contour,” and thus elevates the body beyond the physical and into the spiritual realm.33 Brigman sought to make an “imagined feminine sexuality” which, as analysis reveals, refers to the mystical place that each figure occupies.34

12

Figure 6

Figure 7

The creation of an imagined space situates the photographs within the audience’s imagination and thereby dulls the criticality of de-sexualizing the figures. An imagined space is undeniably removed from reality, but the degree to which it is removed depends on how it is represented. Compositions that portray mystical places are not necessarily detached from real life, but through manipulating her photographs, Brigman places them outside the physical world and instead within the viewer’s mind. Depicting figures in an emotional struggle, Brigman’s images appeal to viewers by calling them to meditate on their own emotional and spiritual journeys. Although the image within the physical photograph denotes a particular location, through retouching—literally scratching off the emulsion of the surface— Brigman divorces the images from reality.

She encourages the viewer to create an imagined context to match the imagined space in the photograph.

Photography attempts to capture a single moment in time, artificially distilling continual movement into a still shot. In this way, photography as a medium causes the audience to experience time differently than the depicted subjects.35 Recognition of Brigman’s compositions as singular temporal instances allows the images to exist in an ambiguous time. However, time alone is not enough to create a mythical arena within an audience's perception; this requires the addition of a spatial disconnection as well. As these photographs do not exist in space or time, they do not reflect the lived experience of the audience accurately. While Brigman’s work elevates female subjects by mitigating their sexuality, by placing the figures in an imagined space, she similarly relegates their power into the same fiction. Thus, her photographs imply that women’s bodies are only ever desexualized within a mystical locus. This is not to say that women can never escape representation as sexual beings outside of an imagined space, but that Brigman’s photographs never depict women in this way.

13

Brigman’s photography exists on a grayscale.

Rhetorically, however, her work neither completely elevates nor suppresses the status of the female nude. In her early work, Brigman placed unclothed feminine figures within a landscape, treating them as objects more than subjects. However, after 1911, she represented the figures as interacting with the environment, acting out their emotional struggle with nature. Throughout her work, she lessens the sexual nature of the bodies, not explicitly depicting them as female. To those aware of the feminine nature of the figures, this de-sexualization elevates the status of the female nude, as it divorces them from the eroticized gaze typical within the Western art canon, the implied audience.

However, Brigman’s work also places these desexualized figures into imagined spaces, thereby dulling the power derived from muting an erotic gaze. The creation of a fantastical space removes the bodies from any temporal or spatial location, and thus separates the bodies from Western cultural values. In turn, this cultural detachment emphasizes the emotion of the figures and fosters a connection with the audience on a human level. In doing so, the compositions focus on how the forms express a shared human identity related to struggle and emotion rather than an expression of the femininity of certain bodies. Although her images exist in an imagined realm, Brigman’s art is an example of how to represent the feminine body as nude without overwhelming references to sexuality and eroticism.

Endnotes 1. Anne Brigman, The Lone Pine, 1908.

Gelatin Silver Print, The Getty Museum.

2. Anne Brigman lived from 1869 to 1950 and worked in association with the PhotoSecessionists, led by Alfred Steiglitz, and the pictorialism movement. Therese Thau Heyman,

Anne Brigman: Pictorial Photographer / Pagan / Member of the Photosecession (N.p.: The Oakland Museum, Art Department, 1974), 1.

3. Nancy Kuhl, Intimate Circles: American Women in the Arts (New Haven, Connecticut: Beinecke Rare book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, 2003), 46.

4. Ann Wolfe, “Laid Bare in the Landscape,” in Anne Brigman: A Visionary in Modern Photography, ed. Ann Wolfe (New York: Rizzoli Electra with Nevada Art Museum, 2018), 160.

5. Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, 1830. Oil on Canvas, Louvre Museum.

6. Weston Naef, The Collection of Alfred Stieglitz: Fifty Pioneers of Modern Photography (New York: The Viking Press with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1978), 96.

7. Naef, The Collection of Alfred Stieglitz, 166.

8. Heyman, Anne Brigman, 8.

9. Kathleen Pyne, Modernism and the Feminine Voice: O’Keeffe and the Women of the Stieglitz Circle (California: University of California Press, 2007), 113.

10. Pyne, Modernism and the Feminine Voice, 113.

11. Wolfe, “Laid Bare in the Landscape,” 172.

12. Heyman, Anne Brigman, 6.

13. Heyman, Anne Brigman, 8.

14. Wolfe, “Laid Bare in the Landscape,” 165.

15. Susan Ehrens, “Songs of Herself: Anne Brigman,” in Anne Brigman: A Visionary in Modern Photography, ed. Ann Wolfe (New York: Rizzoli Electra with Nevada Art Museum, 2018), 182.

16. Ana Mendieta, The Tree of Life, 1976. Silver Dye Bleach Print, Museum of Fine Arts.

17. Wolfe, “Laid Bare in the Landscape,” 169.

18. Ibid, 164; Kuhl, Intimate Circles, 33.

19. Wolfe, “Laid Bare in the Landscape,” 156.

20. Olivia Lahs-Gonzales and Lucy Lippard, Defining Eye: Women Photographers of the 20th Century (N.p.: The St. Louis Art Museum, 1997), 122.

21. Lahs-Gonzales and Lippard, Defining Eye, 126.

14

22. Ibid, 126.

Kuhl, Nancy. Intimate Circles: American Women 23. Lahs-Gonzales and Lippard, Defining Eye, in the Arts. New Haven, Connecticut: 126.

Beinecke Rare book and Manuscript Library, 24. Anne Brigman, The Cleft in the Rock, 1907.

Yale University, 2003.

Gelatin Silver Print, The Metropolitan Museum Lahs-Gonzales, Olivia and Lucy Lippard. of Art. Defining Eye: Women Photographers of the 25. Deborah Bright, “The Machine in the 20th Century. N.P.: The St. Louis Art Garden Revisited: American Environmentalism Museum, 1997. and Photographic Aesthetics,” Art Journal 51, Naef, Weston J. The Collection of Alfred no. 2 (1992): 67.

Stieglitz: Fifty Pioneers of Modern 26. Pyne, Anne Brigman, 110.

Photography. New York: The Viking Press 27. Anne Brigman, Ballet De Mer, 1913. with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1978.

Platinum Print, The Metropolitan Museum of Pyne, Kathleen. Anne Brigman: The Art. Photographer of Enchantment. New Haven: 28. Pyne, Anne Brigman, 7.

Yale University Press, 2020.

29. Jean-Léon Gérôme, Nude (Emma Dupont), Pyne, Kathleen. Modernism and the Feminine ca 1876. Oil on Canvas, Private Collection.

Voice: O’Keeffe and the Women of the 30. Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, ca Stieglitz Circle. California: University of 1485. Tempera on Canvas, Uffizi Museum.

California Press, 2007.

31. Pyne, Anne Brigman, 6.

Pyne, Kathleen. "Response: On Feminine 32. Kuhl, Intimate Circles, 33.

Phantoms: Mother, Child, and Woman33. Pyne, Anne Brigman, 74.

Child." The Art Bulletin 88, no. 1 (2006): 4434. Pyne, Modernism and the Feminine Voice, 61. Accessed March 20, 2021.

113. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25067224.

35. For more on the discontinuity of Wolfe, Ann M. “Laid Bare in the Landscape.” In photography from time, see Geoffrey Batchen, Anne Brigman, 154-179.

Burning with Desire: The Conception of Wolfe, Ann M, ed. Anne Brigman: A Visionary in Photography (Massachusetts: Massachusetts Modern Photography. New York: Rizzoli Institute of Technology, 1997), 184-187.

Electra with Nevada Art Museum, 2018.

Bibliography Batchen, Geoffrey. Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography. Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1997.

Bright, Deborah. "The Machine in the Garden Revisited: American Environmentalism and Photographic Aesthetics." Art Journal 51, no.

2 (1992): 60-71. Accessed April 2, 2021. doi:10.2307/777397.

Ehrens, Susan. “Songs of Herself: Anne Brigman.” In Wolfe, Anne Brigman, 180-219.

Heyman, Therese Thau. Anne Brigman: Pictorial Photographer / Pagan / Member of the PhotoSecession. N.p.: The Oakland Museum, Art Department, 1974.

15

The Philosophy of Pragmatism in the Politics of Democracy: A Method of Overcoming Dualism?

By: Madhav Singh

Madhav Singh is a student at Ashoka University, pursuing a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Political Science. His current area of interest includes electoral accountability as a determinant of democratic resilience against populist radical right parties and its variation across varieties of democratic regimes. He has written and published several independent research papers in peer-reviewed journals such as the Michigan Journal of Political Science and the International Journal of Policy Sciences and Law. In the past, he has also worked as a research assistant for several organizations and think tanks, including the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Centre de Sciences Humaines, Centre for New Economic Studies, and KPMG Global Services. Apart from academia and research, he is deeply passionate about progressive rock and the French New Wave.

16

In his seminal lecture, "The Present Dilemma Through this article, I submit that democracy is a in Philosophy," William James described the method of governance but also, more crucially, a history of philosophy as that of a clash of way of a conjoint, communicated living that certain human temperaments.[1] This clash is exists in a state of uncertainty: it is wedded to also reflected in the history of the philosophy of formal and functional dualisms while also democracy. Attempts at outlining the form of striving to overcome them. To that end, I argue democracy have most prominently taken either for a critical expansion in how we understand of the two definitions: procedural or democracy (and the democratic life) using the substantive, minimal or maximal, thin or thick. framework of early pragmatism as (1) a Those who align themselves with the former conciliatory tool for idle disputes and as (2) a positions view democracy as a form of means for linking theory to practice. This paper government best captured by the set of electoral is structured as follows. The first section, and political rules, processes, and institutions building off a Jamesian mode of analysis, that comprise it, such as free and fair elections, interrogates the formal dualism in the regularized transfer of power, universal philosophy of democracy represented as the suffrage, and so on. Those who align themselves conflict between defining the disposition of with the latter positions instead view democracy democracy in either procedural and objective as a form of government greater than the set of (clean) terms or substantive and subjective its (muddy) terms. I demonstrate how one can comprising electoral processes, expressed in overcome this debilitating dichotomy by terms of the substantive outcomes it produces embracing the pragmatist attitude of looking in the interest of its governed population, such away from the "first things" of democracy, such as liberalism, constitutionalism, socialism, and as rigid categorizations, and looking towards its so forth. People thus find themselves torn over "last things"[2] such as practical consequences the pursuit of the so-called "correct" expression for problem-solving, creative expression, and of democracy and, as a result, this dualism—or associational living. In the second section, the conceptual separation of anything into two however, I complicate this reading of democracy opposing or contrasting parts, or the state of by tracing the functional dualism that persists being thus split—over the formal disposition of within the practice of democracy in trying to democracy has come to dominate much of what reconcile associated living amongst disassociated and how we think of democracy in political members and groups. As a potential solution science and philosophy. But, as we shall later from pragmatism’s toolkit itself, I present a observe, dualisms exist not just over formal multidimensional analysis of the notion of social differences in democracy; in fact, they are endosmosis to illustrate how it transcends this endemic to the very functioning of democracy functional dualism through its novel itself. conceptualization of conjoint separateness.

Finally, I conclude by briefly summarizing the takeaways from my argument and presenting a scope and direction for future research.

17

Formal Dualism: Beyond “Clean” and “Muddy” Democracy I began by addressing a popular divide in defining democracy as either substantive or procedural, maximal or minimal, thick or thin.

But this dispute over the formal characteristics of democracy is only a small (yet significant) part of the larger dichotomy between what I call the “clean” temperament of democracy and the “muddy” temperament of democracy.

“Clean” because it emphasizes the institutions and principles of democracy as uncontaminated from how they are normatively experienced by human beings; “muddy” because it emphasizes the constituents of democracy to be thoroughly contaminated with the complexities and particularities of normatively experienced human influences. This method of analysis borrows from James’ “tender-minded versus tough-minded”[3] distinction, but it has been contextualized with salient differences to capture the idiosyncrasies of the democratic temper. [4] Table 1 lists the various discords encapsulated by this dualism:

The “clean” democratic temper subsists most commonly in the minds of patrician professors and finds its abode amongst the ivory towers of many sanitized classroom (or Zoom) discussions. It is procedural, absolute, objective, and intellectual. It is procedural insofar as it regards democracy as selfcontained within a fixed system of technical and quantifiable rules and procedures, whether

operationalized as the conduct of routine elections, the separation of central powers, or even the equality to vote. It seeks absoluteness in the existence and truth of democracy, which is to say that the principles of democracy can either be present or absent, followed or unfollowed, black or white; there is no possibility of an indeterminate in-between or pesky regions of gray areas. It thus also lays claim to an objective mode of analysis, implying that one can and should evaluate the truth about the measure of democracy in a regime(s) independent of the normativity and biases that underline individual opinions. Finally, it is intellectual because it maintains that the knowledge of democracy can be sustained and advanced only through the use, development, and exercise of the 'thinking' intellect, away from the ‘feeling' emotiveness.

In contrast, the “muddy” democratic temper usually resides in the minds of plebeian activists and social workers navigating the painful 'facts' of everyday experience. It is substantive, provisional, subjective, and humanist. It is substantive because it considers the substance (rather than principles) of democracy as enmeshed in the circumstances, sensibilities, and attitudes of the people—both: the governing and, more importantly, the governed—that constitute it. It exists in a state of provisionality as opposed to absoluteness, given that the existence and truth(s) of democracy are contingent on the particularistic and mutable nature of human claims and demands. It accordingly embraces a subjective frame of analysis, highlighting the role of conscious subjects in influencing, informing, and biasing our knowledge of democratic truths through concrete and normative experiences.

Lastly, it is humanist owing to the premium it places on the agency and value of all 'thinking' and 'feeling' human beings.

18

Now, some of us may not be content with having to choose between the principles offered by the “clean” democratic temper and the experiences offered by the “muddy” democratic temper. We may wish to develop a method that, rather than simply picking from the ‘best’ of the laundry lists on both sides, ingeniously combines the exercise of our powers of intellectual abstraction with some positive connection for actual human lives.[5] A method that ultimately preserves a cordial relationship with facts while also treating aspirational constructions cordially as well. [6]

pragmatic explanation of democracy that tackles the nature of its being must be "down-toearth,"[10] which is to say that the democratic philosophical doctrine must arise out of the human economy of demand and claim-making, intertwined with the natural experience of it.

Third, the pragmatic method demands the cultivation of an "attitude of orientation"—or, the attitude of looking away from "first things," such as principles, categories, or supposed necessities, and of looking towards "last things," such as utility, consequences, and facts.[11] This means that we must turn away from the "first things" of democracy, such as electoral or institutional characterizations, and turn towards its "last things," such as "the habits of problem-solving, compassionate imagination, creative expression, and civic self-governance."[12] In short, by integrating these three tenets of pragmatism, one goes from asking—what does the concept of democracy presuppose?—to asking: what does the practice of democracy effectuate?

Fortunately, such a method can and does exist in the form of the philosophy of pragmatism.

Pragmatism—very broadly—claims that an ideology or proposition is true if it works satisfactorily and that the meaning of a proposition is to be found in the practical consequences of accepting it.[7] It follows that in order to reconcile the contradictory dispositions of democracy, we must turn towards the understanding of democracy as a The answer fittingly comes to us from another practice, as opposed to a position, ideology, or influential philosopher of pragmatism, John dogma. Here, pragmatism would importantly Dewey. Democracy, as seen through the Deweyan require the import of three things. First, one eyepiece, primarily effectuates two things. First, must acknowledge and concede that the a mode of associated living and conjoint dualism between the “clean” and the “muddy” communicated experience.[13] And second, the character of democracy cannot be settled on use of this experiential method—or, “cooperative purely 'intellectual' grounds, i.e. by appealing intelligence”—as a system of inquiry to solve to a certain sense of logical, scientific, or practical problems.[14] But how does the metaphysical superiority. And leaving the practice of democracy effectuate the debate open-ended brings with it the same risk aforementioned? Dewey begins by arguing that of losing the truth as having to pick between democracy inspires the custom of expanding a one and discarding the other. Instead, we must common space for numerous individuals to resort to understanding democracy through the interact and participate in their shared lens of our "passional nature," as a consequence interests.[15] However, this is not just any of the precursive faith in the cooperation of common space for every shared interaction—the many independent persons.[8] Second, and as spatial outlook entails a marked nuance philosopher Cheryl Misak points out, concerning its perpetual adjustment and "pragmatists are empiricists in that they require readjustment in light of its dynamic human beliefs to be linked to experience."[9] As such, a subjects.

19

Reflect for a moment on the common space facilitated by democracy for individuals and of their shared interests. It follows that individuals who may wish to participate in a given interest within this common space must refer their own actions and behaviors to that of others who occupy the same domain for reasons of interconnectedness, positionality, and direction.

Plus, the more numerous and varied points of contact, the more there is a diversity of stimuli to which an individual has to respond, which, in turn, emphasizes variation in their action.[16] Sure, this may reinforce the sustenance of old mutual interests, but, more importantly, it also promotes the emergence of new ones; and with this widening of the area of shared concerns comes the liberation of a greater diversity of personal capacities and thus the security of freer interactions between social groups.[17] As such, for Dewey, democracy proves useful as a method of inquiry into finding solutions for practical human problems, such as inequality in education or barriers in communication, for its purpose becomes to set free and develop the capacities of human individuals irrespective of their race, sex, class, or economic status.[18] In summary, democracy as a practice fosters a common space of shared interests and mutual participation, which supposedly leads to freer interaction between social groups and the upliftment of all individuals.

these effects in my previous exploration, I (like Dewey) conveniently assumed at the outset that democracy at least incites a common space for individuals to participate in some shared interests.

But what happens when the very emergence of this common space is obstructed internally and externally through barriers that prevent free social intercourse and the communication of experience?

For such a condition is what Dewey anticipated through his characterization of an "undesirable society."[19] The nature of an undesirable society matches in content, if not in name, to the nature of a despotically governed state: "there is no extensive number of common interests; there is no free play back and forth among the members of the social group. Stimulation and response are exceedingly one sided."[20] Suffice it to say that there is a lack of an equal opportunity to receive and take from the interaction of others, which results in the loss of meaningful experience and arrests the ability to secure flexible readjustment of societal institutions.

To account for this functional dualism in the practice of democracy that endeavors for conjointness while existing within the separateness of an undesirable society, I turn towards the concept of social endosmosis. Originally conceptualized by philosopher Henri Bergson, and later by William James, to demonstrate the interaction of the mind with nature, the term was soon appropriated by Dewey as a descriptor for interaction between social groups.[21] However, it Functional Dualism: Deweyan Democracy comes as a great blow that Dewey only ever in an “Undesirable Society”? employed the expression of social endosmosis once across all his writings, and it remains an I used the modifier "supposedly" for a reason, undertheorized phenomenon outside a small body which I hope will become clear from a more inof literature. Thankfully, some like B.R. depth cause and effect analysis of Deweyan Ambedkar—Indian jurist, social reformer, and a democracy herein. The above-delineated effects student of Dewey—have managed to not only of democracy as a mode of associated living, preserve the interactive content behind social conjoint experience, and social upliftment endosmosis but also complicated it through its encounter a contradiction from what we took to be contextualized, application-oriented usage. their assumed causes. To reach the conclusions of

20

antithetical ideas of separateness and conjointness, thus facilitating a distinctly pragmatic way of sustaining the democratic life within an undesirable society. Figure 1 illustrates the multidimensional nature of social endosmosis among groups (G1 to Gn) demarcated by porous septa (S1 to Sn-1).

Therefore, if democracy is indeed the pragmatic solution to practical human problems, then social endosmosis is what endows viability to that solution by reconceptualizing what barriers mean for the permeability of action. This can be better Figure 1: Social Endosmosis as Conjoint substantiated once we also identify the Separateness consequences of social endosmosis as a "joint activity"[25] through which individuals (1) Therefore, I submit that a comprehensive subsist transactionally with their social understanding of social endosmosis requires environment and (2) cultivate dispositions by serious engagement with its three the use of things. In our case, the social idiosyncratic dimensions. First, as per the environment consists of various differentiated dimension given to it by Dewey, it implies groups; the thing to be utilized and gradation without separation amongst experimented with is democracy; and the different social groups.[22] This does not cultivation of an appropriate democratic mean that differences between social groups disposition will thus take place when based on volume or even dispositions will individuals contribute to the joint activity of cease to exist altogether, but that the barriers social endosmosis, which will allow them to such as “high” and “low” separating them appropriate the purpose which actuates it must be undermined. Second, in its (conjointness), become familiar with its Ambedkarite flavor, the manner in which methods and subject matters (freer social social endosmosis undermines these barriers intercourse), acquire needed skill is through fluidity—or, by the promotion of (communication), and become saturated with numerous channels through which groups its emotional spirit.[26] Furthermore, joint and individuals are suffused with the activities like social endosmosis denote power nutrient of each other's creative rather than a weakness because they intelligence.[23] Third, and as noted by strengthen interdependence and are Mukherjee, social endosmosis accompanied by a growth in individual and accommodates gradation within fluidity collective abilities that increase our so-called through the idea of the semi-permeable "social capacity."[27] This social capacity "porous septum,"[24] a membrane that makes possible the fulfillment of tasks that provides for the privacy of individuals might have been otherwise impossible for an without enclosing them within impermeable individual to accomplish on their own using walls. Taken together, the concept of social the means of a singular physical or mental endosmosis allows Dewey, Ambedkar, and capacity.

Mukherjee to reconcile the otherwise

21

In ultimately tying together the discussion of acknowledging how the “anti-social spirit”[30] of democracy and social endosmosis, one would be the Hindus acted as one of the worst offenders in remiss to not respond to what is perhaps the most fostering exclusivity, isolation, and selfpopular and potent charge against it: the interestedness amongst the dominant social group. unwillingness of some human agents to associate However, though breaking this deadlock was with others, regardless of the barriers in an difficult, Ambedkar realized that a potential undesirable society. Misak frames it best: "[…] solution consisted of mobilizing external influence these noble sentiments [of democracy and freer or actors to kick-start the process of social intercourse] are again ineffective against those endosmosis. One such instance of his endeavor to who would argue that they are deeply achieve the same is evident in his 1919 witness to uninterested in living amongst, or associating the Southborough Committee, which decided upon with, a minority class, race, or different territorial political reforms for India under the British group and would much prefer to do away with colonial rule.[31] Ambedkar (2014) emphasized them."[28] There is truth to this, no two ways how different social groups in isolation tend to about it. At first glance, it might seem that Dewey create their own distinctive “like-mindedness,” but tried to include a failsafe mechanism in his when the same groups are brought together in a writings to safeguard against this objection using political union, it can create a new like-mindedness what I call the thesis of resocialization. It posits in place of the old, “which is representative of the that all those who partake in, or are exposed, to interests, aims, and aspirations of all the various the experience of communication—whether of groups concerned.”[32] But he also believed that knowledge, interests, activities, or aspirations— the social divisions in India were different from have their experience of the communication those in Europe or the U.S.A, and thus political modified in some form.[29] Thus, the joint reform had to accordingly share a two-way street activities of communication such as social with social reform and endosmosis if it were to be endosmosis are self-sustaining practices once successful. Additionally, this synthesis of political kick-started because they set into motion a cycle reform with social reform would go on to become a of the resocialization of previously socialized template for Ambedkar’s activism, as he utilized attitudes. Granted, the real problem, as Misak the same argument in later interventions such as pointed out, was the act of kick-starting them the 1930 Round Table Conference in London, within a disinclined audience in the first place. where he justified compensatory discrimination in the form of separate electorates for the But where the teacher fell short, the student untouchables. In short, though Misak’s counterswooped in. Ambedkar took the thesis of argument represented an often-overlooked resocialization, combined it with the power of an limitation of the associational idea behind external influence—such as electoral, political, or democracy, proponents of Dewey, such as constitutional reforms—and ran with it. In his Ambedkar, found their own ways of building upon seminal commentary on the oppressive and the pragmatic tradition through contextual undemocratic nature of the caste system in India, improvisation. he echoed part of Misak’s objection by

22

Conclusion Endnotes My purpose in this essay has been to explain and interrogate the import of early American [1] William James, “Lecture 1: The Present Pragmatism in the politics, philosophy, and Dilemma in Philosophy,” in Pragmatism: A New practice of democracy. I have not tried to say all Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, 17th ed. that could be said on the subject. There is scope (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co, 1922), pp. in future studies for either adopting a more 6-7. exploratory direction and incorporating the view [2] William James, “Lecture 2: What Pragmatism of other philosophers of pragmatism or taking Means,” in Pragmatism: A New Name for Some up a more critical stance by considering further Old Ways of Thinking, 17th ed. (New York: counter-arguments and objections to the Longmans, Green, and Co, 1922), pp. 53-55. pragmatic reading of democracy. However, [3] William James, “Lecture 1: The Present within the ambit of what I did say over the course Dilemma in Philosophy,” in Pragmatism: A New of this essay, I hope to have accomplished four Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, 17th ed. things. First, to have demonstrated that the (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co, 1922), pp. formal dualism in the temperament of 11-13. democracy—whether "clean" or "muddy"—is [4] This is why I refrain from calling this a myopic because it presents itself as having to “rationalistic versus empiricist” dualism of pick one over the other and is more concerned democracy. In my theorization, the “clean” temper with the presumptions of democracy than the is not synonymous with the rationalistic temper, practice of it. Second, to have outlined a method and the same is true for the “muddy” and the of reconciling these temperaments of democracy empiricist temper. using the philosophy pragmatism and, in [5] William James, “Lecture 1: The Present particular, through the Deweyan ideas of Dilemma in Philosophy,” in Pragmatism: A New associated living and cooperative intelligence in Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, 17th ed. democracy. Third, to have introduced the (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co, 1922), pp. functional dualism of having to sustain the 20. democratic life within an undesirable society [6] Ibid., pp. 40-40. that erects barriers between groups and individuals to prevent or minimize [7] Douglas McDermid, “Pragmatism,” Internet communication, and how the concept of social Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2006, endosmosis attempts to overcome this through https://iep.utm.edu/pragmati/. its multidimensional nature and consequences [8] William James, “The Will to Believe,” in The as a joint activity. And fourth, to have engaged Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular with a popular challenge to the idea of social Philosophy. (New York: Longmans, Green, and endosmosis and democratic living, and its Company, 1907), pp. 11; 24-25. implications for the creative appropriation of [9] C. J. Misak, “Preface,” in The American the pragmatic tradition.

Pragmatists. (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. x-x.

23

[10] Ibid., John Dewey, and the Meaning of Democracy,” [11] William James, “Lecture 2: What New Literary History 40, no. 2. (2009), pp.

Pragmatism Means,” in Pragmatism: A New 352-352.

Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, 17th ed. [25] John Dewey, “Education as Direction,” in (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co, 1922), Democracy and Education: An Introduction to pp. 53-54. the Philosophy of Education. (New York: The [12] David Hildebrand, "John Dewey", The Macmillan Company, 1922), pp. 34-35.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter [26] John Dewey, “Education as a Social 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = Function,” in Democracy and Education: An https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/ Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. entries/dewey/.

(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922), [13] John Dewey, “The Democratic Conception pp. 26-26. in Education,” in Democracy and Education: [27] John Dewey, “Education as Growth,” in An Introduction to the Philosophy of Democracy and Education: An Introduction to Education. (New York: The Macmillan the Philosophy of Education. (New York: The Company, 1922), pp. 101-101.

Macmillan Company, 1922), pp. 51-52.

[14] C. J. Misak, “John Dewey (1859-1952),” in [28] C. J. Misak, “John Dewey (1859-1952),” in The American Pragmatists. (Oxford, UK: The American Pragmatists. (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 135-135.

Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 135-135.

[15] John Dewey, “The Democratic Conception [29] John Dewey, “Education as a Necessity of in Education,” in Democracy and Education: Life,” in Democracy and Education: An An Introduction to the Philosophy of Introduction to the Philosophy of Education.

Education. (New York: The Macmillan (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922), Company, 1922), pp. 100-102. pp. 6-6.

[16] Ibid., pp. 101-101.

[30] B.R. Ambedkar, "Annihilation of Caste,” in [17] Ibid., pp. 114-115.

Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar's Writings and [18] Ibid., pp. 101-101.

Speeches, vol. 1, ed. Vasant Moon. (Jhajjar: Dr. [19] Ibid., pp. 115-115.

Ambedkar Foundation, 2014), 51-52.

[20] Ibid., pp. 97-97.

[31] Arun P. Mukherjee, “B. R. Ambedkar, [21] Arun P. Mukherjee, “B. R. Ambedkar, John Dewey, and the Meaning of Democracy,” John Dewey, and the Meaning of Democracy,” New Literary History 40, no. 2. (2009), pp.

New Literary History 40, no. 2. (2009), pp.

353-353.

352-352.

[32] B.R. Ambedkar, "Evidence Before the [22] John Dewey, “The Democratic Conception Southborough Committee on Franchise in Education,” in Democracy and Education: (1919),” in Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar's Writings An Introduction to the Philosophy of and Speeches, vol. 1, ed. Vasant Moon.

Education. (New York: The Macmillan (Jhajjar: Dr. Ambedkar Foundation, 2014), Company, 1922), pp. 98-98.

248-49.

[23] B.R. Ambedkar, "Annihilation of Caste,” in Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar's Writings and Speeches, vol. 1, ed. Vasant Moon. (Jhajjar: Dr. Ambedkar Foundation, 2014), pp. 24-24.

[24] Arun P. Mukherjee, “B. R. Ambedkar,

24

Bibliography Ambedkar, B. R. Dr. Babasaheb James, William. Pragmatism: A New Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches.

Name for Some Old Ways of Jhajjar: Dr Ambedkar Foundation, Thinking. New York: Longmans, 2014.

Green, and Co, 1922.

Dewey, John. Democracy and McDermid, Douglas. 2006.

Education: An Introduction to the Pragmatism. Internet Encyclopedia Philosophy of Education. New York: of Philosophy.

The Macmillan Company, 1922. https://iep.utm.edu/pragmati/.

Hildebrand, David. (n.d.). John Dewey.Misak, C. J. The American Pragmatists.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Oxford, UK: Oxford University Philosophy (Winter 2018 Edition).

Press, 2013. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/de Mukherjee, A. P. “B. R. Ambedkar, wey/.

John Dewey, and the Meaning of James, William. The Will to Believe: Democracy.” New Literary History And Other Essays in Popular 40, no. 2 (2009): 345–370 Philosophy. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co, 1907.

25

The Case for Soviet Prison Tattoos as Art By: Lauren Diener Lauren Diener is a recent graduate of SUNY New Paltz. She received her Bachelor’s degree in May of 2020, graduating magna cum laude.

She majored in art history and minored in creative writing. While at SUNY New Paltz, she completed her senior honors thesis titled, “The Case for Soviet Prison Tattoos as Art.” The choice to write about Soviet tattooing stems from her passion to expand upon what many consider art. She strongly believes that stigma and past prejudices interfere with the way in which people categorize art– whether said art is a valid or invalid form of expression. Her hope is that eventually the art community can remove themselves from the confines of their archaic views, and realize that there are many worthy modes of artistic expression deserving of establishment attention.

26

As possibly the first, and certainly the most examining.[5] The cache of arcane images that obvious, canvas upon which human differences have marked the bodies of inmates offers an can be written and read, skin has been a topic untapped wealth of knowledge regarding the daily of continuous interest in anthropology and lives of the downtrodden who were subjected to related disciplines from the earliest descriptions harsh prison conditions, many for several years at of exotic people to postmodern theorizing about a time. Understanding and legitimizing the study the body in contemporary society.[1] of the images that adorned the body of these inmates has taken time. It has only truly come to The fields of anthropology and art history have fruition as an area of study in the last two decades. long been intertwined. Symbols are at the core Within the span of twenty years, experts have of human communication and in order to decode gathered a wealth of information regarding a set of esoteric images, overlapping practices Russian prison tattoos and have been able to within the fields of anthropology and art history apply them to larger areas of interest, such as can be employed. The discovery of the remote LQBT life and Russian expatriates. This study practice of human bodily inscription by nondraws upon recent scholarship on Russian prison European people ignited a desire to uncover and tattoos of the Soviet era to make the case that understand the nature of the inscribed symbols. these tattoos are art and therefore valid subjects of In the year 1691, English explorer, William art-historical study.[6] Dampier transported a Filipino slave covered in tattoos back to his home country.[2] The slave, The notion of marking one's body forever in order Jeoly, became known as “Painted Prince Giolo” to convey some message or indicate some sort of and was immediately put on display like some esoteric knowledge is fascinating. While a large rare artifact.[3] Despite the curiosity portion of this area of study has focused on “nonsurrounding Jeoly, it should be mentioned that Western” people who mostly have inhabited human bodily inscriptions have been a part of islands in the Pacific ocean, the oldest known ethnographic literature even before the genesis bodily inscription actually belonged to a man who of anthropology as a discipline in the late lived in the Ötztal Alps.[7] European crusaders nineteenth and early twentieth century, and and pilgrims got tattooed to prove they had made before the development in the early twentieth it to the Holy Land.[8] Even King Charles XIV of century of art-historical techniques for Sweden (1763-1844) had a tattoo that ironically interpreting symbols, such as “iconology.”[4] read, “Death to all Kings!”[9] History has The study of these inscriptions has almost forgotten the rich tattoo culture of Europe. exclusively dealt with remote indigenous tribes.

However, as tattoo culture gains popularity in In her 2004 essay, “Inscribing the Body,” Enid Western culture, scholars are beginning to look Schildkrout, an anthropologist employed by the to tattoos as a repository of information Museum of Natural History in New York, made a regarding other groups, including, subcultures. claim that Western ideology is the reason behind the lack of knowledge surrounding European Within the last thirty years, the examination of tattooing. Using what Schildkrout puts forth in Russian prison tattoos, under the Soviet regime, her essay, one can formulate an idea surrounding as a subject of anthropological study emerged. the intrinsic and symbolic meaning within the Soviet prison tattooing grew in popularity during iconographic language of Russian prison tattoos. the beginning of the twentieth century, and According to Schildkrout, contemporary society declined in practice during the end of the same believes that it is undergoing what some refer to century; this be the period which we are as a “Tattoo Renaissance.” [10]

27

However, this notion creates a misleading impression of historical events within the world of Western tattooing.[11] She stresses that we must not view tattooing as a modern creation, but rather as a tradition with deep, widespread roots. To legitimize the study, Schildkrout states that it is not only historians and anthropologists who are interested in inscriptions on the skin. It has also been an area of great interest to psychoanalysts and philosophers. She states that the skin is an ambivalent boundary, as it provides agency to the wearer to perhaps subvert authoritative or penal systems.[12] This statement is of particular interest as the subversion of strict prison systems is perhaps the most essential aspect of Russian prison tattoos.

The 1930s was a time within the camps when the anti-Soviet imagery really took hold.[18] It should be said that a majority of the tattoos created within the Gulag camps were the product of the “Thieves in Law.”[19] The “Thieves in Law” are a professional criminal organization that ruled during the Soviet era from within prison camps.[20] The group had substantial membership and power, and thus was able to dictate the nature of many of the images inscribed on Russian prisoners. The tattoos worn by prisoners were highly codified and esoteric; the average Russian citizen would not understand the meaning behind most Russian prison tattoos. Imagery and placement are crucial factors that one must take into account when decoding the tattoos. For example, a spider crawling up the right shoulder of a prisoner A major component of the Russian criminal connotes that the wearer is a thief who is still subculture is the connection to the “Other.” active.[21] However, if the spider is crawling Russian prisoners have long been aware of their down the shoulder the thief has given up their status as outsiders, and rather than long for life of crime.[22] acceptance they thrive and celebrate the fact that they operate beyond the bounds of It is necessary that the iconographic aspects and traditional society.[13] Tattooing became an decoding properties of Russian prison tattoos are integral part of the celebration of “otherness.” mentioned. Outlining every single image and its Once used as an agent of authority by those in meaning would be an impossible task and power to mark prisoners and therefore to easily therefore I will focus on the inscriptions that identify them, tattooing was reclaimed by the mark the body of one Russian prisoner and the imprisoned.[14] The marks once used to deny connotations of said inscriptions. The tattoos the personal autonomy of the prisoner, were were heavily saturated with dark ink and now being weaponized against the very produced in a crude manner. Infections were establishment responsible for imprisonment.[15] common, and some prisoners contracted The practice of reclamation truly grew in bloodborne illnesses from the tattoo needles.[23] popularity during the mid- twentieth century Despite the circumstances, the tattoos are quite among those imprisoned in Soviet Gulag artful and successful in conveying the intended camps.[16] image. The tattoos that emerged from Soviet prisons can be categorized based on subject The iconography of the tattoos carved into the matter. There are primarily four categories into skin of the Soviet prisoners was in itself highly which Soviet tattooing has been placed, in anti-establishment. Nazi insignia and other addition to any aesthetic significance.[24] jarring images were prevalent, as a means to celebrate the enemies of the Soviet Union.[17]

28

The first category deals with interpersonal relationships, which was a popular motif among lesbian prisoners.[25] Shared motifs, or the name of a lover were often the tattoos of choice for these women.[26] It is important to note that both men and women prisoners engaged in the practice of tattooing; however, overall themes of the tattoos differed greatly among the two genders. The tattoos of incarcerated women deal primarily with the emotions connected to a life of crime, broken relationships and the separation from loved ones.[27] Men, on the other hand, were tattooed to convey authority and to demonstrate their place within the prison hierarchy.

From here on out, this paper will be discussing the tattoos of men, which fall within the other three categories into which Soviet tattoo imagery has been divided. The second category of Soviet tattoos comprises pictures that indicate one's participation in a group.[28] Images bearing insignia that denote the wearer as a thief, or professional criminal are examples of tattoos that indicate group inclusion. The third category is a collection of motifs that represent the wearer’s own primary interest.[29] The images represented in the third category are largely the same as those in the second category, as it would often be beneficial for the wearer to align themselves with a larger affiliation.[30] The last category deals with tattoos that relate to the selfimage of the wearer—personal details and memories that the prisoner deems worthy of being inscribed on their body.[31]

man’s left shoulder.[32] Stars present on the body reveal that the wearer is a professional criminal.[33] Building upon the previous statement, the epaulette tattooed on the shoulder indicates that the man has a great deal of authority within the criminal hierarchy.[34] The man presents his heavily tattooed hand for examination. On his ring finger is a black triangle split in two, which indicates this man grew up incarcerated.[35] The two black triangles on his middle finger suggest that he has a strong aversion to prison administrators and will not cooperate with them.[36] On his left arm is an inscription that reads “communism only produces victims.”

[37] It is interesting that this message is not encoded within some shroud of esoteric imagery; any Russian speaking person would understand its meaning.

Several of the tattoos present on the man’s body are difficult to interpret, but this fact does not negate their meaning. An important component of Russian tattooing is the theory of “parts of a whole.” [38] Certain tattoos cannot be understood as solitary images; these tattoos require others to play upon in order for the intended meaning to be revealed.[39] It is best to think of each tattoo as a chapter in a book, with that book ultimately being the wearer’s identity.

It is common for an area of study to expand in subject matter and content included as it develops and garners validity. The study of Russian prison tattoos is no exception. Once experts began noticing the important cultural and social aspects of the tattoos, they began to look at them within The sheer number of tattoos on the body of one different areas of focus. For example, in light of prisoner, documented in a photograph showing recent social reforms, it is no surprise that the a bared chest, shoulder, arm, and hand, suggests images present within the iconography of Russian that this man has been a criminal for a long time prison tattoos would be used in hopes of creating a (Figure 1). This status can be validated through broader understanding of the world of LGBT the examination of the stars present below the Russian inmates, specifically homosexual men.

29

clear, one is the “stinger” and the other accepts the “sting.”[44] The placement of the tattoos is very important, as it serves to remind the participants of their status as they engage in homosexual activity.

Other forced tattoos include open eyes and a mouse being chased by a cat, both placed on the buttocks.[45] It is curious as to why homosexual men were treated so horribly in the prisons. According to a study of 1,100 Soviet era prisoners between the ages of eighteen and eighty, serving sentences of one and a half years to ten years, ninety percent had homosexual contact.[46] Out of the population studied, only eight to ten percent belonged to the lowest caste, meaning they were classified as homosexual.[47] In addition to being treated Figure 1: Sergei Vasiliev. Russian Prisoner. horrifically in prisons, men classified as Photograph. Undated. fuel-design.com/russianhomosexual were also branded as “noncriminal-tattoo-archive/photographs/sergeipatriotic.”[48] It was a common belief, originating vasiliev/print-no-32/. in Stalinist Russia, that homosexuals were perverts and that perverts could never be patriots.[49] According to Russian society, homosexuals were The reality for homosexual men in Soviet prison inherently anti-nationalistic, something that was camps was horrific and inhumane. Homosexuality celebrated within the criminal culture. was a punishable offense, and men sentenced for homosexual activity were automatically subjected Why then did criminal men, most of whom engaged to the lowest level of the prison’s caste system, in homosexual acts, hate and punish the called the opushcheny.[40] People of this caste homosexual prison population? The answer to this faced brutal beatings and were often starved and question above is simple: these men had everything left without proper sleeping arrangements.[41] In taken from them. All they had left was their status. addition, homosexuals of the opushcheny The men of the Russian prisons relied solely on experienced forced tattooing. their domineering masculine identities and hierarchical relationships to gain power and Tattoos, which were a badge of honor for most rank.[50] They could simply not rise in standing if inmates, became a punishment and sign of shame they did not have anyone to rise above. A major way for homosexuals. The markings that were forced these upwardly mobile prisoners asserted upon the bodies of homosexual men can be found dominance over the opushcheny was by use of within the iconography of Russian prison tattoos. forced tattooing; it solidified the status of the For “active” homosexuals, a bee was often tattooed tattooer.[51] on the genitals.[42] “Passive” homosexuals were inscribed with an image of a beehive on the buttocks.[43] The message of the imagery is quite

30

The act of forced tattooing as a means to denote a person considered to be an “Other” did not originate with the inmates of the Russian prison system.

Forced markings had long been used by the Russian penal system to distinguish the criminal from the citizen. Until the year 1846, Russian individuals sentenced to hard labor were branded on their face with the inscription “VOR,” meaning “thief.” [52] In an act of reclamation, beginning in the early twentieth century, prisoners began to use bodily alteration as their own form of self-expression.[53] Thus, the esoteric iconography of Russian prison tattoos was born. However, during the cycle of repossession, the prisoners adopted the atrocious practice that they had previously endured: forced tattooing. In order to try and understand the cruel Figure 2: Nightingale the Robber. Woodcut. First half and inherently hierarchical nature of the Russian of the 18th century. Russian National Library, St. prisoners, one would have to examine the Petersburg. conditions of criminal life in Russia.

The behavior of the Russian criminal can only be understood through the context provided by the Russian criminal underground. Russian criminals held the ideology that their profession also doubled as an artform.[54] Pickpocketing was regarded as the highest form of criminal activity, due to the high level of skill needed to be successful.[55] A good pickpocket is like an actor, wearing need-specific garb and performing in a methodical and time-sensitive way. In her autobiography, Praskovia Skachko writes of the luxurious life she and her husband were able to afford through the “art” of theft.[56] Skachko credits her ultimate downfall to a costume mishap that prevented her from playing her role as a thief.[57] The subject of “the criminal” became a source of fascination for many of Russia’s general public.

Petty thieves became a recurring theme in luboks, a collection of graphic prints with a narrative.[58] Luboks are a compilation of lubki, which are the oldest form of Russian popular prints.[59] The lubok and lubki were extremely popular amongst the lower and middle classes, as they had multiple functions and were relatively inexpensive.

The prints were dualistic, as they had the potential to be didactic as well as ornamental. Prints outlining the exciting tales of the lives of bandits adorned the walls of Russian commoners (Figure 2).

Unlike popular Western tales regarding thieves, i.e., Robin Hood, Russian bandits did not possess altruistic motives.[60] The tales laid out in the lubki were not allegorical, and no hidden code of morality could be derived from them. Instead, Russians looked to tales of thieves as a means to inspire freedom and rebellion against the institutions responsible for unfavorable societal situations.[61] The fictionalized bandit struggled internally between the conflicting themes of wanting freedom and having a place in mainstream society.[62] However, it should be noted that such stories did not idealize a life of crime, as many ended with the bandit committing an act of redemption through patriotism or state service.[63]

31

The famous Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), wrote “art clings to life through death, sin and lawlessness.”[64] Arguably, the most apparent example of the truth to this statement can be seen in twentieth century Russia. The correlation between crime and art was glaringly obvious. Art, paired with labor, was seen as the most efficient way to remold the common criminal and was employed by the Soviet regime in Gulag camps.[65] Officials of the Soviet Union devised a metallurgical analogy—perekovka, or “reforging”— to describe their means of inducing loyalty to the state.[66] Perekovka was based upon the notion that humans, much like elements of industry, could be created according to blueprints.[67]

Figure 3: Prisoners of Belamor, constructing the White Sea-Baltic Canal. Photograph. Undated. http://www.gulag.eu/gulag/storm.html

The philosophy of perekovka was put on display at Belomor, a Gulag camp dedicated to The sordid inner workings of perekovka relied heavily on deceit and the selfish nature of the the construction of Stalin’s White Sea-Baltic prisoners. First, a department was created to Canal (figure 3).[68] Armed with the understanding of the importance of individual facilitate the education and reforging of the convicts.[72] This department was divided into expression, Officials enforced that the smaller sections, and each of these sections was inhabitants of the camp use forced labor as a headed by an educator, or vospitatel.[73] The means of inspiration. Prisoners were vospitateli were also prisoners, and were given encouraged to write of the personal special privileges, such as the ability to neglect transformations they endured through the extra work or to indulge in a drunken card game, means of autobiographical sketches.[69] A as a reward for their assistance in the reforging camp newspaper was also provided to process.[74] The fact that officials turned a blind prisoners, as well as opportunities to circulate eye to the indulgences of the vospitateli is an original poetry and produce plays.[70] At a indication that the Soviet Union did not fully surface level, the aforementioned elements believe that perekovka would work. They were seem to conform to modern ideologies willing to allow certain prisoners to exist outside regarding the rehabilitation of incarcerated of code if it meant control over the greater individuals; providing numerous means of population. It is without doubt that they hoped self -expression is beneficial to the individual.

However, perekovka was not a process devised perekovka would mass produce the perfect member of society, but it is unlikely that they to be advantageous to the individual. The sole purpose of perekovka was to brutally destroy actually believed that this was possible. the previous life of the prisoner in order to make room for a new one that would benefit the Soviet Union.[71] When confronted with a system that wants to erase one’s past, acts of individual expression are seen as most radical.

32

The Soviet Union’s skepticism regarding subscribe to the ideas presented in perekovka. As perekovka is perfectly illustrated in the life of previously stated, many of the tattoos that marked Igor Terentiev. Terentiev was a poet and theater the bodies of prisoners were anti-establishment. A director best known for daring and obscene prisoner could not subscribe to both the methods work.[75] He was a prominent member of the of perekovka and the criminal code. A choice had Futurist group, 41°, which aimed to radically to be made, and through the examination of the transform the world and the language used to tattoos, it is evident that many prisoners chose to express it.[76] He was imprisoned at Belomor align themselves with criminal culture. from April 1931 until the completion of the canal two years later, and should have been an exemplary example of the capability of the reforging process.[77] Once imprisoned, Terentiev wrote for and led an agitational brigade.[78] The purpose of the brigade was to motivate the prisoners through the use of music, and from all accounts he was highly effective in this line of work.[79] In addition to leading the brigade, Terentiev fulfilled 400% of the work norm, and wrote for the camp’s newspaper.[80] His actions did not go unnoticed, which resulted in Terentiev being awarded separate living quarters and an early release from Belomor.[81] After he was released from the camp, Terentiev moved to Moscow where he participated in the creation of Political Prisoners at work, White Sea–Baltic Canal. agitation brigades at the Moscow-Volga Canal.

[82] Terentiev, as a free man, chose to live at the Wikimedia Commons, 1932. local Gulag camp in order to further his work in agitational theater.[83] He was arrested in In many ways, the act of tattooing embodies the Moscow on charges of including anti-Soviet prisoner’s experience at Belomor: creation, themes in his productions, and was executed in destruction, and violence. The Soviet regime June of 1937.[84] There was no proof that the implemented an entire system dedicated to the claim that led to his arrest had any validity, and eradication of “non-beneficial” characteristics in by all accounts Terentiev was truly “reforged.” prisoners, and the prisoners responded by [85] The Soviet regime may have executed one of few known convicts who actually experienced permanently covering their bodies with images that celebrate the fruits of their “non-beneficial” the desired transformation. behavior. The physical body was a subject of great There is no way of knowing how many prisoners admiration in Soviet society and was seen as an essential feature of a good Soviet citizen. [86] On were legitimately re-forged, as most did not “Physical Culture Day,” parades that ran through leave behind physical documentation of their Red Square displayed the well-built physiques of lives. However, through a closer look into the the Soviet youth.[87] tattoo iconography prevalent at Belomor, it is certain that a sizable population of prisoners did not

33

The prisoners created a poignant statement when “stripping” process that they removed the they chose to mark their capable and strong clothes, hair, and names of convicts upon their bodies with anti-Soviet imagery. It conveys the arrival at the camp.[96] In the climate present at sentiment that their bodies are not for the Belomor, the act of tattooing served more than an consumption of the Soviet regime. The aesthetic purpose, it was imperative in the act of inherently permanent nature of tattoos ensures self-preservation. that no amount of reforging can erase the past, and no matter how reformed the criminal has When trying to understand Russian prison become, they will always be reminded of tattoos, one must leave behind all preconceived previous actions. Russian prison tattooing is notions of tattooing. It is important to understand paradoxical in that it is a method of both that many Soviet era prisoners felt an extreme alienation and acceptance— alienation from amount of pressure to get tattooed, as inmates mainstream society and acceptance from the without tattoos were seen as having no authority, criminal realm.[88] masculinity, or status within the prison.[97] In Russian prisons, as Kristina Sundberg and Ulrika Many of those belonging to the criminal Kjellman have proposed, tattoos acted as a underworld found themselves at Belomor, and document, or archive, of the past actions and as a result, images of life at the camp were memories of the wearer. It was a way for prisoners popular within the iconography of Russian to gauge the validity and authority of other prison tattoos.[89] Tattoos depicting life at prisoners; it was important to the hierarchical Belomor often brought to light the neglect the nature of the prisons. The tattoos served as prisoners endured. Highlighting the lack of absolute truths, and were taken as such.[98] available food, one tattoo consists of a starHaving a tattoo that was based on a false event shaped ration cup, which is labelled “the extra could result in the tattoo, or even limb, being cut rations of a convict-hero of socialist labor.” [90] off the wearer.[99] Russian prison tattoos were The cup is outlined with barbed wire and taken this seriously because they were virtually all carnations, and the only contents within are a the prisoners had. hammer and a sickle and shackles.[91] The wearer of this tattoo is making the statement The tattoos served multiple functions and had the that the prisoners are only being fed Soviet power to sustain, create, and enforce an identity ideology and forced labor.[92] within the given social context; the tattoo was a living thing, capable of performing many Tattoos depicting such objects as this ration cup tasks.[100] One of the roles given to tattoos was gave the wearer a unique outlet for selfthe job of courier.[101] Prisoners lived by their expression. Belomor was a “total institution,” own set of values and moral codes, and often this meaning that there was no distinguishable set of rules was exemplified via tattoos.[102] boundary between sleep, leisure, and work; Tattoos could also be an agent used in expressing prisoners lacked the ability to perceive the one’s personal identity. If one were privy to the natural progression of time.[93] Officials wanted language of these tattoos, one could find the lack of time-related boundaries to break the information regarding the personal life of the prisoners. To cope with the disorienting nature prisoner, such as time served and agreements of the camp, many prisoners adopted multiple entered.[103] The images held the capacity to be personalities.[94] The lack of concrete both individualistic in purpose and universal; they personality was essential for the “stripping” were both internal and external.[104] Russian process that criminals underwent at Belomor. prison tattoos facilitated the development of [95] Officials were so eager to begin the dignity by allowing prisoners to mark their own set of values and ethics on their body.[105]

34

The study of Russian prison tattoos has iconographic language. This language relates to progressed tremendously over the last twenty different aspects of life: imprisonment, love, years. Enid Schildkrout’s argument for the sexuality, hardship. Prisoners used the tattoos as a validity of tattoos as an area of study is no longer creative outlet to express themselves and their needed, as the wide array of material on the realities. subject proves. When taking into account the severity of the Soviet prison system, it is Acknowledgments remarkable that a wealth of information regarding the tattooing that went on there exists. My deep gratitude goes first to Professor Reva Before embarking on this area of study, I would Wolf, who offered me a tremendous amount of have assumed that the practice of tattooing would support throughout this process. Without her, I not have been permitted within Russian prisons. would not have been able to accomplish even half Even more surprising is that the subjects of most of what I did in this paper. The amount of time tattoos were quite obviously in opposition to the and effort that she put into my research amazes government. It begs the question, did the me and I will forever be grateful for her assistance. authorities not understand the severity to which they were being scrutinized by the prisoners, or My appreciation also extends to Rachel Crook who did they simply not care? I would believe that so graciously agreed to edit my paper. Rachel they would care as the whole point of perekovka currently works a full-time job in the medical field was the reformation of the prisoner into a and, despite the stresses induced by COVID-19, productive member of society. Tattoos she managed to provide excellent advice on how to expressing the hatred one has towards the improve my paper. There is no amount of thanks government is not the mark of a reformed that I can give to her, as she has helped me in individual. However there were tattoos depicting more ways than I can express. clear messages that any Russian citizen could read, including prison administration (see figure Lastly, I would like to thank the wonderful staff at 1). Perhaps the authorities permitted tattooing as the Sojourner Truth Library. The closing of the it would have caused an uprising within the library was obviously something that I had not prison population if they were to crack down on anticipated and as a result, I was left without the practice and perhaps the authorities did not crucial resources. The staff at the Sojourner Truth find such mark-making to be a real threat.

Library worked with Professor Wolf and I to ensure that we had access to the necessary It is because of the willingness of the wearer to materials. I am indebted to the library staff, as it incorporate meaning into their images, and the would have been impossible to complete my paper inherently artistic nature of the motifs, that I without proper academic resources. would categorize Russian prison tattoos as art.

The images have a clear audience in other Endnotes prisoners and specific meanings. The prisoners used their bodies as a medium to portray their [1] Enid Schildkrout, “Inscribing the Body,” life story and to expose the corruption they faced Annual Review of Anthropology 33 (2004), 319. at the hands of Russian authority. In some [2] Thomas M. Curley, Review of Omai, Pacific instances, they risked infection and disease in Envoy, by E. H. McCormick,” Eighteenth-Century order to convey messages within the images on Studies 12 (Spring 1979): 429. their bodies. In addition, they managed to create [3] Curley, Review of Omai, Pacific Envoy, by E. a series of esoteric images that compose a specific H. McCormick,” 429.

35

[4] Schildkrout, “Inscribing the Body,” 319. On [15] Schildkrout, “Inscribing the Body,” 321. the emergence of anthropology as a discipline, [16] Baldev, Russian Criminal Tattoo see Thomas Highland Eriksen, Small Places, Encyclopedia: Volume 3, 25.

Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and [17] Baldev, Russian Criminal Tattoo Cultural Anthropology, 4th ed. (London: Pluto Encyclopedia: Volume 1, 24.

Press, 2015), 12. The influential art historian [18] Baldev, Russian Criminal Tattoo Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968) succinctly described Encyclopedia: Volume 3, 25. the term “iconology” as being “the branch of the [19] Michael Schwirtz, “Vory v Zakone has history of art which concerns itself with the hallowed place in Russian criminal lore,” New subject matter or meaning of works of art, as York Times, July, 29, 2008. opposed to their form” in Studies in Iconology: [20] Schwirtz, “Vory v Zakone has hallowed place Humanistic Themes in the Art of the in Russian criminal lore.”

Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, [21] Baldev, Russian Criminal Tattoo 1939), 3.

Encyclopedia: Volume 3, 43.

[5] Danzig Baldev, Russian Criminal Tattoo [22] Baldev, Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia: Volume 3 (London: FUEL Encyclopedia: Volume 3, 43.

Publishing, 2008), 25, 43.

[23] Pawel Maczewski, “The Visual Encyclopedia [6] For a discussion of the contemporary tattoo as of Russia Prison Tattoos,” Vice News, December art, see Marcia Tucker, "Tattoo: The State of the 26, 2014.

Art," Artforum 19, no. 9 (May 1981): 42-47.

[24] Kristina Sundberg and Ulrika Kjellman, “The According to Tucker, who proposes that tattooing Tattoo as a Document,” in Journal of “is finally once again coming into its own as Documentation 74, (January 2018): 30. The another aspect of the fine arts,” the act of authors base their discussion of these categories tattooing possesses two aspects that are relevant on Clinton R. Sanders’ study of commercial imperative to its classification as art: tattoos in “Drill and Fill: Client Choice, Client subject/object relation, which she compares to Typologies, and International Control in contemporary art that uses the body as a Commercial Tattoo Settings,” in A. Rubin, ed., medium, and highly skilled technique; Marks of Civilization: Artistic Transformation of “Tattoo: State of the Art,” 47. the Human Body (Los Angeles: Los Angeles [7] Constance Holden, “Isotopic Data Pinpoint Museum of Cultural History, University of Iceman's Origins,” Science 302 (2003): 759.

California, Los Angeles, 1988), 219-32.

[8] Dunbar Plunket Barton, The Amazing [25] Sundberg and Kjellman, “The Tattoo as a Career of Bernadotte, 1763-1844(Boston: Document,” 30.

Houghton Mifflin, 1930), 347.

[26] Sundberg and Kjellman, “The Tattoo as a [9] Barton, The Amazing Career of Bernadotte, Document,” 30.

1763-1844, 347.

[27] Sundberg and Kjellman, “The Tattoo as a [10] Schildkrout, “Inscribing the Body,” 335 Document,” 30.

[11] Schildkrout, “Inscribing the Body,” 335 [28] Sundberg and Kjellman, “The Tattoo as a [12] Schildkrout, “Inscribing the Body,” 325 Document,” 30.

[13] Julie S. Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality [29] Sundberg and Kjellman, “The Tattoo as a and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag (Boston: Document,” 30.

Academic Studies Press, 2014), 79.

[30] Sundberg and Kjellman, “The Tattoo as a [14] Schildkrout, “Inscribing the Body,”, 321.

Document,” 30.

36

[31] Sundberg and Kjellman, “The Tattoo as a [56] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Document,” 30.

Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 76.

[32] Sundberg and Kjellman, “The Tattoo as a [57] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Document,” 24.

Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 77.

[33] Sundberg and Kjellman, “The Tattoo as a [58] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Document,” 25.

Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 77.

[34] Sundberg and Kjellman, “The Tattoo as a [59] Hubertus F. Jahn, Patriotic Culture in Russia Document,” 25.

During World War I (Ithaca: Cornell University [35] Sundberg and Kjellman, “The Tattoo as a Press, 1998), 12.

Document,” 26.

[60] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and [36] Sundberg and Kjellman, “The Tattoo as a Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 77.

Document,” 26.

[61] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and [37] Sundberg and Kjellman, “The Tattoo as a Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 77.

Document,” 26.

[62] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and [38] Sundberg and Kjellman, “The Tattoo as a Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 77.

Document,” 26.

[63] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and [39] Sundberg and Kjellman, “The Tattoo as a Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 77.

Document,” 26.

[64] Alexander Pushkin, as quoted in Draskoczy, [40] Laurie Essig, Queer in Russia (Durham: Duke Belomor:Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s University Press, 1999), 8.

Gulag, 77.

[41] Essig, Queer in Russia, 8.

[65] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and [42] Efrat Shoham, “ ‘Signs of Honor’ Among Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 77.

Russian Inmates in Israel’s Prisons,” International [66] Julie S. Draskoczy, “The Put’ of Perekovka: Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Transforming Lives at Stalin’s White Sea-Baltic Criminology 54, no.6 ( 2010). 994.

Canal,” The Russian Review 71, (January, 2012): [43] Shoham, “ ‘Signs of Honor’ Among Russian 30.

Inmates in Israel’s Prisons,” 994.

[67] Draskoczy, “The Put’ of Perekovka: [44] Shoham, “ ‘Signs of Honor’ Among Russian Transforming Lives at Stalin’s White Sea-Baltic Inmates in Israel’s Prisons,” 994.

Canal,” 30.

[45] Shoham, “ ‘Signs of Honor’ Among Russian [68] Draskoczy, “The Put’ of Perekovka: Inmates in Israel’s Prisons,” 994.

Transforming Lives at Stalin’s White Sea-Baltic [46] Essig, Queer in Russia, 8.

Canal,” 30.

[47] Essig, Queer in Russia, 9.

[69] Draskoczy, “The Put’ of Perekovka: [48] Essig, Queer in Russia, 9.

Transforming Lives at Stalin’s White Sea-Baltic [49] Essig, Queer in Russia, 9.

Canal,” 31.

[50] Shoham, “ ‘Signs of Honor’ Among Russian [70] Draskoczy, “The Put’ of Perekovka: Inmates in Israel’s Prisons,” 985.

Transforming Lives at Stalin’s White Sea-Baltic [51] Shoham, “ ‘Signs of Honor’ Among Russian Canal,” 31.

Inmates in Israel’s Prisons,” 985.

[71] Draskoczy, “The Put’ of Perekovka: [53] Baldev, Russian Criminal Tattoo Transforming Lives at Stalin’s White Sea-Baltic Encyclopedia: Volume 3, 25.

Canal,” 36.

[54] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and [72] Draskoczy, “The Put’ of Perekovka: Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 76.

Transforming Lives at Stalin’s White Sea-Baltic [55] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Canal,” 32.

Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 76.

37

[73] Draskoczy, “The Put’ of Perekovka: Transforming Lives at Stalin’s White Sea-Baltic Canal,” 32.

[74] Draskoczy, “The Put’ of Perekovka: Transforming Lives at Stalin’s White Sea-Baltic Canal,” 32.

[75] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 96.

[76] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 96.

[77] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 99.

[78] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 96.

[79] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 100.

[80] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 100.

[81] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 100.

[82] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 100.

[83] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 100.

[84] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 100.

[85] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 100.

[86] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 21.

[87] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 21.

[88] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 106.

[89] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 105.

[90] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 105.

[91] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 105.

[92] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 105.

[93] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 20.

[94] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 20.

[95] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 20.

[96] Draskoczy, Belomor:Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag, 20.

[97] Sundberg and Kjellman, “The Tattoo as a Document,” 30.

[98] Sundberg and Kjellman, “The Tattoo as a Document,” 21.

[99] Sundberg and Kjellman, “The Tattoo as a Document,” 24.

[100] Sundberg and Kjellman, “The Tattoo as a Document,” 24.

[101] Sundberg and Kjellman, “The Tattoo as a Document,” 24.

[102] Sundberg and Kjellman, “The Tattoo as a Document,” 24.

[103] Sundberg and Kjellman, “The Tattoo as a Document,” 29.

[104] Sundberg and Kjellman, “The Tattoo as a Document,” 29.

[105] Sundberg and Kjellman, “The Tattoo as a Document,” 31.

Bibliography Baldaev, Danzig, Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia: Volume 1. London: FUEL Publishing, 2004.

Baldaev, Danzig, Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia: Volume 3. London: FUEL Publishing, 2008.

Barton, Dunbar Plunket. The Amazing Career of Bernadotte, 1763-1844. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930.

Curley, Thomas M. Review of Omai, Pacific Envoy

by E.H. McCormick, Eighteenth-Century Studies 12.(Spring 1979): 429.

Draskoczy, Julie S. Belomor:Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2014.

38

Draskoczy, Julie S. “The Put’ of Perekovka: Schildkrout, Enid. “Inscribing the Body.” Annual Transforming Lives at Stalin’s White Sea-Baltic Review of Anthropology 33 (2004): 319-335.

Canal.” The Russian Review 71 (January, 2012): Schwirtz, Michael. “Vory v Zakone has hallowed 30-36. place in Russian criminal lore.” New York Times, Essig, Laurie. Queer in Russia. Durham: Duke July 29, 2008.

University Press, 1999. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/world/eur Holden, Constance. “Isotopic Data Pinpoint ope/29ihtIceman’s Origins.” Science 302 (Oct. 31, 2003): moscow.4.14865004.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 759 Shoham, Efrat. “ ‘ Signs of Honor’ Among Russian Jahn, Hubertus F. Patriotic Culture in Russia Inmates in Israel’s Prisons.” International During World War I. Ithaca: Cornell University Journal of Offender Therapy & Comparative Press, 1998.

Criminology 54, no 6. (2010): 985-994.

Maczewski, Pawel. “The Visual Encyclopedia of Sundberg, Kristina, and Ulrika Kjellman. “The Russia Prison Tattoos,” Vice News, December Tattoo as a Document.” Journal of 26, 2014.

Documentation 74, no. 1 (January, 2018): 18– https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9bzvbp/russi 35. an-criminal-tattoo-fuel-damon-murray-interview- Tucker, Marcia. "Tattoo: The State of the Art." 876 Artforum 19, no. 9 (May 1981): 42-47.

39

The Forbidden Existence: Anti-Homeless Architecture and the Regulation of Public Spaces By: Ezequiel Indriago Perez Ezequiel Indriago Perez is a fourth year honors Criminology student at the University of Ottawa with a minor in psychology. He is expected to graduate in June 2021. His areas of interest include the criminal justice system, public perception of crime and law & immigration.

40

Introduction It is estimated that there are at least 235,000 homeless Canadians every year[1] Despite these large numbers, anti-homeless architecture is widespread across Canadian cities. For instance, the #DefensiveTO project has collected and mapped over 120 anti-homeless architectural structures in downtown Toronto alone.[2] Smith and Walters[3] explain that the construction of urban spaces is not a neutral act. From benches with unusual shapes to spikes on the ground, the planning and construction of public spaces are carefully designed and intentional.[4] As the public has become more aware of the oppressive character innate to anti-homeless structures, calls to action have motivated public officials to denounce and dismantle these structures. For example, in 2014 Montreal mayor, Denis Coderre, condemned the use of "anti-loitering" spikes in Montreal's streets and ordered their immediate removal after public outrage.[5] Although many applauded the mayor's effort, few failed to recognize the collusion between the local and provincial government and the construction of anti-homeless architecture. As such, the current research project will seek to answer: How are public architectural designs and legislations working together to prevent homeless people from seeking refuge in public spaces in Canada? Research in this area will bridge the legal with the physical to fill a gap in the literature. Furthermore, the results from the current work will provide the general public with an analysis that can be used to better understand the phenomenon of anti-homeless architecture. Lastly, the current research will provide policy-makers with a relevant and contemporary analysis that addresses the State's role in marginalizing homeless communities to incite change in this area. Results demonstrate that the neo-liberal conceptualization of the public and the private, the assumed exclusivity of public spaces and the societal conception of homeless people all play a

role in the construction and maintenance of antihomeless architecture.

Contextualization The origin of the term anti-homeless architecture and its varying denominations (hostile/ defensive architecture) is unclear. Little is known about when the terms were created and became extensively used to describe the historical phenomenon of public space regulation via physical architectural structures. Moreover, each of the terms used to define this phenomenon has often been conceptualized differently by different scholars depending on the purpose for its use. As such, there is no singular definition used to describe the anti-homeless architecture and its variations. For instance, Petty defines antihomeless architecture as “various structures that are attached to or installed in spaces of public use in order to render them unusable in certain ways or by certain groups.” [6] Whereas De Fine Licht argues that anti-homeless architecture refers to “existing infrastructure [that has been] modified so that it becomes impossible to use it in the same way as before.”[7] Although varying definitions exist to define these structures, this work will use Smith and Walters anti-homeless architecture definition as “architecture designed to actively exclude particular categories of person.” [8] Unlike other interpretations, Smith and Walter’s conceptualization has a broader scope. They claim that hostile architecture is not solely physical structures such as park benches and spikes, but it can also include any form of non-physical deterrents such as CCTV surveillance cameras and ultraviolet lighting resulting in the systemic segregation of homeless people from public spaces.[9] A more conservative definition that solely concentrates on physical structures fails to recognize the extent of anti-homeless legislation.

In essence, anti-homeless architecture can be characterized as both systemic and physical including restricted mobility in public transportation and public spaces.

41

Furthermore, it should be noted that antiDuring this era, anti-homeless architecture homeless architecture is not a contemporary underwent a redesign and began being phenomenon. On the contrary, Legro details implemented more often in downtown cores and that anti-homeless architecture can be traced to areas deemed necessary for these structures.

19th century England where anti-urinating Alas, Jeffrey’s work did not acknowledge the structures plagued the streets of 1800s England. inherent anti-homeless nature of his proposals.

During this period, it was not unusual for the corners of buildings to be filled with stone Later, in the early 1980s, Wilson and Kelling mounds to deter people from relieving theorized that physical deterioration like graffiti, themselves in public spaces.[10] These empty buildings, and broken windows, and structures were replicated worldwide in large disorder all resulted in increased levels of cities such as New York.[11] Likewise, Legro criminality.[14] This phenomenon was coined illustrates a parallel and states that anti-roosting the Broken Windows theory, and during the late spikes have also been used for centuries to 1980s and 1990s, it became the guiding principle prevent birds from gathering in spaces where in the geographical and architectural design and they are undesired. Although anti-roosting construction of major cities across North spikes are environmental deterrents for birds, America. It was during this time that antithe intent behind their creation is similar to that homeless architecture evolved to include nonof anti-homeless architecture used to deter physical deterrents such as surveillance cameras. people from public spaces.[12] In her work, Davis opposed the increased regulation and supervision present in cities and Although these structures have been existing in claimed that the emergence of ideas that public public spaces throughout the world for many spaces had to be regulated to decrease criminality years, their presence has evolved. For instance, resulted in the militarization of streets, creating a in the early 1970s, the concept of crime public sphere inspired by warfare.[15] Today, the prevention using the environment became very effects of these guiding frameworks can be seen popular. In his work, Jeffrey claimed that the in the widespread presence of anti-homeless planning and construction of a city could serve architecture across large Canadian cities such as as a deterrent to crime if designed correctly.[13] Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal.[16] He argued that public spaces where people congregated needed to be planned to prevent The Private-Public Divide and Legislation rather than reinforce crime. He explained that of Public Spaces the presence of deteriorating building facades, graffiti, broken windows, and dark, secluded To analyze anti-homeless architecture as defined areas would increase criminality as it seemed

by Walter and Smiths, the following theoretical inviting for criminogenic behavior. Jeffrey frameworks will be used: the private and public suggested the planning and development of divide, jurisdiction, and public enemies. cities should include crime deterring elements such as better lighting and street distribution, uniformity, and overall cleaner environments.

42

First, the private and public divide, as defined Lastly, Chesnay et al. offer a contemporary

by Hunter, states that the division of public example of stigma related to homelessness. In spaces into private and public is "inherently their work, the term public enemies defines political."[17] She explains that liberal political homeless people that “cannot be tolerated in ideology has influenced how spaces are public spaces, which justifies the use of legal conceptualized. For instance, Hunter argues that enforcement to sanitize public spaces.”[22] in liberal societies, there is an underlying Similar to Goffman,[23] Chesnay et al. have conception which states the private spheres are acknowledged that specific populations often lose areas of "legal non-intervention."[18] Essentially, their humanity through the process of liberalism conceptualizes private spaces as areas stigmatization.[24] However, they have applied that should be exempt from governmental the term specifically to homeless people and intervention. The liberal ideology claims that the expanded on the idea that homelessness is often state should not be involved in people's private seen as dangerous and threatening to ‘regular’ life and private affairs. Alternatively, public communities. According to Chesnay et al., the spaces are areas in which individuals are all state enforces legislation that protects the general presumably allowed to gather; however, these middle class from the alleged dangers of homeless spaces are regulated by the state primarily people since they have been deemed dangerous through legislation. When examining antienemies.[25] Unlike the concept of Stigma by homeless architecture, it is essential to Goffman that primarily addresses selfcontextualize the phenomenon in the broader construction, public enemies refers to the threat societal setting where it is present. Since Canada explicitly associated with homeless communities. is a neo-liberal society, anti-homeless This concept will be used in the current research architecture can be analyzed through the public because it offers a more specific conceptualization and private divide popularized in liberal of homeless-related stigma. The construction of societies, as Hunter explained. Secondly, anti-homeless architecture would most likely be Valverde defines jurisdiction as "the governance considered a legal recognition of the threat that of legal governance."[19] In essence, jurisdiction public enemies pose when they penetrate public determines and distributes state authority spaces. Therefore, the term public enemies can between various legal spheres. According to explain the interplay between concepts of public Valverde, the process of legal distribution avoids safety and legislation. potential conflicts between different legal fields by carefully establishing who has legal power over a determined legal space.[20] Thus, her concept of jurisdiction explains why there are several levels of governments within Canada and why bylaws exist and are enforced. Valverde's definition of jurisdiction helps understand why the government decides to designate specific laws to smaller government levels, such as the provincial government. When analyzing anti-homeless architecture, it is essential to recognize the legality of anti-homeless by-laws through the lens of jurisdiction as "the governance of legal governance." [21] Through Valverde's Photo by Eldan titled “The anti-bench” licensed interpretation of jurisdiction, the legitimacy of under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 anti-homeless architecture will be examined.

43

Exclusivity of public spaces

no person can solicit in public city areas.[34] These two examples are clear indicators of the To begin, public spaces such as city parks are criminalization of requesting money or selling presumed to be accessible for everyone in a goods publicly. Nevertheless, if an individual community.[26] However, Valverde[27] explains requests money from a stranger through a that the regulation of public spaces through legitimate institutional mechanism such as bank legislation such as the Ontario Safe Streets Act transfers and donations to an organization from and Ottawa by-laws render these public spaces home (private space) there are virtually no legal quasi-private, as they are, in essence, owned and impediments to doing so.[35] As such, the regulated by the provincial and municipal criminalization of certain acts in by-laws and governments. For instance, the very restrictions legislation is significantly associated with said imposed on Ottawa city parks, such as behavior's geographical location. Hence, the operational hours, codes of conduct, and permit regulation of public spaces reinforces those certain regulation[28] illustrate that these presumed behaviors must be done in a private setting to public spaces do not operate free of avoid being criminalized. governmental regulations. Public city parks can be better understood as private governmentally The issue arises as homeless people are often owned city parks.[29] forced to use public city spaces to engage in everyday activities that ought to be done in private Furthermore, considering that there are no spaces according to the liberal division of public explicit regulatory by-laws that prohibit and private spaces. However, many Canadian individuals from accessing city parks, it is homeless individuals do not have access to private understood that anyone can access and utilize spaces due to their homeless status.[36] These these spaces. However, Hunter explains that the activities include sleeping, showering, working, private and public divide of public spaces may and engaging in sexual activity. As the government challenge the notion that the public sphere is is attempting to enforce the public and private inclusive for all residents.[30] Hunter asserts divide, these activities, when done in public, are that liberal ideologies compartmentalize society criminalized by the Ottawa by-laws and the into two major categories, the private and the Ontario Safe Streets Act. For instance, section 3 of public.[31] The reasoning behind this dichotomy the Ottawa park bylaw states that no person is is the liberal assumption that the government permitted in city parks between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m., should only regulate public spaces and permit indicating that sleeping is prohibited in parks. individuals to enjoy the deregulated private space.[32] Upon analyzing the Ottawa city park Additionally, section 2 of the Ontario Safe Streets by-laws and the Ontario Safe Streets Act (1999), Act prohibits anyone from disposing of condoms it is evident that the private and public divide as in outdoor public spaces. Moreover, anti-homeless conceptualized by Hunter is the guiding principle architecture is used as a non-legal tool to remind behind the construction and preservation of anti- individuals that public areas cannot be used as homeless architecture in Ontario. For example, private spaces. For example, the extra armrest section 7 of the Ottawa parks by-law states that installed in the middle of many park benches no person is allowed to sell or offer "goods, wares throughout large Canadian city parks prevents or merchandise" in city parks.[33] Similarly, anyone from sleeping on the bench.[37] section 2 of the Ontario Safe Streets Act states that

44

Furthermore, beyond Canadian borders, the use of ultraviolet lighting in many public bathrooms in Jurisdiction and public exclusivity London prevents intravenous drug users from using public areas[38] clearly distinguishing To understand how the government has enacted what is acceptable and not in public spaces. legal perimeters that restrict particular daily Although these restrictions apply to everyone in behavior, we must examine the division of the community equally, they disproportionately governmental power used to produce and maintain affect people that do not have access to private anti-homeless architecture. As previously spaces to engage in these activities. mentioned, anti-homeless architecture and antihomeless legislation disproportionately affect As such, the public and private divide measures homeless people.[42] It disrupts their daily do not consider the needs of homeless people. activities such as sleeping, working, and engaging The Ontario Safe Streets Act and the Ottawa in sexual activity because they are not afforded a park by-laws ensure that ordinary citizens feel private space to engage in these activities.[43] The safe while utilizing public spaces--that is, free of approximately 235,000 homeless Canadians that anyone engaging in private activities publicly. roam the streets of major Canadian cities are [39] These governmental legislations assume constant victims of regulatory laws that seek to that all residents can constantly switch between displace these individuals from public spaces.[44] private and public spaces easily, which disregards However, it is essential to note that the regulatory the lived experiences of homeless individuals. laws and architecture that have made this possible Anti-homeless architecture functions as a nonare enacted by municipal (by-laws) and provincial legal tool employed by local governments to governments (Ontario Safe Streets Act). Federally, bolster the notion that certain people are not any law that prohibits or prevents someone from welcomed in public spaces.[40] seeking refuge, eating, and engaging in sexual activity would be deemed unconstitutional as it Overall, there appears to be a misunderstanding infringes upon several sections of the Canadian that public spaces are inclusive of all residents Charter of Rights and Freedom. For example, in and operate in the best interest of all community Victoria v. Adams[45] it was determined that the members, specifically when reinforcing the city of Victoria was violating section 7 of the public and private divide. However, local and Charter of Rights and Freedoms by prohibiting provincial governments use regulatory legislation homeless people from building temporary shelters and physical architectural obstacles to enforce in city parks. Moreover, in Abbotsford v. the liberal division of private and public spheres. Shantz,[46] it was concluded that preventing While anti-homeless architecture functions as a homeless people from seeking refuge in public non-legal deterrent for those who engage in spaces when homeless shelters were full was private affairs publicly, it should nonetheless be unconstitutional as it violated section 7 of the recognized as a state-initiated program that seeks Charter of Rights and Freedoms. to achieve similar objectives as the legislation does but more subtly.[41] Ultimately, the government uses both legislation and antihomeless architecture to cement the exclusivity of public spaces.

45

"Aritistic Anti-homeless Bench" by lavocado@sbcglobal.net is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Therefore, in various instances, the federal government has upheld and justified provincial and municipal laws that prevent homeless people Despite the court’s ruling that local governments' from seeking refuge in public spaces. For example, provisions to separate homeless people from city in Tanudjaja v. Canada,[52] the plaintiffs argued parks are unconstitutional, Ottawa park by-laws that the lack of and inadequate housing in Ontario and the Ontario Safe Streets Act are still in effect. was unconstitutional as it violated serval sections Furthermore, anti-homeless structures are still of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, present in major Canadian cities[47]. Valverde the courts determined that there were no explains that jurisdiction distributes violations of sections 7 and 15 of the Charter of governmental power between several actors, Rights and Freedoms in the case as the right to which explains this phenomenon.[48] For housing was not justiciable. Similarly, in Henry v. instance, the Constitution Act outlines the legal Canada[53] the plaintiffs argued that it was responsibility that each level of government unconstitutional for election polls to prevent (municipal, provincial, federal) holds. Section citizens from voting if they could not present 91(27) of the Constitution Act states that all personal identification documentation. It was criminal law matters fall under the federal argued that many homeless people do have access government's jurisdiction.[49] That is, the to personal documentation, which would prohibit federal government is responsible for them from participating in elections. The courts addressing any criminal law violations. determined that section 1 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms justified voter identification Similarly, sections 92 and 93 of the Constitution requirements at the election polls. Both Tanudjaja Act detail the powers awarded to provincial v. Canada[54] and Henry v. Canada[55] governments.[50] For example, health care, illustrate the effects of jurisdiction on issues education, and civil rights are all managed affecting homeless people in Canada. In both individually by each province. As such, Valverde cases, the courts have dismissed seemly states that the division of power through unconstitutional acts affecting homeless people jurisdiction permits the federal government to using the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as withdraw from issues for which provincial and justification. The division of power between local governments would be responsible.[51] provinces and the federal government allows This division permits provincial and local legislation to be enacted at the local level, governments to enact legislation that is more disproportionately affecting homeless people. The specific to the communities that they affect. For courts have demonstrated they uphold the example, city by-laws serve as micro-level division of power as laid out by the jurisdiction. legislation pertaining to the specific needs of a community rather than the entire country.

46

As has been remarked, the presence of antitheir experiences living on the streets of the United homeless architecture in large Canadian cities Kingdom. It was recorded that many participants results from jurisdiction. Through court cases, felt stigmatized by non-homeless individuals and the government has exemplified under which were victims of discrimination and harassment circumstances violations of Charter rights would from the general population.[61] Furthermore, a be acceptable. Specifically, the federal participant expressed that as a homeless person, government dissociates itself from provincial “you are not treated like a person, you are treated regulations such as by-laws that regulate parks like a bit of trash.”[62] Similarly, another as these public spaces belong to the provincial participant noted that he felt like an outcast and jurisdiction. This provision enables anti-homeless expressed that homeless people are “not on top of architecture to continue existing across Canadian the public interest list.” [63] Finally, a participant cities as they are essentially deregulated by the mentioned being a victim of assault and federal government. humiliation from passersby's due to his homeless appearance and status.

Societal conception of homeless people Due to the negative perception of homeless people, Lastly, the conceptualization of homeless people Dej explains that there is an increased reliance on can explain the prevalence of anti-homeless psychological-based community intervention architecture. For example, Dej explains that programs that strive to teach homeless people selfhistorically, homeless people have been esteem and responsibilization skills to make them negatively conceptualized by the field of integrate into the Neoliberal model of what it psychology.[56] Behaviors associated with means to be a good resident of a community, able homeless people have been pathologized and to enjoy public spaces.[64] These intervention treated as illnesses that need treatment to programs that focus solely on the individual and encourage individuals to foster pro-social their responsibility to change perpetuate the idea behaviors while diminishing attitudes associated that homeless people experience homelessness with homelessness.[57] In a liberal society such solely due to personal decisions, which overlooks as Canada, homeless individuals are often seen the influence of systemic barriers that may lead to as failing to take ownership of their lives.[58] homelessness.[65] While these programs may be For instance, in a United States-based study well-intentioned, they give the mainstream assessing community attitudes towards homeless population a reason to continue victimizing people, Dear and Gleeson noted a large group of homeless people for their lived experiences and respondents that engaged in victim-blaming fostering negative beliefs towards homeless towards homeless people.[59] In particular, a populations. participant noted that “the homeless are "Camden Council antihomeless by choice, and therefore warrant no public sympathy.”[60] Furthermore, there was a homeless bench seating“ by renaissancechambara general trend in the participants that is licensed under CC conceptualized homeless people negatively and BY 2.0 attributed their homeless status to personal actions that the individual had taken, leading them to homelessness rather than systematic barriers.

Similarly, in a United Kingdom based study, eight homeless individuals were interviewed to detail

47

Consequently, the pathologization of homeless people has led them to become enemies of society.

Chesnay et al. demonstrate that as professionals and the general population have negatively conceptualized homeless individuals, they have become public enemies that deserve to be cleansed from public spaces.[66] Similarly, Gaetz explains that as homeless people began to be perceived as the reason for the issues in public city spaces such as vandalism and destruction, more mainstream attention was given to homeless people, and there was an increase "demand for politicians to do something"[67] which created a sense of moral panic among residents of Canadian communities. As such, Chesnay et al. attributes the criminalization of homelessness to the public enemy status given to homeless people.[68] For instance, the Ontario Safe Streets Act disproportionally impacts homeless people despite being a seeming neutral legislation. The clauses in the act criminalize behavior that would typically be associated with homelessness, such as soliciting (section 2) and engaging in sexual activity in public (section 4). Due to the conception of homeless people, the Ontario Safe Streets Act was enacted and received public support.[69] Similarly, Ottawa by-laws that regulate public spaces illustrate how local governments have conceptualized homeless people. Specifically, they have identified the cleansing of homeless people as a priority through legislation and non-legal avenues such as antihomeless architecture.

In the case of anti-homeless architecture, as there are widespread negative conceptions of homeless people leading the mainstream to pressure cities “into passing more restrictive park laws,”[70] the presence of anti-homeless architecture in city parks and public areas in Canadian cities is a testament to the beliefs that are held about

homelessness in the neo-liberal society. The rejection of homeless people through physical deterrents exemplifies the municipal attempt to reduce what is considered problematic populations from core areas. Homeless people becoming enemies of the public have led to the presence of legal and non-legal deterrents of homeless people.[71] Conclusion Anti-homeless architecture has persisted over many years, and the current work aimed to uncover the role legislation has played in its perpetuation. The analysis conducted demonstrates that antihomeless architecture allows major Canadian cities to reinforce and police the notion of the public and private divide as defined by Hunter. Furthermore, the building of anti-homeless architecture is possible through jurisdiction and the division of power imposed by it. Lastly, the conception of homeless people as public enemies is a leading cause of anti-homeless structures' perpetuation. It is essential to recognize that although antihomeless architecture is not a legal actor or regulated by legislation, it functions similarly to any other legal deterrent of homeless people. For instance, several parallels are found in the Ontario Safe Streets Act, Ottawa by-laws, and the antihomeless architecture construction. As such, equal attention must be given to the factors that enable society to continue marginalizing the homeless community through legislation and anti-homeless architecture.

48

Endnotes

[12] Michelle Legro, “The city that will never let you sleep,” Topic. https://www.topic.com/the[1]Stephen Gaetz, “Safe Streets for Whom? citythat-will-never-let-you-sleep, (2018).

Homeless Youth, Social Exclusion, and Criminal [13] Ray C. Jeffery, “Crime Prevention Through Victimization,” Canadian Journal of Criminology Environmental Design.” The American Behavioral and Criminal Justice 46, no. 4 (2004): 423.

Scientist, 14. no. 4 (1971), 598.

[2]DefensiveTO, “Mapping #DefensiveTO,” [14] James Wilson and George Kelling, "Broken Defensiveto, (n.d) Windows: The police and neighborhood safety" https://www.defensiveto.com/map.

The [3]Naomi Smith and Peter Walters, “Desire Lines Atlantic,https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/a and Defensive Architecture in Modern Urban rchive/1982/03/brokenwindows/304465/, (1982).

Environments,” Urban Studies 55, no. 13 (2018): [15] Angela Y. Davis, “Are Prisons Obsolete?” New 2981.

York: Seven Stories Press, (2003).

[4] Naomi Smith and Peter Walters, “Desire Lines [16] Lauren Pelley, “Ever wonder why you can't lie and Defensive Architecture in Modern Urban down on most city benches? It's thanks to Environments,” 2981. 'defensive design,’”. cbc news.

[5] Lauren Pelley, “Ever wonder why you can't lie https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/howdown on most city benches? It's thanks to defensive-designleads-to-rigid-benches-metal'defensive design,’”. cbc news. spikes-and-visual-violence-in-modern-citieshttps://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/how- 1.5192333, (2019). defensive-designleads-to-rigid-benches-metal[17] Rosemary Hunter, “Contesting the Dominant spikes-and-visual-violence-in-modern-citiesParadigm: Feminist Critiques of Liberal Legalism,” 1.5192333, (2019).

Ashgate Research Companion in Feminist Legal [6] James Petty, “The London Spikes Controversy: Theory, (2016): 19.

Homelessness, Urban Securitisation and the [18] Rosemary Hunter, “Contesting the Dominant Question of ‘Hostile Architecture,” International Paradigm: Feminist Critiques of Liberal Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy Legalism,”: 19.

5, no. 1 (2016): 68 [19] Mariana Valverde, “Jurisdiction and Scale: [7] Karl Persson De Fine Licht, “Hostile Urban Legal `Technicalities’ as Resources for Theory,” Architecture: A Critical Discussion of the Social & Legal Studies 18, no. 2 (2009): 141.

Seemingly Offensive Art of Keeping People Away.” [20] Mariana Valverde, “Jurisdiction and Scale: Etikk i Praksis 11, no. 2 (2017): 29.

Legal `Technicalities’ as Resources for Theory,”: [8] Naomi Smith and Peter Walters, “Desire Lines 151. and Defensive Architecture in Modern Urban [21]Mariana Valverde, “Jurisdiction and Scale: Environments,” 2984.

Legal `Technicalities’ as Resources for Theory,” [9] Naomi Smith and Peter Walters, “Desire Lines 141. and Defensive Architecture in Modern Urban [22] Catherine T. Chesnay et al.,“Taming Environments,” 2984.

Disorderly People One Ticket at a Time: The [10] Michelle Legro, “The city that will never let Penalization of Homelessness in Ontario and you sleep,” Topic. https://www.topic.com/theBritish Columbia.” Canadian Journal of citythat-will-never-let-you-sleep. (2018) Criminology and Criminal Justice 55, no. 2 [11] Michelle Legro, “The city that will never let you(2013): 164 sleep,” Topic. https://www.topic.com/the-citythatwill-never-let-you-sleep, (2018).

49

[23] Erving Goffman, “Stigma Notes on the [38] James Petty, “The London Spikes Management of Spoiled Identity.” New York: J. Controversy: Homelessness, Urban Securitisation Aronson, (1963). and the Question of ‘Hostile Architecture,”: 68 [24] Catherine T. Chesnay et al.,“Taming [39] Stephen Gaetz, “Safe Streets for Whom?

Disorderly People One Ticket at a Time: The Homeless Youth, Social Exclusion, and Criminal Penalization of Homelessness in Ontario and Victimization,”: 423..

British Columbia.”

[40] James Petty, “The London Spikes [25] Catherine T. Chesnay et al.,“Taming Controversy: Homelessness, Urban Securitisation Disorderly People One Ticket at a Time: The and the Question of ‘Hostile Architecture,”: 67– Penalization of Homelessness in Ontario and 81.

British Columbia.”

[41] James Petty, “The London Spikes [26] City of Ottawa, By-law No. 2004-276, Parks Controversy: Homelessness, Urban Securitisation and Facilities. and the Question of ‘Hostile Architecture,”: 67– [27] Mariana Valverde, “Everyday Law on the 81.

Street: City Governance in an Age of Diversity.” [42] James Petty, “The London Spikes Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, Controversy: Homelessness, Urban Securitisation (2012). and the Question of ‘Hostile Architecture,”: 67– [28] City of Ottawa, By-law No. 2004-276, Parks 81. and Facilities.

[43] Don Mitchell, “The Annihilation of Space by [29] Mariana Valverde, “Everyday Law on the Law: The Roots and Implications of AntiStreet: City Governance in an Age of Diversity.” Homeless Laws in the United States.”: 303–35.

[30] Rosemary Hunter, “Contesting the Dominant [44] Catherine T. Chesnay et al.,“Taming Paradigm: Feminist Critiques of Liberal Disorderly People One Ticket at a Time: The Legalism,”: 13-30.

Penalization of Homelessness in Ontario and [31] Rosemary Hunter, “Contesting the Dominant British Columbia.”: 161–85.

Paradigm: Feminist Critiques of Liberal [45] Victoria (City) v. Adams. BCCA 563, (2009).

Legalism,”: 13-30.

[46] Abbotsford (City) v. Shantz. BCSC 1909, [32] Rosemary Hunter, “Contesting the Dominant (2015).

Paradigm: Feminist Critiques of Liberal [47] DefensiveTO, “Mapping #DefensiveTO,” Legalism,”: 13-30.

Defensiveto, (n.d) [33] City of Ottawa, By-law No. 2004-276, Parks https://www.defensiveto.com/map. and Facilities [48] Mariana Valverde, “Jurisdiction and Scale: [34] City of Ottawa, By-law No. 2004-276, Parks Legal `Technicalities’ as Resources for Theory.” and Facilities Social & Legal Studies 18, no. 2 (2009): 139–57.

[35] Don Mitchell, “The Annihilation of Space by [49] Constitution Act, being Schedule B to the Law: The Roots and Implications of AntiCanada Act 1982 (UK), c 11 (1982).

Homeless Laws in the United States.” Antipode [50] Constitution Act, being Schedule B to the 29, no. 3 (1997): 303–35.

Canada Act 1982 (UK), c 11 (1982).

[36] Stephen Gaetz, “Safe Streets for Whom?

[51] Mariana Valverde, “Jurisdiction and Scale: Homeless Youth, Social Exclusion, and Criminal Legal `Technicalities’ as Resources for Theory.”: Victimization,”: 423.

139–57.

[37] James Petty, “The London Spikes Controversy: Homelessness, Urban Securitisation and the Question of ‘Hostile Architecture,”: 68

50

[52] Tanudjaja v. Canada (Attorney General), Pathologization/Responsibilization Paradox.”: ONCA 852. (2014).

117–3.; Fran Klodawsky, “Landscapes on the [53] Henry v. British Columbia (Attorney General), Margins: Gender and Homelessness in Canada.”

SCC 24. (2015).

Gender, Place and Culture : a Journal of Feminist [54] Tanudjaja v. Canada (Attorney General), Geography 13, no. 4 (2006): 365–81.

ONCA 852. (2014).

[66] Catherine T. Chesnay et al.,“Taming [55] Henry v. British Columbia (Attorney General), Disorderly People One Ticket at a Time: The SCC 24. (2015).

Penalization of Homelessness in Ontario and [56] Erin Dej, “Psychocentrism and Homelessness: British Columbia.”: 161–85.

The Pathologization/Responsibilization Paradox.” [67] Stephen Gaetz, “The Struggle to End Studies in Social Justice 10, no. 1 (2016): 117–35. Homelessness in Canada: How we Created the https://doi.org/10.26522/ ssj.v10i1.1349.

Crisis, and How We Can End it.” The Open Health [57] Erin Dej, “Psychocentrism and Homelessness: Services and Policy Journal, 3. no. 1 (2010): 23.

The Pathologization/Responsibilization Paradox.”: [68] Catherine T. Chesnay et al.,“Taming 117–35. https://doi.org/10.26522/ ssj.v10i1.1349. Disorderly People One Ticket at a Time: The [58] Erin Dej, “Psychocentrism and Homelessness: Penalization of Homelessness in Ontario and The Pathologization/Responsibilization Paradox.”: British Columbia.”: 161–85.

117–35. https://doi.org/10.26522/ ssj.v10i1.1349. [69] Catherine T. Chesnay et al.,“Taming [59] Michael Dear and Brendan Gleeson, Disorderly People One Ticket at a Time: The “Community Attitudes Toward The Homeless.”

Penalization of Homelessness in Ontario and Urban Geography 12, no. 2 (1991): 155–76.

British Columbia.”: 161–85.

[60] Michael Dear and Brendan Gleeson, [70] Davud Purnell, “Public Parks: Third Places or “Community Attitudes Toward The Homeless.”: Places Eliciting Moral Panic?” Qualitative Inquiry 166 25, no. 6 (2019): 531–34.

[61] S Williams and T Stickley, “Stories from the [71] Catherine T. Chesnay et al.,“Taming Disorderly Streets: People’s Experiences of Homelessness: People One Ticket at a Time: The Penalization of Stories from the Streets,” Journal of Psychiatric Homelessness in Ontario and British Columbia.”: and Mental Health Nursing 18, no. 5 (2011): 432– 161–85.

39.

[62] S Williams and T Stickley, “Stories from the Bibliography Streets: People’s Experiences of Homelessness: Stories from the Streets”: 436.

Abbotsford (City) v. Shantz. BCSC 1909. (2015).

[63] S Williams and T Stickley, “Stories from the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Part I of Streets: People’s Experiences of Homelessness: the Constitution Act. (1982). Being Schedule B to Stories from the Streets”: 436.. the Canada Act 1982 (UK), 1982, c 11, s 91(24).

[64] Erin Dej, “Psychocentrism and Homelessness: Chesnay, Catherine T, Céline Bellot, and Marie-Eve The Pathologization/Responsibilization Paradox.”: Sylvestre. “Taming Disorderly People One Ticket 117–35. https://doi.org/10.26522/ ssj.v10i1.1349. at a Time: The Penalization of Homelessness in [65] Don Mitchell, “The Annihilation of Space by Ontario and British Columbia.” Canadian Law: The Roots and Implications of AntiJournal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 55, Homeless Laws in the United States.”: 303–35; no. 2 (2013), 161–85.

Stephen Gaetz, “Safe Streets for Whom? Homeless City of Ottawa, By-law No. 2004-276, Parks and Youth, Social Exclusion, and Criminal Facilities.

Victimization,”: 423; Erin Dej, “Psychocentrism Constitution Act. being Schedule B to the Canada and Homelessness: The Act 1982 (UK), c 11 (1982).

51

Davis, Angela Y. “Are Prisons Obsolete?” New Jeffery, C. Ray. “Crime Prevention Through York: Seven Stories Press, 2003.

Environmental Design.” The American Dear, Michael, and Brendan Gleeson.

Behavioral Scientist, 14. no. 4 (1971), 598– “Community Attitudes Toward The 598.

Homeless.” Urban Geography 12, no. 2 (1991): Klodawsky, Fran. “Landscapes on the Margins: 155–76.

Gender and Homelessness in Canada.”

De Fine Licht, Karl Persson. “Hostile Urban Gender, Place and Culture : a Journal of Architecture: A Critical Discussion of the Feminist Geography 13, no. 4 (2006), 365–81.

Seemingly Offensive Art of Keeping People Legro, M. The city that will never let you sleep.

Away.” Etikk i Praksis 11, no. 2 (2017): 27–.

Topic. https://www.topic.com/the-citythatDefensiveTO. “Mapping #DefensiveTO”. will-never-let-you-sleep, (2018).

Defensiveto. (n.d) Mitchell, Don. “The Annihilation of Space by https://www.defensiveto.com/map.

Law: The Roots and Implications of AntiDej, Erin. “Psychocentrism and Homelessness: Homeless Laws in the United States.” Antipode The Pathologization/Responsibilization 29, no. 3 (1997), 303–35.

Paradox.” Studies in Social Justice 10, no. 1 Ontario Safe Streets Act, S.O. c. 8, (1999) (2016): 117–35.

Pelley, L, Ever wonder why you can't lie down on https://doi.org/10.26522/ ssj.v10i1.1349. most city benches? It's thanks to 'defensive Gaetz, Stephen. “Safe Streets for Whom? design’. cbc news.

Homeless Youth, Social Exclusion, and https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/howCriminal Victimization.” Canadian Journal defensive-designleads-to-rigid-benches-metalof Criminology and Criminal Justice 46, no. spikes-and-visual-violence-in-modern-cities4 (2004): 423– 56.

1.5192333. (2019) Gaetz, Stephen. “The Struggle to End Petty, James. “The London Spikes Controversy: Homelessness in Canada: How we Created the Homelessness, Urban Securitisation and the Crisis, and How We Can End it.” The Open Question of ‘Hostile Architecture.”

Health Services and Policy Journal, 3. no. 1 International Journal for Crime, Justice and (2010) , 21-26 Social Democracy 5, no. 1 (2016), 67–81.

Gaetz, Stephen., Erin. Dej, and Tim. Richter.

Purnell, David. “Public Parks: Third Places or “Homelessness Canada in the State of 2016”.

Places Eliciting Moral Panic?” Qualitative Canadian Observatory on Homelessness Inquiry 25, no. 6 (2019), 531–34.

Press, 2016.

Smith, Naomi, and Peter Walters. “Desire Lines Goffman, Erving. “Stigma Notes on the and Defensive Architecture in Modern Urban Management of Spoiled Identity.” New York: Environments.” Urban Studies (Edinburgh, J. Aronson, 1963.

Scotland) 55, no. 13 (2018), 2980–95.

Henry v. British Columbia (Attorney General).

Tanudjaja v. Canada (Attorney General). ONCA SCC 24. (2015).

852. (2014).

Hunter, Rosemary. “Contesting the Dominant Valverde, Mariana. “Jurisdiction and Scale: Legal Paradigm: Feminist Critiques of Liberal `Technicalities’ as Resources for Theory.”

Legalism.” Ashgate Research Companion in Social & Legal Studies 18, no. 2 (2009), 139– Feminist Legal Theory, (2016) 13-30. London: 57.

Routledge.

52

Valverde, Mariana. “Everyday Law on the Street: Wilson, James, and Kelling, George. "Broken City Governance in an Age of Diversity.” The Windows: The police and neighborhood safety" University of Chicago Press, (2012).

The Atlantic. (1982).

Victoria (City) v. Adams. BCCA 563. (2009). https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/ Williams, S, And T Stickley. “Stories from the 1982/03/brokenwindows/304465/.

Streets: People’s Experiences of Homelessness: Stories from the Streets.” Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing 18, no.

5 (2011), 432–39.

53

The Black Janus By: Diallo Simon-Ponte

54

I am a man of two faces. A question that we as precursor, each person in this story will be humans all ask ourselves throughout the course identified based on their race whether or not it of our lives is “Who am I?” The answer to that may seem superfluous to mention. The racial query is never concrete, but rather dynamic as it dynamics of this tale are imperative for complete is always developing and changing as we comprehension. navigate our way through the tempestuous hurricane that is life. For each person the answer will have its metaphysical variations based on the many intricate components that (make up who they are) or delineate their being. As I’ve journeyed through my four-year liberal arts education here at a predominantly white University, very sparingly I have been presented with the academic tools to introspectively examine myself within the framework of that question. Of my own accord, I began to explore masters of psychoanalytic theory Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung poring over their texts, only [Freshman] discovering that something innate was missing.

Evidently, it was the incredibly important racial Dilution into the Universal component that they unwittingly were leaving out. To explore the theme of self, I turned Freshman year, at any college, the underlying towards critical race theory, extrapolating theme is all about fitting in. Becoming a part of everything I could from Black scholars Frantz something. Integrating within a scene, a culture, Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Leopold Senghor, W.E.B. a society you can feel comfortable in. In Dubois, and Ralph Ellison whereas they became hindsight, I merely enveloped myself in a cloak of my psychoanalysts. Further than “Who am I?” naivete ignoring racist signals, signs, and the questions quickly became “Who are We?” undertones to feel a part of something I actually and “What are We in this white world?” all ideas could never exist in. that had been echoing in my head before I had even touched their literature. A quote that To explain, the moment I stepped on campus I resonated with me early on was “everything already had a scene, a culture, a society as I had changes especially when the “we” have to define just started my first year on the Division One themselves against a world which leaves no Men’s Soccer Team. Athletically, it was a crucial room for who and what they are because they time because life was about trying to impress. are Black folks in a world where “universal” Impress your coaches and even more so your seems to naturally mean white.”[1] I was a teammates as it’s they who spend your entire student where the succinct nature of my days with. You eat, you sleep, and you do immediate reality was that I attended a everything together. There’s an initiation your predominately white institution. My Blackness peers put you through but also an initiation you was posed against a sharp white background put yourself through. An initiation almost of and very quickly into my collegiate experience I stripping yourself of things that make you in would find out what that truly meant. As a order to fit in with the whole [the entire].

55

For me being the only person of color on the Césaire says there are two ways to lose oneself: team, that sacrifice involves more than just walled segregation in the particular or dilution in possibly altering the music you listen to, or the the universal. I was drifting towards the latter. way you dress, or how you interact with girls because suddenly there is an athletic status quo It was not long after, the historically white Jesuit you must adhere to. That sacrifice for me institution I attended reminded me of the thin line included stripping down my Blackness to where I walked on their campus. Nothing good ever it became acceptable in a New England division happens at the University townhouses and the one locker room because as Fanon points out following incident only strengthens that “the Black man must not only be Black; he must sentiment. The universe or some higher pro Black be Black in relation to the white man.”[2] Out of powers that be, must have been at play one night necessity I split, I bisected, I morphed. My because I felt an unexplainable force pull me away psyche transformed to imitate a Janus-like from a party my teammates were throwing. In the quandary: the Roman deity represented by a fifteen minutes I happened to leave and stop at a single head with a double face. That duality friend’s, a massive fight had broken out at the embodied the persona I now had to adopt. I had previous house involving some kids on my team to be as Black as the locker room allowed me to and visitors. Later down the road, charges were be and I remember the first time my loyalties pressed, and witnesses were called in by the were really tested. The entire team was at a party Department of Public Safety to recount. When my one night and out onto the lawn behind the team captain stepped away from the questioning, house spilled a large group of people. Of the he approached me with a tinge of incredulity. congregation more than half the kids were Black “You won’t believe what they just asked me” he whom I had briefly met in my short time at the said. “After I had laid out everyone that was University either from the culturally involved several times, they continued, ''Are you reciprocated head nod or in passing at the sure that Black kid on your team wasn’t there?” dining hall and the remainder of the students were a few of my teammates. The tempestuous All round me the white man, above the sky tears nature of the situation was immediately noted at its navel, the earth rasps under my feet, and in the fact one of the Black students was being there is a white song, a white song. All this aggressively held back by his friends. As an whiteness that burns me… [3] almost environmentally appointed liaison, I stepped up to see what the story was. The recap The police had been conditioned by the culture of I got from the African -American faction was that the University to alleviate dangers to the white one of the white juniors on my team had called body and if that meant incriminating a minority one of the Black kids the n-word. Here that student in the process, then so be it. I was very duality (the Janus effect) of who I now had to be aware of where the value of my being stood that identity-wise grabbed hold and shook me to my night in relation to my school. The weight, the core. Why did I find myself walking over to my burden was immense. That my life and future teammates to look for another perspective? Why could be stripped away so effortlessly, caught up when I heard the justification of “I didn’t call in a moment I had nothing to do with. The him a nigger, I called him a nigga” did I for the authority I had perceived was there to protect, was slightest of heart beats try to rationalize in my in fact at every waking moment vying to destroy head why that might be acceptable? The me. Had I been at that party, I am sure that I subconscious and now tangible pressure that would not be here now writing this paper. had been coolly simmering was now searingly hot.

56

[Sophomore]

hard time understanding why safe spaces for minority students on their campus were imperative Where Shall I Find Shelter from Now On? to their health and well-being. The students fought hard and prevailed so in 2015 the Black Student A moment forever imprinted into my mind that Union was founded at the PWU. I learned that an acted as a catalyst for the change I began to institution that masquerades Black students on undergo, happened the summer leading into my their highway billboards and yearly newsletters sophomore year. I was going through my camera drafted new policies to derail the formation of the roll showing my younger siblings the joy college Club. Unheard pseudo-policies were created stating parties would soon bring them. I stopped at one the Club’s constitution needed to be submitted to a where I was dancing in a crowd of people who at University board for review, in an attempt to slow the time, I perceived to be my friends. My twelve- progress. Our Blackness was blatantly being policed year-old brother remarked, “You look like the at the very highest level. I was becoming aware of token Black kid” and my heart hit the floor. He the school I was enrolled at, and I drew strength had meant it in a slightly pejorative joking from those meetings seeing other Black students manner, but a fog was lifted from my eyes and the fight valiantly against the caustic white oppression. façade began to crumble. Growing up, I had been conscious of my positionality in certain situations Sophomore year, I roomed with my white and social dynamics, always ensuring I removed teammates but lived directly across from three myself from the labeling of the token. Yet here I Black students, which was comforting beyond was the oldest, being reminded by the youngest, measure; knowing I could step across the hall into a that as a Black man you must always critically world where I was understood - where a dialogue of observe the scenes you involve yourself in. I had the feelings was able to be discussed. A space where drifted too deep into the universal, and this the daily basis was able to be expressed because of a snapped me out of a proverbial sunken place. mutually shared foundation. A cultural context Things began to become clearer and the direction which meant cultural comprehension. That solace I needed to follow began to appear before me. was warming; however, I was still far from being Sophomore year I decided to stop using my able to fully understand my emotions as well as athletic time commitment as a deterrent for properly navigate the social dynamics that existed attending Black Student Union meetings. They outside of that hallway. There was one weekend in were held once a week, every Sunday for about the Spring semester where my white roommates two hours and I wasn’t able to attend every single and I went to a party down the beach. When I one, but I made a deliberate effort to go to as arrived, I found the theme on that night was “white many as I could. I actually began to feel a part of trash.” People were dressed in camouflage, dirty something: a community that welcomed me forth ripped white t-shirts, smeared in Black paint, had for whoever I was and made no attempt to draped themselves in American flags, and written impose conformity. It was there I learned about ‘Murica all over their bodies. I do not suppose my the short history of the BSU and the fervent readers to be entirely ignorant of what pushback from the University administration to demographic flocked to that party, so it seems oppose its creation a couple of years prior. In rather irrelevant to elaborate. It is only now I’ve 2015, unarmed Michael Brown was gunned down realized how ironically telling it is that a “white by police in Ferguson, Missouri. In 2015, Freddie trash” themed party was scattered with American Gray was murdered in police custody. In 2015 flags. At the time, I didn’t know how to feel being in faculty and administration were still having a that atmosphere.

57

All I knew was the stigma associated with white a warning and walked away a dejected shell of trash is that it is pervasively racist. The entire myself, his words ringing in my ear. “I see you time all I could think about was the lynching of stealing in here all the time.” I rarely stepped foot Black people by Southern whites, this into this Cafeteria, and not once had I stolen a championing of a decrepit scandalous president, single item from their inventory, yet still, he had and all the piercing stares I was getting. Whether associated me with a supposed consistent thievery. they were bitter looks or not, I couldn’t I had fallen right into the stereotype trap I had so differentiate. I was mad. Should I have been vigorously fought against my whole life. I was mad? Was this party racially charged? Was I forgetting who I was, and the anchoring thinking properly? I tried to express this to the oppression was sinking its teeth deeper into my friends I arrived with, but they didn’t see the psyche. Ravenous, it continued to claw its way into problem. I couldn’t process my feelings, so I my being splitting my face into two without regard locked myself in the bathroom and punched a for anything in its path. I was bleeding profusely. hole in the wall. Never have I ever displayed And then I took an African American Art History anger in that fashion before. I didn’t know what course. was going on. I left that party soon thereafter with a million thoughts swirling in my head, but I couldn’t grasp one of them. I was trying to remember who I was but was having trouble coming up with a name.

A couple of weeks later I sat with two of my white female friends at the secondary Cafeteria on campus. It was a place I didn’t frequent often but they wanted to go there so I decided to submit to the consensus. My entire life I have repeatedly promised myself that I would never steal. That I would never adhere to the farcical common When a student, very infrequently I might add, denominator stereotype that Black people are learns about Art History throughout most thieves. When tempted by peers in the past to go American middle and high schools, it is largely along with their antics I always firmly stood my focused on Europe’s contributions to the ground with a definitive reluctance. Yet for some discipline, failing to encompass the full scope of reason that day (if perhaps it was to impress the artistic evolution and influences throughout the girls that I was with) nineteen years of consistent world. After a couple of introductory Art History affirmations went out the window and I stole a classes during my freshman year, I realized that I plate of sushi. I hid the platter on one side of the had been deprived of an abundance of cultural and exposed countertop, walked out of the line for the artistic expression. Therefore, Sophomore year, I register, and five minutes later walked back to get enrolled in an African American Art History class it when a “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” to expand my knowledge on a topic I thought I struck me in the back of the head. In unfamiliar knew a lot about. Growing up, my parents always territory, I froze. The worker behind the sushi said, “Know your history, so no one else can define station had seen me. I was caught and I was it for you,” something that seemed to have slipped exposed. He approached me, a very visible my mind in the past couple of months. They knew anger in his eyes, and said, “I see you stealing in that our Black cultural heritage wasn’t going to be here all the time, give me that” and directed me taught in the typical American classroom. towards the cashier. Fortunately, I was let off with

58

So, at a young age, I set out to immerse myself in learning all that I could about African, African American, and Caribbean history. Prior to course enrollment, I presumptuously perceived that I had a good foundation on the subject matter from the museum exposure I had grown up with. I was soon to find out that I was so terribly wrong. On the first day, my professor posed the question “Who can name any African American artists?” Not a single person in the class of 30 could name one and neither could I. Dismayed, I sat incredibly still in my seat. Was the Art world something I’d [Junior] completely skipped over in my youthful studies? I had prided myself on all that I thought I knew on The Black Man’s Burden African diasporic history only to realize that I had merely skimmed the surface of an ocean of Junior year was a time when I felt like I was the information. We studied Barkley Hendricks, Bill spokesperson for the entire Black race in my locker Traylor, Carrie Mae Weems, Kara Walker, Jacob room and I was. “I was responsible at the same time Lawrence, James Van der Zee, Gordon Parks, and for my body, for my race, for my ancestors.”[5] I the list went on and on. That class changed my life, had successfully won the position on the Diversity & and I cannot stress enough how important it was Inclusion board becoming a University-wide for a young Black man to see his own image representative, which emboldened me to speak a bit reflected in something so masterful and beautiful. louder in life. Even as a Freshman I had checked In the echo chamber of Euro-centric imagery and the usage of the n-word by my white teammates but ideology that the Jesuit institution is, I was able to now, as an established Junior I was fervent in my reclaim myself. I didn’t know it at the time but my approach. Anytime I heard it uttered I locked it submersion into Black American heritage “my way down. “Watch your fucking mouth. Why do you of living history within history, [this] history of a think you could say that?” An aggressive approach, community whose experiences appear to be something familiar in the toxic masculinity typical unique” was a metaphorical praxis of the core of a men’s locker room. My explanation when asked principles of Negritude.[4] Sitting in class I felt “Why can’t I” almost became robotic I heard that teleported into a new psychological geography. Yet retort so often. “Words carry cultural context, and every time the bell rang, I was expelled back into the n-word has been used by whites for hundreds of the surrounding ignorance, a rebirth of sadness years to oppress Black people. Words bear weight, that would only heal until next period. and through slavery, through lynchings, through the killing of my people that word has been used in In the dying weeks of my sophomore spring, I took alliance with that. I don’t care if you hear it in a my newfound learnings in stride, applying to be a song don’t fucking say it.” Some were receptive and member of the student body government Diversity from others I heard “Oh come on Diallo, I’m not & Inclusion board. I was inspired and a new racist my best friend from home is Black. My intellectual energy, a new empowered intensity, driveway is Black. I’m wearing Black clothes. I have and a newly enlightened heat raged within. Going a Black lab. My trash cans are Black. How could I be into junior year I was going to repossess my own racist?” All meaningless responses, all insignificant narrative for I was tired of not writing the plot. replies, all missing the fucking point.

59

The white man wants the world; he wants it for scrutinizing the covert. I began to notice more and himself alone. He finds himself predestined more these projections of who people expected me master of this world. He enslaves it. An to be. White mothers visiting and being acquisitive relation is established between the extraordinarily surprised that I was a wellworld and him. But there exist other values that mannered nice boy to their sons, my roommates. I fit only my forms. Like a magician, I robbed the began to critically examine why these white kids white man of “a certain world,” forever after lost were consistently asking if I had drugs at parties, to him and his. When that happened, the white why I wasn’t dancing, why all the time they were man must have been rocked backward by a so stunned I had a “good” vocabulary. I force that he could not identify, so little used as questioned even the Black students that lived he is to such reactions. Somewhere beyond the across from me my sophomore year. They let objective world of farms and banana trees and several of their immediate white friends rubber trees, I had subtly brought the real gratuitously use the n-word which definitely made world into being.[6] me look at them differently. But who was I to judge? I was only very aware of what the Some were receptive. Too many were not. They’d overarching pressing whiteness at an institution agree with what I was saying but their such as this could do to you. I heard a story from subsequent actions spoke different, as that prior one of their white girlfriends with whom I interaction became cyclical. Their entitlement happened to be friends with at the time tell me was magnificent. All their life the white world when she was alone in his room one night, she had told them everything was theirs. That they overheard his white roommate in the hallway call laid claim to everything they touched. Who was him a nigger behind his back. He thought she was this Black kid to tell them they couldn’t say a asleep on the bed when she was in fact wide word? The task was immense and being the only awake. This had happened months ago, and she’d African American in the locker room, I felt I was never told him and now I felt called to action. But up against the world. I began to branch away. wait, was I in the right to go blow up his entire Each originator of Negritude speaks on the reality? Should I go tell him about his roommate moment they truly begin to reject the world with whom he had several months still to live, around them; for Césaire it was post high school racially abused him months ago? Should I tell him in Martinique as he found himself incredibly his white girlfriend knew about it the whole time displeased with the incessant adoration of all and didn’t come forward? That strain may have things European. For Senghor, he rebelled been too much for one man to handle in the against the notion his Senegalese high school current environment we existed. I didn’t have a teachers pushed that “through their education conclusive answer. they were building Christianity and civilization in his soul where there was nothing but paganism and barbarism before.” [7] This moment was mine. I began to question everything. I questioned all of my friendships, asking who did I really like, who really liked me, who was fetishizing my Blackness, who was touting my friendship as an internal justification that they weren’t racist themselves? It wasn’t the overt racism I was repelling against as I had always done so, but now

60

All these questions that I was asking myself at the they turn to the men of color and ask them for a time, reflecting constantly made me feel rather little human sustenance…” [9] I began to distance isolated in my Blackness. There were times when I myself from it all. I was finally realizing what I would be hanging out with my white friends and wanted in life and acknowledged that this wasn’t it. just couldn’t take it anymore to the point where I I was handing out Black power t-shirts in the had to excuse myself. Wearing a second face was dining hall for Black History Month. I kicked a kid exhausting. I found our values, these core out of my townhouse party who was wearing a principles, the things that concerned us and were “Make America Great Again” hat. I organized a relevant to each of our current lives at the time, school wide trip to the African American Art were not at all similar. The African -American art Exhibit: Soul of a Nation at the Brooklyn Museum. that I had fallen in love with, I tried to share that A trip where I wanted to see who was willing to love with those around me, to communicate what step outside of their comfort zone and into a fresh it was doing, but those cries fell on deaf ears. space. Perhaps one of discomfort but that’s vital to breaking down our preconceived misconceptions. I I returned the miniature, wondering what in the was trying to find my footing, and this was my world had made him open his heart to me. That response to the oppressive whiteness I felt that was something I never did; it was dangerous. permeated throughout this campus. It wasn’t First it was dangerous if you felt like that about much, but for me it was something. anything, because then you’d never get it or something or someone would take it away from you; then it was dangerous because no one would understand you and they’d laugh and think you were crazy. [8] When I began to retreat, the people around started calling me moody, as that was their interpretation of what I was going through and that adjective carried a tinge of pain. How could I express to them what was going on, what I was feeling, in this echo chamber of whiteness where there was no space for it? I was regularly attending BSU meetings and was a very active member on the [Senior] Diversity & Inclusion board, which were my salvation during Junior year because I was fed up.

Finality I was fed up with white people looking towards me when a perceived hood rap song came on to rap it “The echo of “nigga” chanted by the entire with me as if their knowledge of the lyrics gave white crowd around me failed to reverberate them some sort of racialized “hip” validation. through my bones as it once had the first time I They looked to me for this rhythm that I was began to socialize on this campus.” [10] It was supposed to somehow impart on them. The Senior year and I no longer cared about attempting “presence of the negroes beside the white is in a to navigate the social dynamics around me, I had way an insurance policy on humanness. When given up the Sisyphus-like task. the whites feel they have become too mechanized,

61

the repetitive use of the n-word as I knew I would lose friends by the end of it. I said I didn’t care but to a degree I couldn’t help it. This beast of burden, this system I had been involved in for four long years had snared me in its entrapment and the only true liberation I felt possible was graduation.

Graduation. Graduation. Where I would no longer have to periodically switch off parts of my consciousness to survive. Leaving all this in my past was the light at the end of the tunnel, but even so a little voice deep down kept whispering to Graduation was the light at the end of the tunnel myself something I didn’t want to admit. That it and all that mattered. Yet in spite of my mental wouldn’t end here. I quieted those whispers and detachment, I still was disgusted when I saw repressed that voice because I needed hope to students standing on tables at parties reciting surmount this last collegiate hurdle of Senior ironic nationalistic Trump chants over Snapchat. year. My diploma meant more than just a degree I watched one of my better white friends who I but a finality I was ready to claim on a sun that think has been relatively aware of how I’ve had finally set. struggled over the past couple of years make a racist remark about my skin color for the amusement of females. We were driving in his car late one night and as he was on facetime, a girl from the background called out “Where’s Diallo?”

He replied, “you can’t see him, he's too dark.” It’s funny because you think that three long years at a PWI in New England means you’ve heard it all, that you’ve mastered a way to encounter the racism you hear on a daily basis, and yet racism doesn’t care about your feelings. It rips and tears and eviscerates as it always finds a way to leave you stunned. In a very perverted sense, the PWU shaped me to judge my white friends and teammates on who had said the least prejudiced things. I would look around at a party, at this As I write this last paragraph, it is a very surreal homogenous mass of students chanting the nmoment which now claims my conclusion at this word with a cultish fetishized desire and feel a institution. To analyze who I’ve been and who I’ve helplessness from not having the strength to stop now become, so my journey ahead is better it all. I knew it wasn’t my job and that I couldn’t illuminated. Now it is my time to carve out my cure all ignorance. If I spoke, would they even own individualized path free of my PWU’s listen? Still encroaching upon my mind were constraints. I was a man of two faces and am now thoughts of “Was I giving up, was I too scared, no longer. So, in a paper hopefully devoid of was I in fact helpless, was it even worth it?” I clichés, I’m going to end it with a rather applicable started leaving the room when “Dreams and one. Know from whence you came, so you can Nightmares,” a song by Meek Mill came on with know where you are going.

62

Endnotes [1] Diagne, Souleymane Bachir "Négritude", The [4] Diagne, Negritude, 5.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer [5] Fanon, Fact, 112.

2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), [6] Fanon, Fact, 128. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/ent [7] Diagne, Negritude, 11. ries/negritude/.

[8] Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. Modern Library [2] Frantz, Fanon. “Fact of Blackness.” In Black ed. New York: Modern Library, 1994, 43.

Skin, White Masks, 109-140. Grove Press, [9] Fanon, Fact, 129.

1952, 110.

[10] Pérez, Loida Maritza. Geographies of Home : [3] Fanon, Fact, 114. a Novel . New York: Viking,1999. [Adaptation]

63

Rooms of their Own: The Spatialized Consciousness of Clarissa and Septimus in Mrs. Dalloway By: Teo Chee Yan Teo Chee Yan is currently a sophomore at Yale-NUS College in Singapore, majoring in Global Affairs. Her interests lie in the humanities, and she is especially concerned with politics and international relations. Outside of university, Chee Yan has worked for various non-profit organizations as well as public policy and governance think tanks. In her freshman year at college, Chee Yan took a Literature and Humanities class taught by Professor Carissa Foo, where she explored different texts, including Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. Intrigued the stream of consciousness style, Chee Yan examined the intersection between space and consciousness and produced this essay for the class.

64

Introduction

ways: First, the privacy of their rooms provides the characters with a refuge from the gaze of society The feminist critique on the politics of space was and enables them to engage in candid dialogue central to Virginia Woolf’s conception of the with their truest and innermost selves. Second, the private space in many of her works. Scholars have objects and physical space of the private rooms discussed at length Woolf’s interrogation of the anchor their consciousness to the present reality private space as “the site of middle-class female even as their minds wander across fluid time and domestic confinement” and its duality as “the site space, transfixing past, present, and future into of dynamic female potential” in A Room of One’s ordinary and yet revelatory moments of being. Yet Own (1929) and her later works The Years (1937) while these evanescent moments of private and Three Guineas (1938).[1] Beyond Woolf’s reflection translate to a renewed sense of vigour preoccupation with gendered spaces, what is and enthusiasm for life in Clarissa, expressed perhaps less widely addressed is her portrayal of through her love for parties, Septimus’ moments of “the imbrication of space and individual clarity lead him to embrace the liberation of death consciousness”[2] and the complex relationship as he renounces life and thus preserves its dignity. between physical space and the identity one In revealing the characters’ interiority through manifests within it. This relationship is perhaps their deepest reflections in the private space, Woolf most markedly and thoroughly explored in her evinces the striking similarity between the parallel novel Mrs Dalloway (1925), where Woolf characters of Clarissa and Septimus, providing a employs the stream of consciousness narrative lens through which we can begin to understand mode. By weaving in and out of characters’ minds Septimus’ eventual suicide. Ultimately, as we to construct a narrative of the titular character’s navigate Clarissa and Septimus’ consciousness life, Woolf skillfully elucidates the intersection amidst the physical space, Woolf subtly highlights between physical space and individual the transcendent healing power of the private consciousness. As Woolf reveals the interiority of space as the “heart of life”. her characters through the spaces that they inhabit, Woolf’s explication of spatialized Self-reflection in the private space consciousness in Mrs Dalloway warrants deeper study and further dissection.

In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf denotes the attic room as the titular character’s private space, into This essay pays particular attention to Woolf’s use which she retreats for a respite from the public eye. of physical space in Mrs. Dalloway to explore and Historically, in Victorian literary culture, the attic evince the mental and emotional headspace of the room has been associated with the social protagonist Clarissa Dalloway, a middle-aged oppression of women, as well as a place of release: upper-class lady, and Septimus Warren Smith, a consider, for example, Bertha Mason’s young World War I veteran suffering from shell- imprisonment in Jane Eyre and Maggie Tulliver’s shock and hallucinations. Woolf seeks to examine retreat into the attic in The Mill on the Floss. the relationship between characters’ interiority Gilbert and Gubar’s seminal work The Madwoman and their private rooms, namely the attic room in the Attic further highlights its paradoxical image for the former and Mrs. Filmer’s sitting room for as a space of women’s physical confinement as well the latter. For both Clarissa and Septimus, the as one associated with their creative freedom and private rooms facilitate their ruminations in two imagination.

65

room, the shedding of these layers of fine clothing is akin to Clarissa’s casting off of her outward layers of social identity as a hostess, wife, and mother, serving an important function in dismantling the veneer of upper-class nobility and refinement that Clarissa otherwise constantly maintains to leave only her most fundamental and vulnerable self. In the attic, Woolf also alludes to the ineffability of the self as Clarissa ruminates upon how “she alone knew how different, how incompatible and composed so for the world” she was.[6] Clarissa is described to be “composed,” which suggests an intentional construction of a public identity compatible with societal Figure 1: Artistic representation of popular expectations, departing from her true nature with conceptions of “the madwoman in the attic” in the its “faults, jealousies, vanities, suspicions”.[7] Victorian literary imagination.

Woolf thus creates a striking juxtaposition between the constructed Clarissa “who sat in her drawing-room,” a “radiancy…in some dull lives” Woolf’s choice of the attic as Clarissa’s private and a “refuge for the lonely,” and the real Clarissa space is therefore significant, situating Clarissa we see in the attic, vulnerable, brooding, and amidst a broader understanding of the isolated.[8] From this, we glimpse the attic’s “quintessential woman in the attic”.[3] In the attic liminality as Clarissa straddles the public and room, as Clarissa engages in critical evaluation of private spheres within it and is afforded the her private self-vis-à-vis her public persona mental headspace to recognize and confront the presented to others, we see that Clarissa embodies divergence between her public and private self. the trope as a woman who retreats into the attic Woolf thereby highlights the relationship between to escape the oppression of Victorian society and space and the identity one manifests within it, seeks her true identity in its privacy. As Perla setting up the private space of the attic as a site of Korosec-Serfaty also notes in The Home From critical self-examination and in turn potential Attic to Cellar, the public dimension of the reconciliation of the divided self. home’s visible spaces serves as a visage of a person’s mode of being on socially-acceptable The nature of the attic room as a private space also terms, while simultaneously acting as a mask that creates a refuge that permits Clarissa to express distances the outsider from the private dimension her repressed emotions, free from the judgment of of hidden spaces, such as the attic.[4] We see this society. Korosec-Serfaty describes the attic as an manifest as Clarissa notes upon entering the attic “intimate place that only the dweller is thoroughly room that it is in the attic that “[w]omen must familiar with,” where its quality of being safe and put off their rich apparel” and “disrobe”.[5] As secretive affords one with “opportunities of she withdraws from the visible space of the withdrawal and protection”.[9] sitting room and retires to the safety and comfort of the hidden attic

66

This quality of the attic room is demonstrated as characterized by hyperboles of rushing to the Clarissa unveils her deepest secret amidst the “farthest verge,” and being touched by safety and privacy of the attic, confronting for the “astonishing significance” and “extraordinary first time her socially transgressive queer desires alleviation.” It is only in the most private and towards “the charm of a woman”, and in intimate of spaces in the attic, that Clarissa particular that of her childhood friend Sally allows herself to indulge, utterly unbridled, in Seton, who Clarissa has not seen in years.[10] In forbidden fantasies about women to their fullest the “emptiness” of the attic, Woolf draws out the extent. emptiness that Clarissa feels within herself, as she senses her lack of “something central” in her Amidst the cleanliness and material purity of the relationship with her husband Richard.[11] This attic room with its “clean” “white” sheets and bare realization prompts Clarissa’s acknowledgment decor,[15] we also observe a spatial of her attraction instead to a woman, as she “did correspondence in how Clarissa’s mind wanders undoubtedly…feel what men felt” despite having back in time to reflect on the innocence and purity a “scruple” “sent by Nature”.[12] Here, we see the of her youthful days with Sally in her attic ironic juxtaposition of Clarissa’s internalized bedroom in Bourton, her childhood home. She homophobia from society, which leads her to recalls “the most exquisite moment of her whole “resent” her queer desires as unnatural and life” when Sally kisses her, igniting what she transgressive,[13] against her emphatic and describes as a “religious feeling”.[16] Her almost orgasmic expression of homophilia in the superlative choice of words reflects her passionate attic, as she relives the moment of attraction in emotions, while her allusion to this “religious her head: feeling” expresses a divine feeling of transcendence, emphasizing the purity and It was a sudden revelation, a tinge like a blush spirituality of her love for Sally. The sheer extent which one tried to check and then, as it spread, of her love and idolatry is also evident as she one yielded to its expansion, and rushed to the seems to sacralize the moment, likening Sally to a farthest verge and there quivered and felt the goddess to devote oneself to. Herein, Woolf world come closer, swollen with some demonstrates the transformative power of the astonishing significance, some pressure of attic room as it turns conventional notions of rapture, which split its thin skin and gushed and spirituality and religion on its head, morphing the poured with an extraordinary alleviation over the sacrilege of homosexuality into something sacred cracks and sores. Then, for that moment, she and holy, thus masking its transgressive nature. As had seen an illumination; a match burning in a Clarissa permits herself to emancipate her crocus; an inner meaning almost expressed. But otherwise shameful and repressed sexual desires the close withdrew; the hard softened. It was and relishes them at their full intensity, over—the moment.[14] uninhibited by heteronormative societal expectations, we gain a brief glimpse of the Revisiting the moment in the privacy and safety healing experience that the individual undergoes of the attic, Clarissa’s rapturous description is through reflections in the private space. completely uninhibited and unabashed,

67

Ultimately, through Clarissa’s cathartic release of In the relative privacy of Mrs Filmer’s sitting repressed emotions and intimate examination of room, Septimus, who suffers from shell-shock [17] her core identity in the attic, Woolf alludes to a due to the ravages of war, gains a respite from his larger social commentary on how the stifling hallucinations and his all-consuming fears of Dr. societal expectations of Victorian England Holmes and Bradshaw, who threaten to suppress the free expression of identities and institutionalize him, as well as traumatic emotions, thus necessitating the existence of the apparitions of his fallen comrade Evans, that private space as the only recourse through which constantly plague him elsewhere. The sitting incompatibilities between individuals and society can be mediated. room thus enables Septimus to regain some sense of normalcy as Rezia notes that he The attic offers a private space that affords “become[s] himself” and “speak[s] as he used to reflection and a temporal respite for the do” for the first time in days.[18] Through Rezia’s individual who contends with self and society, eyes, Woolf makes it clear that Septimus’ return to personal values, and social norms. Yet, as in the his true self can be attributed to the fact that they case of Septimus Smith, a veteran of World War are “alone together”, in the safety of Mrs Filmer’s I, private space can be a luxury. In comparison to sitting room where they are able to poke fun the complete privacy of Clarissa’s attic room, “privately” without fearing that anyone would Septimus’ only refuge lies in the semi-privacy of overhear them.[19] This idea is reinforced by Mrs. Filmer’s sitting room. The space is not his Septimus’ own inner monologue: own but belongs to his neighbor; he also shares the sitting room with his wife Rezia. Despite the The sun might go in and out, on the tassels, on the nature of the sitting room as one with communal wallpaper, but he would wait, he thought, functions, Mrs. Filmer’s sitting room nevertheless stretching out his feet, looking at his ringed sock serves as the only safe space available to at the end of the sofa; he would wait in this warm Septimus that shelters him from the prying eyes place, this pocket of still air, which one comes on of society and enables him to become his true self. at the edge of a wood sometimes in the evening, when, because of a fall in the ground, or some arrangement of the trees (one must be scientific above all, scientific), warmth lingers, and the air buffets the cheek like the wing of a bird.[20] Deciding contentedly as he watches Rezia sew to “wait in this warm place” reminiscent of “the edge of a wood sometimes in the evening,” where “warmth lingers”,[21] Septimus’ description of the sitting room evokes a sense of comfort, tranquility, and security that starkly juxtaposes with the hyperstimulation and anxiety we observe in him at the park, earlier in the novel.

Figure 2: A shell-shocked soldier from the First World War. Shell shock is a term coined in World War I by British psychologist Charles Samuel Myers to describe the type of post traumatic stress disorder many soldiers were afflicted with during the war before PTSD was termed.

68

Beyond that, the sophistication of Septimus’ Clarissa’s ruminations in the attic, Woolf inner monologue in the sitting room is also presents the inextricable link between the past significant in demonstrating his lucidity and the and present, illustrating how perception of the sharp clarity of his thoughts as he sheds the present is mediated by memories of the past. As appearance of a raving madman to reveal his Clarissa revels in the moment of impassioned genuine and articulate self in the safety and attraction to women, she is drawn back to reality serenity of Mrs. Filmer’s sitting room, suggesting by objects in the attic, specifically ones associated that like Clarissa, it is only in the private space with her husband Richard as she notes that that Septimus is liberated – at least momentarily “against such moments there contrasted the bed – from the mental oppression of societal forces and Baron Marbot and the candle half-burnt”.[24] to truly become himself.

Woolf makes Clarissa’s attitude clear as Clarissa’s orgasmic description of the moment of attraction However, where the semi-private sitting room is juxtaposed against the plainness of language in experiences lapses in privacy, Septimus also her detached and monotone listing of mundane experiences a concomitant compromise of his objects linked to Richard, highlighting the mental faculties. Through Rezia’s recollections banality of her humdrum marriage to a man she in the sitting room, we are reminded of a time does not truly love. Woolf filters Clarissa’s when “the girl who did the room” discovered and ridiculed Septimus’ papers in Mrs Filmer’s perceptions of her marriage through her sitting room.[22] Septimus’ relapse into his memories, and it is through the lens of her past hysterical ravings about “Holmes” and “human experiences with a passionate love that Clarissa nature” as a result of this breach of privacy thus views her present marriage and gains awareness emphasizes the inextricable link between the of what is lacking. In the same way, the dressing security of the private space and individual table in the attic pulls Clarissa from a past consciousness.[23] Ultimately, whether it is in memory of Bourton back to the present, and as the way Clarissa no longer conceals the facets of she looks upon her reflection in the glass, she is her identity incompatible with her public suddenly cognizant of the “[m]onths and months” persona, or in how Septimus’ mind is no longer that still lie ahead of her.[25] The attic exists as a compromised by delirium and fear, the safety liminal space that transcends time, as past, and tranquility of the private space – as far as present, and future coalesce and are transfixed in it is truly private – negotiates the tensions that a single moment. The moment is significant and exist between individuals and external forces, revelatory, a turning point where Clarissa providing an escape that enables and sustains suddenly abandons her fears and “plunge[s] into the endurance of the true self. the very heart of the moment”, enkindling hope for life (for “[s]he was not old yet”) as if she had The healing power of the private space been “fix[ed]” by her “mus[ings]”.[26]

The objects and physical space of the private room serve to anchor the characters’ memories to the present reality, even as their thoughts wander across fluid time and space. Through

The healing power of the private space is evident again at the party, as Clarissa enters the private “little room” where “there was nobody” upon hearing about Septimus’ death.[27]

69

As Clarissa’s “terror” and “awful fear” of “this As for Septimus, the significance of the physical life, to be lived to the end” gives way to an space of Mrs. Filmer’s sitting room in anchoring “incredible” feeling that “no pleasure could him to the present reality is all the more equal” the experience of living life through the pronounced as he grapples with his triumphs of youth and age,[28] Woolf charts the hallucinations and struggles to differentiate shift in Clarissa’s attitude towards death from between delusion and the real world. Despite the one that is filled with a sense of foreboding, compromised nature of the sitting room as an reminiscent of et in Arcadia ego[29] (“Oh! inconsistently private space, Septimus maintains thought Clarissa, in the middle of my party, his grip on reality through the permanence of the here’s death”[30]), to one that indulges in the objects within it, which function seemingly as a reverie of life and embraces the liberation of compensatory mechanism for what the room death as the words “Fear no more the heat of the lacks in constancy. Septimus tries to ascertain sun” from Shakespeare’s Cymbeline come to the nature of reality and seeks confirmation by her.[31] Clarissa’s consequent imperative that looking around the room at the “gramophone”, “[s]he must go back” to the party thus represents “the plate of bananas”, and even “Rezia [who] her renewed hope and vigour for life, even and sat sticking pins into the front of her dress”.[33] especially in light of inevitable death.[32] Ultimately, through Clarissa’s epiphany in the In contrast to the volatility of his hallucinations, attic and her moment of private reflection away the “still” ness of these objects and the physicality from the hustle and bustle of the party, Woolf of Rezia as she trims the hat emphasizes their seemingly alludes to the restorative power of concrete materiality and substantiality to memory and reflection that can only be invoked Septimus,[34] anchoring his sense of reality and in the private space, and elucidates the causing the “[m]iracles, revelations, agonies, significance of these ordinary, evanescent loneliness, falling through the sea, down, down moments of being. into the flames” that he raved about in his delusional state to all “[burn] out” and disappear.[35] As Septimus tells himself that “[h]e would not go mad”,[36] we see that the objects in the room serve not only as physical proof that grounds Septimus to the current reality, disengaging him from his hallucinations, but also function more significantly to preserve Septimus’ sanity and control over his own mind.

This moment where Septimus makes the conscious effort not to go mad reflects a moment of revelation and clarity, and his specific use of the modal verb “would” demonstrates a metacognitive awareness of his past, present, and Figure 3:’Et in Arcadia Ego’, a 1637-38 painting by future mental state, while at the same time Nicolas Poussin depicting a pastoral scene. The conferring him with a sense of authority and inscription on the tomb reads ‘Et in Arcadia Ego’, literally translated to ‘Even in Arcadia, here am I’. control over himself that he typically seems to The ‘I’ commonly understood to refer to death, the lack.[37] We see such a moment of clarity materializing once again seconds before Holmes painting is a memento mori reminding us that enters the room, as Septimus meditates upon how even in the idyllic Arcadia, death still lurks. best to take his own life:

70

Getting up rather unsteadily, hopping indeed from foot to foot, he considered Mrs Filmer’s nice clean bread- knife with ‘Bread’ carved on the handle. Ah, but one mustn’t spoil that. The gas fire? But it was too late now. Holmes was coming. Razors he might have got, but Rezia, who always did that sort of thing, had packed them. There remained only the window, the large Bloomsbury lodging-house window; the tiresome, the troublesome, and rather melodramatic business of opening the window and throwing himself out.[38] The objects of the room once again tether Septimus’ thoughts to present time and space, the split second before Holmes intrudes into the private space and he kills himself. Like before, Septimus demonstrates an acute and almost morbid level of rationality as he detachedly evaluates the merits of each object as his means to an end. This rationality does not falter even as he seemingly contradicts himself when he commits suicide despite saying that “[h]e did not want to die”.[39] As Septimus notes that “[t]he sun was hot” just moments before his death, the line harks back to the recurring refrain “Fear no more the heat of the sun” of Cymbeline, and Woolf seems to invite us to view Septimus’ death as an emancipation from the labour of life.[40] Clarissa’s “transcendental theory” about death further supports this reading:[41]

When we perceive Septimus’ suicide through the lens of Clarissa’s “transcendental theory”, we come to realize that the Septimus we see at the moment of his death is but a small fraction of his entire being diffused across time and space, “so momentary” compared to “the unseen part,” and Woolf seems to suggest that the transcendent, spiritual part of Septimus still lives on even after his physical death.[43] Ultimately, though the moments of revelation evinced by the physical space appear to propel Clarissa and Septimus in opposite directions, one towards a renewed love for life and the other towards an embrace of death, the familiar lines

of Cymbeline that punctuate both Clarissa and Septimus’ thoughts unite the two and reconcile their seemingly contrasting outlooks. While there is an embrace in death as the catharsis of the labour of life, it is ultimately this acceptance and fearlessness of death that empowers one to live life with exuberance and vitality. Yet Clarissa and Septimus are not the only parallels. In Hermione Lee’s biography Virginia Woolf, Lee recounts Woolf’s note that Septimus was to be “founded on [herself],” yet “not so much character as idea”[44]. The similarities between Woolf and Septimus’ lives are uncanny, both suffering from mental illness, threatened with institutionalization, and attempting suicide by throwing themselves out of a window. As we consider Septimus the idea and what he It ended in a transcendental theory which, with represents, Mrs Dalloway reveals keen insight her horror of death, allowed her to believe, or into Woolf’s own illness and suicide, and perhaps say that she believed (for all her skepticism), engenders a more hopeful understanding of that since our apparitions, the part of us which Woolf’s tragic death. After all, though the appears, are so momentary compared with the “apparition” of Virginia Woolf may have ceased to other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, exist for a long time, the “unseen part” “spreads the unseen might survive, be recovered wide”, and it has and will continue to live on in somehow attached to this person or that, or even her literature and legacy.[45] haunting certain places, after death. Perhaps— perhaps.[42]

71

Endnotes [1] Stevenson, Christina. “‘Here Was One Room, [18] Ibid, 121 There Another’: The Room, Authorship, and [19] Ibid, 121 Feminine Desire in A Room of One's Own and [20] Ibid, 122 Mrs. Dalloway.” Pacific Coast Philology, vol. 49, [21] Ibid, 122 no. 1 (2014): 112 [22] Ibid, 119 [2] Jiménez, Ángel Luis, "The Politics of Space [23] Ibid, 119 and Place in Virginia Woolf’s The Years, Three [24] Ibid, 27 Guineas and The Pargiters". Graduate Theses [25] Ibid, 31 and Dissertations. (2009): 2 [26] Ibid, 31 [3] Donaldson, Elizabeth J.. “The Corpus of the [27] Ibid, 156 Madwoman: Toward a Feminist Disability [28] Ibid, 157 Studies Theory of Embodiment and Mental [29] Et in Arcadia Ego is a painting by Nicolas Illness.” NWSA Journal, vol. 14, no. 3 (2002): 99 Poussin. Its literal translation is “Even in [4] Korosec-Serfaty, Perla. “The Home from Attic Arcadia, there am I”, with ‘I’ referring to death. to Cellar.” Journal of Environmental Psychology, The painting is a memento mori, ominously vol. 4, no. 4 (1984): 304 reminding the viewer that even in the blissful [5] Woolf, Virginia. Mrs Dalloway. 1925. utopia of Arcadia, death still exists.

(Reprint, Oxford: Oxford University Press, [30] Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, 156 2000), 26 [31] Ibid, 158 [6] Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, 32 [32] Ibid, 158 [7] Ibid, 32 [33] Ibid, 120 [8] Ibid, 32 [34] Ibid, 120 [9] Korosec-Serfaty, “The Home from Attic to [35] Ibid, 121 Cellar.” 312.

[36] Ibid, 120 [10] Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, 27 [37] Ibid, 120 [11] Ibid, 26-27 [38] Ibid, 126 [12] Ibid, 27 [39] Ibid, 126 [13] Ibid, 27 [40] Ibid, 126 [14] Ibid, 27 [41] Ibid, 129 [15] Ibid, 27 [42] Ibid, 129-130 [16] Ibid, 30 [43] Ibid, 130 [17] Shell shock is a term coined in World War I [44] Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. (Print,

by British psychologist Charles Samuel Myers to Vintage, 1996), 373 describe the type of post-traumatic stress [45] Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, 129-130 disorder many soldiers were afflicted with during the war (before PTSD was termed).

72

Bibliography Donaldson, Elizabeth J.. “The Corpus of the Madwoman: Toward a Feminist Disability Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. Print, Vintage.

Studies Theory of Embodiment and Mental 1996.

Illness.” NWSA Journal, vol. 14, no. 3, 2002, Stevenson, Christina. “‘Here Was One Room, pp. 99–119. JSTOR, There Another’: The Room, Authorship, and www.jstor.org/stable/4316926.

Feminine Desire in A Room of One's Own and Jiménez, Ángel Luis, "The Politics of Space and Mrs. Dalloway.” Pacific Coast Philology, vol. 49, Place in Virginia Woolf’s The Years, Three no. 1, 2014, pp. 112–132. JSTOR, Guineas and The Pargiters". 2009. Graduate www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/pacicoasphil.49.1.0 Theses and Dissertations.

112. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/2030.

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs Dalloway. 1925. Reprint, Korosec-Serfaty, Perla. “The Home from Attic to Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Cellar.” Journal of Environmental Psychology, vol. 4, no. 4, 1984, pp. 303–321., doi:10.1016/s0272-4944(84)80002-x.

73

Call of the Distantant Mountains By: Zhi Zhang

Zhi (Marina) Zhang is a rising senior doublemajoring in Art History and Physics. Born and raised in a traditional Chinese family, she became deeply fascinated by ancient Chinese artistic cultures since she was a child. The author loves to explore the nuanced variances of the ink play and started to investigate the root causes hidden behind the brush strokes of ancient artists. Her favourite period in the long history of Chinese art is the Yuan Dynasty – a time when literati paintings began to flourish and gradually took central stage of Chinese literati culture. She is also interested in the interdisciplinary approach to art through the lens of cutting-edge technology.

74

In 1279, the last lingering hope of Southern Song Zhao Mengfu was not the first to advocate the was annihilated as the Mongolian warmongers search for guyi. Yet, his archaism was not a triumphed in the naval battle of Yamen. Kublai schematic reproduction of prototypes but a Khan declared the establishment of the Yuan refreshing and original reinterpretation of the Dynasty, and China, for the first time, fell to cannon. The aim was to breathe new life, or “spirit foreign rulership. It is a subject that still puzzles resonance” (qiyun 气韵), into paintings in order to the scholars today as to how one of the most deprive them of the lingering academic orthodoxy. epochal periods of Chinese culture prospered He wrote in 1301: under the reign of “barbarous” alien nomads. The artistic creativity of the Yuan scholar-artists was “The most precious quality in painting is the not strictly circumscribed by the already wellantique spirit [or conception]. If this isn’t present, established pictorial conventions. Rather, they the work isn’t worth much, even though it may be strove to make the past serve the present. Among skillfully done. Nowadays, people who paint in a them stood the most pivotal figure at the turn of detailed and delicate manner with bright colors the 13th century - Zhao Mengfu, whose reputation consider themselves to be proficient artists. They had long been tormented by his active service in are unaware of the fact that works lacking the Mongolian court despite his identity as a royal antique spirit aren’t worth looking at. My own descendent of the past Song dynasty. paintings may seem to be quite simply and Notwithstanding his loyalty issues, Zhao’s artistic carelessly done, but the true connoisseur will contributions were undeniably prodigious. A recognize that they adhere to old models and are comparative study between Zhao Mengfu’s Twin thus deserving of approval. I say this for Pine, Level Distance of ca. 1310 (Fig. 1) and Guo connoisseurs and not for ignoramuses.” [1] Xi’s Old Trees, Level Distance of ca. 1080 (Fig. 2) reveals two of Zhao’s most acknowledged theories: first, his commitment to cultural archaism (fugu 复 古) and seeking of “antique spirit” (guyi 古意) in paintings; second, his instrumental synthesis of calligraphy and painting techniques (yishu ruhua Figure 1. Zhao Mengfu (1254–1322), Twin Pines, Level 以书入画). Collectively, they attested to Zhao’s Distance, ca. 1310, Handscroll, ink on paper, 10 9/16 x ingenuity in dialogue with the ancient, as well as 42 5/16 in. (26.8 x 107.5 cm). The Metropolitan his revolutionary approach in revitalizing the Museum of Art. Ex coll.: C. C. Wang Family, Gift of history and rendering it anew.

The Dillon Fund, 1973

75

Figure 2. Guo Xi (ca. 1000– ca. 1090), Old Trees, Level Distance, ca. 1080, Handscroll, ink and color on silk, 14 × 41 1/8 in. (35.6 × 104.4 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of John M. Crawford Jr., in honor of Douglas Dillon, 1981

The inscription offered a lucid explanation of his theory, clearly stating his loathing for the recent ostentatious styles and at the same time, nodding to the canon of old masters. In lieu of scrupulously abiding by one single style, Zhao combined merits across different masters and selectively revived the past. Apart from its theoretical importance, Zhao’s classicism was also instrumental in purging the remnant obsequiousness and decadence of Southern Song Academy art, which he might as well have read as a harbinger with the fall of the dynasty. Juxtaposing Zhao Mengfu and Guo Xi’s two seemingly similar landscapes elucidates Zhao’s selective quotation from, as well as deliberate revision on, the past model — explicitly invoking Guo Xi’s composition and motifs, Zhao boldly reduced imageries to be painted at a minimal level and left most space empty.

Foong Ping identifies Guo’s Old Trees to be an intimate work dedicated to his literati friends who, in turn, read from his quivering autumn scenery a “nostalgic longing” and a melancholic, embittered sentiment toward the court [3]. Well-versed in the multilayered undertone of level-distance format, Zhao Mengfu had the opportunity to see in person Guo’s Old Trees and in his colophon (Fig. 3) — a written inscription of commentaries attached as an additional page to the scroll — he noted: “Tall mountains and flowing rivers fill the world,

Aspiring to draw them with water and ink is difficult.

My whole life I have followed the lofty message of forests and steams;

At first glance, the two paintings closely resemble Constrained by petty official duties, I have been each other with respect to their composition. They unable to achieve it.” [4] share the vista of “level-distance”, which is achieved by setting the viewpoint on a nearby mountain to gaze at one in the distance as defined

by Guo Xi himself. Landscape in level-distance is oftentimes associated with the format of a handscroll, which presents a stark contrast with the monumental landscape in large hanging scrolls Figure 3. Zhao Mengfu, colophon attached to Guo — with Guo Xi’s Early Spring was a pinnacle Xi, Old Trees, exemplar. Monumental landscapes were political Level Distance. metaphors of ideal Confucian court hierarchy — in which the paramount peak symbolized the emperor — and eulogies for the prosperous society under his rulership. By contrast, preeminent mountain is absent in level-distance layouts, which signals one’s momentary detachment from petty officialdom [2].

76

Zhao’s own Twin Pines was probably painted after completely different messages. Guo Xi’s design is he had been summoned back to the court for the well calculated - the island, mountains, pavilion, second time in 1309 by Emperor Renzong [5]. He shore constitute a stable trapezoid compositional had gone on a long sojourn to Dadu (present day framework. It is also self-contained - one starts the Beijing), the Yuan capital far away from his home scroll of Guo Xi with distant mountains at the Wu Xing (present day Hu Zhou, Zhe Jiang upper right and unfolds until the leftmost edge province) twice now. Emperor Renzong was where the figures traveling to the right redirect the fervent in Zhao and compared him to the great view back into the landscape (Fig. 4). On this wise, scholar-artists like Li Bai and Su Shi [6].

Guo Xi’s painting evokes rationality and order, as Nevertheless, Renzong never assigned Zhao to was typical of his contemporary landscapes. On the any significant political post, as Khan once did. In contrary, the layout in Zhao’s is much more fact, Zhao was mainly in charge of artistic and uninhibited. The large foreground covers the entire cultural duties during Renzong’s reign. Therefore, space on the rightmost section and thus captures it is reasonable to date Zhao’s colophon to an early the visual focus. The islands and mountains are stage of his career, and his Twin Pines, a later depicted in parallel linear forms, suggesting they are within proximity to one another, thus obscures time. Maxwell Hearn denotes chaoyin (朝隐) as what characterizes Zhao’s career - “becoming an the boundary between midground and background. official but detaching… and maintaining the moral Connecting the direction of one of the pine purity of a hermit”. The sense of detachment finds branches, the islands run all the way across the its counterpart in Guo's intimate landscape as well, scroll as though, if not limited by the dimension, but Zhao rendered it differently and quite they can extend beyond the physical surface. innovatively.

Opposite to the carefully calculated design of Guo, Zhao Mengfu breaks the paradigm of the three-part Despite the political vicissitudes, Zhao was plan and reveals unbridled spontaneity in the nevertheless luckier than his southern literati landscape. peers to have access to the collection of Northern School old masters like Li Cheng and Guo Xi during his stay in Dadu. Twin Pines manifests the Li-Guo formula of a tripartite “hills beyond a river” plan [7] - trees and rocks occupying the shore in the Figure 4. Guo Xi, Old Trees, Level Distance, detail of foreground, a river creating the sense of spatial figures traveling into the landscape. recession in the midground, and misty distant mountains in the far background. The layout is diagonal in both Zhao’s Twin Pines and Guo’s Old Trees, but the opposite directions convey

77

Let us remind ourselves of Zhao’s role in the art history. Literati artists did not purposefully seek Mongolian court — as a descendent from the Song abstract forms, they seeked succinct portrayal of imperial line, to turn to serve the enemy of nonouter reality, and their contemplation, most Han ethnicity was morally and ethically importantly, was to be conveyed in the very lack of unacceptable, especially given that many of his imagery. The basic elements of a landscape — rocks, peers from Wu Xing resolutely rejected the trees, mountains and river — are present in both invitation of Yuan court. Yet it was not without artists’ works but in different forms. The pavilion considerations for the well-beings of his people and the stone bridge of Guo Xi have been that Zhao eventually set foot in Dadu under eliminated by Zhao, and the multiple figures have Khan’s call. Afterall, to advise the ruler in been reduced to a singularity. For Guo Xi, capturing upholding righteousness is, ultimately, to enhance the nuances of seasons and times are quintessential the lives of people, whereas being a cynical hermit to his natural landscapes. Thus, the withered vines contributed none. The History of Yuan on old, gnarled trees and misty mountains are documented Zhao’s immense achievement in typical of him as an indication of an autumn assisting the tax reform during Khan’s rule [8]. By evening scene. On the contrary, signs of naturalness the time of Emperor Renzong, however, Zhao’s are obscure in Zhao’s scroll. He painted tall straight bureaucratic responsibilities were truncated. We pine trees with unnaturally downward-stretching could only imagine how conflicted Zhao must have branches that makes it difficult to demarcate the felt to be constrained in a foreign government exact season — is it summer as the tree trunks are where only his art was valued. The vast voidness robust and thriving, or is it winter since the in the painting thus should be read as a reflection branches are bowing (Fig. 5)? The bone-like of the chaoyin mentality of the artist, who saplings protruding from the rocks are ambiguous probably yearned for a tranquil spiritual residence as to whether they are withering or sprouting. The where he could temporarily withdraw from the evergreen character of pines further deemphasizes exhausting confinement of political intrigue. the need to specify a season in his painting. Leaving no trace of mist or atmosphere, the simplistic forms The conscious selection by Zhao from Guo’s motif of distant hills minimize the sense of temporality, repertoire also exhibits his tendency toward too. Additionally, both artists utilize empty space to minimalism, which laid profound influence for the allude to the river flow and confirm its existence late literati artists, especially Ni Zan. It is worth with protruding islands and fishing boat(s). noticing that the term minimalism is not to be confused with its canonical definition in Western

Figure 5. Zhao Mengfu, Twin Pines, Level Distance, detail of pine and samplings.

78

In Twin Pines, the lonely fisherman drifts on more spacious emptiness and seems to be enveloped by void, evoking extreme solitude and vulnerability (Fig. 6). Recalling Ma Yuan’s Angler on a Wintry Lake of 1195 (Fig. 7), this use of blank space has already been fully exploited. But Zhao rejects Ma’s accuracy and precision — specifically the naturalism in human and water ripples, which, to his taste, are defects of academic dogma. The figure in Zhao’s painting calls upon a sense of primitivity and candidness suggests communal actions, with lines of sight directed toward one another (Fig. 8 11). The only figure that appears on himself is also implicitly connected to the community as it looks like he is preparing for their arrival (Fig. 12). Foong Ping notes that even the birds and trees occur in pairs and asserts that the iconography of paired inhabitants is a metonymy of the patron-painter relationship [9]. Unlike Guo Xi, whose customized landscape aims to evoke emotional resonance of literati friends who share similar experiences by narrating a perceptible story in his subject matter, Zhao “has eliminated the emotion-laden atmospheric and narrative details of the earlier work” [10] by removing the pavilion stone bridge and excess figures. Although Guo Xi’s landscape

contains figures actively engaging each other, it ultimately conveys a bittersweet pre-departure melancholy, whereas Zhao’s landscape, though cool and spare, is unpretentiously elegant and imparts a feeling of nonchalance that, again, accords with the idea of chaoyin. In other words, Zhao paints solely under self-expression, which fundamentally distinguishes him from Guo Xi, who is patrondriven, private or imperial regardless.

Figure 6. Zhao Mengfu, Twin Pines, Level Distance, detail of fisherman.

Figure 7. Ma Yuan (1160-1225), Angler on a Wintry Lake, 1195, 141 x 36cm. Tokyo National Museum.

Figure 8. Guo Xi, Old Trees, Level Distance, detail of fishermen pair.

Figure 9. Guo Xi, Old Trees, Level Distance, detail of old man-servant pairs.

Some judged that Zhao Mengfu is never amongst the top-ranked artists, arguing that his artistic achievement were limited due to the overt obsession with past canons [11]. Yet, Richard Vinograd, who criticizes harshly of Twin Pines’s formalistic deficiencies in his essay, still acknowledges that “Zhao Meng-fu’s transformations of the manner are evidence of his historical understanding of past art, of his characteristic process of adaptation of old styles, and of what is original within his often archaistic and tradition-keeping art” [12], as also discussed above. To further investigate Zhao’s originality and creativity, it is necessary to examine Zhao’s application of the synthesis of calligraphy and painting (以书入画) — another revolutionary artistic theory of his — in Twin Pines.

79

From Left to Right: Figure 10. Guo Xi, Old Trees, Level Distance, detail of servants pair.

Figure 11. Guo Xi, Old Trees, Level Distance, detail of woodcutters pair.

Figure 12. Guo Xi, Old Trees, Level Distance, detail of the only figure that appears on himself.

Most straightforwardly, the synthesis is exemplified by literally writing the long inscription in the same pictorial space with the painting, as opposed to on a separate sheet of paper that is later attached to the scroll. A z oomed-up image of the colophon clearly shows the calligraphy is already overlapping with the strokes of the mountain (Fig. 13). It becomes so crucial- a part of the entire composition that, with its removal (Fig. 14), the composition mislays its visual stability since Guo Xi’s trapezoid layout is not kept intact here. The long inscription takes up the entire vertical slot on the left, therefore remotely echoing the large foreground on the Figure 13. Zhao Mengfu, Twin Pines, Level Distance, detail of colophon overlapping with painting.

right. Artist’s inscription on their painting is a tradition established well before Zhao’s time, yet the content of Zhao’s is unusual - it is not a narrative anecdote or a poem, but an art historical commentary that candidly reinforces his favour of old masterpieces over “recent painters”. The function of a colophon has evolved from merely adoring the poetic qualities of natural landscapes to asserting the selfhood of an artist. Accordingly, this very colophon epitomizes the communion of both of Zhao’s major theories — lacing together text and image, the former professes his motivations behind cultural archaism and the latter, his praxis.

Figure 14. Zhao Mengfu, Twin Pines, Level Distance, colophon removed.

80

From Left to Right: Figure 15 and Figure 16. Zhao Mengfu, Twin Pines, Level Distance, details of flying-white technique on rocks. Figure 17.

Guo Xi, Old Trees, Level Distance, detail of rock’s outline. Figure 18. Guo Xi, Old Trees, Level Distance, detail of cun (皴).

On a more profound level, the synthesis refers to the conception of calligraphy and painting coming from the same origin (书画同源), which also arose well ahead of Zhao. But as the most accomplished calligrapher of Yuan, if not of all times, he is the most pivotal figure considering the instrumental vocabulary of calligraphic brushstrokes he has established. After his painting Elegant Rocks and Sparse Trees of 1300, Zhao wrote down one of the most influential colophons in the development of literati paintings: “Rocks like Flying-white, trees like the Great Seal script; the sketching of bamboos should include the eight Strokes of calligraphic technique” [13]. Flying-white is a technique in calligraphy that is produced when the brush moves so swiftly that the drying hair begins to separate, thus leaving blank spaces from within the ink.

Outlines of rocks in Twin Pines brilliantly exhibit the application of this technique in landscape elements (Fig. 15-16). Their left edges are emphasized with broader ink, invoking the use of cefeng (侧锋) - writing with the side of brush hair and hence produce more variation of texture than the thinner linings of the right sides. The flyingwhite fabricates the shape but refrains from substantiating any interior volume. In general, it produces an effect of perfunctoriness but also highlights the artist’s hand and his impulsive execution.

By contrast, the outlines of Guo’s rocks are results of sophisticated but realistic representations of nature angular and jagged, they concur with the late autumn bleakness on the one hand and, on the other hand, “demarcates space below and behind the rock” [14] (Fig. 17). The ink washes varied meticulously in accents and gradations to build naturalistic volumes.

The convention of adding texture using cun (皴) is conspicuous in the shoreland (Fig. 18), but Zhao clearly has decided not to pay homage to this “uncalligraphic” technique. The two artists deviate even more greatly in the depiction of trees. Guo’s gnarled old trees are realistically rendered, with outlines of alternating thickness and intermittent breaks (Fig. 19 - 20) that makes evidence of the artist’s careful planning as he employs the brush. The branches demonstrate Guo’s renowned “crab-claw” (蟹爪枝) technique (Fig. 21) - tangling with each other, faithfully reporting the tree types prevalent in Northern areas. Zhao, in line with his didactic quote, invokes the style of zhouwen (籀文), or Great Seal Script (大篆). The contour of twin pines (Fig. 5) runs across the paper within one stroke, non-stop, leaving no room for pause and re-planning thus manifesting spontaneity. The varied thickness and zigzag brushwork of Guo is replaced with the rounded and uniform outline, which are more suitable for depicting tall and straight pines.

Figure 21. Guo Xi, Old Trees, Level Distance, Figure 19 (right). Guo Xi,Old detail of crab-claw technique.

Trees, Level Distance, detail of pulsing thickness.

Figure 20 (left). Guo Xi, Old Trees, Level Distance, detail of pulsing thickness

81

This approach bears immediate reference to seal The way Guo suggests mist and remoteness is by script writings, as can be seen in Zhao’s own applying diluted ink wash blocks, to give form to Record of the Miaoyan Monastery (Fig. 22). “Crab- mountains while muting their outlines (Fig. 25). claw” technique is faintly visible in Zhao’s handling However, Zhao radically rejects any interior texture of the saplings, but he dredges Guo’s straggled and chooses to keep only the outline (Fig. 26). branches into arrayed skeletons. Cursory at first Naturalistic texture and volumes give way to glance, the sapling de facto reflects the artist’s calligraphic linearity. Despite the fact that Zhao superb control of his brush, which is comparable painted Twin Pines when he was in Dadu, his gentlyto Zhao’s distinguished running-cursive script (Fig. sloped hills are poles apart from Guo’s precipitous 23 - 25). The brushwork is charged with vigour and peaks while the latter evokes the topography of the composed elegance, running fluently yet displaying Taihang mountains (Guo’s hometown, also in rhythmic flexibility. Moreover, Zhao’s mountains proximity to Dadu) whereas the former resembles are also exemplary of calligraphic painting. more likely of the Jiangnan (江南) region. Within a few pale-inked brushstrokes, Zhao outlines not what is in front of his eyes but perhaps a nostalgic mindlandscape of his hometown. Shallow in form but definite in clearly outlined existence, they echo the enduring pine trees in the foreground and await the artist’s homecoming.

Figure 22. Zhao Mengfu, section from Record of the Miaoyan Monastery, ca. 1309–10, handscroll, ink on paper, 34.2 x 364.5 cm. (13 7/16 x 143 1/2 in.), Princeton University Art Museum. Bequest of John B. Elliott, Class of 1951

From Left to Right: Figure 23. Zhao Mengfu, Twin Pines, Level Distance, detail of sapling branches.

Figure 24 and Figure 25. Zhao Mengfu, selections from Former Ode on the Red Cliff, 1301, album, ink on paper, 30.8 x 449.5 cm. National Palace Museum.

Figure 26. Guo Xi, Old Trees, Level Distance, detail of mountains.

82

The effect of unifying calligraphy and painting is explicitly reinforces his artistic ideals. Thus, Zhao’s twofold. First, it is a means through which Zhao artistry is never to be overlooked, but is rather tries to achieve antique spirit. Drawing inspiration buttressed by his success in making the past serve from diverse calligraphic models, he was able to the present. A “mind’s painting” as his is, the synthesize disparate styles into an original one minimalistic use of brush and ink does not incline to zhaoti (赵体). Analogously, he creatively utilized construct a welcoming landscape but outlines one various calligraphic strokes to accommodate the that only Zhao himself can relate exclusively. What exactly is occupying his mind? What does it feel like pictorial models. The “brush spirit” (biyi 笔意) of not only old masters like Guo Xi but also ancient for a royal descendent to serve the invaders? Zhao calligraphers flow within Zhao’s brush and hence Mengfu leaves few surviving messages on this imbues his painting with antique spirit. In addition, account. Nevertheless, though torn by his dual integration of the two art forms grants the identities between the past and the present, he brushwork the autonomy to exceed the constraint endures and survives like the straight pine trees. He of creating representational forms but to mirror the gazes nostalgically into the hills beyond the river, artist’s mind. As early as in the Han Dynasty, Yang where the distant history may enlighten a path for Xiong has written: the future.

“Handwriting, is the mind’s painting” [15]. The second canon of Xie He’s Six Laws states the “bone method” (gufa 骨法), which also emphasizes the link between handwriting and personality.

Centuries later, Zhao reflected upon these ancient teachings by revolutionizing the function of painting. After him, landscape paintings need not be true to nature but should first and foremost express the artist’s selfhood. Wen Fong effectively denotes that “the difference between the Sung and Yuan landscape painters may be described as that between one who seeks nature and one who is nature”. [16]

Endnotes

[1] James Cahill, Hills beyond a River: Chinese Painting of the Yüan Dynasty, 1279-1368, 1st ed, His A History of Later Chinese Painting, 1279-1950 ; v. 1 (New York: Weatherhill, 1976).

[2] Alfreda Murck, Poetry and Painting in Song China: The Subtle Art of Dissent, 1st ed., vol. 50 (Harvard University Asia Center, 2000), https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1dnn9rx.

[3] Ping Foong, ‘Guo Xi’s Intimate Landscapes’, in The Efficacious Landscape: On the Authorities of Painting at the Northern Song Court, Harvard East Asian Monographs 372 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: In summary, Zhao Mengfu does not only inherit Harvard University Asia Center, 2015). the legacies of old masters but passes them on in a [4] ‘Twin Pines, Level Distance’, The Met, n.d., renovated version that reflects his fully developed https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search artistic theories, that is, instrumental archaism with /40508. the service of synthesizing calligraphy and painting. [5] Maxwell K. Hearn, ‘Painting and Calligraphy Casting away the highly aestheticized vision of the under the Mongols’, in The World of Khubilai Khan: immediate past, Zhao actively searched to Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty, ed. James C. Y. resuscitate the antique spirits. His formation of the Watt (New York : New Haven [Conn.]: Metropolitan canon is encapsulated by his Twin Pines, Level Museum of Art ; Yale University Press, 2010).

Distance. The history is not dead in this painting — [6] ‘《元史 - 列传第五十九》’, 中国哲学书电子化计 the composition and semiotics derived from Guo 划, n.d., Xi constitute the skeleton of the painting. But https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&chapter=350758&re Zhao simplifies the motifs and fleshes them out map=gb#p4. “以孟頫比唐李白、宋蘇子瞻。又嘗稱 with innovative incorporation of calligraphic 孟頫操履純正，博學多聞，書畫絕倫，旁通佛、老之 brushworks as well as intimate inscriptions which 旨，皆人所不及。”

83

[7] James Cahill, Hills beyond a River: Chinese Fong, Wen. Sung and Yuan Paintings. New York: Painting of the Yüan Dynasty, 1279-1368, 1st ed, His distributed by New York Graphic Society, 1973.

A History of Later Chinese Painting, 1279-1950 ; v. 1 Foong, Ping. ‘Guo Xi’s Intimate Landscapes’. In The (New York: Weatherhill, 1976).

Efficacious Landscape: On the Authorities of Painting at the Northern Song Court. Harvard [8] “《元史 - 列传第五十九》,” 中国哲学书电子化计 East Asian Monographs 372. Cambridge, 划, n.d., https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&chapter=350758&r Massachusetts: Harvard University Asia Center, emap=gb#p4.

2015.

[9] Ping Foong, ‘Guo Xi’s Intimate Landscapes’, in Hearn, Maxwell K. ‘Painting and Calligraphy under The Efficacious Landscape: On the Authorities of the Mongols’. In The World of Khubilai Khan: Painting at the Northern Song Court, Harvard East Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty, edited by Asian Monographs 372 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: James C. Y. Watt. New York : New Haven Harvard University Asia Center, 2015).

[Conn.]: Metropolitan Museum of Art ; Yale [10] MAXWELL K. HEARN, ‘SHIFTING University Press, 2010.

PARADIGMS IN YUAN LITERATI ART: The Case ———. ‘Shifting Paradigms in Yuan Literati Art: The of the Li-Guo Tradition’, Ars Orientalis 37 (2009): Case of the Li-Guo Tradition’. Ars Orientalis 37 78–106.

(2009): 78–106.

[11] Chu-Tsing Li, ‘Recent Studies on Zhao Lee, Sherman E. Chinese Landscape Painting. New Mengfu’s Painting in China’, Artibus Asiae 53, no.

York: Harper & Row. 1/2 (1993): 195–210, Li, Chu-Tsing. ‘Recent Studies on Zhao Mengfu’s https://doi.org/10.2307/3250514.

Painting in China’. Artibus Asiae 53, no. 1/2 [12] Richard Vinograd, ‘“River Village: The (1993): 195–210.

Pleasures of Fishing” and Chao Meng-Fu’s Li-Kuo https://doi.org/10.2307/3250514.

Style Landscapes’, Artibus Asiae 40, no. 2/3 (1978): LI, CHU-TSING. ‘The Role of Wu-Hsing in Early 124–42, https://doi.org/10.2307/3249802.

Yüan Artistic Development Under Mongol Rule’.

[13] Wen Fong, Sung and Yuan Paintings (New In China Under Mongol Rule, edited by John D. York: distributed by New York Graphic Society, Langlois, 331–70. Princeton University Press, 1973).

1981.

[14] Foong, ‘Guo Xi’s Intimate Landscapes’. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.wellesley.edu/stable/j [15] ‘《揚子法言 - 問神卷第五》’, 中國哲學書電子化 .ctt7zv4pr.15.

Murck, Alfreda. Poetry and Painting in Song China: 計劃, n.d., https://ctext.org/yangzi-fayan/juanThe Subtle Art of Dissent. 1st ed. Vol. 50. wu/zhs?en=off. “书, 心画也。” [16] Fong, Sung and Yuan Paintings.

Harvard University Asia Center, 2000. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1dnn9rx.

Bibliography ‘Twin Pines, Level Distance’. The Met, n.d. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search Bush, Susan. The Chinese Literati on Painting. /40508.

Hong Kong University Press, 2012. 中国哲学书电子化计划. ‘《元史 - 列传第五十九》’, http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.wellesley.edu/stable/j n.d. .ctt2854hr. https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&chapter=350758&r Cahill, James. Hills beyond a River: Chinese emap=gb#p4.

Painting of the Yüan Dynasty, 1279-1368. 1st ed. 中國哲學書電子化計劃. ‘《揚子法言 - 問神卷第五》’, His A History of Later Chinese Painting, 1279n.d. https://ctext.org/yangzi-fayan/juan1950 ; v. 1. New York: Weatherhill, 1976. wu/zhs?en=off.

84

Looking for more? Visit our website at www.apollonejournal.org for more amazing undergraduate scholarship. You will also find guidelines for submissions, information on our editors, and blog posts for writers. Thanks for reading!