Apollon Digital Journal - Issue XIV - 2022 by Apollon eJournal

What’s in a Name?

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. ap-ol-lon’

Our Mission

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

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

Acknowledgements

“The Power We Speak: Language, Anti-Black Racism, and Black Resistance”

“Seventeenth Century Dutch Animal Imagery Challenging Anthropocentrism: Paulus Potter’s Punishment of a Hunter”

“Smoke and Mirrors: Reading the Rhetoric of Ted Cruz”

By: Hui Wong, University of British Colombia p. 21 “Stones that Speak”

By: Riley Sutherland, University of South Carolina p. 45

By: Kueh Jinhao Ryan, Yale-NUS Singapore p. 5

By: Winslow MacDonald, Columbia University p. 51

By: Esther Jane Ben Ami, University of Rochester p. 63

By: Lillian Robles, UCLA p. 15 “Simone de Beauvoir and the Other Woman”

Table of Contents

“The Taboos of Family Romances: In Search of the Distorted Feminine Image”

“The Martial and Marital Entwined: Femininity and the Military World in Shakespeare’s Othello”

By: Aldona Casey, College of the Holy Cross p. 29

“Bread, Banquets, and Capons: The Cosmopolitan Culinary Condition of Rome”

“Emerald Atlantic: Motivations in Irish-American Diasporic Violence”

By: Sofya Vorobeva, University of Tyumen p. 71

By: Kelsey Da Silva, Carleton University p. 35

Bread, Banquets, and Capon: CosmopolitanTheCulinary Condition of Rome By: Kueh Jinhao Ryan 5

At its peak, Rome was an urban city very much like cosmopolitan cities of today, featuring a rich intermingling of various cultures and religions that thrived on economic strength and growth. Scholars agree that the city contained approximately a million urban residents, with the city having an estimated consumption of more than 150,000 tons of grain per annum.[1] This, however, begs a following question. What was the quality of food for everyday Romans actually like? In most understandings of “ancient” civilizations, the rich ate better in both form and function balanced and copious diets that contained a variety of nutritious food, whereas the poor ate the cheapest food available for Thissustenance.articleseeks

Rome’s culinary condition was more alike to 21st century cosmopolitan societies, where elites distinguished themselves culinarily through the aesthetic value of consumables, pursuing food that exuded a “sense of distinction” through its copiousness or scarcity. To illustrate this trope, this paper will first expound on the diets of everyday Romans, comparing the diets with ordinary citizens of post industrial 19 20th century European economies. It will subsequently nuance this trope by exploring the Roman intra class culinary difference through a Bordieuan lens, analyzing the elite’s sociological behavior surrounding food and demonstrate how Rome’s culinary condition was instead more similar to the elites of modern 21st century cosmopolitan societies.

Introduction

The Roman Food Pyramid Ordinary Roman citizens ate a nutritiously balanced diet of meat, seafood, fruits, spices and grains on a regular basis, supported by large scale import and distribution of food handouts from the Emperor.[2] The basic roman diet comprised of a main cereal portion (frumentum), supplemented with flavorful side-dishes (pulmentum or salsamentum) such as legumes, vegetables and proteins such as cheese, fish and meat.[3] The earliest Roman staple was porridge (puls) made of boiled emmer wheat, but this was gradually replaced by bread as trade grew. Meat was also available for the poor, who however often consumed less desirable parts of animals through the form of blood puddings, regional sausages (falisci, lucanicae), meatballs (isicia), or stews at food stalls and taverns. Roman cuisine was flavorful as well, with spices and seasonings such as olive oil, wine, vinegar, herbs and spices (pepper, cumin, coriander) commonly used in cooking.[4] In 123 BC, Roman quaestor Gaius Gracchus introduced the first food related welfare handout, with the state distributing subsidized grain to the to the urban populace, eventually expanding to include olive oil, meat and wine after Severan Thistimes.[5]base level of welfare handouts freed up disposable income for ordinary Romans to purchase ingredients that could supplement their diets. Roman legionaries would only have to use 10 20% of his salary to purchase additional wheat for one’s subsistence and an unskilled laborer’s annual cost of feeding a family (of four) was around 20 30% of his income.[6] Literary sources suggest that urban unskilled laborers earned between 150 225 denarii between the first century BCE and CE,[7] with such wages sufficient for everyday citizens to purchase exotic spices such as black pepper priced at 4 denarii a libra.

to explore the culinary condition of the masses and elites in Rome by comparing it to post industrial societies. It finds that ordinary Roman citizens enjoyed a diet that was holistic, nutritious, and well seasoned. Diets were similar in nutritional composition to the elite class, consuming food that were high in calories, diverse in choice, and flavored with spices. It presents evidence that supports a more complex culinary condition when compared to 19 20th century economies, with Roman food culture going beyond simply fulfilling nutritional necessity.

Researchers also find that Roman quarry workers were able to consume fish, shellfish, vegetables, fruits and meat,[8] where Cato’s agricultural slaves were fed a diet of an estimated 3500kcal.

"Roman Food at the British Cheesy"Museumby vintagedept is marked with CC BY 2.0. Comparing consumption information to post industrial revolution cities, everyday Romans ate better than their 19th 20th century counterparts. British farm laborers during the industrial revolution spent 75% of their income on food (71% on bread) whilst miners similarly allocated 58% (40% on bread) of their income towards such purchases.[10] Other studies find that between 1787 1912, calorie consumption varied from 1685kcal to 2768kcal depending on one’s wage level (See Appendix 1), with most households suffering from some degree of nutrient deficiency with the exception of protein.[11] Further evidence from skeletal remains of Hellenistic Greece suggest a taller mean height of 172cm, whereas Western Europeans (Spaniards, Italians, and Austro Hungarians) throughout the 18th and 19th century had a mean height of around 158 162cm,[12] with modern studies supporting the notion that height is closely correlated to nutrition especially with the intake of high quality proteins such as pork, fish, wheat and milk.[13] Such evidence suggests that ancient Romans were perhaps more nutritionally well-off, consuming a more wholesome diet that encouraged physiological growth. Rome thus perhaps achieved parity in food security and quality for the masses, surpassing 19th 20th Century European economies without the advantages accrued from modernization and the Industrial Revolution. Roman “Factory” Farming

The nutritionally-dense and diverse Roman diet was only possible through the existence of complex and specialized market oriented farms that produced livestock in large capacities, generating surplus for the masses. Domestically, the Romans were involved in a wide variety of farming practices that allowed for a rich and varied diet. Farms were technologically intensive and featured specialized farming, viticulture, arboriculture, and market gardening.[14] We see the presence of both agrarian and aquaculture practices, where entrepreneurs invested in specialized villas or latifundias large, centrally managed agricultural enterprises that grew wine, olives, animals and marine culture.[15] Along the sea, there are recorded presence of maritime villas which were involved in oyster, tuna and even fish farming.[16] One such famous individual is that of eques Sergius Orata who leased Lake Lucriunus in Campania from the Roman state for oyster farming and eventually became one of the pioneers progressive maritime farming in the Roman empire.[17]

Archaeobotanical analysis of Herculaneum’s septic tanks supports the literary evidence on how most ordinary individuals were able to consume a flavorful and wholesome diet, where tanks linked to non elite areas shops, taverns and rental apartments find traces of black peppercorn together with the remains of seafood (fish, mollusks, shellfish), meat (chicken, sheep, pigs), fresh fruits, and other spices such as coriander and poppy seeds.[9] These findings substantiate how commoners consumed a rich and varied diet despite their socioeconomic class.

Thus far we have seen how the Roman commoner had a similar nutritional diet composition to the rich, requiring us to draw a more nuanced analysis to illustrate the differences between classes, in terms of food consumption. To aid us in this endeavor, modern sociologist Pierre Bourdieu writes on how food has become an identifier and signifier of one’s class. Bourdieu’s concept of class habitus aptly explains this, where the “the aesthetic sensibility that orients actors’ everyday choices in matters of food, clothing, sports, art, and music […] serves as a vehicle through which they symbolize their social similarity with and their social difference from one another”.[27]

On land, villas could range up to 2000m2 in size, an inclination of the scale and intensity of production.[18] The most prominent cash crops included olive oil and wine which were growing extensively for both consumption and export. For villas, Cato suggested that his ideal farmland size was 100 iugera (62.5 acres),[19] with certain latifundium measuring 1,000 or more iugera,[20] Concomitant to these large estates were a range of agricultural management texts devoted entirely to the maximisation of production efficiency Cato’s De Agricultura, Columella’s De re Rustica and Varro’s Rerum Rusticarum, with Roman’s food technology comparable to the agricultural practices of leading mid nineteenth century Europe. If we compare food production sizes, we see that the Romans did it bigger and better than other ancient civilizations, and even 19 20th industrial societies. Columella’s benchmark for the minimum production of a well-cultivated vineyard is almost exactly the same as the average viticultural productivity of 19th century France, with Columella’s estimates of a normal yield matching French figures for early 1950s.[21] In agriculture production, Britain’s 1885 agricultural records show that 71% of farms were under 50 acres,[22] smaller than Cato’s ideal villa size of 62.5 acres. Further, an archeozoological comparison of cattle sizes similarly show that Roman cattle sizes were sometimes similar, if not larger than cattle from the industrial era.[23] In the Bronze and Iron Ages, European cattle were small, averaging at 110cm. Following the Roman conquest, cattle sizes increased to 120cm 140cm depending on the location of the farm. In comparison, German cattle circa 1900 fell between 135 142cm, whilst cattle from many other European regions ranged from 121 126cm. To supplement domestic production, the developed Roman global trade and expansive empire allowed for an inflow of meat, vegetable, and spices from all across the world. The empire received lettuce from Cappadocia, garum from Mauretania, game from Tunisia, edible flowers from Egypt, and also imported figs from Africa.[24] One of the most impressive spices includes the import of black pepper from the Indo Roman trade. Spices were imported in bulk, allowing such exotic goods to be available at a cheaper price, servicing a much broader segment of the population than anticipated.[25] According to Pliny, the empire imported 50 million sesterces of pepper annually.[26] The distribution of staple foods thus freed up income, allowing everyday citizens to purchase affordable “luxury” spices and vegetables that were imported. The confluence of large scale domestic production and massive logistical structures thus allowed for food to be produced and imported on an industrial scale, creating surplus that enabled a variety of food to be affordable for the masses and encouraging a holistic and varied diet.

The Habitus of Consumption

Members of the dominant class lead a lifestyle that prided on form over function, through a “sense of distinction” via social, cultural, and economic capital, where conversely, members of the working class develop a “taste for necessity” characterized by a lifestyle of function over form.[28]

Aemilius Paullus’ famously organized a banquet to celebrate his victory over the Macedonians in 167 BCE, where he was noted to say “the man who knows how to conquer in war can also arrange a banquet (conuiuium) and organize games”.[34] Banquets had a diplomatic function of advertising Rome’s power demonstrating an individual and empire’s organizational skills and showing cultural understanding before an assembly of surrounding powers. It signaled economic capital, where only civilizations that had additional surplus were able to carry out such feasts, whilst assisting elites in reproducing cultural capital through the recurrence of banquets.

Banquets were a potent symbol of culture where the Romans had a large practice of feasting for the entertainment of the people during celebratory and religious occasions.[33]

"Funerals Grave relief showing the deceased and his widow in a funeral feast where they are depicted in a godlike manner Roman 1st century CE WM McLeod 720X480" by mharrsch is marked with CC BY NC SA 2.0.

The main difference between the diets of the rich and the poor is therefore not in nutritional value (function) but in aesthetic form. As previously discussed, the common citizen had a diet that included handouts wine, bread, olive oil supplemented by access to cheese, fresh vegetables, fruits, vegetable protein and meat in the form of off cuts. Horace and Marital record how chickpeas, lentils, and fava beans were frequently served both at home and at inexpensive food stalls in the city.[29] The rich similarly often consumed such vegetable protein, accompanied with choice cuts of meat such as pork, beef and lamb. Fish was also consumed by both classes, albeit for the lower class this was in the form of preserved fish sauce or garum, whereas the rich in the form of fresh fish. Fresh fish commanded large sums in the imperial period, with Seneca recording up to 5,000 sesterce for one mullet and Pliny up to 8,000 sesterce.[30] On occasion, the aristocratic class was also known to consume exotic meats wild game, song birds, dormice and flamingo.[31] Foie Gras was also referenced to by Pliny the Elder, where a goose is force-fed to fatten the liver before removing the liver and further enlarging it by soaking the organ in honey sweetened milk.[32] Thus, although both classes had a diet with similar compositions, the rich had a wider variety of dishes and access to fresh food that was unmatched by commoners. The difference thus lies in the aesthetic value of consumables rather than the function, where the Roman elites similar to modern cosmopolitan elites often used a “sense of distinction” with food as a medium to distinguish themselves from the lower classes, with food now becoming a marker of class through social, cultural, and economic capital. This form over function came in two manifestations: 1) Banquets and 2) Needless Exoticism of Food. Banquets or “Buffets”

“ Banquets not only had political function, but a social one as well. Philanthropy (Philanthropia) was expected of Roman elites, where they had to maintain large networks of social connections and entertain visitors who came to the city with recommendations from friends. This usually involved feeding and entertaining these large crowds, where certain norms dictating these gatherings. For example, when dining with intimate friends, the capacity should not exceed nine people for it was believed that the occasion would be unruly, going from convivium (life sharing) to convitium (vice sharing).[35] During these banquets, aesthetic form was also important, where the way food was served and appeared carried salience. Slaves were trained in proper serving and carving techniques, with such a role famously elucidated by Carver the Carver in Trimalchio’s dinner.[36] Apicius, one of the authorities on food, also gave instructions on how food should be served, recommending an expensive silver platter for plating.[37] In Petronius Satyricon featuring Trimalchio a former slave who has turned rich and is famed for hosting elaborate, ostentatious banquets is known to interrupt Seleucus and Habinnas mid conversation to ask: “But what did they give you to eat?”,[38] referring to another party Seleucus and Habinnas were coming from. This is meant to satirically illustrate how for elites, what one consumed was of over inflated concern. Petronius further ridicules Trimalchio’s lack of sophistication and finesse in the realm of food and wine, where despite having the wealth to spend on such lavishness, he draws out contrasts between the money spent on the food and the insipid end result [39]. One common example was how elites determined a host’s social hierarchy depending on whether oysters were served at a banquet.[40] Trimalchio’s lack of finesse in form was thus scoffed by Petronius, where the former slave lacked cultural capital of a true “elite”. We thus can see how banquets were utilized within the elite milieu to reproduce social capital whilst demonstrating economic and exclusive cultural capital. Capons and Ortolans Next, we see the presence of the needless exoticism of food, where elites ate items as a status symbol rather than for function. In Rome, the aristocratic class was known to consume exotic meats wild game, song birds, dormice and flamingo, where these exotic meat were priced for its opulence and fetishized by elites not due to its taste, but rather its limited supply and high price. We see parallels to modern day consumption of exotic meat and its ancillary moral concerns, with some examples shark fins, ortolans and pangolin meat. The rarity of these animals often stem from its illegal status and immoral preparation techniques which in turn makes these dishes even more exotic. One contentious example is modern Foie Gras, with the dish often drawing criticism from its gavage preparation technique goose or ducks force fed with a 15 inch tube to facilitate indigestion, unnaturally fattening the livers directly which ensures a desirable texture. Another example is that of ortolans, a practice that has been banned but is still popular on the black market.[41] In Rome, the Lex Faunia was introduced in 162 BC to forbid citizens from eating fattened hens in an attempt to save grain. Roman farmers then found a way around this through caponisation the castration of cockerels which allowed the animals to put on weight and grow twice their normal size,[42] with the consumption and practice of fattened pullets subsequently banned.[43]

Roman and modern civilizations share similar approaches in morally questionable modifications of the animal to produce more “delicious” meats and ancillary pushbacks stemming from animal morality. First, in both civilizations there is an interest and intricate understanding of animal biology, where farmers went beyond simply feeding the livestock, and experimented various ways to produce animals specific for exotic consumption producing animals that were plumper or with fattier livers than the one’s produced by conventional means. Secondly, we similarly see how authorities attempted to clamp down on such “excessively cruel” practices. In Rome, we see the introduction of laws[44] in an attempt to curb such behaviors, with these laws attempting to control frivolous consumption, consumption expenditure and banned certain foods such as fattened pullets and dormice [45]. The banning of shark fins and ortolans are similar modern examples, where these laws sought or are still seeking to ban the overconsumption of these delicacies due to ethical and animal welfare concerns. Thus, we see similarity between Roman and modern elites in their desire to distinct themselves through needless exoticism of certain food, where such delicacies allow them to convey a “sense of distinction” and demonstrate economic capital and an exclusive cultural capital.

Conclusion In conclusion, the everyday citizen in Rome did not only consume for sustenance or “necessity”, but enjoyed a diet that was wholesome, nutritious and well seasoned, similar in function to the elite class. Ordinary Romans ate well, driven by welfare handouts and additional surplus due to the large specialized agricultural industry of Rome.

Juvenal Sociologist in Antiquity In Rome, excessiveness and frivolous spending on banquets and exotic food concomitantly drew scrutiny amongst many, with moralizing literature in the form of satire and philosophical work denouncing extravagance as indicative of moral decay. Juvenal’s infamous term “bread and circuses” speaks to the corruptibility of the citizenry via food and games,[46] where Emperors used food and entertainment as one method of issuing rent to prevent the people of Rome from revolting. The critique focuses on the citizen’s primal desire for such simplistic demands, a commonality found in both elites and locals albeit in different forms. In Horace’s dinner invitation poem addressed to Persicus, Horace talks about the fine wine and food they consume.[47] Juvenal mocks such excessiveness and “softness”, mentioning how gourmet habits would leave one suffering when one’s wealth has been spent and is unable to satisfy one’s desire again,[48] where food has evolved into a symbol of corruption and gaudiness. He also contrasts how Roman predecessors did not engage in such opulence, insinuating how “honorable” leaders of today are “soft”, whereas the original Roman heroes were “tough”, pragmatic and did not concern themselves with these luxuries.[49]

Bourdieu’s theory, which illustrates the class condition of modern society, is interestingly also applicable to Roman society, where both modern and ancient literature demonstrate consensus that the main difference between the classes is not in nutritional value but in aesthetic form. Due to the balanced and rich diets of the commoners, the “sense of distinction” for elites were thus focused on form rather than function, with elites pushing for aesthetic extravagance and gaudy exoticness. This was exclusive to elites as only through their wealth could they afford exotic meats and banquets (economic capital), allowing them to create a distinct culture (cultural capital) that is reproduced through a closed social circle (social capital).

[13] Jessica M Perkins et al., “Adult Height, Nutrition, and Population Health,” Nutrition Reviews 74, no. 3 (March 2016): 149 Grasgruberhttps://doi.org/10.1093/nutrit/nuv105;65,P. et al., “The Role of Nutrition and Genetics as Key Determinants of the Positive Height Trend,” Economics & Human Biology 15 (December 1, 2014): 81 [14]https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2014.07.002.100, Kron, “Food Production.”

[8] Kron, “Comparative Evidence and the Reconstruction of the Ancient Economy.”

As such, the Roman culinary condition was perhaps superior to 19-20th century economies, and more like 21st century cosmopolitan cities in both form and function. This analysis of the Roman culinary condition draws similarities between the class based sociological structures of Rome and modern contemporaries, prompting one to rethink the intricacies and modernity of class structures, and perhaps prompt a deeper reflection into our common historical condition.Endnotes [1] Paul Erdkamp, “The Food Supply of the Capital,” in The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rome (Cambridge University Press, 2013), 262 77, [2]73.org.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/10.1017/CCO97811390259https://doi

[15] Emanuel Mayer, “Money Making, ‘Avarice’, and Elite Strategies of Distinction in the Roman World,” in Skilled Labour and Professionalism in Ancient Greece and Rome (Cambridge University Press, 2020), 94 [16]https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108878135.004.126, Annalisa Marzano, “The Variety of Villa Production From Agriculture to Aquaculture,” in Ownership and Exploitation of Land and Natural Resources in the Roman World (Oxford University Press, [17]prof/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198728924.001.0001/achttp://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view2015),9780198728924chapter11.PlinyNat.Hist9.1689;Cic.Hort6771

[9] Mayer, “Tanti Non Emo, Sexte, Piper.”

[6] Geoffrey Kron, “Comparative Evidence and the Reconstruction of the Ancient Economy: Greco Roman Housing and the Level and Distribution of Wealth and Income,” 2014, 123 46, [7]https://doi.org/10.4475/744.

[10] Emma Griffin, “Diets, Hunger and Living Standards During the British Industrial Revolution*,” Past & Present 239, no. 1 (May 1, 2018): 71 [11]https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtx061.111,IanGazeleyandSaraHorrell , “Nutrition in the English Agricultural Labourer’s Household over the Course of the Long Nineteenth Century,” The Economic History Review 66, no. 3 (2013): 757 84, [12]0289.2012.00672.x.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468

Ernst Emanuel Mayer, “Tanti Non Emo, Sexte, Piper: Pepper Prices, Roman Consumer Culture, and the Bulk of Indo Roman Trade,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 61, no. 4 (May 24, 2018): 560 https://doi.org/10.1163/1568520989, 12341464.

Kron, “Food Production.”

Geoffrey Kron, “Food Production,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy, ed. Walter Scheidel, Cambridge Companions to the Ancient World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 156 [3]https://doi.org/10.1017/CCO9781139030199.011.74,J.MiraSeo , “Food and Drink, Roman,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome (Oxford University Press, [5][4]9780195170726ref/9780195170726.001.0001/acrefhttp://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/ac2010),e490.Seo.Erdkamp , “The Food Supply of the Capital.”

[18] Antoni Martín i Oliveras and Víctor Revilla Calvo, “The Economy of Laetanian Wine: A Conceptual Framework to Analyse an Intensive/Specialized Winegrowing Production System and Trade (First Century BC to Third Century AD),” in Finding the Limits of the Limes: Modelling Demography, Economy and Transport on the Edge of the Roman Empire, ed. Philip Verhagen, Jamie Joyce, and Mark R. Groenhuijzen, Computational Social Sciences (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2019), 129 64, https://doi.org/10.1007/978 3 030 04576 0_8. [19] G. E. Fussell, “Farming Systems of the Classical Era,” Technology and Culture 8, no. 1 (1967): 16 44, https://doi.org/10.2307/3101523.

[22] J. V. Beckett, “The Debate over Farm Sizes in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century England,” Agricultural History 57, no. 3 (1983): 308 25.

William Arrowsmith, “Luxury and Death in the Satyricon,” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 5, no. 3 (1966): 304 31. [39] Grimm, “On Food and the Body.” [40] Marzano, “The Variety of Villa Production From Agriculture to Aquaculture.”

Mayer, “Tanti Non Emo, Sexte, Piper.” [26] Pliny Nat. Hist 12.28 and 58 [27] Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action, trans. Randall Johnson (Stanford: Stanford University Press, B.http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=2043;1998),ElliotWeininger , “Pierre Bourdieu on Social Class and Symbolic Violence,” Alternative Foundations of Class Analysis 4 (2002): 138. [28] Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Harvard university press, 1984). [29] Seo, “Food and Drink, Roman.”; Horace Satires 1.6; Martial 5.78 [30] Seneca, Epistles, 95.42; Pliny Nat. Hist, 9.67. [31] [32]Seo.Pliny Nat. Hist, 10.52 [33] Beryl Rawson, “Banquets in Ancient Rome: Participation, Presentation and Perception,” in Dining on Turtles: Food Feasts and Drinking in History, ed. Diane Kirkby and Tanja Luckins (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2007), 15 32, https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230597303_2.

[24] Phyllis Pray Bober, Art, Culture, and Cuisine: Ancient and Medieval Gastronomy, 1st edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); Patrick Faas, Around the Roman Table: Food and Feasting in Ancient Rome, trans. Shaun Whiteside (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005), [25]go/A/bo3534520.html.https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chica

[34] Livy, 45. 32 3 [35] Veronika E. Grimm, “On Food and the Body,” in A Companion to the Roman Empire (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2006), 354 [38][37][36]https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470996942.ch19.68,Petronius,36,78Apicius4.141

[23] Geoffrey Kron, “Archaeozoological Evidence for the Productivity of Roman Livestock Farming,” MBAH 21 (January 1, 2002): 53 73.

[20] Annalisa Marzano, Roman Villas in Central Italy: A Social and Economic History, Roman Villas in Central Italy (Brill, http://brill.com/view/title/14257.2007), [21] Varro, Rust. 2.3.10; Kron, “Food Production.”

[46] Juvenal, Satire 10.77 81; Erdkamp, “The Food Supply of the Capital.”

[47] Horace 1.5, 1 15 [48] Juvenal 11, 30 43 [49] Juvenal 11, 90 100 & 120 125

[43] Seo, “Food and Drink, Roman.”

[41] Ortolans are caught and deprived of light, causing the bird to gorge on grain and fattening themselves up. The birds are then drowned, and/or rather, marinated in Armagnac before they are roasted and consumed whole head, bones and feet included in one bite. Diners traditionally veil their face with a napkin before consuming the chicken a symbolic gesture to mask the shame of eating the ortolan from the eyes of god.

[44] Lex Fannia in 161 bce, Lex Licinia in 103 bce, Lex Cornelia of Sulla in 80 bce and lex Julia in 1 bce [45] Seo, “Food and Drink, Roman.”

[42] Maguelonne Toussaint Samat, “The History of Poultry,” in A History of Food (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2008), 305 https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444305135.ch11.30,

Smoke and Mirrors: Reading the Rhetoric of Ted Cruz

By: Lillian Robles

Luhmann’s work hinges on observation. Put simply, first order observation is when an observer distinguishes the observed from everything else. Second order observation is the same, except the observee is another observer, who is, in turn, observing. As Luhmann writes,“On the level of second-order observation, one can thus see everything: what the observed observer sees, and what the observed observer does not see.”[1] So, in this quotation, the second order observer is able to analyze critically the first order observer’s act of observation. Again, the first-order observer (and their act of observing) is being observed. Looking closely at Luhmann’s words, this passage is distinctly difficult to read, for all the repetition.

It is well-known that on January 6, 2021, while the electoral votes were being certified, an insurrection was unfolding at the U.S. Capitol. The event was born of a concerted effort to overturn the results of the presidential election. Probably the most important aspect of this event was the barrage of misinformation doubting the security and results of the election. So, to understand this piece of history that is still unfolding, it is important to understand the rhetoric, or the verbal tactics, attached to it. In other words, how can a lie about election fraud be crafted so effectively? In his speech on that day, Senator Ted Cruz objected to the counting of electoral votes, which is largely ceremonial, on the grounds that many Americans believe that there was widespread voter fraud and/or a rigged election. As the counting of the votes is largely ceremonial, the result of the election was already well known and official. It was highly unusual that this event was made newsworthy, and only the widespread misinformation made the routine counting procedure a point of contestation. Note this idea; it is a matter of people’s standpoints. This paper will examine Cruz’s senate speech raising an objection to the certification of electoral votes through two theoretical lenses: first, Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory and, supplementally, Sara Ahmed’s cultural politics of emotion. Together, these lenses, along with an op ed on the subject published in the New York Times, demonstrate the ways in which Cruz obfuscates his own role in the situation as a rhetorical tactic of not only persuasion but political self preservation.

"Smoke and mirrors" by theilr is marked with CC BY SA 2.0. "Ted Cruz Caricature" by DonkeyHotey is marked with CC BY SA 2.0.

First, this paper will examine Luhmann’s systems theory for the purpose of a theoretical framework for understanding Cruz’s rhetoric. Luhmann can be employed here because his work offers a useful lens that contends with the problem of perspectives: the ways that individual points of view prove inescapable in communication, rendering truth and clarity elusive at best. Luhmann was a sociologist and key thinker of the 20th century. Ultimately, the problems presented by Cruz’s rhetoric are problems of perspective.

[3] In this passage, Cruz is more concerned with how other people view the legitimacy election, than how he views the election. This is, according to Luhmann, second order observation. These categories by no means follow hard-and-fast rules. They are merely different frames that Cruz likely deploys when they fit a goal. For example, Mimi Swartz, contributor to the New York Times, is a second order observer: Swartz observes Cruz’s observations. The idea, then, is that Swartz is pointing out Cruz’s blind spots. She points to Cruz’s position as a second order observer: an observer observing his own observation. Swartz writes: “Any decent soul might ask: If you are so smart, how come you are using that fancy education to subvert the Constitution you have long purported to love? Shouldn’t you have known better? But, of course, Mr. Cruz did know better; he just didn’t care.”

[2] Cruz’s issue does not seem to be the reality of election fraud, or a lack of election fraud, but that there are multiple perspectives on the matter, and he does not want to situate himself in one. Instead, he hides himself in the multitude. A frame is a particular way of looking at something. It is the perspective: what an observer sees, what they ignore, what they do not know. Furthermore, there is necessarily a blind spot in the process of observing. That is, each observation carries with it a specific frame that misses something. The second order observer can see another observer’s blind spot, though not their own. So, a second order observer can examine the shortcomings of another observation. Now, put Cruz’s speech in the context of second order observation. It illustrates how Cruz’s speech splits into different observers with different frames, and how he uses this to his advantage. Ostensibly, Cruz is speaking in response to supposed election fraud. Regarding this, his speech is first order observation. It also may be said that Cruz is observing what others think and observe about supposed election fraud, trying to capitalize on it, and is a second order observer. Cruz assesses the situation as follows, “I understand your concerns, but I urge you to pause and think, what does it say to the nearly half the country that believes this election was rigged if we vote? Not even to consider the claims of illegality and fraud in this election.”

It gives the sense that there are endless frames to be employed-- that is, endless different ways to observe. The constant generation of frames makes it possible to get lost in them or, if you are Cruz, to hide yourself in them. Indeed, Cruz is more interested in the variety of ways that the situation is seen, than how the situation is in reality,“All of us are faced with two choices, both of which are lousy. One choice is to vote against the objection, and tens of millions of Americans will see a vote against the objection as a statement that voter fraud does not matter, is not real, and should not be taken seriously. And a great many of us do not believe that.”

[4] This is how I divide Cruz into two separate observers: Cruz, the first order observer, who believes it is important to investigate alleged election fraud, and Cruz the second order observer who sees himself, knows what he is doing, knows he is wrong, and does not care. In other words, the first order observer is on the ground, in the action, while the second observer is more bird’s eye view. This is not to suggest that Cruz has some sort of split psychology, but to provide a theoretical framework fit for describing Cruz’s deception.

Another second order observer Cruz is or might act as (or another frame he might employ) is the one who tries to calculate whether this move will be good or bad for his career. The different versions of Cruz make it difficult to find a “true” observation being made. Or perhaps the “true” intention. There probably is not just one. Each of these different observations, each different frame, has a different perspective with different aims. This serves to obscure any true intention, which gives Cruz strong cover.

Next, supplement the analysis of Cruz’s speech through the second theorist: Sara Ahmed and her book, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, which explores how emotions shape individual identity, group identity, and hierarchical power. Although Luhmann provides the central analytical framework used here, Ahmed’s work provides a specific example of a set of perspectives, or frames, that Cruz hides in: emotion. In this text, emotion becomes a sort of rhetoric: an apparent lack of emotion becomes a sign of intelligence,“It is not difficult to see how emotions are bound up with the securing of social hierarchy: emotions become attributes of bodies as a way of transforming what is ‘lower’ or ‘higher’ into bodily traits.”[5] This distinction is one that Cruz sees, uses, and leverages. Indeed, Cruz specifically distances himself from any sort of emotionality. “Mr. President, we gather together at a moment of great division, at a moment of great passion. We have seen and, no doubt, will continue to see a great deal of moralizing from both sides of the aisle, but I would urge to both sides perhaps a bit less certitude and a bit more recognition that we are gathered at a time when democracy is in crisis.”

[6] Cruz uses rhetoric of unfeeling logic. By acknowledging that there is passion, but positioning himself outside of it, Cruz seeks to inhabit the supposed higher plane of which Ahmed speaks. Cruz denigrates “moralizing on both sides,” seeming to intimate that, while others’ arguments are based on emotion, his is based on logic. However, Cruz’s coldness is not a true lack of emotion. Ahmed writes: “Hardness is not the absence of emotion, but a different emotional orientation towards others.”[7] So, Cruz’s speech should not be read as unemotional, nor should a lack of perceived emotion be a sign of superiority. Swartz points out that this simply is untrue: “Mr. Cruz has been able to use his pseudointellectualism and his Ivy League pedigree as a cudgel.”[8] Cruz’s intellectualism, or perceived intellectualism, is nothing more than a weapon to be deployed or not. In fact, it is another frame: a way he presents himself to impact the ways that others see him. It is a frame Cruz can hide in. Cruz’s emotionality becomes more complex, as he does not manage to remain outside of it entirely. Already, Ahmed has made clear that lack of emotion is an emotional orientation. It is a notion that is complicated further here,“You may not agree with that assessment, but it is, nonetheless, a reality for nearly half the country.”[9] Here, Cruz is referring to the belief that there was widespread election fraud. Cruz continues to pose as the unemotional intellectual, simply trying to do the right thing. He uses the word “agree” in addressing his opposition (that is, people not trying to subvert the election results). The word “agree” makes it seem as though it is an opinion that is subject to emotion, not reason. Then, he uses the word “reality” to describe those who believe that the election was fraudulent.

By Aca1291 Own work, CC BY SA =114522093https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid4.0,

[14] The idea of a paradox is to “deframe” common sense. The language in the above quotation is precisely what everybody is supposed to want: bipartisan cooperation, fairness, and objectivity. It may be common sense to double- and triple-check the legitimacy of an election so important. That is, it may be common sense if taken wildly out of context, which Cruz does expertly. As in this passage, he plays the voice of reason, when his actions would have the impact of undermining the results of an election,“And what I would urge of this body is that we do the same.

[13] Luhmann’s points play out in Cruz’s speech,“Astonish the viewers and act in a bipartisan sense to say we will have a credible and fair tribunal, consider the claims, consider the facts, consider the evidence, and make a conclusive determination whether and to what extent this election complied with the Constitution and with Federal law.”

To return to Ahmed: “So emotions are not simply something ‘I’ or ‘we’ have. Rather, it is through emotions, or how we respond to objects and others, that surfaces and boundaries are made: the ‘I’ and the ‘we’ are shaped by, and even take the shape of, contact with others.”[10] In other words, emotions form individual or group identity. Emotions draw the boundaries between interiority and exteriority. So, what is Cruz doing here? Cruz is drawing lines. First, there is a “you all” created for the other side, formed by how that side “does not agree.” That line also defines the side of believing the election was fraudulent. While Cruz gives them the rhetorical upper hand, that coldness is still emotion, so this side, too, is defined by emotion. Cruz is careful in his speech to appear on the side of finding the truth, not any of the two sides. Thus, Cruz elevates the idea that there was fraud, furthering his agenda, while distancing himself and preserving his own reputation. Next, Cruz’s relationship to the two sides may be expanded upon by returning to Luhmann. These are more ways in which Cruz hides himself in his rhetoric, specifically, the position of the grammatical subject. Luhmann writes,“The ‘self’ of the system can appear and disappear as suggested by circumstances. Language may make the speaker more visible if it is required to say ‘I love’ and not simply ‘amo.’”[11] Luhmann points out that language (here acting as a frame), positions the speaker, or the subject prominently and inconspicuously. From this, how Cruz hides himself in his rhetoric becomes apparent. Cruz in his speech says,“So I endeavored to look for door No. 3, a third option, and for that I looked to history, to the precedent of the 1876 election, the Hayes Tilden election, where this Congress appointed an electoral commission to examine claims of voter fraud.”[12] Here, Cruz speaks of two options: ignoring complaints of fraud or discounting the election due to them. Thus far, Cruz has brought himself out, away from partisan fighting to seem rational rather than emotional. In one sense, he draws extra attention to himself,“I endeavored” emphasizes his individual action in being the champion of justice and truth. However, there is another level in which he draws himself away from those who believe that there was voter fraud. When discussing the “two sides,” Cruz recedes into the background. Thus, he manages to endorse the course of action entirely while separating himself from conspiracy theorists and Finally,seditionists.there is Luhmann’s notion of paradox and how Cruz’s speech traps the listener in its apparent common sense. Luhmann discusses paradox, for our purposes, as something which is and is not, true and not true at the same time. It is often used to expose fault in common sense. Luhmann argues that one must “deframe” common sense (take it out of its context) and reframe it (put it into a new one). Luhmann writes the following: “The communication of paradoxes fixes attention on the frames of common sense, frames that normally go unattended. If this is the function, then it will not surprise us that deframing again needs its own frames.”

The different observers that constitute Cruz in this moment employ these different frames that help to understand the paradox. A paradox is a matter of frames, and so is Cruz’s performance. Using one frame he is doing something horrible, in another it is something patriotic. In one, he is completely without emotion and in another as Ahmed writes, the situation is entirely emotional. The multitude of possible frames can make it difficult to track down and pinpoint the truth. Cruz exploits the fact that the frames are endless to make the situation work for him. In the case of paradox, as Luhmann writes, to create a paradox is to necessitate constant deframing and reframing, which is the perfect way to shirk the truth in favor of abundant misdirection. What is not clear is if Cruz thought this speech had any chance of overturning the result of the election, or if he just thought it a good career move. Unfortunately, the intention is impossible to know. All that can be known are the consequences The speech specifically places any semblance of objectivity, or possibility of accountability for Cruz into doubt. This is not to say that one cannot know what happened, or who is at fault, as that part is clear. However, Cruz’s speech becomes a case study for how to employ smoke and mirrors and how to use rhetoric to obfuscate your own actions. Endnotes [1] Niklass Luhmann and William Rasch. Theories of Distinction: Redescribing the Descriptions of Modernity. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1st ed., 2002), 115. [2] Ted Cruz. 117th Congress, 1st session, report 167, p. 3. 2021. [3] Cruz, 3. [4] Mimi Swartz. “Never Forget What Ted Cruz Did.” New York Times (New York, NY, Jan. 13, [5]2021).Sarah Ahmed. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. (New York: Routledge, 2nd ed. 2014), 3. [6] Cruz, 3. [7] Ahmed, 4. [8] Swartz. [9] Cruz, 3. [10] Ahmed, 10. [11] Luhmann, Rasch, 86. [12] Cruz, 3. [13] Luhmann, Rasch, 81. [14] Cruz, 3. [15] Cruz, 3. 20

That we have pointed electoral commission to conduct a 10 day emergency audit, consider the evidence, and resolve the claims.”

[15] In another sense, the idea that, here, a bipartisan investigation into possible election fraud is a bad thing (which it certainly is) creates a sort of paradox. Cruz makes it a paradox by framing his proposal as a good thing. It must be deframed by removing Cruz’s frame and adding a new one, the actual context. In more practical terms, what Cruz does constitutes what Luhmann defines as a paradox because it uses the wrong frame for the situation, though it deploys common sense, so it seems like the right frame, the right perspective.

By: Hui Wong

Simone de Beauvior and the Other Woman

Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex asks: “What is a woman?”[1] Equally, however, the question might be: Who is de Beauvoir’s “woman”? For de Beauvoir, woman, the titular “second sex,” is “second” to man insofar as she is understood in relation to man, is dependent on man, and serves man. In de Beauvoir’s words, “woman represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity [from man].”[2] Being “only the negative” is understood in relation to man as the positive. “Man” stands for the positive and the neutral, the gender through which human beings in general are understood and is thus the universal subject to woman as the “Other.” It is “Man” who stands for mankind. While de Beauvoir’s analysis is a useful framework and method for providing accounts of marginalized oppression, her categories of subject and Other are mired with ambiguous boundaries that are ultimately untenable as universal, discrete categories. This limitation in the theory becomes clear when the distinction is reconsidered in light of racialized others who challenge the purported universality of de Beauvoir’s formulation. This paper argues that given these challenges, de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex is most useful insofar as it is a method for accounting for experiences of otherness. Black women are gendered differently from the Black man and racialized differently from the White woman through race, occupying an ambiguous position. This paper first briefly elucidates how de Beauvoir comes to regard woman as the Other by placing emphasis on Woman as a historically separate category that implies a distinct and totalizing struggle from that of race, class, etc. In relation to (or juxtaposed against) “race,” this account is problematic. As Amey Adkins suggests, Frantz Fanon’s analysis of Black otherness in Black Skin, White Masks “reveals a pattern of analysis uncannily similar to de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex.”[3] Given this similarity, might it not be too much to suggest that de Beauvoir already implicitly relies on racial categories for her notion of the Other? Otherness is a category whose qualities shift depending on their proximity to a European male subject. Finally, this paper offers a revised conception of woman as the Other, proposing that de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex be taken up as a methodology for providing an account of otherness, rather than a concrete and totalizing category.

"A Woman

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A key component of woman’s inability to resist stems from patriarchal institutions that naturalize oppression, systems that “that some [women] find to their advantage because of ‘economic interests and social condition’.”[10] Because some women supposedly find advantages in being the Other, men declare that “she has desired the destiny they have imposed on her.”[11] For de Beauvoir, then, woman is consequently in a double bind; women are limited by their situation and have been naturalized into believing that they desire it. One can also conclude that woman is her situation, that she is woman insofar as she participates in her oppression. Judith Butler reads de Beauvoir’s “view of gender as an incessant project, a daily act of reconstitution and interpretation.”[12] De Beauvoir identifies such roles as “housekeeping and maternity” to be falsely desirable, burdens with “poetic veils” that keep women in her position as Other.[13] These roles have been imposed on women through “oppressive systems” with “complicated material origins.”[14]

At the beginning of The Second Sex, de Beauvoir, asks: “What is a woman?”[4] For de Beauvoir, the significance of this question largely lies in her asking it “[a] man would never set out to write a book on the peculiar situation of the human male.”[5] “Situation” is regarded as the facticity of one’s material conditions that constrain existential freedom. De Beauvoir suggests that the situation of the human male has historically been regarded as the universal situation; therefore, a man would never question his “peculiar situation” because his situation has never been peculiar. A woman, on the other hand, “finds herself living in a world where men compel her to assume the status of the Other.”[6] Woman’s situation is dictated by male subjectivity, which has pervaded institutions to systemically regard woman as the Other, naturalizing an inability for woman to transcend her situation. Two questions then arise: how did these categories emerge, and how are they maintained? First, de Beauvoir suggests that the “division of the sexes is a biological fact,” a “primordial” relationship.[7] For de Beauvoir, it is because the divide between man and woman is biological that its development is unlike those deriving from class or racial lines. The chief difference is that other oppressed groups “have often been originally independent […] [b]ut a historical event has resulted in the subjugation of the weaker by the stronger”; de Beauvoir points to “[t]he scattering of the Jews, the introduction of slavery into America” to demarcate the unique category of woman as the Other.[8] In the first instance, woman are different from racial and religious groups in that other groups have existed as their own collective without reliance on those who later became their oppressors. Further, de Beauvoir notes that although the proletarian class is similar to women in that “neither ever formed a minority or a separate collective unit of mankind,” they are still different because “proletarians have not always existed, whereas there have always been women” as a biological, indeed, an ontological truth.[9] Crucially, this leads de Beauvoir to conclude that because women have always existed in relation to men and have been unable to form themselves into a collective separate from their oppressor, they are destined to be unable to resist men’s oppression as other groups are able. But another part of woman’s Otherness and her lack of resistance hinges on her own complicity, which relates to how the status of the Other is maintained.

Does de Beauvoir’s formulation speak to the condition of all women? The Second Sex reads as if it is universal: Woman as the Other is a categorization starting from a “primordial” beginning, and her final call for liberation asks to “abolish the slavery of half of humanity.”[15] I argue, however, that this category is ambiguous, and that de Beauvoir implicitly assumes a specific kind of woman in her formulation of the Other, revealed through de Beauvoir’s own positioning of woman with reference to other marginalized groups. De Beauvoir writes that “there are deep similarities between the situation of woman and that of the Negro,”[16] and that there is no biological precedence for innate characteristics “such as those ascribed to woman, the Jew, or the Negro” (emphasis added).[17] She implicitly characterizes race as a separate category from gender; the critical “or” that hangs between each group distinguishes them. Consequently, the subject is not simply the “Man” who has subjugated these other groups, but “White Man.”

By recognizing Black people and women as two discrete categories, a distinct problem emerges: what of racialized women? The “or” that distinguishes categories reveals either that de Beauvoir’s woman is the Other as a White woman or that racialized women experience their otherness sometimes as a woman, sometimes as a racialized body depending on her situation. This is as dubious as it sound such intersectional feminist scholars as Kimberlé Crenshaw have argued that Black women can “experience discrimination as Black women not the sum of race and sex discrimination, but [distinctly] as Black women.”[18] Thus, de Beauvoir’s categories are revealed to be appealing to a particular universality of Whiteness: the universal man who stands as the subject is revealed to be White; the woman as the Other who can be differentiated from the struggles of racialized others is revealed to be a White woman. While de Beauvoir’s categories, now shown to have racial implications in their subjects, have consequences for the categorization of woman as the Other, the upshot is that it also reveals the universal subject who others as a White man. However, it is unnecessary to look to Crenshaw or later intersectional feminist scholars to arrive at these conclusions; de Beauvoir’s contemporary Frantz Fanon, who locates Black men as the Other, helps to provide an understanding of the intertwined notions of otherness in race and gender, showing that de Beauvoir’s analysis is better taken up as a methodology for providing an account of varying experiences of otherness than a definitive categorization.Inanin depth comparison of Black Skin, White Masks and The Second Sex, Amey Adkins places de Beauvoir and Fanon in dialogue with each other. Adkins provides key insight into a critical moment, showing how the two thinkers influenced each other, and how French existentialist tradition left its mark on influential postcolonial and gender studies discourse. The crucial similarity is that the two existentialists find their freedom repressed by their situation: “Beauvoir realizes this situation for women who are split in their subjectivities by the image of woman. But […] we see that Fanon recognizes this same structure via the modality of race.”[19] In The Second Sex, women are “split in their subjectivities” because of a patriarchal hegemony that suppresses their subjectivity, over determining their personhood. For Fanon, a similar suppression arises from the color of his skin: he suggests that “[t]here are times when the black man is locked into his body,”[20] which echoes de Beauvoir when she writes that man “regards the body of woman as a hindrance, a prison.”[21] Indeed, one may notice similarities rather than differences in de Beauvoir and Fanon’s accounts of the otherness of Black (men) and (White) women. Yet similarities in de Beauvoir and Fanon’s texts do not completely elide their differences. Rather, the thinkers reveal that the crux of their similarity relies on an alterity in relation to the White man. Fanon reinforces the proposition that the universal subject has a race, de Beauvoir that s/he has a gender.

Fanon’s account of the relationship between White and Black men challenges de Beauvoir’s notion that race and gender are distinct due to historical precedence. In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon appropriates Hegel’s master slave dialectic to suggest that “[o]ne day the White Master, without conflict, recognized the Negro slave.”

[22] Fanon’s account of the Black slave’s continuing oppression does not correspond to what, for de Beauvoir, seems to be a key point of difference between the oppression of Black slaves and women that Black slaves “have often been originally independent […] [b]ut a historical event has resulted in the subjugation of the weaker by the stronger.”[23] For Fanon, this historical imagination of Black people as a collective is meaningless in the praxis of liberation: “the Negro knows nothing of the cost of freedom, for he has not fought for it.”

de Beauvoir and Fanon dialectically allows for challenges to discrete categories of otherness while retaining their approach as a useful method. De Beauvoir understands race differently from Fanon, and this difference reveals a challenge to de Beauvoir’s woman as the Other. Conversely, Fanon’s perspective on women also challenges these categories while affirming certain qualities, especially the fact that the experience of a Black woman cannot be articulated purely in de Beauvoir’s terms. Key to reading women in Fanon is recognizing that Fanon does not give an account of Black people’s otherness, but that of Black men. Fanon references Black and White women in his text, a treatment Adkins characterizes as “blatantly, even unapologetically, sexist.”[26] For Adkins, however, this sexism affirms de Beauvoir’s categorization: “Fanon determines women [...] in the very way that de Beauvoir so aptly problematizes in The Second Sex.”[27] This affirmation proves the efficacy of de Beauvoir’s method, not her categories. I put forward another interpretation that notes differences in Fanon’s tone toward Black women and White women, differences that add to the ambiguity of woman as the Other.Fanon deals with Black women and White women in two chapters devoted to their relationships with White men and Black men respectively. Fanon is disgusted by the autobiography of a Black woman named Mayotte Capécia: Fanon resents that she supposedly “asks nothing, demands nothing, except a bit of whiteness in her life.”[28] He is derisive of Mayotte because he believes Black women only want White men: “What they must have is whiteness at any price.”[29] Fanon has purportedly known “a great number of girls from Martinique, students in France, who admitted to [him] with complete candor […] that they would ﬁnd it impossible to marry black men.”[30]

But these similarities can only carry a critique of de Beauvoir’s account of woman as the Other so far. To suggest that de Beauvoir’s category does not work because it is exactly like all other “others” simply shifts categorization from a hegemonic woman Other to a hegemonic non White non male Other. It may be generative to seek differences between Fanon and de Beauvoir’s accounts, question what each category leaves out in their analyses, and thus attempt to rewrite de Beauvoir’s notion of women as the Other.

[24] De Beauvoir, in The Second Sex, speaks of women’s passivity as such: “woman may fail to lay claim to the status of subject because she lacks definite resources, because she feels the necessary bond that ties her to man regardless of reciprocity.”[25] Thus, comparative similarity reveals difference; both Fanon and de Beauvoir view their otherness as passive, and de Beauvoir’s appeal to the historical collective independence of Black people as a key point of difference does not seem to hold. De Beauvoir suggests that Black people rely on remembering their individuality to seek liberation, but Fanon replies that the memory has since faded. The similarity, however, also marks that both writers pursued a similar method for an account of their specific otherness to the White Readingman.

What is insightful is not so much what Fanon believes Black women to be; rather, it is that Fanon does not view Black women within the struggle of Black men. Indeed, by implying that Black women hold onto their sexuality as a means to approximate Whiteness and get closer to the universal subject, he reveals that he sees Black women’s sexuality as an extra layer of otherness adding to the need for “the black man to overcome his feeling of insignificance.”

[31] It is then not so clear that with racialized bodies, the category of woman as the Other holds; relations between Black women and Black men seem, for Fanon, to be that of two Others who struggle differently in approximation to the universal White male subject.

[33] Fanon’s accounts of the Black man’s relationship with the White woman is itself riddled with ambiguity. She is at once an object to be dominated, but it is the taboo of dominating the White subject that is desirable; thus, through Fanon, the White woman retains subjectivity in her race and the Black man in his gender and sexuality. The White woman and Black man are held in ambiguous relation, not in an absolute mode of subject/Other, a mode de Beauvoir’s categories fail to reconcile. However, their analyses, insofar as they are similar in recounting the multiplicity of struggles that stem from being othered by a universal subject, demonstrate their strength as a methodology for accounts of marginalized experience.

[32] The racial and gender politics are evident: on the one hand, de Beauvoir is right. Fanon relegates woman’s role to nothing but an object to master; on the other hand, it is specifically the European woman who is satisfying to “master” because outside the intimate relationship, it is Whiteness that holds power. Fanon recounts another experience with a White woman: a White woman’s son, upon seeing Fanon, shouts “[l]ook at the nigger!” and “throws himself into his mother’s arms: Mama, the nigger’s going to eat me up”; the mother responds: “Take no notice, sir, he does not know that you are as civilized as we.”

"woman" by Alessandro Vannucci is marked with CC BY NC 2.0. "Colorfully Dressed Woman" by D Stanley is marked with CC BY 2.0. That Fanon’s tone toward Black women seems to oscillate between sexism and jealousy demonstrates the insufficiency of de Beauvoir’s categorization of woman as the Other. Fanon also explores the relationship between White women and Black men, a relationship that further confuses de Beauvoir’s definitive categories. Fanon’s exploration is especially pertinent if de Beauvoir’s woman is understood to be White herself. For Fanon, the site of Black man White woman relations are seemingly one in which Black men can regain subjectivity: “Negroes have only one thought from the moment they land in Europe: to gratify their appetite for white women,” and they “tend to marry in Europe not so much out of love as for the satisfaction of being the master of a European woman.”

Second, Black women’s existence problematizes the notion of woman as the Other. Black women occupy an ambiguous position, at odds with the Black man through gender and the White woman through race, as well as being othered by the universal subject in a combination of ways. If de Beauvoir and Fanon’s categories of the Other are discrete, the Black woman is incomprehensibly the other Other, the other of pure negativity.

The kind of acts constituting women’s oppression for which de Beauvoir gives an account are not obviously the same acts that constitute racialized women’s oppression (as hinted at through Fanon’s reading of Mayotte Capécia), nor even that of working class European women. Nonetheless, the notion that oppression is constituted through instituted acts is useful. Thus reading de Beauvoir as a method for providing an account of these acts can be critical for liberatory politics.

De Beauvoir’s woman as the Other is an unstable category for a number of reasons.

First, de Beauvoir’s woman as trapped in a “primordial” relationship does not appear to hold as much consequence as de Beauvoir originally articulates for Fanon, the historical I ndependence of a collective group does not figure importantly into seeking liberation.

Further, the kind of acts that constitute White women’s oppressive situation are different from that of women globally. In a footnote, de Beauvoir writes that “[t]he history of the woman in the East, in India, and in China, was one of long and immutable slavery. From the Middle Ages to today, we will center this study on France, where the situation is typical.”[34] If France is typical, what, for de Beauvoir, is an atypical situation?

The experiences of racialized women do not seem to fit into de Beauvoir’s notion of woman as the Other. Thus, this paper proposes that de Beauvoir’s category of the Other (as well as Fanon’s) is best understood as a method that provides an account of how lived experience constitutes oppression in acts, rather than a discrete category. That is, all on the margins are the Other; there is no universalizing framework, but the method with which de Beauvoir approaches what she believes is woman’s universal struggle can be taken up instead as a means through which a multiplicity of groups may be given a voice. Returning to Kimberlé Crenshaw, intersectional feminism recognizes the need to “include an analysis of race if it hopes to express the aspirations of non white women.”[35] De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex still remains useful in this project if it is taken up as a method for giving voice(s) to the margins, not as an ontological category of Other, and that we need not look further than de Beauvoir’s contemporaries to begin intersectional analyses. "Inde India Portrait woman femme" by etrenard is marked with CC BY SA 2.0. 27

Endnotes [1] Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 13. [2] Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. H.M. Parshley (New York: Knopf, 1953), [3]15. Amey Victoria Adkins, “Black/Feminist Futures: Reading Beauvoir in Black Skin, White Masks,” South Atlantic Quarterly 112, no. 4 (2013): 698, https://doi [4]876org.eu1.proxy.openathens.net/10.1215/003822345243.Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 13. [5] Ibid, 14 15. [6] Ibid, 27. [7] Ibid, 19. [8] Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 17. [9] Ibid, 18. [10] Meryl Altman, Beauvoir in Time (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2020), 166, Value Inquiry Book Series Online E Book. [11] Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 677. [12] Judith Butler, “Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex,” Yale French Studies, no. 72 (1986): 40, [13]doi:10.2307/2930225.Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 677. [14] Butler, “Sex and Gender,” 41. [15] Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 687. [16] Ibid, 22. [17] Ibid, 13. [18] Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989, no.1 (1989): 149. [19] Adkins, “Black/Feminist Futures,” 719. [20] Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (London Pluto Press, 2008), 175. [21] Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 15. [22] Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 169. [23] Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 17. [24] Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 172. [25] Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 20. [26] Adkins, “Black/Feminist Futures,” 701. [27] Ibid, 709 [28] Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 29. [29] Ibid, 34. [30] Ibid, 33. [31] Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 35. [32] Ibid, 50. [33] Ibid, 86. [34] Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malo vany Chevallier (New York: Random House, 2009), 89, quoted in Stephanie Rivera Berruz, “At the Crossroads: Latina Identity and Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex,” Hypatia 31, no. 2 (2016): 322, [35]https://doi.org/10.1111/hypa.12226. Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection,” 166. 28

Stones that Speak By: Aldona Casey 29

Made in the 18th century, Water Dropper: Poet Li Bai Sleeping Near Pine, Plum and Bamboo is a small fluorite sculpture with a cavity and opening so it could be used as a water dropper in ink making. The piece reinforces the well known fact that calligraphy and ink were vital to Chinese culture and were considered one of the highest forms of art. This piece shows a sensitivity to material and color that is indicative of a culture deeply in tune with the natural world, Daoist principles, and its ancient past. The attention to detail, ingenuity, and beauty highlight Chinese craftsmanship, but what is really conveyed is the spirit of the stone; a life within the rock that Chinese sculptors were listening to and reveling in. Colored, semi precious stones have a level of sentience and spirituality within them, similar to that of the taotie, the symbolic forces of Nature, and they were treated as such.

Water Dropper: Poet Li Bai Sleeping Near Pine, Plum and Bamboo is a sculpture made of multicolored fluorite that depicts a man lounging on a large wine jug. The wine jug is cleverly positioned, so that the ink is like the wine being poured out, a witty nod to Li Bai (who was a fan of the drink). This draws a connection between the wine, and the real ink, perhaps both were essential to the creative process! The man, Daoist poet Li Bai, takes up most of the composition and is positioned slightly to the left. Behind the man rises a small background that contains a pine tree which is located just above his head, plum blossoms grazing his torso, and bamboo shoots sprouting at his feet. Overall, the piece is quite intricate for its small size, only standing at about 3 1/4 inches tall and 4 1/4 inches wide. That being said, there are some areas that look slightly unpolished, like the sleeves of the robe and the plum blossoms. In contrast, other areas shine with delicacy, like the lustrous pitcher and the polished facial features which present a smooth stone texture. The artist carved this sculpture using one chunk of fluorite that was naturally variegated, having areas that are colored white, a pink toned purple, and a light blue. There are also beige and off white striations, which can be seen on the robe, and thin veins that are dark in some areas and light in other areas. Despite being naturally occurring, the color of the fluorite is very striking especially because of the bright purple/pink, paired with the baby blue and milky whites. The colors make the piece look almost artificial. The artist took great care in utilizing the naturally occurring color, delineating the figure with the mauve fluorite, and contrasting this with a blue and white jug, mauve pine tree, and blue foliage. The jug has translucent white swirling designs on it, which mirror an organic form, like seafoam or a cloud. The man has been stylistically flattened as well; made more two dimensional than life. The face is rounded, and his facial features, like the nose and lips, do not protrude as much as they would in a more realistic rendering. Despite the varying colors, this is all the same rock, and the unification of the material creates a harmonious piece.

Water Dropper: Poet Li Bai Sleeping Near Pine, Plum and Bamboo, 18th Century, Accession Number: 1938.60 [1].

This stone was quite literally perfect for the subject matter, as if during its formation it was destined to depict dates and peanuts, and it was the artist who revealed its potential. Applying this idea of deliberateness and sensitivity to Water Dropper, new meanings form within the piece. The mauve color works to connect all the mauve elements, in this case the coloration connects Li Bai and the pine tree. Pine trees, one of the “three friends of winter” do not die in winter and are a symbol of self discipline, steadfastness, and endurance[4]. By using the variegated stone, the artist was able to color correlate the pine trees and Li Bai, meaning to draw comparisons between their strong, enduring natures, or perhaps the commissioner of this piece wanted to transfer these characteristics over to himself. Moreover, the essence of the stone was not lost in the carving. Its rare coloration instantly grabs the attention of the viewer, far before the trees or figure.Variegated hardstone sculpture exudes individuality and highlights the spectacular wonders of Nature. Though jade can come with some variation, overall it is a uniform, green material. In contrast, hardstone supersedes jade in its variety of color combinations: “While nephrite jade is generally uniform in color with little variation, many hardstones, such as agate, chalcedony, rock crystal, and lapis lazuli, are variegated.[5]”

Peanuts and jujube dates, 18th Century [3]. In the Chinese tradition of hardstone carving, the material was never a passive participant, but rather was an active, even demanding, force that had a clear voice. Semi precious hard stones come in a striking range of color and have the possibility to be multicolored. Often this variegation can only be discovered after it is carved into and can prove to be a large challenge or nuisance for an artist with a specific vision. However, Chinese artists anticipated, and embraced, the spontaneity of the material, and welcomed “mistakes” within the stone. These artists allowed the stone to guide their creations,“The Chinese carver... seems as a general rule to have kept foremost in his mind the piece of material he intended to carve...did he...encounter variations invisible at its outset, he might modify even radically his original design.”

[1] In a way, it was not the artist manipulating the stone, it was truly the stone guiding the artist. This reflects a broader reverence and understanding of Nature and even connects back to the Daoist principles of flow and wu wei, which is known as effortless action, a noble portion of Daoism. These artists, however, were not completely passive and submissive, but instead worked with the hardstone’s “imperfections” to “turn a potential flaw into a desirable highlight.”[2] The dynamic between the stone and the carver works as a collaboration, rather than the artist controlling or exploiting the material. This relationship goes beyond respect, and more accurately reflects the spirit of man and stone cooperating to create something beautiful. In Peanuts and jujube dates (pictured below), an 18th century Chinese sculpture, the potential of the stone's natural features is fully realized to create an exquisite, almost hyper realistic, still life. The dates were depicted using the deep, translucent, naturally occurring brown of the stone which mimics the soft wet texture of the dates. The peanuts stand out in contrast, with their matte, rough texture, and life like beige color.

Pictured above are three pieces from the Metropolitan Museum of Art which shows the versatility of these stones, not in simple color either, but translucency, finish, pattern, opacity, and variegation. Water dropper in the shape of a crane and Vase with bird and flowers have a subtle ombre variegation, whereas Snuff Bottle has an abrupt, bold swirl of deep brown against a white background, which is more similar to Water Dropper. A reclining figure is not necessarily a revolutionary subject matter, but the type of stone it was created out of gives the piece a sense of personality and individuality. Unable to be replicated, its uniqueness transcends individuality: Almost any bronze, however fine...or painting, however delicately executed, can, if an adequate craftsman be available for the purpose, be imitated so closely that only an expert sensitive to the infinitesimal differences...can distinguish one from the other. In the Chinese carvings in partially colored hardstones, however, Nature also has had a hand, and often the craftsman has but followed, sometimes with incredible perspicacity, her directing finger and for a stone whose colors are irregularly disposed, there is small chance that a precise duplicate can be found.[9] It is not just about the stone, but Nature itself, because it was formed by Nature. Thus, the stone has an active presence, a voice, and holds within it the spirit of Nature, which guides the artist. Within hardstone carving, the stone collaborates with the artist, exhibiting a level of spirit, sentience even, that lives within the stone, especially rare and colored ones. In an article on Southeast Asian beliefs, it was reported that “Among the Kelabit, as well as among other peoples in Sarawak...people collect and keep small stones that are oddly shaped or coloured...such stones may, it is believed, be inhabited by spirits[10].” Notice the importance placed on shape and color in relation to spiritual potential, and the latter most certainly applies to the Water Dropper

Scholars Rock 18th Century [11] From Left to Right: Water dropper in the shape of a crane, 18th Century [6] / Vase with Bird and Flowers, Qing Dynasty [7] / Snuff Bottle, 18th early 19th Century [8] 32

A belief widely held in “mainland Chinese culture” was that stones were considered to have a “vital life force” within them, which could be tapped into[12]. The notion of a life force especially in such abiotic, “dead” material shows a supreme sense of unity with, and for respect with Nature. Pictured above is a scholar's rock, dated from the same time as the Water Dropper. Though the stone itself was not manipulated, it was elevated to “art” by this stone, despite its different coloration, shape, and purpose, is similar to the water dropper through spirit and materiality. Scholar rocks were believed to symbolize earth, even the cosmos, and could have been used for meditation purposes, or for inspiration to scholars. The idea that rocks held within them more than rock would also explain why artisans treated rare and colored stones with “a sympathy [for] the substances they manipulated.[13]” The Art Institute of Chicago went a step further claiming that Chinese culture held the belief that “The purest essence of the energy of the heaven earth world coalesces into rock.[14]” Thus the subject matter of Water Dropper: Poet Li Bai Sleeping Near Pine, Plum and Bamboo fades into the background, and rather than being a sculpture on stone, it becomes a stone with sculpture. The variegation suggests individuality, the colors are inviting and vibrant, and the red-brown striations give the piece an ancient, earthy feel. This understanding completely changes the possibilities of how this piece was used. Instead of the sculpture being a decorative piece in a calligraphy set, we could theorize that the spirit, energy, and life force of the rock was meant to inspire creativity everytime the owner used it, or, perhaps, was meant to grant a steady hand, rouse a pleasant demeanor, or grantThedetermination.powerofstone collecting, which warrants taking note of, has an appeal that moves on from aesthetic and into the spiritual realm while revealing the importance of color. The viewer is presented with the final art piece, the polished vision, yet before it became Poet Li Bai Sleeping Near Pine, Plum and Bamboo, the material was a chunk of raw material. Hardstones and jade were “excavated from mountains and picked up in riverbeds.[15]” The time this sculpture was made, the 1700s, is not ancient, yet many advancements in mining technology had not been made, so this piece was either found or man mined[16]. A story that epitomizes the influence of stone is about Mi Fu, an eccentric artist and Chinese governor during the Song Dynasty[17]. Mi Fu became so absorbed in stone collecting that he neglected his duties as governor of Lienshuei. Subsequently, he was criticized by his superior, at which point Fu began producing stones from his robe, saying “How can one help loving it?[18]” The debacle became vehement when Fu showed his superior a stone “the color of the sky,” at which point his superior grabbed the blue rock from him, exclaiming “I love it too” as Fu desperately tried to get “his treasure back.[19]” It was only after a beautiful blue stone was shown that Fu’s superior understood the beauty of stone. However satirized, Fu was a real man who loved collecting unique stones and dedicated his life to art. It is a completely viable, and likely, claim that the owner of this water dropper had a similar love, if not respect, for this piece. The natural beauty of semi precious harstone combined with Chinese craftsmanship, patience, and creativity make for beautifully thoughtful, at times playful works of art. But the practice of stone carving and collecting reveals a belief that energy, perhaps even spirit or sentience, is held within stones, especially those of unique color or improbable form. Thus Water Dropper: Poet Li Bai Sleeping Near Pine, Plum and Bamboo becomes elevated from an extravagant yet useful calligraphy tool, to a treasured object, manifesting both a connection to a revered poet as well as its own life force.

[15]Cartwright, Mark. "Jade in Ancient China." World History Encyclopedia. Last modified June 29, [16]inhttps://www.worldhistory.org/article/1088/jade2017.ancientchina/.https://www.generalkinematics.com/blog/a brief-history-of-mining-and-the-advancement-ofmining technology/ [17] Beurdeley, Michel. 1966. The Chinese Collector through the Centuries, from the Han to the 20th Century [Translated by Diana Imber]. C. E. Tuttle

Endnotes [1] W. L. Hildburgh. 1942. “Chinese Utilizations of Parti Coloured Hardstones.” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 81 (473): [2]live&scope=siteue&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.868670&site=edshttps://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=tr189. Sun, Jason. “Chinese Hardstone Carvings.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000 rd.htmhttp://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/hard/hd_ha.(June2016) [3] [5]plum/43777package/three[4]/44155https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/searchhttp://artmuseum.princeton.edu/objectfriendspinebambooand Sun, Jason. “Chinese Hardstone Carvings.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000 [6]rd.htmhttp://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/hard/hd_ha.(June2016)https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/hard/hd _hard.htm#:~:text=By%20traditional%20Chinese [9][8][7]%20China.20is%20one%20of%20the%20oldest%20arts%20inprecious%20stones.&text=Hardstone%20carving%%20semi%20definition%2C%20hardstones,precious%20andIbidIbidW.L.Hildburgh . 1942. “Chinese Utilizations of Parti Colored Hardstones.” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 81 (473): https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=tr190. ue&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.868670&site=eds [10]live&scope=siteJanowski , Monica. “Stones Alive!: An Exploration of the Relationship between Humans and Stone in Southeast Asia.” Bijdragen Tot de Taal , Land En Volkenkunde 176, no. 1 (2020): [11]114. probably 18th century. Scholar's Rock, front. sculpture. Place: Harvard Art Museums, Department of Asia, https://hvrd.art/o/201687. [12] Janowski, Monica. 116. [13] W. L. Hildburgh. 186. [14] Spirit Stones of China: The Ian and Susan Wilson Collection of Chinese Stones, Paintings, and Related Scholars' Objects. Edited by Stephen Little. Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago in association with University of California Press, 1999. Pp. 112.

[18]live&scope=site.ue&db=cat06787a&AN=chc.b1238892&site=edshttps://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=trCo.Beurdeley,Michel.1966.

The Chinese Collector through the Centuries, from the Han to the 20th Century [Translated by Diana Imber]. C. E. Tuttle Co.

[19]live&scope=site.ue&db=cat06787a&AN=chc.b1238892&site=edshttps://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=trIbid 34

The Power We Speak: Language, Anti-Black Racism & Black Resistance By: Kelsey Da Silva 35

Whatever the modality, whether verbal, written, body language, or even the release of various chemicals and pheromones, communication is universal between all living things. Humans naturally congregate and gravitate towards one another for more than just survival, rather for companionship and celebration, primarily through language. It is from these congregations, each with their distinct methods of communication, language, that cultures are born. People often underestimate the significance of language, both in the abstract and in regard to individual languages. Each language, and the variety that exists within them, is imbued with culture and history inseparable to its existence. Linguists have since come to learn that the primary languages one speaks can have a direct influence on how one thinks and in turn perceives the world around them. This can depend on the depth of description for certain concepts, such as colors, feelings, time, and direction or even the structure of the language itself. Many North American Indigenous languages for example are verb based, compared to Latin/Germanic based languages that are noun based. Such Indigenous languages allow for a worldview in which everything is more animate and fluid.[1] Conversely, languages that have gendered nouns can also greatly impact and perpetuate unconscious gender bias. A study found that native speakers regularly use adjectives associated with masculine or feminine characteristics in describing nouns that are the corresponding ‘gender’: such as describing the masculine noun of “vino,” Italian for wine, as “strong and full bodied” while describing the feminine noun of “birra,” beer as,“light and bubbly.”[2] Considering the role language can play in societal conceptions of gender, it is especially important to examine the significance of language for racialized persons.

Introduction

It has only been within recent decades that the role language plays in socialization have begun to be examined more closely and acknowledged within mainstream society. Black[3] populations, especially those who have experienced the colonizing or civilizing process represent a particularly interesting paradigm. For many colonized people, learning or speaking one’s ancestral language is an important form of cultural preservation, resistance, and decolonization. However, many Black persons, from various diasporas, residing in western countries do not have such an ability. They instead are forced to speak of their struggles and oppression through the language of their colonizers. As Frantz Fanon put it, “All colonized people...position themselves in relation to the civilizing language.”[4] As described by Frantz Fanon in his chapter “The Black Man and Language” in a colonial relation, language has been and continues to be used to oppress Black people. Deprived of an alternative language, Black people have subverted the language of their oppressors, making it their own as a source of empowerment. To demonstrate this multifaceted intersection, a general introduction to the emergence of creole languages and African American Vernacular English (AAVE) must be examined. Linguistic microaggressions, including but not exclusive to the use of pidgin and ulterior connotations of certain words when used towards Black people, and the practice of racial code switching will then be discussed. Followed by the exploration of the ways self affirmative language has been used as a source of empowerment and decolonization for Black populations, including analysis of the contentious modern use of the ‘n word’. As the content and experiences outlined here are not unique to any one country or even region, the relationship between Blackness and language is discussed in the abstract. English will however be the primary colonial language in question when discussing specific racial intersections, such as AAVE.

Unlike other languages that evolved organically over the course of several generations, often as a result of splitting culture groups, the creation of Creole languages is a direct result of European encroachment and colonization, the bringing together of multiple differing cultures.[5] In this way, Creole is the only language family in which the birth of specific iterations can be more or less pinpointed.[6] Historians and linguists, for example, know that there was no Haitian Creole prior to 1690 and likewise with Hawaiian Creole before 1880; yet within a generation of those dates, each respective language existed.[7]

Slaves and general laborers, who were often from different culture groups themselves, would have needed some way to communicate with one another as well as with the ruling white colonizers. Creolization occurs with the expansion of vocabulary, syntax, grammar, etc. Once the language becomes native to the community it exists in, it is then considered a new language.[16] Creoles most closely resemble the European language of the region’s primary colonial-presence; such resemblance is largely superficial due to dramatic grammar and phonetic changes, similar to the way English and German share linguistic origins but differ in significant ways.[17] This is further proven with explanation of how Creole language rule systems were created. With traditional languagelearning, children naturally pick up rules that more or less align with those of their elders. However, studies have found that first generation Creole speakers “produced rules for which there was no evidence in the previous generation's speech.”[18] 37

Background of Creole & African American Vernacular English (AAVE)

"Ebon Heath Typographic Mobile Print" by urbanartcore.eu is marked with CC BY NC 2.0.

The origins of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and Black English (BE) have been divided into three main academic theories: the Anglicist, the Creolist, and the neo Anglicist.[8] The Anglicist hypothesis argues that AAVE developed from British-based dialects, sharing benchmark similarities with white Southern vernacular.[9] This position maintains that AAVE developed as early generations of American born slaves, “learned the regional and social varieties of surrounding European American speakers.”[10] The Creolist hypothesis came about in the 1960’s and 70’s and asserts that the roots of AAVE derived from a variety of Creole English as a result of expansive African diaspora.[11] Finally, the neo Anglicist theory agrees with the origins of the primary Anglicist hypothesis of its origins in English.[12] However, the neoAnglicist position diverges in explanation of AAVE’s development by asserting that the language is now very distinct to modern European and American vernacular forms of speech: …as the African American community solidified, it innovated specific features' and that 'contemporary AAVE is the result of evolution, by its own unique, internal logic'. Labov (1998:119) characterizes the most recent position as follows: 'The general conclusion that is emerging from studies of the history of AAVE is that many important features of the modern dialect are creations of the twentieth century and not an inheritance of the nineteenth'.[13]Whileneverdefinitively proven, it is commonly agreed upon that Creoles originated as pidgin.[14] Pidgin is a simplified form of language, generally used as a means to communicate when there is a presumed or legitimate language barrier; native to no one, it is always used as a secondary language.[15]

Due to their distinguished descent from European languages, Creoles were viewed very negatively until the past century or so, regarded as a bastardization of the European parent language. [19] Fanon mentions how in his home of the French Antilles, Creole was only used by the bourgeoisie in speaking to servants.[20] Schoolchildren were taught to view the language with contempt and some families forbade its use at home. French writer Michel Leiris, on the subject of Creole, viewed the popularity of the language as the result of illiteracy and poverty and would thus “become a relic of the past” once access to education became widespread.[21] Further revealing its association with those of a “lesser” social status, poor and uneducated Black people who do not strive to meet white standards, that society does not respect. Leiris’ prediction has proven incorrect with many Creoles becoming an indispensable aspect of the cultural identities within their respective communities. Rather, French Martinique cultural critic and philosopher Edouard Glissant viewed creolization as,“an unending, fluid process that cannot be reduced or essentialized.”[22] Creole both reflects and subverts the power relations of the colonial situation. In recent years, the process of Creolization has also been compared to globalization in that there is increasing emphasis on a sort of international society whose norms and values are informed by a conglomerate of varying cultures.[23] Glissant goes so far to say that,“since no one has been spared creolization, no one can assert ‘purity’ of origins as a pretext for domination.”[24] This presents a very significant argument against inequality and norm supremacy as well as providing a poignant interpretation of the effects of increasing globalization and cultural mixing (particularly in settler states created and sustained by substantial immigration such as the United States and Canada).

Many of the previously dominant views and connotations surrounding Creole, are now found within perceptions of African American Vernacular English (AAVE), also referred to as Black English (BE). The languages are viewed as inferior by the dominant culture with stereotypes of ignorance and laziness associated with its speakers.[25] In the same way many within Fanon’s home community disliked Creole, but also viewed it as a sign of solidarity and authenticity, studies on AAVE reveal just such contradictory nuances. Some studies have found that Black people do hold AAVE in high regard, while others have shown that standard English (SE) is preferred over BE.[26] Research conducted in the 1990’s did however notice that as Black families or individuals integrate more into the middle class mainstream American culture, they are more likely to view those who exclusively use AAVE in a negative light.[27] Despite the common belief, AAVE/BE is not in fact defined by its reliance on slang; like any other language, colloquial slang comes and goes, varying from decade to decade.[28] Use of BE within literature speaks well to the point that it, “is not simply a matter of street corner argot.”[29] "Ebon Heath Typography Installation" by urbanartcore.eu is marked with CC BY NC 2.0. 38

Linguistic Microaggressions & Code-

Switching:

The origins of AAVE and BE have been divided into three main academic theories: the Anglicist, the Creolist, and the neo Anglicist.[30] The Anglicist hypothesis argues that AAVE developed from British based dialects, sharing benchmark similarities with white Southern vernacular.[31] This position maintains that AAVE developed as early generations of American born slaves, “learned the regional and social varieties of surrounding European American speakers.”[32] The Creolist hypothesis came about in the 1960’s and 70’s and asserts that the roots of AAVE derived from a variety of Creole English as a result of expansive African diaspora.[33] Finally, the neo Anglicist theory agrees with the origins of the primary Anglicist hypothesis of its origins in English.[34] However, the neo-Anglicist position diverges in explanation of AAVE’s development by asserting that the language is now very distinct to modern European and American vernacular forms of speech: …as the African American community solidified, it innovated specific features' and that 'contemporary AAVE is the result of evolution, by its own unique, internal logic'. Labov (1998:119) characterizes the most recent position as follows: 'The general conclusion that is emerging from studies of the history of AAVE is that many important features of the modern dialect are creations of the twentieth century and not an inheritance of the Asnineteenth'.[35]thelattertwo theories are relatively younger, there is little consensus on the origins of AAVE and its subsequent development, however one can see the many parallels between it and creolization. There is also a wide variety of terms used to describe this same language AAVE, BE, African American English (AAE), Ebonics, among others, which has been said to undermine its legitimacy and recognition as an independent language.[36]

Fanon opens the first chapter of Black Skin, White Masks with the assertion that studying language is essential in understanding one element of “the black man’s dimension of being for others,” because “to speak is to exist absolutely for the other.”[37] Fanon goes on to discuss how there are two dimensions to the Black man, that of when he is with other Black people, and that of when he is with white people.[38] This idea of multiple ‘dimensions’ or sides to oneself, particularly in the context of language, Fanon describes is now commonly referred to as ‘code switching.’ Code switching is a concept rooted in linguistics, originally referring to multilingual people that can easily switch from one language to another in a single conversation.[39] However, it has since become a common term within racial discourses, specifically that of Black communities.[40] Speech is an important signifier in the development of one’s perception of another person as it can signal status and prestige.[41] This means that reliance on stereotypical cues for validation of initial impressions is of course, but unfortunately, still common.[42] Black individuals thus often feel the need to censor parts of their speech, indeed themselves, or switch to “[their] white voice” to be accepted and feel safe in non Black dominant spaces.[43] Fanon recalls such feelings when he first went to France, as well when reflecting on fellow Antilleans returning from France; men who are then faced with the dilemma of maintaining their newly founded superiority complex, rejecting Creole, and being ostracized by their own people or returning to so called ‘savagery’ and live in non white inferiority.[44] This distinction further demonstrates the connection between perceived racial difference and alliances based on the way one speaks. Interestingly, one study found that Black subjects held negative views towards those who did not know how or when to switch from AAVE to standard English.[45]

One can easily make the comparison of how Creole was perceived during Fanon’s time (and even now to varying degrees) as being akin to how African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is perceived in the present, as lesser forms of speech, even among Black populations themselves depending on the context. It should be noted that everyone, regardless of race, alters their speech in various situations.[46] The difference in perceptions based on speech however is much more significant for racialized individuals because of aforementioned stereotypes already working against their favor. Even with the ‘protection’ of being able to code switch, Black people nonetheless face countless linguistic microaggressions stemming from deep seated, historical, and paternalistically racial supremacist norms. Further on in the chapter, Fanon brings up the use of pidgin by white people when speaking to Black individuals, speaking as if they are addressing children. With its use, there is the inherent assumption that Black people are incapable of ‘complex’ communication, expression and thought, immediately dismissing any form of personal and political autonomy. As racial inequality has improved (in some ways more than others), the use of pidgin has become less common and seen as socially unacceptable prior to the establishment of an actual language barrier between adults. However, new ways of talking to or referring to a Black person’s verbal fluency have nevertheless surfaced, maintaining the same racist connotations outlined by Fanon. Race theorist Tim Wise suggests that there has been a subtle shift to a “form of racism that allows for and even celebrates the achievements of individual persons of color, but only because those individuals have ‘transcended’ their race.[47] Within this same line of thought, Fanon comments that “There is nothing more sensational than a black man speaking correctly, for he is appropriating the white world.”[48] Barack Obama presents a perfect example for this sensationalism Fanon refers to. While praised for his oratory, the constant surveillance and scrutiny of Barack Obama during his political career does well to highlight the extent to which “Black Language…. [is] constantly policed by White and other Americans in the public sphere.”[49] A study of the word ‘articulate’ regarding Obama, revealed how one’s innocuous praise can be another’s glaring insult when used in reference to a Black individual due to subtext of the ‘exceptional negro’ and white bewilderment.[50] The following quote describes the reason for these presumed connotations well: “Black folks’ assumption is this: If one needs to consistently point out that an individual Black person is “good,” “clean,” “bright,” “nice looking,” “handsome,” “calm,” and “crisp,” it suggests that White private opinions about Blacks, in general, hold that they are usually the opposite “bad,” “dirty,” “dumb,” “mean-looking,” “ugly,” “angry,” and “rough.”[51] The same way pidgin is viewed as something primarily used with children, many view the use of ‘articulate’ in the same context as innocent, because children are continuously learning and therefore not expected to be able to communicate well.[52] When used with adults however, both are viewed as passive aggressive and insulting.[53] Fanon goes as far to say that the use of pidgin with an adult is to keep them in ‘check’ in their place of subjection.[54]

Black people have a uniquely complicated relationship with colonialism. As like any other colonized group, their Indigenous ways of life were stripped from them through European exploitation and assimilation, with the added trauma of extensive, intergenerational slavery. Yet, the vast majority of Black people descended from those original colonized populations do not reside on the same land of initial colonial contact. Distinction between forcibly displaced, slave-descended persons and the willing European settlers that colonized North America has been made in recent years, notably mentioned by Metis scholar Chelsea Vowel in her book Indigenous Writes. However, the path towards self-reclamation and decolonization for Black populations nonetheless remains a complex abstraction. As previously mentioned, many colonized Black populations were completely stripped of their ancestral and cultural language, leaving them in perpetual limbo of having to express themselves through the language of their colonizers. But as any colonized group, Black people have found alternative methods of resistance and empowerment, however narrow the confines of their oppression restricts such forms of expression. In their decades leading up to and since colonial independence, many countries within Africa and Central America embraced their traditional Creoles, turning a source of contempt and self hatred into one of cultural pride, self-affirmation, and empowerment.[55] What a more poignant symbol of decolonization than nationalizing the language that diverged from the colonizers through a process of multi cultural influence after independence from said empires. The use and push for normalization of AAVE shares similar symbolism, particularly within settler states such as the United States and Canada. With the use of AAVE there is inherent acknowledgement of current and historical struggles, of Black strength in overcoming adversity. This belief is central to a Black identity in which Black people view,“themselves as ‘humanly and culturally rich survivors.’”[56] This self affirming symbolism is best demonstrated through the contentious case study of modern usage of the n word by Black people. As one of the, if not the, only English words censored in such a way, explanation as to the racist history of the word that has led to such censorship by non Black people would likely be redundant, nor would doing so serve the broader point of this discussion. To many, the common use of the n word by some Black people seems contradictory given its extreme history, even with dropping the hard ‘er’ for an open ended ‘a’ sound.[57] Those who reject its use within the Black community sometimes view its use as a symptom of internalized anti Black racism, thereby contributing to identities based on selfhatred.[58] These worries however directly contradict the word’s prolonged social association of survival that has been found to have originated during the time of slavery, with its usage in this way by Black persons as far back as the early 1800’s.[59] Use of the n-word between Black persons can speak to solidarity, or even endearment, between one another or the community at large for continued perseverance through diaspora and systemic racial injustice.[60] Compared to other terms of self reference used by Black populations, the n-word word conveys a more historically layered meaning to identity as a Black person living in the West.[61] Words constantly go in and out of popular use, however the n word has maintained a stronghold within Black lexicons for its flexibility in subverting old meanings and producing new ones that universally speak to Black identity, consciousness, resistance, and empowerment.[62] 41

Resistance, Empowerment & Decolonization

https://languageadvantage.ca/how languages shape the way we think/. [3] Since the mid 19th century, much of white society and academia has primarily used the term ‘African American’, however, in recent years I have observed a dramatic (albeit informal) change to the use of ‘Black’ as an alternative due to preference, acknowledgement that not all Black people are descended from Africa and to normalize the idea that Black is not a negative term. As a non-Black person, I will thus defer to what I have seen and heard from Black people themselves. [4] Fanon, Frantz. “The Black Man and Language.”

By reclaiming languages and words that were once used to oppress and incur self hatred, subjected groups diminish the power they and the ruling class has over them, essentially finding empowerment from the pain of subjection.[63] This is the real reason negative connotations were given to Creole and AAVE, because cultural pride and Black empowerment poses an inherent threat to the western status quo that values white bodies over all else. As American writer Rosaline Lippi Green put it: “[Black English] is tangible and irrefutable evidence that there is a distinct, healthy, functioning African American culture which is not white, and which does not want to be white. This is a state of affairs that is unacceptable to many” (italics mine).[64] As such, the push to minimize use of AAVE is now seen as a push for assimilation and erasure of Black culture that has become fiercely protected by its members.[65] In the words of Fanon, Black people are asserting themselves as just that, Black, and making themselves known, regardless of white recognition or approval.[66]

Conclusion With the background of Frantz Fanon’s primary chapter ‘The Black Man and Language’ in his extraordinary book Black Skin, White Masks, a cursory exploration, and analysis of the relationship between language and Black populations has been completed. Both within the abstract of general use in subjection and specific examples in the case of Creole and African American Vernacular English (AAVE) by Black individuals and communities. The history and theorized roots of these two respective languages as the result of multi cultural influence and settler colonialism was first discussed to provide a referential background. Linguistic microaggressions based on racist presumptions of Black inferiority and incompetence were demonstrated with the examples of pidgin and modern scrutiny of Black linguistic mannerisms. Finally, it was discussed how Black populations, largely deprived of their original ancestral languages, have subverted white norms, and made the languages of the colonizers into their own, as a sort of linguistic resistance, source of empowerment, and sign of solidarity through the use of AAVE and modified n word.

Even in its brevity, this paper has shown the extensive importance in considering the intersection between race and language, particularly in one’s personal and professional capacities as non-Black individuals. Whether such comments or thoughts are subconscious, due a lack of awareness or forethought of racial nuances, or intentional, the impact is the same.[67] In Fanon’s own eloquent words “it is precisely this absence of will...the ease of which they classify, imprison him at an uncivilized and primitive level that is insulting.”[68] This is why it is imperative to actively recognize the ways one’s privileges and power may be reflected or perpetuated through language, words can have infinitely different meanings and implications depending on how they are said and to who. Passive support is simply not enough in the fight against racism, one must be actively anti racist; a part of this is recognizing the varying ways anti blackness in particular is perpetuated, even in communities of color. Endnotes [1] Little Bear, Leroy. “Jagged Worldviews Colliding.” Government of Alberta, 2000.,1 2 [2] “How Languages Shape The Way We ThinkLanguage Advantage.” Accessed April 17, 2021.

In Black Skin, White Masks, 1st ed. New York, NY: Grove Press, 2008., 2 [5] Bickerton, Derek. Roots of Language. Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers, 1981., 2 42

[6] Ibid., 1 [7] Ibid. [8] Wolfram, Walt. “Reexamining the Development of African American English: Evidence from Isolated Communities.” Language 79, no. 2 (2003): [10][9]284Ibid.Ibid. [11] Ibid. [12] Ibid. [13] Ibid., 285 [14] Ibid. [15] “Oxford Languages and Google - English | Oxford Languages.” Accessed April 17, 2021. https://languages.oup.com/google dictionary en/. [16] Bickerton, Derek. Roots of Language. Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers, 1981., 2 [17] Ibid. [18] Ibid., 6 [19] Stewart, Charles, ed. Creolization: History, Ethnography, Theory. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2007., 1 [20] Fanon, Frantz. “The Black Man and Language.” In Black Skin, White Masks, 1st ed. New York, NY: Grove Press, 2008., 4 [21] Ibid., 11 [22] Stewart, Charles, ed. Creolization: History, Ethnography, Theory. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2007., 3 [23] Ibid. [24] Ibid. [25] Koch, Lisa M., Alan M. Gross, and Russell Kolts. “Attitudes Toward Black English and Code Switching.” Journal of Black Psychology 27, no. 1 (February 2001): 30-31 [26] Ibid., 30 [27] Ibid. [28] McWhorter, John H. The Word on the Street: Fact and Fable about American English. New York: Plenum Trade, 1998., 130 [29] Ibid. [30] Wolfram, Walt. “Reexamining the Development of African American English: Evidence from Isolated Communities.” Language 79, no. 2 (2003): 284 [31] [34][33][32]Ibid.Ibid.Ibid.Ibid., 285 [35] Ibid. [36] Wassink, Alicia Beckford, and Anne Curzan. “Addressing Ideologies Around African American English.” Journal of English Linguistics 32, no. 3 (September 2004): 177 [37] Fanon, Frantz. “The Black Man and Language.”

In Black Skin, White Masks, 1st ed. New York, NY: Grove Press, 2008., 1 [38] Ibid. [39] McWilliams, A. T. “Sorry to Bother You, Black Americans and the Power and Peril of Code Switching.” the Guardian, July 25, 2018. [41][40]rryhttp://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jul/25/sotobotheryouwhitevoicecodeswitching.Ibid.

Doss, Richard C., and Alan M. Gross. “The Effects of Black English and Code Switching on Intraracial Perceptions.” Journal of Black Psychology 20, no. 3 (August 1994): 283 [42] McWilliams, A. T. “Sorry to Bother You, Black Americans and the Power and Peril of Code Switching.” the Guardian, July 25, 2018. [43] Ibid. [44] Fanon, Frantz. “The Black Man and Language.” In Black Skin, White Masks, 1st ed. New York, NY: Grove Press, 2008., 4-9 [45] Doss, Richard C., and Alan M. Gross. “The Effects of Black English and Code Switching on Intraracial Perceptions.” Journal of Black Psychology 20, no. 3 (August 1994): 283 [46] Koch, Lisa M., Alan M. Gross, and Russell Kolts. “Attitudes Toward Black English and Code Switching.” Journal of Black Psychology 27, no. 1 (February 2001): 31 [47] Alim, H. Samy, and Geneva Smitherman. Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, and Race in the U. S. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2012., 33 [48] Fanon, Frantz. “The Black Man and Language.” In Black Skin, White Masks, 1st ed. New York, NY: Grove Press, 2008., 19 43

Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, and Race in the U. S. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2012., 53 [65] Koch, Lisa M., Alan M. Gross, and Russell Kolts. “Attitudes Toward Black English and Code Switching.” Journal of Black Psychology 27, no. 1 (February 2001): 30 31 [66] Fanon, Frantz. “The Black Man and Language.”

Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, and Race in the U. S. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2012., 42 [53] Ibid., 34 [54] Fanon, Frantz. “The Black Man and Language.”

Journal of English Linguistics 40, no. 2 (June 2012): [57]163 Ibid., 138 [58] Ibid., 142 [59] Ibid., 146 [60] Ibid., 155 [61] Ibid., 147 [62] Ibid., 165 [63] Fasehun, Osa. “Reclaiming Words: The Struggle to Find Empowerment from Pain.” The Bowdoin Orient. October 20, 2017. [64]words/.https://bowdoinorient.com/2017/10/20/reclaimingAlim,H.Samy,andGenevaSmitherman.

In Black Skin, White Masks, 1st ed. New York, NY: Grove Press, 2008., 17 [55] Stewart, Charles, ed. Creolization: History, Ethnography, Theory. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2007., 1-2 [56] Rahman, Jacquelyn. “The N Word: Its History and Use in the African American Community.”

Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, and Race in the U. S. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2012., 35 [68] Fanon, Frantz. “The Black Man and Language.”

In Black Skin, White Masks, 1st ed. New York, NY: Grove Press, 2008., 15 44

In Black Skin, White Masks, 1st ed. New York, NY: Grove Press, 2008., 95 [67] Alim, H. Samy, and Geneva Smitherman.

[49] Alim, H. Samy, and Geneva Smitherman.

Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, and Race in the U. S. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2012., 34 [50] Ibid., 34 35 [51] Ibid., 34 [52] Alim, H. Samy, and Geneva Smitherman.

By: Riley Sutherland

The Martial and Marital Entwined: Femininity and the Military World in Shakespeare’s Othello

first encounter Desdemona, she is escaping from the cloistered life that her father, Brabantio, expects for her. After learning Othello has married his daughter, Brabantio expresses disbelief: he runs to her room and realizes she is indeed gone, then laments the loss of a “maid so tender, fair and happy . . . . never bold, of spirit so still and quiet.”

[3] Ostensibly, Desdemona is drawn to Othello’s strength and courage; Othello himself accepts this notion and he tells Brabantio, “she loved me for the dangers I had pass’d.”

[4] Shakespeare’s language, however, reveals more than admiration. Instead, Desdemona, “with a greedy ear Devour[s] up” Othello’s stories: she has a tremendous appetite for adventure, perhaps having read of women like Joan of Arc, but she cannot personally experience adventure so long as her father forces her to be “still and quiet.”

Shakespeare’s Othello is familiar to literary scholars and high school students alike: the eponymous Venetian general, falsely led to believe his wife is an adulteress, kills her and, upon realizing his error, himself. Some scholars analyze Othello’s fall by adopting a military lens. For example, C. F. Burgess argues that “Othello’s military background is a major factor in the disaster which overwhelms him”: accustomed to defusing two sided confrontations by relying on fixed chains of command, Othello is confounded by more complex social conflicts. As a general, he naturally turns to his next in command, Iago, which proves a fatal error. Other writers, like Lisa Jardine, analyze the place with gender studies. They argue that Desdemona and Emilia die as victims of patriarchal dynamics and unfulfillable sexual standards. This paper aims to synthesize approaches by evaluating the intersections of femininity and militarism in Othello. It argues that Desdemona and Emilia experienced a double subordination; Othello and Iago commanded them as both husbands and as superior officers. The women perish because they are unable to fulfill these dual and sometimes conflicting martial and marital obligations. Bianca, however, represents an alternative form of womanhood. She survives the play by operating at the periphery of the military Whenworld.[1]we

[2] He perceives Desdemona as a timid, cloistered young noble woman. Othello paints a different picture. She became enamored of him only after hearing of “the battles, sieges, fortunes, that I have passed.”

[5] Not without Othello. She thus falls in love not just with Othello but also with the idea of sharing his experiences as a military wife. Her husband is shocked when he receives summons to Cyprus and she declares, “let me go with him”; with these lines, Desdemona seizes a life of greater mobility than Venice Shakespeareoffered.[6]could reasonably expect his audiences to know more about women’s true relationships to the military than the naïve Desdemona. Thousands of women joined soldiers in fact, often outnumbering them in sixteenth-century European armies. Many were indigent; they washed and sewed for men in exchange for pay or rations to support themselves and their kids. These wives often had to plunder clothes and food from civilian populations. Some military manuals suggested officers should hire sex workers for their enlisted men, though Venetian officers threatened to slit the nose of any such woman who came near troops. The women who lived with the army operated in a liminal space between civilian womanhood and military needs, sculpting a uniquely pragmatic femininity.[7] 46

As a noblewoman, Desdemona might have expected to raise children and manage servants. But Emilia introduces her to the distinct obligations of military wifehood. As the army wife of an ensign, she may have needed to bend standard gender norms to serve her husband properly, from plundering to making “her husband a cuckold to make him a monarch,” or using sex to strategically advance his prospects.[8] Desdemona reacts with horror at the apparent depravity of Emilia’s world. Emilia responds by reassuring her that all is relative: “why the wrong is but a wrong i’the world: and having the world for your labour, tis a wrong in your own world, and you might quickly make it a right.”

[14] After some time with the army, Desdemona begins relying instead upon positive orders, like her general husband: “let Cassio be received.”[15] Othello’s men recognize her power, sensing that “her appetite shall play the god.”[16] Nevertheless, they affirm her command. For example, Cassio turns not to Othello but to Desdemona seeking a restored rank; in exchange, he declares, he will never be “any thing but your true servant.”[17] By interfering in issues of military appointment and receiving officers’ loyalty in exchange, Desdemona believes she is acting as Othello’s partner. He, however, is easily convinced she is trying to outrank him. The ensign Iago scorns his low rank and fears Emilia is unfaithful; he projects these insecurities onto Othello, who in turn questions Desdemona’s fidelity and his ability as a general. It is significant that the men first question their wives’ faithfulness, then military command: their vulnerability relates to the idea of double subordination. Iago and Othello control their wives not only as husbands but also as military commanders. Thus, if Desdemona and Emilia slept with other men, they would be committing acts not only of infidelity but also insubordination. Iago and Othello see their wives’ alleged lack of allegiance not only as threatening but also as highly possible. Because armies so often traveled with sex workers, civilians sometimes generalized negative reputations to all women of the army. Influenced by public perception indeed, especially sensitive to it as a foreigner constantly trying to prove his commitment to Italy and desperate to hold on to his command, Othello is thus especially gullible when Iago suggests that Desdemona has slept with Cassio.[18]

[9] In the world of the military, women served their husbands in both marital and martial capacities; defining proper from improper womanhood was a constant process of negotiating between the two roles. In both marital and martial roles, however, Emilia knows she is subordinated. Like any wife, she must follow Iago’s commands. But because she is a woman of the army, she must also abide by officers’ orders or risk court martial and expulsion. Although military life offered Emilia greater mobility than the noble Desdemona, this double subordination places tremendous pressure on her to follow orders, even if they violate her own ethics. Accordingly, when the “wayward” Iago orders her to steal Desdemona’s handkerchief, she hesitates, asking “what will you do with‘t[?]”[10] Realizing it will be employed against Desdemona, she begs Iago not to use it “for some purpose of import” that will make her “poor lady . . .run mad.”[11] Even with compunction, she must follow orders and turn over the handkerchief. In Emilia’s hands, the white napkin, speckled with red embroidery, resembles a blood stained flag of surrender flown after a protracted internal battle.[12] Desdemona ignores Emilia’s experience and refuses to recognize her husband as her commander; instead, she sees him as a partner and mirrors his military leadership. Othello playfully teases his wife about her military role, greeting her as, “my fair warrior!”[13] But she soon internalizes the role, and her increasing confidence reflects in her speech patterns. Upon first landing in Cyprus, she directs requests to Othello by asking questions (when pressing a meeting with Cassio, “shall’t be shortly?”) or implying a degree of deference (“I prithee, call him back”).

Otelo y Desdémona Antonio Munoz Degrain WikiGallery While Desdemona dies because she refuses to be subordinated, Emilia perishes for the opposite reason: she accepts the need to follow orders but cannot when her multiple masters’ commands conflict. As a wife, Emilia must listen to Iago; as a servant, to Desdemona; and as a member of the military, to Othello. Iago’s plot, however, causes all three of her masters’ orders to interfere with each other. We first see her conflicting loyalties regarding Desdemona’s handkerchief. Iago begs Emilia to steal the precious handkerchief. After successfully giving the napkin to her husband, Emilia later has to lie to comfort her mistress: “where should I lose that handkerchief, Emilia?,” Desdemona asks. “I know not, madam,” is her meek reply.[27] She once again violates Desdemona’s confidence when Othello asks her to serve as an informant, reporting on his wife’s relationship with Cassio. Emilia tries to defend her mistress but nonetheless feels uncomfortable about breaking Desdemona’s trust by providing the general with intelligence about her. Emilia can justify any depredation she sees as necessary to serve her master; however, she bursts under an inability to serve multiple masters when they start ordering her on different paths.

In the military world, Othello responds to his wife’s purported infidelity not as her husband but as her commanding officer. His punishment peaks in act IV, scene II, when Othello turns to corporal punishment: he strikes Desdemona. As a witness, Lodovico is shocked: he sees a husband strike his loving wife and instructs Othello to “make her amends.”[19] Othello, however, is so blinded by fury and insecurity that he cannot see his wife as anything more than an unruly, subordinate member of the army and thus questions why Lodovico disapproves of his response. He nonetheless calls Desdemona back, declaring “she can turn, and turn, and yet go on, and turn again . . . she’s obedient, as you say, obedient, very obedient.”[20] The bizarre proceedings resemble an officer drilling his young recruits; because Desdemona refused to accept the unique constraints of Emilia’s military wifehood, Othello reduces her to just another foot soldier under his Yetcommand.still,Desdemona refuses to accept double subordination. Instead, she disavows Othello’s dominance not just as a commander but also as a husband. When Emilia asks her about Othello, or “my Lord” (since Othello allots rations for Emilia, she too identifies him as her “Lord”), Desdemona bristles, snipping “who is thy lord? . . . I have none.”[21] In a last, desperate stand, Desdemona tries to postpone her death by once again mirroring Othello’s actions as a commander. When Othello lurks over her, planning to kill for her alleged relations with Cassio, she commands, “send for the man and ask him!”[22] Her order is a perfect parallel to Othello’s at the beginning of the play; when Brabantio accuses Othello of casting a spell on Desdemona to win her affection, the general orders, “send for the lady . . . and let her speak of me before her father.”[23] Both husband and wife issue demands, creating informal trials. They want to arbitrate matters with evidence before impartial judges, much like Othello would be accustomed to in a world governed by courts martial. But in the end, Desdemona is not a commander: she is a wife. Othello thus ignores her commands, warning her, “thou art to die.”[24] Once again, she orders, “send for him hither; let him confess a truth.” “Down, strumpet!,” Othello cries.[25] Unable to command her as a general and a husband, he reduces her image to that of a prostitute in an attempt to justify her punishment. He then smothers her.[26]

She finally chooses a single loyalty, to her fellow army woman Desdemona, and rails Othello for killing his pure wife before revealing Iago’s role in the plot. Iago, like Othello, kills his wife and justifies her death by declaring her a “strumpet.” In her final moments, Emilia lies in bed beside her mistress, singing a song beloved by Desdemona. Although Desdemona rebelled against s ubordination while Emilia abided by it, they die demonstrating a sisterhood forged by an insufferable double subordination.[28] While Iago and Othello use charges of promiscuity to destroy their wives, living as a sex worker somewhat paradoxically saves Bianca from their fate. We first meet Bianca when she approaches Cassio. “What make you from home?” the soldier asks. “I was coming to your house.”[29] With these lines, Cassio establishes Bianca as a woman who operates outside of the military world. Moreover, as a sex worker, Bianca has complete command over her own space and movements. escapes rule of military and martial barriers.[30] She similarly controls her relationships to the men of Cyprus. When Cassio offers her the handkerchief, she demands to know, “whence came this?” and assumes he took it from a different woman. Unlike Desdemona and Emilia, she refuses to accept the “minx’s token,” declaring, “I’ll take no work on’t.”[31] Ultimately, the napkin is a symbol of loyalty. Because Venetian officers punished men who hired prostitutes, Bianaca would have no choice but to keep Cassio at a distance. She, however, also has the luxury of refusing it because she experiences neither marital nor martial subordination. We are led to believe that she hopes to marry Cassio; indeed, she is fond of him, referring to “my dear Cassio,” and the soldier himself believes she wants a long term relationship.[33] If true (and not merely one of Iago’s lies), perhaps Bianca believes uniting with Cassio would offer her longer-term financial stability than life as a courtesan. Nonetheless, he is her customer, so she defines the terms of their relationship. Moreover, Bianca operates at the periphery of the military world. She did not earn rations nor travel with the army, so they lived entirely free from the martial laws that governed Desdemona and Emilia.

Mobile and free from military command, Bianca felt more capable of directly confronting those who slander her name. After Cassio declares Bianca a mere “fitchew” and tries to give her the handkerchief, she cries, “let the devil and his dam haunt you!”[34] Later, Emilia tries to separate herself from the sex workers Iago associates her with by denouncing Bianca as a “strumpet.” Bianca unflinchingly responds, “I am no strumpet; but of life as honest as you that thus abuse me.”[35] As a doubly subordinated wife, Emilia brushes aside Iago’s charges of infidelity, refusing to address them. Desdemona, trying to protect her reputation, tries to mobilize support from Emilia and Iago. Only Bianca immediately responds to charges of promiscuity by confronting the aggressor herself and by turning the charges around on Emilia by arguing for their common personhood. Because she is free to travel in and out of the military world, define her own relationships, and openly retaliate against her attackers, Bianca’s status makes her the only woman to survive the play. And although Iago tries to use Bianca, a sex worker, as a scapegoat, he is not entirely successful. Indeed, while Desdemona unsuccessfully begged for a trial by asking Othello to question Cassio, Bianca does receive a trial. She is taken away to “tell another’s tale.” When she leaves, we can be confident she will have at least some opportunity to make her voice heard. And she disappears for the rest of the play. Her absence is significant: Desdemona and Emilia’s bodies, as well as and the finality of their deaths, are staunch reminders of their inability to escape the confines of the military world. Bianca, however, once more fades back into the very periphery that shielded her from tragedy.[36]

[1] C. F. Burgess, “Othello’s Occupation,” Shakespeare Quarterly 26, no. 2 (1975): 208 13 (quotation on 209); Lisa Jardine, “‘Why Should He Call Her Whore?’: Defamation and Desdemona’s Case,” in Reading Shakespeare Historically, ed. Jardine (London: Routledge, 1996), 18 33. Additional military interpretations of Shakespeare that guided my reading of Othello include Kristina Straub, “The Soldier in the Theater: Military Masculinity and the Emergence of a Scottish Macbeth,” Eighteenth Century 58, no. 4 (2017): 429 47; Ken Jacobsen, “Iago’s Art of War: The ‘Machiavellian Moment’ in Othello,” Modern Philology 106, no. 3 (Feb. 2009): 497 529; Dong Ha Seo, “Military Culture of Shakespeare’s England,” PhD diss. (University of Birmingham, 2011), 216 30. For additional gendered approaches that shaped my understanding of Othello, see: Elizabeth Mazzola, “Going Rogue: Bianca at Large” Critical Survey 27, no. 1 (2015): 36 59; Edward Pechter, “Why Should We Call Her Whore? Bianca in Othello,” in Shakespeare and the Twentieth Century: The Selected Proceedings of the International Shakespeare Association World Congress, Los Angeles, 1996, ed. Jonathan Bate, Jill L. Levenson, and Dieter Mehl (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1998), 364 76; Tiffany Lowden Messerschmidt, “From Maiden to Whore and Back Again: A Survey of Prostitution in the Works of William Shakespeare,” MA thesis (University of South Florida, 2009), 41 46; Eamon Grennan, “The Women’s Voices in Othello: Speech, Song, Silence,” Shakespeare Quarterly 38, no. 3 (1987): 275 92.

Endnotes

[2] William Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Edward Pechter, 2nd Norton Critical ed. (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2017), 17. [3] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 22. [4] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 23. [5] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 23, 21. [6] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 27. Desdemona’s confinement relates to her existence within the private household in Venice. Jack D’Amico further examines private interior spaces in Shakespeare, ultimately deciding they functioned as places to display wealth and, consequently, imperial battlegrounds. Desdemona’s strength, he argues, is her ability to turn the bedroom into a public space, including when she champions Cassio’s case. But the same lack of distinction between public and private hurts her in the brothel scene. D’Amico, Shakespeare and Italy (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001), 73 78; for more on the importance of physical mobility, see Mazolla, “Going Rogue.”

[7] Mary Elizabeth Ailes, “Camp Followers, Sutlers, and Soldiers’ Wives: Women in Early Modern Armies (c. 1450 c.1650),” in A Companion to Women’s Military History, ed. Barton Hacker and Margaret Vining (Boston: Brill, 2012), 61 84; Barton Hacker, “Women and Military Institutions in Early Modern Europe: A Reconnaissance,” Signs 6, no. 4 (1981): 643 71. [8] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 108. [9] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 109. [10] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 68 69 (quotation at 68). [11] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 69. [12] Ailes, “Camp Followers, Sutlers, and Soldiers’ Wives.” [13] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 38. [14] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 59 60. [15] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 78. [16] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 54. [17] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 58. [18] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 61 66, 42. [19] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 90. [20] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 91. [21] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 96. [22] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 111. [23] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 22. [24] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 112. [25] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 112. [26] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 96, 112, 22. [27] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 75; for a different interpretation of Emilia’s subordination to men relative to Desdemona’s, see Lisa Jardine, “‘Why Should He Call Her Whore?,’” 24 29. [28] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 92, 118. [29] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 80. [30] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 87. Scholars debate whether Bianca should be interpreted as a sex worker. Because Cassio refers to Bianca as a “customer,” and the list of actors denotes her as a “courtesan,” I will assume that she is, indeed, a sex worker. For a dissenting opinion, see Edward Pechter, “Why Should We Call Her Whore?,” 365 70. [31] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 81. [32] Elizabeth Mazzola elaborates upon the subject of Bianca’s physical mobility and how it represents her relative independence. “Going Rogue,” 36 59; Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 87. [33] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 107, 86 87. [34] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 87. [35] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 109. [36] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 109. 50

Emerald Atlantic: Motivations in DiasporicIrish-AmericanViolence

By: Winslow MacDonald

War in the Diaspora Civil wars and emigration are closely related concepts; wars force relocation, while refugee populations beyond a state’s borders can influence a conflict within its original borders. As Idean Salehyan writes in his “Rebels without Borders: State Boundaries, Transnational Opposition, and Civil Conflict,” from Sikhs in Pakistan to Contras in Costa Rica, “modern insurgencies are not limited to the geographic area of the state.”[1] Safe beyond the reach of their government enemy, “diaspora communities often provide funding and resources to opposition parties within their origin state, including violent factions.”[2] Scholars have examined the consequences of diasporic support for civil wars, arguing, like Salehyan, that “ rebellions are more likely to emerge and endure”[3] according to the capacity and proximity of rebel organizations beyond the state’s territory.

Examining the variance in motivation and activity of Irish American diasporic groups participating in the Anglo Irish conflict offers an appropriate example to understand the factors impelling violence within the diaspora. Over nearly two centuries, Irish-Americans have organized to provide political and military support to the cause of Irish nationalism within the U.S. In identifying the commonalities and distinctions between Irish American nationalist groups, the nature of a group’s domestic agenda emerges as a salient determinant for its likelihood to use violence in an adopted country. Before the onset of mass Irish immigration in the 1840s, the Irish fought the British alongside other powers as mercenaries and as immigrants in adopted countries; this pattern changed as Irish immigrant populations reached a critical mass. The likelihood of Irish immigrants to commit violent nationalistic acts outside of the homeland is a function of said violence’s reconcilability with political circumstances within the diaspora, rather than a product of traditional factors of war onset: economic shocks, poverty, or ethnic grievances. Military experience and material capacity, while capable of affecting the nature of violence, have little effect on a diasporic organization’s decision to use violence or not.

Origins of Irish Discontent Since the Tudor Conquest of Ireland and the establishment of settler colonialism in the north of the island, such as the Plantation of Ulster in 1609,[4] Irish separatist fervor has fomented and, several times, erupted. Irish armed rebellion against English rule has occurred multiple times: the Nine Years’ War of 1594, failed Rebellions in 1641, 1798, and 1848, and the 1921 Irish War of Independence, which resulted in mixed success, including the partition of North Ireland and the Irish Free State and the Irish Civil War.[5] The persistence of conflict between Ireland and Great Britain, Irish solicitation of foreign support for their cause, and oppressive British Penal Laws (including the expulsion of Catholic soldiers from the island and countless other oppressive, anti Catholic measures),[6] established a rich tradition of Irish service in the militaries of foreign governments preceding the Irish Diaspora. Dubbed the “Flight of the Wild Geese,” ethnically Irish regiments began the tradition of foreign military service beginning with the Army of Flanders under a Catholic Spanish King in the Eighty Years’ War. In 1607, fearing “a period of rigorous repression and savagery based on religious bigotry,”[7] Irish Earls who had fled to continental Europe organized Irish regiments in Spain, the Netherlands, and France, with the intention “to return one day to take their own country back from the English invaders.”[8] As the English and Spanish continued to fight over the following centuries, various units of Irish ‘Wild Geese,’ including the Spanish Hibernia, Ultonia, and Irlanda Regiments or Pope Pius IX’s Irish Battalion of St. Patrick,[9] fought with distinction.

The Fenian Raids are the best example of militant Irish-American support for Irish separatism. From its establishment in 1858, the Fenian Brotherhood consolidated Irish American resources to be used in various revolutionary schemes, with the ultimate objective of achieving an independent Irish Republic. Two events, the Irish Potato Famine and the Irish Rebellion of 1848, were of tremendous bearing on the Brotherhood’s conception. The 1845 famine and inadequate British mitigation efforts exacerbated preexisting Irish separatist fervor to incite the ineffectual Irish Rebellion.[14]

"The Fenian Brotherhood." by Villanova University Digital Library

The Fenian Brotherhood & Violent Diasporic Action

In the late eighteenth century, Irish units fighting under the Spanish and French flags fought against the British during the American War of Independence; 600 men of the Hibernia Regiment assaulted the British installation at Pensacola, Florida in 1780.[10] As mercenaries motivated by economic factors and the opportunity to take up arms against the British (Catholics were barred firearm ownership under the Penal Laws),[11] the Flight of the Wild Geese stands as a stark historic example of Irishmen using internationalist methods to combat British oppression. It is crucial to distinguish between the internationalist methods of the Wild Geese before the 1840s and cross diasporic, Irish American support for Irish separatism. As Hennessy argues in his The Wild Geese: The Irish Soldier in Exile, though the Irish mercenaries had noble political and religious separatist motivations and won glories on the battlefield, “the irrefutable but frequently forgotten fact remains: they started to tread the path of glory while they were still the minions of a dethroned British sovereign.”[12] While the Wild Geese and descendant Irish American groups both endorsed violence for achieving Irish independence, they differed in meaningful ways. The Wild Geese fighting in France were not fleeing Ireland permanently, indeed, they left behind their wives and children.[13] Conversely, violent separatist groups in the nineteenth century U.S., such as the Fenian Brotherhood, had unique Irish American diasporic identities. While the Wild Geese fought the British within the context of international European conflict (i.e. involving the Spanish and French), Irish diasporic organizations in the U.S. engaged in and materially supported Irish violence as Irish Americans within the diaspora. Contrasting the ideological and methodological developments and commitments of Irish-American ethnic organizations offers a compelling lens through which to understand Irish American nationalism and willingness to commit international violence in the name of their ancestral homeland. In a comparison of the Fenian Brother’s motivations and those of the American faction of the Irish National Land League, domestic political agendas, and to a lesser extent military capacity and experience, determine the likelihood of organizational violence. Departing from traditional understandings of civil war onset, diasporic violence is not the result of economic and social grievances, nor the cohesiveness of ethnic consciousness.

Hereward Senior, the state’s punishment “aroused much resentment among Irish-Americans,” who “were beginning to acquire grievances against American society.”[22] Although the San Patricios’ defection was not explicitly Irish nationalist, their history illuminates factors impelling later Irish immigrants to make a cost-benefit analysis regarding committing transnational violence. Despite the high likelihood of U.S. triumph over Mexico, and indeed the high price to be paid for defection (proved by the 54 hangings), the San Patricios elected to crystallize around ethnic homogeneity if it meant a chance to ameliorate their religious, social, and economic deprivation.

Furthermore, the Famine opened the floodgates for diasporic emigration from Ireland outside of Europe, massively increasing a practice that had begun with the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars in the 1810s.[15] Whereas previous Irish immigrants to the U.S. had been primarily male and majority-Protestant Ulster, the famine displaced entire families of Catholics. In the U.S., Irish immigrants experienced church burnings, labor discrimination, and worse.[16]

Invoking linguistic, cultural, and religious distinctions, nativist Protestant Americans perpetuated the notion of an ethnic distinction between Irish immigrants and Americans. In a wartime context, Nativist discrimination eroded the infantile national bond between immigrants and their adopted country. Hundreds of Irish-born U.S.troops defected to the “San Patricio” Brigade during the Mexican American War: pushed by mistreatment at the hands of Protestant officers, lack of Roman Catholic chaplains, and alleged “compulsoryProtestant church parades”[17] and attracted by the prospect of at last living under a “Catholic power” or enticing offers of 320 acres in Mexico to those who deserted.[18] The fascinating history of the San Patricios exhibits several relevant themes about economic and ethnoreligious factors in rebellion prevalent in the scholarship of Collier and Hoeffler, especially the nuanced interconnectedness of ethnic, religious, and economic grievances in instigating rebellion.[19] Further, it reflects the work of Cederman et al. in demonstrating how social exclusion, recent ethnic violence, a non ethnically neutral state actor, and a demographic’s mobilizing capacity influence the cost benefit analysis of defection.[20] Irish immigrants were socially and economically subordinated to white Protestant Americans while the U.S. military, a state apparatus, was an agent for anti Catholic religious exclusion. When the U.S. eventually captured 80 of the San Patricios, 54 were hanged for treason and 26 (who had luckily deserted before the American Declaration of War) were flogged and branded with a D, for “deserter.”[

21] According to Fenian scholar

The American Fenian Brotherhood, emerging in the context of failed Irish ‘insular’ separatism in Europe, continued social and religious discrimination in the U.S., and perpetual poverty, expressed political recalcitrance in their call to invade British Canada. The Fenians hoped to rally diasporic support, coordinating with Fenians in Ireland to translate an invasion of Canada into “the liberation of Ireland.”[23] Canada was still a British dominion and Irish soldiers fought in Canadian militias, but as the Fenians expected Irish emigrant support from Irish Americans and Irish Canadians in their raids, and as the raids violated both Canadian sovereignty and American neutrality,[24] I define the Fenians as diasporic actors committing interstate and domestic Afterviolence.decades of fundraising and organizational challenges, the American Fenians raided the Canadian border multiple times from 1866 to 1871.

Tasked with avoiding American agents before combating Canadian militias, the Fenians were able to launch several large scale assaults on various Canadian locations, incurring significant casualties without retaining territory. In April 1866, nearly a thousand heavily armed Fenian militants threatened Campobello Island, in New Brunswick, from the Maine border. The attack was stymied by the warnings of U.S. General George Meade and the intervention of a British warship; though the Fenians failed, their energy was not spent. 54

American support for the Irish National Land L eague represented Irish-American non-violent support for Irish nationalism. The Land League emerged in Ireland in 1879, in the wake of the 1848 Rebellion and concurrent with international labor movements. The League hoped to address economy: “too many smallholdings” and “insecurity of tenure,”[28] as well as a catastrophic decline in potato production in 1879. Tenants in Ireland organized for agrarian reform, inciting anti-landlord sentiment and then, crucially, an “Appeal to the Irish Race for the Sustainment of the Irish National Land Movement,” bringing the issue to the U.S.[29] Suggesting that American immigrants were themselves victims of the Irish land system, the League’s leader Charles Parnell traveled to the U.S. with the avowed mission “to solicit money from the Irish in America and to mobilize American public opinion against British rule in Ireland.”[30] American support for the Land League extended to famine relief and political agitation but did not entail violence within the diaspora or Ireland.[31] As espoused by Parnell’s deputy Michael Davitt, armed revolution against Britain, whether occurring on the Canadian frontier or Ireland itself, was ultimately a futile endeavor. Davitt asserted that the League wanted to “unite the people of Ireland in a peaceful Cover image from: A Greater Ireland The Land League and Transatlantic Nationalism in Gilded Age America Ely M. Janis mass agitation for their right to the land,” arguing that “our appeals to arms, our desires to gratify revenge, and exiting of the impulses and sentiments were vain and useless.”[32] Ultimately, the Land League sought to establish first “peasant proprietorship in Ireland”[33] and then national independence. 55

Non Violent Diasporic Action

On June 1, 1866, 1,500 Fenians crossed the Niagara River.[25] The day after, they engaged Canadian militiamen and British regulars at Ridgeway (near Fort Erie, Canada West, now Ontario, Canada). The Fenians won several mini victories and inflicted more casualties (10 killed, 37 wounded) in the Battle than they sustained (7 wounded, 2 killed) but, with the threat of American gunboats preventing reinforcement and mass congregation of thousands of Canadian militiamen, the Fenians again retreated to the U.S.[26] Fenian attacks in Canada East several days later, on June 7, again resulted in temporary Fenian victories followed by the surrender of outnumbered Fenians. Similar ill fated Fenian raids in Quebec and Manitoba between 1870 1871 resulted in fewer casualties on both sides and again prompted Fenian surrender, as well as the arrest of their leaders by U.S. troops for violation of U.S. neutrality.[27] Ultimately political and military failures, the Fenian Raids represent the only significant extra imperial violence between Irish separatists and British military forces.

While it is tempting to consider economic factors in the disparate use of violence by the Fenians and American Land League, especially because of the latter’s preeminent focus on labor and industrial issues, the economic compositions of the two organizations’ respective memberships were rather similar. Furthermore, the existence of violent prolabor, pro Irish nationalism organizations, such as the Molly Maguires in the Pennsylvania anthracite region, suggests that adherence to a pro labor, anti industrial ideology alone cannot stimulate violent diasporic support. Economic conditions may have impelled the emergence and intensity of IrishAmerican diasporic organizations like the Fenians or Land League, but cannot singularly determine an organization’s likelihood to resort to violence. As Meagher argues, the low economic status of Irish immigrants across the U.S. in the nineteenth century “may have reinforced their attachments to their ethnic group,” as “limited possibilities for individual [economic] advancement….rested largely in the advancement of their entire group.”[39] Though poor economic conditions may explain a resurgence in Irish American ethnic consciousness in connection with support for the Land League’s objectives, the same pattern is reflected in decades earlier Fenian recruitment, rendering the possibility of poor economic conditions facilitating violent cross-diasporic support unlikely. Further examination of the socio economic composition of the Fenians and LandLeague reaffirms this principle.

By 1881, the Land League enjoyed significant success in the U.S., with the establishment of over 792 American branches and successful fundraising efforts.[34] In marrying industrial labor and nationalist movements, the League established a broad based coalition of conservative and liberal Irish American interests, ultimately contributing to the League’s short American lifespan. In Ireland, the League divided on the question of land nationalization, but the greatest blow to the organization’s future in the U.S. was dealt when members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood assassinated the Chief Secretary of Ireland, Lord Cavendish, and his undersecretary Thomas Burke. Irish-Americans in Boston offered a $5,000 reward for the capture of the assassins, and liberal nationalists in the U.S. widely condemned the murders and led to a “conservative backlash against radicalism.”[35] As the Land League began to falter in the U.S., the question of land nationalization became more divisive. Davitt, arriving in the U.S. to compete with Parnell and advocate for broader land reform, further exacerbated fissures among Irish American nationalists. These divisions, expanded on later, proved the death knell of the organization in the U.S. Beginning in 1882, the number of active Land League branches in the U.S. plummeted, with radical and conservative nationalists “disenchanted by its shifts away”[36] from its original principles of international social reconstruction defecting from the League. In April 1883 in Philadelphia, the American Land League formally disbanded.[37] Following its organization’s demise in 1883, the Land League splintered into more ideologically homogeneous groups. Some Americans continued to support the Irish National League and nationalism “shorn of its social element,”[38] while most continued their activism in the industrial and labor movements. It would take until the 1916 Easter Rising for Irish-Americans to once again demonstrate their support of Irish nationalism with vivacity. Poverty Alone ≠ Violence

Both the Fenians and American Land League gained their largest popular support from economically disadvantaged Irish American immigrants. The Fenians “recruited very heavily among the Famine migrants” as well as “urban tradesmen and laborers.”[40] David Brundage claims in his Irish Nationalists in America that with as many as 50,000 “mainly working-class members” and over 200,000 supporters, the Fenians constitute not only the “first mass based Irish nationalist movement in American history.”[41] 56

Similarly, radical Irish nationalists supporting international social reforms in the 1880s and 1890s enjoyed support in “small mill towns and mining communities”[42] in the U.S. The Irish Land Leaguer Michael Davitt explicitly bound the cause of Irish land reform with extant or potential Irish American economic decline, declaring to an audience in Leadville, Colorado, that “you have no aristocracy yet….but rich Americans may desire to perpetuate their families and introduce the doctrine of primogeniture on American soil.”[43] The Land League emerged and prospered in both Ireland and the U.S. because of its mission to elevate the economic status of the poverty-mired and economically repressed Irish race, just as the Fenians had asserted decades earlier in their mission for the “establishment of a thoroughly democratic Irish republic….even more sweeping program of social and economic reform.”[44] Ultimately then, as the Fenians and the American Land League both recruited from and enjoyed massive popular support from the working class through invoking economic reform and Irish social elevation in the U.S. and abroad, the socioeconomic conditions of the organizations cannot explain why the Fenians resorted to violence, while the Land League explicitly rejected militance.

Anti Irish and anti Catholic sentiment remained pervasive throughout the lifespans of both the Fenian Brotherhood and the LandLeague. From the Know Nothings to the American Protective Association, Protestant Americans sustained organizational prejudice throughout the 19th century that existed “independent of [the Irish] historic quarrel with Great Britain.[45] In the following examinations of Irish American ethnic identification shifts in the latter half of the 19th century, nativist anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiment is constant. In his 1985 study of ethnic consciousness among Irish Americans in Worcester, MA over time, Timothy Meagher argues that ethnic consciousness is a function of a group’s socio-political environment; ethnic identity is instrumentalized when politically and economically advantageous and does not necessarily subside over generations. As Meagher’s study is transgenerational, accounting for confounding variables, its application to understanding the function of ethnic consciousness in the Fenian Brotherhood and Land League is appropriate.

The Island of Ethnic-Consciousness

Meagher charts Worcester’s Irish population’s relative ethnic isolation over time, finding that American born Irish consistently maintained cultural practices (e.g. marrying late, producing more children than Irish born immigrants or American Yankees, devotion to Catholicism despite prejudice)[46] regardless of external factors, though“environmental conditions” influenced ethnic insularity. From Irish born immigrants to their U.S. born descendants, Irish Americans shifted between an “eagerness to prove themselves good Americans and reconcile their differences with their native stock Protestant Yankee neighbors” and “sullen and belligerent ethnocentric isolation.”[47] This bipolar ethnic consciousness, Meagher argues, was the product of political coalitions and their cooperation, or lack thereof: when the Yankees and Irish relied on one another for political election and/or patronage, Irish nationalism and ethnic distinction were Conversely,minimized. as Swedes and French Canadians entered Worcester in the late 1880s and competed for Irish jobs and political control, the Yankee Irish coalition faltered.[48] For a period, Worcester’s Irish population lingered in ethnic isolation and political reclusion. Across the U.S. and in Worcester, the Irish American population by the 1880s was mostly second generation immigrants. They expressed their political ideology through ethnic mouthpieces, advocating for specifically Irish American objectives. Through established immigrant self help organizations, namely the Ancient Order of the Hibernians, Worcester’s Irish called for Irish representation on the school board, parochial education, and Irish history in the curriculum, rather than Irish independence.

The Fenians were able to execute violence and partially surmount the collective action problem through their military organizational and material capacities, as well as the recent military experience of their members. Fenian leaders had often solicited military aid from foreign governments to catalyze an Irish Revolution since before the American Civil War. For example, Irishmen colluded with the Russians to land 2,000 expatriates and 10,000 guns in Ireland during the Crimean War, a plan that petered out when the war ended.[53] As Senior argues, while “many of the Fenian rank and file must have belonged to agrarian secret societies and been involved in quasi guerilla actions against Irish landlords,”[54] the American Civil War was a crucial development in the creation of a “formidable force of trained men.”[55] In the period between its conception in 1858 until the 1861 outbreak of the Civil War, Irish immigrants organized Irish militias, some under overt nationalist control, including the O’Mahony Guards, the Phoenix Brigade, and Corcoran’s Brigade.[56] In the American Civil War, some of these militias were converted into ‘ethnic regiments’ that identified with their home country and promoted nationalism, including the 69th Volunteer Infantry.[57] Thomas Meagher, of the Young Ireland Rebellion of 1848 was exiled to Tasmania before his escape to the U.S., led the Irish Brigade during the conflict. If ideological or geographic division caused the Irish to organize along ethnic lines for both the Union and Confederate armies and “at first dissolved the Fenian military organization into the forces of the contending armies,”[58] the American Civil War was only a temporary inhibition. After the conflict’s close in 1865, Fenians from across the United States (including the formerly Confederate or ‘neutral’ states Louisiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky) formed ranks with men from New York, Michigan, and New England as battle hardened units under the command of experienced officers.[59]

As Worcester’s Irish American population faced political exclusion and resurgent anti Catholic, nativist prejudice in the 1890s, “heightened ethnic consciousness” became an object in “the Irish drive for political recognition.”[49] Meagher continues to argue that Worcester’s Irish ethnic revival dissolved “when changing political and social circumstances altered the conditions which had inspired it in the first place.”[50] Unable to achieve desired political recognition while ethnically isolated, Worcester’s Irish jettisoned ethnic consciousness, opting instead to ally with French Canadian immigrants on the principles of American patriotism and mutual Catholicism.[51] As Timothy Meagher reveals in his examination of Worcester’s transgenerational Irish immigrant populations, ethnic consciousness and isolationism served political functions. He demonstrates how “environmental conditions” in Worcester, such as the politically disruptive arrival of new ethnic groups, “were far more important than generation or class differences in explaining variations in the intensity of Irish ethnic consciousness.”[52] American Fenians and supporters of the Land League both doubtlessly strongly identified with their Irish heritage. Applying Meagher’s analysis that ethnic consciousness is epiphenomenal of environmental conditions or political ambitions to the Fenians and Land League allows us to eliminate the existence or magnitude of Irish American ethnic consciousness as a determinant of violent diasporic support. Military Experience and Capacity

While in Ireland, the Land League commonly resorted to agrarian violence, a tactic that some historians have linked to the ultimate disintegration of the organization in both Ireland and the U.S., since the American Land League explicitly rejected violence.[60] As a consequence, identifying how military experience may have influenced members of the American Land League and their perceptions of violence is a more difficult task. Some of the League’s non violence may be ideological, as emblematized by Davitt’s references to the “vain and useless” militance of the past. The notion that reform should not come via violence is difficult to reconcile with the Land League’s use of violence in Ireland.

Why did the American Land League condemn the violence of Irish nationalists in the U.S. and Ireland, while their Irish affiliates waged agrarian warfare, and, just decades earlier, Irish Americans had enthusiastically supported the Fenians? Emerging decades after the conclusion of the Mexican American War, 1848 Rebellion, and U.S.Civil War, a lack of military experience, leadership, and mobilization capacity could explain in part why the American Land League rejected violence. The all out, traditional warfare waged by the Fenians reflected the American Civil War’s Napoleonic stratagem, rather than the guerilla tactics of later violent nationalists in the U.S., speaks to the influence of the American Civil War on the Fenians’ repertoire of violence. The existence of contemporary Irish American organizations to the Fenians, the Molly Maguires or Clan na Gael, that committed more clandestine violence (e.g. assassinations) and lacked the Fenians’ military experience and capacity, suggests that these factors cannot alone determine why diasporic groups elect for violence, but can influence the nature/repertoire of their violence. Ultimately, one must examine the relationship between domestic (i.e. American) and international agendas of Irish American groups to understand why some opted for violence, and others not. Domestic Agendas

The foremost factor in determining whether Irish American nationalists opted for violence or non violence is the nature of the organization’s domestic agenda. In the case of the Fenians, tense AngloAmerican relations and the spirit of international republicanism permitted a greater degree of violent activity domestically. With improved Anglo American relations and a burgeoning international and labor movement, the Land League subordinated radical violent Irish nationalism to the achievement of domestic objectives, namely the amelioration of industrial conditions. While the Land League facilitated cooperation between Irish Americans and native Irish, the incompatibility of radical, militant Irish nationalism and the American liberal labor movement precluded Irish Americans from supporting violent action that could jeopardize their domestic condition. In comparing the domestic and international objectives of the Fenians and Land League, it is clear that Irish Americans executed violence only when they conceived of their ambitions as reconcilable with the Anglo American dynamic and contemporary internationalist movements. The aftermath of the Trent Affair of 1861 and consequential threats of Anglo American War or U.S. annexation of Canada increased the perceived utility of violent action, as expressed at the Fenian Convention.[61] While American military forces did intervene against the Fenians multiple times, for example, in sending warships to Campobello and arresting Fenian militants for violation of American neutrality, U.S. government officials also declined or postponed apprehension of the Fenians on multiple occasions. Either compelled by impending elections in which “the Irish vote was an important consideration,”[62] local and state officials in the U.S. opted to prioritize the Irish vote over “British diplomatic pressure,”[63] permitting Fenian militants to clandestinely militarize and advance to the Canadian border, even paying for some Fenians’ return home with few, if any, consequences for violating American neutrality.[64] If the U.S. government ostensibly upheld neutrality laws, their reluctance to act decisively against the Fenians created an environment that was accommodating of, if not conducive to, violent nationalist action. International circumstances similarly contributed to the Fenians’ use of violence. While Irish nationalists had long courted international support for their independence from the British, the rise of international republicanism and opposition to British imperialism led the Fenians to believe they had international, non Irish allies who would permit or even contribute to their violent activity. As Senior argues, “a feeling existed among European republicans at this time that they formed an informal international brotherhood,” leaving Americans with the obligation to aid “republican movements wherever they arose.”[65] 59

Further, the Fenians were convinced that “those living under British rule were its natural enemies,”[66] thereby expecting the support of Canadians (especially those of Irish, French, or indigenous ancestry) to support their cause. While the Fenian invasions of Canada ultimately failed, the specter of Anglo American diplomatic opposition and potential war, contemporary revolutionary republican movements, and opposition to British imperialism led Irish Americans to perceive violent action against the British imperial zone tenable. The domestic political environment faced by the American Land League stymied their militance. While ethnically exclusive, nationalist Irish American groups like Clan na Gael supported violence, the Land League coalitionism led to its prosperity and nonviolence. The League became “undoubtedly the largest Irish-American nationalist organization in American history”[67] through the marriage of nationalism and “labor radicalism,”[68] expanding their ranks while intermingling Irish nationalism with the interests of other, non Irish demographics within the U.S. Irish American leaders at the time, including the radical Patrick Ford, also “supported women’s rights, African American rights, and temperance,” opposed both “British and American imperialism,” and supported the labor and industrial movements.[69] The diversity of interests composing the Land League, and especially their subordination of Irish independence to social and economic reform in the U.S. or Ireland, led to ideological fissures that prevented violence as a viable strategy. The risk of U.S. politics dividing the Land League was manifest from the organization’s conception, for example, in the forbidding of discussion of American politics at meetings of the Boston Branch.[70] Divisions within Irish Americans’ U.S. interests ultimately doomed the League, however, and ideological divisions preceded and precluded any support for violence. This led to factionalism and radicalism, thereby lowering the domestic costs of defecting from non violence. The composition and objectives of the American Land League’s constituencies represented a diverse array of participants and methodologies. Furthering the disintegration of a coherent American Land League ideology was the tendency for members to use the League as a conduit for mustering domestic political support, especially to the Tammany Democratic Machine, despite the League’s mandate to be a “nonpolitical entity as far as American politics were concerned.”[71] Beyond American politics, Irish Americans representing different demographics coalesced in the Land League: for example, the “involvement in Irish American nationalism by Catholic authorities was unprecedented,” especially since they had recently denied burial for Catholic Fenians.[72] Church projects attempting to establish the Irish as independent yeomen in the United States, such as the Irish Catholic Colonization Association of the United States, directed Irish-American attention to domestic improvement.[73] Many lower class Irish American radicals, including the Knights of Labor in Chicago, supported Michael Davitt’s call for land nationalization, a policy “loudly criticized”[74] by the Catholic Church. The Jersey Freight Handlers, majority-Irish industrial workers, explained the universal applicability of the program: “the nationalization of the land seems. . . to be the only means of forever destroying class monopolization of the natural source of opportunity to mankind land.”[75] Within the League, Church leaders interpreted nationalization as communism’s harbinger and split from the labor movement faction. As argued by Ely Janis in A Greater Ireland, “whereas conservatives tended to favor the social status quo and sought to achieve inclusion within it, nationalists enthused about social reform pushed for a profound reshaping of American society.”[76] Such divisions prevented the organizational and social cohesiveness requisite for diasporic violence. If contemporary Irish-American nationalist organizations, like the secret society Clan na Gael and the Molly Maguires, exacted or supported violence, they were unable to accumulate popular support for their cause.

5. Maurice Hennessy, The Wild Geese: The Irish Soldier in Exile (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1973), https://babel.hathitrust.org, 17. 61

Their perpetuation of violent ethno isolationist violence differed from the demographic and ideological coalitionism of the Land League, which explicitly denied Clan or Molly Maguire infiltration of their organization and convinced its American members that they were “performing their duty to their native land by paying money to the League”[77] and not committing violence. Encompassing too broad an ideological spectrum to endorse land nationalization or Irish independence, the Land League could not condone, let alone execute, violence. The tense coalitionism of Irish American nationalists with ‘real’ Americans and ‘real’ Irish persisted into the 20th century when Sinn Fein leaders were reluctant to speak of the organization’s left wing objectives “to avoid alienating conservative Irish American supporters.”[78] Ultimately, diasporic nationalists consider their internationalist action in terms of its domestic (i.e. non Irish) acceptability. Conclusion If distance and time inhibit refugees’ ability to contribute violently to an insurgency in their homeland, these obstacles are somewhat circumventable. As Salehyan argues, refugees “can and do participate in politics in both their home and host countries, including through violence, and their humanitarian needs should not obscure this role.”[79] An investigation of the emergence of Irish American nationalist groups in the United States over the nearly two centuries of the Irish Diaspora offers a unique and more transhistorical lens into the motivations and capacities of diasporic groups to influence the course of conflict within their adopted homeland. In comparing the nature and composition of two particular Irish American nationalist organizations, the Fenian Brotherhood and the American Land League, it is clear that diasporic violence by nationalist Irish immigrants is more a result of domestic (i.e. non Irish) political circumstances, rather than poverty, ‘tribal conflict,’ or military material capacity. Throughout the 20th century, from the Easter Rising of 1916 to the Troubles to the present, Irish nationalism remains relevant. Some Irish Americans have continued to organizationally express their support for nationalism through organizations like NORAID, which ostensibly “supports through peaceful means, the establishment of a democratic [united] Ireland.”[80] While NORAID’s capacity to contribute to foreign violence has been scrutinized, its ultimate peaceful objective is refracted through a prism of American acceptability. The U.S. has similarly asserted its interest and relevance in Anglo Irish peace through participation in the 1985 AngloIrish Peace Agreement: the four American politicians involved in the process, including Tip O’Neill and Ted Kennedy, were of renowned Irish American ancestry.[81] Both Irish Unionists and Separatists continue their attempts to mobilize American Ulster or Irish Catholic diasporic communities to finance their efforts in a centuries old conflict.[82] Liberated from the surveillance and repression of the origin state, diasporic actors are empowered by their existence away from the borders of the homeland. Ultimately, however, the diasporic actors are motivated and constrained by the adopted country’s political and demographic composition: the feasibility of their committing violence within the diaspora is determined by the organization’s coalitional dynamics.

Endnotes

1. Idean Salehyan, Rebels without Borders: Transnational Insurgencies in World Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 3. 2. Salehyan, Rebels without Borders, 55. 3. Ibid, 235. 4. Niall Ó Dochartaigh, “Reframing Online: Ulster Loyalists Imagine an American Audience,” Identities 16, no. 1 https://doi.org/10.1080/10702890802605851,(2009), 116.

6. Hennessy, The Wild Geese, 17. 7. Ibid, 22. 8. Ibid, 22. 9. Ibid, 131. 10. Ibid, 134. 11. Ibid, 17. 12. Ibid, 36. 13. Ibid, 36 14. Hereward Senior, The Last Invasion of Canada: the Fenian Raids, 1866 1870 (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1991), 16. 15. Senior, The Last Invasion of Canada, 14. 16. Ibid, 14. 17. Ibid, 15. 18. Ibid, 15. 19. Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, “Justice Seeking and Loot Seeking in Civil War” (Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, 1999).

81. Mary McGrory, “Thatcher's Irish Problem,” The Washington Post, February 24, 1985, 82.https://www.washingtonpost.com.Dochartaigh , “Reframing Online,” 122. Content EditorsMay 6, 2022 62

20. Lars Erik Cederman, Andreas Wimmer, and Brian Min, “Why Do Ethnic Groups Rebel? New Data and Analysis,” World Politics 62, no. 1 (January 18, 2010), 21.https://doi.org/10.1017/s0043887109990219.Senior, The Last Invasion of Canada, 16. 22. Ibid, 16. 23. Ibid, 20. 24. Ibid, 37. 25. Ibid, 88. 26. Ibid, 88. 27. Ibid, 49. 28. Ely M. Janis, A Greater Ireland: the Land League and Transatlantic Nationalism in Gilded Age America (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2015), 29.25. Janis, A Greater Ireland, 27. 30. Ibid, 28. 31. Ibid, 51. 32. Ibid 61. 33. Ibid 52. 34. Ibid, 73. 35. Ibid, 181 183. 36. Ibid, 192. 37. Ibid, 196. 38. Ibid, 195. 39. Timothy J. Meagher, “‘Irish All The Time:’” Ethnic Consciousness Among the Irish in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1880 1905,” Journal of Social History 19, no. 2 (1985), https://doi.org/10.1353/jsh/19.2.273, 276. 40. David Thomas Brundage, Irish Nationalists in America: the Politics of Exile, 1798 1998 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2016), 89.

41. Brundage, Irish Nationalists in America, 89. 42. Meagher, “‘Irish All The Time,’” 285. 43. Janis, A Greater Ireland, 62. 44. Brundage, Irish Nationalists in America, 89. 45. Senior, The Last Invasion of Canada, 19. 46. Meagher, “‘Irish All The Time,’” 276. 47. Ibid. 275. 48. Ibid, 280. 49. Ibid, 284. 50. Ibid, 285. 51. Ibid, 285. 52. Ibid, 275. 53. Senior, The Last Invasion of Canada, 19. 54. Ibid, 22. 55. Ibid, 22. 56. Ibid, 36. 57. Ibid, 18. 58. Ibid, 22. 59. Ibid, 66. 60. Janis, A Greater Ireland, 179. 61. Senior, The Last Invasion of Canada, 40. 62. Ibid, 50. 63. Ibid, 101. 64. Ibid, 102. 65. Ibid, 18. 66. Ibid, 18. 67. Janis, A Greater Ireland, 75. 68. Meagher, “‘Irish All The Time,’” 280. 69. Janis, A Greater Ireland, 116. 70. Ibid, 74. 71. Ibid, 81. 72. Ibid, 80. 73. Ibid, 85. 74. Ibid, 187. 75. Ibid, 187. 76. Ibid 114. 77. Ibid, 84. 78. Dochartaigh, “Reframing Online,” 114. 79. Salehyan, Rebels without Borders, 65. 80. “Peace Process,” Irish Northern Aid, June 7, 2007, ww.inac.org.https://web.archive.org/web/20071102160225/http://w

Esther

By: Jane Ben Ami

The Taboos of Family Romances: In Search of the DistortedImageFeminine

"womanofthedesert"byrickreddsis marked with CCBY NC SA2.0.

CHILDHOOD LOVE DENIED

Grotesque explores the distortion of feminine identity through dysfunctional familial and romantic intimacy. The dysfunctions mapped throughout the novel also illustrates the private and domestic power structures of gender relations and patriarchy, reflect, and enforce larger issues such as the power imbalances and conflicts within Japanese society and cross culturally. For example, the protagonist’s mother’s subservience within her family results in her loss of her sense of self her subservience also embodies the marginalized side of cross cultural conflict reflected within a singular home. Other female characters endure dysfunctional relationships with their sexuality and family that manifests an incestuous subtext within several of these relationships. The dysfunction within the domestic sphere also results in a paradox of extremes between an obsession with superficiality and physicality on one end, and a profound lack of emotional sincerity on another, both of which are conveyed through the complex identities and sexualities of Grotesque’s female Regardingcharacters.thedysfunctional familial intimacy centering the protagonist’s mother, this family partially portrays the dissolving Japanese family structure. In other words, its description of marital dysfunction reflects a contemporary sociological issue in Japan: the incompatibility between Japanese culture and outside cultures.

The feminine image is a broad conceptualization of feminine identity and behavior and is thus based in archetypical femininity. Archetypical femininity includes the nurturing quality associated with maternity, the chaotic element of nature and transformation, and the display of physical beauty and sexual appeal. Archetypal femininity, though expansive and necessary to the substance of life, becomes an oppressive tool when rigid expectations for gendered behavior arise from it. Oppressive archetypal femininity demonizes women’s behaviors that deviate from the ideal. Additionally, elements of archetypical femininity that challenge the opposing masculine archetype are scrutinized. For example, considering the traditional conceptions of masculinity and femininity, where femininity was conceptualized as chaotic, naturally disruptive, and in need of sorting out by, masculine order, the demonization of the transformation associated with female bodies is rooted in its element of natural and uncontrollable change (such as sexual development and maternity). Archetypical feminine chaos also plays a part in defining uncontrollable sexuality as a feminine attribute. In cultural traditions known for their adherence to order, established norms, and discipline, such as the Japanese, rigid expectations distort the feminine image. The distorted feminine describes both the distortion of individual identity in conformity with the archetype and the perceived distortion of those who deviate from the archetype. The distorted feminine image unfolds in a connective fabric [1] across three separate texts: Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino (2003), Hotel Iris by Yoko Ogawa (1996), and An Extraterrestrial by Yumiko Kurahashi (1998). Each text has its different approach to expressing the distorted feminine image and its consequences on individuals, relationships, and the larger society. Moreover, the distorted feminine image engenders a longing for the original source a pre societal space before archetypal femininity enforced gendered expectations of behavior.

The emotional corruption that arises from the domestic sphere’s reconstitution of traditional gender values are highlighted in Mr. Sato’s claim that the values he embodies mean “nothing to him.”

The protagonist’s mother’s oppression by her Western husband conveys the impact of patriarchal control on individual cultural identity. Therefore, this may be understood as a commentary on the cultural erasure of Japan by Western influences through a gendered lens. Portraying cultural conflict through family dysfunction, effectively gendering the conflict, illuminates one aspect of the distorted feminine image: the distortion of individual identity in conforming to the archetypal quality of subservience, which is invented in the domestic sphere and projects outwards to influence cross cultural conflict and loss. Grotesque also uses the family structure to reflect the sociocultural problems within Japanese society overall. By comparing the protagonist’s family to her schoolmate Kazue Sato’s ethnically Japanese family, it’s clear the emotional corruption of Japanese society is reflected within the domestic sphere, which results in the distortion of several female characters’ identities. The following paragraph will closely reflect on a scene with the Sato family to prove this point. Upon being confronted by Mr. Sato about her intentions with Kazue, the protagonist reflects on the compromised structure within her mixed family, explaining that while her father maintained a dominating presence within the household, his position as a foreigner prevented him from expressing that authority to society. And while the protagonist’s mother represented the dominant culture of society (Japanese culture), she could not express that authority within the household because of gender expectations, which, in her culture, prescribe her to be subservient and nonautonomous.

The marriage between the protagonist’s Japanese mother and European father has endured years of strain due to cultural differences. The protagonist recounts both the father’s disapproval of Japanese customs within the household throughout the text and the mother’s severe sense of alienation in Switzerland.[1] Thus, the protagonist’s family represents a breakdown of Japanese family values, incited by a clash between Japanese and Western cultures occurring within the nucleus of the family. Therefore, xenophobic hostilities and anxieties of cultural erasure, is reflected in the private domestic sphere, distorting individual identity in its most intimate interpersonal context, familial relationships.

The Sato household dynamic was different: When I saw a person who used rigidity and the absurdity of social conventions as steadfastly as Kazue’s father did, I was impressed. Why? Because Kazue’s father did not really believe in the social values he represented, but he clearly knew that he armed himself with them more or less as a weapon of survival.[2] In other words, because of Mr. Sato’s ethnicity as Japanese, his position as an authoritarian father transforms his household into a place that parallels the societal sphere. Thus, Grotesque conveys that Japanese society is a patriarchal social structure, and this social hierarchy is both reflected and invented in the domestic sphere. In all, having the social hierarchy of society, which is largely built on rigid gender roles[2] , reflected in the home, allows the domestic sphere to become a space where gendered social norms cultivate children’s personalities. We see this clearly through when all the women of the Sato household cater their identities to meet Mr. Sato’s expectation of traditional gender values.

Nevertheless, he imposes them on Kazue, who believes in their sincerity, and is unconcerned with the psychological damage it may inflict on her. Herein lies the point of emotional corruption of Japanese society, reflected within the domestic sphere: the fight for social survival is so severe, empowering toxicity within gendered relations that is so excessive, it disrupts the unconditional love shared between parents and their children, distorting the intimacy children yearn for in those close relationships.

[6] Yuriko’s whole life is centered around sex: she was aware of her sexual appeal at the early age of nine and lost her virginity to her uncle at age thirteen. By high school, she became a prostitute. Moreover, her sexual relationships are characterized by an incestuous subtext, displaying how the disruption of familial intimacy leads to the distortion of romantic intimacy in terms of the boundary transgression between the two. Not only does Yuriko have sex with her uncle, her deepest and most long term relationship is with a character named Johnson, a father figure. “What is certain is that Johnson somehow sustains me,” Yuriko says. “It is perhaps a longing for a father figure? Maybe. Johnson is unable to stop loving me, so in a way he is like a father. My own father, of course, did not love me. Or at least his love for me was thwarted.”[7] On one end of the extreme, Yuriko suffers from the absence of parental love which causes her to become romantically and sexually infatuated with a father-figure on the other end of it. In all, Yuriko’s fulfillment through sex is a reaction to her family’s and society’s obsession with her physical appearance. Denied love as a child, she becomes obsessively preoccupied with what did give her attention in those formative years. 66

[3] Because of her powerfully seductive beauty, the protagonist expresses resentfulness, contempt, and intimidation toward Yuriko throughout the novel.

"Alphonse Mucha P40 Femme Parmi Les Fleurs/Woman Among The Flowers, c.1900." by K.G.23 is marked with CC0 1.0. However, Yuriko’s looks may cause herself the most suffering. Yuriko claims that she defines her worth solely based on her sexual appeal towards men. She explains, “my ability to meet my lover’s demands is the only way I can feel alive.”

The Sato family becomes a symbol of stability in a society characterized by rigidity, emotional vacancy, and a lack of authenticity. Although the protagonist’s family’s dysfunction reflects Japanese patriarchy to an extent in its domestic dynamic, it does not fully reflect Japanese society’s power structure, since the protagonist’s father is unable to reproduce the society domestic parallelism that Mr. Sato does. Instead, the patriarchal dynamic within a mixed family suggests that the distortion of intimacy and identity reflecting and enforcing society’s gendered rigidity exists outside of Japanese culture, too. By suppressing and corrupting the emotional needs of the female characters, physical desire and emotional desire are forcibly disconnected. The intimacy normally expected to be found in familial and romantic bonds is absent; however, sexuality remains a dangerously uncontrollable force. Grotesque inversely suggests, through this paradox of extremes between physicality and emotion, that the body and soul are meant to be intertwined. Disrupting the bond between them results in their mutual distortion, and intimate structures are simultaneously areas of emotional emptiness and transgression. For example, Kazue and the protagonist describe Mrs. Sato, completely subservient to the father’s wishes, to be like “one of his daughters”[3], indicating that the role of wife and daughter is transgressively blurred. A more explicit portrayal of transgression and of sex being an uncontrollable force characterizes Yuriko’s the protagonist’s younger sister narrative. The protagonist describes Yuriko to be so stunningly beautiful that she is “monstrous”.[4] The protagonist’s hatred towards her younger sister is embedded in Yuriko’s encapsulation of society’s superficiality, in which average looking people like the protagonist are disadvantaged. “I knew I was far more intelligent than Yuriko,” she says, “and it irked me to no end that I could never impress anyone with my brains. Yuriko, who had nothing going for her but her hauntingly beautiful face, nevertheless made a terrific impression on everyone who came into contact with her.”[5]

Yuriko’s sexual obsession is motivated by childhood neglect. Likewise, Mari’s precocious sexuality and transgressive describes young woman who uses sexual relationship to map out psychological damages. Like Yuriko, not only does the text describe Mari as beautiful, she also becomes sexually active at an early age, with a man more than twice her age, who is known as “the translator.” The distortion presented in Hotel Iris concerns feminine and masculine archetypes on an individual scale. Mari and the translator’s interactions display how gendered archetypes, when imposed on the individual, distorts the Beforeindividual.exploring the archetypal significance of Mari’s self fulfilling sexuality, I will describe the neglect and abuse Mari experienced because of her gender. Mari’s mother’s superficial compliments on Mari’s beauty while fixing up her hair a daily ritual cause Mari to reflect on her history of objectification that is endorsed by her mother. She states how her mother enjoys gloating about the many times when others have complimented Mari’s beauty. A sculptor, for example, tried to make a statue of her when she was a child. However, the sculptor had almost molested Mari. After it is over, Mari says, “I feel as though she’s hurt me in a way that will never heal”[8], referring to how, her mother’s objectification of her beauty conditioned her to become an object of sexual desire and violence. Therefore, Mari experiences an inverse reaction to perceptions of beauty: judgements of her attractiveness are distorted and inverted into feelings of ugliness because she understands that attractive women suffer in her society. Indeed, Mari describes her discomfort while her hair is being done: “the more she tells me how pretty I am, the uglier I feel”.[9] Thus, the hair styling ritual becomes symbolic of the distorted feminine image passed on from mother to daughter, where Mari’s mother nurtures Mari’s identity fixate on the ideal of beauty, at the expense of her psychological and physical security. The wounded emotion behind the statement, “she’s hurt me in a way that will never heal” illustrates how the dynamics of the child parent relationship persists into adult relationships and how the domestic sphere influences the societal sphere and vice versa. When Mari’s mother ritually arranges her daughter’s hair, she also passes down archetypal feminine chaos, which manifests in sexual appeal, a byproduct of conforming to the ideal of beauty. In fixing her hair, Mari’s mother communicates both the overweening importance of beauty, and the instruction to harness the feminine chaos the coincides with its cultivation. Ironically, it is because she is overwhelmed by feminine chaos that Mari seeks to be organized by masculinity, and she specifically seeks this out through her sexuality. Therefore, because of this matrilineal heritage of archetypal conformity and shame, Mari’s relationship with the translator constitutes her embodiment of chaotic femininity regulated by masculine order. "the other woman" by Chiara Stevani is marked with CC BY NC ND 2.0.

Considering the novel’s hierarchical social environment, the relative freedom of this imaginative space may alleviate the protagonist from social judgment. The original pre societal and prenatal aspect imbues it with a (biologically) feminine construct. Therefore, we can interpret the envisioning of a prenatal and pre societal space as a yearning for the original source.Art by Elizabeth Tillar

In “An Extraterrestrial,” the original source manifests as the body of the text’s title character. Due to its lack of autonomy and its hermaphrodite features, the Alien becomes the destination for which the brother and sister can express their socially unacceptable and thus repressed, affections for one another a bond anticipating disruption by the sister’s impending marriage enabling the Alien to act as a pre societal space. Furthermore, several components determine the Alien as a feminine symbol.

“I was an affront to order,” Mari narrates. In the scene, Mari expresses a deep yearning to be forgiven for what is left unanswered in the novel, allowing the archetypal framework to set in. She relates this desire to the dynamic between her and her mother that she’s experienced since childhood, “‘I’m sorry, forgive me.’ They were words I had said over and over to my mother since childhood. Though I’d had no idea what forgiveness meant, I had cried for it nonetheless. But now, finally, I understood. From the bottom of my heart, I wanted to be forgiven.”[10] In other words, Mari portrays the prototypical woman who has, perhaps due to her physical appeal, internalized the distorted feminine image. She is no longer an autonomous individual her entire identity centers around the feminine chaos she’s internalized and the forgiveness it requires when exercised to its expected potential. Indeed, she is continuously punished (through hair rituals, objectification, etc.) for the archetypal feminine chaos she conditioned to represent. Thus, Mari seeks the sexual space to act out primal gendered shame, where she embodies the feminine archetype and her partner, the masculine. Mari’s sexual encounter constitutes this space. Taking on these roles allows Mari to be forgiven for her femininity through sexual debasement. This may be why Mari falls more in love with the translator the more he humiliates and punishes her through the sexual violence she endures she is redeemed.

THE ORIGINAL SOURCE Overall, the internalization of the distorted feminine image typically conveyed through the embodiment of a self denying gender expectation or gender archetype is cultivated in the childhood and/or domestic space and characterizes these fictional women’s dysfunctional adult relationships. This leads to a longing for the original source a pre societal place void of gendered shame and social expectations. The original source is an imaginary space where one can express desires spontaneously and without inhibition. It is characterized by feminine constructs targeted for misogynic debasement, such as the life giving and transformational aspects of female bodies, which establishes them as a direct antidote to the distortion by the feminine image. Grotesque’s protagonist’s daydreams describe the characters around her, along with the imaginary children conceived in her mind, swimming in a prenatal and pre-societal space.

Mari’s first sexual encounter with the translator depicts the regulation of femininity by masculinity.

First, its emergence into the world: the egg connotes pregnancy. The egg from which the Alien came and the Alien itself is characterized by a vast emptiness. This space allows for repressed desires to be expressed. Thus, the feminineness of the Alien’s manifestation in the narrative lends to the pre societal potential as well. The egg’s interior holds an endless nothing, another feminine construct since it describes the paradox of the feminine vessel: the perpetual emptiness due to its status as a vessel is paradoxical to its potential to carry something significant (i.e., life). Thus, the Alien is used as a treasured vessel to convey the brother and sister’s taboo relationship, join their transgression, and connect their (gendered) opposition, harmonious unity: "Between me and L lay the nothingness enclosed by the fake flesh, our universe, so to speak".[11] The Alien is, for the brother and sister, their “universe” of free sexual expression. And the Alien’s defining feminine construct of birth identifies it as a site of transformation. The union of the brother and sister through the alien, along with the Alien’s hermaphrodite features, envisions the original source as a space of unity between opposites. Likewise, the relationship between Mari and the Translator in Hotel Iris represents a similarly sacred place where the contrasting archetypes and internalized shame are expressed and symbolically joined through sex. The translator's island and house exist as a sexual universe, where Mari is reborn through masculine order. In short, the vision for original unity in Hotel Iris manifests in the sexual relationship between two characters, which marks the destination where their archetypal transformation takes place. In “An Extraterrestrial,” the destination of original unity is the Alien’s body, shared between the siblings as their pre societal, uninhibitedly expressive space that they are reborn into. The story ends with the pair of siblings entering the alien’s vast and endless womb the night before the sister’s wedding. This reverse birth symbolizes the siblings’ mutual longing for the original source, which, through the Alien, represents the harmony of original unity, a pre-societal idea.

CONCLUSIONS

All in all the taboo and/or emotionally corrupted relationships that exist across, and thus connect all three texts, distort the feminine image. Grotesque offers a view into the domestic and interpersonal dysfunction and rigidity upon which Japanese society is based, a dysfunction that affects a paradox of extremes, which calls for unity and is expressed in several ways. Yuriko is so beautiful that she becomes a monster, and interpersonal bonds are so drained of their authentic emotional quality that physical appearance and sexuality become objects of obsession. In Grotesque, the distorted feminine image is created within the domestic sphere; it projects gendered power dynamics (as seen through the protagonist’s parents) and emotional corruption (as seen through the cultivation of Yuriko’s and the Sato women’s personalities) into the societal sphere and reflects those toxicities inwards as domestic, interpersonal, and individual maladjustment. Hotel Iris approaches the distorted feminine image more transcendentally by having Mari and the translator act out the conflict between feminine and masculine archetypes through their sexual relationship. We see that Mari’s desire to have masculine order contain her feminine chaos results from the feminine shame passed down from her mother. The act of passing down supports how the distortion of the feminine image has its roots in an inter generational archetypal conflict that is internalized within individuals. Finally, “An Extraterrestrial”, Like Hotel Iris and Grotesque, grounds sociological and metaphysical incongruency in gender and sexuality.

“An Extraterrestrial” envisions a utopia where both the paradox of extremes, and, the conflict between archetypal femininity and masculinity are resolved by unity in a perfect sensual universe.

Endnotes [1] Kirino, Natsuo. Grotesque. Translated by Rebecca Copeland. (Peng Rand, 2008), 42 46. [2] Kirino, 93. [3] Kirino, 94. [4] Kirino, 7. [5] Kirino, 46-47. [6] Kirino, 119. [7] Kirino, 120. [8] Ogawa, 16. [9] Ogawa, Yoko. Hotel Iris. Translated by Stephen Snyder. (MAC HIGHER, 2010), 16. [10] Ogawa, 55. [11] Kurahashi, Yumiko and Atsuko Sakaki. “An Extraterrestrial .” Chapter. In The Woman with the Flying Head and Other Stories, (Armonk, NY: Routledge, 2015), 22 70

Seventeenth-Century Dutch Animal Imagery Challenging Anthropocentrism: Paulus Potter’s Punishment of a Hunter By: Sofya Vorobeva 71

Paulus Potter. Punishment of a Hunter, c 1647 1650 Oil on wood panel, 84. 5 x 120 cm

The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg Figure 2

Paulus Potter. The Bull, 1647 Oil on canvas, 235.5 cm x 339 cm Mauritshuis, Den Haag, Netherlands Punishment of a Hunter is distinct, both in terms of Potter’s other works and more broadly in Dutch seventeenth-century painting. The structure of the wood panel fourteen scenes separated by black lines was unusual for painting at that time and more common for printed engraving spreads. The level of activity on each scene stands out from the usual calm of Potter’s artworks. These two central scenes of trial and retribution raise questions about the conceptual and physical interrelations and commonalities between animals and humans. The smaller vignettes that surround the central scenes add context and moralizing narrative to the entire painting. The narrative and content of the artwork seem extraordinary for the seventeenth century for the contemporary viewer by its content and form.

INTRODUCTION

Figure 1

In the painting Punishment of a Hunter, the Dutch seventeenth century artist Paulus Potter depicted animals putting a hunter on trial and enacting a death sentence. Surrounded by smaller allegorical and hunting vignettes that show animals and humans, the animal court and hunter’s execution by burning appear in two central scenes. In the upper central scene, the guilty hunter appears at the forest’s edge in front of the animal court. His arms are tied behind his back, and two wolves hold the ends of the rope. A bear stands behind the hunter and holds him tightly. Other animals preside in the court, with the lion at the head, while the fox records the proceedings, enacting the death sentence. In the lower scene, the hunter is roasted on a brazier. Together a bear and a goat stand nearby with spoons, ready to taste the flesh of the guilty. In the cloud of smoke, two hounds hang from the tree and another two are waiting for their turn. Nearby, animals are dancing, celebrating justice over the hunter and his accomplices.

The painter, Paulus Potter, specialized in painting animals, especially domestic animals in Dutch pastures. Most of his works were animal portraits, the majority being stable with minimal actions. His famous The Bull (1647) represents all these key features of his style (fig. 2), including his tendency to give a human character to his animals and vice versa.[1]

A SATIRE ON HUNTING Comprising of fourteen scenes separated by drawn thin frames, the entire painting measures 84.5 x 120 cm. It consists of twelve small side scenes and two larger central ones. For a comparatively small canvas, there are numerous figures arranged into different scenes. There are four types of images: allegories, a portrait, hunting scenes, and the central climatic episodes. This analysis will concentrate on the role of these images in the construction of the painting’s complex message. 73

This painting turns power relations upside down, questions human superiority over other animals, and reflects on animal subjectivity. Even more remarkable and paradoxical is that this painting of animal consciousness and power was produced in the same era when humanist philosopher, René Descartes, developed his concept of mind body dualism to define the human and proclaimed animals as reasonless automata. Therefore, the painting decentralizes the human at the origin of Cartesian thought where logos and sensitivity distinguishes humans from animals, well ahead of contemporary animal studies theories.

Piers Beirne and Janine Janssen, in their essay “Hunting Worlds Turned Upside Down,” apply a cultural criminology approach to examine the possible meanings that Potter invested in his painting.[2] Beirne and Janssen propose that it could be a satire on animal trials, a commentary on the political situation, or an expression of contempt for animal cruelty. They could not claim that any one of these readings are the most accurate because they lacked evidence, awareness and knowledge of Potter’s views.[3] Beirne and Janssen initially supposed that Potter’s painting condemns animal cruelty, but they could not develop this investigation because they believed that these views were not typical for the seventeenth century. Instead, this paper concentrates not on the historical context of Potter’s artwork but on messages that people in the seventeenth century may have perceived in this painting and what insights they may provide to present day viewers. This approach might be more fruitful since it does not depend on Potter’s ideas and thoughts. Beirne and Janssen’s paper shows a gap in the body of research concerning the interpretations of how this painting was perceived through different epochs. Hence, in the analysis of Potter’s artwork, this paper will build upon Nathaniel Wolloch’s approach, presented in his paper “Dead Animals and the Beast Machine,” of situating Dutch seventeenth-century paintings within the central philosophical ideas about humans and animals at that time and examine Descartes’ and Montaigne’s ideas in more detail in order to provide a contextualized reading of the painting.[4] Additionally, the contemporary philosophy is applied to analyze the artwork through the prism of questions about anthropocentrism, animal subjectivity, and their status in philosophical Buildingconcepts.upon this body of ideas, Punishment of a Hunter is interpreted as a satire on cruel hunting and a metaphorical statement that challenges human mastery over animals and decentralizes humans from a position of mastery. In arguing for this interpretation, the research will begin with formal and iconographic analysis of the painting. Building upon this analysis, the painting’s message is contextualized in the central philosophical ideas about human animal relationships in both seventeenth century philosophy and in the recently established field of animal studies.

Figure 4 (Bottom Image) Etienne Dupérac. Verkeerde wereld, c 1560 Printed etching on paper, 37.1 cm x 50.8 cm Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Figure 5 (Above) Ioan Galle. Topsy Turvy World, c 1580 1600 Printed etching on paper, 21 cm x 29.8 cm Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen,NetherlandsRotterdam, 74

The relationship between the side and central scenes play a key role in creating meaning. While we are first drawn to the central images due to their size, location and the density of figures, the smaller side scenes are essential for interpreting the central ones. The painting’s format resembles that of a polyptych, which often feature larger central panels surrounded by smaller secondary ones (fig. 3). However, they typically have a chronological order that helps to create narrative structure.[5] In the case of religious polyptychs, this complex structure is implemented in conjunction with highly moralizing religious iconography. Moreover, polyptychs are constructed from separate connected panels, while Punishment of a Hunter is a single wood panel with painted lines that separate scenes. The structure of the painting also resembles the popular European tradition of “World Upside Down” (WUD) broadsheets, in which the world order is depicted in reverse. WUDs are satirical graphic works that ridicule ordinary things or show the oppressed in positions of power (fig. 4). WUDs are often accompanied by text that explains the scenes, an inverted globe or world map, and the title “World Upside Down.”.[6] Punishment of a Hunter employs some of the key features of the WUD to create a similar satirical effect and like the broadsheets, it features separate scenes. Notably, human and animal roles are often reversed in these prints. Indeed, one possible source for Punishment of a Hunter is the etching Topsy Turvy World (c. 1580 1600) by Ioan Galle (fig. 5).[7] It seems to combine both scenes depicted in Potter’s work a bound hunter appearing before a court in the foreground, and the brazier and dogs hanged in the background. Hence, the inheritance of the WUD tradition in Potter’s work becomes clear, since it inherits its structure, and the same plot was executed before in Galle’s WUD.

Figure 3 (Above) Jan van Eyck. The Ghent Altarpiece (open view), 1432 Oil on wood panel, 520 x 375 cm Saint Bavo’s cathedral, Ghent, Belgium.

The surrounding scenes provide a broader context for understanding the images of punishment. Three upper vignettes set up a moral frame for interpreting the central images. The upper left scene depicts the hunter Saint Hubert kneeling before a stag, who appears with a crucifix between his antlers. After this vision, St. Hubert preached that one should hunt animals humanely because they are also creations of God and capable of suffering.[8] The upper right scene, which was painted by Cornelis van Poelenburgh, depicts the myth of Diana and Actaeon.[9] It tells the story of Actaeon, the hunter who accidentally encountered Diana, the goddess of the hunt, naked and enjoying a bath with her nymphs. As punishment for seeing her virtuous body naked, she transformed him into a stag. The painting depicts the start of the hunter’s transformation; a figure with antlers fleeing in panic. At the end of the myth, Acteon is killed by his hounds, who fail to recognize him. Between these scenes, Potter depicts the portrait of the hunter in refined clothes with prey and two hounds against a traditional Dutch landscape. In this scene, the hunter appears as the owner of the land and master of Nature. However, the two flanking moralizing narratives question his status. The legend of St. Hubert teaches that in Christian cosmology, morally permissible hunting is practiced out of need and not out of greed or demonstration of power. Diana and Actaeon’s myth show in a metaphorical way that the hunter can become a prey one day. These two allegorical images with a portrait of the hunter in between raise the tenuousness of animal human distinction. They stress the closeness of humans to animals via the metamorphoses of Christ stag and hunter stag, and thus question human exceptionalism and mastery over animals.

The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg 75

Two types of hunting scenes appear to the left and right sides as well as at the bottom. The first demonstrates traditional hunting methods, such as hiding in the landscape with a gun or using traps.

The second type presents the hunt as a battle, not a strategic practice. Cornelis Hofstede de Groot claims that these scenes are caricatures of Peter Paul Rubens’ hunting scenes and this can be confirmed by comparing the composition and plasticity of figures between Potter’s scenes and Rubens’ painting (fig. 6).[10] Indeed, Potter references Rubens by depicting exotic animals, hunters in turbans, and the use of swords and long distance weapons in a close battle, something that no real hunter would use in this way. These scenes highlight the damage done to animals and humans. Hounds bite prey the latter respond by ripping dogs and hunters apart. In the lion and wolf hunts, people pierce the animals with spears and pitchforks. On the one hand, these battle hunting scenes, alongside the traditional ones, stress the cruelty of the process, as well as presenting animals and hunters in more equal positions. Like prey, the hunters and hounds are also wounded during the battle.Inthe central upper scene, Potter depicts the animals putting the hunter on trial. The lion presides as judge and other animals serve as officers and guards. The hunter bows his head before the lion and receives his judgment. In the background, four hounds wait their turn. Below, the sentence is carried out. The hunter is roasted on a brazier while the goat and boar are ready with the spoons to eat him. Two hounds hang from the tree, while a third accomplice waits their turn. On the right side, animals dance in celebration of justice. Figure 6 Peter Paul Rubens. Meleagr and Atalanta Hunting, mid 1630s. Oil on paper pasted on canvas, 316 x 622 cm.

Punishment of a Hunter presents a complex message on the essence of the relations between humans and animals. In the seventeenth century, two major debates on animals centered around their cognitive abilities. The first was presented in the writings of Michel de Montaigne, a prominent sixteenth-century writer and philosopher. Even a century later, his thoughts were influential and were mainly articulated in the work of his disciples, such as Pierre AmericanCharron.[12]philosopher, George Boas in his book The Happy Beast in French Thought of the Seventeenth Century (1933), introduces the notion of “theriophily” the idea that animals are superior to humans. He argues that this concept is rooted in primitivism and observes that some thinkers concentrated on ancient (or primitivist) cultures like the Scythians and Hyperboreans. Some extended it to cultures that Europeans encountered during the period of exploration of the world. Simultaneously, as Boas puts it, other thinkers turned their attention to animals as an extreme point in primitivism, believing that animals are more “natural” than human beings. Boas identifies this belief as theriophily. He states that some theriophilist thinkers argue that animals are better than humans because the former is better adapted for wilderness and are not perverted with intellect. This follows the same primitivist logic, in which “civilized people” are perceived as inferior to “savages.” However, other thinkers objected to the basic theriophilist claim by arguing that animals also have different forms of cognitive abilities, and it does not make them inferior to humans.[13] Boas identified Pierre Charron as the most prominent theriophilist and explored the origins of his views in Montaigne’s essays. Boas claims that the essay “Of Cannibals” (1603) presents Montaigne’s primitivism or Theriophily in a better way. In this text, Montaigne affirms that savages are not more barbarous than civilized people but more natural.[14] Then, Boas shows that Montaigne despised human intelligence and pride. 76

The formal elements of the artwork support the WUD like structure of the painting. Unlike Potter’s other paintings, Punishment of a Hunter is dense with figures of animals and humans in action.[11] Some animal poses and actions seem unnatural and anthropomorphic: a lion with a scepter, a fox holding a scroll, and dancing animals. Along with the battle hunting scenes, these poses introduce a satirical aspect that coincides with the tradition of the world in reverse imagery. Moreover, the more conventional images of human animal interactions on the sides of the painting reinforce the satirical essence of the central scenes. Providing a frame for the satirical images, the side scenes stress the cruelty and excessiveness of the hunts. Hence, the structure and formal elements of the painting enhance the satirical commentary on unethical ways of Therefore,hunting.

Punishment of a Hunter is a satire on cruel hunting and a metaphorical statement that challenges human mastery over animals and decentralizes humans. The analysis shows how side scenes provide the moralizing context for central ones through the composition of the painting. The painting reminds the viewers that hunters can also be prey for some animals and suggests that all creatures are equal in their rights for co existence in the world. ANIMALS IN SEVENTEENTH CENTURY THOUGHT

These climactic scenes attract attention not only because of their size and density of figures but also due to the colors (e.g. a black cloud of smoke below and golden sunlight above). Framed by previous scenes, we can understand that the hunter received his retributive justice for causing much suffering to animals. In the center, the animals act like humans. They do not kill like wild animals; but they do it like humans by trial and execution. Notably, this painting does not have a singular hero. In each scene, the hunters are depicted with different faces, styles of clothes, horses, and hounds. Thus, the hunter in the center is not an individual but an archetype. His execution symbolizes the punishment of all cruel hunters.

Descartes claimed that there are two types of movement: corporeal and mechanical (sensitive) versus incorporeal and rational. He considered animal movements to be mechanical because they lacked self consciousness or rational souls. Harrison pays attention to the fact that Descartes, in his Meditations, “established rational grounds for belief in God, other minds, and the external world.”[20] In other words, for Descartes, rationality is tightly connected with spirituality. Harrison shows that Descartes in his letters claims that he cannot be certain if animal souls encompass spiritual actions, and that he did not deny that animals have the ability to feel pain.[21] Hence, for Descartes, since he could not be certain whether animal cognition is similar on a spiritual level to human one, it was better to claim that animal activities are mechanical ones. 77

However, Boas cautions the reader not to interpret Montaigne’s works only through the lenses of animal superiority over humans because the French philosopher also wrote some statements that presented the opposite view. Boas argues that these opinions and statements were not peculiar to Montaigne, who was influenced by the literary tradition of paradoxes.[15] In the texts where he raised the question of human animal relations, Montaigne stated that nature gave people and animals an equal means of defense. He claims that all creatures have unique ways of interacting with the world, and comparison of human features with animalistic traits does not provide a basis for claiming that one group is superior to another.[16] However, some of Montaigne’s followers and readers have interpreted his comparisons between animals and humans in the discussed texts as an assertion of animal superiority over humans.[17] They tend to focus on the passages where Montaigne states that intelligence is evil, animal instincts might be more divine than rational human acts, and animals are nobler than people because they do not have servants and slaves. On the whole, the attitudes of Montaigne’s disciples towards animals were criticized and attacked by Descartes’ followers. Both sides had different points of view over the claim that animals are reasonless automata, which Descartes presented in his book Meditations on First Philosophy. Building upon this claim, Descartes’s readers concluded that if animals cannot think and are deprived of self consciousness, then they are non sentient beings. In his text “Descartes on Animals,” Peter Harrison examined Descartes’s original text, his replies on letters with the questions about animals’ cognitive abilities, and other interpretations of the philosopher’s position. Harrison starts his text from John Cottingham’s reading of Descartes’s text where he asserts that attentive, close reading shows that Descartes did not deny animals ability to feel. Furthermore, Descartes’ understandings of feeling and thinking seem deceptive and confusing. Since, according to Cottingham “feeling [sentire] is no other thing than thinking.”[18] In this passage, Descartes clearly states that feeling is one of the cognitive abilities thinking that is tightly connected with self consciousness. However, this does not mean that Descartes’ denial of animal self consciousness necessarily leads to the inability to feel. As Cottingham notes, Descartes employs two distinct terms that are both translated into English as “feeling” but mean slightly different things: sentire and passions. Sentire is the feeling that requires self consciousness and cognitive abilities that Descartes denied to animals. In contrast, passions do not depend on thought or selfconsciousness, and they may be found in animal behavior (i.e., fear, hunger, and joy).[19] Thus, Descartes did not deny all animal feelings. Moreover, Harrison argues that the concept of souls is crucial for an understanding of feelings. Descartes’ understanding of souls derives from Aristotelian differentiation of them: vegetative (plant) souls, sensitive (animal) souls, and rational (human) souls.

From this perspective, Punishment of a Hunter allows viewers to reflect upon the possibility of animal responses to human actions. In this painting, the animals have their own point of view on excessive hunting and response to it, which allows us to rethink the content of the painting from the animal’s perspective. 78

While Descartes and Montaigne, placed the human in the center of their studies and animality is used as an instrument to define human nature and the features of being human, Jacques Derrida criticizes this approach. In his book The Animal That Therefore I Am (2006), he examines the great divide in western thought between humans and animals, arguing that earlier philosophers ignored animals as the objects of study and their influence on the construction of ideas about humans. He uses a structuralist approach to address the history of the cultural separation of the category of animal from the category of human, and the nature of this division in culture. Derrida’s ideas had a major impact on other philosophers, and this text is perceived as a turning point in contemporary animal studies. Interest in animality and not humanism is one of the crucial differences between contemporary theories and those of the seventeenth century. Donna Haraway, a philosopher influenced by Derrida, criticizes the idea that the human is the central figure in the world in Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (2016). This book considers ideas about human animal interactions in a dimension of conceptual thinking over power and world order. Their ideas will be applied to formulate a contemporary interpretation of Potter’s artwork. In his text, Derrida presents the idea of the great divide between animals and humans. He examines ideas presented in different cultural objects, such as the Book of Genesis, works of literature, and philosophical texts. All these sources share a common separation of humankind from the diversity of other species called “animals.” He criticizes this binary opposition between two categories because it creates an abyss between them in our comprehension and deters the development of a more complex understanding of humans and animals. Derrida argues that this oversimplification is even more harmful to the comprehension of animals because, under this abstract group, the incredible diversity of living beings is homogenized. It creates an obstacle for thinking about possible interconnections and relations between animals and humans.[22] On the other hand, he claims that even though people and animals are not separate homogeneous groups, they can be united over the violent and ignorant attitude of humans to other species. Moreover, he highlights the paradox that this kind of attitude comes from species being divided into human and non human groups. Hence, he argues that the “animal” category is a crime against animal species.[23] Following this same logic, we may consider Potter’s Punishment of a Hunter as an opposite case because it unites all the hunters in the world under the category of “hunter.” The painting may be interpreted in two ways: it shows that humans might be a mere “prey” category for predators, or it shows hunters in the animal position, as animals being killed only because they belong to the non human category. In other words, if we assume for a moment that the hunter in the center is not an archetype but an individual, animals execute him regardless of his deeds but because he belongs to the category of “non animal” abusers. This message, in effect, creates a crime against humanity.

TURNING FROM HUMAN TO ANIMAL

Derrida also provides a close reading of Descartes and criticizes him for his logocentric approach to ontology: to exist and have an ability to respond, one needs to have self consciousness. Derrida argues that Descartes’ approach excludes possible ways of comprehending animal responses because this logic is developed from human perception in opposition to animality.[24] Moreover, he claims that the animal point of view is missing from the discourse because it is the product of human reason.[25] Therefore, existing discourse over human animal relations limits our comprehension of communication to the abilities of Homo sapiens and does not consider alternative ways of interacting with each other.

CONCLUSION

Therefore, contemporary animal studies try to abandon anthropocentric logic and propose conceptions that allow consideration of other species at play. Both Derrida and Haraway recognize animals’ ability to respond to human actions. This analysis allows us to see the painting’s message as a warning for people that they are not the masters of nature; that this mastery harms and limits the perception of the world and interaction with it.

On the other hand, this painting shows us the limitation of human understanding of the animal point of view. Potter’s animals act according to European human customs they do not kill the hunter in the manner of predators, they do it like humans by means of trial and execution. Nonetheless, the moralizing narratives suggest different ways of interaction between humans and animals, by revealing animal pain, which is ignored by humans. In Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Donna Haraway criticizes the concept of “the Anthropocene,” which presents humans as comparable to a major geological force that changes nature and to a planetary force that has power over other forms of life. She argues that this concept promotes human exceptionalism and presents humans as the key force that changes the world. To counteract the shortcomings of this concept, she proposes to switch the primary focus away from the human species and instead to consider them as part of the enormous web of interactions between the diversity of living beings.[26] Moreover, she argues that the Anthropocene is a harmful concept for humans considering ecological crisis because it presents humans as villains who will destroy Earth and all life, including themselves. She proposes to accept the troubles that people caused to the world and take responsibility for it. She argues that people need to abandon apocalyptic thinking as seemingly unavoidable and maintain a more responsible way of living and acting together with other living and nonliving actors on Earth.[27] She does not relieve humans from responsibility for the climate disaster, but rather proposes to rethink our place in the ecosystem and loss of hope in case of preventive actions. In the context of Potter’s painting, Haraway’s approach supports the painting’s message, which overthrows human supremacy over animals. In this light, Potter presents humans as villains who kill animals for amusement and bring disbalance to biodiversity. The animal trial reminds us that people cannot abuse nature eternally because people are not separate from the tight web of interspecies interactions.

Given the preceding arguments, initially, Punishment of a Hunter, seems to condemn animal suffering, which is a rather unconventional message for the seventeenth century. Formal and iconographic analysis shows that this painting is a satire on cruel hunting. Even though the artwork does not condemn all forms of hunting, it clearly presents moralizing narratives that label excessive hunting as wrong and highlights the tenuousness of the distinction between animal and human. Descartes and Montaigne’s ideas support this point by recognizing that animals deserve equal consideration in discussions about pain and interspecies interactions. These statements dispel contemporary misconceptions about the perception of human animal relationships in the seventeenth century. By abandoning anthropocentric logic, contemporary animal studies reveal the painting’s attempt to show hunting from the point of view of the animals. This context adds to the moralizing message that people are not the masters of nature and that the arbitrary exercising of power over animals will eventually end tragically for all living beings. This approach allows us to reflect upon our cultural and physical attitudes to animals and to consider more ethical ways of interaction with our sentient neighbors. Therefore, Punishment of a Hunter challenges the anthropocentrism that is dominant in Western culture. Both in the seventeenth century and today, it proposes alternative ways of perceiving hunting and interacting with animals. The painting decentralizes humans from the position of mastery over nature and proclaims ethical methods of hunting. 79

Endnotes

Dustin Garnet, “Polyptych Construction as Historical Methodology: An Intertextual Approach to the Stories of Central Technical School’s Past,” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 28, no. 8 (September 14, 2015): 955, [6]https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2014.933911.DavidKunzle , “Bruegel’s Proverb Painting and the World Upside Down,” The Art Bulletin 59, no. 2 (June 1977): figure,Eustace.the[8]Wolf[7]https://doi.org/10.1080/00043079.1977.10787404.198,HereIwouldliketothankmysupervisorErikafordrawingmyattentiontothisimage.LikeintheBernieandJanssenpaper,sometimesfigureofSt.HubertisconfusedwiththeSt.However,unlikeEustace,asthedevotionalHubertwearsrobes,andasthepatronsaint of hunters, he has a hunting horn. Moreover, unlike Eustace, he appears only in the art of northern Europe after the sixteenth century; Beirne and Janssen, “Hunting Worlds Turned Upside Down?,” 19; James Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, ed. Kenneth Clark, Icon Editions (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 158. [9] Hofstede de Groot and Hawke, “Paulus Potter,” 590. [10] Hofstede de Groot and Hawke, 592. [11] Hofstede de Groot and Hawke, 583.

[1] Hofstede de Groot and Hawke, 583 85.

[12] George Boas, The Happy Beast in French Thought of the Seventeenth Century (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins press, 1933), [14][13]http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b685327.2,Boas,12.Boas,3;Villey, “Les Essais” de Michel de Montaigne, I xxxi, I 256. [15] Boas, 9. [16] Boas, 4, 19; Villey, II xii f. 181 205, 214 f. [17] Boas, 4, 9. [18] Harrison, “Descartes On Animals,” 222. [19] Harrison, 222, 225. [20] Harrison, 223, 224, 226. [21] Harrison, 226. [22] Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am, ed. Marie Louise Mallet (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 33, 47. [23] Derrida, 48. [24] Derrida, 87. [25] Derrida, 11. [26] Donna Jeanne Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), 49. [27] Haraway, 2, 49. 80

[2] Beirne and Janssen, “Hunting Worlds Turned Upside Down?,” 49 69.

[3] Beirne and Janssen, 22, 23, 25, 26. [4] Nathaniel Wolloch, “Dead Animals and the Beast Machine: Seventeenth Century Netherlandish Paintings of Dead Animals, as Anti Cartesian Statements,” Art History 22, no. 5 (1999): 705 27, [5]https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8365.00183.

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