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Un(friendly) Nature
Nothing is beautiful or loving or political aside from underground stems and aerial roots. (Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 15), A Thousand Plateaus)
No one can dispute the fact that the basic human needs, starting from the ability to live and breathe fresh air, to the food and medicines humans take, they get from nature and plants. Another lesser-known fact is that plants are alive, and not just alive in a sense that they represent equitable members of the eco-system, but they feel, communicate with each other, make friends and protect their families.
One of the scientists who explores the liveliness of nature, Peter Wohlleben, a German forester, in his ‘The Hidden Life of Trees' (2015) shared the idea of trees as social beings. His researches and observations have shown that:
Trees may recognise with their roots who are their friends, who are their families, where their kids are. Then they may also recognise trees that are not so welcome.
What is more important, none of this, as Wohlleben (2015) emphasizes, would be possible without the so-called ‘wood-wide web’, a fungal network in roots through which the trees send electrical signals. He compared this network to humans’ nerve system, because the roots react to all the stimuli around them, especially when they feel threatened. Apart from interacting with each other in isolation, trees also communicate about and to other species. Wohlleben (2015) mentioned the study of African acacia trees, which shows that trees release chemicals when giraffes attack them, and then these chemicals are spread through the air to warn other trees, which start to release toxic chemicals before giraffes have even come near them. Above all, most trees want to live socially, says Wohlleben. Trees don’t want to grow fast. They want to have companions. They want to live in social groups … they support each other (Wohlleben, 2015).
The idea about the emotional side of nature has gone viral on all the social media, in a way that people want to empathize with all the happenings in the word of nature. In this sense, the Facebook page became crowded with various events and seminars where different researchers offer help in connection with the natural world.
One of such seminars[i] I came across on Facebook is organized in Croatia by Damanhur association whose organizers promise it to be life-changing. Seminar topics cover the three worlds that are to be reunited: the world of animals, plants and the ghosts of nature. The seminar is suitable for anyone who feels the need to personally experience the direct communication with the plants. Of course, this experience costs some money, and its success can only be measured by the personal experiences of the attendees.
This idea goes even further because some people claim they can actually feel the emotions and cries of the nature around them. What is more, they have such a strong connection with nature, that they talk to trees and share their suffering.
A perfect example of such ‘eco fans’ I found on YouTube is a group called ‘EarthFirst’[i], who was found mourning deep in the woods of North Carolina. These people cried after the loss of trees due to humans’ carelessness. They feel a deep connection to trees and address them directly.
The examples mentioned above show that nowadays society shows a growing interest in nature and natural ecosystem. How come that after all these improvements in the fields of economy and technology, people want to come back to the nature and roots of civilization?
One of the possible explanations could be that people became aware of the fact that without nature, nothing else would exist. It has become obvious that humans are slowly but surely destroying the land they live on and live from. In his book called ‘Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations’, Montgomery (2007) emphasizes the role of soil in shaping the root of our existence. He tries to explain how Charles Darwin helped open the door for the modern view of soil as "the skin of the earth", in a sense that it represents the root of our existence, supporting our feet, our farms and our cities. Being the skin of the earth, the soil is, Montgomery concludes, really "the frontier between geology and biology”.
The whole biological enterprise of life outside the oceans depends on the nutrients soil produces and retains. (Montgomery (2007), Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations)
His book also reveals that we are running out of soil, especially because of the changes in farming practices in a way that “…conventional agricultural methods accelerate erosion well beyond soil production…” On one hand, our agriculture developed after modern mechanization and all the innovations in using various chemicals and pesticides. On the other hand, farmers around the world have already degraded and abandoned one-third of the world’s cropland which led to the frightening fact that “It only takes one good rainstorm when the soil is bare to lose a century’s worth of dirt” (Montgomery, 2007).
Wohlleben (2015) also mentioned the consequences of modern agriculture on plant communication:
However, when we step into farm fields, the vegetation becomes very quiet. Thanks to selective breeding, our cultivated plants have, for the most part, lost their ability to communicate above and below ground.
Wohlleben here emphasizes that the biggest reason why people cannot ‘hear’ nature is that they became completely blind to the consequences they make while using modern farming practices which result in the loss of soil and all types of plants.
Ligotti (2011) in his Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimescribe, goes even further with the description of the terrible consequences that happened after people have used the land for harvesting.
Above all these manifestations, however, was the fact that the earth of those harvested acres, especially in the area surrounding the scarecrow, was unnaturally warm for the season.
Ligotti takes a familiar and often haunting season of autumn and depicts it as something dangerous, even alive, with an ominous intent of its own. The reason he chose autumn is that it is the time of harvesting, and people then take from earth everything they can. But the question remains; does the earth want something in return? In essence, there is an old-age concept that the earth always demands a sacrifice. But Ligotti changed the perspective by telling the secret from the collective first-person viewpoint of the members of the community. And this also refers to all the readers, making them the members of that community. The readers suddenly become part of the events that happen to the community. What is more, this story shows that the world and nature much larger than what the human mind could understand. The consequences of human misbehavior resulted in a bizarre event; a scarecrow from the middle of the field became weirdly animated by a strange fungus-like substance growing out of the earth. This growth could not be cleaved by axes or other tools, nor could it be dug out of the earth. In the end, it was replaced by a bottomless pit that the community covered over with boards and dirt. The only character whose name was revealed was Mr Marble, who had an extraordinary connection with nature:
… Mr Marble had spoken of what he could read in the leaves, as if those fluttering scraps of lush colour were the page of a secret book in which he perused gold and crimson hieroglyphs.
The only person who could feel what was really going on in his community was Mr Marble, who managed to step out of the community as an individual who was able to figure out what the earth wants from him because he was deeply connected with the spirit of the season.
The soil motif also became very popular in art. Many artists recognized the importance of soil in creating the Earth’s land, and some of them even organized exhibitions directly or indirectly dedicated to soil.
Philip Beesley, Radiant Soil, ALIVE / EN VIE exhibition at Espace EDF Fondation, Paris, 2013.
This beautiful work of starts from the idea of soil as material that begets life and ties together the whole eco-system. In this sense, the work recreates the architecture of living systems by connecting extravagant cells including protocells, organic power cells, reticulated storage manifolds, and scent-lures to attract viewers.
But there are also some works of art which try to depict what happens if humans forget about the importance of the soil they live on and continuously degrade. One such artwork is Urs Fischer’s installation which gave prominence to dirt and debris.
Urs Fischer, You, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise Gallery, New York, 2007.
There is a big sign at the door that warns; ‘THE INSTALLATION IS PHYSICALLY DANGEROUS AND INHERENTLY INVOLVES THE RISK OF SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH’. This sign might be interpreted in a way that everything started from the soil and everything will return to dust. The contrast between the white walls which surround the dirt and the hole could be seen a warning sign of what could happen in the near future. ‘You’ also represents a place which is somewhere in-between, because when people enter, they are above and below, and indoor and outdoor at the same time.[iii]
Kamruzzaman Shadhin, Rooted in Soil, Alliance Francaise De Dhaka, Bangladesh
Kamruzzaman Shadhin[iv] is a visual artist from Bangladesh, who tries to express environmental and social issues through art. His work was created after the experience he had in a village called Molanipara, where he witnessed the negative effect on flora and fauna of the village after the minority has changed their lifestyle in a way that they started using pesticides and insecticides while employing new farming methods. After these people saw the advantages of modern agriculture, they became greedy and started destroying nature. For this reason, Shadhin designed more than 15 000 rats which depict human greed. Since they changed the natural flow of eco-system, one of the scariest consequences that occurred to the minority was the increase in the number of rats they used for hunting, and they were so widespread that they invaded people’s homes. The connection between rats and human carelessness to nature is also present in Grass’s novel The Rat, which consists of several stories about the human relationship with nature:
Where man had been, in every place he left, garbage remained. Even in his pursuit of the ultimate truth and quest for his God, he produced garbage. By his garbage, which lay stratum upon stratum, he could always be known, for more long-lived than man is his refuse. Garbage alone lives after him.
One of the intriguing events within the story happens when a female rat starts to show the narrator in a dream that the rats will take over the earth which is already destroyed by humans through contamination, deforestation and nuclear warfare. In the description of the posthuman area, the rats were mourning humans but on the other hand they recognized that when the humans disappeared, some positive changes happened; the earth started reviving, the air was clear again, and new creatures were born.
The topic of the weird happenings in nature is also present in the movies. Von Trier in his movie AntiChrist (2009) puts the focus on the mixture of extreme pain and enjoyment, brought by the characters of He and She in a place called Eden.
Scene from the film AntiChrist
‘She: Oak trees grow to be hundreds of years old. They only have to produce one single tree every hundred years in order to propagate. May sound banal to you but it was a big thing for me to realize that when I was up here with Nic. The acorns fell on the roof vent. They kept falling and falling. And die and die. And I understood that everything that used to be beautiful about Eden was perhaps hideous. Now I could hear what I couldn't hear before. The cry of all the things that are to die.
He: Acorns don't cry, you know that as well as I do. That's what fear is, thoughts distort reality. Not the other way around.’
In this male-female relationship, He is represented as a rational cognitive therapist, and She, in contrast, embraces the mysterious, uncanny energies of the unconscious and unknowable elemental forces. In this sense, She created a special relationship with the Eden, and can feel the pain of nature that surrounds them.
In one of many weird scenes, the character of He went through the wood when he encountered a talking fox who told him that "chaos reigns". Reason for this, as the director explains, is a miserable defence against elemental forces.
Such disturbing scenes of animals and the appearance of ‘The Beggars’ can be, according to Simmons (2015), related to Freud’s concept of the uncanny, or the familiar made strange. Considering the relationship between the uncanny and the mechanism of emotional repression, Freud (1919) writes:
If psychoanalytic theory is right in asserting that every affect arising from an emotional impulse – of whatever kind – is converted into fear by being repressed, it follows that among those things that are felt to be frightening there must be one group in which it can be shown that the frightening element is something that has been repressed and now returns. This species of the frightening would then constitute the uncanny, and it would be immaterial whether it was itself originally frightening or arose from another affect.
According to Freud’s logic, the frightening images of the animals including the deer trailing the dead fetus, the talking fox and the immortal crow might be the symbols of the emotions of grief, pain, and despair caused by the repression of Nic’s death. In other words, his refusal to mourn Nic and deal with his own emotions led He to throw himself into She’s cognitive therapy. Because of the repression of his emotions, He then attempted to establish emotional and psychological control over She in order to process his own emotions through her (Simmons, 2015).
Although there are many different perspectives that observe the relationship between nature and humans, one fact pervades them all - that the Earth would be uninhabitable if there were no the soil-making bacteria, and therefore one must not forget to take care of the soil he/she steps on.
[i] https://www.facebook.com/events/334025803834082/
[ii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElJFYwRtrH4
[iii] http://nymag.com/arts/art/reviews/41266/
[iv] http://www.daily-sun.com/magazine/details/174716/Rooted-in-Soil-/2016-10-14
Works cited
Deleuze, G., Guattari, F. (1987). “Rhizome: Introduction.” A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi. London: Bloomsbury. 7-13.
Freud, S (1919). The Uncanny. Retreived from: http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/freud1.pdf
Grass, G. (1986). The Rat. Luchterhand Literaturverlag.
Ligotti, T. (2011). “The Shadow at the Bottom of the World,” Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimescribe. New York: Penguin. 396-405.
Montgomery, D. R. (2007). “Skin of the Earth,” Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations. Los Angeles: University of California Press. 16-28.
Simmons, A. (2015). Antichrist (Devil's Advocates). Leighton Buzzard: Auteur
Von Trier, L. (2009). Antichrist (film)
Wohlleben, P. (2015) “The Language of Trees,” The Hidden Life of Trees. Vancouver: Greystone Books. 17-21.
Dijana Rožić
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Networking the abyss of technology
In this essay I will examine networking of the abyss of technology that humanity does everytime new technology is present. I will examine it on the examples of Source Code by director Duncan Jones and the text Panoramic Travel by Wolfgang Schivelbusch. Source Code leaves a lot of questions unanswered and that fact opens many understandings of the film and makes it that much more complicated. To fully compare the two works more plausible possibilities have to be examined. That is why before going into dealing with new technology it is necessary to define the meaning of the title of this essay and to go through the possible interpretations of Source Code.
Source Code was intended to function as a sort of time machine to solve crimes but if we look at the events of Source Code, the movie, few interpretations are possible and time travel is just a part of each of them. Firstly captain Colter Stevens himself thinks that the Source Code created a new world. ''Colter Stevens: You thought you were creating 8 minutes of a past event, but you're not. You've created a whole new world.'' (Jones) While travelling through time Source Code created a new world in which Stevens continues to live after saving everyone in that world and the other, ''original'' one. That option immediately creates another similar one. Everytime Stevens was sent back, Source Code created a new world. Just because he died in those realities does not mean that the reality ceased to exist without him. One of the last shots in the film shows the viewers a warped image of the world. That image could be understood as a representation of all the new worlds created by Source Code.
Another way of interpreting the events is if we look at Source Code as a tunnel to another dimension. In the infinite expanse of parallel universes Source Code managed to find a way to connect them and send Stevens there. That option is partially referenced in the movie: ''Source Code is not time travel. Rather, Source Code is time re-assignment. It gives us access to a parallel reality.'' (Jones)
If we strip the theories to basics, two options are available: the one in which Source Code creates and the one in which it is a tunnel. In both of them the technology used is something new and dangerous.
The word networking is defined in two ways. The first: ''the establishment or use of a computer network'' and the second: ''the exchange of information or services among individuals, groups, or institutions; specifically : the cultivation of productive relationships for employment or business'' (Merriam-Webster).
Looking at the first definition making connections is not difficult. Captain Colter Stevens is connected to the Source Code, he operates within the Source Code which is network-like, and we could even say that he connects, with the help of Source Code, to other realities. On the other hand a train is connected to a network of railways and in turn connects places spatially separated. While the train connects space, Source Code connects time or more likely parallel worlds. ''Colleen Goodwin: The program wasn't designed to alter the past. It was designed to affect the future.'' (Jones) If it, however, connects parallel worlds, its function would be much like that of a train with an added bonus of time travel. The way the train connects space is the way Source Code was intended to connect time. ''...the motion of the train through the landscape appeared as the motion of the landscape itself. The railroad choreographed the landscape. The motion of the train shrank space, and thus displayed in immediate succession objects and pieces of scenery that in their original spatiality belonged to separate realms'' (Schivelbusch, 60).
The other definition of networking is to ''exchange information or services among individuals, groups, or institutions; specifically : the cultivation of productive relationships for employment or business'' (Merriam-Webster). Stevens interacts on two different levels. He interacts and exchanges information with people from his own world and people from the past/different reality. The same could be said of anyone who travels by train. You need to interact with the person selling the tickets and the people working at the train station if you ask for directions or something similar (like Stevens interacts with scientists from Beleaguered Castle) and when you enter a train it can feel like entering a new reality in which you interact with the people on the train whether you speak to them or not.
The word abyss can have multiple meanings as well one of which is ''the bottomless gulf, pit, or chaos of the old cosmogonies'' (Merriam-Webster). Stevens is put inside Source Code, a kind of abyss or bottomless chasm if we consider that the movie states that he can be sent there again and again, as many times as the people from Beleaguered Castle want or need. Trains can be seen as operating in a seemingly endless network of railways connecting different places. Another definition states that the abyss is '' hell or the infernal regions conceived of as a bottomless pit'' or ''a very great difference between two people, things, or groups can be referred to as an abyss'' (Collins Dictionary). All of the definitions of the abyss can perhaps be seen best in Stevens conversation with dr. Rutledge. ''Dr. Rutledge: You know, many soldiers would find this preferable to death. The opportunity to continue serving their country. Colter Stevens: Have you... have you spent much time in battle, sir? Huh? Dr. Rutledge: That's immaterial. Colter Stevens: Any soldier I've ever served with would say that one death is service enough.'' (Jones) In this conversation we see a deep difference in opinion as well as a deep abyss in which Stevens is plunged into in the name of serving his country.
Dealing with any new technology goes through positive and negative phases. When we humans are presented with something new which changes our perception of the world we tend to react with fear and disagreement. Not only that but we usually take time to find a right and moral way of using that new technology. That may not apply to trains as much but it certainly applies to Source Code. If we take a drone as an example we see that the flying drones were first used as weapons and than after some time they started to be a mass produced thing we see in our everyday lives used mostly for fun. Panoramic Travel talks about losing the joy of travelling because of the train and it talks of dehumanizing the traveler as one of the first reactions to the railways.
On the other hand, Panoramic Travel also mentions that after some time people started to see something new, beautiful and exciting it that way of travelling. ''That is not a picturesque landscape destroyed by the railroad; on the contrary, it is an intrinsically monotonous landscape brought into an esthetically pleasing perspective by the railroad'' (Schivelbusch, 60). A kind of new technology is after a time seen as something positive. People have lost the fear of it and found out enough about it so that they can now find beauty in it. In a way humanity found a way out od the dark abyss of the railways. However ridiculous that may sound when compared to technology we have today.
Futurism, for example, relished in the ever changing environment at the time of the rise of railways. Futurism was ''a movement in art, music, and literature begun in Italy about 1909 and marked especially by an effort to give formal expression to the dynamic energy and movement of mechanical processes'' and it was ''a point of view that finds meaning or fulfillment in the future rather than in the past or present'' (Merriam Webster).
The train and Source Code, as was said before, function in a similar way. The train connects places while Source Code was intended to connect time. Human imagination leads humanity to new discoveries. What was once only a dream (travelling at the speed of a train) is now an everyday thing; we have even went further with planes, for example. That same imagination now turns to time travel and it is no wonder there are movies about it. And not just movies, we have different theories dealing with the physics and quantum physics of making such a thing possible. Holodeck, a room used by characters from Star Trek, is another form of technology that we could have and it uses a similar principle as Source Code. They both depend on having enough information about a place and time. Source Code takes its information from the experience from a dead person while Holodeck uses general information collected through history.
''If you have enough information about a part of the universe configured in a certain way, it can be the same as being in that part of the universe. The same with a person – people can be transmitted by conferring or reconfiguring information – and the quantum observer with sentience or consciousness can be moved along tracks in possible universes, experiencing different branches of the waveform, by being exposed to this information in a specific way'' (Fenzel).
Absence of proof, or obvious time travelers in our reality coincides with Source Code. ''Some versions of the many-worlds interpretation can be used to suggest that future humans have traveled back in time, but have traveled back to the meeting time and place in a parallel universe'' (Wikipedia).
Furthermore, the connection between the train and Source Code is present in the losing of the senses. While being sent ''back'' Stevens is shot through time or space if Source Code creates or connects parallel worlds. That process is clearly confusing for the traveler and Stevens is seen to have a moment of being lost before waking up in the train. ''The train was experienced as a projectile, and traveling on it, as being shot through the landscape – thus losing control of one’s senses'' (Schivelbusch, 54).
The way in which Source Code and the train both work can also be connected to the web of life. The train moves on a web of railways full of passengers, full of life while Stevens in the process of going ''back'' seems to go through a web of sorts. That web could represent the web of life and his placement being moved from one time to another, from one reality to another.
Another thing mentioned in Panoramic Travel is the boring aspect of travelling at that speed. ''...a quiet walk along not more than ten or twelve miles of road a day, is the most amusing of all travelling; and all travelling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity'' (Schivelbusch, 58). When it comes to dullness in Source Code it is also connected to moral implications of the story itself.
''Colter Stevens: There are hundreds of people on that train! Dr. Rutledge: Well, then check them out one by one. Doesn’t matter what you do to them. They’re already dead. Get to that gun and shoot someone if you have to. But get us some usable intel'' (Jones). Stevens is told that the passengers are irrelevant and that he should use any means necessary to complete his mission. He is given permission to do anything to those people, people who by his words at the end of the movie are real and continue to exist. If we think that everytime he goes back Source Code creates another world or is connected to another world, Stevens hurts multiple passengers and is not affected by it. ''The flowers by the side od the road are no longer flowers but flecks, or rather streaks, of red or white; there are no longer any points, everything becomes a streak...'' (Schivelbusch, 55).
His communication with the government from Beleaguered Castle is another point of low morality of the new technology as is the concept of sending a dead soldier back in time to die again and again, even if it is for the safety of others.
''The government communicates with him by viewscreens – those are the “shadows on the wall” that Gyllenhaal perceives as real, but which offer only a distorted idea of what his situation in the world really is. The prisoners in Plato’s allegory of the cave have been in there long enough to not have a memory of what the “real world” was like. This raises the question of what the “real world” actually is for Captain Stevens'' (Fenzel).
Even Panoramic Travel talks about losing the grip on reality while travelling with a train. To be inserted into something so new and foreign causes travelers to lose an aspect of their reality. They are no longer sure of the space they occupy nor are they sure of the place they are going through. ''The foreground enabled the traveler to relate to the landscape through which he was moving... He saw himself as part of the foreground... Now velocity dissolved the foreground and the traveler lost that aspect. He was removed from that ‘total space’...'' (Schivelbusch, 63).
Stevens never agreed to the project and his almost dead body was used against his wishes. When he asks about his state or the state of his friends and family he is given no answers and is treated as an object rather than a person. ''The traveler who sat inside that projectile ceased to be a traveler and became, as noted in a popular metaphor of the century, a mere parcel'' (Schivelbusch, 54).
In conclusion, dealing with technology and change is something humans have always dealt with and will continue to do so. Dealing with it may cause fear as it has before and it may feel as if we were plunged into a deep and dark abyss from which there is no way out. However, humans have an innate need to explore and that need is the thing that makes us look at the deep dark abyss with curious eyes and it makes us ''boldly go where no one has gone before'' (Star Trek).
Lea Štambuk
Works cited:
Peter Fenzel, The Pseudoscientific Philosophy of Source Code, www.overthinkingit.com/2011/04/05/source-code-pseudoscience/
Source Code. Dir Duncan Jones, Vendome Pictures, 2011.
Star Trek. Gene Roddenberry, Paramount Domestic Television
Wolfgang Schivelbusch, “Panoramic Travel,” The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century, University of California Press, 1987. 52-69
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel
www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/abyss
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abyss
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/futurism
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/networking
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The Shimmer as a metaphor
The Shimmer is at the centre of the 2018 science fiction psychological horror film Annihilation. **Spoilers ahead!** A mysterious anomaly called the Shimmer appeared in the U.S. and its surface is slowly spreading. The mystery part being that it is unclear at the start of the film what it really is because no expedition inside has been successful, the only survivors are Lena and her husband Kane whose story is told in retrospect. What follows are massive changes within the anomaly which affect the sustainability of humans and foreshadow destruction of the world known to us. This essay will reflect upon the premise that a threat to Holocene resurgence could potentially lead to annihilation and therefore the Shimmer can be seen as a metaphor for that threat. The term Holocene resurgence here used is the one used and explained by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing in Threat to Holocene Resurgence Is a Threat to Livability.
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing explains the term Holocene resurgence as an interplay of forest and field which is essential to integrational livability for humans and their domesticates as well as other species. She stresses the need for multispecies resurgence, meaning the remaking of livable landscapes of many organisms in order to achieve sustainability. Sustainability is, in general, avoidance of the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance and that balance serves in passing a livable Earth to future generations. Tsing points out in her essay that those future generations are both human and nonhuman and that many of us tend to forget that. We, as humans, tend to think about our own preservation and not enough about the fact that the nonhuman generations of animals and plants affect us as well, as much as we do them. However, she does point out something interesting and positive: after disturbances livable ecologies often come back if given time. She uses the example of a forest fire to prove this argument. After a forest fire everything is burnt and dead, black, covered in ashes, yet somehow after a period of time sprouting seedlings start to appear in the ashes and regrow a forest. Of course such comebacks take many years to happen, but in the case of the film Annihilation nature reacts slightly differently to a disturbance.
The disturbance mentioned is the appearance of the anomaly, the Shimmer, which is connected to a fall of a meteor and therefore suspected to have an extra-terrestrial impact on the surface of Earth. Viewers get to discover changes once the female team goes into the Shimmer, into the glistening veil which seems to hide what is behind. This is the first time that a female team is sent, all scientists, each with their own specialty and with their own life struggles which unravel as the plot continues and seem to haunt them inside in different ways. Once they enter the veil we can immediately see that there is what we would call an anomaly, because nature is very much alive after the hit which should have damaged it or destroyed the plants and animals in the area. It seems to have skipped that step of destruction or simply sped up the step of regrowth. It has recovered extraordinarily and even evolved beyond what is known to happen in nature. It has mutated into new forms, trees and flowers of new colours and patterns.
The scene in which they enter the Shimmer and see this, what only can be described as a new overwhelming ecology can be viewed as an unmanageable spread of mutated ecology which we soon find out has replaced original nature by completely altering it. Tsing points out that humans have already started doing alterations in nature by creating plantations, simplified ecologies which are designed to create assets for future investments, but in reaching that goal they kill everything that they do not recognize as assets. She says that plantations sponsor new ecologies of proliferation, that there is an unmanageable spread of plantation which leads to augmented life in the form of disease and pollution and that proliferation threatens life on Earth.
Same can be seen in a simpler example of moving, transporting plants from one continent to another, which we are doing ever since the trade business exists, centuries ago. These plants, which were creating and living in their own unique ecologies are now being moved to new ones where they are forced to change to remain alive or to overpower the existing ecology. Therefore, they are changing ecology on both ends and with the rate they are spreading by human transport they are permanently erasing some sustainable ecologies and harming Holocene resurgence.
Something seemingly so beautiful, interesting, new, useful in nature does not mean that its consequences can be overlooked. The film shows this same change occurring more rapidly. Although, in today’s world we can see the changes in nature occurring much faster than ever before in history. This was also confirmed in World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice and the list of problems which include: ozone depletion, freshwater availability, marine life depletion, ocean dead zones, forest loss, biodiversity destruction, climate change, and continued human population growth. It would be easy to say that we are focusing on the problems, the negative side only, but it is a fact that the negative facts outweigh the positive.
Soon after entering the Shimmer, the cellular-biology professor Lena, the main female character, realizes that these mutations are like nothing she has ever seen, cells multiplying too fast, cancerous cells which are changing nature, but not killing it; and finally that these mutations which are happening to the environment are happening to them inside the Shimmer too. They suspect this by noticing movement on their skin, but it takes a while before they see the full impact it has on them. Before they reach that point they discover that it is not only plants that have mutated in this once swamp area, but animals too.
They see animals merged with plants and they are attacked by an alligator which has teeth of a shark and a bear which keeps the voice of its victims. Here, the group realizes how unnatural these mutations really are and stay fearful of what they might discover next. However, not all team members stay afraid, as one of them, the one who is suicidal embraces the nature around by becoming a part of it and turning into a humanoid plant which they discover has happened to some people who were left in there.
It is unclear why she is able to embrace it and have the people who were in the affected area during the hit also embraced it or if not, why has nature taken only some individuals and not all in such a human-plant form. It cannot be argued that the nature is accepting to human desire in this instance because everyone else is also affected with a cellular mutation.
The full impact on humans is seen first in the compound where the girls see a video of Kane and his team members cutting open a man to show his mutated insides, and later in the lighthouse where Lena watches the video in which her husband kills himself in order to spare the world of the mutation which is caused in him from being in this place. In the lighthouse Lena sees the alien which lacks a consciousness, but wants to annihilate human biology and rebuild it from a molecular level. This is the core of the Shimmer. This is why the Shimmer can be seen as a threat to Holocene resurgence.
On another note, Tsing says that we are in the period of Anthropocene, which is denoting the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment. But there is no clear line when did that age begin. Is it from domestication? From modern projects? Where does it end? Lena in the film destroys the Shimmer, but once outside we see the spark of the Shimmer in her eye and we are left wondering what happened to the changes in her blood. It is left ambiguous. Is she human, or is she perhaps more likely a changed being? Can this be the step to annihilation that is to come and can anything be done to stop it?
Human imagination and ability to picture this in a form of a film is fascinating. However, it is even more fascinating how we take this as an example of pure imagination, surrealism, something that perhaps took a smidge of a real problem and amplified it to mainstream entertainment, but that smidge as something irrelevant. Instead of seeing it as something that can never happen to us, it should shake us, awaken us, that the smidge is the core of our world and that we face these problems already and we shouldn't turn our head the other way. What makes me come to such opinions is also the fact that the movie did not reach theatres, even though it was intended for it. In the words of Guy Lodge, who writes for the Guardian.com, mainstream audiences found Garland’s film overly chilly and intellectually complex. The film is an imaginative piece none the less. And we are still left with the question is there hope for Holocene resurgence as a vital part of sustainability of our world, or has the period of Anthropocene started, not just a threat, but an inevitable annihilation? One thing remains clear, in the words from World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice, humanity is pushing Earth's ecosystems beyond their capacities to support the web of life.
Ana Olujić
References:
1. “World Scientists Warning to Humanity,” Bioscience, 13 November 2017.
2. Anna Tsing, “Threat to Holocene Resurgence Is a Threat to Livability,” The Anthropology of Sustainability. Mark Brightman and Jerome Lewis, eds. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2017.
3. dir. Alex Garland, “Annihilation“, R, 1h 55 min, 2018.
4. Guy Lodge, “Was Annihilation too brainy for the box office?“, The Guardian, 10 Mar 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/mar/10/annihilation-netflix-release-alex-garland-ex-machina
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The automated human being in times of Digitalisation
The discussion following an article in „The Guardian“, published on the 6.12.2017, raised an additional question for me which was not discussed by the involved parties and media. Contrary to the opinion that the croatian Border Police did not fulfill their duties on the one hand and the assurance that all laws where followed by the respective officers on the other hand. I want to consider the failure of the human beings involved in this incident. An incident which at least in my opinion hints towards a much bigger problem our society and it's social beings are going to face in times in which Digitalisation influences all parts of our work and private life.
For merging these topics into one omnipresent problem everyone is facing nowadays, I first have to outline several characteristics of our society, which intellectuals like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels have forshadowed already more than 100 years ago.1
Today we live in a workcentred world where work is the central social mechanism to distribute wealth and money, which is then used to satisfy our material needs. An idividual's job is his or her priority function in the society, it determines our value for the society, we measure and compare each other on that basis. Our jobs determine our function in society and represent our status, they contribute to our identities and form several aspects of it.2 Specifically they become our masks, which we carry out and show the world.
Who does not know the question: „And what is it you do?“ A questions that does not aim to elicit what you are doing in your free time or what kind of a person you consider yourself to be, but primarly and most of the times only seeks for finding out your profession. As soon as you revealed yourself to being a doctor, teacher or engineer, you will be allocated to certain characteristics that itself fit in the overall image a society developed of this profession. A human being that works as a doctor will always be perceived as a doctor by his or her environment. Certain characteristics allocated to the image of a doctor in the respective society will be observed way more frequently than others which may not fit into the image of a doctor.
The identity put on us by society, our surroundings and ourselves allowes a human being to hide behind it, e.g. a human being who fulfills the function of an officer of the croatian Border Police was able send a refugee family back to Serbia in the middle of the night on 21st of November in 2017. A decision that was followed by a tragedy as six year old Madina Hussiny was mortally hit by a train.3 Unlike others I will not focus on what the croatian Border Police, as an institution has done wrong or what they where obliged to do by EU law, but on what has to happen to a human being in order to not be able to realize that it is wrong on many levels to send a family with little children back into the night in the middle of the winter.
Are we so distant from each other that we are not able to see through the classifications put on us by society? Can a Border Police Officer nowadays not see the human counterpart in a refugee, a counterpart that dreams of the same basic things?
Karl Marx already outlined a future society in the mid 19th century with the aim that this society should allow it's social beings „to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.”.4 Marx followed the theory that the technological progress would lead to higher production of bigger amounts of commodities, with less human capital necessary. He wanted to minimize the value creating factors of work and maximize the personal freedom of individuals to use their workforce in ways they would choose themselves, creating worklife that would represent our human nature, a puzzle of different interests, of assets and weaknesses. The reduction to one function that determines our value for the society and our status in the society is inhuman. We have to stop comparing ourselves and measuring our value in criterias that every machine is better in.
We are facing new questions and problems nowadays than Marx was facing 150 years ago and still his theories and thoughts on society and economy seem to be more and more relevant for understanding ourselves, how the system we created works and what kind of solutions we should try to find.
In Madina Hussiny's case, every machine or algorythm could have come to the conclusion to send them back to Serbia, since they tried to cross the border illegally definetely a logical decision. Only a human could have decided to keep them safe for the night! A decision that needs empathy and compassion to be made, both clearly human qualities, also a decision that would have saved her life, at least for that night. Obviously these qualities do not benefit a Border Police Officer in fulfilling his or her function in this society, otherwise this little girl would still be alive. This decision was made because the respective officers probably had certain orders on dealing with situations like these. Most impotantly this decision was made because it is not required in most jobs to use our brains for finding an answer ourselves but we follow answers someone else is providing for us, this someone most of the times sits in a big building far away and never experiences the situation in person. When a traffic accident happens or a plane crashes, the official statement considering the reasons often include the phrase „human failure“, unfortunately in Madina's case the topic of the discussion is whether the institution of the croatian Border Police failed or whether the authorities gave out wrong guidelines to their officers.
Every psyochologist can verify that we human beings are considered to have some sort of decisive force, we are able to determine what is the right course of action based on the experience and role models we had during our lifes. Most private people know what they want for themselves and for the people close to them, unfortunately this seems to change when we fulfill our function in society, like these Officers that were most probably following the guidelines of their superiors, a chain of command that continues.
The problematic point is, that we have our brains for a reason, we are individuals for a reason, our greatest strength comes from our need for freedom and making our own decisions, as does our greatest weakness.
If the automatisation of the human being, especially considering work force and work life which both strongly influence our private life and perception of people, is the declared goal of our society, the Digitalisation will create way bigger problems as we are able to understand so far.
Machines have the potential to do up to 78% of predictable physical work in the future, which is only one aspect we have to consider.5 The question is whether we can continue comparing ouselves in criterias in which machines are clearly better, e.g. logical decisions, physical work force and simply following orders? Machines complete these tasks better and more efficient than a human being could ever do, still we continue measuring our value for society in the value of the professions we represent.
The answer to the Industrialisation in the 19th century and the problems it created was the social state, a state that cares for the distribution of wealth, benefits social care and health care to ideally all of it's citizens. The percentage of the overall profit that is distributed to an individual was since then based on the work force an individual has, on how many tasks an individual can complete in a certain time. The more tasks are completed or the more important a task is, the bigger the amount of our exchange currency, money, this individual earns. A system that will not function in the future anymore, since now competitors are present in all parts of society. Competitors we can not compete with if we play by the same rules and measure our value in criterias that are not primarly human. We needed almost 200 years to find satisfying answers to the social questions produced by the Industrialisation, we will not have another 200 years to deal with the questions raised by Digitalisation.
I want to conclude with the point that we have to reinvent our system of values on which we evaluate ourselves and our contribution to society towards a system that understands that we are not comparable in terms of automatisated behaviour. A system that fits our human nature and allows a freer assessment of human work force and work life. Every human being should be enabled to find his or her place in society without having to fit in an image of the respective profession or simply following orders to be considered a successful and value creating factor. We are not just factors or little cogwheels in the machine, we are the inventors of this machinery and we should not get stuck in it or let it determine our lifes. To find the right answers to the problem of restructuring and rethinking our society will be the most important task of our generation.
Footnotes:
1 Engels & Marx, 1976
2 "Zukunft der Arbeit: Vollautomatischer Kommunismus - zeit.de", 2018
3 Graham-Harrison, 2018
4 Engels &Marx, 1976
5 "Where machines could replace humans--and where they can’t (yet)", 2018
References:
Print media:
Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1976). The German ideology. Moscow: Progress Publishers
Electronic media:
Zukunft der Arbeit: Vollautomatischer Kommunismus - zeit.de. Retrieved 06 March 2018, from http://www.zeit.de/kultur/2016-12/automatisierung-arbeitsgesellschaft-roboter-utopie-kommunismus
Graham-Harrison, E. (2018). 'They treated her like a dog': tragedy of the six-year-old killed at Croatian border. the Guardian. Retrieved 27 February 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/08/they-treated-her-like-a-dog-tragedy-of-the-six-year-old-killed-at-croatian-border
Where machines could replace humans--and where they can’t (yet). (2018). McKinsey & Company. Retrieved 6 March 2018, from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/digital-mckinsey/our-insights/where-machines-could-replace-humans-and-where-they-cant-yet
Semjon Fischer
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The Axis of Evil: On Petroleum, Politics, Wars & Ecology
Humanity today is witnessing different phenomena, ranging from climate changes that resulted in major floods, eartquakes, storms and hurricanes to ecological disasters and numerous wars. The world is literally burning, we are burning our planet with carelessness and killing ourselves in wars for “greater causes“. Is the fire that is burning us our creation, is it something that we have caused by forgetting who we are and where we are? Could we have envisioned it? This seminar will be a kind of time travel, a constant comparison of past and present – what was written and said and is it happening and why? What was the evil in the past and what is it today: from Gog and Magog to petroleum, wars and ecological disasters – with the goal to increase even a tiny bit the respect for our planet and the love for our neighbor.
Gog and Magog from past to future
Gog and Magog appears among different books and files from the past belonging to different nations or religions – one thing is similar in all of them: Gog and Magog is an embodiment, a form of evil. Hebrew Bible defines the term as “individuals, peoples or lands; a prophesied enemy nation of God's people according to the Book of Ezekiel, and according to Genesis, one of the nations descended from Japheth, son of Noah“. Jewish eschatology depicts it as enemies to be defeated by the Messiah while Christianity interprets Gog and Magog as allies of Satan contrasted to God at the end of the millenium.
Thomas de Kent: Gog and Magog consuming humans
In the Christian Bible, Gog and Magog are mentioned on several occasions as, for example, in Ezekiel (38: 14 – 16 ): “Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say to Gog, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “On that day when My people Israel dwell safely, will you not know it? Then you will come from your place out of the far north, you and many peoples with you, all of them riding on horses, a great company and a mighty army. You will come up against My people Israel like a cloud, to cover the land. It will be in the latter days that I will bring you against My land, so that the nations may know Me, when I am hallowed in you, O Gog, before their eyes.” or in the Book of Revelation (20: 7 – 9): “And when the thousand years are finished, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall come forth to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to the war: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up over the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down out of heaven, and devoured them”. The Bible announces a great war (maybe third World War?), or a great issue, disaster that will overcome inhabitants of the Earth in the future (ecological disaster?). Gog and Magog are a part of metaphors in political discourse through time. In 1971, Ronald Reagan, gouverner of California at the time, held a speech where he points at Russia being the Gog and Magog of his time: "Ezekiel tells us that Gog, the nation that will lead all of the other powers of darkness against Israel, will come out of the north. Biblical scholars have been saying for generations that Gog must be Russia. What other powerful nation is to the north of Israel? None. But it didn't seem to make sense before the Russian revolution, when Russia was a Christian country. Now it does, now that Russia has become Communistic and atheistic, now that Russia has set itself against God. Now it fits the description of Gog perfectly.“. Thirty two years later, in 2003, US invasion on Iraq is looming and the president G. W. Bush is on the phone with the French president J. Chirac trying to convince him that France should join the “coalition of the willing“ against Saddam Hussein and tells him that “the prophecy is being fulfilled“ refering to the Gog and Magog. French president was intrigued with the constatation and immediately contacted Thomas Römer, a theology professor and an expert in the Old Testament from the University of Laussane, Switzerland. Chirac asked Römer to write a paper on Gog and Magog, and he explains: “ "In chapters 38 and 39, a global army is formed to fight a final battle in Israel. That battle is ordained by God, in order to rid the world of His enemies, and thus herald in a new age. The axis of evil is composed mostly of nations to the north of Israel, and led by Gog.”. Römer uses the term “axis of evil“ which was first used by G. W. Bush in his annual message, State of the Union , in 2002 and further on, often to describe governments that he accused of sponsoring terrorism, seeking weapons of mass destruction or nuclear weapon (Iran, Iraq and North Korea).
Bush's "axis of evil" comprised Iran, Iraq, and North Korea (red).
Another past to present relation is definitely the area of controversy in geographical sense. When we take a look on the map, searching for the borders of Iraq and Iran where the focus of the war was, or Syria where the focus is today, it overlaps with Biblical Israel, the promised land of God's people. In the Bible, Israel is where today Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, part of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, part of Egypt and the Gaza strip are today. These are all countries that we can hear about in the news almost every day. Comparing that with the petroleum map of the Middle East, gives an interesting motif – this is the area where the concentration of the petroleum is the largest in the whole world.
Borders of Biblical Israel
Petroleum map of Middle East
Petroleum
Petroleum and natural gas formation started approximately 300 or 400 years ago in the ocean where tiny sea plants and animals died and were buried on the ocean floor, covered by layers of silt and sand over time. In the last 50 to 100 milion years the pressure applied on the remains buried them deeper and deeper and the enormous heat that appeared as a byproduct of pressure, turned the remains into oil and gas. Today, we drill down through layers of sand, silt and rock to reach the rock formation that contains oil and gas deposits.
We can already see that the petroleum is almost as old as our planet is and that it reaches from past to nowdays. It also reaches from the underground to surface, like a mythical creature designed in the far past to appear in the future and becaome a threat to the inhabitants of the Earth. Today, petroleum practically controls the life on Earth: price of petroleum dictates the price of absolutely everything else, petroleum reserves dictate the distribution of power and even the rate of currency. All of these things are desirable to every country leader so we can easily conclude that petroleum causes and has caused many wars and disastres around the world, especially in the area of the Middle East. Reza Negarestani comments the idea of petroleum in modern world and says: “according to the classic theory of fossil fuels, petroleum was formed as a tellurian entity under unimaginable pressure and heat in the absence of oxygen and between the strata, in absolute isolation. A typical, Oedipal case, then, a typical case of repression. Petroleum’s Hadean formation developed a satanic sentience through the politics of in-between which invariably wells up through a God-complex deposited in the strata.”. He refers to the petroleum as “a satanic sentience“ that manipulates and oppresses the world. Another issue that raises when it comes to petroleum is the number of ecological disasters that occured in the last 50 years. Oil spills are a major issue today endangering not only the life on human kind on Earth but also the natural balance in animal and plant world. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is an industrial disaster that began on April 20th 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico and it is the largest marine oil spill in the history of petroleum industry. US government estimated that 780 000 m3 of oil were discharged in the ocean and it was not sealed untill September 19th 2010. Due to the months – long spill along with the effects of cleanup activities, extensive damage to marine and wildlife habitats and fisihing and tourism industries was reported. There were 11 people killed by the oil spill and 17 people injured. Researches in 2012 showed that the leaking is still present, and in 2013 was reported that dolphins along with other marine life are dying at six times the normal rate.
NASA Terra satelite: Deepwater Horizont oil spill (2010)
Frontline: The Spill (2010)
Desert as a battlefield
In the Book of Exodus, the Biblical writer is sending a warning to the God's people: ”(...) everything must be leveled to fulfill the omnipresence and oneness of the Divine (...)”, Moses guided the people through desert for 40 ears until they reached the promised land – desert is in the Bible standing as a strong symbol of the battle and temptations that a man has to overcome in order to enjoy God's mercy. Jihadi radical think of desert as of an ideal battlefield: to desertify the Earth is to make the Earth ready for change in the name of Divine's monopoly. Desert is a militant horizontality. The Gulf War that lasted from 1990 to 1991 was codenamed Operation Desert Shield, and was a war waged by coalition of 35 countries led by the US against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion on Kuwait. The war culminated with the operation Desert Storm (January/February 1991) which restored monarchy in Kuwait, but destructed both Kuwait and Iraqi infrastructure.
Air forces attack during the Gulf War
Stickiness and the burning world
Petroleum as an underworld fits perfectly, even Negarestani confirms that it is a Hadean structure – an undergroung monster hidden deep underneath the surface of Earth, now coming to manipulate the weaker and to pollute our planet. It is also a hyperobject – it is both in the past and in the present, it is both underneath and above the surface of the Earth, it is both a supstance that comes from the dead organisms and the supstance that kills the living ones. It manipulates people to start wars over the petroleum fields. This leads us to the war as a hyperobject – war that is started by two sides affects the whole humanity, war that is supposed to defend the weak ones is a war for power and possesion. A war that thinks of a desert as an ideal battlefield, takes place in populated areas, kills civilians and innocent people and leaves nothing but ashes and the desert.
Damask, the capital of Syria before the Syrian War
Damask, the capital of Syria today
References:
Reza Negarestani, “Paleopetrology: From Gog-Magog Axis to Petropunkism.”Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials, re.Press, 2008, 9-39.
Brian Henessy, ”Do we need to worry about Gog and Magog?” Israel Today: October 19th 2015, WEB: http://www.israeltoday.co.il/NewsItem/tabid/178/nid/27599/Default.aspx
Frank Jacobs, ”How Dubya Used the Book of Ezekiel as a Blueprint for the Iraq War” Big think: December 2016, WEB: http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/gog-and-magog-or-dubyas-biblical-mind-map
Samuel Tomlinson, “ Apocalypse Damascus: Bombed-out houses and rubble for as far as the eye can see... this shattered landscape is all that remains of one suburb in Syria's capital“ Daily Mail Online: December 2015, WEB: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3371675/Bombed-houses-rubble-far-eye-apocalyptic-landscape-remains-one-region-Syrian-capital-Damascus.html
Frontline: The Spill, dir. Marcela Gaviria 2010
Marijana Rako
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Heroes from the Underworld
During this course I have learnt that things may not be as they seem and that every piece of art, be it literature or any other type of art, should be explored a bit more and be brought to some new light. In that spirit, I chose to write about a famous children’s animated series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (to be precise, the 2003 series). Many of us have grown up watching the adventures of four anthropomorphic turtles who are guided through their lives by the useful advice of a nice old talking rat and who live together as a family in the sewer beneath New York City. Being put this way, it seems that there is not much to add to it, but every cartoon we used to watch when we were children seems a lot different when we recall it later in life. This can also be applied to Ninja Turtles, who (in my opinion) can be used as an interesting example of a piece of contemporary art which could be explored in connection to the Underworld and ecological problems of today.
Sewer as the Underworld
The first and most obvious notion of the Underworld is the fact that the protagonists live in the sewer – beneath the surface of the earth and away from the light of day. The sewer can be seen as the unknown underworld, something that we are not closely familiar with, but know that it exists and is only a manhole away. The sewer tunnels represent a home to the turtles and their sensei Master Splinter, but if we try to find out a little bit more about the sewer tunnels, we can see that the life in the underground is not a mere fiction. There are actually people who live in the sewer just like the protagonists of the series.
One of the most famous examples of underground homes is in Las Vegas, where a thousand people created their homes in the dark tunnels under the sparkling surface. When we think of Las Vegas, we usually instantly visualise big glittering billboards and colourful advertisements which sparkle and draw our attention to many luxurious hotels and casinos, but this city has its dark side underneath this sparkling surface full of everyday bustle. This dark side reveals itself in 200 miles of sewer tunnels who are a "home to 1,000 people who eke out a living in the strip’s dark underbelly" ("The Tunnel People" 2010). That "underbelly" is the complete opposite of the surface of the city. The city which is for some people heavenly oasis on earth hides a version of hell under its surface.
So why do those people willingly descend into the underground to live in hell? All of them have their reasons for such decisions, but the people interviewed in the Daily Mail article have revealed their stories and they seem to have experienced hell even before descending into those gloomy tunnels. A man named Steven told the reporter that he was forced into the tunnels "after his heroin addiction led to him losing his job" ("The Tunnel People" 2010). From this we can see that his terrible decisions have turned his life on the surface into hell and he turned to the underground to find consolation and shelter. This situation reminded me of one moment in Don DeLillo’s novel Underworld, where the novel’s protagonist describes how Jeff told him about the people going to uranium mines in order to cure themselves. According to Jeff’s story "they sit in tunnels under rangeland in Montana, where the radon emissions are many hundreds of times higher than the federal safety level" (DeLillo 1997: 795). The people from the novel were trying to find cure for their illnesses in a truly weird way because radioactivity is known to be really harmful for living creatures, but they had nothing else to try and that seems to be the last hope for them. We could also look at living in the sewer tunnels under Las Vegas as the last hope for people who do not have anything left in this world. They were forced into those tunnels just like the people from the novel and the tunnels represent the last chance for curing their lives. They had nowhere else to go so as a result, they descended into the sewer. In a similar manner we could also look at the protagonists of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. They descended into the sewer because Master Splinter knew that the world above would not accept them and New York City’s sewer represents their last chance for survival. That is why Splinter tells the turtles: "You four are different in ways that surface dwellers will never understand" (TMNT 2003: S01E01). From these words and everything mentioned above, we can notice some indications of incarceration. Physically nothing stops the tunnel people and the turtles from going out on the surface, but they are somehow doomed to the underground world in a way that they are aware of the fact that the outside world would not and does not welcome them. Their destinies are affected by the fact that they are different than the rest of the world, but both tunnel people and ninja turtles might work their way out of the underground. They can break the partial incarceration by attempting to integrate themselves into society. The turtles do that by fighting crime on the streets of New York in the night and the tunnel people could try to regain their lives by earning some money and getting their old jobs back. In those cases understanding and support of the society for such individuals are important, but we can see the lack of such thinking even in the animated series because ninja turtles are seen as weird creatures even though they help the community. Because of this, the partial incarceration of both ninja turtles and tunnel people seems to be always present and they can rarely get away.
The next people interviewed in the Daily Mail article were Amy and Junior, who "lost their home when they became addicted to drugs after the death of their son Brady at only four months old" ("The Tunnel People" 2010). Their story is even worse than Steven’s, but we can see the similarity in the fact that the drug addiction has forced them into such horrible living conditions. They also lost their home on the surface so they turned to the underground to find shelter. Matthew O’Brien, a reporter who discovered the tunnel people on one occasion, says that "these are normal people of all ages who’ve lost their way, generally after a tragic event (...) Many are war veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress" ("The Tunnel People" 2010). From these examples we can see that life in the sewer is not just something that we watch for fun on the television, but it is a horrible reality for some people. Some terrible set of circumstances has forced them to live like animals in inhumane conditions.
Tunnel people have created homes for themselves by using furniture and clothes that people have thrown away. This way, they are somehow recycling a fair part of the stuff that most people consider to be garbage, as Steven has put it this way: "One man’s junk is another man’s gold" ("The Tunnel People" 2010). They reuse the stuff that other people throw away and try to make the sewer tunnels look like home. There is even a part of the tunnels which serves the purpose of an art gallery. That part is completely covered in graffiti and it could be said that it represents the art of their Underworld. It is still sometimes arguable if graffiti are considered to be art, but it is a fact that they are the closest thing to art that the tunnel people have. The graffiti section of the tunnels looks like the subterranean gallery of urban art which somehow both reflects the sorrow of the people who live there and enlightens the dark tunnels with vivid colours. It is questionable if this could be considered as beautiful, but even though the graffiti are in an ugly place and some of them look really grotesque, there is something beautiful in the fact that art finds its place everywhere in many different shapes.
The fact that most people consider graffiti as pure vandalism also somehow fits in the whole picture because there is probably nothing that would represent the artistic expression of groups of marginalised people in a more appropriate way. They ended in the tunnels because of their inappropriate behaviour which got them into troubles and they created a whole new city underground. As every city has its galleries, their subterranean city has its unusual spot where grotesque art finds its place and reflects the spirit of the city’s inhabitants. Both the tunnels and the graffiti "gallery" could be considered as the cultural landscape of this group of people. As Theodor Adorno puts it, cultural landscape is "an artifactitious domain that must at first seem totally opposed to natural beauty" (1997: 64). We can see that it really is in opposition to natural beauty, but the question is if it is only at first. There seems to be nothing natural in the environment in which those people live, not only at first, but also at every other time we look at it. On the other hand, what is natural here is the instinct of survival, which is the main cause for the occurrence of the underground city, and the urge to make the environment look more appealing, which is the reason for the attempts of making a gallery and decorating living rooms in the sewer. From this we could make out that there is something natural in the background of this and that justifies the usage of the term cultural landscape in this example.
Furthermore, Adorno continues to develop the idea of cultural landscape by saying that historical works are "considered beautiful that have some relation to their geographical setting" (1997: 64) and he uses hillside towns which are related to their geographical environment by using its stone as an example. In this sense, we could look at the underground city also as being related to its setting through the use of second-hand furniture, decorations and clothes. The setting here is not the nature, but another construct made by humans and tunnel people have taken some parts from it to make another construct underneath it. By using materials from the surface they integrate themselves in a way into the society that has rejected them earlier. This integration is maybe not visible at first, but their existence serves as a reminder to the others that the tunnels are waiting for them if they lose their way. This oxymoron situation makes them social rejects and integrates their existence in the overall picture both at the same time.
In the first episode of season one of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Splinter gives a lesson to the turtles and tells them: "Your path in life will not be an easy one. The outside world will not be a friendly place for you" (TMNT 2003: S01E01). These sentences could partially be applied to the tunnel people of Las Vegas because their path in life is certainly not an easy one and the outside world is definitively not a friendly place for them. It can be partially applied because some of them have chosen their path and it is only their fault for getting themselves into such troubles, but some of them were struck by tragedies which affected them greatly and they were not able to cope with the situation. These tragedies and wrong paths are the reasons for the fact that "the destitute and hopeless have constructed a community beneath the city and have even dedicated one section of tunnels to an art gallery filled with intricate graffiti" ("The Tunnel People" 2010).
The Origin of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Threats to Eco-systems
The reason why the turtles and Splinter are doomed to life in the underground is the fact that they are different from any other living creature on earth and the cause of that is actually a mini ecological disaster. They used to be normal turtles when they were born, but according to Splinter’s story, they were accidentally exposed to some sort of a mutagen. A little boy was holding them and then a truck accident almost occurred. A truck with the logo T.C.R.I. almost hit a blind man crossing the road and a man tried to help him hurriedly so he accidentally pushed the boy who has then dropped his little turtles on the floor. A bottle of some ooze fell out from the truck and spilled all over the turtles that fell into the sewer drain. The logo is significant because it stands for Techno Cosmic Research Institute which performs laboratory testing and the truck was transferring some dangerous chemicals with which the animals got in contact during the accident. After the accident Splinter took the turtles and found them shelter in the sewer. He also got exposed to the mutagen so all of them started gaining some of human body characteristics and developed intelligence and speech (TMNT 2003: S01E03).
The story about these turtles that become ninjas and save the city from the villains is an interesting idea for a TV series, but on the other hand, it makes us think about what happens to the real living beings when they get exposed to such chemicals or radiation. It is a question if we really are aware of the threats that chemicals pose to the eco-systems on earth today. Science has advanced a lot and we seem to use it more for bad purposes than for something that would help us keep our environment safe and sound. The levels of pollution all around the world have been rising and that affects the wildlife greatly, but many people do not seem to be interested in those problems. We see a motif of pollution and exposure of animals to chemicals in the animated series in a highly unlikely way where animals gain human characteristics, but accidents with chemicals and radiation happen also in real life with different consequences for living beings.
Some parallels could be drawn between the story of ninja turtles’ origin and the part of DeLillo’s final chapter of Underworld where the protagonist speaks about deformations caused by radiation. The protagonist and his friend were spending some time in the city of Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan and their guide Viktor Maltsev decided to take them to the so called Museum of Misshapens. That place is a part of the Medical Institute and it displays the horribly deformed foetuses in different display cases, some even in pickle jars: "There is the two-headed specimen. There is the single head that is twice the size of the body. There is the normal head that is located in the wrong place, perched on the right shoulder" (DeLillo 1997: 792). The author shocks us by giving these descriptions so simply and the fact that the foetuses are created by human activities which destroy nature makes us aware of the fact that we are destroying ourselves slowly. Even though this is a fiction novel, the message of this part is a strong one and we should become aware of the dangers of nuclear weapons as well as of chemical testing before we get to witness such horrible occurrences. Furthermore, DeLillo continues to shock us with detailed descriptions of people affected by radiation. He talks about Viktor who takes the protagonist and his friend Brian in the clinic for victims of radiation, which he has visited four times, and then proceeds to describe the victims:
This is a man who is trying to merchandise nuclear explosions – using safer methods, no doubt – and he comes here to challenge himself perhaps, to prove to himself he is not blind to the consequences. It is the victims who are blind. It is the boy with skin where his eyes ought to be, a bolus of spongy flesh, oddly like a mushroom cap, springing from each brow. It is the bald-headed children standing along a wall in their underwear, waiting to be examined. It is the man with the growth beneath his chin, a thing with a life of its own, embryonic and pulsing. It is the dwarf girl (...) It is the cheerful cretin who walks the halls with his arms folded. It is the woman with features intact but only half a face somehow, everything fitted into a tilted arc that floats above her shoulders like the crescent moon (1997: 793).
From this we can see that Viktor may represent the whole humankind because he continues doing his job sometimes oblivious of what is happening to the people, but at some points in time his conscience wakes up and he tries to prove to himself that he is aware of the threats that are posed to these people and of their horrible misfortune. After describing the reasons of Viktor’s visit to the clinic, DeLillo continues describing the people affected by radiation as if that is something normal. The simplicity with which he talks about these people is actually disturbing because he describes their deformations as if they are something normal. What is even more horrifying is the fact that these deformations were not the result of an accident, but Viktor says that the Russian Red Army detonated hydrogen bombs and left a hundred villagers around only to see what effect on people it would have (DeLillo 1997: 793). This part of the novel seems to be a critique of the modern warfare and the society as a whole in a way that it shows how far the development of weapons and its testing might go, if they have not gone too far already.
When talking about the disastrous strength of radioactivity, we cannot talk only about nuclear weapons because more damage to the environment and the people has been done due to accidents. The most famous accident that has ever occurred is the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant which has released "400 times more radioactivity in the atmosphere than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945" (Mousseau 2016). According to professor Mousseau, "radiation exposure has caused genetic damage and increased mutation rates in many organisms in the Chernobyl region" (2016). Furthermore, he says that birds and mammals have cataracts in their eyes and smaller brains due to being exposed to ionizing radiation in air, food and water. Human survivors of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had also suffered from these consequences. Tumours are also obvious on the birds from areas of high radiation, just like developmental abnormalities in some insects and plants and the populations of many species in highly contaminated areas have shrunk (Mousseau 2016).
From these results of the research conducted we can see that deformations and mutations are really present in the wildlife and that it is not just fiction. The things we read about or watch on television are far more real than they seem to us. All of that seems so far from us, but the effects of radioactive pollution are highly dangerous for all of us as they can spread really far. The most recent nuclear disaster happened in 2011 in Fukushima, Japan and many areas close to it were affected by radiation. Now we see that this is not something that is under our control and that these things happen even in the 21st century, a period when many people think that we can rule the world completely and keep the things under control. From these accidents we should learn that we have created something that is much stronger than us and that it might be deadly not only for us, but also for other innocent living beings on earth.
Even though we had our chances, little did we learn from these disasters. According to professor Mousseau, there are still more than 400 nuclear reactors in operation all around the world and around 65 were under construction in 2016. Also, more than 165 were planned to be built at that time (2016). From these numbers we can see that we continued playing with the nature and our lives instead of turning to some better renewable energy sources. We keep on getting shocked and disgusted when reading about deformations (both real and fictional), but nuclear reactors keep sprouting and laboratory tests are being conducted anyway. It is a fact that there are more accidents to come and that "all operating nuclear power plants are generating large quantities of nuclear waste that will need to be stored for thousands of years to come" (Mousseau 2016). This waste is the problem that needs to be dealt with when accidents happen because it all goes into the atmosphere, soil and water and causes severe pollution. Some people got an idea how to get rid of the nuclear waste for a long time and it resulted in the process of creating of Onkalo waste repository in Finland on the island of Olkiluoto. It is planned to consist of long tunnels which would go far underground and nuclear waste would be disposed there for a hundred years (Into Eternity 2010). We can find some resemblance here with the already mentioned going underground of the tunnel people and the turtles. They descended into the underground because they had nowhere else to go on the surface of the earth and the same thing happens here with the waste. We have nowhere else to put it where it would not cause great problems, but deep in the underground. It is actually an attempt of hiding what we have created after we have realised how badly it affects life on the surface.
When mentioning waste, we could take into consideration the fact that the sewer is also a place where the waste is disposed and in that light we could analyse the life in the sewer. In this sense, ninja turtles could be seen as chemical or nuclear waste which should be hidden underground, away from the light of day and out of sight. Even though they are away from our sight, it does not mean that they are not there (except the fact that they are fictional characters from an animated series) and the turtles show their existence when they fight the criminals on the surface. Furthermore, they can also be seen as the waste of the society, or better to say as something that the society has disposed of due to physical deformations which cause fear among the human population.
In this essay Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were seen as something deeper than just a children’s TV series with which we used to spend our weekend mornings. The fact that they dwell in the sewer allows the connection to the Underworld and opens up a whole new world in the real life, the world of people who share similar destiny with the fictional characters. Living in the underground is their reality and we are sometimes blind to the fact that such a thing exists under the glittering lights of one of the most famous cities in the world. Furthermore, the turtles are condemned to the sewer because of their mutations which were caused by human-made chemicals. Seeing it this way, they are being punished for being something that man has created. The fact that they are a result of an accident makes them a chemical disaster and some parallels can be drawn between them and mutated animals in areas of high radiation. When we think of that, we can see how badly we affect the environment and its inhabitants, including us as well. We look at the people who live underground as some weirdoes and even consider them dangerous, but we might also be forced to live underground in some bunkers because, as Master Splinter has put it nicely, "the world above is a dangerous place."
Marija Močić
References:
Adorno, Theodor (1997). "Natural Beauty", Aesthetic Theory.
DeLillo, Don (1997). "Epilogue: Das Kapital", Underworld.
Mousseau, Timothy A. (2016). "At Chernobyl and Fukushima, radioactivity has seriously harmed wildlife".
"The tunnel people of Las Vegas: How 1,000 live in flooded labyrinth under Sin City's shimmering strip". Daily Mail, 3 November 2010
Into Eternity: A Film for the Future. Dir. Michael Madsen, Atmo Media Corporation, 2010.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Executive producer: Gary Richardson, Viacom Media Networks, 2003.
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The Importance of Including Hyperobjects in Literature and Film
The question regarding purpose of art has already been widely discussed, but in this essay I would like to focus mainly on the role which literature and film have in omnipresent, global issues. Here I mainly refer to the global warming and nuclear war as important and influential hyperobjects of today. I would like to argue that the purpose of art is not only to entertain us, to be beautiful and pleasant to the eye, as it is still commonly believed, but rather that it has a more important role for the society – to spread knowledge and truth, to make people think about important issues and to encourage them into action. In order to develop my thesis, I will rely on the philosophy of Timothy Morton and Jacques Derrida, connecting them to fiction novels – J. VanderMeer’s Annihilation (2014) and J. G. Ballard’s The Drought (1968) and documentary films Into Eternity: A Film for the Future (2010) and Home (2009).
Hyperobjects
Global issues that I mentioned above can also be called, according to T. Morton, hyperobjects. He best explains this concept in his book Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World:
‘’I coined the term hyperobjects to refer to things that are massively distributed in time and space relative to humans. […] They are viscous, which means that they “stick” to beings that are involved with them. They are nonlocal; in other words, any “local manifestation” of a hyperobject is not directly the hyperobject. They involve profoundly different temporalities than the human-scale ones we are used to. […] And they exhibit their effects interobjectively; that is, they can be detected in a space that consists of interrelationships between aesthetic properties of objects’’ (Morton 2013: 1).
If we take global warming as an example of a hyperobject, we realize that it really is all around us, but difficult to comprehend fully. It is viscous, because nobody can escape from it - it is a part of our reality and every human being is involved. Global warming is also nonlocal because it is impossible to place it in a certain time period or to try and imagine simultaneously all the parts of the world where it can be seen or every animal species that is affected by it. We can possibly see some segments of global warming, for example some footage of a polar bear starving to death as a result of melting Arctic ice, but we can never see the full picture.
It is hard to imagine something that is so many times bigger than ourselves and our ability to comprehend time and space. An average lifetime of a human being is incomparably shorter than the time in which climate changes were and are happening. And lastly, global warming offers many examples of interobjectivity – ‘’the way in which nothing is ever experienced directly, but only as mediated through other entities in some shared sensual space’’ (Morton 2013: 86). This means that we can only experience certain aspects or manifestations of the global warming, for example the acid rain, but the acid rain is not the global warming itself. Similar line of reasoning can be applied to the example of nuclear war which is discussed in J. Derrida’s essay No Apocalypse, Not Now (Full Speed Ahead, Seven Missiles, Seven Missives). In this essay he discusses the role of language and communicating information when it comes to the subject of nuclear war:
‘’Nuclear weaponry depends, more than any weaponry in the past, it seems, upon structures of information and communication, structures of language, including non-vocalizable language, structures of codes and graphic decoding. Butthe phenomenon is fabulously textual also to the extent that, for the moment, a nuclear war has not taken place: one can only talk and write about it. […] It has never occurred, itself; it is a non-event’’ (Derrida 1984: 23).
I find this quote to be one of the best explanations of the role of literature as a means of predicting and describing a non-event - something that cannot be easily imagined and understood by all people (as it is also the case with global warming). Through literature, nuclear war can be presented and become an important topic for discussion although it is usually something that people do not feel comfortable thinking about. But, nuclear war is an elusive concept that needs to be communicated. Here I would like to point out that, although there is an apparent difference between the global warming and the nuclear war in that the first is very much real and is happening at the moment, and the second is an ubiquitous possibility, both of them are hyperobjects. Nuclear war is a hyperobject in a sense that all the conditions needed for it to happen already exist and, if it does happen, it would be a global disaster. Thus, if we think about nuclear war, we must think of it as of a hyperobject because, if it actually happens, it would fit into the hyperobject definition perfectly. It would be viscious because all the people in the world would feel its consequences, directly or indirectly. It would also be nonlocal simply because it is not in its nature to manifest its effects only on some specific locations. And it would also be interobjective because most people would not experience it directly but through some indirect manifestations, such as diseases. Derrida emphasizes the role of literature later on in the essay:
‘’Nuclear war has not taken place, it is a speculation, an invention in the sense of a fable or an invention to be invented in order to make a place for it or to prevent it from taking place (as much invention is needed for the one as for the other), and for the moment all this is only literature’’ (Derrida 1984: 28).
Derrida argues that literature has an important role in making a place for the nuclear war to happen or in preventing it from happening. Literature, like art, serves as a tool for expressing different attitudes towards important issues, it provokes discussions and evokes emotions. Not writing about nuclear war would then mean that we are hiding from the truth, and as Morton also pointed out, ‘’hyperobjects are real whether or not someone is thinking of them’’ (Morton 2013: 2). This is why I consider novels which deal with the problems of global warming and nuclear war to be important - they make readers think about these issues and act upon them. My viewpoint is probably too optimistic, as some consider that there is nothing that can be done to decrease the disaster but, before I talk about different points of view, I will first present the aforementioned novels.
Annihilation and The Drought as predictions of future
Annihilation is a science fiction novel which features a group of twelve expeditors who attempt to do a research of a so-called Area X. This area is a place where weird things happen and the laws of nature that are familiar to humans do not apply. Nobody from the previous expeditions came back home, and if they did, they would be completely different people. The interconnection of human and non-human is so close in this novel that it is sometimes impossible to decide which is which. The novel is filled with the weird and unpredictable events which awaken reader’s imagination. In the Area X, expeditors find a tunnel which goes deep down into the ground and which presents a kind of a hyperobject which is hard to describe or explain. All we know is that it is huge, alive, confusing and scary. People in the Area X went through many different transformations for which they were unprepared. They did not know exactly what they were venturing into and what the consequences of the expedition would be. This situation in which expeditors found themselves in the novel resembles the situation in our world today. Climate changes are forcing us to transform and adapt to the new situation. Most people know very little about the problems that climate changes carry, and that is mainly why I argue that art which brings about these issues is needed. The changes that are happening in our world are still progressing relatively slowly and that is why it is sometimes hard to estimate the scope of their effects. The biologist in the novel experienced something similar when she was faced with the Crawler – an unidentified creature living inside of the tunnel:
‘’But the longer I stared at it, the less comprehensible the creature became. The more it became something alien to me, and the more I had a sense that I knew nothing at all - about nature, about ecosystems’’ (VanderMeer 2014: 88).
I understood this quote, and the whole novel actually, as a warning to start questioning our relationship with the nature and the way we treat it. If we take the Crawler as a symbol of something alien, something we have never seen or experienced before, then we can compare it to the nuclear war and the climate changes as well. Only when we realize that we do not know enough about these issues and about the direction in which we are heading when it comes to them will we be able to change our approaches. When the biologist came closer to the Crawler, she couldn’t comprehend its colour, then she was drowning in it unable to reach the surface, afterwards it started changing shape and structure and she felt like she was being attacked. Her chaotic experience reminds me of people who were struck by ecological disasters like tsunamis or earthquakes – unprepared and frightened. This is why I found Annihilation to be a prediction and a warning for the future where we will probably have even more disastrous catastrophes.
Another science fiction novel, The Drought, was written in 1964, much earlier that Annihilation, and thus in this context presents a more progressive outlook for the future events. In this novel there are no inconceivable creatures or invented places like in Annihilation, in fact, the setting and the problems illustrated in the novel are very likely to become reality somewhere in near future. It is a novel about global disaster (obviously the drought), but also about personal problems that characters find themselves in because of the new and unexpected situation.
‘’With the death of the river, so would vanish any contact between those stranded on the drained floor’’ (Ballard 1968: 11).
Failure of landscape is simultaneously accompanied with the failures in people’s lives and their relationships. In this way the relationship between people and their environment is foregrounded, directing readers to pay attention to the ways in which characters behave in relation to the nature. The drought brings about certain problems which characters have never had to deal with before. They started questioning their own existence and the purpose of their lives. Suddenly they became detached from their homes, from their friends and families and, finally, from themselves:
‘’Each of them would soon literally be an island in an archipelago drained of time’’ (Ballard 1968: 12).
Soon enough, the time did not matter anymore and any sense of it had disappeared. The only concern was to find clear water and survive. They even started changing physically together with the environment - their hair turned almost white and their skin was sunburnt. Each of the characters in the novel had their own coping mechanism which enabled them to deal with drought. Reading the novel, we can identify ourselves with one of the characters and try to predict how we would have behaved in an apocalyptic world. We can also think about how our sense of time has changed together with globalization and modernization. Maybe we can go even further and ask ourselves whether we really are becoming alienated from the nature and from other people. In a sense, this novel is interactive because it enables us to enter the spirit of a certain character, unlike in the Annihilation where there are too many unrealistic events and creatures. In The Drought there are some characters which refuse to cope with the problem, but rather they decide to ignore it and to dwell in the past memories, and there are others who imagine what the future might be carrying for them and attempt to find the solution for the drought or, at least, to escape from it. The ones who survived the drought were the ones who learned how to adapt to the new situation and who fought for survival believing that better days are on the way. This is also something we can identify with in today’s world. Some of us like to discuss the problems related to climate changes and other important issues, feeling that we can actually make an effort and change the situation for the better. Others, however, refuse to even think about contemporary hyperobjects because they feel like it is a waste of time and there is nothing that one person can do to change things. I will explore these opposed approaches in the paragraph that follows.
‘’It’s too late to be a pessimist’’
‘’When it comes to global warming, finding a good reason for tackling it may be one of the greatest factors inhibiting actually doing anything about it. There are just not enough reasons. Global warming is what some philosophers have called a wicked problem: this is a problem that one can understand perfectly, but for which there is no rational solution’’ (Morton 2013: 135).
This bold statement that Morton defends in his book on hyperobjects is actually one of the most common excuses for people who are naturally too lethargic to cope with problems. I do not agree that there are not enough reasons for tackling the problem of global warming. The way I see it, it is just that there are too many reasons to choose from and it is frightening and off-putting. Some of the reasons could be the ones that we hear about almost on daily basis: global temperature rise, sea level rise, water pollution or numerous catastrophes such as tsunamis, rainstorms or wildfires. These are consequences of climate changes and there are scientific facts showing precise evidences that prove it. Not believing in them or ignoring them would be a highly irresponsible thing to do.
Trying to find only one ‘’rational solution’’ for global warming would be pointless because there is not only one single cause of it. But, there are some effective solutions which have to be implemented continuously and which take time to show any significant results. As I have already mentioned, the time span in which global warming has been in action cannot even be compared with the life span of a human being and this is why we have to think ahead and leave examples of positive shifts for the future generations. But, Morton has a different opinion:
‘’Once we become aware of the long-term effects of hyperobjects, we cannot abolish this awareness, and so it corrodes our ability to make firm decisions in the present’’ (Morton 2013: 140).
Although very persuasive and believable, Morton is also clearly pessimistic in a sense that he gave up on a possibility of making a change in the present. He believes that firm decisions are hard to make in the given circumstances and I would have to agree with that, but, I would also argue that his statement is too exclusive and that firm decisions are possible. If we think back about Annihilation, we see that this novel goes along with Morton’s thought. Namely, in this novel, answers and solutions are not given. Readers do not get any kind of consolation or explanation on what is actually Area X, what is the tunnel and the creature living inside of it, what exactly happened to the previous expeditors and will this case ever be solved. There are some hints on what happened to the expeditors, i.e. they became some sort of an animal, an object and so on, but the questions of how and why this happened are left open for the debate. I believe that this can be compared to the case presented in the film Into Eternity: A Film for the Future where the final answers are also not given. However, the documentary is about a real life situation. The main concern of the film is how to leave a warning for future generations not to open Onkalo – underground nuclear waste repository in Finland which is still in the process of building and should be sealed in 2100. The storyteller in the film warns a future man never to open Onkalo for the safety of the planet, but the question is whether the future man will understand the signs and warnings, and whether he will follow them. There is no guarantee that the depository will endure all of the climate changes that are to come in next decades and therefore, some scientists believe building Onkalo is not a permanent solution. Expeditors in Annihilation also knew that they would not survive if they enter Area X, but they went there anyway. And, neither in the novel nor in the film is the optimistic solution for the problem given.
Although most of the predictions for future in a sense of climate changes are not very bright, there are some examples of novels and studies which bring consolation and hope. One of them is, strangely enough, The Drought. Even though throughout the whole novel there were some traces of hope, there was no real sign that the Earth was going to recover. Every now and then an animal or two would appear out of nowhere as a sign of life and hope. Only the ones who believed in positive outcome could find the consolation in animals which survived. As a kind of reward for their faith, at the very end of the novel it finally started to rain. There was no logical explanation on how that could happen, but it did. I understood this uplifting ending as a message never to give up on our planet and to keep an optimistic attitude towards Earth’s ability of resurgence.
This encouraging ending reminded me of a documentary film Home in which many ecosystems in different parts of the world are portrayed and linked. It shows us how nature has its balanced and perfectly arranged ways of maintaining biodiversity of life on Earth. However, for the most part, the film is about the ways in which people are destroying this balance:
‘’But after relying on a muscle power for so long, humankind found a way to tap into the energy very deep into the Earth. […] With oil began the era of humans who break free of the shackles of time. […] And in fifty years, in a single lifetime, the Earth has been more radically changed than by all previous generations of humanity’’ (Arthus-Bertrand 2009).
The voice in the film tells a story of how the things were before humans started exploiting natural resources and how it all changed when people were no longer satisfied with what they got through agriculture and farming. The face of our planet was changing faster and faster and human’s greed became a destructive force. People started using more machines, building bigger cities and larger factories, but Earth could not keep up with these changes: rivers dried down, whole forests were cut, the ozone layer got thinner, and many more negative consequences followed. And because so many disappointing and depressing examples of disastrous effects of human activities on Earth were presented, the optimistic ending of the film had an even more uplifting effect to it. The following quote is just one part of it:
‘’Must we always build walls to break the chain of human solidarity, separate people and protect the happiness of some from the misery of others? It’s too late to be a pessimist. I know that a single human can knock down every wall. It’s too late to be a pessimist. Worldwide four children out of five attend school. Never has learning been given to so many human beings. […] Governments have acted to protect nearly 2% of the world’s territorial waters. It’s not much but it’s two times more than ten years ago. The first national parks were created just over a century ago. […] This harmony between humans and nature can become the rule, no longer the exception’’ (Arthus-Bertrand 2009).
The speech goes on giving many positive examples of the countries worldwide which have found different ways of protecting nature and natural resources. It is also very encouraging to see that a single human being can contribute by getting actively involved in these matters and, for example, joining an environmental protection organisation. Even Timothy Morton admitted that ‘’hyperobjects make hypocrites of us all’’ (Morton 2013: 136), but in the film Home it is shown that it does not have to be that way. There are people who devote their whole lives in order to help wildlife survive and they can be called anything but hypocrites.
It is true that when we understand the concept of hyperobjects, we feel powerless in a sense that we think we could not possibly deal with such a big issue. But, instead of thinking about solving the whole problem, we can just think about doing smaller positive changes, one at a time, and art could serve as an inspiration for it. At the end I would like to point out that when it comes to the topic of global warming or nuclear war it is important to know facts about these subjects in order to be able to actively involve into discussions. Whether we have an optimistic or pessimistic outlook should not affect our will to explore, understand, communicate and act on these problems. The influence of any form of art, and not just literature and film that I talked about, on the way that people think is unquestionable. Other than the factual knowledge we gain through, for example, reading literature or watching documentaries, we also widen our horizons and use our imagination for predicting possible future scenarios.
Works cited and referenced
1. Ballard, J. G. (1968). The Drought. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books Ltd.
2. Derrida, J. (1984). No Apocalypse, Not Now (Full Speed Ahead, Seven Missiles, Seven Missives). Diacritics, 14(2), 20-31.
3. Morton, T. (2013). Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
4. VanderMeer, J. (2014). Annihilation. New York City, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
5. Home. Dir. Yann Arthus-Bertrand. EuropaCorp, 2009.
6. Into Eternity: A Film for the Future. Dir. Michael Madsen, Atmo Media Corporation, 2010.
Edita Jerončić
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Homes – Underworlds of Reality
What does the home mean to us? How is that home connected with our (in)sensibility for the nature around us? The further discussion will deal with the concept of house and its representations and symbolism for us, human beings. The house will be presented as home connected with the feelings of safety and peace; a place where the memories and experiences are being recollected; a place within which we distance ourselves building a life which consists of both material and non-material things. The life in home and home-like places pulls people inside both physically and mentally separating them from the outside world; stimulating the further formation of delusional and secluded worlds. There I will discuss the results of seclusion which is the alienation of the human being from the world around him. Homes and home-like places reflect our social status while proportionally distancing ourselves from the nature.
When we think about our homes, we can notice the warm feelings which it usually brings to us. There is a subconscious representation and true perception of our houses. ''Transcending our memories of all the houses in which we have found shelter, above and beyond all the houses we have dreamed we lived in, can we isolate an intimate, concrete essence that would be a justification of the uncommon value of all of our images of protected intimacy?'' (Bachelard, 4) When we think of our homes we think of our shelters which are as valuable as our experience of living inside of it. According to the Bachelard, the non I protects the I which is the concrete evidence of the value of the inhabited places. (5) The house for itself is something material and insignificant until put in relation to us personally. That is the point where it gains the certain value and sense of protection. We give the empty house a meaning building the illusion of that protection and familiarity due to our imagination.
Bachelard indicates that a house constitutes a body of images that give mankind proofs of illusions of stability.(1994:17) The house's characteristics of protection and stability do not exist per se. ''...If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamers, the house allows one to dream in peace.'' (Bachelard, 1994:6)
That is, feeling protected in a house we are able to focus on our growth without being blocked by fears. So, the definition of a house given by the authors would be: ''In short, the house we were born in has engraved within us the hierarchy of the various functions of inhabitating. We are the diagram of the functions of inhabitating that particular house, and all the other houses are but variations on a fundamental theme.'' (Bachelard, 1994:15)
The meaning and significance of one's safety place is also presented in Kafka's ''The Burrow''. Here we are introduced with a mole-like creature and its preoccupation with the burrow he lives in. The burrow is the typical subterranean of an animal and its safe place. The creature isn't necessarily animal and his (personified or not) thoughts and behavior indicate the human-like creature. The forehead he uses as a tool for digging through the tunnels might be interpreted as an intelligence or mind: "I was glad when the blood came, for that was proof that the walls were beginning to harden. I richly paid for my Castle Keep." (Kafka, 1971:357) His mental efforts put in building the perfect burrow show the results. This creature can be identified with all the creatures seeking to find or build a perfect safe place. Like all living creatures, this one also has the urge to escape the world into its non-realistic safe place. The burrow with its innermost sanctuary, the Castle Keep, is his painfully constructed bastion against the animosity of the world around him. The outside world is a stranger who intrudes our peace. Here, the Kafka's character tries to reach the perfection. He fights against irrationality trying to making it as rational as possible. Therefore, the rationality equals perfection while irrationality equals imperfection. The imperfections are not desirable and therefore, there should be none of them.
According to Bachelard, house is called ''a material paradise''. It contains our material world onto which we reflect our memories and give them a special meaning. We life fixations, usually those of happiness, and we comfort ourselves by reliving memories of protection (Bachelard, 1994:8). The poetic depth of the space is what attracts us the most. This is where our material and non-material world collides and provides warm and secure feelings. But like Kafka's character says in one moment: ''At any moment it may be shattered and then all will be over.'' (Kafka, 1971:356) All of it is illusion and built upon an imagination It is a fragile system which has elusive basis for its existence. In another second it can be a place where the threat penetrates and ruins everything. That is why reaching the perfection of that place is necessary, even essential. The more effort we put in making it perfect we are one step closer to feeling secure.
The author Bachelard give the example of the attic as a symbol: ''But in the daydream itself, the recollection of moments of confined, simple , shut-in space are experiences of heartwarming space, of a space that does not seek to become extended but would like above all still to be possessed. In the past, the attic may have seemed too small, it may have seemed cold in the winter and hot in summer. Now, however, in memory recaptured through daydreams, it is hard to say though what syncretism the attic is at once small and large, warm and cool, always comforting.'' (1994:10) The same duality is present in the Kafka's The Burrow, a small, dark place, yet comfortable and secure. Homes come in all forms and sizes but in any of them we are able to build dreams and illusions of protection and comfort.
That seclusion leads to isolation and distance from everything that is undesirable to enter. The Kafka's character deals with the problem of imperfect isolation throughout the whole story: ''...it was there that I began my burrow, at a time when I had no hope of ever completing it according to my plans; I began, half in play, at that corner, and so my first joy in labor found riotous satisfaction there in a labyrinthine burrow which at the time seemed to me the crown of all burrows, but which I judge today, perhaps with more justice, to be too much of an idle tour de force, not really worthy of the rest of the burrow, and though perhaps theoretically brilliant -- here is my main entrance, I said in those days, ironically addressing my invisible enemies and seeing them all already caught and stifled in the outer labyrinth -- is in reality a flimsy piece of jugglery that would hardly withstand a serious attack or the struggles of an enemy fighting for his life.'' (Kafka, 1971:360) The entrance is the point which separates his home and his reality from the outer world and outer reality. He can never exclude himself completely from the outside world; therefore, he is unable to reach the perfection. In other words, the impossibility of creating a perfect inner world goes hand in hand with the impossibility of shutting himself off completely.
This fact is pointing out another fact – that one cannot shut himself and have a full control over the things around him. He might have an illusion of control but the outside world is a world on its own which can end up as a destructive force in our small inner world. ''And the danger is by no means a fanciful one, but very real. It need not be any particular enemy that is provoked to pursue me, it may very well be some chance innocent little creature, some disgusting little beast which follows me out of curiosity, and thus, without knowing it, becomes the leader of all the world against me; nor need it be even that, it may be -- and that would be just as bad, indeed in some respects worse -- it may be someone of my own kind, a connoisseur and prizer of burrows, a hermit, a lover of peace, but all the same a filthy scoundrel who wishes to be housed where he has not built.'' (Kafka, 1971:365)
No matter how deep we escape the outer world into our underworld, the outer world is there and affects our life constantly, at least in the form of fear we experience. ''But nobody comes and I am left to my own resources. Perpetually obsessed by the sheer difficulty of the attempt, I lose much of my timidity, I no longer attempt even to appear to avoid the entrance, but make a hobby of prowling around it; by now it is almost as if I were the enemy spying out a suitable opportunity for successfully breaking in.'' (Kafka, 1971:365) In this case the burrow starts to feel as a betrayal, as a disappointment because of the possible entrance. He concludes: ''...is one ever free from anxieties inside it? These anxieties are different from ordinary ones, prouder, richer in content, often long repressed, but in their destructive effects they are perhaps much the same as the anxieties that existence in the outer world gives rise to.'' (1971:367) The truth is, one is never away from all the things of which the outside world consists of. The interweaving of these two worlds is constant ad real.
''I intend now to alter my methods. I shall dig a wide and carefully constructed trench in the direction of the noise and not cease from digging until, independent of all theories, I find the real cause of the noise. Then I shall eradicate it, if that is within my power, and if it is not, at least I shall know the truth. That truth will bring me either peace or despair, but whether the one or the other, it will be beyond doubt or question. This decision strengthens me.'' (Kafka, 1971:376)
This is the purpose that keeps the character going. Fighting for a better home is a common thing among all the living creatures. There is an everlasting motivation to make our homes and safe places better. ''Deep stillness; how lovely it is here, outside there nobody troubles about my burrow, everybody has his own affairs, which have no connection with me; how have I managed to achieve this? Here under the mosscovering is perhaps the only place in my burrow now where I can listen for hours and hear nothing.'' (Kafka, 1971:379) Being completely secluded from the outside world is obviously impossible and there are only attempts for achieving it. Therefore, being completely secluded and not involved in anything which comes from the outside world can be accomplished only in death.
The weak point in our lives is shown in Bachelard's essay: ''At times we think we know ourselves in time, when all we know is a sequence of fixations in the spaces of the being's stability - a being who does not want to melt away, and who, even in the past, when he sets out in search of things past, wants time to ''suspend'' its flight.'' (1994:8) Home is the place where we leave our mark and which brings our signet for a while. The common fear of death makes us feel we need to stop the time in some material form and the house is the best one which contains us saved in time. Sense of protection is the basis for our existence since our biggest fear is the fear of death; of vanishing without a trace; of being forgotten.
Bachelard connects the image of home with the Jung's dual image: ''Here the conscious acts like a man who hearing a suspicious noise in the cellar, hurries in the attic and, finding no burglars there decides, consequently, that the noise was pure imagination. In reality, this prudent man did not dare to venture into the cellar.'' (1994:19) The same can be interpreted in the context of Kafka's creature which stays in the cellar, and although it is empty, he is ready to confront the potential enemy. The cellar and its danger become his obsession and the comfort at the same time. The isolation is comforting but the outside world is always there lurking.
When thinking about the importance of our homes we have to take into an account some other fact about our homes. Today's houses are growing bigger, getting higher; adding additional yards around and therefore inevitably reflects our social statuses. There is a question whether there is a connection between the luxury of the house and the social isolation leading to alienation from the nature. Homes became shelters long ago, but they also gradually became a shelter from the nature and society.
Rebecca Riggs talks about this topic in her essay which describes Perth's house styles and living seen from the above. The central issue in this case is the pool and its significance in such society. ''Step out in that thin hour to see stars drowning in the gardens – every waterbody brims with the stars.'' (Riggs, 2010:13) The landscape of Perth is filled with pools. What does that say about homes? They are getting bigger and bigger trying to bring relevant pieces of nature inside while rejecting and isolating from the rest. Bringing a pool in the garden is just one more step to taking into control one more natural aspect in our isolated and protected home. ''These pools then, exist within matrices of meaning that go deeper than their superficial codes divulge; they exceed their function as designators of class status and privileged regimes of the body.'' (Riggs, 2010:15) The author here takes home to another level by presenting it as a place which put nature in human control and territorialisation; picking out the parts of it which are selfishly beneficial for us and leaving out the rest which is not. There the author poses a question if the water from the pool is really water claiming: Despite the fact that a pool can be made up of all water, it clearly marks an elision of nature...'' (Riggs, 2010:20). The fact is that we cannot define where the natural and artificial water begins and ends but the point is in the human's free and irresponsible taking of nature under control for selfish purposes and being disinterested for global picture.
Backyard Pools, Perth
At this point starts the ecological and environmental insensibility. Riggs points that in a sentence: ''In the garden we are too busy acting to stop and consider how we should be feeling about the nature around us.'' (2010:16) The illusion of security, but also power, is carefully built in our houses. The result is that we are completely self-centered and inward oriented creatures which lack perceptibility of the real world around them.
The same can be found in The Burrow where the creature is entirely oriented towards himself becoming completely obsessive. His burrow is imperfect and that is his only preoccupation while everything outside of it presents an enemy. He experiences the constant fear that the outside world could enter his inner world: ''I can find nothing, no matter how hard I search, or it may be that I find too much.'' (Kafka, 1971:372)
That this issue is in progression we see in the fact that houses are no longer our only home where we build our comfort. Consciously or subconsciously that separation we made long time ago is growing bigger and starts to take different forms. In modern times we started to build places which have several characteristics of our homes; the places which offer consolation and warm feelings. Those feelings are, again, illusionary created.
One of the best examples of such places is malls and shopping centers. We can notice that they come up day by day. It is no longer just one or two, but several big ones completely disproportional with the number of population of the city. Those places characterize isolation just like our homes. We simply replace one isolation with the other, new one and freshly attractive which offers a relief for a modern human being. That isolation moved on another level, excluding even more from the outside world.
With almost all the time spent in the safety of our imagined worlds, the problems of the outside world progress and wait for us to notice it. But we have no time to do that because less and less time is left in our days to stop for a moment and step outside to deal with the reality. The notion of shopping centers is a perfect new form of a protected bubble inside which we feel comfortable but only ostensibly. We can even speak of the shopping centers as a great tool for blurring our vision. As long as we spend our days in that illusion comfort manipulation can be carried out without any problems. An there lies the irony since our homes and home-like places are not entirely separated in a sense that they exist on their own. They are consisted of that nature, but the parts which we selfishly used. It is naively to think of a home as a place which has nothing to do with the nature around when the two are completely intertwined.
It is the ultimate time to think about how insensitive about the world around us we are. Our connections with the nature are at the bare minimum. Everything is consisted of one's individual reality which includes only him. We are becoming more and more self-centered while forgetting that nature gives us life. Being blind for the nature eventually leads to downfall. We cannot continue to exploit the natural resources, like in that case of gardens filled with pools, without giving the nature something in exchange. We are certainly in the age of unreasonable exploitation of the nature but that could change only if we find the strength to step outside of our safe places and start dealing with the problems of reality.
Maja Tramontana
References:
1. Bachelard, G. (1994). The House. From Cellar to Garret. The Significance of the Hut. The Poetics of Space, Boston: Beacon Press, 3-37.
2. Giggs, R. (2010). Swimming Fixations. The Rise of the Edge: New Thresholds in the Ecological Uncanny. Australia: University of Western Australia, 13-30.
3. Kafka, F. (1971). The Burrow. The Complete Stories, New York: Shocken Books Inc., 354-386.
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Notes from the Underground: Anxiety and stone walls
Though it may seem true that an underworld is often seen as a physical place, no matter how magical or improbable, in its core still lie the properties of something tangible and materialistic. Yet there could be another form of an underworld, one that is closely connected to human thoughts, feelings, fears and hopes. One underworld I would like to investigate is situated in the human’s psyche; it is the person’s consciousness. Since it deals with the ability to think and reason about everything in the immediate reality as well as more abstract and complex aspects, the scope of this topic enlarges by the second. For that reason, this essay will closely examine themes of hyper-consciousness, isolation, anxiety and determinism, how they combine to form a world inside the one people live in, one inside somebody’s mind.
This essay will mainly centre around the Underground man from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1864 novella Notes from the Underground. Divided in two pieces, the novel in the first part consists of Underground man’s monologue about different topics, ranging from reason, free will, logic and suffering, as well as the inexplicable satisfaction it offers to an individual. Firstly, it is important to address that the main protagonist of the novel exclaims that he is hiding in the “underground”, which is an obvious reference to the theme of underworld. One would say it denotes a physical space, but the Underground man implies otherwise, he sees it as a state of mind he had been living in for a long time.
Already even then I had my underground world in my soul.
(Dostoevsky 2013:63)
This state of mind was characterized by living in complete isolation from the world while in the same time being an active part of it. Girard (2012:77) sees the Underground man as only a participant of the Underground society, more specifically, underground people are characterized as imitators who try to hide their imitation from others, and even from themselves. He suggests that people go “underground” as a result of frustrated mimetic desire, that is, apart from imitating people’s behaviours, we also imitate their desires, therefore the objects of their desires (Girard, 2012:78). As a result, rivalry occurs. Underground people hide this even from themselves, so as not to give their models the reward of seeing themselves being imitated, since it would be extremely humiliating for the underground people (Girard, 2012:78). This is one of the reasons Underground man manages to live in such a way that his interaction with other people generates the maximum amount of failure, unpleasantness, anger, humiliation, and despair for all those involved, especially himself (Girard, 2012:80). He further stresses that mimetic desire is pushed to its logical extremes where it becomes the obstacle addiction, by means of which underground people are irresistibly attracted to those who spurn them and they irresistibly spurn those who are attracted to them, or even those who do no more than treat them kindly (Girard, 2012:81). This is best seen in the second part where the protagonist recalls the events concerning the arrogant officer, the farewell dinner and the entire story with the kind prostitute Liza. She was kind to him, and he despised her for it. On the other hand, in the first two cases, he was drawn to people who spurned him. According to Girard, the Underground man has surrendered to exasperated mimetic desire and it has led to ultimate misfortune (2012:82).
Albrecht Durer – Melancholia (1514)
Though it is quite true that the underground denotes an imagined place in one’s soul, the protagonist is at times placing himself in the physical underground by stating:
I have been for forty years listening to you through a crack under the floor.
Though we may sit forty years underground without speaking, when we do come out into the light of day and break out we talk and talk and talk...
(Dostoevsky 2013:51, 49)
The need to separate himself on the physical level and set boundaries perceived by the five senses intensifies his desire to alienate from the society. In the second part of the novel the underground man recollects some of the events from his past that had led him up to the point where he is later in life. Even when he was a young man in his twenties, the Underground man resented the world and the people in it as much as his older self. The feeling was, as he felt it, quite mutual, but he also had a deep repugnance oriented inwards.
It is clear to me now that, owing to my unbounded vanity and to the high standard I set for myself, I often looked at myself with furious discontent, which verged on loathing, and so I inwardly attributed the same feeling to everyone.
(Dostoevsky 2013:56)
He hated himself, and faced many insecurities when trying to look presentable before his co-workers, caring for things as petty as his looks. Oscillating between a desire to form meaningful human connections and existing in isolation, he eventually chose to live in the underground. It could be that this self-doubt and fear of losing face placed him deep underground from where he now addresses the readers. Girard sees his decision as a result of inferiority grown rampant (2012:17). While maintaining a superficial impression of superiority, in the second part it is obvious that his younger version saw itself as inferior to others.
In fact, it happened at times that I thought more highly of them than of myself. It somehow happened quite suddenly that I alternated between despising them and thinking them superior to myself.
(Dostoevsky 2013:57)
When comparing this to the notion of supremacy so assertively put forward in the first part of the novel, a conflict is quite evident.
Another important characteristic of the Underground man is the inability to take action. The need for action often present in him, was only realized by feeble and sorry actions (Girard 2012:29). Girard compares our underground character with Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment and questions the meaning of isolation these characters believe to determine by their own will (2012:29). Raskolnikov, as much as the Underground man, does not know whether his solitude makes him superior or inferior to other humans, an individual god or an individual earthworm (Girard 2012:30). The Underground man depends on the verdict of his officer bullies, and here is where the conflict assembles. If the isolation is not voluntary, the topic of loneliness may be introduced here. According to Rollo May (2009), every human being gets much of his sense of his own reality out of what others say to him and think about him. Accordingly, people need other people so they do not to lose sense of their own existence (May 2009). If little contact with others is happening, in extreme cases it could lead to fear of psychosis (May 2009). Once this occurs, a person has an urgent need to seek out contact with other people to retain the distinction between the subjective self and the objective world (May 2009). This is what happened to the Underground man:
I could never stand more than three months of dreaming at a time without feeling an irresistible desire to plunge into society. To plunge into society meant to visit my superior at the office, Anton Antonitch Syetotchkin. (…) But I only went to see him when that phase came over me, and when my dreams had reached such a point of bliss that it became essential at once to embrace my fellows and all mankind; and for that purpose I needed, at least, one human being, actually existing.
(Dostoevsky 2013:75)
As much as he tries to convince himself that his way of living is the right one, on this and numerous other occasions it is shown that he is not content with his solitary life and that he wishes to plunge into society. An important detail here is to be take into consideration, his need to have contact with a person which is superior to him, which reinforces his inner model of deficiency. The notion of inferiority could further be discovered at a few instances, for example, at the very beginning, by stating that he is a sick, spiteful and unattractive man, clearly an indicator of low self-esteem.
Francisco Goya y Lucientes – The sleep of reason produces monsters (c. 1799)
The protagonist’s behaviour, as puzzling as it may seem, could be interpreted as social anxiety (Justman 2015:195). Again, on the topic of isolation, Fromm (2001:25) states that the experience of isolation is closely linked to anxiety since psychological isolation beyond a certain point always results in anxiety. Human beings develop their individual selves in society, and the problem occurs whether or no they can relate themselves to the interpersonal world (May 2009). Mechanisms of escape for isolation and anxiety have been developed in the form of conformity, sado-macohism and destructiveness (Fromm 2001:136). Frank (1961:10) emphasizes the dramatic function Dostoevsky employs with the Underground man’s expression of machoism:
I got to the point of feeling a sort of secret abnormal, despicable enjoyment in returning home to my corner on some disgusting Petersburg night, acutely conscious that that day I had committed a loathsome action again, that what was done could never be undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing, gnawing at myself for it, tearing and consuming myself till at last the bitterness turned into a sort of shameful accursed sweetness, and at last—into positive real enjoyment!
(Dostoevsky 2013:8)
Machoism is evident in the feeling of enjoyment from the too intense consciousness of one’s own degradation, but Frank argues that this ambiguous delight “arises from the moral emotive response of his human nature to the blank nullity of the laws of nature” (1961:10). He further continues by claiming that machoism here denotes a different meaning, it signifies his refusal to set free from his acute conscience and submit silently to determinism, even though his reason assures him that there is nothing he can really do to change for the better (Frank 1961:10). This interpretation is therefore not seen as a pathological abnormality, but an indication of his paradoxical spiritual health (Frank 1961:11).
Fromm sees sadism and machoism not as two separate things which express the desire to inflict pain or have pain inflicted on one’s self, but as forms of symbiosis in which an individual endeavours to overcome isolation by becoming absorbed in the existence of another person or persons (Fromm 2001:135). An example of this can be recognized in the shameful self-invitation to a farewell dinner of an officer Zverkov whom he had detested. It is revealed quite obviously that his hatred for Zverkov was unreasonable, and founded on shaky grounds:
This Zverkov had been all the time at school with me too. I had begun to hate him particularly in the upper forms. In the lower forms he had simply been a pretty, playful boy whom everybody liked. I had hated him, however, even in the lower forms, just because he was a pretty and playful boy.
(Dostoevsky 2013:79)
Apparently, Zverkov is a handsome and successful man, highly respected, with all qualities beyond Underground man’s area of interest. Yet still he is not able to justify his hatred towards him. Only reason that is in accord with everything previously stated is that somewhere deep inside, the Underground man desires Zverkov’s social status and things he has, but is unable to come clean with this desire neither to people around him nor to himself. Despite the obvious social cues that he is an unwanted guest, he allows himself to form an illusion in which Simonov, Trudolyubov, and Ferfitchkin are taken aback by his charisma and delightfulness and ignore Zverkov completely.
What is more, even in the acutest paroxysm of this cowardly fever, I dreamed of getting the upper hand, of dominating them, carrying them away, making them like me—if only for my ‘elevation of thought and unmistakable wit.’ They would abandon Zverkov, he would sit on one side, silent and ashamed, while I should crush him.
(Dostoevsky 2013:89)
After this thought, he immediately concludes that he did not even care about the whole thing, humiliating Zverkov, wining over his friends or being admired by that, but at that point it hardly appears to be the truth. It seems though that the Underground man, in this case, is behaving either sadistic or destructive. These two terms are not identical, even though they do overlap to a certain extent (Fromm 2001:136). The destructive person wants to destroy the object, that is, to do away with it and to get rid of it. The sadist, on the other hand wants to dominate his object and therefore suffers a loss if his object disappears (Fromm 2001:137). Since Zverkov is considered the model for his imitation, he employs similar methods with Liza. She becomes the victim over whom the Underground man exercises the same tyrannical power that he feels his model has exercised over him; the Underground man insults and humiliates her as he himself has been humiliated (Astell 2011:189). Astell (2011: 189) claims his desire to take the place of his mediator (as tormentor) thus leads him simultaneously to identify with the tormented victim, who represents himself in the unequal relationship with his former schoolmate.
Once, indeed, I did have a friend. But I was already a tyrant at heart; I wanted to exercise unbounded sway over him; I tried to instil into him a contempt for his surroundings; I required of him a disdainful and complete break with those surroundings. I frightened him with my passionate affection; I reduced him to tears, to hysterics. He was a simple and devoted soul; but when he devoted himself to me entirely I began to hate him immediately and repulsed him—as though all I needed him for was to win a victory over him, to subjugate him and nothing else.
(Dostoevsky 2013:87)
This relationship from schooldays shadows the outcome of his relationship with Liza. According to Astell (2011:188), the Underground man is fully conscious of his sado-masochism, of his self-punishing enthrallment to his models, Liza being one of them, but he remains wilfully unrepentant at the end. On the other hand, Rosenshield (1984:321) opts for differentiating the younger Underground man from the older one, and using the later recollections of their relationship as an indicator of the narrator's willingness, even passionate desire, to take responsibility for his actions. This theory is sustained by the devastating irony with which he treats all his earlier attempts to rationalize his cruelty to Liza (Rosenshield 1984:327). Furthermore, the Underground man suggests that these rationalizations derive from his superior present understanding of his past understanding, because they have been arrived at only by someone who has lost contact with reality (Rosenshield 1984:328).
Justman investigates how number of his traits image like social anxiety (2015:196). Once they are taken out of context, different statements by the unnamed protagonist are in accord with what appears to be social anxiety:
I simply tried not to look at any of them. I assumed most unconcerned attitudes and waited with impatience for them to speak FIRST.
I made friends with no one and positively avoided talking, and buried myself more and more in my hole.
‘I am alone and they are EVERYONE,’ I thought—and pondered.
(Dostoevsky 2013: 100, 56, 58)
It is obvious her that he fears interacting with people, but could this be interpreted as anxiety? Rollo May (2009) defines anxiety as a feeling of being caught and overwhelmed by fear because one does not know how to react and meet danger. This “normal anxiety” denotes anxiety which is proportionate to the real threat of the danger situation. On the other hand, May (2009) addresses another type of anxiety, so called “neurotic anxiety”, where the anxiety is disproportionate to the real danger, and arising from an unconscious conflict within himself. The unconscious psychological conflict may have its origin in mimetic desire and Girard’s already mentioned theory. Therefore, the Underground man could have suffered from neurotic anxiety, which would have coloured his actions less miserable and would have rendered him innocent. Still, if we were to represent him as a sufferer with either social or neurotic anxiety, this would include ignoring a large part of his story where he tortures others since they are a torture to him (Justman 2015:197). This theory is further rebuked as May (2009) claims that anxiety in greater or lesser degree tends to destroy our consciousness of ourselves. Accordingly, awareness of ourselves can destroy anxiety, that is to say, the stronger our consciousness of ourselves, the more we can take a stand against and overcome anxiety (May 2009). As it has already been noted, neurotic anxiety is a sign of an unresolved conflict within a person, and it can be dealt with once the person becomes aware of the conflict within. The Underground man is in a state of heightened and inflamed consciousness, and is well aware of it, so it appears he does not suffer from anxiety:
I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness—a real thorough-going illness. For man’s everyday needs, it would have been quite enough to have the ordinary human consciousness, that is, half or a quarter of the amount which falls to the lot of a cultivated man of our unhappy nineteenth century, especially one who has the fatal ill-luck to inhabit Petersburg, the most theoretical and intentional town on the whole terrestrial globe. (…) It would have been quite enough, for instance, to have the consciousness by which all so-called direct persons and men of action live.
(Dostoevsky 2013:7)
In this passage the insistence that his way of life is superior is met with a desire to live a more normal life, by having an ordinary human consciousness. His hyper-consciousness may be seen as a sort of excuse of not taking action and being overwhelmed by inertia. Consciousness causes him to believe that no real action is ever legitimate and ultimately he stays in the repetitive cycle of wishing to stay underground and becoming a normal person. Frank (1961:7) argues that Dostoevsky attributes to his character a belief in scientific determinism, since the Underground man knows all about science and the laws of intensified consciousness. Furthermore, he embraces the thought moral impotence, that is, everything he does is inevitable and cannot be changed because it is already pre-determined (Frank 1961:7). The Underground man is at first content with the nature of this law:
And the worst of it was, and the root of it all, that it was all in accord with the normal fundamental laws of over-acute consciousness, and with the inertia that was the direct result of those laws, and that consequently one was not only unable to change but could do absolutely nothing.
(Dostoevsky 2013:9)
To do absolutely nothing to change the state one lives in gives perfect excuse for any faulty behaviour or as the Underground man puts it, no one is to blame for being a bad person. Action is therefore, considered as a trait found only in stupid and limited people, and if one were to begin to act properly on something, it would include having a mind completely at ease and with no doubt left in it (Dostoevsky 2013:22). This is, of course, highly unlikely for the Underground man who sees his state of acute consciousness as the cause of not being able to find a primary cause and foundation to act upon. Reasoning life in this manner makes all moral action impossible and meaningless.
Despite the obvious idea of scientific determinism put forward, there lies another underlying and important thought. It can be argued that the Underground man, with his machoism, sadism and destructiveness, cannot help behaving as if there actually exists a certain amount of free will, free human response which is rather meaningful and possible (Frank 1961:11). This idea is explained by the image of a stone wall:
Of course I cannot break through the wall by battering my head against it if I really have not the strength to knock it down, but I am not going to be reconciled to it simply because it is a stone wall and I have not the strength.
(Dostoevsky 2013:16)
The Underground man understands what the “stone walls” mean, and they are no consolation for him, he opts for ultimate understanding. Frank (1961:12) found that Dostoevsky with his portrayal of the Underground man hardly wanted to show his psychopathological descent into madness or just an evil person, he shows how he became this way via reductio ad absurdum. In that way, the more he underlines the incredible obtuseness of his self-confident judge, the more he evokes the possibility of a world with no absolute determinism (Frank 1961:12).
In rejecting this literal reading would imply, the purpose of the novel becomes a different one. The underworld is still the protagonist’s mind, but it is coloured in another way. The Underground man’s behaviours are therefore interpreted as a pre-state of an existence where human choice does make a difference, of an existence which allows for free will and action.
Ana Ribičić
Works Cited
1. Astell, A. (2011). THE WRITER AS REDEEMED PROSTITUTE: GIRARD'S READING OF DOSTOEVSKY'S "NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND". Religion & Literature, 43(3), 186-194. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23347098
2. Dostoevsky, Fyodor (20). Notes from the Underground. Retrieved from http://www.planetebook.com/ebooks/Notes-from-the-Underground.pdf
3. Frank, J. (1961). Nihilism and "Notes from Underground". The Sewanee Review, 69(1), 1-33. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/27540632
4. Fromm, Erich (2001). The Fear of Freedom. Routledge
5. Girard, R. (2012). Resurrection from the Underground: Feodor Dostoevsky (Williams J., Ed.). Michigan State University Press.
6. Justman, Stewart (2015).The Nocebo Effect: Overdiagnosis and Its Costs. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan
7. May, R. (2009). Man’s Search for Himself. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company
8. Rosenshield, G. (1984). The Fate of Dostoevskij's Underground Man: The Case for an Open Ending. The Slavic and East European Journal, 28(3), 324-339. doi:10.2307/307831
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Peering into the Abyss: Milton and Nietzsche
Donelli Iva
Archangel Gabriel to John Constantine;’‘ No, John. You are going to die because you smoked 30 cigarettes a day since you were 15... and you're going to go to hell because of the life you took. You're fu*ked.’’ (Adler and Aguilar, 2005)
And while John Constantine- the main protagonist of the same-titled 2005 movie- got his answer of why he is going to hell- a frightening thought itself, some 150 years earlier German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, proposed even more horrifying prospect: ‘’What, if some day or night, a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: This life, as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh… must return to you—all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over again and again—and you with it, speck of dust!’'(Nietzsche, 2015:236). What is even more interesting is that the latter statement came from the very same figure who seemingly refused to answer what is the purpose of this possible ''eternal recurrence'', as he called his doctrine, stating how: ''there is no bourne. There is no answer to the question: To what purpose?'' (Nietzsche, 2015:5) Namely, by announcing the death of '' all gods'' in his 1883 Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche dubbed himself as the ''atheistic nihilists'' refusing the idea of there being hell or heaven waiting for us up above or down below; ’’ we have not the smallest right to assume the existence of transcendental objects or things in themselves, which would be either divine or morality incarnate (Nietzsche, 2015:5). According to Nietzsche, hell is here and now- constantly occurring and recurring ad infinitum. And yet, despite Nietzsche initially claiming of how there is no purpose to be found in the recurrence, it seems how the very concept of eternal recurrence poses the question of its significance by itself. What if things do really recur infinite number of times? What does one do to escape this eternal recurrence? Is there any way to escape hell and suffering at all, or are we all- just like John Constantine- doomed?
Having ''no wish to enter the kingdom of heaven'' Nietzsche’s The Antichrist, published in 1885, seems not only to stamp his ''infamous'' status, but it also appears to be Nietzsche's ''harshest condemnation of Christianity'', calling it ''the greatest misfortune of mankind so far'’(Lewis, 2017:44). Namely, this 20th century German philosopher, psychologist and- according to some ‘’Antichrist’’- blamed God for turning the Spirit against the earthly and who ''had devalued the worth of life on earth'' (Lewis, 2017:44). And so Christian Spirit, still connected to the earthly and the physical- thus not being able to unite with God ''in a super-sensible realm'', decided to '' lash back at the body out of anger for having its dream of ascension thwarted'' (Hiltner, 2003:35). Thus, for Nietzsche God and Spirit were the primary source of one’s misery and were the ones men should therefore reject if they are to achieve the ultimate liberty;’’ Nietzsche saw this anger in Christianity in a more general way as a need for power and dominion not only over the body but over all that was Earthy, indeed, the earth itself (Hiltner, 2003:35). Consequently Nietzsche’s forcing back from all ‘’higher beings’’ led many critics to conclude how his denial of Christianity logically led to his negation of Christian morality, which fell alongside God. And now, since God was no longer the unitary measure for what was considered to be righteous and what was faulty- the responsibility for ‘’all that was Earthy’’ fell on the Overman. However, the figure Nietzsche introduced in his Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883) was later perceived by many as the symbol of ‘’the affirmation of egoism itself’’ (Ponzi, 2016). Namely, it was now the time for the Ubermensch to re-create the new, as Lewis, calls it ''morality without supernatural sanctions'' (2017:44). While the role of Overman will be discussed later in the paper, it is important to mention how this ‘’new order’’ led to numerous debates of how it will affect an individual- his moral values and responsibilities. Will that mean that the Overman is no longer chained to any rule? Is he beyond of that what is right and what is wrong? Is everything, since God’s death, now permitted? And what position does the Overman have in the eternal recurrence? Well, some critics did indeed see Nietzsche's announcement of the death of God and Overman taking its place, as leading to ‘’complete loss of all significance’’- some called it Nietzsche’s ‘’hidden despair’’, others even argued that this was the result of his implicit desire to be godlike and some saw a world with no compassion as leading to ‘’violence and cruelty (...) in an ever-decreasing scale and degree’’ (Lewis 2017:44).
On the other side of the spectrum, there is a figure- who appears to be a rather mirroring opposite to Nietzsche himself- John Milton, the author behind the first English epic Paradise Lost (1667). The most notable difference between the two is of course their perspective towards religion. Unlike the self-proclaimed ''immoral atheist'' Nietzsche, Milton thought of himself as being the man of religion- despite the fact that his ''religious opinions cannot be stated in terms acceptable to any single nonconformist church'' (McLachlan 1941:66). Namely, in spite of his refusal of clerical authority, as it was already hinted, Milton's faith had deep Christian roots. In relation to the latter, at the first glance John Milton modus operandi – both earthly or spiritual, appears to be in clash with that of Nietzsche’s. To be more specific, Nietzsche- whose sole purpose seemed to be disproving the laws imposed by God, for Milton God plays the central role. Not only that, unlike Nietzsche’s ‘’dead’’ God, Milton’s God is very much ‘’alive'' and is, for him, undoubtedly considered to be a point of reference when it comes to deciding what was equitable and what was not. Milton, in his epic Paradise Lost, thus served as a sort of an interpreter of God’s message to humanity, wanting to ‘’assert Eternal Providence’’ and ‘’to justify God’s ways to men’’ (Milton, 1.1-26).
Bearing all these differences in mind, it almost appears to be impossible to try and draw any parallels between the two respectable figures- unless the sole purpose is to highlight their clashing outlooks on God, religion and morality in general. However, if the latter is to be done, and if the questions whether the man- now being ‘’Godless’’- is free to do as he pleases, one must consider the doctrine of Ubermensch and its relation to the eternal recurrence. Before trying to fit Nietzsche’s notion of ‘’the heaviest burden’’, as he calls his notion of eternal recurrence-,and its relation to John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost, it is important to see how and whether their seemingly clashing views- regarding not only religion, but moral, responsibility and even politics- are in contrast- or could they possibly lead to their union in the end. In spite of their opposing standpoints of who is to blame for the imposed burden in the first place and whose way is to follow: God’s or man’s own- if read more closely, Paradise Lost does not only seem, as Hiltner (2003) suggests, to ‘’escape Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity’’, it also rather implicitly re-affirms Nietzsche’s concept of the Overman as the ‘’protector of the Earthy’’, as well as the fact that eternal return is indeed “the heaviest burden”.
Speaking of Milton’s epic, many critics often stress out the necessity of Milton’s work being read at three different levels: moral, ecological and political- dubbing ,thus, Milton as the proto-critic of capitalism, as the environmentalist and even as the prophet of modernity. Related to aforementioned issues, it can then be argued how these different ‘’dimensions’’ of his epic are not only interrelated through the aspects of religion and morality- the central focus of Paradise Lost, but can also be connected through Nietzsche’s concept of eternal return- as it will be shown later in the paper.
Speaking of the most noticeable, moral dimension of Paradise Lost, it can also be visible, that this level is perhaps the one which relies the most on Milton’s view of religion. Namely, refusing the Protestant concept of Predestination- according to which one was either predestined for eternal salvation or eternal damnation despite one’s beliefs, deeds or actions, Milton’s epic wanted to highlight the seemingly forgotten notions of freedom and choice. Thus, Milton believed that every single man was, as he states, ‘’free to fall’’. And so, Milton’s God on numerous occasion emphasizes how he is not responsible for the collapse of humanity, since ‘’they themselves decreed/Their own revolt, not I’’ (Milton, 3.116-117). This is repeated, when God foretells the fall of Adam in Book III of Paradise Lost he emphasizes that it will be the Adam’s own choice- not his;
‘’ "So will fall/
He and his faithless progeny. Whose fault?/
Whose but his own? Ingrate! He had of Me/
All he could have; I made him just and right/
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall."
(Milton, 3.95-99)
As it was already noted, unlike Milton, Nietzsche seems to disagree with this idea of God not being responsible for the ‘’fall’’ of mankind. According to Nietzsche it was God who imposed the burden the moment God, not only turned the Spirit against the body and‘’ has waged a war against all sense of respect and feeling between a man and a man’’, but also when he ‘’accused’’ God of imposing moral values, and free will as a kind of a ‘’guilt trip, a form of manipulation that enslaves’’ (Lewis, 2017:44 and Spencer 2016:57). Speaking of God and free will, in Milton’s case, the reader cannot but feel perplexed by his portrayal in the epic. As it was stated before, Milton's God on multiple occasions states how it is he who ‘’ form’d them free, and free they must remain’’ (Milton, 3.125-130). Thus, God is first seen as the one to whom ‘’mankind’s free will is repeatedly the underlying principle of his self-justification’’ (Baxter, 2017:259). However, on several occasions in his epic, Milton appears to be inconsistent in depicting how God ''operates''. Consequently many argue, that Milton actually sided with Satan and, thus, deliberately ‘’failed’’ to portray God as ‘’a strong and decisive figure who would warrant our faith in him’’ -since it rather seems how God merely ‘’ had to be shown to allow free will’’ to avoid accusations of being a dictator (Baxter, 2017:259). As Baxter states, God has ''ordained or decreed certain events and these ''decrees'' are regarded as commands to be carried out by the angels '' (Baxter, 2017:259);
‘’Th’ eternal Regions: lowly reverent /
Towards either Throne they bow, & to the ground /
With solemn adoration down they cast’’
(Milton, 3.345-350)
This, subsequently, leads to question of who is responsible for the fall of nature in Paradise Lost. Was it the Nature itself, that decided to turn against Adam and Eve- without any ‘’supernatural intervention’’; ''At that tasted Fruit/ The Sun (...), turn’d/ His course intended’’ (Milton, 10.687-689) Or was it ‘’the dictator’’- God who caused the sudden fall, as a sort of - as Nietzsche would say punishment -for Adam and Eve disobeying his laws?; ‘’Some say he(God) bid his angels turn askance/ The poles of Earth twice ten degrees and more/ From the Sun’s axle’’ ( Milton, 10-651-719) . Viewing God in such light, it indeed does seem to go ‘’hand in hand’’ with Nietzsche’s accusation of God’s ‘’metaphysical hostility’’ being the very essence of his revenge against ‘’the Earth and Earthy itself’’ (Hiltner, 2003:35)
In relation of Milton’s portrayal of God, it is interesting to see how he depicts Satan. While Romantics argued that Satan was actually the protagonist of Milton’s epic- seeing him as a tragic hero, latest readings of Paradise Lost seem to be more focused on his capitalistic tendencies. Speaking of the latter, some critics, such as Colebrook (2008), argue that Milton can actually be considered as one of the first proto-critics of capitalism. Namely, in the epic, Satan does indeed view the new world as a good waiting to be appropriated by him and the rest of his fellowmen. In Book I, he so agrees with Belzeebub’s plan of finding;
‘’ Some easier enterprize?/
Some advantagious act may be achiev’d/
By sudden onset, either with Hell fire/
To waste his whole Creation, or possess/
All as our own, and drive as we were driven/
The punnie habitants (...)''
(Milton, 2.345-370)
And, throughout the epic, one can see how Satan's ''economic'' diction, thus, often involves words such as purchase and bought. One example being when Satan describes the possible outcome of him submitting to God, Satan states; ''so should I purchase dear/ Short intermission bought with double smart'' (Milton, 4.101-102). Another example, as Stirling and Dutheil de la Rochère (2010) state, is when Satan flaunts his accomplishments to his fellowmen, while dismissing the prophecy(of the bruised head) of the Son; ''A world who would not purchase with a bruise'' (Milton, 10.500).
If Milton is to be viewed, as some considered him to be, the anti-capitalist, then one must analyze the position God holds in relation to this issue. Namely, on numerous occasions in Paradise Lost it can noticed how, not only Satan, but God himself appears to be involved in, as some call it, ‘’spiritual capitalism’’. As Sterling and Dutheil de la Rochère again point out, ''work is done by everyone in the poem''- angels, Satan, Adam and Eve, implying, thus, ''economic operation:(...) what we give(or what we give up) is what we get, what we risk in order to gain (...)- a cost- benefit analysis (2010:88). God, thus, implies that man’s free will, logically enables them to indulge in free enterprise. Not only that , it appears that God even acts as the ‘’customs broker’’- suggesting them what is worth of investing in;
‘’ Thir freedom, they themselves ordain’d thir fall/
The first sort by thir own suggestion fell/
Self-tempted, self-deprav’d: Man falls deceiv’d/
By the other first: Man therefore shall find grace/
The other none: in Mercy and Justice both/''
(Milton, 3.130-135)
As it was already stated, there are also mentions of possible profit- as the result of their right investment;’’ To prayer, repentance, and obedience due,/(...)Mine eare shall not be slow, mine eye not shut ‘’(Milton,3.185-195). In relation to his Satan views God as another ‘’capitalist giant’’, - the only question then being who will dominate the free market;
‘’Evil be thou my Good; by thee at least/
Divided Empire with Heav’ns King I hold/
By thee, and more then half perhaps will reigne’’
(Milton, 4.110-115)
And while Milton was not perhaps entirely sure where he stands when it comes to the issues of capitalism- Nietzsche's standpoint seems to be rather clear. Not only does Nietzsche points a sharp critique of the capitalist and conformist tendencies of bourgeois society, God for Nietzsche, just like Milton’s Satan, turns everything working in man’s favor into ‘’the chief weapon against us, against all that is noble, gay, high-minded on earth, against our happiness on earth’’(Lewis, 2017:44). Hence, it can be argued that God for Nietzsche, became Satan itself- if one is looking from the Christian standpoint. Speaking of the devil, it can also be debated whether Nietzsche shared his view of Milton’s Satan with Romantics. As it was mentioned, latter perceived Satan as a rebel, a tragic hero, in pursuit of his own freedom. And it indeed appears that Nietzsche, similarly to Satan, wishes to; ‘’Live to our selves, though in this vast recess, free/ and to none accountable'' (Milton, 2.250-255).
However, it is important to state how for Nietzsche, denying God did not mean turning to worshipping Satan, nor does his ‘’annihilation’’ of Christian morality means rejection of one’s morality per se nor responsibility. As it was mentioned in the introductory part, a beacon of freedom- both from Satan and from God- for Nietzsche became the figure of Overman or, as some call it, Beyond-Man (Ponzi, 2016).
Nietzsche’s notion of Overman is described by many critics as the one who ‘’in his self-centred will-power, is more or less indifferent to others’’ and, therefore, is slowly becoming a ‘’contradictory self-emancipatory being: both zealously domineering and competitive and highly curious and sensitive in his interactions with other will-powers in the world’’ (Fletcher, 2017:102). On the other hand, Nietzsche himself indicates how Overman -despite his freedom of morals imposed by any ‘’higher’’ being- should not be used as a synonym for anarchy since, at it was mentioned in the introductory part, Overman was in charge of taking care of ’’all that was Earthy’’ and ‘’ the Earth itself’’. In other words, in spite of the fact that sinning against God- since the latter is dead, is no longer considered to be sin, ''to sin against the earth is now the most dreadful sin'' (Lewis, 2017:44). Thus, perceiving Overman as the ‘’protector’’ of what God has not only forgotten, but acted out against- that being the earth and life in all its physical forms- Nietzsche’s view slowly comes to coincide with that of Milton’s. However, before looking more closely into relation Nietzsche has with nature and ecology, I will first explore that of Milton in his epic.
Namely, apart from being dubbed as a proto-critic of capitalism, most recent readings of Paradise Lost portray Milton not only as a proto-environmentalist but also as a prophet of modernity. When it comes to the latter, some consider his epic to be his reaction of the growing urban and environmental problems of his time- 17th century London- over population, air pollution and rapid urbanization (Duran, 2008). Bearing this in mind, one can look at Book II of Milton’s epic, which depicts Satan and his fellowmen katabasis into hell. There, one can find lengthy, and rather gory descriptions of the place, which is portrayed as a ‘’vast recess’’ and a place that is, in Satan’s own words, rather ���’intolerable’’. Milton- drawing his inspiration from other greats such as Homer, Virgil and Dante, used some elements from Greek mythology, such as the five rivers which run through of Hell;
‘’ Into the burning Lake thir baleful streams/
Abhorred STYX the flood of deadly hate, Sad ACHERON of sorrow, black and deep/
COCYTUS, nam’d of lamentation loud Heard on the ruful stream;fierce PHLEGETON/
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage./
Farr off from these a slow and silent stream,/
LETHE the River of Oblivion rules''
(Milton, 2.575-580)
What is interesting is how in the original Greek mythology, the aforementioned rivers were often used to connote the emotions of death in the relation to the very inhabitants of the place. However, if Paradise Lost is to be read as not only as moral, but also as a prophetic and ecological text it can also be argued that Milton was wailing the death of the place itself- which is due to happen if the modernity starts to dissipate into chaos.
Milton then goes on to describe hell as a sort of an arctic tundra, proving further how hell is ridden of all life; ‘’Beyond this flood a frozen Continent/Lies dark and wilde, beat with perpetual storms (...) All else deep snow and ice (...) The parching Air/ Burns frore, and cold performs th’ effect of fire’’ (Milton, 2.545-555). Whether John Milton foresaw the ‘’fall of nature’’ will be discussed further, but what is certain is that today; ‘’We have unleashed a mass extinction event, the sixth in roughly 540 million years, wherein many current life forms could be annihilated or at least committed to extinction by the end of this century’’ (Ripple, Wolf, Newsome et al.2017).
Back to Milton's prophetic role in Paradise Lost, he hints in Book II , first how Satan is forced to use ''various modes of survival to get to the newly created world which; ‘’With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way/And swims or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flyes’’ (Milton, 2.950-955). But another important detail occurs just before Satan arrives to his desired destination. In order to pass through the region in which ‘’Chaos reigns’’, Satan needs to pass through the gates guarded by Sin and Death. If Milton’s role as a prophet of modernity, and even a moralist, is to be considered, than one can interpret this encounter as Milton’s referring to the black plague- which decimated the population of London in 1665, as the result of already mentioned overpopulation. Similarly, Satan’s encountering Sin can also be read as Milton’s seeing people of his time trading their working for God, for working for their own personal profit- as the consequence of industrialization, and growing wealth (see Picture 1).
Connected to this prophetic reading, ecological outlook on Paradise Lost seems to unite not only prophetic, but also moral and politic dimensions of Milton’s epic. As it was already mentioned, Milton’s faith was deeply rooted in the Holy Bible, or in this case, the Book of Genesis. Related to Milton’s Paradise Lost, it is important to state how the Book of Genesis also has two, vastly different, versions. First version, also known as the P(Priestly) text, emphasizes human dominion over nature, since God tells Adam and Eve; ‘’ be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl in the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth’’(Genesis 1.28). Milton's Satan seems to encapture and operate by this version of the Book of Genesis, it is shown in the scene where he first enters the Garden of Eden, feeling alienated from it, and perceiving the Earth with its beasts and humans as commodities which are to be driven as he ''was driven''. This is also connected to the political-economic reading of the epic in which Satan himself continue to display his capitalistic aspirations. Firstly, from the descriptions found in Book II which describe ‘’the mining of riches and the forging of metals’’, one is led to conclude how’’ getting rich from the process of material production originates in hell’’, even though God himself enjoys the very same ‘’wealth’’ in Heaven (Stirling and Dutheil de la Rochere, 2010:88). Back to Satan, in Book III, he decides to explore the newly created world. His very position- depicted as a vulture standing on the Tree of Life which the highest in the garden of Eden- not only indicates him feeling superior, but it also provides him with the perfect view of the ‘’goods’’ surrounding him;
‘’Thence up he flew, and on the Tree of Life/
The middle Tree and highest there that grew/ Sat like a Cormorant (...)
Of that life-giving Plant, but only us’d/
For prospect, what well us’d had bin the pledge/ Of immortalitie. So little knows/
(...)to value right/
The good before him, but perverts best things /
To worst abuse, or to thir meanest use.’’
(Milton, 3.195-205)
Later, in the poem, Satan slowly starts conceiving himself in terms of alienation and abstraction- from what surrounds him, manifesting his general hostility to the universe around him;
‘’ Of this new World; at whose sight all the Starrs/
Hide thir diminisht heads; to thee I call/
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name/
O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams(...)’’
(Milton, 4.35-40)
Ironically, Satan becomes unable to escape this very alienation- which he later comes to embody; ‘’Me miserable!(...)/ Which way I flie is Hell; my self am Hell’’ (Milton, 4. 73-75).
Back to Nietzsche's Overman, as it was already stated, some critics find him resembling Milton's Satan, due to him being ''zealously domineering and competitive’’. This led some to conclusion how his Overman was, like Satan, alienated due to him being ‘’complete separate from ordinary mortals- the ‘herd’ or ‘mob’ as Nietzsche always rather disparagingly described the common people’’ (Morris, 2014:571). However, most recent readings of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, paint a different picture of his concept, again highlighting how Ubermensch is not only being in charge of taking care of the earth but being ‘’the meaning of the earth’’ itself. (Morris, 2014:571).
Thus, Nietzsche’s, as a naturalistic philosopher, emphasizes that man cannot turn ‘’against’’ nature- since he is the very nature. Similarly to Milton, Nietzsche writes how; ’’Nature- and life (...) are continually in motion, striving towards self-transcendence. When man tries to master his animal nature and to sublimate his impulses, he is only exemplifying a striving that is essentially natural’’ (Kaufman, 1974:260). Nietzsche, thus, wishes for a man to become more ‘’natural’’, or tries to translate man back into nature. He further, promotes positive ecology of value ‘’designed to sustain species whose will to power is value positing’’(Bull, Cascardi, Clark, 2009:45). And so he writes how’’ society must not exist for society’s sake but only as a foundation and scaffolding on which (...) a being is able to raise itself to its higher task and to a higher stake of being-comparable to those sun-seeking vines of Java (...) high above the oak tree- but supported by it, they can unfold their crowns in the open light and display their happiness’’ (Bull, Cascardi, Clark, 2009:45).
It, then, seems that Nietzsche’s understanding of man and nature, or to be more specific, man in nature or man of nature, could go well with the second version of The Book of Genesis. Namely, the Y(Yahwist) text which highlights human responsibility for it; ‘’ dressing and keeping’’ the nature, emphasizing that human’s use of plants and animals is not based so much on sovereignity as on service (Genesis, 2:15). The latter statement shows that Nietzsche’s outlook, in its core, is not so contrary to Christian morals, and is also promoted by Milton- since genius loci according to both appears to be’rooted in the Earth itself’’ (Hiltner, 2003:35). That is why , both in Paradise Lost, as well as in Paradise Regained, Milton emphasizes the importance of what Anna Tsing (2017) calls ‘’resurgence’’. Unlike ‘’sustainbility’’ which leads to alienation of all organisms- promoted by Satan who himself embodies this very alienation, ‘’resurgence’’ may be described as the multispecies affair or ’'life cycles in which there is no grave’’ (Brown, 2009);
’If every just man that now pines with want/
Had but a moderate and beseeming share/
Of that which lewdly-pamper’d Luxury /
Now heaps upon some with vast excess/
Nature’s full blessings would be well dispens’t/
In unsuperfluous even proportion’’
( Milton, Paradise Regained, 768-773)
Apart from their emphasis that nature is not merely a commodity designed to ‘’serve’’ humans, is connected to another prominent similarity between Milton and Nietzsche which is related to physicality and spirituality. As it was already mentioned, Nietzsche was a naturalistic philosopher believing how body and spirit were the part of the same continuum- which was one of the reasons why he’’ turned away’’ from God who made the Spirit lash out against the body. As the opponent of dualistic ideology, Nietzsche saw soul in a sort of a rhizomic relationship with the physical- as the inseparable part or feature of the body. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra he emphasizes both natural world and natural body’’ Body am I, and Soul.- thus speaks the child. And why should one not speak like children?’’ (Peery, 2008:123). Also, Nietzsche’s monism can be noticed in Deleuze’s and Guattari’s view of his concept of Overman. According to the two authors, ''Nietzsche's lone superman taking on the world with his life force- his raw will power'' is ''toned down'' and transformed into '' a being with desires'', insisting that the ''connective nature of human being'' – as ''the being who is in intimate contact with the profound life of all forms or all types of beings '' . Thus the connective nature, along with human desire ''produces ever- new connections between beings''- a rhizome, if you will (Fletcher, 101:2017).
Similarly, to Nietzsche, Milton in Paradise lost displays his monistic outlook on both human body, soul and very nature- despite the fact how for Milton, God is not the one who ‘’lashes against the body’’ but he rather acts like a ‘’supernatural glue’’;‘’God shall be All in All’’(3.340-345). Eve, thus explains Adam how:
‘’O ADAM, one Almightie is, from whom/
All things proceed, and up to him return/
If not deprav’d from good, created all /
Such to perfection, one first matter all/
Indu’d with various forms, various degrees /
Of substance, and in things that live, of life/
But more refin’d, more spiritous, and pure(...)
Each in thir several active Sphears assignd/
Till body up to spirit work, in bounds/ Proportiond to each kind(...)’'
(Milton, 5.470-480)
And so, Adam and Eve are intertwined- both physically and spiritually, through God, to all the beasts, trees and plants, surrounding them;''
''(...)I feel
The Link of Nature draw me: Flesh of Flesh/
Bone of my Bone thou art, and from thy State/
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.”
(Milton, 9.15-20)
What is interesting is that Milton's first humans as well as Satan, fell due to this very rejection of monism. Namely, starting to reject the rhizomic relationship between self and other, every single one of them imposes himself either as the Subject to the Objects, playing, thus, ''Gods''- leading slowly to their demise; ’At that tasted Fruit/ The Sun (...), turn’d/ His course intended/(...)Some say he(God) bid his angels turn askance/ The poles of Earth twice ten degrees and more/ From the Sun’s axle’’ (Milton, 10.651-710). Nietzsche's Zarathustra also descended, due to the same reason- wanting to impose himself as a god-like figure; ''But let me reveal my heart to you entirely my friends''- says Zarathustra, if there were gods, how could I endure not to be a God'' (Slote, 2013:113).
Related to the question of Milton's and Nietzsche's monism, the role of Nietzsche's Ubermensch, and those of the first humans in Milton's case, in the concept of eternal return must be discussed. Nietzsche’s notion of eternal recurrence, left many not only puzzled but, Nietzsche was both criticized and, in some cases even, mocked for his idea of things repeating themselves eternally. And so Jorge Luis Borges, in his essay The Doctrine of Cycles dubbed Nietzsche as ''the most pathetic inventor of the theory of cyclicality''. He also posed a question of - if the theory holds- how would one know if we are in an ever changing, possibly repeating world- if God is dead. Borges also touched upon the question of; ''what significance can there be to the fact that we are going through the cycle the thirteen thousand five hundred and fourteenth time, and not the first in the series or the number three hundred twenty-second with the exponent of two thousand?'' (Jenckes, 2012:132). When it comes to Borge's first question, of how would one know whether events do really repeat themselves to infinity, it can be said the satisfactory answer, fortunately or not, does not exist. However, as Jeckens (2012) states, since there is no ''higher being'' that would inform us of ''our curved entity'', we are to rely on ourselves and our own ''imperfect modes of memory and representation''- such as art and music; the society's highest values, with the Overman being acknowledged by the society as the embodiment of these values.
When it comes to the other question posed by Borges- that of significance of things repeating themselves eternally, one can look at Hieronimus Bosch’s, triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights for the possible answer (see Picture 2). And so, the exterior of Bosch's painting, seems to represent Earth- trapped in a spherical ball- during the first three days of creation- having no animal or human life.
Once opened, the first panel the Joining of Adam and Eve in the ‘’original Garden’’ portrays the events before the sin started to flourish alongside flora and fauna- as it is presented in the central panel. The latter- containing numerous portrayals of nudity, sexual acrobatics, are believed to represent how man is slowly progressing to becoming one with the beast. The situation culminates in the right panel titled ‘’The Hell’’ or ‘’The Final Judgment’’, in which Eden- due to sin became ‘’the torture garden with concealed mechanisms, nightmares intimating the irrational and with violent applications of scientific knowledge ‘’ (Deckard, 2009). Analyzing the painting this way, there is an allusion to the linear and finite occurrence of the events- having its ultimate ending in the hell. In other words, the original sin of the first humans led to the consequent fall of humankind and their suffering in inferno. However, looking more closely at the first left panel, the viewer can see how- even in Eden, scenes of brutal violence and killing are being presented. Scenes of a wild cat carrying a mouse and boar catching a fox are rather peculiar considering the portrayal of the original garden in The Book of Genesis, in which beasts lived in peace alongside humans.This led some to conclude that the exterior of Bosch’s painting- representing the Earth in a spherical ball, actually represents the days of Noah, or the Great Flood- after the fall of the first (Jacobs, 2012). If Bosch’s work is analyzed this way, it can be seen how the events occurrence is no longer linear, but it rather resembles the structure of the Celtic cross.
In other words, the fall of Satan was a reference point after which ‘’falling’’ occurs in a rather circular motion. Namely, the descent of Satan caused the fall of Adam and Eve which led to fall of the Cain and the days of the Great Flood. Looking at this from a broader, Biblical perspective, what followed was the fall of the Tower of Babel and Christ’s crucifixion which also seems to suggest that the fall was not singular. Also, speaking from Christian perspective this cycle will have no end- since even after the Judgment day, for some, hell will repeat itself infinitely (see Picture 3.). In Paradise Lost even Milton, just like Nietzsche, suggests that history- or in this case fall of Satan and the first humans will repeat itself again. And so, in Book XI, Milton foresees the fall again- writing of days of the Flood as well as the arrival of the Son- as the result of humanity falling yet again;
‘’ He look'd, and saw the face of things quite chang'd/
The brazen Throat of Warr had ceast to roar/
All now was turn'd to jollitie and game/
To luxurie and riot, feast and dance/
Marrying or prostituting, as befell/
Rape or Adulterie (...)''
(Milton, 11.710-720)
Perhaps, then, the Borge's question of the significance of eternal is actually that, once one becomes aware of it, it becomes -as Nietzsche states- “the heaviest burden.'' Or, as Kundera in his The Unbearable Lightness of Being states;'' As opposed to the profound moral perversity of a world that rests essentially on the nonexistence of return- for in this world everything is pardoned in advance and therefore everything cynically permitted (...)the idea of eternal return implies how (...)If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross. It is a terrifying prospect. In the world of eternal return the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make (2009:10,11)''. And so, the frightening prospect of every single event, every fall, could possibly repeat themselves ad infinitum not only places, as Nietzsche would say das schwerste Gewicht, on our every thought, action or event, but it also puts the emphasis on the right to choose, and more importantly the right choice- when it comes to Milton. At the same time , it also underlines the responsibility in ''active nihilism'' of Nietzsche's Overman when it comes to ''legislating values'', since ‘’the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being'' and to avoid becoming '' only half real, with his movements being as free as they are insignificant'' ( Kundera, 2009:11). And so it seems how for both Milton and Nietzsche it is this very belief that it is in responsibility of '' those who have spiritual strength''- either in themselves, as Nietzsche’s Ubermensch or in ''higher being'' as Milton does, lies the answer of being able to ''make tolerable, a rather intolerable situation'' ( Fontinell, 2000:178). However, as Kundera would say: ‘’ Anyone whose goal is something higher must expect some day to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? (...)No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of the abyss below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall (...). The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become'' (Kundera 2009:11,78).
Works cited:
1. Adler, G., Aguilar, M. & Lawrence,F. (2005). Constantine (Motion picture). United States: Warner Bros.
2. Baxter, D. (2017). Free Will, Foreknowledging and Predestination. In: D. Baxter (ed.); Paradise Lost: A Drama of Unintended Consequences. Leicester: Troubador Publishing Ltd., 259-277.
3. Bull, M., Cascardi, A.J., Clark, T. (2009), Where is the AntiNietzsche. In: M. Bull, A. J. Cascardi,T. J. Clark (eds.); Nietzsche's Negative Ecologies. Oakland: Univ of California Press, 20-50.
4. Colebrook, C. (2008), Capital, Time, Production and Generation. In: Colebrook, C. (ed.); Milton, Evil and Literary History. London, New York, Sydney, Delhi: Bloomsbury Publishing.44-70.
5. Duran, A. (2008),Textual Sites. In: Duran. A (ed.); A Concise Companion to Milton. New Yersey: John Wiley and Sons.59-215.
6. Colebrook, C. (2008), Capital, Time, Production and Generation. In: Colebrook, C. (ed.); Milton, Evil and Literary History. London, New York, Sydney, Delhi: Bloomsbury Publishing.44-70.
7. Fletcher,D. (2017).Deleuze and Guattari: Self-emancipatory philosophy in the '68 era. In: D. Fletcher(ed.); The Cultural Contradictions of Anti-Capitalism: The Liberal Spirit and the Making of Western Radicalism. Abingdon:Routledge, 83-105.
8. Fontinell, E. (2000). Immortality, Hope or Hindrance? In: E. Fontinell (ed.): Self, God and Immortality: A Jamesian Investigation. New York: Fordham Univ Press,165-200.
9. Hiltner, K. (2003). Eve as the Garden's Spirit of Place. In: K. Hiltner (ed.); Milton and Ecology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 30-43.
10. Jacobs, L.F.(2012), The Sixteenth Century and Beyond. In: L.F. Jacobs (ed.) ; Opening Doors:The Early Netherlandish Triptych Reinterpreted. Pennsylvania: Penn State Press,189-220.
11. Jenckes, K.(2012). Reading Historie's Secrets in Benjamin and Borges. In: K. Jenckes (ed.); Reading Borges after Benjamin: Allegory, Afterlife, and the Writing of History. New York:SUNY Press, 67-99.
12. Kaufman, W.A. (1974). Power versus Pleasure. In: W.A. Kaufman (ed.); Nietzsche, Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 257-284.
13. Kundera, M. (2009). The Unbearable Lightness of Being.New York: Harper&Collins Publishers.Print.
14. Lewis, G. (2017).Atheism: Proclaiming the Death of God. In: G. Lewy (ed.); If God is Dead, Everything is Permitted? New Jersey:Transaction Publishers, 43-51.
15. McLachlan, C. (1941). John Milton. In: C. McLachlan (ed.); The Religious Opinions of Milton, Locke, and Newton. Manchester:Manchester University Press, 3-69.
16. Milton, J. (2016).Paradise Regained. North Charleston:CreateSpace Independent Publishing. Print
17. Milton, J. (2016).Paradise Lost. North Charleston:CreateSpace Independent Publishing. Print
18. Morris, B. (2014). Friedrich Nietzsche and Existentialism.In: B. Morris (ed.); Anthropology and the Human Subject. Bloomington: Trafford Publishing, 550-601.
19. Munroe, A., Geisweidt, E.J.(2016). Approaches to Teaching Ecological Texts and Metodology. In: 8.Munroe, A., Geisweidt, E.J.(eds.); Ecological Approaches to Early Modern English Texts: A Field Guide to Reading and Teaching. London: Routledge, 143-205.22
20. Nietzsche, F. (2015). Attempt at a Self-Criticism. In: Delphi Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Illustrated): Friedrich Nietzsche. East Sussex: Delphi Classics, 5-21
21. Peery, R.S. (2008). Body and Bodies. In: R.S. Peery (ed.); Nietzsche, Philosopher of the Perilous Perhaps. New York: Algora Publishing, 121-127.
22. Ponzi, M. (2016). Nietzsche Editions and Interpretations of His Works. In: M. Ponzi (ed.); Nietzsche's Nihilism in Walter Benjamin. Berlin:Springer:57-93.
23. Ripple J. W., Wolf, C., Newsome T.M., Galetti, M., Alamgit, M., Crist, E., Mahmoud,I., Laurance, W.F. (2017). World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice.
24. Stirling,K., Dutheil de la Rochère, M.H. (2010).Devilish and Devine Economies In and After Paradise Lost. In: K.Stirling, M. H. Dutheil de la Rochère (eds.); After Satan: Essays in Honour of Neil Forsyth. Cambridge:Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 85-100.
25. Slote,S. (2013). Also Sprach Molly Bloom. In: S. Slote (ed.); Joyce’s Nietzschean Ethics. Berlin:Springer, 107-127.
26. Tsing, A. (2017). Threat to Holocene Resurgence Is a Threat to Livability, The Anthropology of Sustainability. Mark Brightman and Jerome Lewis, eds. Basingstoke: Palgrave
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Picture 1. 17th Century London
Table 1.World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second NoticeOxford University Press (2017)
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Picture 2. Hieronimus Bosch (1490-1510)
The Garden of Earthly Delights, Museo del Prado, Madrid
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Mulholland Drive and Courage in the Big Stinkin' City: Behind the Spectacle
In his 1967 book The Society of the Spectacle Guy Debord discusses his idea of spectacle, defining it as a representation of real life produced by the ruling bourgeios class, as a mass of images combined into “a common stream in which the unity of that life can no longer be recovered” (1967: 10). The bourgeioisie produces these images to its own benefit. By locking the proletarian into a cyclical time, themselves developing an irreversible historical time and giving it its direction, the bourgeiosie have managed to maintain their benefits and dominance on the basis of the labor of the working class (Debord 1967: 51). The proletarians are estranged from their work, which means that they are unaware of the fact that the system of injustice actually rests upon their labor. For this reason the spectacle must perform its passivizing role; purporting to be the only reality, it prevents the workers from ever questioning their position, “The spectacle presents itself as a vast inaccessible reality that can never be questioned. Its sole message is: ‘What appears is good; what is good appears.’ The passive acceptance it demands is already effectively imposed by its monopoly of appearances, its manner of appearing without allowing any reply” (1967: 12). The reality is presented as being the best imaginable and the society as the best possible,
The spectacle is the ruling order’s nonstop discourse about itself, its never-ending monologue of self-praise, its self-portrait at the stage of totalitarian domination of all aspects of life. The fetishistic appearance of pure objectivity in spectacular relations conceals their true character as relations between people and between classes: a second Nature, with its own inescapable laws, seems to dominate our environment (Debord 1967: 14).
The spectacle is, thus, produced by the very economic system, but conceals this fact. The workers produce privileges for the bourgeoisie. In turn, the bourgoisie exploit them in the workplace, but treat them as subjects in their leisure time because workers are also consumers and have to be convinced to consume the very images their estranged labor produces. They are excluded from any real life, they are radically separated from history which they create. For this reason Debord warns that culture is complicit in producing the spectacle. That is, culture is easily coopted into the system and shown as yet another sellable commodity that, even when trying to be subversive, can be tamed and made profitable. For this reason Debord insists that for a true revolution what needs to be combined is theory and praxis which would collapse this false consciousness, make workers aware of the historical time and their place in it. This would finally enable them to access the real life and open up a path to a change in the unfair social relations.
Deconstructing the spectacle
Although they belong to quite different genres and seemingly do not share many things in common, Mulholland Drive and Courage the Cowardly Dog actually share a very important trait. Both the art film and the cartoon deal precisely with spectacle and purport to deconstruct it. Mulholland Drive shows the seedy underbelly of fame, the spectacle that everyone readily consumes, capitalism’s dehumanizing effects. Similarly, Courage in the Big Stinkin’ City deconstructs the spectacle, showing what it takes for the spectacle to run properly. This paper will offer a Marxist analysis of these two works, showing how they both question the reign of false imagery and how they fit this criticism into their respective genre. Yet, it will be argued that neither Mulholland Drive nor Courage in the Big Stinkin’ City offer any usable solution to the problems they expose.
Courage the Cowardly Dog as a political cartoon
Courage the Cowardly Dog is a Cartoon Network cartoon that ran from November 1999 to November 2002 for four seasons. The show follows the Bagge family – Muriel, an elderly, kind-hearted woman, her grumpy husband Eustace and their dog Courage. The trio often falls into all sorts of bizzare situations from which Courage, albeit a coward, has to rescue them. The show is notable for borrowing from the horror and fantasy genres, with numerous characters of mad scientists, creatures from outer space, monsters, mythological creatures. However, it can be argued that Courage the Cowardly Dog is also a political cartoon. Much like postmodern sci-fi/fantasy films, it speaks about very contemporary and modern issues beneath the seemingly banal surface. The later seasons have especially dealt with certain political and ecological issues.
For example, the episode Snowman's Revenge quite explicitly deals with the issue of global warming, which, for instance, the current American administration is denying (they even have to take lessons in ecology from Jersey Shore cast members!). In this episode, a snowman, a recurring villain in the series, is forced to move from the North Pole because the temperature has risen so much that the ice has melted. He has to leave because the place is riddled with memories of his snowmen friends who have melted away as well. He himself is sweating because of the heat.
He picks the Bagges’ home as the location where he will create a West Pole. He freezes up the whole environment in the middle of August. Later on he confides to Courage that he longs for the days „before things got hot“, and explains that the cause of the melting away of the North Pole is that a blanket got weaker until it ripped and it was all the fault of man. Here we see that the snowman is explicitly blaming humans for their impact on the environment. He is a spokesperson for the mute nature, a representative of the world humans exploit and do not take into consideration. Ironically, even a rural community like the Bagges is portrayed as complicit in the global scheme of anthropocene. Debord explains this by pointing out that the boundary between urban and rural has been erased, which does not mean that there has been „a transcendence of their separation, but their simultaneous collapse“ (1967: 175). As the Bagges are driving home, we see a cloud of exhaust gases from their truck signalizing that even the everyday lives of the community connected with nature is contributing to climate change. In the end, Courage redeems humans and solves the issue by flying to the hole in the ozone layer and patching it up with a needle and thread.
Another notable episode is Conway the Contaminationist, which deals with the issue of pollution. In the episode, a plane crashes in front of the Bagges' house. The pilot is Conway, a 193-year-old man who lives in an unhealthy, unsanitary way. He creates a polluted environmet in the Bagges' home and teaches them how to live in filth because such a lifestyle has health benefits, and, most importantly, saves money. He prepares Muriel a nice, soothing bath out of boiling muck and lets out toxic fumes to create a nice ambience.
The authorities proclaim the house condemned and seal it up. Courage, again, rescues the family by turning Conway's plane into a giant vacuum cleaner he uses to vacuum all of Conway's filth.
These episodes deal with capitalist influence on the planet Earth and its impact on the quality of human life. This is also true of the episode chosen for analysis.
Courage and the underworld
Another theme that is present in the episode is the underworld. Interestingly, the series has dealt with underworlds of different kinds before. Famous examples include the episode Queen of the Black Puddle in which a seductive sea creature/woman takes Eustace to her underground water kingdom through a black puddle which keeps shrinking, threatening to separate her kingdom from the upper world, leaving Eustace trapped. Also, it has dealt with the resurgence of the underworld, for example in the episode Everyone Wants to Direct where a zombie director named Benton Tarantella comes to the Bagges' home and pretends to be shooting a movie, whereas he is actually performing a resurrection ritual to summon his zombie fellow director Errol Von Volkheim from the dead with the intention to eat the Bagges.
Courage in the Big Stinkin' City
Courage in the Big Stinkin' City is an episode from the second season of the show. The episode follows Muriel who has won a sitar contest and will be playing in Radio City Music Hall. The Bagges arrive to New York and a scary insect greets them at the door of their hotel. He shows them to what he claims is the rehearsal room. The insect, Schwip, sends Courage off to a mission to pick up a package. He threatens to release an unnamed creature which will kill Muriel if he fails to return by the end of the show. Courage finds out that the police are looking for the package and his panicky behavior draws the attention of a policeman. Afraid of the “evil package”, the metro driver jumps out of the window and Courage crashes the train into the hotel. Schwip opens the package and finds that the content has broken and wants to kill Muriel. Courage saves her, Schwip gets arrested and Eustace has been eaten by the unnamed creature.
Mulholland Drive and Courage the Cowardly Dog
Rightfully, a question can be posed as to what kind of a connection there could be between a highly stylized art film and a children's cartoon.
The plot of the episode is quite similar to that of Mulholland Drive. Both follow a provintial character coming to the big city to pursue a career in the entertainment industry. Betty is a young woman from Ontario who comes to Los Angeles to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. Muriel and the Bagges come to New York from a place called „middle of Nowhere“ in Kansas. As provintials, Betty and the Bagges are quite naive. Betty is a kind young woman who goes to great lengths to be nice to people so she even accepts the stranger Rita into her home. Muriel does the same at home, which in many episodes causes all kinds of adventures for the family. In this case, the Bagges are also easily manipulated – Muriel is fooled by the false welcoming sign on the door into thinking that Schwick is after their well-being and even proclaims the decrepit, creepy room “homey”. Eustace, on the other hand, is attracted to the room by the TV set which offers two thousand channels and by Schwick's promise of hotdogs.
Hell
The characters in both of these works descend into a kind of an underworld. The underworld in both cases is a place where the production of spectacle is disrupted.
In Mulholand Drive Betty and Rita drive off to theater Silenzio at 2 o'clock in the morning. As they signal to cabs by the side of the road, a flyer taped to the light post can be seen that says “hell”.
They arrive at a creepy theater where the hosts are proud to present their audience with a disruption of illusion. „No hay banda“, there is no band, yet there is music, whichever instrument the host names, it can be heard playing. A performer comes on stage who sings the song “Llorando”, causing Betty and Rita to start crying because her performance is so emotional. Yet, the illusion is broken when the visibly bruised and battered singer simply collapses on the stage, but the emotional song keeps running on. After that point in the movie, everything changes. The movie proves to have been an illusion from the beginning. Mulholland Drive is notorious for the variety of interpretations it has generated. It is not crucial for this paper to accept any of the given interpretations or offer a new one. What is interesting is that each of them, in one way or the other, ironizes the society of spectacle.
If we opt for the simplest solution and understand Rita’s initial car crash as Betty's attempt to murder her, it can be argued that we are choosing a very spectacular interpretation that draws on popular genres such as crime fiction and romance. We as viewers prove that our expectations are saturated with sensationalist, cliché formulae produced by the system. If we opt for the interpretation that the first part of the movie is Betty's dream, it can be said that we are attributing the entire plot to a single quirk of one's psyche, thus particularizing a much broader issue. In reality, the very issue of Mulholland Drive is hidden not in homosexuality nor in psychoanalysis, but in class.
Hell in Courage the Cowardly Dog
Similarly, Schwick takes Bagges deep beneath the surface. They take the elevator down a considerable number of storeys and descend into a pit that visually resembles hell, where they are faced with the grim reality of life behind the polished representations of the big city.
What comes into play when the Bagges descend into the false rehearsal room is the name of their helper. Schwick is actually short for Buschwick, the name of a neighborhood in New York mostly populated by working class people. Schwick insists that everyone call him Schwick and not Buschwick. He tries to conceal his working class background to blend into the capitalist society so that he can subvert its mechanisms.
When the Bagges settle in, Schwick sends Courage out to retrieve a package for him. He threatens to kill Muriel if he does not come back before the end of the show.
Courage looks for the address and finds himself in front of a condemned building. Inside, he opens every available door and finds behind them a three-headed dragon, a shark and a monster girl playing a violin. A scream can be heard saying “Open the door”. What he finds are other performers, other characters and stars that Schwick has locked up to disrupt the production of entertainment – Kind Ghidroh, a monster from Japanese mythology, a shark which may be a reference to Spielberg's Jaws, and a young lady, who, like Muriel, is a musician.
Schwick locks these entertainers up to try to prevent the production of sensationalism.
Stars in Mulholland Drive and Courage in the Big Stinkin’ City
Schwick knows and David Lynch signals that the idea of a star is one of the main features of the society of spectacle. Debord argues,
As specialists of apparent life, stars serve as superficial objects that people can identify with in order to compensate for the fragmented productive specializations that they actually live. The function of these celebrities is to act out various lifestyles or sociopolitical viewpoints in a full, totally free manner. They embody the inaccessible results of social labor by dramatizing the by-products of that labor which are magically projected above it as its ultimate goals: power and vacations — the decisionmaking and consumption that are at the beginning and the end of a process that is never questioned (1967: 25).
In other words, stars are used to represent a false ideal that conceals the fact that workers produce the privileges which allow other people to have fun and vacation, but at the same time, vacations are imposed on the workers as the desired lifestyle to conceal the fact that there is a radical separation between the two classes. Stars are not real, they are, by definition, devoid of individuality. Similarly, Lynch exposes the falsitude of celebrity culture in many ways. Again, whichever way we take Mulholland Drive, it ironizes stars. Stars pretend to be in happy relationships. They are oversexualized as the grotesque scene where Betty is trying for a role and literally puffs and pants over her male co-star, which she did not do when she was rehearsing with Rita who actually attracts her, proves. Stars have no right to a life of their own, they are constantly tormented by the society's hunger for sensation, as the elderly couple haunting Diane demonstrates. Directors have very little control over their movies, their movies belong to their investors and are not the product of their fancy.
Similarly, Schwick captures stars to prevent people from a passive, blind adoration, the consumption of a lifestyle they can never attain. The viewer is led behind the stage to see what it takes for the spectacle to run properly. And what it takes is the erasure of labor, the keeping away from the real life of the proletarian.
The show even directly shows how the mechanisms of the spectacle work. Schwick uses spectacle to divert the Bagges' attention from the fact that they are being held captive. While Courage is on the quest, Schwick sedates Eustace with a TV set with two thousand channels. Again, we see an ironic portrayal of contemporary society in which the spectacle covers over real life and prevents the consumer from asking too many questions. Schwick even kicks off the bones of a person, an earlier victim, still holding the remote control from the chair and lets Eustace sit in it. Even when Eustace is eaten by the unnamed creature, he continues to watch television.
Debord argues, “The alienation of the spectator, which reinforces the contemplated objects that result from his own unconscious activity, works like this: The more he contemplates, the less he lives; the more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own life and his own desires” (1967: 16).
This brings about the question of how long these individuals were in Schwick's rehearsal room and why no one ever looked for them. Although they are stars, these people are disposable on the one and alienated on the other hand, they are replaceable, because individuality is not valued highly in capitalism. As Debord claims, “The spectacle is the acme of ideology because it fully exposes and manifests the essence of all ideological systems: the impoverishment, enslavement and negation of real life. The spectacle is the material ‘expression of the separation and estrangement between man and man’” (1967: 79).
Similarly, in Mulholland Drive it turns out that Betty is actually Diane, a struggling actress who commits suicide. Rita and Betty find the body which had been decaying for some days, again without anyone looking for it. Another example of radical alienation is the man behind Winkie's. He is a homeless person portrayed as gruesome, covered in layers of filth. He hides behind the café because he disrupts the spectacle of capitalism, his appearance denies the narrative about capitalism being the best possible economic system. Interestingly, Schwick is depicted as a bug. In its way, Schwick is similar to Kafka's creatures like the one in “The Burrow”. Albeit living in what appears to be the ground beneath a lawn, the creature shows all the symptoms of urban paranoia; the uncanny feeling of being watched, of an alien, mysterious force constantly plotting against the individual. The root of the paranoia is the breakdown of collectivity – capitalism, with its relentless logic of accumulation, has caused separation, a collapse of all emotional ties and a sense of hostility. Kafka's creature is obsessed with making his home safe, it is ready to exterminate anyone who should dare to invade it, which is a discourse that too much resembles contemporary attitudes towards migrants.
Courage and sensation
Another instance in which Courage the Cowardly Dog mocks sensationalism and the production of ever more excitement by the media is the very mission to bring back Schwick's package. Courage finds out that the package he is carrying is actually wanted by the police, who are calling it the “evil package”. This is why a policeman has been following Courage all along. Their first encounter occurs when Courage is reading the address from the envelope which Schwick gave to him. The policeman simply asks him whether he needs assistance and Courage panics – he starts screaming and runs away. This instance is a way for the director to explicitly depict interpellation; Courage is made to feel guilty by the exponent of the system by sheer appelation, even though he has done nothing wrong, guilt is implicitly imparted on him by interpellation.
The policeman follows Courage into the subway, another underground space, which is, it would appear, more adept for the transport of evil packages than a taxi or a bus, or the evil carriage which Courage took to the house.
In the end all of the built up suspense is made ridiculous by the fact that the package turns out to contain nothing more than a squeegee Schwick uses to wipe off a cry for help from one of his previous captives.
In this way the show actually pokes fun at the contemporary journalism, at infotainment and the tendency to spread mass panic and produce sensational headlines.
Class
The issue that Schwick's working class background opens up is the position of the working class in today's society. Class is the underground underlying all of society's issues. Debord claims that a true revolution can be carried out if the proletarian realize that their alienated labor is the basis of society. One cannot help but ask, in our representative democracy, who represents working classes? Who can educate the poor, the homeless, the underpaid, exploited workers, the slaves and indented laborers in the Third World about revolution? The answer is – they have no representatives, no advocates. The liberal class, which ought to represent their issues, has given up on them to maintain their own benefits.
In a fervent book written in extremely simple, straightforward language, journalist Chris Hedges tracks the history of liberals' loss of political power. He claims that the liberals stopped acting as the society’s “safety valve” after the First World War (Hedges 2010, n. p.). At the time, the right wing used the state of panic to create an atmosphere of hostility. They invented enemies within and outside of the state and produced a state of “permanent war”, which demanded “greater secrecy, constant vigilance and suspicion” (Hedges 2010, n. p.). Liberals could have intervened and created a more positive atmosphere, but they failed to do so because they wanted to keep their privileges. This resulted in the current state of affairs in the world, where the American administration is spending an enormous amount of money on wars in which untrained soldiers fight. Ironically, the ultimate goal is to not to bring peace or enlightenment, but to perpetuate wars because buying and selling weapons is a lucrative business.
The liberals are accomplices in this formation. They have no political influence since their main purpose, being a safety valve, has been betrayed. Instead, they have focused on identity politics, as a washed down form of liberalism they still seem to believe in. However, this, too, is a simulacrum, a facade concealing the fact that economy and class are what shaped their politics, and not sex/gender or race.
The question that opens up is – if the world is shaped by class and economy, what good can (analyzing) popular culture offer.
Popular culture is political, but not politics
Contemporary theorists attribute a lot of political momentum to pop-cultural artefacts. It is easy to find many an article on the feminism of Beyoncé, laborism in Star Wars, greater visibility of LGBT characters in movies and series. However, while it is true that pop-cultural products are political, what has to be constantly kept in mind is the fact that they are products. As Frederic Jameson puts it, by its acceptance of the communicative, hedonistic, open nature, postmodern art serves itself as a shiny product to be consumed and is, therefore, undoubtedly co-opted into the system. It may criticize certain anomalies in the society, but it is nonetheless part of the same order. Beyoncé's postfeminist stance rests on a neoliberal value – it places women's empowerment in their ability to buy beauty products to create an attractive body which is, then, their source of power. Such a view overlooks two important issues. Firstly, the attractive body is modeled according to male pleasure. Secondly, how are women who do not have purchasing power to be empowered? How are they even to buy if their basic needs have not been met? Postfeminism, too, obliterates class issues and directs its activism towards young, carefree women with a stable income. Another example is the Star Wars franchise. The latest installment The Last Jedi has by some movie critics been described as laborist. This is a profoundly absurd qualification if we take into account the fact that the series was produced by Disney in the context of the oligopoly of a fistful of the richest studios that destroy all independent and local production. It is a deeply offensive gesture, and typical of the society of spectacle, which has co-opted disenfranchisement and resold it to the very disenfrancshised.
Interestingly, Cartoon Network is produced by Time Warner, one of Disney’s competitors and the successor of Warner Bros, a studio historically opposed to Disney’s animation style.
Disney's animation style was the role model since 1930s, but in the 1950s opposition emerged in the form of Warner Bros, United Productions of America and Zagreb School of Animated Film. The poetics of Disney consisted of full animation and movement, as well as oval lines to create illusion. Disney movies sedate viewers, they offer them a fully rounded world in which no oddities disrupt their passive consumption of content. However, cartoons made by the three dissident studios offered an alternative to the Disney style. Their emphasis on geometrical lines, reduced animation and movement collapsed Disney's traditionalism. It was art which puzzled the viewer, made him uncomfortable by drawing attention to its artificiality. It was art which allowed the viewer to be critical because he or she had to watch from an ideological distance. In postmodernism, this distance, as Jameson claims, has collapsed,
No theory of cultural politics current on the Left today has been able to do without one notion or another of a certain minimal aesthetic distance, of the possibility of the positioning of the cultural act outside the massive Being of capital, from which to assault this last. What the burden of our preceding demonstration suggests, however, is that distance in general (including “critical distance” in particular) has very precisely been abolished in the new space of postmodernism. We are submerged in its henceforth filled and suffused volumes to the point where our now postmodern bodies are bereft of spatial coordinates and practically (let alone theoretically) incapable of distantiation; meanwhile, it has already been observed how the prodigious new expansion of multinational capital ends up penetrating and colonising those very pre-capitalist enclaves (Nature and the Unconscious) which offered extraterritorial and Archimedean footholds for critical effectivity (1991: 48).
Cartoon Network is an offspring of the dissident animation style. It is, thus, interesting to analyze how the author is using cartoon to achieve a more engaged form of art and to what extent the criticism of the forerunners is still evident.
Art which faces problems
Jameson proposes a solution for postmodern loss of engagement. He calls for a restoration of old functions art used to possess – the pedagogical and didactic. To be didactic can prove to be a very tricky goal in art-films – most often if their desire to espouse a certain political view or message, this diminshes their aesthetic value since they seem mere propaganda. Mulholland Drive is a film that manages both to be highly stylized and to address certain issues. But, that is basically all that the movie does – it does not even offer strong criticism, it simply shows the dark side of fame and leaves the viewer to decide how he wants to take it. Courage, in that respect, again proves to be quite similar to the movie.
Cartoons, whose audience is children, by default have a didactic function. Although they have to entertain children, they also have to teach them something. This is a perfect medium to insert progressive messages such as those Courage the Cowardly Dog is trying to promote. Be these issues the center of the plot, as in the episode Snowman's Revenge, or just latent as in other episodes, children are exposed to a certain form of critical awareness which prepares them from a young age to be sceptical of the narratives that their leaders are promoting.
Yet, is this truly fulfilling the potential of the medium?
How does Courage in the Big Stinkin' City end? Courage brings Muriel to the stage where she performs. Schwick chases them and as he tries to snatch Muriel, the policeman appears and kicks Schwick into the orchestra. Schwick is arrested and social equilibrium is restored.
However, the problem is not really solved. The working class villain is (rightfully) punished, but the problems of his class are not headed. What we have at work is again just a surface solution of a Manichean battle of evil and good, which works quite well in the show meant for a younger audience.
The didactic nature of the genre necessitates a happy ending in which the children are, naturally, instructed not to act in illicit ways. However, since the show's villain is a “villain with a cause”, the show does not offer any hope that the system will stop producing more Schwicks.
We can, thus, see the extent to which it is permitted to be critical. Criticism is welcome, since the system can coopt it and use it as a pretense of its acceptance of dissent voices, but presenting a solution is not allowed. This is where the needed simplicity of cartoon comes in. The authors create fairly simple, yet unfeasible solutions, unburdened by the need to answer the questions properly. How do we solve the problem of global warming? We patch up the sky with a needle and a thread. How do we solve the issue of pollution? We build a large vacuum cleaner and just clean up the mess we've created.
It is not all so simple. Engineers and construction workers in Onkalo will have had to work for more than 200 years to hide our garbage.
Solution
Rarely are the “solutions” that are offered in cartoons applicable to the real problem. Similarly, the only solution the viewer gets in Courage in the Big Stinkin' City is the solution to the very basic plot. A villain is punished. Children receive a moral lesson. However, it is as if the author uses children's cartoon as a form which cannot, by definition, carry too much ideological content. In other words, the authors can raise certain issues, but can offer infantile, simple solutions to them. Cartoons are not expected to solve problems.
Both Mulholland Drive and Courage the Cowardly Dog certainly warn about problems. However, these problems cannot be saved by commercial art alone. Commercial art, by virtue of the fact that it is a commodity in the capitalist system, can only draw attention to them, but politics should solve them. Art should not be used as the only means of political fight. Debord proposes,
In the language of contradiction, the critique of culture is a unified critique, in that it dominates the whole of culture — its knowledge as well as its poetry — and in that it no longer separates itself from the critique of the social totality. This unified theoretical critique is on its way to meet unified social practice (1967: 77).
Criticism alone can achieve nothing in a system that turns criticism to its own advantage. Any criticism that focuses on a single aspect of the global issue, be it race, gender, ecological issues, is bound to be unsuccessful in its attempt to make a significant impact because it overlooks the basic injustice on the basis of which all the others have been construed, and that is the problem of class and the alienated labor. Any critique that purports to be revolutionary has to take into account the global picture and accompany it with practice.
Works cited and referenced
Debord, Guy (1967). The Society of the Spectacle.
Hedges, Chris (2010). The Death of the Liberal Class. Nation Books.
Kafka, Franz. “The Burrow”.
Jameson, Frederic (1991). Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press.
Mulholland Drive. Dir. David Lynch. Asymmetrical Productions, 2001.
Courage in the Big Stinkin’ City. Dir. John R. Dilworth, Cartoon Network, 2000.
Into Eternity: A Film for the Future. Dir. Michael Madsen, Atmo Media Corporation, 2010.
Andrea Jović
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