Archive for the ‘History’ Category
American Literature, Autobiography, Ayn Rand, Book Review, Jack London, Mark Twain, Prometheus Unbound, Robert Louis Stevenson, Samuel L. Clemens, The Canon, William Faulkner
In American History, Arts & Letters, Book Reviews, Essays, Fiction, History, Humanities, Liberalism, Libertarianism, Literary Theory & Criticism, Literature, Nineteenth-Century America, Novels, Politics, Rhetoric, Western Civilization, Writing on November 1, 2011 at 9:26 am
The following post originally appeared here at Prometheus Unbound: A Libertarian Review of Fiction and Literature.
Good things come to those who wait, the old adage goes, and the world has waited a century for Mark Twain’s autobiography, which, in Twain’s words, is a “complete and purposed jumble.”
This 760 page jumble is a good thing. And well worth the wait.
Twain, or Samuel L. Clemens, compiled this autobiography over the course of 35 years. The manuscript began in fits and starts. Twain, while establishing his legacy as a beloved humorist and man of letters, dashed off brief episodes here and there, assigning chapter numbers to some and simply shelving others. In 1906, he began making efforts to turn these cobbled-together passages into a coherent narrative. He met daily with a stenographer to dictate various reflections and then to compile them into a single, albeit muddled, document. The result was a 5,000 page, unedited stack of papers that, per Twain’s strict handwritten instructions, could not be published until 100 years after his death.
To say that we’ve waited a century to view this manuscript is only partially accurate because pieces of the manuscript appeared in 1924, 1940, and 1959. But this edition, handsomely bound by the University of California Press, and edited by Harriet Elinor Smith and others of the Mark Twain Project, is the first full, printed compilation of the autobiographical dictations and extracts. The editors, noting that “the goal of the present edition [is] to publish the complete text as nearly as possible in the way Mark Twain intended it to be published before his death,” explain that “no text of the Autobiography so far published is even remotely complete, much less completely authorial.” The contents of this much-awaited beast of a book, then, are virtually priceless; no doubt many of Twain’s previously unread or unconsidered passages will become part of the American literary canon.
Stark photographs of the manuscript drafts and of Twain and his subjects — including family members and residences — accompany this fragmentary work. The lively and at times comical prose is in keeping with the rambling style of this rambling man whom readers have come to know and appreciate for generations. Read the rest of this entry »
Brazil, Charles Lamb, Dissents, Emerson, Harvard, Henry Abbot, Henry James, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, jurisprudence, law, Law and Literature, Literature, Louis Agassiz, Louis Menand, Mark DeWolfe Howe, Matthew Arnold, neopragmatism, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Plato, poetics of transition, poetry, Pragmatism, Robert Browning, Rorty, Sir Walter Scott, Supreme Court, Sylvanus Cobb, The Prometheus of Aeschylus, truth, William James
In American History, Art, Arts & Letters, Emerson, History, Humanities, Jurisprudence, Law, Law-and-Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism, Literature, Nineteenth-Century America, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Philosophy, Poetry, Pragmatism, Rhetoric, The Supreme Court, Western Civilization, Western Philosophy, Writing on October 26, 2011 at 9:16 am
Writers on Holmes have forgotten just how influential poetry and literature were to him, and how powerfully literary his Supreme Court dissents really are. The son of the illustrious poet by the same name, young Holmes, or Wendell, fell in love with the heroic tales of Sir Walter Scott, and the “enthusiasm with which Holmes in boyhood lost himself in the world of Walter Scott did not diminish in maturity.”[1] Wendell was able to marry his skepticism with his romanticism, and this marriage, however improbable, illuminated his appreciation for ideas past and present, old and new. “His aesthetic judgment,” says Mark DeWolfe Howe, author of the most definitive biography of Holmes and one of Holmes’s former law clerks, “was responsive to older modes of expression and earlier moods of feeling than those which were dominant at the fin de siècle and later, yet his mind found its principle nourishment in the thought of his own times, and was generally impatient of those who believe that yesterday’s insight is adequate for the needs of today.”[2] Holmes transformed and adapted the ideas of his predecessors while transforming and adapting—one might say troping—milestone antecedents of aestheticism, most notably the works of Emerson. “[I]t is clear,” says Louis Menand, “that Holmes had adopted Emerson as his special inspiration.”[3]
Classically educated at the best schools, Wendell was subject to his father’s elaborate discussions of aesthetics, which reinforced the “canons of taste with the heavier artillery of morals.”[4] In addition to Scott, Wendell enjoyed reading Sylvanus Cobb, Charles Lamb’s Dramatic Poets, The Prometheus of Aeschylus,[5] and Plato’s Dialogues.[6] Wendell expressed a lifelong interest in art, and his drawings as a young man exhibit a “considerable talent.”[7] He declared in his Address to the Harvard Alumni Association Class of 1861 that life “is painting a picture, not doing a sum.”[8] He would later use art to clarify his philosophy to a friend: “But all the use of life is in specific solutions—which cannot be reached through generalities any more than a picture can be painted by knowing some rules of method. They are reached by insight, tact and specific knowledge.”[9]
At Harvard College, Wendell began to apply his facility with language to oft-discussed publications in and around Cambridge. In 1858, the same year that Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. gifted five volumes of Emerson to Wendell,[10] Wendell published an essay called “Books” in the Harvard undergraduate literary journal.[11] Wendell celebrated Emerson in the piece, saying that Emerson had “set him on fire.” Menand calls this essay “an Emersonian tribute to Emerson.”[12]
Holmes had always admired Emerson. Legend has it that, when still a boy, Holmes ran into Emerson on the street and said, in no uncertain terms, “If I do anything, I shall owe a great deal to you.” Holmes was more right than he probably knew.
Holmes, who never gave himself over to ontological (or deontological) ideas about law as an existent, material, absolute, or discoverable phenomenon, bloomed and blossomed out of Emersonian thought, which sought to “unsettle all things”[13] and which offered a poetics of transition that was “not a set of ideas or concepts but rather a general attitude toward ideas and concepts.”[14] Transition is not the same thing as transformation. Transition signifies a move between two clear states whereas transformation covers a broader and more fluent way of thinking about change. Holmes, although transitional, was also transformational. He revised American jurisprudence until it became something it previously was not. Feeding Holmes’s appetite for change was “dissatisfaction with all definite, definitive formulations, be they concepts, metaphors, or larger formal structures.”[15] This dissatisfaction would seem to entail a rejection of truth, but Emerson and Holmes, unlike Rorty and the neopragmatists much later, did not explode “truth” as a meaningful category of discourse. Read the rest of this entry »
A Passage to India, Amritsar Massacre, Brahman Hinduism, Classical Economics, District Collector, E.M. Forster, Edward Said, Emerson, India, Jeremy Bentham, Libertarianism, Mr. Turton, Murray Rothboard, Orientalism, Rule of Law, Utilitarianism, William Blake
In Arts & Letters, Austrian Economics, Book Reviews, Communication, E.M. Forster, Eastern Civilizaton, Emerson, Essays, Fiction, History, Humane Economy, Humanities, Jurisprudence, Law, Law-and-Literature, Liberalism, Libertarianism, Literary Theory & Criticism, Literature, Novels, Philosophy, Politics, Religion, Transnational Law, Western Civilization, Western Philosophy on October 17, 2011 at 11:55 am
The following post first appeared here at Prometheus Unbound: A Libertarian Review of Fiction and Literature.
A Passage to India, by E.M. Forster [trade paperback]; also made into an award-winning film.
Perhaps the most important task of all would be to undertake studies in contemporary alternatives to Orientalism, to ask how one can study other cultures and peoples from a libertarian, or a nonrepressive and nonmanipulative, perspective.
– Edward Said, Orientalism
When I asked Dr. Plauché what I should review for my first contribution to Prometheus Unbound, he suggested that I elaborate on my recent Libertarian Papers article: “The Oft-Ignored Mr. Turton: The Role of District Collector in A Passage to India.” Would I, he asked, be willing to present a trimmed-down version of my argument about the role of district collectors in colonial India, a role both clarified and complicated by E.M. Forster’s portrayal of Mr. Turton, the want-to-please-all character and the district collector in Forster’s most famous novel, A Passage to India. I agreed. And happily.
For those who haven’t read the novel, here, briefly, is a spoiler-free rundown of the plot. A young and not particularly attractive British lady, Adela Quested, travels to India with Mrs. Moore, whose son, Ronny, intends to marry Adela. Not long into the trip, Mrs. Moore meets Dr. Aziz, a Muslim physician, in a mosque, and instantly the two hit it off. Mr. Turton hosts a bridge party — a party meant to bridge relations between East and West — for Adela and Mrs. Moore. At the party, Adela meets Mr. Fielding, the local schoolmaster and a stock character of the Good British Liberal. Fielding invites Adela and Mrs. Moore to tea with him and Professor Godbole, a Brahman Hindu. Dr. Aziz joins the tea party and there offers to show Adela and Mrs. Moore the famous Marabar Caves.
When Aziz and the women later set out to the caves — Fielding and Godbole are supposed to join, but they just miss the train — something goes terribly wrong. Adela offends Aziz, who ducks into a cave only to discover that Adela has gone missing. Aziz eventually sees Adela speaking to Fielding and another Englishwoman, both of whom have driven up together, but by the time he reaches Fielding the two women have left. Aziz heads back to Chandrapore (the fictional city where the novel is set) with Fielding, but when he arrives, he is arrested for sexually assaulting Adela. A trial ensues, and the novel becomes increasingly saturated with Brahman Hindu themes. (Forster is not the only Western writer to be intrigued by Brahman Hinduism. Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Blake, among many others, shared this fascination.) The arrest and trial call attention to the double-standards and arbitrariness of the British legal system in India.
Rule of law was the ideological currency of the British Raj, and Forster attempts to undercut this ideology using Brahman Hindu scenes and signifiers. Rule of law seeks to eliminate double-standards and arbitrariness, but it does the opposite in Chandrapore. Some jurisprudents think of rule of law as a fiction. John Hasnas calls rule of law a myth. Whatever its designation, rule of law is not an absolute reality outside discourse. Like everything, its meaning is constructed through language and cultural understanding. Rule of law is a phrase that validates increased governmental control over phenomena that government and its agents describe as needing control. When politicians and other officials lobby for consolidation or centralization of power, they often do so by invoking rule of law. Rule of law means nothing if not compulsion and coercion. It is merely an attractive packaging of those terms.
British administrators in India, as well as British commentators on Indian matters, adhered in large numbers to utilitarianism. Following in the footsteps of Jeremy Bentham, the founding father of utilitarianism, these administrators reduced legal and social policy to calculations about happiness and pleasure. Utilitarianism holds, in short, that actions are good if they maximize utility, which enhances the general welfare. Utilitarianism rejects first principles, most ethical schools, and natural law. Rather than couch their policymaking in terms of happiness and pleasure, British administrators in India, among other interested parties such as the East India Company, invoked rule of law. Rule of law manifested itself as a concerted British effort to discipline Indians into docile subjects accountable to a British sovereign and dependent upon a London-centered economy. The logic underpinning rule of law was that Indians were backward and therefore needed civilizing. The effects of rule of law were foreign occupation, increased bureaucratic networks across India, and imperial arrogance.
Murray Rothbard was highly critical of some utilitarians, but especially of Bentham (see here and here for Rothbard’s insights into the East India Company). In Classical Economics, he criticized Bentham’s opinions about fiat currency, inflationism, usury, maximum price controls on bread, and ad hoc empiricism. Bentham’s utilitarianism and rule of law mantras became justifications for British imperialism, and not just in India. A detailed study of Hasnas’s critique of rule of law in conjunction with Rothbard’s critique of Bentham could, in the context of colonial India, lead to an engaging and insightful study of imperialism generally. My article is not that ambitious. My article focuses exclusively on A Passage to India while attempting to synthesize Hasnas with Rothbard. Forster was no libertarian, but his motifs and metaphors seem to support the Hasnasian and Rothbardian take on rule of law rhetoric and utilitarianism, respectively. These motifs and metaphors are steeped in Brahman Hindu themes and philosophy. Read the rest of this entry »
“The Differend”, Crimes, François Châtelet, Jean-François Lyotard, law, Plaintiff, Private, Public, punishment, sanction, Silence, sovereign immunity, Statism, the State, Torts, Totalitarianism, victim
In Arts & Letters, History, Humanities, Jurisprudence, Law, Law-and-Literature, Legal Education & Pedagogy, Libertarianism, Literary Theory & Criticism, Philosophy, Politics, Rhetoric, Rhetoric & Communication, Western Civilization, Western Philosophy on October 13, 2011 at 12:53 pm
“I would like to call a differend [différend] the case where the plaintiff is divested of the means to argue and becomes for that reason a victim. If the addressor, the addressee, and the sense of the testimony are neutralized, everything takes place as if there were no damages (No. 9). A case of differend between two parties takes place when the ‘regulation’ of the conflict that opposes them is done in the idiom of one of the parties while the wrong suffered by the other is not signified in that idiom.”
—Jean-François Lyotard, from “The Differend”
Lyotard’s term “differend” does not refer to a concrete, tangible thing; it refers to a situation. The situation is one where a plaintiff has lost the ability to state his case, or has had that ability taken from him. He is therefore a victim. If the plaintiff has no voice, he has no remedies because he cannot prove damages. Just as one cannot prove something happened if the proof no longer exists, so one cannot prove something happened if the proof depends upon the approval of another person or party denying or erasing the proof, or having the power to deny or erase the proof. Lyotard describes this situation in relation to power or authority. Because of the nature and function of power or authority, a person or group possessing power or authority can divest the plaintiff of a voice. This divestiture results in what Lyotard calls a “double bind” whereby the referent (“that about which one speaks”) is made invisible. A plaintiff who is wronged by the power or authority cannot attain justice if he has to bring his case before the same power or authority. As Lyotard explains, “It is in the nature of a victim not to be able to prove that one has been done a wrong. A plaintiff is someone who has incurred damages and who disposes of the means to prove it. One becomes a victim if one loses these means. One loses them, for example, if the author of the damages turns out directly or indirectly to be one’s judge.” Specifically, Lyotard uses the differend to describe the situation where victims of the Nazi gas chambers lack the voice to articulate their case in terms of proof because, among other things, the reality or referent is so traumatizing and tragic as to be ineffable.
If Entity A harms me in some way, and Entity A also represents the arbiter or judge before whom I must appeal for justice, Entity A can (and probably will) neutralize my testimony. That is why a State may tax its citizens. In effect, a State has the power or authority to do something—take a person’s earnings against his will and punish or threaten to punish him, by force if necessary, when he fails or refuses to yield his earnings—that a private person or party cannot do. When a private party demands money from a person, and threatens to use force against that person if he does not yield the money, the private party has committed theft. The difference between theft (an unauthorized taking by one who intends to deprive the other of some property) and taxation (an authorized taking by an institution that intends to deprive the other of some property) is the capacity or ability to sanction. The difference depends upon who controls the language: who has the power to privilege one form of signification over another and thus to define, determine, or obliterate the referent.
“Sanction” is a double-edged term: it can mean either to approve or to punish. Both significations apply to the State, which, in Lyotard’s words, “holds the monopoly on procedures for the establishment of reality.” (Note: Lyotard is not referring to any State, but to the “learned State,” a term he borrows from François Châtelet.) Sanction is implicated when a party is harmed, or alleges to have been harmed, whether by the State or by a private party. The State then resolves whether the harm, or the act causing the harm, is “sanctionable”—whether, that is, it receives State approval or condemnation. The State either validates [sanctions] the alleged harm (in which case the alleged harm officially is not a harm), or it condemns the alleged harm (in which case the alleged “harm” is officially constituted as a “harm”) and then punishes [sanctions] the one who caused the harm. In any case, the State sanctions; it enjoys the power to decide what the referent ought or ought not to be. Read the rest of this entry »
Abraham Lincoln, Albert Jay Nock, Alexander Hamilton, Allan Bloom, Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Lytle, Ayn Rand, Barry Goldwater, Charles Murray, Clyde Wilson, Conservative, Daniel Webster, Dick Cheney, Dinesh D’Souza, Donald Davidson, Donald Rumsfeld, Eric Voegelin, Francis Fukuyama, Frank Meyer, Friedrich Hayek, George Fitzhugh, George Santayana, George Ticknor, George Will, Gerald Ford, H. L. Mencken, Harry V. Jaffa, Henry Clay, Herbert Hoover, Irving Babbitt, Irving Kristol, James Burnham, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, John Adams, John C. Calhoun, John Crow Ransom, John Marshall, John Randolph of Roanoke, Leo Strauss, Ludwig Von Mises, M. E. Bradford, Michael Novak, Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard, Newt Gingrich, Norman Podhoretz, Orestes Brownson, Pat Robertson, Patrick Allitt, Patrick Buchanan, Paul Elmer More, Paul Gottfried, Ralph Adams Cram, Richard Weaver, Robert Bork, Robert Taft, Roger Kimball, Ronald Reagan, Rufus Choate, Russell Kirk, Samuel Huntington, Strom Thurmond, The Conservatives, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas DiLorenzo, Thomas Fleming, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Sowell, Wendell Berry, Whittaker Chambers, William Cobbett, William F. Buckley, William Graham Sumner, William Howard Taft
In American History, Arts & Letters, Book Reviews, Conservatism, History, Humanities, Liberalism, Libertarianism, Politics on October 9, 2011 at 4:51 pm
Many American politicians call themselves “conservative” despite never having read Paul Elmer More, Irving Babbitt, Robert Taft, Donald Davidson, Frank Meyer, Richard Weaver, James Burnham, or Russell Kirk. Television pundits recycle the term “neoconservative” without even a passing reference to Leo Strauss, Irving Kristol, or Norman Podhoretz. A welcome respite from the ignorance of the talking heads, Patrick Allitt’s The Conservatives (Yale University Press, 2009) is an engaging and informative book, even if it is more of an introduction to American conservatism than a critical study. I recently reviewed the book here at the journal 49th Parallel, but I have more to say about it.
American conservatism is rich and complex but too often simplified or ignored by academics who think they know what conservatism means. I applaud Allitt for taking conservatism seriously and for marshaling a wealth of evidence to support his thesis. Those who cannot identify what generally distinguishes a paleoconservative from a neoconservative, or who’re confused by the apparent hypocrisy of conservatives who call for big-government spending on military and surveillance while griping about big-government, need to read this book. Allitt provides clarity and direction for the uninitiated. He deserves not just our attention, but our admiration.
Allitt attends to several figures in this book, including John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, William Cobbett, John Marshall, John Randolph of Roanoke, George Fitzhugh, Rufus Choate, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, George Ticknor, Abraham Lincoln, Orestes Brownson, William Graham Sumner, Andrew Carnegie, Theodore Roosevelt, John Crow Ransom, Andrew Lytle, H. L. Mencken, Herbert Hoover, William Howard Taft, Albert Jay Nock, Ralph Adams Cram, George Santayana, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig Von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Ayn Rand, Whittaker Chambers, William F. Buckley, Milton Friedman, Barry Goldwater, George Will, Ronald Reagan, Michael Novak, Robert Bork, Allan Bloom, M. E. Bradford, Thomas Fleming, Clyde Wilson, Francis Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington, Patrick Buchanan, Jerry Falwell, Roger Kimball, Thomas Sowell, Charles Murray, Dinesh D’Souza, and others. One book cannot address every major figure that influenced American conservatism, and Allit’s failure to mention some names (Strom Thurmond, Gerald Ford, Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, Donald Rumsfeld, Wendell Berry, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, or any of the Bob Joneses) is understandable. Paul Gottfried appears just once in the book, and passingly. But a case could be made that Gottfried’s paleoconservatism is more European in origin and thus worthy of analysis. And surely Eric Voegelin warrants more than a casual reference in a single paragraph.
For some, Allitt’s most objectionable suggestion will be that the Civil War was a conflict of two conservatisms: Calhoun’s versus Webster’s. This interpretation illuminates and simultaneously complicates such recent debates as the one held between Thomas DiLorenzo and Harry V. Jaffa over the issue of Abraham Lincoln’s legacy.
Allitt also suggests that the Federalists represent an early manifestation of conservatism. This classification would mean that Jefferson and his ilk were not conservatives, which would in turn imply that current Jeffersonians are not in keeping with a purely conservative tradition. Allitt offers this helpful and accurate note about Jefferson: “He might not have been the Jacobin his Federalist foes alleged, but neither can he easily be thought of as a conservative.” Many scholars and enthusiasts consider Jefferson to be a “classical liberal,” but the signification of that word relative to “libertarian” or “conservative” merely confounds definitional precision: All three words have been used interchangeably and negligently in recent decades. It may not matter if Jefferson is called “conservative” or “liberal,” especially if those terms cause people to short-circuit reflection or affix a contemporary label to a complicated man living in a complex, radically different era.
Allitt’s book is a fine contribution to and about conservative letters. I recommend it to anyone who thinks he can explain conservatism.
American History, American South, Appellate Courts, Ariela Gross, History, jurisprudence, Laura F. Edwards, law, Laws of Slavery, Local Law, Localism, Mark Tushnet, North Carolina, Paul Finkelman, Slavery, South Carolina, State Law, The People and Their Peace, Thomas D. Morris, University of North Carolina Press
In Advocacy, American History, Arts & Letters, Book Reviews, Civil Procedure, History, Humanities, Jurisprudence, Law, Laws of Slavery, Nineteenth-Century America, Politics, Rhetoric, Slavery, Southern History, The South on September 28, 2011 at 10:41 am
Since Mark Tushnet revived the study of slave laws in the American South, several historians, most notably Paul Finkelman, Thomas D. Morris, and Ariela Gross, have followed in his footsteps. Laura F. Edwards’s The People and Their Peace is a book that extends this trend in scholarship. Focusing on North and South Carolina from roughly 1787 to 1840, and more specifically on three North Carolina counties and four South Carolina counties during that time, Edwards situates local law in contradistinction to state law, portraying the former as polycentric and heterogeneous and the latter as centralized and homogenous. Edwards suggests that state law was more aspirational than practical in the early nineteenth-century Carolinas because it failed to inform ordinary legal practice at the local level in the same way that resident culture or custom did.
Pitting “reformers” (elite individuals who sought to create a uniform and consolidated body of rules that appellate courts could enforce at the state level) against locals, Edwards demonstrates that the legal system was bottom-up and not top-down and that law on paper or in statutes was different from law in practice. On paper or in statutes, law subordinated lower courts to appellate courts and seemed, in keeping with the reformers’ ideals, systematized into a unitary, integrated order that reflected the supposedly natural and inevitable unfolding of history. Reformers selectively compiled local laws and practices into lengthy works to forge the impression that law was a set of consistent, underlying principles. In practice, however, law was variable, contingent, and contextual. It emerged from the workaday and quotidian operations of individuals in towns and communities. Law was therefore as messy as it was unpredictable, and it cannot be understood today without a deep knowledge of interpersonal relationships and cultural conditions in locales where courts sat. Slave codes, for instance, did not reflect realities on the ground because they were handed down by state legislatures and could not account for the reputations and routines of people in local communities—people who cared less about consistency in the law or about fixed principles than about their personal stake in any given legal matter.
This book is a corrective to histories interested principally in local legal sources but neglectful of the particularities that brought about these local sources. It marshals evidence from legal documents—especially case decisions, including appellate opinions—while considering why and how those documents were produced. The development of state law became increasingly important during the antebellum years, but the rise in state law—which privileged narratives of individual rights, standardized legal principles, and enabled southern distinctiveness—does not make sense apart from local data. Local data reveals much about the processes (as opposed to philosophies) of law. Put differently, local law remained discretionary because it was fluid and not subject to abstract and purely notional mantras about rights. Read the rest of this entry »
A Civil Death, A Project Named Desire, Allen Mendenhall, Battle for the Planet of the Apes, Box Car Bertha, Fear of Dying, Film, General Hospital, Interview, John William Corrington, Joyce Corrington, MTV, New Orleans, Search for Tomorrow, So Small a Carnival, Superior Court, Television, Texas, The Omega Man, The Real World, The White Zone
In Art, Arts & Letters, Creativity, Fiction, Film, History, Humanities, Information Design, John William Corrington, Law, Literature, News and Current Events, Novels, Philosophy, Screenwriting, Television, Television Writing, Writing on September 22, 2011 at 8:31 am
Joyce Corrington is a writer who, with her late husband John William “Bill” Corrington, wrote several films, including The Omega Man (1970), Box Car Bertha (1971), and The Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973). Also with Bill Corrington, she co-authored four novels: So Small a Carnival (1986), A Project Named Desire (1987), A Civil Death (1987), and The White Zone (1990). She was head writer for such television series as Search for Tomorrow, Texas, General Hospital and Superior Court, and she has been a co-executive producer for MTV’s The Real World. She holds a Ph.D. from Tulane University. Her latest book, Fear of Dying, is available in both Kindle e-book and paperback format. Formerly a Malibu resident, she now resides in New Orleans.
Photo by Robert Corrington
Joyce, thank you so much for doing this interview. I’m surprised we haven’t done one before. You’ve been an enormous help to me over the years. You even allowed me to stay at your home in New Orleans so that I could do research on your late husband, Bill. During that time I learned that you hold a Ph.D. from Tulane University, and taught Chemistry at Xavier University for ten years. Tell me, how did a person with that background become a writer?
I’m sure it would never have happened if I hadn’t met and married Bill when we were both at Rice University. He was working on a doctorate so he could earn a living teaching, but he wanted to write. Bill succeeded in publishing a number of well-received novels, which I typed and edited for him. But we did not become co-writers until Roger Corman read one of Bill’s novels and invited him to write a movie script. This was not something Bill especially wanted to do. But it paid better than college teaching, so we evolved a film writing partnership, whereby I would create a detailed story structure and Bill would write a script following my outline. After six films, we became involved in writing television series and continued our writing partnership there and in the four New Orleans mystery books we published. Bill passed away as the fourth was being written, so I completed it.
Why did you choose to continue the series?
After Bill died I found it difficult to get the same kind of writing jobs we had been used to doing. I think this was because all of my credits were as half of a writing team and producers felt uncertain whether I could do the job by myself. Thus I had about two years where I had little to do and, while I read a lot during that time, I also began writing a sequel to our New Orleans mystery series. I think I wanted to prove that I could do it by myself. Just after finishing the manuscript for Fear of Dying, I was hired to help produce The Real World, a job which I held for eleven seasons. I did not get around to publishing Fear of Dying until I retired from that job. Read the rest of this entry »
genealogy, History, knowledge, Michel Foucault, Nietzsche, origins, Paul Ree, philosophy, society, Western philosophy
In Art, Arts & Letters, Historicism, History, Humanities, Literary Theory & Criticism, Philosophy, Politics, Rhetoric, Western Philosophy, Writing on September 17, 2011 at 10:02 am
“Genealogy […] requires patience and knowledge of details, and it depends on a vast accumulation of source material. Its ‘cyclopean monuments’ are constructed from ‘discreet and apparently insignificant truths and according to a rigorous method’; they cannot be the product of ‘large and well-meaning errors.’ In short, genealogy demands relentless erudition. Genealogy does not oppose itself to history as the lofty and profound gaze of the philosopher might compare to the molelike perspective of the scholar; on the contrary, it rejects the metahistorical deployment of ideal significations and indefinite teleologies. It opposes itself to the search for ‘origins.’”
—Michel Foucault, from “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”
This brief passage by Foucault has three references to Nietzsche. The essay from which the passage is drawn demonstrates Foucault’s immense debt to Nietzsche, citing as it does no other thinker but Nietzsche (save for a fleeting reference to Paul Ree, whose term “Ursprung,” or “origin,” Nietzsche adopts). Of all Nietzsche’s ideas and practices, genealogy is the one that Foucault cultivates most impressively. Genealogy is a methodology by and with which one documents or tracks the development of ideas and their relation to human organization. In other words, genealogy traces knowledge to its systemic formations across various networks of discourse. That is why genealogy “requires patience” and “depends on a vast accumulation of source material.” It is a process, and processes take time to work out.
Genealogy does not recover origins because origins are not recoverable. Origins are fluid, not fixed; they are not, strictly speaking, origins at all—if, that is, “origins” is taken to mean single, absolute causes or definite, immutable sources. Rather, for Foucault, “origins” is a term of convenience—perhaps strategically essentialized—referring to sets of beliefs and activities that constitute discursive structures mobilized by numerous truth claims. That is why Foucault can employ the term “origins” in one sentence and then, in a subsequent sentence, seemingly reverse course by calling origins “chimeras.” The point is not to define or explain origins; the point is to discredit the idea of origins as self-evident and immanently knowable.
Origins themselves are inaccessible; the emergence and development of structures based on ideas, however, are not only accessible, but also edifying. Foucault’s genealogy, therefore, seeks to collect data about numerous truth claims and then to explain how these data form and shape culture. As Foucault says of genealogy, “It opposes itself to the search for ‘origins.’” Note the quotation marks around “origins.” Those marks suggest an intent to divest that term of its expressive purchase. Origins are knowable only as points of loss or complication, only as intricate and multifaceted constructs that, when examined closely, signify multiple and heterogeneous phenomena and that thus enable and sustain further inquiry. Read the rest of this entry »
Anamnesis, First Things, John Finnis, LYCEUM, Modern Age, Natural Law, Peter Haworth, R. J. Snell, Robert P George, Thaddeus J. Kozinski, The Good Society, The Mises Review, The New Natural Law Theory
In Arts & Letters, Conservatism, Essays, History, Humanities, Jurisprudence, Law, Liberalism, News and Current Events, News Release, Politics, Religion, Rhetoric, Western Civilization on August 12, 2011 at 4:19 pm
Over at the web-essay section of Anamnesis: A Journal for the Study of Tradition, Place, and ‘Things Divine,’ Professors R. J. Snell and Thaddeus J. Kozinski have weighed in on debates over the New Natural Law theory.
Here is Snell’s thesis:
Despite differences in particular religious commitments, a significant number of theists share reservations about the natural law. Natural law theory overlooks the Fall, arrogates the domain of revelation, attempts obligation without divine command, and treats God in the generic and thus in terms alien to the believer—just some of the many objections.In this short essay I offer a broad defense against these charges, particularly claiming that understanding natural law through human subjectivity recognizes how humans actually know and so consequently preserves the uniqueness and transcendence of God.
Appealing to authorities within the religious tradition may go some distance in answering objections, for theology and sacred text tends to vindicate the natural lawyers, especially if the religion has a doctrine of creation. But the charges may have particular traction against the so-called New Natural Law Theory (NNL), with its first-person perspective. As Christopher O. Tollefsen explains, the NNL takes seriously “considerations concerning the nature of human action,” particularly intentions as “agent-centered, or first-personal … from the point of view of the agent as seeking some good.” It is, he continues, “only by adopting the perspective of the acting person that an agent’s action can be best understood.”
Here is Kozinski’s thesis:
I commend R.J. Snell for his excellent essay “God, Religion, and the New Natural Law.” His thesis: “understanding natural law through human subjectivity recognizes how humans actually know and so consequently preserves the uniqueness and transcendence of God” is defended rigorously, and is, to my mind, true. However, in allying his argument with those of the New Natural Law school, I think he does himself a disservice.There is nothing in his thesis in terms of data, premises, argumentation, and conclusions that requires such an alliance, for everything he claims about the indispensable role and even primacy of subjectivity, experience, understanding, and judgment in ethical inquiry and practice rings true on its own and is clearly in accordance with the philosophia perennis in general and Thomistic ethical philosophy in particular. Whereas, the major claim of the New Natural Theory, that is, the adequacy of practical reason alone to ground and explain ethical theory and practice, does not ring true and is in, at least prima facie, contradiction with traditional Catholic and Thomistic moral philosophy and theology.
Though I agree with Dr. Snell that the modern and postmodern “turn to the subject” is the most appropriate beginning to inquiry about the natural law, and maybe the most effective motivation for obeying it, in our present public milieu of deep worldview pluralism, it is only a beginning. Moreover, even a sound, systematic Thomistic defense of the relative self-sufficiency of practical reason for knowing and living out the natural law can be misleading if it neglects to include a discussion of these four realities: 1) the mutually dependent relation of speculative and practical reason; 2) the subjectivity-shaping role of social practices; 3) the tradition-constituted-and-constitutive character of practical rationality; and 4) the indispensability of divine revelation in ethical inquiry and practice.
These essays are good introductions to the New Natural Law Theory. For more about this branch of jurisprudence, see the following web-based essays and articles (some of them approving of natural law and some of them critical):
Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. “On the New Natural Law Theory.” Modern Age (2000: 415-418).
Phillip E. Johnson. “In Defense of Natural Law.” First Things (1999).
Christopher Tollefsen. “The New Natural Law Theory.” LYCEUM, Vol. X, No. 1 (2008).
David Gordon’s review of Robert P. George’s In Defense of Natural Law. Review title: “New But Not Improved.” The Mises Review. Vol. 5, No. 4 (1999).
Larry Arnhart. “Darwinian Conservatism as the New Natural Law.” The Good Society, Vol. 12, No. 3 (2003).
The Daily Dish. “The ‘New’ Natural Law.” The Atlantic (Dec. 23, 2009).
David D. Kirkpatrick. “The Conservative-Christian Big Thinker.” The New York Times Magazine (Dec. 16, 2009).
“The Gospel of Life: A Symposium.” First Things (1995).
This list is hardly exhaustive. It shows only a few scholarly and popular pieces. No discussion of natural law theory should fail to mention John Finnis and Robert P. George, whose books and articles are well-known and oft-discussed. Anamnesis, edited by Peter Haworth, is sure to come out with more compelling pieces related to topics discussed here at The Literary Lawyer. Please read Anamnesis and, if you feel so inclined, leave a comment in the “comments” section of the web-based fora.
A Plea for Positivism, Bradley C. S. Watson, Claremont Review of Books, Conservatism, Constitution, Constitutional Illusions and Anchoring Truths: The Touchstone of the Natural Law, Edwin Meese, Fred Hutchison, Hadley Arkes, III, jurisprudence, law, Michael M. Uhlmann, Murray Rothbard, Natural Law, Natural Law Man, positive law, Robert P George, The Language of Law and the Foundations of American Constitutionalism
In American History, Arts & Letters, Conservatism, History, Humanities, Jurisprudence, Law, Legal Education & Pedagogy, News and Current Events, Politics on July 14, 2011 at 5:30 pm
Three days ago, the Claremont Review of Books posted two interesting reviews on jurisprudence. The first, “Natural Law Man,” is a reprint of a piece that appeared in the Winter/Spring 2010-11 issue. Here, Michael M. Uhlmann praises Hadley Arkes’s Constitutional Illusions and Anchoring Truths: The Touchstone of the Natural Law. In the second review, “A Plea for Positivism,” Bradley C. S. Watson comments on Gary L. McDowell’s The Language of Law and the Foundations of American Constitutionalism. (Click here to read McDowell’s discussion of the book with Edwin Meese, III.) Both reviews situate their subjects alongside conservative theory. Both books are worth reading.
The prevailing tendency among some uncritical commentators is to binarize natural law theory and positive law theory as polar opposites. That’s understandable if the terms “natural law” and “positive law” are reduced to cliché. But cliché, although helpful to students first getting introduced to concepts, doesn’t do justice to the complexities and challenges of natural law or positive law jurisprudence. In any event, it is curious that both natural law theorists and positive law theorists claim to have influenced, and to have been influenced by, conservatism. That fact alone suggests that natural law theory and positive law theory are complicated. Here are some readings that will complicate the complicated: Murray Rothbard’s excerpts “Introduction to Natural Law” and “Natural Law versus Positive Law,” F. Russell Hittinger’s short pieces “Natural Law” and “The Rule of Law and Law of Nature,” Robert P. George’s “Witherspoon Lecture,” and Fred Hutchison’s overview “Natural Law and Conservatism.”
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