Issue 4 - The Durham Review of Books by Isaac Turner

Durham Review of Books Literature, Politics & Culture

Issue 04 -‐ September 5th 2015 -‐ £4

EDITORIAL Welcome Back! We hope that all of you were able to enjoy your summers without too much exertion, and aren’t especially disappointed to be returning to work, wherever that may be. We ourselves have been steadily building this new issue of The Durham Review of Books, in the hope that it might provide a stimulating and exciting project that many of you would like to be involved with. After all, come the end of the year, we will be looking for new hands to take over the running of the publication, as the current exec will be making their terrified way into the world beyond the bubble. We’d like to explain the choice of theme for the current issue. ‘Allegiance’ is certainly ambiguous, and the range of topics within the issue’s pages reflect this fact. Once again we have been lucky enough to play host to many talented writers, all of whom have moulded and explored the theme in such a way as to produce intelligent reflections on a number of large concepts. So, to some extent, I expect this demonstration of the theme to be a better explanation than we could hope to provide in a short editorial. The main aim here would be to dispel any suggestion that the publication endorses any kind of blanket anti-religious sentiment by avoiding to use the word ‘Faith’, or indeed due to the absence of any overtly religious articles in the issue itself. On the contrary, we recognise the huge power of religious faith, and are perfectly aware that we could build this term’s piece entirely from articles focused on that very issue. This, in fact, in the reason we opted against using ‘Faith’ as a title. More than anything else, the use of ‘Allegiance’ was intended to encourage our writers to apply this very sentiment – one that has been tied inextricably to religion – to matters which are distinct but otherwise just as provocative and interesting. We feel that both our ‘home’ and ‘guest’ contributors (the latter of which are in greater abundance in this issue than any before) have fulfilled this aim with flair and artistry, and we hope that you agree. Ben Kirk and Nikki Motohashi Editors

This magazine’s contributors were Isaac Turner, Ben Kirk, Harriet Walsh, Nikki Motohashi, Kate Gath, Kate Horrocks, Nathaniel King, Alex Williams, Samantha Patrick and Jack Little. Many thanks, also, to Hilton Murrell, for the cover design. Printed by printondemand.com using environmentally sustainable sources. Published independently in October 2015 by The DRB Society in Durham, UK.

CONTENTS Brand New World: Young Adults And The Construction Of Geographic Allegiances Isaac Turner

Science's Ominous Dedication To Mechanising The Mind Ben Kirk

Attempted Allegiance: More Harm Than Good? Harriet Walsh

The Asian-American Dream Nikki Motohashi

Political Allegiance: Loyalty, Cynicism And Seventeenth Century Side-Switching Kate Gath - In collaboration with 'The Narrator'

The Problem Of Production: How An Allegiance To Capitalism Has Failed Us And The Environment [Long-form Essay] Kate Horrocks

Poetry: The Dirty Word - Imagining A Renewed Role For Poetry In Education And National Discourse Nathaniel King (University of East Anglia)

Politics And Humanism: What Do We Owe Our Fellow Man? Alex Williams (University of Birmingham)

The Echo Chamber Effect And The Virtue Of Discomfort Samantha Patrick (University of Oxford)

Must Prejudice Entail That We Abandon Our Authors? Jack Little (Falmouth University)

amicable relationship with the Cambridgeshire High School for Boys, the precursor to my own sixth form college. I, contrastingly, harbour many positive feelings towards it. Nonetheless, it's easy to feel strange in Cambridge when I come back for each holiday. My formative years seem to be in the not-so-distant past and the same buildings and people still exist in the places they always did, but there are little changes that I notice - a childhood house up for sale, a familiar face out of place, a news article hinting at some greater shift. Simultaneously, my time until actual adulthood is fast running out ten months at the last count, should I take up the task of teaching. When the worlds of university and home collide it's a funny sensation, as if I'm hesitant for them to cross over too much lest I lose control of my older memories and realities. These past couple of years, I have socialised with my few remaining city-based friends and meandered from place to place, trying to grasp at what was once felt. The limbo years of our twenties provide a sense of loss and emptiness at the lack of friends who choose to stay and the fact that there are no structures, educational or otherwise, to keep us tied down to old haunts.

Brand New World: Young Adults And The Construction Of Geographic Allegiances .

BY ISAAC TURNER i.j.turner@durham.ac.uk

I have always found the relationship that people draw between geographical place and a sense of ‘home’ to be complex, murky and prone to rarely deconstructed assumptions. To take one case, what do you presuppose about the personal connection between the young white men of Clacton and their allegiance to the local area in light of their high concentrations of UKIP support? Research taken to achieve a deeper understanding of why people assign and deassign their faith to a particular locality can be seen in articles covering an extraordinarily broad range of sources, from the rural sociology of sexualities, to analysis of Thames Estuary metadata. The architecture and planning scholar Peter Somerville rather vaguely (yet understandably) concludes that the social construction of home is done ‘physically, psychologically and socially in both ‘real’ and ‘ideal’ forms’. As such, in this article I aim to build on his definition using a more personal narrative. I wish to understand why we, as students, place so much faith in the area considered ‘home’ to reflect our experiences, beliefs and aspirations - and why in many instances this could go beyond homogenising stereotypes.

It is experiences such as these through which young people turn to Somerville’s ‘ideal’ forms of home to project their individuality onto geographical space. Put more simply, we wish to inhabit a place in which there is a productive, creative and positive relationship between the individual and their environs. For myself, aiming to relocate to teach in the north of England, this is based in the sense of community and family a school can provide in a post-industrial, innovative and sustainable city away from the

Pink Floyd’s scolding protest song Another Brick in the Wall is said to have arisen from Roger Water’s less-than-

lurching grip of the south-east. Many others from universities such as Durham will inevitably go the opposite way, pledging allegiance to reap the rewards of London’s neoliberal avant-gardism and world city status. Whether your new job determines your new hometown or vice versa, we all seek to see a reflection of ourselves wherever we eventually settle down.

how we pick and choose between potential places to call ‘home’. For example, the 21st century has seen a tremendous amount of young graduates migrating into urban regions from their childhood rural homes, as a result of the seemingly more lucrative, intriguing and progressive neighbourhoods that city planning can offer. The opportunities of the Thameslink train infrastructure project, Liverpool’s regenerated docks and Manchester’s Curry Mile, all seen as being part of the urban fabric by planners and councillors, are now marketed to ensnare potential residents in such localities.

Research by the University of Canterbury suggests that social activities and cultural practices such as choosing a home-place are both formed by and from certain landscapes. It is the combination of the inside - such as Bristol’s gay bars, Newcastle University’s red brick corridors or the regenerated mills between Huddersfield and Leeds - and their cyclical influential relationship with the outside proximity to the Pennines, the chalky cliffs of southern England or the ecosystem of Morecambe Bay - that constitutes a place and the behaviour that is extracted from it or imposed upon it. We each select a place to call home based on these interactions. Indeed, architects and planners such as Somerville often take this argument a step further and propose the built environment as being a largely deterministic factor in

In this article, albeit briefly, I have attempted to give a succinct overview of how young people such as ourselves in Britain may locate their identity in particular spaces and places. Homemaking is a continual, personal reaction to a multiplicity of factors ranging from the emotive pull of nostalgia to pragmatic transport links. Although it is impossible to reduce such a social practice to a one size fits all formula, it is clear that certain patterns, trends and psychologies emerge as indicators of the connection between our own hometown allegiance and its geographical context.

Further reading: Perkins et al: The Study of “Home” From a Social Scientific Perspective: an annotated bibliography. P. Somerville: The Social Construction of Home. Journal of Architecture and Planning Research. A bit more off-piste, but Google’s Maps and Streetview tools are not just for navigation - they are invaluable resources for anyone interested in further experiences of space and place.

Science’s Ominous Dedication To Mechanising The Mind BY BEN KIRK benjamin.kirk@durham.ac.uk

In his illuminating and quietly forceful article Naturalism in the Philosophy of Mind, John McDowell argues how the advancement of modern science has placed the ability of knowledge acquisition in a contrasting conceptual space to that of nature. The result, he explains, is that the practice of acquiring knowledge becomes a supernatural pursuit, something that cannot easily be explained by adherence to paradigmatic ‘laws of nature’. Such an idea seems intuitively perverse and absurd, and yet this is arguably what is strongly implied by modern scientific dogma. Although not an altogether straightforward analogy, it seems that there is a similarly misplaced trust in scientific thought which is endemic in most civilised societies today, and it is this allegiance which can demonstrate McDowell’s conclusion in a parallel way. It does not always manifest itself as a concern about ‘natural vs supernatural’, but more often as a kind of lazy acceptance of the black and white distinctions that are drawn between supposed extremes. That is, it seems as if our bodies have been mechanised to such an extent as to produce a uniformly recognised perception of objective paths that we each must follow as we live, and in many cases, discrete sets of binary categories that each of us are expected to fall into. The most obvious example for many will be the issue of sexuality: it used to be the case

that sexual attraction was seen as a simple matter of ‘man or woman’, or occasionally both. The prevalence of prejudice towards those who identify as bisexual, however, highlights how any deviance from even the most crudely defined groups is still so misunderstood as to provoke attack, although progressive emerging research will hopefully help to remedy this in the near future. But sexuality serves as a perfect reminder of the myriad facets of human life that cannot be investigated by the same kind of scientific methodology that informs us which one is the ‘good cholesterol’ (it’s HDL, apparently). The complexity of human character and experience simply cannot be boiled down to a number of neatly defined categorical distinctions. The problem is that this kind of realisation is as frightening as it is emancipating. Just as we rely on the scientific method to establish the objective truths of the world that we hold up as being beyond reasonable doubt, we seem to rely on the same line of thinking to try and provide truths that hold for our own lives. This can result in the kind of counterintuitive conclusions discussed by McDowell, where something as natural as thinking, knowing, or remembering acquires a distinctly unnatural flavour. Of course, to some extent a measure of objectivity is vital when dealing with certain aspects of our lives. Modern medicine would surely have never advanced as far as it has if certain liberties were not taken with regards to the consistent nature of our bodies, and I am in no way suggesting that these should be totally abandoned in favour of more idiographic approaches. However, it is when this prototypical conception of the human body is translated to psychological

matters, and the same objective distinctions are used when dealing with various quirks and eccentricities of each person’s cognitive process, that a kind of vicious circle becomes apparent. By popularising the belief that we can ‘diagnose’ ways of thinking, we seem to conform to such ways of thinking, even though the belief that such ‘concepts of thought’ predate the thought patterns themselves is logically self-defeating: given that the concepts themselves were only constructed as a result of the very cognitive patterns that they claim to explain, how can an objective description be reached in such a fashion? A perfect example of the tensions that such a categorical approach to psychology creates is the largely well-esteemed internet ‘quiz’ related to the ’16 personality types’. The website claiming to identify which of 16 personalities you embody (excuse my provocative choice of term) based on your responses to an extensive questionnaire is admittedly rather masterful in the way it draws one in and is able to convince us of its spookily accurate predictions. I myself was quite taken with the project upon first encountering it, believing that it provided an unusually precise account of my personality type. However, with further thought and further readings more removed from the initial excitement, it became clear that the accounts weren’t as accurate as they seemed at first. Of course, this is entirely to be expected, it would be absurd to assume that these fixed

descriptions would provide exhaustive coverage of all the idiosyncrasies of each person’s cognitive profile. I’d even go as far as to say that the types as they are now are about as extensive as they could be, given that there are only 16 of them that are supposed to apply to literally everyone. But it’s the very fact that there are only 16 of them that is the main issue here. It is a result of a kind of assumed collectivism and law-like generalising that we are confronted with the totally implausible claim that the personalities of 7 billion people on earth can be boiled down to one of 16. Although the example I have chosen is relatively harmless, the same kind of generalising can have far more damaging effects, and is certainly part of the reason why there has been such a stigma attached to mental illness (thankfully, action to prevent this is gathering pace in the modern age) as it suggests that ‘abnormal’ must equal ‘wrong’. The point that I wish to make is not that applying science to the mind is wholly worthless or redundant, but, rather, that acceptance of the fact that an objective method as applied to natural laws will not always be appropriate for chronicling our cognition can help to ease the sense of unease that accompanies a feeling that we don’t quite ‘fit the norm’, particularly when it comes to the way we think.

Further reading: John McDowell: Naturalism in the Philosophy of Mind. Dean Burnett: Nothing personal: The questionable MyersBriggs test Judith Butler: Gender Trouble

wearing it is #theaesthetic then perhaps this is not a good enough reason.

Attempted Allegiance: More Harm Than Good? BY HARRIET WALSH h.e.walsh@durham.ac.uk Firstly, it is important to clarify that as a white, middle class undergraduate at a Russell Group university, many (including myself) would describe me as privileged. My initial idea for this article was to explore cultural appropriation and how white people can still cause damage in a culture supposedly less institutionally and verbally racist than ever, due to political correctness. Then I realised, this article was being written by a young white woman who had never experienced any form of negative discrimination on the basis of her skin colour. What gives me the right to presuppose that I have any form of authority on this issue? I then realised the irony in that this discussion is still centred on white people. However, in order to both limit scope and to make informed conclusions, I will only comment upon white people appropriating other cultures. With this in mind, we can define cultural appropriation. This is an area of social justice and sociology which is hotly debated, but in essence, it is where a person of one culture adopts or uses elements of another. This definition is not to say that everything produced by cultures other than white ones is ‘off limits’, so to speak. It is the lack of appreciation, respect, and understanding of a culture whilst simultaneously stealing aesthetic and/or ritual elements of it that is cultural appropriation. To clarify, there is a difference between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation; there is a difference between wearing a bindi to your Indian friend’s wedding and wearing a bindi to a festival. If the reason you’re 7

Two issues arise here. Firstly, white people who use elements of other cultures often do so without bad intentions - like children, we like the colours, the smells, the patterns, and like children we do not realise the damage we can cause, even though our intentions are not often malicious. In some cases, the use of another culture can be an attempt to prove a lack of racism or an allegiance with other races, “Hey, I can’t be racist, I have black friends and love rap, that’s why I sometimes wear my hair in cornrows.” Secondly, white people who try to call out other white people for appropriating other cultures are also attempting to be in allegiance with other cultures, “Hey, I’m not like other white people, I know what cultural appropriation is!” The way in which the first issue is problematic is fairly self-explanatory. White people, systematically and historically more privileged than minorities, add to the problems people of colour experience regularly. For example, in the USA, the act of white people wearing Native American headdresses to Coachella is using their culture as an accessory to complete an illusion of originality and edginess, whilst completely ignoring (deliberately or otherwise) the fact that their ancestors routinely participated in the deliberate attempt to exterminate that very culture, all the while reducing that culture to an accessory and an accessory alone. The attempted allegiance of borrowing from other cultures without a full understanding or appreciation of that culture is problematic and damaging. On the note of “I have black friends”, white people can often try to assimilate themselves into another culture by saying “When I look at you, I don’t see race” or to

paraphrase, “We are all a part of the one race, the human race.” Whilst aiming to be non-racist, this seems to erase a person’s identity by trying to equate them with the assumed ‘base level’ of being white, which in turn is racist in itself in assuming that the norm is being Caucasian – it’s a form of whitewashing.

the praise of one thing does not automatically condemn another. My point is that white people cannot be subjected to racism as they do not suffer negatively from a system of prejudice, and so what gives white people the right to define something we do not and will not experience? Having said this, if white people accept it and try to use their position of power to dismantle that very power, is that not better than white people staying quiet and letting a damaging system continue?

The way in which the second issue is problematic is more complex. On the face of it, a white person calling out another person for appropriating another culture is somewhat positive - it may prevent future appropriation. However, there are several issues with this. Firstly, who has the right to assume what culture another person is from? If you assume a light-skinned Latina is a white person and subsequently try to call them out for ‘appropriating’ a culture that is actually their own, that is racist. Secondly, a white person saying “that is racist” like I have just done is difficult. Can a white person really define ‘racism’? Perhaps white people cannot be subjected to racism as they are in a position of power and privilege. As an illustration, take the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri and the subsequent #BlackLivesMatter movement. The classic white objection is that this is racist: “#AllLivesMatter!” This is fundamentally nonsensensical. Responding to “Winter is amazing” with “ALL the seasons are amazing” is useless;

In conclusion, whilst my opinion on this matter will never be as important as a person of colour’s, I still think it is important to discuss cultural appropriation and utilise my (unjustified but present) privilege as a white person to bring to other white people’s attention that the things that they are doing, even if good natured, can be damaging and easily avoided. However, it is equally about selfchecks and self-awareness, to minimise any appropriation or microaggression that you as a white person could be performing. In the words of Mohammed Fayaz, if you’re using elements of another culture to look cool/sexy/random/crazy, “you’ll live without it”.

Further reading: Mohammed Fayez: Appropriation vs. Appreciation. Kadia Blagrove: Your Guide to Avoiding Cultural Appropriation http://skindeepoxford.tumblr.com/

Yet this narrative began to evolve in the post-WWII world, as the focus of the US shifted to the dangers of Russian communism, and the race for technological superiority. In 1965, changes to immigration laws allowed professional classes of Asian immigrants – those who had attained a certain level of education – to move to the United States. These voluntary, and often moneyed settlers were unsurprisingly successful in their new circumstances, and, as such, were upheld as model citizens, heralded by the government and media as proof that ethnic minorities had just as much chance at achieving the American Dream as their white contemporaries. Although this myth involves the evidently false equation of involuntary immigrants, or those descended from slaves, with those already equipped for success, such stereotypes continue to contribute to the prejudice against other black and minority ethnic groups in America to this day. Proof of this can be seen in the denial of white privilege by Fox News host Bill O’Reilly in the wake of the Ferguson unrest: he argued that Asian Americans often succeed because ‘their families are intact and their education is paramount’, whilst, by contrast, African Americans refuse to exhibit such ‘civil behaviour’.

The Asian-American Dream BY NIKKI MOTOHASHI nikki.motohashi@durham.ac.uk Stereotyping is a deeply ingrained tendency of modern-day society: every word has implications and connections that are extremely hard to escape or ignore. Yet each stereotype, in and of itself, is rarely fixed or long-lasting. One example of this is the flexible categorisation of minority groups, disseminated through the power and reach of the media, which has long been a valuable tool for the advancement of political agendas. An interesting case study for this trend is the changing perception of Asian populations in America: their transformation from representing the feared ‘Yellow Peril’ to the elevated ‘Model Minority’ reveals the the malleability of politically-driven stereotypes, and the variety of problems that they can pose. Theories concerning the perceived danger of Asian peoples to the West originate in the late nineteenth century, with the rise of Chinese immigrants working as unskilled labourers, or so-called ‘coolie’ slaves, across the Western world. The negative stereotyping of such workers, associated with the term ‘Yellow Peril’, created an American culture in which East Asian immigrants were seen as a threat to the wages of the white populace, and, by extension, to the security of Western civilisation as a whole. It was this culture that espoused the 1882 Chinese Exclusion act, which prohibited all immigration of skilled and unskilled Chinese labourers to the US. The revised version of this act remained operational well into the 20th century, alongside the use of the term ‘Yellow Peril’ as a scare-mongering device to scapegoat Asian populations.

Soya Jung examines this inequality in ‘Race Files’, concluding that white supremacy in America is somewhat of a seesaw, ‘a zero-sum game where groups “rise” by participating in the exclusion and exploitation of others’. In this sense, we can see the transformation of attitudes towards East Asian immigrants as an invitation extended to a limited and strategically selected number in order to create the illusion of a non-biased meritocracy in the US. Therefore, while it is true that Asian-Americans are an overrepresented ethnic group at elite universities, and often have above-average 9

household incomes, this general trend should be seen largely as the result of migration patterns and the selfperpetuating effects of government agendas. Certainly, their success cannot be used to prove the universal availability of meritocratic self-advancement for nonwhite Americans, nor the laziness or inadequacy of other ethnic groups - those who have fallen far shorter of the infamous American Dream. This so-called ‘Model Minority’ myth has limited benefits for Asian-Americans themselves, occasionally creating institutional advantages in schools and workplaces by predisposing peers and supervisors towards their perceived intelligence and diligence. However, these expectations of achievement also come with a clear downside, notwithstanding their effects on the perceptions of other racial groups in America. Stereotyping all Asians as high achievers means that those who are slower learners, or do not thrive under the conventional system, are made to feel like failures, or racial outliers. The intensity of this pressure contributes to the fact that Asian Americans have been shown to suffer from higher levels of stress, depression and mental illness in comparison to other races. In fact, NAWHO states that among women aged 15 – 24, Asian American girls have the highest suicide mortality rates across all ethnic groups. Admittedly, it is difficult to extract one cause of these problems from another, and it is certainly true that the prioritisation of hard work has arisen independent of US influence in some East Asian populations. However, American stereotyping contributes towards an overwhelming pressure for success, which truly benefits only a lucky few. Moreover, the conception of a ‘Model Minority’ comes with the stereotyped

notion of Asian Americans as apolitical, and predictably monotone in their attitudes and behaviours. This means that while their relative academic success is incontestable, it is rare to find Asian Americans at high levels of leadership in the US: they are often seen merely as quiet, unassertive and submissive worker robots. As such, the other political purpose of such ethnic stereotyping becomes clear: encouraging East Asian allegiance to the American Dream both enhances prejudices against the ‘lazy’ black population and ensures that a group of potential political activists is suppressed. We can see the effects of this in a recent report from ‘Third Way’, in which it is recorded that the rate of Asian participation in US politics remains relatively low. And, of course, the other fundamental problem with the conception of Asian Americans as a ‘Model Minority’ is the same as with any stereotype: the existence of radically different histories and experiences across the Asian American diaspora is disregarded in favour of categorising all individuals as one ambiguous ‘Other’. The stereotyping of East Asian immigrants as a ‘Model Minority’ serves as a smokescreen for the real issues at hand – first and foremost, the continued contradiction between the US ideal of liberty, and the prejudices, limitations and aggressions faced by Black Americans. It also replaces allegiance between minority groups – a potentiality that would threaten the hegemony of white America – with division and antipathy. Consequently, while the evolution of the ‘Yellow Peril’ stereotype into an elevation of Asian American ‘success’ may seem positive on the surface, this politically motivated transformation has caused more harm than good to the unity and equality of the US as a whole. 10

Political Allegiance: Loyalty, Cynicism And Seventeenth Century Side-Switching .

BY KATE GATH [Guest Writer from University of Sheffield, in collaboration with 'The Narrator']

French politician Charles de Rémusat stated 'the public that scoffs at the people who have served strikingly different governments forgets that it has done the same itself'. This observation reveals much about attitudes in past and recent centuries regarding political allegiance, a topic which remains reliably controversial. Our personal and political identities are viewed as inescapably bound to our voting choices. We expect those in Parliament to remain faithful to a certain set of policies, such as those prescribed by a particular political party. Any politician who transgresses, especially by defecting to another party, is vilified by the press and compromises their public image. Must it be this way? More importantly, how loyal are we in our voting habits? Does this even matter? Anecdotal evidence leads me to believe that there are a great number of people who feel strongly aligned to a particular party and will put a cross in the same box whenever engaging in the voting process, sometimes throughout their entire life. There also seem to be many who generally vote the same way, or those who will vote for a certain party for years or even decades at a time. I would suggest that far fewer people have more unpredictable voting habits, which tend to be informed to a much larger extent by the circumstances around and at the time of casting their 11

vote. Or maybe it seems to be ‘far fewer’ as this demographic are rather less vocal about their voting than the die-hard supporters of any one party. Such people are important - when in ‘general election’ mode, news reporters never allow us to forget the ominous-sounding 'floatingvoters'. These silent but deadly members of the electorate may be making their final choice a matter of days before voting, or even at the ballot box. Loyalty is an admirable trait; for this reason there is something of a stigma in not aligning yourself with a particular party. But it’s your vote to use however you see fit. Voting in itself is something to be applauded, especially since not everyone on the planet is lucky enough to have such an opportunity, but that is a subject for another debate. Committing oneself wholly to a certain party is more than acceptable, but the reasoning behind it should be sound, as opposed to being of the 'my dad voted X, his dad voted X and his dad voted X, so I've always voted X' school of thought, which is nonsensical. Just because someone is of the same blood, it does not mean we will or should adopt identical politics. This kind of thinking also implies that voting differently to your family, or members of your community for that matter, makes you some kind of political pariah. You are not obliged to reveal the details of your vote but nevertheless should not be shamed, to any degree, if you vote ‘outside the box’. This aside, we should feel fortunate that our political allegiance, in the UK at least, is highly unlikely to leave us fearing for our lives. During the revolutionary decades of the Civil Wars in the seventeenth century, this was not the case. William Davenant, writer, war general and high profile royalist is often presented as a toadying figure, an anti-populist and determined careerist. Yet somehow, alongside his literary output, he remains rather likeable.

Davenant was captured in 1650 as he set sail for Maryland to become a lieutenantgovernor. He was imprisoned in Cowes Castle on the Isle of Wight, and then moved to the Tower of London; death loomed large, but Davenant escaped, to then be rearrested for debts. Later, as a free man, Davenant penned A Proposition for Advancement of Moralitie (1653), a text appealing to the new government, detailing the benefits of didactic performances in imposing state control over the masses. While this was surely also an attempt at sidestepping the legal constraints placed around the theatre, Davenant is clearly keen to ingratiate himself with the regime. Who can blame him? Andrew Marvell is another literary figure of the era whose politics are almost frustratingly ambiguous, and pamphleteer Marchamont Nedham was a notorious turncoat. He worked as author and editor for Parliamentarian publication Mercurius Britanicus from 1643 until it was shut down in 1646 and Nedham imprisoned. The following year, he began work on Mercurius Pragmaticus, a Royalist newsbook, and after being incarcerated again, he founded state text Mercurius Politicus in 1650. Journalism seems to be the only cause to which he was committed. Surely many of us would be the same if it kept us alive? Alive, employed and safe?

While historical turncoats and modern side-switchers differ hugely in their motivation - at one time a shift in allegiance could save your life, whereas now it is at most your livelihood on the line â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the same outcome occurs of gaining a reputation as wholly untrustworthy. Whether you are Marchamont Nedham, William Davenant, a 21st century floatingvoter, Mark Reckless or Georgie Ramsay (Conservative and Labour figures respectively who both defected to UKIP before the 2015 general election), you have committed the ultimate sin of refusing to be loyal to one set of beliefs. However, your motivation is most likely a desire to remain true to your own values, but instead you are denounced as fickle and disloyal, simply for exercising freedom. Those of the seventeenth century, even when they were without an absolutist monarchical regime, did not have freedom of speech or the opportunity to vote. We must remember that loyalty can be misguided, and it often goes unrewarded. People, parties and policies change, and an individual's politics can be highly idiosyncratic, finely nuanced and difficult to shape to existing political moulds. Ultimately, political allegiance is far more complex than we find it convenient to believe.

Further reading: Geoff Andrews and Michael Saward: Political Belonging:Loyalty, Community and Statehood Andrew Gelman et al: The Mythical Swing Voter Dr Philip Major: Literatures of Exile in the English Revolution and its Aftermath 1640-1690 12

The Problem of Production: How An Allegiance To Capitalism Has Failed Us And The Environment .

BY KATE HORROCKS kate.horrocks@durham.ac.uk

One of the most poisonous errors of our time is the belief that the “problem of production” has been solved. This belief is held by virtually all the “experts”; the captains of industry; the economic managers in governments of the world; the academic and not-so-academic economists; not to mention a host of economic journalists. Despite many other diverging opinions, these various heads of industry, business and commerce all (seemingly) agree that the problem of production has been solved: that humankind has, at last, come of age. The blossoming of this error in thinking, so egregious and firmly rooted, is closely connected to the philosophical changes during the last three or four centuries in humankind’s attitude to nature. Or, rather, western and westernised attitudes to nature. “Our entire attitude to nature today, our violation of nature, with the help of machines and the unimaginable inventiveness of our technicians and engineers, is hubris” writes Nietzsche, charging us “moderns” with an arrogant and decadent relationship towards nature and natural resources. “Modern” humans do not experience themselves as part of nature but, rather, as an outside force destined to dominate and conquer it. With the alarming rate of environmental degradation that has occurred within the last two hundred years, especially if

measured relative to the history of all human activity thus far, one is inclined to think that perhaps he is right. The illusion of unlimited powers over nature, nourished by astonishing scientific and technological achievements, has produced the current illusion of having solved the problem of production. This illusion is based on the inability to distinguish between income and capital where the distinction matters most. Capital is the means by which income is produced. Income is the amount of money you receive, like a wage or salary, or the profit from a business. For example, a slicing machine might be the capital to produce crisps, which when sold creates income. Every economist and businessperson is familiar with this distinction, applying it conscientiously and with considerable subtlety to all economic affairs; except where it really matters. That is, when dealing with the irreplaceable “natural capital” which humans have not made, but found, and without which can do nothing. A businessperson would not consider a firm to have solved its problems of production if they saw that it was rapidly consuming its capital. How, then, can we overlook this very basic flaw when it comes to our shared firm: planet Earth? First of all, and most obviously, one type of “natural capital” is fossil fuels. If we treated them as capital items, which they are, we should be concerned with conservation: we should do everything in our power to try and minimise their current rate of use. However, many nations (with a few exceptions) are not even slightly concerned with conservation; we are maximising, instead of minimising, current rates of use. And if there is ever a concern with our rates of use the solution tends to look at other 13

polluting energy sources, such as a move from oil and gas to coal, or vice versa, demanding ever more gigantic efforts to search for and exploit the remaining treasures of the Earth. Surely it must be evident that our current methods of production are already eating into the very substance of our industrialised lives. To many, this is not evident at all. They say, now that we have solved the problem of production, have we ever had it so good? Are we not better fed, better clothed, better housed and better educated than ever before? And we are, but not all of us: the rich among us thrive off the back of those who struggle. But, this is not what I mean by “substance”. The substance of humankind cannot be measured by Gross National Product. I began by suggesting that one of the most fateful errors of our time is the belief that the problem of production has been solved. This illusion is based on our inability to recognise that the modern industrial system, with all its intellectual sophistication, consumes the very basis on which it was erected. To use the language of the economist: it lives on irreplaceable capital which it cheerfully treats as income. In order to get off our present collision course we must thoroughly understand the problem and begin to see the possibility of evolving a new lifestyle, with new methods of production and new patterns of consumption - a life-style designed for permanence. We still have to learn to live peacefully, not only with our fellow humans but also with nature. The question that is key to my investigation is this: is there enough to go round? Immediately we encounter a serious difficulty: what is “enough” and who can tell us? Certainly not the economist who pursues “economic

growth” as the highest of all values, and therefore has no concept of “enough”. Economic growth, when viewed from the point of view of economics, physics, chemistry and technology, has no discernible limit. Economic growth relies on materialism; an attitude to life which seeks fulfilment in the single-minded pursuit of wealth. Materialism cannot fit into this world because it contains no limiting principle, but exists within limited environment. If human vices such as greed and envy are systematically cultivated, the inevitable result is nothing less than a collapse of intelligence. A human driven by greed or envy loses the power of seeing things as they really are; in their roundness and fullness. If whole societies become infected by these vices, they may indeed achieve amazing things but they also become increasingly incapable of solving the most elementary problems of everyday existence. The Gross National Product may rise rapidly but results in a population who find themselves oppressed by increasing frustration, alienation, insecurity and so forth. However, it seems probable that the grave social diseases infecting many rich societies today are merely passing phenomena which an able government could eradicate by revolutionising science and technology whilst promoting a more holistic view of life; one that promotes wisdom and sustainable living. The economics of permanence implies a profound reorientation of science and technology which has to incorporate wisdom into its very structure. The exclusion of wisdom from economics was something we could perhaps get away with for a little while, but now that we have become very “successful”, the problem of spiritual and moral fulfilment moves into the central position. From an economic 14

point of view, the central concept of wisdom is permanence. Nothing makes economic sense unless it can continue for a long time without running into problems. The cultivation and expansion of needs is the antithesis to wisdom and, also, the antithesis to freedom and peace. We will never be free, wise or peaceful unless we relinquish our dependence over which we cannot control. Scientific or technical solutions which poison the environment or degrade the social structure and humans themselves are of no benefit, regardless of how brilliantly conceived or how compelling their superficial attraction. Bigger machines, entailing ever bigger concentrations of economic power and exerting ever greater violence against the environment do not represent progress: they are a denial of wisdom. Human wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the gentle, the non-violent and beautiful. How can peace be built on a foundation of reckless technology and a violent economic system? We need methods and equipment which are cheap enough so that they are accessible to virtually everyone; suitable for small-sale application and compatible with humankindâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s need for creativity. Out of these three characteristics non-violence is born and a relationship between humanity and nature which guarantees permanence emerges. The subject is so large that I cannot do more than touch upon it. Above all else, there is need for a proper philosophy of work which understands work as something other than what it has become: an inhuman chore. Rather, it should be treated as something which is nourishing for the community, body and soul. After family, work is the true foundation of

society. If the foundations of a society are unsound, how could society itself be sound? Soul-destroying, meaningless, mechanical, monotonous work is an insult to human nature which inevitably produces either escapism or aggression. Economically, our wrong living consists primarily in systematically cultivating greed and envy and thus building a vast array of unnecessary wants. To rise above these unwarranted desires, we must reconnect with our human â&#x20AC;&#x153;wisdomâ&#x20AC;?. Wisdom can be read about in various publications but it can be found only inside oneself. To be able to find it, one has to liberate oneself from such masters as greed and envy. The insights that wisdom allows us to have enables us to see the hollowness and fundamentally unsatisfactory nature of a life dedicated primarily to the pursuit of material ends, to the neglect of the spiritual. Without wisdom, humans are destined to destroy the world through a monster economy which satisfies only the desires of the physical. It is impossible to create a sustainable economy based on foundations which systematically cultivate greed and envy because these are inherently violent. But, how do we disarm greed and envy? Perhaps by resisting the temptation to let our luxuries become needs; and perhaps by scrutinising our needs to see if they can be simplified and reduced. Western economies have been built in a very calculated manner on gratification, addiction, and unnecessary spending. We spend to cheer ourselves up, to reward ourselves, to celebrate, to fix problems, to elevate our status, and to alleviate boredom. Economics plays a central role in shaping the activities of the modern world, inasmuch as it supplies the criteria of what 15

is “economic” and what is “uneconomic”, and there are few other sets of criteria that exercise a greater influence over the actions of individuals and groups, as well as over governments. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that, with increasing affluence, economics has moved into the very centre of public concern: economic growth, economic performance, economic expansion and so forth have become the obsession of all modern societies. If an activity has been branded as “uneconomic”, its right to existence is questioned and, usually, denied. Anything that is found to be an impediment to economic growth is “foolish” and those who cling to it are thought of as “saboteurs”. A thing can be immoral, souldestroying or degrading but as long as it has not been shown to be “uneconomic”, its right to exist has not been questioned. Capitalist economics is concerned with only one thing: whether a thing yields profit to those who undertake it. Businesses are given a financial target and are expected to pursue this target without any regard to the damage it might be inflicting. This means economic judgement tends to give far more weight to the short term as opposed to the long term. Economically “sound” decisions are based on a definition of cost which excludes all “free goods”, meaning the entire environment. Therefore, an activity can be economic even if it wreaks havoc with the planet and it’s inhabitants. Capitalist economics deals with goods in accordance with their market value and not in accordance with what they really are. All goods are treated the same because the point of view is fundamentally that of private profit making and this means that it is inherent in the methodology of economics to ignore humanity’s dependence on the natural world. In the market, the buyer is essentially a bargain

hunter; they are not concerned with the origins of the goods or the conditions under which they have been produced. There is no probing into the depths of things, into the natural or social facts behind them. In a sense, the market is the institutionalisation of individualism and non-responsibility. When economic thinking is based on the market, it takes the sanctity out of life, because there can be nothing sacred in something that has a price. The pretence that everything has a price or that money is of the highest value is the most destructive fallacy of our time. Economics can operate legitimately and usefully within a given framework but if the economist fails to study economic systems as occurring within a context of human and natural life, then they will surely cause grievous harm. Every science is beneficial within its proper limits, but can become evil and destructive as soon as it transgresses them. We should expect that economics must derive its aims and objectives from a study of humankind and that, in turn, it must derive at least a large part of its methodology from a study of nature. No meaningful response to climate change can occur without massive social change. Capitalism is not sustainable by its very nature. It is predicated on infinitely expanding markets, faster consumption and bigger production on a finite planet. And yet this ideological model remains the central organising principle of our lives, and as long as it continues to be so it will automatically undo every single green initiative anybody cares to come up with. The question we must ask ourselves is this: is it possible to run an expanding capitalist economy while keeping its impacts within safe ecological boundaries, or is the greeddriven system effectively a suicide machine that is doomed to destroy itself? 16

asserting 'The Death of Literature', but the death of poetry is already in motion: we'll soon be writing up the eulogy. However, there is still time for change.

Poetry: The Dirty Word Imagining a Renewed Role for Poetry in Education and National Discourse .

BY NATHANIEL KING [Guest Writer from University of East Anglia]

Poetry is on a steep decline in Britain. There's no denying this. Poetry carries the patina of snobbery, esotericism and inaccessibility in the UK. Propelled by misguided public conceptions that it is saccharine claptrap written by sentimental teenagers or, possibly more harmful, relegated to the spectral relics of a previous era (the Shelleys and the Byrons of the world), poetry is perpetually on the verge of extinction. Once every ten or so years a new generation of young writers pop up to challenge the establishment and save it from the history vault. Be it the GenX 90s poets, or the Beats, or even the New Formalists, these coteries come tapping at the Zeitgeist and beg to be acknowledged. But poetry today can no longer lean on the hope of these small factions to save it from becoming a footnote on our fractured postmodern narrative. This is one reason it is become a specialised medium, delegated to small print presses and online publications. It's the reason we're allowing James Franco's undercooked self-indulgence be published under the Faber imprint ('This despair is nice because it is the sorrow of an artist' and 'the fame raped me and I raped the fame' are just a couple of examples from his collection), it's the reason poetry in schools is entrenched in an antiquated canon- it's fast becoming the culture we deserve. Guardian, Bazaar, Harpers and The New Yorker regularly print articles 17

Change happens incrementally, and a love of poetry needs to be instilled from a young age. With the recent reshuffling of the Educational Cabinet and the (better-latethan-never) dismissal of Education Minister Michael Gove, a new poetry AQA syllabus has been in circulation in secondary schools since Spring 2015. It's been billed as 'Poetry: Past & Present' and purports to range from poets between the years 1789 to the present day. This continues a long trend in schools of teaching poetry as a chronological signpost that ties the past to the present, failing to showcase the imaginative displays of linguistic freedom that poetry affords, its appreciation of the complexities and nuances of language, and the mirror it holds up to society. In the very little exposure I had to poetry in secondary school (or any millennial growing up in the past 15 years for that matter), there was nothing on the syllabus that made even the most discerning student prick up their ears and listen. This is a result of the way poetry is taught in secondary education, revolving around a binary system of showing students how best to achieve their grade, while failing to illuminate the sheer joy of reading linguistic composition. This, admittedly, is a problem limited not just to poetry or even English Literature, but an inadequate teaching model across the whole humanities board. The failure lies not in teachers, but in the canonical syllabus that educational government dictate they teach. Instead of a cover-all-bases approach that seeks to encompass the largest number of writers in the shortest period of time, we

need to implement a system whereby students take poetry into their own hands. Introduce students to a large array of writers both contemporary and historical, and allow them to select a voice which appeals most to their sensibility. From there we can encourage a deeper understanding of their work. Poetry is a tool for self-exploration, and should be taught thus, in a way that guides the reader in the direction of their interests, rather than alienating them with AQA-typified selections such as Carol Anne Duffy's bloody conception of a young calf. My initiation into the world of poetry came at the age of sixteen. After a long day at college slogging through the arduous love song of T.S Eliot's J. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Procockâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, a friend introduced me to a little book called Lunch Poems by Frank O'Hara. It was unusual, and didn't seem to fit into any categorical understanding of what I came to think of as capital-P poetry up until that point. Poetry was supposed to be hard, endlessly referential, impossible to relate to the everyday experience of being a teenage boy in the South West of England. Reading Frank O'Hara was like switching on a light- bulb, it was like finding a friend I didn't know I was looking for. The conversational approach, the celebration of the mundane aspects of everyday, the fascination with the present moment: 'There's nothing more beautiful than knowing something is going to end'. From there ensued a brief but very potent affair with the unabashed romanticism of e.e cummings, the cock-sure posturing of Charles Bukowski, and finally into the more reserved but ultimately deeper pastures of Robert Creeley; a whole world had opened up to me. I came to realise that my issue wasn't with poetry itself, it was with the established literary dogma taught in schools, and how

this had polluted my conceptions of what it could in fact accomplish. Poetry had been reduced to a blanket term that covered thousands of voices and styles. A term that had been marred by years of uninspired academic selections, loaded to the brim with all kinds of disparaging undertones. In short, 'Poetry' had become a dirty word. But it didn't need to be. One of the factors we can attribute to this is our long lineage of literature in the United Kingdom. It is an incontrovertible fact that we have the richest tapestry of writing in the Western world, a reality we should be very proud of. But a bi-product of this is stagnation. By its very nature, in order for literature to live, it requires renewal. And the entrenched attitudes towards poetry in Britain allows us to rest on our laurels. Even the best-selling British poets today continue a formalist tradition, informed and enriched by a typically English poetical-mode. There's a reason why Simon Armitage has just won the post of poetry at Oxford, and is widely recognised as a leading poet by commercial media in the UK today, whereas a poet like John Hartley Williams (with his larky off-thewall sensibility) live-and-die virtually unheard of outside a select circle of Poetry Society Choice critics. This in no way is meant to dismiss the tremendous impact that writers like Carol Anne Duffy, Simon Armitage and T.S Eliot have had on the poetic landscape, just to acknowledge that- like any other art formit's a matter of taste. And in order for those tastes to be cultivated, the reader must be equipped with the capabilities at hand to discern the possibilities of the craft. Simply put, poetry requires an audience. The cynical world-view that, in 21st century popular culture, the public can't appreciate nuance and subtlety is condescending, anachronistic and just plain false. 18

There is a flourishing poetry scene in Britain- we just need to look in order to find it. UNESCO-approved literary city Norwich is a powerhouse in producing new-and-upcoming writers, with print journals like Lighthouse Literary Magazine (full disclosure, they have been very obliging in publishing one of my own poems) and The Rialto accommodating the sort of work that defiestypical categorisation. Looking further afield, Ambit and Gratia still maintain their position as publishing innovative voices across the board. Then there are Faber and Bloodaxe Books, the sole proprietors of any major UK poetry collection published this side of the century. There are also a number of student-run factions hosting readings and open-mic nights across the country on a regular basis, with an underground circuit of poets who wouldn't even register on a Waterstones orderform.

There is no denying that we live in a cultural vacuum, where it's safer to teach and reprint established poets than take a risk on new ones. But if we broaden our school selections to include a diverse array of voices from experimental and contemporary writers, we can ensure that poetry has a more prominent role in children's futures. Let's make poetry a part of our national conversation, by instilling a love for it in our schools and in the British media at large. A big step in ensuring this is to dismantle the notion that poetry is difficult or 'serious'. We must reassert the inherent pleasures of a well-composed line, the ways in which it sheds light on our collective history, its ability to amplify and give shape to the smallest of emotions. Because otherwise it will be the death of poetry as we know it, and T.S Eliot may have been onto something when he wrote â&#x20AC;&#x153;This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.â&#x20AC;?

Further reading: Daniel Zomparelli: Poetry Is Dead: What The Hell Happened? Frank O'Hara: Lunch Poems Nathaniel King has been published in: Lighthouse Literary Journal (two poems, Norwich Based Publication, UK), The Elbow Room (two poems, London Based Publication, UK), Undergrowth UEA 2015 Creative Writing Anthology 2015 (two poems, East Anglia Publication, UK) , Join Hands, Defile Yr Icons (commissioned pamphlet of eight poems for Arts & Drafts, a student run arts event in Guelph, Ontario, Canada), Kalmar Magazine (one poem for Swedish publication based in Uppsala, Sweden) 19

Politics And Humanism: What Do We Owe Our Fellow Man? .

BY ALEX WILLIAMS [Guest Writer from University of Birmingham]

Nationalism has never been something I have ever subscribed to as a concept, nor has the fact that I was born in England ever provided me with a source of great pride. Indeed, we are all well aware of the negative impact of such thoughts and ideas, that they can often lead to hateful and intolerant opinions of people from different groups and cultures. That being said, I do look upon the National Health Service as one of the last great institutions of this country, and feel very fortunate that I have been born in a country where I can expect expert medical attention at a moment’s notice, with no questions asked about my income, status, or background. Even the most ardent Conservative would be reluctant (I hope) to completely do away with a national health service of some kind, suggesting that in this one area of life, our society has seemingly agreed that through taxation and collective responsibility, people from any walk of life must have access to health care and not be made to pay for the inconvenience of being sick or hurt. This is a beautiful, humble, and humanist ideal, an ideal, however, that is sadly becoming rarer and rarer in our increasingly selfish and cynical world. There is a definite trend of pessimism and wariness emerging in politics world wide, especially among nations from the western world. It is a narcissistic, self-serving, hostile attitude of us vs. them, of a distrust of one another, of foreign aliens, of refugees, of even ourselves. Examples of this can be seen on an almost daily basis,

from Donald Trump’s repeatedly scathing and outright racist remarks about Mexican-Americans, to the treatment and vilification of the Calais migrants here at home. Though the vitriol of Trump and the apathy of Europe may seem poles apart morally, they are both symptomatic of the same negative attitude towards ‘the other.’ The Independent even published a survey this summer stating that over fifty percent of the British public do not trust the British Public. Despite this comical example of English irony, there is something deeply troubling in this survey’s findings, as everywhere you look suspicion and doubt embed themselves into the fabric of our society, dragging it into an era where hatred and contempt prevail in the place of compassion and understanding. If we continue on our current path of segregation and ignorance we will start to lose sight of the values that our civilisation was built upon, we will start to lose sight of the very things that make us human. But the situation is not all doom and gloom, where our society crumbles to its knees in an unpreventable cycle of hatred and vitriol. In fact, the cure is a simple, apolitical one, and is a matter of perspective rather than ideology. It all starts with a fundamental question; what, as a collective, is really important to us? In order to answer this question properly, it is vital to identify our responsibilities as conscious beings with the capability to both empathise and sympathise. No one chooses the life they are given, where they were born, who their parents are, even where they are educated, if they are even educated at all. Some people, in short, are just luckier than others. Because there was no choice in these matters, because a lot of our achievements and successes are down to circumstances out of our control, we, as the lucky few, have a responsibility to the others who are not as 20

fortunate as ourselves. Recognising the randomness of our luck keeps us humble, and is the essence of our humanity. Peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s aspirations are also very similar, again, when you strip them back to their most simplistic form. Most individuals on this planet, despite their difference in race, nationality, gender or religion have virtually the same goals: to be happy, to love and be loved, to form meaningful relationships with one another, etc. All the money, all the material possessions, all the greed that comes with living in the western hemisphere is redundant, and will count for nothing when we are gone, regardless of what you believe awaits you in the afterlife. However, our humanity, the way we treat one another, and the planet we leave for our children will have a far more lasting impact, and not only define who we are, but the define the future for many others to come. Collectively, have an inflated sense of self-importance, we are so consumed by the pettiness of our own problems that we have stopped to consider one another, we have forgotten that we are all, deep down, very alike, and that the borders and

distinctions that we use to separate one another are actually only mere social constructs anyway, and are totally banal and outmoded. We must remove the blinkers that have kept us from addressing the real problems of recent times, remember our relative insignificance, and strive for a more understanding and allencompassing world, so that we may all live harmoniously as one. This may all sound sickeningly utopian, and maybe it is slightly unrealistic to think this can all change with one shift of perspective. However, if you cannot aspire for change, for the improvement of things, then what, ultimately, is the point? Far better to try than to shrug with indifference or sigh with apathy when everything comes crashing down around us. As people of this earth, we have an unspoken allegiance with our fellow man, a duty to care for and protect our most vulnerable members. It is this, not in the preservation of self, where our true humanity lies. All the rest is just white noise.

Further reading: Pat Duffy Hutcheon: Beyond Right and Left: A Humanist Approach to Politics John Ballatt and Penelope Campling: Intelligent Kindness: Reforming the Culture of Healthcare 21

The Echo Chamber Effect And The Virtue Of Discomfort .

BY SAMANTHA PATRICK [Guest Writer from University of Oxford]

For those yet to hear of the echo chamber effect, it is difficult to explain concisely without sounding like either a bitter baby boomer or the proud owner of a tin foil hat. In brief, it is the idea that with the increasing opportunities for internet users to customise the content that comes their way, we are fast becoming trapped in bubbles where our own opinions and worldviews are constantly bounced back to us and reinforced. The result: internet communities gradually become veritable dystopias in which all members believe the same thing and dissenting voices are excluded or silenced. In other words, prime breeding grounds for the spreading of misinformation, prejudice and radicalism. Or something like that. In reality, the state of affairs is not quite so dire. Are echo chambers really turning online communities into mindless cults bent on the destruction of The Truth? Not quite. Are you in an echo chamber? Yes. If you’re on twitter, tumblr, reddit, even facebook, you’ll have had ample opportunity to build one for yourself. We generally follow people and creators who agree with us on most things, or who at least reinforce our perception of the world. It’s a natural instinct; having our own beliefs repeated back to us is reassuring. Political parties and social justice movements are prime examples of this, but the effect can trickle down even to relatively small matters of opinion. We build ourselves personalised

online worlds which aim to satisfy us – the items that appear on our newsfeeds (and, more worryingly, our google searches) are filtered to be as pleasing to us as possible. Unsurprisingly, we are deprived of content that would contradict our own beliefs. This is a problem, because we tend to all believe that we view the world objectively, even as we tailor our own tools for bias. So when we see someone online voice beliefs radically different to ours, we react with confusion and perhaps revulsion, because their beliefs are so incongruent with things we believe to be more or less objectively true. We’re observing this voice amputated from its own context: its own personalised flow of information and opinion which has informed its own “objective” perspective. But how different is this to our offline worlds? The people we interact with on an everyday basis, family, friends, colleagues, are likely to share many of the same life experiences and opinions with us. We choose which newspapers to read, which television shows we watch. The danger of being trapped in our own personal bubble does not disappear when we look away from our screens. Quite the opposite: social media now provides the opportunity to interact with people from a wider range of backgrounds and experience than has ever previously been possible. This can be incredibly useful, especially for people who’ve led fairly sheltered, privileged lives and feel like their perspective of the world is being cut off by a sea of red trousers. Not that social media is a cure-all answer to ignorance - of course, books, news media, and documentaries also help people stay informed - but social media has the ability to add a rawness and immediacy to current issues and debates that is impossible in any other medium, and allows access to voices which are not considered respectable or important enough to be amplified by mainstream media. 22

Furthermore, no echo chamber effect is impermeable. It isn’t difficult to diversify the stream of content you’re exposed to – simply choosing to follow politicians from a party which you do not support, comparing articles that come your way with similar articles from a differently aligned source and always, always fact checking, can go a long way to diminishing the effect. Nor is the echo chamber effect always bad news – it can promote vital solidarity and cohesion in particular movements or, conversely, spark concentrated debate around community-specific issues. In fact, the echo chamber effect is only really a threat when one forgets that it exists. If one accepts that most of the content coming one’s way is biased, then it’s easy to take it with a pinch of salt and remind oneself to stay open minded. But when an illusion is created of witnessing an actual fair debate between two opposing views, perspectives can rapidly become warped. The internet has no shortage of people voicing their opinions; in any given controversy or ideological divide, it’s easy to find someone in the opposing camp of whom to make an example – someone fanatical, ignorant and hyperbolic, who embodies everything your own side believes to be true about the opposing side. This person can then act as a convenient strawman for someone to dissect and destroy in full view of their own camp – all of whom can witness the exchange and

believe that it is essentially a microcosm of the wider debate, demonstrating the logic of their own beliefs and the sheer stupidity of their opponents’. A similar thing can occur when an individual interlopes into a “territory” in which they do not belong for the purpose of contributing to a conversation: for example, when someone comments on an article of a news website with a political leaning opposite to their own. Usually, that individual is dogpiled by the native commenters, each explaining exactly how very wrong they are or outright mocking them. The interloper leaves, in all likelihood withdrawing to their own echo chamber for comfort and reassurance. Meanwhile, the natives congratulate themselves on their re-established superiority, encouraged by the consensus of the other commenters and the rush of righteous indignation. Ultimately the echo chamber effect is no looming, Huxley-esque threat to free thought and individuality. But it serves as a reminder to all of us to assert ownership over our own cognizance and actively prevent ourselves from becoming sheltered and out of touch. That means stepping out of comfort zones and having unpleasant, difficult conversations with people we like very little and understand even less. It means making the decision to protect our minds over our beliefs, rather than the other way round.

Further reading: Vincent F Hendricks: Is Anyone Immune To The Social Media Echo Chamber Effect? Eli Pariser for TED talks: Beware Online 'Filter Bubbles' 23

Must Prejudice Entail that we Abandon our Authors? .

BY JACK LITTLE [Guest Writer from Falmouth University] “As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it – whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.”

Truer words were never spoken in To Kill a Mockingbird, one of, if not the most canonical work of fiction in the twentieth century. Here, Atticus Finch explains to his offspring about the flagitious and illiberal world that America was in the 1930s. Atticus’ aphorisms on race and inequality, narrated through the eyes of his innocent daughter Jean Louise, were bold and clear lessons that stuck with many of us from our early adolescence and are why the novel, and especially the character of Atticus, has received such enduring love. So it was no wonder, then, that when the long-awaited sequel, Go Set a Watchman, finally came out this year, I felt betrayed. What we had idolised was gone. Atticus’ fidelity to morality was crushed as Jean Louise returned home and found his pamphlet: The Black Plague. When confronted, he displays none of the gentle understanding of his younger self, and at one point, with an air of condescending malevolence, he tells Jean Louise to “Go Back to School”. Racism like this in literature has long been a subject I am apprehensive towards. In

the novel Scoop by Evelyn Waugh, the racial language was such that it rendered the novel unreadable. It is not a narrative that is particularly racially charged, but that may have been my qualm: it was just the mode of expression. Scoop was written in 1938, around the same time that To Kill a Mockingbird was set, and despite it not being particularly malicious, the use of such persiflage jarred on me. What to some is an apparently is a funny book seemed atrabilious. On the other hand, a book that purposefully used racial epithets to seem atrabilious was Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, one that I do not find reprehensible. There is an ongoing debate as to whether or not the latter story is racist or realist, and I fall on the side of the latter. I argue that the novel does not promote racist ideals, and is a portrayal of the real aims of European imperialism in Africa. Alternatively, Waugh viewed change as futile, exhibiting the ideologies of the British Empire as it transferred from colonial to post-colonial. Moreover, similarly to Jean Louise, it would seem to me that allegiance in literature is allegiance to progressive thinking, which was most likely instilled in me by To Kill a Mockingbird itself. But, if we were all expecting Watchman to have the same message, would that not be hypocritical and nostalgic? Would it not be taking the same stance as Waugh? This is exactly the underlying message of Watchman: everything is always in flux. When Jean Louise comes home, Atticus is different, her brother isn’t there, and her beloved cook, Calpurnica, is no longer cordial to her. As her Uncle Jack, explains: “Every man’s island, Jean Louise, every man’s watchman is his conscience.” So, to “Go Set a Watchman”, according to Harper Lee, is to stick to your convictions, as, when times change, so will people and only you can decide what you think is right. This is why Childe Roland is consistently 24

alluded to throughout the book. In Robert Browning’s poem, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, where Roland has to journey alone to a dark tower across a barren plain that symbolizes the corruption of modern life. During his journey, he hallucinates that his comrades are with him to cope with his hellish surroundings. When he arrives, he seemingly perishes. Jean Louise makes a parallel journey: alone, through a corrupt world, and greeted at the end by the destruction of the image of her father as a flawless, almost divine man. It is a paradigm shift similar to when, as a child, she is exposed to people of different backgrounds, putting a halt to her ignorant racism. However, in this case, her view of her father’s perfection is shattered: “...a man who has lived by the truth – and you have believed in what he has lived – he does not leave you merely wary when he fails you, he leaves you with nothing.”

people that we have put our faith in, and as they have grown older, in their respective ways, they have abandoned their convictions; whilst Atticus once fought for equality, he now attends meetings to ensure inequality and whilst Harper Lee maintained her whole life that she would not release another work, she has now released what is found to be a first and rejected draft of To Kill a Mockingbird. Throughout Go Set a Watchman, we, as readers, are having our allegiances tested in a way similar to Jean Louise. When Watchman was first received, people slammed it for destroying both Harper Lee’s and Atticus’ legacies. But the message that Uncle Jack gives Jean Louise is that she was also bigoted for not even seeing Atticus’ point of view. Ultimately the message of the book is that sometimes nostalgia can cloud our vision, and that things change, but ultimately, allegiances shouldn’t.

Parallels can also be drawn between Atticus and Harper Lee herself. They are both

Further reading: Harper Lee: To Kill A Mockingbird; Go Set A Watchman Charles E. Wilson: Race and Racism in Literature Errin Whack: 'Go Set A Watchman' Is A Revelation On Race, Not A Disappointment 25

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