Romanesco / Spring 2023 / Vol. 2

A scholarly journal of the Nueva School

EDITORIAL BOARD

Hailey F.

Jennifer Paull

Noor Z.

Ted Theodosopoulos

EDITORIAL REVIEWERS

Abi W.

Adrienne P.

Alice T.

Anahita A.

Anya M.

Carina T.

Chelsea Denlow

Ella L.

Elle D.

Gabriel B.

Gabriel H.

Grace F-O.

Jehnna Ronan

Jodie C.

Julia K.

Kaitlyn K.

Kate K.

Kian S.

Kaitlyn K.

Marie Burks

Michael S.

Micah B.

Misha A.

Natalie S.

Nate B.

Pearl Bauer

Riyana S.

Sam J.

Sami K.

Sasha G.

Senya S.

Stephanie L.

Sofia T.

Talinn H.

Letter from the Editors

We admit the germination period was long, but take note of this year’s yield: Romanesco has effloresced into its second edition. In the spirit of vegetative regeneration, we are back again with a new array of pieces.

Yet like any natural growth, our revival has taken on its own idiosyncrasies, secrets, and joys. Like before, we asked the Nueva students to submit their writing specifically in the humanities. We asked what it means to be human, and the students who volunteered their work grappling with this impossibly complex query responded like any good ventriloquist: they projected the impossible onto life’s frantic—and frantically human—minutiae. With pieces that explore Orvil Redfeather’s identity in Tommy Orange’s novel There There and the etymology of the term “symbiosis,” the writing featured here does center around the humanities. At the same time, this new material also solidifies our claim to interdisciplinary-ness (and neologisms). Literary analysis, philosophy, history, and etymology coalesce to produce studies of the AIDS movement and metaphor, Judaisim and Jim Crow, science and satire. The beauty of these disparate topics and the connections they make is in their recursion.

We are not, that is to say, merely interested in these pieces as individual units. Rather, they work in concert to create and sustain our vision of the humanities. How does an analysis of subjectivity color one’s understanding of Daisy’s agency in The Great Gatsby? In what way do machismo and myth-making inform a dissection of power? This journal, Romanesco, invites you to imagine your own connections and vistas. We encourage our readers to treat the journal like a bakery: everything, we as the proprietors maintain, is sumptuous, but, as we also maintain, everyone has different tastes. Picking and choosing, mixing and matching—however you like to read is exactly how we hope Romanesco will be read.

With the rise of artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT, humanities-based subjects have been repeatedly called into question. Educators, students, and developers alike raise fresh concerns about the value and relevance of the humanities, questions that are perhaps not novel but certainly amplified. As the editors of Romanesco, we’ve watched this trend with trepidation but also hope; this, we realized, was our time to shine. In the face of these new technological developments, the humanities are all the more

important, and Romanesco fits squarely into the dialectical tradition that simultaneously defies and adapts to technology and humanity. We hope that this edition can provide a reason for continuing the study of the humanities, even as expedients like ChatGPT continually become readily available. Romanesco is not only our chance to showcase the work of the Nueva community, but to show to the community how much their creativity and writing are valued.

In this spirit, we’d like to thank you, our readers, for choosing from Romanesco’s delectable assemblage of analyses. We’d also like to thank our reviewers, designers, illustrators, and faculty who supported us through this process of regrowth. Without the immense support and love we’ve received, we would have been unable to sprout. We can only hope that your interest will keep us growing, and that you can take refuge in our fractal shade.

With love,

Hailey F. and Noor Z. The Romanesco editorial board

Why Are We Called Romanesco?

The title Romanesco came from an off-the-cuff joke, which turned into an online search flurry and the unexpected discovery that the fractal veggie actually suited our project! The word “romanesco” has the interdisciplinary quality of this scholarly journal—it could mean an ancient Italian dialect or refer to the beautifully spiraled, continually expanding plant. And it makes people curious. We hope you’ll read with that sense of curiosity!

DESIGN

T. R., class of 2022

ILLUSTRATIONS

All original artwork by T. R., class of 2022

Oakland waterrcolor courtesy of Ingo Menhard, via Dreamstime

AIDS quilt image courtesy of Lars Hammar, Flickr

Pearl leash image courtesy of Unsplash

Synagogue photo courtesy of Dreamstime

Romanesco courtesy of Rubén Pérez Planillo, Flickr

SPECIAL THANKS

Everyone who submitted writing—we loved reading it and we’re grateful for your trust in our process!

LiAnn Yim for stalwart support

The tech team for equipping us

All of Nueva’s teachers in the humanities, for their provocative questions

by Nikki A.

by Jonathon T.

by Julia K.

M.

Lives in Pieces: Subjective Experience Through Time by

Nancy S.

Criticizing the Third Reich While Permitting Jim Crow: An American Erasure in World War II

by Emma M.

Riyana S.

Contradiction and Connection

Orvil Redfeather as the Urban Indian in There There

At its core, Tommy Orange’s novel There There is a poignant examination of the “Urban Indian” characters who explore and grapple with their identity. Orange highlights urbanization as what was supposed to be “the completion of a five-hundred year-old genocidal campaign,” and thus describes Urban Indians as stuck between two worlds, grappling with their Indigenous identity while facing forced assimilation and isolation within colonial American society (Orange 12). Orange posits that the “Urban Indian” navigates the realities of the modern world but perpetually carries the burden of his ancestors through “wounds [that] get passed down,” often being forced to shoulder this burden alone (143). The Urban Indian struggle is thus pierced with generational trauma and isolation from Native culture—and Orvil Redfeather serves as a materialization of this phenomenon. Orvil’s struggle with his identity is characterized by the contradiction between his desire to be a “real Indian” and his profound isolation when he attempts to connect to his heritage.

Orvil’s warped view of his own identity is deeply influenced by his grandmother, Opal Bear Shield, and her aversion to passing down Indian tradition and culture. This disconnect from heritage is demonstrated when Orvil tries on his grandmother’s regalia. As he looks in the mirror, Orvil finds that “he doesn’t look the way he hoped he would…. with his too-small-for-him stolen regalia, dressed up like an Indian” (97). Orvil craves the feeling of being a true Indian, but neither the regalia nor the title of “Indian” fits him. His disappointment in his appearance signifies a lack of Indigenous role models for him to identify with. Orvil has an image in his mind of who he hopes to be, but Opal’s refusal to engage in cultural conversation forces him to navigate his indigenous identity in isolation. Beyond this, the notion of being “dressed up” deepens this sense of profound insecurity, evoking the image of an imposter—dressed in clothing stolen from his grandmother, claiming culture he feels he’s stolen from his ancestors. Orvil is thus a perpetual Urban outsider: craving connection to his culture while viewing himself as wholly insufficient, unfit for his stolen regalia and Indian identity.

Orvil’s isolation is furthered by the disconnect between his and Opal’s opinion of the standards of Indian identity. When Orvil asks her to teach him to be Indian, Opal replies, “anything you hear from me about your heritage does not make you more or less Indian” (96). Opal thus sees “Indian” as a permanent label placed upon her grandson, something immutable and inherent to his identity. There is no spectrum of Indianness in Opal’s mind, and exploring Indian identity is a privilege and not a prerequisite to being indigenous. In

“Orvil sees his identity as something to be earned, performed, and revoked---it is possible to be and not be an Indian.”

contrast, Orvil states that “the only way to be Indian in this world is to look and act like an Indian. To be or not to be Indian depends on it” (98). Orvil sees his identity as something to be earned, performed, and revoked—it is possible to be and not be an Indian. Furthermore, his effort to “look and act like an Indian” is deeply influenced by his need to be perceived as indigenous, and hold on to his claim to indigenous heritage. Thus, Orvil’s fragile sense of indigenous identity is contingent on the opinions of others, not on his own sense of self. As a result of his need for external cultural validation—and Opal’s refusal to provide it—Orvil turns to technology, a powerful driver of communication within the Urban Indian diaspora. Orange pinpoints virtual communication as synonymous with urbanization, stating that “plenty of us are urban now...if not because we live in cities, then because we live on the internet” (13). In Orvil’s narrative, however, technology has an inverse effect—rather than making Orvil urban, the internet makes Orvil Indian. This is specifically made clear when Orville, after watching hours of powwow footage on YouTube, asks Google “‘What does it mean to be a real Indian,’ which [leads] him...to an Urbandictionary.com word [he’s] never heard before: Pretendian” (97). Orvil’s loss of identity is explicitly clear—he is forced to define his own identity through the experiences of strangers on the internet. The utilization of Urbandictionary is also significant, not only because of its allusion to the Urban Indian but also because of its nature as a crowdsourced dictionary website. Every single word on Urbandictionary is written by an individual with a point of view—and yet Orvil’s greatest insecurity is his lack of experience, and the fact that he does not have a first-hand point of view with regards to the ancestral indigenous experience. Furthermore, the word Pretendian, a portmanteau of “pretend” and “Indian,” is indicative of Orvil’s own identity struggle. Orvil constantly feels like an imposter, performing the role of an Indian until outsiders perceive him to be truly indigenous. He also feels alienated from indigenous culture, as indicated by his reliance on the Internet. Beyond this, however, the word “alien” may also apply to Orvil’s experience of isolation in white culture. In spite of feeling disconnected from his Native identity, Orvil is seen as an Other by white society. Thus, Orvil carries the burden of the Urban Indian despite his fears of being insufficiently indigenous—and through the marriage of technology, isolation, indigenous culture, and the imposter syndrome that plagues Orvil, Orange highlights the contradictions embedded within the Native Indian experience.

Through his narration of Orvil Redfeather’s story, Orange explores the struggles riddling the Native experience, emphasizing Orvil’s desire for guidance as he navigates his Urban Indian identity. Furthermore, Orange highlights the heartbreaking dichotomy of being too Indian and not Indian enough—and the ensuing isolation from both white and indigenous society. Thus, Orvil’s story serves as an overarching commentary on the Urban Indian experience as a whole: the push and pull of shouldering the ancestral burden, while resisting assimilation into colonial America.

Orange, Tommy. There There. Vintage Books, 2018.

Riyana S. is a current twelfth-grader who plans to study public policy and international relations, starting at Brown University in the fall. She loves musical theater and soul music, and recently completed the American Conservatory of Theater’s Young Cabaret Program.

Nikki A.

The AIDS Movement: A Working Metaphor

Though the plague years of the HIV/AIDS crisis have passed, their legacy lingers in our writing, art, music, and activism. Academics study the actions of the AIDS movement, spearheaded by groups such as ACT-UP (Aids Coalition to Unleash Power) and TAG (Treatment and Data Group), and the way these groups harnessed the power of metaphor to prove their points. In her book AIDS and Its Metaphors, Susan Sontag discusses metaphor and its impact upon illnesses such as AIDS, examples of which can be found in the David France documentary How to Survive a Plague. Sontag’s argument is augmented by scholar Douglas Crimp’s paper on “Mourning and Militancy.” Ultimately, the power of metaphor as seen during the HIV/AIDS crisis is unquestionable, due to the fact that metaphors are subjective and as such, do not have the same barriers to entry as other forms of rhetoric, thus creating a consistent narrative for following the HIV/AIDS crisis and changing public perception of the plague into something more favorable.

What Is a Metaphor?

Sontag explains:

“By metaphor I meant nothing more or less than the earliest and most succinct definition I know, which is Aristotle’s, in his Poetics (1457b). ‘Metaphor,’ Aristotle wrote, ‘consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to someone else.’ Saying a thing is or is like something-it-is-not is a mental operation as old as philosophy and poetry, and the spawning ground of most kinds of understanding, including scientific understanding, and expressiveness.” (Sontag 93)

Both the method by which the AIDS movement utilized metaphor and the methods by which the disease and movement were described follow this older, broader definition. It is

important to note that metaphor itself is neither negative nor positive—it is a tool. During the AIDS movement, metaphor was wielded both by the government and many right-wing politicians (such as Senator Jesse Helms) to ostracize the queer community and by activists within the queer community to fight for change in the government’s response to AIDS.

The Metaphorical Status of AIDS

The status of AIDS as a plague is one way in which metaphor is important to understand the true impact of the disease. In How to Survive a Plague, activist Larry Kramer shouts “PLAGUE!” as he explains that AIDS is not just a disease in the queer community, but that they are in fact in the midst of a plague (France). Sontag explains that “Plagues are invariably regarded as judgements on society, and the metaphoric inflation of AIDS into such a judgment also accustoms people to the inevitability of global spread. This is a traditional use of sexually transmitted diseases: to be described as punishments not just of individuals but of a group” (Sontag 142). AIDS is not a plague just because it kills, but because of the social status it had even before being branded a plague. People living with AIDS were stigmatized and avoided—before being named AIDS it was known as GRID for “gay-related immune deficiency,” or a “gay disease”—and the disease brought homophobia to the surface. This metaphorical status increased fear and stigmatization of AIDS, so much so that these responses linger in the American public today. Sontag continues, “that it is a punishment for deviant behavior and that it threatens the innocent—these two notions about AIDS are hardly in contradiction. Such is the extraordinary potency and efficacy of the plague metaphor: it allows a disease to be regarded both as something incurred by vulnerable ‘others’ and as (potentially) everyone’s disease” (Sontag 152). This particular juxtaposition comes in how the media depicted AIDS patients. Crimp writes that “despite great achievements in so short a time and under such adversity, the dominant still pictures us only as wasting deathbed victims” (Crimp 16). As a plague, the metaphor implied that those living with it were victims of their own life choices—something that everyone could catch, if only they did the wrong thing. This metaphor furthermore generalized the consequence of queerness as AIDS, and “showed” that homosexuality itself could be caught if one fell in with the wrong crowd. In general media, the usage of plague and the depiction of AIDS patients as weak victims only heightened the related stigma. Homophobes leveraged that fear, but AIDS also became something to pity, an emotion that the queer community drew upon. Vulnerability as a concept is subjective, but when embodied by the typical image of a patient, generally an originally attractive white man, wasting away in bed, it turned into a metaphor that most people could pity. It created a more appealing narrative for understanding the disease.

It is important to note that Sontag’s paper, in which she dives into the meaning of metaphor and its application to AIDS, is not for everybody. She focuses entirely on theoretical work as to what metaphor means and its impact on the epidemic. Readers are not meant to interpret Sontag’s work like they are How to Survive a Plague, but rather focus on using Sontag to enhance their understanding of other pieces of media. The pairing of intense academic scrutiny with the emotional spur of crisis can enhance one another, as seen in Crimp’s

“They used the broader concept of freedom to draw similarities between the queer community and the rest of the U.S. and thus begin reversing the ‘othering’ of the queer community.”

“Mourning and Militancy.” Crimp focuses on both humanity in terms of his own experiences with the AIDS movement and grief, but also on the psychology behind the movement in an intensely academic method. He draws upon his own queer experiences during the AIDS epidemic in his paper, and brings a poignant, human touch to the piece. Even in this paper, human examples from How to Survive a Plague are needed to truly understand how Sontag’s paper on metaphor applies to the real world. In this way, Crimp brings a more human perspective to an academic field on his own, without needing to combine pieces such as Sontag’s book and France’s documentary to bring the best parts to the forefront.

AIDS as a Weapon for Social Good

Not only is metaphor important for understanding AIDS, but also for understanding how activists fought for treatments for AIDS. Members of ACT-UP drew on the power of metaphor to get their point across and draw outrage and attention from the nation. One example is their usage of condoms as a metaphor in activism—chanting phrases like “Cardinal O’Condom” to refer to a homophobic cardinal who was against the usage of condoms, or acts such as placing a 50-foot condom on the house of homophobic Senator Jesse Helms drew both outrage and attention (France). In these scenarios, the metaphor behind associating two old, religious men with a sexual symbol drew attention. The acts were metaphors themselves—metaphors for the pride the activists took in being themselves, having sex, and enjoying life. Sex itself was a metaphor for freedom in a way; Crimp explains that one impact of the AIDS crisis was that they lost “a culture of sexual possibility: back rooms, tea rooms, bookstores, movie houses, and baths; the trucks, the pier, the ramble, the dunes. Sex was everywhere for us, and everything we wanted to venture” (Crimp 11). Sex wasn’t just about enjoyment for the members of the queer community, it was in many ways a metaphor for freedom and individual identity. Connecting condoms to those who sought to suppress them proved that the queer community could not be suppressed. This metaphorical connection to a broadly accepted concept, freedom, helped ACT-UP connect with audiences who would generally not have been as receptive to their message. The group used the broader concept of freedom to draw similarities between the queer community and the rest of the U.S. and thus begin reversing the “othering” of the queer community.

Another important metaphor ACT-UP utilized was the AIDS quilt to evoke empathy for the grief that many of the queer community felt at the deaths of their loved ones. As a demonstration, members of ACT-UP went to Washington D.C. and laid pieces of the AIDS quilt down across the lawn, each panel honoring a different person who had died of AIDS (France). The quilt was yet another metaphor, this time for humanity. It was proof that they were not different from anyone else, that they were human beings with colorful lives and families who had died. Furthermore, it helped strengthen the image of the queer community as not just a community of “fringe gay groups—drag queens, radical fairies, pederasts, bull dykes, and other assorted scum” but also one of ordinary people who everyone could relate to (Crimp 13). There was a panel for everyone and in this way, the metaphor of humanity strengthened because it presented a different perspective of the plague than the media. Patients were not only victims wasting away; they were fully human beings being treated like trash by the government that had sworn to protect them. This metaphor grew during demonstrations such as ACT-UP’s scattering of cremation ashes on the White House lawn (France). It was not about grief, but about what the grief represented: their humanity, dead or alive. It combined mourning and militancy, as Crimp so accurately discusses in his paper, but in a public way so as to create a metaphor of their grief, to transform their grief into something beyond all of them.

While Sontag’s book AIDS and Its Metaphors and France’s How to Survive a Plague are unde-

[Metaphor] turned one person’s grief into every person’s grief, because what human could not empathize with loss or a longing for freedom?

niably two separate pieces of work, from separate genres, addressing separate issues, the two have more in common than the casual viewer would realize. At its core, France’s documentary is a metaphor on its own. While it is not framed as such, so as to be more accessible to the average viewer, it is still a metaphor about humanity and struggle. What human can’t relate to struggling with the government and its decisions, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic? What person does not want their humanity recognized, and to receive basic human rights? Queer or not, most people would have a hard time recognizing that AIDS victims were many times buried in trashbags because hospitals would not put out the resources for them, and it is by being so blunt about this and focusing on personal interviews that the documentary brings these emotions—horror, grief, anger, and freedom—to the front. Without the interview-style format the documentary would not have nearly the same metaphorical impact because even though it would be about humanity and human struggles, we would not get to know any humans. Metaphor is at its best when augmented by humans who can embody the metaphor and bring its meaning to life.

Conclusion

Metaphor, ultimately, was used to create a narrative. By turning statistics into stories, and crowds into individuals, more than a decade of struggle for treatment and recognition can be turned from something incomprehensibly broad into a palatable story that evokes empathy. It turns from something broad into something pseudo-fictional, with activist interviews as stand-ins for characters with whom we cannot help but relate. Metaphor is powerful both because it creates a consistent narrative with which to follow the HIV/AIDS crisis, and because it changed how the plague was perceived. ACT-UP successfully utilized metaphors relating to humanity, grief, and sex in order to draw outrage and sympathy from across the nation and force the government to pay attention to them. This method worked because their metaphors were not clear and defined, but drew on personal experiences to tell stories. It turned one person’s grief into every person’s grief, because what human being could not empathize with loss or a longing for freedom?

Works Cited

Crimp, Douglas. “Mourning and Militancy.” October, vol. 51, 1989, p. 3., doi:10.2307/778889. France, David, director. How to Survive a Plague. Amazon Prime Video, 2012, www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B00B03D5HQ/ref=atv_yvl_list_pr_0.

Sontag, Susan. AIDS and Its Metaphors. Picador, 2006.

Sontag, Susan. Illness as Metaphor. Picador, 2006.

Nikki A., class of 2022, wrote this paper for the elective Rage, Romance, Resilience: A Cultural History of the AIDS Movement. She has a particular interest in queer history that led to her taking this class.

Caudillismo, Hyper-masculinity, and Patriarchal Violence

InLatin America, the mid-19th century was defined by the emergence and proliferation of the caudillos: patriarchal “military men” who ruled over regions of Central and South America. Caudillos derived authority from their willingness to rule through violence—a characteristic that distinguished caudillos from their less-violent political challengers. The pervasive dominance of caudillismo—the reign of the caudillos—can be attributed to the patriarchal monopoly on violence which the caudillos ruled under; without a complete monopoly on the use of violence and force, a caudillo could not rule effectively. A caudillo’s ability to earn the respect of other men, physically dominate women, and rule with the threat of violence encapsulated the benefits enshrined by the monopoly on violence held by these military leaders.

According to historians Eric Wolf and Edward Hansen, caudillos derived their social and political power from their masculinity, or machismo, as it is dubbed in Central and South American culture. Caudillos were always men, who used their “capacity to dominate females” and “readiness to use violence” to exert their control over local communities (Wolf & Hansen 51). For caudillos, these two characteristics were indisputably linked: the ability to dominate over other men “implie[d] the further capacity to best other men in the competition over females” (51). Firstly, in order to prove his authority and gain the respect of others, a caudillo had to prove his worth against other political challengers: “[a]ssertions of dominance are tested in numerous encounters, in which the political leader must test himself against other political claimants” (51). To prove himself, a caudillo had to demonstrate his capacity for violence, often risking death at the opportunity to gain political and social capital amongst other men: “the claimants to victory must be prepared to kill their rivals and to demonstrate this willingness publicly…[they] must submit to the winner, or be killed” (51). In order to prove his masculinity, and thus his capacity for violence, a caudillo had to be willing to sacrifice his own life to maintain the ruthless culture of the caudillos. In a society defined by violence and domination, “submit[ing] to the winner” was antithetical to the construction of masculinity built by caudillos (51). The aversion to yielding inextricably tied masculinity to violence, as the construction of masculinity was dependent on demonstrating an unwavering commitment toward the use of violence. This capacity for violence served two purposes in the upholding of patriarchal power structures. Firstly, it demonstrated the ability of men to control other men physically through positions of power; and secondly, it represented a hierarchy of masculinity created by the threat of violence—the more violent a man was, the higher his social standing was on the social and political hierarchy. The connection between patriarchal power systems and violence was also seen in early 19th-century systems of gift-giving. Lords, wanting to have their wealth and property protected, would offer gifts to their local caudillo to demonstrate their respect (Wolf & Hansen

52). These gifts served as a symbolic recognition of authority and, by extension, the violent and patriarchal means by which authority was achieved. This process not only paid tribute to a caudillo, but its non-violent nature represented the acceptance of defeat and submission to the violent authority of a caudillo. On the contrary, those who disrespected the authority of a caudillo faced a swift demonstration of a caudillo’s capacity for violence. In one story, a group of young men was celebrating the defeat of Facundo Quiroga, an Argentine caudillo during the early 19th century, when they noticed a hooded man standing in the corner. The hooded man, who was Quiroga, let the young men finish their celebratory song before promptly having the young men publicly executed (De la Fuente 55). To rule effectively, a caudillo used violence to demand the utmost respect for his authority, anything less was unacceptable. The use of violence both entrenches this authority and prevents other potential challengers from contesting the system, two outcomes that helped the caudillos maintain social and political power. As such, caudillos used violence to uphold social structures of masculinity and patriarchy.

Ignited by the Spanish American Wars of Independence, the need for strong, capable fighters was omnipresent. Subsequently, many caudillos were military leaders who saw extensive combat against Spanish forces throughout Latin America (Wood & Alexander 44). This military background allowed the caudillos to leverage their military identity to legitimize their violence-prone methods—effectively ensuring political, cultural, and social respect. During the 19th century, it was customary for men to be armed with muskets and swords, as “the protection of both life and property depended more upon one’s self than upon the law” (Chapman 46). Caudillos derived their authority from this violent association, shaping their masculinity around “building personal ties of loyalty with their following and in leading them in ventures of successful pillage” (49). The characteristics of a caudillo represented a direct connection between their proximity to violence and masculine presentation; the only way to gain respect within the patriarchal system was through the demonstration of violence. Chacho Penaloza, an Argentine caudillo who ruled during the Argentine Civil War, noted that he had political authority over other soldiers because “he fought at their side for forty-three years” (De La Fuente 56). Penaloza noted that his men respected his authority not just because he was their leader, but also because he had demonstrated his capacity to be violent, in the face of violence (56). This behavior further highlighted the connection between masculinity and violence, as caudillos with military backgrounds used violence to prove their authority as a leader.

Although the authority of a caudillo largely hinged on his ability to physically assert his authority over others, his role as community leader also strengthened his authority. Caudillos were not just responsible for the maintaining of civil order but were also responsible for “the reproduction of patriarchy” in a society (57). One example of this social unfolding is through arranged marriages, which attested to patriarchal control wielded by caudillos in Spanish-American culture: “[i]t was the caudillo who castigated those who would subvert the functioning of matrimony and the authority of the father to choose a daughter’s mate”

“Caudillos were perceived as the highest social and moral authority [...] this further reinforced the authority of caudillos to adjudicate customs of patriarchal domination, linking social and cultural authority to violence and respect.”

(De La Fuente 57). Caudillos were perceived as the highest social and moral authority; as society came to idealize the authority of the caudillos, they came to be seen as “moral authorities and role models in the communities they ruled over” (55). Cultural and social respect for the authority of the caudillos further reinforced the authority of caudillos to adjudicate customs of patriarchal domination, linking social and cultural authority to violence and respect. Although the caudillos’ monopoly on violence was wildly effective to legitimize their authority, it eventually was threatened as Spanish and American military leaders continued to bolster their military forces and strengthen their position. With each battle lost, the caudillos’ monopoly on violence continued to slip; without their military success and valiant displays of violence, the caudillos quickly lost their reputation and authority (Beezley 351). As foreign military forces won the upper hand, caudillos could no longer associate their masculine identity with moral superiority; in turn, the constant threat of patriarchal violence was nullified, stripping the caudillos of their perceived authority. The reign of the caudillos demonstrates the inextricable connection between patriarchal violence and masculinity; without both, the caudillos were unable to rule effectively.

Works Cited

Eric R. Wolf and Edward C. Hansen, “Caudillo Politics: A Structural Analysis,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 9 (1967): 168-79.

Wood, James A, and Anna Rose Alexander. Problems in Modern Latin American History : Sources and Interpretations Lanham, Maryland, Rowman & Littlefield, 2019.

Ariel de la Fuente, Children of Facundo: Caudillo and Gaucho Insurgency during the Argentine State-Formation Process (La Rioja, 1853–1870) (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 115–17, 125–28.

Chapman, Charles E. “The Age of Caudillos: A Chapter in Hispanic American History.” Hispanic American Research Review 12, no. 2 (May 1932): 286-92.

Antonio López de Santa Anna, The Eagle: The Autobiography of Santa Anna, ed. and trans. Ann Fears Crawford (Austin, TX: Pemberton, 1967), 65–69.

Beezley, William H. “Caudillismo: An Interpretive Note.” Journal of Inter-American Studies 11, no. 3 (1969): 345–52. https://doi.org/10.2307/165417.

Sam J. is a graduating senior who is interested in science fiction movies, cooking, and backpacking. His favorite subjects include economics, history, computer science, and political science—yet somehow has to pick only one of those subjects to major in. He originally wrote this piece for a history elective: Postcolonial Latin America.

Alice T.

Daisy’s Cage and Leash: Analyzing Metaphorical Accessories in The Great Gatsby

“But she didn’t say another word. We gave her spirits of ammonia and put ice on her forehead and hooked her back into her dress, and half an hour later, when we walked out of the room, the pearls were around her neck and the incident was over. Next day at five o’clock she married Tom Buchanan without so much as a shiver, and started off on a three months’ trip to the South Seas.”

(Fitzgerald 76)

InF. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the intricate bond between Tom and Daisy and their imminent marriage takes center stage. On one side stands Tom Buchanan, a wealthy, upper-class man determined to marry his beloved. On the other side, Daisy emerges as a hopeful young woman caught between the weight of societal expectations and her own desires for love and a fulfilling future. As the story unfolds, Fitzgerald employs metaphorical accessories that symbolize confinement, depicting Daisy’s hesitation about marrying Tom and foreshadowing the challenges they will face as a couple. Fitzgerald describes Daisy’s imminent matrimony using metaphor—linking symbols of her preparation to those of incarceration through words that emphasize a lack of choice. To prepare Daisy for her nuptials, Daisy’s maid and bridesmaid “hooked her back into her dress.” The dress represents a bodily cage that ties her to this marriage, as putting on the dress is one more step to composing her for the wedding. The significance of other women “hook[ing] her” in the dress implies that it was their methodical action that forced Daisy into the wedding. Daisy’s ambivalence about the wedding was smothered by the intimate experi-

ence of getting strapped into the dress, her closest associates trapping her in this ritual. Thus, as uncertain as Daisy is, she concedes to the wedding—sacrificing her individual autonomy for the sake of society—while influenced by the silent insistence of the women around her.

Furthermore, the symbolism of Daisy’s necklace serves as a metaphorical leash, highlighting the imprisoning essence of her fiancé and underscoring the risks she confronts in their imminent marriage. When Daisy puts the “pearls around her neck,” the imagery of a string around a person’s neck alludes to the constricting leash of a future with Tom. Correspondingly, the pearl necklace is a symbol of wealth, as it is worth an exorbitant amount of money: $350,000. Though expensive, it is still pearls strung on a thread—delicate and breakable. Thus, these pearls represent how fragile the idea of Tom is to Daisy, while simultaneously tying her to him. The opulent necklace, intended to show off and decorate Daisy, shows the proprietary nature of their relationship. The wealth and security that the necklace denotes create pressure that pushes her to marry Tom. The pearl necklace manifests Daisy’s captivity: the entrapment of wealth that society encourages her to pursue. Thus, Daisy takes a significant risk with her future by marrying Tom because although society views it as a rational decision, her conflicted emotions about him make it a hazardous choice, ultimately setting the stage for perilous marital tension hereafter.

In this excerpt, Fitzgerald draws out Daisy’s compulsion to marry through the physical and emotional imposition of accessories by those closest to her. Despite her mixed feelings about Tom Buchanan, societal norms dictate that it is unacceptable for Daisy to refuse the union due to his wealth and the prevailing belief in the 20th century that a woman’s role was to marry. Fitzgerald utilizes various metaphors to symbolize the societal pressures that push Daisy into marrying Tom for his financial security, trapping Daisy in a wedding that foreshadows a shaky relationship for the Buchanans.

Works Cited

Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott), 1896-1940. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner’s sons, 1925.

Hart, Alexa, Personal Interview. 27 January 2023.

Kovatchev, Ilarion. Personal Interview. 31 January 2023.

Lee-Messer, Beckett. Personal Interview. 31 January 2023.

Paull, Jen. Personal Interview. 1 May 2023.

Sarboraria, Michael. Personal Interview. 25 January 2023.

Alice T. is a junior who loves precipitation, poetry, and publishing papers—including this one! Inspired by her admiration of fashion, she crafted this essay to investigate the novel’s extravagant dress and pearls.

Jonathon T.

Gulliver and the Needless Abstractions

Inhis novel Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Anglo-Irish author Jonathan Swift critiques contemporary science through the lens of the protagonist, Gulliver. Gulliver keeps a “pocket perspective” that he uses to peer far out into the universe, losing sight of his place in the world and the omnipresent Creator around him. In that Age of Enlightenment, during the continuation of the Scientific Revolution in Europe, Swift’s conservative values conflicted with the innovations of the time. Swift was an Anglican cleric, and in accordance with Anglican philosophy at the time, he believed in the Great Chain of Being, a concept that stated all life was decreed directly by God. Anglicans saw divinity in hierarchical order, starting with nonliving things, then ascending through plants, animals, commoners, royalty, angels, and ultimately God. In contrast to this system, the Royal Society, England’s leading scientific institution, was dedicated to finding objective truth and empowering men with scientific knowledge. Swift observed the transition from a philosophy of natural order to mathematically driven, scientific abstractions, and believed that modern science would uproot the Great Chain of Being, placing man above God. In response, Swift satirizes science through his depiction of the floating island of Laputa and the scientist-run Academy in Laputa’s capital, Lagado, emphasizing how abstract scientific developments disregard the limits of human knowledge.

Swift contrasts the citizens of Laputa’s obsession with science with their technical shortcomings, to argue that needless abstractions of contemporary science exemplify man overstepping his boundaries. Upon observing Laputan architecture, Gulliver notes that “their houses are very ill built,... and this defect ariseth from the contempt they bear to practical geometry” (137). Swift criticizes scientists via Gulliver’s insults of the Laputans’ poor workmanship and aversion to “practical” design. Swift demonstrates his view that scientists attempt to level themselves with God by depicting the Laputans trying to apply their elaborate calculations to simple architecture. The towers of Laputa, like the Biblical Tower of Babel, stretch high into the clouds, attempting to level with the Creator without consideration of human limitations. Swift implies that contemporary scientists, represented by the Laputans, devote their life’s work to studying impractical subjects, forget the limit of human capabilities and reason, and unnecessarily overcomplicate simple tasks. Additionally, Gulliver insults the Laputans by describing how “they are wholly strangers to… imagination, fancy, and invention” (137). Through Gulliver, Swift argues that his contemporary scientists share the same traits. Instead of exhibiting humanist qualities such as creativity and innovation, Swift’s scientists seek to think on a higher, more abstract level.

Swift believes that instead of contributing to the greater good of humanity, scientists unethically strive to understand the fundamental truths of the universe. Moreover, Gulliver highlights that the Laputans “are under continual disquietudes” and that “they are so

perpetually alarmed with… impending dangers, that they can neither sleep quietly… nor have any relish for the… amusements of life” (138-139). Gulliver reflects Swift’s view of his contemporaries, including Isaac Newton who predicted the possibility that the Earth could plummet into the sun. Through Gulliver, Swift underlines how scientists play God by preoccupying themselves with predictions of “impending dangers” and disaster. Instead of using their knowledge to improve people’s lives, Swift suggests, scientists apply their theories naively and claim to know as much as God, including the end of the universe. Through the defects of Laputan society, Swift expresses his disdain for what he sees as scientists’ heedlessness toward the Great Chain of Being.

Swift parodies scientific institutions through his description of the Lagadan Academy, demonstrating how he believes that scientists conduct futile experiments. Lord Munodi, a Laputan character who helps Gulliver tour the Academy, tells Gulliver that “projectors came to him with proposals to destroy [his] mill, and build another… whereof a long canal must be cut,” but that “the work miscarried” and “the projectors went off” (150-151). Munodi describes the incompetent and exploitative projectors, just as Swift parodies the Royal Society and criticizes its scientists. Through Munodi’s description, Swift underlines how science experiments often fail or have little benefit upon completion, despite claiming to revolutionize the scientific community and the world. Swift argues that failed, impractical experiments are an example of man overestimating their knowledge, claiming omniscient insight into solving the world’s problems. Additionally, when Gulliver enters the Academy, he is shown a word-generating “invention” and describes how a “professor showed [him] several volumes… of broken sentences which he intended to piece together” and that “the world would soon be sensible of its usefulness” (154-155). The machine resembles the computer and the professor assures Gulliver that his invention will benefit humanity. The computer represents trivial Royal Society inventions that were created to contribute to the world and demonstrate their “usefulness.” Swift’s description of the mundane and impractical computer underlines the short-sightedness of scientists who believe their contrived and mundane experiments will change the world. Furthermore, according to Douglas Lane Patey, a specialist in 18th-century literature, “Gulliver witnesses experiments that serve no practical human use” and that “in seeking to reverse the order of nature,” the projectors—“like all Moderns—have forgotten the… distinction between the sciences of demonstration and the arts of prudence” (9-10). Patey equates the Lagadan projectors to modern scientists and states that Swift noticed scientists straying from empirical practices and attempting to control nature. Similar to the Lagadan projectors, scientists of his day attempted to discover the unknowable through alchemy or predictions of the universe. According to Swift, these ambitious scientists defy God and overstep the boundary of their position as humans.

Swift’s satirical representation of Laputa and Lagado underlines his opposition to scientific research, as he considered it an immoral dismissal of human limitations and an improper yearning for omniscience. Swift’s critique of trivial scientific research is as relevant today as in the 18th century. Similar to how Swift observed the scientists of the Royal Society as

“Swift observed the transition from a philosophy of natural order to mathematically driven, scientific abstractions, and believed that modern science would uproot the Great Chain of Being.”

According to Swift, these ambitious scientists overstep the boundary of their position as humans.

scheming “projectors,” the present-day reader draws a connection between the Lagadans and modern entrepreneurs with undeveloped ideas and a lack of long-term plans. Like the Laputans, people today are engrossed in their technology, using it for the simplest tasks and overcomplicating their lives with god-like computing power. Our lives would likely be less complicated if, when gazing at the universe through the lens of a pocket perspective, people would maintain their view of the world and remember the importance of the ground beneath them.

Works Cited

Patey, Douglas Lane. “Swift’s Satire on ‘Science’ and the Structure of Gulliver’s Travels.” ELH, vol. 58, no. 4, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991, pp. 809–39, https://doi.org/10.2307/2873283.

Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels. W. W. Norton & Company, 2002.

Jonathon T., class of 2022, is an aspiring physicist. He enjoys reading and writing sci-fi and hopes to one day discover new scientific knowledge of his own.

Julia K.

A Broader Horizon for the Term “Symbiosis”

The definition of the term “symbiosis” has lingered in an ambiguous realm for more than a century. In its broadest sense, symbiosis refers to the dynamic that arises when two organisms of different species live together. This scientific definition includes all classifications of biological relationships, ranging from parasitism to mutualism. An alternative definition of symbiosis exclusively denotes mutualism, a dynamic in which both species benefit from living together. The scientific community uses this less frequently, but it’s more often used colloquially and in contexts outside the field of biology. This paper seeks to understand why “symbiosis” remains a technical, scientific word applied mainly to non-human biological interactions. It also explores how the broader usage of symbiosis could provide for a better understanding of the biological and sociocultural realms.

The word “symbiosis” originates from the Greek sumbiōsis (companionship) and sumbioun (to live together). It first recirculated in German and English languages in the early seventeenth century, to characterize “communal or social life,” including “the union of living together of distinct individuals as companions or in marriage as husband and wife.”1 From the seventeenth century onward, this positive definition of symbiosis, with connotations of mutualism and interdependence, was broadly used in this sociocultural sense. In his 1622 book Free Trade, Edward Misselden, an English merchant, argued for more tightly regulated international trade and discussed the urgency “to study and invent things profitable

1 Gontier, N. (2016). Symbiosis, History of. In Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Biology (Vol. 4, p. 274 ). Oxford.

for the publique Symbiosis.”2 Later usage of the word reveals more about symbiosis’ ties to concepts of mutualism; in 1910, an English political magazine described “the savage with his… sense of ‘participation,’ of ‘symbiosis.’”3 Given that punishment for individual crimes was enforced on the group level and many community tools and items were used and owned collectively in so-called “savage” Native American societies, they can be described as more pro-mutual aid and pro-interdependence than European ones at the time.4 Symbiosis, in this context, was used to describe a form of social organization that was deeply participatory, founded on interdependence. In 1920, another English journal published a book that held that “so long as the [indigenous people living in tribes] can talk freely together, they form one spiritual symbiosis, and their culture will be the same.”5 In this excerpt, a journalist argues the cultural benefits, in the form of a “spiritual symbiosis,” that come from community participation, like the participation observed by the English in indigenous societies. In 1951, the term appeared in a social anthropology textbook6 to refer to indigenous examples of friendly cooperation between socially different, and often ethnically different, groups: “It is most evident in the case of an African tribe having its members living intermingled with those of other tribes and in symbiotic relationships with them.”7 Symbiosis has been colloquially used up until the present to describe interdependent, often mutualistic and positive relationships in human societies, though it has been used in this sociocultural context less frequently than in the biological sciences.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, “symbiosis” declined in popularity in the sociocultural sphere and saturated the scientific language of biology. One definition of “symbiosis” used by biologists exclusively denotes mutualism. In 1895, natural historian Anton Kerner von Marilaun observed how “several plants… live symbiotically with certain… ants. The plants afford the ants lodging… and give them nourishment…; the ants in return defend the foliage against the attacks of leaf-eating animals.”8 This dynamic can be compared to the symbiotic interactions between African tribes, who would trade and gift specialized goods to one another. It can also be found in the division of labor in industrialized economies that Adam Smith famously identified as the most important source of economic progress; as laborers specialize in increasingly narrow parts of the production of a good (pins, for example), and rely on other workers for different goods and services, all workers have access to more, high-quality resources overall.9 A similarly mutualistic relationship was defined as symbiosis by a naturalist in 1882: “Certain animals have embedded in their tissues numbers of unicellular algae, which are not to be regarded as parasites, but which thrive in the waste products of the animal, while the animal feeds upon the compounds

2 Symbiosis, n. Oxford English Dictionary. (2020, December). Retrieved 2021, from https:// www.oed.com/view/Entry/196194?redirectedFrom=symbiosis#eid.

3 Symbiosis, n. Oxford English Dictionary. (2020, December). Retrieved 2021, from https:// www.oed.com/view/Entry/196194?redirectedFrom=symbiosis#eid.

4 Graeber, D., & Wengrow, D. (2021). The dawn of everything: A new history of humanity Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

5 Symbiosis, n. Oxford English Dictionary. (2020, December). Retrieved 2021, from https:// www.oed.com/view/Entry/196194?redirectedFrom=symbiosis#eid.

6 Firth, R. (1951). Elements of social organization. Routledge.

7 Symbiosis, n. Oxford English Dictionary. (2020, December). Retrieved 2021, from https:// www.oed.com/view/Entry/196194?redirectedFrom=symbiosis#eid.

8 Symbiosis, n. Oxford English Dictionary. (2020, December). Retrieved 2022, from https:// www.oed.com/view/Entry/196194?redirectedFrom=symbiosis#eid.

9 Smith, A. (2009). Wealth of Nations. Classic House Books.

elaborated by the algae. This combined condition of existence has been named by Dr. Brandt symbiosis.”10

Over time, a broader use of this word, expanding beyond just mutualism, became dominant. In 1879, botanist Heinrich Anton de Bary defined it as “the living together of unlike organisms.”11 This definition of “symbiosis” encompasses all types of biological relationships, from neutralism to parasitism to mutualism. It is important to note that these are artificial categories constructed by biologists to sort species and relationships into smaller, more easily studied buckets. In many cases, interactions between species are not static and will present differently under different conditions. Although many biological relationships are not perfectly captured by biology’s scientific terms, “symbiosis” and its (according to de Bary) subcategories of mutualism, neutralism, commensalism, parasitism, predation, and amensalism, provide formal linguistic tools with which to analyze complex intraspecies and interspecies interactions.

While the scope of “symbiosis” has been an issue of contention in the biological community for more than 130 years, the word’s use seems to converge towards de Bary’s definition. In a 2013 study published in the International Journal of Biology, 100% of general biology (GB) textbooks surveyed used an explicit or implicit “de Bary” definition of “symbiosis,” while only 40% of general ecology (GE) textbooks did the same. When combining GB and GE textbooks to analyze usage of the word, 85% defined mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism as symbiotic interactions.12 Not only has “symbiosis” become an increasingly technical, scientific term that does not exclusively imply mutualism, “at the beginning of the twentieth century, parallels between the sociocultural and natural world appear to have come into disuse.”13

Symbiosis may have been divorced from its original sociocultural context and strong connotations of mutualism because the concept of mutualistic symbiosis and its importance was antithetical to popular Enlightenment thought. Key natural philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Malthus, and Adam Smith14 conceived of humans as individuals in direct competition with one another for scarce resources. For Hobbes (1651), “humans were like wolves, who in a ‘natural state’ found themselves at ‘war’ with other humans because they wanted to defend their individual freedom.” A struggle for existence

10 Symbiosis, n. Oxford English Dictionary. (2020, December). Retrieved 2021, from https:// www.oed.com/view/Entry/196194?redirectedFrom=symbiosis#eid.

11 Symbiosis, n. Oxford English Dictionary. (2020, December). Retrieved 2021, from https:// www.oed.com/view/Entry/196194?redirectedFrom=symbiosis#eid.

12 Martin, B. (2013). Current Usage of Symbiosis and Associated Terminology . International Journal of Biology, 5. https://doi.org/10.5539/ijb.v5n1p32

13 Gontier, N. (2016). History of Symbiosis. Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Biology, 4, 272–281.

14 While Adam Smith did acknowledge the positive-sum advantages of dividing labor (mentioned earlier in the paper), his broader writings about selfishness and competition would go on to be used as the foundation for social theories of individualism.

“Symbiosis may have been divorced from its original sociocultural context because the concept of mutualistic symbiosis was antithetical to popular Enlightenment thought.”

resulting from a scarcity of resources (similar to that outlined by Malthus) would lead to a natural selection of the fit, at the expense of the maladaptive. The biological sciences had access not only to “symbiosis” as it refers to mutualistic relationships, but an arsenal of additional words—parasitism, commensalism, neutralism, synnecrosis, symbiont—that serve to compose an entire framework for conceptualizing intraspecies and interspecies relations in non-human forms of life such as lichens, fungi, and fish. However, since the critical Enlightenment-period conceptions of individualistic social behavior, it has been increasingly politically subversive for ideas of symbiosis to be applied formally to the sociocultural realm in the field of biology.

Additionally, notions of symbiotic relationships’ evolutionary advantages were brought up as early as the early twentieth century, but did not gain footing in scientific discourse until the past two decades. In 1902, historian and natural scientist Peter Kropotkin postulated that symbiotic relationships might offer evolutionary advantages. While peer scientists painted organismal beings as “naturally amoral and asocial beings, Kropotkin [made] the case that mutual aid and the division of labor is as ‘instinctive’ and ‘natural’ as the [competitive] ‘struggle for existence’ is. For Kropotkin, the law of mutual aid helps eliminate competition and aids in the struggle for existence, enabling the establishment of social and political laws that bond organisms in communal lifestyles characterized by reciprocal altruism and cooperation.”15 Kropotkin’s socialist ideas about symbiosis and evolution, and their implications for humans’ social and political life, are only just being rediscovered.16 Similarly, the term symbiogenesis, first used by Russian biologist Konstantin Mereschkowski in 1905, is gaining popularity now17 and can be used to describe the crucial role of symbiosis in evolutionary success and development.

Nathalie Gontier, an evolutionary-sciences scholar, writes that “symbiosis is increasingly recognized as an important selective force behind evolution; many species have a long history of interdependent co-evolution.” For example, over the past couple of decades, biologists have come to recognize the role of symbiosis in human health. The human gut microbiome is a community of commensal organisms—gut flora—that prevent the entry of harmful non-commensal organisms; contribute to the human body’s metabolism, immunity, and adaptability to stress; and regulate nutrient and fluid reclamation.18 This idea that levels of competition and cooperation can be nested—running from an individ-

15 Gontier, N. (2016). History of Symbiosis. Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Biology, 4, 275

16

Gontier, N. (2016). History of Symbiosis. Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Biology, 4, 275

17 Gontier, N. (2016). History of Symbiosis. Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Biology, 4, 272–281.

18 Hedayat, K. M., & Lapraz, J.-C. (2019). Chapter 5 - Symbiosis. The Theory of Endobiogeny, 2, 63–75.

“Using the same terminology for animal, plant, and human interactions might facilitate more thought around how we may be similar to animals and ecosystems, as well as our own relationships as humans with the natural world.”

ual’s gut microbiome up to their relationships with other people—provides a more holistic picture of symbiosis, and its explanatory power concerning natural and social laws. In an 1894 natural history of plants, American biologists stated that “Animals and Plants [could be] considered as a great symbiotic community.”19 Their use of the word “community,” as opposed to another word such as “ecosystem,” to describe the symbiotic relationships between plants and animals carries social implications of fellowship, union, and common-ownership. This transference of terminology emphasizes the parallels between humans and the natural world.

Using the same terminology for animal, plant, and human interactions, whether they be cooperative or competitive, might facilitate more thought around how we may be similar to animals and ecosystems, as well as our own mutualistic, commensal, or parasitic relationship as humans with the natural world. Broader usage of “symbiosis” and its accompanying biological terminology, in the sociocultural realm where it originated, would provide a linguistic avenue for exploration into human relationships, where they may fall on the spectrum from mutualism to parasitism, and what this says about more fundamental natural, social, and political laws.

In this paper, Julia K. (class of 2022) explores her interests in the philosophy of science, environmental studies, and anthropology. She is especially interested in social scientists’ and biologists’ approaches to understanding competition and cooperation, and had fun taking an interdisciplinary angle in this paper.

19 Symbiosis, n. Oxford English Dictionary. (2020, December). Retrieved 2021, from https:// www.oed.com/view/Entry/196194?redirectedFrom=symbiosis#eid.

Selina M.

From Backfire to Breakthrough

As Claude-Louis Navier watched his new building crumble before his eyes, he pondered his decision to study architecture. Perhaps this was not the right course of action, he thought, as a meticulously sculpted gargoyle shattered by his feet. Dentistry. Mom said I should have been a dentist. A loud crack reverberated off the other structurally sound buildings lining the street as his foundation split in half. Months of physical work, years of planning, and lifetimes of knowledge disintegrating. All because of his one simple miscalculation.

“Disappointing, really,” said a man next to him, gazing up at the spectacle that had been made of Claude’s career. Claude knew this man—he was a member of one of the many legally distinct and yet utterly indistinguishable government committees Claude had been forced to win over in the process of creating this building—but he could not recall his name. Probably because he didn’t like him. Claude, as a rule, didn’t waste space in his brain on people or things he didn’t like. (He called it efficient; his therapist called it avoidance.) This man’s greasy mustache and self-satisfied demeanor epitomized what Claude didn’t like.

“Is this what happens when you drop a sign?” Ah, that’s right. This was the “don’t count on those fancy mathematics” man on the architect certification committee. That whole process—this whole community, Claude reflected—was filled with pompous jerks. The man chuckled when Claude didn’t reply. “That’s fine, save your words for the committee. In any case, I’m sure they’ll have plenty for you.”

They did, in fact, have plenty of words for him. They were the kind of words on which Claude didn’t waste brain space.

Stripped of his architect status, Claude stewed quietly in the corner of a cafe. It really wasn’t the right career for him—too much bureaucracy, too many hoops to jump through (and Claude had never been an athletic man). He was better off, really, he told himself. But the one thing that he couldn’t seem to remove from his thoughts, despite his dislike, was the smug face of that greasy man. He was the reason why, when someone wrote a book about him someday (and someone would, Claude was sure), there would be a chapter about his public government reprimand for “relying too heavily on mathematics.” Too heavily on mathematics! The most fundamental part of the universe! He marveled at how truly idiotic this man was. How inane. How imbecilic. How—

Before Claude could think of another alliterative insult, a burst of steam exploded outside with a squeal not dissimilar to that of a baby, or a cat dropped from great heights (Claude disliked both). A vehicle, one of the new-fangled horseless ones, had broken down in the middle of the street. Claude watched in self-pitying disinterest, still sulking in his shame, as the driver attempted to contain the disaster. A shiny copper pipe had burst at a bend— physics hated right angles—and the propulsion from the jet of vapor had tipped the cart over with surprising forcefulness. Unable to get close to the pipe without burning herself, the driver was unsuccessfully trying to tug the vehicle to the side of the road, away from traffic. Traffic, meanwhile, was in a similar state of disaster, the horses all having been thoroughly spooked by the noise. One had shat itself on the spot. Overall, it was an entertaining scene and a welcome distraction for Claude.

Normally, Claude wouldn’t even consider offering his help (a grown adult should be able to carry themselves through life just fine), but steam power interested him. The next big thing, everyone called it. The future of technology. The culmination of humanity’s knowledge. So, he nobly sacrificed the rest of his warm coffee and made his way to the scene. The pressure had dissipated quickly, leaving the burst pipe dripping on the road. Offering a hand to the driver, they tipped the vehicle upright again, more hot water sloshing out of the pipe in the process.

“Thank you, sir,” the driver wiped her hands. “Shoddy workmanship. Honestly, it’s appalling,” she deflected, waving at the cart with disdain.

“Surely they’ve figured out the amount of pressure in these pipes? Can’t they just…” Claude gestured awkwardly at the pipes; human interaction had never been his strong spot.

“You’d think,” she scoffed. “Apparently, ‘steam is hard’,” she quoted sarcastically. “They ‘just don’t have the numbers’ so it’s all experimentation. Prefer if they experimented before they sold it to me...” She shook her head. Claude just nodded. After a quick beat of silence, he waved a polite goodbye and walked off before he could be compelled to help anymore— she could find her own way home.

As Claude began his own walk home, he pondered her words. (He liked pondering, it made him feel important.) Now, Claude was not a religious man, but he couldn’t help but feel that the universe had gifted him this opportunity. If “they just don’t have the numbers” wasn’t a sign, then Claude didn’t know what was. A real-life, important topic that needed a smart and handsome mathematician (such as himself) to swoop in and save the day, proving the viability of mathematics in the process? Well.

Was he projecting? Possibly. Probably. But either way, Claude flung himself into this problem with all the vigor he could manage. He soon learned that the subject of fluid dynamics was, to put it mildly, rough. The current models were simple and inaccurate—even the best failed to account for velocity, an agonizingly necessary component of steam-power calculations. It pained him to do so, but after piles upon haphazard piles of work, Claude reached out to another mathematician for help.

George Gabriel Stokes was an Irish mathematician Claude had met at a scientific conference, back when he still bothered to attend those stuffy popularity contests. Unlike most of the other attendees, George had actually seemed to like Claude. His cheerful disposition had irritated Claude endlessly, but every scowl he delivered was met by a grin. Unlike Claude, George had always been applauded for his scientific work—he had even been knighted, a fact that inspired a slight resentment in Claude. Still, they worked well together. Claude’s mechanical engineering and architectural experience meshed well with George’s physics studies, and George’s ceaselessly sunny demeanor was so powerful that even Claude couldn’t bring him down. Soon they managed to develop a set of differential equations that could, theoretically, entirely predict the movement of those elusive, turbulent fluids.

It was this “theoretically,” however, that kept Claude up at night. These differential equations were complicated (surprise), and for the life of him, Claude could not prove that a solution existed in three dimensions. And it wasn’t for lack of trying—no, anyone who had observed him in the past months could attest to how hard the man was working. Even George, who had similarly dedicated his career to this problem, would occasionally worry

“It was this small part of him that would occasionally find him in his garage in the middle of the night, scribbling away and hoping for a breakthrough.”

about his late nights and eating habits. In fact, George was the one that eventually managed to convince Claude to give up.

It had become apparent at least a year ago that this problem was unsolvable, at least for them. The equations were still serviceable—in fact, they were an incredible leap forward in the field of physics—but Claude’s pride prevented him from just setting them aside, incomplete. He had already lost faith in his ability to solve them, but pride and stubbornness carried him through many more months of agonizing, fruitless work. It was only when George forcefully brought Claude to one of his social gatherings for scientists, and when Claude witnessed the grudging respect and admiration his work had garnered him, could he finally be convinced to give up.

A small part of him, however, never let go. It was this small part of him that would occasionally find him in his garage in the middle of the night, scribbling away and hoping for a breakthrough. It was this small part of him that set aside a portion of his inheritance for anyone who managed to solve it, just because he wanted to see. It was this small part of him that drove the rest of his work, this lifelong dissatisfaction that cemented his place in history as one of the founders of fluid dynamics.

Selina M. is a twelfth-grader; her interests include abstract math, mechanical engineering, and epic fantasy. In this short piece of historical fiction, she explores the life of Claude-Louis Navier, using a largely fictionalized character spliced with Navier’s actual journey from failed architect to legendary mathematician.

Lives in Pieces: Subjective Experience Through Time

Thomas Nagel, an NYU professor of philosophy and ethics, states that an organism has consciousness if there is something that it is like to be that organism; he calls this the subjective character of experience. We cannot know what another person’s subjective experience is, or even if they have one; this limitation of knowledge is called the epistemic barrier. It exists because consciousness is not currently measurable by anything physical. Though we may assume that someone who has the ability to perceive the world has some experience of the world, we cannot know how similar their subjective experience is to our own. David Chalmers, an NYU professor of philosophy and neural science, argues that our only knowledge of consciousness stems from our own experience of it—even if we believe that others have a subjective experience, we cannot know for certain. In this paper I will endeavor to show that there is an epistemic barrier not just, as we know, between ourselves and others but also even between ourselves and our past and future selves; because we do not have accurate, objective memory, it is impossible to know what our past subjective experiences were like or even if we truly had them.

It is fairly easy to access our own subjective experience in the moment, and it may seem like memory allows us to access our subjective experiences from the past. However, this is not true. When we remember our own past, we view it through our current consciousness and that past loses its subjective perspective. Reconstructive memory theory states that as we recall things, we pull from our prior experiences in the form of schemas. Schemas are ways that we understand and apply structures in our minds where information is organized and grouped; people form schemas for everything they experience about how the world works, like how you know how to open a door you have never opened before because you have a schema for opening doors in general. As we remember, our memories are altered to fit what we expect them to be based on these schemas. Memory is not a way of accessing past experience, but is actually a part of the current subjective experience. Every time you remember something, you insert some part of your current consciousness into that experience and the resulting memory no longer seamlessly reflects your past subjective experience. For example, Loftus and Palmer’s 1974 study showed that the way a person is asked to recall something can affect one’s memory of the event. They showed participants a video of a car crash, and asked half of them to estimate the speed of the cars when they collided. The other half heard the question with the word “smashed” instead of “hit.” Later, all participants were asked if they remembered seeing broken glass in the video; participants who were asked how fast the cars were going when they “smashed” more often reported broken glass. The schemas the participants had for the words “smash” and “hit” were a part of their current consciousnesses, and these schemas affected their memories of the event, even though while they were watching the video they were not influenced by language.

Subjective experience is constantly changing; it is reflective of what it is like to be you at this one specific point in time. At any given moment, you are constantly taking in information and events, and these things combined are your experience. This means that we have a different subjective experience, a different consciousness, from each instant of our past selves. If we do not remember exactly what it was like to be us in the past and unless that memory is the same as the experience, we cannot access our past subjective experiences. We cannot know what it was like to be those versions of us because we can only access our own subjective experience, and have no way of accurately recalling a subjective experience we used to have. Nagel gives the example: “Our own experience provides the basic material for our imagination, whose range is therefore limited. It will not help to try to imagine that one has webbing on one’s arms, which enables one to fly around at dusk and dawn catching insects in one’s mouth; that one has very poor vision… In so far as I can imagine this (which is not very far), it tells me only what it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves.” You cannot know what it used to be like to be yourself in the same way that you cannot know what it is like to be a bat; it is a separate subjective experience.

However, it seems difficult to believe that our subjective experience from just one minute, or even one second ago, is completely separate from our current subjective experience. Consider though, how you would remember a subjective experience, assuming your memory is accurate and objective. In order to conceptualize what it was like to be you at that point in time, it must become factual memory. When you recall that memory, you are converting it to a format that is understandable from an objective point of view. This is the same as trying to explain a subjective experience to someone else; you can recall the things you were experiencing and explain them, but not what it was like to experience them. An example is that when you remember a time you were so sad you cried you do not actually cry; there is a distance between the memory and its actuality in the past.

Thus, we can see that there is an epistemic barrier between your current self and your past and future selves. If you are a person, you know what it is like to be that person, so if you cannot know what it is like to be someone, you cannot be them. Therefore, there being an epistemic barrier between yourself and your past self implies that you are a different person at every moment in time. This raises questions about moral and ethical implications. For example, can you be blamed for past actions if you are not the same person who did them? If your past self is not you, this would be exactly like blaming someone for someone else’s crime. If you cannot be held accountable for your past actions, there would be no justice system or ethical punishment for crime. This also implies that the person who decides to take an action and the person who takes that action are not the same person, which brings up questions of free will. Does the person who takes the action but did not decide to take it have autonomy? Do they have the ability to change the decision at their point of existence, or are they trapped in the decision made by someone before them? This also implies that you have the same moral duty to not harm your past or future self as you do to not harm someone else. This has huge implications on our system of justice and punishment, such as how we should punish people and for what. If everyone operated under the assumption that

“How would we ever be able to change if we stopped thinking of ourselves as continuous and permanent in our flesh sacks? Completely disconnecting these bodies from our concepts of self would be extremely difficult.”

we are different people at every moment in time and are unable to fully understand our past and future selves, the way we interact with the world and our bodies would completely shift. Though I have shown this to be true, the world would not necessarily be better if we operated as such. It would be a strange dystopia where there is no way to hold people accountable for their past actions. How would we build relationships between people who only exist for a tiny sliver of time? How would we ever be able to change if we stopped thinking of ourselves as continuous and permanent in our flesh sacks? We have brains, bodies, and memories that are constantly reminding us that we have grown and moved through time, and completely disconnecting these bodies from our concepts of self would be extremely difficult. For example, how can you look at a piece of artwork your body created, remembering every brush stroke and decision, and think, “Someone else made that, with my hands and my brain?” However, it is important to not treat our memories of the past as fact, and to not believe in our own ability to completely understand what it was like to experience something exactly as you would experience it as you exist in the present. Being aware that the way you are remembering something is not the same as how you once experienced it or even how it happened is important in reducing confidence in potentially false memories, and keeping a sense of personal distance from the past that you can no longer experience. The epistemic barrier between yourself and your past and future selves is important on an individual level, if not societal.

Nancy S. is a twelfth-grader. She wrote this piece for the Philosophy of Consciousness elective.

Emma

M.

An American Erasure in WWII

T

he Holocaust, and the subsequent US response to it, is venerated in American collective memory for its place as one of the few examples of true heroism in this nation’s history. However, beneath this cherished image lies a harder truth— that the Nazis were inspired by America’s successful institutionalization of racism. Despite the parallels between Nazi racial laws and American Jim Crow laws, United States officials and media have strategically framed discussions of the Holocaust to exclude race entirely, allowing America to maintain its narrative of moral superiority while simultaneously perpetuating white supremacy.During Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in the 1920s and 30s, German ideas of Aryan racial superiority and the inferiority of the Jewish people evolved as a result of German understandings of racism in the US. While America was blissfully ignorant of the connections between Jim Crow and Nazi racial laws, both the Nazis and the wider German population scrutinized the United States and its history of racial separation for commonalities, fallibilities, and guidance. German newspapers printed during the 1930s exemplify this analysis of the United States particularly well. For example, Der Weltkampf, a prominent Nazi ideological journal, published a piece in 1926 by Hans Richard Mertel which argued that “Slavery was morally justified in the Old South... and the Yankees had conducted a slave war [the Civil War] against the South because of ‘misguided humanity’” towards the

African Americans.1 This type of rhetoric glorifying the United States’ racial hierarchy was common during this time, with some pieces even going as far as to recommend that the US repeal the 14th and 15th amendments.2 The Nazis saw the US as an example of how to institutionalize white supremacy and thus looked to it for direction when modeling the Third Reich. Perhaps the most obvious instances of Jim Crow-inspired policy were the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which consisted of two parts—the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, and the Reich Citizenship Law. The former forbade all sexual relationships (marital or otherwise) between Jews and Aryans, in much the same way that interracial marriage was illegal in the South.3 The latter solidified the rules for citizenship in the Third Reich, formally classifying Jews as “enemies of the state” and stripping them of their civil rights. The Nazis defined Jewishness very methodically, creating three main racial categories—Aryan, Mischling, and Jewish—based on what percentage Jewish a person was. A person with one-eighth or less Jewish ancestry was deemed “Aryan,” while someone with three-fourths or more Jewish lineage was branded a “Jude.” Those that fell between the two extremes acquired the pejorative legal label “Mischling,” meaning “half-breed,” and only partly gained German citizenship. Those with this label could also be reclassified as Jews based on close relationships with “full Jews” or—in a deviation from the typical racialization of Jews—if they were a part of the Jewish religious community. It is crucial to recognize that the Nuremberg laws were a reflection of how broader Nazi antisemitism was rooted in the fear of the “subhuman” Jewish race defiling the superior Aryan race. This racebased vilification of a people is precisely why Germans so easily saw the parallels between Nazi policies and Jim Crow.

Hitler’s efforts to gain support in America appealed specifically to German people living in the US, hoping to win their allegiance through a message of ethnic nationalism that grew from the definition of Aryans as the “master race.” Unfortunately for the Nazis, this strategy was quite unsuccessful—while German Americans showed some interest in Hitler’s plans to retake Germany’s historic colonial possessions and resettle them with Aryans, nearly all rejected Nazism as an ideology entirely.4 German organizations like Stahlhelm (the German veterans’ organization) and the German Foreign Institute attempted to sway German Americans through equating cultural pride with Nazi solidarity, but their reach was limited

1 Grill, Johnpeter Horst and Robert L. Jenkins. “The Nazis and the American South in the 1930s: A Mirror Image?” The Journal of Southern History 58, no. 4 (1992): 675. Accessed May 11, 2021. doi:10.2307/2210789.

2 Grill and Jenkins, “The Nazis and the American South,” 677.

3 Grill and Jenkins, “The Nazis and the American South,” 692.

4 Grill and Jenkins, “The Nazis and the American South,” 681.

“It is precisely this placing of Nazi antisemitism and American white supremacy into distinct buckets that allowed America to take the moral high ground against the Nazis in selfproclaimed ideology while remaining strikingly similar in practice.”

and in many cases opposed. For example, “at one German-American celebration in New Braunfels [Texas], the organizers refused to hoist the German flag with its swastika to the chagrin of both the Stahlhelm paper and the German consul, who left the celebration in protest.” 5 Especially given the failure of this ethnonationalist campaign, it is important to note that Nazism was rife not only with antisemitism but also with anti-Blackness, which could have provided a very effective nationwide campaign in the Jim Crow US. However, the Nazis may have avoided capitalizing on anti-Blackness for fear of inciting backlash against the Third Reich, as the American people could not square the hypocrisy of criticizing Nazi racial supremacy while upholding the same type of racial hierarchy at home and were likely to become defensive if such a direct comparison were made.

America needed a way to understand the Nazi oppression of the Jews in a way that did not disrupt the Black-white binary set in place by Jim Crow—after all, accepting the Nazi persecution of the Jews on the basis of race would have forced some uncomfortable introspection on the ideals of white supremacy in the United States. To do so, the government allowed Jews to occupy a rather odd in-between state with regards to the American racial hierarchy, marking them as “almost-white.” Until after World War II, the United States classified Jews as a distinct race on census and immigration documentation, which was the root of much discussion among Jews and non-Jews alike. Unofficially, though, Jews were understood to be a part of, or at least adjoin, the broader “white” race, and thus did not face the same extent of oppression that Black people experienced in the United States. This tolerance of Jews as a separate race led many Jewish groups to encourage this label, as “in a period of increasing secularization and shifting social boundaries, ‘race’ offered Jews a more compelling means of self-understanding than did more traditional markers of Jewish identity.” 6 Notwithstanding, though Jews were tolerated, they still faced many negative stereotypes and discrimination. Some Jews hoped that by accepting a separate racial classification, they could gain recognition for their positive contributions to American society and dispel the rampant antisemitism.

However, by the turn of the twentieth century, Jews’ ability to hold on to their Jewish racial identity while being accepted as part of the white community was waning. This point of inflection with regard to Jewish identity later dovetailed with America’s chosen reconciliation of the moral hypocrisy of criticizing the Nazis while permitting Jim Crow—which principally involved the erasure of the specific targeting and racialization of the Jews under Nazism. For example, white-run newspapers during the Holocaust “invoked the extermination to prove that their own paternalistic white supremacy had no relationship to the extreme Nazi racial ideology and its violent manifestations.” 7 By highlighting the brutality of the Holocaust rather than its specific targets, Americans framed the Jewish genocide within a larger narrative of Nazi inhumanity, which they contrasted sharply against America’s comparative benevolence. American willful blindness to the specific Jewish focus of the Nazis also allowed US lawmakers to pass increasingly restrictive immigration laws against multiple groups, including Jews—using the “Jewish” racial classification that was

5 Grill and Jenkins, “The Nazis and the American South,” 681.

6 Goldstein, Eric L. “Contesting the Categories: Jews and Government Racial Classification in the United States.” Jewish History 19, no. 1 (2005): 81. Accessed June 5, 2021. http://www.jstor. org/stable/20100947.

7 Bendersky, Joseph W. “Holocaust-Era American Antisemitism.” Virginia Commonwealth University and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2018): 5. Accessed June 6, 2021.

https://academic.oup.com/DocumentLibrary/HGS/HGS%20Introduction%20Virtual%20Issue%20

Antisemitism%202.pdf

the subject of such debate—before and during World War II, which prevented thousands from escaping the Holocaust.8 The other key American tactic in erasing the racial nature of the Holocaust was by explaining the persecution of the Jews as purely religious. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee does an excellent job exemplifying the prevailing American attitude toward the Holocaust at the time: “[The fictitious teacher Miss Gates] cannot acknowledge that the motive behind Nazi policy might not be anti-religious but ‘racial’ prejudice instead; and the Third Reich differs from the United States because ‘over here we don’t believe in persecuting anybody.’”9 It is precisely this placing of Nazi antisemitism and American white supremacy into distinct buckets—this separation of Old World and New World hatred—that allowed America to take the moral high ground against the Nazis in self-proclaimed ideology while remaining strikingly similar in practice.

The United States’ stubborn desire to prove that it was morally superior to Nazi Germany and righteous in its condemnation of the Final Solution has endured to this day. The mythologization of the Holocaust in American memory takes many forms, but the prevailing narrative is of a noble, pluralistic United States battling against the evils of global fascism, and serves to further differentiate Nazi racism from American racism. A curious example of this conscious narrative-building is the existence of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. According to historian Norman Finkelstein, “the presence of the Holocaust Museum...is ‘particularly incongruous in the absence of a museum commemorating crimes in the course of American history’...[specifically] the slave trade and genocide against the American Indians.” 10 The fixation on the Holocaust to prove American exceptionalism has in many ways co-opted the Jewish experience of that history while also rewriting the story to better fit the desired image of America as ultimate savior. While in reality the United States and the Allied forces were much more concerned with securing a military victory than rendering humanitarian aid during World War II, our national story instead flaunts images of starving, emaciated prisoners being liberated from Auschwitz by the Allied forces.11 This sort of representation seeks to portray the Jews as a helpless minority that the kind American nation saved from the most horrific circumstances imaginable—a rare, though commendable, example of the United States helping a minority that has become emblematic of the character of this nation. At the same time, the rapid decline of Jewishness as a separate racial category in the US after World War II has led to the erasure of the key racial component of the Holocaust from popular memory, effectively stripping away Jewish identity as distinct from whiteness while handing the Jews the memory of the Holocaust as a “civil religion”—a reminder of their debt to America.12

8 Goldstein, “Contesting the Categories,” 86.

9 Whitfield, Stephen J. “The South in the Shadow of Nazism.” Southern Cultures 18, no. 3 (2012): 66-7. Accessed May 10, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26217314.

10 Friedberg, Lilian. “Dare to Compare: Americanizing the Holocaust.” American Indian Quarterly 24, no. 3 (2000): 354-55. Accessed June 8, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1185909.

11 “The United States and the Holocaust, 1942–5,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed June 4, 2021, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/ article/the-united-states-and-the-holocaust-1942-45

12 Friedberg, “Dare to Compare,” 354-5.

Works Cited

1. Bendersky, Joseph W. “Holocaust-Era American Antisemitism.” Virginia Commonwealth University and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2018). Accessed June 6, 2021. https://academic.oup. com/DocumentLibrary/HGS/HGS%20Introduction%20Virtual%20Issue%20Antisemitism%202.pdf

2. Friedberg, Lilian. “Dare to Compare: Americanizing the Holocaust.” American Indian Quarterly 24, no. 3 (2000): 353-80. Accessed June 3, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1185909.

3. Goldstein, Eric L. “Contesting the Categories: Jews and Government Racial Classification in the United States.” Jewish History 19, no. 1 (2005): 79-107. Accessed June 7, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20100947.

4. Grill, Johnpeter Horst, and Robert L. Jenkins. “The Nazis and the American South in the 1930s: A Mirror Image?” The Journal of Southern History 58, no. 4 (1992): 667-94. Accessed May 11, 2021. doi:10.2307/2210789.

5. “The United States and the Holocaust, 1942–5,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed June 4, 2021, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-unitedstates-and-the-holocaust-1942-45

6. Whitfield, Stephen J. “The South in the Shadow of Nazism.” Southern Cultures 18, no. 3 (2012): 57-75. Accessed May 10, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26217314.

Emma M. (class of 2022) found great excitement in exploring the humanities at Nueva. She wrote this essay for her 11th-grade American history class, to better understand the role of the United States in the Holocaust, as well as how she fits into this nation’s broader history, as a Jewish person. In her free time, she enjoys morning runs, watching women’s college basketball, and curling up with a good book.