Power and Reality by Vera

VERA 06

SHADES OF REALITY Imagined Truths

Power & Reality

Such stuff as dreams are made on...

PERVERSION OF POWER The Displacement of Trust

FEVERISH IMAGININGS Historical Constructions

VERA Issue No. #2

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Power & Realityâ&#x20AC;? June 2016 Front/Back Cover Aurelius Noble

Contributors: Editor Aurelius Noble Editors Arthur Scott-Geddes Eleanor Chambers Joshua Alston Assistant Editors Catherine McAteer Gabby Presence Ian Simpson Designers Aurelius Noble

Contributors Aurelius Noble Dominique Triggs Ed Davies Eleanor Chambers Fiona Holland Ian Simpson Jake Leigh-Howarth Joshua Alston Sonya Bushell Umamah Yusufi Will Ainsley Artists Aurelius Noble Fiona Holland Jamie Gayya

To contribute to Vera magazine please contact: editorveramag@gmail.com

CAPTION JUNE 2016

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EDITOR’S NOTE

ear Reader,

After many weeks we find ourselves here again, a place made possible by the dedication and talent of a wide array of people. It is with a great deal of pleasure that I am able to present to you such a variety of topics, ranging from Tanzanian history, to Japanese literature, to American music. Alongside this issue, I am also glad to announce the launch of a new website, which will regularly publish articles, both on similarly intellectual topics and on the more obscure elements of current affairs. The theme of this issue, perhaps even more suspect than the last, is that of Power and Reality. In particular, articles mainly focus on two themes: the relationship between reality, portrayals of it and the consequent meaning ascribed to it; and upon the re-shaping of ‘reality’ to suit certain political or historical agendas. Beyond this, the somewhat anarchic spread of articles aim to critique a variety of commonspread assumptions, on democracy, on shared perceptions of reality and on sanity itself. In the first section, Shades of Reality, we begin by surveying abstracted realities, and their ability to convey multiplicitous meanings; even those in which meaning itself is subsumed by the realisation of the subjective and facile nature of overarching interpretations of existence. Beyond this we might understand an anarchic or ‘natural’ beauty to supercede intentional human constructions of aesthetics. The next section, the Perversion of Power is more narrowly focused, examining power as both the defining factor in political realities and as something which is in turn defined by these realities. This suggests the omniprescence of an evident darker truth, which still lies somewhat obscured behind the shifting facades that are continually projected in the pursuit of power. Finally, Feverish Imaginings details the varied constructions of statehood and ideology in a historical context, suggesting that societies and indeed nations do not always spring up fully formed, but instead are intentionally constructed with pre-existing agendas in mind. -Aurelius Editor

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Contents Shades of Reality 7 / THE TREACHERY OF IMAGES

Artistic realism and the rise of abstract art. Art as a reflection of reality or a more abstract truth.

17 / IT’S ONLY A PAPER MOON

Haruki Murakami and the dissolution of meaning through alternate realities and prophecy.

23 / THE MODERN ABYSS

The dead land - the rise of brutalist archicture and the consumerate death of beauty and meaning in the city.

27 / CAPTAIN BEEFHEART

Insanity as an artistic device - the true originality of the music of Captain Beefheart.

43/ THE AMERICAN DREAM

The rise and the revival of an American dream - Jay Gatsby and the rise of populist politicians.

47 / THE POWER OF IMAGE

French monarchs and modern world leaders, an examination of the centrality of image to political power.

Feverish Imaginings 53 / IMAGINARY TANZANIA

The conjuring of a colonail state - Tanzania, its colonial construction, and post-colonial reconstruction.

“This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man’s hand Under the twinkle of a fading star.” The Hollow Men (1925), T. S. Eliot Topic

31 / SOCIAL (PSEUDO)-SCIENCE

The rise of “social experiments” and their inability to accurately represent reality.

Perversion of Power 37 / A NATURAL ORDER

A history and critique of democratic thought - the limits of “people’s power”. issuu.com /veramagazine

editorveramag @gmail.com

57 / REINVENTING CASTE

The British colonial state and the reconstitution of class hierarchies in India.

61 / TWISTED REALITIES

The development of a crusading psychology Christianity, holy war and atrocities in the crusading mind.

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Shades of Reality BEAUTY, TRUTH AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF MEANING AS A REFLECTION OF REALITY

‎René Magritte, The Treachery of Images (1929), edited

THE TREACHERY OF IMAGES Detailing the perfection of artistic realism and the rise of abstract art, this article questions the purpose of art, its role as a reflection of reality and the extent to which realism better expresses the nature of this reality. By Fiona Holland

ow much has art really got to do with reality? Some see it as a reflection of the past, or depictions of, as well as reactions to social and historical events. Artists produce their own responses, but viewing these works and understanding them as renderings of the reality of their time helps us to discover the past through a different medium than the facts , figures, and sources printed on paper. Once the subject of modern art and other abstract works is looked into however, the act of understanding an image and the reality it depicts makes many contemporary viewers feel uneasy. On the face of it, these pieces seem to be praised only because they lack representations of figures, objects or simply any signs of life. This assumption undoubtedly generates responses like ‘this isn’t art’, or ‘a child could do that,’ because to some, the unrecognizable refers to the unskillful, and so cannot be categorized as ‘art.’ Works produced between 1945 and the present day are therefore controversial, baffling and disturbing for many . These reactions, however, should not let viewers discard value in works that lack the recognizable, as in many ways they form some of the most accurate and interesting reflections of the reality of their time.

picture? Some search for its meaning and what it is trying to say. The more a work depicts something realistic or recognizable the more we feel we can understand or take something valuable away from it. Take John A. Grimshaw’s painting Boar Lane as an example. When I look at it, I admire his portrayal of a street in Leeds I know well. I can see figures of shoppers, a man looking inside a tobacco shop perhaps wondering whether or not he will go inside. The glistening, wide street and the dull sky bear the remnants of a recent shower. I admire a depiction of a reality that might well have been seen in 19th century Leeds. I am able to analyse it because I recognize not just that I know where it is, but that what is being represented in the painting is a street, a clock tower, windows and lights. It is a painted snapshot of what we might see in real life. The basis of my understanding and admiration of the picture is the recognition of its content. Having objects or scenes from the real world depicted in an artwork like Grimshaw’s is often associated with skill, and if an artwork lacks this , some find it difficult to attribute value to it.

istic depiction of the pipe is influential in and of itself. You feel you could reach out and tear it from the image, yet this is the very point Magritte wishes to highlight. The blank cream background, combined with the blunt statement that “This is not a pipe,” reveal that this work, like so many other works of art, are only representations. This picture is, of course, an image of a pipe and not the real object itself. Although this piece and its message has been around since the early 20th century, many viewers still value the visual arts mostly for the artist’s ability to use a medium to create a mimetic image. If today, we still have such an attachment to the recognizable in art, how then, can we begin to understand yet alone appreciate abstract works from the early 20th century to the present day?

The Perfection of Illusion

One way of beginning to be able to understand modern art in the early 20th century is to understand that artists of this time were making works during the rise of machine reproduction. The emergence of photography introduced a completely new way of producing an René Magritte’s The Treachery of image, but one that for the first Images, is a piece of work that may time could physically capture an help us understand our attachment image to the very last detail, creatThe Familiar Lie to the pictorial illusion when we ing an exact replica of the real life What happens when you look at a view a work of art. The hyper-real- scene. W.J.T. Mitchell suggests that 8 |

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the photograph can tell a lie at the level of “photographic and optical truth,” but not at the level of historical truth. Look at Lewis Hines’ photograph of a spinner girl, which vividly highlights the raw truth of child labor in United States in the early 19th century. The photograph blurs the line between reality and its image. As in the production of any other artwork, a human hand chose the angle, light and subject focus of the image. But the photo holds a historical truth: the girl in the picture did once exist in the mill and her surroundings were also real. A photograph is able to provide a far more accurate historical record than drawings or paintings ever could. Therefore, with photography now able to tell a true story about the real world that is visually closer to what is seen in real life, does the 20th century is still have a need for painting?

The Art of Abstraction Abstract Expressionism arose alongside the rise of machine reproduction, and it has been argued that these abstract works were an attempt at dealing with the new photographic technologies of the postwar world. If pictorial illusions were being created faster through a camera than in an oil painting, could paint on a canvas still convey the same valuable realism to a viewer? The answers that some American and European artists arrived at, were works that contained no obvious subject matter, instead made up of raw colour and shape. The American art critic Clement Greenberg wrote on abstract works being produced in America. In American-type painting, he praised artists that best presented a concept he named ‘flatness.’ A painting that produced this would highlight

Shades of Reality

the dialectic between the literal surface of the canvas and the illusion of depth in the depicted surface, therefore drawing the viewer’s attention to the act of painting instead of the pictorial illusion on the canvas. The painting Autumn Rhythm, by Jackson Pollock exemplifies this concept. The painting has an obvious ‘messy’ look, and this has been provided by the obvious ‘gesture’ on the surface of the painting. The gesture is an indexical mark of the artist throwing paint across the canvas, or handprints and footprints left by a bodily motion. The reality the viewer is made to think about then, is the process Pollock used to make this painting. Mark Rothko, the colour field painter, also attracts viewers to the canvas surface in his work. Greenberg writes that Rothko’s pieces “exhale colour,” “escaping geometry through geometry itself.” Most of his colour-filled works conform to Greenberg’s concept of ‘flatness’ through a blank background and several flat two-dimensional rectangles that are wide and thin. There is no obvious presentation of depth, no noticeable background or foreground. The rectangular forms dissipate at their edges, leaving them tied to the surface of the canvas. While ‘flatness’ was revolutionary in how it brought the viewer’s attention to the act of painting itself instead of the pictorial illusion given, these works are more than just responses to fears of the significance of painting dying out. Artists like Pollock and Rothko, of the New York School, were working at the start of the Cold War. America was in the process of forging its own identity as a global power and within American society, there existed continuous anti-communist

rhetoric. Pollock’s ‘gesture’ in his painting, allowed what Greenberg has named, a ‘liberation of line.’ His dribbling, and flicking of paint, gives him an ability to become part of his artwork, in the sense that his movements, hand and footprints, demonstrate freedom, purity and authenticity. The idea that Pollock’s composition isn’t contained by the limits of its support, as the paint on the canvas continues round the edges further advances the rhetoric of freedom. Pollock represented America as a nation, free to think and create. Rothko’s work is also concerned with the representation of American freedom and liberation. His piece Number 14 offers a return to the mythic and the otherworldly. Like most of his colour-field paintings, Number 14 is human size, allowing viewers to have an experience that is similar to a personal encounter. His personal technique enables the rectangular and colourful forms to appear as if they recede forward and backwards, allowing viewers to believe they are encountering something both abstract, but that still has a life force. Rothko liked working with philosophical ideas. The use of colours like red and brown aimed to lead viewers somewhere else. It invites them to think about their place in the universe, and have what could resemble a meditative experience with the artwork, offering something of the sublime. These works were big, bold and bright. They were authentic and discussed topics such as the universal, humanity and the rhetoric of freedom. They were exemplar depictions of America as a country of freedom and new ideas, for the first time in history it seemed, these works allowed New York to be centered on as the new art capital of the world, delving into alternative forms of reality.

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John A. Grimshaw, Boar Lane Leeds (1881)

Lewis Hines, Spinner in Whitnel Cotton Mill (1908)

Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm ((1950)

Mark Rothko, Number 14 (1960)

Jean Fautrier, Tête d’Otage (1944)

In Europe, artists working with abstraction depicted a different reality of their time. One in which they lived alongside the backdrop of a post-war environment. In comparison to America, who had emerged out of the war as a Superpower, Europe was in a state of turmoil after 1945. Memories of the war atrocities were well engrained in the minds of many, but aside from this, the living conditions in France, as in many other European countries, were far different from those in the thriving land of the free. For many artists at this time, any type of realism seemed irrelevant,especially to those belonging to the group Art Informel. But this desire to use marks and blotches of paint that were unexpected or accidental on a canvas still manages to give viewers a sense of the atmosphere of French life in the late 1940s. An artist able to refer to the horror and disgust of recent events through an abstract-like technique in his work was Jean Fautrier. The Les Otages series blended the abstract with the sculptural. Without the contextual knowledge of the time and atmosphere in which Fautrier created this series, the image may look messy and confusing, like the painting of a child. The paint has been applied using the haute pâté technique. A thick substance of oil paint was mixed in with sand; gravel and other materials that were applied in layers onto the canvas. The paint closely resembles thick human flesh;the piece is as much a sculpture as it is a painting. What inspired the series was his own experience during the German occupation of France. He heard the executions and abuse of prisoners by Nazi troops during the German occupation in a forest that surrounded an asylum he had taken refuge in, in the suburbs of Paris. With 12 |

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this information in mind, it seems that Fautrier has aimed to create a penetrated surface rather than a flat surface like the abstract expressionists. The faces in the series stand by themselves like abstracted floating torsos. Aside from small semblances to an eye or a mouth formed out of grooves or scratches, in Tête d’Otage N.1 not much else is obviously recognizable. The face is featureless, mutilated beyond recognition, allowing Fautrier to depict the honest truth of the brutal experiences suffered by victims of war. Artists in the Art Informel group were, in a sense, trying to reinvent themselves and their art in a way that dealt with the memory and the trauma caused by recent events. For Fautrier, abstraction helped him convey as well as deal with the reality of life after war. A reality of confusion, melancholy and grief .

Contemporary Art

was ‘relational aesthetics,’ originally observed by Nicolas Bourriaud a French art critic in his book Esthétique relationnelle. He suggests that the art practice aims to challenge the idea of art being a private aesthetic experience, by transforming it into a convivial one. Day notes that this type of art has to be “conceived not as something to be looked at, but as the activity in which we engage.” The relational aesthetics art practice deals with current social situations and processes and tries to improve them. Pad Thai by Rikrit Tiravanija for example, simply organized a social space where Pad Thai was cooked for the people who came to the gallery. At first glance the piece looks like a messy installation, but really, Tiravanija is inviting the viewer to connect socially with contemporary art, and in doing so aims to ameliorate social connections. The artist depicts, prompts and produces inter-human relations through this piece.

During the 1990s there emerged a new method of depicting realism “I’m interested only similar to the abstract works of the in expressing basic 1950s. The works don’t look realistic, but, as Gail Day explains in her human emotions. work Global dissensus, they “go And the fact that a beyond appearances to reveal solot of people break cial truths that are not readily visidown and cry when ble.” These works are known as the ‘social’ and ‘political turns’ of conconfronted with my temporary art that provide “realpictures shows that isms beyond resemblance.” These I can communicate ‘turns’ involved a use of new types these basic human of materials to depict the social and political realities of the time. Work emotions” was beginning to be moved out Mark Rothko of the museums and brought into smaller art galleries in cities across Shortly after the development of relational aesthetics came relationthe world. al antagonism in 2000. This type of One specific approach emerging art practice was very much driven at the end of the 20th century by a focus on social relations but felt Bourriaud’s ideas could allow

Shades of Reality

“And like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind.” William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1611) a depiction of the more extreme or harsh truths on reality, and contemporary social and political issues. Santiago Sierra worked with the antagonistic concept in mind. For his piece 250cm Line Tattooed on Paid People, Sierra hired six unemployed young men from Old Havana for $30 in exchange for having a tattoo along their backs. Instead of improving social relations, this piece aims to cause social rupture and unease. He plays on the question of ethnicity, hiring men of the same colour. The scene he creates is supposed to be representative of situations of exploitation that exist around the world. He produces a scene that most will believe to be criminal, and unjust, but through this shock, Sierra aims to draw attention to a set of questions and problems surrounding sociality at

Shades of Reality

that time. An advance in technology soon began to be seen as an advantage for many artists. New technologies provided new materials for artists. As seen in Pad Thai, as well as 250cm Line Tattooed on Paid People, the concepts of relational aesthetics and antagonism hold the artwork into place instead of materials like paint, charcoal or pencil. By using a concept instead of a material, these types of works would change viewer’s perceptions of what an artist does. They no longer simply stand by their canvases with a paint and brush, presenting what they see, but are presenting the world, and specifically the contemporary issues around them in a completely different way to the Old Masters centuries before.

All artists are tied to their own realities and truths. Whether these are personal experiences, collective memories, or present day events and issues. There is a need to demystify the belief that works of art that are abstract or lacking evidence of demonstrating the craft of depicting a pictorial illusion do not have the ability to reveal truths about their time, or depict a sense of ‘reality.’ Works that are abstract in how they appear still manage to give viewers accurate references to reality without the aid of visual illusion utilised previously by Old Masters or in photography. Their ability to create accurate references to reality is what gives these abstract-type works immense value.

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Rikrit Tiravanija, Pad Thai (1992)

Santiago Sierra, 250cm Line Tattooed on Paid People (1999)

Fiona Holland

IT’S ONLY A PAPER MOON The work of Haruki Murakami is pervaded by fatalism, magic realism and sideshadowing - through inter-weaving Western authors like Orwell and Kafka into his work, Murakami is able to question the very nature of reality. By Aurelius Noble

“Say, it’s T only a paper moon Sailing over a cardboard sea But it wouldn’t be make-believe If you believed in me”

he moon has been observing its chaotic neighbour for what seems like an eternity. Floating in the night sky, it seems so lonely, a barren rock drifting through space. For Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, the moon seems an emblem of the limitations of believing only (if at all) in our own reality. In his night sky, or rather that of his 1Q84 trilogy, there is not just one moon, but also its smaller sister sleeping beside it. It is this use of elements of magic realism which embellishes his worlds with a lyrical and quasi-surrealist quality. Yet beyond aesthetic effect, several of his works use this to explore the nature of reality and its consequent relation to meaning. Indeed, his 1Q84 trilogy revolves largely around that simple notion, that this world is not our own. Set, for the most part, in the alternate reality of 1984 Japan, referred to by the novels’ protagonists both as 1Q84 and as the Town of Cats, he calls into question the relation between reality being... well real, and the consequent meaning we ascribe to it. That is to say, whether in order to find purpose in existence we need to believe in a singular, objective reality. The names given to this alternate reality are grounded in two pieces of fiction, George Orwell’s 1984 and a fictitious work It’s Only a Paper Moon, called Towns of Cats, using these as Harold Arlen (1933) parallels by which our own insignificance can be compared.

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Loneliness and the Co-Construction of Reality Though in a rather less direct sense, Orwell’s novel focuses very much on the notion that “reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else”. If 2 + 2 can be made to equal 5, reality ceases to exist beyond the boundaries of our mind. The main character, Winston, is shortly co-opted, in part due to his desire to find objective truth, into a secret organisation called the Brotherhood, which is dedicated to the downfall of Big Brother. The symbol of this search for the true nature of society is the book The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, by Emmanuel Goldstein, which aims to explain the nature of the party and consequently of Winston’s reality. Yet, this search for a true reality is inherently a lie, the Brotherhood member who co-opted Winston and gave him a copy of the book is actually a Party agent, and the legitimacy of the book is left in a rather questionable state. He shortly comes to realise that an objective truth is irrelevant, it is largely the reality people choose to believe in that becomes the true nature of the world. After being subjected to the extensive use of torture, Winston is forced to forgo his ideals, to “cure” himself of his “insanity”, to change Shades of Reality

his perception to match that of the rest of society. Indeed, 1984 ends with Winston aligning his reality with that of the rest of society - “everything was alright, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother”. While Orwell’s work was primarily intended as a diatribe against totalitarianism, it has some interesting parallels with Murakami’s work. Both works suggest that reality is, to an extent, in the minds of those who perceive it and that attempts to limit that to a singular true reality fail to reflect the complexity of the human condition. Certainly, in this instance they have a similar application, with both suggesting that internal conviction in reality, in defiance of the rest of society, is of the utmost importance. However, in their basis the two works differ vastly - for Orwell this suggests the necessity of a truthful, objective perception of the world;

yet Murakami’s work seems to suggest that an equally valid response is just not to ascribe any meaning to the external validity of reality, to forgo searching for truth and to instead prescribe meaning on a purely personal basis. Murakami picks up on this thread, suggesting that even within our minds the existence of subjective reality is entirely individual and need bear no relation to the world, that the realities we choose to create, even if we don’t believe in their objective value, can have meaningful subjective value. While in 1984, the love felt between Winston and Julia is ultimately futile, incapable of surmounting the crushing weight of the “reality” of Big Brother; in 1Q84 love somehow manages to endure these challenges: “If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there’s salvation in life.” The love between the two protagonists Aomame and

Tengo makes the validity of reality meaningless, they have each other, that is enough. The story of the Town of Cats is an equally bleak one - it chronicles the tale of a young man, travelling around purposelessly until he reaches a seemingly deserted town. Yet, as the sun sets, the town gradually comes alive with cats. Quickly realising that he is an unwanted visitor, the young man hides atop the town’s bell tower, stowing away for several days, unable to escape the town’s spell, its enchanting allure. On the third day of his visit the cats begin to notice his distinctive scent and set out to find him, shortly discovering his hiding place - yet he is saved, if you can call it that, by his disappearance from that reality. The cats are entirely incapable of seeing him and when he returns to the train station it fails to stop for him:

“The young man knows that he is irretrievably lost. This is no town of cats, he finally realizes. It is the place where he is meant to be lost. It is another world, which has been prepared especially for him. And never again, for all eternity, will the train stop at this station to take him back to the world he came from.” IQ84, Haruki Murakami (2009)

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This exemplifies the loneliness of Murakami’s work and acts as a parable for his own characters. Reality is not, in itself, discernible - meaning is found instead through the relation of individuals within that shared “reality”. Tengo finds himself almost lost, stranded in the Town of Cats, as he tries to extract truths from his dying father. Yet ultimately these remain of little relevance and simple serve as a backdrop to the mechanisms of fate which drive Tengo and Aomame together.

The Insignificance of Reality

damaged individuals, searching for some greater purpose. Aomame’s best friend, who was subject to childhood abuse, tries to fill this emptiness with meaningless distractions, but shortly finds that “if you peeled away the ornamental egos that she had built, there was only an abyss of nothingness and the intense thirst that came with it. Though she tried to forget it, the nothingness would visit her periodically - on a lonely rainy afternoon, or at dawn when she woke up from a nightmare”. The closest she ever comes to filling this hole is through her relationship with Aomame, which gives her meaning again, yet even this eventually results in her eventual rape and strangulation. Yet, for Murakami this was an inescapable conclusion, a manifestation of his fatalism in which the most damaged characters come to seek out their own destruction in an attempt to escape that nothingness.

Stylistically Murakami’s work shares some Kafka-esque elements, yet while Kafka uses surrealist elements to exemplify notions of alienation and frustration within bureaucracies, Murakami attempts to make a broader point about society and reality itself. Indeed, Kafka’s The Castle contains a great deal of parallels with the Town of Cats, with the narrator, K, finding himself lost amidst an endless, supposed“I dream of a grave, ly flawless, bureaucracy. However, that there are flaws in the system deep and narrow, is evident, and the inconsistencies where we could clasp resulting from this result in K’s inability to gain access to the Castle and consequent inability to meet each other in our arms the purpose assigned to him. The as with clamps, and book ends mid-sentence, with I would hide my face no resolution to K’s problems in sight. Though in part due to Kafka’s death, this ending perfectly char- in you and you would acterises the sense of utter desohide your face in me, lation, of insignificance before an uncaring reality. In 1Q84 this sense and nobody would ever of emptiness extends beyond just see us any more” society and reaches into the characters themselves, highlighting the The Castle, pervasive cynicism and nihilism Franz Kafka (1926) evident throughout Murakami’s oeuvre. These characters are, al- Just like Kafka’s work, the protagmost without exception, highly onists in 1Q84 acknowledge that “Where I’m living is not a story18 |

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book world. It’s the real world, full of gaps and inconsistencies and anticlimaxes.”, this lends Murakami’s surrealism a certain realist quality. Whereas most novels attempt to convey meaning throughout, certain elements of Murakami’s story simply trail off with no real conclusion, just as K’s story ends before ever reaching the Castle, Murakami chooses not to conclude the central storyline, concerning confrontation with the Sakigake cult; Tengo and Aomame simply leaving that world behind, never to return. These techniques not only makes the world undeniably more real, minimising the dissonance between literary fantasy and reality. It also points to the notion that reality has no inherent purpose, human life consists of a series of events, beginning with birth and ending in death, but meaning is only constructed in retrospect and many strands of our existence serve no purpose, ending with no definitive conclusion. Belief in a shared “objective” reality thus lacks any basis in logic, there can be no way of ascertaining its validity and it may prove less personally meaningful than belief in other realities. “Sanity” may just be perscription to a particular set of beliefs, rather than inherently superior to “insanity”. Certainly, there is a middle-ground to be found - even if we cannot be certain of reality’s existence and despite all perceiving this “reality” differently, in a practical sense it is clearly useful to simply presume that meaning and knowledge flow from a (somewhat) shared perception of a universal reality, but it is in our minds that these universals are shaped into concepts, into realities; as Immanuel Kant once put it:

Shades of Reality

“Thoughts without content are empty, perceptions without concepts are blind.” Immanuel Kant Likewise, in Murakami’s rather more existential work, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, the lines between reality and fantasy are blurred. The novel follows the stories of the two narrators, the first in the Hard-Boiled Wonderland, an anachronistic version of Tokyo where the narrator is tasked with encoding information. Upon learning that he has only a day and a half before the End of the World (which consequently is the phrase he uses to encode information), he seeks out the meaning of the information entrusted to him. Even this “real” world is infused with surrealist elements, the narrator is entrusted with a strange skull, which turns out to be that of a unicorn - this, it seems, holds the key to understanding his reality and to this end he works with a young, female librarian (whom he shortly falls in love with) in order to discern its meaning. In the parallel reality of the End of the World, the narrator, who turns out to be the same person, is trapped within the Town, a strange and desolate land, where no one has any shadows. He is the dreamreader, and is tasked with each day going to the library and sitting there, besides the librarian, a fictitious version of his real love, extracting memories from the skulls of dead animals. Yet, he longs to escape, and with his shadow (which is being kept prisoner) concocts a plan to leave the Town.

to be lost within his own mind, despite his emotional ties to the real world he is unable to escape the Town. The final chapter, set within the Town, details his inability to leave. Despite finally reaching the moment of his escape alongside his shadow, the narrator ultimately chooses not to leave the Town, his love for the librarian (in this fantasy as well as reality) in part traps him there. However, ultimately it is his realisation that this world (the End of the World) is of his own creation, that he chose to be there, that prevents him from escaping. This darkly depressing ending perfectly portrays the ease with which we can become trapped in our own minds. As the narrator in the real world comes to realise the inevitability of becoming lost in his own mind, this is actually his own choice, or at least the choice of the version of him within his own fantasy. It is he himself, at least within his own mind, who ultimately chooses not to escape, as he comes to realise that their is no point, that for this world to exist in his mind he must have created it. It is here that Murakami, in the clearest way possible, shows his disdain for the ordinary, for the real, the narrator choose fantasy over reality, choose a fictitious love over a real one, not because he necessarily wanted to, but because for him that world was no less real, no less valid, simply because it was of his own creation, because it wasn’t “real”.

Prophesy and Retrospect

This fatalist attitude pervades Murakami’s work, with the heavy use of foreshadowing, recurring motifs and often the realisation by the characters themselves of their Over time the narrator in the real impending fates. Indeed, in his world (Hard-Boiled Wonderland) most-critically acclaimed work The comes to realise that he is destined Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, prophecy Shades of Reality

plays a central role in the plot, in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, it becomes clear over time that the two narrators share the same fate. Likewise in 1Q84 it becomes clear fairly early on that Tengo and Aomame will come to meet each other, it is destiny. Speaking of her love for Tengo, whom she hasn’t seen since childhood, Aomame says “What I want is for the two of us to meet somewhere by chance one day, like, passing on the street, or getting on the same bus”, within an externally valid reality this would seem impossibly delusional, yet within the world of 1Q84 their meeting is an inevitability. The choice of the characters to believe in the reality of 1Q84 as much as they do 1984 means that reality is simply a story that they can tell. In a way, the futures they choose as their fates, the manner in which they perceive their reality - these things become inherent traits of the reality they believe in. In 1Q84, Murakami compares his work to that of Anton Chekhov, stating that in Chekhov’s work “once a gun appears in a story, it has to be fired”, but the gun taken by Aomame to commit suicide in the event of her capture is never used. It is not reality that constructs meaning in Murakami’s worlds, it is people. By defying this narrative convention, by filling his tales with irrelevant details and anticlimaxes, by allowing his characters to choose their endings and by allowing them to find meaning in defiance of belief in reality - Murakami is showing us that our lives are our own, the construction of our stories, past, present and future is our choice and that we need not believe in anything to find our own meaning. JUNE 2016

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Aurelius Noble

THE MODERN ABYSS

The rise of functionalist and brutalist architecture has, in many ways, led to a decline in everyday beauty - deadening the cityscape and giving rise to a culture where nature and man-made structures stand diametrically opposed to each other. By Sonya Bushell

een from above, the modern city materialises as a blister on the face of the earth. Seen from below, it appears to be a gross and monstrous exaggeration of Babylon. Whilst skyscrapers and tower-blocks pierce the horizon, buildings compete for attention in crowded streets with displays of ever-increasing ugliness and vulgarity. Grey concrete covers the ground, save for the occasional park that displays a sanitised version of nature complete with regularly mown grass and a safety-conscious play area. Nets prevent damage to buildings from pigeons – whilst carefully-designed benches and spikes in doorways protect people from the inconvenience and discomfort associated with seeing a homeless person sleep rough. A modern city is a cruel, ugly, and lonely place. How did we come to this? Our cities were designed and built by people, some of whom, presumably, thought they were doing the right thing. Yet to understand ’the right thing’ it is necessary to know what is good – and it is that knowledge that, as a society, we have lost. We have lost, or rather severed, three good and vital relationships: the relationship between humanity and nature, the relationship between man and beauty, and the relationship between the new and the existing.

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Humanity has lost ‘the land’ – the land that is our birthright and our responsibility. Unfortunately, most are ignorant of this tragedy – whilst those who recognise the loss cannot envisage its return as likely. Nowadays, most of us buy our food without thinking. We do not consider the animal-welfare issues or environmental consequences of factory-farmed pork, nor do we consider the burden we place on the environment when we order soya milk from razed-up rainforests on the other side of the world. The idea that people should connect food with ‘the land’ now seems an absurdity or a luxury. We reject the idea that we are creatures of nature as a primitive or barbaric idea: we do so at our peril. Though the human race is, at different times, infinitely more barbaric and considerably more compassionate than nature can ever be, that is not to say that humanity is separated from nature. Instead, it means that we have a unique role to play within the natural world: we evolved to fit within nature yet also to step beyond it. True engagement with nature encompasses both awe at its greatness and anger at the suffering that lies at its heart. In doing so, we recognise and come to terms with the tragic nature of our existence – that our ability to do good and to accept goodness must constantly compete with our

ability to do evil and accept evil. We cannot remain pure. It is this idea that people wish to reject when they distance themselves from nature, agriculture, and their responsibilities as guardians of the natural world.

The Rewilding Trap Today, we believe that land should either serve some specified function or be left well alone. Nature is either something used to control or it is something to be controlled. The current obsession with ‘rewilding’ is symptomatic of a society that views man as other to nature. Rewilding is the idea that nature should be encouraged to return to how it would have been had humans never arrived on the earth. Of course, for true rewilding to occur, the extinction of the human race would be necessary. However, it is now being argued that partial rewilding should occur – that there should be designated areas in which human activities are severely constrained so that wilderness can be allowed to develop. Whilst partial rewilding sounds attractive and romantic, the consequences of extending the principle beyond a few select areas would be problematic. Roger Scruton describes in Animal Rights and Wrongs: “We are guardians and keepers of the natural order, which Shades of Reality

owes its character to us. We could turn our backs on it and cease to interfere. But the result would not be better, either for the animals who live in it or for us, who depend on the natural world for our sense of what we are. If deer were never culled, Exmoor would contain nothing else bedside suburban houses, and the highlands of Scotland would be treeless crags. If foxes were never killed, lambs, ducks and chickens would be reared indoors, in conditions that no decent person should tolerate”. It can be assumed that if there are areas of land which become less populated and productive as a result of rewilding, there must also be compensatory areas of land that become more populated and productive. If there are beautiful and romantic patches of wilderness, there must also be factory farms and crowded cities. If those cities are full of people who desire distance from nature they will be very dreary places indeed. Though the obligatory parks and gardens will still be provided, these will offer only a poor imitation of the natural world and true engagement with nature will be almost impossible. We will live as diminished people, divided between those who des-

perately seek moral purity and those unbothered by morality. Indeed, the future will not look very different from the present.

The Desecration of Beauty Yet the current state of our cities cannot be solely explained by the absence of nature. There is also a noticeable absence of beauty. Difficult to define, beauty is not personal taste and it is not loveliness. Roger Scruton writes that ‘beauty can be consoling, disturbing, sacred, profane; it can be exhilarating, appealing, inspiring, chilling. It can affect us in an unlimited variety of ways. Yet it is never viewed with indifference […] it speaks to us directly like the voice of an intimate friend.’ Beauty is a complex blend of that which is similar and that which is ‘other’ or transcendental. Beauty is that which inspires and that which stops one in one’s tracks. Whilst it may arouse different emotions in people, it is an objective concept. Beauty is that which Fyodor Dostoevsky said would “save the world”. It is certainly true that the absence of beauty has not saved our world. Companies imprison employees in concrete and glass office blocks with little regard to their mental health; hospitals are built efficient-

“Into my heart an air that kills from yon country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those? This is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went And cannot come again.” A. E. Houseman Shades of Reality

ly rather than caringly, and tower blocks are used to house the poorest members of our society. In a world increasingly bereft of the capability to appreciate or create beauty, concerns around functionality, efficiency and cost dictate the design of our buildings. Yet our consumerist free-market society cannot be held fully responsible for the overriding ugliness and brash aesthetic of modern buildings. What we see today is not merely an absence of beauty but a trashing of beauty. Simply put, beauty is now an embarrassment. The modern human is too proud to admit to supernatural beliefs or tender emotions, preferring to think of themselves in terms of rationality, utility and strength. The idea that such a human could recognise beauty as an objective concept is unthinkable. It is now difficult to imagine how people could publically admit to valuing beauty in anything other than an abashed or ironic way. Indeed, it is now considered admirable and clever to admit to valuing the ugly. Damian Hirst has even declared that ‘there’s a beauty in ugliness’. Thus, we design ugly, brutal and inhumane buildings.

An Ugly Reality The Worseley Building is an infamous example of such brutalism. Housing the School of Medicine and the School of Dentistry, the large concrete building stretches from the bottom of campus to Leeds General Infirmary. The building’s exterior - tall and grey- is featureless, save for small vertical concrete strips and glazed sections. The interior is a labyrinth of corridors and cramped teaching rooms. Damien Hirst described it as ‘either a Godless building – or God’. Just as modern western society sneers JUNE 2016

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at Christian traditions of humility, service and love, so does brutalism. Proud and detached from human concerns, the Worseley Building towers over all who enter it. It is ugly and it exalts in its ugliness. The designers’ total disregard for human comfort is breath-taking – very little sunlight is permitted in the building and there is little variation in colour or texture throughout its interior. Supposedly built to serve its inhabitants, the building instead compels them to adjust to its foibles and monstrosities.

“Retake the falling snow: each drifting flake Shapeless and slow, unsteady and opaque, A dull dark white against the day’s pale white And abstract larches in the neutral light. And then the gradual and dual blue As night unites the viewer and the view.” Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabakov (1962) This building is the environment in which students are supposed to be taught to respect and care for all human life, however vulnerable or fragile. Yet its scale and design are such that it (literally and metaphorically) overshadows its inhabitants and brashly reinforces its status as an icon that will outlast them and their efforts. Like the ancient pedestal of Ozymandias (Percy 24 |

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Shelley), it commands its users to ‘Look on my Works, ye Mighty and despair!’. Damien Hirst, an admirer of the building, called it ‘facist’, ‘relentless’ and filled with the ‘idea of death’. He described it as looking like ‘a concentration camp or gas chamber’ which he found ‘eerie for a place of study’. Whilst a beautiful building of similar scale could inspire its guests to reflect on the transcendental and the good, the ugliness of this building focuses attention on its evident reality such that possibilities for reflection are lost. Rather than inspiring students to value human potential and endeavour to do good, it reinforces the idea of power and status being all-important in this world.

ly high-rise buildings, often stand remotely from their environment. They are rootless and detached, as if they are not designed for us.

Ponder this question: if you were told that you were dying soon, in what surroundings (independent of other factors) would you choose to spend your last days? It would be surprising if the modern, brutal architecture of today was a popular choice. The truth is, we are all dying – and our lives should reflect that fact both in terms of our future legacy and in how we choose to spend our days. The chief risk that modern architecture poses is ultimately not to our reputation in the future but to ourselves. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: ‘If you look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you’. Thus, as our lives become A Rootless World more spiritually vacant, growing Sadly, the Worseley Building is not numbers of people feel restless, an isolated case. Across the globe, rootless and alienated. buildings are now built to reinforce the dreary reality in which people A desire for change appears to be are expected to spend their lives. In emerging amongst some commuthe words of Henry David Thoreau: nities. Organisations such as The ‘most men lead lives of quiet des- School of Life seek to improve city peration and go to the grave with environments by campaigning for the song still in them’. It is assumed the adoption of stricter planning that people will automatically adapt regulations. These would certainly to their environment, and thus be welcome. However, it seems untheir rulers, rather than the other likely that top-down change will be way round. In the words of Damien able to create a society that values Hirst: ‘buildings are at their most engagement with nature, beauty perfect before people move into and the past. The renewal of old them’. Even in cases where new relationships and traditions is dearchitecture completely destroys pendent upon individuals rather what has gone before, with little than organisations - the responsithought to the associated loss of bility is borne by ‘us’ rather than community or context, resistance ‘them’. As Steinbeck writes in East is mocked as primitive or nimby- of Eden, we all carry ‘the great ism. The idea that buildings should choice’. If it is to arise, salvation reflect (or at least accept) the his- will primarily occur on an individual tory, geography and community basis. It is only through recognising of the location within which they the importance of this that we can are placed is now adhered to only come to understand how ‘beauty superficially. Structures, particular- will save the world’.

Shades of Reality

Aurelius Noble

CAPTAIN BEEFHEART

Anarchy, power and madness in the Californian sun - the story of Captain Beefheart and his eclectic compositional process accentuates the creative depths that can be found at the furthest corners of the human mind. By Will Ainsley

onsider this. It’s a baking hot California day. A couple of bums are being dragged out of a supermarket. Their cheeks are hollow and their skin is rat-grey. They haven’t had a square meal in months. Except these aren’t really bums, they’re members of Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band, in the middle of recording what will be, in many people’s eyes, Beefheart’s magnum opus, his manifesto, Trout Mask Replica. The album is inaccessible and completely wonderful. Many see this period as when Don van Vliet was at the height of his creativity and madness. The pair’s illegal activity is the product of many months living at the behest of Don van Vliet’s psychopathic tendencies. Van Vliet was so deeply involved with the album that he declined an invitation from Stravinsky to meet him. This devotion to his craft often was made manifest in the 14 hour days that he made the band keep. The year is 1990. After a show at SXSW in Austin Texas, the singer-songwriter (in the loosest sense of the word - calling Daniel Johnston a singer-songwriter is like calling Las Meninas a doodle) Daniel Johnston has a manic episode whilst flying back to West Virginia with his father in a private aircraft. Johnston takes the keys out of the ignition and throws them out of the window, due to his conviction that he is Casper the Friendly Ghost. For the rest of the year, Johnston is 26 |

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committed to a psychiatric hospital. The history of popular music is home to a familiar character: that of the tortured genius, tearing out hair over complex sounds, ideas, and philosophies at 4am with an empty stomach and an even emptier bottle. Though these days the genius is a dying breed, men and women that have been mentally ill have created some of the most visionary art in popular music’s short history. Artists seem to be more prone to losing their grip on reality. Whether this is due to music itself, or whether music is a natural road for the mad and dispossessed to go down, is unclear. What is clear is that rather than being an obstacle, losing one’s grip on reality can often be a catalyst for great art. Don Van Vliet was a man who craved power. Daniel Johnston was a man who was afraid of it. Both ultimately lost their grip on reality. It seems contradictory, but losing grip of reality often allows the artist to create truly visionary, visceral art. Daniel Johnston wrote simple songs, with titles like ‘True Love Will Find You In The End, ‘I Live For Love’, and ‘Follow That Dream’. This is something that David Mcnamee argues in an article entitled, ‘The Myth of Daniel Johnston’s Genius’, where he convincingly argues that, partly due to his mental illness, Johnston lacked a filter that other

“Furrow of all our travel— trailed derision! Eyes crumble at its kiss. Its longdrawn spell Incites a yell. Slid on that backward vision The mind is churned to spittle, whispering hell” The Bridge, Hart Crane (1930)

Shades of Reality

have, a filter that ex“I had a dream, songwriters cludes repetitive song structures the ‘obsessive repetition of his which was not all a and core themes’. Lou Reed also lacked dream. this filter to some extent. Reed tended to shy away from writing The bright sun was songs with more than two or three His musical foil, another extinguish’d, and the chords. genius, John Cale, once said his was, ‘don’t bore us, get to stars mantra the chorus’. Both Reed and Johnhave a history of schizophreDid wander darkling ston nia. William Blake said that when doors of perception [we can in the eternal space, ‘the take this to mean the mind] are Rayless, and pathless, cleansed, everything appears as it is, infinite’. The experience of menand the icy earth tal illness seems to allow the mind to become ‘cleansed’ in a similar Swung blind and transformation to the one configby Blake.. It goes without sayblackening in the ured ing that mental illness is a terrible and people like Reed or Johnmoonless air; thing ston would rather not have been Morn came and saddled with it. went and came, and This is not to say that there is any hard and fast correlation between brought no day, creativity and genius and mental illness. For every Beefheart And men forgot or Anton Newcombe, there is a Tucker or Arthur Rustheir passions in the Maureen sell who isn’t mentally ill but still works of genius. To be a dread produce genius, one doesn’t have to have mental illness. However, many Of this their astudies have shown that illnesses desolation; and all like psychosis or bipolar are often accompanied by heightened crehearts ativity. For instance, people with these illnesses have a higher level Were chill’d into a of word association. If one were the word ‘tulip’ to someone selfish prayer for towithsaythese illnesses, the number of

light” The Darkness Lord Byron (1816) Shades of Reality

creativity and mental illness is not one-way. It is important to consider the dialectical relationship between creativity and the process of losing one’s grip on reality. Mark Runco writes in Psychological Inquiry that ‘creativity might lead or contribute to what appears to be a disorder (most likely a bipolar affective disorder), or the disorder might somehow allow creative insights.’ I believe that there is not just one way that creativity and mental illness correlate. Though the concept of losing one’s grip on reality is relatively common in popular music, the notion of power in music, and its relation to genius, is somewhat less common. From Beefheart’s starvation techniques, to Lou Reed and John Cale forcing Nico to redo the vocals of ‘I’ll be your mirror’ over and over again until she broke down, the list of anecdotes goes on. Beefheart once didn’t speak to his new bassist for three whole months in order to ‘break him in’. When a genius exerts this kind of domination, it is never for the love of power, it is for the love of the craft. Phil Spector had Ronnie Ronnette sing the word ‘kiss’ in ‘Be My Baby’ over thirty times just to achieve the particular breathy, innocent sound he had in his head.

It is clear that whilst mental illnesses are terrible things and that artists would almost certainly choose not to have them, often they can enable the production of truly visionary work. Indeed, without it, words they might offer in relation many great works of art might nevto ‘tulip’ would be, in some cases, er have been produced. three times as great as someone without the illness. However, the relationship between JUNE 2016

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Don Van Vliet, Cross Poked Shadow of a Crow No. 1 (1990)

Aurelius Noble

SOCIAL (PSEUDO)SCIENCE A dishonest reflection of reality, pranks and social experiments represent some of the worst elements of modern internet culture, often failing to provide accurate information and perpetuating stereotypes. By Ed Davies

ideos of ‘pranks’ and ‘social experiments’ have seen a significant increase in popularity over the last couple of years, with their creators gaining high numbers of views on YouTube in particular. The wide range of social media available, such as Vine, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat, enables creators to spread their ideas and videos to an ever-growing audience incredibly quickly. According to their creators, these videos aim to warn people about issues in society. However, many see them as perpetuating negative stereotypes, using paid actors and staged scenarios in order to give a false impression of society in order to gain views. They are seen as a threat to the integrity of YouTube as a platform, as viewers are increasingly looking for videos with low production values that do not utilise the format to its full potential, whilst simultaneously reinforcing a negative view of society. By creating staged videos that support what people supposedly already think, whether it is accurate or not, these ‘social experiments’ are using a mask of entertainment in order to gain popularity off the back of negative stereotypes. The main argument against ‘prank’ videos and ‘social experiments’ is based around whether or not the video is ‘fake’. This can be defined in a number of ways, but the two keys points are whether the reac30 |

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tion of the victim was real or they were in on the ‘prank’, and whether or not the social issue being highlighted is one which is actually true, or one which has been exaggerated by the creator in order to provoke a response. The reaction of the victim is an interesting one when considering the ‘fakeness’ of a video, and it can be difficult to discern the point of a video if everyone involved is in on it. Ethan Klein of h3h3Productions makes this point when looking at Sam Pepper’s recent ‘KILLING BEST FRIEND PRANK’ which, according to Klein, is clearly staged. If this is the case then what message is the video trying to send? MAN TERRIFIED WHEN FRIEND SHOT IN FRONT OF HIM. Not exactly ground-breaking information to the average viewer, and even if the reaction is genuine it is still no surprise to anyone watching that the victim would react in such a way. The argument must therefore be based around the entertainment value of a piece. We never question whether or not a film is fake because it uses CGI, it is simply accepted as the piece of fiction that it is. As a piece of fictional entertainment these ‘pranks’ are therefore relatively harmless; the issue arises when they are not openly shown to be staged. Andrew Hales of LAHWF, makes this point in his video ‘An Easy Way to go Viral’: that it does not matter to the creator whether it is staged

or realistic in the slightest, just as long as it creates a discussion in the comments and generates views to make money. It is at this point that these videos become harmful, as the people making the videos are able to manipulate their audience by showing them what they apparently want to see. The idea of showing the audience what they want to see in order to gain popularity is not a new one, it is simply the method in which they are done that makes ‘prank’ videos so harmful. Paul Neafcy makes the point that relatability is what creators seek to achieve, whether they are musicians, artists, authors, or YouTubers. Using a little bit of artistic license, creators will play to their audience in order to make their content more relatable, and therefore they reach as many people as possible. The issue with ‘prank’ videos is that the creative license they utilise is very often based around negative stereotypes, most notably based around women, black people, and the homeless. By ‘proving’ these stereotypes to be either right or wrong, and attempting to show themselves as morally superior, the creators of such videos simply make the problem worse. It is very clear that these videos are not meant to provoke intelligent debate. It only requires a viewer to look at the comments on one of these videos to see phrases like

Shades of Reality

‘Faith in humanity restored’ and ‘I knew it *insert racist or sexist stereotype here’ to see that they are simply a means of satisfying a need by the viewer to be proved right, whether in a positive or a negative way. By ‘fear-mongering’, as Klein puts it, creators are not helping their audiences but patronising them, and simply utilising stereotypes in order to make money and become famous.

to Robert W. Sweeny, despite the amateurish and therefore seemingly replicable nature of Jackass, the disclaimer that preceded the programme made it very clear that copying the stunts seen on the show would be stupid, because the people doing them in the first place were ‘idiots’. Although this did not always help, with some still attempting to copy things seen on the show, it certainly did not encourage viewers to get their camIt is important to recognise that the eras out and film themselves doing embellishment of the truth, exag- the same thing. On the other hand, gerated stories and fictional tales by its very nature YouTube is based have long been a part of world his- around the fact that anyone can tory, with truths being made more make a video and post it on the site. fantastical in order to draw an audience. In her examination of pam- The viral potential of sharing videphleteers and street performers in os on Facebook and Twitter means early modern Europe, Rosa Salzburg that the idiots who make these vidconsidered how these performers eos will always have access to an auwere able to draw audiences with dience likely to contain naïve viewexciting news stories of serial killers ers impressionable enough to copy and scientific discovery. Although them. YouTuber Rosianna Halse Roembellished, they provided an au- jas makes the point that YouTube dience with the means to think is becoming increasingly ‘flat’: that about things that would never have instead of growing in depth and reached them otherwise. Similar- range, often creators are simply ly, Ruth Michaelis-Jena makes the just doing the same thing because point that by collecting stories into it seems like an easy way to get farespected works, the Grimm broth- mous. A number of creators such as ers gave the tales credibility and an Jack Howard, rhymingwithoranges, audience that was more interest- and Jacob Trueman argue that peoed in discussing their finer points. ple are ceasing to make videos beTraditionally, circus performers cause they have something to say, have always performed dangerous but simply because everyone’s dostunts to draw audiences, and in ing it and getting rich. When peomore recent times TV shows like ple copied shows like Jackass or a Jackass have utilised similarly dan- circus act they had seen, they did gerous or disgusting feats in order it once, invariably got injured, and to gain popularity. It is clear there- stopped, all without going viral fore that the methods used by the and being told that what they had creators of ‘prank’ videos are not done was inspiring. By creating vidnew at all, and although the media eos that are convincing enough for used to spread them is new, they people to copy them, ‘pranksters’ are simply using the same tech- like Sam Pepper and Vitalyzdtv fail niques used by performers for cen- to openly present their videos as turies in order to build an audience the vapid entertainment that they and make money. are, pretending instead that they are helping people. The important point that differentiates YouTube culture from that Of course, not everything on Youof its predecessors is the lack of a Tube is a toxic cancer in its body warning or a disclaimer. According of creativity, and I am not denying Shades of Reality

that they can be entertaining, but there are serious issues that can arise when this content, which is not age-restricted, gives young people a false impression of the world. The existence of YouTube means that anyone with a camera can bring their voice to the world and someone will hear it; the issue arises when that voice is idiotic or bigoted. Social media allows creators like Andrew Hales and Stuart Edge to produce actual social experiments and show off their talents, as well as allowing positive movements like Black Lives Matter to spread rapidly across the world. But by sharing videos of women who were paid to fulfil sexist stereotypes in order to get views and make money for fame-hungry morons like Sam Pepper or Chris from Prank Invasion, we are failing ourselves as a society. These creators have the gall to tell their audiences that these videos are not staged, attempting to be relatable by telling them that their bigoted views were well-founded. Paying a woman to act like a gold digger and then saying all women are gold diggers is akin to saying all men are serial killers because they paid Anthony Hopkins to play Hannibal Lecter. It is likely that this is just another stage in YouTube’s development, and we can only hope that the videos that actually say something worthwhile without giving a false impression of society are the ones that survive. Overall it is important to remember that ‘prank’ videos are popular not for their deep social commentary but because they are pieces of insipid light entertainment, bland but easy to digest. They do have their place, but as a way of teaching people how not to act, and as a way of understanding how moronic the people that make them are. It is likely that the platform will grow out of them, but until then it is best that you just don’t believe everything you see on the internet.

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Black Lives Matter protest, Mall of America, (2014)

Perversion of Power THE WEAVING OF WORDS AND IMAGES IN THE PURSUIT OF POWER

Jamie Gayya

A NATURAL ORDER

A brief exploration of the history and practice of democratic theory, its varied flaws and consequent criticisms by a variety of philosophers spanning the ages. By Umamah Yusufi

t is the 5th century BC in the citystate of Ancient Athens. A flock of a few thousand people have congregated at the Acropolis under the Mediterranean midday sun; all toga-clad, land-owning, male Greek citizens ready to participate in their burgeoning new political experiment that would continue to be hailed as an ideal after millennia. This is one of the earliest records of public-involvement in the political affairs of a state, and is the first example of a direct democracy. It is an early tremor of the paradigm shift that saw the pyramidal power structures of most Western nations being turned on their head, at least in social spirit and discourse. Needless to say, many ‘democracies’ that sprung forth after this initial precedent, whether inspired or independent, did not uphold those values of equality, liberty and justice that we find necessary premises for democracy today- the original Athenian democracy itself only included around 20% of the population at its peak public participation. Even in the 18th century, Rousseau commented : “If we take the term in the strict sense, there never has been a real democracy, and there never will be. It is against the natural order for the many to govern and the few to be governed.” Despite this prophetic analysis, Rousseau succumbed to the moral limits of his own time in his disregard for 36 |

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equal male and female participation in his ideal democracy. This calls to question whether the discrepancies between the lofty ideals of democracy and its implementation and practice in reality can be truly eradicated.

principles. This was a challenging demand to meet; Plato recognized the difficulties in finding the best moral solutions for problems that affected thousands of citizens with competing interests, and refused to believe that an ordinary voting citizen would chose the option that provided the greatest overall societal benefit if it brought them no personal benefit, or even some personal detriment. This could never produce an ideal state because decision-making was left to the will of the people- easily manipulated and limited in moral reason- rather than a set of ideal truths. Thus, his wise tutor was forced by the unruly masses to abandon his philosophical beliefs or lose his life by hemlock. Socrates died with his moral principles intact - something Plato believed the masses were never capable of doing.

Ironically, the initial use of the word ‘democracy’ – translating directly from Greek into ‘people power’was used as a slur by the aristocratic classes to imply ‘mob rule’ or ‘tyranny of the masses’. Socrates and Plato were staunch critics of this early direct democracy, and many politicians, philosophers and historians have since found everything from frustrating weaknesses, to fundamental flaws, in the varying versions of democratic theory. The next question then is how practical, or indeed desirable, are those democratic ideals, so championed by politicians and leaders from every point on the political compass. The underlying problem for Plato was that there seemed to be no consistent moral principles that Benefits of Benovolence tied society to a common interPlato was one of democracy’s est- or the ‘general will’, as Rousearliest critics. His distaste could seau put it. He advocated for a sohave arisen from its hand in the ciety with a rigid social hierarchy, forced-suicide of his tutor Socrates, and where the rulers- philosopher but Plato describes a more fun- kings- would make benevolent, damental moral argument: both altruistic choices for the general he and his tutor strongly believed good, freeing citizens to pursue and that politics, like any other craft, perfect their personal crafts. Whilst required a particular tempera- his ideas have often been criticised ment and skill-set underpinned as paternalistic, tyrannical and imby a supreme set of wise, moral pinging on individual liberty (not Perversion of Power

least by its dystopian recreation in Huxley’s Brave New World), there is something attractive about Plato’s idea.

“Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they’ve told you what you think it is you want to hear.” Alan Coren Amongst today’s complex political laws, structures and relationships, it can be difficult for us to truly understand the nature of most problems, especially in the global context. Shouldn’t the perfect leader, armed with an omniscient understanding of the problems of the present and the future, be free to make the best choice for the nation as a whole? If such a feat were practically possible, we could see a very high standard of leadership. Who were the heads of state that were most admired and commemorated in the public imagination? The likes of Augustus, the first Roman Emperor, or Churchill, who carried Britain through the Second World War. They weren’t by any means morally superior to other forgotten leaders in popular history, yet they had a strength and autonomy, earned by the people’s need for security, to make difficult but important decisions. In comparison, we see many of today’s politicians changing their tune to what society says in order to garner

Perversion of Power

votes, rather than upholding their own principles. Perhaps if we had more wise, moral, powerful politicians, we might have seen better foreign and domestic policy.

rather than committed to the unifying Islamic political philosophy that he thought best. Thus, Iqbal argued that elected leaders didn’t always have common good of society in mind, succumbing to sectarian inAllama Iqbal- the poet of the East- terests at best, and at worst, trying shared similar beliefs, describing to consolidate their own power and what he termed ‘Islamic democra- wealth. cy’. For him, the word of God, as recorded in the Qur’an, provided an The Dangers of Mob Rule unchanging set of principles that would be the foundation of the Allama Iqbal did not believe that laws of the land, similar to modern all citizens were made equal. He western constitutions. Unlike such mused: ‘Democracy is a system constitutions however, these could where people are counted but not not be undermined no matter how weighed”, and so the choices made strong the public desire for the con- by the collective are not necessarily trary, for these held timeless wis- the best, for they are not made by dom that may not be understood the best of men. This is the premby most men. With this foundation, ise for giving rulers, once elected all stately matters must be decided on the basis of superior character, with consultation- ‘Shura’- and ad- greater powers enabling them to vice from experts and experienced overrule the masses. There must elders. Iqbal discussed how leaders be a series of checks and balancare chosen on the basis of their es, Iqbal reassures, but in the end, moral reputation, and that policies “the intellect of two thousand Assare designed in conjunction with es cannot bring forth a single man’s those affected by them. This is a far thought”. more collaborative form of government than Plato’s philosopher king- In a similar vein, Rousseau stated: ship, but one where the criteria for “Were there a people of gods, their leadership was just as strict, and government would be democratic. still based on subjective interpreta- So perfect a government is not for tions of morality. men.” Rather than criticising direct democracy as an idea, he questions The context for Iqbal’s writing was man’s ability to value its spirit. Unin the latter years of the British like Plato, Rousseau thought that Raj. This was a time where, with each individual had a natural sense growing hopes of a movement for of morality and empathy, and that independence, came discussions this could be translated into morabout a possible democratic Indian al action with the right education. government. Iqbal was concerned Theoretically, then, citizens could about the underrepresentation be raised and educated in the disof Muslim interests in a Hindu-led ciplines most conducive to positive congress, and feared that Muslims stately participation. But Rousseau would only pass hands from British echoes Plato’s scepticism in peoto Hindu rulers under the dem- ple’s ability to expand their empaocratic process. Moreover, Iqbal thy beyond their own social circles: saw many of the Muslim leaders in citizens, he thought, would have to the Indian Congress as corruptible, be free of prejudices, specific interJUNE 2016

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-ests and cultural, socioeconomic divides in order to make decisions for the general good, all difficult prerequisites to come across considering democracy is the tool employed by most societies to achieve these ends.

“Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time...” Winston Churcill (1947) For this reason, Rousseau believed that democracy could not function with too many conflicting interests, and so only small states like ancient Athens where individual members knew one another personally; with more common ties than divisive group-interests; could practice direct democracy in its truest possible spirit. If no single option found basis in a majority, a country could find itself in a political stale38 |

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mate. He wasn’t to see the twentieth-century conversion of Western monarchies and dictatorships into democracies, with the masses rallying behind common calls of secular socialism or constitutions. What Rousseau perhaps didn’t expect in his own time became widespread: reconciliation between individual expression- cultural, religious or otherwise- and a shared social identity based on national (‘British’), continental (the EU) and even universal (the ‘working class’) ties. But the democratic form in these instances was not direct, as in the discussions of Rousseau and Plato. These were representative democracies, where, by means of a vote, representatives were designated to debate policies in the interests of those they represented. This limited the average citizen’s participation in day-to-day politics, freeing them up for their personal endeavours on one hand, but increasing reliance on individuals, reducing the individual’s direct role in decision-making. And whilst the development of representative democracy has streamlined the process, Rousseau’s worries about excessive conflict are still relevant today; the embroilments inherent in party-politics are a perfect example. Even at the highest level, the representatives of democracy prioritise the oft-arbitrary principles of the party they belong to over the real, absolute needs of the people relying on them for better standards of living. Robert Dworkin describes how this culture of red and blue “signals a deep, schismatic rift in nations as a whole: a division between incompatible all-embracing cultures”. Rather than uniting the people under

common moral principles, modern democracies take the semblance of televised sports or dramas where the ultimate winner is the individual that manages to avoid criticism or the admission of mistakes.

False Pretences The process of choosing worthy leaders or representatives has always been crucial to representative democracy. In ancient Athens, members of the legislative councils and popular tribunals were chosen by lottery, similar to jury service today; elections were considered too biased in favour of those with wealth and influence. This, whilst being incredibly egalitarian for its time, is understandably unworkable in most modern societies. Most of us rightly expect certain knowledge, expertise, experience and insight from our leaders in the interest of competent leadershipeven in Athens military magistrates were too important to leave to lot and were elected by the popular assembly. Realistically, many of us wouldn’t have the time nor desire to be called by lot to debate issues of seemingly little interest or relevance to us in Parliament. For most roles, competition between candidates puts pressure on those vying for leadership positions to show favourable qualities, be they moral or practical. On a more symbolic level, the vote has often been regarded as a unit of democracy, the manifestation of the power for change an individual has in society. Whether the vote is a truly unit of power is another matter. It still carries the weaknesses that the Athenian lottery was aimed at eliminating, primarily the ease of manipulation. From Herman and Chomsky’s idea of Manufacturing

Perversion of Power

Consent, to the outrageously overt cases of electoral fraud in recent political memory, we are all too aware that our democratic representatives have their own private interests, which, in addition to the political influence they wield- their global political, media and financial connections- and the ease with which the public can be manipulated, makes a recipe for corruption and social misdirection. In the 2013 Pakistani general elections, the current Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was known to bribe the poorest with bags of flour, sugar and cash to win votes in the most influential seats, leading him victorious in the wake of the popular Imran Khan, whose number one promise was to rid the nation of corruption. Such shameless displays remind us of Plato’s scepticism of such a system. Even if the populus were capable of unifying to make sound choices, it wouldn’t matter because their wishes would not be enacted. Ultimately, the vote is a show of support for a particular individual rather than a particular policy, so it may not always be possible to have your interests represented, even if you have a free vote. Weaknesses of the current electoral system are evidenced by the architecture of regulating bodies, spending limits and legislature used to ensure elections are free and fair. And even with these in place, increasingly low voter turnouts have made much of democracy empty gestures.

Subjective Democracy Skeptics and poor examples of democracy throughout history hold valuable lessons for our present

Perversion of Power

interpretations of this ancient political system. First, it would be a mistake to believe that there are objective democratic ideals. All societies will lay claim to upholding justice, but the definitions of justice will vary greatly, depending on the cultural and social norms of the time. Who is to decide which version of democracy is the ‘right’ one? Instead, democracy should be regarded similar to the scientific method, where society reaches a common consensus based on incomplete evidence, without presumptions about what is right and wrong. Attempted use of democratic ideals to lay claim to a position of moral superiority should be evaluated with the utmost caution, especially when being used to encroach on individual liberties. Democracy is better understood as a process used to develop a political system rather than a system of its own, and it can not be imposed from above to form a successful democratic state. In nations where it is artificially introduced without a pre-existing culture of equality and open debate, the longevity of the democracy is greatly compromised. At the other end of the spectrum, nations that uphold democracy as a tradition are at risk of a complacent, apathetic public. The most important thing to remember is that democracy will not inherently produce positive outcomes. It is how we own it and use it that determines the degree to which it benefits society. As Dworkin states: “We need to find ways not merely to struggle against one another about these issues, as if politics were contact sports, but to argue about them from deeper principles of personal and political morality that we can all respect.”

“We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats’ feet over broken glass In our dry cellar Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion; Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom Remember us—if at all—not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.” The Hollow Men T. S. Eliot (1925) JUNE 2016

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Maurice Quentin de la Tour, Jean-Jacques Rosseau (Unknown)

Fiona Holland

THE AMERICAN DREAM

A dream made real by its very imagining, its legacy continues to resonate from the gilded halls of Jay Gatsby’s mansion to the packed stadiums of Donald J. Trump’s rallies. By Ian Simpson

o dream is to mould reality and to mould reality is to exude great power. The American Dream, central to the ethos of the US, is deeply rooted in the Declaration of Independence: ‘all men are created equal’. It calls for the moulding of society where ‘life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement’ as coined by American historian, James Truslow Adams. Yet the American Dream has Orwellian resonances; indeed, some men will always be created more equal than others. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s eponymous millionaire Jay Gatsby – of The Great Gatsby (1925) – is that man. Despite Gatsby’s dreams coming true – he has the cars (many), the shirts, the house, the lifestyle – readers witness Gatsby’s downfall as Fitzgerald warns against the tantalising decadence of the American Dream against the hedonistic backdrop of the Roaring Twenties. The love of Gatsby’s life, Daisy Buchanan, slips through his fingers (again) and the illicit nature of how he achieved his Dream is exposed. The American Dream can still be heard faintly echoing today. Fitzgerald’s warning is reaching its crescendo: a New American Dream is being forged, spearheaded by none other than Donald Trump.

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Along the resplendent coastline of fictional West Egg, an imposing mansion is home to opulent parties boasting an array of the most prominent members of high society. Gatsby, the host of these parties, however, is nowhere to be found. Rumours surrounding Gatsby and his empire swirl amongst the social elite: he inherited his family’s fortune, his education at Oxford afforded him a dazzling career, his time in the war led him to great treasures which he then sold. As Gatsby is raised onto several podiums of esteem, the mystery surrounding the means by which he acquired his fortune gives him great power. Nothing is as it appears, which is a sentiment shared by narrator Nick Carraway. Yet when Carraway recognises Gatsby from the war, and Gatsby presents a photo of himself at Oxford’s Trinity Quad, readers are forced to swallow their pride and admit Gatsby truly does have this power. Fixated by a mysterious faint green light, the illustrious seam of Gatsby’s empire, however, soon begins to unravel. His opulent parties – at which there is no guest list – are revealed to be merely a desperate attempt to reunite with the love of his life Daisy Buchanan who, for the sake of convenience, happens to be Carraway’s cousin. A series of flashbacks occur which reveal that Gatsby was set to marry Daisy before the war

intervened and he was enlisted. Despite promising to wait for his return, Daisy marries Tom Buchanan after finding out Gatsby’s power is a mere fallacy, ‘[sprung] from the Platonic conception of himself’. In reality, Jay Gatsby is James Gatz who builds an empire built upon lies by gaining wealth through bootlegging alcohol and various other illegal activities. Broken when Daisy eludes him, Gatsby seeks to better himself: the parties are nothing more than a ploy to tempt Daisy into visiting so he can show her he no longer identifies as Jay Gatz. Flash forward and, through Carraway, Daisy and Gatsby are reunited and, subsequently, begin an affair. When Tom publically divulges how Gatsby has made his wealth, Gatsby again plummets back to Gatz and the superficial Daisy crawls back to Tom. In a final attempt to prevent the ‘Daisy dream’ disintegrating and to claw back some power over her, Gatsby takes the blame on her behalf for killing Tom’s lover. Unsurprisingly, it is never clear why Tom is adamant the Daisy-Gatsby affair must end while Daisy is able to ignore Tom’s numerous extra-marital affairs. Gatsby’s desire for power blinds him and is consequentially revenge-killed by the husband of Tom’s lover. Despite Gatsby falsely inventing himself, readers are saddened by this ending: Gatsby was still a humble, caring man who sought to better himself – albeit il-

Perversion of Power

-licitly – for the love of his love. The Roaring Twenties were indeed a prosperous time for America, however, the amoral pursuit of wealth soon predominated the desire for social mobility and individualism. Fitzgerald, therefore, knows Gatsby must die, akin to the dying vitality of the American Dream before the Wall Street Crash of 1929 permanently ended it.

“All men dream: but not

equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible” T. E. Lawrence

The All Seeing Eyes

was observe, they could not warp the plot’s events but merely watch as the American Dream slowly faded into oblivion. These eyes are very much still watching America. When Barack Obama – America’s first black president – took office in 2009, America was thought to continue its post-World War Two recovery. Media coverage regarding Obama’s time in office has, generally, been positive. Yet Cugat’s all-seeing eyes oversee a different vista. Under Obama, unemployment reached its peak in October 2009 with 10% of the population unemployed. In a time of global financial crisis – not unlike the Wall Street Crash The Great Gatsby prefigures – America’s national debt increased by 50% with Obama at the helm. Just as Gatsby was placed upon a podium only to have it erode beneath him, Obama was lauded as someone who could continue to develop America and increase its prosperity. Within The Great Gatsby, the eyes see the American Dream begin to crumble. Yet here the eyes could not intervene either: the power fallacy Fitzgerald’s fiction represents is being replayed in reality. With Obama’s time in office reaching its end, the world’s gaze is once again fixed upon America, with billionaire Donald Trump pursuing presidential power. Despite his admittance to actively avoiding tax, his plan to outlaw abortion and punish women that have them – a movement he magnanimously labels ‘pro-life’ – and his desire to build a wall to inhibit immigration, Trump is powerful: leading the election polls in nineteen out of thirty-one states thus far. Trump’s controversial manifesto has caused a media-explosion which has no doubt propelled his campaign. Those who oppose Trump’s views though not need presume they are doomed to him becoming President as his power is, like Gatsby’s, (partly) fallacious.

Completed before Fitzgerald finished writing, The Great Gatsby’s cover is amongst the most heralded pieces of artwork in American literature. Illustrated by a little-known artist, Francis Cugat, Fitzgerald was so enamoured by the design that it featured within the novel: with eyes ‘blue and gigantic – their retinas – […] one yard high. They look out of no face, but instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent nose’. Again, there is something Orwellian here, something inherently Big Brother-esque. These eyes see all. They knew (long before Carraway or the reader) that Gatsby was Gatz, they knew that Tom had always engaged in extramarital affairs. Most importantly, however, they were passive: all they could do Bernie Sanders, a Democratic Perversion of Power

nominee, seems inherently anti-Trump. Whereas Trump seeks to ban abortion, Sanders acknowledges it should be a woman’s choice; whereas Trump sees no issue with America’s gun policy (other than believing a gun permit should be legal in every state), Sanders believes the prevalence of gun permits incites gun violence, something he desperately wishes to reduce. Sanders stands to not only cement the cracks in the pillars of the American Dream but to provide scaffolding to ensure that they do not crumble again. Out of nine states, Sanders has won a higher percentage than his Democratic adversary, Hillary Clinton. Clinton may be marginally ahead, yet Sanders is the nominee who can overpower Trump. According to a recent CNN report (March 2016), Sanders is considered favourable by 60% of the population; yet reversing this, 59% of the population find Trump unfavourable, and 53% of the population view Clinton negatively. Unlike Trump, Sanders has chosen not to indulge the American citizens with a Gatsby-esque party: instead, he believes his policies speak volumes. Trump’s power originates from optics: everyone is watching him to see what he will do next. Yet along with the media-explosion governing his every move, there have been multiple parodies of Trump’s speeches: in part, his power derives from irony. As the election continues, the world and Cugat’s eyes are watching. Now, however, the eyes of every American citizen can do more than merely loom, every pair of eyes is able to make a decision. The reality is not yet known. Gatsby is rarely seen at his parties, yet Trump wants the world to see him, his power is built on a spectacle. Gatsby was unable to escape the gaze and his fallacious power was revealed. It seems, therefore, only time can reveal whether the same happens to Trump…

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Francis Cugat, Celestial Eyes (1925)

Aurelius Noble

THE POWER OF IMAGE

The centrality and evolution of imagery from Henri III to Obama, and the evolving challenges to maintaining that image. By Dominque Triggs

magery permeates modern society: from advertising campaigns to social media, this imagery is highly flexible in terms of its aims and what it achieves. Each person creates their own self-image and projects it to others around them. This can differ depending on our environment, for example in the workplace we may actively present ourselves as efficient and capable. Yet for world leaders this takes on a totally new political dimension. Today’s leaders are governing in a time where imagery is constant and news travels all over the world instantaneously . No leader has ever been universally liked, but it is beneficial to have an image that gains a leader support This can make all the difference in how long a leader can sustain their influence and power. Many changes have occurred since the sixteenth century, but not the importance of generating a powerful and positive image for a nation’s leader. Early modern French monarchs had fewer resources available to them to spread their image, but their imagery at home and abroad was still important for securing their rule. Some of the ways they secured this was by sitting for portraits and entering cities with great fanfare. France at the turn of the sixteenth century was acquiring new territories, resulting in a variety of culture and languages, with 46 |

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no unified French culture. France was almost continuously at war, sometimes with foreign states like the Holy Roman Empire and England, but often with itself. Indeed a civil war known as the Wars of Religion would come to dominate French governmental affairs from the 1560s-1580s. The early modern period was tense, with king’s attempting to secure their royal authority throughout the century. The monarch’s personality was intrinsically tied to royal governance, as the king ruled through his personality. A weak personality equalled a weak reign. This can be seen in the case of Henri III, who was King of France from 1574-1589. His elder brothers Francis II and Charles IX had both died young and did not secure the succession with an heir. Both of their reigns had been dominated by religious problems which neither had solved. Their mother, the formidable Catherine de Medici, had been the power behind the throne from 1560 onwards, and acted as regent after Charles’ death and before Henri’s accession. Henri was actually King of Poland, an elected monarchical position, when he became King of France. He was viewed with great hope from many corners of the continent, as a committed Catholic and war hero, yet despite this he failed miserably in promoting his image.

and masculine, father and protector of his people. A key way to ensure this image was presented was by having heirs, but Henri was single when he gained the throne and his consequent marriage to Louise of Lorraine resulted in no children. This created doubts about his fertility and damaged his perceived masculinity. More damaging though was his close relationship with his mignons. These were young men, who were members of Henri’s personal entourage, but they did not come from long established nobles houses, and naturally this ruffled many feathers among the traditional nobility. In the sixteenth century, sexual or romantic relationships between men were typically viewed as morally wrong, which meant when Henri was accused of ‘sodomy’ with his mignons it presented a significant problem. These accusations show that Henri was not effectively controlling his image and was allowing it to be persistently undermined. This permitted powerful nobles to take advantage of weakened royal authority. Coupled with his lack of children this meant Henri was failing to live up to the expectations of sixteenth century masculinity. Within France the wars of religion raged on, with no solution in sight. To many Catholics this meant Henri was falling short of his coronation oath to protect them from heresy. A king was expected to be strong Heresy, in this case, being Protes-

Perversion of Power

-tantism. Many powerful Catholics started to take matters into their own hands, namely the Guise brothers of the House of Lorraine. They were popular Catholic noblemen who severely threatened Henri’s already weak authority. Henri’s decision to assassinate them would have stark repercussions. Over 200 pamphlets were published in 1589 alone denouncing him, with many political texts arguing that tyrants could be overthrown. There was no opportunity to recover his image, as he had allowed it to become unsalvageable by 1589. In modern society this is the equivalent of a story going viral across all social media platforms. His brutal assassination can be seen as a result of failing to create and sustain an image that made his people support him. His successor Henri IV in contrast built a very successful image. On his succession he was in a weak position due to his estranged and childless marriage with Marguerite de Valois, having produced only illegitimate children who could not succeed him. Yet his illegitimate children were proof of his fertility, and on his second marriage to Marie de Medici he secured his dynasty, having eight legitimate children in all. His many affairs with women put a strain on his image, as too much sexual activity was viewed as detrimental to men, but this never overwhelmed his image the way Henri’s sexuality had. Due to being the first of the Bourbon dynasty to rule, he made a concerted effort to present himself as a forgiving conqueror and a French Hercules saving the nation from civil war. His use of the classical Hercules from Greek mythology is no coincidence, as it visually advocated his strong physical health, which was in contrast to his predecessors. It was not

Perversion of Power

unusual for monarchs to associate themselves with popular figures from myth or history, as it allowed them to gain these figures’ prestige for themselves. His Protestant religion caused considerable anguish at the beginning of his accession and despite converting to Catholicism it was many years before all of France accepted him as king. His commitment to positive self-presentation did have an effect, with an increasing number of people wanting images of him. Although he was assassinated, his legacy is summed up in the epithet ‘good King Henry’. He symbolised the end of the Wars of Religion and the continuity of the French monarchy through his heir the future Louis XIII.

appear not in control. The more recent Panama Papers scandal emphasises how events can easily break a carefully crafted self-image with disastrous consequences. David Cameron is at the centre of this scandal where his tax activities have come into question. He has been criticised by many, with calls for his resignation. If this were early modern times, it could take weeks for this information to reach those who were not present when events were unfolding. The scandal is particularly awkward for Cameron as it damages the image he tried to create, as a middle class person who understands the British peoples struggle. Corbyn has inferred Cameron is part of the super-rich and has no relatability to the peoAll French monarchs tried to con- ple. Yet in the modern world techtrol their image, some more suc- nology means much of the world is cessfully than others, with the discussing the Panama Papers, and two Henri’s offering an interesting it is dominating the media. dichotomy in successful and unsuccessful self-image. They show The scandal has resulted in Camerthat it was important to always on tenuously trying to protect his be vigilant regarding their images, image as the upstanding Conservand that even if they attempted to ative Party leader, although not to create a powerful image this could much effect at present. On social never succeed without success to media, everyone gets a say, and it back it up. has not been favourable towards him. Image is a lot more fragile for Even today leaders still need to con- modern leaders, yet when crises trol a positive self-image to ensure do not occur they are in a strongthe security of their position. This er position to dominate the public is incredibly difficult to do as the perception on themselves. This can media shows, with political scan- be seen in the case of Barack Obadals erupting and being discussed ma who, in a 2015 survey conductall over the world, for example the ed in forty different countries, is Lewinsky scandal concerning Pres- perceived positively by 65% of the ident Bill Clinton in 1998. Many survey sample. This could be due male leaders still feel the need to to the fact he projects a charismatpresent a stereotypically masculine ic and calm self-image, which has image, for example Vladimir Putin become relatable to many people, choosing to be photographed rid- for example when he sung a few ing a horse topless. Scandals involv- lines from an Al Green song during ing women, like the Lewinsky scan- a fundraising speech. Also during dal, can undermine a masculine his election campaign in 2008 he image as it makes the male leader promoted himself positively, for

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example with the popular ‘HOPE’ poster and the slogan “change we can believe in”. This was a concerted effort to present a popular image to pull voters, and it worked: he became president, which shows how useful imagery can be in securing power.

What both early modern French kings and modern leaders show us, is that it is difficult to create a powerful self-image when events are not within their favour, but when events are going according to plan it is much easier for their projected image to be the received and accepted one. Modern leaders are not as in control of their image due to technology, whilst French kings attempted to get their image sent to the masses, for example when Charles IX went on a progress between 1564-1566 in order to be seen by as many of his subjects as possible. Ultimately when any modern leader creates a persona outside of his actual personality, it usually shows, which is why Obama has success in this area as he does not appear to be representing himself as something he is not. French kings were the opposite, instead trying to create an image of an absolute powerful monarch, even if this did not represent their personality or rule, as seen in the case of Henri III. Self-image is always going to be important to modern leadersthey may be worlds away from early modern French kings, but in this aspect they are united. For if their image is unsuccessful, it can affect how long they can sustain ultimate political power.

“The whisperings of leaves on sunlit days. And the sands are many And the seas beyond the sands are one In ultimate, so we here being many Are unity; nathless thy compeers, Knowing thy melody, Lulled with the wine of thy music Go seaward silently, leaving thee sentinel O’er all the mysteries, High Priest of lacchus. For the lines of life lie under thy fingers, And above the vari-coloured strands Thine eyes look out unto the infinitude Of the blue waves of heaven, And even as Triplex Sisterhood Thou fingerest the threads knowing neither” Salve Pontifex, Ezra Pound (1912)

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Ferverish Imaginings THE CONSTRUCTION OF HISTORICAL REALITIES

Aurelius Noble

IMAGINARY TANZANIA

The construction of communities through collective imagination - colonialism, the conjuring of a Tanzanian nation-state and the continued legacy of imperialism. By Joshua Alston

enedict Anderson writes in his book ‘Imagined Communities’ that all nations and all communities are the products of collective imagination, rather than being based on any categories that are real. Yet despite the arbitrary invention of identities and categories, these communities are of great importance to the way in which we identify and view ourselves. In colonial Tanzania, the collective invention of tradition became a site of contest between the colonial state and local and national elites. Each sought to mobilise and promote their invented traditions as a source of their power. Tanzania first came under colonial rule in the 1890s, after a brutal German conquest. Since then, under German and then under British rule, it has provided a site of interaction between the colonial state and local populations, as both sought to define and grow their power. Since independence in 1961 it has proven to be one of the most stable states in Africa, providing the laboratory for Julius Nyerere’s great experiment in African socialism and pan-African cooperation, enshrined in the Arusha Declaration in 1967. The development of a post-colonial and independent Tanzania is the product of the reality of the colonial state, its means of control and the ways in which it maintained and exercised its power. The situation created by the colo52 |

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nial state shaped the way in which Tanzanians formed their identities and defined their programmes. As in many African states, where the borders and the existence of the state were solely the products of the colonial imagination, the colonial state and resistance to it provided the only possible bedrock of a unifying ideology for the newly independent Tanzanian nation. The creation of Modern Tanzania is the not just the product of colonial power and colonial discourses, but also the way in which Tanzanians responded to them, through the adoption, subversion and direct opposition to colonial ideas.

The Late Colonial State The colonial state in Tanzania shared many of the features common to British rule across Africa. One of the key tenets of colonial rule in Tanzania was the colonial state’s use of what they perceived as ‘traditional’ structures of rule, such as institutions of tribal and chiefly systems of government. Government through chief and tribe were not reflective of the pre-existing reality of life in Tanzania before colonisation. This institution was more shaped by the British fantasy of primitive and uncivilised Africans. In contrast to the British idea of basic tribal governance, under chiefs in small communities, pre-colonial Tanzania had highly developed urban, tech-

nological and administrative infrastructure at the centre of the Kilwa Sultanate (1300-1500), which ruled much of the Swahili-speaking East African coast. The tribe and the chiefs, rather than functioning as a continuation of the ‘traditional’ African system, functioned more as a colonially imposed local government, with responsibility for the collection of taxes and the maintenance of colonial control. The institution of ‘traditional’ forms of authority by the British was especially significant in their governing structure as it provided their most important mechanism of extracting revenue, enabling the collection of taxes, the organisation of labour and exportation of goods from Tanzania. The authority of the chiefs was almost unequaled as an institution of the colonial state. Land was held in communal possession under the supervision of a chief, who had the power to control and requisition labour. They also served a judicial function as arbiters of the law. The power given to the chiefs by their colonial masters was open to abuse, often allowing these functionaries to become very wealthy and powerful. They could levy their own taxes, many of which would be for their own benefit rather than that of the colonial state. Unrivalled power allowed them access to violent means of control including the coercive military power of the colonial state. The

Feverish Imaginings

British used their discourse of tradition to justify and legitimise what Mahmood Mandami describes as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;decentralised despotismâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;: the violent, arbitrary and powerful rule of imported African chiefs.

Contesting Traditions

Luo peoples, a cultural group largely living in Southern Kenya and Northern Tanzania used different methods to challenge the British claim to be the protectors of traditional authority. Rather than claiming conservative moral authority, they sought to redefine the traditions, religious and social boundaries which formed the assumptions of the colonial state. One of the key ways in which they did this was through the widespread adoption of syncretic religions which combined elements of Christianity and Bantu religions. Christianity, was seen as a marker of power, owing to its associated with British elites. This allowed followers them to claim higher status within the colonial system and to undermine the highly negative British assumption of the backward African follower of traditional religion. These revivalist groups also contravened the British expectation of social organisations, notably by refusing to build walls and boundaries between their houses, and by maintaining the pre-colonial tradition of eating communally. The adoption of new religious systems and the maintenance of pre-colonial culture was significant in the construction of a unified Luo ethnic identity. This strengthened identity was mobilised, as part of their growing anti-colonial movement led by TANU (the Tanganyika African National Union). The Luo attempt to challenge the colonial authority over tradition relied on appropriating markers of colonial authority and emphasising the maintenance of pre-colonial ideas of tradition.

The upholding of African tradition was one of the key sites of contest between the colonial state and African elites, often representatives of chiefly groups seeking to reinforce the power given to them by the colonial system. The aim of the local elites, to claim and invent tradition, was partly derived from their dependence on structures brought in by the colonial state. Significantly, the tribe was the source of their power and giving moral authority to reinforce. This moral authority was often defined in opposition to the colonial state. For example, Haya leaders looked to claim control and moral authority over the burgeoning trade in Haya prostitution across Tanzania. This development was seen by male Haya leaders as an affront to Haya social conservatism and their culture of privacy. This creation of a moral panic over prostitution and the enforcement of a patriarchal law, seen as putting women in their traditional place, allowed the Haya elites to position themselves as the guardians of tradition, contesting the British claim to this traditional authority. Furthermore, the moral panic over prostitution allowed them to attack the British as the users of prostitutes, and as usurpers of traditional authority. The claim to conservative authority and the production of a moral panic over prostitution was a reaction to the Towards a Tanzanian Nation British defining authority on the basis of control and arbitration on During the 1950s the British mechAfrican tradition. anisms for controlling Tanzania

Feverish Imaginings

underwent a period of change. Instead of basing their control on maintaining their position as the guardians of tradition, there was a move towards a system of symbolic representation. The electoral system was divided into systems of separate electorates for Black Tanzanians, Tanzanians of Asian descent and White settler populations. This system, rather than denying a voice to TANU, the largest Tanzanian party, created the basis for interracial cooperation allowing TANU to gain a significant majority in these elections. This was both a reaction to the changing international situation with significant UN pressure for decolonisation and the reaction to increasingly organised anti-colonial activity from Tanzanian activists and in particular TANU. This change in the British method of control led to a change of emphasis, from contesting the British status as the protectors and arbiters of African tradition, to asserting themselves as the equal of the colonial power: an independent nation in modernist terms, and as the equal of the colonial power. The changing priorities and methodologies of the colonial state led to a change in the forms and priorities of the anti-colonial movement to a form that was more focussed on forms of government that were both set by and would be familiar to the colonial state. One of the problems posed by the creation of a new Tanzanian nation, as is true of most nations within Africa is the arbitrary nature of the state, based on borders and identities almost exclusively manufactured by the colonial state. This problem was partly overcome by alliance of smaller local identities, such as the Haya or Luo discussed

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earlier. A large part of this was made possible by the stressing of a holistic national identity, based on a common African identity. Pan-Africanism, the attempt to create a transcendent African nation and national identity, was based on Kwame Nkrumah’s principal that Africans must unite in order to oppose European colonialism and the common oppression felt by all Africans at the hands of their colonial overlords. This was a consciously anti-colonial step. Partly due to the colonial approximation of the Tanzanian state, a new national identity was imagined by the Tanzanian elites, based itself on the common legacy of colonialism. A new Tanzanian national identity was formed from the reality of a Tanzanian state created by European colonialism.

“The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms”

industrialisation of Tanzania. His programme was inspired by his belief in the creation of a distinctive form of socialism relevant to the African political situation and experience. Key to his programme was the creation of socialist-inspired, collectively-owned villages (known as Umajaa villages). These villages would allow the Tanzanian population to receive support from the state, including primary schooling, grants to receive agricultural machinery, and easier access to basic healthcare. The Umajaa villages can be seen as a rebuttal to colonialist imaginations of the African. Where it saw disorder or inefficiency, the new Tanzanian state would bring order. Where Africans were seen as primitive and technologically backward, these schemes would bring modernity. The colonial state had seen itself as the civiliser of the African. Nyerere’s socialist village development in Tanzania was designed to conform to these European-defined categories of civilisation without the intervention of the colonial state. Nyerere’s vision of African socialism was a direct challenge to the imperialist imagination of Africa: it aimed to create a society that was the antithesis of the colonial vision of Africa. However, in doing so it adopted the categories of progress and modernisation that provided the intellectual justification for imperialism.

Nyerere’s own civilising mission, like the earlier colonial one, served the function of reinforcing his power by creating villages that were Towards Umajaa Socialism easily accessible to the state. Key Dr Julius Nyerere, the leader of to this was his forced villagisation TANU and Tanzania’s first presi- scheme which settled nomadic Tandent, was a pioneer of radical ap- zanians in villages against their will. proaches to the modernisation and The authoritarian and often violent The Hollow Men, T. S. Eliot (1925)

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attempts to force nomadic groups into villages shows the continuity of the state’s oppression of its population, with the post-colonial state still the enforcer of authoritarian development. By forcing people to become more accessible to the state through compulsory villagisation, the state acquired greater power to manipulate and control the Tanzanian population and build a society around it. This function of Umajaa villages was shown by the frequent placement of the TANU headquarters at the centre of the village. The Umajaa village and the authoritarian methods by which it was instituted show the struggle that post-colonial Tanzania faced with the legacies of colonialism. The failure to challenge the colonial categories of modernity and the continuation of the very same authoritarian methodologies practiced by the colonial state led to the failure of the scheme due to the continued resistance of Tanzanians. It also shows the continuation of the interaction between the colonial imagination of Africa, its perception of tradition, modernity and the nation, and the ideas of Tanzanians, even after the end of direct colonial control. The imagination of Tanzania was contested, from the enforcement of patriarchal power to the radical contravention of European expectations of social organisation, to the unifying ideologies of pan-Africanism. The late colonial and early post-colonial history of Tanzania shows the role played by the imagination of tradition and community as a tool of the powerful, enabling them to mobilise and reinforce their own power.

Feverish Imaginings

Aurelius Noble

REINVENTING CASTE

An analysis of the development of caste consciousness in India, and how the colonial state helped shape structures which still permeate Indian society. By Eleanor Chambers

aste, as a hierarchical and powerful social structure in India, has existed in some form since before colonial rule of India. The term ‘caste’ itself was European in origin, foreshadowing (?) the Eurocentric lens through which it has often been viewed, since its emergence in Western literature in the eighteenth century travel writings by the likes of Holwell. Caste is based on the ancient cosmological ‘varna’ system, a basic and traditional system of segregation dividing society into four: the highest Brahmanic caste, the warrior Kshatriyas, merchant Vaishyas and the low caste Sudras, with ‘untouchables’ or Dalits below the caste system altogether. Whether or not the emergence of caste was a completely colonial phenomenon, or a tradition deeply rooted in Indian society and antiquity is not easy to ascertain. Brahmanic traditions were solidified as ‘Hinduism’ as the East India Company agents attempted to write histories of India and group traditions into clear and defined mapped data. Brahmanical traditions heightened caste differences, and the British engagement with these learned priests and scribes reinforced their superior status as the highest caste.

ed to reinvent caste reality, or if it was due to their interest in oriental histories based on immutable traditional hierarchical structures is unclear. The colonial state redefined and reorganised caste, cementing this new and more fluid caste arrangement through its census and ethnographical work, up until the partition of India in 1947. The reality of caste was shaped too by Indian grassroots nationalist movements, which gathered momentum particularly in the inter and post-war periods, developing the reinvention of caste and using various caste categories to promote areas of nationalism. Post-colonial discourse struggled to shift the heavily Eurocentric hierarchical view of caste, until the Subaltern discourse emerged in the 1970s, as a post-colonial critique combining Marxism, poststructuralism, Foucault, and archival and textual research to provide a history of the subordinated Indian classes. The voice of the subordinated can be accessed as this history represents and domesticates those with little or no agency, reinstating their history and creating new and dynamic visions of caste relations preceding and during the Raj. Caste is an ongoing reflection of the ability of power in shaping realities, even historical ones.

purposes an ethnographic state, and the colonised reduced to subjects of little agency, categorised and controlled by caste. Racially-centred ethnographies were at their peak as racial ‘sciences’ gained momentum across Europe. These ethnographies influenced colonial ideas about caste, and the often racially based categorising was often justified by the underlying feeling that it was a ‘noble venture’ with a regenerative purpose for India. Caste was transmuted into a form of civil society, which justified the denial of Indian political rights and explained the necessity of colonial rule.

Orientalists viewed caste as a fundamental Hindu institution of great religious importance, however caste as a Hindu tradition is debatable in itself. Caste in a looser sense did definitely exist in pre-colonial times, but not in the rigidly defined, pedantically mapped-out form it became during colonial rule. Claiming caste to be religious as a ‘Hindu’ tradition is also problematic when considering that ‘Hinduism’ is merely a term describing a plethora of different cultural, social and religious traditions, with no unified body or text. The British are often attributed to having reinvented the Certainly, caste was projected into reality of caste, because of the way the limelight like never before in in which they crudely grouped the the nineteenth century; whether By the late nineteenth century, Co- many varied traditions together unthis was as the colonial state start- lonial India was for all means and der the umbrella of ‘Hinduism’. In 56 |

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fact, the ‘Hinduism’ to which they referred was for the most part a very Brahmanical-focused one, as the learned scribes and texts they had referred to when investigating Indian religious culture had mostly been written by or discussed with Brahmins. Hinduism was not the only diverse and varied body: colonial discourse was less unified than it is often considered to be. Despite the underlying currents of racist ethnology and ideas of imperial superiority, some colonial discourse was balanced and liberal, giving agency to the Indian people.

breeding contempt was less feared, in lieu of more tolerant mid-enlightenment views that were prevalent at this time. However, whilst questioning what its proper role in India should be, the British did not resign its power, instead the nation made ideological and political adjustments to justify its rule in India, resulting in its self-awarded role as a civilising mission. The concerns raised in the eighteenth century led to ideas about imperial responsibility, and certainly by the late 1700s, the appropriate goal for the British was to rule and ‘civilise’ India. This was undertaken in several Caste, and its relationship with ways, most notably the use of dathe colonial state, was a subject of ta-collection and enhanced admingreat scrutiny throughout the colo- istration with ethnographic surveys nial period, with domestic British of the British states and the first concerns over ramifications of per- decennial census in 1871 establishceived mal-administration in India ing categories of people based on bring fundamental change to Brit- caste in a way never seen before. ain. Widespread metropolitan concern arose concerning the proper In contrast to the racially-based Governance of the Indian Empire, ethnographies which are usually and worries over the perceived ascribed to commonplace colonial permeable nature of the frontier thinking, ethnographers like Denzil between India and Britain all con- Ibbetson insisted upon a portrayal tributed to the emerging colonial of caste which included Indian Sikhs self-examination, running parallel and Muslims, instead of employto fears of the Oriental lifestyle and ing a close-minded Hindu only apa tide of Indian imperialism en- proach to caste categorisation. His croaching upon Britain. The result- caste classifications were sensitive ing moral crisis of the eighteenth to regional variations, and refrained century, often referred to as the ‘In- from describing caste as static, asdia question’, was formed around serting a much more sophisticated concerns over what the proper fluid analysis of the caste system, relationship should be between and foreshadowing post-modernist Britain and her Indian Empire. The historiographies arguing that caste varied roles of the British in India, status and hierarchy were a colonifrom Company or colonial officials. al invention cemented into the InSpecifically, there were widespread dian consciousness by the census. fears about the effect an Empire Unlike Risley’s descriptions of India based on conquest would have on as a composite social landscape, in Britain, and worries that corruption which some groups evolved historiand arbitrary government may be cally, leaving others bound by caste passed to Company servants act- hierarchies, with the Aryan-deing as ‘corrosive agents’ on Britain. scended Brahman ‘race’ were caParallel to this, humanitarian anxie- pable of achieving nationhood and ties about the treatment of Indian Western enlightenment. natives by the Company and fears that conquest would breed con- Caste was blamed by colonialists tempt for Indian civilisation were for several less desirable aspects common. In the late-eighteenth of Indian society, whilst simultacentury, the concept of conquest neously being actively encouraged Feverish Imaginings

and reinforced by the colonial state through their ethnographies and census. The 1957 Mutiny was followed by systematic and large-scale ethnological data collected about caste, as an attempt to classify ‘criminal tribes’ or particular castes who were more likely to have criminal tendencies. Ethnographic research exploded afterwards to subdue over-mighty castes and ensure no future rebellions, and whilst certain castes were criminalised, other caste groups involved in the mutiny were deemed to have ample scope for regeneration under the enlightened British Government in overcoming India’s caste-caused debilitating fragmentation. Colonialists believed that caste caused the rebellion by harbouring polluted ideologies, and the failure they had made in overlooking these tendencies had resulted in the rebellion. The mutiny also prompted severe criticisms of missionaries, for alarming Indians about British objectives to interfere in their religious or social traditions. Caste was finally dropped as a census category in 1931, partially due to an avalanche of petitions to census commissioners over caste status and despite its potential political advantages for British rule, due to it sometimes contradicting the nationalist movement. Missionary involvement in India was only allowed from 1813, and they rarely worked towards the same aims as the colonial state. Despite being labelled by some as “little detachments of maniacs”, they actually arguably promoted imperialism by other means. European social norms and structures were implicitly encouraged through Christianity, and their civilising mission was just undertaken in different ways to the colonialists. Most missionaries saw caste as the chief impediment to Christian conversion, and often attacked so-called Brahmanic corruption, raising questions about public morality under British rule, JUNE 2016

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and tended to portray Indians as subjects lacking agency or political will. There were certain missionaries who varied from the typical missionary rhetoric, who supported colonial policy and their decision to initially ban missionary activity in India, and who held caste in high regard, but these were few and far between. Caste-centred Colonial policies and decision-making enhanced caste as a prominent social structure in the Indian consciousness, and reinforced colonial stereotypes of caste. By the 1910s cases appeared where people referred to their caste status on their job applications, such as an application to the Uttah Pradesh Civil Services in 1917 in which their ‘good and loyal’ Rajput caste was referenced. Colonial stereotypes like the ‘effeminate Bengali’ perhaps were the product of how ‘useful’ each caste was deemed to be to the colonial state, and less ‘useful’ castes earned more derogatory reputations. A damaging stereotype resulting from colonial ethnography were ‘criminal tribes’, communities defined as born criminals, often used for local policing purposes. The concept of ‘hereditary’ characteristics of each criminal tribe were supposedly easy to classify, yet in reality the Criminal Tribes and Castes Act was problematic to apply, which was openly admitted by Colonial officials. Repealed in 1949, these historical associations caused ramifications from economic hardship to alienation and continued stereotyping for certain Indian subjects. Colonial policy-making such as this, based on ethnographical classifications of caste, exemplifies just how important caste status became in the British Raj. Indeed, caste was used as a political and social tool; the census and other ethnographies added to the rigidity of differentiation. The relationship between caste identity and the civil service was important, and the British used caste to balance out 58 |

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power groups, taking advantage of caste dominance where possible to reduce the danger of specific caste domination by recruiting ‘suitable’ castes into the Indian army. In civil service recruitment too, the colonial state considered problems of ‘caste dominance’ in localities, and the 1919 Montagu-Chemsford reforms reserved spaces for ‘backward’ Indian castes. This effort to reduce the strict hierarchical system resulted in the formation of lobby groups, and the colonial state became more porous as lower castes realised their potential political power. Caste organisations known as sabhas developed as a result of caste-recorded censuses, and they used a process of sanskritisation to attempt to redefine and promote their interests. Caste sabha literature would claim a higher status for their caste, and particular castes would copy behaviour of a higher caste and internalise it as their own. The reality of caste thus shifted dynamically during the early twentieth century, and the power of the British in enhancing caste importance was turned against them. Aside from widespread colonial ethnographies and caste classifications, Indian responses to caste were changing and reinventing themselves. Certainly, the meaning of caste changed dramatically over the late colonial period, with caste histories rewritten to ‘better’ a community’s status. Some Indian responses denied caste as a binding societal structural system altogether, with B. R. Ambedkar, an influential Dalit, setting up organisations in the 1930s-40s in Bombay, challenging the notion of caste completely. Caste had by this point, however, become a sign of Indian civilisation, and thus Gandhi paradoxically, (despite denouncing the poor treatment of untouchables), reinforced the caste system to prevent his worries over the possible disintegration of Hindu society. This resulted in major setbacks to lower

castes and particularly Dalits, who after the Poona Pact in 1932 were refused separate electorates. Despite this, organs like the Depressed Classes Welfare Association worked to scrap caste hierarchies, and large numbers of conversions from Hinduism to Buddhism (moving away from social and religious hierarchies), show a significant Indian reinvention of caste, separate to the colonial state. Post-independence, caste is still a political tool. The Bahujan Samaj Party, (formed in 1984), promotes lower castes by reservations, and attempts to destroy caste differences altogether. For the Colonial State, caste was a paradox: an embarrassment to the British, and an aid in retaining indirect rule. The census and other British ethnographies highlighted social injustices of caste, and directly led to caste critique, helping the movement denouncing it. In this sense, the census both (perhaps inadvertently) ‘reinvented’ caste, and simultaneously accelerated its removal. Caste was already reinventing itself within Indian political movements and with growing nationalist sentiment, particularly in the interwar period, regardless of the British interference. Caste became installed as a fundamental unit of India’s social structure, but rather than colonial discourse striving to invent the ideology or social reality of caste, colonialist views were diverse and sometimes liberal, going as far as to question the centrality of caste. The British certainly enhanced a caste-conscious social order, but this required the context of broader political and social changes already in motion before colonial rule. It is a crude assertion that the British alone reinvented the reality of caste. The colonial period is better viewed as evidence of the British interacting with and trying to comprehend its ‘colonial other’, than a vessel leading to reinvention of caste.

Feverish Imaginings

Aurelius Noble

TWISTED REALITIES

The construction of a crusading reality - a discussion of crusaders’ socio-psychological state and the ways in which they experienced and justified their varied atrocities. By Jake Leigh-Howarth

he crusading period had a long and bloody history and centred on the Manichean struggle between Christianity and Islam. The crusaders and indeed their Saracen counterparts were fuelled by a religious dogma, inculcated in their societies, which imagined an enemy as heretical, blasphemous, and inhuman. Warriors, intoxicated by such propaganda, murdered and defiled in its name. “[our men] were killing and slaying even to the Temple of Solomon, reports the Gesta Francorum; “where the slaughter was so great that our men waded in blood up to their ankles…”. The Gesta’s report of the 1099 Jerusalem massacre, uneasily matter-offact and almost celebratory in tone, reveals to the retrospective observer the horrifying results of a twisted psychological state. How could men of God, foregoing the sacred commandments to kill, loot, and rape could commit such a bloody spectacle and believe it to be divinely sanctioned? The purpose of this article is to discuss the reasons why the crusaders took this choice on that fateful July day, and to learn how their psychology constructed a reality in which such egregious acts were justifiable. During the medieval period, Jerusalem was an extremely important religious city. It was of course the venerated birthplace of Christ and the subject of many pilgrimages 60 |

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from the West. The 13th century Mappa Mundi located at Hereford Cathedral even placed Jerusalem at the centre of the world. This great spiritual haven was conquered by the forces of Islam in 637, with a campaign to get it back instigated some five centuries later by Pope Urban II at the 1099 Council of Clermont after renewed interest in the eleventh century. The intervening period was essential towards the cultivation of the ‘holy warrior’. From as early as the eighth century Charlemagne was considered the defender of the church, and in the tenth century even the pope saw military action. Popes John X and John XII both took part in combat. By validating violence in the name of God the lines that configured the morality of combat were being irreparably blurred. This can be illustrated by the time of Urban II’s 1095 Clermont sermon where Guibert of Nogent, rousing the people to fight for the Lord, proclaimed that those who undertook such dangerous excursion to liberate The Holy Sepulchre “were not knights but monks”. The popular ‘holy warrior’ idea shared parallels with the changing definition of pilgrimage. Pilgrimage, once a peaceful undertaking was militarized. A pilgrimage was now viewed as an opportunity for the laity of the Church to achieve salvation by the only means they knew: violence. Those who did not pro-

fess the monkhood were left with the option to undertake a journey that itself was an act of penance. The laity were now able to “obtain in some measure God’s good grace while pursuing their own way of life with the freedoms and in the dress to which they are accustomed” according to Guibert of Nogent. To sweeten the deal, Urban II promised “immediate remission of sin” to all who died on the way. Urban and other advocates of crusade had successfully tapped into the ubiquitous religious fervour of the age and, through promises of spiritual reward, were directing it towards their own ends. Europe, then a gallimaufry of kingdoms, duchies, and states was a war torn continent. The pope, having Christian subjects that transcended state boundaries was able to unite warring factions to a common purpose. And so, as the crusaders ravaged Jerusalem in a torrent of murder and death, one begins to see the results of this indoctrination, so powerful it made a massacre seem like a penitential act undertaken by God’s holy warriors. But was this an act of love? John Riley-Smith has famously argued the case. An argument originally put forward by Erdmann is that Pope Urban II’s original reasoning for a crusade was to defend the Eastern Church. In his Clermont speech, Urban uses fraternal language to play on the idea of family,

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a positive source of strength in the Middle Ages. Regarding his Eastern kinsmen, Urban proclaimed they were “sons of the same Christ and the same Church”. The conflict was framed by Urban as a blood feud against those who had harmed Christ’s family. Undertaking atrocities against the Muslims and other heretics fell in accordance with loving thy neighbour.

from doing evil things. Ivo of Chatres, another revered scholar, along with many others stressed the idea that wars could be acts of pacification.

One might even consider the whole crusade being a journey celebrating their love for Christ. Crusaders expressed love because they literally became followers of Christ because they loved Him. Christianity was a It becomes even more paradoxi- religion Christo-mimetic from birth, cal when we consider the killing of and imitating Christ inevitably inthe infidel as an act of mercy upon volved suffering and self-sacrifice. the enemy. Because the Muslims in Christian eyes followed the wrong Whether the crusaders were religion they were already sub- spurred on by an unwavering Chrissumed with sin. Killing the Muslim tian belief or not is a matter still up was merciful because it prevented for debate. Indeed, the promise him from falling deeper into sin. of plunder was undeniably part of The famous theologian, Augustini- the reason why a lot of crusaders, an, whose influence penetrated the impoverished at home, sought Church had some influence on this wealth abroad. Their material posconception. His ‘Panoramio’ dedi- sessions were also looked after by cated three chapters to demanding the Church whilst they were away. that men prevent their neighbour However, it would be unwise to

dismiss the pertinence of spiritual incentives. The crusaders partaking in the Jerusalem massacre were committing genocidal acts that conformed to espoused Christian propaganda. Muslims, Jews, and all others not deemed Christian were fair game in the warped minds of the Western interlopers. The barbarity of the crusaders as they “seized great numbers, both men and women, either killing them or keeping them captive” and executed 10,000 Muslims in the temple Mount area as Fulchre of Chatres relates illustrated the negligible importance placed on material gain in these situations. Conversely, the crusaders were intoxicated by a religious fanaticism that warped their reality and justified their grisly actions. As they slaughtered they may well have viewed themselves as holy warriors on a pilgrimage, delivering Jerusalem and saving the souls of the infidel in a perverse act of love.

“Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I’ve a call.” Lady Lazarus, Sylvia Plath (1962) Feverish Imaginings

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J. Robert-Fleury, Les Croisades, Origines et Consequences (1840)