Power & Culture Poli 110J

1. Power & CulturePoli 110J This is the pure form of servitude: to exist as an instrument, as a thing.

2. Reading poetry • Poetry is the art of arranging words in the maximally powerful order • Look up any references that you don’t understand • Poetry derives a part of its power from allusion to other sources • Don’t ask what it MEANS, ask what it DOES • Poetry is art, not a secret code

3. Howl • 1957 Obscenity trial in San Francisco • "filthy, vulgar, obscene, and disgusting language.” • Judge: “Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemisms?” • 2007 Obscenity fear • Pacifica radio planned to broadcast in order to commemorate 50th anniversary of Howl’s protection under First Amendment • But feared fines from the FCC, put it online • Differing basis of censorship: public morals vs. “offensiveness” and affordability of free speech

4. Howl • Clear American identity • Influence of Walt Whitman • Similar mystical and political concerns • Brotherhood, spirituality, equality, repression, sexuality • The title • What is a howl?

5. Allen Ginsberg • 1926-1997 • “Beat” poet • Ginsberg’s mother, Naomi Livergant Ginsberg • Politically radical and mentally unwell, hugely influential on Ginsberg’s life & work • His other most famous poem, “Kaddish”, written at her death • Carl Solomon • Ginsberg met him in a mental institution during a period when each was briefly institutionalized. Formed lifelong friendship.

6. Part I • “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness” • Who are the best? What is meant by “best minds”? What does it mean that they are the ones destroyed? • Reflected in word choice: the use of coarse language in high art • Frames all of part I of the poem • Who… • The actions of part I are those of these destroyed minds, efforts to escape and transcend. • Ironically, those most despised by society at large are in fact its best

7. Transcendence • A spiritual overcoming of the world in which we find ourselves • To reject and vault above the material world, to access some higher spiritual good (union with God, truth, salvation, true self, enlightenment) • Emphasized in the mystical aspects of many world religions

8. Transcendence • Modes of transcendence • Spirituality • Humiliation of the flesh • Sex • Drugs • Art • Violation of taboo

9. Transcendence • Over a world of power, materialism, and time: • “Who threw their watches off the roof / to cast their vote for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks / fell on their heads every day for the next decade” (16) • Desperate attempts to transcend end in failure • “…or were run down by the / drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality” (16) • What could be more crudely real than that?

10. “Who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism…” (18) • Carl Solomon • Is this not a better appreciation of Dada than a lecture? • Beauty and meaning in art that transcend rational analysis • Resistance against the dominance of unreason by the rational

11. ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and / now you’re really in the total animal soup of / time— • “an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone / cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio” (20) • “with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered / out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand / years.” (20)

12. Howl pt. I • “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness” • Transcendence • Failure & destruction

13. Howl, pt. II • What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? (21) • “the best minds of my generation” • Inhuman, monstrous • Crudely material, vs. the spirit

14. Moloch! • Rashi, 12th c. French rabbi & commentator: • “Tophet is Moloch, which was made of brass; and they heated him from his lower parts; and his hands being stretched out, and made hot, they put the child between his hands, and it was burnt; when it vehemently cried out; but the priests beat a drum, that the father might not hear the voice of his son, and his heart might not be moved.”

15. Moloch! • Leviticus 18:21: “And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD.” • A divine commandment to disdain • Worship of Moloch equated to profaning the name of God. • Cannibal-god of the Canaanites, the enemies of the children of Israel • The enemies of the few, the chosen, the faithful • Idolatry and abomination

17. Also a reference to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), which depicts industrial society itself as Moloch, a concept that Ginsberg expands in pt. II

18. Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! • Brute materialism • Repression • Cannibal • Blasphemy, unholy • Loveless, sexless

19. “They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven!” (22) • The best minds of my generation • Failed attempt, not to themselves transcend, but to elevate the profane into transcendent holiness • “Heaven which exists and is everywhere around us!” • The transcendent is not fantasy, it is as real as the material brutality that has displaced it

20. Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! / gone down the American river! • “down the river” • Betrayed, cheated: “sold down the river” refers to the way in which difficult slaves in the Northern slave states would be sold into harsher conditions in the South

21. Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole / boatload of sensitive bullshit! • Un-rational aspects of human existence, bringing meaning to life • A sincere embrace of what the calculating, materialistic Moloch deems a “boatload of sensitive bullshit”

22. “They bade farewell! / They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! / carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!

23. Part III • “Pyramidal” structure: lengthening responses to “I’m with you in Rockland” structure • Rockland a mental institution • Real institution Columbia Presbyterian Psychological Institute • What is suggested by the name of Rockland? • But even there there is love & friendship

24. I’m with you in Rockland • where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul / is innocent and immortal it should never die / ungodly in an armed madhouse • The spiritual elevated over the material • But it can be killed • Ungodly armed madhouse sounds a lot like Moloch • The asylum is the world in microcosm

25. I’m with you in Rockland • where you accuse your doctors of insanity and / plan the Hebrew socialist revolution against the / fascist national Golgotha • Inversion: inmates in charge of the asylum • Though Solomon is “madder than I am” • Plans of the ultimate victory of the few, the holy, and the oppressed • Moloch = “fascist national Golgotha” • The place of the skull • Martyrdom & crucifixion

26. I’m with you in Rockland • where you will split the heavens of Long Island / and resurrect your living human Jesus from the / superhuman tomb • Emergence of the transcendence into the mundane • Superhumanity equated with death, the tomb • Life and the miracle of resurrection are properties of the human • Resurrection the definitive triumph of the spiritual and divine over the material world

27. I’m with you in Rockland • where we wake up electrified out of the coma / by our own souls’ airplanes… • Fantasies of the final triumph of the soul over the material world, vision of what that world would look like • O victory forget your underwear we’re/ free

28. I’m with you in Rockland • in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea- /journey on the highways across America in tears / to the door of my cottage in the Western night • In Rockland the only consolation is memory and imagination • Though the speaker is with Solomon in Rockland, they are not physically present to each other • Though some small comfort is possible, the speaker remains within the godless, armed madhouse

29. Footnote to Howl • A footnote • Separate from, below the text • Either • Provides clarification for the text • Provides additional understanding and context for the text that are not strictly needed in the text itself

30. Footnote to Howl • Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! • Radical tonal shift, from sadness and solitude, futility and self-destruction, cannibal-gods and insane asylums to ecstatic recognition of universal holiness • Holiness =/= sacredness • Holiness is the mark of the presence and/or favor of God

31. Footnote to Howl • The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! / The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand / and asshole holy! • Continues theme that the despised are in fact the elevated • But begins to attack the duality present in the poem so far, as both the spiritual and the material are presented as of like holiness

32. Footnote to Howl • Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the / clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy / the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch! • Fifth International • Unity of opposites • Sacredness present even in the most profane

33. Footnote to Howl • Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours! / bodies! suffering! magnanimity! • Holiness here is achieved, as the “best minds” failed to do • Not in transcendence, but in immanence • Not “lifting Moloch to Heaven,” but recognizing the “Angel in Moloch” • Not elevating the earthly into the divine, but recognizing the presence of divinity in the mundane. The world, good and bad, spiritual and material, is itself holy.

34. Herbert Marcuse • 1898 – 1979 • Student of Heidegger, broke w/him over Heidegger’s Nazi party membership, immigrated to US from Germany in 1934 • Worked for US gov’t during & immediately after WWII • Member of Frankfurt school • Taught at Columbia, Harvard, Brandeis, UCSD • Mentor of Angela Davis, “Father of the New Left”

35. Marcuse • One-Dimensional Man • Neo-Marxist social criticism • The absence of the critical dimension • The prevalence of false consciousness • Western totalitarianism • Modes of thinking as an instrument of power • Existential concerns: transcendence & authenticity

36. One-Dimensional Man • Ch. 1: Western totalitarianism • Ch. 2: The loss of the negative dimension in politics & society

37. What is totalitarianism? • The permanent and total mobilization of society and the individual in the defense of “the state” • Terror • “Technology”

38. Totalitarianism “is not only a terroristic political coordination of society, but also a non-terroristic economic technical coordination which operates through the manipulation of needs by vested interests” (3)

39. In the west, “Technical progress, extended to a whole system of domination and coordination, creates forms of life (and of power) which appear to reconcile the forces opposing the system, and to defeat or refute all protest in the name of freedom from toil and domination.” (xliv)

40. The full integration of state, economy, and society thwarts criticism: • The social order has integrated even concepts & agents that were meant to negate and oppose it • “society”, “individual”, “class”, “private”, “family” • “With the growing integration of industrial society, these categories are losing their critical connotation, and tend to become descriptive, deceptive, or operational terms.” (xlvi)

41. “In this society, the productive apparatus tends to become totalitarian to the extent to which it determines not only the socially needed occupation, skills, and attitudes…

42. …but also individual needs and aspirations. It thus obliterates the opposition between the public and private existence, between individual and social needs.” (xlvii) • The individual self is thus fully mobilized in the service of the state

43. False Consciousness • True and false needs: • True: food, clothes, company, shelter • False: “those which are superimposed upon the particular social interests in his repression: the needs which perpetuate toil, aggressiveness, misery, and injustice.” (5)*

44. Example: Relaxation. • Work is hard and unpleasant • You need to relax. • Vacations are expensive. • Work & save. • Buy & buy. • Now you’re broke. Back to work. • Work is hard and unpleasant. • “euphoria in unhappiness” (5)

45. “No matter how much such needs may have become the individual’s own, reproduced and and fortified by the conditions of his existence; no matter how much he indentifies himself with them and finds himself in their satisfaction…

46. …they continue to be what they were from the beginning—products of a society whose dominant interest demands repression.” (5) • “Private [mental] space has been invaded and whittled down by technological reality.” (10)

47. How to distinguish false from true needs? • No judge can do it, it would be reprehensible. • It must be left to the individual “if and when they are free to give their own answer.” (6) • But they are NOT free.

48. Thus, the more this process proceeds, “the more unimaginable” it becomes that “individuals might break their servitude and seize their own liberation.” • “All liberation depends on the consciousness of servitude.”

49. This is in part because of the triumph of positivism • “The concept is synonymous with the corresponding set of operations.” • Example: length. What about justice? • “Many of the more troublesome concepts are being eliminated” because they cannot be operationalized. (13) • “debunking of the mind” • Reason brought to earth, incorporated

50. Criticism becomes impossible. Lacking a “negative” dimension to criticize “positive” thought, the status quo appears perfectly rational. • The objective good of progress and efficiency • Justice  justice system • Free institutions  those of the free world • “Does not the threat of an atomic catastrophe which could wipe out the human race also serve to protect the very forces which perpetuate this danger?”