After watching the movie Night Catches Us I noticed two examples of ways in which the police or the feds (the ‘man’) exerted power over the African Americans. Both exertions were a means of control, and both were founded on a fiction.

First let me discuss the comic book, just so I can move past it more quickly. When we are first introduced to it we see it as a training manual for young Black Panthers, and then it is revealed to be a work of misinformation produced by the feds to incite young black people to violence against white power. By ‘white power’ I refer to the thoughts motivating the behaviors of those with power to control anyone who is identified (by someone who identifies them self as ‘white’ and who also has grown accustomed to a feeling of power) as ‘not-white’. Behaviors, which in any way (necessarily defined by someone who identifies them self as ‘not-white’) inhibits the freedom of a not-white (self identified) person.  The misinformation of the comic book is the first example of power being exerted over another, power to mislead a person into carrying out the desires of another (ask yourself why the feds would want black people to attack cops), and it is based on a deception.

The second is seen when the two police officers are questioning a young man while Jimmy (played by Amari Cheatom) watches from across the street. This play is much more precarious than the ostensibly anonymous distribution of propaganda comics, the two officers are taking for granted that anyone watching will be placed under the same spell as the man they are harassing. In this scene we see Jimmy in his proudest moment. He understands the magic at work (or appears to, more likely he is spitting truth fed to him by Iris (Jamara Griffin)) and stands above it and is intelligent enough to wield it properly to protect his fellow man. The magic at work is another deception, a weaker one than the comic book, not an out an out lie but rather a withholding of the truth.  Jimmy undoes their spell by revealing it for what it is – nothing, a puff of smoke, a fiction spun between two cops. He appeals to the power which the officers are agents of, and which they had misused. That is, Law. And expounded the truth which the officers had hoped to conceal, thereby arming his fellow man with the power to protect himself.

This protection is limited. Very limited. And Jimmy ruins it perfectly. After existing as the very definition to true power for less than a minute, he reveals his true nature as a petty, small minded man by insulting the officer. And we see a deeper truth begin to reveal itself before Jimmy is saved by the stranger doing a drive-by (perhaps this was planed by Jimmy, but I doubt it). The officer was prepared to beat the living shit out of Jimmy, and most likely his fellow man as well, and then arrest them both for what ever he wanted to arrest them for. And he would have gotten away with it, because the hideous truth revealed in that brief moment before the drive-by was that the only reason he had not already begun the beating was because Jimmy had temporarily dazzled him with his knowledge of the law and his fearlessness in confronting the cop. The power which produced the comic book, and which the cops attempted to abuse, is ultimately on side of the cops. That is, Law (though truly, the truth Jimmy exposes is deeper than law). A fiction agreed upon by the masses (once they are instructed on what to believe) and then instructed to believe it is truth. It is fiction. A puff of smoke. To affirm that it is real is a deception. To affirm that an action is ‘right’ or ‘true’ because it is ‘law’ is a deception.

Deception is a fear response.  It is seen in individuals who believe they cannot rely on truth, because if they did they would be without power. The deceptions used by the two officers, as well as the federal government in the production of the comic, exposes a fear in them of losing power. Indeed, it exposes that they are already powerless.  When Jimmy faces the officers he stands on truth alone, a thin ledge of truth perhaps but truth nonetheless, and thus he exemplifies true power. This truth is the simple fact that the man being harassed did not have to speak. A truth so obvious that the power embodying the two police officers allows for it. It has no choice, to claim that a person must speak to the police would be ridiculous. The illusion of power woven by makers and enforcers of Law would collapse. Sadly, the truth he stands on is overwhelmed by the fiction which protects and empowers the police. Jimmy’s truth is enough to take away the officer’s power to bully information out of the stranger across the street (without working up a sweat or risking any injury to himself, that is). He who had used deception to hide his powerlessness (to bully) then resorted to another fear response: anger.

His anger is evident as he strides across the street. He meets Jimmy with it hoping to get a reaction from him, producing the positive feedback loop is body is so hungry for, to release his anger, to exert that most primitive power to control another. Jimmy does not give him anything though, he stands upon truth alone, and the officer is cowed. His anger begins to deplete and then Jimmy, no doubt  giddy with his own power, the power of truth, the one true power, calls out to the officer, stoking his anger anew. I do not know if Jimmy understood the position he was in or not. If he did then he truly was asking for a beating, and no matter how true his position, he was asking for the officer to release his anger, perhaps to allow himself the same release.

It is important, however, that he does this very foolish thing. The film makers wanted us to see this microcosm, as abbreviated as possible in a crunch for time. This is the Black Panther movement in a nutshell. Jimmy starts the movie with a strongly held belief about police officers that they are violent pigs. No matter how justified that opinion is, it does not change the fact that the cop was walking away when Jimmy taunted him. Jimmy, through his own will alone, created his preconceived notion. After demonstrating the higher path, that which was chosen by wiser activists such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., he showed what happens when you stray from that path and meet force with force: needless violence. Iris’ husband learned this lesson the hard way, and all the people who survive him have learned it too. All except Jimmy, who had to learn it himself, to show us. This truth, allows them to thrive in a hostile environment which proved too devious and complex for Jimmy.

Anger and Deception, both responses to the emotion Fear, a loss of power, however trivial, both attempts to take away that painful feeling.  Ask yourselves, brothers and sisters, the next time you meet these two exertions of power: “what is the fear behind this behavior?”  Understanding this will allow you to see the true power at work, as Jimmy did when he saw the officers harassing the other man. I hope you will have the strength of will to stand upon that truth and not give in, as Jimmy did, to the temptation of attempting to exerting power over someone who is already in a state of fear based anger, attempting to control the officer, to make him attack, and succeeding.  Justifying, for the officer, his own attempts to control others amplifying and affirming his anger. Do not forget, brothers, sisters, as Jimmy did (I think) that this truth upon which you stand can be precarious. The power of truth can be wholey eclipsed by the power of fiction. But fiction stands upon belief, which stands upon a persons will to believe. Truth stands upon nothing, it is its own foundation, and it remains even despite any number of opinions to the contrary.

When I was very young I used to go fishing with my step dad, John.  I sat beside him in a small metal boat as he demonstrated how to hook a worm. He was an experienced fisherman and made the gruesome business look simple, even painless (one two, one two, and through and through).  The worm hardly seemed to notice, it wriggled around exactly as it had been before being plucked from it’s tub of soil and impaled on a hook. None could tell if the wriggling meant anything at all.  He dropped his hook into the water and it was my turn. I picked a worm at random from the tub. Perhaps my hands were too small or too clumsy but pinching it between two fingers, as John had done, was not enough.  It took five fingers and all my concentration to contain its agonized writhing.  It, The Worm, who had no power whatsoever to comprehend its new position in the world, or to save itself from the imminent horrors about to be inflicted upon it, squirmed frantically. A worm is a simple thing, one imagines its desires are to stay moist and crawl around in dirt eating whatever worms eat. It found none of this clutched in my dry, salty, hands. It wished to return to a state where things made sense, it’s home, where sensory data corresponded to established patterns allowing it to navigate  its would and flex it’s Will to Power. It would not hold still, so I held it tighter. The wrinkles circling its form inverted as the pressure in its body increased to the point of exceeding the strength of one of it’s two ends, and all at once, all that was once contained within the skin of the worm was evacuated onto my thigh.

Something between a liquid soaking into my jeans, and solid, definite forms which once constituted a whole, still pulsing, still squirming with a purpose. The ruined pitiful creature still held its desires intact. Still held memories of moist, cool darkness, of safety somewhere beyond the salty claws of this idiot god who had arbitrarily chosen it for hell. It still fought. I sensed in its scattered constituents that this desire to return to that state of order, now fragmented, would, if added up, amount to an even more innocent desire- that to simply be whole again. to be gathered back up and placed back on its normal path. Never mind that distant home, it would gladly squirm in my hostile grip for the rest of its days so long as it could BE again.

“lets us return to that place where ‘we’ were called ‘I’. lets us return to that home where each of us worked together to make a humble miracle squirm happy and free, where the burden and loneliness of individuation was an unknown unknown.”

That home which had been flung into the water by reflex and with a disgusted terror, and a girlish scream, to be devoured without hesitation by the fish down below. I stood up in the boat and nearly fell out frantically flapping my jeans, sending the former tenants down where, presumably, they faced even greater divisions before finally becoming parts of a new whole.

Journal Entry 4/25/15

Trying to read With in a budding grove, so that I am ahead, but this grave shift is so boring that every time I start to read I fall asleep. I think I will work on my close reading, I will have to print it out tomorrow. I really enjoyed the interaction with the narrator and Elstir. It reminds me of a big brother showing his little brother the way, I don’t know why it just does. Elstir is not at all the same person as the painter was portrayed to be in fact I don’t think many people realize at first who Elstir is, I know I didn’t. The painter was a whiny, rude and opinionated follower. He was young and impressionable. Elstir has obviously grown up, he is more mature. I think that he realizes that a lot of what he did in his youth was wrong, like painting the picture of Odette, which he hides when his wife comes in to the room. I am so nervous to read on Monday, I know I will be tired.

Journal Entry for 4/15/15 and Follow up 4/24/15

We started watching the Sorrow and the Pity today. I am pretty sure I don’t like it. The movie is made in 1969, less than twenty years after Hitler and not one of these men ever says you know what why did this happen? Why did one man have the ability to turn a country against people? Maybe I just am naive, maybe I just don’t get it, but never the less it is still disgusting. The man with the cigar at his daughters wedding just annoyed me. He seemed to be so pompous, so irritating. I took his attitude to be like, Yeah I killed people so what I was told to. I know that during war it happens, but to to almost eradicate a group of people is barbaric.  The memories of all the people interviewed (with the exception of the school teachers) were so vivid, many of the men interview in the small village and the gentleman with his family, seemed to really want to talk about what happened. What the women in the barber shop said was so powerful, the emotion was raw. When she said that she spent 15 years in jail for something she didn’t do, I was appalled. There were so many people doing things that should have put them in jail, but they didn’t see any time. This movie was sad, and informative, I feel that it gave me more to think about in terms of war, and standing up for what is right. Most of the people interviewed seemed to be remorseful, with the exception of the gentleman with the cigar, he didn’t seemed to care he answered questions evasively

Journal Entry 4/10/15

Dora Bruder was a fast read. There was a lot of questions that were not answered. For me it seemed that the writer was obsessed with the idea of finding information about Dora. What is interesting is while were are reading this book we are also reading A Swanns Way, where the main character is also obsessed with a women, however each man is obsessed in different. Well as I write this I am surprised that actually they have more similarities that I realized. Both want answers to what happen, or has happened and both want to know about the future. We see some of each mans past. Patrick Modiano was like searching for answers he would never find.

Journal Entry 4/8/15

There is a part in Swanns Way (pg. 202-206) where the narrator writes about burying memories. Swann has gone to visit Odette but she tell him she does’t feel well and that he should leave. He  think Odette is keeping something from him. He starts to obsess in his head. What is she doing, was someone hiding in Odettes house while he was there? Swann decides to go and knock on her window like he did when they were first in love. He thinks he hears a mans voice. It ends up being the wrong window, and then leaves. ” He never spoke to her of this misadventure, he ceased even to think of it himself. But now and then his thought in their wondering course would come upon this memory where it lay unobserved, would startle it into life, thrust it more deeply down in to consciousness and leave him aching with a sharp far rooted pain. I have felt this pain, the pain of a memory, that you have successfully blocked away, but out of no where it will resurface and leave you immobilized in pain. I think the memories of being hurt by a spouse or lover is harder to get over. It took me two years to just stop thinking about what I went through. I was extremely obsessed with certain people, what information they could give me, I pushed away friends, family and I just was an overall mess. Swann was so obsessed with Odette that he could not function completely. It is obvious in the way the narrator tells the story that he wants the reader to get the impression that Swann is going crazy with obsession. Being wronged by someone you love or just getting that feeling that something is not right. Hurt not only the heart, but also the memory and ones capacity to function.

I found Thursday’s Lecture on Schopenhauer fascinating. I have not yet taken a philosophy class so Thursday was my first introduction to Schopenhauer. I found some of the lecture on his theories to be a bit confusing, but I took great interest in his theory that people represent fragmented bits of will, and that the wills of others are constantly in conflict. From what I understood of the lecture it seemed that Schopenhauer believed the universe to be of a single will until humans arrived on the earth. I interpreted this to mean that Schopenhauer saw the “natural world” as having a single harmonious drive, but that people brought into the world conflict because we see our individual will as being the only one of importance, and are frustrated and confused when others get in the way of us reaching our goals. Such a principal reminds me of the Theory of Mind, which is described as ones ability to understand that others are mental beings with thoughts, feelings, desires, and perspectives of their own. The Theory of Mind principal actually came to me quite a few times as I was reading Swann’s Way. During the first half of Swann’s Way Marcel is though thought to be around 9 or ten, around which age he should have already developed a fairly sound Theory of Mind, and yet he seems to lake this skill which has been deemed by  developmental psychologists as being necessary for proper social interactions. For instance, on page 109 of Swann’s Way the narrator describes his young self as not understanding why his parents would be upset about him meeting his uncle’s mistress. “How could I have thought such a thing, since I did not wish it?” he laments. He fallows this with “And I could not suppose that my parent’s would see any harm in a visit in which I myself saw none.” Such statements demonstrate how young Marcel could not understand how his will did not directly create the outcome that he desired. Schopenhauer believed that we all have problems with the concept of Theory of Mind through out our lives, and that this is why there is conflict in the world.

Proust’s series, In Search of Lost Time, seems to add a whole new dimension to Schopenhauer’s theory of conflict of will and interpersonal discord. Proust does this by having the narrator Marcel dwell repeatedly on the distinctions between the present and past selves. If our present selves are so different from our past selves, that our desires and thus wills change, how do we deal with the resulting internal conflict of wills? On page 54 of Within a Budding Grove the narrator states that “[Love creates] a supplementary person, distinct from the person whom the world knows by the same name, a person most of whose constituent elements are derived from ourselves.” Here, it is being said that love too can create a new form of our self, a form whose will is obsessed with the goal of obtaining the object of their desire. The notion that both time and love(the falling out of ) can work together to distinguish separate selves is presented on page 804 of The Fugitive. “The newcomer who would find it easy to endure the prospect of life  without Albertine had made his appearance in me… The possible advent of these new selves, which ought each to bear a different name from the preceding one, was something I had always dreaded, because of their indifference to the object of my love…” The conflict here is the distress Marcel experiences over realizing that the person he has become no longer cares for Albertine in the same way as his past self.

Schopenhauer’s philosophy of will and conflict can be applied numerous times throughout Proust’s masterpiece, not just due to the conflict of interest between the different characters, but due to the differing interests existing within a single character.

If you haven’t read The Death of the Author by Roland Barthes, I highly recommend it in conjunction with Proust’s La Recherche, and should note that it only takes around 5 minutes to finish. In the essay, Barthes is explicitly detailing what theories Proust is analyzing through the narrator, those being the functions of the critic, author, and reader. Barthes argues that the symbol of the author rises with the modern age, and it is in this symbol that we falsely attribute the explanation of their work as belonging to the author. The argument is that it is language which speaks, not the author, and it’s through the author that this language can be performed. Failures of the critics, to Barthes, was that they held the author  as an epitomized figure who was thought to “nourish the book,” rather than being  “born simultaneously with the text.” (1) The consequences of this is that genius and talent a priori seems to fall, and is rather dependent on experience and tradition. Since language is ‘finished’, what the author composes has already been finished in a theoretical dictionary. One complaint toward the critic, is that once a text is given an author, a limit is imposed on that text which allows its composition to bear an ultimate meaning, thus allowing the critic to be victorious once they discover the author. When writing becomes an act without intending to assign a secret, it becomes a revolutionary activity, “an anti-theological activity.” (2) The final point Barthes brings up is, “Thus is revealed the total existence of writing: a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation, but there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not, as was hitherto said, the author.” (3) So, with the death of the author, comes the birth of the reader, and it is only in the reader that literature is possible to exist and be deciphered.

One final note: it was nice to be able to understand this passage as a result from reading La Recherche. “Proust gave modern writing its epic. By a radical reversal, instead of putting his life into his novel, as is so often maintained, he made of his very life a work for which his own book was the model; so that it is clear to us that Charlus does not imitate Montesquiou but that Montesquiou – in his anecdotal, historical reality – is no more than a secondary fragment, derived from Charlus.” (4) How can we analyze the narrator’s plight of becoming a writer, reader, and critic with this essay in mind now, and also the separation of the public/private aspects of the artist?

Bibliography

1.) Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” 1967. Essay. 2.
2.) Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” 1967. Essay. 3.
3.) Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” 1967. Essay. 4.
4.) Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” 1967. Essay. 2.

Though I am not really writing about Proust in my paper, in my research I could not help but make connections between In Search of Lost Time and research texts, including one of my YA lit primary sources, John Green’s Looking for Alaska. I have a theory that LFA is a simplified, contemporary retelling of the story of Marcel and Albertine. Here are my reasons, some more superficial than others:

• Green’s characters are named Miles and Alaska. In my experience, the retention of first letters is a common practice when changing characters’ names for a retelling.
• The overall story arc and some characterization: Miles is obsessed with Alaska from first sight, though she is not particularly interested in him except as a friend. Alaska is incredibly charming to all around her. Miles’s obsession grows and grows over a relatively short time: September to February of a single school year. Then, Alaska dies ambiguously—maybe an accident, maybe suicide. Miles’s obsession grows exponentially as he tries to solve the mystery of her death, and the mysteries of her life that eluded him when she was still around. Sound familiar?
• Miles’s flattening of Alaska from a complex and subjective individual into a two-dimensional image of Woman and Romance (a topic of my essay) parallels Marcel’s treatment of Albertine.
• The story takes place over a limited time, at a remove from parents, though instead of being summer at a resort it is a school year at a boarding school in Alabama.
• Alaska is not orphaned, but she did lose her mother very young. Meanwhile, Miles has a very secure and stable family that he is merely temporarily separated from. Familiar again.
• The book’s attempt to put pressure on the concept of romantic obsession and romantic (rather than sexual) objectification, though it is not very successful (another topic of my essay), is similar to some of the larger themes permeating not just the Albertine storyline, but also ISOLT as a whole.

Of course, it is also possible that the trope of romantic obsession is simply old and common enough that Green need not have intentionally or even unintentionally retold Marcel and Albertine’s story for these commonalities to emerge. Certainly at least Alaska falls into the category of the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” character, a trope that is very common in contemporary media and may have earlier roots. Albertine is arguably too well-developed as a character to be categorized as an MPDG, but Marcel’s perspective on her is definitely related to that trope. So perhaps these commonalities are not specific enough to make a case for LFA as a retelling. Maybe I will try to ask the author since he has a fairly responsive online presence. It’s worth a try. I will update if anything comes of it!

There’s a specific moment when I was in the fourth grade that I remembered when I was younger.  I was brushing my teeth ain the bathroom and so was my brother.  I had an intense question that was weighing on my mind, I asked my brother, “What if what you’re seeing is different from what I’m seeing?”  I was asking a question that was essentially about how our minds perceived the world.  How our eyes may see different things, or hear differences but we can’t vocalize them to one another because it can’t escape the reality we’ve created.  At the time though, this was something that I couldn’t really understand or name.

In relation to Proust I identify with the narrator in his novel, when he was a young man living in Combray.  I was caught up in deep emotions, thoughts that I couldn’t quite name or understand.  I would fixate on specific people, places, thoughts and ideas.  Many people told me that I was a daydreamer when I was younger, I was stuck within in my own world of thoughts and dreams.  I was so amazed by the universe and the complexity of my understanding of reality that often it would lead me to questions that none around me had the answer to.  I’m curious if engaging with a memoir will help me uncover the troubles of my youth or if it will be a fabrication that I will not understand.

Proust’s exploration of memory through fictional characters is an interesting approach.  Aren’t all the characters in memoirs portrayed as fictional, even though they’re portrayed as real people?  Remembering a specific moment and creating a story out of it may actually distance someone from the reality of the actions.