Politics of Mourning by Simon Stow
Powers of Pop: Cross-Cultural Influences Between Japanese and American Pop Cultures, 2023
Yoko Ono was born in 1933 in Tokyo, Japan. Her father was a successful banker and a frustrated mu... more Yoko Ono was born in 1933 in Tokyo, Japan. Her father was a successful banker and a frustrated musician. The Onos were extremely well off, with one critic describing her upbringing as "aristocratic." 6 Indeed, Ono would be the classmate of the Japanese Crown Prince Naruhito, and she would later date Prince Toshi, Naruhito's younger brother. 7 Hers was an upbringing immersed in Japanese culture, both high and low. From her mother, an accomplished amateur musician, she was exposed to classical Japanese music and instrumentation; from the family servants, by whom she was largely raised, she learned Japanese songs and folk tales. 8 Her later singing style, notes Steve Holtje, was deeply influenced by Noh theaterthe Japanese dance-drama that stretches back to the fourteenth century-and Gagaku, the music of the imperial court; 9 while Miya Masaoka draws parallels between Ono's musical approach and Japanese Kabuki, and the story-singing style that accompanies the biwa, a short-necked Japanese lute. 10 Over the course of her education, she would become knowledgeable about I Ching, Noh, Zen, and other Eastern philosophical and cultural traditions. 11 This background would become vitally important during her early years in New York when she would make ends meet by lecturing on Japanese culture to American audiences. 12 Even amidst this traditionally Japanese upbringing, however, she was also exposed to considerable Western, and especially American, influences. Yoko's father had a keen interest in Western music that stretched from the liturgical sounds of the church-through the works of experimental
American Mourning. Tragedy, Democracy, Resilience, 2017
American Political Science Review, 2010
What does the furor over the “politicization” of Coretta Scott…
Perspectives on Politics, 2012
The New Orleans Katrina Memorial is located at the upper end of Canal Street, an inexpensive and ... more The New Orleans Katrina Memorial is located at the upper end of Canal Street, an inexpensive and relatively short trolley car ride from the city's tourist hub in the French Quarter. Despite its ease of access, and close proximity to the more famous cemeteries to which tourists regularly make pilgrimage, the memorial is little visited and largely unknown, even to many of the city's own residents. In this it stands in stark contrast to the National September 11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan, which drew its millionth visitor less than four months after its opening on September 12, 2011. Recent work in political theory on memory, mourning, and memorialization—as well as Ancient Greek concerns about the same—point to the ways in which the manner of remembrance, grieving, and commemoration employed by a democratic polity help to shape political outcomes. In what follows, I trace the history and design of the New York City and New Orleans memorials to suggest the ways in which they e...
Politics of Race by Simon Stow
Black Popular Culture and Social Justice: Beyond the Culture, 2023
, Martin Luther King Jr. arrived in Los Angeles following fve nights of violence in the predomina... more , Martin Luther King Jr. arrived in Los Angeles following fve nights of violence in the predominantly Black Watts section of the city. The immediate cause of the confagration was a routine trafc stop that had escalated following a physical altercation between a Black motorist and the police, but the longer term causes included economic deprivation, poor housing, and over-policing. 1 King, however, appeared to blame Watts' Black residents for the unrest, characterizing their actions as a "blind and misguided revolt against. .. society and any authority," even as he excused the violence of the police. "[A] mob," he noted, "does not respond to reason," so it was "necessary for police power to be used to restrain it." 2 It was little surprise, then, that when he spoke to a public meeting in Watts, King was heckled and scorned. Declaring that "[a]ll over America. .. the Negroes must join hands," King was met with the retort "And burn!" 3 In 1967, Andrew Kopkind identifed King's irrelevance in the aftermath of such violence. "The responsibility of the intellectual is [now] the same as that of the street organizer, the draft resister, the Digger: to talk to people, not about them. The important literature now is the underground press, the speeches of Malcolm, the works of Fanon, the songs of the Rolling Stones and Aretha Franklin. The rest all sounds like the Moynihan Report and Time-Essay, explaining everything, understanding nothing, changing no one." 4 King, however, remained wedded to a high-minded faith in the promise of America's institutions. Just as he championed "the magnifcent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence," in his 1963 "Address to the March in Washington" (556), on the eve of his assassination he demanded that White America "[b]e true to what you said on paper." 5 Such pleas increasingly fell on deaf ears, with popular culture proving more radical and infuential than the speeches of politicians and public fgures who purported to speak for the race. Among those talking to the people and not about them was the spokenword/musical group the Watts Prophets. Part of the "Watts Renaissance"
A Fistful of Politics: The Western and Political Thought, 2023
Comedy too knows about Justice; and what I say will be shocking but it will be right.-Aristophane... more Comedy too knows about Justice; and what I say will be shocking but it will be right.-Aristophanes, The Acharnians Soon after it began showing Mel Brooks's 1974 classic comedy Western Blazing Saddles in July 2020, the streaming service HBO Max quietly added a short introduction to the movie presented by Jacqueline Smith, a professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. Not quite a disclaimer-unlike her introduction to Gone with the Wind, the only other film to which HBO felt it necessary to append an explanatory note-Stewart's foreword to Blazing Saddles sought to "ensure that the film was put into the proper social context." More specifically, Stewart sought to explain that although the film was rife with racist language and attitudes, "those attitudes are espoused by characters who are explicitly portrayed here as narrowminded ignorant bigots." 1 Not only did the film not endorse these attitudes, she suggested, it
The Journal of American Culture, 2023
American Political Theory, 2017
Arguing that the political theorist Danielle Allen and the rock musician Bruce Springsteen offer ... more Arguing that the political theorist Danielle Allen and the rock musician Bruce Springsteen offer similar analyses of the causes of, and solutions to, America's racial divide, this article employs Springsteen's music and his efforts to model his relationship with Clarence Clemons as an example for the broader American polity to consider the plausibility of Allen's claims about interracial friendship as a source of political reconstitution. Detailing the criticism of the friendship model of racial politics set out by Benjamin DeMott, and the more specific criticism of Allen's formulation offered by Lawrie Balfour, it argues that considering Springsteen's work as a practical embodiment of Allen's theory suggests not only that Allen fails to surmount such critiques but also that the problems of Springsteen's relationship with Clemons indicate further ways in which friendship, as a form of citizenship, is an inadequate solution to the political problems of race that Allen identifies.
Post-45, 2018
In Stamped from Beginning, Ibram X. Kendi observes that the black characters in Harper Lee's 1960... more In Stamped from Beginning, Ibram X. Kendi observes that the black characters in Harper Lee's 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird "come across as spectators, waiting and hoping and singing for a White savior, and thankful for the moral heroism of lawyer Atticus Finch." There had, he continues, "been no more popular racist relic of the enslavement period than the notion that Black people must rely on Whites to bring them their freedom." 1 Just as the novel's black characters are depicted as servants to whitesas maids, housekeepers, field hands, and trash collectorsthey seem to function in the novel as servants to a story of white heroism and moral growth. 2 At best they are only partially sketched: Calpurniaworking mother, grandmother, Finch family housekeeper, pillar of Maycomb's black community, and arguably the most prominent African American character in the texthas no surname, neither in Mockingbird, nor in the subsequently published Go Set a Watchman; nor, it seems, does she have a husband, a partner, or a father to her children. 3 Offering what may be a first in Harper Lee criticisma reading focused on a black characterthis essay situates Calpurnia within her textual and historical context to suggest answers to longstanding, but little reflected on, concerns about her family heritage and the paternity of her son Zeebo. In so doing, it argues that Mockingbird offers a more sophisticated account of black women's social and political agency in the periods in which the novel was set, written, and largely read, than has generally been acknowledged. Indeed, Lee's novel recreates for the reader the experience of social relationships in small southern towns, showing us what white readerslike the white citizens of such towns, and of the nation of which they are a partmust ignore in the interests of maintaining certain dominant racial understandings. 4 That the racially-driven tensions underpinning these relationships are more prominently displayed in Watchman than Mockingbird means that reading the first-published novel along with, and through, the first-written one might offer attentive and historically informed readers a more complex understanding of the issues of race, sex, and political agency faced by the black characters in Lee's work; and, indeed, by African Americans in the world beyond it. I begin by addressing two issues of methodological concern. First, the relationship between the written world of the text and the unwritten world in which it is produced: that which permits the critic to employ the novel's historical context as a hermeneutical lens through which to view the text without reducing literature to history or sociology. 5 Second, the relationship between Lee's novels, and how each mightor might notbe used to illuminate and/or support claims about the other. Building on Jennifer Murray's suggestion that by "interrogating the 'unsaids' of the novel's discourses ... we might best discover whether the mockingbird really does have anything to tell us about history, about otherness about ourselves," I then show how the dominant readings of Calpurnia, in both Mockingbird and Watchman, overlook aspects of her life that, when placed in their proper historical context, reveal much more about her existence than has hitherto been suggested. 6 These details, I argue, may serve to mitigate the white savior narrative by situating Calpurnia as an actor in her own drama. History, Palimpsest, and Method While literary texts cannot simply be reduced to the historical, readers inevitably bring historical knowledge to their readings. When, for example, Scout's school mate, Cecil Jacobs, gives his in-class presentation on Hitler's treatment of the Jews, readers with a basic grasp of twentieth-century history will be aware that he is alluding to the rise of the Nazi Party in 1930s Germany. The more knowledgeable might recognize that the timing of Cecil's accountlate September or early to mid-October 1935-suggests that his presentation on "Current Events," concerns the passing of the Nuremburg Laws. 7 Others might further note that the Nuremburg Laws were themselves modeled on American lawspredicated upon the pseudo-science of eugenicsaimed at achieving racial purity. Such historical attentiveness highlights, and makes more resonant, the novel's theme of white hypocrisy, depicting whites as decrying oppression of a religious minority abroad, while engaged in the oppression of a racial minority at home. 8 The value of such historical contextualization is further suggested by the detailed knowledge of American legal history that Lee displays in her fiction. Atticus Finch's otherwise incomprehensible optimism about Tom Robinson's chances of a successful appeal is, for example, explained by the Supreme Court's ruling on April 1, 1935, in P45 Post45 is a collective of scholars working on American literature and culture since 1945. The group was founded in 2006 and has met annually since to discuss new work in the field.
Perspectives on Politics, 2012
Politics of Literature by Simon Stow
Philosophy & Literature, 2021
What does the impossible location of Finch's Landing tell us about the moral pedagogy of To Kill ... more What does the impossible location of Finch's Landing tell us about the moral pedagogy of To Kill a Mockingbird? Rejecting the claim that the novel calls for us to place ourselves in another's shoes, I argue that it actually exposes the weakness of this mechanism as a resource for moral action. Instead, the novel seeks to demonstrate that such action requires a kind of engaged critical re ection, one called for by a text that makes far more signi cant demands on the reader than many have recognized. The location of Finch's Landing is the key to understanding the whole text. Seriously.
Anq-a Quarterly Journal of Short Articles Notes and Reviews, Nov 2, 2020
That spring was a good one: the days grew longer and gave us more playing time. Jem's mind was oc... more That spring was a good one: the days grew longer and gave us more playing time. Jem's mind was occupied mostly with the vital statistics of every college football player in the nation. Every night Atticus would read us the sports pages of the newspapers. Alabama might go to the Rose Bowl again this year, judging from its prospects, not one of whose names we could pronounce (Lee 126).
What is the proper role for literature in political thought and analysis? Can reading novels make... more What is the proper role for literature in political thought and analysis? Can reading novels make us better citizens of a liberal democratic society? What is the status of argument and reason in an academy dominated by readings and redescriptions? Simon Stow identifies a potentially detrimental literary turn in the contemporary academy, arguing that the study of literature and the study of politics have become somewhat indistinguishable enterprises. Drawing on the work of Judith Butler, Terry Eagleton, Martha Nussbaum, and Richard Rorty, he examines the problematic claims, circular reasoning, and misplaced assumptions that underpin this disciplinary merging, and seeks to defend political philosophy and social science against the rival claims of literature and literary criticism as sources of political insight and construction
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http://post45.research.yale.edu/2018/01/the-other-finch-family-atticus-calpurnia-zeebo-and-black-womens-agency-in-to-kill-a-mockingbird-and-go-set-a-watchman/