Teaching Journal: A Nonsensical Rant on Teaching Ancient Literature to Ninth Graders

Uncredited Photograph of a Road

Why None of My Students "Dig" Homer (Or Virgil) 

I finally figured out why none of my students likes the Odyssey or the Iliad, or the Aeneid (except in an anti-nostalgic, oh yeah, my parents read that in High School, kind of way; or oh yeah, I am supposed to like this story because my grandfather read it in the original Greek, or oh yeah, someone told me it was good; I'm supposed to like it, like I am supposed to like Catcher in the Rye because my English teacher read it as an adolescent).

There are better narratives to pursue. That’s why. 
I would love to teach Six Feet Under as an epic - or Angel the Vampire with a soul - or even heck, Mio, my Mio by Lindgren. I am flipping tired of Odysseus. He was an unlikeable twat. I really don't like him anymore. Why do we stick to the tried and true "classics"? Folks are swayed by better narratives that fit their current milieu, but we still drill them with Macbeth and Julius Caesar. Here I am teaching about the rage of Achilles where most kids have figured that out living with themselves nowadays is tantamount To Achilles’ rage. I don’t need to teach an ancient greek epic for them to figure out their own narcissistic tendencies. Now, granted, as a ninth grader, I loved the tale of the Odyssey, but my teacher was unique. She did not care if we actually “read” the book. What she would do is weave stories in class based on the epic story relating to events in real life. For example: Penelope. She would talk about the plight of the single mother—something we could relate to in the classroom, because a majority of us came from single family homes. But, even the kids who didn’t read got the gist of what my teacher was saying and passed the tests. Here I am teaching the Odyssey, about a man longing for home, but most kids don’t have a home (at least in the metaphysical sense of the word) so the story is lost on them in the reading, only to come alive when I mention that perspective.
 

But, I am being hyperbolic. 
Both the Odyssey and the Iliad are vibrant tales. Home, loss, anger, curses, fathers, mothers, sex, honesty, revenge, you name it. The issue isn’t the brilliance of this ancient epic, but rather, the children I teach are already subsumed in their own epics. I know I am going to get fire for saying this, but TV shows nowadays—if you scan through them — have their own brand of epic tonality that beats the Ancient Greeks. Take for example Skins — a brilliant TV series from the BBC. The beginning scenes of its first episode about a Telemachus named Tony— the shenanigans of a British teenager—beat out the tumultuous fatherloss of Telemachus in the first four books of the Odyssey. Like I said, it is not that the ancient epics were not good—but heck—I am trying to teach a beautiful epic here, where kids are completely toned out. They won’t read the thing, save for a few of them, who are secretly bitter that they are the only ones reading. I have too much to compete with: Madea, Fuel, Adult Swim, American Idol (okay, here I will say the ancient epics are paramount). I am not sure anymore what makes a narrative great. I am not sure anymore about the CANNON.
 

I will parse my argument out better here: 

... take the epic of the Odyssey. What do we want to teach when we introduce this story? Home? Right? Isn’t that the core of the story? the return home? Why the Odyssey? Why can’t we teach the same theme with something like Skins? I really don’t understand. It is funny: because an epic is more than a thousand years old, it’s legit. But, god forbid we teach a story that is only a few months old. The naysayers will say the ancient epics are better written. But, I say that is a bunch of bulls*&^. I could create a lesson that teaches everything I already teach using film and popular culture: heroes, antagonists metanoia, epiphany, journey, inner journey, archetype, you name it. I think if I teach Ancient Lit again, I am going to only teach the Odyssey, Gilgamesh, and Oedipus Rex as primary texts. Everything else will be excerpts, mixed in with television: Angel, Six Feet Under, Dexter, and Welcome to the Dollhouse. 

What do you think? How do I teach the themes of Ancient Literature? Is it still relevant? Post your comments.

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Poem: "apple-faced kids"

when the clock sounds

the apple-faced kids

rush to class

not to learn

but to whiz in their heads

the wonders of the world

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Apple's New Creation (and I hope it's not called an iPad)

A company known for its draconian tactics to protect internal secrets, Apple is expected to announce its new creation tomorrow (which was sent out to "friends" last week but cannot be found on Apple's site).
Everyone is abuzz. Since Christmas, I have been reading blog forecasts about the secret Apple device. What's it going to be? Apple remains mute. The consensus among the technorati seems to be some kind of multi-touch super-sized iPod on steroids running a version of the Mac OS X operating system.

As David Pogue wrote in his blog, quoting Robert Burns, “There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing.” The certainty is so certain all of us are in some kind of suspended state of uncertainty: "What's it going to be?!" I have never experienced such a paradox: an emphatic declaration of a device's existence that may or may not exist. When journalists write about the iPad (I hope they don't name it this, as Mad TV humorously demonstrated), iSlate, iTablet, Mac Tablet, MacBook Touch - or whatever the damn thing's going to be called - it is usually prefaced with the epithet "the probable" or "expected" Apple miracle device. Are we talking about an unidentified flying object or a real thing? I dunno.

The device (which may or may not exist) has been deemed to have any number of features:

• a Kindle killer
vendors will allow consumers to download lush, color graphic books, magazines, and newspapers. I must say if I can read National Geographic in full color and swipe the pages with my finger I want an iThingy too. 

• a Nexus One killer
 If the new device signs on with Verizon who's going to want a Nexus One? I really doubt though that people who will have bought a Nexus One anyway are going to drop it for Apple.

• Video Game Console Killer  
Adolescents and twenty-somethings will supposedly be wowed by the device which will undoubtedly beat anything the Playstation can do (Grand Theft Auto anyone?)

• and even a laptop killer

 Well, if all you do is search the net and check email, then yes a multi-touch device would be an adequate replacement. But, anything more than that, in my humble opinion, is going to need a laptop or a desktop.    

I have read it may have the following features:

• a 3G network with Verizon
• a webcam
• an extended iTunes App store
• games
• streaming TV
• media content from HarperCollins
• the ability to teleport users to fourth dimensions (joking, obviously on the latter)

Whatever "the creation" is, I have the same sinking suspicion as David Pogue, that "there are some aspects, some angles, that nobody’s guessed." Apple has been notorious in the past for concealing its hidden angles. Throughout the company's history, Apple has revealed products that wow the masses and changed the status quo. Here are some notable game-changing features Apple has wowed us with in the past:

• The GUI of the first Macintosh in 1983. The smiley Mac face hits shelves.
  
• OS X (a radical departure from OS 9). Apple starts clean. For real.
  
• the iPod
  
• and, of course, and perhaps most emphatically, the iPhone.

With the company's successes, however, there have been some notable guffaws, 

• the Newton (which seems to be the closest product matching tomorrow's rumored gadget) 
• or the Cube. Now, even though the Cube was a failure, Apple persisted and came up with the Mini. So, if tomorrow's device is some kind of tablet PC, hopefully, it will forgive the tarnish of the Newton.

Amidst the mass of speculation, I think I can offer one piece of clear, objective fact. Whatever is unveiled at tomorrow's press conference in San Francisco will inevitably face the trial of the hoi polloi. If the announcement does not live up to its hype, then Cupertino will surely suffer. People will be quick to say, "Apple has lost its ability to produce cutting-edge products." If the product dazzles, then Apple shares will exponentially rise. But: here is the rub. How quickly can Apple's Research and Development team concoct the next WOW device before the public gets bored of this one (which is not even out yet!)? Apple has always been able to foresee a market niche even before the market realizes such a niche exists. Case in point is the iPhone. Apple realized creating content for the mobile web was the way go even though many phones on the market only had measly WAP access to the net.

Apple's greatest strength is its weakness. Can it continue to foresee market trends? With Google now in on the hardware market, I think Apple will have a tough time in the future staying above the rest. I personally do not think they have lost their edge.

My own prognostication is that tomorrow's device will surely wow us. We will be impressed. I have a hunch though, that by Christmas 2010, the technorati will be buzzing again about another fabled Apple device. The question is, can Apple keep up with this game? What will the rumors be in six months? The flexible Apple device that fits in the palm of your hand, feels like a book, but miraculously is made up of tiny nanomites that feed its internal architecture (thanks GI Joe)!

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Poem: "nursing home"

 

her lying, sheets thin, mattress barely a support

she dying

glistening fluorescent light a harsh reveal

of her ruddy body, bare

save for the taffeta pajamas,

a crispy swath of rose embers,

issued by a crisis,

yet, her mouth curved a bit, sitting next to her—so low—

i felt gravity’s relentless tug

and she curved, wincing at the pain,

although it hurt; a scissor-like pain throughout her entire frame,

she said it was okay;

her hair, long and brown like spaghetti string,

matted by the months of neglectful uncombing;

her beauty an archetypal beauty, matching the faces of every woman who was,

his, an is, an unmediated face of pathos lines, matching every face of those who are

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Fragment: The Moon Shines Bright

Stolen Shot: Midnight Cowboy

One of the best on-location street scenes in movie history was actually an accident (although there are some naysayers who say the shot was scripted). When "Ratso" Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman) yells, "I'm walking here!" to a New York City taxi driver in Midnight Cowboy (1969), the cabbie was a real-life cabbie. To save money, Director John Schlesinger did not file a permit with the city to use the Midtown Manhattan street for his film. The scene is a "stolen shot," which in film rhetoric means the director did not get official permission to shoot on a city street. The pedestrians are real New Yorkers, not extras. Their surprise is not canned. The cameramen were poised in a van a block away, shooting the scene. The cab driver is an actual pissed off cab driver. No extras on set.
Hoffman is brilliant in this scene. He does not break character. He keeps Ratso's limp intact (evidently Hoffman kept pebbles in his shoe to keep his limp consistent for every shot). His cigarette falls to the ground; he doesn't bother to pick it up. When his buddy (John Voight) looks stunned, Hoffman pulls him along by the arm. Hoffman's adlib is perfect; after a near brush with a yellow cab, he keeps it hot, muttering in character, "Actually, that ain't a bad way to pick up insurance, you know"; you can tell Voight is a little surprised by the interruption, but even still, he stays in character.

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Me, describing him

"when I look at him now —

face scrunched into the shape of an oval —

he thinks with his jaw set"

— me, describing him

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The Problem of the "Innocent Child" (Thanks, James R. Kincaid)

Shirly Temple 
image credit: movieactors

The notion of the “innocent child” is a powerful narrative in the West, so much so, we forget it is even a narrative to begin with. The Romantic child (boy or girl) historically has been around since the Greeks, immortalized by Sappho and also the Greek epigramists. This image of the child, unmediated and innocent is typical of the poetry of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience and William Wordsworth’s child of spontaneous, overflowing emotion in the “Prelude” but also, the image, at least partly, of Thomas Mann’s Tadzio in Death in Venice and Nietzsche’s Romantic depiction of the child as the pure child and bringer of a new philosophy in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. But, it was Jean Jacques Rousseau who made the claim that the child exists a priori in a state of innocence “in nature” which in time, through puberty, is corrupted a posteriori by the mediating forces of “society.” Rousseau famously advised nannies to allow children to wear loose-fitting clothes (or no clothes at all) so they would not be constricted by anything other than their unmediated innocence. Rousseau wrote controversially that children are not inflicted with Original Sin but are born innately innocent and pure. He made the then radical claim that Original Sin is an erroneous doctrine. Taint is not inherent on the soul of a newborn, but, the soul becomes corrupted by a misguided society. For Rousseau, the innate innocence of the child must be preserved through careful education. Education is what maintains innocence along with the child’s developing consciousness. For Rousseau, then, there is a general suspicion of nurture. In Rousseau’s Romantic (and I use this word purposefully, and critically) political vision, the good state is inscribed within a social contract that works to protect and preserve the inherent goodness of children.  It is an unguided introduction to society that corrupts the child and separates it from nature, thus distancing the child from an original innocence, its true and unfettered state.

One of my favorite cultural critics who explored further the idea of innate innocence is James Kincaid. He wrote a book called  Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting. In this book he argues once "adults" name the child innocent, such naming empties the child of a meaningful signifier. "Innocence," then, becomes a metaphor for an empty container, a blank face, devoid of substance which can be filled in by the adult’s desires. The innocent child is the “present” child — the ubiquitous Shirley Temple — who by being shed of experience, of sexuality, is in fact made to be molested. It seems in the West we are at odds with the binary of erotic/innocence. We cannot seem to reconcile ourselves with this strange pairing. Kincaid argues that the very construct of "innocence" is paradoxically warped to mean "protection" against experience but also, simultaneously, a disavowal of the child as inherently erotic. He uses some great examples from popular culture: the Home Alone kid: both cute, cunning, but utterly innocent. Shirley Temple, of course. Jean Bennet Ramsey. Poor thing. She was made both to be erotic and innocent. You can't have your cake and eat it too, kids.
I guess we could blame it on our Judeo-Christian heritage but, it does not take long to look into "recent" history: just look at the Genesis account of Adam and Eve (or at least how it has been interpreted). We were once innocent, until some dame messed things up for us. We were happy naked and in union with God. We got knowledge and now we're screwed. Seen from the view of the Fall, we've been trying to get back to the garden ever since (thanks Joni Mitchell). What a perfect scapegoat is the child (and the woman). They look kinda cute: a perfect face to throw all of our hopes and insipid wishes for innocence on them - poor, innocent creatures! So what has been created as a sort of compromise?! Well, adolescence of course. At first we were happy with merely the child/adult dyad, with the emphasis on the adult. It could be argued that the only truly human being in the West for thousands of years was the blue-eyed, blond hair man. The child? Not even considered as subject. The supposed invention of the child, as distinct from the adult, apparently is an eighteenth century invention that did not exist even as recent as the Middle Ages, according to the cultural historian Philip Ariès in his book, Centuries of Childhood. So, we go ahead and create the child three hundred years ago and then, to add insult to injury, create the adolescent. An even further blurring of the lines. It is no wonder that we are wee bit confused. But, that is fodder for another discussion.

The Good Son: the duality is brought out ad absurdam in the film, The Good Son (1993) also starring the kid from Home Alone, in a complete role reversal. From cutesy kid to serial killer. Mark, a boy of about nine or ten, played by Elijah Wood is sent to stay with his Uncle and Aunt in Maine after the death of his mother.  He quickly learns that his cousin Henry (Culkin) is in fact evil. He shoots dogs, wears a spooky paper-maché mask, drowns his brother, almost kills his sister, and attempts to push his mother over a dangerous precipice.  The movie, with cute child actors to boot, is almost certainly playing on the innocence/experience duality, the virtuous, innocent boy versus the abject opposite, an evil child, with no apparent explanation to why he does the cruelty he does — and why, no one, except Mark, Elijah Wood’s character, realizes his evilness. It is as if the child has to be either completely one or the other: any venture into the gray is taboo.
    Mark, the good child, is all-knowing and incredibly intuitive.  When his mother dies in the first scene, he is literally committed to the belief that she will not leave him, and, almost immediately, transfers the mother image to his aunt, as if he knows this must be the case.  We do not agree with his logic, perhaps, but we cheer his innocent intuition and allow it to endear him to ourselves, thus creating a convenient matrix to explain the Mother/Aunt Son/Nephew bonding.
    The evil child is also all-knowing and incredibly intuitive, but he uses his “gifts” to curse, convince people to fly, smoke cigarettes (the epitome of evil?) — and we are made to revel in this only as a ploy to convince us that he really ought to die!  Both boys, consequently, are inverses of each other: Culkin is blonde, blue-eyed and light, the other, Wood, is brown-haired, blue-eyed and darker complexion. In the movie’s final scene, as James Kincaid brilliantly observed (and I am ashamed to say I have capitalized on his argument), the mother dangles both boys from a Maine precipice in the hopes of saving both children, ostensibly her sons.  Her strength is not enough to hoist both children up, so she has to let one of them go to save the other or risk losing both.  What would you do?  Do you destroy the good child or the evil child?  As James Kincaid notes, audiences cheered when she destroyed the evil child (159-60) and we thought nothing of it, deeply satisfied she did the deed. It is as if the film is stating not quite subtly, we can now wash our hands of the problem once and for all.  We have saved the good child from obliteration and we somehow seem sated by this fact.
Is there an alternative narrative? I wonder, is there a narrative out there that does not fall into this duality Rousseau set up for us so long ago? Is there a way out? In the present narrative, the child is discarded (like the Wild Child of Averyon) or is the child beatified (the child of innocence)? Kincaid suggests at the end of his book that to free ourselves from the current narrative we must free ourselves from suspicion, from repression, from nonsensical legalities and the like that threaten to blind us from the child qua child. Stay tuned. Peace.

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Mental Health Resource: Stress Fact Sheet

What is stress? Stress is the body’s response to its environment when it feels threatened or challenged. All higher order mammals (with a functioning pre-frontal cortex) respond to stressors in its environment with either a “fight or flight” response. If I unsuspectingly walk into a house and stumble upon a snake slithering across the floor, my body’s pituitary glands will secrete adrenaline into the cardiovascular system and I will jump back, startled. The body’s stress response can be triggered by any number of external factors, “real or imaginary.” For example, when a student feels a professor is too demanding, the same scenario can enact the same adrenaline rush.
Stress is also highly subjective. People respond to job demands, friendships and expectations differently. In helping someone cope with stress, it can be helpful to help the person say out loud how they perceive stress in their life. Never be afraid to ask. Improperly managed stress can cause serious medical or psychological problems, high blood pressure, or even stomach ulcers. We got get out what we feel. Coping strategies are only as good as a person’s own storehouse of internal resources and a healthy ability to self-reflect. Once a person can learn what is causing the stressful situation, they can then marshall their own resources to cope.
Unnecessary expectations and requirements: Sometimes, stuff piles on and we can feel the world is pushing down on us like a thumb on a tack. Does our boss make unreasonable demands by giving unclear or impossible requirements? Are daily plans frequently disrupted? Internal homeostasis — that is, their level of equilibrium — has been unduly disturbed if demands are impossible to meet. If you hold your fist closed and held it closed for a month, after a certain period of time you would being to feel pain. When your body is that “tight”, the stress will manifest itself physically. Studies have shown that the bigger the consequence for failure the more stress one can expect.
Chronic stress. In some cases, a healthy amount of stress can encourage people to perform better than if they had an open window for completion of a project. The problem to keep in mind is chronic stress. Chronic stress pervasively and consistently inhibits our ability to succeed. Chronic stress is dangerous and can cause serious human and spiritual formation problems.
Need for Validation: Lack of recognition of achievement can cause even the most hardy of us to feel stressed out. People require healthy doses of positive reinforcement, especially when it comes from others who mean the most to us. Students, for example, perform better when they know and are told they are doing a good job by their teacher. Also, having good friends to share your life and stories with is vital for healthy psycho-social development. A good sense of how we “play” (how we enjoy our relationship with others), especially with our mentors, peers, buddies and whomever, is beneficial and essential to our human development and is a sign of our capacity for friendship and love. Lack of such dynamic support can diminish a person’s belief that they are doing well. This can lead to depression and even suicidal tendencies. More commonly, chronic stress is perhaps the largest cause of burn-out. Those who work for the church, social workers, teacher, or the “helping professions” can often take on too heavy of a workload in order to feel validated. When the body is chronically stressed, the need to isolate oneself and to limit empathic response is increased. Consider your own capacities. How easily do you get burned out? How easy is it to fall into a pattern of stressful situations because of loneliness or lack of support?

Primary Coping Strategies: behavioral approach
turn off the tv | organize your files | take notes in class | relaxation | call a supportive friend | write in a journal | team problem solving | yoga | remove distractions |
negative: harming others, harming self, destructive behavior, alcohol or drugs to self-medicate
Secondary Coping Strategies: cognitive approach
prayer | spirituality | think positive | reframing perceptions| learn from mistakes | humor | acceptance of stressor’s reality |
negative: denial of stressor, negative self-image, suicidal thoughts, mental escapism

Practical Scenario
A client comes to a shrink's office expressing concern that the architectural plans he has prepared for his immediate supervisor consistently gets sent back for a redo. The client claims that he has worked many hours to get his plans just right, including requesting outside help from colleagues and from his books. With all of his extra work, the client states that he is not achieving what the boss expects to be quality work. Because of his difficulty in giving a “good” finished product, his self-image has been tarnished and he has been questioning his ability to do well; his sexual libido has diminished and he begs off meeting with friends after work.
Questions
1. Coping mechanisms can either be primary or secondary. Primary coping strategies are direct ways we can can control our environment. Secondary coping strategies are ways we change our perceptions. How can this guy cope with his problem? Are there better coping strategies the client could employ?
2. What are the expectations of the client in this scenario? How can he reconceive the problem?
3. Can it be assumed the problem lies with the supervisor?

works cited:Johnson, John J. "STRESS IN CHILDREN." Journal of Pastoral Counseling 39 (2004): 68-87; Park, Crystal L. "Religion as a Meaning-Making Framework in Coping with Life Stress" Journal of Social Issues 61.4 (Dec. 2005): 707-729;Pector, Elizabeth A. “Professional Burnout Detection, Prevention, and Coping” Clergy Journal; Sep2005, Vol. 81 Issue 9, p19-20, 2p;Wagner, Cynthia G. "Stress and the Brain" Futurist 40.2 (Mar. 2006): 12-13. web sites: stress.about.com, helpguide.org.

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The Rage of Achilles - A Review of the First Book of Homer's Iliad

"Rage, goddess, sing of the rage of Achilles" (1.1)

Homer, Book One of The Iliad

A Review of Book One of Homer's Iliad

In Medias Res

The story of Achilles begins in medias res, nine years into a battle between the Trojans and the Greeks. The poet does not give historical background for the war or its duration, assuming readers already know the context. For more on the Trojan War's origins, students often consult Edith Hamilton's classic Mythology or read about the Judgment of Paris. There is even archaeological evidence that Troy may have existed in the Bronze Age.

A horse and his boy

The poet is silent about much of the background, focusing instead on mortals and immortals. The Iliad could well be called The Rage of Achilles, as anger and loss thread through the poem. The muses, invoked for inspiration, act as furies in the poem's opening: "Rage, goddess."

The god quaked with rage (1.54)
The epic traces the genealogy of Achilles’s resentment, beginning with Apollo’s anger at Agamemnon for refusing to return his slave girl, Chryseis. Apollo’s wrath brings a plague to the Greek camp. The soldiers want to return home, but Agamemnon refuses to give in, even at the cost of his men’s lives—echoing the selfishness of a corporate boss clinging to privilege.

A Dispute Among Children
Book One centers on a childish dispute between Agamemnon and Achilles. When Achilles protests Agamemnon’s selfishness, Agamemnon retaliates by seizing Achilles’s slave girl, Briseis. Achilles withdraws from battle, vowing not to fight, comforted by Patroclus and Athena.

The Boy with Fiery Hair (1.232)
Achilles is depicted as a youth with fiery red hair—a symbol of his rage. Feeling entitled and above others, he sees himself as nearly divine. When insulted, he appeals to his mother, the sea nymph Thetis, who promises to ask Zeus to avenge him.

Thetis, the Old Man of the Sea’s Daughter
In a poignant scene, Achilles walks the shore, praying to Thetis for vengeance and honor. His tragic flaw is not recognizing his own mortality.

Uncontrollable Laughter Broke from the Gods (1.721)
The book ends with the gods laughing at the mortals. Is it schadenfreude? Do the gods laugh at Achilles, at mortals, or at our delusions?

N.B. The edition I use is the Robert Fagles translation published by Penguin Classics (Deluxe Edition).
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Book Review: The Lives of Animals

In J.M. Coetzee’s novella, The Lives of Animals, protagonist Elizabeth Costello is an aged novelist famous for writing The House on Eccles Street, in which she imagines the life of Marion Bloom of Joyce’s Ulysses. She has been invited to lecture on a topic of her own choosing at Appleton College, where her son is a physics professor. The novella is interesting because it is dubbed an academic work, a strange genre form that offers footnotes and, in this case, two full lectures on animal rights, as part of the University Center for Values Series.    Elizabeth, a non-human animal sympathizer, provokes a visceral response from the faculty — and her family — because of her views.  People cringe to sit at the same dinner table with a vegetarian — “an animal lover” — because it puts into question their own self-assumed values and assumptions that they may have held since childhood.  so, when Elizabeth sits down at the dinner table with her son and daughter-in-law (who is a philosopher) she wonders where are the children.  Norma answers that they are eating in the other room because she doesn’t want to inculcate in them the belief that eating chicken is wrong.  In this delicate scene, it is obvious that Elizabeth’s beliefs are not strictly theoretical and impervious to the sphere of breaking bread in the domestic sphere, for her beliefs concerning animal rights impose upon the familial as well as the academic. What we considered clean to eat and what we consider polluted, has perhaps, defined us as human beings, and when these basic assumptions are challenged, it causes us to defend ourselves because we do not want to be considered “polluted.”  As Mary Douglas in her book, Purity and Danger, wrote, “Pollution dangers strike when form has been attacked” (130).  Pollution — or dirt — is a deciding cultural factor that humans worry about; dirt makes us anxious — especially if we feel dirty or polluted or made to feel that way, for it threatens our sense of form and “unity of experience.”
    Coetzee’s novel is interesting because, as readers, we are privy not only to the two lectures Elizabeth gives at Appleton college on animals: one on animal rights and another on animals in literature — but also the responses and behaviors of those who hear her speak.  Again, the theme of who is polluted and who is clean surfaces.  Elizabeth makes the startling claim that the Germans, living near the Treblinka death camp, were willfully ignorant of the slaughter of millions of human beings.  They could have acted, but they went on with their lives, acting otherwise.  This willed ignorance, this inability to act, argues Elizabeth, is a mark of their self-inscribed inability to be human.  They refuse to see the death camps as a mark of their own pollution.
    Costello makes the analogy that the willed ignorance of the Germans of the Third Reich is tantamount to the willed ignorance of those who refuse to do anything about the inhumanity of the factory farms or lab testing on animals.  This is a shocking claim.  For isn’t Burger King and McDonalds an industry we tolerate?  Costello and writers like Peter Singer would claim that in both cases, the ill-treatment and murder of human beings like cattle, and the actual ill-treatment and slaughter of cattle, are considered equally unethical, and a mark of a human being’s propensity to use his reason, his practical mind, as a means to use someone or something for his own end.  The inability of humans to recognize this unethical state of affairs is a sin, according to Elizabeth.  Because it makes the human being less human.  The Germans who refused to recognize the horrors at Treblinka or Dachau, their inability to realize that the gold chain they wore, or the soap they used to wash their children — once belonged to a dead prisoner marks them as polluted.  This inability of the citizens of the Third Reich to realize their own complicity in the systematic transportation, labor and eventual slaughter of millions of people is the same — and Singer would argue too — of the industrial raising and feeding of factory farm animals for eventual slaughter and consumption.  The point being raised, is that the common element we share, all sentient beings, nonhuman and human — is the capacity to suffer.  The inability to recognize the animal who has the ability to suffer is what animal rights seem to address.  No one would rather think of a sentence like this, written by Singer, about a slaughterhouse in his book Animal Liberation: “Millions of gallons of liquefied feces and urine seeped into the environment from collapsed, leaking or overflowing storage lagoons.”
    But I don’t think most carnivores think of an actual, living, sentient being who suffered when they bite into their burgers.  Most American, would not consider Plutarch’s ancient, infamous expression “Of Eating of Flesh,” concerning animal rights, “You ask me why I refuse to eat flesh.  I, for my part, am astonished that you can put in your mouth the corpse of a dead animal, astonished that you do not find it nasty to chew hacked flesh and swallow the juices of death-wounds.” (quoted in Coetzee 38).      
    Most Americans, it has been said, don’t care how their meat is produced as long as it doesn’t kill them.  Probably, many people would assume it is a Darwinian survival of the fittest: eat them before they eat you!  We may care tenderly for our pet canine or feed affectionately the doves at the local park, but it seems, that we do not consider the ethical complicity we share in the disavowal of the animal to be nothing other than a means without any real end. 
    I would agree, that at this level, we are prone to see the animal as merely an automaton.  We would rather not think that the animal has the capacity to suffer, like us.  We would rather consign to a non-ethical realm our decision to eat meat, to be carnivorous — for as Coetzee, suggests, most of our beliefs about what is clean and what is polluted lie in deeply set cultural and familial mores.  The prevailing ethos in the West is the notion that only the human, the most perfect in the animal kingdom, has the Adamic privilege to render that which is less perfect, as subject to himself (see Aquinas on this issue).
    As concerns my own beliefs, I have had several stints of vegetarianism throughout my life, but I have to admit, I have not been consistent in my resolve to put away a carnivorous appetite.  But, as we mentioned in class, even the vegan probably has animal leather on their sandal.  So even they are not fully removed from involvement in the suffering of animals.  We are all complicit at some level with the suffering of the sentient creatures that inhabit this planet.  None of us can exonerate ourselves completely.  But, I think the heart of Animal Liberation, and any liberation for that matter, is consciousness raising; for, we cannot think, that just because we freed the slaves, or that we gave women the right to vote, that all forms of oppression have been eliminated.

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Book Review: On Clarice Lispector with Heidegger

 What is being?  What does it mean to be?  How does being situate itself in relation to the human being, Dasein?  How does the choice I make in the morning to get out of my cocoon of a bed reflect my a priori relationship to beingness, not only my own Being, but my relationship to the beingness of my bed, of the cat purring closer to the floorboard, to the beingness of those I encounter at breakfast?  Does this being-in-the-world irrevocably mark me as a human Being, made distinct by the metaphysical priority that having a world seems to grant?

  Heidegger states in his book Being and Time, that the human Being, Dasein, has a certain facticity, he calls it, towards his own beingness, “such that its Being-in-the-world has always dispersed [zerstreut] itself or even split itself up into definite ways of Being-in” (83). Heidegger seems to suggest that Dasein’s Being not only resides in the world, but Dasein, specifically has a world, in which he makes Being his home.  In his Letter on Humanism, he writes that “Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home” (?).  Does my own encounter, my engagement, with the world, through my language, or my body, to put it that way, reflect my own rich interrelatedness to the world, my being-in-the-world, that differs from say, the chicken, in Clarice Lispector’s short story?  Does Lispector’s chicken have a specific facticity towards its own Beingness?  Can a chicken, in fact, have a facticity towards its Being?  Or is it , say, just a being, an aggregate that is not present, not at hand, independent, in its own Being-in?
    The chicken seems, by the first paragraph of the story, to have a certain anxiety, that “No one would ever have guessed...”  Is it because the chicken has its own language by which it makes its own home that Dasein, the human being who seems to be rich in the world, does not have access to?  Can Dasein, only, feel anxiety about its own existence?  Can it only feel alone in the world, or make existentel choices about its own existence?
    But Lispector asks, “What was it in the chicken’s entrails that made her a being?  The chicken, is, in fact, a being” (50).  Heidegger would argue that the animal, that the chicken, does not have a constitutive being that makes it independently its own Being.  The being of the chicken is poor-in-the-world because only Dasein can be-in-the-world.  Only Dasein has a world to inhabit, in this way, only Dasein has a Being that is verhanden, present-at-hand.  The chicken, by extension, does not have a world to inhabit.  The chicken is identical in appearance to all the other chickens, and its being is such, that if one were to die, like this chicken, another automatically appears to take its place.  Lispector seems to suggest that the chicken, for the most part, struts around the house, oblivious to its own existence, its own mortality, to its own relationship to the family, that wants to kill it, then wants to keep it, when it lays an egg, professing its maternity when the child of the house cries out, “Don’t kill the chicken, she’s laid an egg!” (51).
    But in its apparent oblivious to its own place in the world, the chicken has moments of expressing its own beingness, by strutting her chest out, when she feels threatened, and seems to embody certain human categories: apathy, fear, anxiety, hesitant, solitude, dumb and intent.  But in its oblivious embodiment of characteristic human attributes, the chicken is, Lispector notes, “unconscious of the life that had been spared her.”  And like I said, at the moment the chicken is about to become lunch, about to be not only commodified, but, literally modified into chicken parts, the chicken is plopped down on the kitchen floor by the father.  “It was then that it happened.  Positively flustered, the chicken laid an egg.”  By exhibiting its motherhood, its somewhat complicit engagement with the human family, but at the same time, exhibiting its otherness, its chickenness, its obliviousness, “the chicken became part of the family.”
    It is not as if Lispector is suggesting that the chicken became a member of the family in the same way that Dasein becomes a member of its own house, for in the final paragraph, in the final sentence, in fact, the tenuous nature of the chicken’s own Beingness is conscripted to its ugly consignment of a empty head, a chicken head, and the family kills her for dinner, “and the years rolled on.”
    The chicken appears to be present-at-hand; it appears to strut its chest out like a proud mother, affecting its maternity, eliciting an emotional response from the child in the family to exclaim, “The chicken loves us!” 
    But this apparent being-present-at-hand is quickly taken into Dasein’s own hand.  What I mean is that the chicken’s own sense of power, its apathy, and fear, is quickly, and quite unceremoniously, consigned to a hollow silence. The chicken is, after all, merely a empty-headed entity, right? — devoid of any ethical dignity or care!  And it seems, from the story’s conclusion of the chicken’s own fate, that the chicken has not been denied, in its short life, life, its way of being — whatever that is! — but can it ever have a say in this life, outside of which is transcribed by the human other?!  What it has been denied, though, is a place in the world; its way of being, in Heidegger’s view, will never grant the chicken a metaphysical priority of that of Dasein.

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