Lincoln, Hale, and Resistance

I need to say a few things on this blog about Humanities Core in case any of my current students expect to get something out of this . . .

Our theme this year is “Associations and Disassociations.” This quarter we are focused on “Nation and Empire.” We’ve started by considering the way rhetoric created the nation we know as the United States of America. Brook Thomas has been arguing that Lincoln didn’t so much “save” the union, as create it through his rhetoric (and winning the Civil War).

Before 1860 people weren’t sure the U.S. was a nation. It seemed more like a confederation of states. People used plural verbs with the U.S. (i.e., “the United States are . . . ) because they couldn’t quite get their heads around the idea that the U.S. was a nation. It certainly wasn’t a nation in an ethnological sense, and people wondered to what extent it was really a nation in a political sense.

But Lincoln, in his inaugural addresses and in the "Gettysburg Address," was able to argue that the United States is (not “are”) a nation, a nation held together by “fraternal affections,” a shared memory of patriotic sacrifices, and, of course, the Constitution.

How fragile, though, this nation is. Can a nation really be created with rhetoric? And who is included in this nation? Who can join? Benedict Anderson’s groundbreaking work, Imagined Communities, argued that the nation-state, a modern phenomenon, is an imagined community. Laclau and Mouffe have argued for the “impossibility of society,” claiming that society is a “sutured reality” (in Lacan’s sense) that is discursively constructed. This leaves the identity of the community always open, always in need of suture, always fragile.

Then we explored this same theme through Everett Hale’s story, “The Man Without a Country.” I’d never read it before, but my Baby-Boomer colleagues got all wistful at the mention of the story, a story they been taught to love and then had learned to hate, condemning it has a mindless endorsement of the “my country, right or wrong” mentality.

The story certainly does seem to endorse that kind of sentimental patriotism, but Brook Thomas did a great job comparing that story to Lincoln’s ideas of the nation. On one level Lincoln’s conception seems superior, since for Lincoln our allegiance to our country is predicated on this nation’s commitment to liberty and equality. For Lincoln the U.S. is a nation “of the people, by the people, and for the people” and to rebel against that nation is to rebel against the people. But for Hale, there is a big difference between the “country” and the government, and this difference makes a space for resistance.

Last Spring, in a different Humanities Core sequence, I showed my students a documentary on the Weather Underground. I asked them if they thought it was ever appropriate for people to break the law (violently?) in a functioning democracy. They universally said no. They thought such resistance in a functioning democracy was just being a sore loser. But I’m not so sure.

Is it possible for a government elected by the people to be against the people and not for them? I wonder. All right, I suspect this current administration may be one such government.

(Coincidentally, while I type these words my iTunes just started playing U2’s cover of “Along the Wachtower.” Cool.)

"A Love Song for Bobby Long"

This is a really good film. I just saw it yesterday and it blew me away. This film is based on the novel, Off Magazine Street, by R.E. Capps (Ronald Everett). I haven’t read the novel, but the film was wonderfully lyrical. It's set in New Orleans, but not the touristy New Orleans, but the New Orleans where the "invisible" people live. It's beautifully literary, with a gentle sensibility that pulls you into the emotional world of all the characters, even the "minor" ones.
The film stars John Travolta as “Bobby Long,” a washed-up alcoholic literature professor (he no longer teaches) who sort of self-destructing on screen. I was just discussing with my sister’s boyfriend how much of a loser we think Travolta is, or at least how much we think he should be writing a thank you note to Quentin Tarantino ever day, but Travolta was great in this film. He plays someone who is both charismatic and menacing at the same time, tough and tender. Thought the ending was a little over the top, I really liked the film.
Scarlett Johanssen was fabulous. She is really establishing herself as an actress with a lot of depth.
The film also stars Gabriel Macht, who was also incredible.
In other words, this is an actor’s film, but it was also very well-written and beautifully shot. This is definitely worth your $7.

I realize probably nobody is going to read this because I haven’t written in so long. I’ve been . . . gone . . . sick . . . unbelievably preoccupied and depressed. My good friend Dave’s mother died. I’ve got some kind of virus. I’ve been on an emotional roller coaster that I will probably not describe here. Instead, I will just say . . . I’m wrung out and sad and feeling as empty as I’ve ever felt.

I need to get back to some serious work now. UCI starts tomorrow, and I’m really not ready for this. The students all want to get “A’s” but very few of them are actually “A” students. What am I to do?

It’s been really rainy here in SoCal, which I love, but this means I can’t go surfing, which I probably shouldn’t do anyway, since I’m practically coughing up a lung every 90 seconds.

I’ll just say I also saw “Closer” a couple of weeks ago . . . and it is awesome. My friend, Susan, had already turned me on to Damien Rice, but if you haven’t listened to him, you have to listen to him.

I’ve also been reading Louise Gluck’s Vita Nova. She kills me. She really does. Well, I supposed I need to get home and get on with my evening, so this is all. I’ll just say that I’m back, and I’m going to try to ignore the voices of my harshest critics (and you know who you are) and just keep writing this blog and see where it takes me.