gadfly fall2010
TRANSCRIPT
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the undergraduate philosophy magazine of Columbia UniversityGADFLYTHE
Existential
Stage-Fright:
Dostoevsky and
Identity [p. 6]
Debate: How ar can
we criticize the
Western Canon? [p. 17]
Interview:
Making Small
Talk with Bruce
Robbins [p. 14]
Systematic Criticism:Marx, Nietzsche and
the Financial Crisis [p. 20]
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GADFLYTHE
Fall 2010
Shorts
Philosophy TalksUpcoming Conferences, Talks, Lectures
Branching OutPhilosophy-Related Courses
A Treatise to Spirit Dragons
The Paradox of Reductionism
FeaturesExistential Stage-Fright
Toward A Functional Denition of Religion
Systematic Criticism
Marx, Nietzsche and the Financial Crisis
On Public Art
Criticism
Making Small Talk with Bruce Robbins
An Interview
How Far Can we Criticize the Western Canon?
A Debate
A Review ofA Clockwork Orange
Joshua Maslin
Shai Chester
Thomas Sun
Peter Licursi
Arton Gjonbalaj
Rebecca Spalding
Bart Piela
Puya Gerami
Evan Burger
2
3
6
10
20
24
4
14
17
28
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From the Editor
The Gady is sponsored in part by the Arts Initiativeat Columbia University. This funding is made possiblethrough a generous gift from The Gatsby CharitableFoundation.
STAFF
Editor-in-Chief
Bart Piela
Managing Editor
Puya Gerami
Shorts EditorSumedha Chablani
Features Editors
Stephany GarciaAlan Daboin
Criticism Editors
Victoria Jackson-HanenRebecca Spalding
Copy EditorAmber Tunnell
Arts Editor
Hong Kong Nguyen
Layout Editor
Christina Johnston
Technology Director
Cindy Zhang
Business andFinance Manager
Michelle Vallejo
Thanks to the Columbia and Barnard PhilosophyDepartments for their support and assistance.
ILLUSTRATORS
Amalia RinehartLouise McCuneKeenan KorthDaniel Nyari
Ashley LeeArais Abbruzzi
Christina JohnstonRachel Shannon-Solomon
[A plain, empty common room. Four chairs arranged around a central table. In themiddle of the table lie three copies of a magazine. A y buzzes around the room.
EnterVlada philosophical sort of chap, DescartesMeditations in towand
Estronot.]
Vlad [excitedly]: A table! Existent or not? [Pauses.] I. The same question.
Estro: You cogitate. I sit. [He sits.]
Vlad [under his breath]: Heavybody. [More loudly.] Whats that? [He sits acrossfromEstro and peers at a magazine.]
Estro: What?
Vlad: That! With the queer fellow on it. What a beard on him. He doesntlook so good.
Estro [looks down]: Looks ne to me.
Vlad [noticing another copy, ipped]: Ha! A kind of mask. Exhibit A: cool,composed, calculating. Exhibit B: rotting. Two sides of the same shekel,though you wouldnt know it. Or would I? [He opens a copy and begins read-ingFrom the Editor. The hand holding the magazine begins to fade.]
Vlad [shouting]: Reductio ad absurdum!
Estro: Who!? [Aside.] But enjoy. [The lights go out. With a nervous shout.]Vlad!
Vlad [calmly]: Yes?
Estro: What are we waiting for? [Silence. He crosses himself, slowly.]
[The lights turn on. The same room, empty. In the middle of the table lie two copiesof a magazine and a tome of Descartes.Enter a janitor. Tidying , he throws themagazines in the trash. Later. Enter a student. He places three copies of a magazine
on the tableand, with a smile, he picks up theMeditations. He exits.]
Bart Piela
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THE GADFLY Fall 20102
Philosophy Talks
Out and About
Friday, February 11, 2011Rachael Briggs (Sydney/NYU visiting)
Friday, February 25, 2011Jonathan Schaffer (Rutgers)
Friday, March 4, 2011Sally Haslanger (MIT)
Friday, March 25, 2011
Anthony Gillies (Rutgers)
Friday, April 29, 2011Shelly Kagan (Yale)
Thursday, February 24, 2011Tamar Gendler (Yale University)4:10 PM- 6:00 PMRoom 716 Philosophy Hall
Thursday, March 10, 2011Kathrin Koslicki (U. of Colorado)4:10 PM- 6:00 PMRoom 716 Philosophy Hall
Thursday, April 7, 2011Brad Skow(MIT)4:10 PM- 6:00 PMRoom 716 Philosophy Hall
The Center for Public Scholarship at the New SchoolThe 22nd Social Research Conference
CPS: The Body and the StateFebruary 11, 2011 - February 12, 201110:30 AM - 7:00 PM
Join us as speakers discuss the body as a human rights arena in which many forces, suchas religion, science, media, and market struggle for control over policies that control ourbodies. We hope to illuminate how the often tacit assumptions about the normal, healthy,and acceptable body lead to policies which are, at their core, unjust.
New York University
Spring 2011 Colloquium SeriesColumbia University
Spring 2011 Colloquium Series
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shorts 3
Branching Out:Philosophy-Related Courses Outside the Department
Aesthetics & Philosophy of HistoryDorothea von MueckeGermanic Languages
W 4:10-6:00 PM
Montaigne, Descartes, PascalPierre ForceFrench Romance & PhilologyTR 2:40-3:55 PM
German Thinkers & Heidegger
Matthias BormuthHistoryM 11:00-12:50 PM
Plato the RhetoricianKathy H. EdenEnglish and Comparative Literature
W 11:00-12:50 PM
Philosophy and Historyof Evolutionary BiologyWalter BockBiologyMW 1:10 - 2:25 PM
Buddhist EthicsThomas F. YarnallReligionTR 2:40-3:55 PM
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THE GADFLY Fall 20104
A Treatise to Spirit Dragons:
Joshua MaslinIllustrated by Amalia Rinehart
The Paradox o Reductionism
The reductionist has done it! Shehas found the most basic constitu-ents of the universe: we are all
nothing more than spatiotemporal pointsbeing blown around by the stellar windsof cause and effect. Humanity has philo-sophically ascended (descended?) enoughto gure out what the universe is made of:
reallyREALLYsmall things. Dontbelieve it? Doesnt matter. Youre stillcomposed of these spatiotemporal points.Better start coming to terms with it.
And you know who else has tostart coming to terms with this idea? Corn.Someone should really tell corn that it toois made of spatiotemporal points. Cornhas spent so much time festering in itsunintentional ignorance (ironic for a plant
with so many ears). Sure, corn is not ascomplex as we are; really, its so simplethat it couldnt tell a man from a woman,a woman from a pernicious tree fungus!I guess we need to try a bit harder to getthrough to corn. Find a loud SigEp andget him to yell. Not working? Have
him yell louder.
Fine, ne, the yelling is useless.
Get that bro out of the corneld. At the
end of the day, weknow what constitutescorn. If corn doesnt want to listenifcorn doesnt even know we existwemight as well exploit the hell out of it.Plant it in rows, harvest it, turn it into syr-up, maybe even a pseudo-efcient gasoline
substitute, and distribute it to the masses!Corn will never know the difference.
Wait a minutelets pump thebrakes for a second. If livingcorn is completely removed
from the complex reality we experience,does that mean that human beings...No.It couldnt be. Could it? Could webe thecorn? Of course we arentactuallythe corn.
But are we likethe corncould the universebe farmingus?Are spirit dragons farming us?!
Corn experiences the universe in its owncorny way, for it lives and reproduces. Butcorn is missing out on so much! Is it pos-sible that we are, too? Is it possible that weare equally bound by our humanity, just
as corn is by its corniness?
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shorts 5
Humor a thought experiment and
take actor Haley Joel Osment. Asa child, he played a superhuman
introvert in M. Night Shyamalans familyclassic, The Sixth Sense. Before we allbecame disillusioned with M. Nights complexcinematic writing formula (arbitrarily selectingplot twists from a hat during drug-inducedstates of consciousness), we were shockedto nd out that (spoiler alert)
our young protagonist could
see dead people. This was his sixthsense. Like everyone else, hecould, ostensibly, tastecake, hear Ke$ha songs,see double rainbows,touch furry rabbitsand smell gas leaksfrom the stove. But hecould also perceive deadBruce Willises. While Ioften dream about deadBruce Willises, I have yetto perceive his mopeyghost in a waking state.
Those spiritdragons! Whoknows what theycan perceive?Dead Abe Lincolns?
Intelligent Republicans? Ibet theyre laughing at our spatiotem-poral points right now. Jerks! Theyll neverunderstandoh. If we cant understand cornsplace in the universe, how could spirit dragons(coughgodcough) understand humanitys?If they could, theyd be just as simple as us.So why even speculate about these spirit drag-ons? We dont have the hardware to deal withtheir issues, nor do they have the means to un-
derstand ours.
Oh, Reductionists: As long as were ac-knowledging the possibility of theseunknown unknowns, you guys should
probably send someone over to apologize tothe corn. After all, were all re-
ally in the same boat. A littleempathy could do everyone
some good.So, just to summa-
rize: there are spirit drag-ons farming us, and corndeserves our respect.Stated another way:we exist in an incom-
prehensible universelled with incom-
prehensible things.Our vision of thisuniverse will al-ways be strainedthrough a humansieve. Reductionistlogic, born of hu-manity, is subject
to innite regression
(and progression). To
conceptualize the fabricof the universe in terms of
parts could be an entirely false paradigm, ifnot physically, at least philosophically.
Disagree, oh mighty Reductionists?Then I am at your mercy, omnipotent Gods ofCorn. And if you like manipulating the fates ofthe ignorant and disconnected, consider capi-talizing off of the wildly popular Farmville.You could catapult Universal Farming Religion
to the forefront of human consciousness!
Our vision of this universe will alwaysbe strained through a human sieve.
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THE GADFLY Fall 20106
Existential Stage-FrightShai Chester
Illustrated by Daniel Nyari
Universal truth is an outdated con-cept. Traditional philosophersexplained reality through a single
system of precepts which, though oftenabstracted to the point of meaningless-ness, provided the singular satisfaction ofcomplete and absolute truth. Contempo-rary thinkers are skeptical of such grand
unifying theories. To them there is no oneobjective vision of reality, only variousperspectives, all equally valid and limited.
This pluralism subverts the lay-mans conception of the soul. While onemight at rst assume that each person
has a single, unchanging soul and that thewildly contradictory emotional states thatpossess us are merely supercial masks, a
pluralistic interpretation would assert thatthere is no single, unchanging soul, ratherthat each of these emotional states is itsown distinct soul. All of these emotionalstates are bound by their common physicallocation: you. The absence of an absoluteidentity would not seem to be so troublingthough, as it validates a plurality of masks.(Here and throughout I have in mindWendy Donigers essay, Many Masks,Many Selves.) This relativism is liberatingin a world that demands many identities,allowing a career woman to change from
doting mother, to cutthroat capitalist, tosultry temptress without undermining any
of her masks. Freed from the obsolete no-tion of the soul, Pluralistic Man denes
himself more or less as he wills.
The Underground Man, the anti-hero of Dostoyevskys novelNotesfrom the Underground, is the epitome
of the pluralistic personality masquerader.
Throughout the novel, the UndergroundMan deliberately assumes identities rangingfrom debauched aristocrat to radical socialcritic, culminating in his stirring sermonon vice and redemption to an enrapturedprostitute, which is ultimately revealed as acynical intellectual self-indulgence with notrue pathos. The Underground Man doesnot feel liberated by his radically differentpersonalities; rather his acute realization
of his masks undermines his masquerade.The jarring contradictions between hisdifferent personae make them feel phonyand reveal his terrible disconnection fromhis true self, which Dostoevsky, unlikemodern pluralists, fervently believes in.Dostoevsky employs the UndergroundMan to prove that the individual whoknows thyself cannot comfortably wearpluralistic masks.
The vestment of the sanctimo-nious is the most uncomfortable mask forthe self-perceptive man because the hon-est preacher, constantly aware of his ownsins, hesitates to cast the rst stone. Dos-toevsky demonstrates this with the Un-derground Mans failed speech during thegoodbye dinner of Zerkov, a successfularmy ofce and former school mate. The
protagonist prefaces this episode by de-scribing his childhood jealousy and hatred
A version of this article previously appeared in the
Journal of the Undergraduate Writing Program.
The vestment of thesanctimonious is the mostuncomfortable mask forthe self-perceptive man.
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features 7
of Zerkov, a typical aristocratic philistineblessed with beauty, moral indifference,and social graces. This last attribute par-ticularly vexes the Underground Man, asit is what he lacks and longs for most. Toprove his moral superiority and disdain,he decides to don the smirking mask of
satire and interrupt the dinner with a dia-tribe that he thinks will shatter Zerkovs
conceit. In the middle of his philippic,though, he is struck by the hypocrisy ofhis cynicism. After all, he invited himselfto the dinner originally out of a vain at-tempt to ingratiate himself with the verymen whose vanity he is attacking. Crippledby this revelation, his tirade trickles into
confused and sentimental rambling, whichonly fuels his opponents contempt.
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THE GADFLY Fall 20108
Seen through the lens of pluralisticselves, the Underground Mans mor-
alizing is defensible. His supposedlysinful true self is no more fundamentalthan the righteous persona he adopts, so
the latter is not hypocritical, but merelydifferent. A pluralistic self that wears con-icting masks is no more duplicitous than
a single actor who plays separate conict-ing parts in the same eternal play.
Such a carefree possessor of anti-thetical ethics is acknowledged by Dosto-evsky. He longingly describes the rogue[who] can be absolutely and loftily honestat heart without in the least ceasing to be
a rogue. Yet such innocence is limited tothose who have a faculty for the mostcontradictory sensations, i.e. unreec-tive laymen. The perceptive mans visceralaversion to conscious hypocrisy cannot beassuaged by an intellectual recognition ofthe plurality of self.
The self-aware individuals com-prehension of the articial source of his
mask inhibits his ability to naturally mas-querade, as Dostoevsky exhibits againwith his hapless protagonist. In a surge ofanger, after being humiliated at the dinnerparty, the Underground Man imagines anelaborate revenge involving an honorableduel, years of stoic suffering in Siberia,and nally a climactic confrontation with
the grand perpetrator, Zerkov, whom theChrist-like hero magnanimously forgives,
attaining absolute moral revenge. The in-tegrity of this mask of righteous anger
is quickly undermined, however, by theUnderground Mans realization that theentire revenge fantasy is merely a trite re-
hashing of plots lifted from Pushkinand Lermontov.
Appropriating personae fromart is not unique to raried
literati such as the Under-ground Man. How often do you nd
yourself repeating jokes you have heardon television? And how many of the al-most meaningless cutsie phrases that un-necessarily replace simple words in oursentences are lifted from trite TV charac-ters and ads? We all imitate art, and usuallynot even the sort of meaningful art thatthe Underground Man apes. The external-ity of our masks is not an issue to the plu-ralistic interpretation though, as it denies
the existence of a wholly internal mask tobegin with. We are never ourselves to our-selves, but always in relation to others, sothe difference between the UndergroundMan quoting Pushkin versus Pushkinsoriginal exhortations is just a matter ofdegree.
To Dostoevsky though, this mat-ter of degree is crucial because the wearer
of the mask is conscious of it. All ideasmay be necessarily external because theyare ultimately an amalgamation of reac-tions to others ideas, but they do not im-mediately appear so to their conceivers,even those who are perceptive. Converse-ly, when the Underground Man copies di-rectly from Pushkin, since art is articial
by default, he is unavoidably aware that heis uttering artice. Again, the condence
The self-aware individualscomprehension of the articialsource of his mask inhibits hisability to naturally masquerade.
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features 9
of the masquerader is determined by hisawareness of the masquerade, not the the-
oretical validity of the mask.
Amask worn in its proper scenecan appear authentic; during thetransition between scenes, how-
ever, the absurdity is naked. Dostoevskyillustrates this with the UndergroundMans nal interaction with the prostitute
Eliza. The penitent harlot comes tohis house seeking the holy man who
had lectured her on sin. Althoughher savior begins his address appro-priately, sanctimoniously extollinghis humble abode, he is soon dis-tracted by his hated manservant and startssquabbling with him over some petty mis-deed. Pathos turns to bathos, and the Un-derground Man is reminded once more ofthe silliness of his masks. Note that moralhypocrisy is not the issue here. The man-
servant may have deserved a tongue lash-ing as much as Eliza merited more owery
words. It is the awkward juxtaposition thatundermines each persona.This damning disparity is not just
apparent during abrupt switches. No mat-ter how brief and uid the transition, the
perceptive individual will always note themomentary non sequitur. Even WendyDonigers model career woman, cominghome from a day of merciless layoffs tobake cookies for her children, would be
disquieted by the contrast of her masks.
Both the contemporary concep-tion of self and Dostoevskysolder conception have their con-
solations. The former does not posit asingle fundamental identity, but effec-tively replaces it with the pluralistic self.Dostoevsky denies the feasibility of thispluralistic self, but believes in an ultimate
authentic identity: a soul. Although theUnderground Man may have lost his soulthrough lack of tting environment,
through divorce from real life, and ranklingspite, hisNotesserve as corrective pun-ishment for himself, for the reader, and
perhaps even for the author, urg-ing them to avoid his mistakes andreturn to their true selves. Whenviewed through each others lensesthough, these consolations cancelout. The Pluralistic UndergroundMan can neither blithely exchange
masks, nor piously pursue the sacred aspi-ration of the non-existent true self. He is
the tragic archetype of modernity: masteryof reasoning has allowed him to penetratethe minds substrata of comforting delu-sions and fantasies, only to nd nothing
beneath. Doniger optimistically assureshim that as we strip away masks, or faces,each time we see more in the hall of look-ing glasses. The Pluralistic UndergroundMan only sees innite reections of his
plastic face, endlessly mocking him.
Even the model career woman,coming home from a day of mercilesslayoffs to bake cookies, would bedisquieted by the contrast of hermasks.
During the transition between
masks, the absurdity is always
naked.
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features 11
Scientists undergo euphoric states just asmuch when they admire the beauty ofthe galaxy or the complexity of the brain.Richard Dawkins, in an article entitled IsScience a Religion?, describes this well:The merest glance through a microscopeat the brain of an ant or through a tele-scope at a long-ago galaxy of a billionworlds is enough to render poky and pa-rochial the very psalms of praise. If deepeuphoria isnt the distinguishing character-istic of religion either, then what is?
James, I think, mentions it inpassing:In the religious life, on the con-trary, surrender and sacrice are positively
espoused: even unnecessary givings-upare added in order that the happiness mayincrease. Religion thus makes easy andfelicitous what in any case is necessary.Unlike religion, science cannot make oneembrace pain, suffering or death with en-thusiasm. At best, it can teach one to be
patient and accepting of the ways of theuniverse. Science can ease pain, sufferingand death by reducing them into sums ofchemical reactions or parts of biologicalcycles, but it would be extremely difcult
for science to transform them into some-thing worth embracing. Here we nally
have the distinguishing characteristic ofreligionthe ability to make easy and fe-licitous what is necessary.
Instead of dening religion to be the
personal, solemn worship of the pri-mary truth, as James approaches it,
and therefore running the risk of char-acterizing science as a religion, I proposethat we take a backwards approach. In-stead of looking at the different emo-tive or doctrinal components that build areligion, why not look at what religion isuniquely able to accomplish? This unique
ability is to make what isnecessary, such as suffer-ing and death, easy andfelicitous. A religion hasto prepare one in sucha way that one startsto positively embracesuffering. It doesnot have to makedemands on itsbelievers, norestablish rituals,
nor create socialgatherings, norworship the divine,so long as it accom-plishes this func-tional task.
This func-tional approach todening religion is
helpful in eliminat-
ing the vaguenessinherent in otherapproaches, partic-ularly James. WhenJames tried to dene
religion in terms ofbelief in the divine,he found himselfin muddled wa-ter. The chief
trouble was in
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THE GADFLY Fall 201012
hinging the deni-tion of religion onthe nebulous concept of the divine,itself a term laden with connotations of areligious nature, when James was attempt-ing to puzzle out what religious nature wasin the rst place. To explain the divine,
James asserts that it is any object that isgodlike. When pushed further, he ex-plains that what is godlike is the primaltruth. The overall strategy seems to bedening one ambiguous term in terms of
another. If, on the other hand, we denereligion in terms of its function to us, asubject we probably know more aboutthan nebulous concepts, then we can
avoid dependence on illusory termsand ideas.
Apreliminary testwill show that the ma-jor religions of the
world will t the funct iona ldenition. Chris- tian and Is-lamic follow- ers believe in thep r e s e n c e of Heaven and Hell
and an impending Last Judg-ment. The doctrine that suffer-ing in the currentlife will be recip-
rocally compen-sated by rewards in
an afterlife is one ofthe most effective tools
religions use to ascribepositive attributes to suf-
fering. Critics of Chris-tianity such as Nietzschecriticize just this ability ofChristianity to make suf-
fering contagious. Indeed,Christianity is so effective at
this that occasionally we hearof followers who not only em-brace sufferingtheyask for
more. Julian of Norwich, in her
Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love,begs to be sent a bodily crisis sothat she can gain intimate knowl-
edge of the suffering of Christ. In similarveins, suffering and sacrice are positively
espoused in Buddhism and Hinduism. Inthe former, suffering is cast as a necessarystep towards achieving nirvana. In the lat-ter, sacrice in the current life is said to ac-cumulate and be proportionally rewardedin the next world.
If we dene religion in terms of itsfunctions to us, then we can avoiddependence on illusory terms and ideas.
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features 13
An immediate objection to thefunctional denition of religion
may be that, according to ourcommon experience, religions are not theonly entities that can render suffering andsacrice in a positive
light. The most strik-ing counterexample
is nationalism. Manywar heroes have cho-sen to sacrice their
lives not for their reli-gion but for their nation. This line of criti-cism insightfully points out that the func-tional denition of religion offered thus
far is not a sufcient condition, just as I
have pointed out that James denition of
religion in terms of the solemn treatmentof the primary truth does not sufciently
qualify religion. Perhaps a sufcient deni-tion of religion should combine these twonecessary conditions: a religion must (1)revere the primary truth of the world in asolemn manner and (2) positively espousesacrice and suffering. This denition will
rule out science as a religion, for sciencedoes not render sacrice and suffering in
a positive light. It will also distinguish reli-gion from nationalism, for nationalism isabout the pursuit of things like freedomand independence, not of the primary
truth of the universe.In order for this two-part
denition of religion to stand, a more
detailed analysis will have to show thatother recognized religions of the world,
besides the ones discussed above, willcontinue to be qualied as religions un-der the denition. The search for a pre-cise denition of what it is to be a religion
does not only have theoretical value, but
also practical value. It can help the Inter-nal Revenue Service in drawing the linebetween religious and non-religious insti-tutions and the Supreme Court in judgingcases related to the separation of churchand state. And, considering a case we areperhaps more familiar with, it will give
answers to the premed student who nds
himself behaving more and more like a re-ligious follower during his weekly MCATBible study, his communion in weekendstudy groups and his relentless sacrice of
social fun. He may be a zealot, but he isnot a religious zealot.
Instead of looking at the different
emotive or doctrinal components thatbuild a religion, why not look at whatreligion is uniquely able to accomplish?
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THE GADFLY Fall 201014
Making Small Talk with Bruce RobbinsRebecca SpaldingIllustrated by Ashley Lee
Bruce Robbins is the Old
Dominion Foundation Professor in the
Humanities in Columbias English and
Comparative Literature Department. His
primary interests include nineteenth and
twentieth century ction, literary and
cultural theory and postcolonial studies.
A prolic author, Professor Robbins
has published such works as Feeling Global:Internationalism in Distress, The Servants
Hand: English Fiction from Belowand Secular
Vocations: Intellectuals, Professionalism, Culture.
From 1991 to 2000 he was co-editor
of the journal Social Text. He regularly
teaches courses on contemporary literary
theory, modern comparative ction, and
intellectual history.
Recently, I sat down with Professor
Robbins to discuss his undergraduateyears, the important relationship between
literary theory and philosophy, and the
Core Curriculum.
How did you rst get into your
eld?
I was a history and literature
major at Harvard, which was a combined
program for those students who hadnt
quite gured out which eld they were
more interested in. I had gone into college
thinking I would become a philosophymajor. I had read Plato, Nietzsche, and
Sartre during my adolescence, in the hey-
day of existentialism. I remember I once
told my high school friends that I was
interested in existentionalism. I was, of
course, mocked and put down in the way
that people are severely put down in high
school for being pretentious. Anyway, I
was familiar with those thinkers before I
got to Harvard but I never ended up tak-ing a philosophy course during college. In-
stead, I was turned on to literary criticism
through a close reading course that I took
freshman year. The best way the history
department and literature department had
found to combine the two subjects was, in
effect, a sort of compromise. We did read
social historians who were big in that peri-
od, but intellectual history was at the cen-
ter. Thats what gave me the condence to
take a shot at so-called theory when it
took off in the U.S. in the 70s.
At some point in senior year, I
went morein the literary direction. I guess
it seemed to me that literary criticism was
more open than other elds. The philoso-
pher Richard Rorty said it well when he
said that philosophy had abandoned the
goal of asking the big questions, and lit-erary criticism had picked up the ball af-
(i)
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15criticism
ter philosophy dropped it. For in-stance, around 1972 there was a
certain excitement around Claude
Levi-Strauss, and a friend of
mine, an undergraduate at the
time who actually went on to
become a professor at the Uni-
versity of Chicago, suggested we
form a reading group with an as-
sistant philosophy professor in or-
der to read Levi-Strauss.We did, but it didn't work.
The guy in the philosophy depart-
ment was not interested in answer-
ing the larger questions, such as,
What is this thinker trying to do? Why
is it worth doing?This particular phi-
losopher, not the discipline as a whole,
was not prepared to answer these larger
questions and I believe I was because
there was more room to do so in literarycriticism, at least at that moment.
Have things changed for literary
criticism?
It is not a good moment for
literary theory. All across the
country, partly due to nancial pressure,
scholars have pulled back into a narrowly
historical understanding of their eld;
many only work within that particular peri-
od. Not many people are asking questions
that transcend their period. Theory exists
to impose these larger questions on the
discipline.Are we really talking about the same
object as in earlier periods? Or are we relying on
the lazy assumption that these texts are the same
simply because they are all called literature?To
a certain extent, literary criticism is a placewhere that still happens, just less so. As a
historical fact, theimpulse of French theory in the 60s and
70s does not seem as strong now. To-
day, people are looking elsewhere for that
philosophical excitement that we got from
French theorists.
Is there anyone working in
theory now who gives you that
philosophical excitement?
Etienne Balibar, for one, who is actually
teaching a seminar at Columbia this fall.
He is asking very interesting questions
about violence and civility. He and Judith
Butler are working on the same problems,
particularly the problem of universality.
Is there such a thing as the
Western Canon as taught in
Literature Humanities and
(ii)(iii)
(iv)
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THE GADFLY Fall 201016
Contemporary Civilization and is the Core an
adequate way to teach that Canon?
I have never had the good fortune of
taking Lit Hum or CC or teaching eithercourse. It is something I would like to do
while Im still walking. The Core is great
when I want to refer to a certain philo-
sophical tradition in my other classes be-
cause students have read Herodotus, Kant,
etc. There are not many other universities
where you can do that. However, I think it
would be a good thing if the Core were re-
vised in some way by integrating other tra-
ditions into Lit Hum and CC. Not as other
options on the side but at the centerI
would like to see the Core tell the story,
the true story, of the communication be-
tween these traditions and the Western
tradition. This could happen in the Core.
This currently happens through institutes
around campus that bring together people
from different intellectual backgrounds to
explore the same problems.
Which philosopher or philosophi-
cal tradition has most inuencedyour approach to literary theory?
The Kantian tradition. It is Kants inter-
pretation of the aesthetic that makes lit-
erary criticism a viable discipline whether
critics acknowledge that debt or not. That
being said, traditions that are hostile to
Kant are also inuential for me and for
the discipline; Hegel, for example. A great
deal of contemporary theory is based, at
least in part, on readings of Chapter 4 of
the Phenomenology of Spirit. And in turn, the
anti-Hegelian traditions of French post-
structuralism have also become important
to me and to the discipline.
Whats your favorite novel?
Dickens' Bleak House. But I will put in a
good word for Franzens new novel, Free-
dom.
(vi)
(v)
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17criticism
The more we know about some-
thing, the better we can place
new information about that thing:the better we can make connections, ad-
vance our understanding, go beyond our
immediate knowledge set. Even when new
information complicates old information,
we have the hope of working through the
complication towards a better understand-
ing. This is the value of dialectic (and,
hopefully, this debate).
To be able to place any informa-
tion, we need to start somewhere. We cannot
remain intellectual blank slates for long. So
where should we start? Thats a complicat-
ed question. Should we begin by gathering
scientic knowledge and go from there?
Or religious knowledge? Philosophical?
Political? Should we start with the East
and move West, or the other way around?
In an important sense, it does not
really matter. We can start anywherewith any canonand move outwards, as
long as we are careful, discerning, curi-
ous intellectual agents. Where we start is
a matter of convenience. In our case, it is
roughly a function of geography.
I
t is useful to take the evolution of
thought, bind it by relatively arbitrary
geography and study that evolution.
This offers us a way to explore how criti-cal thought originates, evolves, overlaps,
diverges and converges in a fairly well de-
ned historical set of works. It gives us
somewhere to begin investigation into ourvery humanity.
So, does the Western Canon exist?
Yes it doesand weve invented it. We, as
an intellectual community, have attached
more or less permanent labels to works,
one of these being Western, and we ex-
ploit these labels for our own ends, one of
these being learning. And these labels truly
are useful. As our ends (gradually) change,
so can the labels. This explains why the
syllabi of Literature Humanities and Con-
temporary Civilization have evolved over
the years. This is not to say the labels are
perfect, even when most everyone agrees
upon them. We make mistakes, and we
have to acknowledge our larger intellectual
community does as well. We resist change
and so does the community.
But, overall, learning happens and it
happens within a specic frame-
work. Without this framework, we
would be much worse off. We would have
nowhere to start. We could start some-
where else, but this would take immense
energy and efforta complete reorienta-
tion of Western academia. If the current
method isnt broken, we shouldnt try so
hard to x it. Its not perfect, certainly. Itignores some questions too permanently,
A Useul ConventionBart Piela
Debate:How ar can we criticize the Western Canon?
Illustrated by Rachel Shannon-Solomon
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THE GADFLY Fall 201018
when these questions shouldcome up. But
it gives us our all-important starting point.
And by virtue of its obvious imperfec-
tions it brings up the obvious questions.
In this sense, it is more valuable becauseit isimperfect, because it is something we must
revaluate, question and probe. Our revalu-
ation, though, should not be too vicious;
in a way, we should be just as cautious in
criticising the Canon as we are in accept-
ing it.
We cannot deny existence or use-
fulness to something because it is, at bot-
tom, arbitrary. This would undermine the
very notion of a convention. Few endeav-
ors would ever get off the ground. As longas we can move from the point we have
decided upon towards new horizons, as
long as we do not become trapped within
the Western Canon, its value is immediate
and important.
T
he selection of a Western Canon
involves a exible manipulation,
conscious or not, of the past
what to remember, and what to forget. Itis not a xed collection of unquestioned
masterworks, celebrating the inexorable
progress of human civilization. Nor is
it a monolithic body of aesthetic and
philosophical texts that will remain
eternally relevant. It is a battleground for
constant cultural self-denition. Because
of this, the formulation of the Canon is
implicitly informed by various interests
which probably afrm and reenforce theprevailing values of the current order
rather than substantially challenge them.
And just as we must always be suspicious
of who is writing our historysince, as
Orwell reminds us, those who control the
present control the past, and those who
control the past control the futurewe
must be equally wary of those who claim
the intellectual capability to determine a
Western Canon. More often than not, the
reading of a canon uncritically reects the
patchwork of principles and hypotheses
which bolster the intellectual foundation
of the reigning political-economicsystem.
Furthermore, it is important, I think,
to dispel the dangerous notion
that the authors of the Canon
are undeniably ingenious thinkers who,
through intellectual meditation and open
dialogue, built the extraordinary foundation
of contemporary society. This triumphalist
account denies the competitive nature ofphilosophical discourse. If the place of
the Canon is to be justied, then readers
must recognize the divisive upheavals in
intellectual history that have gloried
some authors while condemning others to
oblivion.
We must also be aware of the
often questionable factors that are involved
in the formulation of a Canon. For
example, it is now discreditable to insist
The Canon and the Status QuoPuya Gerami
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19criticism
on some sort of Western civilization,
and if we are to defend a Canon, then
all attempts must be made to discard the
notion of the West as a separate culture
representing enlightenment and intellectualprogress. Similarly, it is no coincidence
that in a society dened by patriarchy
and the sanctity of private property, a
great deal of the Canon respects these
characteristics and provides fodder for
their defense. I am, of course, pointing to
the repeated and not unconvincing claim
that the support of a Canon reproduces
the intellectual foundation for a awed
and starkly unequal society.
Nonetheless, granted that one
acknowledges the dangerous implications
of a Canon and notes the obvious effect
that such a project will often signify an
underlying approval of the status quo, I
think that one can reasonably argue that
it is a supremely valuable educational
tool if re-directed for different purposes.It ought to be used rst to rigorously
interrogate our own fundamental political
assumptions. In the process, readers
will be able to nd relevance in certain
authors while dismissing others as no
longer theoretically valuable; in this way
the Canon will be constantly re-made.
In that case, the Canon exists,
surely; but it is not a collection to
inspire passive awe, but rather a body of
thought to be perpetually challenged, re-
interpreted, destroyed, and re-built.
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THE GADFLY Fall 201020
Systematic Criticism
Peter Licursi
Illustrated by Keenan Korth
As the dust begins to settle in the
aftermath of the recent nan-
cial crisiswhich has caused
the deepest economic recession since the
Great Depressiontwo different posi-
tions have emerged among various intel-
lectuals, politicians and activists. The rst,
popularly touted by fundamentalist pro-
ponents of the free market, views the cri-
sis as a result of inhibiting state-imposed
regulations which compelled the private
sector to design more mystifying nancial
innovations. The second, advocated by
the more moderate defenders of liberal-
democratic capitalism, oppositely argues
that the crisis was sparked by massive de-
regulation, the growing power of nancial
managers, and in certain cases, the greedy
ethical deciency of those in positions
of economic responsibility. And yet, few
if any of these vocal analysts have ap-
proached understanding the crisis in sys-
temic terms.
None have surmised that theessential calamity debated between
moderate and fundamentalist lib-
eral capitalists can be found within
liberal capitalism itself. Contrary to
these awed patterns of mainstream
political discourse, I believe that what
is needed today is a totalizing theoreti-
cal critique of the political-economic
system. To do this, we must use the
tools rst provided by two philoso-phers whose works undermined the
prevailing, embedded religious and ethi-
cal values of their societies: Karl Marx
and Friedrich Nietzsche. I argue that their
works remains relevant and can be utilized
to call into question the seemingly ubiq-
uitous belief in the fundamental sustain-
ability of liberal capitalism.
The primary triumphs of Marx
and Nietzsche, within their respective
methodologies, are that they re-historicizemorality, subvert ethics and call into ques-
tion the very foundations of so-called
Judeo-Christian religiosity. From these
groundbreaking critiques of the funda-
mentally universal, one can derive the im-
petus to en-
vision
Marx, Nietzsche and the Financial Crisis
What is needed today is a
totalizing theoretical critique of
the political-economic system.
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features 21
our societal catastrophes, and conceivably
their resolutions, on a systemic level.
Marxs historical materialism
is central to his account of human con-
sciousness in society and its manifestation
in religion and morality. In his Theses onFeuerbach, Marx posits the materialist argu-
ment that religious sentiment is a purely
social product. This leads to a basic meth-
odological innovation: in understanding
religion and morality, philosophy must
not consider the abstract individual, but
rather a particular form of society. Ideas
are the by-products of economic material
relations. Morality, religion and other ide-
ologies do not stand by themselves, inde-pendent of these relations. Nor do their
corresponding forms of consciousness.
All ideology, whether religious or secular,
relies exclusively on the material experi-
ence of human beings: Life is not de-
termined by consciousness, Marx writes,
but consciousness by life.
This underlying materialism is key
to understanding the manner bywhich Marxs conception of reli-
gion is fruitful in constructing a systemic
critique of contemporary capitalism. For
Marx, the critique of religion is the key to
the critique of all ideologies and institu-
tions. Mans reluctance to understand his
material reality, including that of his situa-
tion under capitalism, is clearly manifested
in religion. This fundamental concept also
allows us to deconstruct some of the mis-
guided criticisms of the nancial crisis.
Rather than appealing to a very vague con-
ception of business ethics to target par-
ticular managerial trends as perpetrating
this crisis, we can attempt to understand
how capitalism as a complex social system
produces these trends. Rather than under-
standing this incident as an abstract psy-
chological or ethical trend, one must insistupon analyzing it as a material reection of
capitalism. In essence, the crisis represents
a series of trends that were rst identied
by Marx. However, these patterns have ac-
celerated and developed to a degree that
Marx could not have foreseen.
Marx describes the power ofcapitalism to alienate man from
his labor and mediate all social
interactions as relations of production, re-
sulting in a commodity fetishism in which
the socially produced material goods seem
naturally produced. In this crisis, one ob-
serves a level of alienation in which the
material product has been removed. Even
the innovators of complex derivatives
admit that their nancial speculationsoccupy a ctitious realm divorced from
material production. With this level of
sustained alienation from the means of
production and productive forces, accord-
ing to Marxs logic, man loses his ability
to exert inuence over his material reality,
and thus, his human essence. This com-
plete mystication of productive relations
leads to the false consciousness that Marx
analyzes in his critique of religion.
Furthermore, as Marx suggests,
capitalism today is no longer merely an
economic system, but rather a complex so-
cial structure in which individuals devout-
ly trust. As Slovenian philosopher Slavoj
iek warns, one should never underesti-
mate the innite plasticity of capitalism.
It has adapted and regenerated through a
number of crises, and yet despite this it
has become increasingly clear that neither
the market nor the state can solve the in-
nite problems that face our world. Still,
contemporary political discourse largelydisregards the possibility of a systemic
critique of liberal capitalism. For its most
Ideology is a mere construct,
utilized to further the aims of
those in positions of dominance.
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THE GADFLY Fall 201022
ardent supporters, the crisis occurred pre-
cisely because capitalism, they argue, was
restrained. Like religion, capitalism, both
as ideology and complex social system, is
fetishized and masked as a naturally oc-
curring phenomenon, despite its roots in
our material reality. If, as Marx insists, man
is the human world, the state and society,
then the status of capitalism is far less cer-
tain, and we have much more control over
our social, political and economic organi-
zation than presumed by those who de-
fend this system. In order to add another
level of nuance to this critique, it is gainful
to turn to Niezsches critique of morality.
I
n On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche
sets out to disprove the widespread
notion in the philosophy of ethics,
from Plato to Kant, that morality is a priorito society. These doctrines search for the
metaphysical criteria for judging any ac-
tion good or evil. But for Nietzsche mo-
rality is an a posteriori phenomenon, and
religion is merely a mode of valuation
with tangible historical origins. Nietzsche
characterizes the emergence of religion,
beginning with Judaism and continuing
with Christianity, as a triumphant slave
revolt in morality. This act, on behalf ofthe weak, is prompted by the resentment
of the once powerful knightly-aristocratic
class, and produces an inversion in which
good qualities (nobility, aggression and
strength) become Evil, and bad qualities
(impotence, weakness and simplicity) be-
come Good. Nietzsches argument is em-
bedded in an understanding of human
history similar to Marxs materialism in
that it is concerned with the a posterioriori-
gins of ideology.
Unlike Marx, however, Nietzsche
assaults these values as man-made con-
structs. In fact, in an evaluative sense he
posits that everything considered Good
in Judeo-Christian ethics is merely a set
of defensive constructs, hypocritically
imposed on society, without any inherent
meaning. In doing so, Nietzsche estab-
lishes a mode of criticism that calls into
question the most foundational ideologi-
cal presumptions of society. It is in this
methodological tradition
that one can pursue the
systemic criticism ad-vocated above. As
Nietzsche decon-
structs the entire
teleology of Eu-
ropean ethics, we
too can decon-
struct the teleol-
ogy of capitalism
and its insistence
on its own per-manence via de-
mocracy, human
rights, and the free
market.
An impor-
tant de-
v i a t ion
from Marx in
Nietzsches cri-tique is the no-
tion that ideology,
even broad ideo-
logical systems
like Morality,
is a mere con-
struct, utilized to
further the aims of
those in positions of
dominance. Marx, on
As iek warns, one shouldnever underestimate the innite
plasticity of capitalism.
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features 23
the other hand, sees ideology as the product
of material conditions, functioning as both an
expression of those material conditions and as
their mask. This theoretical
crossroads is key to a cri-
tique of contemporary
capitalism. Is this system,
as both an ideologi-
cal construct and a
complex social or-
ganism, buoyed
at the insistence
of its power ben-
eciaries and
their ideologicalwardens? It does
seem that the vic-
tims of this crisis
are far more willing
to attack the greed
of a few managers,
like Bernard Madoff
or the executives that
ew to congressional
hearings on private jets,than to seek those fun-
damentally problematic
structures in capitalism
that make crises inevi-
table and recurring. How-
ever, this reaction assumes
that capitalism requires a
balanced ethical outlook; in-
stead, in the tradition of Marx,
we must pursue the notion that capitalism, asa system, produces the behaviors that our so-
ciety has quite clearly deemed unacceptable. In
fact, we see that in prosecuting the individu-
als who perpetrated risky speculations without
looking at the inherent causal elements in capi-
talism that prompt these behaviors, we end up
perpetuating and strengthening the system as
a whole.
Thus, the public embarrassment and
prosecution of bank executives is merely a
masquerade, in which the public demand for
justice is supercially satiated and a select few
take the fall for the inherently problematic ele-
ments of capitalism. Thus, using the Marxist
and Nietzschean critiques, I believe that the
reactive discourse of the nancial crisis is a
mystication of class-consciousness, in which
those with a vested interest in the prolongation
of liberal-capitalism dole out what appears to
be justice in order to avoid the actuation of
real social justice. Those who desire to divert
criticism from capitalism disregard it altogeth-
er as a subject for critique. Apologists create
an assumptive discourse in which the longev-
ity of the system is incontestable, and, in sodoing, mystify the ability of the victims of the
crisis to understand the totality of capitalism
as a historical process.
In both the works of Marx and Nietz-
sche, consciousness of the historical, material
origins of grand ideological systems is key to
the intellectual liberation of man. Each thinker
posits that the maintenance of these grand ide-
ological systems depends on the unconscious-
ness of its material origins, which is why these
systems are fetishized and masked as natural,
rather than social, entities. It is the very fact
that the permanence of capitalism in politi-cal discourse is so staunchly presumed that we
must view it with a skeptical, critical lens. I am
not positing a solution to the problem of the
nancial crisis, as this is not the true purpose
of philosophy, but rather a redenition of this
problem as a systemic crisis necessitating a cri-
tique of the inherent qualities of capitalism.
Marx and Nietzsche provide us with the intel-
lectual tools to make this critique.
It is the very fact that thepermanence of capitalism inpolitical discourse is so staunchly
presumed that we must view itwith a skeptical, critical lens.
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THE GADFLY Fall 201024
Public art faces a challenge that is
quite unlike that which is faced by
all art: each and every instance of
public art has both a time limit and a spa-
tial attachment. That is to say public art
has a temporal restriction, an expiration
date, a moment when it ceases to interest
its viewing public, as well as a site-specic
designation. The implications of site-spec-
icity for public are more obvious and
immediate than those of time-specicity.
To derive a theory that combines both
specicities, I question human nature,
with particular emphasis on the viewing
publics sensitivity to public art. The speci-cities, or parameters, of public art are re-
vealed precisely when the viewing public
becomes conditioned by, or desensitized
to, public art. We can condently declare
the end of public art when we, as human
beings qua viewing public, stop caring,
talking and thinking about public art.
It is crucial to understand rst
that both the artist and the viewing pub-
lic play an important role in the time-specicity and site-specicity of public
art. Because public art is so exposed, it is
extremely accessible to the viewing pub-
lic. The artist is thus confronted with the
challenge of creating public art that re-
tains its viewing public, namely its local
community. Due to this over-exposure,
public art fails to transcend the temporal
restrictions that are less known to works
of art in the museum. Public art is directly
restricted to the changing tides of human
interest, participation and sensitivity, to
the changing face of its viewing public, to
the changing times.
Public art is site-specic because it
must occupy a specic public space.
Complicating matters, it must be
relevant to the public space of its viewingpublic. This is, again, a burden and a chal-
lenge placed to the artist. The philosopher
Hilde Hein notes, [The] sheer presence
of art out-of-doors or in a bus terminal
or a hotel reception area does not auto-
matically make that art publicno more
than placing a tiger in a barnyard would
make it a domestic animal. For example,
Maya Lins Vietnam Veterans Memorial
in Washington, D.C. is an instance of pub-lic art, but a public rendition of Salvador
Dals The Persistence of Memory in
London is not. Some art, like The Per-
sistence of Memory, is essentially taken
out of the museum, copied, and placed in
a public spacefor the purpose of this
article, I shall not consider this public art.
Memorials, such as that of Maya Lin, are
often highly site-specic, as they should
be, but their time-specicity becomesrather complicated and controversial. A
memorial is thought to possess qualities
that transcend the boundaries of time, to
appeal to and communicate with count-
less generations of people through time.
Yet memorials are conned to the time of
their installation, the time when they (and
their subject matter) were considered rele-
vant. This is not to say that memorials are
On Public Art
Illustrated by Louise McCune
Arton Gjonbalaj
Public art faces a challengethat is quite unlike thatwhich is faced by all art.
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features 25
unsuccessful works of art; in fact, they are
extremely successful, but only if they help
the ever-changing viewing public experi-ence or at least imagine the time when the
work was installed, when it was important
and relevant, when it was alive.
It is apparent, then, that public
art can link us to the past, taking us out of
our time and space. Public art can force us
to rethink our habits as well as our habi-
tats. At the proper level of engagement
with public art, we are placed outside of
our very recognizable selves, outside of
the environment with which we were once
so familiar. We think that we know our
space, but only a drastic modication of
the spacethrough public artcan accu-
rately test our familiarity and knowledge.
Public art compels us to question our
identity as well as our surroundings. Only
after this transformation can we truly un-
derstand our time and space and, moreimportantly, ourselves. After
we have inevitably exhausted
public art of this function, it
expires. Public art can take us
out of our time and space, but
it cannot save itself.
What transpires in arts transition
from the museum or gallery
to the park or street corner?Think of the Salvador Dal and Maya Lin
examples. On a more personal level, think
about the Thinker and Alma Mater
on Columbias campus, the rst simply
copied and placed on campus, and the
latter made specically for the site that
is Columbia University. When Columbia
students, the viewing public of Alma
Mater, tried to destroy the sculpture in
the 1970s, as philosopher Arthur Danto
recalls, the students were not vandals but
revolutionaries, symbolically attacking the
public whose values Alma Mater embod-
ies.
There is hope that public art can
be kept alive if its artist does something
innovative and original. To extend its im-
pact and push its temporal and spatial
boundaries, public art should provokecontroversy and interaction in the
There is hope that publicart can be kept alive ifits artist does somethinginnovative and orginal.
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THE GADFLY Fall 201026
form of discourse or deep personal medi-
tation. Public art must respond to and in-
teract with the viewing public by reecting
the cultural, historical, philosophical, po-litical and social interests of the viewing
public. However, in doing so, it is tied to
a temporal and regional locality. As
it attempts to reenergize and sculpt
an often-overlooked public space,
by transforming the blank canvas of
bare public space into an artistic and
expressive fte, public art pays tribute to
the local, the ordinary and the vernacular,
deeply time-specic and site-specic ele-ments.
The role of the viewing public, as
inuenced by different times and
localities, is essential to under-
standing public art. Public art requires the
sensational investmentthe active partic-
ipationof the viewing public. As Hilde
Hein suggests, we are no longer mere
passive onlookers. Instead, we
are participants
actively implicated in the constitution
of the work of artA works realization
depends on the audiences bestowal of
meaning upon it, a contentious social andpolitical undertaking. However, the view-
ing public rarely becomes more attached
to any instance of public art over time. It
seems that at some point each instance of
public art becomes a xed entity, merelysomething we pass by on a daily routine.
The interruption of the ow of nature,
of the ow of human trafc, caused by
public art is crucial to its overcoming the
specicities. Public art must have redemp-
tive value that implicates an understanding
of the spatial and temporal arrangement
of the environmentan understanding
of that which constituted the space before
the installation and that which consti-
tutes it after the installation.
The ideal instance of
public art demonstrates relevant
meaning that transcends its in-
stallation in a specic time and
space, a meaning that is in-
fused in a new, updated instal-
lation. This subsequent in-
stallation reects the artistscareful consideration of the
criticism of the viewing
public, as well as the dy-
namics and restrictions of
time and space. This no-
tion of the continuity of
an idea or meaning con-
veyed through an instance
of public art transcends
The ideal instance of public artdemonstrates relevant meaningthat transcends its installations.
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features 27
that particular instance through a series
of generational installations. In this case,
the essence of a specic instance of pub-
lic art is never lost. However, the pieceitself, the particular instance of public
art, becomes outdated, outmoded, and
ignored. Ultimately, this is not a solution
to the notions of time-specicity or site-
specicity, nor a solution that is absolute-
ly necessary. In fact, part of the very fab-
ric of public art is its ability to evaporate,
to disappear from the eyes and lives of
the viewing public, making way for a new
local installation.
P
ublic art is sculpted by the
hand of the artist
and the eye of the
viewing public, from
the moment of
its installation to
the moment of its
elimination, its re-
moval. Public art that
is neither initially nor ul-
timately given any meaning by the view-
ing public, has no meaning. It is therefore
toppled, in totalthe idea, the meaning,and in extreme cases, the artist. The time-
specicity and site-specicity of art do
not necessarily condemn it; instead they
challenge the artist to create fresh, new
public art that meets the changing de-
mands of the changing viewing public,
with hopes of creating and understand-
ing a form of art that can transcend time
and space.
Public art that is not givenany meaning by the viewingpublic has no meaning.
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THE GADFLY Fall 201028
Evan Burger
little
philosophybooks
A Clockwork Orange
Illustrated by Arais Abbruzzi
In 1972, Stanley Kubricks masterpiece
A Clockwork Orange was released in
British theaters. The lm ratings
board of Great Britain had been especially
hard on this viciously violent movie, and
the boards harshness was soon justied:
a multitude of copycat crimes, supposedly
inspired by the movie, broke out acrossthe country. The most horric of these
involved a 17-year-old Dutch tourist
raped by a gang of young men chanting
just as in the lmthe lyrics to the
song Singing in the Rain. Kubrick
subsequently bowed to public pressure and
forbade the showing of the lm in Great
Britain, a self-imposed ban that lasted until
his death in 1999. The public reaction to
the movie was motivated by an unspoken
theory of art and ethics; namely, that the
aesthetic good is inextricably bound tothe moral good, that good art makes good
people. The great irony is that the work of
art in question is itself an attack upon this
commonly held (but rarely challenged)
assumption.
Alex, the protagonist of
A Clockwork Orange, has the most
rened aesthetic taste of all the
characters in the moviehe
loves Beethoven and appreci-ates beauty for its own sake,
even if that beauty is almost
solely restricted to the female
form. And yet, Alex has the
blackest heart in a cast of vil-
lains. This dichotomy induces in
the audience an unpleasant cog-
nitive dissonance, conicting with
our assumptions. Despite this con-
ict, Kubricks mastery of cinema-tography draws us into rapport with
flm
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