Once in the 24 hours (but not always at the same hour) I take half a grain of purified opium, equal to 12 drops of Laudanum—which is not more than an 8th part of what I took at Keswick, exclusively of Beer, Brandy, & Tea, which last is undoubtedly a pernicious Stimulant." —Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Greetings from the far left coast where I open with brief remarks about a subject I did not take up on the blog despite a succession of fitful starts soon abandoned. Two subjects, actually, conjoined by ubiquitous elements of race and racism. First was the incident at the end of LSU's victory over Iowa where LSU star Angel Reese, who happens to be black, directed a trash-talk gesture at Iowa star Caitlin Clark, who happens to be white and has been known to engage in this kind of thing herself—and it should be noted defended Reese after she was subjected to abuse by a social media mob. The episode involving two young women—Reese is twenty, Clark twenty-one—that perhaps merited passing mention was exploited every which way by crude, professional provocateurs on sports talk shows and podcasts who traffic in this sort of thing because it generates social media outrage and followers—and who by the bye had to be aware that the race of the players and racial makeup of the two teams made this a conflagration waiting for a spark—while from another angle we were treated to a spectacle of posturing and pontificating by ideologues who blew an incidental foofaraw up into a major kerfuffle that diverted the spotlight away from two outstanding basketball players, two fine teams, and their contribution to the growing appreciation for women's basketball.
On the heels of the trash talk affair came the more serious expulsion of two young black members of the Tennessee House of Representatives following their participation from the House floor in a demonstration calling for gun safety legislation. Their actions were ill-advised and ineffective. A generous application of the imaginative faculty is required to fathom how they might have thought this would further their cause. They arguably crossed the proverbial line, especially when the bullhorn was brought out. A stern talking to, maybe censure, would have been understandable responses by the Republican majority, who doubtless would have gone beyond that for some rabble rousing of their own. Expulsion crossed a line so far beyond the pale that it blurred anything objectionable done by the two offending reps.
It is a feature of the times that persons of a certain disposition are quick to attribute wrong and injustice to race and racism notwithstanding confounding variables and even the clear presence of other significant contributing factors that bear on the injustice. Likewise, in something of a mirror image, others are equally quick to insist that race and racism have nothing to do with any of it. Sometimes, though, too many times, it really does come down to race and racism. When Gloria Johnson was asked afterward why Justin Jones and Justin Pearson were expelled and she was not (she missed out by one vote), she responded, "I'll answer your question — it might have to do with the color of our skin." Indeed, it might, although here too there is more to it than race alone. Republican disdain for democracy and a grab for power were also on display (see Kathy Gilsinan, When a Legislature Goes to War With Its State’s Richest City, Politico, April 14, 2023).
Zut. I did not set out to rattle on at such length. Thanks for bearing with me.
Cultures are not silos, self-contained, self-absorbed. Their tradition and character are colored and flavored by an array of cross-cultural influences, some readily discernible, others altogether assimilated. This unremarkable observation is absent from hysteria about cultural appropriation and misbegotten fealty to fanciful notions about cultural and intellectual traditions associated with Western Europe. A facile conception of Eurocentrism is denounced by one camp, celebrated by another.
A recent Washington Post opinion column by Angel Adams Parham and Anika Prather (As Black educators, we endorse classical studies) breathes welcome perspective onto ill-informed, ill-founded wrangling about the place of classical studies in American education. Parham is a sociology professor and senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. Prather is director of high-quality curriculum and instruction at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy. They are the authors of The Black Intellectual Tradition: Reading Freedom in Classical Literature. Two salient points from their column:
In this increasingly polarized debate, both sides reveal an astonishing lack of historical understanding combined with a lamentable lack of imagination. Have the classics and classical education at times been used to exclude and oppress? They certainly have. Is exclusion and oppression innate to an education steeped in the history and literature of the Mediterranean crossroads? Certainly not.
In a way quite similar to the foundations of Christianity, the principles of classical antiquity emerged, flourished and were shared around the Mediterranean Sea — the crossroads of Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The impressive exchange of ideas continued across the barriers of time, religion, geography and culture.
Parham and Prather point to Herodotus, whose Histories some 2500 years ago "reflected the richness of this exchange" with "real and fantastical stories from what we now call the Iberian Peninsula to India, from Central Europe to Ethiopia and beyond." During the Middle Ages Arabic scholars preserved works of the classical Greeks that would otherwise have been lost to us, including "Aristotle’s treatises discussing democracy and the relation between living a virtuous life and happiness, as well as what it means to be alive." In the 13th century Fibonacci returned to Italy from his education in North Africa "armed with Hindu-Arabic numerals, liberating his fellow mathematicians and future generations from the limitations of Roman numerals and counting boards." In the 11th century the Islamic philosopher, physician, and judge Ibn Rushd, also known as Averroes, wrote influential commentaries on Aristotle's works that Thomas Aquinas read and responded to with great respect.
Classical studies have their place in the history of the black struggle for freedom and equality in this country. During the Revolutionary War era the poet Phyllis Wheatley, black, enslaved, and female, was according to Parham and Prather nourished on the classics, something I did not know (it should go without saying there is much I do not know). Frederick Douglas memorized the speeches of Cicero. Huey Newton studied Plato's Republic.
Summing up, Parham and Prather relate their experience with students they teach who "combine the challenges and riches of their own lives with insights from classic literature":
So: Down with classics and classical education? Not while we have the chance to invite our students to inhabit its crossroads and engage as interlocutors in its conversations with Plato, Averroes, Fibonacci, Wheatley and many more. These are our real teachers, and we submit that we all have much to learn from them.
As Dr. Matsen, who introduced me to the pre-Socratic Greeks and medieval philosophy, liked to say, "We stand on the shoulders of giants." It might be added for benefit of those animated by pique and resentment or by know-nothing nativism and delusions of greatness that these giants came from a variety of places and cultures that mutually interacted, influenced, and appropriated from one another..
Memo from the serendipity desk. The April 20 issue of The New York Review has an article about recent archaeological discoveries on the shores of the Red Sea in modern-day Egypt that suggest trade on an "unprecedented scale" between India and the Roman Empire by a sea route across the Indian Ocean (William Dalrymple, Garum Masala). Among the findings are "the head and torso of a magnificent Buddha, the first ever found west of Afghanistan," depictions of Hindu deities and other Indian sacred objects, and "even a bilingual inscription in Greek and Sanskrit, made in the mid-third century by a Buddhist devotee from Gujarat named Vasulena the Warrior." Fascinating stuff.
Recommended reading: Annie Lowry at The Atlantic discusses artificial intelligence with the director of the AI Now Institute, which "produces diagnosis and policy research to address the concentration of power in the tech industry" (AI Isn’t Omnipotent. It’s Janky, April 3, 2023). Amba Kak starts by telling Lowry that AI is a buzzword: "The FTC has described the term artificial intelligence as a marketing term…[that] has no discernible, definite meaning! That said, what we are talking about are algorithms that take large amounts of data. They process that data. They generate outputs."
Kak advises that we need to "use this moment to reassert public control over the trajectory of the AI industry":
Rather than take their word that they’ve got it covered, rather than getting swept up in their grand claims, let’s use this moment to set guardrails. Put the burden on the companies to prove that they’re going to do no harm. Prevent them from concentrating power in their hands.
Tamara Keith and Amy Walter returned to the PBS NewsHour this past Monday: Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on the politics of abortion, guns and democracy. It appears that I was not the only NewsHour regular to note the absence of their Politics Monday segment after the changing of the guard at the beginning of the year. Co-anchor Geoff Bennett's comments suggested that we will see more of Keith and Walter as the 2024 campaign heats up. It is is not clear whether this will be on an occasional basis or a return to the regular Monday feature. Even so, it is a welcome development.
Memo from the cinema desk. I managed to miss both Tár and Everything Everywhere All at Once, put off in different ways by accounts heard on NPR and reviews in various publications. The protagonist of Tár, played by Cate Blanchett, seemed so unlikable and beyond redemption that I was not inclined to make my way out to see it. This I now regret and hope to remedy after recommendations by two friends whose opinions I hold in high regard. Reviews and clips from Everything Everywhere All at Once suggested a film that might serve as an entertaining diversion but not really up my alley and I failed to see what all the fuss was about.
It was from this perspective that I read with interest a letter to London Review of Books, March 30, 2023, by Stuart Maconie in response to Nicholas Spice's review in an earlier issue of LRB that mentions Tár in passing at the beginning of a piece whose focus is a new translation of Richard Wagner's essays on conducting and In Good Hands: The Making of a Modern Conductor by Alice Farnham (Theirs and No One Else’s, March 16, 2023).
Maconie takes issue with Spice's assertion that Tár is about "an internationally acclaimed conductor…whose spectacular fall from grace follows serial grooming and abuse, for sexual favours, of younger colleagues." Maconie writes that this was never made explicit and "we were left to ponder what was real, rumour, natural or supernatural." He adds that he was disappointed that Tár lost out at the Oscars to the "bafflingly fêted Everything Everywhere All at Once, essentially a Kung Fu Ghostbusters for hipsters." While I cannot say whether "Kung Fu Ghostbusters for hipsters" is fair to Everything Everywhere, "bafflingly fêted" fits my impression. That said, I may check it out one of these days and remain open to having my impression corrected. It would not be the first time.
New Blog Post: 60 Minutes and the Mainstreaming of Marjorie Taylor Greene. April 6, 2023. The title of Lesley Stahl's interview with Marjorie Taylor Greene on Sunday's episode of 60 Minutes gives the game away: "from the far-right fringe to the Republican Party's front row." …The far-right fringe is the Republican Party's front row…read more>>
Keep the faith.
Stand with Ukraine.
yr obdt svt
