“The fall of the Roman Empire created a power vacuum that we’re still dealing with today.”

My father would have been 80 yesterday (that’s how far it is to July 3, 1936). We slipped out to a jazz club in the South Loop by way of celebration. Think of it: in July ’36 Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton were still in their prime, Miles Davis was ten years old. An unpredictable zigzag was born.

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I know these people– let’s call them B and E. For years now, B keeps threatening to leave E. Every time, E makes concessions and allows B to renegotiate the terms of the relationship, always in B’s favor. Finally, after a new installment of threats, B has departed– but is now trying to reestablish visiting rights on B’s own terms, presenting this as a favor done to E.

E’s friends are relieved that B is gone and are telling E to change the locks. A court order might be necessary.

Republicans have dismissed as a “publicity stunt” a continuing sit-in protest over gun laws by Democrats in the US House of Representatives.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said the protesters were more interested in headlines than tackling gun violence. (BBC News, 23/6/2016)

Would you let a poisonous snake wander around your house while children and guests were there?

Although Goebbels, no stranger to killing, went around with a cyanide pill hidden on his person, and I suppose that was his right, he didn’t think to carry a dose sufficient to carry off another fifty or three hundred people, or to toss it in the water supply. We Americans are a generous people.

A theology professor in our neighborhood shot himself and his wife the other day. Why was he in such a hurry? Because convenience was right at hand, and we Americans love convenience. I am reminded of something about “seventy times seventy,” from a guy who must have lived in a more slow-moving era.

Rikki Garni said it best: “The dictionary is the only loaded gun we keep in the house.”

I am privileged to have spent much of my adult life in the company of people for whom fat-shaming is a more grievous injustice than starvation.

(With an opening line like that, it will have to be a posthumous memoir. I couldn’t stand to read the reviews.)

(A talk for the 2016 Weissbourd conference, “Does Liberal Education Need Saving?”)

Just at the moment when the liberal arts are under attack in America as being a merely ornamental excrescence, Chinese university administrators are trying to reform the curriculum in order to include more general education and more seminar-style teaching. Cao Li 曹莉, a professor and dean at Tsinghua University, finds this risky. “Many universities,” she says,

are rushing to join in the adventure of internationalizing higher education with foreign capital. All these shifts and transformations pose severe challenges to the Chinese university, one of which is the problem of how the identity of a Chinese university can be defined and upheld. In this regard, liberal education cannot ignore the strategic importance of maintaining national identity and cultural self-consciousness…. [T]he model of the American university is being invoked to rationalize and standardize university of education. We will have to realize that one of the most disturbing results of globalization is the standardization and homogenization of cultures, which threatens to deconstruct nationality and dismantle national consciousness as well as cultural confidence…. To break out of such a globalizing paradigm both culturally and intellectually is a challenge to all nations and their educational enterprises.[1]

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“We demand that sex speak the truth… and we demand that it tell us our truth, or rather, the deeply buried truth of that truth about ourselves wich we think we possess in our immediate consciousness,” you’ll remember that Foucault said. He also insisted that that “truth” was a scam, the more so the more it became obligatory.

I guess it’s usual to lie about sex– the sex one is having or not having (or used to have or not have). But lying about the kinds, occasions and purposes of sex that other people are having, or have had, touches my fiber of moral disgust. It happens in Phentermine 200Mg and ways. Let’s do less of this.

I don’t have the time to research this right now, but it seems to me that the set of features known as “the Kafkaesque” owe at least as much to the experience of being a tuberculosis patient in the 1920s as they do to to Jewishness, Austro-Hungarian bureaucracy, minority language status, the Oedipus complex or other factors that have been put forward.

It’s all there. The dream quality of not being able to distinguish the most trivial things, or fantasies, from mortal danger:

[1922] March 16. The attacks, my fear, rats that tear at me and whom my eyes multiply.

March 24. How it lies in wait for me! On the way to the doctor, for example, so often there.

May 26. The severe ‘attacks’ during the evening walk (resulting from four tiny vexations during the day: the dog in the summer resort; Mars’ book; enlistment as a soldier; lending the money through Z.); momentary confusion, helplessness, hopelessness, unfathomable abyss, nothing but abyss; only when I turned in at the front door did a thought come to my assistance… [The Diaries of Franz Kafka 1914-1923, ed. Max Brod, tr. Martin Greenberg (New York: Shocken Books, 1949), 225, 230]

The paranoiac feeling:

[1923] June 12…. More and more fearful as I write. It is understandable. Every word, twisted in the hands of the spirits– this twist of the hand is their characteristic gesture–becomes a spear turned against the speaker. Most especially a remark like this. And so ad infinitum. The only consolation would be: it happens whether you like or no. And what you like is of infinitesimally little help. More than consolation is: You too have weapons. [Diaries, 232-233]

But Franz K. didn’t have all the weapons he needed: that was the last entry in the diary. (He lived for almost another year past writing those words.)

Most of all, a description of tuberculosis that makes it sound like what much later would be classified as an auto-immune disease:

[1922] March 7. Yesterday the worst night I have had, as if everything were at an end.

March 9. But that was only weariness; today a fresh attack, wringing the sweat from my brow. How would it be if one were to choke to death on oneself? If the pressure of introspection were to diminish, or close off entirely, the opening through which one flows forth into the world. I am not far from it at times. A river flowing upstream. For a long time now, that is what for the most part has been going on. [Diaries, 223]

What’s so special about the 1920s? Since Koch’s discovery of the TB bacillus in 1882 and development of the sputum test in 1890, it had been possible to know with certainty that you were doomed, yet be unable to do anything conclusive about it (that would become possible only with antibiotics). Does this sound like the judgment or what? Yes, Susan Sontag, I am aware of the danger of romanticizing illness. But don’t you see the analytic mind of Kafka at work, trying to understand the process of his own obliteration? That’s the castle, that’s the trial, that’s Amerika (or: The One Who Disappeared).

“The person who proposes that cowboy poetry is poetry composed by cowboys has not begun to theorize. ” Saussy, The Ethnography of Rhythm: Orality and Its Technologies, p. 15.  But now see Carson Vaughan, “Order Phentermine Online Legally.” Not especially theoretical, but has a range.

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For some reason I couldn’t help writing up a French-language digest of my book The Ethnography of Rhythm, just out from Fordham University Press.

L’ETHNOGRAPHIE DU RYTHME

Écriture, oralité, technologies

Haun Saussy

Préface par Olga Solovieva

Introduction: Le poids d’une parole ailée

Le sujet de ce livre est la perturbation causée par la littérature orale. Ce qu’on entend par littérature orale; comment on en rend compte (approche théorique, approche ostensive)—insuffisamment. La nécessité d’une histoire du concept, car ni l’oralité ni l’écriture n’existent en tant que telles: définitions en miroir et par défaut. Jules César et les druides, Flavius Josèphe et les aèdes. Les Anciens vs. les Modernes, et Homère, auteur de “chansons du Pont-Neuf.” Vico, Ossian, Wolf, les folkloristes du XIXe siècle. Quand a-t-on pensé pour la première fois que les textes oraux avaient une structure spécifique?

Chapitre I. Une poésie sans poèmes ni poètes

1. “Deux ou trois cents phrases rythmées”

Jean Paulhan (1913), collectionneur des hain-teny. Une poésie de dispute. Le bien communal poétique. Les proverbes, les formules: composition par tous et par aucun. Un langage superposé au langage ordinaire.

2. Des festivals du rythme

Marcel Granet (1919), lecteur de Paulhan. La poésie chinoise ancienne, définie par ses déficits en personnalité et en invention. “Le rythme était tout.” Les formes élémentaires de la vie poétique.

3. Le style oral

Marcel Jousse (1925) prend fait et cause pour une civilisation de transmission orale, gestuelle, du savoir. Les verbo-moteurs. Les Formules, les Balancements. La disparition de l’auteur au profit de la Récitation. Homère, Jésus, porte-paroles de la mémoire collective. Les grands laboratoires du Style oral.

4. La formule comme système

Milman Parry (1928), ou la mise en ordre rythmique d’un apparent chaos sémantique. Les formules nom-épithète chez Homère et leur différenciation fonctionnelle. Langage poétique, langage d’une poésie orale. Les débuts des “oral poetry studies.”

5. Langue, parole, censure

Jakobson et Bogatyrev (1929) proposent une théorie du folklore oral centrée sur l’oubli (censure) de ce qui viole les normes. La récitation d’une œuvre orale est la parole d’une langue collective. La futilité de la censure dans une civilisation de l’écrit prouvée par l’histoire.

Chapitre II. L’écriture comme moyen de notation

1. Le cyborg épique

La théorie de la composition collective orale: le robot poète. Peur du mécanisme, d’où : dénégation, mauvaise foi. Un déterminisme technique par antiphrase. Critique de l’ethnographie tacite des “oral poetry studies,” trop dépendante d’une valorisation d’une différence oral/écrit qui ne correspond pas aux données rapportées du terrain.

2. “Mot à mot”

Comment transcrit-on? Sait-on ce qu’on fait en notant un texte oral? Le mot, artéfact d’une technologie. La théorie linguistique des aèdes. Les unités de composition; l’identité et la différence considérées au point de vue d’une autre technologie de la reproduction des textes. Comment faire mieux que l’écriture: rappels, liens, tabulations.

3. Au fil du temps: sutures

La rencontre du texte oral et de l’imprimé. Henri Estienne, Ludolf Küster: qui sont les rhapsodes? Le texte homérique et l’ennui du typographe: pourquoi tant de formules? Naissance du cliché, de la propriété littéraire, de la parodie. Les médias et les technologies selon les commentaires pindariques.

Chapitre III. Autographie

1. L’oreille inscriptrice

Léon Scott (1858): invention d’un mécanisme pour transcrire la parole sans passer par l’alphabet. Marey. Les choses parlent d’eux-mêmes.

2. “La parole est un mouvement”

Pierre-Jean Rousselot (1882), disciple de Marey. La dialectologie, science des différences infimes. La parole, au sens de Saussure, captée par une écriture sans mots et sans playback. Le corps, la matière, le temps, l’inscription.

3. Le patois de Parnasse

L’alexandrin existe-t-il en dehors d’une fiction normative? La phonétique expérimentale au secours du vers libre. Le vers traditionnel n’a pas vraiment douze pieds, et le vers libre comporte symétries et césures.

4. Une différence de quinze cycles

Le corps humain, instrument de réception et de production de vibrations. Une esthétique physiologique, une psychologie musculaire.

Chapitre IV. Le gramophone humain

1. “Errores Modernistarum”

L’arrivée tardive de la philologie biblique allemande en France. La philologie contre la foi. Le Vatican contre les “modernistes.” La condamnation (1907) de Loisy.

2. L’évangile du mouvement

La récitation orale selon Jousse, une réponse à la philologie iconoclaste de Renan et de Loisy. L’évangile ne résiderait pas dans les textes écrits, mais dans un registre aujourd’hui perdu de gestes et de mouvements. “Nous avons les paroles mêmes de Jésus.” Les moyens de mémorisation plus forts que la mort.

3. Une galerie de squelettes

La Psychologie de la Récitation au temple de l’anthropologie physique. L’ambition: faire du mimétisme une loi physique de l’organisme humain, tout comme l’inscription d’un contenu dans une série de gestes lui donnerait corps et un moyen de propagation.

4. “Quatre juifs obscurs”

La valorisation de l’oralité contre la glorification maurrassien de Rome. Un certain philo-sémitisme rencontre le renouveau juif ; déchristianisation de l’évangile.

5. La civilisation gallo-galiléenne

Dans la France occupée, une lecture de l’histoire à contre-pied. Le front uni des Druides et des Mères. Le retour de l’oralité.

Chapitre V. L’inscription corporelle

1. La science des matériaux

Le corps humain, support d’inscriptions. L’esprit humain comme surface écrite. Quelques “lois” de l’écriture sur cerveaux vivants.

2. Des techniques du corps

Mauss (1934): le corps, premier outil. Transmissions des savoirs par et sur le corps. Merleau-Ponty et l’homme sans projets. Le projet, unité d’inscription de la technique mémorielle qu’est la littérature orale. Perspective de reconstitution d’un paysage mnémonique pour la récitation épique. Bricolage, Traumarbeit. Le corps du récitant, le corps du texte. La littérature orale aura été le lieu d’expérimentation pour tant d’avant-gardes artistiques ou théoriques du XXe siècle parce qu’elle a le pouvoir de dissoudre et de reformer les unités mêmes dont dépendent les autres médias de notre modernité.

Bibliographie

Illustrations et légendes

What do you say I write an application to the XXXX Foundation, the YYY Trust, or the ZZZZ Institute for the following purposes:

— Cataloguing my library. I can’t find books I’m looking for. I would save a lot of time if I knew where so-and-so’s book about Lamartine as epistemologist was stored, or even what color the jacket was. (Higher-ticket item: digitize my whole library so I can carry it around on a 2TB telephone attachment.)

— Organize my xerox collection, with many items dating back to 1974. (As above.)

— Get time to read books. The list of things I’ve started but not finished is embarrassingly long. Save me, XXXX Foundation, from my lifelong embarrassment.

Or of course I could retire, with a generous enough pension, and do all this without ever bothering anybody again about it.

From 1993 until last week, I interviewed high school students for admission to Yale, under the aegis of a branch of the Admissions department called the Alumni Schools Committee (ASC). For the first twenty years, it was a rewarding experience, one where I saw immense possibilities for some students and hoped that Yale could help make those possibilities happen. I worked hard in my interview reports to convey who and what the students were. About five or six years ago, I got a Lucite paperweight and a certificate from the ASC, indicating that I had done better than expected.

In the year or two after, the students took on a different character. There were many fewer given to me, and those were most often students who had been programmed with activities and spurred to excel by well-meaning but desperate parents. I saw only one student from that time who actually seemed capable of changing the world. The competitive world of college admissions meant that many were now provisionally admitted, through a little bit of legalistic chicanery, before an interviewer ever came on the scene, rendering my role almost superfluous. And I had a shock when, after many years, I was put into the same room as my fellow interviewers and discovered that all the stereotypes of Yalies had instantly come true. Representative was one jowly man, slightly older than me, wearing a tailored navy-blue Brioni suit, who worked for UBS, and who was very concerned lest he and his colleagues be held responsible for the financial collapse of the country. “She’s going after our people!” he said of Elizabeth Warren, with no small outrage. As the prophet Hosea put it, “You are not my people.”

The final thing that made me think about leaving interviewing was that, due to new rules, quite sensible, I could not interview in my home. I am an independent contractor, and have no office of my own. The ASC local director was kind enough to ask a fellow interviewer, a very high-powered lawyer in an international firm, whether I could use some of the lawyer’s office space. It was palatial, taking up the top floor of a skyscraper. There were huge, marble walls, enormous volumes of space, marble topped conference tables, and a conference room looking out fifty miles to the mountains to the east. The office manager offered me food, soda, and water whenever I came in. I felt like an imposter whenever, at home, I put on my one acceptable suit, knotted my bulldog tie, and, a half hour later, ushered a student into the panoramic conference room. I felt as though I was conveying a rather Mephistophelean message: cast your lot with Yale, and all earthly success shall be yours. Given that I was a glaring example of that not happening, I felt completely out of place, especially given how deferential the students were after they gaped at the panoramic conference room.

Last year, I had to do something I had never had to do before: ask ASC to reassign a student. Foolishly, I had forgotten that the AAAS conference was at the same time as the crunch interviewing week. I was upset about it, but that turned to relief in a very short time. This year, I had one student reassigned due to my being sick, and realized I didn’t want to interview anymore. I got a nice note from the ASC director, but now I am free.

I am not sure how to give back to Yale anymore—I surely cannot do so financially. The Yale of today seems fundamentally different from 25 years ago. Perhaps Yale needs more interviewers from younger generations. Perhaps Admissions will rely more on computers to home in on the precise data that determine a successful applicant, and fewer interviews will be needed. For now, I can take off the wolf’s mantle of “success,” and try to be more consistently who I am.