Power & Culture
Poli 110J
This is the pure form of servitude: to
exist as an instrument, as a thing.
Reading poetry
• Poetry is the art of arranging words in the
maximally powerful order
• Look up any references that you don’t
understand
– Poetry derives a part of its power from allusion to
other sources
• Don’t ask what it MEANS, ask what it DOES
– Poetry is art, not a secret code
Howl
• 1957 Obscenity trial in San Francisco
– "filthy, vulgar, obscene, and disgusting language.”
– Judge: “Would there be any freedom of press or
speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid
innocuous euphemisms?”
• 2007 Obscenity fear
– Pacifica radio planned to broadcast in order to
commemorate 50th anniversary of Howl’s protection
under First Amendment
– But feared fines from the FCC, put it online
– Differing basis of censorship: public morals vs.
“offensiveness” and affordability of free speech
Howl
• Clear American identity
– Influence of Walt
Whitman
– Similar mystical and
political concerns
• Brotherhood, spirituality,
equality, repression,
sexuality
• The title
– What is a howl?
Allen Ginsberg
• 1926-1997
• “Beat” poet
• Ginsberg’s mother, Naomi Livergant Ginsberg
– Politically radical and mentally unwell, hugely influential
on Ginsberg’s life & work
– His other most famous poem, “Kaddish”, written at her
death
• Carl Solomon
– Ginsberg met him in a mental institution during a period
when each was briefly institutionalized. Formed lifelong
friendship.
Part I
• “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed
by madness”
– Who are the best? What is meant by “best minds”?
What does it mean that they are the ones destroyed?
• Reflected in word choice: the use of coarse language in high
art
– Frames all of part I of the poem
• Who…
– The actions of part I are those of these destroyed
minds, efforts to escape and transcend.
• Ironically, those most despised by society at large are in fact
its best
Transcendence
• A spiritual overcoming of the world in which
we find ourselves
– To reject and vault above the material world, to
access some higher spiritual good (union with
God, truth, salvation, true self, enlightenment)
– Emphasized in the mystical aspects of many world
religions
Transcendence
• Modes of
transcendence
– Spirituality
– Humiliation of the flesh
– Sex
– Drugs
– Art
– Violation of taboo
Transcendence
• Over a world of power, materialism, and time:
• “Who threw their watches off the roof / to
cast their vote for Eternity outside of Time, &
alarm clocks / fell on their heads every day for
the next decade” (16)
– Desperate attempts to transcend end in failure
• “…or were run down by the / drunken taxicabs
of Absolute Reality” (16)
– What could be more crudely real than that?
• “Who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on
Dadaism…” (18)
– Carl Solomon
– Is this not a better appreciation of Dada than a
lecture?
– Beauty and meaning in art that transcend rational
analysis
– Resistance against the dominance of unreason by
the rational
• ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe,
and / now you’re really in the total animal
soup of / time—
• “an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani
saxophone / cry that shivered the cities down
to the last radio” (20)
• “with the absolute heart of the poem of life
butchered / out of their own bodies good to
eat a thousand / years.” (20)
Howl pt. I
• “I saw the best minds of my generation
destroyed by madness”
• Transcendence
• Failure & destruction
Howl, pt. II
• What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed
open their skulls and ate up their brains and
imagination? (21)
– “the best minds of my generation”
– Inhuman, monstrous
– Crudely material, vs. the spirit
Moloch!
• Rashi, 12th c. French rabbi & commentator:
– “Tophet is Moloch, which was made of brass; and
they heated him from his lower parts; and his
hands being stretched out, and made hot, they
put the child between his hands, and it was burnt;
when it vehemently cried out; but the priests beat
a drum, that the father might not hear the voice
of his son, and his heart might not be moved.”
Moloch!
• Leviticus 18:21: “And thou shalt not let any of thy
seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt
thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD.”
• A divine commandment to disdain
• Worship of Moloch equated to profaning the name of God.
• Cannibal-god of the Canaanites, the enemies of the
children of Israel
– The enemies of the few, the chosen, the faithful
• Idolatry and abomination
• Also a reference to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis
(1927), which depicts industrial society itself
as Moloch, a concept that Ginsberg expands in
pt. II
• Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness!
– Brute materialism
– Repression
– Cannibal
– Blasphemy, unholy
– Loveless, sexless
• “They broke their backs lifting Moloch to
Heaven!” (22)
– The best minds of my generation
– Failed attempt, not to themselves transcend, but
to elevate the profane into transcendent holiness
– “Heaven which exists and is everywhere around
us!”
• The transcendent is not fantasy, it is as real as the
material brutality that has displaced it
• Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles!
ecstasies! / gone down the American river!
– “down the river”
• Betrayed, cheated: “sold down the river” refers to the
way in which difficult slaves in the Northern slave states
would be sold into harsher conditions in the South
• Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions!
the whole / boatload of sensitive bullshit!
– Un-rational aspects of human existence, bringing
meaning to life
– A sincere embrace of what the calculating,
materialistic Moloch deems a “boatload of
sensitive bullshit”
• “They bade farewell! / They jumped off the
roof! to solitude! waving! / carrying flowers!
Down to the river! into the street!
Part III
• “Pyramidal” structure: lengthening responses
to “I’m with you in Rockland” structure
• Rockland a mental institution
– Real institution Columbia Presbyterian
Psychological Institute
– What is suggested by the name of Rockland?
• But even there there is love & friendship
I’m with you in Rockland
• where you bang on the catatonic piano the
soul / is innocent and immortal it should
never die / ungodly in an armed madhouse
– The spiritual elevated over the material
• But it can be killed
– Ungodly armed madhouse sounds a lot like
Moloch
• The asylum is the world in microcosm
I’m with you in Rockland
• where you accuse your doctors of insanity and
/ plan the Hebrew socialist revolution against
the / fascist national Golgotha
– Inversion: inmates in charge of the asylum
• Though Solomon is “madder than I am”
– Plans of the ultimate victory of the few, the holy,
and the oppressed
– Moloch = “fascist national Golgotha”
• The place of the skull
• Martyrdom & crucifixion
I’m with you in Rockland
• where you will split the heavens of Long Island
/ and resurrect your living human Jesus from
the / superhuman tomb
– Emergence of the transcendence into the
mundane
– Superhumanity equated with death, the tomb
– Life and the miracle of resurrection are properties
of the human
• Resurrection the definitive triumph of the spiritual and
divine over the material world
I’m with you in Rockland
• where we wake up electrified out of the coma
/ by our own souls’ airplanes…
– Fantasies of the final triumph of the soul over the
material world, vision of what that world would
look like
– O victory forget your underwear we’re/ free
I’m with you in Rockland
• in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea/journey on the highways across America in tears
/ to the door of my cottage in the Western night
– In Rockland the only consolation is memory and
imagination
– Though the speaker is with Solomon in Rockland, they
are not physically present to each other
– Though some small comfort is possible, the speaker
remains within the godless, armed madhouse
Footnote to Howl
• A footnote
– Separate from, below the text
– Either
• Provides clarification for the text
• Provides additional understanding and context for the
text that are not strictly needed in the text itself
Footnote to Howl
• Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
– Radical tonal shift, from sadness and solitude,
futility and self-destruction, cannibal-gods and
insane asylums to ecstatic recognition of universal
holiness
– Holiness =/= sacredness
• Holiness is the mark of the presence and/or favor of
God
Footnote to Howl
• The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is
holy! / The nose is holy! The tongue and cock
and hand / and asshole holy!
– Continues theme that the despised are in fact the
elevated
– But begins to attack the duality present in the
poem so far, as both the spiritual and the material
are presented as of like holiness
Footnote to Howl
• Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy
the / clocks in space holy the fourth
dimension holy / the fifth International holy
the Angel in Moloch!
– Fifth International
– Unity of opposites
– Sacredness present even in the most profane
Footnote to Howl
• Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy!
Ours! / bodies! suffering! magnanimity!
– Holiness here is achieved, as the “best minds” failed
to do
– Not in transcendence, but in immanence
– Not “lifting Moloch to Heaven,” but recognizing the
“Angel in Moloch”
• Not elevating the earthly into the divine, but recognizing the
presence of divinity in the mundane. The world, good and
bad, spiritual and material, is itself holy.
Herbert Marcuse
• 1898 – 1979
• Student of Heidegger, broke
w/him over Heidegger’s Nazi
party membership,
immigrated to US from
Germany in 1934
• Worked for US gov’t during &
immediately after WWII
• Member of Frankfurt school
• Taught at Columbia, Harvard,
Brandeis, UCSD
• Mentor of Angela Davis,
“Father of the New Left”
Marcuse
• One-Dimensional Man
– Neo-Marxist social criticism
– The absence of the critical dimension
– The prevalence of false consciousness
– Western totalitarianism
– Modes of thinking as an instrument of power
– Existential concerns: transcendence & authenticity
One-Dimensional Man
• Ch. 1: Western totalitarianism
• Ch. 2: The loss of the negative dimension in
politics & society
What is totalitarianism?
• The permanent and total mobilization of
society and the individual in the defense of
“the state”
– Terror
– “Technology”
• Totalitarianism “is not only a terroristic
political coordination of society, but also a
non-terroristic economic technical
coordination which operates through the
manipulation of needs by vested interests” (3)
• In the west, “Technical progress, extended to
a whole system of domination and
coordination, creates forms of life (and of
power) which appear to reconcile the forces
opposing the system, and to defeat or refute
all protest in the name of freedom from toil
and domination.” (xliv)
• The full integration of state, economy, and
society thwarts criticism:
– The social order has integrated even concepts &
agents that were meant to negate and oppose it
– “society”, “individual”, “class”, “private”, “family”
– “With the growing integration of industrial society,
these categories are losing their critical
connotation, and tend to become descriptive,
deceptive, or operational terms.” (xlvi)
• “In this society, the productive apparatus
tends to become totalitarian to the extent to
which it determines not only the socially
needed occupation, skills, and attitudes…
• …but also individual needs and aspirations. It
thus obliterates the opposition between the
public and private existence, between
individual and social needs.” (xlvii)
– The individual self is thus fully mobilized in the
service of the state
False Consciousness
• True and false needs:
– True: food, clothes, company, shelter
– False: “those which are superimposed upon the
particular social interests in his repression: the
needs which perpetuate toil, aggressiveness,
misery, and injustice.” (5)*
• Example: Relaxation.
– Work is hard and unpleasant
– You need to relax.
– Vacations are expensive.
– Work & save.
– Buy & buy.
– Now you’re broke. Back to work.
– Work is hard and unpleasant.
– “euphoria in unhappiness” (5)
• “No matter how much such needs may have
become the individual’s own, reproduced and
and fortified by the conditions of his
existence; no matter how much he indentifies
himself with them and finds himself in their
satisfaction…
• …they continue to be what they were from
the beginning—products of a society whose
dominant interest demands repression.” (5)
• “Private [mental] space has been invaded and
whittled down by technological reality.” (10)
• How to distinguish false from true needs?
– No judge can do it, it would be reprehensible.
– It must be left to the individual “if and when they
are free to give their own answer.” (6)
– But they are NOT free.
• Thus, the more this process proceeds, “the
more unimaginable” it becomes that
“individuals might break their servitude and
seize their own liberation.”
• “All liberation depends on the consciousness
of servitude.”
• This is in part because of the triumph of
positivism
– “The concept is synonymous with the corresponding
set of operations.”
– Example: length. What about justice?
• “Many of the more troublesome concepts are
being eliminated” because they cannot be
operationalized. (13)
– “debunking of the mind”
– Reason brought to earth, incorporated
• Criticism becomes impossible. Lacking a
“negative” dimension to criticize “positive”
thought, the status quo appears perfectly
rational.
–
–
–
–
The objective good of progress and efficiency
Justice  justice system
Free institutions  those of the free world
“Does not the threat of an atomic catastrophe which
could wipe out the human race also serve to protect
the very forces which perpetuate this danger?”
• The pattern of one-dimensional thought &
behavior either deflects ideas, actions,
feelings that transcend it, or reduces them to
its own terms.
– Reason and religion both tamed, co-opted
• Example: freedom. Don’t people choose freely?
Who is to contradict them?
– But the availability of choice here is not the issue.
That is a non-critical understanding of freedom
• Free election of masters abolishes neither masters nor slaves
• Free choice of goods & services is not free if these gods &
services sustain social controls over a life of toil and fear
• Doing what you want isn’t freedom if your wants are given
to you by the forces of your exploitation. That you want that
just demonstrates the efficacy of the controls (7-8)*
So what?
• In the past, constant labor was necessary
• Now, technology has rendered this unnecessary,
also opening new political possibilities
– Where once life was a struggle to dominate the world,
there is now the possibility of its pacification
• “the development of man’s struggle with man and nature,
under conditions where the competing needs, desires, and
aspirations are no longer organized by the vested interests in
domination and scarcity”
So What?
• However, while there exists a trend toward
this consummation of technology, there are
“intensive efforts to contain this trend within
the established institutions.”
– Technology becomes an instrument of domination
rather than liberation, of servitude rather than
freedom. This is the “irrational element in its
rationality.”*
• “Life as an end is qualitatively different from
life as a means.” (17)
So What?
• What is being lost?
– Freedom FROM the economy
• The individual exists only as an economic unit
– Liberation from politics over which the individual
has no real control
• Democracy is not, in fact, rule by the people. It is only
insofar as elections are thought to be equivalent to
power
– Freedom of Choice?
– Freedom of individual thought, unrestrained by
manufactured “public opinion”
The unification of opposing forces
• Political parties
– In the name of profit and against the Enemy
– Applies both to US & USSR
• Classes
– To maintain the comfortable society
• Labor & industry
– A shared interest in long-term corporate profitability
• Is this stabilization temporary, painting over the roots
of conflict, or is it permanent, having transformed the
very basis of social conflict?
– Systematic effects
– The elimination of negative potential
Nullification of Labor
• Laborers, who once lived in contradiction &
negation of the system, are now integrated
– Sticks: Technological unemployment, outsourcing,
speed-up
– Carrots: Lifelong benefits (retirement, etc.) cause
workers to identify their own interests WITH the
company
• Even to the extent that they will surrender increased
wages to ensure continued profitability
– Co-optation of labor interests
Revolution: Impossible
• In order for fundamental social change
(revolution) to occur, the laboring classes
must be “alienated from this universe in their
very existence, that their consciousness is that
of the total impossibility to continue to exist in
this universe… Thus, the negation exists prior
to the change itself…” (25)
– Labor no longer alienated; its critical (negative)
dimension is gone
Revolution: Impossible
• The promise of an ever-more-comfortable
existence for some and brutality for others
makes it impossible to imagine a qualitatively
different universe of discourse & action
• The current system is supremely able to
contain & manipulate subversive thought &
action
Incorporating the professionals
• Professionals are integrated ever more
systematically
– Interdependence of professions
• Striking has no effect
– Reliance on machines
• Computers store the knowledge once held by humans
– Proletarianization
• Example: store clerks
The Bosses Vanish
• Even owners and bosses are integrated,
becoming less makers of decisions than
corporate administrators
– Behind the veil of vast corporate & government
administration, responsibility dissolves and there
is no place to affix responsibility, resentment, or
anger
– Who governs? Who leads?
Life as a thing
• Labor, organizers, administrators,
management all lose negative potential
– They plan, they administrate, but “the decisions
over life and death, over personal and national
security are made at places over which the
individuals have no control.” (32)
• No one decides, no one chooses, they only
function.
Life as a thing
• “The insanity of the whole absolves the
particular insanities and turns the crimes
against humanity into a rational enterprise.”
(52)
– 5 million deaths is rationally preferable to 10
million.
• But this is only a single insanity within a greater system
of insanity.
Life as a thing
• “The growing productivity of labor creates an
increasing surplus-product which ... allows an
increased consumption—notwithstanding the
increased diversion of productivity.”
– Work  Consume  Work
Life as a thing
• “As long as this constellation prevails, it
reduces the use-value of freedom: there is no
reason to insist on self-determination if the
administered life is the comfortable and even
the “good” life.” (49)
– Use-value of freedom?  Efficiency
• Freedom not good for anything
– Who defines “good”?
Life as a thing
• “This is the pure form of servitude: to exist as
an instrument, as a thing.” It doesn’t matter
“if the thing is animated and chooses its
material and intellectual food, if it does not
feel its being-a-thing, if it is a pretty, clean,
mobile thing.” (33)
– The human administered, managed like
equipment
That’s crazy talk.
• “The unrealistic sound of these propositions is
indicative, not of their utopian character, but
of the strength of forces which prevent their
realization.” (4)
For next time: Freudian terms
• Id/ego/superego
• Eros/erotic – joining together, not necessarily
sexual
• Pleasure Principle – the id seeks pleasure above
all
• Reality Principle –the id’s pleasure-seeking is
thwarted by the external conditions in the world
• Sublimation—erotic energy redirected away from
sex due to reality principle
• Thanatos—the drive to destroy, aggression