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Bezig met laden... Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays)door Rebecca Solnit
Books Read in 2019 (648) Best Feminist Literature (146) Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. For a collection of topical essays this book served me as a reminder of how we got to the disarray of politics and the divide in our society. More than that, Solnit analyzes and resists our tendency to live with lies and euphemisms rather than face hard facts. It heartens me to know that some commentators are not simply rambling on about our problems but actually addressing them. ( ) This is another brilliant collection by Rebecca Solnit, who seems to me to be a very wise woman. Some of the pieces are very hopeful, in a modest, realistic, way. Solnit recognizes that things don't usually turn on a dime. People have to think about new ideas before they adopt them. Solnit speaks strongly, but she doesn't engage in pointless recriminations or savaging of (most) people. I particularly like her acceptance of imperfection, her condemnation of naive cynicism, and her recognition that things, like taking advantage of the poor and the marginalized is really a form of violence. I will ask to be excused for spending most on this review on one particular essay that I didn't like, but it always takes so much longer to explain why one disagrees that to praise what one agrees with -- the latter tends to speak for itself. Anger, and its associated issue, forgiveness, is a very important issue for me. This is probably going to be an essay in its own right and may therefore be skipped as not really part of a review. It is Solnit's "Facing the Furies" essay that I have trouble with. It seems rather odd in a collection that seems to almost vibrate with anger, even if carefully expressed, and indignation. I needed to pause between essays, partly so that I could think about them, but also to take a rest from the intensity. I also review Martha Nussbaum's Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice as Solnit quotes from her work. I will also throw in comments from a friend who was a parole officer for thirty years; I'll call her PO. The essay seem a bit disjointed to me. Annoyance, anger, fury, and rage, are mixed together with little distinction as are serious offenses and annoyance. Solnit several times quotes Martha Nussbaum, whose Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice, I consider to be a waste of trees. Neither Nussbaum nor Solnit seem to distinguish between being angry, displaying anger, and correctly displaying anger. There was an explicit or implicit belief of liberals that was very common in the 1960s-70s that all criminals were the victims of social failures. The victim on the other hand, was a privileged member of society who had every material and mental resource to bounce back from whatever had been done to them. This ignores that fact that actually the disadvantaged suffer more from crime. I often wondered, then and now, how one explained crimes by middle- and upper-class white men? Does this sound like a reasonable explanation of Donald Trump, Bernie Madoff, highly paid business executives who embezzle money, companies that knowing sell dangerous products, companies that pollute, whether or not they are breaking the law, the reckless financiers who so badly damaged the world economy in 2008? Solnit criticizes many of these same people in her other essays, so why is anger inappropriate? I believe that that these people do more damage to our society than street crime. Solnit praises Michael Dukakkis, who was asked in a debate, if he would want the death penalty if his own wife was raped and murdered. Dukkakis affirms his long-standing opposition to the death penalty, which is fine with me. What bothers me is the vague talk of better ways to handle violent crime. I've heard that too often from the well-meaning. Perhaps they would like to be a little more specific? Nussbaum calls for the judges to determine what would rehabilitate the offender and assign that. Gee, as simple as that? Why didn't anyone think of that before? Another 1960s-70's idea is that we can solve all problems, in some vague yet concrete fashion. A famous Sydney Harris cartoon shows two mathematicians standing in front a blackboard. On it, the first has written a series of calculations followed by the words, "And then, a miracle occurs," followed by more calculations. The second mathematician points to the words, and says, "I think you should be more explicit, here in step two." The name "penitentiary" refers to the original idea that offenders would sit in isolation and repent their behavior. In my state, we have had for almost 70 years a prison/hospital that is operates on the assumption that committing a crime results from some mental or social problem, which Men of Science (as Karl Menninger liked to say) can treat and then release the person back into society. It hasn't worked out quite as planned, partly because people will not follow their own logic. It turns out that for most crimes, short of the horrific, treatment can take longer than the jail sentence that the offender would have gotten. But if this is treatment for a mental condition, and not a punishment for a specific crime, then the psych-professionals who were trusted to release their patients logically should be able to determine when they shouldn't be released. What if the patient doesn't think that they need to change? Moreover, in his book Think Again, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong quotes the American Psychological Association, "Report of the Task Force on the Role Psychology in the Criminal Justice system": 'Psychiatrists and clinical psychologist are trained in diagnosis and treatment of mental illness, but lawyers sometimes ask them to predict future crimes by defendants. Are they authorities in this area? No, according to their own professional organization: "It does appear from reading the research that the validity of psychological predictions of dangerous behavior, at least in the sentencing and release situation we are considering, is extremely poor, so poor, that one could oppose their use on the strictly empirical grounds that psychologists are not professionally competent to make such judgements." In short, authorities on psychiatric diagnosis and treatment are not authorities on prediction of criminal behavior.' Barbara R, Kirwin, calls herself a forensic psychiatrist, who is often called to determine whether someone on under indictment is actually insane, makes a similar point. In her book, The Mad, the Bad, and the Innocent, she argues that typical psych-professionals are not competent to make such a distinction. Scientists have sometimes been deemed, by professional magician James Randi, for example, as being too trusting to catch fraud. It takes someone like him who knows a lot of the tricks. PO, who was a psychology major in college, has given up on psych-professional for the same reason: they are too naive. One psychologist who deals with criminals told her indignantly that he cannot believe that their clients would lie to them. PO's reaction was that lying is what many of them do. Her example was that someone who passes 200 bad checks in six months, and frequently changes the jurisdiction in which she lives, hoping that her past offenses won't catch up with her, is a bit honesty-challenged. PO also commented on a case in which twelve psych-professionals had weighed in on the sanity of a suspect. Six said he was sane, six said he was insane, but they disagreed on what was wrong with him. PO commented that if there was any validity to their analyses, surely the latter six would agree on their diagnosis. Nussbaum quotes Aristotle in building her definition of anger as a desire for payback. As she notes, Aristotle also said: "Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy." Nussbaum doesn't find him authoritative in when he clearly believes that anger is sometime appropriate. I think that using only the word "pay-back" to describe the focus is anger is inadequate and tendentious. I would probably agree that displaying 80%-90% of anger is a waste - that's where weighing its value and its consequences is important. I no longer get angry, unless the other driver(s) have done something really dangerous, when someone cuts into my lane of traffic, I just slow down a bit so that they can get in safely. I think anger is very useful when being reasonable isn't working, and I need to stand up for myself, especially given all my training in being an inoffensive doormat. Then anger is a source of strength - when I am angry, I think faster, I'm more articulate and bolder. The expression still needs to be managed. I consider myself to have failed if I yell, curse, or sling insults, let alone use any violence. Jean Safer, in her book, Forgiving and Not Forgiving, pointed out that the importance of forgiving, or overlooking, as Nussbaum might prefer, depends in part on the value of our relationship with the offender. The same goes for anger. I was angry at some relatives who threw out heirlooms from my mother, but I have never said anything. It would not get the things back, it would create friction with people I prefer to be on good terms with, and there is no useful lesson to be learned, so it simply isn't worth displaying the anger. There is also a distinction between wanting to tell someone off and being willing to get into an argument to do so. As Hilary Jacobs Hendel and Juli Fraga say in their NPR article: "Feeling ragey? Don't bury your anger, process it. Here's how:" "While anger is common, many of us have a conflicted relationship with it. So often we're told that expressing our outrage makes us a "hothead" or means we have "issues." In other words, we're taught to feel bad about our anger. This is why it can be a revelation to learn that feeling angry isn't a character flaw — in fact, it has a biological purpose. Our emotions never hurt anyone. It's what we do with them that matters. [ . . . ] "But there are two types of anger: core and defensive. Core anger is a response to a perceived violation. This is why threats of physical violence, character assaults, and feeling wronged can evoke it. Without it, we wouldn't be able to speak up when someone makes a racist remark or set a boundary when a co-worker is rude." I use what I call anger to push for a resolution, without being fobbed off by vague promises or facile excuses, to set boundaries, something that women are notoriously discouraged from doing, by making it clear that there will be consequences if they are crossed. A friend once said the most offensive thing anyone has ever said to me. Is making it clear to someone that I will not tolerate being spoken to like that really misguided payback? Many people suppose that if one hasn't forgiven someone, one is constantly grinding their teeth in anger, or drinking poison hoping that someone else will die, as it is sometimes put. I wonder if Solnit and Nussbaum are doing something of the sort with anger. No, there are a number of people that I have never forgiven (as I define the word, it has a lot of definitions) whom I almost never think about. Some people call that forgiveness, I call that getting over it. If I am able to avoid them, they are no longer an active problem, and I put the anger that I needed to deal with them in storage. It's still there, though, if I need to take it out. Joseph Carroll, in his book, Literary Darwinism, suggests that the humanities need to be grounded in a more thorough understanding of scientific studies, in Nussbaum's case, in things like game theory and evolutionary psychology. Game theory has shown, that at least for western cultures, economic gain is not the only motivator of human behavior - subjects will sacrifice money to reinforce fairness and equity. Societies requires reciprocity among their members to function, and sanctions to discourage people who attempt to cheat or get a free ride. Societal even if not cosmic balance. Even if one does not believe in evolutionary psychology as an inherited trait, it does offer insights into the purposes of some human behavior. A monkey will happily eat carrots, until it sees that another monkey has been given the preferred treat, grapes. At that point, it will protest, refuse the carrots, and may even throw them at the experimenter. What does jailing an offender do for the victim? It can make them safe, at least for a little while. Rapists, and other offenders, like domestic abusers, often threaten or promise to return. Solnit starts out this essay with Kenny Roger's "Coward of the County," in which the main character, Tommy, avenges the gang rape of his wife or girlfriend, Becky, by beating up the perpetrators. I'll look at this several different ways. Nussbaum also uses a case of rape as an example, coincidentally naming the victim Rebecca. Instead of looking at things through Rebecca's eyes, she uses the point of view of Rebecca's close friend, Amanda. Oddly enough, neither Nussbaum nor Solnit ever consider very much how the victim Becky/Rebecca might feel. Rape wasn't a good example if Nussbaum was trying to convince me. She thinks it is ridiculous is Amanda sees the rape as a down-grading of herself (or apparently Rebecca). In the first place, since she has specified that it is a stranger rape, she apparently doesn't think that they should take it personally, despite the fact that it happened to Rebecca personally, let alone should Amanda feel that her dignity is assaulted. Considering how rape is treated in this country and throughout the world, if rape isn't taken as downgrading a woman, I certainly take it to be a signifier of the contempt in which women are commonly held, and rapists to be reinforcing that contempt. No, I don't think that Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump, and Harvey Weinstein were or are unfortunates suffering from societal neglect. And despite what one of my friends argues, I don't think that everyone always deserves another chance, no matter what they've done, no matter how often they've done it, and no matter how many chances they have already had. Nussbaum thinks Becky/Rebecca should react to being raped by abandoning their “narcissistic anger” and recognize the need to preserve the dignity of their rapists. I think that rapists should give up their narcissistic behavior. Solnit talks about the lack of recompense or restorative justice for Becky in the Kenny Rogers song. Martha Nussbaum would not approve of either. Nussbaum also does not believe in forgiveness, since believing in forgiveness is also an assault on the dignity of the perpetrators. Funny how she doesn't seem to think that victims might feel that their dignity is diminished. It seems to me that she ends up in the same place, though - all the work is dumped back on the victim as an additional burden. Presumably, Nussbaum thinks that the women in the #MeToo movement have it all wrong. As I noted, she feels that anything that isn't illegal is trivial, and should be overlooked. I am younger than Nussbaum, and I can remember Jim Crow laws, poll taxes and literacy tests for Black people who wanted to exercise their right to vote, laws against miscegenation, and the tolerance of discrimination against ethnic and racial minorities, women, and anyone in the LGBTIA categories, (I've probably missed something.) Those were not illegal at the time, so according to Nussbaum's standards, they were trivial, and presumably all the Civil Rights movements have all been misguided. Nussbaum attempts to finesse this issue by arguing that they should have been illegal. But as a favorite hymn says: "Time makes ancient good uncouth / They must ever up and onward / Who would keep abreast of truth." It's denouncing "trivia" as unacceptable that makes it become illegal. Rather oddly, Solnit quotes Kelly Sundberg who was raised as a conservative Christian, and the fact that they place a high value of women being forgiving, which she apparently deplores. Gas-lighting, most of it, trying to tell me that I cannot trust my own emotions and judgement. I ignore them as much as I can. but it still chips at my self-confidence. I might be more impressed if they took their own advice. Solnit comments that anger has been considered the privilege of white, straight, males, but I don't see how that is supposed to convince me that other people are not entitled to it. I also read Jean Briggs' Never in Anger, about a certain group of Inuit that she studied. At least Solnit recognized that Briggs didn't think that they were never angry, just that they exercised self-control. Nussbaum chose to ignore that. In reality, some Inuit, there are a number of different groups, have a high rate of violence, and they may also raid one another. Another anthropologist found that the Inuit she studied attempted to solve conflicts by referring the offenders to elders for admonishment. After a few tries, if that didn't work, an offending male Inuit may be invited to go hunting on an ice floe and shoved off. So, back to Becky/Rebecca. How would she feel? Judging what was appropriate for her husband, I would have to know what would have happened if it was reported to the law. Would they call her a lying slut who was out to ruin the reputations of three good men, pillars of society? Would they take a rape kit and never analyze it? Would they try to convince her that there was no real harm done, and it was best to avoid an unpleasant trial? Is this the sort of lawless place where one needs to make it clear on one's own that there WILL be consequences, which was, on a lesser level, what I was doing with my obnoxious friend. Is he more likely to get arrested than her assailants? Offering restitution to rape victims would probably only add fuel to the argument that they are lying, in this case to get money. Restorative justice? What would that offer her? Would the perpetrators just laugh at her or accuse her of provocation or overreacting? Would they say they were sorry - almost everyone is after they're arrested? I can see lining up all the people who suffered from the vandalism of a pair of teenagers who thought that they were funny, but not routinely for more serious matters. I am told that it helps the victim to understand that the perpetrators are human beings and not monsters. Are there some contractions between being human and behaving monstrously that I'm unaware of? I don't think that either Solnit or Nussbaum deals adequately with Becky/Rebecca's rape. Solnit ignores the conditional nature of both the advice Tommy gets from his father, as does he ("Walk away from trouble if you can"), and Tommy's final statement ("Sometimes you have to fight to be a man.") Everyone, male, female, intersex, nonbinary, or gender-fluid (or any other the other 40-70 odd genders that I have read that there are, will need to fight sometime, even if it isn't physical. Properly managed anger is a help. Ms Solnit is brilliant, as always, but she isn't always edited well by her publisher who, in her 4th essay collection for Hey Day books has once again, put her work in kind of a jumbled nonsense of a pile. If you can stand that these essays seem thrown about like yesterday's laundry, you'll be fine. On their own, they are magical, particularly "Preaching to the Choir" geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
"Changing the world means changing the story, the names, and the language with which we describe it. Calling things by their true names cuts through the lies that excuse, disguise, avoid, or encourage inaction, indifference, obliviousness in the face of injustice and violence. In this powerful and wide-ranging collection, Solnit turns her attention to battles over meaning, place, language, and belonging at the heart of the defining crises of our time. She explores the way emotions shape political life, electoral politics, police shootings and gentrification, the life of an extraordinary man on death row, the pipeline protest at Standing Rock, and the existential threat posed by climate change."-- Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)306.0973Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Culture and Institutions Biography And History North America United StatesLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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