Social Distancing with Shakespeare

This week in North Philly Notes, Jeffrey Wilson, author of Shakespeare and Trump, writes about why people are cycling experiences with coronavirus through Shakespeare.

First came the meme to wash hands for the duration of Lady Macbeth’s “Out, damned spot” speech.

Soon society was shutting down. “I’m worried about Covid-19 causing theatres to go dark,” tweeted theater-maker @MediocreDave on March 9, 2020. “Not because I’ll lose income, but because we’ll inevitably be subjected to opportunistic Shakespeare scholars making smug but superficial analogies to the playhouse closures of the late Elizabethan plague years.” That’ll be the end of that, I thought.

The next day, Slate ran a piece from Ben Cohen, “The Infectious Pestilence Did Reign: How the Plague Ravaged William Shakespeare’s World and Inspired his Work, from Romeo and Juliet to Macbeth.” Two days later, Shakespeare scholar Emma Smith was historicizing appropriations of Lady Macbeth’s hand-washing scene for Penguin Books. Another two days, and The Atlantic ran Daniel Pollack-Pelzner’s “Shakespeare Wrote His Best Works During a Plague.”

The content of these essays—Shakespeare born in plague, shuttered theaters prompting his poetry, Romeo and Juliet derailed by quarantine, playwrights sustained by wealthy patrons, disease threatening rival acting troupes, great art created in isolation—is not as fascinating as the questions raised by their method. Why are people cycling experiences with coronavirus through Shakespeare? What do we gain from comparisons between social distancing in Shakespeare’s time and in ours? How might our experiences with social distancing help us better understand Shakespeare’s? How can these examples help us think about academic work in 2020?

On March 14, @rosannecash caused a collective groan by tweeting, “Just a reminder that when Shakespeare was quarantined because of the plague, he wrote King Lear.”

Twitter did its thing. “Just a reminder that when Shakespeare was quarantined because of the plague, he wrote Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” wrote @sydneeisanelf. “Just a reminder that when Shakespeare was quarantined because of the plague, he masturbated incessantly,” said @emilynussbaum.

With doors shuttered, some theaters offered plays and programming online, free to the public, including Shakespeare’s Globe, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theater, the Public Theater, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. Then came pop-up performances like Patrick Stewart’s #ASonnetADay and The Two Gentleman of Verona on Zoom. What is the value of art in times of social distancing? How is social distancing changing the way art is done? Based on the analogy to Shakespeare, what might the art that comes out of coronavirus look like?

Academics followed suit. On March 23, Andy Kesson, Callan Davies, and Emma Whipday launched A Bit Lit, featuring open-access, of-the-moment interviews with early-modern literary scholars. What is the role of humanistic thought and conversation in times of social distancing? What is the importance—if any—of studying Shakespeare when society is in such turmoil?

Social distancing with Shakespeare soon became A Thing. Kathryn Harkup in The Telegraph on March 15; Andrew Dickson in The Guardian on March 22; James Shapiro on CNN on March 30. The genre was common enough to call for satire. On April 1, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner wrote “What Shakespeare Actually Did During the Plague” for The New Yorker: “Day 25: Definitely too dark. Keep the mood light! No one wants to see a tragedy after a plague.”

Emma Smith tackled that tension with a straight face in the New York Times, arguing that “[Shakespeare’s] fictions reimagine the macro-narrative of epidemic as the micro-narrative of tragedy.” Is our experience with coronavirus tragic? What makes something tragic?

Elsewhere in the New York Times, Ian Wheeler cited Shakespeare to argue that, in America, “We need a better patronage system for artists.” In The New Yorker, James Shapiro lobbed Coriolanus-shaped bombs at the Trump administration: “The casual insults, the condescension, and the refusal to accept responsibility will be familiar to anyone who has lately tuned in to the daily White House briefings on the coronavirus pandemic.”

These various ShakesTakes sift into terms developed in Shakespeare and Trump, my recent book about the surprising—and bizarre—relationship between the provincial English playwright and the billionaire President of the United States. There are the ShakesMemes. There are the Politicitations. And there is the Shaxtivism.

Above all, the Shakespearean gloss on social distancing shows the power—and pitfalls—of Public Shakespeare, where scholars eschew peer-reviewed academic writing in favor of public engagement.

I come not to bury Public Shakespeare, nor to praise it. I want to ask what it is, where it comes from, how it works, and why it elicits simultaneous enthusiasm and nausea. What is behind the push in some scholars to filter current events through Shakespeare? What is behind the tendency in others to get annoyed when they do?

Why are Shakespeareans suddenly authorities on everything—from presidential politics to social distancing? At a time when Donald Trump nonchalantly disclaims, “I’m not a doctor,” then proceeds to use his power and platform to promote hydroxychloroquine, why are Shakespeare scholars going widely outside their areas of expertise surrounding a 400-year-old English playwright to comment on current events?

Four points:

1. As an early-modern playwright who often represented medieval and ancient history, Shakespeare built into his texts the practice of engaging the present with the distant past.
2. As artworks that often have scholarly sources, yet are performed for a broad audience of mixed social backgrounds, Shakespeare’s plays have public engagement built into them.
3. The long tradition of modern-dress Shakespearean performance and adaptation provides a model for scholars looking to bring ideas that are old and artistic into conversation with current events.
4. At a time when the humanities are said to be in crisis, Public Shakespeare gives scholars a platform to illustrate the practicality and utility of our field.

There is tremendous energy right now behind public-facing ShakesWork with an ethical if not activist edge. There is also legitimate skepticism of that endeavor. As @ClearShakes wrote on April 12, “Guys, sometimes there just isn’t a Shakespeare play that’s relevant to our situation.”

But recognizing Public Shakespeare as more closely related to Shakespearean performance than Shakespearean scholarship helps us understand why, like any show that takes creative risks, some cheer and some hiss.

 

A Passion Reignited

This week in North Philly Notes, Bill Double, author of Charles E. Hires and the Drink that Wowed a Nation, writes about his passion for Hires Root Beer. 

Whether a frosty mug at a Stewarts’ drive-in or the brain-clearing rush of herbal effervescence from a freshly opened bottle of Hires at home, I grew up with a yen for root beer. Fortunately, this habit proved nonaddictive. As I moved on, the drink faded into a pleasant memory, occasionally relived but hardly a compulsion.

Neither did this early craving influence my decision to chronicle the life of Charles Elmer Hires, who turned a humble homemade root beer into an iconic national brand.  Hires was an intrepid entrepreneur and an authentic American success story. His life and times would have fascinated me as much had he instead concocted a new ginger ale, pet food or soap powder.

Nonetheless, researching Charles E. Hires and the Drink that Wowed a Nation reawakened my latent root beer thirst.  I ordered an eight-pack of modern-day Hires from Amazon (of all places) and began to sample other brands.  Root beer seemed to be less prevalent today and certainly less promoted in the popular media. Was the spicy, woodsy flavor enjoyed by millions during Charles Hires’ heyday fading from the public’s palate? My findings suggested otherwise.

I discovered a thriving root beer subculture, a legion of fiercely loyal aficionados who shared my taste and interest in the brew. An array of websites, Facebook pages and blogs are devoted to discussing, dissecting and exalting root beer. Some sites, it is true, are mounted by commercial bottlers eager to pitch their wares. But others are clearly labors of love maintained by dedicated root beer buffs. Among these: Root Beer Review (“Root beer reviews by root beer lovers.”); The Root-Beer Blog (“Root Beer is a goodness, government is not and freedom and liberty are worth having and so is a good Root Beer!”), the Stark Raving (Root Beer) Blog! and the Association of Root Beer Enthusiasts.

Eric’s Gourmet Root Beer Site, perhaps the most comprehensive, presents histories of the vintage brands, industry news, reviews of new craft root beers and reader comments.

After perusing the painstaking instructions offered root beer homebrewers on other websites, I decided to join their ranks.  I purchased a three-ounce bottle of Zatarain’s Root Beer Extract, a product quite similar to Hires’ original, and followed his 1880 instructions closely.  To my surprise, my first attempt yielded a dozen bottles of root beer that were both delicious and nicely carbonated.

I also found that the craft beer movement, instrumental in improving the quality of real beer in America, had spawned dozens of craft root beers. Brands include Virgil’s, Maine, Boylan, Fitz’s, Dominion, Saranac and Sprecher. The online Root Beer Store offers details on these brews and many others.  They are available at venues ranging from soda pop stores to Trader Joe’s and even some old-style taprooms.

This proliferation of craft brewers would not have displeased Charles Hires, provided they used natural ingredients and did not infringe on his trademark. However, another modern trend – alcoholic root beer – would surely have evoked his ire. One such brew, aptly dubbed Not Your Father’s Root Beer, boasts an alcohol content over 5 percent.  While all fermented root beers contain a trace of alcohol, temperance advocate Hires was forced to battle a WCTU boycott that falsely contended the level in his drink was alarmingly high.

Meanwhile, “Big Soda” continues to woo root beer fanciers with traditional offerings – Barqs, Dads, Mug, Hanks and Frosty. Dr. Pepper Snapple alone produces four root beer brands – A&W, IBC, Stewarts and Hires. Regrettably, Hires ranks lowest in the company’s promotional pecking order.

In conclusion, I am pleased to report that the drink Charles Hires perfected and so successfully promoted over a century ago is at no risk of becoming a relic. While failing to attain the popularity of Coke or Pepsi, its unique flavor still delights and inspires a discerning minority. Indeed, root beer’s longevity reminds me of jazz music, another of my long-time passions. Neither root beer nor jazz has quite managed to achieve mainstream respectability in the modern era. Yet both tenaciously continue to endure, evolve and reward those receptive to their charms.

An interview with Richard Gilman-Opalsky co-editor of Against Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Against Capital in the Twenty-First Century addresses present impasses in imagining a world ungoverned by capital, a world of different possibilities, both desirable and practical. It is a collection of rival visions and heterodox analysis that can be read as an alternative to the whole liberal litany of administered economies, tax policy recommendations, and half-measures. The history of government failures to reverse the most dangerous capitalist tendencies is as old as capitalism itself. We aim to think beyond those failures and dangers. Media outlets interested in a critique of the Left from the farther Left (as opposed to from the Right), should get in touch for media events. 

We chatted with co-editor Richard Gilman-Opalsky about his book.

What was the impetus that prompted you and John to compile this book? You describe it as a “contrary accompaniment” to Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
There were two general impetuses for this book. First, we were (and remain) dumbfounded by a stunning lack of imagination on so much of the Left, which often seems to have accepted a position of acquiescence, especially on the question of capitalism. That positon is perhaps best exemplified in Thomas Piketty’s 2014 book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Piketty shows that capitalism has generated, does generate, and will continue to generate unacceptable inequality. And yet, he strangely concludes that we must accept that there are no alternatives beyond the same old litany of failed tax initiatives aimed to re-regulate a near-totally liberated capital (Piketty’s refurbished brand of this is the global tax on capital). But we do not accept that we have to accept the unacceptable in perpetuity. So, we wanted a “contrary accompaniment” to Piketty’s book. Since one did not already exist, we created it.

Second, John [Asimakopoulos, co-editor] and I share an interdisciplinary commitment to thinking against sectarian currents which have long divided the radical milieus of Marxism, anarchism, critical social theory, feminism, and other currents. So, we wanted our volume to embody and reflect some of the real diversity of thought that is out there, which we consider necessary to the task of working against capital in the twenty-first century.

What were your criteria in selecting the contributors/contributions for the volume? They seem to both work in concert and create a conversation about critical thinking on capital(ism), anticapitalism, and inequality.
We used three basic criteria in compiling the volume: First, we wanted a diverse range of theorists, activists, and artists who offered a deep—if not total—critique of capitalism. Second, we sought contributions that were not interested in any resuscitation of the top-down politics of Leftist statism, which we both feel (and argue in our introduction) should be left buried in the graveyards of the twentieth century. Third, we wanted to include some of the rich diversity mentioned above, so in addition to contributors from many academic disciplines and practices, we also took care to include contributions from Black radical and feminist writers. Contributions by Frantz Fanon, Raya Dunayevskaya, Silvia Federici, Selma James, CLR James, Alicia Garza, KRS One, Isabelle Stengers, Marina Sitrin, and Angela Mitropoulos are part of that diversity.

Readers will notice that the book is full of philosophical and political disagreement too. We don’t claim to agree with everything in the book ourselves. Our overarching criterion was that everything in this volume should be a critical part of any conversation about how to confront and abolish a world organized by the logic of capital, about how we can bring an end to the reign of a world governed by money. If you’re interested in that conversation, we want this book to participate in it.

There is a diversity in voices and perspectives in the volume. How did you balance the views/ideologies, topics (and contributors)?
One of the many challenges we faced was the blend of the living and the dead. Some of our contributors—such as Cornelius Castoriadis and Félix Guattari— are no longer living, or recently deceased, like James O’Connor. Most of them are still alive and working, and of those some, including Sayres Rudy, Alicia Garza, and Stevphen Shukaitis, are newer creative voices while others have work stretching back decades (Penelope Rosemont, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, John Holloway, Isabelle Stengers, Peter McLaren, and Henry Giroux). The question for us was to find what we thought essential to the construction of a forward-looking radical theory and practice for the twenty-first century.

The book’s sections are organized around topics we think of as fundamental categories of inquiry. So, while the book is not comprehensive, we insisted on sections dedicated to theory and praxis, class composition, racialization and feminism, critical pedagogy, literature and art, ecology, history, and forms of action.

You focus on how theory is related to and comes out of movements and global uprisings.  Can you explain this?
I published a previous book dedicated to this very subject, Specters of Revolt: On the Intellect of Insurrection and Philosophy from Below, in 2016. This is also a major part of John’s work, which helps us to understand the importance of revolt in a different way. We both agree that contentious social movements and global uprisings (including riot, revolt, and insurrection) are phenomena that make sense within the contexts of their historical occurrence. Yet, global uprisings are frequently discounted as violent, irrational, and ineffective. We claim, to the contrary, that they are the opposite. Revolts are more often responses to violence (and not the violence themselves), their reasons are perfectly legible if only we would take their disaffection seriously (instead of discounting it as incoherent), and they are very effective in changing the lives of their participants in so many ways, changing political conversations, and saying what has to be said about the world in which they break out. So, in addition to ourselves, we included contributors who share our contention that theory is articulated and developed in contestation.

Can you discuss the importance of culture for radical politics?
We have a dedicated section in the book called “Capitalist Culture and Cultural Production.” We also have a section entitled “Language, Literature, and Art” that includes poetry, an excerpt from a story, lyrics, and an interview with a filmmaker. Culture is one of the central contexts in which we learn, think, and interact, and for radical politics, it can be the context in which we develop a critical consciousness.

We chose a quote from Angela Y. Davis to open the book’s section on culture: “It’s true that it’s within the realm of cultural politics that young people tend to work through political issues, which I think is good, although it’s not going to solve the problems” (PBS Interview, 1997). I tend to agree with Davis and think that cultural content can expose people in moving ways to a radical critique of the existing state of affairs often more powerfully than philosophical texts and revolts. Also, people do not just consume culture. People produce a lot of cultural content themselves to communicate their feelings, frustrations, and hopes. All of this cultural content is really important to helping people work though how they feel about themselves, their lives, and the world, and to communicating with one another in affective, transformative ways. Yet, Davis is also correct that epiphanies alone will not solve our problems, so radical politics needs ultimately to move in various ways beyond cultural production and consumption to real confrontations and new modalities of collective action. In fact, the concluding section of our book is entitled “New Modalities of Collective Action.”

What Temple University Press staff wants to give and gift this holiday season

This week in North Philly Notes, the staff at Temple University Press suggest the Temple University Press books they would give along with some non-Temple University Press titles they hope to read and receive this holiday season. 

Mary Rose Muccie, Director

Give: Just in time for Christmas, we’ve reprinted P Is for Philadelphia, an alphabet book, beautifully illustrated by Philly school children, that celebrates everything that makes the city great. I’ll be giving it to my 7-year-old niece, Hailey, and can’t wait to read it with her.

Get: Earlier this year I read a review of The Bedlam Stacks, by Natasha Pulley and have had it on my list ever since. Set in mid-1800’s Peru, it’s a combination of science fiction and fantasy, mystery and adventure. If I don’t get it, I’ll be giving it to myself!

Irene Imperio, Advertising and Promotions Manager
Give: P Is for Philadelphia. Although Amazon doesn’t have copies we do!!!  And it’s fun for the whole family!

Karen Baker, Financial Manager
Give: I would give We Decide!, by Michael Menser, to my son-in-law because he is very interested in politics and democracy.

Get: I would like to receive I Can’t Make This Up: Life Lessons by Kevin Hart because I think he is hilarious.

Ryan Mulligan, Editor 

Give: The Cost of Being a Girl I’ve discovered while publishing this book that there are people on Twitter who search for the phrase “wage gap” just to tell anyone who happens to be talking about it that the concept is a myth – that women’s wages are lower because they have less experience on average and go into lower-paying fields.

The irony is, this book takes that contention head-on by looking at a population where all labor is equally unqualified and low-skilled: teenage workers entering the workforce for the first time in fields like retail and food service. Even here though, Besen-Cassino shows us that male workers are fast-tracked towards management, while female workers are pegged for “aesthetic labor” and “emotional work” that pays less and takes a significant toll on the worker’s well-being. These dynamics not only reveal the biases of the workplace, but set teens on unequal tracks that continue into adulthood. And the book is really compelling reading. So I’d give this book to all those Twitter trolls.

Get: Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform by John Pfaff.  A lot of criminologists I talk to are really excited about this book. Mass Incarceration is one of the US’s defining issues of the day, of concern across the political spectrum thanks to its disproportionate hold relative to the rest of the world, its effect on American families, and its costs. Pfaff’s contribution, undertaking a sensical review of the dauntingly hard-to-consolidate evidence, sounds like discovering a new verse to a song you thought you knew by heart.

Ann-Marie Anderson, Marketing Director

Give:  I’d give a copy of Tommy Curry’s The Man-Not to aid in understanding the stereotypes (and oppression) of black men.

Get: I’ve already received my holiday supply of books to read, but I have just learned about Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, a survey of African American art from 1963-83 which was a crucial period in American art history.  The book purports to bring to light previously neglected black artists, like Sam Gilliam, Melvin Edwards, Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, and many others.

Sara Cohen, Editor

Give: This holiday season, I’ll be getting my friends and family copies of Philadelphia: Finding the Hidden City. As the editor of this book, I learned a ton about Philadelphia’s Gilded Age history, and it’s really changed the way I think about and read our city.  It’s a great gift for the urban historian/architecture critic/fine photography connoisseur/Philadelphian in your life.

Get: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I haven’t read it since I became a mother, and because it’s partially about how weird it is to create and be responsible for another being, I’ve been meaning to reread it.  Plus, 2018 will be the 200th anniversary of the book, and rereading it seems like a great way to celebrate it’s bicentennial.

Aaron Javsicas, Editor-in-Chief

Give: Pennsylvania Stories–Well Told, by Bill Ecenbarger. Bill is a superb writer, and he showcases some of the wonderful weirdness — but also nobility, industry, and the dark side — of our often overlooked commonwealth. From the Pennsylvania pencil and fireworks industries, to the turnpike, to the author’s ride-along with John Updike, to the unfortunately significant presence of the Klan, Ecenbarger treats his subjects with humor, insight, and honesty. I love this state and know a lot of other folks who do too, so this will be an ideal gift.

Get: Good Neighbors: The Democracy of Everyday Life in America, by Nancy Rosenblum. National politics over the last eighteen months or so have been quite inspirational — by which I mean, it has inspired me to focus local politics. This book looks like a great way to get your mind around what that means, by examining our neighborly democratic interactions. Local relationships form the underlying fabric that supports our larger democracy, so what makes that fabric strong or weak?

Joan Vidal, Senior Production Editor

Give: Pennsylvania Stories—Well Told, by master storyteller William Ecenbarger. This compelling collection of articles originally published in the Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, which features topics that range from Byberry to Zambelli Fireworks to deer hunting to John Updike, makes a perfect gift for anyone interested in Pennsylvania history and popular culture.

Get: the novel Lilli de Jong, by Philadelphia author Janet Benton, which tells the story of a young Quaker woman who decides to keep her baby girl after giving birth in an institution for unwed mothers in 1883 Philadelphia. Through a series of journal entries that detail her struggles, she sheds light on the daily lives and social norms of the people and communities around her.

Dave Wilson, Senior Production Editor

Give: Phil Jasner “On the Case”. This book is about the long-time Philadelphia Daily News sports writer and Naismith Hall of Famer who had a tireless work ethic in his quest to report Philadelphia sports. Phil’s son, Andy, also a sports writer, assembled a book showing just a sliver of his dad’s greatest moments and Phil’s passion to report accurately while exhibiting a tireless work ethic. This book is a wonderful tribute by a son to this father. The book shows the amazing relationships Phil had with great Philadelphia sports legends, and the chapter introductions from prominent Philadelphia sports figures make this an entertaining and touching read.

Nikki Miller, Rights and Permissions Manager

Give: Exploiting the Wilderness by Greg L. Warchol as a holiday gift.  As an animal lover, I think this is a great book that offers a look into the wildlife crime that occurs in Africa and what can be done to stop it.

Get: Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly.  I’ve read great reviews about this book and can’t wait to start reading it over the holidays.

Kate Nichols, Art Manager

Give: Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies, published by Temple University Press on behalf of the UCSB Center for Black Studies Research. As per George Lipsitz, the Senior editor, “In addition to its featured peer-reviewed scholarly articles, Kalfou devotes parts of each issue to short features focused on the places where ideas, activism, and art intersect.” As Volume 4, Issue 2 was just published, the journal is more important and timely than ever.

Rachel Elliott, Marketing Assistant

Give: The Audacity of Hoop by Alexander Wolff, because it is a visually compelling book that brings the president, often an inaccessible figure, down to the real world. We get to see him as he is in real life.

Get: We Should All Be Feminists because it has been recommended to me several times already! I love learning more about women’s issues and inclusive feminism and this book explores exactly that!

Gary Kramer, Publicity Manager

Give: I recently attended the 20th-anniversary party for Ellen Yin’s restaurant, Fork. While the menu has changed since she published her memoir/cookbook Forklore, the recipes and stories collected in her fabulous book are timeless, and still wonderful to read and savor.

Get: I’ve been wanting to read Sherman Alexie’s You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me since it was published. One of my favorite authors has written a memoir about his mother. But I just know this is going to break my heart, so I’ve been resisting it. But if someone gave it to me, I’d feel obligated to read it.

The Seeds of the Imagination: Colin Kaepernick’s Gift

This week in North Philly Notes, we repost a September 27 article from The Con by Grant Farred, author of Long Distance Love, about the NFL’s “Take a Knee” controversy.

In his response to his friend Fredric Jameson’s essay “American Utopia,” Slavoj Žižek makes a case for what is all too often lost in the uproar and turmoil caused by a historical event. What is forgotten, Žižek argues, are those “seeds of the imagination” that first created the conditions that made the event possible; the “seeds of the imagination” are overwhelmed by the event and, without the deliberate act of retrieval, lost to history. Žižek has no timetable, but one suspects that he has a longer view in mind than Colin Kaepernick’s decision to take a knee on the 1 September, 2016. It was in a National Football League (NFL) game for the San Francisco 49ers against the-then San Diego Chargers.

Still, there is a resonance about Žižek’s concept in a moment when there is large-scale support for the decision by NFL players, coaches, owners and an assortment of commentators in response to Donald Trump’s condemnation of the “SOB” players who, following Kaepernick’s example, have kept up the tradition of taking a knee. The bi-racial Kaepernick, adopted by a white family in Wisconsin, took his decision because of police violence and mistreatment of other minorities in the United States. This was not a nation, Kaepernick declared, whose flag or anthem he could honour, this was not a nation to which he could pledge allegiance. Kaepernick was, in this regard, following Jackie Robinson, who had, decades earlier, taken the same stand. As, Robinson said, a “black man” signified very differently to him than it did to white Americans. Unlike Robinson, who made this statement after his career had ended, Kaepernick has paid, like Muhammad Ali, a professional price. Since the end of last season, in a league full of mediocre quarterbacks (and even worse backups), Kaepernick has been out of a job.

However, what Kaepernick brought to the fore was politics. The politics of race, police brutality and the unequal treatment of minorities. In the aftermath of the Huntsville rally where Trump criticised the “sons of bitches” footballers for taking the knee, in this weekend’s NFL games, there was an outpouring of condemnation.

Players, from the usually reliable (Seattle Seahawks’s Richard Sherman and Michael Bennett; Marshawn Lynch, once of Seattle, now of the Oakland Raiders; and so on) to the unexpected (Tom Brady, [New England] Patriot in more senses than one, a Trump supporter to boot; the Dallas Cowboys, albeit taking a knee before the national anthem); coaches, from the admirable (Pete Carroll, Seahawks) to the shocking (Rex Ryan, for whom Huntsville was a Damascus experience); owners, well, other than the Steelers’ Rooney family everyone was a surprise. Shahid Kahn (Jaguars), the New England Patriots’ Robert Kraft (like his quarterback Brady a Trump man), Jerry Jones (who participated in the premature knee-taking) to the owners of the Philadelphia Eagles . . . It would seems that the New York Jets’ Woody Johnson, a rather fervent Trump underwriter, is out in the cold by himself. It promises to be a lonely place for Woody. But at least he’ll have the company of the National Hockey League’s (NHL) Pittsburgh Penguins, who only represent the whitest sport in America. He’ll have to do without the likes of National Basketball Association (NBA) superstars Lebron James (Cleveland Cavaliers) and Steph Curry (Golden State Warriors), who want no part of Trump and his White House. Then there’s Robin Lopez of the Chicago Bulls, whose tweet suggests that he expects Trump to be indicted.

What has been lost sight of, in the nigh universal locking-of-arms, taking-of-knees, and expressions of public outrage by commentators from the normally ebullient Chris Collinsworth to the articulate Bob Costas, from the savvy of CNN’s Bakari Sellers to the erudition of MSNBC’s Brian Williams, is how the entire conversation is being overwhelmed by the discourse of respectability, responsibility and, of course, patriotism. The case has made based entirely on the players’ First Amendment right: the right to free speech; their right to protest animated, of course, by the anger fuelled by Trump’s incendiary call to “fire” the “SOBs”.

The players, almost every commentator announces, are patriotic. They have “great respect” for the American flag. Under no circumstances must their protest be understood as a slap in the face of the military. The players are apparently united in their respect for the nation’s armed services, for the police force and all other state institutions whose members work to keep the country safe.

Whatever happened to the “seeds” of Kaepernick’s “imagination?” Have we already forgotten that Kaepernick, like Ali once did (before his conservatism got the better of him), like Robinson and John Carlos and Tommie Smith, understood, correctly, that the problem is precisely the American nation as it is constituted. To be sure, both Carroll and Costas gave voice to this. And, each in their own way, began from the political premise that racism and institutionalised inequality are ingrained in the nation’s fabric; discrimination of African-Americans, Latinos and other minorities is the very stuff of America – you know, like apple pie.

What is more, the dominant line of defence has been, the NFL players “care” about their “communities” and work very hard to contribute to it. These “communities” are never specified, but one presumes that it has to do with kids, and, almost certainly, with kids in under-resourced neighbourhoods.

But . . .  But . . . None of this matters. None of it.

In fact, the only way in which the First Amendment means anything, has any political purchase, is if it begins from the ground that the players, like every other resident of this country, have rights that are in no way contingent. That is, they are free do as they choose – protest, take a knee, stand with their hand over their heart, raise a clenched first – regardless of whether they are “responsible” citizens given to doing good deeds in their assorted “communities.”

What the discourse of “caring” achieves is to imbricate, relentlessly and repeatedly, the players’ right to protest, their right to give voice to their anger, whether it be against police brutality or against Trump’s racist bullhorn (very much in the spirit of Alabama’s own “Bull” Connor), in the discourse of respectability. Because the players, and the NFL, by extension, are responsible stewards of their “communities,” they are then implicitly immunized against the charge of disloyalty to the nation. Their commitment to their “communities” is the surest sign of their investment in America and its values; because they have “great respect” for cops and “deeply appreciate the sacrifice of our brave men and women in uniform” the act of taking a knee on a Sunday afternoon must not be mistaken for a lack of “patriotism.”

Why ever not? Isn’t the very fundament of the rights enshrined in the First Amendment precisely the right to offend? To give offense, again and again? To disrespect the flag, turn your back on the singing of the national anthem or to pour scorn upon American “values?”

In the rush to support or defend the players’ right to protest, what that right means has been reduced to a publicity relations campaign overwhelmed by the discourses of respectability and responsibility. The logic of this defence proceeds from the ground that the players are “worthy” of their rights; they are “upstanding members” of their “communities” who care —  a point with which I am fully sympathetic — about disproportionate police brutality against blacks and the structural inequality that remains a persistent feature of American life.

It does not matter if they are “upstanding” citizens or not. (No one makes the same demands of the owners, those who, like Johnson and Jones and Kraft, remained silent when Trump berated Mexicans as “murderers and rapists,” or advocated predatory sexual behaviour against women, or mocked a specially-abled reporter or . . .). The right to the First Amendment, if it is to have any political salience, must be apprehended as unconditional, something like sovereign. The moment in which support for the players is made to rest upon their socio-political “worthiness,” the discourse of respectability and responsibility veers unthinkingly into political paternalism. Only the “worthy” can give voice to their frustration or anger. Girding this argument is an unreflective and, within the context of the US, historic racism.

Respectability and responsibility (the NFL has its share of miscreants and unsavoury characters, from Lawrence Taylor to Ray Rice to . . .) is installed as the litmus test. There must be no contingency, no dependency upon others burnishing the players’ grievance and anger with their, to mix metaphors, their seal of ethical approval.

There is no need for the players to “nuance” (a term Costas favoured on Monday as he made his way on the talk show circuit) their protest. In fact, they have every right to make, if they so wish, public their disdain for the military or, contrary to what the Steelers so spectacularly failed to do, call one another out, team mate to team mate. Why should one team mate not be divided from another on matters of politics? Why should a league of which, at least, some 70% are black men, not let the mainly white crowds know that they disapprove, in the strongest possible terms, of their – the crowds, as was shown on Sunday and Monday evening – voting tendencies? Why ever not? Why not reiterate the division between black performance (labour, albeit a labour of love, as it is for many) and white consumption? In a moment of historic racial division, it can be argued that the first right is that of enunciating racial difference and the continuing deleterious effect of American racism. From police brutality to the failing Chicago Public School system (ask Chance the Rapper about that) to the intense racial animus that Trump has traded on.

It may very well not, this insistence on the right to unfettered right, to the absolute right to express that right, be the most efficient PR strategy. But, then again, there has never been a protest movement that began by first seeking approval. Or, allowed the fear of sanction to immobilise it. The Montgomery bus boycott, the March to Selma, Ali’s willingness to sacrifice his career because, as he said when he refused induction into the US Army, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong, they never called me Nigger,” owes much to its willingness to offend, to take issue, publicly, with the status quo.

Because of the rush to respectability, because of the visceral impulse to submit to the discourse of patriotism (the first refuge of scoundrels, as I’ve argued elsewhere), Kaepernick’s gift is in danger of being trampled upon. It might serve the NFL players better if they resisted the urge to clothe themselves in the cloak of respectability, if they eschewed the trappings of responsibility.

If, instead, they embraced fully the “seeds” of Kaepernick’s “imagination.” Kaepernick sowed, through his willingness to articulate the politics that informed his act of kneeling, in his stated opposition to the racism that has repeatedly allowed police officers who have ended the lives of black citizens (a point Sellers made on CNN) to be summarily ended without any palpable justice, a seed uncompromised by the desire for respectability. Kaepernick acted as a political “bad boy.”

If that “seed” is lost, if his “imagination” is not properly understood and honoured, if the “seed of his imagination” does not grow into a politics rather than a placatory course of action, then, as Žižek reminds us, there will have been, no matter the amount of ink spilled on this issue, no matter the hours spent trolling the internet or sitting glued to the TV/computer screen offer their opinions on it, fidelity to Kaepernick’s “seed,” to the possibilities a now unemployed quarterback opened up when he first took that knee, in that game more than a year ago against the Chargers.

The only proper way to honour Kaepernick is to recognise the promise of the political “seed” he germinated and then to exceed it. As the Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett senior put it, his NFL-playing sons, Michael and Martellus (tight end for the Green Bay Packers), will continue to protest. Out of one “seed,” potentially another. And so on, and so on. The Seahawks defensive end appears ready to add the force of his political “imagination” to the “seed” Kaepernick planted in San Diego. Who said that defensive ends are the scourge of quarterbacks? Not in this case, one dares hope.

ABOUT GRANT FARRED

Grant Farred teaches at Cornell University. His most recent work is Martin Heidegger Saved My Life (University of Minnesota Press, 2015).His previous books include In Motion, At Rest: The Event of the Athletic Body (University of Minnesota Press, 2014), What’s My Name? Black Vernacular Intellectuals (University of Minnesota Press, 2004), Phantom Calls: Race and the Globalization of the NBA (Prickly Paradigm, 2006) and Long Distance Love: A Passion for Football (Temple University Press, 2008). His forthcoming works include Conciliation (Temple University Press) and The Condemned: Lio Messi, Luis Suarez and the 2014 World Cup (Indiana University Press).

Remembering 9/11

On the 16th anniversary of September 11th, we offer a quartet of Temple University Press titles that put the 9/11 tragedy in context.

American Dunkirk: The Waterborne Evacuation of Manhattan on 9/11, by James Kendra and Tricia Wachtendorf; 

When the terrorist attacks struck New York City on September 11, 2001, boat operators and waterfront workers quickly realized that they had the skills, the equipment, and the opportunity to take definite, immediate action in responding to the most significant destructive event in the United States in decades. For many of them, they were “doing what needed to be done.”

American Dunkirk shows how people, many of whom were volunteers, mobilized rescue efforts in various improvised and spontaneous ways on that fateful date. Disaster experts James Kendra and Tricia Wachtendorf examine the efforts through fieldwork and interviews with many of the participants to understand the evacuation and its larger implications for the entire practice of disaster management.

The authors ultimately explore how people—as individuals, groups, and formal organizations—pull together to respond to and recover from startling, destructive events. American Dunkirk asks, What can these people and lessons teach us about not only surviving but thriving in the face of calamity?

History and September 11th edited by Joanne Meyerowitz; The contributors to this landmark collection set the attacks on the United States in historical perspective. They reject the simplistic notion of an age-old “clash of civilizations” and instead examine the particular histories of American nationalism, anti-Americanism, U.S. foreign policy, and Islamic fundamentalism among other topics. With renewed attention to Americans’ sense of national identity, they focus on the United States in relation to the rest of the world. A collection of recent and historical documents—speeches, articles, and book excerpts—supplement the essays. Taken together, the essays and sources in this volume comment on the dangers of seeing the events of September 11 as splitting the nation’s history into “before” and “after.” They argue eloquently that no useful understanding of the present is possible without an unobstructed view of the past.

Behind the Backlash: Muslim Americans after 9/11 by Lori Peek; As the nation tried to absorb the shock of the 9/11 attacks, Muslim Americans were caught up in an unprecedented wave of backlash violence. Public discussion revealed that widespread misunderstanding and misrepresentation of Islam persisted, despite the striking diversity of the Muslim community.
Letting the voices of 140 ordinary Muslim American men and women describe their experiences, Lori Peek’s path-breaking, award-winning book, Behind the Backlash presents moving accounts of prejudice and exclusion. Muslims speak of being subjected to harassment before the attacks, and recount the discrimination they encountered afterwards. Peek also explains the struggles of young Muslim adults to solidify their community and define their identity during a time of national crisis.

Abuse of Power: How Cold War Surveillance and Secrecy Policy Shaped the Response to 9/11 by Athan Theoharis; Theoharis, long a respected authority on surveillance and secrecy, shows that the events that occurred 11 years ago are still felt everyday by Americans in the sense of government security. Passionately argued, this timely book speaks to the costs and consequences of still-secret post-9/11 surveillance programs and counterintelligence failures. Ultimately, Abuse of Power makes the case that the abusive surveillance policies of the Cold War years were repeated in the government’s responses to the September 11 attacks.

A view of Public History in the light of recent events in Charlottesville

This week in North Philly Notes, in response to the Charlottesville Syllabus, which details books and articles about confederate statues and other related issues, we showcase our public history title, Presenting the Past.

In recent years, history has been increasingly popularized through television docudramas, history museums, paperback historical novels, grassroots community history projects, and other public representations of historical knowledge. This collection of lively and accessible essays is the first examination of the rapidly growing field called “public history.” Based in part on articles written for the Radical History Review, these eighteen original essays take a sometimes irreverent look at how history is presented to the public in such diverse settings as children’s books, Colonial Williamsburg, and the Statue of Liberty.

Presenting the Past is organized into three areas which consider the role of mass media (“Packaging the Past”), the affects of applied history (“Professionalizing the Past”) and the importance of grassroots efforts to shape historical consciousness (“Politicizing the Past”). The first section examines the large-scale production and dissemination of popular history by mass culture. The contributors criticize many of these Hollywood and Madison Avenue productions that promote historical amnesia or affirm dominant values and institutions.

In “Professionalizing the Past,” the authors show how non-university based professional historians have also affected popular historical consciousness through their work in museums, historic preservation, corporations, and government agencies. Finally, the book considers what has been labeled “people’s history”—oral history projects, slide shows, films, and local exhibits—and assesses its attempts to reach such diverse constituents as workers, ethnic groups, women, and gays.

Of essential interest to students of history, Presenting the Past also explains to the general reader how Americans have come to view themselves, their ancestors, and their heritage through the influence of mass media, popular culture, and “public history.”

What Temple University Press staff wants to give and read this holiday season

This week in North Philly Notes, the staff at Temple University Press suggest the Temple University Press books they would give along with some non-Temple University Press titles they hope to read this holiday season. 

Mary Rose Muccie, Director

Give: As a recent Press tweet suggested, I’d give Alexander Wolff’s The Audacity of Hoop to those on my list who’ve been in a funk since November 8.

Read:  A review of Maria Semple’s new book, Today Will Be Different, pointed me to an earlier book, Where’d You Go, Bernadette, and I’ve had it on my list ever since. I love smart, witty, satirical contemporary novels and this looks to be just that.

Karen Baker, Financial Manager
Give: Boathouse Row  by Dotty Brown and Building Drexel, edited by Richardson Dilworth and Scott Gabriel Knowles, as both of these books are beautiful. Since all of my family are born and raised in Philadelphia, they will make great gifts for them.

Read: A Dog’s Purpose: A Novel for Humans. This book was just brought to my attention because it is about to be made into a movie, and it looks like a fun read.

 

 

Aaron Javsicas, Editor-in-Chief

Give: Boathouse Row, by Dottie Brown. We at Temple University Press have done our part to make holiday gift giving a little easier on Philadelphians this year. Dottie is a terrific writer who is passionate about rowing, the book is gorgeous, and it’s the first full exploration of this fascinating and unique Philadelphia institution. Giving Boathouse Row is practically a required act of Philadelphia civic pride.

Read: American Amnesia, by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson. These authors argue we have apparently forgotten how a “mixed economy” — with a substantial role for public intervention as well as for free markets — was crucial to achieving American prosperity in the twentieth century. It’s hard to know where we’re headed these days, but with seemingly everything up for grabs this looks like the sort of fundamental civics lesson we could all use.

Sara Cohen, Editor

Give: I’ll be giving folks copies of Dennis and Michele Waskul’s Ghostly Encounters.  It’s fascinating, readable, and (at least as far as I’m concerned) nothing says “holiday season” like ghosts.

Read:  I’ll be reading Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl and Tom McCarthy’s Remainder, the latter of which I received as an early holiday gift from a good friend.

 

 

 

Ryan Mulligan, Editor

Give: Will Big League Baseball Survive? The World Series this year brought in so many viewers and gave them such a sublime show at just the moment that football looks like it might be losing a shade of its luster. Will baseball fandom remain arcane to casual audiences? Is a breakthrough imminent, possible, or even necessary? Lincoln Mitchell sees the path forward. His book is perfect for the baseball evangelists I know.

Read: Colson Whitehead’s NBA-winning (no – we’re not talking about sports anymore) Underground Railroad and Zadie Smith’s new Swing Time (read her speech on hope and history ) in fiction and I’m curious about Michael Lewis’s take on Kahneman and Tversky in The Undoing Project.

Nikki Miller, Rights and Contracts Manager

Give: Dotty Brown’s Boathouse Row, which takes you through the history of rowing with beautiful pictures along the Schuylkill.  It offers a relaxing balance of history and storytelling which makes it a perfect read for the holiday season.

Read: The holidays give me an excuse to lay by the fire and reread my favorite book: The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah.

Joan Vidal, Senior Production Editor

Give: Suicide Squeeze: Taylor Hooton, Rob Garibaldi, and the Fight against Teenage Steroid Abuse, by William C. Kashatus. This important story of the tragic steroids-related suicides of two up-and-coming student-athletes is an essential addition to the continuing education on the widespread problem of steroid abuse among young people.

Read: I hope to receive The Boys from Eighth and Carpenter, by Tom Mendicino, a novel about two brothers who grow up in 1960s South Philadelphia and then go their separate ways: one staying and taking over their father’s barbershop and the other moving away and becoming a high-society lawyer. When life goes awry, they reveal the strength of the bond between them.

Kate Nichols,  Art Manager

Give: I would give George Lipstiz’s How Racism Takes Place.

 

Read: I have already given myself Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen (through a donation to WXPN).

Dave Wilson, Senior Production Editor

Give: I thoroughly enjoyed working on and reading City in a Park: A History of Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park System by Lynn Miller and Jim McClelland. The authors recount a fascinating story of the birth of the park system, and I found myself wanting to visit the many places and houses so vividly depicted by the authors. The accompanying talks the authors gave made me more aware of one of the world’s greatest park systems, one that I didn’t fully appreciate until I had read this book.

 

 

Ann-Marie Anderson, Marketing Director

Give: I’d like to give a few of my friends copies of The Possessive Investment of Whiteness, by George Lipsitz, a book that illustrates the injustices suffered by and the advantages of white supremacy.

Read: I’m trying to catch up on my reading, so from the 2015 New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books list, I just bought Loving Day by Mat Johnson to read over the holiday break.  Peace and love to all this holiday season!

 

 

 

Emma Pilker, Editorial Assistant

Give: Framing the Audience by Isadora Anderson Helfgott, to my art history colleagues. Anyone interested in the social history of art will appreciate Helfgott’s analysis of pivotal 20th century movements that shaped today’s art world.

Read: I have been putting off reading Fox Girl by Nora Okja Keller because of the heavy themes, but the end of the year is the perfect time to commit to some historical reflection and cultural

 

Gary Kramer, Publicity Manager

Give: Considering how 2016 was, Timothy Recuber’s Consuming Catastrophe: Mass Culture in America’s Decade of Disaster,  an appropriate gift. Recuber looks at how the media covered four crises–the 9/11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, the Virginia Tech shootings and the 2008 financial crisis–and how our concern for the suffering of others help soothe our own emotional turmoil.

Read: I just started read Michael Chabon’s Moonglow, which actually acknowledges a Temple University Press book–Murray Dubin’s South Philadelphia—as source material for the depiction of South Philadelphia in the book. This video of Chabon, made during his Free Library of Philadelphia appearance on December 8 opens with him talking about how Dubin’s South Philadelphia influenced his “autobiographical novel.”

Charting the public’s engagement with disaster media

This week in North Philly Notes, Timothy Recuber, author of Consuming Catastrophe, writes about our media-induced empathy for disaster victims, and the problems associated with empathetic hedonism.

From October 4^th to October 10^th, Hurricane Matthew trudged up the Atlantic coast from Cuba to North Carolina. It killed hundreds in Haiti and caused billions of dollars in damages in the United States. And for several days, it monopolized our attention, elbowing its way into public consciousness alongside the US presidential elections, as news networks provided live coverage in the States while citizen journalists sent shaky, handheld camera footage from locations throughout the Caribbean. In the storm’s immediate aftermath, harrowing tales of rescues mixed together with heart-wrenching stories of loss and earnest appeals to charitable giving on our televisions and computers. Then we began the process of forgetting. Presidential election coverage returned to its absurd heights. War crimes in Yemen took center stage among the foreign news reports. And life for all of us distant spectators of mass-mediated disaster returned to normal.

While this pattern of public engagement with disasters is not surprising, it deserves scrutiny. What does it mean to understand the suffering of others in these ways? How does the increasingly intense and intimate coverage of catastrophes encourage certain kinds of reactions, and discourage others? What sorts of narratives win out when we understand disasters and loss through the succession of powerful yet fleeting mass-mediated experiences, where one disaster and then then next appear and disappear before our eyes? And how are new media technologies altering or reinforcing these patterns?

These were the questions I set out to answer in Consuming Catastrophe: Mass Culture in America’s Decade of Disaster. I focused on a particularly tumultuous time period in recent American history: the first decade of the twenty first century. From the September 11^th, 2001 terrorist attacks to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007, the financial crisis in 2008, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, America was rocked by some of the largest disasters in the country’s history. Yet despite very significant differences in the duration, cost, and amount of lives lost due to these disasters, each followed a fairly similar path through mass-media and public consciousness. Using close reading and discourse analysis of news transcripts, documentary films, reality television programs, and digital archives, I was able to trace out some of the larger cultural norms that emerged during this period.

Chief among these norms is the obligation to show empathy to those directly affected by disasters. In the book, I develop the concept of empathetic hedonism as a way to understand the media-induced pleasure in attempting to imagine what others are feeling, even if those feelings are painful. We are, I argue, increasingly asked to empathize with a whole host of suffering others today. And this certainly can be a good thing. But that empathy often comes at a cost. It is easily focused on individuals and their personal problems, but hard to direct towards structural issues. It is intense but short lived, such that the long aftermath of rebuilding is often ignored. And it works best with spectacular, acute disasters—like hurricanes—rather than long, slow, diffuse disasters—like global climate change, even though the latter has more damaging consequences than anything else. Thus we need to think critically about where and how our attention and emotion is being directed during and after disasters. And as I suggest in Consuming Catastrophe, we need to focus on the less spectacular work of creating a more just society all of the time, not just when disaster strikes.

Temple University Press is having a Back-to-School SALE!