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MARITÉ DUPONCHEEL

1ÈRE BAC DROIT

Introduction to the Culture of the English-speaking World

F. van der Mensbrugghe

Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles 2013-2014

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Theme 1. The Meaning of “Culture” Introduction

• Bewildering concept by reason of its ubiquity The world culture has no precise definition. It can cover the arts but also the anthropological sense as values and norms that people share. The word “culture” appears to be one of the most bewildering words in the English language.

• Fundamental on a personal level (homesickness, culture shock, culture wars) Leave your home country and travel to a foreign land for a few weeks may cause a mild disease known as homesickness. Some people contract it a short distance away from their home. For expatriates, this disease may be much more serious, requiring the intervention of a psychotherapist. It can cause lack of energy, concentration or sleep disturbances. Culture wars: gay marriages, death penalty, abortion, religious differences…

• Fundamental for society at large, in varying degrees (France, the UK, the USA) Culture is not merely a matter of personal interest or welfare. It concerns society at large. As evidence of this, a foreigner’s relationship with a state’s culture constitutes a fundamental feature that is taken into account when granting or denying citizenship. By way of illustration, the French Council of State, in a ruling delivered in June 2008, denied a Moroccan-born woman citizenship’s application because she failed to assimilate to French culture and practiced a type of Islam found incompatible with French values: the woman was married to a French national, spoke French, had three children born in France, and wore a burqa covering her entire body except her eyes. Such decisions impinge on our deepest cultural references. The French State is deeply involved in upholding and promoting French cultural values. The roots behind this relationship between culture and politics go back to Richelieu’s creation of the Académie Française in 1635 under the reign of Louis XIII. Beyond these historical factors, France’s “touchiness” in these matters may also be explained by the country’s feeling that it is threatened by the cultural hegemony of the English-speaking world (particularly the cultural hegemony of the United States).

• A matter of international concern: see the “Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions” (approved by the UNESCO on 20 October 2005, entered into force on 18 March 2008)

Affirming that cultural diversity is a defining characteristic of humanity, as well as being conscious that cultural diversity forms a common heritage of humanity and should be cherished and preserved for the benefit of all and being aware that cultural diversity creates a rich and varied world, which increases the range of choices and nurtures human capacities and values, and therefore is a mainspring for sustainable development for communities, peoples and nations.

♦ 18th Century England Culture is difficult to apprehend because culture bears multifarious dimensions (dependent on upbringing and subjective interests): William Hogarth (1697-1764) and Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) give two complementary visions of 18th century English culture.

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Relying on satire, Hogarth’s view of life is dominated by growing, urban London. His series of eight paintings, A Rake’s Progress (1733-34), tells a story and teaches a moral lesson in its depiction of the rise and fall of Tom Rakewell. This is an eighteenth century that English schoolbooks portray as a chaotic mess waiting to be cleaned up by the “Age of Reform” which set in from the 1820s. Conversely, there is the eighteenth century conjured up by Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), more aristocratic and naturalistic. Gainsborough portrays comfortably off gentry with their wives, offspring and the odd servant who gaze complacently at us from their family portraits. We are no longer staring at an illuminated stage. In the background of Gainsborough’s paintings, we can catch glimpses of a country house, and perhaps another out-of-frame, background, where the process of intercontinental commerce and imperial expansion are taking place: an eighteenth century, essentially which could be portrayed as the cradle of modernity. The problem is to create an accurate view of eighteenth century England where Hogarth’s and Gainsborough’s worlds coexist. Both artists, living approximately at the same time, express a quintessential Englishness in their own separate ways.

♦ Collective Orientation Culture may also be a collective orientation: numerous examples come to mind:

• “drink culture” in the UK, and its torrent of alcohol-related illness; • “corporate culture”: every organization has its own unique culture, value set, behavioral

quirks, interactions; • “consumer culture”: the “Diderot effect” (process of spiralling consumption resulting from

dissatisfaction induced by a new possession)

♦ USA: Arms (Gun) Culture

• In the USA, a civilian gunstock exceeding 200 million; • 15 children and young people are killed by guns each day, most of them in or around their

own homes; • The issue is of course related to “gun control” (background checks for firearms

purchases…); • The UK and the USA tend to approach firearms differently: in the USA, remnant of the

“frontier” spirit of the 19th century…; • Influence of lobbies and in particular of the National Rifle Association (NRA); • Symbol of power and masculinity.

♦ Topical Issue

In addition to those reasons just mentioned, the problem is to know whether the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution bestows upon citizens an individual right to own firearm for lawful purposes. Skewed reading of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”.

! Back in 1787

No indication that the Framers intended to enshrine a right of self-defense in the Constitution. Concerns raised during the ratification of the US Constitution that the power of the US Congress to

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disarm the state militias and create a national standing army posed an intolerable threat to the sovereignty of the states.

! Yes, but in the 21th century

1). District of Columbia v. Heller (June 26, 2008) The United States Supreme Court considered that there seemed no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to keep and bear arms. The ban of firearms is challenged but four (out of the nine) Justices disagreed (“dissenting opinions”). 2). See also McDonald v. Chicago (June 28, 2010)

! End of the story? No… Attempts (in New Orleans, Chicago…) to make gun-makers “liable” for shootings, either because guns are a public nuisance or because guns are not equipped with adequate safety devices " 2 consequences:

1. gun related medical care : costs 2. increased police protection : costs

Other areas of complaint:

• Tobacco makers who have conspired to defraud US consumers (since the 1950s) by hiding the health risks of smoking;

• Fast-food chains: relationship between “junk food” and obesity (Supersize me!) # This leads us to developments on another form of American culture: the “culture of complaint” or “claims culture”, i.e. a litigatory process gone rampant DEFINITION OF CULTURE, by Alan Bloom: According to Alan Bloom, in his book called “The Closing of the American Mind” (p. 9), “First, culture is almost identical to people or nation, as in French culture, German culture, Iranian culture, etc. Second, culture refers to art, music, literature, educational television, certain kinds of movies - in short, everything that is uplifting and edifying, as opposed to commerce…”.

1) Ubiquitous Dimension

A. Mass Culture Alan Bloom’s definition fails to take into consideration the popular dimension of culture. Indeed, our approach to world of culture should not be limited to the lofty realms of “high brow” expression of the arts. Walter Benjamin – a blogger avant la lettre – took trivia (infos) seriously and read the modern era from its trash, toys, lunch bills, shopping arcades, snippets of just about anything. Benjamin’s biographer and translator, Esther Leslie, notes that “There may be more artworks ‘inspired’ by Benjamin than by any other thinker.”. Indeed, almost anyone who studies everyday contemporary life is a follower of Benjamin, whether they like it or not.

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♦ Popular Dimension Returning to the Anglo-American world, there is more to English culture than Paradise Lost by John Milton or Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray: for example, the irrepressibly prolific American artist, Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) built on the legacy of Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) by obscuring the lines between art and life. Most notably, Rauschenberg considered that just about anything, including junk on the street, could be the stuff of art and that it could be the stuff of an art aspiring to be beautiful – that there was a potential poetics even in consumer glut. In terms of sculpture, “Canyon” consists of a stuffed bald eagle attached to a canvas. “Monogram” was a stuffed goat girdled by a tire atop a printed panel. “Bed” entailed a quilt, sheet and pillow, slathered with paint, as if soaked in blood, framed on the wall. All became icons of postwar modernism. He loved making something out of nothing. With other American artists (Jasper Johns1, John Cage2, Merce Cunningham3), Rauschenberg defined a new era of experimentation in American culture.

♦ Popular Culture In any event, we can make two further remarks at this stage:

1. In the first place, high-brow culture is undeniably nourished at one stage or another by popular culture. There is no clear demarcation line: see the British composer Edward Elgar (1857-1931) and his Pomp and Circumstance March N°1;

2. So-called “bad” culture is perhaps good for us all: • Everything Bad is Good for You: How Popular Culture is Making Us Smarter

(London: Allen Lane, 2005): Steven Johnson contends that far from rotting the minds of modern youth, video games, television, films and the Internet actually increase cognitive skills and contain strong educational values

• The Simpsons, like Monty Python, is an Anglo-American take on existentialism. By way of illustration, in the episode, “Homer the Heretic”, Homer gives up church and decides to follow God in his own way. Homer throws out different – controversial – observations in this episode.

$ The arguments in favor of “popular culture” are many. The problem nevertheless remains

that the loss of dedication to “high-brow culture” can mean it can be degraded, if not altogether lost. An English philosopher, Roger Scruton, argues that is precisely what happened to the once flourishing Islamic culture.

$ On the “demand” side, it would be wrong to consider that the public is oblivious to “high-

brow” culture. More books are read today than ever before (including classics), more plays are produced and seen, more opera and classical music listened to, and more museums and art galleries visited. Finally, it would be wrong to portray the past as a fantasized nirvana of goodliness, proper manners, and cultural bon goût.

1 Jasper Johns, born in 1930, is an American artist, often described as a Neo-Dadaist, as opposed to pop-art. 2 John Cage (1912-1992) was an influential American composer, famous for his avant-garde, radical innovations

in music. Robert Rauschenberg and John Cage were close friends. Cage bought one of Rauschenberg’s paintings in 1951 at the influential Betty Parsons Gallery (the only painting that was sold). Regarding Rauschenberg, Cage once remarked, “Beauty is now underfoot wherever we take the trouble to look”. In 1952, Rauschenberg painted a series of all-white paintings. These were considered, in retrospect, spiritually akin to Cage’s famous silent piece of music (Black Mountain, composed in 1952), during which a pianist sits for 4 minutes and 33 seconds at the keyboard without making a sound.

3 Merce Cunningham, born in 1919, is a prominent American choreographer, famous for developing, among others, “non-representative” dance which emphasizes “mere” movement.

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B. Anthropological Deepness Values and norms that a people share: (a) our most mundane pleasures, and (b) our innermost feelings (love + suffering).

a) Human Pleasures

♦ Weather Our attitudes towards weather, and most notably rain, are cultural. In dry places such as India or Africa, rain is often greeted with joy, if not euphoria. British weather is rarely extreme: it is, rather, extremely variable. This consistently variable climate is a result of Britain’s unique geography – sandwiched between an ocean to the west and a continent to the east, and squeezed between tropical air masses to the south (the Gulf Stream) and polar air masses to the north. The British are proud of their island fortress, nearly a thousand years unassailed. Their unconquered record, however, has perhaps less to do with plucky fighting spirit than with the wild winds that sweep their shores. Julius Caesar failed each time he tried to conquer the island. In 1796, a French invasion force, sent by Napoleon, of 43 ships aiming for Bantry Bay in Ireland’s County Cork met the same fate, if it had not been for the inclement weather. English fiction is drenched in rain " opening sentence of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre: “There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.” This striking opening of the novel develops a number of contrasts with symbolic meanings: the weather corresponds to a wretched emotional climate for the unloved orphan within, taking refuge from a hostile world behind curtains. (Jane was left in the care of her aunt Mrs Reed : she suffers in isolation from a passionate sense of injustice. She consoles herself in books where she finds images which seem to express her own bewildered state of what life is like: images of storm, shipwreck, and disaster: death and mysterious evil…). There exist many other examples:

• Charles Dickens’ Bleak House (1852-3) is a satire on the old court of Chancery where London fog hangs over the city like a primitive force taking human imagination back to the earliest stages of existence.

• See also the paintings by J.M.W. Turner (fonder of the impressionism movement in England) (1775-1851): rain, mists, or fog provide a formidable climatic backdrop to British imagination, a sense of longing , a poetic veil, a mysterious cloak.

Closer to us, the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games in August 2008 gave way to London’s stewardship for the next Olympic Games: the 8-minute showcase of British culture was reduced to a group of wet commuters waiting for a double-decker bus. Perhaps, however, this “dampened” projection of British cultural forms was meant as a metaphor of English self-deprecation.

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♦ Food and Drink Food and drink are unarguably products and reflections of our culture from Shakespeare’s character of Falstaff to an abundance of food in the novels of Charles Dickens. Food and drink come out sharply in the works of several English authors, among whom William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. To take but one character, Sir John Falstaff, a famous comic figure in several of Shakespeare’s history plays (Henry IV, parts I and I, Henry V, The Merry Wives of Windsor), is not only loveable because he is witty and skillful at turning jokes on himself, but also because he is the drinking companion of the prince of Wales who later becomes Henry V. Falstaff’s very life ends in food and drink. He dies in Henry V in a tavern on the eve of the French campaign. In the same play, long after Falstaff’s death and the battle of Agincourt, Shakespeare indulges further in food when a new comic character, Fluellen, compels the braggart Pistol to eat a leek. In 19th century England, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was unrivalled in his use of food to describe his characters and epitomize British culture. Food is a social marker from Oliver Twist’s request “please, sir, I want more”. Today, the planet has largely been taken over by the eating habits and the food industry of the English-speaking world. In part, the reason has to do with popular fondness for “fast food”. Other reasons lie behind this phenomenon:

- the “green revolution” with its chemical fertilizers and high-yield seeds; - the emergence of factory farming and the ensuing production of cheap meat in

unprecedented quantities; - the use of corn as a cheap universal feed for chickens, cows, and even fish, not to

mention the corn products that seep into candy, soft drinks, cheese, and almost everything else;

- the decline in the real cost of fattening foods; - the phenomenon of “hedonics” or “eatertainment”; - jumbo-sized portions.

There are numerous consequences to this trend:

• Billions of animals experience terrible lives (restricted in mobility and diseased) and horrible deaths (skinned alive).

• Constantly sick, they give us our flu pandemics. They occupy and degrade nearly a third of the world’s land, use and pollute water, and warm the planet.

• According to the United Nations, animal agriculture is the single biggest cause of climate change. It contributes 40% more to global warming than all forms of transport combined.

• Finally, there is the problem of obesity or “globesity”. Children are getting fatter and fatter. Under present-day conditions, diets do not work, because they just make the dieter appreciate the reward of food even more. Obesity is a disaster, both for the individuals who suffer from it and for the health care systems they are likely to enter.

But the English-speaking world also produces more positive consequences:

• French gastronomy is being pulled out of centuries of decorum, snobbery and fossilized rules to emerge afresh and spontaneous, and much of this change is due to a philosophical movement that takes inspiration in the English-speaking world: the “fooding” movement (a

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combination of “food” and “feeling”, with the provocation of using an English word within the context of French cuisine);

• Under the “fooding” movement, rules are set aside in favor of casualness and high-spirited settings where chefs and diners mingle in an atmosphere reminiscent of a music festival. There are no longer any boundaries between the people involved, nor between brasseries, bistros, and grand restaurants;

• Generally speaking, these problems of eating and drinking – however negative or positive – hinge on pleasure and man’s communion with man, with earth, and with seasons. We take the produce of the cultivated and of the uncultivated earth to sustain our bodies but also to partake in an essential component of human culture.

b) Innermost Feelings and Beliefs: Weddings, Funerals, and Everything In-Between

Whether it be love or death, each culture has its own images and “practices” that are deeply rooted in the collective psyche and which may baffle the foreign onlooker.

1) Love (and the Wedding Industry: “Bridezillas”) Jane Austen (1775-1817) gives a stark example of “English” love in Pride and Prejudice (1813), a novel which inspired the more recent, and farcical, Diary of Bridget Jones. The heroine of the Pride and Perjudice, Elizabeth Bennet, finds Mr. Darcy snobbish and arrogant. He thinks she is fair but not pretty enough to go out dancing with. Eventually, Darcy’s prejudice is overcome, as is Elizabeth’s pride, by love. The fact of the matter is that Jane Austen’s conception of love is very English. In today’s America, the wedding culture has reached extravagant heights. Brides are sometimes vilified as “Bridezillas” who maraud through wedding catalogues as they plan their individually perfect days (with the ensuing risk of bitter disappointment when their Cinderella dreams do not come true). Related to expenses, a cultural commentary of the American wedding beckons debate on the introduction of the sacred into the shopping process. By way of illustration, a silk pillow may become a magical object merely because the wedding rings will be placed on it during the ceremony.

2) Death Similarly, a person’s way of dealing with pain and suffering, or death, is revealing of that person’s culture. The British novelist Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) makes this abundantly, and comically, clear in his macabre story about California funeral practices : The Loved One (1948). The novel tells the story of a group of Englishmen working in Los Angeles, one of whom commits suicide upon learning he has been laid off by a Hollywood studio. A young friend of his makes funeral arrangements and enters into the artificial world of a distinctly luxurious funeral parlor, the Whispering Glades Memorial Park, only to discover American-style death, wrapped up and sold like a package holiday. He is greeted by an obsequious woman who bears the title of Mortuary Hostess. In 1963, Jessica Mitford (1917-1996) devoted a book to the American funeral industry, entitled The American Way of Death. The book remains considered a classic today. In her book, Mitford proceeded to a muckraking dissection of funeral directors, who stooped very low to dissuade the bereaved from opting for a cremation rather than a fancy casket, and whispered to those who refused embalming about the ways that untreated bodies rot.

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3) Freedom Our conception of democracy is also very much embedded in our culture. See the Wintu Indians of California.

2) The revelatory function of Culture Culture is not neutral. It reflects past and current ideas of a given society in a way that is inescapable. The fact of the matter is that culture is organic. Indeed, the word culture comes from the Latin term cultura, meaning to grow or cultivate. “Culture” arises out of “agriculture”.

A. Individual dimension

One must avoid national stereotypes when defining cultural production. Individual works (a painting, a novel, a play…) nevertheless demonstrate certain “organic” features, as it can reflect a culture, and for the present purposes, the culture of English speaking world, depicting either:

a) Humor: pp. 36-43 b) Tragedy (futility of life): pp. 44-48 c) Ideology: pp. 48-49

a) Humor

Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400), poet and great traveler who studied the sciences, the arts, and the literatures of France and Italy, wrote The Canterbury Tales (series of stories), an unfinished collection of short stories about pilgrimage that mingles human beings of all temperaments and social conditions. Each pilgrim is supposed to tell two stories. Bailey, the landlord of the Tabard, offers a free supper to whichever of the pilgrims shall tell the best story on the long road to and from Canterbury. Then Chaucer – the great poet – tells a prose story that is hardly less dull and provides “the first example in literature of that peculiar English humour which takes a keen delight in self-derision” (≠ French culture which is perhaps more cerebral and introspective…).

♦ Satire In addition to being a “teller in the tale”, William Makepiece Thackeray (1811-63), shows a particular brand of “satire” (caustic wit or irony used to expose or attack human folly). Vanity Fair tells the lives of two young women with sharply contrasted characters: Becky Sharp (unscrupulous) and Amelia Sedley (moral but unintelligent). The organic dimension of culture comes out strikingly when contrasting Racine and Shakespeare.

♦ Racine and Shakespeare

Shakespeare is unquestionably a millstone round the neck of British culture. Many French authors have had difficulty with Shakespeare, thus underlining serious cross-cultural misunderstandings.

Shakespeare’s writing may be said to draw on three characteristics:

1. Presence of the ordinary is obvious in all of Shakespeare’s plays, and even in his tragedies such as King Lear (1604-1605). The real world is overwhelmingly present in Shakespeare: it is made up of blood, sweat and tears (whilst, all the while combining laughter,

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fantasy and mockery). This is no more apparent than in the storm scene of King Lear, when he divided his kingdom between his 3 daughters.

>< the French playwright Racine (1639-1699). His tragedy, Phèdre (1677), tells the story of an Athenian queen, married to King Theseus, who falls in love with her stepson, Hippolytus. Racine’s books are much more polied, well done and bienseance.

The real world for both of them:

- Racine: the presence of the real world is severely measured - Shakespeare: the real world is overwhelmingly present (blood, sweat and tears;

laughter, fantasy and mockery)

2. Abundance of Language

Again, Shakespeare and Racine may be contrasted: - exuberant, centrifugal, down-to-earth (if not bawdy) language with Shakespeare; - restricted vocabulary, refined forms of speech (if not abstract) with Racine.

3. Multiple plots + genres

Multiple subplots in Shakespeare: Henry V… (Agincourt, Falstaff, the wooing of Catherine of France…) and multiple genres such as history, comedy, and tragedy are all mixed into one. Henry The Vth The play is set in the early 15th century. Tense political situation in England: bitter civil wars and the new monarch, Henry V, must live down his wild adolescent past (drinking with his closest friend, Falstaff…). Henry lays claim to certain parts of France " invasion in August 1415 and victories against incredible odds (siege of Harfleur). They were outnumbered 5 to 1 at Agincourt:

• On his way to Calais, with a force at most 13,000 strong, Henry is met at Agincourt by a French army of 50,000 The English are further hampered in their hopes to win by exhaustion due to the siege of Harfleur, dysentery, and inclement weather (mud everywhere);

• The King delivers a powerful, inspiring speech to his soldiers (“Crispin Crispian” speech, syllabus, pp. 36-37);

• Miraculously (with the help of their archers using longbows, and cunning tactics…), the English win the battle, and the proud French must surrender at last.

The victory at Agincourt, and Shakespeare’s heart-stirring account of the battle written in 1599, transformed Henry V into one of England’s most iconic figures, an inspirational leader akin to France’s Joan of Arc… A sense of miracle (the few had destroyed the many), holding up two string fingers as an act of defiance and victory, the emergence of the common man as a vital part of the English nation, England’s “finest hour”. Still a sensitive topic today, the French accuse the English of war crimes and exaggeration. Later:

• Peace negotiations are worked out between the 2 kingdoms; • Henry will marry Catherine, the daughter of the French king;

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• Henry’s son will be the king of France, and the marriage will unite the two kingdoms.

$ 2 remarks: 1. Cross-cultural misunderstandings: Gide and Tolstoy gazed at Shakespeare with “repulsion,

weariness, and bewilderment”. They thought his writing was exaggerated. 2. Many of these contrasts permeate our culture on different levels: Code civil >< common

law.

b) Tragedy

• A sense of hopelessness and futility of life also pervades the poetry of T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), Nobel Prize for Literature 1948: see most notably his poem The Waste Land (1922), epitomizing “modernism” (see pp. 41-42 of the syllabus);

• The poem “Strange meeting”, written by Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), offers a stark illustration of the hopelessness and anger at the cruelty and waste of war that pervaded the trenches during the Great War. Owen himself was killed seven days before the Armistice, near the Belgian city of Namur.

c) Ideology The “Beat Generation” in general express hostility toward 1950s American middle-class values, commercialism and conformism (syllabus, pp. 42-44). Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) is considered a pioneer of the Beat Generation. The term Beat Generation itself is open to dispute. To some, “beat” means “dead-beat”, while to others, the word means “beaten-down”. Still others view the word in a more positive light, meaning “beatific” (showing exalted joy or bliss). Whatever the case may be, this movement emerged during the Eisenhower presidency (1953-1961), that gave birth to the civil rights movement, unleashed consumerism, McCarthyism, competition between the superpowers and fear of nuclear war, the beginnings of U.S. interventionism in South-East Asia (first the Korean War, then Vietnam)... With hindsight, one can view this period as self-complacent, intimidating and stodgy... Members of the Beat Generation, a group of writers centered in San Francisco and New York in the 1950s-1960s, reacted violently to the stodginess of this period and displayed their hostility toward middle-class values, commercialism and conformity in all forms and manners. In contrast, they displayed enthusiasm for the visionary states produced by drugs, sex, meditation, and jazz. The Beat Generation stirs up reminiscences of England’s 19th century Romantic movement, and America’s “ecologists”. At this time also, and in both countries, writers, composers, and painters alike felt things brilliantly afresh, with a desire to bathe in the primal power of Nature. Set in the Industrial Revolution, the English Romantics reacted to the boundaries of reason and form, preferring instead the power of imagination. Even J.K Rowling’s series of books, Harry Potter (the fastest selling-books in history), fall into this phenomenon of value-pushing. The novels have more to tell than sorcerers’ secrets and wizardry. The wizard himself is perhaps not entirely devoid of thoughts on today’s culture.

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B. Collective dimension E.g. racism, defined by Martin Luther King as a “doctrine of the congenital inferiority and worthlessness of a people”, which is not innate but culturally acquired, through language (blackmail, black sheep, black market) and history (legacy of colonialism and slavery).

♦ Caveat ! If culture is the product of external conditions, it is also the product of internal choices for adapting to those conditions, so we can fix the problem… See Samuel Beckett (“Fin de partie”), “I can’t go on. But I must. So I will.”.

C. Geo-strategic dimension

• The drive to domination of the “ascending” culture: e.g. Conrad’s Nostromo (1904) • Ensuing, and unprecedented, growth in the apparatus for the diffusion and control of

information: a quantum leap; • Sense of inevitability, yet resistance possible:

- Internal resistance: e.g. Mark Twain, really famous for his writing on the deep side

of USA (1835-1910): anti-imperialist writings (on China, South Africa, the Philippines, Belgium…)

- External resistance: e.g. Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941): tireless encouragement of Bengali language and writers of Indian vernaculars.

So far, we have analyzed an individual piece of work or a collective cultural phenomenon in a domestic context. The question remains to be seen what happens when one goes one degree higher, to a world dimension. Basing ourselves on the groundbreaking work of Edward Saïd, on culture and imperialism, three remarks deserve to be underlined:

• The first is that there is often a drive to domination of the “ascending” culture. Economic expansionism is highly dependent and moves together with, upon, cultural ideas and ideologies. An economic system, like a nation or a religion, lives not by bread alone, but by beliefs, visions, daydreams.

• Our second remark is concerned with the recent, unprecedented growth in the apparatus for the diffusion and control of information (quantum leap). Before, you needed a physical presence. Today, there is an international media presence that insinuates itself, frequently at a level below conscious awareness.

• Finally, whilst there is an unarguable sense of inevitability behind these phenomena, resistance is possibly, either internally (see, for example, Mark Twain’s writings at the end of his life against American foreign policy in the Philippines or in Latin America), or externally (see Rabindrinath Tagore (1861-1941) who obtained the Nobel prize for literature in 1913 and who tirelessly encouraged writers of the Indian vernaculars).

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Theme 2. The Dark Dimension of Culture

1. Strengths and Weaknesses of Culture

The very strength of culture may constitute a source of vulnerability. Not for nothing do dictatorships clamp down on their poets and thinkers and impose censorship. In China, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-76) launched by Chairman Mao Zedong is a case in point. During this bleak period of Chinese history, youthful Red Guards fanned out across the country to destroy cultural treasures seen as representing the “old China” and denounce anyone seen as lacking ideological purity or class loyalty. Western classical treasures, in particular works of literature or classical music, were banned as well. Untold numbers of people were killed or driven to suicide and millions of careers destroyed. McCarthyism The witch-hunt conducted by Joe R. McCarthy (1909-1957), a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, was aimed at suspected Communists in the United States in the nineteen-fifties – leading to that most bleak period in American history known as McCarthyism. It began in Feb. 1950 with the Senator announcing that he had in his hand a list of numerous communists “known to the Secretary of State” who were working and making policy in the State Department. The smear campaign soon turned into an all-out “witch-hunt” aimed at high government officials (civil servants, diplomats), intellectual circles (scholars, scientists), trade unionists, and the entertainment industry, including…

• Actors: Larry Parks (who starred in “The Al Jolson Story”), Zero Mostel; • Directors: Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Jules Dassin; • Screenwriters: Dalton Trumbo (screenwriter of “Spartacus” or “Exodus”); • Musicians: Leonard Bernstein, Paul Robeson…

Journalists were also victims of these attacks, like Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965), a pioneer of television news broadcasting (“See It Now” on CBS) who had an uncompromising style of journalism and dared to uphold freedom of thought : most notable was his defense of Milo Radulovich (a weatherman dropped from the Air Force). Many people were summoned before a special committee of the U.S. Congress: “House Un-American Activities Committee” (HUAC). Some people refused to come: they were held “in contempt” of Congress. Other people were willing to talk about their own past, but not about that of other people: they were also held “in contempt” of Congress. Some simply refused to answer questions, invoking their right under the 5th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution not to bear witness against themselves. “Taking” the Fifth was interpreted as an admission of guilt. The Justice Department drew up a list of organizations it decided were “totalitarian, fascist, communist or subversive, or seeking to alter the form of government of the United States by unconstitutional means”. The list included: the Chopin Cultural Center, the Committee for the Protection of the Bill of Rights, the League of American Writers, the Nature Friends of America, the Washington Bookshop Association… How did the US come to this point?

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A. The Red Scare Shorthand expression designed at describing the fear of Communism in the United States due to different world events such as the communist control over China (Chiang Kai-shek forced to leave the mainland and take refuge in the island of Taiwan), the Korean War of 1950-53, the upsurge of colonial peoples demanding independence: e.g. Indochina and France… These were all portrayed to the public as signs of a world Communist conspiracy. B. Collective Hysteria The Red Scare fuelled paranoia and collective hysteria within the US, most notably:

• The arrest in the summer of 1950 of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, charged with espionage and executed in June 1953;

• Millions of pamphlets were distributed to the American public: “Where can Communists be found? Everywhere.”

A petition was distributed in Madison, Wisconsin that happened to be a copy of the Bill of Rights. Even this was considered to be subversive. C. Reaction to FDR and the New Deal Term applied to the economic program of Franklin D. Roosevelt after his inauguration in 1933, aimed at reorganizing capitalism in such a way as to overcome the economic crisis that began in 1929 (the “Great Depression”). The damage done by the economic depression to the incumbent President, Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) and the Republican Party, along with Governor Roosevelt’s personal skill and charisma, and his bold efforts to combat the depression in New York, contributed to his election as President in November 1932. The economic situation worsened significantly the months preceding his inauguration in March 1933. There were now 13 million unemployed in the United States, victims of factory closings, farm foreclosures, and the collapse of the banking system. Roosevelt faced the most serious crisis in American history since the Civil War, with little relief in sight: world trade was spiraling downwards – by some 66% between 1930 and 1933. Roosevelt undertook immediate actions to initiate what became known as the New Deal. To halt depositor panics, he closed the banks temporarily. Then he worked with a special session of Congress during the first “Hundred Days” from 19 March to 16 June 1933. The immediate aim was to pass recovery legislation that set up alphabet agencies such as the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) to support farm prices and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to employ young men.

• Based on the slogan “Relief, Recovery, Reform” (restoration of Americans’ trust in themselves following the Depression + stabilization of the economy);

• Congress enacts a comprehensive body of legislation with unprecedented speed (the “Hundred Days”.

1st New Deal: 1933-1935

• Aim: relief and recovery from financial depression and unemployment. 2nd New Deal: 1935-1938

• Aim: jump-start the economy through deficit financing (expenditure funded via borrowing) and suspension of antitrust prosecution;

• Enactment of the Social Security Act.

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Two noteworthy acts from a cultural viewpoint: 1. Federal Art Project (FAP) 2. National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA)

1). The FAP The FAP was the visual arts arm of the New Deal. Its general purpose was to “give work to artists by arranging to have competent representatives of the profession embellish public buildings”. In the 8 years of its existence, the FAP employed some 5,000 artists (earning “plumber’s wages”) " creation of 200,000 works of art (1,900 buildings decorated). For example, James Brooks painted a vast mural in LaGuardia Airport. Relationship with McCarthyism…? The witch hunting politicians of the 1950s sometimes found evidence of Marxist sympathies in these works of art. To point, Brooks’s mural was covered with white paint in the 1950s… Fundamentally, what assessment can we make of Roosevelt’s FAP today? We can point out the abysmal quality of many work : lots of “Social Realists” (art with a purpose : telling the truth about “the people”) and just as many “Regionalists” (desire to use regionalists in their own regions). Nevertheless, FAP also gave artists work, food as well as a degree of freedom and dignity. Some famous careers could have been lost without the FAP’s encouragement. Indeed, the FAP led to “abstract expressionists”, not a movement, but a loose confederation of different painters who had three things in common:

i. Reluctance to engage in “socially grounded” activist art (too many clichés…); ii. Influence of Surrealism: stress on the power of the unconscious + expanding culture

of psychoanalysis; iii. Influence of “primitive” art: a cultural escape (lack of interest in composition…).

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), famous for his “action painting” or his “drip paintings” (“Jack the Dripper”). Blue Poles is thought to be worthy between $100 and $150 million. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist, because he had a volatile personality, and struggled with alcoholism for most of his life. Pollock died at the age of 44 in an alcohol-related car accident. Pollock denied "the accident"; he usually had an idea of how he wanted a particular piece to appear. His technique combined the movement of his body, over which he had control, the viscous flow of paint, the force of gravity, and the absorption of paint into the canvas. It was a mixture of controllable and uncontrollable factors. Flinging, dripping, pouring, and spattering, he would move energetically around the canvas, almost as if in a dance, and would not stop until he saw what he wanted to see.

• 2006 documentary entitled “Who the Fuck is Jackson Pollock?”: the film is about a California truck driver named Teri Horton who bought a Pollock painting at a thrift store for a mere 5 dollars;

• A 2001 feature movie, called “Pollock”, directed by and starring Ed Harris. Mark Rothko (1903-1970). Born in Lithuania, his paintings may be characterized by fields of glowing color (Rothko is a “field” painter), without “photographic” depth, and with an abandonment to feeling: art is a physical and emotional, non-intellectual experience. Rectangular fields of color and light that appear to float. Combative artist: see most notably his commission to decorate the “Four Seasons” restaurant in the Seagram building in New York (designed by Mies van der Rohe).

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What can we make from all this from a cultural viewpoint?

1. The New Deal (1930) and FAP tell us much about government patronage of the arts (i.e. support, encouragement, privilege, and often financial aid);

2. McCarthyism demonstrates the “dark dimension of culture”, cultural repression;

3. Abstract expressionism demonstrates cultural escape and freedom (in contrast to the URSS

forms of artistic expression). 2). The National Industry Recovery Act The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) suspended the antitrust laws in return for certain concessions by big business: workers could freely organize themselves into unions and a federal bureau, the National Recovery Administration (NRA) could lay down and enforce codes of conduct for each separate industry. The judiciary attempted to block the NIRA. A most noteworthy illustration is given by the U.S. Supreme Court: Schechter Poultry Corp. v. U.S., 295 U.S. 495 (1935). What are the principal arguments to hold the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) unconstitutional? 2 arguments:

• 1st argument: “delegation running riot” (Justice Cardozo); • 2nd argument: relationship to interstate commerce: Congress does not have power to extend

the regulation of INTERstate commerce to INTRAstate activities that have only an “indirect effect” on interstate commerce

Indeed, when looking at the U.S. Constitution, it appears that enumerated powers granted to the Federal government (Article I, Section 8), and that residual powers belong to the states (10th Amendment). Having said as much, Article, Sect. 8, clause 4 (better known as the “Commerce Clause”) provides a means to bypass limited powers. FDR was incensed with the Supreme Court’s attitude towards the New Deal and reacted:

• Starting-point: 9 Supreme Court Justices, appointed by the President for life (amongst whom 4 Conservatives threatening the New Deal);

• FDR urges the enactment of a bill to create one new judgeship for every judge who is more than seventy years old;

• Consequently, FDR would be able to appoint six new Justices; • The Court-packing plan is defeated.

NIRA and Schechter Poultry illustrate two related items about the culture of the ESW (and the United States in particular):

! 1st item: American culture is doubtless marked by a long, deep, and seemingly endless quest for balance between Federal government and the power of the states. Alfonso Lopez v. United States (1995) is a recent illustration of this quest, with respect to the constitutionality of the “Gun-Free School-Zones Act” of 1990. The act was declared unconstitutional

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! 2nd item: The role of the judiciary in the United States is far greater than that which is known in most other cultures: a feature that Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) could but only recognize in his classic opus “De la démocratie en Amérique” (1835). In short, and coming back to Arthur Miller4, culture is vulnerable to repression, by reason of its very strength (supra, developments on FAP and McCarthyism) and for partisan reasons (balance of power/party swings). Arthur Miller’s text illustrates American culture on different levels. Arthur Miller refers to the “real America” rising up against:

1. Sophistication (“all that was not simple to understand”); 2. Foreign fads, moods, or fashions (“all that was or seemed foreign”);

3. Absence of innocence (“all that implied something slightly less reassuring than that America stood innocent and pure in a vile and sinister world beyond the borders”). A tendency to view world affairs in binary terms: we and them.

2. Relationship between culture and moral values

The relationship between culture and barbarism comes out through various means

• political commitment (Ezra Pound); • cowardice (Elia Kazan); • snobbery (Kasuo Ishiguro); • psychological imbalance (Joseph Conrad).

A. Political Commitment Ezra Pound (1885-1972), one of the makers of modern American poetry was involved in Fascist politics : radio broadcasting, support, admiration for Mussolini and Sir Oswald Mosley (founder of the British Union of Fascists). Why was he so popular?

• Belief in backwardness of USA and decay and demise of Western civilization; • He was associated with Imagism, i.e. free verse, free choice of subject-matter (often focusing

on a single, concentrated moment of experience), and economic use of language; • Influenced by Japanese poetry.

B. Cowardice Returning to the period of McCarthyism in the 1950s, Elia Kazan (1909-2003) – director of A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, East of Eden, Baby Doll, or America America. Kazan was also a screenwriter and a co-founder of the Actor’s Studio. He cooperated with the House Un-American Activities Committee (“naming names”) and was plagued by his unfortunate choice until the end of his life. As Kazan later explained, he felt that it was in the best interest of the country and his own liberal beliefs to cooperate with McCarthy’s witch-hunt in order to counter the alleged influence of Communists in Hollywood. When he received an honorary Academy Award for 4 Author of “The Crucible”, who is a dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Province of Massachusetts Bay during 1692 and 1693. Miller wrote the play as an allegory of McCarthyism, when the U.S. government blacklisted accused communists. Miller himself was questioned by the House of Representatives' Committee on Un-American Activities in 1956 and convicted of "contempt of Congress" for refusing to identify others present at meetings he had attended.

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lifetime achievement in 1999, part of the audience refused to recognize Kazan’s artistic accomplishments and remained seated. Arthur Miller bitterly disagreed with Kazan. C. Snobbery In English fiction, one need only think of Lord Darlington, a character taken from Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, The Remains of the Day, to explain the slippery slope between the cultivated snob and the espousal of heinous ideas: portrayal of appeasement policies in the conversation between Lord Darlington and his guests. D. Psychological Imbalance Psychological imbalance also plays a part in the relationship between culture and barbarism. The character of Kurtz, in the tale Heart of Darkness, written between 1898 and 1899 by Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), provides a stark example of such mental trouble. As such, Heart of Darkness makes up one of the fundamental documents of “literary modernism”:

1. The basic story of Marlow’s journey upriver to confront Kurtz; 2. A metaphor of the alienation of modern man, or the meaningless of supposedly civilized

life. Marlow journeys into the self, to confront Kurtz as a second self (alter ego, sort of avatar, i.e. an alternate personality) in the guise of Lucifer or Faust;

3. Racist account (Chinua Achebe controversy that confirms the relevance of the story in multicultural studies and postcolonial discourse).

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Theme 3. The Culture of the English-speaking world What do we mean by the culture of the English-speaking world? Quite obviously, we are not referring to the mere Commonwealth. The Commonwealth is an intergovernmental organization of 54 States, formally established in the London Declaration of 1949, following the independence of India. In practical terms, the London Declaration of 1949 stated that the British monarchy would be a symbol of the free association of independent States, and as such the Head of the Commonwealth. The members of the Commonwealth are in principle bound by a common language (English) and a shared past (primarily associated with English colonization). The organization itself has been headquartered in London since 1965 (Marlborough House).

• Meetings of Commonwealth Heads of Government take place every two years; • Commonwealth concerns cover democracy, equality, governance, sustainable development

and poverty eradication; • The Commonwealth spans 2 billion people (30% of the world population); • Today, the current Secretary-General: Kamalesh Sharma, of India.

Two questions remain to be established : the issue of what the culture of the English-speaking world is not (§1), and the issue of what the English-speaking culture is (§2).

1. Misnomers “Anglo-Saxon culture” and “Anglo-American culture” are both misleading terms. Strictly speaking, they are far too limited in scope (the first in temporal terms, the second in geographical terms). A. The Misnomer of Anglo-Saxon Culture “Anglo-Saxon” refers to the people and language of the Saxon race who colonized the southern part of Britain. They replaced the romans at the end of the fifth century. Reference is had here to a period which began shortly after the Roman legions left Britain (A.D. 410) and which ended soon after the Norman Conquest (A.D. 1100). And the Celts? Celtic languages, and the people who brought them, probably first arrived during the Neolithic period (starting circa 10,000 B.C.). What remains of Celtic heritage? Little: the Celts were despised by later invaders, the Angles and the Saxons, who called them “wealas” (which led to “Welsh”). Different legends and words (kick, fudge…) subsist, but in large part, cultural, linguistic, and genetic eradication. And the Romans? After all, England was a province of the Roman Empire from A.D. 43 to 410. They were largely set aside by the barbarians who did not want to submit to a language and people who had an historical claim to be their superior. The Barbars eradicated the Roman culture from England. But why did Scotland get influenced by Rome? Simply because between the 12th and the 15th centuries, lawyers in Scotland were trained on the continent. Later, the Roman influence revived through Christianity, when, during the Anglo-Saxon period, Pope Gregory the Great sent Saint Augustine (of Canterbury) to preach the gospel in England (A.D. 597).

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Christian missionaries converted English Kings (King Ethelbert, King Edwin…), and in so doing, they introduced literacy as well as an important body of Latin vocabulary. They also contribute to the formation of an English national awareness. The Venerable Bede narrates this period of Kings’ conversions. Conversion of King Edwin (see pp. 69-71)

Para. 1: The nation of the Angles and King Edwin; Para. 2: Preaching of Paulinus to the King – uplifting, edifying account (tear-jerker); Para. 3: Opposite extreme – on the edge of a cost-benefit analysis; Para. 4: Sparrow metaphor on the transitory nature of life – in religious terms, a gambler’s hunch; in literary terms, images of light and darkness, winter and cold, rain, mist and fog; Para. 5-6: Coifi profanes and desecrates the temples and altars of the old religion, ever-professing that he found no benefit in them Pragmatism at its peak, i.e. assertions estimated solely by their practical bearing on human interests:

• Present in Shakespeare (e.g. Henry V, King Lear…); • UK: training of barristers (in the Inns of Court); • Rule of precedent: “the life of the law is experience, not logic” (Oliver Wendell Holmes); • Absence of a self-contained constitution in the U.K.

Beowulf The lengthy poem Beowulf (3,182 lines) also partakes of Old English literature (although it has nothing to do with England). This epic poem tells the story of the hero, Beowulf, who slays a monstrous troll named Grendel (and Grendel’s mother) not far from the royal hall the Danish King Hrothgar. After much celebration, Beowulf returns to his homeland, Geatland (what is today southern Sweden). Through a series of events, he ascends to the Geatish throne and rules for fifty years until a fiery dragon begins to lay waste the kingdom of the Geatas. Beowulf again slays this monster, with the help of a kinsman, Wiglaf, but he himself receives a deathwound. The poem ends in awe for the glorious hero, triumphant in death, along with mystery and despair surrounding the nation whose inevitable doom has been predicted. The poem displays a wealth of historical, legendary, and religious features of Anglo-Saxon England. Essentially, a warrior’s story, the poem offers horrific images and sounds: fangs that snap, bones that break, winter storms, and pools of blood. It presents an awesome combination of history and fantasy, of dignity and horror, a portrayal of the nation’s ancestors’ shortcomings and an urge to take pride. The association between the strength and violence of the story itself and the Old English language is palpable. The following Modern English words are to be found in Old English, and are typical of that language: strength (in which seven muscular consonants strangle a single vowel), breath, quell, drench, crash. Compared with the softer languages of the East and South, Old English seems to be a series of loud noises”.

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B. The Misnomer of Anglo-American Culture a). The Indian Subcontinent : India, Pakistan (pp. 77-81)

♦ Arundhati Roy

Her novel, The God of Small Things, won the coveted Booker Prize in October 1997. It caused however a great deal of controversy. Prominent English authors contended that the novel was « an execrable book » which should never have reached the shortlist of the Booker Prize. The English response may be viewed as revealing of the damaging insularity and racism of the English literary scene. Over and over, Roy’s book was called « derivative » because it was about India. The God of Small Things also caused controversy in its home country when some claimed the novel had won acclaim in the West only because of its « anti-Communist venom » (three Communist characters are depicted in the book).

♦ Anita Desai Novelist, short-story writer and children's author Anita Desai was born in 1937 in Mussoorie, India. She was educated at Delhi University. Her novels include Fire on the Mountain (1977), which won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, and Clear Light of Day (1980), In Custody (1984) and Fasting, Feasting (1999), each of which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In Custody was made into a film by Merchant Ivory productions. Her children's book The Village by the Sea (1982), won the Guardian Children's Fiction Award. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Girton College, Cambridge and Clare Hall, Cambridge. Her most recent book is Diamond Dust and Other Stories (2000). Anita Desai lives in the United States, where she is the John E. Burchard Professor of Writing at MIT, Cambridge, MA. Desai’s novel, In Custody, tells the story of a lecturer, Devin, who teaches at a small college in Northern India. A timid, ordinary man, he is resigned to a life of mediocrity and empty dreams. Then, unexpectedly, an old friend, Murad, asks him to interview the greatest living poet of Dehli, Nur. It is far too late to turn back when the Deven realizes he has made a mistake. This book showcases the decline of a language and its effect on a people, i.e. the Muslims of India. A great book with many comical elements, but an all pervasive sense of loss and decline permeates every page as an idealist teacher searches for a lost literary treasure.

2. The culture of the English-speaking world A. Emergence of “Special Relationships” Winston Churchill acknowledged a “special relationship” between the people of Britain with the Commonwealth of Nations united under the Crown (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, etc.) and the people of the United States who had broken with the Crown and gone their own separate way. In on of his speeches, Churchill described the fraternal association of US-Britain. It is mostly a military support relationship (common bases all over the world, exchanges between their officer’s school and so forth). In large part, Churchill’s awareness of the “special relationship” that existed between English-speaking peoples came from his own multicultural background. While his family, on the paternal side, came from the illustrious English aristocratic background of the Marlboroughs (J.B. Priestley considers that John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough was “incomparable, the greatest [soldier]

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England has known”), his mother – Jennie Jerome was born in Brooklyn, New York. Some authors even ascribe Native American ancestry to Churchill’s family. Legend would have it that Jennie’s grandmother on the maternal side was one Anna Baker – an Iroquois Indian. Churchill himself, a romantic at heart, is believed to have given credence to this urban legend. Churchill’s manner of speech may be ascribed to American origins. He spoke with a gusto and brashness that annoyed – or amused – the more genteel English political aristocracy. He drew on emotions and shared them with the whole nation – to the point of letting tears run down his cheeks when delivering speeches in the House of Commons or sobbing with families in Blitz-torn London. Unarguably, Churchill had a common touch. There is no doubt that “special relationships” exist between the different countries of the English-speaking world. With respect to Britain and the USA, this was far from an obvious undertaking (a). With respect to Britain and other English-speaking nations, things were perhaps a bit simpler (b). a) Britain and the USA Britain and USA have always a string and unique relationship. Still today, we have seen a couple years ago the joint invasion of Iraq by the American Army and the British one. They have many values in common as freedom and justice. All in all, the relationship between the United States and Britain suffered a bumpy, and often tragic ride through the greater part of the 18th-19th centuries. The twentieth century brought the two nations together. Cultural migrations (transport, adoption, and adaptation). Convoluted historical relationship between the UK and the USA, with notable resentment of the Americans towards the British and considerable admiration towards the French. 1). Britain and the USA in the 18th + 19th Centuries The War of American Independence was first and foremost a war of decolonization. Forsaking a detailed account of the War of American Independence, several important events that led to the waking of the Revolution in the American colonies deserve to be developed so as to understand the breaking-off, and subsequent estranged relationship between the United States and Britain. As with many revolutions, an increase in the price of commodities served as the tipping-point. In the case of the American colonies, it was first sugar (molasses) and then tea that focused animosity. (See pp 86 to 89 for more details but mainly, the English increased taxes on both of these. It sparked some feelings of being abused and stolen by England and didn’t accept it. A big event was the Tea Party that took place in 1776 and where the colonials threw tea’s boxes out off the British boats. Cultural migrations (transport, adoption, and adaptation). Convoluted historical relationship between the UK and the USA, with notable resentment of the Americans towards the British and considerable admiration towards the French.

1.) The transport

The English settled in North America at the beginning of the 17th century. They created Jamestown, in Massachusetts. They took their cultures, laws, values, language with them. It became an inheritance and a birthright. Once they have transported that culture, this one remains to be adopted. This is much more controversial.

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$ In India, the British had very liberal attitudes. They wanted to educate, to share materials, but they were rejected because they had their own honors, royalty.

2.) Adoption

After the American Revolution, The Americans were very grateful towards the French. The war ended in 1781, and the peace was ratified in Paris (Treaty of Paris). Importance of Thomas Paine during the Revolution. He was the greatest pamphlet-writer of the American Revolution. In January 1776, he wrote the Common Sense, which is the most historically pamphlet in American History. In a few pages, Paine put the case for democracy, against the monarchy, and for American independence from British rule. Its clear thinking and exciting language quickly united American feelings against England. He also wrote some other pamphlet and one collection of them is the Crisis, written amid the period of revolution. The pamphlets gathered in The Crisis were designed to lift the spirits of America’s supporters of independence in difficult times.

# Britain recognized the end of the war and another international entity: the United States of America.

By that time, the Americans had already adopted the Articles of Confederation. That one was leaving a lot of power to the original 13 states, because the new states didn’t want to exchange they newly acquired liberty to a federal state. This document is very loose, it is almost impossible for the new central power to levy taxes, to organize the continent. However, they have to organize it to reimburse their debts.

# It is a failure.

It is so replaced by the Constitution of 1887. To Thomas Paine, the Americans had to take example out of the French, because they had much more in common. When the French revolted in 1789, 2 attitudes:

- Rejection: Edmund Burke – reflection on French revolution (the French messed everything up);

- Thomas Paine takes defense of the French revolution. Why this gratitude toward the French? France’s role in the War of Independence was both spontaneous and pro-active. At first, young nobles in France flocked to the American colonies voluntarily, out of sheer boredom, only too content to escape the stifling atmosphere of Versailles and serve under the command of the Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834). The French supplied financial aid, fighting men, and armaments. Furthermore, gratitude and the American War of Independence aside, the American rebels also felt a degree of intellectual admiration for the French. The statement by which the French playwright Beaumarchais (1732-1799) derided the nobility for taking “the trouble to be born and nothing else”, gave fodder to the cause of the American rebels. Admiration was further enhanced when the French Revolution broke out in the summer of 1789. Thomas Paine, the author of The Common Sense and The Crisis (supra), wrote a famous defense of the French Revolution : The Rights of Man (1791-2). The book was written as a reply to Edmund Burke (1729-97), a conservative member of the English Parliament who challenged the legitimacy of the French Revolution in his Reflections on the French

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Revolution (1790). Burke defended tradition, property, and heredity, all of which, Paine contended, were promoted by the relationship between church and the monarchy. Gratitude towards the French notwithstanding, the Napoleonic Wars of 1803-1815 added confusion in the relationship between Great Britain and the United States. On the one hand, America’s neutral flag in this war served French interests as the United States was a refuge for French maritime commerce. On the other hand, Britain and the United States entertained strong commercial bonds which enhanced Britain’s war efforts. Whilst cultural ties induced most Americans to take sides with the British, provocations had the upper hand and put grave strains on the relationship. One notable incident was that of the British frigate, the Leopold, that opened fire on an American frigate, the Chesapeake, in 1807. The British opened fire suspecting that the American vessel harbored British naval deserters (which it did). Numerous casualties were suffered on the American side (twenty-one in all), and the outcome was immense public indignation and the passing of a law in December 1807 which, in effect, amounted to a self-imposed embargo with the belligerents. No longer would the United States have commercial dealings with foreign countries until her rights were respected and recognized. Naturally, the principal victim of this policy was the United States itself. President Jefferson, under whose administration the original law had been enacted, reluctantly signed an act repealing the embargo two days before leaving office. Even after the War of 1812, British pride was severely wounded on a number of occasions. Most notable was the “Alabama” dispute involving a Confederate ship built in Liverpool during the American Civil War (1861-65). Britain allowed the Alabama to sail from Merseyside and to prey upon American shipping. In effect, the vessel captured some seventy Federal ships during the Civil War. Once the war was over, the United States sought compensation from Britain, requesting $15 million in damages, by reason of the latter country infringing rules of neutrality. The dispute was submitted to a mixed commission, which contained a neutral element, to solve the legal dispute between the parties. The commission held in favor of the United States, leading to the extreme unpopularity of the then British Prime Minister, William Gladstone. How does the adoption take place? They realized that they had much more in common with the British than with the French, so the British culture was adopted in the late 90’s. Besides language, two related reasons explain that Americans went along with the British (resentment notwithstanding), rather than with the French (despite gratitude and admiration). The first reason has to do with a sense of historical continuity behind the destiny of the two nations. The second has to do with a shuddering fear before radical departures as experienced in France (Thomas Paine’s misfortunes). Paine was aghast at the atrocities committed by Robespierre (1758-1794) during the Reign of Terror (1793-94), especially when he was imprisoned and nearly lost his own head.

3.) Adaptation

The Americans had to adapt the British culture to fulfill their own needs. 2). Britain and the USA in the 21st Century The general election of May 6, 2010 produced unexpected change in British politics, one that had not been witnessed in Great Britain since 1945. After thirteen years, New Labour gave way to a coalition government made up of the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Party. The long-running streak of alternative runs in office by the Conservatives and Labour had ended. In terms of British foreign policy, this change meant that government would generally reclaim the US-UK “special relationship” as the foundation of British statecraft. Three different reasons nevertheless

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deserve to be taken into consideration so as to comprehend that the special relationship has undergone substantial change and that Britain is no longer America’s bridge to Europe.

- Britain served as a bridge between the US and Europe during the Cold war. However, the collapse of the Berlin Wall (ensuing the collapse of the URSS) change everything and the US no longer needed a strategic bridge in Europe;

- The second reason explaining a change in the special relationship between the US and the UK has to do with the fact that America’s strategic priorities themselves shifted away from the Euro-Atlantic zone to the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region;

- Finally, Britain’s special relationship with the US receded in favor of the former nation’s greater interest for the European Union.

B. Persistence of Cultural Differences

• Britain’s valiance and endurance, Britain’s stoicism: valiance during the World War II and the famous “England’s Battle” were many aviators got killed to stop the Nazi’s progress through Europe and preserve the integrity and the liberty of England.

• America’s optimism: Americans do not down-beat. An American “feel-good vibe”

pervades the land. This is the country that declared happiness to be an inalienable right. They also have a community spirit and some enthusiasm for joining from their churches to the Elks fraternity, and more recently to book clubs and Internet discussions. There is an undeniable John-Wayne-like individualism in the United States. Individualism may be viewed in the country’s formidable gun culture (34% of Americans possess arms and view this as a “constitutional right”) or in the economic freedom that is viewed as an all-American attribute.

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Theme 4. Political Culture Section 1. The Basics of Politics §1. Basics of British Politics The Death of Elizabeth I in 1603 led to the throne passes to her Scottish cousin, James VI of Scotland who, becoming James I of England, brings under his personal rule the Kingdoms of England (and the dominion of Wales), Ireland and Scotland

• Constitutional unification with Scotland in 1707, and with Ireland in 1800; • Since 1672, Britannia has been anthropomorphised into a woman wearing a helmet, and

carrying a shield and trident. The poem "Rule Britannia" by James Thomson (1700-48) was put to music by Thomas Augustine Arne (around 1740) and is sung as an unofficial national anthem.

A. The British Constitution Britain is a constitutional monarchy without a self-contained written constitution. Parts of governmental system are written down in Acts of Parliament (also called “laws” or “statutes”) but there is no universally accepted definition as to which Acts have constitutional value, nor is there any certainty that these Acts have greater value than ordinary Acts of Parliament

• Nevertheless, a combination of acts of Parliament (e.g. Act of Union 1707), judicial precedents (e.g. Entick v. Carrington of 1765), and conventions (the House of Lords must ultimately defer to the Commons);

• Currently under considerable strain by reason of EU membership (1973), the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights (2000), and the phenomenon of “devolution” (2000).

B. Main Political Actors Concept of “parliamentary sovereignty” (or “supremacy”): the Parliament of Westminster (2 chambers) can make or unmake any law whatsoever and nobody can override or set aside the legislation of the parliament. The House of Commons has been enfeebled by rigid party discipline. Today, control lies in the hands of the party whips. Instead of holding the executive to account, parliament has become a rubber stamp for the governing majority. The decision in 2003 to send British troops to Iraq, alongside the Americans, provides of evidence of rigid party discipline. Had MPs listened to their constituents, it is most likely that British troop never would have been sent to Iraq. In addition, local democracy has been largely emasculated, leaving Britain with the most centralized system of government in Europe. This began under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. Furthermore, the House of Lords sits half-reformed and largely appointed. Most, but not all of the hereditary peers have gone, only to be replaced by self-selecting political cronies and establishment placemen. The argument for an unelected second chamber is unanswerable.

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§2. Basics of U.S. Politics A. The US Constitution

a) Historical Background

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was the chief author of the Declaration. Besides counting as the most important document in the political history of the United States, this document was also a fine work of literature. Although it was written in war, the Declaration is surprisingly free from emotional appeals. It is a clear and logical statement of why the colonies wanted their independence. Jefferson made no attempt to be original. Rather, he built upon the ideas of such philosophers as John Locke. The Declaration was revised eighty-six times before it was finally signed on July 4, 1776, its full title being The “Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America”. In signing the Declaration, the delegates to the thirteen states were naturally jealous of their states’ respective prerogatives and newly proclaimed independence. Few were willing to trade their hard-fought-for rights against a new strong central power. All agreed that the government that governed best governed least. The case being, the bitter fight with Great Britain would last another seven years. It was only with the Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783, that the American Revolutionary War was formally ended and that a new state was recognized: the United States of America. The Declaration of Independence itself was a product of the Second Continental Congress, begun in Philadelphia in May 1775. Besides declaring independence, this gathering laid down a first plan for a confederation – i.e. a loose union among the states. The resulting legal enactment of this plan was a first constitution known as “The Articles of Confederation”. The Articles were ratified by (all) the states by March 1781 and went into effect even before the formal end of the American Revolution in February 1783. This first American constitution revealed gross inadequacies that soon became overwhelming.( not executive branch for the confederation and no national system of court, the Congress of the Confederation had no ability to impose taxes, the Congress of the Confederation had no ability to enforce its will on either states or citizens. The problem was maintaining public order in the midst of outbursts of discontent) " failure of the Articles of Confederation. The Philadelphia Convention met from May 25 to September 17, 1787, gathering a total of 55 delegates, among whom General Washington. There were some controversy and we had framers divided into two camps: those who favored the “Virginia plan”, which called for an unprecedented and powerful central government, and those who favored the “New Jersey plan”, which favored the preservation of state sovereignty. Different compromises were reached. The first compromise concerned the question of how the states would be represented in the national legislature. The large states proposed a legislature with representation based either on the taxes paid by each state to the national government or on the number of people in each state. The small states wanted one vote for each state no matter what its size. After a long deadlock, an agreement called the Great Compromise established the present structure of Congress – representation based on population in the lower house (House of Representatives) and equal representation for all states in the upper house (Senate). As with the writing of the Constitution, debates at the time of its ratification generally divided people into two camps: the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists. The Federalists basically aimed for a form of government and society which would not be easily upset. To point, in the debates over the writing of the Constitution, they had pushed for property

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qualifications for voting, an indirectly elected Senate modeled after the English aristocratic House of Lords, a lofty indirectly elected President, and a strong, non-elected judiciary. The Federalists – being somewhat pessimistic about human nature (including the nature of the rulers) – considered that these “cooling-off” devices would deviate the people from unruly influence on government. The main problem with the Federalists’ viewpoint was that supported a strong central government – that might tax and place burdens on people’s liberties – while these were precisely the very perils that they had argued against during the War of Revolution. On the opposite side, the Anti-Federalists were more optimistic as to human nature (though just as suspicious about the nature of those in power). One of them, Thomas Jefferson was deeply influenced by the ideas of Enlightenment and believed that man did not have to depend on God to improve the world, and should use his own wisdom to do the improving by himself. Anti-Federalists favored strong local – state – governments because they felt the states would be closer to the popular will than a strong central government. They wanted fewer limits on popular participation and pushed for the legislative branch to have more power than the executive and judicial branches. Believing that the majority was responsible, though agreeing that it needed cooling off, Anti-Federalists wanted government to be accountable to elected officials. A series of essays were published in American newspapers. The most famous were gathered in what is known today as The Federalist Papers (or The Federalist). The debate as to inclusion of the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments in the Constitution, soon became a key issue in the struggle over ratification.

b) Constitutional Principles Four basic constitutional principles may be drawn from the United States Constitution : (1) separation of powers and checks and balances, (2) federalism, (3) limited government, and (4) judicial review.

1) Checks and Balances: The principle behind the related idea of “checks and balances” is that each branch of government has constitutional means to limit the others. Example: the presidential veto gives the chief executive the opportunity to prevent bills he dislikes from becoming law (this amounts to a “quasi-legislative” function)

The others principles are not defined in the course.

B. The Main Political Players

a) Institutional Implications U.S. Congress: two chambers – the Senate (upper chamber) and the House of Representatives (lower chamber). Impeachment is the equivalent of “indictment” in the criminal law. It does not mean that the person impeached is guilty, only that a trial must be held to determine his innocence or guilt. Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution states that: “The President, Vice President [...] shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”. 2 precedents:

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- Andrew Johnson: conflict with the Radical leaders of the Republican Party concerning the Tenure of Office Act of 1867, and sacking of Secretary of War (in the Tenure of Office Act, Congress specified that its violation constituted a « high misdemeanor »);

- Bill Clinton (1998-99): House voted Articles of Impeachment (December 19, 1998), but failure to pass the Senate (mid-February 1999).

The U.S. Senate Senate: the 100 members of the U.S. Senate serve offset six-year terms (37 seats up for election) Democratic party: 51 senators Republican party: 47 Independent (allied with the Democrats): 2 members The House of Representatives: Total of 435 members (+6 non voting members=> from the Washington DC. District) All 435 members are elected every two years, as set by the Constitution

b) Issues for Obama after this midterm election

• Economy: the Democratic-led Congress passed a stimulus bill (with only 3 GOP votes=> GOP is the Grand Old Party, i.e. Republican Party), at cost of $787 billion. All the while, unemployment standing at circa 10%, vast household debt, ballooning U.S. budget deficit and huge trade imbalance with China;

• Immigration: Arizona passed a law cracking down on illegal immigrants (racial profiling). Will of some States to take the same route;

• Foreign policy: two wars, with emphasis on Afghanistan (additional 30,000 troops) and plan to withdraw U.S. combat forces from Iraq by August 2010;

• Health care: an historic reform (extending coverage to an additional 32 million Americans) but GOP plans to repeal the bill (considered expensive, inefficient, and anti-business);

• Energy: Deepwater Horizon disaster prompted questions on offshore drilling in particular and energy policy in general;

• Education: lay-offs of elementary and secondary school teachers, program cuts, and rising college tuition fees;

• State sovereignty issues embedded in all the above.

c) Rise of the “Tea Party” Obvious reference to the “Boston Tea Party” of December 1773 (today, “taxed enough already”…?). Diffuse grass-roots group that emerged in 2009 in protest to the economic stimulus package: more conservative views than Republicans generally Basic agenda: block the Democratic agenda on the economy, the environment, and health care Fiscal conservatism and pledge to rein in the federal government

• It is a reaction to the Obama’s presidency, in reference to the Boston Tea Party; • Related to state sovereignty.

What is its composition? People are influenced by some sort of conspiracy against USA… some sort of socialism overthrow. They advocate anti establishment ideas politics. They have a thin understanding of the demarcation between church and states in USA. In the US constitution, you

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have one amendment: “Congress shall make now law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”.

1) Intellectual foundation: Fundamentalists who wanted to define the United States as a Christian nation rather than a secular republic, and who recast the Founding Fathers as devout Christians guided by the Bible rather than deists inspired by the French and English philosophers. Skousen’s book, “The 5,000 Year Leap”, published in 1981, argued that the U.S. Constitution was a godly document above all else, based on natural law, and owed more to the Old and New Testaments than to the secular and radical spirit of the Enlightenment. Beliefs that American government and the welfare state were set by a socialist conspiracy. The intellectuals are largely discredited in the 1960s (seen as paranoids). By the late 60s, conservative pragmatists got more important in the Republican Party. In the 1980s, Reagan undoes the fiscal basics of New-Deal government, reconfigures the American judiciary and U.S foreign policy. Reagan’s departure (because there was no totemic figure in the republican Party) makes the current resurgence of extremism with the birth of the tea party. 2) Composition: It is a conspiracy to extend the government. These people are anti-everything: state + religion have to form one thing. This idea comes from the fact that a large proportion of the early settlers in America came from Europe to escape bondage which compelled them to support and attend government favored churches. 3) Activists: Who are they ? Varied group, including a former Alaska governor and Vice-Presidential candidate (Sarah Palin), a Senator from South Carolina (John DeMint), and aspiring politicians such as Sharron Angle (Nevada), Christine O’Donnell (Delaware), or Rand Paul (Kentucky). Some members of the Congress… “Mama Grizzlies”, conservative Christian women who believe in looking after the state like looking after their family. Media stars: Glenn Beck, fired from FOX TV who now has his own network. 50 million were watching him every day with his conservatives’ ideas. He relies heavily on the writings of Skousen (“the 5000 year leap). He says things like the socialists led by Obama have taken the power and the patriotic Americans must take that power back or that he will reveal secret information (// McCarthyism). Also academics: De Souza, from Stanford, speaks about the anti-colonial dreams of Obama’s father. He says that in order to understand Obama’s policy, we have to understand that he really admired his father who was an anticolonial agitator and that Obama would be, as his father, an anticolonial. (Dreams from my father). This translates into policies that have annoyed the Republicans: the bank bailouts, the takeover of the auto industry, hostility to be rich, NASA’s budget cuts…).

Section 2. Exceptionalism The “exceptionalism” of the ESW can be dealt with through a wide variety of angles, developed in the syllabus at p. 130 (for the U.K.) and p. 154 (for the USA) The United States Exceptionalism: Focus on the Capital punishment Applicable in 35 states and at the Federal level (see the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 + the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996) for a limited number of crimes. Sometimes people tell you that UK and America don’t have code and the only ones are the laws. That’s BS. US is maybe the country who had the most codified its system.

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Case: Oklahoma City bombing of April 19, 1995 (which claimed 168 lives), and linked to Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols; Federal building that exploded because of a bomb. They did this because they were against the establishment, they were against Washington DC. McVeigh was executed, and the other is in prison. Starting Point Capital punishment was suspended from 1972 through 1976 as a result of Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972): highly divided Supreme Court (each of the 5 Justices in the majority wrote a separate opinion). They declared it unconstitutional. In 1976, the Supreme Court reverses course and declared that states can carry out capital punishment: Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976). Over 3600 people on death row in 2010. Various methods: lethal injection, firing squad, gas chamber, electric chair, hanging…