The Olive Press Review

Category: Opinion

  • Does the Child Know Best?: How Literacy Excels in Child’s Play

    Term 5, Myth and Creativity

    Freud’s psychoanalysis of child’s play was arguably a prominent source within the field of children studies, yet the work was in dire need of improvement. The neurologist satisfied his claim through a categorical dichotomy; the ‘phantasies’ that the adult engaged with, which would have transpired from the imaginative play of the child, would be identified as ambitious wishes or erotic phantasies. Eventually, the hands-on, intimate, motor-oriented movement of the child was forgotten in lieu of archetypal characters in the “less pretentious authors of novels1”. Yet, an idea was peeking from Freud’s interpretive piece – the inability for the human mind to relinquish memory. The individual ingests the linear timeline of past, present, or future precedents that are capable of retention insofar that, “[the mind] can never give anything up; [it can] only exchange one thing for another. […] In the same way, the growing child, when he stops playing, gives up nothing but the link with real objects; instead of playing, he now phantasies2”.  

    So, Freud’s conditions of ‘phantasies’ produce enough substance to tread the psychoanalytic inquiry of imagination to adult literary creation, yet I am to expand upon Freud’s categories of ambition / eroticism to encompass sensation. Furthermore, a three-dimensional approach on attention, emotions, and delayed closure will be utilized to illustrate the modern tradition in childhood studies presently.  

    Key words: Freud, phantasies, sensation, memory 

    Introduction 

    D.B Elkonin within his publication, ‘Theories of Play’ examines K. Groos and D.A Colozza attempts to outline the psychological processes of child’s play, as the two theorist’s varying modes of thought contradict accepted beliefs in childhood studies. D. A. Colozza argues:  

    For higher animals, including humans, the struggle for existence is initially not that different and cruel. Newborn babies get assistance, protection, and care from their mothers, or, in the majority of cases, from both their mothers and fathers. Their lives are, to a significant extent, maintained by the labour and actions of those who brought them into the world; their energies, which they do not yet have to use for obtaining food, are spent freely, in way that can hardly be considered 

    Colozza’s statement re-introduces the parents within the sphere of child’s play – the child is not merely maintained by their mind alone, but also the body, intellect, and orality of the parent, as the child is introduced to varying environments. A stark contrast to Freud, the surroundings of the child are not merely societal interventions like eroticism or wish fulfilment, but rather the maintenance of labour and the significant extent to protect, assist and care for the child. It is then, the adaptation of qualities (empathy, communication skills, problem-solving, etc) will work alongside the feedback of the parents to formulate a present and future response Freud considers to become ‘phantasies.’ 

    Sustained Attention 

    Robert Strom in his psychoanalytic piece, ‘Observing Parent-Child Fantasy Play’, provides ten categories of play observation between child and parent to analyse their mimetic behaviour. While milestones such as crawling, rolling over, walking or their first word are substantial in preliminary observations of child development, touch and verbal sensations amongst progressive cognition arouse a psychoanalytic inquiry notably interpreted amongst Sigmund Freud, K. Groos, and Maria Montessori. Initially, Strom’s proposition of categories is introduced by the child’s ability to ‘sustain attention’; a query the theorist regarded as, “The readiness of pre-schoolers to sustain attention while at play can be timed. This ability to pay attention is for the process of play rather than any among the discontinuous events or plots on which process may focus3”. The study concluded that the child’s attention was substantially longer when partaking in activities they personally enjoyed, as opposed to window-shopping with their mothers the day prior, or engaging in adult-like activities such as grocery shopping, card games, or going to restaurants. Plainly, adult action was not stimulating enough, nor was it digestible for the child who wished to touch, smell, or speak freely.  

    The consistent engagement satisfies a broad acceptance of attention to detail, memory recall, and critical thinking found in gradual literacy or creative writing. Therefore, if the child is to receive an education focused on literacy, the maturation of toys from blocks to dolls, or eventually sports, will inform a growing imagination through the senses. Executive Function will then proceed as a goal-directed behaviour alongside the foundation of inhibition, which largely suppress the distractions commonly associated within developing children. So, if Strom’s assertion of ‘Sustained Attention’ is an acting agent into a relationship of child’s play and literary creation, then research into cognitive maturation or sensory play are far more sustainable than inquiries into ‘phantasies’. 

    Part I: Sensation of Touch 

    At Freud’s insistence, his piece, ‘Creative Writers and Daydreaming’, assumes three moments in the individual where the ideation of a ‘phantasy’ develops: the present provokes the occasion to daydream, the past is utilized as a basin for memory (often in a younger stage of life), and a future which would represent the fulfilled fantasy. Yet, what if the implied linearity, which must rely on the memory of the individual, was replaced by the relationship of internal comprehension to external recognition brought by sensation? 

    English paediatrician and psychoanalyst, Donald Winnicott delivered the ‘transitional phenomena’ present in childhood over half a century ago. The infant utilizes an object, often with little significance or reason, to hold, chew, or throw as means of representing present emotions they are otherwise unable to verbalise. Winnicott proposes: 

    […] perhaps a bundles of wool or the corner of a blanket or eiderdown, or a word or tune, or a mannerism – that becomes vitally important to the infant for use at the time of going to sleep, and is a defence against anxiety, especially anxiety of depressive type4. 

    The sensation of touch connects the infant to a world outside of them – an experience Jacques Lacan labels as the ‘mirror stage’. Gathered by the eighth month in infancy, the child’s state of helplessness, spurred by ‘motor impotence and nursling dependence5’ will illicit negative feelings akin to distress or anxiety. 

    To the young child, motivated by these negative affects, a crucial component of the enthralling lure exerted by the fascinating image of his/her body is this image’s promise that he/she can overcome his/her Hilflosigkeit6 and be a unified, pulled-together whole, an integrated, coordinated totality like the bigger, more mature others he/she sees around him/her-self7. 

    The embolden subjectivity the child experiences when the mirror stage is engaged is crucial to actualizing the sensation of touch outside the breast of their mother. The ego begins to form, alongside the presence of their body, as Winnicott’s theory of ‘Transitional Phenomena’ effectively replaces the intimacy and warmth of the parent. If we are to broaden our subject to the social environment around them, the sensation of touch will allows the child to self-soothe when encountering anxiety or distress but will also allow the mind to begin the process of touch by engaging in the object, toy, or person around them. It will then be inevitable, that the ‘phantasies’ Freud investigates are to be evident with the child’s play as they subscribe transitionary feeling to all that is around them.  

    Part II: Sensation of Hearing 

    After the touch of the mother, commences the prominence of her voice. The child will hear their name sung, muttered, yelled, or enunciated as they acknowledge the vibrations that carry past physical touch, to their ears. Amidst K. Groos’s work, The Play of Man, the sensation of hearing for the infant is visceral, and all-encompassing: 

    From the suckling’s delight in his own guttural gurgling’s to the most refined enjoyment of a concert-goer, from the uncouth efforts of the small child to produce all sorts of sounds, to the creative impulse which controls the musical genius, there is, in the light of history, a progressive and consistent development8 

    The ‘consistent development’ alluded by Groos, is a matter of maturation toward one’s senses. A child will begin with the voice of the mother to the representative noises of its own, until assertion of the self is simply expected. It is persistent, often unconscious, and is mainly impulsive in the early stages of development. The theorist’s observation of children was accompanied by external examination of family friend’s or other psychoanalysts since the child’s birth, and within his catalogue, K. Gross noted a common impulse:  

    I have often seen three- and four-year-old children skip about when they heard enlivening band music, as if they wish to catch the time of the rhythmic movement, an impulse which indeed affects adults as well9  

    Accompanied by the senses, the body corroborates with motor processes and the external environment with enough space to ‘skip about’, that a visual scene naturally aligns with verbal cues – this is how a child comes to learn distinction, delayed response, and expressed emotions. Attending to the fanatical world of creative writers, the scenic images or grotesque portrayals are stimulated by child-like experiences. The fear, anger, or sadness that we once clung to with that teddy bear in our mouth, is expanded to the rage-filled screaming of a character experiencing loss. Groos’s portrayal of sound follows similar cues as the psychologist examines its textual sensations: 

    I would instance the cherry crackling of flames in a fireplace, the frou-frou of silken garments, the singing of caged birds, the sound of wind howling of storms, rolling of thunder, rustling of leaves, splashing of brooks, seething of waves, etc. Most of these, it is true, contain elements of intellectual pleasure as well, and so through association link themselves to genuine aesthetic enjoyments10. 

    Delayed Closure 

    Strom’s second moment of classification emerged in the notion of ‘Delayed Closure’ which corresponds with attention span and emotion regulation by measuring, “[the child’s] ability to successively engage in play events without their serial completion, illustrates the delay of closure. Persons of this ability demonstrate a tolerance for incomplete events and the consequent tension of ambiguity11.” Yet, the relationship of children and delay often produce fits of rage or bouts of screaming as the child discerns, they cannot immediately obtain what it is presently desired. So, if adjustment of behaviour, alongside the progression of self-identity is persistently developed, then it is no longer just a practice of an internal, personal dilemma but rather the delayed closure response would interact with the child’s external space, i.e society, relationships, or individuals. Therefore, the child’s engagement with the surrounding environment will shape, “each moment under an enormous vertical and horizontal pressure of information, potent with ambiguity, meaning-full, unfixed, and certainly incomplete12.” 

    Correspondingly, Albert Camus in his piece, The Stranger, delivers the invisible, ambiguous suspense within his opening lines. He leans into a delayed atmosphere, pressing into the uncertainty of his own narrative capabilities, while also producing scepticism within the reader: 

    MOTHER died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure. The telegram from the Home says: YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP SYMPATHY. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday13.” 

    So, how does delayed closure extend to exploitative tension? The child will grasp distinction as the writer makes a point to utilize it. Simply, the fanatical persona Freud attributed to child’s play was not entirely harmless, yet key moments in the child’s development, in which the toys are coddled or thrown away, are symbolic enough to fissure his pre-existing notions of just daydreams. Play becomes more. The creative writer will sensationalize their murder mystery, romance novel, or fanfic adaptation. Their childhood self has already corroborated on the experience of instability, loss, and unidentified anxiety to spur on their future works. Expressed Emotion 

    In fact, Strom’s category of ‘Expressed Emotion’, that accounts for the ‘relative absence of inhibition […] for the verbal and nonverbal intensity with which [the child] expresses emotion’, supports the intensity and depth the child holds to play or transitional objects. Children assume a position of authority over the object, the conversation, or the free movement to which role playing, fantasy play, or notable modes of entertainment, like dress up, invoke surges of confidence within speech and overall expression.  

    Alongside patience and regulation, the presence of affective empathy is integral to child’s play. A. E. Denham’s, Empathy and Literature, posits the review as a line of critical questioning read as, “What is it to read empathically?” or, “Does reading make us more empathic?” to investigate such phenomenon and its influential backbone of social relations. In her piece, Denham elucidates a modern rendition of empathy, or rather how we have developed literature to have such a visceral effect on the reader itself, in what is known as ‘affective empathy’, later defined as: 

    The first-personal experiences of affective states (including emotions, motivations, and visceral sensations) in response to observations (perceptual or otherwise, veridical or non-verdical) of natural manifestations or second-order representations of those states in another, while maintaining awareness of self and other as distinct subjects of experience14 

    Keenly, Denham’s relationship between experience and observation purposes an awareness that must be gathered within the child to replicate, assume or even deny through the practice of empathy, but more generally the expression of emotion. An awareness of the self is assumed by the ego, yet the child stepping out of the developing self (second-order manifestations) to help a friend who cut their knee or happens to ‘feel down’ because their parents were fighting the night prior, alludes to how relationships are formed and consistently upheld within a physical present (of tending to a sore knee or offering a hug) or a stimulating, literary future (lead by romance, passion or the growing popularity of tropes to pursue a level of care we offer to others).  

    Literacy and Creative Writing 

    Eventually, the correlation between child’s play and creative writing does not appear as bleak. The motor cognition developed in childhood often unconsciously transcends into the lyric, narrative, or poetical work created for the pleasure of the writer. It is then, the literary work acknowledges a form of play once entertained as children – an action Mielonen and Paterson describe as: 

    […] they [the child] arouse their memories to assist to connect their play to pre-literacy skills such as naming and symbolic thought. Children recall their past play experiences and create new meanings each time they play15. 

    The feedback loop of internal eagerness brought forth by play and the external response of children/adults, is unavoidable as the child adopts the skills of listening, attention, and inhibition. It is then that ‘symbolic thought’ arouses the cyclical nature of action – evidence – consequence to a broader investigative technique explored by critics and writers years later. Correspondingly, Amanda Porter’s investigation into the translation of ancient myth into modern context presents a piece on a growing form of literary text, fanfiction. Laid out in, ‘Atalanta Just Married’: A Case Study in Greek Mythology-Based Fan Fiction’, the flexible, exploratory mode of writing, takes the Greek goddess, Atalanta, and handpicks certain skills, experience, or overall appearance to fit their narrative. Amongst her investigation, Porter notes: “Atalanta is usually the heroine of these stories, a ‘Mary Sue’ character who represents the author, often a schoolgirl coming to terms with her divine heritage, like the author herself coming to terms with teenage life16”. Crucially, Porter’s depiction of the fanfic writer ’coming to terms’ with their life suggests the adaptation, but even further, the implementation of the fanatical to either combat childhood stressors or become malleable enough to arouse myth as an exposition of modern times. The relation to a future the writer holds the character Atalanta to explore, hints at the creative effect of ’phanatsies’ Freud engrossed his psychoanalytic work into, and would later explain the day-dreaming, or maladaptive dreaming, presently researched by modern scientists and writers alike.  

    Conclusion 

    Alongside most investigations into children’s studies, the conclusions are often sparse and vying for additional research. My aim and further work here, was exploratory in nature and largely dependent on variables, gaps in research and arguments afforded by personal a priori. The utilization of Freud’s theoretical framework of daydreams and ‘phantasies’ posited a weak and inconclusive argument that overlooked the child’s development of sensation and motor skills. It is then, that we must investigate such unconscious practices or refined tools for learning, akin to growing attention spans, illusory endings, and boundless emotions to demonstrate the link between child’s play and creative writing as I have argued for within this paper.  

    Bibliography: 

    Camus, Albert. 1942. The Stranger (Vintage International) 

    Denham, A E. 2024. ‘Empathy & Literature’, Emotion Review, 16.2 (SAGE Publishing) <https://doi.org/10.1177/17540739241233601>&nbsp;

    Elkonin, D. 2005. ‘Chapter 3 : Theories of Play’, Journal of Russian & East European Psychology, 43.2: 3–89 <https://doi.org/10.1080/10610405.2005.11059246>&nbsp;

    Groos, K. 2018. ‘The Project Gutenberg: Play of Man’, Gutenberg.org <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/58411/58411-h/58411-h.htm#Page_7>&nbsp;

    Hejinian, Lyn. 2020. ‘The Rejection of Closure by Lyn Hejinian’, Poetry Foundation <https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69401/the-rejection-of-closure>&nbsp;

    Johnston, Adrian. 2024. ‘Jacques Lacan (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Summer 2024 Edition)’, Stanford.edu <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2024/entries/lacan/>&nbsp;

    Maurice, Lisa, and Amanda Porter. 2017. Rewriting the Ancient World : Greeks, Romans, Jews and Christians in Modern Popular Fiction (Brill) 

    Mielonen, Alissa, and Wendy Paterson. 2009. ‘Developing Literacy through Play’, Journal of Inquiry and Action in Education, 3.1 <https://digitalcommons.buffalostate.edu/jiae/vol3/iss1/2>&nbsp;

    Raver, C. Cybele, and Clancy Blair. 2016. ‘Neuroscientific Insights: Attention, Working Memory, and Inhibitory Control’, The Future of Children, 26.2: 95–118 <https://www.jstor.org/stable/43940583>&nbsp;

    Strom, Robert D. 1974. ‘Observing Parent-Child Fantasy Play’, Theory into Practice, 13.4 (Taylor & Francis, Ltd.): 287–95 <https://doi.org/10.2307/1475889>&nbsp;

    Winnicott, Donald. 1971. Playing and Reality: Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena <https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/winnicott1.pdf&nbsp;

    Footnotes:

    1 Freud 1908: 425.  

    2 Freud 1908: 422. 

    3 Strom 1974: 287. 

    4 Winnicott 1971. 

    5 Johnston 2018. 

    6 Freud established the term to be a ‘biologically dictated prematurational helplessness naturally predestines the human being to the predominance of social nurture over material nurture’ due to a predetrmined reliance on the person in regard to life or death.  

    7 Johnston 2018. 

    8 Groos 2018: 19. 

    9 Gross 2018: 21. 

    10 Groos 2018: 22. 

    11 Strom 1974: 288. 

    12 Hajinian 2009. 

    13 Camus 1942: 1.  

    14 Denham 2024: 86. 

    15 Mielonen & Paterson 2009: 17. 

    16 Porter 2017: 147. 

  • Medea and Nyasha

    Writing and Crit., Paris 2023

    I have been going through feedback from years prior, it comes with the changing of the years, or the manifestations boards we pry from the backrooms of pinterest. Anyway, I stumbled upon an email from a previous professor on a final I wrote almost three years ago — a favourite of mine simply because I didn’t need to crawl into the recess of my brain for an argument. I could simply hold a conversation. The question went as such:

    Write a dialogue between two characters chosen from different texts studied this term. How might the characters advise the other? Be inventive, but make sure the characters are addressing a theme common to both text.

    Muddled in the haze of summer, I recieved an email from her a few weeks after landing in London. She wrote:

    “I also wanted to shout out your diualogue: it’s moving, its funny, and you skillfully weave in the themes of both works without ever losing the rhythm of an actual conversation”

    Here is my brazen attempt to publish this work once more…

    [Setting: Both women have just entered the room at their therapist office. Medea’s appointment is to discuss the mistreatment of prescription pills prescribed from her bipolar disorder. Nyasha is undergoing treatment for anorexia. Both women take a seat on the opposing couch, (more pillows than actual couch). They happen to clash appointment times as Medea was running late due to fussy children and Nyasha appearing early from an overwhelming episode the night prior. This is their first and only meeting.]


    Medea: I have a lint roller in my bag.

    Nyasha [looks up] : Excuse me?


    Medea: Your shirt is covered in lint. I can see it from here. Do you need the roller, yes or no?


    Nyasha [unwillingly putting her hand out for the roller] : (muttering) Thanks.
    [Both gaze around in the silence, elduing any type of eye contact. The The minute hand on the clock has passed two black bold lines and a recpetionist at has yet to call either of their names. Nyasha refrains from chucking the lint roller back at Medea, opting to roll it upon the carpet flooring to the older women across the room.]


    Medea: What’s your name?


    Nyasha: Nyasha. Do you want my social security next?


    Medea: I could give you mine if that would appease you. [The clock must continue to tick]. What do they have you in for?


    Nyasha: [Her gaze caught the brief display of Medea’s phone case littered in a grotesque animation of cats playing sports.] My diagnosable hatred for cats, its chronic, I’m afraid. [She offers up a cough as her eyes begin to close]


    Medea: [Awfuly she wants to laugh, but resorts to this bigger person act and purposefully sets her phone on her legs with the case visible. She smiles at Nyasha’s eye roll] You on any prescription pills? Stay away from the Atavan alright, makes you question to much about life, about the woes of being a women, if you can even form a thought, that is.


    [Nyasha exudes disinterest but is throughly entertained by the lack of etiqutte this woman seems to hold]: I was thinking more on the route of opioids, but I’ll get back to you on my successes. [Deciding to reach out in the conversation, Nyasha begins the questions] Do you have a tampon? Or even a pad? I don’t trust the ones in the bathroom, they are too colorful to open.


    [Medea rummages through her bag forgetting her period stoped two years prior. She shakes her head slighlty, a hand still in the pocket of her purse, grasping onto the white lid of a pill bottle. Nyasha sighs once again as she begins to lean over. The lights were distracting and she could feel her heart beat smoothered as she laid on her side.].

    Medea: Is your mother around?


    Nyasha: Nope. [She pops her mouth at the end of the word] She has decided that she must tend to dinner, and breakfast, and lunch. Oh, don’t forget appeasing any man she encounters, or horrifyingly lowering herself down to knees for forgiveness, or maybe from muscle fatigue, because I refuse to believe there is a sort of pleasure she recieves as her skin becomes bruised. I find her submission tactics revolting. (Arms leave the space by her head to slowly rise in the air) I mean what is the point of submitting to a man who can’t even operate a laundry machine, or fails to understand the soap container in the dishwasher, and worst of all not knowing where his folded pants are in the morning. I get embarrassed simply seeing her subdued. Between you and me, I question if I am a woman sometimes because of this. Because of her.


    Medea: [At the last sentence she frowns. Quite frankly, she doesn’t know the best way to approach this situation – her mother succumbed to cancer two years ago, a brother dead from a drug overdose, and a father still trying to climb that ladder of fame. That is to say, she didn’t think about herself that much, as a person capable of revulsion or identity. So, she was left to questions.] Does her submission scare you or anger you?


    Nyasha: It mostly embarrasses me. I mean, she gave birth to three children who are able to breath and run around fast enough to eventually scrap their knees or hand their ridiculous pictures our parents will eventually hang on the fridge with the very damn hands that she grew! Does she not understand that we all suffer from the patriarchy already, from the day she gave me my name with the wierd little lifting syllable at the end, it would erase me. That sixteen years down the line, I would be percieved less than because they saw my tits? Jesus. (Nyasha doesn’t realize she is whispering now, not until Medea finds enough surface to talk) Sometimes, I want to cradle her against my chest and whisper, ‘why must we punish ourselves too’? I mean, she has to listen to submit, why can she not acknowledge the bruises on her knees in the process?


    [Medea looks past Nyasha’s head, a brief tilt to acknowledge the youngers gaze that has not left in the five minutes]

    Medea: I suppose that is how she is to fight. If we are being honest here, I have sacrificed my hands and my clothes and that ridiculous amount of time one losses sitting in the car park waiting for their child, just to save a bit of my energy. Maybe, I am wrong in sacrificing moments of my identity. It was painful, it always is. Not like childbirth, this pain is not a by-product but it is internal enough to envoke endurance in some and submission in others. (A long pause is held for the passing sirens) Either way, the embarrasment does not leave you. You will see it resemble your skin in the shower, or the way your hands grip a steering wheel, or more predictably when you are in the same room with your father.

    [Nyasha tilts her head down, seeimgly focused on the broken hem in her shirt, resisting the urge to keep pulling] How do you take control? [Medea’s confusion is clear] I mean, how do you, I don’t know… become you again? I know there is the embarrassment, but there has to be a way to work around this, I mean, (Nyasha exasperation is evident) we have the pain, the dread we carry in our purses and the bedroom, but, come on, there has to be a way I can become a different person who doesn’t need to come to an office like this, weekly?


    Medea: You know, I used to try these therapy sessions because I thought I would be easier to love if I didn’t have any pain, but as my lovely therapist informed me, I would be rid of my memories. I don’t think we as humans are pure enough to not know the fear and forgetfullness, or the subsequent regret. Truthfully, between you and me, I think the whole idea of becoming pure is a man’s doing, where we need to constantly be changing to fit some holy or divine ideal. Hell, they were the ones who created religion just to know what it felt like to be a God. So, if you want to hold your mom close, in that wierd hug that you mentioned earlier, then maybe you should both be happy you are a little messed up. Fuck that pure shit and trust me on this sweetheart, the moment you feel the lick of freedom upon your skin you will be so happy to have never prayed to a man to get there.


    [Nyasha watches as Medea leans backward, a subtle wink thrown her way as the older women comes to a stop; Nyasha can’t simmer in the self-assurance just yet] Have you ever thrown up before? [Medea nodes slightly] You know that anxiety you get right before you are about to bend over and you have to accept that this uncomfortable act you is natural, so you must continue to breath even through the panic? How do you kill the part of yourself that loves it? That instead of fear they sometimes feel relief?


    Medea: [She pauses for a moment, enough to make Nyasha back off once more, arms gripping one another to turn the knuckles white.]


    Nyasha: Never mind, forget I said anything.


    Medea: It is okay to want control in your life Nyasha so long as you know what it is you must control. Now I am not going to go on that bullshit tangent where I claim to be wise because I am going through menopause, or whatever they say, but I don’t think it is necessarily a situation where ‘if you know, you know’. As we are being honest here, I didn’t know I was being abused until seven years into my marriage, carrying a child on my hip and a dead phone in my hand. It was only until a late friend of mine called me up to discuss her weekend that I burst out into tears looking at frozen pizza’s at my grocery store, wondering what the hell happened. I mean, I used to do ballet, and rather than my pelvic floor crumbling each time I need a wee, I only had to deal with the blood that barely came out of those damn shoes. [There is a long pause as Medea catches her breath, seemingly relieved to tell someone this part of her] I am jealous of you. You have thought about killing the control, I have only force-fed it. Maybe that is what having kids does to you — you want to assume that death is to far away, light years away in fact, but they encounter it everyday. So, my motherly advice to you is to feel that “relief” more than you want to get rid of it. Either way, one is bound to work for you anyway, eh?


    Nyasha: [A timer goes off on her phone, a daily reminder to take her birth control. Medea looks wistful and courageous and in pain. They both want to laugh at this ridculous situation]


    Medea: You know, when I was younger I dreamed of being that relief for people. That little saviour that would sit on their shoulder, without actually having to save then, but instead I would just listen. It was a small act, but I was a dreamer so it was became extradionary to me. But, Nyasha I think you wear that dream beautifully.


    [Nyasha opens her mouth once more, wanting to know what to do next, but Medea has just been called by their therapist and so she lost focus on the woman once in front of her. She places the packet of pills back into her pocket, not caring to adjust the fallen sleeve on her shoulder or follow the ticking of the clock behind her. Rather, she wonders what she is going to have for dinner tonight.]

  • Colonial Oppression, Resistance and Revenge in a South Asian Diaspora: The Role of English in Post Colonial Translations

    Introduction 

    The belly of the world1 relies on the inevitability of language. The concept of The Self, its material relations imposed upon the body, the limits and traditions aroused by a collective, sustained a moralizing, passionate, and tainted reliance on the voice. We have allocated a multiplicity of words to navigate our loudest quality: morphology, semantic, lexicon, linguistic, communicative. Yet, the present limitations of low literacy rates, linguistic assimilation, or lack of receptive multilingualism acknowledged a new form of social discourse, that of post-colonial studies.   

    Provided the tools and proper education, the fabrication of the voice is reliant on that of tones, nuances and paradigms, yet if the embodiment and articulation of the individual is compressed/forgotten/unacknowledged, how is the culture affected?  Sara Suleri and her text, The Rhetoric of English India, posits, “To tell the history of another is to be pressed against the limits of one’s own – thus culture learns that terror has a local habitation and name2”. Post-colonial studies became that catalyst of stretched limitations, by the recognition of subalternity and the tense ambivalence that dominates a diaspora. Moreover, my aim in this essay is to address how writers of South Asian heritage utilize the English language within cultural narratives to explicate a history of colonial oppression, resistance, and revenge amongst linguistic ‘Otherness’.  

    Colonial Oppression and Translation 

    Harish Trivedi and Susan Bassnett began to tackle the complexity of post-colonial translation as a literary phenomenon – that which disregards physical space or metaphoric, cultural ‘transportation’, for a literary field prescribed as an ‘interlingual translation provid[ing] an analogue for post-colonial writing3.’ Notably, the utilization of the prefix post- or pre-, upholds a function as linear identifiers, capable of separating a before, a beginning or an aftermath. Therefore, their actions are stationary, emblematic as a point of reference on a historical timeline or a previous state of existence. Yet, the prefix trans- disrupts a literary tradition with measurable outcomes; rather, it’s embraced as an ambiguous, stratified, social concept which must evaluate relevant discourse of personhood, identity and cultural subjugation to understand hierarchical systems of oppression. Plainly, it thrives on theoretical frameworks that become a necessary foreground for a ‘metatext of culture4.’   

    Namely, the ‘transcolonial’ or ‘translocation’ interacts with a complexity of geographical boundaries in conjunction to the morphological, the semantic, or the linguistic attitudes within a diasporic nation. The mitigation of ‘trans-’ must suffice as a competent descriptor of the transient identity the colonized subject is to retain. Rennhak attempts to tackle the marginal role of this dislocated pre-fix: 

    […] they [‘transnational’, ‘transcultural’] do not focus on the links between two given entities – nations, cultures – assuming that these entities essentially remain the same; they rather presuppose (personal emphasis) border transgressions and constitutive transformations to take place all along, and they explore the productive instabilities, fluidities and conflicts within such entities – nations, cultures – which render all political attempts to draw a rigid boundary around them questionable5 

    The conditions of a diasporic identity are innately cyclical. The persistence of the English Language is repetitive, brazen in nature, and reliant on practices of assimilation. As such, the linguistic paradigms and cultural integrity of Eurocentric nations, disrupt the social harmony and ability to regulate ‘intercultural’ relationship between the ‘trans-’, foreign tongue and Standard Written English6. Ania Loomba in ‘Colonialism / Postcolonialism’, enriches Spivak’s’ influential postulation of the subalterns’ agency in her essay, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, by pressing a linguistic dimension of the colonial subject. She writes, “In what voices do the colonised speak – their own, or in the accent borrowed from their masters7?” The mitigation of ‘borrowed’ to be an action wilfully taken on by the colonized individual elucidates a prevailing history of assimilation – that of the subaltern carrying a voice not of their own yet incapable of cultural possession of the colonizer’s language. English bears the commonality of hegemony and expansion; Urdu/Hindi became the fragment of agency left to the South Asian writer. So, how does the South Asian writer speak?  

    Salman Rushdie knew well of the ‘translated man’, who knew English and could not reject its presence. The writer was not to engage in a cultural fusion of the Indo-European, but rather the “locational disrupture8that must decentre the writer’s native homeland, rendering the land ‘imaginary’ amidst memories. By default, the space for Indian work in English media is how loose the accent becomes, the timidity of a colonial replication, or the biting silence of conversations. Language exists in these tensions of subversion – the utilization of ‘Othering’ to argue their uncivilized authority (‘savage, brute, uncouth, unsophisticated, barbarian, […] primitive’) and the political action necessary to reject the British, colonial role within India. Rushdie explores the former concept of linguistic subversion through the act of creating a new language entirely: 

    English, no longer an English language, now grows from many roots; and those whom it once colonized are carving out large territories within the language for themselves. The Empire is striking back9 

    As I begin to carve out my argument on Resistance and Revenge writing, the individual must be positioned accordingly. Edward Said in his book Orientalism procures an academic, philosophical, and intimate depiction of the ‘Other’. A raw and passioned piece of text, Said narrates a poli-cultural exposition to shape the Orient amongst the linguistic paradigms of language, repetition, and mimicry. 

    It is an elaboration not only of a basic geographical distinction (the world is made up of two unequal halves, Orient and Occident) but also a whole series of ‘interests’ […] it not only creates, but also maintains; it is, rather than expresses, a certain will or intention to understand, in some cases to control, manipulate, even to incorporate, what is a manifestly different world10 

    Notably, the Orient succumbs to a duality of identity, ‘Orient and Occident’, while enforcing the maintenance, incorporation, or intention into a subjected alterity. These distinctions are disjointed and unregulated by linear conceptions of time, reliant on the colonial subject to execute with recognition of language. Post-colonial studies resist the dualism of identity through the conception of abrogation. It is then that the alterity of the voice can be heard.  

    Resistance: Allowing the Subaltern to Speak 

    “Something of the unwashed odour of the chamcha lingers around its cadences.” 

    Salman Rushdie, The Empire Writes Back with Vengeance 

    The political tradition of resistance within a colonial territory is unabashedly physical. The land becomes violated — seeped in blood or deficient in institutions, rendering the body of the land contaminated by the imposed, imperial command. Yet, a lingering dialect of the people resist the violence of this colonial policy, as a tactic recognized for Linguistic Imperialism. A conception that seeks to structurally, ideologically, and with exploitative intent, privilege a dominant language, in this instance English, over an ‘uncivilized’ language – that of the native, colonial dialect. Phillipson on Linguistic Imperialism, empirically investigates the characteristics of dominate and suppressed languages in common expansion practices, global trade, and the waves of post-colonial critique. An English Professor at the University of Copenhagen, Phillipson offers an analytic list of necessary qualities present within linguistic imperialism – for my argument, I will be listing a few critical points: “Linguistic imperialism is invariably contested and resisted,” [..] “The dominance is hegemonic: It is internalized and naturalized as being ‘normal,’” […] “Linguistic imperialism interlocks with a structure of imperialism in culture, education, the media, communication, the economy, politics, and military activities11” Yet, with a limited implementation of a native, colonial language, in this instance Hindi and Urdu, the writers, linguists, religious practices, teachers and individuals, connected to their native tongue, are unable to express the consumptive process of colonialization precisely within the English language. They are stuck amidst the boundaries of translation. The invariable resistance Phillipson mentions attaches Trivedi and Bassnet’s theoretical framework of an intra-personal conflict the South Asian writer encounters, writing: 

    [The Indian who writes] in spite of our ambiguity towards it, or because of that, perhaps because we find in that linguistic struggle a reflection of other struggles taking place in the real world, struggles between the cultures within ourselves and the influences at work upon our societies12 

    The genesis of linguistic resistance necessitates cultural reflection, their current ambiguity within society, or even further, the South Asian writer must begin to frame the discourse their language arouses within global conversations as their own. My attempt within this section is to display the expanse of linguistic dislocation and the corresponding response of the ‘Other’ — that when utilized by the oppressed, begins to critique, dismantle, and outright resist the structuralism of imperial languages13 (i.e English). To apply pressure at the root of my argument, an opposition of colonial rhetoric is essential, or precisely what Doering labels as ’counter-discourse’: 

    Such a process by which oppositional forces emerge from within established power structures and begin to redefine or re-employ their mechanisms, is usefully described as ‘counter-discourse’ […] Yet to fight this cause, the means are taken up in different, unconventional, unexpected ways and so, instead of endorsing the discursive structures, are now used to manipulate their elements, appropriate their signs and ultimately change them14 

    Present-day media has allowed for the unconventional, raw, or often violent to be globally recognized, or most importantly heard. But what of the South Asian writer who nurtures a philological attitude within their work? How does the rhyme match the tension of their native tongue? Does the translation they are engaging with accurately elucidate the words missing from their vocabulary, lost in colonial regimes and decades of linguistic hegemony? Is this all their voice would become known for? 

    Section II: Shame, Salman Rushdie 

    Salman Rushdie prepares a space amongst literature to produce a body of work on shame. The basis of power, that which surpasses royal status, political affiliations, marriage, or economic abundance rather commences at the welcoming of resistance. The opposition amongst these cultural notifiers, is decerned by their relational qualities, that of challenging authority, situation, dependency on movements/protest/action, and a social response. Within his novel, Shame, Rushdie’s pivotal reflection on the shamelessness of political corruption or of gendered persecution, actualizes the 1947 Partition of Pakistan and India as a space capable of satirization from a South Asian writer: 

    Wanting to write about shame, I was at first haunted by the imagined spectre of that dead body, its throat slit like a halal chicken, lying in a London night across a zebra crossing […] I thought of the crime as having been committed right there, publicly, ritually, white at the windows eyes.15 

    Intimacy permeates the mode of resistance for Rushdie. The personal implication of acknowledging shame, writing the complexity and qualities of the brash emotion, while reflecting the feeling in a narrative based on a post-partition Pakistan alludes to the rigid silence desirable by that linguistic imperialism. Rushdie utilizes English to write the South Asian experience tainted by a British, colonial upheaval; the grasp of shame is not a quality of the Oriental body, but a consequence of the Occident invasion. Crucially, the body is not forgotten, rather personified to hold the violent persecution of shame, leaving a ‘throat slit like a halal chicken’ and the remnant of the figure is left publicly for all to witness the crime. The metaphoric body is abruptly killed at night, laid in the street of blinking lights and zebra crossings, to carry an outline of a voice Rushdie cannot carry, but his text can. The acknowledgement, publication and enunciation of the by-product of shame upholds a space to question and observe the experience of the subject, while also examining the encounter the South Asian author witnessed to know such characteristics of shame. Salman Rushdie’s metaphoric examination of shame became a bite of resistance as he set out to write the Oriental struggle in a colonial language of English.  

    Revenge: The English Expansion 

    “Babu-English, chamcha-English, and turn it against  

    itself: the instrument of subservience became a weapon of liberation16” 

    Yet, what does revenge look like within one’s fight against linguistic imperialism? The British poet, Daljit Nagra, arguably performs within his notable works ‘British Museum’ and ‘Look We Have Coming to Dover!’ a channel for a counter-discourse, often challenging mainstream narratives within the complexity of post-colonial language itself.  In his piece, ‘For the Wealth of India17’, a disparate dialect leads the scene of Nagra’s ’ancestral homeland’ through the bazaar tracks and the ’brightly lit boutiques’, yet as the speaker begins to brandish the wealth through Sari-shopping, the diction aligns with British, formal expressions: ”That is the style mummy! / I need it now mummy!” while a few lines later, Nagra creates a linguistic space for the mother, as her Indian accent seeps through the dialogue: “[…] until mum / clears them with her finest English: / Vut is dis corruption? Vee need it fut-a-fut, or must vee / go to the clean nosed Hindu with cut-cut scissors, next door? / Daddy would applaud if he wasn’t slogging at the concrete factory18.” Nagra decisively disregards the aesthetic judgement, or embarrassment toward an accent untouched by British expression, but rather proceeds within a position of authority. Rather, the mothers accent becomes a state of great wealth, a symbol of power which can refuse the work of British tailors to go to the ’clean nosed Hindu next door.’ Doering comments on the phenomena of power and language stating,” […] ’power’ should not be understood as a matter of physical violence only (personal emphasis) but of language, of everyday practices […] but which all bear serious thinking and reconsideration because none of them are historically unchanging nor without alternative19.” Precisely, the British poet is critical of the framework of power present within language. The piece subverts the English voice, saturated in a British (colonial) accent, as inferior within the conversation; the tailors are silenced, contained to slight movements as they ’scratch their necks, snort / reversing some phlegm’. 

    Nagra employs a notable portmanteau, ‘Punglish20’, as a keynote to his work. A fusion of the British-Asian experience, the writers revenge begins at the concoction of a new lexicon, a merging of a voice oppressed for an ’uncivilized’ presence amongst an enforced colonial language. Rather, Nagra’s work becomes an antithesis to assimilation. In his piece, ’He Do the Foreign Voices’, the voice becomes disjointed, mixed with an extension of an occupying English dialect, yet ripe in the lyrical intonation of Punglish. The disruption is vital to sustain the control of language, whether it be a mesh of English-Hindi, or translations from Hindi to English. Nagra ends the piece as, “You drive away, yet somehow affirmed, / more in love with your pretty airs / that update the same old / that speak to power and fear, / whether they’re heard or not, they’ll say, head on, / before family and blood and wealth / our hoard of words must cleanse the world21” In defiance, the ’hoard of words’ utilized is no longer metaphorical, or lapsed through linguistic assimilation, rather Nagra punishes the English aesthetic with gaps, pauses and enough space to let his ’Punglish’ voice lament the history of Indian imperialism.  Eurocentrism is disrupted, in favour of the world which must be cleansed, before that of ’family and blood and wealth’ comes the distinction of the Punjab voice.  

    Section III: Partition Voices 

    BBC Radio 4 series on ‘Partition Voices’ interviewed British-Asians and militia in the British Colonial forces to cover the 1947 Partition between India and Pakistan. The migrations of millions, uneducated borders imposed by British officials resulting in border disputes, the dislocation of language between Hindi and Urdu, and the religious affiliations between Muslims and Sikhs/Hindu left last damage between the two countries over seven decades later. The broadcast titled ‘Legacy’ and ‘Inheritors of Partition’ assemble the consequence and tense aftermath of the Partition while also providing a voice for the generations of British-Asians who feel the effect years later.  o a greater extent, the coverage provided a concrete foundation for the South Asian voice to explicate, deconstruct, or just remain an active participant within the conversation. Amongst the first of the series, a Pakistani gentleman provides a metaphoric illustration of the Partition, stating: “[…] You know when a lady does an abortion, child has died, she bleeds. We Sikh community, we aborted from our home, but we were alive. She [homeland in Pakistan] must be bleeding22.” Recalling the instigation of power within post-colonial studies, the space carved by this podcast allows for a representation of South Asian identity, while also embracing the violence of resistance through verbal expression. Therefore, the mode of ’revenge’ is not a physical, aggressive display of power, but one found is reuniting a dislocated, transcolonial identity a platform to utilize a voice once repressed, disregarded, or linguistically altered.  

    Conclusion 

    Translation and the industry of literature are neoteric guides amongst post-colonial discourse. A bridge between the ‘Oriental’ voice and the hegemonic listener, the mode of morphology and interpretation deliver banished stories, untold narratives and forgotten dialects as foundational to the modern socio-cultural and political atmosphere. As post-colonial studies progress, my argument surrounded the colonial, diasporic voice and revenge may be acknowledged, but my theoretical framework posited through poetry, narratives, and alternative media expand upon a literary tradition of orality and interpretation. The South Asian writer, individual, speaker and experience do carry a voice capable of resistance amidst colonial oppression, but also with a strength to engage in revenge as well.  

    Footnotes:

    1 Referenced from Sadiya Hartman in her piece, The Belly of the World. Utilized in this instance to replace how the modern follows the conception of language, relying on its birth and future endeavours to establish identity. Therefore, language is a symbol of birth, which is inevitably once conceived, but also critical to modern development.  

    2 Suleri 1992: 2.  

    3 Bassnet, Trivedi 1999: 35. 

    4 Bassnett, Trivedi 1999: 3.  

    5 Doring 2019: 30. 

    6 The definition of SWE is utilized in the context of David Foster Wallace, ‘Democracy, English, and The Wars Over Usage’ referenced in Harper’s Magazine. (2001). Wallace makes considerable effort to indebt his work with abbreviations, where he makes racially charged statements elucidating a difference between SBE (Standard Black English) and SWE, (Standard White English). This is to be noted due to the clear erasure of accents, tones and phrases used within cultures, to where they are considered ‘Other’ and unconventional. Notably, this mindset settles in with the debate of language in South Asian Diasporas.  

    7 Loomba 1998: 229.  

    8 Trevidi 1998: 13. 

    9 Rushdie 1982. 

    10 Said 1978: 13.  

    11 Phillipson 2024.  

    12 Bassnett & Trivedi 1999: 58. 

    13 It is to be noted that given the nuances of language, English is represented within linguistic imperialism due to its histography within British, colonial rule in India, yet many other language like Spanish, French and German were utilized in a similar manner within colonization to inflict structural, linguistic impositions on the native subject. 

    14 Doering 2019: 26.  

    15 Rushdie 1983: 116. 

    16 Rushdie 1982.  

    17 Daljit Nagra, Look We Have Coming to Dover!  

    18 Nagra 2019: 9.  

    19 Doering 2019: 22

    20 A combination of Punjabi and English. 

    21 Nagra 2017: 19.  

    22 BBC Radio 2017: 00:43.  

    References:  

    Bassnett, Susan, and Harish Trivedi. 1999. Post-Colonial Translation: Theory and Practice (Milton Keynes: Lightning Source) 

    Döring, Tobias. 2011. Postcolonial Literatures in English (Stuttgart Klett Lernen Und Wissen) 

    Gallagher, Michael, Tim Smith, and Ant Adeane. 2017. ‘Legacy, Partition Voices’ (BBC Radio 4) 

    Loomba, Ania. 1998. Colonialism-Postcolonialism (London Etc.: Routledge) 

    Nagra, D. (2017). British Museum. Faber & Faber. 

    Nagra, D. (2019). Look We Have Coming to Dover! Faber & Faber.  

    Phillipson, Robert. 2024. ‘Linguistic Imperialism’, The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics (Wiley): 1–5 <https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal0718.pub3>&nbsp;

    Rushdie, Salman. (1982) ‘The Empire writes back with a vengeance’, Times, 03 Jul, 8, available: https://link-gale-com.bris.idm.oclc.org/apps/doc/CS134843107/TTDA?u=univbri&sid=bookmark-TTDA&pg=8&xid=013e846f 

    Rushdie, Salman. 2010. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991 (London: Vintage Books) 

    Said, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books) 

    Singh, K., Maheshwari, K. (2024). Primitivizing the Hindus: Hindus as Oppressive and Hierarchical. In: Colonial Discourse and the Suffering of Indian American Children. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-57627-0_3 

    Suleri, Sara. 2011. The Rhetoric English India (Chicago ; London: The University Of Chicago Press) 

  • Is Violence Against Nature Superior to Human-On-Human Violence?

     

    Histories of Violence, Term 5

    Key words: Anthropocene, Climate Change, Environment, Violence, Ecocriticism 

    Lewis and Maslin, a pair of Professors in Geology at UCL, present a paper in MacMillian as ‘Defining the Anthropocene1’ aimed at consolidating the ‘possible Anthropocene-specific’ dates, alongside ‘evidence-based decisions’ which would elucidate the consequence of this Anthropocene Epoch. A scientific and social discourse barely half a century old, the ‘Anthropocene’ Era is reliant on the deconstruction and processing power of humanity to become a primary agent of environment change, often coined Climate Change. For further precision, the introduction of the Anthropocene by the pair above, define the term within its critical tensions:  

    The magnitude, variety and longevity of human-induced changes, including land surface transformation and changing the composition of the atmosphere, has led to the suggestion that we should refer to the present, not as within the Holocene Epoch (as it is currently referred to), but instead as within the Anthropocene Epoch2.  

    Utilizing evidence-based papers and scientific diagrams, I aim to position ecological violence enacted by individuals as superior to human-on-human violence by exploring industrial pollution of Roman antiquity and the occupation of military infrastructure which posits the natural world as incorporeal. 

    Industrial Pollution 

    Humanity has been consistent in exploiting industrial pollutants, namely carbon emission and sulphur compounds. By 400 BC, Hippocrates published, ‘On Airs, Waters, and Places’ which explored the critical role of an individual (and later collective) interacting with nature. The introduction offered a candid argument of the environment, space, and human interaction: “There was a rational element, which relied upon accurate observation and accumulated experience. This rationalism concluded that disease, and health depended on environment3.” By Hippocrates argument, the individual must surpass a co-dependent relation to the outright reliance onto the environment for overall survival. Correspondingly, the naturalist and naval commander of the early Roman Empire, Pliny the Elder, dedicated pieces to the ongoing mobilization and further urbanization of the Roman Empire. A mirror of Hippocrates four centuries later, the scientist writes, “We taint the rivers and the elements of natures, and the air itself, which is the main support of life, we turn into a medium for the destruction of life4.” 

    Susanne Knittel5, within the field of Memory Studies examines a ‘forgotten’ approach to environmental violence, one that does not pose the socio-cultural field as its primary application: “Often, the way ecological violence is framed as violence relies on repertoires, forms and conventions for representing and commemorating genocides and other acts of large-scale violence against humans… [we should explore] the turn towards the environment and the non-human6.” Knittel’s implication of broaching the incorporeal, that which is ‘non-human’, posits the metaphysical hierarchy, currently recognized as the Anthropocene7. Applying Knittel’s proposal to the groundwork of Industrial Pollution in the Roman Empire, we can begin to address the lineage of ecological violence, beginning with lead measurements in Greenland Ice.  

    In 2018, the multidisciplinary scientific journal PNAS8, delivered a research article within Environmental Sciences, known as, ‘Lead Pollution Recorded in Greenland ice Indicates European Emissions Tracked Plagues, Wars, and Imperial Expansion during Antiquity’, which provided evidence on Roman industrial pollution peaking at the start of its emerging empire. Referencing Figure 1, the chart provides data of fluctuating lead measurements in relation to critical centuries of human development, which is contextualized by the articles abstract:  

    Here we show, using precisely data records of estimated lead emissions between 1100 BCE and 800 CE derived from sub annually resolved measurements in Greenland ice and detailed atmospheric transport modelling, that annual European lead emissions closely varied with historical events, including imperial expansions, wars, and major plagues9. 

    Figure 1. Lead measurements in Greenland Ice derived from PNAS article.  

    Environmental exploitation in the Roman Empire lacked any legal mediation or government interference unless the natural resource was guarded for ‘indiscriminate exploitation10.’ Notably, the persistent exploitation of ‘high temperature smelting’, large scale extraction of conquered lands and valuable elements, deforestation to combat rapid expansion, and industrial-scale operations for mining for economic profit11, produced enough emissions to penetrate the integrity of the soil and land from 500 BCE. Moreover, the biological and microscopic structures of the ice utilized for this data collection showed immense morphological changed nearly two millennium later.  

    Section II: Current Industrial Pollution 

    Many of the present phenomena, field of studies, or terminology fall under Waring, Wood and Szathmarys’ procedure of ‘Group-level Environmental Management Traits12’. Precisely, larger groups will encounter more challenges to manage their environment as they lack consistent evolutionary qualities or solutions to the developing involutions (e.g extinct species). Correspondingly, we are unable to manage the scale of social organization to readjust, convene, or faithfully deconstruct previous systems of belief.  

    Macroecology, a subfield in ecological studies, focuses on ‘large-scale ecological patterns across broad spatial and temporal scales,’ and is only a present-day distinction. It was a side-effect without the precaution of mobility, in which, the development of a new ecological system was necessary and could not be removed without further dislocation from the original objective. Therefore, the structures of biological and environmental distinctions must be expanded to address, study, or report on the rapid shift in our present climate conditions.  

    Moreover, to establish violence in the context of industrial pollution, we must refer to Serene Jones explication of the ‘traumatized physical environment’- that which must witness the ‘integrity of the creation [become] violated13’. The ‘violation’ is eventually dualistic, as the physical degradation of plants, landscapes, and synchronic climates correspond to the conceptual, biological, and evolutionary framework we have once prescribed upon nature. This ‘twofold approach’ must present a concurrent discourse of the existing conditions of nature and all that is absent to consider the future. Correspondingly, the condition of the environment will become integral to daily interaction, allowing for the destabilization of an anthropogenic perspective, as human-on-human action becomes secondary to the foundation of landscape, matter and the self-regulating processes of the Earth. 

    Turning to Fig. 2., The University of Leeds produced linear graphs depicting the quality of air pollution between The United Kingdom and Pakistan, drawing upon the a ‘global disparity’ amongst pollutants. While the contrast of colours may produce a positive or negative attributes, the diversity of shades becomes a concerning ‘cocktail of pollutants14’. The agriculture, cars, forest fires, burning of oil, vehicle exhaust, power plants and the fossil fuel industry united as a primary cause to a degrading ozone layer, acid rain, bleached coral reefs, scorched landscapes, and a lack of biodiversity within plants. A rather careless violence stuck in a cycle too repair itself.  

    Fig 2. The United Kingdom, Global Air Quality Trends15 

    Fig. 2, Global Air Quality Trends16  

    Moreover, if we are to return to Hippocrates, the presence of dense air and floating sulphur pollutants is a familiar topic. Referencing his notable texts, On ‘Airs, Waters and Places’, the naturalist writes, “They are likely to have deep, hoarse voices, because of the atmosphere, since it is usually impure and unhealthy in such places17.” The individual’s innate reliance on oxygen produced by a stable, homeostatic body, will suffer a similar violation as the integrity of the body is compromised. So, if the co-dependency of humanity onto the expansive, biological function of the Earth, reduces the anthropocentric measures to a more equal baseline of existence between nature and humans, the violence upon the environment will be held to the severity, repercussions and justice that humans have awarded themselves.  

    Military Infrastructure 

    Roman Antiquity 

    […] argued that the emergence of modern bureaucratic, territorialized and centralized nation-states — marked by the monopolization of the means of violence […]  — was in large part the result of protracted wars and highly expensive military campaigns, a process of co-evolution whereby ‘war made the state and state made the war18’. 

    Roman, military grounds were littered with dead bodies. Their armour was weaponized, buried, or reused for the solider next in line. Deforestation become a building block for invasions, providing enough resources for fuel, materials for weapons, and the space for military sites. Yet, how was military infrastructure displayed in an active war? Josephus, Jewish War, presents the siege of Jotapata as the Roman army sought the Jewish stronghold for further power in their campaign to Galilee. As the campaign makes way, the distraction of military weapons and an erected stone wall is as much a Roman display of power as it is a forceful overtaking of integral landscape: 

    Vespasian now brought up his artillery engines — 160 in all — and set them in a semi-circle with order to fire on the defenders on the wall. In one concerted barrage the catapults sent their spears whistling through the air, the stone-throwers hurled hundredweight rocks, and both flaming and regular arrows flew in a hail19.  

    Eventually, the earth will begin to scream of thirst, the charred dirt will be forced to recover, the cement left behind from the battering ram will stand still as a trophy depicting their conquer. The city will continue, with or without the inhabitants, conquerors, or those in-between, but the landscape must reclaim a buried ecosystem once more.  

    Section II: The Present 

    […] where I, for a fraction of time, caused a security alert, because I violated this order by standing on a scrap of grass, next to a public highway, looking through a fence20.  

    This ‘scrap of grass’ — a space designed to hold up the fence, the shoes of her body, the cement that is to guide aircrafts, bustling bases, and artillery weapons is barely a register. The purpose has changed, unbeknownst to the grass covered in gravel or the roots pulled for concrete bases, the land lacks recognition. Nature became the first casualty, with the title of victim but lacking in the finality of justice. Thus, they are just a victim.  

    Fig. 3. Burning of Oil Wells in Kuwait during The Gulf War. Noted to be ‘one of the worse environmental disasters’ in recent history21.  

    Returning to the Anthropocene, the self-awareness of humankind becomes imperative to the assumptions one must accept for central power. An awareness catering to conditions, that of: 

    […] continental trade and transport networks, eradication policies for nuisance species and diseases, agricultural pollution fines, genetic modification, anti-extinction policies and the emergence of global environmental law22. 

    While armed forces sustained Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD): 

    [..] from uranium mining and milling; through transport of ‘yellowcake’, MOX and other nuclear materials; fabrication of fuel rods; reprocessing and fast-breeder reactors; and the problems of storage of nuclear waste over millennia23. 

    Unsurprisingly, Nature will lack the corporeal rights, or rather the right to co-exist fairly, within a centrist collective. Even further, the environmental laws, annual summit meetings, prosecution by fines or trespassing warnings are in favour of the individual, not of the planet. They become exercises of free will, faux determinism, or ill-informed manuscripts delivered with enough enthusiasm to think moral implications are censored. We will continue to address future generations in decorated speeches, before questioning the soil degradation in Sudan. Reports of, “50 nuclear warheads and 11 nuclear reactors littering the ocean floor24” will be cleared an ‘accident’ yet the responsibility of the ocean to absorb the force of a nuclear weapon, must be rationalized as a the only ‘right’ Nature can afford.  

    Fig 3. is a makeshift military infrastructure. An active battlefield, with no soldiers as enemies, but rather the land as their final target. While the burning of oil wells in Kuwait were documented as a military tactic, or an economic loss for the country, the campground, uniforms, artillery shells, surveillance helicopters, and the bodies, traumatized that land. The burning fuel was violent, the weakening ground was silenced, and the smoke-filled air traumatized the natural, surrounding life. It would take over eleven months for the last oil well to be capped and the miles of ‘fire trenches25’ would be discovered.  

    Fig 4. Unrecorded spraying of Agent Orange in Vietnam War26.  

    Lastly, there are a few human disasters to touch upon. Captured in Fig. 4, the use of Agent Orange in the Vietnam War became a hidden ecological disaster, as released FBI files lack the extensive records of using chemical warfare. As the black-and-white photographs display, the thick, scar-like line amongst the tree is defoliation. A common tactic within war to uncover food, shelter and aid harvesting of the opposition. The chemical agent utilized biologically alters the structures and / or compounds of the plant, forcing them to de-shed, often permanently. The land cannot recover, and the herbicide will flourish in the soil of next year’s harvest. Put simply by Pearson, “the militarization of landscape is rarely complete or final27.” 

    Conclusion 

    My aim within this paper balanced loosely between a personal, corporeal discernment and sympathies toward the incorporeal. What rights, as an individual, have I willingly taken from the environment to further this violation? Could we, as a collective, repair the tension, brutality, and suffering we have posited to be correct, moral and justified? Either way, our violence is noticeable. It is then, imperative to start on the contrary to modern thought, to focus on the corporeality, the body of the environment, as a necessary right to life.  

    Bibliography: 

    Barthleme, Phillip. 2024. ‘New Data on Agent Orange Use during the US’s Secret War in Laos – CEOBS’, CEOBS <https://ceobs.org/new-data-on-agent-orange-use-during-the-uss-secret-war-in-laos/#6&gt; [accessed 2 December 2025] 

    Bostock, John, and Henry Riley. 2018. ‘The Project Gutenberg EBook of the Natural History of Pliny, Vol I., by Pliny the Elder.’, Gutenberg.org <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/57493/57493-h/57493-h.htm>&nbsp;

    Hay-Edie, David. 1991. THE MILITARY’S IMPACT on the ENVIRONMENT: A NEGLECTED ASPECT of the SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT DEBATE a Briefing Paper for States and Non-Governmental Organisations (Sebastian) <https://www.ipb.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/briefing-paper.pdf&gt; [accessed 1 November 2025] 

    Jones, W.H.S , and Hippocrates. 2023. ‘On Airs, Waters, and Places [Attributed to Hippocrates (C. 460 – C. 370 B.C.)] : Hippocrates : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive’, Internet Archive <https://archive.org/details/hippocrates-airs-waters-places-l-147/page/XIII/mode/2up>&nbsp;

    Kersten, Jens. 2017. ‘Who Needs Rights of Nature?’, RCC Perspectives: 9–14 <https://www.jstor.org/stable/26268370>&nbsp;

    Knittel, Susanne C. 2023. ‘Ecologies of Violence: Cultural Memory (Studies) and the Genocide–Ecocide Nexus’, Memory Studies, 16.6 (SAGE Publishing): 1563–78 <https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980231202747>&nbsp;

    Leeds, University of. 2024. ‘New Images Reveal Global Air Quality Trends | University of Leeds’, Leeds.ac.uk <https://www.leeds.ac.uk/news-environment/news/article/5635/new-images-reveal-global-air-quality-trends>&nbsp;

    Lewis, Simon, and Mark Maslin. 2015. ‘(PDF) Defining the Anthropocene’, ResearchGate <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273467448_Defining_the_Anthropocene>&nbsp;

    McConnell, Joseph R., Andrew I. Wilson, Andreas Stohl, Monica M. Arienzo, Nathan J. Chellman, and others. 2018. ‘Lead Pollution Recorded in Greenland Ice Indicates European Emissions Tracked Plagues, Wars, and Imperial Expansion during Antiquity’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115.22: 5726–31 <https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1721818115&gt;  

    McSorley, Kevin. 2014. ‘Towards an Embodied Sociology of War’, The Sociological Review, 62.2_suppl: 107–28 <https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-954x.12194>&nbsp;

    Pearson, Chris, Peter A Coates, and Tim Cole. 2010. Militarized Landscapes : From Gettysburg to Salisbury Plain (London ; New York: Continuum) 

    Salgado, Sebastiao. 2016. ‘When the Oil Fields Burned’, The New York Times <https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/08/sunday-review/exposures-kuwait-salgado.html>&nbsp;

    Serene Jones. 2009. Trauma and Grace : Theology in a Ruptured World (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox) 

    Waring, Timothy M, Zachary T Wood, and Eörs Szathmáry. 2023. ‘Characteristic Processes of Human Evolution Caused the Anthropocene and May Obstruct Its Global Solutions’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 379.1893 (Royal Society) <https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0259>&nbsp;

    Whiston, William. 1737. ‘Josephus: Of the War, Book III’, Penelope.uchicago.edu <https://penelope.uchicago.edu/josephus/war-3.html>&nbsp;

    Woodward, Rachel. 2004. Military Geographies (Malden, Ma: Blackwell Pub) 

    Zvereva, Elena L, Eija Toivonen, and Mikhail V Kozlov. 2008. ‘Changes in Species Richness of Vascular Plants under the Impact of Air Pollution: A Global Perspective’, Global Ecology and Biogeography, 17.3 (Wiley): 305–19 <https://doi.org/10.2307/30137862>&nbsp;

  • Re: Re: ‘A Woman’s Issue’ by Margaret Atwood [with notes].

    Persecution saturates the neck of young women. This damp exterior, crushed between jagged ribs and the unbecoming ill-remains of fat, will become explicit, R-rated, subverted to a perversion of this body, her body. Forget about the care we show intent — it is now stretched, disjointed; an awkward veil of femininty (lace and all.)

    [I could be remarkable, and prudish.]

    Should I talk upon the juvenile nature of flexibility? Where, the extension of ones hips [the landscape for childbirth] & career & jaw, remains sexual. Deceptiveley delicate ‘the woman’ is.

    Either way, the post / pre / birth of modern misogyny aligns a women to be knowledgeable in its ‘devices’ — that which shocks, suffocates, pricks, invades, redefines. That of a collar or hand, of personal persuasion to bind the stomach, the fat under the arms, the placement of the toes upon the feet — how they should curve until the bones snap.

    Then, there is the awful codification of ‘muse’, which could have been disastrous, but remained ill-defined as women began to carve space into art and music and fashion (still posing, hooked on devices, drugged to calm the eyes). Atwood was familiar with such inflexibility of women in art, or their use for it, and therefore made her own exhibit.

    Space: Part I

    Space: the three feet between their sunken back in line and your purse (controlled by stickers glued to the pavement and an awkward placement of your hands); the lack-there-of between a shared hug (how we create an allowance for the possibility of a greeting); an interval (the bell on a microwave, the minutes between contractions); the cycles of sleep (how religion was formed from hours of REM); a uterus (childbirth, cysts, IUDs’); the gap between breaths, cells, neurons, eyebrows.

    Briefly, I want you, the reader, to remove yourself from any understanding that you are about to read a poem (and any notion that it may be life changing). Rid yourself of excitement, pride, humility, or historical insight you may feel is relevant to the female body. Now, this intangibility of your intelligence should be caressed — held with enough care that dislocation from the physical body is nurturing, yet necessary.

    Here, I urge you simply, to consume.

    “The woman in the spiked device

    that locks around the waist and between

    the legs, which holds in it like a tea strainer

    is Exhibit A“

    We must start with ‘The’, whose practical use in the sentence must provide a body, a root, for the further construction of a ‘woman’. Yet, Atwood extends past simple grammatical structures to dictate a tone of culpability, where name is unknown, and whose consciousness holds no weight in her description.  The ‘woman’ is dismissed – nameless, muted, and withheld. By the first sentence alone, Atwood introduces the present, systemic, pornographic reality of women (who endure sexual slavery, prostitution, brutish desires and ferocious kinks). She is silenced, and more importantly, spoken for.   

    Even further, the frequent sexual strangulation present in pornography and sexual encounters, is leaving women with irreparable brain damage. Therefore, suggestions of ‘the woman’ being implicated as ‘brain dead’ are probable, and often passively initiated when a ‘spiked device’ strains upon the neck and legs. It is then, that the omniscient voice must dictate her despair.  

    What are we to then make of ‘Exhibit A?’ Are the readers meant to watch, loosely, abhorrently, decisively like one does in an art exhibit? (Never too closely, or even somewhat thoughtfully, limited to opening hours and release dates, constrained by the attention span of the viewers). Is it possible Atwood is referring to an article, doused in symmetrical red circles and frilly skirts as the women try to cover their face? Do we place the symbolism past the women to inspect her constraints, (i.e the collar, the sunken waist, the immobility of mouth and body) and leave the connotations of ‘Exhibit A’ to schoolboys’ magazine as they move the image side to side.  

    By the end of the first stanza, the removal of the subject is dualistic. Atwood respects the privacy of ‘the woman’ enough to soften her features, deconstructing the hard contours of breasts or a demeanour that must be conquered, while being unable to free her body from the sexual, sociological constraints – that which ‘holds [here] like a tea strainer’. A tool, designed to grasp and clench; while also actively releasing parts of itself; the dilution of the women is uncanny to modern, female autonomy.  

    What pleasures have I given away?

    Space: Part II

    “The woman in black with a net window

    to see through and a four-inch

    wooden peg jammed up

    between her legs, so she can’t be raped

    is Exhibit B“

    Let us assume that Exhibit B is a photograph, which was displayed on National Geographic for the features of her face (how the world could not fathom such beauty enduring starvation, or genocide, maybe sexual abuse, and modern slavery). Let us hide the wooden peg, claim that the object was in the way of the shot, (a mental disturbance at best for the viewer) and rather focus on how the pattern of the net reflecting amongst her skin. Please do not entertain the background (the refugee camp, the perished mountains and dry soil, those rushing toward flour or the individual surrounded by bottles) rather focus on the eyes.

    Who is violent, then?

    —

    Exhibit B builds upon the sexual strangulation of ‘the women’ in ‘devices’, while precisely eliminating her personal liberation of sexual security. The viewer must walk between the exhibits, aware of the struggle the soles of their feet encounter with the wet, marble floor to the persecution of ‘the women’s’ skin (& the unforgotten space of flesh between her legs), which to them, is all movement anyway.

    Insertion is not dictated, nor coerced, it is ‘jammed’, pummelled, immobilized within her uterus. The violation is personal, yes, but the removal of space between her legs furthers the offence that she must lose in ones translation of all we are meant to sacrifice.

    There was a window, (Atwood recalls), which is pliant for the man. ‘The woman’ is now a dominion, conquerable and contagious in here lack of exploitation. He is goverend by assumption, and therefore, once capable of interfence, his depravity of his violence will surpass the insertion of the wooden peg.

    —

    What is Exhibit B?

    a) The women of Tigray, who after being forcefully raped, succumbing to the pain of nails, screws, plastic rubbish, sand, gravel, and letters jammed into their uterus.

    b) Rape being a tactic of war and interastate conflicts in Sudan, by the RSF (Rapid Support Forces) which forced women into sexual enslavement, gangrape, sexual assualt against children, and enacting violence which displaced women and their children in the Dafur region.

    c) The men and women in the Abu Ghraib prision in Iraq, that faced psychological torture, sexual humiliation, rape, confinement, and electrical shocks which were produced by “enhanced interrogation techniques” and what we know today as “The Hooded Man”.

    d) Women, boys, girls, dogs, and animals in Palestine, Ukraine, Sudan, Congo, Vietnam, Afghantistan, Iraq, Ethipia, Mali, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Bosnia & Herzegovina (…) who become paramount staistics in reports a decade later, yet have succumbed to their injuries years prior.

    e) Annihilation.    

    —

    16.10.25

    It was Denial in my throat. All of this.

    Tania Bruguera, Title: Tribute to Ana Mendieta (1985)

    I was a petulant child, smothered by my own two hands — hands that were recognized, and therefore clenched.

    There was little articulation amongst the imposing stature of the self, maybe it was the balancing part I struggled amongst confrontation. This ‘self’ must be considerate enough to bruise it once in a while, alongside proving the subtlety of the act alone.

    Much of these days, intention is of that same false decree we hang religion from. Space (a tribute to oxymorons) must be weighed, sifted, and if appeased, saturated in front of ones mirror suitable for child-like identification. Our eyes no longer belong to the face of our mother, neither will these ‘petulant hands’, and what do I make of my righteous ability?

    I have already learned how to breath.

    A manuscript for greed, the breath is. Delicate and horrifyingly immeshed with a voice for death.

    What else have I known?

  • (no title)

    Sometimes, briefly or as though I know what it means to dream, the leaves begin to shift each time I am near, as if the tree could fathom the soul of my name. There was time spent defining energy (the soul gliding amongst tissues and muscles and nerve endings as my mouth once did on the rim of a wine glass; purely intentional in the mark I left behind). A familiar tug of war, as death mechanically hovers over the ankles (and family corners the home of the soul), that one’s eyes, saturated in hunger, blink toward their rife separation. A dilemma which begins at a curve, disjointed by laws in physics and treehouses, till the breath begs to touch the calcium of carved bone.

    I suppose my chatter toward energy is valued at the notion that it cannot be destroyed; therefore, the remnants of my smile could be altered, but not erased. So, my laugh should follow alongside the crooked shape of my eyes with each wink… (and I am finding it hard to believe in an afterlife, when your smile still exists). Maybe, it is the wind I mentioned previously?

    Anyway, I can tell you that the light, which arguably reflected off the leaves at 5 PM last Tuesday, was proof enough.

    Fuck the wind. Let’s share this fantasy together?

    Please.

    Three days ago, a surface-level cavity had to be filled, yet when they drilled away such brief remains of bone and decay, I wondered if you would see my smile clearly in the trees. Should we let this hope extend amongst the row of ants captivated by the rich, dense roots of this oak tree we buried our catastrophic fingerprints upon?

    What should we do about the winter due to arrive soon?

    Where will your smile go then?

  • Social Media As a Witness to Trauma: How Modernity Shaped a Precarious Voice for Palestinians During Genocide

    Grade: Upper Second Class, Trauma and Literature, Term 3

    *This paper has been altered since the grade has been received, to formally capture the feedback given. Please note the paper was also written within the time frame of September-December of 2024, and therefore the statistics, pictures, and comments could reflect incorrect data. In this instance, it will be necessary to return to present numbers, news articles, and first-hand sources to better understand the genocide in Palestine. Here are a few resources to incite your research:

    https://www.aljazeera.com/tag/israel-palestine-conflict/

    “It is hostile in that you’re trying to make somebody see something the way you see it, trying to impose your idea, your picture[1].”

    Joan Didion, The Paris Review (1978) 

    “The vast photographic catalogue of misery and injustice throughout the world has given everyone a certain familiarity with atrocity, making the horrible seem more ordinary — making it appear familiar, remote, inevitable[2]” Sontag’s depiction of ‘The ordinary’ situated to ‘the misery’ and ‘the injustice’ infiltrates photographs, capturing the declaration of life, of the Palestinian life, motivated by the zoom and the number of frames captured. It is then, as the blood marks the face, the smoke fills the lungs, and the bodies are immersed into rubble, do the the photographer’s intention clarify the fatal mark of perception — that of genocide. Notably removed from political and global refuge, the Palestinian voice is to become ostracized, devalued, constructed, and forcefully held in the fingertips gliding upon a screen, manipulating the once still photograph to amplify the face amongst rubble. In these instances, can the testimony of the survivor remain the same or does the influence of a collective social media voice, develop a disingenuous and unreliable narration from western publication of Palestinian genocide? Even further, Dori Laub’s trauma theory within testimony, incites question on an inability to perform the necessary responsibilities of the listeners (to ingest, respond, and empathize) whose further interpretation is situated amongst social media post. Critics have frequently determined the Palestine-Israel conflict to be strictly political, formed through peace agreements and government funding; however, I argue that the genocide of Palestinians should be expanded through an analysis of a formed, precarious voice integrated within social media, and to re-examine how the testimony of the witness is formed through modern applications of a virtual trauma to better understand the impact of a voice in a public, global sphere.  

    Theory and Trauma 

    Titled, “Two: Bearing Witness,” Dori Laub presents their theoretical relationship between the victim, the owner of a testimony, and the listener, that who is untouched by the experience yet a “co-owner of the [victims] traumatic event.[3]”  Particularly, this act of witnessing the traumatic event, characteristic of the victim’s testimony, is reflected within a technological role — a liminal, global, transitional entity that must, by its nature, connect two parties, unanimously and unpremeditated within the expansive audience. The localization of the Palestinian voice, is stringent upon exposure, repetition, a functional screen, and heighted controls of volume to persuade a genocidal replication fit for empathic response. “The absence of an empathic listener, or more radically, the absence of an addressable other, an other who can hear the anguish of one’s memories and thus affirm and recognize their realness, annihilates the story,[4]”. Therefore, If the listener can scroll, mute, cover the screen or unfollow critical photographers, can a testimony be expressed? Is the direct voice of the listener consistently active, even without physical displacement of their body, their voice, and rather enmeshed in a virtual performativity, unable to consecutively respond back? In other words, can “reciprocal identification[5]” be achieved, if the testimony cannot be shared within a physical, or even viable space? And if the voice can be heard, shared, returned, does it matter if the cry of the survivor is deemed precarious, inequal, an ‘Other’? 

    Judith Butler refines ‘frame’ in her piece, Frames of War, as a “construct[ion] around one’s deed such that one’s guilty status becomes the viewer’s inevitable conclusion,[6]” yet my aim is to expand upon her objective by incorporating the conclusion of a ‘guilty status’ through the modern lens of social media. Interestingly, modernity developed a physical tangibility of Butler’s theocraticals, as the mobile phone envelops the screams, deaths, prayers, and limbs of Palestinians within a five-inch frame, alongside the ability to turn the illuminated screen into an eventual ‘gaping, vertiginous black hole,[7]” each evening. On my own terms, I will be developing the ‘precarious voice’ as an extension of Butler’s theory of precariousness, an ideal she defines as, “… one’s life is always in some sense in the hands of the other[8]” and more generally, “…attend[ing] to the suffering of others… [and] which frames permit for the representability of the human and which do not.[9]” Attributing to my theory on the precarious voice, is Mladen Dolar’s politicized voice, that must acknowledge the voice of the ‘other,’ addressed as “…the topology of extimacy, the stimuleous inclusion/exclusion, which retains the excluded to its core.[10]” Namely, the precarious [Palestinian] voice must be excluded, politicized, unequal by westernization, and exist in a framework of suffering where ‘inevitable conclusion’ captures their voice as distant, fallible, or racially inequal. The Palestinian genesis, which is their historical testimony, is consequentially limitless, fluid, and malleable by social and technological standards, deconstructed by news outlets, censored images and words, and the inability to respond while experiencing genocide. Therefore, the forced docility of Palestinian voice must surrender to the loud, expansive, fixed voice of global organizations and colonizing governments — it once more if forced to remain a constructed opinion of circumstance, a play on numbers, or a target for international powers.

    Social Media as a Persona for Trauma 

    Scrolling, reposting, commenting, liking, sharing, donating, until the photograph of the hidden body or agonizing screams, assumes a pertinent role in articles, newspapers, talk shows, Instagram posts and Facebook arguments — it becomes controversial. The black void which must cover the despair of language, physical pain, death tolls and bombs dropped do not expect a response, it is once more a liminal, metaphysical ground capable of exposure, yet lacking the stimulation of conversation. Therefore, the listener must participate, muted or within a delayed reception, grasping at opinions from the voices of the public — dichotic, integral and “[…] crucial [to] social function.” The performance of the victim, the Palestinian confined to 8 GB of storage, must intently direct a pathos, suitable enough to contain the movement of hurried fingers, yet with enough conviction to press upon links, petitions, news articles, and GoFundMe’s. The listener must bear witness to the genocide, the gruesome images, the littered bodies, the starving children, with enough maintenance to perform dualistic procedures of social media, (scrolling, liking, sharing) yet build a steady voice for the victim, a intertextual testimony capable to withstand politicization, social alienation and economic retaliation. The owner of the testimony is not guaranteed a response, neither is the co-owner, leaving the ostracized voice to rely on civic duty and fewer bombs. 

    Drawing attention to Figure 1, the screenshot presents a grid of nine images which appear on the ‘For You’ page of Instagram when the word ‘Palestine’ is searched. Referring to boxes 7 and 8, pathea is artistically utilized, through red ink on ‘24’ and ‘Exterminated’, while assembling an urgency toward the present starvation and genocide. Rather than the common usage of photographs to unconsciously posit the Palestinian body under scrutiny and destruction, the declaration through literary means evolves a testimony constructed on facts and full stops. Determined, rather than filled with plea, the listener has taken the victim’s testimony (i.e photographs, videos, news articles) and transferred the ostracized voice into a statement, rather than a bargain. A western response, catering to rapid attention spans and a noticeable lack of violent images – the precarity of the Palestinian voice must hold enough censorship to allow the global co-owner to perform an assembly line of demands. It must be noted, within this first examples, that the exacerbation of Palestinian voices are forced to exist within exclusion, as the ‘Other’ through social and political denotions, therefore forcing the intertextual testimony of the Listener to succumb to social procedures of a powerless voice — the emphasis on panthea is then necessary within these instances. The “…means of (re)producing a body politic[11]” of inequal expectations, that the voice of the other can only be heard through recognizable conditions which produce death, suffering, and an inability to retaliate, condition social conventions of what is right to mourn in Western media. 

    Moreover, the deliberate language spreads to box 1 to utilize a platform where their dominant voice suppresses identical vocalizations by the use of requirements – you are either “Pro-Palestine or pro-genocide. There is no in between[12].” Precisely, through Allen Meek’s observations, they are forming “trauma narrative[s] constructed by public figures, media professionals, and artists to provide sites for identification[13]” Eventually, these sites strictly shape the space for voice, to conviction and expectation, toward the Palestinian suffering. Boxes four and five demonstrate the necessary persuasive language shaped by its precarious status: “One day, we will rejoice on the beaches of Gaza and celebrate a free Palestine[14]” and “Palestine will be free & Gaza will be rebuilt[15]”. A fixed voice of hope, its utterance can only incite inspiration, hope, and a necessary future, uncritical toward the genocide, but rather focused on the ability to continue the Palestinian voice.

    Allen Meek’s examination of ‘cultural trauma narratives’ in his work, “Trauma in the Digital Age,” expounds upon collective trauma which suspends “the media image, like a traumatic memory, […] as the literal trace of an event: always dislocated in time and space yet experienced with a powerful sense of immediacy and involvement10.” In other words, trauma forms a collective voice and develops into a site of personal identification through photographs, articles, bolden headlines, until Palestine is suspended, rather dislocated in its present suffering and precarious voice, lost to the many countries attempting at amplifying their own testimony. Referring to Figure 2, the screenshot captures eight different narratives from countries like Chile, Australia, Lebanon, the UK, and the US, as their own social body is “recorded and disseminated,[16]” published for the correlation between personal violence and Palestine. Is it possible that the consistent exposure to traumatic images and human suffering initiated a collective narrative that has partially traumatized societies, due to an inability to fulfill Laub’s position of the listener within the survivor’s testimony? As most of this essay is formulated through inquiry, I will briefly return to Butler and Sontag to frame the possibility of such questions. In, On Photography, Susan Sontag returns to a past as she gazes upon graphic postcards: 

    “When I looked at those photographs, something broke. Some limit had been reached, and not only that of horror; I felt irrevocably grieved, wounded, but a part of my feelings started to tighten; something went dead, something is still crying. To suffer is one thing; another thing is living with the photographed images of suffering, which does not necessarily strengthen conscience and the ability to be compassionate. It can also corrupt them[17]”

    Accordingly, trauma does not discriminate, and modernity is relentless to the morality of life; the repercussions are evident by both witnesses, that of the survivor and the listener, until their vulnerability of the skin infiltrates the emotional appeal of the Western mind. Modernity has expanded upon trauma, made it accessible, more frequent, louder, as the “agonized vocalization[18]” drowns must social construction trap the screams from the face and the displacements of the body into a lit-up screen, tucked in a back pocket. In other words, the unconscious relationship produced through social media entangles both parties, entrenched in norms and conventions, until “repeated exposure to images becomes less real.[19]” and while I doubt that apathy has severed global minds, does the repetition of screams appear duller due to their bare life? Once more, I acknowledge Butler’s framework to outline my questioning: “[…] how [do] such norms operate to produce certain subjects as “recognizable” persons and to make others decidedly more difficult to recognize.[20]” Does the precarious voice involuntarily appear less internationally, and more so through social media as repetition renders the global voice confused in its complicity? Subsequently, my field of questioning is theoretical and lacking in definitive solutions, yet the performance of social media is unequivocally fundamental to modern progression and demonstrations of a voice, and through this intertwined relationship, an analysis of global events can be attended to the immorality of human atrocity.

    Palestinian Testimony 

    Mustafa Abu Ali’s 1974 documentary, ‘They Do Not Exist’, addresses the political landscape of Palestine, Lebanon refugee camps, guerrilla training, while also converging aesthetics to construct the beauty of the country under Israeli bombardment. After disappearing for almost a decade after the bombings of Beirut, the twenty-four minutes construct a vulnerability, one which humanizes their precarity past western construction as letters pass between child to soldier, families gather rubble from their own bedrooms, and mothers grieve their deceased children.  

    When formulating the Palestinian voice, the dialogue confronts their persecution and ethnic suppression, rather than encompassing their culture, beliefs, and community. Their construction of a cultural narrative must be silenced by the subjection of bombardment, suppressing expression and voices, turning them into photographs and stills. It, as in the Palestinian voice since the Nakba in 1948 became precarious. Displaced, expunged, and socially conditioned to the biological premise of ‘bare life’, their ostracized identity must rest upon the Western Saviour complex. 

    The headline of Figure 3 as, “There is no more Palestine… It does not EXIST” exacerbates the cultural erasure through the capitalization and denotation of ‘Exist’ to the full stop of the statement — the contrast of ‘no more’ to ‘exist’ consciously elucidates a present existence, which can only be exterminated, hindered, injured, or sequester in order to deliver the promise of the statement. Through a present reception, the use of film, categorically shies away from social media within the five decades since it release, yet the removal of orality for the replacement of falling rubble, initiated a present depiction of ecological and physical devastation amongst Palestinian land and their people. It simply appears that Abu Ali’s understand of pathea within his film, characteristically shelters the Western opinion, overshadowing the generational pain, muted despair, and consistent violence to fit into the nature of aestheticism for saviour complexes.

    Giorgio Agamben extends Foucault’s biopolitics [30] to develop his theory of ‘bare life’. Akin to the precarity of voice, the Italian philosopher expresses: “[…] in the “politicization” of bare life – the metaphysical task par excellence – the humanity of living man is decided.[21]” Critically, the unconscious construction of ‘humanity’ must be postponed, hindered, and unapplicable within the application of politics — namely, a body politics of the Palestinian, unable to deconstruct the ‘Other’ or ‘Oriental’ life. Employed, the Palestinian body must integrate, join, and learn modern forms of media: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, etc. English must follow — plea-filled, desperate, filled to the brim with prayers to simply be heard. It is through this exchange that the endured trauma, the death and the injured, must hope that the new co-owner, the Western unprecarious voice, will deliver a testimony, careful to translate the urgency capable for movement. 

    Introducing Figure 4 and Figure 5, the screenshots taken from the documentary mirror the devastation in social media posts presently, yet, I find it necessary to display the Palestinian voices rupturing their own precarity, as their hope-filled monologues present a recovered future:

    “I was outside during the raise I rushed to rescue my children. I found only 4. The 5th (Jahar) was not there. […] finally they found him under the rubble. It is a burning suffering for a mother. Many Palestinian mothers went through this. […] He is not the only martyr. We are all ready to sacrifice for Palestine[23]” 

    Surrounded by her children, Figure 5, displays a mother holding a photograph of her eldest son, killed by the bombs dropped upon the Palestinians by Israel, yet my emphasizes rest upon her last line of, “We are all ready to sacrifice for Palestine.” These sentiments are expansive and embraced all around Palestine, a national belief and passion, that has been produced on their own land, production crew, people, and voices, untouched by media outlets and news articles. The testimony of the survivor is untainted, and most notably, ends in belief even with their repeated exposure to trauma. Within this sentiment, I find it necessary to allow this essay to not only become a co-owned testimony for Palestinian voice, but a construction of the voice they have held for centuries: “Our people will never bend to oppression and killing. We are fighting for peace and justice[24]”.

            A Palestinian poet, Olivia Elias’s piece “Day 38, Nov. 14, I Didn’t See the Fall This Year” captures the continuous bombing on Gaza from October 7th and her reflection on the genocide. Referenced as Figure 6, I want to draw attention to the constructed Palestinian voice through poetic form and repetition. The spaces are intentional, physical separators that cater to the repetitive, horrifying moments of descending bombs upon the land of Palestine. “Your small bodies     which didn’t get the time to grow up[25]” or “I must say goodbye    goodbye to every single thing[26]” construct Elias’s precarious voice, immersed in a politicized role of addressing the immoral conditions, the uninterrupted death, the exclusion as “the Big Chief of America[27]” and the “support of their powerful Allies[28]” decimate her personal voice, when “the cranes fly away” and fall lacks a return. Agamben returns to Aristotle quoting, “[a] living animal with the additional capacity for political existence[29]” and while the philosopher is speaking upon the existence of man, precarity illustrates the dehumanization, the subjection of ‘animal’ whose existence is political, similar to Abu Ali’s documentary as the expression of fascist beliefs shape their suppression.

    Overall, a lack of information is due to the limited scope of the Palestinian voice, its pertinence to social media, and its modern effects within trauma studies, leaving gaps within my claims. Several limitations present questions to be answered, as the persistent death of Palestinians and their irretrievable stories continue, yet answers may be possible in the future, especially in the field of literature, through non-fiction pieces and detailed records in the coming years. As the precarious voice was attempted, developed, and expanded, the acceptability of my remarks may be questioned, yet in the context of the political, it is necessary to address the inconsistencies and amend the rupture present in human right affairs and social issues. Overall, I attempt to argue the classified precarious voice of Palestinians, which is altered on social media not only as a witness to the events through the role of the listener, but alongside the modified testimony of the survivor as they fight to humanize themselves.

    Bibliography:

     Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, California Stanford University Press) 

    Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London ; New York: Verso) 

    Butler, Judith. 2009. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (London; New York: Verso) 

    Dolar, Mladen. 2006. A Voice and Nothing More (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Mit Press, Cop) 

    Felman, Shoshana and Dori Laub. 1992. Testimony : Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History (New York: Routledge) 

    Instagram. 2020. ‘Login • Instagram’, Instagram.com <https://www.instagram.com/explore/search/keyword/?q=palestine&gt; [accessed 20 November 2024]

    Meek, Allen, ‘Trauma in the Digital Age’, in Trauma and Literature, ed. by J. Roger Kurtz, Cambridge Critical Concepts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 167–80 

    Kuehl, Interviewed by Linda. 1978. ‘The Art of Fiction No. 71’, Www.theparisreview.org <https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3439/the-art-of-fiction-no-71-joan-didion&gt;

    Arab Lit. 2023. ‘A Poem by Olivia Elias from Day 38, Nov. 14’, ARABLIT & ARABLIT QUARTERLY <https://arablit.org/2023/11/18/a-poem-by-olivia-elias-from-day-38-nov-14/>&nbsp;

    Palestine Diary. 2010. ‘They Do Not Exist – Film by Mustafa Abu Ali’, Www.youtube.com <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WZ_7Z6vbsg>&nbsp;

    Sontag, Susan. 1977. On Photography (New York Picador) 

    The Independent. 2024. ‘Palestine’, The Independent <https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/palestine?CMP=ILC-refresh>&nbsp;

    [1] Kuehl 1978.

    [2] Sontag 2002: 21.

    [3] Laub 1992: 57. 

    [4] Laub 1992: 68.

    [5] Laub 1992: 63.

    [6] Butler 2009: 8.

    [7] Laub 1992: 64.

    [8] Butler 2009: 14.

    [9] Butler 2009: 63.

    [10] Dolar 2006: 106.

    [11] Meek 2018: 170.

    [12] Instagram 2024

    [13] Meek 2018: 168.

    [14] Instagram 2024.

    [15] Ibid.

    [16] Meek 2018: 167.

    [17] Sontag 2002: 20.

    [18] Butler 2002: 133.

    [19] Sontag 2002: 20.

    [20] Butler 2009: 6.

    [21] Agamben 1998: 8.

    [23] Palestine Diary 2010: 19:57- 21:08.

    [24] Palestine Diary 2010: 18:06- 18:21.

    [25] Arab Lit 2023: l. 19.

    [26] Arab Lit 2023: l.20.

    [27] Arab Lit 2023: l. 10.

    [28] Arab Lit 2023 : l.9.

    [29] Agamben 1998: 7.

    [30] Foucault’s biopolitics can be discovered within his work, History of Sexuality, and develops the idea as ‘a political rationality which takes the administration of life and populations as its subject: ‘to ensure, sustain, and multiply life, to put this life in order”

    Figure 1: ScreenshotInstagram Feed when ‘Palestine’ is searched on the ‘For You’ page.

    Figure 2: Screenshot of the main page, Al Jazeera News Feed, September 15 2024.

    Figure 3: Screenshot of scene from ‘They Do Not Exist’. Youtube.

    Figure 4: Still from documentary, ‘They Do Not Exist’. Youtube.

    Figure 5: Still of documentary, ‘They Do Not Exist’. Youtube.

    Figure 6: Olivia Elias, ‘Day 38, Nov. 14, I Didn’t See the Fall This Year’

  • A Greek Mimesis of Persian Tragedy

    Grade: 65, 2:1; Drama, Term 4 (2500 words)

    *Paper has not been altered after feedback has been given.

    Tragedy is socially dramatized and linguistically undefined, positioning the polis1 toward ‘arbitrary and sterile2’ definitions, with little effect. The contextualisation of human suffering is mimetically presented within Aeschylus Persians, as Greek interpretation strives to imitate Persian political atrophy and civic decimation within a framework of the Persian – Greco War. Herein, Steiners’ definition of ‘Tragedy’ presents a dualistic argument able to sustain the dialogic expressions of the characters, as grief is constructed within the narrative: “The intentional focus can be narrow and specific, as in ‘a tragic accident’ or undefinably spacious, as in the shopworn phrase ‘a tragic sense of life’3”. I aim to expand upon choral identity within a narrative framework alongside a corporeality present in lamentations to explicate a reconstruction of human suffering of Persians’ through a mimetic, Greek, tragedian perspective.  

    Choral Identity and Vocalization 

    Participation of the chorus in Aeschylus Persians is strategically abnormal. Vocal and dominant within the dialogue, the group of women defy a traditional placement that is commonly mollified by moral ideology or a modest collective commentary, seen within Euripides Medea or even, Aeschylus Agamemnon. The presentation of the choral identity begins within Aeschylus temporal, theatrical depiction, as his “[…] display of an Athenian chorus dressed as Persian males right at the opening of his 472 BCE play was a daring and, as far as we know, unparalleled gesture4”. Aeschylus challenge toward the presentation of a female-dominant role, negates an ancient theatrical structure, submerged in gender presentation, social power, and vocality. This (‘daring’) act exemplifies the bold nature of the tragedian, whose decisive linguistic conventions, posit his work outside social convention — as I later argue, to utilize as means to further potent representations of human suffering.  Additionally, it’s “fundamentally chora medium5” rejects enforced civic displays of public mourning, that which was “permitted, although in a controlled form6” and could not be re-enacted by “women under the age of sixty, other than close relations, [who] could enter the chamber of the deceased or follow the procession to the tomb7”. Aeschylus’ intent surpasses a Greek, social presentation of mourning, to depict a Persian pathos existing outside Athenian civic obligation, elucidating the dramatic within a cacophony of chants, wails, laments, and lacerations.  

    To begin, I aim to construct a timeline of the Persian chorus to facilitate their progressive, polyphonic voice as it encounters a tragic framework of war. Before receiving word from the messenger, the Queen converses with the chorus on an omen she received with fear. The routine role of moral guidance is sustained within the response of the chorus, as they reply:  

    Mother, we do not wish to say what would make you wither unduly fearful or unduly optimistic. You should approach the gods with supplications and ask them, if there is anything sinister in what you saw8. 

    Yet, as the chorus immerses their voice within the Persian politic, “moments of ‘self-referentiality9” deconstruct their role within mediation, opting to dialogically employ pathea10 as means to draw the audience into the familiar condition of grief – an ‘integrated experience’ outlined by Carter. As the socio-political and economic life in the Persian city, Susa, bears transitional tension, the mimetic dramatized upon conditionally relies on Aeschylus knowledge on the Greek politic and legislation, to correctly divide the public and private sphere of potential suffering. The body of the chorus unflinchingly condemns Xerxes fatal actions, as the young king went to war with the Greeks: “Otototoi, you are saying / that the dead bodies of our loved ones / are floating, soaked and constantly buffeted by salt water, / shrouded in mantles that drift in the waves11”, reconstructing a new temperament of the chorus, through the sheer evaluation of Persian bodies floating amongst the sea. Steiner’s broad sense of tragedy captures dream-filled omens and spacious declaration – “and < in every house / the woman left behind > howls for her young husband12” – while also targeting the dead bodies of (‘loved ones), (‘buffeted), (‘shrouded) and (‘floating’) amongst the sea thousands of miles away. The intentional narration, vocality, and tonality immersed in accusation the chorus fosters their eventual barbaric action within laments and public bouts of mourning. This vocality of anguish slightly shifts in its accommodation from the internal to external justification, as the chorus directs their speech to the public space before them: “O you god who has caused such toil and grief, how very heavily you have leaped and trampled on the entire Persian race!13” The act, formerly confined to dialogue of the Queen, Messenger, and Chorus, is unconsciously torn as the women turn their attention to the metaphysical, to a God with capability to proctor death fit for immense human suffering. Placating, questioning, blaming, and sadness, the liminal atmosphere of the chorus’ bargaining eventually commences full-bodied laments that harbor a collective anguish, turmoil, and anger of the (‘Persian race’).  

    Furthermore, the mimetic performance rests upon an historic reality, which eliminates the prepotent of the mythic, until it becomes a“[…] kind of lamentation more shocking, for the audience is encouraged to compare what they see with their own funerary practices14”. The funerary procession is noncorporal, the bodies of the soldiers cannot be returned to Susa, leaving Xerxes in worn out attire, and a weeping chorus to fulfill a memorial of the lost men. Specifically, the function of the chorus as a collective, capable of anguished re-enactment, yet fundamentally immersed in Greek mimicry to feasibly represent the Persian individual concurrently encountering a personal, vivid suffering.  

    In comparison, Alice Oswald’s, Memorial, captures the similar literary essence of dedication amongst a funerary procession, developing an oral cemetery for the lost bodies: 

    DEMUCHUS 

    LAOGONUS 

    DARDANUS 

    TROS 

    MULIUS 

    RHIGMOS 

    LYCAON 

    MYDON15 

    Aeschylus’ Persian eulogy exacerbates the role of the chorus – their demands target the power dynamic between citizen and King, dismissing civic hierarchy to emphasize the suffering the women unconsciously feel. Language becomes a weapon of distrust, commencing verbal accusations against Xerxes through the use of (‘you’), while also suggest the young king is neither (‘brave’) and (‘nobly-born) due to his fatal actions. Before the lamentations proceed, the chorus bemoans stanzas of notable soldiers lost from this encounter, crying out: “Where did you leave Pharnuchus, / yes, and the brave Ariomardus? / Where is the lord Seuacles / or the nobly-born lilaeus, / Memphis, Tharybis and Masistras, / Artembares and Hystaechmas?/ I ask you this again16”. Mirroring Oswald’s declaration, the constructed voice of the once mediating chorus is left to return the dead amongst Persian lands by a verbal eulogy, leaving the group of women to unconsciously redefine their capabilities to a role of mourners.  

    Corporeality and Lamentations 

    Correspondingly, the two distinguished laments of the chorus, (l.255-59) and (l.908-1077) redefine characteristic responses to suffering, as Aeschylus shifts from the internal (private) to the external (public), within his displays of anguish. Yet, this shift into a public sphere, orients the mourning into the political, defining the act of laments indecent, unqualifiable, or unnecessary through representative measures of class, gender, and age. Paul Kottman expands upon the mimetic within a philosophical framework, denoting the theatrics to hold political qualities, allowing for the expansion into the role of the chorus: “[…] like the praxis it imitates – is also pre-political, for it is precisely the interaction that adheres in speaking and action among a plurality that opens the space for the polis17”. The Persian (‘polis’) is intertextual and heavily reliant on Aeschylus interpretation of the Greeks socio-economic, politic, and literary convention, simply due to the representative nature of mimesis. Therefore, Greek tragedies like The Fall of Miletus18 contrive anecdotes of tragic pathos Athenians experienced, whose substantially vivid baseline of grief, becomes a unification of meaning and significance, that would be pertinent to its application in Persian suffering19.  

    Within the tragedy, I aim to touch upon the severity of the laments exercised by the Chorus and the furthered incitement of verbal encouragement of the young king, Xerxes. Aeschylus’ stage directions signal a shift within the vocality of the chorus, alluding to an exacerbated tonal shift of anguish: “[They shift from chant to song] / The land laments its native youth / killed by Xerxes, who crammed Hades with Persians20”. The accusatory tone is projected within a unified, collective manner, yet a polyphonic21 structure surrounds the notion of ‘chant’ (i.e it necessitates a crowd to project in a unison manner) and produces a vivid spectacle of voice to demonstrate public suffering. Even further, the utilization of the body to endure laceration and physical punishment within a lamentation, is mimetic – representative of women in Greek processions of mourning: “[…] women displayed their mourning […] by beating, and sometimes baring, their chests, by loosening and tearing their hair, by crying and wailing, by tearing their robes and by scratching their cheeks22”. Persian suffering, therefore, rest upon the intertextual conceptions and assumption of character, alongside Aeschylus framework and personal encounter of war. 

    Ultimately, the expansion of corporal identity within the chorus expands to adjust to the demands of Xerxes, and crucially the lack of recovery toward the bodies of the soldiers:   

    Xerxes 

    and Chorus 

    Ototototoi! 

    Chorus 

    And mixed in with my groans will be – 

    oi! – black, violent blows. 

    Xerxes 

    Beat your breasts too, and accompany the action with a 

    Mysian cry. 

    Chorus 

    Painful, painful! 

    Xerxes 

    Now, please, ravage the white hairs of your beard23. 

    The (‘black, violent blows’) composed alongside the beating of the breast, produce a gendered, physical, and an aggressive tone defined by (‘groans’) and the (‘Mysian cry’). The suffering surpasses the emotional, liminal boundary to reassign the chorus as a witness and a narrator to their own grief. The collective identity of the chorus merges the private individual of the women to an uncontrollable entity, encouraged to experience the (‘painful’), fatal disposition of the Persian soldiers. Aeschylus continuation of mimetic narratives within a Greek understanding, situates Persian suffering past individual fatality to a unified, collective identity of civic collapse.  

    Thus, the ‘living memory24’ of Aeschylus and Athenians alike, constitute a relation to a ‘mimetic performance25’ that can support, characterize, and develop a theatrical performance of human suffering outside a cultural context. Aeschylus’ Persians interacts within a theoretical framework of polyphonic and mimetic analysis, expanding Steiners’ dichotomy of tragedy to a vivid corporeality and unique narration of a Persian chorus.  

    —–

    Footnotes:

    [1] See, The Oxford Classical Dictionary, definition of polis. In this paper, I will be referring to Oswyn Murray’s definition listed: The polis is the characteristic form of Greek urban life; its main features are small size, political autonomy, social homogeneity, sense of community and respect for law.

    [2] Steiner 2004: 2.

    [3] Steiner 2004: 1

    [4] Hopman: 58.

    [5] Hopman: 59.

    [6] Foley 2003: 25.

    [7] Foley 2003: 23.

    [8] Aeschylus 2008: l. 215-17.

    [9] Carter 2011: 247.

    [10] Utilized within a plural sense of pathos.

    [11] Aeschylus 2008: l. 274-77.

    [12] Aeschylus 2008: l. 12-13.

    [13] Aeschylus 2008: l. 515-6.

    [14] Swift 2010.

    [15] Oswald 2012: 12.

    [16] Aeschylus 2008: l. 967-73.

    [17] Kottman 2003: 82.

    [18] Kottman produces the account of Athenians watching the performance of The Fall of Miletus within the writing of Herodotus. I have taken an excerpt for reference of suggest claims above to articulate a baseline for Greek suffering. “The audience in the theater burst into tears, and the author was fined a thousand drachmae for reminding them of a disaster which touched them so closely. A law was subsequently passed forbidding anybody ever to put the lay on stage again” (Kottman 2003: 83.)

    [19] Further information is sourced from Steinby 2013: 2. Excerpt follows as such: “The unit of the world in aesthetic seeing is not a unity of meaning or sense – not a systematic unity, but a unity is concretely architectonic”

    [20] Aeschylus 2008: l. 923-26.

    [21] Polyphony in this context is was derived from Steinby 213: 10. The definition used is ‘polyphony’ arises from persons with different world views encountering each other in the concrete events of life”.

    [22] Hurschmann 2006: Brill.

    [23] Aeschylus 2008: l. 1052-56.

    [4] Kottman 2003: 97.

    [25] Ibid.

    Citations: 

    Αἰσχύλος., et al. Aeschylus. Edited by Alan H. Sommerstein, Harvard University Press, 2008. 

    Carter, D. M. Why Athens?: A Reappraisal of Tragic Politics. Oxford University Press, 2011. 

    Hurschmann, R. (. (2006). Mourning. In Brill’s New Pauly Online. Brill. https://doi-org.bris.idm.oclc.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e1219110  

    Kottman, P. A. (2003). Memory, “Mimesis,” Tragedy: The Scene before Philosophy. Theatre Journal, 55(1), 81–97. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25069181 

    Murray, O. (2012). polis. In The Oxford Classical Dictionary.: Oxford University Press. Retrieved 25 Mar. 2025,  

    https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199545568.001.0001/acref-9780199545568-e-5162.

    Oswald, Alice. Memorial: An Excavation of the Iliad. Faber and Faber, 2011. 

    Steinby L. Bakhtin and Lukács: Subjectivity, Signifying Form and Temporality in the Novel. In: Steinby L, Tintti T, eds. Bakhtin and His Others: (Inter)Subjectivity, Chronotope, Dialogism. Anthem Press; 2013:1-18. 

    Steiner, G. (2004). “Tragedy,” Reconsidered. New Literary History, 35(1), 1–15. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057818&nbsp;

    Swift, L. A., ‘7 Thrēnos and Ritual Lament’, The Hidden Chorus: Echoes of Genre in Tragic Lyric, Oxford Classical Monographs (Oxford, 2010; online edn, Oxford Academic, 1 May 2010), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199577842.003.0008, accessed 25 Mar. 2025.  

  • Roman Approach to ‘Other’ Cults

    Roman Approach to ‘Other’ Cults

    Grade: A*, First-Class Honours / Pagan Religions of the Roman Empire, Term 4

    Roman cults centred their religious, political, and social beliefs, around an anthropocentric system, as it captured ritualistic practices and lavish temples, establishing a metaphysical hierarchy. As Rome expanded into East and Western territories, the integration of regional ‘Other’ cults, their campaigns struggled to integrate Roman belief as Persian Magi, human sacrifice, and the presence of esoteric traditions threaten the sanctity of their established empire. The purpose of this essay is to address the dualistic approach and cultural dissension toward the Persian and Celtic-Gallic regions, as the construction of the ‘Other’ is formulated by literary narratives and political agendas.

    The ‘Oriental Other’ is textualized through a tumultuous history of the Persian and Roman Empire, as six centuries of conflict and religious distinction end with acculturation of regional cults. Notably, my approach to the Eastern Empire will rely upon strictly Roman textualization due to, “a paucity of Persian sources and the prevailing Western orientation1”.

    The Persian Magi existed within the semantic field of ‘philosophical-religious magic2’, of which presentation toward their wise character and a ‘hereditary priestly clan’, conspired a Roman literary tradition to interpret, and further demean, the tribe. The practice of Magi was fearsome by its ability to subvert the metaphysical hierarchy, eliminating the position of the daimon, a role necessary for communication to Gods in Roman cults. Herodotus and Catullus remark on the practices of the Magi, declaring, “the Magi as ‘employing enchantments’ when sacrificing white horses to cross the river Strymon3.” and “[…] regards them with contempt especially for the incestuous conjugal customs4 Ibid.”. Running concurrently with contempt, the fear displayed threaten political certainty through expansion and war. Augustus revaluation of the tribe left him to, ‘equate it [magia] with goetia5’. The degradation of the Persian Magi could be linked to the ‘Oriental Other’ the Romans utilized to address foreign cults, yet the Romanic approach to ‘magus’ solidified their dissension toward the Eastern Empire.

    Furthermore, the complexity of their conflict expands from the Roman-Persian Wars, 54 BC – 628 AD, defined by contradictory literary and religious rhetoric:

    The opponents whose despotism, slavishness, luxury and cruelty were the exact opposite of all the virtues of the Greeks. At the same time, though, they had been highly impressed by the Persians and in many spheres of life busily copied them6

    To a greater extent, the (‘opponents’) integration of Isis* and Osiris into the sphere of Roman cults exacerbates my dualistic approach, as the Hellenistic world’s apt attribution to religious acceptance marks a defining cultural modification. I aim to briefly capture the Romanization of Isis, as an Egyptian and Iranian cult figure, with literary compositions from The Metamorphosis of Apuleius and a modern explication from Susan Walker:

    *Upon feedback, it is to be noted that the importance of Isis within a Roman context, as she is not an Iranain diety, and can be furtherd through necessary integration of sources support my claims of Roman response.

    The dedication of a statue of Aphrodite to Isis surely indicates by the Hadrianic period Isis had taken over ground that had been sacred to Aphrodite. The record of the marble stele (4) shows that the two cults were unconnected in the first century B.C. By the second century A.D, Isis had become predominant7.


    Isis is re-positioned, re-constructed, and re-developed within Apuleius narrative until she succeeds power over the Roman god, Fortuna, and is reborn into the service and ‘the providence of the highest goddess8. ’ by the Numidian poet, Apuleius. The worship of Isis constitutes shrines, statues, and altars amongst the Capitol, through demolition, inauguration, or banishment of the cult by emperors. Figure 2 displays her sanctuary built in the early 2nd century, headless, and draped in Hellenistic garments, elucidating a dualism of permanence toward her standing statue, surrounded and covered in Romanic architecture, yet a by-product of dissent as her bodice is all that upholds the ‘Oriental’ other in Roman belief.

    Additionally, Roman approach to the Gallic-Celtic cults and Druidism, sustained a literary tradition of depreciation, demanding their practices were inhumane or impure through “barbaric forms of sacrifice and divination in [the] Gaul9”. Insistent on the devious nature in the Gallic-Celtic region, Lucan writes in his text, “[…] ceremonies of the gods / barbarous in ritual, altars furnished with hideous offerings, / every tree is sanctified with human blood10”. Specifically, the orientation of goetic magic was enriched and dramatized for literary enjoyment, drawing upon the visceral violence and human sacrifices (’sanctified with human blood’) the tribe seem to partake in. Consequentially, as Roman cults prohibited human sacrifice, deeming the action to be impure, the Druid rituals are deemed improper by cultural dissension, and therefore pose risk to Romanic religion through centrism and the transactional relationship with their Gods.

    The negative approach employed is fastened to political agendas — that which posit the Gallic-Celtic empire as foreign land critical to the expansion of the Roman Empire. Druidism, by association to the Gallic, parallels the harsh connotations of previous ‘Other’ cults, through political sovereignty and “intimations of the occult11”. The aristocracy of the Druids ‘united the Gallic tribes in a loose religious union12’, persisting alongside the Western territory during the Gallic Wars. Declared a political danger by Claudius, the metaphysical power posed critical advancements for the Romans, aimed toward the elimination of the Druids. Referring to Figure 1, David and Monnet place a Roman soldier at the centre of the sketch, depicting his stretched-out arm as an order, conducting the pointed finger to a fatal sentence for the Druids, tied upon a stake, to be punished to death by fire.

    Alongside the anti-Roman rhetoric of the Druids, the Gallic and Celtic Western regions encountered Romanic cultish belief during their period of expansion, as the convergence of differencing produced cultural dissension amongst Roman literary rhetoric. Classified as 1313 Strabo 1923.structure of the Romanic cult. “witlessness and boastful[…]13”, the character of the Britons was ultimately reconstructed as Roman cults approached their regional religions. The Celtic and Gallic territories faced submission through the integration of their land, relinquishing the nationalistic, political shape of a religious belief that ultimately threatened the

    Overall, Roman approach to ‘Oriental’ and ‘Other’ cults offer insight on their cultural dissension and a distinction in literary rhetorical dichotomies. The Persian Empire’s religious integration, yet belief and proceedings in Magi present contrasting Romanic approach through their six centuries of conflict. The Celtic-Gallic and Druids depict the general atmosphere of Roman expansion in foreign or regional lands, as political and cultural immersion shadows the Britons past of Magi and


    Figure 1. A Roman soldier is ordering the burning of the druids who are tied to a stake. Etching by F.A. David after C. Monnet

    Figure 2. Temple of Isis. Delos Island, Greece, Schmuel Magal, Sites and Photos

    1: Ehoward 2006

    2: Costantini 2019: 25.

    3: Costantini 2019: 26.

    4: Ibid.

    5: Costantini 2019: 27.

    6: Bremmer 2008: 243.

    7: Walker 1979: 248.

    8: Apuleius 1998: 226

    9: Last 1949: 3.

    10: Lucan 1992: l. 403-407.

    11: Dewitt 1938: 320.

    12: Tamblyn 1909: 22.

    13: Strabo 1923.


    Bibliography:

    Apuleius. 1998. The Golden Ass or Metamorphoses, (London, Penguin Books).

    Constantini, Leonardo. ‘Exploring the semantic complexity of the voces mediae: magus, magicus, and magia’, in Volume 1 Words and Sounds, ed. by Nigel Holmes, Marijke Ottink, Josine Schrickx and Maria Selig. (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter), pp. 21-32.

    DeWitt, Norman J. “The Druids and Romanization.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, vol. 69, 1938, pp. 319–32. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/283182. Accessed 20 Mar. 2025.

    Ehoward. 2006. ‘The History of the Roman-Persian Wars’ < https://www.historynet.com/roman-persian-wars/.&gt; [Accessed: 15/3/2025]

    Last, Hugh. “Rome and the Druids: A Note.” The Journal of Roman Studies, vol. 39, 1949, pp. 1–5. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/297701. Accessed 20 Mar. 2025.

    Lucan. 1992. ‘Book 3’, in ‘Lucan: Civil War’ ed. by Susan H. Braund. (Oxford: Oxford University Press), l. 399-411.

    Monnet, Charles, 1732-1809?, and David, François-Anne, 1741-1824. A Roman Soldier Is Ordering the Burning of the Druids Who Are Tied to a Stake. Etching by F.A. David after C. Monnet. 1 print : etching, with engraving, [1784]. Wellcome Collection, JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.24887652. Accessed 19 Mar. 2025.

    Strabo, Geography 4. 4. 5, Volume II: Books 3-5, trans. by Horace Leonard Jones,

    Loeb Classical Library 50 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1923)

    Tamblyn, W. F. “British Druidism and the Roman War Policy.” The American Historical Review, vol. 15, no. 1, 1909, pp. 21–36. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1835422. Accessed 20 Mar. 2025.

    Temple of Isis. Built ca. 166 – 88 BC. Sites and Photos. Artstor, JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.15229763. Accessed 19 Mar. 2025.

    Walker, S. (1979). A Sanctuary of Isis on the South Slope of the Athenian Acropolis. The Annual of the British School at Athens, 74, 243–258. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30103562

  • Crisis, Intellects & Love.

    Editor

    to Me

    Re: ‘Crisis’

    Amanda,

    Carry the child-like wonder of possibility on your left hip, graze fingertips upon a melting, egregious split your lips are capable of — that which holds back weathered teeth and a home to hold laughter.

    Imitate the dictionary upon your dresser — be malleable and forget the definition of a monster and the act of surrendering; become corrosive or generous, watch how the sun falls first, then decide. Capture a big word, then use it, like a header or a new name. Don’t carry it in your sodden wallet, let the syllables shatter amongst the[ir] cheeks. Smother. Recollect. Strategize. Become abbrasive.

    Then, define “‘Crisis’”.

    Trace the freckles, drowsy in winter sun, until an opening gives. Fit the body between the slim carving of wasting vessels, seep between the bone, re-define oxygen, carbon, the blood from your mother. Sleep deliciously, past noon, till dinner must hold the stomach accountable, breath then, I suppose.

    Return back to your arbitrary question. Simmer, dwell, practice hand gestures and whimsical movements of your hips, align your back, breath, send an email to your therapist.

    Leave the answer for tomorrow morning.

    Best,

    Editor

    —

    I contemplated the subjection of my mind / my teenage years / the pressure behind my eyes / the swell of my stomach / the political atrophy of global governments / starvation and homeless populations / the plummeting of human rights / coral reefs succumbing to bleaching / the metal detectors at the school entrances / my first period / the right to love / carry the fetus / hold the blood in your hands / eighteen with five credit cards / tasers, rape whistles, pepper spray, the word fire / how expensive plan B is / productivity to guilt to profit to neglect to capitalism / modern slavery and child labour / rampant ecological devastation / food deserts / carbon emissions / therapy cost / the wealth divide / femicide / death.

    The skin has stretched from the crushed liquid of my spine to the gruesome perspiration upon fingertips — I had no control, the weather was harsh, annual blood test have become far to weekly. [I could not exist without crisis, or disaster and the far too many lists that developed from anxiety-riddled midnight catastrophes. Here would be the proper time to imagine, dedicate a paragraph, the journal four years old and barely reputable in terms of cohesiveness. I did this to spare your imagination and my blood pressure levels, but might you read this and insert your own crises, laid bare, as you remember to unclench your hands.]

    Your crisis will continue through flying spaceships, snow-covered summers, a ferocious PMC, the awkward conversations of paper straws, an incarcerated womb, everyone starving – furiously, desperately, unconsciously. Crises cannot be wretched from you — for this, you must make this a positive, generous, even holy belief.

    Doubt. Become your own religion. Demand crisis to submit to your uncertainty. Re-name the holy practice of ‘Crisis’, to begin with.

    Breath.

    —

    “We are here and we have to do something nurturing, that we respect before we go. We must. It is more interesting. More complicated. More intellectually demanding and more morally demanding to love somebody. To take care of somebody. To make one other person feel good. Now the dangers of that are the dangers of setting up as a marytr or as you know the one who without whom it would not be done. That is the problem of the human mind and the soul but we have to try that. We have to try that. We have to do that, and not doing it is so poor for the self. It’s so poor for the mind. It’s so uninteresting to live without that and it has no risk. There’s no risk involved, and that just seems to make life not just livable but a gallant, gallant event. If you want to hang onto your sanity or hang onto yourself, don’t live anything, it’ll hurt… It’s so risky. People don’t want to get hurt, they don’t want to be left out, they don’t want to be abandoned, you see? It’s though love is always some present you’re giving somebody else and it’s really a present you’re giving yourself.”

    Toni Morrison

    It felt realistic, at least once the morning meditation, coffee, teeth-brushing, mind-numbing warmth of a second-hand turtleneck — would provoke a decency among me, should I have forgotten it the night before, slumped upon wilted sheets and questionable philosophies toward lust. I became attracted to the possibility of love without the necessary lesion of trauma. It was intellectually stimulating to demand more, to perform heartbreak ritually (each six-month job, friendships constructed around an hour each week, forgetting the take the trash out before Friday morning), to be unrealistic.

    There is the prosperity of fantasy, the out-of-date requests copied over by generations, the odd cliché of brushing your teeth each morning lest you both stare into the mirror at the same time(?). I could use love to explain my failures, dilemmas, sorrows, pleasures, lack of writing in my journal (as Ha Jin wrote best…)

    My notebook has remained blank for months
    thanks to the light you shower
    around me. I have no use 
    for my pen, which lies
    languorously without grief.

    Nothing is better than to live
    a storyless life that needs 
    no writing for meaning -- 
    when I am gone, let other say
    they lost a happy man, 
    though no one can tell how happy I was.

    Ha Jin, Missed Time

    Yet, yet, yet. […]

    I should become the easy assurance produced by love. (I could) Submit to the individuality the connection offers, allow it to re-define its bruising meaning, and as (I)/you turn to arbitrary paths of drugs and lust, might someone provide sufficient evidence (I)/you can one day embroider on a pillow or smoother across your lips.

    DEBTS AND LESSONS: (taken from Zadie Smith’s Intimations, Six Essays)

    CONTIGENCY:

    “That my mother had no hatred for her own skin, hair, nose. backside, nor any part of her… That I was considered ‘ugly’ young and ‘beautiful’ later. That by the time the external opinion changed it was too late to create any real change in me… That I met a human whose love has allowed me not to apply got love too often through my work — even when we’ve hurt each other desperately”

    Within these parts of Zadie Smith, I wish to reconcile love with crisis and love with stimulation — that of the present and future events. A brief moment where the application of style, in which this reference is subjected to the style of ones existence, their youth, the presentation which is of ‘little protection against catastrophe’ and therefore can wilt if caressed enough. Such style works through the mechanisms of love, the defiance birthed from mechanical list of attributes and baby names, a vacuum of desperation, of despair, with the hopeful nature that your crisis of a lover is synonymous with a crisis amongst yourself, your intellect. Now, realistically, I am using the same language of ‘Crisis’ I mention later, yet it is valuable when you are also situated in this vacuum of society, and so, I prefer to be liminal and harsh.

    So, here must I must lay out some ground rules if you are to love amongst crisis.

    1. Redefine desperation to a characteristically holy adventure rather than the submission of despair.
    2. Respect the ability to nurture, and only nurture. Love does not need to follow this sentiment. It is simply okay to hold.
    3. Present yourself to risk (and while you are at it, redefine the cautious nature of this word, or someone else will do it for you.)

    —

    Carrying multiple conversations between intellects alike, The Voices: Writers and Politics offer differing opinions to establish a multi-perspective narrative, as the fluid line of questioning sparks debates on the many central crises arising socio-economically and politically. I aim to include four brilliant writers in this segment: Umberto Eco, Stuart Hall, Nadine Gordimer, Susan Sontag.

    Crisis no longer cuts the hands or bruises the shins. It became fluid, capable of a literary construction, and a necessity that must punish the blood that hides under your fingertips. It matched your breath, and therefore it must be here, in text, on paper, carried upon the skin as it pushes the air around you. It is “biologically, physically, culturally speaking, a permanent state”. By such details, you might want to conclude your own sovereignty, barren of complex governments and contesting relationships, but what if the acceptance one arguably grasps is necessary. What if this grey, liminal space, where the detriment of such definitions, does not need to solve, coddle, simmer as brilliantly as you deem it to be worth?

    “And that is what I mean by crisis, the incapability of a society to recognise the real historical process and movement. My interpretation doesn’t solve your problem.”

    I appreciate the candour, how inflexible the mouth can be when you expand upon personal uncertainty — (a constriction a father imposed on your sixth birthday). Is it a problem then? If we relinquish our crisis of identity, of belief, of love, to satisfy a rectification on its our own language? Then malleability must rest upon tone, mood, to the proper insert for quotations, instead. It is no longer a crisis nor a division of circumstances, but character with enough weight for enunciation and storytelling.

    “Something is dying, and what we’re seeing is that something, the new that we hoped for, doesn’t seem to be being born”

    It is a dying act. Reconstructing, trusting, forgetting. Historically, the alteration of language was made to be simplistic, louder, held. Yet, its lack of success birthed our own crisis to be heard. Our own genesis, an origin of longing, a consequences of urges — we become creators with enough sustenance to breath life into movements with enough action, that reaction is our plight. Should this revelation spark empathic urges to nurture your words, learn to reinforce, to modify your sensibilities, to enlarge your sympathies. The stretch you fear, (of doubt, of forceable expansion) does not render the lung deficient. The skin will fold, the bones will shift, what has crisis ever shaped between your breastbone?

    “[…] but I realize that my writing comes out of a deep pessimism and I think that we do live in a time that we all experience in some way as a time of crisis, as a time in which much has been destroyed and much has been lost and much more is going to be lost”

    I am not fond of conclusions, nor summaries. My expansions are sacrificial enough and I prefer to not situation such meaning to broad, social understandings. I believe I have bared enough words for now.

    Allow your poor mind to re-define crisis, quickly enough, that sleep does not have to keep waiting.

    References:

    Zadie Smith, Imitations: Six Essays (2020)

    Channel 4 Series, The Voices: Writers and Politics

    Toni Morrison, On Love and Writing: Bill Moyers Interview (1990)

    Ha Jin, Missed Time