Arete N

o. 27

No. 27

Student Academic Journal

No. 27

Student Academic Journal

Copyright © 2018

School of Arts and Humanities, Dr. Sharon Nell, DeanSt. Edward’s University Austin, TX 78704 facebook.com/SEUarete

All Rights ReservedPrinted in the United States of America

Faculty AdvisorAmy Root Clements

Editor-in-ChiefGabrielle Wilkosz

Senior DesignerHailey Johnson

Junior Designer Sabrina Smith

Copy EditorsAllanah MaarteenBronte TreatKathie RojasLogan StallingsMargaret “Marji” DzenkoMax MurphyMelissa GonzalesNicole VickersSarah Gonzales

AreteStudent Academic Journal

No. 27

A Journal Honoring the Virtue of Inquiry

Arete is the award-winning, student-run academic journal at St. Edward’s University. First published in 1991, Arete is an annual publication that encourages students from all disciplines to sub-mit research papers, essays, and theses with substantive, fresh, and well-researched arguments for an informed audience. The word “arete” (ahr-i-tey), meaning “virtue” and “excellence” in Greek, pays tribute to the honorable mission of scholastic inquiry.

Table of Contents

Poetry Applied, Past and Present

Laura IrwinSometimes Timing Is Off By A Little, Sometimes It’s Off by Centuries: An Analysis of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz

Lilli HimePoetry of Communal Witness: A New Genre of Poetry by Marginalized Voices

Resounding Public Voices

Chase BartlettBurning Slaughterhouse-Five: How Vonnegut’s Response Exhibits Emotional Appeals Unique to Personal Letters

Nicholas TafacoryDifferent Approaches, Same Concerns: Comparing the Philosophies of Thoreau and Mussolini

Architecture of Societies

Shelby BennettContradictions in Fin-de-Siècle Montmartre

Dane ShannonPrison Privatization: Complacency, Pragmatism, and Justice for Sale

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A Note from the Editor

the three subcategories of Arete’s 27th edition could be described as bizarre. So how have “Poetry Applied, Past and Present,” “Resound-ing Public Voices,” and “Architecture of Societies,” found their way into a journal of scholastic inquiry?

Arete’s 2017-18 range of submissions has narrative of its own. Stu-dent research is the product of curiosity, whether it is inspired by our world’s current events, a professor’s guidance, or other factors too many to name. Still, the arc of students’ interests is inherent to the types of re-search submitted by authors of varying disciplines and majors.

One trend among submitted papers has been creative defiance against “comfortable” topics, a decisive reworking of familiar themes into unfamiliar ones. Research from writers Laura Irwin and Lilli Hime takes an intimate look at the social justice poetry of historical figures and history in the making. Providing academic surveys of an other-wise emotional-artistic form, the papers offer an intimate view into the headspace of St. Edward’s students, our social justice-conscious instructors, and the community we share.

Research rooted less in art, matters of philosophy and virtue sur-face in “Resounding Public Voices.” Writers Chase Bartlett and Nicolas Tafacory study the historical conflicts between groups or individuals that have been pitted against one another due to ideological differenc-es. These in-depth pieces of research find meaning in the opposite, per-haps paving the way for common ground, even if only in theory.

Finally, authors Shelby Bennett and Dane Shannon pull out maps of the communities we’ve built—not withholding social, political, and economic inequities that have arisen. While Shannon looks at the ev-

er-controversial issue of privatizing America’s prisons, Bennett pro-vides an in-depth look at a well-documented site of gentrification, an issue that she reminds us, hits close to home for Austinites.

Readers, we hope this assembly of research demonstrates the narra-tive arc of student thought in all of its eclecticism, curiosity, and depth. To mirror these ambitious ideas, this year’s issue was crafted by our de-sign team, Senior Designer Hailey Johnson and Junior Designer Sabrina Smith, who graciously created a layout that reflects the creative folding and unfolding of student research into a traditional—and sometimes tricky—medium, the academic journal.

Thank you to Faculty Advisor Dr. Amy Root Clements for her endur-ing support, and to members of the Arete board who have dedicated countless hours to locating the story arc of this year’s student submis-sions.

Ideas are dangerous. Thank you for reading ours.

With gratitude,

Gabrielle WilkoszEditor-in-Chief

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Poetry Applied, Past and Present

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Sometimes Timing Is Off By A Little, Sometimes It’s Off By Centuries: An Analysis of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Laura Irwin

Introduction

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s poem, “Hombres Necios que Acusaisá” (“You Men”), is an excellent artifact to analyze through the lens of kai-ros, or timing, precisely because it did not have any. Sor Juana was a Mexican nun in the 1600s who dedicated the majority of her life to ad-vancing her education. Unfortunately, her journey was often met with societal roadblocks that deterred her from pursuing knowledge and higher education. Sor Juana combated these difficulties by speaking out against them through her writing, specifically in the aforemen-tioned poem. Within this essay, we will analyze whether or not Sor Juana’s poem was successful in combating the obstacles she faced. We must determine whether her poetic response was appropriate for the time or if it would have been more effective in another context. This is an important inquiry because it will display the flexibility of a kairotic analysis. Using the English and Spanish translations of the poem paired side-by-side, I will present extensive context surrounding Sor Juana and her time period. I will then analyze the text and how it was received by the audience to determine efficacy. Finally, I will analyze the flexibility of kairos in relation to historic artifacts.

Background

In the 1600s, Spaniards brought the Baroque society to Mexico. The Catholic Church heavily influenced the art, architecture, literature, and culture of this period as they sought to counteract the repercussions of the Protestant Reformation. There was a major shift back to honoring God through traditional liturgy and grand expressions of art and liter-ature (Baroque Period). The clergy increased their influence, especially in Mexico, where they dictated the society. Men dominated the society, developing a behavior known as machismo in which their masculin-ity gave them inherent rights, privileges, and freedoms to act and do

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as they pleased. Such a society held certain expectations for women: learn to maintain a household, bear children, marry, or live pious lives (Lockert 8). These limited expectations confined women, curtailing any opportunities for education or personal advancement outside of their prescribed roles and duties.

Juana Inés de la Cruz was born in November of 1648 as the illegiti-mate daughter of a Spanish captain and a Creole woman in San Miguel Nepantla, Mexico (Kantaris). From a young age, Sor Juana thirsted for knowledge and learning, teaching herself to read and write in Latin, de-spite living at a time when women were discouraged from learning. At the young age of six or seven, she begged her mother to let her disguise herself as a boy in order to attend Mexico University to study (Kantar-is). Instead, she was sent to live in Mexico City, where she eventually became a nun. She took her vows in 1669 in the Convent of Santa Paula of the Hieronymite (Merrim). Within this cloistered life, she was able to dedicate numerous hours to reading, writing, studying, and teaching, which pushed the boundaries of her role as a woman and challenged the Mexican Baroque society.

Sor Juana’s poem, “Hombres Necios que Acusaisá,” overtly speaks out against the machismo she observes in her society. This poem was written around the same time that she published a letter known as “A Response to Sor Filotea” in a local newspaper in 1691. Filotea is the pseudonym for the archbishop of Mexico, Aguiar y Seijas. Behind this name, the archbishop attacked Sor Juana for her poetry, comedic writings, and sonnets. His goal was to put her back in her place after she had openly critiqued a priest’s homily (Lockert 5-6). He chastised her because her commentary was not only impolite, but also sinful... It was completely inappropriate for a nun to critique a priest, not only because nuns should never speak up against priests, but also because women should never speak up against men (Lockert 5). This occasion provided the perfect opportunity for Sor Juana to boldly argue against a male-dominated society.

Analysis

While Sor Juana directed the response letter to “Sor Filotea,” we as-sume the poem was directed to a larger, broader audience—men. She speaks directly to this audience from the very start by naming them in the title “You Men.” Within the first two stanzas, she manages to pres-ent her exigence and her intended audience at the same time.

Hombres necios que acusáisa la mujer sin razón,sin ver que saois la ocasióde lo mismo que culpais.

Si con ansia sin igualsolicitáis su desdén, ¿por qué queries que obren biensi las incitáis al mal?

Combatís su Resistenciay luego con gravedad decís que fue liviandadlo que hizo la diligencia.(378)

Silly, you men-so very adeptat wrongly faulting womankindnot seeing you’re alone to blamefor faults you plant in woman’s mind.

After you’ve won by urgent pleathe right to tarnish her good name,you still expect her to behave—you, that coaxed her into shame.

You batter her resistance downand then, all righteousness, proclaimthat feminine frivolity,not your persistence, is to blame.(“Hombres Necios”)

She blames men for creating a society that punishes women for be-ing subjugated. Every time she is “put in her place” or told to hold her tongue, she believes that she is being forced into a system that keeps her oppressed, while making it seem as though it is her fault for being oppressed. Men, under a machismo society, can lie, cheat, and impreg-nate women and then proceed to blame women for their own weak-nesses (Lockert 8-9). She realizes the injustice that has befallen women because they have been shamed into good behavior like domesticated animals. Sor Juana responds to this machismo society by acknowledg-ing it and bringing it to light.

Further, throughout the poem Sor Juana makes the deliberate choice to include historic and famous women.

Queréis con presunción neciahallar a la que buscáis, para pretendida, Tais,y en la posesión, Lucrecia.(379)

Presumptuous beyond belief,you’d have the woman you pursuebe Thaisï when you’re courting her, Lucretia once she falls to you. (“Hombres Necios”)

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This is an incredible addition to the poem because women were very important figures and people in Greek history. In presenting these women, Sor Juana proves her education. Including this in the poem de-liberately challenges the machismo society because women were dis-couraged from reading or being educated (Lockert 7). This is an overt attempt to prove that women are not only capable of learning, but also capable of making a mark on history. She challenged the educated soci-ety by living and writing against it. She is proving to her audience that she should be taken seriously because she is just as learned as they. This is part of her attempt to shake the machismo world by including a woman’s ideas in a largely male-dominated conversation.

Unfortunately, such composition was ill-received by her audience. As a result of her writing and brazen accusations, Sor Juana was prac-tically forced into isolation. Archbishop Aguiar y Seijas ensured that anyone associated with Sor Juana would be similarly chastised and practically exiled (Lockert 9). Two men found themselves in this situ-ation as a result of their relationship with Sor Juana – Carlos Sigüenza y Góngora and Father Antonio Núñez de Miranda. Góngora was Sor Juana’s kindred spirit in that the institutions to which they belonged had isolated them both (Góngora used to be a Jesuit). He spent plenty of time with Sor Juana and as a result was physically attacked by the misogynistic Archbishop in 1692. Since then, Góngora ceased visits to Sor Juana (Lockert 8-9).

Miranda’s relationship with Sor Juana was more spiritual in nature because he was her confessor. He was her connection to the church, even though she spoke against its male-dominated hierarchy. After the Archbishop published his “Carta a Sor Filotea,” Miranda proceeded to deny Sor Juana the sacrament of confession, which is essentially a form of excommunication in the church (Lockert 8-9). Sor Juana was abandoned by anyone who supported her because she dared to speak against her own society. This isolation illustrates just how inappropri-ate Sor Juana’s poem was for the time—speaking against or criticizing men in any way would subject a woman to social ostracization.

Mexico in the 1600s was not ready for Sor Juana’s ideas. She was openly attacked by the Ecclesiastical hierarchy which sought to silence her pen by demanding that she renounce her books and studies to lead a life for God (Kantaris). She was often put to kitchen duty in her convent because the Mother Superior claimed that Sor Juana “read too much” and was, therefore, being influenced by the devil (Lockert 7). Men

and women alike found ways to exile her because her opinions were too radical for the Church, especially because the Church was trying to survive the Reformation. Any outside or radical ideas were immediately expelled to prevent disruption. Unfortunately, Sor Juana became one such disruptive force and was treated as such regardless of the fact that she was a devoted nun. The kairos for this poem was incredibly inap-propriate. The audience wasn’t receptive and her poem’s noble exigence was written off as the ranting of a madwoman, making her unsuccess-ful at promoting any real change.

Conclusion

While it may be concluded that Sor Juana’s poem didn’t achieve kai-ros during her time period, it was not an abject failure in the larger historical context. If we broaden the scope of our analysis, we can see that this poem is considered a significant artifact in the international feminist community, and that Sor Juana is a leading inspiration for fem-inism in the Americas (Bardile 18). It is in this larger scope that we are able to realize Sor Juana’s lasting impact; thus, labeling her successful in her attempts to change the way society treats and views women.

Although most of the poem centers on accusations against men, Sor Juana takes a moment to pause and praise the women who refuse to succumb or bend to the will of men.

Mas entre el enfado y penaque vuestro gusto refiere,bien haya la que no os quierey queja enhorabuena.(380)

Still, whether it’s torment or anger—and both ways you’ve yourselves to blame,God bless the woman who won’t have you,no matter how loud you complain.(“Hombres Necios”)

It is here that Sor Juana’s actual audience is revealed: women. Al-though she is speaking directly to men, she hopes women are the ones actually listening and taking note. She is trying to empower them by reversing the narrative and revealing that men are the true oppressors. She commends the woman who refuses a man and is able to hold her ground against him. It is within these lines that Sor Juana makes her mark on feminist history.

In 1920, Dorothy Schons, a professor and author of Spanish-Amer-ican literature, called Sor Juana the “first feminist in America.” Mirta Aguirre, a Cuban poet and essayist, said that women of the future owe Sor Juana an unpayable debt (Bardile 16). There is unanimous consent among global feminists labeling Sor Juana as the true and preeminent feminist of the Americas (Bardile). It is for this reason that we read her

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work and reflect on the surrounding contexts of her work as they pro-vide a significant perspective for the feminist struggle in the past and present. Although she was unable to make an impact during her own time period, history has not forgotten Sor Juana and she has become a force leading the charge on the feminist movement in the Americas (Bardile 17).

It is also important to understand how we see rhetoric through fo-cused or broadened lenses. We can see that this artifact may have been unsuccessful when contained within its own time because the audi-ence was not prepared to receive it. Nevertheless, as time went on and the original audience evolved, the artifact became a proud piece of lit-erature for the feminist movement. So often we try to limit our rhetor-ical scopes, which in turn limits our ability to analyze. Kairos is about realizing that good timing is not immediate; sometimes it takes a while to create appropriate timing. Although Sor Juana makes valid points and critiques about her society, the fact that her audience was unre-ceptive made her timing inappropriate. It is not until much later that society is able to appreciate her artifact and understand her position as worthy of consideration.

Works Cited

Bardile, Vittoria Ferrara. “Sor Juana y el compromiso como mujer, co-momonja, como poeta.” Letras Femeninas, vol. 11, no. ½, 1985, 16-20.

“Baroque Period.” New World Encyclopedia. http://www.newworlden-cyclopedia.org/entry/Baroque_period. Accessed 18 Sept. 2017.

“Hombres Necios Que Acusais.” Abriendo Puertas: Antologia de Litera-tura en Español Tomo 1, McDougal Littell, Inc., 2003, 378-381.

“Hombres Necios que Acusais: AP Spanish Lit and Culture.” Genius. https://genius.com/Sor-juana-ines-de-la-cruz-hombres-ne-cios-que-acusais-annotated. Accessed 18 Sept. 2017.

Kantaris, Geoffry. “Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Juana Ramírez de Asba-je).” Lecture for Part I SP1: Introduction to the Languages, Lit-eratures and Cultures of the Spanish-speaking World, Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge. Online Lec-ture Notes.

Kantaris, Geoffry. “Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Juana Ramírez de Asba-je).” Lecture for Part I SP1: Introduction to the Languages, Lit-eratures and Cultures of the Spanish-speaking World, Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge. Lecture.

Lockert, Lucía Fox. “Sor Juana como protofemenista de sue dad y la dehoy.” Letras Femeninas, vol. 11, no. ½, 1985, 5-15.

Merrim, Stephanie. “Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz” Encyclopedia Britannica, 1 Aug. 2017. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sor-Jua-na-Ines-de-la-Cruz. Accessed 18 Sept. 2017.

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Poetry of

C o m m u n a l

Witness: A New

Genre of Poetry

by Marginalized

Voices

Lilli Hime

IntroductionHow does poetry address society’s problems?

Language exists for the purpose of connection, and so poetry exists, as Audre Lorde believed, to “illuminate” a person’s felt but unspoken experiences. The most fundamental connection linking all poetry is its roots in the human experience, for to tell one experience as truly as we can is to inherently, if only consequently, tell the experience of many, resulting in a shared experience or community. This essay sets off to explore one of these links, the one of marginalized identities tar-geted by violence, and establish itself as a recognized entity. In Carolyn Forche’s introduction to her anthology A Poetry of Witness, she asserts the two common categories of the personal, such that invokes love and loss, and the political, which works arduously and sometimes divisively for social change. Forche proposes that there exists a grey space be-tween the two categories: the social space or poetry of witness, where poets write about specific experiences or hardships they’ve lived due to a shared event or identity, which is not myopically personal or trying hard to be political. In this essay, I expand this space by submitting a type of subgenre, a poetry of communal witness. Where Forche’s cri-teria is that the poet had to experience the event themselves, I suggest poetry of communal witness requires only that the poet bears the same identity of the victim such that they can exist in the same community. I will explore how poets distill their reaction to violence against some-one of a shared marginalized identity and argue for the subgenre by comparing three different poems concerning violence and power dy-namics: Audre Lorde’s “Power,” Ai Ogawa’s “Finished,” and Ross Gay’s “A Small Needful Fact.”

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Context

Audre Lorde, one of America’s great modern poets, identified as a Black lesbian feminist. In a compilation of poetry, prose, and essays, she tackles racism, sexism, and homophobia. Her poetry is often recog-nized for its radiating rage and the deeply personal way she handles po-litical threats to her identity. Living from 1934 through 1992, Lorde saw the rise of the second wave of feminism, the fight for desegregation, and the gay liberation movement. In this extremely political and often vio-lent moment in history, she saw every facet of her identity rising up for equality, and she challenged her poetry to do the same in content and form. At the same time, the feminists of the poetry community were in revolt, rejecting traditional form for free verse as a way of rejecting the patriarchy it originated from. Lorde’s work very much embraces free verse as revolutionary not only in content but in poetic form.

Ai Ogawa, born just a decade after Lorde in 1947 and living until 2010, was another strong feminist poet whose intersectional identi-ty played a large, yet vastly different part in her work. Ogawa proud-ly identified as a mixed race of Japanese, Choctaw-Chickasaw, Black, Irish, Southern Cheyenne, and Comanche descent. This complex racial identity gave her the ability to morph into and speak as different people through her poetry because she felt unbeholden to a single entity. She is known for her dramatic monologues often from the point of view of abused or marginalized people. However, she also bounced between nameless victims of abuse to the perpetrators, allowing her race, gen-der, class, and abuse to be flexible within her poetry. Her poetry is bru-tal and raw in its unflinching depiction of graphic violence and cruelty which reveal the dark side of humanity.

As a Black man and a much more current poet, born 1974 and still alive, Ross Gay stands out among this poetic trio. Between his three published books and two chapbooks, his poetry ranges from a list of gratitude for the simple fact of existence in his collection, A Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, to a critical analysis and re-imagination of institutional violence in Bringing the Shovel Down. In a lecture at Harvard, Gay expressed his belief that society leads us to believe that African American suffering is a default and natural state, so he refutes that by focusing much of his writing on beauty and gratitude, most of which he draws from na-ture, flowers, and family. In a style very averse to Ogawa, Gay refuses the cruelties already prevalent in the world and in art, opting instead to create from a place focused on gratitude, beauty, and luck of life that is altogether healing.

Analysis of the Artifacts

In “Power” (1978), Lorde recounts the real-life event of a 10-year-old Black boy named Clifford Glover shot by a white policeman who was later acquitted by an almost-all-white jury. In a conversation with fellow poet Adrienne Rich excerpted in Sister Outsider, she recalls that upon hearing the news on her car radio, she was so overcome with emotion that she had to pull over and write at that moment. Lorde ac-knowledges this poem as a way of personal coping and public speaking about the issue of police brutality and powerlessness, as ironically high-lighted by the title, in the Black community.

Within this poem, there exists an ars poetica and two retellings of the Glover case, one rooted in metaphor where Lorde is present and the other a direct, factual account. Each serves a unique purpose.

“The difference between poetry and rhetoricis being ready to killyourselfinstead of your children.”

Through the ars poetica, which opens the poem with captivating aggression, Lorde explores poetry as a conscious means of discovering truth and justice and recognizing the lack of it in Glover’s case. The im-age of “a desert of raw gunshot wounds/and a dead child” exemplifies poetry’s ability to distill the personal feelings of loss and outrage Lorde has just by being part of the same Black community as the victim. In this space, the only way she can start to heal is to take back her lost power with language, speaking out at the injustice.

“trying to make power out of hatred and destruction

trying to heal my dying son with kisses”

In the direct retellings of the Glover case, straightforward state-ments detail the violence in an explicit and unrelenting manner to give the full force of the murder and injustice. These, coupled with the anaphora of the phrase “and there are tapes to prove it,” are also repre-sentative of how simple and obvious the conviction should have been, given the extenuating evidence, which makes the acquittal that much more enraging. This is the frustration felt by the Black community at the unjust power dynamic between them and white police.

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This frustration is accentuated by the metaphor which breaks up the literal language in which Lorde describes how the majority white male jurors convinced the only Black woman juror with their ancient and lasting power dynamic of superiority.

“dragged her 4’10’’ black Woman’s frameover the hot coalsof four centuries of white male approvaluntil she let gothe first real power she ever had”

Altogether, Lorde’s poem is self-aware of its use of language to dis-till the experience of someone in your community being the victim of racial power dynamics. It utilizes this to hand the reader Lorde’s same processing of every injustice of the case and the outrage that comes with it.

Ogawa’s “Finished” takes on the same assertive manner but with a shift of perspective. While the abused woman speaks in first person, Ogawa uses second person to place the reader implicitly in the shoes of the abusive lover.

“You force me to touchthe black, rubber flapsof the garbage disposalthat is open like a mouth saying, ah.You tell me it’s the last thing I’ll feelbefore I go numb.Is it my screaming that finally stops you,”

This point of view also enters the reader into the power dynamic be-tween a physically stronger man and weaker woman, making the read-er acknowledge this unsettling superiority. In a way, the second person makes the horrific violence in the poem that much more human and that much more terrifying. Ogawa’s poetry shows the dark side of hu-manity, making us admit the sadistic and cruel capabilities we’d rather deny.

“I ran outside in my nightgown,while you yelled at me to come back.When you came after me,I was locked in the car.You smashed the window with a crowbar,but I drove off anyway.I was back the next day”

The straightforward statements narrating exactly what is happen-ing in the scene speak to how these violent acts need no emphasis, as they are disturbing enough. The numbness at the end of the piece not only serves the abused but also creates a space for the reader to fi-nally process their own emotions after such an unrelenting display of violence.

Because of Ogawa’s usual style of entering the perspective of mar-ginalized women through her poetry, we have no reason to believe this was a personal experience. And though she never cited a particular in-stance, her identity as a woman is enough to qualify her understanding of male/female physical power dynamics and the fear that comes along with it. So, assuming this was an imagined or heard-about experience, Ogawa obviously worked to understand and empathize with her fellow women on the commonality of fear of the male counterpart.

Gay’s “A Small Needful Fact” (2015), again, is the Black unicorn among these poems. Where Lorde and Ogawa are very bold and up-front, his poem seems to beat around the bush in a subtle and under-stated way. The form is very brief at only 15 lines and looks nearly tradi-tional with medium length, relatively uniform lines.

Is that Eric Garner workedfor some time for the Parks and Rec.Horticultural Department, which means,perhaps, that with his very large hands,perhaps, in all likelihood,he put gently into the earthsome plants which, most likely,some of them, in all likelihood,continue to grow, continueto do what such plants do, like houseand feed small and necessary creatures,like being pleasant to touch and smell,like converting sunlightinto food, like making it easierfor us to breathe.

Where Lorde and Ogawa’s poems never let up on their power, Gay’s poem delivers only two powerful punches: the mention of Eric Garner’s name and the final two lines, “making it easier/for us to breathe.” Gay makes the bold move of never actually touching the case of racially motivated police brutality, instead opting to delve into this seemingly insignificant fact about Garner. The subtleness and the lack of actual vi-olence in the poem leaves the tacit understanding of the police brutal-ity up to the conclusion of the reader. It also leaves them the responsi-bility to already know or to find out about Eric Garner’s case and make

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the connection between the plants breathing and Garner’s final words pronouncing his inability to breathe. By allowing the reader to do their own work in understanding the poem, he additionally allows the reader the room to form their own emotions and reaction. In this way, Gay’s poem is different from the latter two because this poem seems written more to allow the reader to process their feelings rather than for the poet to process his feelings.

Conclusion

Though each poet broaches the topic in their unique style, they all contain similar aspects of explicit or tacit power dynamics, violence, and the context of responding to an event or experience subject to someone of their community. A large part of the traumas come from the shared identity the poet has with the victim as well as the unjust and horrifying power dynamics of the poems’ main characters. In “Pow-er” and “A Small Needful Fact,” both poets are Black, so in describing racially motivated police brutality against Black victims, they convey how personal it is to see someone with their same skin color be unjust-ly killed. The fact that they are both police brutality cases delves into the unequal power which law enforcement, specifically represented by white officers, has over black individuals. Ogawa’s “Finished,” though never proclaimed autobiographical, describes a woman’s case of abuse, a fear and threat that resonates for all women. The unequal distribution of physical and gender power is present in this poem as the abuser is male and the abused is female. And while the violence is boldly upfront in “Power” and “Finished,” it is still very present, even tacitly in “A Small Need-ful Fact,” especially in the last line’s reference to Eric Garner’s last words.

Ultimately, each poet answers the question of why a person of like-characteristics serves as a voice for anyone who shares a field of oppression with them. I suggest this poetry of communal witness as a subgenre of the social sphere, where poets react to trauma within their community’s identity, even though they themselves have not ex-perienced it. This is increasingly important when you consider the vic-timization of the poems’ subjects—sometimes the survival rate means they would not be able to tell their story. If anything, this genre is a memorial to those who cannot tell their own story of abuse but need some way to be remembered.

Works Cited

“Ai (1947 - 2010).” The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry, by Rita Dove, Penguin Books, 2011, pp. 436–438.

Forche, Carolyn. “Introduction.” Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness, Norton, 1993, pp. 29–47.

Gay, Ross. “A Small Needful Fact.” Poets.org, Academy of American Po-ets, 9 June 2016, www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/small-needful-fact.

Lorde, Audre. “Power by Audre Lorde.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53918/pow-er-56d233adafeb3.

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R e s o u n d i n g Public Voices

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B u r n i n g

Slaughterhouse-

Five: How

V o n n e g u t ’ s

Response Exhibits

Emotional Appeals

Unique to Personal

Letters

Chase Bartlett

Introduction

In 1973, the small town of Drake, Ohio, became known to the world. The town, whose population then contained less than 700 residents, shocked the American public on November 8th when the school board decided to burn 32 copies of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five in the school’s furnace (Stevens). Following the destruction of the books, Von-negut wrote a personal letter to the school board’s chairman express-ing his disapproval. This letter, which some have given the title “I Am Very Real,” contains significant pathos appeals which, under analysis, may provide an interesting understand-ing of the relationship between audience and affect. In the context of this letter and ones like it, the question is: why does the real audience, especially when intercept-ing something that was originally private, sometimes feel a heightened sense of emotion? Specifically, this project will examine how intended and real audiences can experience the pathos appeals of the same ar-gument differently. However, before going into any kind of analysis, it would be best to please take a brief moment to read Vonnegut’s letter, which can be found online.1 While doing so, consider how you feel—about the letter, about the arguments posed, and about Vonnegut and McCarthy. When you’ve finished, put away those thoughts for later.

Historical Background and Context

To understand the letter itself, it would be helpful to first understand the context preceding its creation. Though the books were burnt on No-vember 8th, it wasn’t until November 16th that a news source as big as The New York Times covered the event. According to the The Times, the American public was, at this point, livid and upset; the American Civil Liberties Union chapter called it a “violation of free speech,” while North Dakota’s branch of the National Education Association considered it to

1 To read the letter itself and follow along, you can search “I am very real” at lettersofnote.com.

Public Voices 3130 Bartlett Slaughterhouse-Five

be “almost inconceivable” (Stevens). At the same time, a source claimed that the people of Drake were “dumbfounded” about this controversy sur-rounding them (Stevens). After all, from their perspective, the members of the school board were exercising their perfectly legal right to censor the curriculum. Their reasoning for burning the books was simply that they “didn’t approve of its obscene language” (McCarthy qtd. in Hibbard).

The same day that the NYT released its article overviewing the situ-ation in Drake, Vonnegut mailed his letter. While there is no record of how Vonnegut first received the news, the fact that he replied within just eight days shows his intent involvement in the situation. The kairos of a quick response only adds to the personal nature of the letter, which was shown by Vonnegut’s clear expression of his intended audience. He called the letter “a strictly private letter from me to the people of Drake,” and the tone throughout is intimate. Other than his reference to “you people” in the first line, Vonnegut addresses McCarthy directly as “you,” and bestows an especially personal kind of judgment upon him.

The purpose, or exigence, of Vonnegut’s letter was also transparent. He explicitly claims at the end of his argument that they “should ac-knowledge that it was a rotten lesson [they] taught young people in a free society,” and “expose [their] children to all sorts of opinions and information.” For Vonnegut, it’s obvious that the he wanted them to

“behave like educated persons” should. However, it’s also interesting to note how Vonnegut explicitly showed what his exigence was not; in the first big paragraph, he acknowledges that he’s not excited about “all the books [he] will sell because of the news.” Rather, he is “angered and sickened and saddened” because of what they had done. For Vonnegut, this expression of emotion serves to fit the genre of the intimate letter he was writing: there was his private address to McCarthy; the genera-tive timeliness, which suggested strong interest on behalf of Vonnegut; and there was the claim that Vonnegut took this problem personally and was interested in resolving it in a private manner.

Analysis and Argument: Affect

While Vonnegut’s letter exhibits both the building up of his charac-ter through ethos (para. 4), and the intellectual, logical appeal of logos (para. 5), his incorporation of pathos (para. 6) is the most important component of his letter because it demands a change. Vonnegut’s af-fect argument begins by acknowledging the school board’s “right and responsibility” to choose which books are read, but proceeds to chal-lenge their American values; he tells them that if they are to “exercise that right… in an ignorant, harsh, un-American manner,” that even their “own children” are entitled to call them fools.

By calling their actions “un-American,” Vonnegut exhibits his first affect appeal. Bringing in values of Americanness, he begins to provoke his audience into feeling badly about what they have done. Specifically, Vonnegut intends to make his audience feel remorse, regret, or shame. To accomplish this affect, though, Vonnegut relies on the ideological presupposition that all Americans identify with values of freedom, rights, and civil behavior—including Drake’s school board. Hidden in this presupposition is the assumed emotional repertoire that shared situations and actions deemed “un-American” are worthy of shame and condemnation. In this case, the behavioral script of the emotional repertoire is that “if you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.”

However, for McCarthy and the school board to start exposing their children “freely” to all kinds of information, Vonnegut first had to change their cognitive interpretation about whether or not burning the books was ethical. To alter the interpretation of their actions, he claims that “books are sacred to free men for very good reasons, and that wars have been fought against nations which… burn them.” Here, by men-tioning that wars have been waged over burning books, Vonnegut re-freshes several vivid, violent examples; consider, for one, the German Säuberung (or, “cleansing”) book-burning that occurred before World War II.2 Thus, by tying the affective component (shame/remorse) to the ideal interpretation (burning books is bad), Vonnegut’s values and images serve as emotional pathemata to draw out the behavior that he desires.

Currently, there is no evidence to whether Vonnegut was able to change their interpretation and elicit a new behavior from the Drake School Board. However, the fact that we are able to read the letter today, at the very least, suggests that McCarthy eventually did share the letter. Actually, the fact that we are reading the letter at all sug-gests something about Vonnegut’s secondary interests and goals. Looking back at the last line of the third para-graph, Vonnegut challenges McCarthy: “do you have the courage and ordinary decency to show this letter to the people, or will it, too, be consigned to the fires of your furnace?” Here, why would Vonnegut so explicitly taunt McCarthy to share it unless he already intended for him to do so? As the rhetorical scholar Kevin Roozen notes, “writers are always doing the rhetorical work of addressing the needs and interests of a particular audience, even if unconsciously” (17). If this is true, and Vonnegut even briefly considered the possibility that the letter would be shared, then it must also be true that his writing was directed (part-ly) for people all across America.

2 Heinrich Heine, a German poet and literary critic, is famously quoted to have said “Wherever books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too.” It’s interesting to note that this was said at least 100 years before the Holocaust, which seems to suggest that book burning has a well-deserved and long-lasting notoriety.

Public Voices 3332 Bartlett Slaughterhouse-Five

Because Vonnegut’s letter was also intended for a larger audience, this is the moment to reconsider and reflect upon your reading of the letter in the beginning of the project. How did the argument and letter make you feel? You were the real audience—you read it, just as McCa-rthy did—and Vonnegut’s writing was suited for you. The immediate point to note at this stage is that, because we are a different audience, we experience a different affect. If you are anything like me, you didn’t feel shame or remorse, as I imagine McCarthy did. Rather, you proba-bly felt something between sympathy and respect for both Vonnegut’s character and argument.

Mark Longaker and Jeffery Walker, in an introductory pathos analy-sis, note that an “astute rhetorical analyst can… [incorporate] the same affect into a new interpretation, a new behavioral response, and thus a wholly different argument” (213). While this is not the case for Von-negut’s argument (because there is a different affect among the two audiences), the point is that affect, behavior, and interpretation are in-tertwined. In the letter, it’s likely the intimate nature was what led the secondary audience (us) to feeling an affect of sympathy and respect. Because there is a different affect, there is likely a different interpreta-tion and behavior; because we have nothing to cause us to think or feel shame, we probably have a much different interpretation of the letter than McCarthy’s. However, what is interesting about all of this is that:

1. Different audiences experiencing the same argument experience different affects.

2. The genre of a personal letter, when intercepted by a different audience, provides a unique emotional response.

To prove the latter, it may be useful to give another example. Richard Feynman’s letter to his deceased wife (which can be found by googling

“My Wife Is Dead”) elicits an effect of intense sorrow and sympathy—primarily because of the context; it was never intended to be read by anyone. The letter was strictly personal and remained unopened un-til his death. Because of this intimate context, it could be possible to argue that the personal nature actually may lead to a heightened or changed affect.

Conclusion

While it is currently impossible to prove whether Vonnegut’s emo-tional appeals warranted the response that he intended them to, it is possible to further examine personal letters. In this unique genre, the letters must rely on pathos to sway an audience. Specifically, though, personal letters are interesting because they suggest that different au-diences can experience different affects while encountering the same argument. While the subjective nature of emotional analysis makes it challenging to form a grounded conclusion as to whether or not per-sonal letters produce an intensified or changed affect, it does seem in-tuitive. At the very least, pathos analyses of personal letters like “I Am Very Real” and “My Wife Is Dead” raise interesting questions. For in-stance, could it be said that these letters generally produce affects sim-ilar to sympathy for their intercepting audience? And, what is it specifi-cally about the personal letters that causes these emotional responses? For future analysis, examining a larger body of personal letters might reveal further insight to these questions.

Voices 3534 Bartlett Slaughterhouse-Five

Works Cited

Feynman, Richard. “I Love My Wife. My Wife Is Dead” Letters of Note, www.lettersofnote.com/2012/02/i-love-my-wife-my-wife-is-dead.html.

Hibbard, Laura. “Kurt Vonnegut’s Letter To Drake High School: ‘You Have Insulted Me’”. The Huffington Post, 30 Mar. 2012, www.huff-ingtonpost.com/2012/03/30/kurt-vonnegut-letter-to-drake-high-school_n_1392557.html.

Longaker, Mark Garrett, and Jeffrey Walker. Rhetorical Analysis: A Brief Guide for Writers. Pearson Longman, 2011.

Roozen, Kevin. Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies. Logan: Utah State UP, 2015. Print. pp. 17.

Stevens, William K. “Dakota Town Dumfounded at Criticism of Book Burning by Order of the School Board.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Nov. 1973, www.nytimes.com/1973/11/16/archives/dakota-town-dumfounded-at-criticism-of-book-burning-by-order-of-the.html.

Vonnegut, Kurt. “I Am Very Real”. Letters of Note, www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-am-very-real.html.

36 Last Name Slaughterhouse-Five

D i f f e r e n t

A p p r o a c h e s ,

Same Concerns:

Comparing the

Philosophies of

Thoreau and

Mussolini

Nicholas Tafacory

Introduction

At first glance, the Italian leader of the National Fascist Party, Beni-to Mussolini, and the American Transcendentalist author, Henry Da-vid Thoreau, seem to be an extraordinarily mismatched pair for most intents and purposes. However, I will argue to the contrary that, de-spite their overall irreconcilable philosophies (collectivism versus in-dividualism, respectively), their worldviews contain many of the same elements and desires, which allow us to view them together more har-moniously, at least in some regards.

Whether these shared elements and desires are truly indicative of how each figure felt is another issue and one beyond the scope of this paper. Perhaps they fervently believed in some aspects of their writings, but perhaps other aspects were used for rhetorical flourish or some sort of personal (political or economic) gain. For now, we will take them at their printed word and assume that they genuinely believe what they are espousing, though there is reason to be skeptical about this claim.

As another side note, it has since been discovered that the Italian political philosopher Giovanni Gentile was ultimately responsible for writing the first section of “The Doctrine of Fascism” that is ascribed to Benito Mussolini. For the sake of simplicity, however, we will pre-tend that Mussolini himself wrote the words. As a result, there will un-doubtedly be some quotes in which I say “Mussolini said,” but really I mean, “Gentile said.”

Finally, in contrasting Mussolini’s collectivism and Thoreau’s in-dividualism, I will analyze them on three key criteria: the efficacy and/or prominence of political structures (especially towards po-litical or social progress), the direction of duty, and the scope of freedom. With regards to efficacy/prominence of political structures, I mean the extent to which each figure attributes certain measures of societal progress or value. As for direction of duty, I mean either an in-ternal sense of duty (ultimately to oneself) or an external sense of duty

Public Voices 4140 Tafacory Approaches

(ultimately to a larger group.) With reference to the scope of freedom, I mean the suggested amount or proportion of political freedom allo-cated to the individual under each figure’s worldview and the impor-tance of that freedom.

Mussolini’s Fascist Collectivism

Mussolini serves as a representative of the collectivist tradition within political philosophy of the Western world. In the first section of his work, “The Doctrine of Fascism,” Mussolini asserts that the only objective value that an individual human being has is directly tied to, more strongly—inseparable from, the contributions he/she offers “as a member of the family, the social group, the nation, and in function of history to which all nations bring their contributions” (426). The direction of duty for Mussolini’s worldview, then, is external; residing outside of one’s self, and always directed towards the larger group. Yet this group is not just the family or the workplace or even the religious group, but to the State which subsumes all other groupings.

Concerning the efficacy and prominence of political structures and the potential progress for which they are responsible, Mussolini writes that, “[it] is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission, and welds them into unity, har-monizing their various interests through justice and transmitting to fu-ture generations the mental conquests of science, of art, of law, and the solidarity of humanity” (437). Mussolini goes further and emphasizes that, because of its ubiquitous reach into the daily lives of its citizens, the State has a “spiritual” dimension to it. This “[spirituality]” is derived from the State’s responsibility for unifying, guiding, and inspiring the general people into fulfilling its collective destiny.

Mussolini’s fascist collectivism, then, is only minimally open to any claims about or defenses of individual freedom/liberty. Mussolini views an individual’s scope of freedom as conditional: “the fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State” (426). He tries to debase any fearful reactions to this claim by stating that, “[the] fascist State organizes the nation but leaves a sufficient margin of lib-erty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom but retains what is essential” (439). However, given the rest of his rhetoric as well as historical evidence from fascist Italy during the 20th century, what he (or fascism) considers to be “essential” is negligible at best; the individual’s scope of freedom is reserved for mi-nor details. But there is no substantial base of freedom to, say, criticize the State or voice an opposing viewpoint.

Thoreau’s Radical Individualism

Thoreau, on the contrary, is a proponent of radical individualism within the Western tradition of political philosophy. In his work, “On Civil Disobedience,” he states that “[there] will never be a really free and enlightened State, until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and au-thority are derived, and treats him accordingly” (301). In addition, in warning against blind obedience to the State, Thoreau says “if [a law] is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to an-other, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine” (287). The direction of duty for Thoreau, then, is internal and resides within each individual himself/herself. To him, an undue and unquestioned respect for or obedience to the State, especially in the event that the latter is involved in some sort of moral wrong-doing, reduces a human being to the status of a mere automaton.

Moreover, Thoreau does not believe the State to be anywhere near as capable or efficacious as Mussolini does. He argues that the State, “never have itself furthered any enterprise […] It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The char-acter inherent in the American people has done all that has been ac-complished” (282). Instead of the State being responsible for progress and political success, it is actually the individual (or at least a band of individuals) who brought about the necessary changes and solutions to political problems. The State, on Thoreau’s view, actually retards prog-ress and any attempts to end instances of moral wrong-doing. As such, Thoreau ultimately holds it in much lower regard than Mussolini.

Also in contrast to Mussolini’s fascist collectivism, Thoreau affords the individual an extremely broad scope of freedom. He not only be-lieves that, “we should be [humans] first, and subjects afterward” but also he acknowledges the individual’s right to revolution, which con-stitutes, “the right to refuse allegiance to and to resist the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable” (283, 285). Mussolini would denounce such a sentiment, believing that the suffering endured is to be valued as a kind of personal sacrifice to the greater good of the State. Thoreau, however, finds personal freedom, especially in resisting the actions of the State, to be paramount for any possibility of justice.

Public Voices 4342 Tafacory Approaches

Different Approaches, Same Concerns

One similarity that Mussolini and Thoreau share is distaste for what has historically been called the “tyranny of the majority.” Both of these fig-ures criticize political structures that are based on the whims, preferences, or beliefs of a numerical majority of individuals. In demarcating fascism from democracy, Mussolini states that, “[ fascism] is therefore opposed to that form of democracy which equates a nation to the majority, lowering it to the level of the largest number” (427). Thoreau echoes this sentiment by remarking that, “[A] majority are permitted […] rule […] not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the mi-nority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice” (283). Mus-solini denounces majoritarian democracy because he views it as too re-ductionistic, thereby cheapening the undergirded “spirituality” of the State which is to be more robust and cohesive, whereas Thoreau believes that majoritarian democracy is effectively a government in which might makes right and justice is inappropriately redefined by a mob-like conception of the term. Both of them firmly stand against a “tyranny of the majority.”

Another similarity of Mussolini’s and Thoreau’s is their denuncia-tion of consumerism/materialism. Mussolini claims that fascism aims to avoid, “those superficial, material aspects in which man appears as an individual, standing by himself, self-centered, subject to natural law which instinctively urges him toward a life of selfish momentary plea-sure” (425). Thoreau, in addressing one of the mechanisms of consumer greed, boldly declares, “Absolutely speaking, the more money [an in-dividual has], the less virtue [that individual has]” (292). Both of these figures stand firmly against a lavish lifestyle with excessive material comforts. They both find that it has detrimental consequences for the individual and for society. Mussolini is against it because it makes the individual/the group into slaves of selfish desires. Thoreau is against it because it diminishes an individual’s moral virtue.

A final similarity found in the writings of both Mussolini and Tho-reau is an emphasis on action rather than, what they consider to be, excessive deliberation when it comes to resolving genuine political and social problems. In appraising his postulated doctrine, Mussolini as-serts that, “Like all sound political conceptions, fascism is action and it is thought” (424). Thoreau, in a similar fashion, claims that, “what is once well done is done forever. But we love better to talk about it: that we say is our mission” (291). Despite their divergent approaches, both Mussolini and Thoreau find idle speech and indecision to be detrimen-tal to actual progress and resolution of vexing societal problems. Rath-er, they would prefer to experience and witness concrete actions taken.

Conclusion

It is undeniably true that Mussolini and Thoreau broach political philosophy in diametrically opposed ways. For Mussolini, the collec-tive fascist State is supreme and of the utmost value. Thoreau sees it differently though, believing that the perspective of the individual is essential. Despite this fact, both of these figures share some interest-ing secondary and tertiary views that demonstrate that they do have at least some things in common. These include a fear about the tyranny of the majority, a concern about excessive materialism, and a desire for action over mere thought.

Works Cited

Somerville, John, and Ronald E. Santoni. Social and Political Philosophy: Readings from Plato to Gandhi. Anchor Books, 1963.

A r c h i t e c t u r e of Societies

46 Last Name Approaches

C o n t r a d i c t i o n s in Fin-de-Siècle Montmartre

Shelby Bennett

Montmartre: La Butte

“Quel sujet pourtant plus digne d’une étude historique, quelle terre plus riche en souvenirs, quelles pages plus sombres dans l’histoire des destinées humaines, quels rires plus sonores au milieu du concert des joies nous pourraient être offerts en quelque coin de la planète, si ce n’est à Montmartre, la Butte sacrée?”1 Montmartre is Paris’ northern-most arrondissement, the dix-huitème, which is official-ly defined by the boulevards de Clichy, de Rochechouart, and de la Chapelle to the south, the boulevard de Ney to the north, the avenues de St. Ouen and de Clichy to the west, and by the rue d’Aubervilliers to the east ( figure 1).2 Montmartre wasn’t officially part of Paris until 1860, when it was annexed during a period of expansion and improvements in Paris. This gave Montmartre residents a feeling of independence from the city; however, Mont-martre is less than a 20-minute drive from the centre ville of Paris. But as many came to see it “the spirit of Montmar-tre was not, and could not be contained by geography.”3 Montmartre is on a hill and stands above the rest of the city. Locals often refer to it as “La Butte” (meaning “the hill”). One of the defining features of Montmartre is the Sacré Cœur was finished in 1891—putting “La Butte” in view of all Parisians, even south of the Seine.⁴

Montmartre, of course, is also well-known for its clubs and cabarets, which flourished in fin-de-siècle Paris. The Moulin Rouge is the most famous, but the Chat Noir and other café concerts also attracted the attention of Parisians from Montmartre and from the more respectable centre ville. The “indigenous” of Montmartre were mostly working-class tradesmen, entertainers, petty criminals, pros-titutes, and, of course, artists.⁵ Although pre-fin-de-siècle Montmar-

1 Renault, Georges and Chateau, Henri. Montmartre, Paris, Flammarion, 1897, x. My own translation: “What subject, however, more worthy of a historical study, what earth richer in memories, what darker pages in the history of human destinies, what more sonorous laughter in the midst of the concert of joys could be offered to us in some corner of the world. the planet, if not in Montmartre, the sacred hill?”2 Cate, Phillip Dennis. The Spirit of Montmartre: Cabarets, Humor and the Avant Garde, 1875-1905. Rutgers University Press, 1999, 193 Ibid.4 Milner, John. The Studios of Paris: The Capital of Art in the Late Nineteenth Century. Yale University Press, 1990, 123

Figures starting page 59Additional editing of the French provided by Philippe Seminet

Architecture 5150 Bennett Contraditions

tre was primarily known for its religious attractions rather than its painters or parties, artists from near and far were attracted by cheap rents, tax-free wine, and a sense of camaraderie with the vibrant locals.⁶ La Butte is probably best known not only as a red-light district but also an artists’ colony. “There had always been painters in Montmartre: its reputation as the cen-ter of artistic life dated back to the reign of Louis VI, who was a great supporter of the arts.”⁷ However, the World’s Fair, held in Paris in 1889 and 1900, brought many artists and workers north to Montmartre where they found “des moulins, des cabarets et des tonnelles, des élysées champêtres et des ruelles silencieuses, bor-dées de chaumières, de granges et de jardins touffus, des plaines vertes coupées de précipices, où les sources fil-trent dans la glaise, détachant peu à peu certains îlots de verdure où s’ébattent des chèvres, qui broutent l’acanthe suspendue aux rochers; des petites filles à l’oeil fier, au pied montagnard, les surveillent en jouant entre elles.”⁸ In contemporary and current accounts alike, the romanti-cization of fin-de-siècle Montmartre is unavoidable. Films, books, and other accounts describe the glamorous yet gritty bohemian lifestyle that used to define Montmartre. Mont-martre today, because of much higher rents and contin-ued development, is much more of a “tourist theme park”⁹ than bohemian artists’ colony. The vast writing and artwork produced in Montmartre from 1880-1910 cul-tivated an identity of Montmartre and “contributed to the evolution of Montmartre into a kind of cultural theme-park in which even the tangential authenticity of the Bohemianism was shamelessly sentimentalized.”10 This is why today, if you visit Montmartre you’ll find nar-row streets overrun with tourists and filled with souvenir shops selling mass-produced poster prints of Toulouse Lautrec posters ( figure 2).

I started this project to investigate how the art-ist-filled fin-de-siècle Montmartre became the “tourist theme park” that Montmartre is today and found that many of the roots of the extreme gentrification of the

neighborhood were already in place by 1910. I will here explore Mont-martre from 1880-1910 during the final push of modernism into Paris through an exploration of the contradictions that existed in the lives of artists of Montmartre.

5 Roe, Sue. In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse and the Birth

of Modernist Art. Penguin Books, 2016, 14

6 Roe, 157 Roe, 15. Montmartre appears

in records dating back to the twelfth century when the Abby

of Montmartre was founded by Louis VI. Montmartre’s famous windmills are also

a result of the devout, they provided the food for the

religious communities. This is a bit ironic if you consider

Montmartre’s most famous windmill, that on the façade

of the seedy Moulin Rouge cabaret.

⁸ De Nerval, Gérard. Promenades et Souvenirs,

Paris, l’Illustration, 1853. My own translation: windmills,

cabarets and arbors, rustic paradises and silent alleyways,

lined with thatched cottages, barns and gardens, green

plains ending in cliffs, where the springs filter through the clay, staggering little

out of little islands of green where goats graze, grazing

the thistles hanging from the rocks; little girls with a proud

eye, with a mountain foot, watch them playing with each

other.”

⁹ Hewitt, Nicholas. “From Lieu De Plaisir; to & Lieu De mémoire; Montmartre

and Parisian Cultural Topography.” French Studies: A Quarterly Review, vol. 54, no. 4,

2000, pp. 453–67, 46210 Hewitt. 463

Montmartre and Fin-de-Siècle Anxieties

A combination of factors including the fin-de-siècle anxieties and en-croaching modernity contributed to tensions, which culminated at the top of La Butte. Especially because Paris was the site of the World Fairs of 1889 and 1900, which highlighted the most exciting developments of the new century, Parisians were on the front lines of the changes that were being introduced in the new century. The Exposi-tions Universelles also introduced many artists to the Montmartre art scene, Picasso arrived in Montmartre in 1900 to present at the Spanish art pavilion at the fair. Ma-tisse, although he had been in the Paris art scene since the 1890s, came to Montmartre looking for work during the World’s Fair and ended up on a team painting a frieze for the Grand Palais.11 The World’s Fair was described by the Guide Hachette: “the Fair shows the ascent of progress step by step—from the stagecoach to the express train, the messenger to the wireless and the telephone, lithog-raphy to the x-ray, from the first studies of carbon in the bowels of the earth to the advent of the airplane.”12 The World’s Fair and the turn of the century contributed to the anxieties and contradictions of imposing modernism “to be modern is to live a life of paradox and contradiction;”13 “To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world and, at the same time, that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are.”14

These tensions were especially strong in Paris, where Haussmanniza-tion acted as a visible metaphor for the end of “old Paris” and the beginning of “new” Paris. This transition left Parisians, especially those who could still remember the vieux Paris, stuck between two worlds. These tensions came to fruition in Montmartre because it was one of the “final frontiers” of vieux Paris. Although Montmartre was being developed to accom-modate the expanding city, “it was not a smart or elegant area.”15 Living inMontmartre was to live “slowly and quietly, like going back in time.”16 The streets were still narrow, pastoral, and made the neighborhood feel more like a rural village than a bustling city. Montmartre kept the “narrow streets and small buildings as well as… open fields, trees, and windmills that bestowed upon it an almost rural appearance.”17 This rural quality is exactly why the artists chose Montmartre. They were looking to escape the anxieties associated with the moderniza-tion of Paris without getting too far from the city center. This created the perfect recipe for their countercultural, transgressive community, keeping a toe in the past as they moved into the new century.

11 Roe, 1712 Roe, 413 Berman, Marshal. All That Is Solid Melts into Air: the Experience of Modernity. Verso, 2010, 1314 Berman, 1515 Milner, 13316 Roe, 517 Kenny, Nicolas. “Je Cherche Fortune: Identity, Counterculture, and Profit in Fin-de-siècle Montmartre.” Urban History Review, volume 32. No. 2, 2004, 24

Architecture 5352 Bennett Contraditions

Artists of Montmartre 1880-1900

Arguably, the artist most associated with the Montmartre area is Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Lautrec was the heir of an influential fam-ily that traced its ancestry to the eighth century.18 As a child, Lautrec suffered from health problems as a result of his parents’ inbreeding,

and, after breaking both of his legs in an accident at thir-teen, they became brittle and remained as they were de-spite the fact that his upper body continued to mature as he reached adulthood.19 As a result of his deformity, he was unable to participate in typical aristocratic activ-ities such as “riding and hunting with which his father felt he should identify.”20 Lautrec grew up as an outsider in his own family and took refuge in drawing and paint-ing. At age seventeen Lautrec entered the studio of Léon Bonnat, off the avenue Clichy in Montmartre.21 Lautrec stayed deeply tied to the Montmartre scene through-out his career and until his death in 1901. Lautrec was close friends with performers, owners, and patrons who frequented the famous cabarets in Montmartre. Mont-martre’s famous nightlife was the subject of much of Lau-trec’s work. His models were the dancers, singers, drunks, prostitutes, and patrons who Lautrec sought to capture in motion, observing his models in a chance moment was Lautrec’s “greatest desire.”22 He captured, the wom-en of the cabarets with an “ambiguous, analytic yet quite critical attitude”23 in both his paintings and lithographs24 that he is remembered for today. Lautrec’s studio was the calm, solitary, silent contrast to the nightclubs where he transferred the antics of the night before onto large can-vases propped against a ladder instead of using an easel.25 Lautrec worked in and for the nightclubs of Montmar-tre, creating promotional posters ( figure 3) in addition to paintings and other work. “In this way Lautrec produced a popular art that was the antithesis of Salon respect-ability, transgressing the bounds of painting, with all its connotations of preciousness, for a cheap and popular, but no less brilliant decorations of street hoardings.”26 Although he died in 1901 due to a combination of his

alcoholism and his disability, Lautrec had already begun fashioning Montmartre as “one of the most durable and lucrative tourist-traps in modern Europe.”27

Lautrec, although the most closely associated with Montmartre, wasn’t the only post-impressionist artist working there. Van Gogh lived in Montmartre briefly during his stint in Paris where he worked with other influential Post-Impressionists including Seurat and Signac. Like Lautrec, Montmartre itself was the subject matter of Van Gogh’s and Signac’s ( figure 4) work, taking a cue from the street scenes of the plein-air impressionists who came before them, sketched street scenes that showed the discontinuity that existed in Montmartre as modern façades began to infiltrate the previously pastoral boulevards.28

Like Lautrec, these artists did most of their conceptual work in the solitary confinement of their studios, sketching on the streets and composing a few blocks away in the studio. “Thus the studio played an essential role, its wan but steady light permitting a meticulous and painstaking study impossible in a street.”29 Not insignif-icant, however, was the fact that the studios weren’t far from where the artists were getting their subject matter. This closeness also contributed to a sense of camaraderie among the artists working in Montmartre.

However, the arrival of the new century marked a sig-nificant change in the Montmartre scene. With the death of Lautrec and the departure of Van Gogh in addition to the gradual development of the neighborhood, and the arrival of the World’s Fair a whole new generation of stu-dios was cropping up in Montmartre. Interestingly, this was not without the criticism of some of the “original” Montmartre crowd. Some of the “earlier” avant-garde writers, the École de Montmartre, who “saw them-selves representatives of an authentic Montmartre culture” resent-ed Picasso and the second wave of avant-garde artists who began to infiltrate the neighborhood.30

Artists of Montmartre 1900-1910

Especially because of the World’s Fair, many new artists arrived in Montmartre around 1900. One of the most famous arrivals in Montmar-tre was Pablo Picasso who ventured to Paris for the first time in Octo-ber of 1900 with a group of Catalan artists31 to see his painting Last Mo-ments displayed at the fair.32 Picasso was nineteen when he arrived in Paris for the first time.33 In Paris the young Picasso saw work by David, Delacroix, Ingres, Daumier, Corot, and Courbet and also works by the impressionists like Caillebotte, Monet, Manet, Pissarro, and, of course Cézanne, who would prove to be very influential to Picasso. Another surprising influence on the young artist was the poster art he found

18 Kenny, 2819 O’Connor, Patrick. Nightlife of Paris.: the Art of Toulouse-

Lautrec. Universe, 1992., 10

20 Kenny, 28 21 O’Connor, 10. Lautrec was

not the only upper-class student of Bonnat. In fact, most of the other students

working at his studio were also “outwardly Bohemian” but

came from wealthy families as well.

22 O’Connor, 1223 O’Connor, 12

24 The prints that made their way into posters which have

made their way onto the walls of every low-budget French

restaurant in the world, it seems.

25 Milner, 13926 Milner, 138

27 O’Connor, 10 Of course, Lautrec did this mostly

unknowingly but it is worth noting that many of the clubs

for which he made posters (the Moulin Rouge included)

specifically targeted upper-class Parisians who Lautrec (because of his background) probably understood how to

pander to.

28 Milner, 13429 Hewitt, 46130 One of whom, Carlos Casagemas killed himself soon after their move to Paris. This was a traumatic even for Picasso and colored (no pun intended) the development of his Blue Period. 31 Roe, 532 Roe, 533 Lautrec’s Montmartre of the Moulin Rouge was already on its way out, it seemed.

Architecture 5554 Bennett Contraditions

on the streets of Montmartre. Posters by the Swiss artist Stienlen (who created the still-famous cat poster for the Chat Noir) and Toulouse Lau-trec filled the streets of Paris. Picasso stayed with a friend-of-a-friend and on his first night in Montmartre he and his friends went out to the famous nightclubs but found them to be too expensive.34 However, as Picasso began to work in Montmartre, he too began to sketch and paint the patrons of the nightclubs at the foot of La Butte. Picasso’s ear-ly Montmartre works are clearly inspired by Lautrec, moody nightlife

scenes, but show a “psychological dimension” that hint at what is to come.35

Early during his time in Paris, Picasso caught the at-tention of dealer Ambrose Vollard, who was also living and working in Montmartre at the start of the century. Picasso began to be featured in shows of Vollard’s and it was through Vollard that Picasso was introduced to the Steins. Gertrude Stein, who had just moved to Montmar-tre after a disappointing stint in London became fast friends with Picasso as she sat for many, many hours while Picasso sketched and painted her portrait, which was finally finished in 1906.36 Picasso, especially in his portrait of Gertrude Stein was planting the roots of what would be cubism. In Montmartre, the Stein’s home be-

came an informal salon for the artists of Montmartre. Chez Stein was a place where they could collaborate, see each other’s work, receive cri-tique, and start friendly competitions with one another. It was through the Stein’s that Picasso became formally introduced to the work of Ma-tisse, who would eventually become Picasso’s “rival.” Matisse came to art much later in life than Picasso but came to Montmartre earlier than him. Matisse started his work in Montmartre working in a more pointil-list style with Seurat and Signac and eventually development Fauvism with Andre Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck.37 The Fauves were also fa-vorites of the Steins and all of them spent time together in Montmartre.

In 1907, Picasso was deeply influenced by an exhibition of African Arts and produced his most influential work to date, Demoiselles d’Avi-gnon. In the same year Matisse painted his Blue Nude. By the end of the decade Picasso and Georges Braque would go on to create analytic cubism and the advent of abstract art. The two collaborated so closely in Montmartre that it is sometimes difficult to tell which painter pro-duced which piece. “Montmartre played a vital part in the development of Cubism in particular. In these streets above Paris, creative activity flourished for many years.”38 But after cubism, the artists dispersed.39

Contradiction: In and Out of Paris

Although upper Montmartre was only annexed into Paris in 1860 during Haussmann’s ambitious urban renewal project, the Butte wasn’t far from the centre ville of Paris. However, Montmartre is Paris’ north-ernmost district and exists literally on the fringes. Despite the lack of distance, the significance of the location as both literally and symboli-cally on the city’s outskirts was intrinsically linked to its “social and cul-tural aloofness” and fueled its inhabitants’ obsession with maintaining its image as separate from the bustling city life of Paris.40 Many of the artists were working in ways that rejected typical salon expectations, which were being shown just south in heart of Paris. Art-ists like Lautrec, Picasso, Matisse, and many others en-hanced this literal and metaphorical marginality in their work by “sharing the marginal position of the fringing inhabitants of Paris who were pushed behind the city boundaries, guaranteed the radical novelty of their art and, at the same tine, increased its nonconformity and outrageous impact.”41

Ironically, though the closeness-yet-detachment from Paris also lead, in many ways, to the creation of Mont-martre’s “cultural theme park.” Because Montmartre was so close, the “smarteux” upper class Parisians “constantly in quest for fashionable, and therefore transitory, pleasures and entertainment” be-gan arriving.42 Les smarteux enjoyed venturing out to a neighborhood they perceived to be “dangerous” (despite the fact that this wasn’t ex-actly true) that was still in safe proximity to their parts of town. Mont-martre’s nightclubs and artists depended upon the bustling city centre for patrons but strove to maintain their independence from traditional Paris. Contemporary accounts of Montmartre describe it as “in Paris but not of it.”43

Contradiction: Rural and Urban

Upper Montmartre (la Butte) wasn’t originally included in Hauss-mann’s plan for restoration. It had, therefore, avoided modernization and kept the “narrow streets and small buildings as well as … open fields, trees, and windmills that bestowed upon it an almost rural appearance” ( figures 5 and 6).44 This rural quality is exactly why the artists chose Mont-martre. They were looking to escape the anxieties associated with the modernization of Paris without getting too far from the city center. This created the perfect recipe for their countercultural, transgressive com-munity, keeping a toe in the past as they moved into the new century.

34 Roe, 3735 Roe, 17336 Roe, 175

37 Milner, 16238 The start of the war in 1914

encouraged the departure of foreign artists from Paris

especially. 39 Brigstocke, Julian. “Defiant

Laughter: Humour and the Aesthetics of Place in Late 19th Century Montmartre.” Cultural

Geographies, vol. 19, no. 2, 2012, pp. 217–235., 24

40 Claire Le Thomas. “Beyond the Margins: Picasso and Company in Montmartre.” Urban History Group 2008 Annual Conference Urban Boundaries and Margins, 2008, Nottingham, France., 441 Hewitt, 46042 Kenny, 2543 Kenny, 2444 Milner, 159

Architecture 5756 Bennett Contraditions

Renoir’s first studio in Montmartre, a large, crumbling, seven-teenth-century house, had huge gardens and vast views of the country-side “as far as St. Denis.”45 Here Renoir had a “lavishly colorful and fresh retreat from the city” a place where he, and later Emile Bernard, Vincent

Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Suzanne Valadon, and Maurice Utrillo found refuge from unsettling, and unpleasant city life of Paris.46 From here, Van Gogh could see the wind-mills which surely reminded him of his native Holland. A few blocks away, a popular weekend destination for Montmartre residents, Moulin de la Galette, a windmill which opened its gardens and buildings as a café and bar, also reflected the “semi-rural air” of the area. Mou-lin de la Galette ( figure 5) was a place where workmen would relax alongside artists on weekends; “invasions by foreigners were very rare at the Moulin de la Galette.”47 Even Lautrec was fond of the rural feeling of Montmar-tre’s streets.48

The rural landscape also connects Montmartre to the longstanding Romantic tradition of artists connect-ing to nature and the tension this created in a place like Montmartre, which seemed pastoral in relation to the new wide boulevards of central Paris. Renoir’s family described one of the studios he had in Montmartre as “largely compensated for by the low rents, the fresh air. The cows, the lilacs and the roses”49 despite the fact that is was quite difficult to get to. However, as Haussmann and adventure-hungry bourgeoisie pushed at the seams

of Montmartre locals expressed fear that their rural paradise would soon be lost. “Les maisons nouvelles s’avancent toujours … le vieux mont de Mars aura bien bientôt le sort de la butte des Moulins, qui, au siècle dernier, ne montrait guère un front moins superbe.”50

Contradiction: Working class and bourgeoisie

Artists especially in Montmartre sought to establish themselves as decidedly anti-bourgeoisie because they felt it made them appear to be more avant-garde. “For Montmartre’s exclusivity to be meaning-ful, bourgeoisie Paris had to serve as its foil.”51 Because it had avoided Haussmanization, Montmartre was “Paris’ last peasant community” and thus “a refuge for the dispossessed.”52

Although the artists who lived in Montmartre were often poor and may have wanted for food, clothes, or heating, “living in Montmartre was a necessity and a choice for the artists.”53 The artists established

themselves with the working class to create a kind of kinship with the poor. Many of the artists (including Picasso and the Fauves) enhanced the depraved aspects of their life to appear more avant-garde and an-ti-bourgeoisie. Picasso and Braque even adopted the “coarse language associated with the working classes.”54 The artists liked living in an area that was working-class, separate from the stuffy, upper-class École des Beaux Arts. They felt that living in a working-class neighborhood and rubbing elbows with the working class themselves made them (and therefore their art) seem more avant-garde. Matisse’s work on painting a frieze for the World Fair’s in 1900, for example, was a “grueling” “nine-hour day, bent double, crouched over canvases spread out on the ground ‘as if they were breaking stones.’ ”55

However, as the clubs and avant-garde lifestyle caught on with les smarteux Montmartre became a “victim of its own success.”56 The smarteux were “enjoying the atmo-sphere of risqué sensuality without taking any real risk.”57 While some artists and club owners embraced the new bourgeois clientele, others mourned the loss of old Mont-martre. Even before 1910, the “earlier” avant-garde writ-ers (the École de Montmartre) who “saw themselves representatives of an authentic Montmartre culture” resented Picasso and the second wave of avant-garde artists who began to infiltrate the neighborhood. The essential connection between the urban poverty and the allure of Montmartre inevitably lead to the “theme park-ing” of the neighborhood.

Contradiction: Romanticism and Modernity

“Nou ne croyons pas émettre quelque opinion subversive en déclar-ant ici que les artistes ont fait Montmartre. C’est là une vérité quasi ax-iomatique.”58 It comes as no surprise that even contemporary sources were claiming that “artists made Montmartre;” the neighborhood’s pas-toral, working-class atmosphere is typically romantic. However, the art-ists who made Montmartre were creating the most modern art in Paris in its least modern neighborhood. Despite the fact that Montmartre claimed to be the center of modernity through which all of the modern world would be expected to pass the inhabitants were fiercely protective of preserving its rural aura.59 Montmartre’s residents were always on the “defense of the representational and the traditional. In this, it can stand as a representative of Montmartre as a whole: humorous, caricature, fantastic yet unwilling to extend far beyond the boundaries of realism, qualities which will become all too apparent when the Bohemians of the Butte come to transform the ‘lieu des plasirs’ into’ a ‘lieu de mémoire.”60

45 Milner, 15946 Milner, 15947 Milner, 159

48 O’Connor, 10 Lautrec, however, because he was

wealthy had been visiting his home in the actual countryside since he was a child. In a letter

at seven years-old wrote to his grandmother “Although

I don’t mind it here in Paris, he preferred to back in the

countryside.”49 Milner, 156

50 De Nerval. My own translation: The new homes advance everyday … the old mountain of Mars will soon

have the fate of the Butte des Moulins, which in the last

century hardly showed a less superb front.

51 Kenny, 2452 Le Thomas, 2

53 Le Thomas, 454 Le Thomas, 355 Roe, 1756 Kenny, 3057 Roe, xiv58 Renault and Chateau, 199. Translation: we do not believe that we are giving a subversive opinion in declaring that artists made Montmartre. It is A QUASI-axiomatic truth. 59Brigstocke

Architecture 5958 Bennett Contraditions

Montmartre after 1910 – “Lieu de Mémoire”

By 1910, many artists who had gotten their start in Montmartre had left. Picasso stuck around in Paris for a while but eventually made his way to Avignon and then to Antibes. Matisse also left for the south of France and ended up in Nice. After 1910, Montmartre wasn’t the same rural, poor, artists’ village. As soon as 1923, there were proposed con-struction projects in Montmartre of new houses with studios which were intended to be lent to artists at modest rents because the artist was losing their place in Montmartre.61 “Artists, painters, sculptors, engravers, decorators, architects, and musicians are all determined to

prevent upper-class people or nouveaux-riches from get-ting hold of a house and turning the studio into a draw-ing-room, smoking-room, or dance-room.”62

Unfortunately, it seems that the construction efforts were unsuccessful as Montmartre has lost all traces of the authenticity that it once held for artists and locals

alike, as upper-class Parisians took over the area followed by devel-opers who pandered to tourists looking to get a glimpse of the Mont-martre of Lautrec and Picasso. As the neighborhood was taken over by upper-class Parisians, both the working-class inhabitants and the artists were pushed out and (a century later) has become a parody of itself. The “true” Montmartre now exists only in memory. The contra-dictions existed in Montmartre from 1880-1910 as a result of the final push of modernism into Paris. The same contradictions that existed in fin-de-siècle Montmartre eventually lead to its demise as the once ro-mantic, rural, non-Parisian neighborhood came to represent the most commercialized tourist neighborhood in Paris.

Montmartre’s story, however, is not a totally unique one. Although Montmartre is arguably the most extreme example, New York’s East Village, London’s SoHo, and even Austin’s East Side are just a few exam-ples of artists’ neighborhoods that have all held similar contradictions throughout their history. As problems with gentrification begin to af-fect cities small and large across the world, looking back to places like Montmartre can help us understand how gentrification works, what we can do to prevent it, and how we can create spaces that continue to inspire creativity without compromising locals.

60 Hewitt, 46261 Emile-Bayard,

Jean. Montmartre Past and Present. Brentano’s, 1929., 136

62 Emile-Bayard, 136Figure 1

Figure 2

Architecture 6160 Bennett Contraditions

Figure 6

Figure 5

Figure 3

Figure 4

Architecture 6362 Bennett Contraditions

Bibliography

Berman, Marshal. All That Is Solid Melts into Air: the Experience of Mo-dernity. Verso, 2010.

Brigstocke, Julian. “Defiant Laughter: Humour and the Aesthetics of Place in Late 19th Century Montmartre.” Cultural Geographies, vol. 19, no. 2, 2012, pp. 217–235.

Cate, Phillip Dennis. The Spirit of Montmartre: Cabarets, Humor and the Avant Garde, 1875-1905 . Rutgers University Press, 1999.

Claire Le Thomas. “Beyond the Margins: Picasso and Company in Mont-martre.” Urban History Group 2008 Annual Conference Urban Boundaries and Margins, 2008, Nottingham, France.

Emile-Bayard, Jean. Montmartre Past and Present. Brentano’s, 1929.

Hewitt, Nicholas. “From Lieu De Plaisir; to & Lieu De mémoire; Mont-martre and Parisian Cultural Topography.”  French Studies: A Quarterly Review, vol. 54, no. 4, 2000, pp. 453–67.

Kenny, Nicolas. “Je Cherche Fortune: Identity, Counterculture, and Profit in Fin-de-siècle Montmartre.” Urban History Review, vol-ume 32. No. 2, 2004

Milner, John. The Studios of Paris: the Capital of Art in the Late Nine-teenth Century. Yale University Press, 1990.

De Nerval, Gérard. Promenades et Souvenirs, Paris, l’Illustration, 1853

O’Connor, Patrick.  Nightlife of Paris.: the Art of Toulouse-Lautrec. Uni-verse, 1992.

Pierre, Mac Orlan. Montmartre, mémoires, Paris, Arcadia Éditions, 2003 [1946]

Renault, Georges and Chateau, Henri. Montmartre, Paris, Flammarion, 1897

Roe, Sue. In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse and the Birth of Modernist Art. Penguin Books, 2016.

Images

1. Map of Paris (http://maps.wallpapereu.us/map-paris-arrondisse-ments/)

2. Montmartre today (https://a2.muscache.com/locations/uploads/photo/image/11716/0_4200_0_2800_one_Montmartre_Lagarde_16.jpg)

3. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, À Montrouge, 1886 (https://upload.wi-kimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Toulouse_Lautrec_A-Mon-trouge_Rosa_la_Rouge.jpg)

4. Paul Signac, The Boulevard de Clichy under Snow, 1886 (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Paul_Signac_-_Snow%2C_Boulevard_de_Clichy%2C_Paris_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)

5. Moulin de la Galette (https://i.pinimg.com/736x/35/5b/b7/355bb7c-c213fea83da9fa93f6eb27226--old-paris-vintage-paris.jpg)

6. Heights of Montmartre (Milner, Page 149)

64 Last Name Contraditions

P r i s o n

P r i v a t i z a t i o n :

C o m p l a c e n c y,

Pragmatism, and

Justice for Sale

Dane Shannon

Introduction

In America, prison privatization has been an increasingly controver-sial issue since the 1980s, when the U. S. government began to contract out criminal rehabilitation to businesses in the private sector. The justi-fication behind this movement boiled down to inefficiency on the gov-ernment’s part that some estimated would be remedied in a competi-tive business market. Much of the debate surrounding issues of prison privatization regards its efficacy and ethicality. In a report he wrote for Congress in 2006, entitled “Privatization and the Federal Government: An Introduction,” government analyst Kevin R. Kosar explains that “[i]t can be expected that privatization will remain a controversial idea. Any attempt to improve the federal government’s provision of goods and services through privatization likely may elicit concerns over the inten-tions and possible consequences of the proposal” (Kosar 36). Because prison and criminal rehabilitation systems have a tremendous impact on society and social justice, they must be approached, managed, and operated with the utmost concern.

For this reason, the issue of prison privatization has many citizens, political leaders, corporations, and organizations arguing over the legit-imacy of private prisons as a solution to the inadequacies of state and federal prisons. These arguments are oriented around a variety of ap-peals, ranging from philosophical and theoretical to factual and practi-cal. Behind all of them lies the question: Should the government abolish privately owned, managed, and operated prisons? Vermont’s Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders has answered that question with a remarkable “yes” by introducing a bill for the “Justice is Not For Sale Act of 2015,” which proposes a three-year plan to ban all levels of government from contracting with private prisons (Justice is Not For Sale Act).

Architecture 6968 Shannon Prison Privatization

Opponents of the “Justice is Not For Sale Act of 2015”

This policy and others like it which proposed bans and restrictions on prison privatization are often met with the strong resistance of stakeholders on the other side of the issue, who claim that private pris-ons are useful and beneficial to all parties involved in prison reform. A great example of such a stakeholder is Adrian Moore, Vice President of Policy Studies at the libertarian Reason Foundation and hearty advo-cate for prison privatization. In his Reason Foundation policy analysis, entitled “Private Prisons: Quality Corrections at a Lower Cost,” Moore argues that “federal, state, and local officials across the nation are fac-ing a real crisis in their prisons and jails—too many prisoners and not enough money… Private prisons can be a big part of the answer to this problem” (Moore). Moore makes a great point when one considers the challenges state prisons have encountered in the past. In his article “The Prison-Industrial Complex,” Eric Schlosser writes about how pris-on privatization was the solution to crises in California prison systems due to overcrowding and inadequate management by the government. Schlosser explains that the industrialization of the prison system was adopted originally because of an unwillingness or incapability on the government’s part to reform prison on its own (Schlosser).

This theme, that privatization and private prisons are the answer to problems created by a swollen and overexerted “big government” appeals to many conservatives and libertarians. Like Moore, these stakeholders in favor of private prisons, advocate for privatization in general with the perception that such institutions remove power from the government and reinvest it into the private circuit, thus lessening government control (Schlosser). Schlosser also points out that around the initial boom of prison privatization “living conditions in many of the nation’s private prisons [were] unquestionably superior to condi-tions in many state-run facilities,” making the argument against a ban due to government inefficiencies particularly compelling (Schlosser).

This leads corporate stakeholders with investments in private pris-ons to argue that industrialized prisons can perform better services at lower costs than the government because managers and owners of pri-vate prisons have the business know-how to operate facilities efficient-ly and because they have the incentive to optimize the quality of those facilities in a competitive market (Schlosser). This argument is most frequently employed by corporations like Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group, two of the biggest corporations running pri-vate prisons (Friedman). These companies and their like promote the idea that their business models ensure high-quality, low-cost results, incentivized by the competitive nature of a capitalist economy. Charles

H. Logan, a professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut who has done extensive research at The National Institute of Justice, ex-plains this argument in Private Prisons: Cons and Pros. He says that in theory “[c]ontracting provides an alternative yardstick against which to measure government service; it allows for comparisons” (Logan 42). It should be noted that Logan makes no indication of his agreement with that argument or its logic.

Kosar also illustrates another argument that proponents of privat-ization often present: low costs guaranteed by private prisons mean tax cuts for citizens. This argument typically engages upper-class conser-vatives who ideologically appreciate tax reductions on principle and/or are wealthy to the degree that those tax cuts make a substantial differ-ence in their bottom line. These stakeholders stand to suffer a signifi-cant loss in the event of any governmental prison reform calling for tax increases as the brunt of that increase will fall on them (Kosar).

Advocates for private prisons also suggest that private facilities provide jobs and create business. Schlosser discusses the many busi-nesses necessary to operate a private prison including but not limit-ed to “plumbing supply companies, food-service companies, health-care companies, companies that sell everything from bullet-resistant security cameras to padded cells available in a ‘vast color selection’” (Schlosser). These businesses are usually contracted to the private prisons, with many dependent employees, making them and their sur-rounding communities stakeholders.

While there are many intricate reasons for which these aforemen-tioned stakeholders resist the “Justice is Not For Sale Act of 2015,” these are by far the most prevalent and reasonable in terms of results.

Proponents of “Justice is Not For Sale Act of 2015”

These pro-privatization arguments and the reasoning behind them seem solid enough in theory. However, in application, there are a number of conflicts of interest that put all of these principles into question. These conflicts of interest arise when the government out-sources and privatizes prisons without setting up rules and regulations for accountability. Kosar writes regarding this subject in the terms of general privatization, explaining that “[g]overnment agencies, unlike private firms, usually operate under complex accountability hierar-chies that include multiple and even conflicting goals” that “embody principles of democratic justice, such as the allowance for public par-ticipation and government transparency.” Kosar contrasts this system of accountability, describing the privatized sector as one that is outside

Architecture 7170 Shannon Prison Privatization

the jurisdiction of the government, and therefore uncheckable by dem-ocratic ruling (Kosar 24-25). This is a problem that many stakeholders, predominantly liberal citizens who value democracy and government regulation, take issue with on the grounds that it undermines the core principles of American political philosophy.

With these values in mind, stakeholders against privatization argue more importantly that a prison system unaccountable to the govern-ment is a breeding ground for corruption and social injustice. Logan points out the first of many such opportunities by discussing how pris-on privatization “creates incentives to lobby for laws and public policies that serve special interests rather than public interest; in particular, private prison companies may lobby for more imprisonment” (Logan 46). Kosar backs this concern, suggesting also that “[c]ontracting out can promote iron triangles and other corrupt relationships between the federal government and the private sector” (Kosar 14). These are valid and alarming worries given that these institutions are designed to correct social dysfunction.

Further, this potential for corruption within the unregulated system of privatized prisons becomes even more disconcerting for supporters of the “Justice is Not For Sale Act of 2015” when they consider the incen-tives for such corruption. Typically, the government funds its private prisons based on how many prisoners they house per day, or as Schloss-er defines the model, paid by the “man-day” (Schlosser). This means that if a private prison has agreed with the government that the cost of a “man-day” is “X,” then contracted with it to be paid “X plus profit,” the incentive to maximize “man-days” increases to an uncomfortable level for many stakeholders resisting the private prison system.

This issue harkens back to Logan and Kosar’s concerns over corrupt lobbying by private prisons as they attempt to affect legislation in ways that will increase criminalization, and therefor incarcerations. This in-troduces the entirety of American society as a stakeholder since corrupt legislation threatens civil liberties and compromises the integrity of the law as a whole. However, it makes some communities far more suscep-tible to mistreatment than others. Impoverished, underprivileged, and historically marginalized (certain ethnic, racial, and religious groups) communities are at a greater risk of being affected by this corruption, as they tend to be targeted more frequently by law enforcement due to our nation’s prejudiced and racist culture (ACLU). This makes these communities stakeholders in favor of the “Justice is Not For Sale Act of 2015” as well.

Perhaps one of the most important stakeholders advocating for a ban on prison privatization are the prisoners at institutions where cor-ner-cutting to save on costs has led to inhumane conditions. Derek Gil-na, a researcher for Prison Legal News and opponent of private prisons, provides numerous examples of such conditions in his report “How Private Prison Companies Cut Corners to Generate Profit.” According to Gilna, the companies make money by “cutting corners in staffing, healthcare, lower employee qualifications and reduced training, and substandard facility maintenance” (Gilna). One particularly compel-ling case occurred through Anamark Corporation, a food service pro-vider for private prisons. Gilna states that Anamark was “the subject of numerous lawsuits for providing prisoners with inferior food” and was “cited for serious problems at Michigan and Florida correctional facilities” (Gilna). Issues of abuse like these engage human rights orga-nizations and generally empathetic and socially conscious citizens in the controversy, pitting them against prison privatization.

Corner-cutting in private prisons, as Gilna points out, doesn’t af-fect only prisoners; staff members and employees are significantly underrepresented, underpaid, and undertrained (Gilna). Private pris-on owners often cut costs by blocking union organization and slash-ing employee wages to increase affordability without losing profit (Schlosser). Employees aren’t given adequate training for coping with the high-stress environment of prison employment either (Gilna). This can significantly damage the morale of officers and staff working for private prisons, creating an environment and culture in which negative attitudes can fester and eventually progress into aggressive behavior.

Once again, advocates for prison reform and the “Justice is Not For Sale Act of 2015” certainly defend and promote the bill with oth-er arguments and concerns regarding the privatization of prisons in America. However, these arguments serve as the fundamental bas-es for their debates and centralize the main incredulity stakeholders have toward private prisons in terms of political philosophy and po-tential for corruption.

Architecture 7372 Shannon Prison Privatization

The Remaining Impasse

These are the arguments that characterize the contention surround-ing the “Justice is Not For Sale Act of 2015,” as well the controversial nature of prison industrialization and privatization. There seems to be valid reasoning behind each approach to the issue when one considers the government’s past failures in operating the prison system without help from the private sector. One must consider whether or not the government would have the capacity to manage prisons any more ef-fectively or ethically than private owners. Can we be sure that a ban on the privatization of prisons wouldn’t simply result in worse conditions for prisoners, employees, and public safety if and when the government becomes overwhelmed by the prison population? On the other hand, allowing the government to remain reliant on private corporations weakens an already vulnerable and exposed flaw in our government and criminal justice system. Neither of these two options seems ideal by any means, so in choosing between the “Justice is Not For Sale Act of 2015” and prison privatization, stakeholders certainly seem to be deter-mining the lesser of two evils.

One Perspective for the Reader’s Consideration

“The Justice is Not For Sale Act of 2015” presents society with a com-plex solution to an even more complex issue. This means addressing its validity and exigence, given the conflicts of interest in prison privat-ization, requires extensive consideration. Having deeply examined the controversies surrounding this social issue, I’ve come to the conclusion that I support “The Justice is Not For Sale act of 2015” on three grounds. First, the model of privatization motivates to invest more in profit schemes than in prisoners and their rehabilitation, violating their hu-man rights and their well-being by reducing them to quantifiable assets rather than respectable and worthwhile individuals. Second, regardless of inefficiencies, a public government should be responsible for so-cial and public projects as they can be moderated by democratic rule while the private sector cannot. Third, the values present in arguments against the act are rooted in pragmatic settlement rather than an aspi-ration toward moral ideals.

In the first case, the problem I see with prison privatization is im-mediate. It creates the incentive to view prisoners as capital, alien-ating and disrespecting their intrinsic human values and, as a result, perpetuating the perception that they are no longer valid individuals worth the attention of society. This not only conflicts with my values for human rights, empathy, tolerance, and respect for all members of

society, but it also brings into question the values upheld by operators of private prisons themselves. Often, private prisons value monetary gain over the well-being of their prisoners, resulting in poor conditions for staff and prisoners. In a report she wrote for Prison Legal News, en-titled “Lax Oversight Plagues Private Prisons in Texas,” Lauren Reinlie exposes some of these “squalid conditions,” calling Texas prison privat-ization a “failed experiment” (Reinlie). A primary goal of “The Justice is Not For Sale Act” is to address these concerns and uphold these values by eliminating the system that constricts the worth of prisoners to sti-pends and monetary gain; I’m in full support of that goal (“Justice is Not For Sale Act”).

In the second case, a government that relies on the private sector to manage its public affairs, especially social justice programs, violates its basic democratic obligations. Any control and rule over social projects given to private sector is control and rule taken away from the public to whom the power belongs in a democratic government. I’ve recognized that it is the government’s responsibility to oversee the prison system so that it remains accountable to all citizens and not merely opaque bureaucratic agencies (Kosar). By banning prison privatization, “The Justice is Not For Sale Act of 2015” will reinvest the government in the social justice system and reestablish social justice as its responsibility (“Justice is Not For Sale Act”). This will not only reopen the prison sys-tem to the public but also motivate the government to focus more ef-forts toward social justice programs that reduce incarceration. In these effects, I’m once again in full support of the act.

Finally, I take issue with the government’s privatization of prisons because it indicates either social complacency or, worse yet, social res-ignation. Instead of working to solve the prison crises through legisla-tion and judiciary reform—revision of causal policies, precedents, and prejudices that exacerbate incarceration rates—the government sim-ply abdicated responsibility over a portion of its population and bar-gained them into the confinement of private corporations. With these principles in mind, Schlosser argues that utilizing private prisons is an example of the “greed and political cowardice that… pervade America,” (Schlosser), and I agree. Prison privatization is a manifestation of gov-ernment and society’s deeply rooted lack of concern for social justice or, even worse, a substantially incompetent and broken government. From my research, I’ve gathered that there is significant truth in both explanations. Thus, the consequence of continuing to rely on the pri-vate sector’s management of prisons will further debilitate the govern-ment and excuse it from investing in the social justice reform necessary to keep citizens out of prison in the first place. “The Justice is Not For Sale Act of 2015” seeks to confront the government in its complacen-

Architecture 7574 Shannon Prison Privatization

cy and inefficiency, requiring that it eventually reassume its obligation and re-engage with alternative solutions to incarceration (“Justice is Not For Sale Act of 2015”). On the grounds that those requirements will limit if not reverse the negative consequences of prison privatization, I support “The Justice is Not For Sale Act of 2015.”

While developing an opinion regarding this social issue required tremendous reflection and consideration, my conclusive position is in tentative support of the “Justice is Not For Sale Act of 2015.” I admit hesitancy, being aware that the implementation and execution of the act will require the substantial investment of the public—monetarily, ideologically, and emotionally. The state-run prison systems will need to recover from the damage done over several decades of reliance on the private sector. I recognize, however, that such reliance will only worsen with continued complacency and avoidance.

Works Cited

Friedman, Alex. “Who Owns Private Prison Stock.” Who Owns Private Prison Stock? Prison Legal News, 31 July 2015. Web. 16 Oct. 2016.

Gilna, Derek. “Prison Legal News.” Report: How Private Prison Compa-nies Cut Corners to Generate Profit. Prison Legal News, 2 Aug. 2016. Web. 16 Oct. 2016.

Justice Is Not For Sale Act of 2015, S. HEN15C35, 114th Cong. (2015). Print.

Kosar, Kevin R. “Privatization and the Federal Government: An Intro-duction.” CRS

Report for Congress RL33777 (2006): 1-37. Congress Research Service. Web. 16 Oct. 2016.

Logan, Charles H. Private Prisons Cons and Pros. New York: Oxford UP, 1990. Print.

Moore, Adrian T. “Private Prisons: Quality Corrections at a Lower Cost.” 1 Apr. 1998:

The Reason Foundation: Policy Studies. The Reason Foundation. Web. 14 Nov. 2016.

“Racial Disparities in Criminal Justice.” American Civil Liberties Union. ACLU, 2016.

Reinlie, Lauren. “Lax Oversight Plagues Private Prisons in Texas.” Watch Your Assets 1 (6 Feb. 2008): 1-9. Print

Schlosser, Eric. “The Prison-Industrial Complex.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, Dec. 1998.

Staff Bios

Editor-in-Chief

Gabrielle WilkoszGabrielle is a graduating senior. This May, she’ll walk the stage Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Arts in English Writing and Rhetoric, concentration in Professional Writing. She hopes someday to teach rhetoric at the collegiate level. Her research interests include U.S. for-eign diplomacy and feminist rhetorics applied.

Senior Designer

Hailey JohnsonHailey is a senior majoring in Computer Science and minoring in Graphic Design. Her interests include user experience design, drawing, baking, running, and gardening. After gradutation, she plans to pursue a career in Design Technology.

Junior Designer

Sabrina SmithSabrina is a junior Graphic Design major. Her hobbies include reading, drawing, making candles in her kitchen, and embroidery. She hopes to become a book designer after graduation and own a lot of cats.

Margaret “Marji” DzenkoMarji obtained her degree in English Writing and Rhetoric with a spe-cialization in Professional Writing in December of 2017. She is from Simsbury, Connecticut, and is still working on integrating “y’all” into her vocabulary. Some interests of hers include taking 40,000 photos of her dogs, nature walks on the Greenbelt, and wholesome memes. You can visit her website at www.marjidzenko.com

Max MurphyMax is a third year philosophy student with active interests in all kinds of stuff. Get him going and he’d be more than happy to spout some pseu-do-intellectual nonsense in a long, semi-incoherent fashion. Favorite topics include Historical Materialism, Mars colonization, and frisbee. He’d like to take the remaining space to thank all those who’ve rooted for him over the years, especially his mother.

Melissa Gonzales Melissa Gonzales is from Corpus Christi, Texas. She is now at St. Ed-ward’s University in Austin to study creative writing and psychology. She aspires to edit books in the future, as well as write some of her own. When she isn’t writing, she is likely to be found watching movies, play-ing with her Chihuahua, or spending time with friends.

Nicole VickersNicole is a junior English Education major at St. Edward’s University. She has been actively writing poetry and plays since high school and won the Scholastic SIlver Key Award for “Name of Play,” one of her plays. She finds her inspiration through nature, folk music lyrics, her Croatian heritage, and Joni Mitchell.

Sarah GonzalesSarah is a sophomore Writing and Rhetoric major. Her focus include creative writing and journalism, but out of the two she hopes to pursue a career in journalism; preferably Arts & Entertainment. Sarah’s hob-bies include hanging with friends and watching movies. Fun facts: She jumped out a window. She’s terrible at lying. Her hero is Wonder Wom-an. Her kindergarden bestie is Kathie Rojas with an “ie.”

Copy Editors

Allanah MaarteenAllanah is a writer, editor, and artist. As frontwoman and guitarist for the band Imitari, she’s recorded three albums and toured the Southern U.S. She’s currently finishing her senior year at St. Edward’s Universi-ty and will graduate in May 2018 with a Bachelor of Arts in Writing & Rhetoric, Creative Writing emphasis.

Bronte TreatBronte is from San Antonio, Texas. She studies Rhetoric and Writing at St. Edward’s University. She admires the poetry of Sharon Olds, War-san Shire, and Catherine Pierce. Upon graduation, she hopes to teach English abroad. Her passions include practicing yoga, reading, and dis-mantling the patriarchy. She greatly enjoyed editing for Arete.

Kathie RojasKathie Rojas is a second-year writing student from Dallas, Texas. She is currently a barista at Austin Java, a copy editor for Hilltop Views, and a Sagittarius most of the time. A rhetor of soft phrases, she holds cats in high esteem and loves to listen to low instrumental music in the dark. Her kindergarten best friend is Sarah Gonzales with an s.

Logan StallingsLogan is a junior at St. Edward’s, double majoring in graphic design and writing. A friend to all print publications, she has worked as the design editor of the McNair Scholars Journal and New Literati and is published in Freelancer Magazine, New Literati, and Sorin Oak Review. In the fu-ture, she hopes to attend grad school and test the waters of screenwriting and film, incorporating her love of storytelling and visual aesthetics.

The typeface for Arete Vol. 27 is Kepler, designed by Robert Slimbach. The titles are set in Futura designed by Paul Renner and distributed by Bauer Type Foundry. The text stock is Neenah Starwhite Tiara 70T, and the cover stock is Neenah Starwhite Flash Cover White 84C.

The making of this publication was funded by St. Edward’s University, and an edition of 400 copies was printed by OneTouchPoint Printing in Austin, Texas.