Aaron Ruben

            On Tuesday just before 1:00 I did my usual search for bedbugs and found none. I've seen four live ones in three weeks. I finished editing "La java des chaussettes à clous" (The Tap dance of the Hobnail Boots) by Boris Vian in Christian's Translations and now all I have to do is post a video for it and I should have it published on the blog tomorrow. 

            I memorized the second verse of "U.S.S.R. / U.S.A." by Serge Gainsbourg and worked on revising my translation of the last verse. 

            I weighed 89.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            Just before 10:00 I logged on for my US Literature Zoom lecture. 

            Next week our classes will probably be in person. 

            She said informed participation in lectures is not required but welcomed. We are only required to participate during tutorials. 

            She warned us that it's impossible to talk about slavery without looking at violent material.

            She repeated her preference that students only use the chat when we are invited to make comments. 

            Frederick Douglas is said to have been the most photographed person of the 19th Century. He was certainly more photographed than Abraham Lincoln. He wanted to be photographed because it was part of his project of anti racist representation. He wanted to circulate how his image did not conform to stereotype. 

            Last week we looked at collectively authored documents and speech acts. But Douglass brings forward the importance of the individual at the expense of a more complex social understanding. Can anyone be an individual who is not a white male property owner? 

            This is an introduction to US Literature and so we are not covering everything. 

            Douglass escaped slavery around the age of twenty and became a famous Abolitionist orator. He started a newspaper called the North Star and wrote and rewrote his autobiography. 

            We need the 1845 text. That's what I have in e-book form. His book is central to the canon of US literature. 

            After he escaped and became a lecturer he was still not legally free. He had revealed his whereabouts in print and put himself in danger. He was purchased by two sisters in England for $700 and then liberated. His first public speech was in Nantucket. 

            He was a protegee of William Lloyd Garrison, who wrote the preface. Garrison was one of two people who published authenticating materials of Douglass's narrative. Douglass broke with Garrison because he objected to white expectations of him and being told to leave the philosophizing to white speakers. He was asked simply be an example of and to provide evidence for the slave suffering. They didn't want him to be too eloquent. Douglass emphasized doubleness in that he was suffering but could represent himself. 

            "My feet have been so cracked with frost I could put my pen inside." 

            He was a perlocutionary force, successfully motivating for abolition through oratorial persuasion. 

            By the time of the first Cambridge History of Literature Douglass was only briefly mentioned. In the Literary History of the United States he is not mentioned at all. Why did he disappear from the canon? Because of formalism and new criticism. The rise of formal literary study established proper literary objectives that did not include the slave narrative. He was rediscovered during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. 

            She showed a quote from Donald Trump in 2017 in which Trump refers to Douglass in the present tense as if he were still alive and says he's doing great things and will continue to do so. 

            The title Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave is composed to serve its claim to authenticity. "Written by Himself" is necessarily added. His signature under his photograph also serves that purpose. It posits singularity but also renders him generic. 

            United States of Americanness and enslavement. "American slave" is an oxymoron. If the United States of America signifies individuality what does it mean to be an American slave? 

            It was illegal for slaves to testify. He has to assert he is a subject. For his narrative to be authentic it had to be prefaced by white abolitionists. Not being able to authenticate himself undermines his authority. No testimony on the part of coloured witnesses could convict a white person. They were considered as incompetent as brutes. She reminds us of the slave petition from last week in which they refer to themselves as being rendered as beasts. Animalization was one of the conditions of slavery according to Douglass. 

           It was technically illegal for a slave owner to kill his slave but conviction required the testimony of white witnesses because coloured witnesses were considered to have no credibility. Africans were not considered to be rational and reason was a sign of divinity. Pro slavery advocates argued that slaves benefited from patriarchy. Writing was a sign of reason that seperated the animal from the human. So an authentic slave narrative produces a slave's humanity. The peculiar paradox was that the institution of slavery made it illegal to teach slaves to read and write. If they were not capable of reading then why make it illegal? There were no laws against teaching horses to read. 

            After Douglass's narrative was published a neighbour of Douglass's former master came forward to declare that he knew Douglass when he was a slave and he was not capable of having written such a book. Douglass responded that the neighbour was correct that he couldn't have written it at that time.

            Kinship and natal alienation. Douglass's mother travelled at night and took a risk to lie with and comfort him. A slave narrative is missing the origins that come with an autobiography. He did not know his birthday but chose February 14 because his mother called him her Valentine. It is a testimony to his mother's love. He refused to be interested in his father. Slavery worked systematically to deprive slaves of relations but it was not always successful. The slaves reinvented kinship. Orlando Patterson wrote on natal alienation, slavery and social death. To be a slave is to be deprived of ancestors and heirs. 

            We took a five minute break. 

            Everyone turns off their webcam video during the break but me. I wonder if there is some sort of convention that I don't know about. I can't find anything about it online. 

            After the break we looked at Frances Harper, continuing on the subject of natal alienation. She was the child of free parents and grew up to be a feminist, an abolitionist and a poet. She wrote responses to Uncle Tom's Cabin and the 1850 slave act. Her poem "Slave Mother" was meant to stir Abolitionists. It directly addresses and calls on the reader. The addressee does not have access to the interiority of the mother. How can a mother's child not be hers? The Biblical imagery is not separable but separated. 

            The final line of stanza 8 asks, "Oh Father! Must they part?" 

            I said the addressing of a real or imagined divine Father emphasizes that there is no father to address on Earth. 

            In the 19th Century the ideal family was headed by a patriarch. To have a father is a privilege. There should be a patriarchal authority here but there is none that we respect. The poem is probably more addressed to female Abolitionists or potential ones. 

            We return to Frederick Douglass and the primal scene of enslavement. The idea of the primal scene comes from psychoanalytic theory. For Freud the primal scene is the child seeing his parents having sex and witnessing one's own origins. But no one can really tell one's origins. 

            Douglass's writing calls attention to itself as writing. Parallelism. 

            The louder she screamed the harder he whipped. Her bloody body is compared to the blood stained gate of child birth. In this moment his entry into slavery is sexualized. The master doing the whipping is probably Douglass's father. The sense of repetition suggests that he has witnessed this many times since. The motif of traumatic experience resists representation. It evades capacity. It is too overwhelming to represent. It distinguishes Douglass's narrative and reaches the limits of reputation. What is Douglass's position? He is a participant and expected his turn next. Who does he identify with? According to Deborah McDowell the black child was forbidden to identify with their master. Douglass uses violated feminine characters to establish himself as the masculine subject. His freedom depends upon narrating the bondage of black women. A slave made a man. Douglass as witness. 

            Slave songs connect back to the limits of representation and what it means to testify an experience. When I was in the circle I didn't understand but repetition increased the experience. It is extralinguistic and does not carry the meaning in words. The songs had coded language and Biblical allegories to convey messages. But he is talking about meaning of which he is not in full possession. One can't witness slavery from within or without. Maybe to be authentic is to have been inside and then to step outside.

            Education. The story of learning to read. He used Tom Sawyer like trickery to learn to read. I said that reading is a freedom that cannot be easily policed. This reminded her of a prison reading program. Education in prison provides fragments of freedom. Douglass says reading was a revelation. This is a spiritual reference that goes along with the tomb of slavery and the hell of slavery. His master became his teacher in denying him an education. He became educated in the workings of power. He learns to read power by closely reading the master's tone and anxiety. Learning to read the master makes Douglas dangerous. Animalization is the force of the institution of slavery. It tries to reduce slaves to animals by putting them in animallike conditions. He learns to write in the spaces left by the master's son's school copy book. Occupying spaces is an act of subversion. 

            I weighed 89 kilos before an early lunch and after eating I took a siesta half an hour earlier than usual because I had an appointment with the fracture clinic at St Joseph's Health Centre for 16:00. When I got up I shaved and showered because Dr. Fu is female, then I got ready and headed out.

            I got to St Joseph's at 17:45. I had to take a number at the fracture clinic even though I had an appointment. My number was 56 while the digital readout on the number machine was permanently at 17 even though they were already serving numbers in the 50s. The receptionist often forgot what number she was serving because of that. 

            There was an old black woman in a wheelchair waiting and complaining that she was allergic to the air conditioning. Behind me on the TV that was hanging in the corner Joe Biden was speaking. She asked who that was. When someone told her she asked if Trudeau won. When she was told he did she started clapping. She said he promised her money for the Annapolis Valley. I asked if she was from Nova Scotia and she said she was born in Montreal but her mother was from the Annapolis Valley and that they were promised money for it. She said she would accept $100,000 for a start. I think she's talking about the eviction of African Canadians from Africville in the 1960s. They are looking for compensation but I can't find any news of any promises by Trudeau in that regard. 

            I waited almost an hour and was frustrated that there were people called in to the clinic from the waiting room who arrived after me. When I was finally called in I sat on the same bed as two weeks ago. 

           The nurse called up my chart and while I was waiting for Dr. Fu I got up to read it. It said, "A large posterior abrasian to the elbow limits flexion range of motion. Supenation pronation is intact as is wrist range of motion actively. Shoulder range of motion is initiated to 45 degrees in all planes. No bruising or tenderness to palpitation along interior aspect of shoulder. Passing range of motion goes above shoulder level. She wrote down that I was a model at OCADU although I don't know why that would be relevant information to put on my medical chart. 

            Dr Fu was impressed with my progress and seemed confident everything would go back to normal with the exercises I'm already doing and so I'm on my own now and don't have to go back. 

            I was in and out of the hospital in an hour and fifteen minutes. 

            I weighed 88.6 kilos at 17:45. 

            I made a fresh batch of gravy. I had a potato with gravy and a heated steak while watching the final episode of the third season of Gomer Pyle. 

            In this story Lou Ann Poovie reveals that she is about to lose her job as a singer at the Congo Club. Duke gets her a chance to sing on a local radio show. Carter books her an opportunity to make a recording. She is very grateful to both of them but when Gomer says he has gotten her a job at a record store she is insulted because it implies that she shouldn't be in show business. Gomer comes to see her the night before she is scheduled to go into the recording studio and begs her not to go. He explains that she isn't ready because her voice needs improvement. Now she is even more offended and asks him to leave. But after singing "That Old Black Magic" and hearing her voice played back to her for the first time, she realizes that she can't sing. She finds Gomer in the audience at a monster movie and makes up with him. She takes the job in the record store. 

            Carter's connection in the recording studio was played by Aaron Ruben, who was the manager of both Andy Griffith and Jim Nabors and a writer and producer of their shows as well as Sanford and Son. For his eighth birthday he gave future multiple Oscar winning director Ron Howard an 8 mm movie camera.