The Hypocrisy of the Declaration of Independence

            On Tuesday morning it marked four days in a row of not seeing any budbugs and in the last two weeks I've seen three. The exterminator is coming tomorrow. 

            My arm mobility was a little better and I could raise both arms up while holding a rubber band and partially pull them apart. 

            I finished working out the chords for "La p'tite Agathe" by Serge Gainsbourg. I added some that I didn't hear in the recording because the song sounded better with them there when I ran through it in French and English. I uploaded it to Christian's Translations and began editing it for blog publication. It should be posted tomorrow. 

            I weighed 90.3 kilos before breakfast. 

            Before 10:00 I logged on for my first US Literature lecture. I was at the door of the Zoom room ahead of time but Professor Morgenstern hadn't logged in yet. After I got in I could see her picture and some lecture slides but then my connection failed and by the time I got back in she'd been talking for three minutes. 

            There were 146 students in the class at that time. I didn't miss much since she was just talking about how important it is to read the material. She said some students try to get by without reading it all. That's hard for me to understand. The goal of reading is important because it channels into the exam, which is worth 40% of our mark. It's large because the syllabus doesn't have a lot of small assignments. It evaluates skills that are different from writing skills. There will be passage identification and short essays. We will be asked for dates but it's okay to be a few years off. 

            At this point she froze and then disappeared for about ten minutes. There was a continuous text chat going on between students. Someone was talking about a theological thesis by Kanye West. 

            My webcam video was still green, especially on the left side. Another student looked like he was either wearing a mask or had digitally altered his face. 

            When professor Morgenstern returned she said, "Expletive, expletive, expletive!" 

            She asked students not to use the chat while she's speaking because she finds it distracting, but they did anyway. 

            There are no tutorials this week. They will be online next week and after that the plan is for them to be in person. 

            There were now 153 students in the class. 

            We looked at a quote from Toni Morrison's 1992 essay from her book "Playing In The Dark: Whiteness and the American Literary Imagination." 

            "the validity or vulnerability of assumptions conventionally accepted among literary historians and critics and circulated as ”knowledge.” This knowledge holds that traditional, canonical American literature is free of, uninformed, and unshaped by the four-hundred-year-old presence of, first, Africans and then African-Americans in the United States. It assumes that this presence—which shaped the body politic, the Constitution, and the entire history of the culture—has had no significant place or consequence in the origin and development of that culture’s literature. Moreover, such knowledge assumes that the characteristics of our national literature emanate from a particular “Americanness” that is separate from and unaccountable to this presence. There seems to be a more or less tacit agreement among literary scholars that, because American literature has been clearly the preserve of white male views, genius, and power, those views, genius and power are without relationship to and removed from the overwhelming presence of black people in the United States . . . The contemplation of this black presence is central to any understanding of our national literature and should not be permitted to hover at the margins of the literary imagination." 

            She is challenging us to think that there is no separation between US of Americanness and black life and the history of slavery. That there was an influence by black people on the society and economy of the United States. The figure of the United States of American individual has benefited from others who were deprived of these rights. This is still a real issue in the United States. Critical race theory is treated in a negative sense. People are afraid that it will cause them to lose their ideals. But what ideals? Freedom, democracy, the rights of individuals. They want these without critique and without being accountable to history. There is a positive sign of transformation in the removal of Confederate monuments. She showed a slide of a recent removal of a statue of Robert E Lee, the head of the Confederacy being removed from its pedestal in Richmond, Virginia. 

            Most of the slides will be quotations that help the professor organize. She will make the slides available online after the lectures. 

            We looked at Philip Freneau's 1781 poem "On Emigration To America and Peopling the Western Country." he was the poet of the American Revolution, was imprisoned by the British and later became an abolitionist. The poem touches on the political imaginary of the US. 

            In the poem there is the single figure of Palemon. The name represents a young man on a voyage, leaving despotic Europe. He encounters Nature with a capital "N." "Sovereign Nature" implies that it is the new king. The stanzas seem to fortell the future as he refers to "mighty states." There is a reference to taming the soil to plant the arts. 

            It is ironic to write of the United States as free and Europe as not being free. There is no recognition of slavery and there is the fantasy of Europeans coming to an unpopulated land and taming nature for commerce. 

            In stanza 4 the Indigenous people are acknowledged but there is ironically no violence of displacement. They are said to be unsocial and to voluntarily retreat into nature. 

            "No slaves insult him with a crown." To be a king here would be an insult. These are not African slaves. 

            In stanza 9 he speaks of African unbroken chains. There is a disavowal of slaves. "Disavowal" is a nuanced term that means to deny responsibility. Reason will eventually rid us of slavery. Of "the African complains", the word "complains" as defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as "plaint" with "com" as an instensifier. "Plaint" is grief but also a legal term and not so dismissive. The African is not dangerous. "O come the time" is a plea. 

            I tried to speak but she couldn't hear me at first. It turned out that the problem was from her end. I commented about Palemon being a legendary figure who escaped from Rome and founded Lithuania. I said Europe of that time is being compared to the fallen Roman Empire. But the reference to priests enchaining the mind suggests that the Rome that this Palemon escapes from is the Roman Catholic church given the strong anti Catholicism that pervaded throughout those colonies. 

            Someone used the term "land epistomology." 

            The Declaration of Independence is juxtaposed with "The Humble Petition of Many Slaves." Declarations and pleas are fundamentally different speech acts. Freneau's poem contains a plea and a declaration of destiny. A petition is defined as supplication, prayer, entreaty, formal request for favour, right or mercy. Petitions were important in the colonies. A petition of grace is supplication while a petition of right is insistent. It becomes more complex and less deferential as it moves from a petition to a declaration. The petition is presented by Felix in behalf of a collective of slaves. Who is the sovereign power? 

            This petition is extremely reverential. Is it the performance of an exaggerated tone of good will? The professor hears despair and anger. The phrase "beasts that perish" communicates that the petitioners are enslaved and degraded to animals. They can't enjoy life itself except as beasts. Racialization as animalization. Christians have souls and die in body only. To be a slave is to have no soul. We will be obedient as long as god says so. We obey god and the masters should do so as well. The petition establishes a commonality between slaves and slave owners in the form of belief in the Bible. Fredrick Douglass blasts the Christianity of slave owners. 

            The original Declaration of Independence is in a tomblike case in the Library of Congress.

            Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John Adams before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. She told him to remember the ladies moreso than your ancestors or we will rebel. All men would be tyrants if they could. John responds with laughter. He admits that women are a powerful tribe but we won't repeal masculine systems. Do they mean it or is it simply flirtatious banter? They both mean and don't mean what they say. They are aware of the limits of freedom. It is not for ladies, children, apprentices, Indians or blacks. This kind of flirtation comes up in Henry James's Daisy Miller.

            There are two versions of The Declaration of Independence. There is Jefferson's text and Congress's revised version. It's primarily written by the slave owner Thomas Jefferson. The language is strange. "In the course of human events" is not god's narrative and it's different from the Puritan understanding of human life. "It becomes necessary means it has to happen but what is "it"? "It" is a definite indicator. Agency and responsibility for independence is disguised. 

           The Declaration of Independence is not clearly a call to revolution. "Dissolve political bonds" is not violent and rather implies a melting away. "Law of nature and nature's god" gives "god" a small "g". God is disappearing into nature. This is different from a Christian petition. It distracts from agency, power and force. Jefferson was a Christian Deist and so god was not as big a deal. A decent respect for the opinions of mankind required to declare to be respectful. Tracking tension between obliqueness and boldness. "We hold these truths to be self evident." Self evident means "true." But "we hold" suggests that they are only self evident because they are held. We assert. The grievances are written by lawyers.

            In Jefferson's version there is a long passage on slavery. It's strange because he argues that the king can be blamed both for the slave trade and for turning the slaves against the colonists. 

            Note the complexity of the working of authority. Supreme judge. A god given right to revolt. Doubleness: "Are free and ought to be." "Is dissolved and ought to be." The doubleness qualifies boldness. I suggested that the doubleness comes from a belief in pre-destiny and so that explains the "is and ought to be." The freedom is being claimed to exist already in the form of a destiny as god's plan. She argued that this is a different god but I researched a bit on Christian Deism and found out that they believe in providence and so that gives credence to my argument. 

            I didn't finish typing my lecture notes until the next night. 

            I weighed 89.7 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Yonge and Bloor. Just as I was entering my building I heard someone on the street call my name. It was Moses, one of my former yoga students and the guy who gave me the wifi adaptor that I still use. We chatted for at least half an hour. He had robot heart surgery to have a tumour removed. Regular heart surgery would have been covered by OHIP but this is apparently a superior procedure and it wasn't covered. It was however paid for by the Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation. The tumour was next to his heart and he dealt with it psychologically by writing a poem to it as if it were a lover, which he showed me. The name he wrote for the type of tumour he had is mymoma which added to the effect but I think the actual name is myxoma.

            I weighed 89 kilos at 18:45. I rubbed three chicken legs in olive oil, salt and chili powder and grilled them in the oven. I had one with a potato and gravy while watching an episode of Gomer Pyle.

            In this story Lou Ann Poovie returns. She comes specifically to see Gomer at the base and explains that she didn't get married after all. She was at the altar with the groom but when the minister asked the question about "do you ... until death do you part?" She thought about it and answered, "Well, actually ... no." She has returned to California to pursue her singing career and has gotten her old job back. despite her attentions to Gomer, Carter and Duke are each still trying to have a relationship with her. Sergeant Carter uses his authority over the privates to give them duties that will allow him to be alone with Lou Ann. Carter invites her to dinner but she says they could have dinner at her place but when he arrives Gomer and Duke are there. Then Carter tries a new tactic. Rather than trying to be alone with Lou Ann he encourages Gomer and Duke to come along because he is sure that when Lou Ann sees them all together she will see him as the superior man. But when they are walking together someone whistles at Lou Ann which causes Carter to respond aggressively. But Gomer steps in and handles the situation diplomatically. They all go to a club and Carter dances with Lou Ann forcefully while Gomer just has a great time with her on the dance floor. Finally Carter asks Lou Ann to choose. She says Duke is like a brother, Carter is like a father, but Gomer is the one she wants for a beau. She has Gomer walk her home and tells him he can kiss her but then Carter and Duke interrupt, saying that as her father and brother they don't feel Gomer is right for her.