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Notes on various things.
After reading Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, I wonder who exactly his intended audience was. While he takes great care to denounce vanity in projects like this (while simultaneously indulging in it), it seems overall to be too clean, too polished, and too self-serving to simply be a one-off letter to his son or a response to a request for moral guidance for the peoples of the colonies. Perhaps having seen so much of his prior writing published, either willingly or unknowingly, he took great care to act as a one-person PR firm for himself, always aware that he had an image to maintain as a lettered yet simple man. As other commentators have pointed out, slavery is scarcely mentioned even though Franklin owned slaves himself.
He has an obsession throughout the book with becoming a paragon of virtue, to varying success, in order to rise above the humdrum of life's vices. Yet while he tries to escape gluttony, low conversation, and so on, he is limited in his capacity as someone born in the 18th century to rise above the ideology of his time. He is unwilling or unable to grapple with facts of slavery and exploitation which enabled him to attempt to rise above others, and in doing so he becomes the mold for everything which follows: the yeoman farmer, Horatio Alger's novels, small business owners, Ben Carson, Jeff Bezos, etc. These stories act as a shunt to redirect failures in the system to personal responsibility while the success stories have lured people around the world into the American Dream.
Like Baldwin's detail of the Swiss woman who had never seen a typewriter, I think that this book is similarly filled with fabrications and obfuscations. I have no idea what to believe is real, but I do know that if Franklin had heard of the story of Washington and the cherry tree, he would have claimed it as his own.
Weber and Franklin both note the power that religious morals have in business. Lorelei subverts that. She preys on the trust or stupidity of the wealthy to consume, and as a consuming American she is only able to view her relation to other people through this lens. Beekman is tricked into giving her an expensive diamond tiara, and his wife threatens to ruin her reputation. But as Lorelei does not subscribe to such bourgeois morality, the threats ring hollow. Even the men sent to retrieve the tiara are duped and two-timed, brought into the scheme while simultaneously excluded and relieved of their own money. At this point in time, a colossal shift was underway in American culture; work ethic was being replaced by the pleasure ethic (Susman, 2003, 111). So why scrimp and save when you have the option to pursue pleasure, and why not pursue pleasure by any means necessary?
While Loos herself might have rejected this analysis, as a product of her time she must reflect the world around her. There are other tricksters in American literature like Lorelei, but she differs in that her end goal is the pursuit of pleasure. But no hedonist's pleasure is their own. Lorelei fixates on jewels and diamonds and other signifiers of wealth. She is trapped on the hedonic treadmill because as a product of the liberal American mindset, her class status, or whatever, she is separated from social existence and only able to comprehend the world through the pursuit of individual pleasure. She lives for nothing that is real.
I also thought this book was hilarious, especially the character of Dorothy.
Some other random notes:
Gramsci's comments on unions are enlightening and I think still relevant today. Craft unions, remnants of medieval society in Europe and petit-bourgeois in the US, served inherently as a reactionary force against the rights of Fordized and Taylorized workers in mass industry.
Gramsci rightly points out that "American workers unions are, more than anything else, the corporate expression of the rights of qualified crafts and therefore the industrialists' attempts to curb them have a certain "progressive" aspect" (Gramsci 286). This is progressive in the same way that the bourgeois destruction of the feudal order was progressive as it allows new ways of organizing to take place. Because those workers grouped themselves together by skill, rather than by class (i.e. all workers), they serve as a protective cushion for capital because they limit the organizing that 'regular' workers can achieve. Many of these craft unions were extremely selective in terms of membership and thus crushed organized resistance to the excesses of American capital, resulting in a "system of mutually isolated factory-based workers' organisations" (Gramsci 292).
The birth of industrial unions and trade union federations brought more power to these disaffected workers. In the past, if coalmen on trains wanted to strike, they would be limited to one company, easily broken by strikebreakers, the police, and so on. But in an industrial union, there is the possibility of a general strike, of the entire railroad being shut down, or even all of industry in a geographical area stopping in solidarity with exploited workers.
Fordism offered a new way of organizing, not as a class but as a nation or a people, which meant that labor concerns were all but dead, subsumed into national questions rather than class questions. In Fordist production, labor unrest can be funneled into a higher purpose, that of a 'new country'. You are no longer struggling for yourself and your fellow workers; you are struggling for the nation. Who is this nation? Not workers. But enough bones are thrown that these workers could feel like they had a voice, that they could influence the system.
But unions in the United States are all but dead, relegated instead to shilling for political parties and (if even present in an industry or workplace at all) negotiating for ten cent raises. What effect did Fordism have on unions? Has the national question been supplanted by the corporate question (see LinkedIn for evidence)? If labor unions have become part of American cultural hegemony, what are the alternatives?
While I was doing some research I stumbled upon a review that Sayyid Qutb made on the Egyptian version of Yelp (here auto-translated and cleaned up a little by me).
Cracker Barrel - a symbol of American decadence and emptiness, by Sayyid Qutb
While traveling through the mid-Atlantic region with a friend, our pangs of hunger prompted us to stop at a local eatery. As we were due to our next engagement relatively soon, we agreed to stop at the closest restaurant off of the motorway, a typical American invention which both connects and separates the private and social lives of the inhabitants of this continent. But more on this later.
We were greeted by a nondescript brown building bearing the signage for a 'Cracker Barrel'. Yet there were no crackers nor barrels to be seen--I was initially thankful, as crackers are hardly food but perhaps pass for it here, more suited to the birds I fed as a child--so I then assumed that it referred to the customers, who appeared to be of mostly European-descent. My friend corrected me and explained that it referred to the American phenomenon of gambling, a terrible vice, and losing one's clothes, hence the use of a barrel as a substitute. While I thought he was jesting at first, I later happened upon a grotesque children's cartoon called 'Looney Tunes' which illustrated this phenomenon.
Outside of the restaurant were rows and rows of 'rocking chairs', another typical American phenomenon, for it grants the user both the sensation of movement and of rest simultaneously; not content to while away their lives in cars, which provoke a similar response, they also seek this sensation while eating!
Inside we were greeted by shelves of small toys and household goods. But while a similar market might be full of useful things elsewhere in the world, in this Cracker Barrel the aim seemed to be to get hungry visitors to buy as many plastic harmonicas and pine-scented candles as could fit in their pockets. Americans cannot go anywhere without buying junk, so this restaurant appeals to their base instincts well. Satiate not just one's hunger, but the burning hole in one's wallet as well!
Our hostess (I chuckle using this term, as she did anything but host) brought us to our table. Surrounding us on the false wooden walls were thousands of artifacts, tools, photographs, and even a shotgun. A shotgun in a restaurant! A people with such sparse history seem content to tack their wares up on motorway restaurant walls, showing how little they value the past. I gazed upon a photograph of the winner of the 1934 Des Moines Trout Fishing Competition nailed haphazardly to the wall above an American stuffing his face with all manner of pork, eggs, and a peculiar dish known as grits, which takes its name from its similarity in texture to such road grit as might be found on the side of American motorways.
I ordered the 'Grandma's Sampler', expecting to be greeted by the best dishes made by American grandmothers, who are well known to be excellent cooks. Instead, I was given two pancakes, which are misleading in their name as they are not cakes, but rather flat sweetened bread covered with a sickly-sweet syrup, eggs, and a side of fried apples. Yet again the American cannot resist frying perfectly good food.
Thoroughly overwhelmed by this hollow, disgusting eatery, we departed. I have resolved never again to visit this Cracker Barrel. 1/2 out of 5 stars.
Sayyid Qutb (sayyidqutb), "Cracker Barrel - a symbol of American decadence and emptiness," Yelp, April 22, 2007, https://yelp.eg/sayyidqutb/review/1120575417151369221.
After reading Lin Shu's introduction to his translation of Uncle Tom's Cabin and happening to watch Gangs of New York this weekend, in which a stage version of the novel is shown, I wondered: was there ever a Chinese stage production of Stowe's novel?
Yes, there have been several. The first, organized by Chinese students in Japan in 1907, makes several key changes to the text. George Harris, an enslaved man who escapes to Canada in the novel, is turned into a freedom fighter in the Chinese play. He ends up killing several of the slaveowners and slavecatchers in a dramatic mountaintop battle, reflecting anti-colonialist sentiment in China at the time. All mentions of Christianity were also purged from the text. Interestingly, this was also the first Western-style play produced by Chinese actors.
The second, staged several years after World War Two and in a newly founded People's Republic, is explicitly socialist realist, with characters considering their class relations and exploring the systems which have been used to oppress the enslaved and the proletariat (especially Christianity, which is now back in the play). Even Tom, the eponymous lead, becomes bitter and regretful at the life he had been tricked into following, whereas in the novel he remains a devout Christian and forgives his murderers in the end. Blackface and costuming were used throughout but without any of the affects that we would attribute to minstrelsy in terms of spoken and body language. The play here operates as a critique of the United States' race relations and systems of bourgeois power, while also reflecting new alliances or sympathies between China and socialist revolutionaries/civil rights leaders throughout Africa and the United States.
The third, produced in the 2000s, is more complex. It follows the novel generally, but with changes in dialogue and additional scenes meant to reflect the Cultural Revolution and the deaths of artists at the hands of the Red Guard. It was also the first staged version of the play in China without blackface, with race instead being depicted by the use of dress, mannerisms, and language. How they did this with language I don't know, but I imagine a rural or countryside Chinese accent was used.
There is a lot to unpack here. I'd like to focus on the use of blackface in the context of Chinese productions of Uncle Tom's Cabin and how American art can be used/changed once it moves abroad (thinking also of Anita Loos' apocryphal story of the Soviet response to her novel).
Ammirati, Megan. "Uncle Tom's Cabin in China: Ouyang Yuqian's Regret of a Black Slave and the Tactics of Impersonating Race, Gender, and Class." Asian Theatre Journal 36, no. 1 (2019): 165+. Gale Academic OneFile (accessed November 17, 2021). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A578046902/AONE?u=amst&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=6e60f919.
Yu, Shiao-ling. "Cry to Heaven: a play to celebrate one hundred years of Chinese spoken drama by Nick Rongjun Yu." Asian Theatre Journal 26, no. 1 (2009): 1+. Gale Academic OneFile (accessed November 17, 2021). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A195012902/AONE?u=amst&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=43ef61d7.
Baike Baidu (Chinese Wikipedia) entry on Uncle Tom's Cabin: https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%B1%A4%E5%A7%86%E5%8F%94%E5%8F%94%E7%9A%84%E5%B0%8F%E5%B1%8B/5804.
Throughout his autobiography, Nkrumah mentions secret police, border controls, and dossiers in the UK and the US. I'd like to briefly talk about a particular 'spook' in the context of world events. Bear with me as we explore this rabbit hole together.
As Nkrumah finished the autobiography years before his overthrow, being worried about the CIA was probably far from his mind. After all, he enjoyed good relations with other countries and the process of decolonization in Ghana was a mostly peaceful one. But the spook is always active and always operating in the background.
After Patrice Lumumba's brutal murder by combined Belgian and counter-revolutionary forces in the Congo, along with the help of the CIA, Nkrumah wisely became more suspicious of foreign influence in Ghana. The CIA was supporting future conspirators and developing a plan for the coup, meant to reestablish pro-US leadership in the country as well as economic control via the IMF.
Howard T. Bane, the CIA station chief in Accra, decided to take full advantage of the upcoming revolt by bringing in a special forces team from the US. This team was, during the chaos of the coup, to wear blackface, break into the Chinese embassy (the only Chinese embassy in Africa at the time), murder all of the Chinese diplomats, steal anything worth stealing, and then destroy the building. This plan ended up being rejected by higher-ups, but the coup was still given the go-ahead.
While Nkrumah was visiting China he was overthrown. Never to return to Ghana, he lived out the rest of his days in Guinea.
Bane, meanwhile, had quite a successful career. He was double-promoted and made station chief in the Netherlands. While there, he worked closely with the Dutch BVD (Binnendlandse Veliligheidsdienst, or Homeland Security, now called the Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst, or General Intelligence and Security Service) and surprised them with how advanced American espionage was. During the Japanese Red Army hostage situation in the Hague in the French Embassy, Bane told the Dutch that he could easily trace phone calls made from the embassy (this was beyond Dutch spycraft at the time). During this time up to 10% of Dutch BVD agents were also on the payroll of the CIA.
Bane was also present in the Netherlands during a CIA/BVD-backed plan called 'Operation Red Herring', in which a Dutchman codenamed Christ Petersen was paid for decades to head a fake Marxist-Leninist party. The fake party was used to keep tabs on communists in the Netherlands, and the mole was invited to China, the USSR, and Albania dozens of times, meeting Mao and Enver Hoxha in person. In the mid-70s, Bane was outed for the first time as CIA station chief by the publication Vrij Nederland, who most likely learned of his identity through Bane's dealings with the Dutch police during the hostage crisis in the Hague.
After leaving the Netherlands, Bane was tasked with providing Laotian anti-communist guerillas with one million AK-47s, which he achieved through his contacts in Africa. Alfred W. McCoy, now a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, testified in front of the Senate that the US and the CIA were involved in the burgeoning drug trade originating from Laos and the rest of Southeast Asia which led to the heroin crisis of the 1970s. A government investigation found that this was not true, however ("we investigated ourselves and found no evidence of wrongdoing…").
Bane died a few years ago, unheralded by the media except in a short obituary published by a friend (who worked in the George W. Bush administration) in the Washington Times, a far-right newspaper. It is a strange end to a faceless bureaucrat-spook who was probably responsible for thousands of dead and untold misery throughout the world.
On Nkrumah's overthrow and CIA involvement: https://www.nytimes.com/1978/05/09/archives/cia-said-to-have-aided-plotters-who-overthrew-nkrumah-in-ghana.html
CIA/BVD involvement in the French Embassy hostage situation: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/close-ties-counterterrorism
Leaked diplomatic cable confirming Bane's outing as CIA in Vrije Nederland: https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1976THEHA00388_b.html
Bane's obituary: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2007/aug/2/original-cia-spymaster/
McCoy's article on the CIA and the heroin trade: https://prism.lib.asu.edu/items/76614
CIA/BVD-backed fake communist party in NL: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB110203852323790050
On CIA-BVD ties (in Dutch): https://decorrespondent.nl/1024/in-1965-stond-tien-procent-van-de-nederlandse-geheim-agenten-op-de-loonlijst-van-de-cia/188405842944-841c8743
A PDF book on the CIA, called Killing Hope, was found on Osama bin Laden's computer. The book details CIA atrocities throughout the world. (This is a direct download link on the CIA's website, so it will immediately begin downloading if you click): https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/13/130AEF1531746AAD6AC03EF59F91E1A1_Killing_Hope_Blum_William.pdf