Delayed Seminar 10: Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism"

In 1933, Hannah Arendt became a political activist, kick-starting a life-long passion to look at the pros and cons of every type of government. In The Origins of Totalitarianism she referred to Nazi Germany's as "a terrifying new form of government" where people mindlessly follow the leaders and absorb the propaganda, simply following orders and do not think for themselves what the consequences of their actions may be.

Hannah argued that the whole human status showed that racism is embedded in Western culture; the idea of the Nation State is inherently racist because it excludes. This 'community' only thinks highly of itself, viewing outsiders as just that, something that should stay on the outside. This can be clearly seen by the actions of the Nazis trying to eradicate all non-Aryans from Germany. They only included the Jews because they were needed to act as slave labourers; their skills and their work was valuable to Germany, otherwise, Arendt argues, they would have been eliminated immediately.

Part of the reason that Arendt's work is so controversial and shocking is that she was a Jew writing against the Jews.

In her book she focuses on Nazism, which was nationalist, based on the scientific differences between races and wanting a 'pure' society, and Stalinism in which the communist agenda was not restricted by law or other people's opinion; Stalin was all-powerful and answered to nobody. Both these frightening regimes used propaganda and manipulation of media and culture to create their power. This shows the dangers and possibilities that the Media hold, thereby emphasising why it is so important for journalism to be monitored and censored.

Arendt portrayed Hitler and Stalin as very similar; both with charisma, ability to manipulate, a God-complex and egos big enough to fill the whole of Europe. However, they had very different ideologies; Hitler was completely against Communism, while Stalin thrived on it.

One of the many conclusions that Arendt draws, a very shocking one, is that totalitarianism was an accident. Even more shockingly, she saw the holocaust as normal.

The question is continuously brought up; how could the media have this much power over the masses? Carey would argue that this is because the masses are not smart enough to think for themselves and so simply take whatever information is spoon-fed to them by the media and run with it, no questions asked. This is very dangerous, as both examples (Germany and Russia) show.

Arendt's work can be clearly linked to John Carey's 'supermen' and the social and intellectual hierarchies that he sets out in Intellectuals and the Masses. The masses are seen as bacteria (linked to Hitler's idea of purity of race and Stalin's views on soiled blood).

Therefore both Arendt and Carey are key in understanding how the media is used and why, and how to prevent a disaster such as the Holocaust recurring.

Lecture 5 - Total war: Romanticism and the rise of the nation-state

Dr Goebbels’ Total war conference of 1944 is a prime example of nationalism at its worst. Goebbels was mobilising what remained of the German nation, the elderly, children, unfit, to commit what was effectively mass suicide as a last effort to win the war, putting up thousands of innocent people to fight against strong armies. The fact that they mindlessly followed this propaganda in one last push is what is so scary about nationalism.

As Arendt points out, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were prime examples of problematic totalitarianism; the population was no longer made up of individuals, but were a mass there to be manipulated by the state as puppeteer.

Chris Horrie’s theory of nationalism as he put forward in today’s lecture is that the more over the top and superficial the nationalist attitude, the more it will be a problem. He put forward that Great Britain has a pretty balanced idea of nationalism, whereas other attitudes such as in the US where the flag is sacred, they seem to be trying to gloss over the fact that their country is made up of immigrants, from the time of settlement to today. He also said that German nationalism is so strong because their nation has been constantly changing throughout history; the borders of Germany were constantly in flux throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, it can be argued that if you go far enough back through history, everyone is a migrant.

Nationalism has been argued to be a product of the 19th century literary movement of Romanticism, for example built up by the ‘legends’ of Robin Hood and King Arthur, products of nineteenth century literature. It was designed to justify territorial demands at times of war and supported by both popular culture (newspapers, music halls and patriotic songs) and state directed education systems. This development of Our Island Story, as Chris puts it, is not unique to Britain. Every nation has its own nation history which portrays that country as uniquely civilised among a world of barbarians who must be tamed and transformed into images of the home country. In this way, the major nations of Europe are highly artificial and mythological. Great Britain, for example , is made up of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, all of which are in turn made up of many different ‘nationalities’ and authority groups. Take England; originally made up of Anglo-Saxons (themselves a mix of national identities), Scandinavians, Celts and other mixed origins. Another example would be the Romany group which can be found throughout Europe.

However, Chris points out that there is no such obsession with nationality in the Muslim world. Instead, they are divided into theological loyalties and allegiances, with each city having its own tendencies. In contrast, China has a very diverse ‘ethnic polity’ meaning that rather than national or theological allegiances, it is based on politics, which can even be seen in the origins of the name, China, which comes from the Chin dynasty. China therefore has a very non-nationalist ideology, despite its imitation of many customs of the Western world. Also, in the Roman Empire there were few very nationalist people and many sovereign authorities all competing for jurisdiction. It has been argued that the wars of the 17th Century increased sovereignty.

One very prominent artefact of European culture is that modern nation states present themselves as servants of the nation, however it is pointed out that this is likely to be a passing phase in human development. In the middle ages, sovereignty was divided, which marks a point of contrast with what it is today: total command. In the middle ages, politics was a matter of negotiation between land owners and the church, meaning that political power was limited and therefore wars were limited in scope and inconclusive and could often carry on for generations. Kings had to beg for money from other Kings, which is how the first state was accidentally come across: in an attempt to combat this.

Max Weber said that “The state is a monopoly of legitimate violence”, which is supported by the fact that we pay taxes and obey laws in return for the state’s protection from external enemies and for things such as education and health care. Thus the concept of ‘civil society’ was introduced; the idea that an activity is completely voluntary and not effected or controlled in any way by the state; doing something simply because you want to. However, this is not possible in the totalitarian state.

The French Revolution marked a turning point in nationalism, sweeping away all forms of traditional feudal links to the state. The state as a system is all that remained, so that the King is the only thing, really, that was swept away. Therefore the state keeps reasserting itself, showing that ‘artificial man’ (as Hobbes put it) will always remain. Louis xvi created the absolute state, but when he was taken away there was a crisis of legitimacy, as well as the inevitable economic crisis, as the people of France did not know who to obey. The formerly coerced regions tried to break free and rule themselves, including both those within ‘France’ and the colonies. However, the first act of the new republic was to attack the regional autonomy, very violently, which was seen as a monarchist counter-revolution. Through this, centralisation began to be associated with progress, liberty, equality and fraternity. However, it turned out that the idea that the nation is One and Indivisible turned out to be largely fictional. This clearly shows that the collapse of monarchy leaves huge problems as to the legitimacy of state.

Key philosophers and their views on nationalism:

Hobbes
Author of ‘The Leviathan’ (a symbol of the force of nature which humans cannot control and simply have to live with), in which he outlines his theory of power: that our state of nature means living in fear because if left to our own devices we will be barbarians. His solution was to alienate our rights to supreme sovereignty in order to live in peace. The ‘artificial man’ that is the state would be a ‘war machine’, organised for war against subjects who resist and against rival states. He argues that the emerging state is already so vast and artificial that opposition would be folly. Hobbes’ logic is ‘impeccable’ but false at the level of reducto ad absurdum, according to Chris, because once you have submitted to the state, rational man wants that state to be as powerful as possible. Hobbes argued that the greatest good arises when the whim of state is automatically law, no matter how cruel or irrational it may be. Chris emphasises the importance of Hobbes’ stance by saying that how you think about Hobbes defines your social view; you are either a realist or a dreamer. However, I think that this is too black and white.

Rousseau
Wrote the Social Contract and believed in a rational ethno-linguistic homeland where regional differences would be eliminated, creating a state that is a single voice. However, his arguments create the problem of who is a man, who counts in the state, and who decides who counts? Rousseau’s view is quite prominent in the 20th Century state in that the state will take care of everything from education to housing to emotional support for its citizens.

Hegel
Said that “the state is God on earth” and believed that the Prussian state was the German homeland and that the state does the work of God. However, he did acknowledge that the state and the nation are not natural.

Hume
Said that “authority is based on nothing but opinion”.

Charles Darwin
Wrote the Origin of the Species and came up with the theory of evolution through natural selection and the survival of the fittest. This led to ‘social darwinism’, the adoption of these ideas by the state to argue that if you do not triumph over the rival claimants of power, they will destroy you. This idea suggests that there is no negotiation, especially if they have the potential to outbreed you. Here we can see the justification for European racism and the origin of many of the worst atrocities ever carried out by humanity, such as the holocaust. It suggests that the state exists to protect the race, promoting violence against minorities or people who may potentially ‘infect’ or hurt the race.

John Carey
Argued that England has become weak because of the masses. This originates from the Crimean War of the 1860s, after which a survey of the nation was carried out which found poor health and education which were blamed for the failures of the English army, the creation, it was argued, of cramped, unsanitary, city conditions. In Darwinian terms, the nation was dying. This revelation led to the development of the welfare state.

Totalitarianism is therefore present in every society and shown in the ability to implement wards. War is argued to impel totalitarianism as nation myths are seen as the source of consolation and solidarity in the face of external threats. However, in philosophy, the belief is that all that the state has control of is the law.

Seminar 4: John Carey's The Intellectuals and the Masses

Today’s seminar was about John Carey. As a follow up to my seminar paper, here are the key points that we discussed today:

The worst part about the divide between the intellectuals and the masses, in my opinion, is the fact that society has simply accepted the self-proclamation of superiority by the intellectuals, as Stefano pointed out in his seminar paper. Another idea that interested me was the way that he brought in our current education system in relation to the educational hierarchy which Carey discusses. Are we really receiving a quality education? Are we rivaling the intellectuals in terms of our knowledge of the world?

It was also pointed out that Hitler’s use of propaganda to control the mass, and his targeting of the Germans as a mass, are hypocritical of his populist ideas as outlined in Mein Kampf. Also, the root of the word mass comes from a Roman idea of the masses being incarcerated in hell, and Hitler’s actions can be seen as physically reenacting this idea.

There are many links between the work of Hannah Arendt and John Carey; they both discuss Hitler and Stalin and what should be done about the masses. However, Arendt is far more extreme and is not afraid to say that she thinks there are too many uneducated people and that the intellectual hierarchy must be maintained.

We all agreed that Carey’s mention that the growth of the European population between 1800 and 1914 rose from 180 million to about 460 million was a shock and an eye-opener, showing why the intellectuals may have been so fearful. However, it is definitely not grounds for genocide and we were all very clear on this point; there are other ways to sustain society without killing off the lower levels.

What is also shocking is how normal Hannah Arendt finds the idea of killing people. She talks about it in a way that takes away the idea that the masses are human, which is very distressing as we are all human, we all have thoughts and feelings and should be treated accordingly. Not simply numbered and thrown in a mass grave.

The modernist idea of putting literature out of the reach of the masses can be seen reflected in our education system. Now that more people than ever are getting higher grades in GCSEs and A levels and with more university students, outcries that the educations system is too easy are resounding through our lecture rooms. This is being tackled by raising fees and entrance qualifications, and the job market is joining in by expecting, not only a degree, but a 2:1, and experience, and connections, and references. It is getting harder and harder to get anywhere without an education.

Another interesting point that came up was the fact that in the last chapter of The Intellectuals and the Masses, it seems that there is a huge conspiracy, with all of the great writers, artists and intellectuals teamed up against the rest of humanity. This chapter also makes it seem that many people were interested in mass extermination and that, while we thought that Hitler was an evil man and now a dead evil man and so we could sleep at night safe and sound from any evil genius that may start a mass genocide, in fact there are many people who were thinking along similar lines to him. He was simply the one that tried to put it into action. This brings up ideas of will the holocaust ever happen again? In countries like China where the communist government stifles any kind of outside influence, the chances are higher.

Finally, we discussed Lord Northcliffe and Tabloid Nation with regard to the intellectuals/mass divide. It is pretty clear that Lord Northcliffe was not among the greatest thinkers of our time, but neither was he part of the mass. However, he made a conscious decision to target the masses and write for a mass audience, and even target women when they were condemned by society to be idle housewives. But was this a purely financial concern? Or did he actually care that the masses were informed?

Seminar Paper on John Carey's "The Intellectuals and the Masses"

John Carey, born in 1934 in the midst of the Modernist movement, is a British literary critic and Professor at the University of Oxford, a renowned anti-elitist and is known for attacking many well-respected beliefs and institutions. He wrote Intellectuals and the Masses in 1992 and he discusses many writers and literary theorists throughout the book regarding the rise of the middle class and universal education, such as Virginia Wolff, Friedrich Neitzsche and E.M. Forster.

In The Intellectuals and the Masses he examines the attitudes of the ‘intellectuals’ towards the masses and women, and the way in which the social structure has changed. A common theme is the loss of the intellectual’s hold over ‘avante garde’. This is defined as seeking “to take literacy and culture away from the masses, and so to counteract the progressive intentions of democratic educational reform”. This definition’s inclusion of the phrase “progressive intentions” suggests that Carey is trying to show intellectuals as not progressing, but being stuck in the past. This can also be seen in the way that the ‘masses’ are referred to as resembling “children and savages” which are “unambitious and common” and Carey’s constant referral to peasants and their place in history.

Thomas Hardy, for example, felt afraid and threatened by the mass and referred to “a monster whose body had four million” which held too close a proximity to him once London began to grow and the suburbs swallowed the villages such as Upper Tooting, where Hardy lived. This is a common theme in E M Forster’s Howard’s End where the “creeping” “red rust” is foreboding of the collapse of the established social order which intellectuals so cherish. This was also a major pre-occupation with Neitzsche who created images to show “the modern intellectual’s effort to limit and dominate the mass”. He continually used metaphors such as a herd of animals, swarms of poisonous flies, raindrops, and weeds ruining proud structures, in order to suggest that the mass gaining knowledge would result in the downfall of ancient traditions. This instability above all else seems to have terrified intellectuals, so much so for Neitzsche that the basic function of his writing was “to deprive the mass of human status”. This is dangerous, as James Carey points out, it can clearly be linked to what made Hitler and the Nazis think it acceptable to try to exterminate any race other than their own.

This denial of humanity became an important project among the intellectuals of the early twentieth century, as T S Eliot pointed out. The scientific approach included referring to the masses as seething, unclean “bacteria”, acting like microbes to “hasten the dissolution of dead bodies” (a clear comparison to the dissolution of social boundaries). These ideas were exploited by those that wanted to purge the mass, such as Stalin and Hitler, and used as a justification for huge crimes against humanity. This prejudicial divide between the less educated and the over-educated can therefore be seen as the catalyst for mass genocide. Gustav Le Bon had a large role to play in this, suggesting that “crowds are mentally inferior and intent on destruction”, an argument which has been and still is a frequently used get-out clause for those who are not respecting humanity. He describes the rabble as “suggestible, impulsive, irrational, exaggeratedly emotional, inconstant, irritable and capable of thinking only in images”, fostering a deep disdain in the intellectuals and accentuating the divide. Along this same line of discussion, he is derogatory to women saying that all these qualities are “in short, just like women” and saying that “like women”, the mass only respond to force, not kindness.

A woman’s place in society is much discussed by Carey in Intellectuals and the Masses. Women were seen by intellectuals at the modernist time as purely decorative, without any real opinion or skill. They therefore thought that the “emancipation and education of women were signs of modern shallowness” because it would do no good. For example, in Thus Spake Zarathustra, he says “Are you visiting women? Don’t forget your whip”, showing that he sees a need to control them, for their own good and thinks that their independence could only be a negative. This is because if women’s opinions could be heard, the male superiority and aristocracy, and therefore the whole social structure, would have to change and the intellectuals did not want this. However, Lord Northcliffe had a totally different attitude, “considering women readers worthy of attention” and even establishing the first magazine read and published by women (even if it was a flop). Since the women’s liberation, the latter view has become widespread and women are finally being seen as just as much human and capable of intellect as men. However, although, like women, the intellectuals dismissed “the rabble” as uneducable and a waste of time, unlike women, this has so far not been universally overturned.

The ambition to acquire culture is shown to be “ill-advised and unsuccessful” in much literature including E.M.Forster’s Howard’s End in which Leonard Bast, used as an example of the newly-educated and struggling masses, is eventually killed by what he is striving for. He tries in vain but never really acquires “true culture”. Forster seems to be giving a cautionary warning and declaring the masses to share Leonard’s “cramped little mind”. Virginia Wolff is also unsympathetic to those trying to acquire culture in Mrs Dalloway, suggesting that they never quite get it right; “she seeks comfort in Christianity, forfeiting her intellectual integrity in return” and therefore negating the whole process. James Joyce’s Ulysses is also a prime example in which Leopold Bloom, as a representative of the masses, is “distinctly not a literary intellectual”. However, this novel is sort of a contradiction of itself in that it both “embraces mass man but also rejects him”. The focus of the novel is on a nobody, and yet because we are getting to know him so intimately it seems that he is somehow important, however the way that it is written in modernist form excludes those that are not intellectual through “the complexity of the novel, its avante garde technique, its obscurity”.

This technique shows the principle behind modernist literature which was “the exclusion of the masses” however, “what this intellectual effort failed to acknowledge was that the masses did not exist... [they are] a metaphor for the unknowable and invisible.” The use of “masses” to describe most of the population is used specifically because it “denies them the individuality which we ascribe to ourselves and to people we know”. It makes it easier for intellectuals to forget that they are talking about the majority of humanity and their essential selfishness and narrow-mindedness for wanting to keep knowledge and literacy skills for themselves.

Freud said that the mass represents the “primal horde” and the most primitive form of human society, “it is impossible, Freud stresses, to conceive of civilization without the control of the mass by a minority, and that control will inevitably involve coercion”. However, as difficult as it is for us to conceive of this society, that does not mean that it isn’t possible. It was thought that “schooling transforms people into ‘enemies of society’, makes young people dissatisfied with honest toil, and recruits numerous disciples for ‘the worst forms of socialism’ ”, which in a way can be said to be true because it does encourage people to aim higher, but only because everyone one deserves the chance. The intellectuals could not stop the masses from gaining literacy skills, but “could prevent them reading literature by making it too difficult for them to understand”. Therefore the realism that the masses were assumed to appreciate was abandoned, as was logical coherence and “Irrationality and obscurity were cultivated”. By placing art beyond the reach of the masses, they were deliberately trying to “divide the public into two classes - those who can understand it and those who cannot”. Therefore, Ortega y Gasset suggests, modern art is not so much unpopular but more like “anti-popular”.

Neitzsche’s opinion of journalism as put forward by Carey was not very high, to say the least. The famous quotation: “the rabble ‘vomit their bile and call it a newspaper’” and that readers are “a complacent, prejudiced and unthinking mass” shows him looking down on the masses and those who provide for the masses. Carey sees the principles of new journalism as “ ‘giving the public what it wants’ but most of the book is arguing over whether the public deserves to get what it wants. If we assume that the masses are in fact human beings, then what is so wrong with giving them what they want? The quote from Intellectuals and the Masses “Sherlock Holmes’ adoption of the newspaper as an ally, when contrasted with the intellectuals’ horror of newsprint, makes a fault line along which English culture was dividing” just goes to show that there really is no way to please both camps, a theme that often comes up in discussion of modern day journalism, such as, how much privacy should celebrities have, given that they have chosen to live their lives in the public eye? Are they public property? F.R. Leavis said that “the mass media have brought about ‘an overthrow of standards’ ” which can be clearly seen in the modern landscape where journalism has changed immensely since its birth.

In the latter part of the book, George Gissing, H.G. Wells, Arnold Bennett, and Wyndham Lewis are all examined as case studies to show the bad practice of separating the intellectuals from the public and ‘high’ culture from ‘low’ culture. However, many of the concerns that Carey has with these writers are a simple as their personal preferences and their own social distance from the ‘real world’. This intellectual hierarchy, while terrible, does not really effect everyday life.

Chapter 1 explores how the ‘masses’ are perceived and treated by the intellectuals, and their rejection on the grounds that they let down the idea of the individual, however it is the term “mass” which took away individuality - a term ascribed to them by intellectuals- and the mass is in fact made up of many individuals. The intellectuals are shown to look down on ordinary people, for example they are referred to as “vulgar, trivial working millions”. I would argue that it has to be remembered that it is the individuals doing their nine-to-five, un-rewarding jobs who keep the country running. The work of intellectuals is no more important than analyzing what other people do. (On the other hand it could be said that this improves society overall as we can learn from our mistakes, although who actually reads the works of intellectuals in their spare time?) As Carey said, intellectuals are “functionless and ignored” and we are quickly “dispensing with the need for novelists” to re-hash all these philosophical ideas about the world. Therefore, all of this is completely pointless.

John Carey, while celebrated as a literary critic, says “I write to stimulate and involve the reader”, something which this book definitely achieves, whether you want it to or not. Many of the issues covered are so universal that no-one can come away without some kind of opinion. For example, the idea of two sides pitted against each other; the intellectuals and the masses, is intriguing because you are either one or the other. Carey sees himself as part of the masses and is opposed to the effort of the intellectuals to take knowledge from the masses; “The idea that there are absolute, eternal values in art and literature, to which experts have access, is not one that I find convincing”. As Robert Sandall of the Sunday Times states, Carey “questions the origins of our strong and often unexamined ideas about cultural hierarchies and anybody who manages to do that with such wit and humanity deserves to be heard”. However, my final point is that i don’t believe that people who publish intellectual books are actually heard, or at least not by many and not necessarily in the way that they would like. The only people that will read it are intellectuals, and we all know that they aren’t going to pass the knowledge and insight on to the masses. Therefore, it is a waste of time, energy and paper.

Lecture 4: Totalitarianism and Hannah Arendt

This week’s lecture was not, as I expected, about fascism and scientific racism, but instead it was about phenomology in relation to totalitarianism and the Holocaust. Although I suppose it was quite fitting to remember the atrocities of the holocaust and those that have fought for democracy/freedom on November 11th.

To start, a definition of phenomology:

An objective analysis of subjective phenomena that can only be known at that moment in time. In plain English this means, before we can think about a set of ideas about, for example, philosophy, we have to think about what philosophy is and why it is a thing. There are also the basic questions; ‘why is there something rather than nothing’, ‘why am I here’, ‘why am I me and not you’? It is a technical philosophy on thinking in the modernist school of phenomology, supported by the work of Jasper and Hediegger as well as Hannah Arendt. Heidegger was married to Arendt and was a Nazi. He wrote ‘Being and Time’ which would have been much more powerful had he not been a Nazi. His aim was to get rid of the enlightenment by asking why things are as they are, for everything. Phenomology also has a connection to Hegel, however the events of the early 20th Century discredited the phenomology movement.

Hannah Arendt; a mid 20th Century academic, writer and philosopher associated with the communist movement and writing in the wake of the holocaust which was a huge shock and setback for the communist movement.

The history behind Hannah Arendt’s ideas:

The Final Solution, for the Nazis, was to use sophisticated systems to murder over 6 million people over the course of just 2 and a half years. If they hadn’t been stopped, they would have aimed to kill every ‘inferior race’ world-wide. There were 4 main stages in the systematic genocide; 1) lock them in a building and set it on fire so that they burnt to death. 2) deport them, firstly to Madagascar, then Uganda, then Siberia (to go in with Stalin’s unwanted peasants), then to holding camps and ghettos. 3) to shoot them in the street (however bullets were valuable and they quickly ran out so more efficient methods were needed). 4) Either work them to death in labour camps or if they weren’t dying quick enough, round them up into gas chambers.

The whole system worked as a commercial exploitation of ‘sub-human’ races such as the Jews, gypsies, homosexuals…. This went so far as using the hair that was shaved from their heads in the production of fabric, the gold from their teeth as currency and the calcium from their bones. Films such as ‘Shoah’ (1973) show that people in Germany knew. Ordinary people were part of these atrocities, whether it be by organising the trains for transportation of the people to camps, or making tea for the people that organised the trains, even just by not standing up to this genocide, people were compliant and therefore involved in the atrocities. For instance; the Channel Islands were 100% co-operative, showing no resistance whatsoever, does this mean that they are partly to blame?

Hannah Arendt argues that the holocaust is the fault of everyone involved, that it was normal and that Hitler must not be used as a scapegoat simply because he was the ‘ hypnotist’ leadership figure who is now dead and therefore easy to blame. She said that there is no superhero, no scapegoat, for something that they were all complicit in. By doing their jobs, people were involved and therefore partly to blame.

This is linked to her belief in the ‘banality of evil’; it starts with discrimination because they are different, then it becomes them being a problem, then you have to do something about the problem, then you have to be more efficient in solving the problem. It is similar to the phrase ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’. Even by meaning well you may, in fact, be doing harm. This can be clearly seen in the development of the genocide to the Final Solution. Hannah Arendt argued that compared to Fascists, Communists are liberal in an enlightened sense; instead of prison they try to reform criminals; by sending Kulaks to Siberia, Stalin intended to reform them so that they could eventually return to society.

The actual events which emerged in Khrushchev’s ‘secret speech’ in 1956 suggest that this was not the case. It revealed the crimes of Joseph Stalin, meaning that the world no longer saw him as a ‘nice’ dictator. The mass genocide of the Kulaks amongst other peasant or farmer minorities was revealed. They were either shot on the spot or deported to death camps in Siberia. They were welcomed to leave if they did not like it in the prison, but all that faced them outside was thousands of miles of snow and ice, with the occasional tree, so their choice was death or death. Again, it was a case of economic gains from keeping them for labour. Thousands of Kulaks died in a 5 year battle to dig the White Sea Canal with their bare hands, faced with machine guns if they stopped. The speech also revealed that Stalin had gone insane by the outbreak of war with Germany; just a couple of weeks before the Germans invaded, he ordered a meeting of his commanding officers where, in a paranoid rage, he shot them all. It also came out that the Russian economy was dependent on slave labour; they became addicted to it and when they ran out of Kulaks to deport and use for labour they would arrest and frame innocent people whose jail time would be spent in a labour camp. All of this caused an outcry and came as a shock to the communist movement whose moral force lost integrity and it led to a re-evaluation of Marxism.

In the 1960s this re-evaluation could be seen in the New Left which Hannah Arendt was a part of. They were trying to come to terms with ‘the God that failed’ and the atrocities carried out under communist rule that had come to light. This new group’s leader was Ralph Milliband who set up the Institute for Workers Control. The group was mainly made up of Trotskyites who said that Stalin was not communist enough and did not stick to Communist ideals which is why his dictatorship went wrong.

The 1930s and 1940s showed communist heroics and led to a worship of Stalin, which was later blown apart by Khrushchev’s revelations, for instance the Battle of Stalingrad showed communism beating fascism.

The 1950s saw leftist heroism with Sartre and Camus being very influential. The French Revolution and emergence of existentialism meant that people finally confronted the reality of collaboration; the reality that it was not all Hitler, but also the people that carried out his orders. This period also saw the Cold War and much Anti-Communism, and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The 1960s saw the New Left take off, for example in America with the sexual politics of the women’s liberation, gay liberation, black liberation, disability rights and ‘PC’ language, (although this owed more to Nietzschean individualism than to socialism). The ‘60s also saw the Liberal Elite who were detached and avante garde, regarding individuality as having no connection to the organised working class. This was seen as a phenomenon of the Western world. Maoist type communist also evolved into something strange and violent, further smudging the name of Communism, with atrocities in countries such as Nepal, Cambodia, Peru and Zimbabwe.

Hannah Arendt’s Ideas:

Arendt said that World War 2 was too horrific to talk about, bringing in Freudian ideas of repression and coping mechanisms such as scape-goating. She said that this was because, deep down, they all knew that everyone was complicit. She argued that people need to think for themselves and never submit irrationally to authority; if it goes against your morals to do something, don’t do it just because you are told. Don’t just follow the herd; THINK.

Another of her ideas was the ‘banality of evil’ which came from the trial of Eichmann, the man known as the architect of the holocaust, who stood there as a normal man, not a raving lunatic, and said he was just doing his job. He wrongly argued that Kantean philosophy taught him to obey the boss no matter what, to always please and do his duty. Arendt argued that ‘collaboration is death’ meaning that by collaborating, he murdered. This links to Neo-Kantianism and its ideas about the moral law and the categorical imperative.

She emphasises that we must THINK rather than simply obeying. She said ‘no thinking person could have done what Eichmann did’, which is true. But the question is, when do we draw the line between the moral good for humanity and the good of ourselves? After all, we live in a world where it is survival of the fittest.

Seminar 3: James Joyce's Ulysses

In discussing Ulysses, Chapter 15 (Circe) in particular, we came up these main points:

James Joyce uses lots of description and imagery as well as a stream of consciousness approach to depict the everyday life of Leonard Bloom

the novel is often dream-like and jumps between the real world and Bloom’s thoughts a lot, which we all found very confusing. Often it is hallucinations that are being described, but this is not obvious because of the Modernist style that it has been written in.

The whole book is about what happened in one day of Leonard’s life in Ireland.

There are a lot of different languages, such as English, Irish and Greek, mixed in together and lots of Irish idioms which make the book even more difficult to follow.

Joyce also liked to play with words a lot.

Many parts of it pick up on Freudian ideas of the unconscious, the Id the Ego and the Superego as well as defense mechanisms and the importance of both mother and father figures in a person’s mental state.

The root of Leonard’s problems is suggested to be the lack of sex in his marriage.

It depicts a normal person on a normal day, which is partly what makes it difficult to understand because we all think in different patters, but which also can be applied to everyone. This is very much in keeping with modernist work at the time in thinking about how the human mind works.

It has been suggested that Stephen is trying to find a paternal role model in his life and that his issues stem from his lack of a father figure, reflecting Freud’s emphasis on parent-child relationships.

In one part, Bloom is shown to have 8 babies, which are all perfect, with clothes and positions of high authority in society from birth, which can be seen as reflecting the ideals in life at the time and the expectations the different parts of society. It could also be interpreted as Bloom striving for perfection. This few paragraphs is a good example of how Joyce blurred lines, in this case between the midwife delivering his babies and the suggestion of a sexual encounter.

Leonard often tries to behave like a normal member of the public, for example in the way that he acts with the prostitutes (pretending to be setting up a hostel for them as an excuse to be there?). This can be seen as showing his ego at work, and social expectations as well because he doesn’t want people to know that he has been there. This is reflective of the ideas of public and private lives that are picked up in much other literature such as Howard’s End by E.M. Forster and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by R.L. Stevenson.

Throughout the book, the Roman Catholic Church is attacked. Especially in the delusion in which Leonard is celebrated and inaugurated in which the pomp and ceremony is described with a mocking hyperbole. Also, accusations are hurled at priests at one point.

At many points Joyce mixes between talking about Jews and Roman Catholics, which can be quite confusing.

There is also much criticism of Ireland itself and it must be remembered that when Joyce was writing Ulysses, he had not been living in Ireland for 20 or so years and so was quite detached. Ireland is portrayed as seedy and many of the court hallucinations show it to be corrupt and fickle. It is not an overly positive view, therefore, and only really shows a snapshot; we only see what Leonard sees.

Finally, we concluded that Ulysses set the style for other Modernist literature and tackles many issues which makes it a “classic” and a very important book.

Lecture 3: Freud, James Joyce and the Modernist Novel

This week’s lecture started with talking about Freud and all his contributions both to psychology and to literature, as well as all the ways that it has permeated our culture and everyday life in phrases such as ‘Freudian slips’ and the ‘unconscious’.

First of all a bit of background on Freud; he was born in the 1850s in Vienna and died in London in 1939 after a long battle with cancer. Freud came up with an all-encompassing theory which made him a celebrity; he was nominated for two Nobel prizes, one in literature and one in science. He was ambitious and hard-working and believed that all of the problems with humanity could be solved with psychoanalysis. He was seen by many as a sexual renegade that damaged our idea of ourselves as noble creatures because of his ideas that sex is involved in every action, on some level and that it is the central motivator for our actions.

He challenged the Enlightenment by presenting an alternative to rationality; that we are NOT controlled by rational faculties, but by the impulsive, base Id. He also challenged the idea that we are born with a ‘blank slate’ onto which society’s values are imprinted by suggesting that we are born with the innate functions of the Id.

Freud’s Theories:

Phallic symbols are all around us and sex and the penis (seen as a symbol for sex) are crucial in every action we take.

Women have ‘penis envy’ because they thought that the reason they lacked a penis was that they had been castrated. Because of this, they love their father because he has a penis and reject their mother because they see her as being weak.

Humanity’s ‘self-love’ prevents scientific development and progress because we cannot stand to think of ourselves as less than perfect and having these aggressive, sexual thoughts. Freud also argued that this stopped us from accepting that the earth is not the centre of the universe or believing Darwin’s theory of evolution which challenge our view of ourselves as above animals. Another scientific theory that was marred by our ‘self-love’ is the fact that our conscious brain is not in charge. All the time, our reptilian brain is keeping us alive and often over-rides the thoughts of our conscious brain.

The KEY to Freud, however, is his ideas regarding the unconscious, this has been his legacy. However, many thinkers of the time did not like it as it went against the popular idea of humanity as rational beings. Freud divided the mind into 3 distinct parts that are in deadly conflict, an internal war which will constantly send us into turmoil.

1) The Id, aka the unconscious, was, according to Freud, innate and provided us with instincts such as sleeping and eating. It is the most basic, animalistic part of us and as a result can only deal with symbols rather than language, which is shown in our dreams as a way for the Id to communicate with our consciousness. It operates on the pleasure principle, wanting to follow its desires all the time no matter what the situation.
2) The Ego, aka the conscious or self operates on a reality principle and realises that we cannot always satisfy our pleasures but works to do so in a socially acceptable way. This is the part of our mind that we are aware of, our consciousness.
3) The Superego is the internalised rules and morals of our parents and society which is constantly trying to keep us civilised and telling the Id that it can’t do what it wants.

Freud also thought that childhood was essential to our development as adults and that any problems in childhood would result in mental difficulties in later life. He devised 5 stages of development in childhood and said that if there was conflict at any of these stages, it could cause you to fix at that stage and regress to it in later life.

1) The Oral stage – a stage at which the child has an obsession with the mouth and premature weaning could cause problems such as obsessive eating, smoking or drinking in later life.
2) The Anal stage – during toilet training when problems could mean you become compulsive, clean and stingy. (This idea has permeated our culture and people are often referred to as ‘anal’ if they have any of these qualities.)
3) The Phallic stage – when the child is obsessed with their genitals and problems may result, for women, in a need for domination and the Electra Complex which means that the woman eventually identifies with their mother, and the Oedipus Complex for men where they want to have sex with their mother and kill their father, however they fear castration by their father and so identify with him because he is strong. This was one very controversial part of Freud’s theories.
4) The Latent stage – where sex becomes unimportant
5) The Genital stage – when they become sexually active and their early experiences effect how their personalities with develop, for example if one is shunned they will become isolated.

The three parts of the mind battle all the time, according to Freud, and he thought that these battles can result in repression and defence mechanisms such as:
o Sublimation (turning sexual energy into something else e.g., work)
o Displacement (turning shameful thoughts into/onto something/one else)
o Projection (attributing your own feelings onto someone/thing else)
o Rationalisation (making it into a more socially acceptable explanation)
o Regression (returning to an earlier stage of development, for example one at which there was a conflict)

The key to psychoanalysis, Freud argued, is that you are hiding something from yourself that you cannot face, but he had found a way in which the Id could be dealt with directly. He used a combination of methods through which the Id could let off steam, such as Hypnosis, the ‘pressure’ method, free association and dream analysis.

Freud had quite a negative view of mankind in that he thought that sex and aggression could never be eliminated as you can never escape the Id, you can only try to control it. He also made a sort of social commentary by saying that groups want to be dominated and look for someone to be in charge, such as a father figure. This could relate to Nietzsche’s pronouncement that “God is dead” and the fact that people are simply looking for leadership and something to believe in. Freud argued that civilisation and hierarchy keeps us in check and is there to control our desires and that groups gave up their libidinal (energy linked with instinctual biological drives) feelings to the leader and unleashed their aggression on those outside of the group. This idea can be linked to what was happening at the time with Nazi and communist domination in Eastern Europe.

There were many attacks on Freud as a theorist, mainly on his methodology. Karl Popper argued that there were problems with falsibility in that there has to be a way to prove or disprove a theory and Freud’s were too general to allow any kind of testing. Advances in neuroscience such as MRI scanners and study of the anatomy of the brain, uncovering the Reptilian Brain, Limbic System and Neo Cortex which suggest that our brains have evolved as humans have, have also invalidated many of Freud’s ideas and brought up new questions such as where is the Id, Ego and Superego, in physical terms?

Another criticism came from Reich who believed the opposite of Freud; that the unconscious is good and that it is in fact the suppression which is encouraged by society that does the damage, distorting the unconscious and making people dangerous. He believed that the underlying sexual energy is good and that humanity would flourish if it was released. This thinking acted as part of the ‘free love’ movement of the 1960s.

As well as his scientific theories, Freud had a huge influence on literature and other culture. However, Freud said “The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious. What I discovered was the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied”, showing a modesty out of place with the huge impact of his work. Examples of his influence are; Virginia Wolfe, numerous biographies and the idea of looking back at childhood to see how it has effected adulthood as well as much influence on education.


We then went on to talk about James Joyce’s Ulysses in very general terms:

It is a modernist work, with no real beginning or end meaning that you can pick up from any chapter and still understand. It is a novel of the body and the senses, of the writer unburdening their internal life and giving the first glimpse of the habitual, the everyday. It was very much a reaction against the past and the ideologies that had come before, attacking Ireland and the high ideals that had caused World War 1, arguing that they are dangerous.

It was based on the Odyssey, portraying a journey and providing the fullest account yet of everyday life. It was also an attack on the hero, especially the nationalistic hero, which can be linked to the fall of his hero at the hands of the Catholic Church. This can be seen in the way that Joyce attacks religion, God and the Catholic Church. It has also been argued that it is an indirect attack on Irish Revivalism.

It is written in a very Irish way, which can make it difficult to understand, and all the chapters refer to one another. Joyce thought that the artist should insult rather than flatter national vanity, challenging the norms and society that it is created within.

Lastly, we looked quickly at characteristics of the Modernist novel:

1) The writer is in control, a law unto themselves
2) There is a sense of crisis in that there is a radical break in culture
(unfortunately I could not keep up for the last of the list, but I will add to this as soon as I can)

Seminar 2: Friedrich Neitzsche

Today's seminar started out with Brian explaining the laws of defamation which are there to defend reputations if someone says (slander) or prints (libel) something that damages or lowers how the public see you. Anything that is published is liable - even this! Another interesting titbit of information about libel is that London gives the biggest payouts, whereas in the US, freedom of speech is stronger so libel payouts are much smaller and harder to get.

We then went on to talk about Neitzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra which was written "for all and for none" meaning that Neitzsche wanted anyone to read it, but it was not for any specific academic camp or group of society. This was because he wanted people to follow his philosophy of their own will, rather than being forced to. He used Zarathustra to preach to the masses about things such as the origins of our belief systems, why we are here and the effect that tradition has on society.

Firstly, he thought that traditions such as democracy, morality and belief in spirits and the afterlife are holding humanity back from achieving their full potential (as Overmen). This would have been very controversial at the time because people did not want to hear that there was no afterlife, that they did not have immortal spirits or that God does not exist; Neitzsche thought that this is because God and religion gives them comfort and escape from the truth. All of this would have been very shocking at a time when most people were deeply religious.

One of the most shocking statements he made was that "God is dead". This brings up the idea of God as Clockmaker, setting up the world then going away to leave the machine ticking over and not interfering, as well as the theory of the God of the Gaps which says that things that we cannot scientifically explain, are explained by God, but anything that can be explained by science shows that God does not exist there. What also came to mind was Hegel's idea of the geist and how it is an expression of moving on and progressing. Different to all of these ideas, Neitzsche seems to be arguing that God never existed; only the idea of him did. He is saying that the idea of God is no longer strong enough to keep people aiming for a higher purpose; the values, morals and ethics of that God are gone and something else needs to come and take its place in providing comfort and purpose and progress for the world.

Hence Neitzsche's theory of the Uberman/overman/superman. He argues that humanity is merely a stepping stone between being an animal (which we evolved from) to being an Overman (which he believes we will evolve to). An overman is someone who is free from all the prejudices, traditions, values and moralities of human society and creates his own values and purpose; someone that motivates themselves and doesn't look to a higher power to give them a purpose in life. An overman also differs from humanity in that he has the strength of will to keep going through the "eternal recurrence" of every event in your life being repeated infinitely. Neitzsche said that "Man is a rope fastened between animal and overman. A rope over an abyss." He thought that out journey in life, if we let it, leads us to become overmen, but things like democracy and religion weaken us and those that are weak will never become overmen. In Thus Spake Zarathustra, the protagonist seeks out individuals that are strong and can be powerful and take control of their own lives, thoughts and moralities and abandons the herd who he sees as weak.

The idea of eternal recurrence shows Neitzsche's view on time; that it is infinite. This links to ideas of reincarnation and the journey towards paradise/ to join Buddha. We then moved on to talk about meditation and the idea that people who meditate are trying to free themselves, to find serenity, nothingness, oblivion and to overcome themselves. This, and the idea of being born again in the cycle of reincarnation, can be seen as similar to Neitzsche's progression from man to overman.

He also spoke of "the last man"; someone that believes in the old ways and refuses to accept the idea of the overman. Someone who is stuck, not progressing or challenging. In the story, the people of the marketplace liked this idea which persuaded Zarathustra that he should give up trying to preach to the masses and that he should turn his attention to those that wanted to follow him; the strong individuals rather than the herd.

Neitzsche also said that the universe is a struggle between good and evil and that religion is a barrier and burden to the overman. At one point he juxtaposed the camel, the lion, and the child (symbolically). The camel was the carrier and the provider of knowledge, while the lion was an aggressive individual with ideas of their own and the child was fresh, new and unburdened. These can be seen as the progression from animal (camel) through human (lion) to Overman (child), and reflects the theory of evolution.

Throughout the book, there are many metaphors and symbols which can be picked up on to show Neitzsche's ideas. One example is the cave that Zarathustra emerges from and later takes his followers back to. Many have seen it as a nod to Plato where the cave could be a private thinking space, away from the world and its traditions and values. The shadows in the cave are that of the real world; not close enough to effect those in the cave but still present. Neitzsche wants people to escape the cave and progress to the real world and the idea of the Overman.

One point that I made about the reading was that iI found the loose plot line very difficult to follow, however Brian pointed out that it was deliberately loose to reflect the modernist traditions where things were no longer structured, no longer sticking within "safe" boundaries, but breaking the rules and thinking outside the box.

Lecture 3: A hotchpotch of Modernism

In this lecture, Chris was talking about all the important people, ideas and events of the Modernist era which, I have to say, is very confusing. I don’t know if it was the nature of the content or the way that we jumped from one thing to another, but I was lost. However, on hearing from Chris after the lecture that “It is okay to be confused”, I am now much more relaxed about having no clue what is going on.

I will try to organise my notes into the key people of the Modernist era before going on to the key factors.

To start, I will outline what Modernism is:

Modernism is important in the history of culture, as set up by Thomas Kuhn in his structure of history. It was a reaction against Romanticism and the Enlightenment, in which the arts, maths and architecture all reflect the idea of the de-centred universe in which there is no central point and everything is in relation to another point rather than to the universe as a whole. In this way, it was thought that nothing is more important than anything else. The science behind the Modernist movement focused on particle physics and the fact that as you continue to spit objects into atoms, sub-atoms etc., it becomes more and more clear that everything is made of nothing, and as the universe continues to expand, there is less and less in it. This was reflected in the fact that Europe was no longer the centre of the world, with America emerging in the 19th century and then Asia shortly after that, creating a globalised world in which Europe is eclipsed and Eastern religions gain importance. Being the opposite of the Enlightenment, modernism was very individualist, rejecting Christianity for being “sheep” and democracy because it was seen as idiots running the world. Modernists were more likely to support an “aristocratic super-scientist”. Examples of these ideas can be found in Nietzsche’s work where Zarathustra is the “over-man”, using super-hero qualities to overcome hurdles in life, and in Schopenhauer’s music which was seen as a “supernatural force”. Another key idea in Modernism was that because of medicinal advancements, the human race has stopped evolving, one example that Chris gave was that of appendicitis; if those that have it do not die, it will continue to be passed on in the gene pool. This has forced two different views; the far right-wings say that we need forced eugenics, such as the Nazi’s idea, in order to stamp out these biological faults, however this is ridiculous and the far left-wing would argue that we need to build a communist super-utopia and evolve socially instead. Many key thinkers would blame Christianity for the advancements in science and welfare that have caused us to stop evolving and it is often seen as the “religion of the weak”. Ideas often associated with Modernism are; war, fire, power, destruction, Freudian sexual theories.

Wagner was very important in Modernism, especially as it is thought that the first moment of modernism in music was his opening of the Prelude to Tristan and Isolde in which he breaks the structural rules for composition by not resolving the piece in the “home key”. Wagner’s operas were always on a huge scale, never seen before, and were seen as a cosmic drama of the universe told through mythology. He was a conservative nationalist and common themes in his work were; burning, sex, anti-Semitism and cannibalism.

Nietzsche was also key, with his style being very important for journalists and many of his most famous quotations now being used in pop culture and journalism. His translator, an American journalist and stylist called H.L. Mencken, was also very important in the advertising industry, pop music’s hook lines and many of the traditions in headline-writing. Both of these men wrote in outbursts, which helps to make their work very quotable, hence the many aphorisms such as “God is Dead”, “Mankind is a thing that must be overcome” and “Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual”. In Nietzsche’s “The Genealogy of Morals” he reflects modernist ideas of; relativity, that the universe has not fixed centre or fixed points which means we cannot have change, the redundancy of the concepts of good and evil, that everything about science is to do with change (which reflects many other philosophers such as Hegel). He did not think there should be racialism or nationalism because of his ideas of individualism. He was a devotee and friend of Wagner and they would often go to orgies at “mad” King Ludwig’s castle.

Freud’s psychoanalysis proved to be a big player in this era mainly because he was saying that you do not really possess your own consciousness and that your subconscious is outside of your control. His ideas of wish-based fulfilment were also seen to be of significance.

James Joyce’s de-centred narrative in Ulysses can be seen as embodying Modernist ideas in that it had no set beginning, middle or end, or set characters. It was seen as an “honest portrayal of real life” and due to its sexual explicitness and radical ideas was banned from the pope-ruled world.

Dorothy Parker was another writer/poet/journalist whose lack of sentimentality has been seen as directly based on Schopenhauer.

Feminism and women came into this era only because of the references in many works to sex, but after they were introduced, they had a large impact, although I am not sure what this impact was. Chris suggested that because women are the givers of life, they are therefore the cause of all of humanity’s problems, because if we did not live we would not worry about life.
Some key events in Modernism were:

The Great War, which brought about a moral, political and economic dissolution of the European order, causing all aspects of culture (books, poems, music etc) to be haunted by the events and consequences of this horrific period. Even the Russian revolutions and the rise of the Nazis can be put down as a direct consequence. It caused huge shock because of the scale of its destructiveness.

The Jazz age; America had the Harlem Renaissance in the 1860s which meant that slavery was officially abolished and The Migration began. Arguably the most important intellectual music of the 20th Century; Jazz and Blues, came out of this as a combination of Jewish, African and American and who knows what else. This created the first world music which then became blues, then rock and roll, then pop music.

Communism, both with Lenin in Russia and with Rosa Luxembourg in Germany, was very important in the Modernist era.

Futurism emerged as part of modernism, characterised by Russian constructivist design such as photo montage and mass production which essentially was the start of magazine journalism. Futurism was against Kantean ideas of works of individual genius.

The architecture in the modernist age reflected the way that people were losing the aesthetic ideas of platonic forms and instead were focused on functional, scientific design based on ergonomics, measurement, etc. Pretty terraced housing was out and functional tower blocks were in. Along with this went the idea of central planning which underpinned fascism as highly rational and functional parts of society.

The Holocaust (organised, industrial mass murder) is thought of as the end of the Modernism era.

And there you go; a hotchpotch of notes that I don’t even understand! Enjoy…

Seminar 1: Tabloid Nation and Lord Northcliffe

The first thing we talked about in the seminar was what we thought of Lord Northcliffe (Alfred Harmsworth). The general opinion was that he was entrepreneurial, with a good head for business but was more politically motivated than journalistically.

He knew the importance of the front page of a newspaper and used this knowledge to good effect. His bold headlines caught the attention of the reader, in this he was very influential. He was very much a risk taker at the start of his career, as shown by the fact that The Daily Mirror was the first paper run by women, for women. He was also the first person to introduce supplements, which he did when he changed the Mirror into a picture paper and created a women’s supplement, so as not to completely lose that readership. However, he was not the original innovator in a lot of his ideas; he was simply bringing Hearst’s ‘yellow journalism’ to the UK.

Northcliffe created a huge newspaper empire, starting with The Illustrated London, The Bicycling News and Answers to Correspondents on Every Subject Under the Sun before moving on to bigger projects like The Daily Mirror, The Daily Mail and The Times. After all the build up to the launch of The Daily Mirror, sales quickly dwindled and it became the laughing stock of Fleet Street, an embarrassment to Northcliffe who swiftly brought in Hamilton Fyfe and Hannen Swaffer to turn the publication into a picture paper that would actually sell. This new paper was meant to be entertaining, rather than factual or intellectual. This was reflected in the articles; they were “interesting and sufficiently simple” for the newly educated middle class, with big headlines and lots of pictures so that it could be skimmed rather than read, with a maximum of 250 words per article.

When Northcliffe died, Rothermere inherited the empire and brought about the age of free gifts and prize giveaways, entering it into the craze in newspapers at the time and spending much of the budget on gimmicks such as these.

We next compared Northcliffe and Hearst, with our conclusion being that Northcliffe was much less ruthless; despite the fact that he also needed to seek out and even create news, he would not go to such extreme measures. This could be partly to do with the fact that Hearst would pour as much money as he could into his papers, whereas Northcliffe was much more economically minded, wanting to use his profits to expand into other businesses rather than ploughing the profits straight back into the newspapers. This is especially true when it came to The Daily Mirror; he saw it simply as a means to get more money to put into other businesses, at one point having £8 million worth of secondary business ventures.

We also said that Northcliffe was less afraid of failure, as can be seen by his ‘try it and see’ attitude to launching The Mirror as a woman’s paper. However, he was more motivated by making profit and using his papers for politics than in the journalism side.

We next discussed the quotation on page 23 about the Freedom of the Press. The statement is generally still true today, in that if the advertisers do not like the content, they will not buy advertising and the paper will therefore go bankrupt. However, Rothermere still managed to put some pretty radical content in his papers such as his views on fascism and his support of Hitler and Mussolini. From this, it is clear that as journalists it is important to be objective, but it must not be forgotten that it will be edited and may be rejected from printing; the opinions of the audience and the advertisers are very important.

Photojournalism was an important part of the success of The Mirror. However, it can be dangerous because of the different perceptions and assumptions that can be made of a photograph. Telling a story with a picture leaves out the facts that must be put into words, which can be the essence to understanding the story. However, it is a useful tool because it captures the audience, making them aware of what the headline is in a split second. Also, pictures are important because crime and disasters sell and often the best way to represent stories such as this is through a visual image. Papers are often about appearance, and a wall of print is not enticing.

Newspapers can also be seen as a symbol of status; if you carry around a Guardian or an Observer, people will make the assumption that you are educated, interested in politics and wealthy. Whereas The Mirror or The Sun are seen as lower quality journalism.

We also discussed the fact that journalism thrives on bad things, such as crime, war, disaster, shock statistics and the government gone wrong. These headlines sell papers because we, as readers, love drama.

The last thing that we talked about was how Hearst may have felt about Northcliffe taking his ideas across the pond and poaching members of his staff, such as Kennedy Jones, who was brought over from The New York Journal to be editor of The Daily Mail, or Alexander Kenealy who was also poached from Hearst’s Journal, to replace Hamilton Fyfe as editor of The Daily Mirror. We were curious as to Hearst’s reaction to ‘yellow journalism’ spreading, and after first saying he would have been pretty annoyed at his ideas being stolen, we came to the conclusion that he was quite a self-righteous man and so would probably have been flattered at the popularity of his ideas, and possibly arrogant because he had already done so well and made a huge impact on journalism. This feeling of pride in his work would have been helped by the fact that his papers and Northcliffe’s were not in competition and therefore his sales would not be affected by the spread of his techniques.

Year 2, Lecture 1: William Randolph Hearst and his contributions to Journalism

We started the lecture by going over the period in American history which pretty much cemented the idea of America as a blank canvas. The 1800s saw America transform, with the established cities of the East giving way to the lawless, unclaimed West coast. The 1840s and 50s saw the first Gold Rush in which, while millions left the Irish Famine and widespread disillusionment of Europe, and Asia, hundreds of thousands of those already in America took to the road and headed West to claim their fortune in the mines. This lead to a new generation of men who had worked their way from the mines to being millionaires, such as W R Hearst’s father, George Hearst who was lured from Missouri in 1850.

From this drive West emerged the Frontier Thesis which is crucial in the American psyche. They were travelling to a new place where they could establish their own way of life, free from the restraints of organised society in the East. This brought out the adventurous, violent, individualistic side of the American man which defines the American constitution. Those that succeeded in making their millions did so simply because they were stronger, smarter and had more guns than those that failed.

George’s hard won success in the mines was simply a stepping stone to the career in politics that he strived for and his son, William, used it to his advantage, showing himself as a self-made man. He also took from George’s success the fact that even poor, uneducated people could be successful, so the son of a millionaire certainly could. He came from a ‘legend-maker’ and his grass roots heritage inspired him to strive to succeed.

George either bought or won the San Francisco Examiner, depending on your sources, which he then used to head his campaign to start a political career. Early American newspapers, known as “penny papers” were either political or commercial, in a time where reporting was partisan and “objectivity” was not thought important. This meant that they acted as a voice for whoever it was that owned the paper and their political views, and were often used for party propaganda. However, in 1846, New York papers came together to organise the Associated Press which sold news stories to the papers to provide raw, uncut, objective stories to several newspapers. This was the beginning of objective, unbiased journalism.

In 1887, William took over the Examiner from his father who had no real interest in running it. He transformed the paper, showing the passion he had for journalism and reflecting his eye for art that had been honed by his trips to Europe with his mother. Front pages of newspapers used to be walls of text, simply putting as much information as possible in. WRH reduced the number and length of stories on the front page, making the headlines larger and eliminating advertisements. Above the mast head he put endorsements and circulation figures, so that the paper effectively advertised itself. His obsession with the front page did not end there, WRH was the first journalist to put illustrations on the front page of a newspaper to “attract the eye and stimulate the imagination of the lower classes and materially aid comprehension”. This appealed to a wider readership as it took into account those with low literacy and those who spoke a different language, taking not of the varied population of California. He also improved the style of the writing to make it more focused and more urgent, with sensational, snappy headlines to catch the reader’s interest.

His Examiner was pro-labour, anti-capital, anti-railroad and very much aimed at the working class. It supported the unions and worker’s rights; however it occasionally was quite racist. It used language that its readership could understand, taking into account the ‘slang’ that was developing as a way for people of all different origins to communicate, making the paper much more accessible than most.

New York was a booming, lively city fuelled by cheap labour, new technology and low commodity prices. Joseph Pulitzer owned the World and was the king of New York journalism. He was seen as a genius for his new style, very similar to WRH’s, of dramatic, sensational writing aimed at the working classes. In 1896, Hearst decided he was bored of San Francisco and set up the New York Journal in completion with Pulitzer’s The World. He poached “The Yellow Kid”, an immigrant cartoonist whose work was immediately identifiable and understandable to the working classes. He was perfect for pulling in mass audiences and very valuable to Hearst. Pulitzer hit back by employing another cartoonist to copy the Yellow Kid and thus the Journal and the World soon became known as “Yellow Papers”, now know as Red Tops in the UK.

Yellow journalism was very interested in crime and “underwear journalism” (sex stories) and the two papers soon battled for crime stories and led their own investigations, offering rewards for information on crimes and sending reporters to find out anything they could. It turned into a free-for-all and this type of investigative journalism soon became known as “muckraking”. Nellie Bly was the original Muckraker, and started the trend for undercover journalism which we see today in stories such as those dishing the dirt on footballer’s affairs. Bly did investigations such as “Ten days in the mad house” and revealed corrupt politicians, sweatshops and similar shocking stories.

The Spanish War in Cuba proved to be a boom time for Yellow journalism. In 1897, Cuba’s insurgency problems continued to build and WRH sent one of his best reporters, Harding Davis, and his best illustrator, Frederic Remington, to Cuba. Hearst was a champion for the Cuban cause and encouraged the government to get involved and break their isolationist policy. However, the reporter he sent to Cuba reported that he had “not heard a shot fired or seen an insurgent” and the illustrator also became bored and complained that “everything is quiet. There is no trouble here. There will be no war.” Hearst replied “Please remain. You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war”. This built Hearst’s reputation, however he later denied that he said it and we do not know for an absolute fact; it is difficult to distinguish between legend and truth, but subsequent actions by Hearst suggest that he was capable.

For example, he interfered once again for the story “Rescue of Evangelina Cisneros”. For this story, he set up a petition to free her, which he managed to get signed by the President’s wife, but when this was not effective, he sent a reporter to bribe prison guards to let her out and took her to New York where he paid for her stay in the Waldorf. She had an audience with the President and eventually the USS Maine was sent into Havana Harbour where, a week later, it mysteriously exploded, making war inevitable and ending American isolationist policy. The edition in which Hearst reported this was the first ever to get over the million circulation mark, marking the boom of the yellow press and showing that war, above even crime and sex, sells papers. Hearst referred to it as a “splendid little war” and pushed it in his papers, even celebrating by firing rockets from the roof of The Journal. He then went to Cuba himself with a large accompaniment which showed the extent to which journalism had changed with the emergence of the Yellows.

From Hearst’s successes, the nature of the relationship between journalism and government changed; media became a strong influence on foreign affairs and diplomatic policies, to such an extent that the line between reporting news and creating it has become blurred. Hearst was also very influential in creating a model for popular journalism which developed into the tabloid. This was later copied in the UK by Northcliffe of the Daily Mail and Rothermere of the Daily Mirror and ultimately by Rupert Murdoch and The Sun. Tabloid journalism is now hugely popular and has taken over as the leader of the journalistic world, with far more tabloids being published than broadsheets.

Module Summary/end of module test preparation

Here are the questions that we went through in the lecture, and my version of the answers:

1. Mary Wollstonecraft asserts that the social subjection of women was partly due to nature, and partly due to the system of education given to men and women. Why might she have thought this? (20 marks)

This is linked to Romantic views of nature and the fascination at the time with human nature. This state of nature was looked at by Rousseau, Hobbes and Locke. Wollstonecraft accepted that women are physically weaker and is part of the romantic movement, appreciating and celebrating nature, accepting that it is in women’s natures to be submissive. However, she rejected the system of education at the time, which was Aristotelean.

Aristotle has been seen to be as influential as Christianity itself. He saw women as and inferior species, akin to animals, with no role in reproduction. He also believed in “natural slavery”, that some people are naturally meant to be directed and that it is cruel to give them freedom. Women were included in this category. He also thought that the best sort of rule is Aristocracy.

Wollstoncraft’s work was a reaction against these Aristotelean ideas. She was part of the general radicalism movement, politically liberal, like Shelley. She agreed with Locke’s idea that we begin with tabula rata and so education is very important. She was inspired by Rousseau’s anti-elitism, but their ideas clashed in his attitude towards women and education. In Vindication on the Rights of Women, she said that women are partly at fault for accepting their role in society, which is then reinforced by the education that they receive. She thought that we are human beings first, and should be treated equally in the public sphere, with no difference in rights etc, and that gender should come second. She saw it as not important in the public sphere, only in private, personal relationships.

1. Compare the epistemological stance of Keats in the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” to that of Kant in the “Critique of Pure Reason”. (20 marks)

Epistemology is the philosophy of knowledge, or the theory of theory; thinking about how we can be certain about what we know. Aesthetics is the study of beauty itself. Both of these men had interest in both of these areas.

Keats was a poet in the Romantic movement, along with Shelley, Byron and Wordsworth, and had an interest in the nuomenal; possible worlds that exist beyond what can be expressed in words. In “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, he wrote that “truth is beauty, beauty is truth... that is all you can know”, which is a very strong philosophical statement (something you would not hear from an actual philosopher) and has all the trappings of romanticism.

Kant talked about the division of the universe into nuomenal and phenomenal. The nuomenal is objects in themselves, even when they are not being perceived. Phenomenal is the object when it is perceived. The aesthetic response when you, as a subjective being, see something beautiful, for Kant, is a proof of the existence of the nuomenal world. Any subjective, blissful, sublime feeling or emotion gives a glimpse of the world beyond ordinary perception, hence beauty is truth, truth is beauty.

1. Define and very briefly discuss the following terms as used in logic before the innovations of Frege;

1. Axiom (2 marks)

Axiom comes from Euclidean geometry and syllogism. An axiom is the starting point of absolute truth, beyond doubt and argument. Aristotle’s example “all men are mortal” is axiomatic, in that a syllogism can be constructed from it. This is often known as syllogistic or deductive logic. e.g., all men are mortal, Aristotle is a man, therefore Aristotle is mortal.

1. A priori (2 marks)

This means knowledge that is know without experience, without any verification from the external world. Hume rejects this idea and Locke’s theory of tabula rata says that there is no such thing. However, Hegel thinks that most things are known a priori, such as the rules of logic. This originates in Aristotle’s work.

1. A posteriori (2 marks)

This is knowledge that only comes from experience. Empiricists and materialists depend primarily/absolutely on this kind of knowledge.

1. Deduction (or analysis) (2 marks)

Deduction is the syllogism; we derive a conclusion from the original premace, e.g. we can deduce from the fact that an oak tree is an oak tree that it is a tree. Kant’s example is that if a man is a bachelor, we can deduce that he has no wife. Therefore it is a statement that is true by definition, a certain/analytic truth.

1. Induction (or synthesis) (2 marks)

This is synthetic logic, the opposite of deductive logic, because you add knowledge that is not in the deduction. It is similar to jumping to conclusions, which journalists have a perpetual dislike of. It is a method of science and therefore most scientific theories are inductive; based on adding information in. For example, deductive logic is that aeroplanes can crash, this is an aeroplane, therefore it can crash. The inductive would be that plane crashes are rare, which requires gathering data and calculating the odds.

1. In the Essay on Human Understanding, Chapter X (On Miracles), it might be said that David Hume asserts that every observable phenomena is a miracle. If this is true, why does he assert this? (10 marks)

Hume said that every observable phenomena is a miracle because certain knowledge is impossible by deduction. For example, there is no reason to say that because the sun sets, it will rise tomorrow. He is skeptical about any kind of truth statement, or taking a leap of faith. It is very difficult to live by his way of thinking because it means questioning everything and being sure of nothing. He says that when someone tells you that they have seen a miracle, you should compare the likelihood of the miracle occurring and the likelihood that he is a “knave” or a fool. We live in a world of logic.

1. Contrast your understanding of Philosophical “materialism” with philosophical “idealism” with particular reference to Hegel and Marx. (20 marks)

Materialism is an epistemological stance, that the world is made up of sensible matter; objects, atoms etc. Idealism says that everything you see is a mental phenomena, in the abstract. For example, the statement “love makes the world go round” is idealistic because it says that the spirit or geist of love causes the world to be. Hegel was a transcendent idealist, believing that nothing at all is matter but everything is spirit or manifestation of geist. Geist, according to Hegel, has a purpose and therefore this theory is teleological; saying that everything has a purpose and everything happens for a reason (Aristotle). It also says that everything is logical and conforms to dialectical rules.

Marx was Hegelian and professed that “I have stood Hegel on his feet” (which is often mis-quoted). He said that the world creates ideas. He was not a materialist in the sense of John Locke, an English Empiricist that believed in mechanistic materialism. Marx was essentially materialist, but saw that ideas do play a role in the world.

1. Discuss the economic, demographic, political, technological and sociological factors influencing the development of newspaper and periodical journalism in the period 1815 to 1915. (20 marks)

This is between the end of the Napoleonic wars and one year into the First World War, in a century when the world became the world we know today. There was no radio or television, so they were dependent on newspapers. Economic factors include the introduction of free trade and capitalism, allowing people to make money and getting rid of mercantilism, corn laws and protectionism. Cobbett and Dickens explored these factors in their writing, looking at the new liberal way that individuals could make money through newspaper businesses, creating the golden age of profits.

Demographic factors include urbanisation, which Cobbett wrote about, with people moving to towns to make densely populated areas, which aided distribution and created a concentration of people with similar interests. The markets that emerged also aided distribution, for example New York. Malthus was involved in this; the country was no longer rural, urbanisation had begun.

Political factors included the rise of the radical press, the repeal of stamp duty, the end of censorship and the liberal political regime that was in place, allowing much more freedom of expression.

Technologically, the steam driven printing press of the 1820s led to tens of thousands of copies in a night compared to the dozens of the old Gothenburg press. Railways were also important in that distribution was vastly improved. The telegraph also had an impact, meaning that news could be transmitted in the same day, for example the news of the Crimean War.

Sociological factors such as class and language also influenced the growth of journalism, as many more people could read and access papers, especially in urban environments such as New York where people were living on top of each other. This was also the time of William Randolph Hearst who transformed the journalism industry with images and cartoons and attention grabbing headlines.

Economically, the reforms of liberalism and free trade were very constructive for the market and meant that many people were able to start up newspaper businesses. It was also useful that in cities, people spoke the same language, therefore making news more easily spread.

Lecture 5: William Randolph Hearst

William Randolph Hearst was around at the end of the 19th Century, and virtually invented modern popular journalism and was one of the founders of modernism.

In 1848, Europe was grouping together. It is known as the year of revolutions; Marx predicted one that didn’t happen, the Irish were defeated by the British, the French revolution was suppressed, so the country became economically backwards, and the Russian and Austrian revolutions both failed.

1849 is know for the gold rush in California, which sparked massive European emigration, with New York’s Ellis Island as the entry point. The Europeans were fleeing oppression, backwardness and poverty, and created a cosmopolitan ‘linguistic melting pot’ in New York City.

William Randolph hearst was based in San Francisco, which, in 1849, had over 150 languages. He published the first ever tabloid rumour; the gold rush, creating the hype which led to frenzied settlement of the west and the railway boom. His newspaper the San Francisco Examiner was the first ever sensational circulation newspaper, largely printing articles on rumours of gold. It’s main revenue business was advertising shovels, for those that believed the gold rush rumours. With this newspaper, the gold rush mentality (meaning that they are only interested in greed and fear, the things that sell newspapers) was established and still survives today. The visual style of the newspaper was also very similar to that of today’s papers.

1850s America was characterised by the railway boom, the settlement of the West and the telegram invention, which helped Hearst in setting up the settlement newspapers that were crucial in creating the new communities, and also in establishing WRH’s print empire. He got rich by selling a shot at the gold that was promised in the West.

The American Civil War in the 1860s was partly to liberate black people but mainly to free the Southern states from the government. No new state could be a slave state, which angered many of the people in areas that wanted to be under the federal government. South Carolina left the US and was then invaded by the federal army, which set off an industrial war using modern inventions. It led to the creation of a ‘Yankee’ empire and the future of America was settled; it would be a liberal, trading, industrial nation, based on the ideas of John Locke etc. The already booming cities of the North, such as New York and Boston, gain massively from this as they get cheap cotton and produce, which they can then ship to Britain, from the Southern states which have cheap labour.

America has always been a country of contrasts. William Randolph Hearst built up his newspaper empire in the new towns in the West, while James Coolitzer set himself up as a rival in New York City. He had arrived in the US in 1849 as a Hungarian nationalist-reactionary and taught himself English. He set up the New York Daily World (which the Daily Planet in superman is based on) and was seen as on the side of ‘sod busters’, or poor farmers, because he wanted de-valuation and also because he was seen as a ‘nut breaker’, a penetrating investigative journalist. He spoke out against issues such as oil and railway companies and the terrible working conditions of those that they employed. He was populist, isolationist and not afraid to speak his mind.

At the time, New York City had all the ingredients for rapid growth; there was plenty of cheap labour from the emigrants arriving daily, desperate for work; they had a liberal constitution which meant they had civil rights and rights to ownership; the urban concentration, with a high population density which reduced economic overheads (from this perspective, Cobbett’s views of industrialisation and urbanisation were wrong). This was Coolitzer’s world, and was seen as the “era of the rubber bands” because people went from rags to riches in just one generation. There was vast infrastructure investment, which stimulated the economy, helped by the vast internal market for products. The absence of war was also a key factor in New York’s success, as Europe was engulfed by the Franco-Russian war and other disputes which meant even more people left the continent for the ‘streets paved of gold’. There was also an absence of imperial entanglements and colonies, leaving the government free to focus on infrastructure etc. It is also important to know that the US was very anti-European.

The 1860s saw the newspaper wars, where Coolitzer was on top, then Hearst comes along copying Coolitzer’s paper with the New York Sun, but in a simplified version; simpler headline styles, shorter and simpler articles (articles longer than 250 words would be deleted) and it was the first newspaper to have engraving and therefore appealed visually as well. Hearst also invented the cartoon strip, however, Coolitzer soon developed the Yellow King strip which was the most popular (the Simpsons is an explicit reference to this). Hearst bought this cartoon strip and rocketed ahead of the competition. He was an expert on distribution and was ruthless in the circulation wars, he introduced competitions such as bingo, he headhunted the most popular parts of other papers and used banner headlines. The news was all about crime, creating an over-estimation of danger and feeding on the formula of fear and greed to grab the public’s attention.

The Spanish-American war was about the US wanting an export-import relationship with Cuba, but colonisation could not be considered as an option because they had learnt from World War One that it causes many problems. The people of Cuba wanted independence from Spain, but the Spanish were trying to suppress this. The thing that sparked the war was the singing of an American ship in Habana Harbour, Cuba, this cause the US to declare war on Spain and “support Cuban independence”. However, this decision was very unpopular in the US.

William Randolph Hearst saw this as a good thing, an opportunity for US world power with New York as the capital of the world, at first. He sent reporters to Habana, where they reported that they saw no war. To this Hearst said “you supply the story and I will supply the war”, and within 24 hours the ship had been blown up. This is a prime example of Hearst’s methods.

Now, all tabloid journalists work by this method: 1) think of the story, then 2) stand it up. They would think what they wanted to write about, then they would dig around to find enough evidence to make it plausible. This is because, Chris Horrie says, true stories are less interesting, and this is shown in the fact that big headlines catch peoples attention, and therefore sell more papers.