Privileged Gaze?

City Soul of Contrasts

          Oscar Wilde sure seems to be one who holds this "privileged gaze" upon humanity. We’ve been discussing the city in the 19^th century this quarter, and after studying Mayhew’s version of the London Labour’s decrepit poor, now we have a new type of 19^th century Londoner; the flaneur. Yet, this character, with its rich associations: the man of leisure, the idler, the urban explorer, the solitary prostitute, is not just the connoisseur of the street; this flaneur is a nocturnal wanderer in pursuit of entertainment.  Judith Walkowitz’ City of Dreadful Delight’s opening chapter “Urban Spectatorship” explains that it is “the flaneur’s propensity for fantasy” and a “bourgeois male pleasure” whom has a “privileged gaze” and whose exploration and discovery of one’s city can help him obtain the advantage of what Griselda Pollock defines as truly “being at home in the city” (16).  Walkowitz describes the progress of this new urban traveler from the traditional urban spectatorship of the “sympathetic resident” who can take up night walking, (noticeably a male pursuit immortalized in urban accounts since Elizabethan times).

             So, now we learn that the poor hovels of London in the East End become a place of entertainment for the bored aristocracy, how enchanting. The “streets of London became a playground for the upper classes” where the street's sights and characters are" passing shows.” Is this like visiting the animals in a zoo? This is where the connection between Wilde’s classic The Portrait of Dorian Gray and the city landscape really began to connect for me. Dorian goes down to the dumpy London theater to “watch” a second rate actress perform, and Sybil Vane becomes the character in one of his many passing shows.

            Except, Walkowitz begins using terms such as moral and biological degeneration in the latter part of her chapter to define the poor. People of poverty (or the characters in the streets who create the stage shows), who were able to change the bourgeois’ boring reality into an evening bit of fantasy, are now the purveyors of immoral attitudes that ultimately change the biological nature of humanity. Really? Well, yes. Walkowitz declares London to be a place  “where values and perception seem in constant flux” and Wilde shows us that when Dorian enters into these East End opium dens, (where he ultimately learns his horrid immoral behavior as he quite frequently begins sauntering into these decrepit hovels), we watch how one can easily transfer from an “illegible” city at night back into an “ordered and knowable” city before dawn. This fluctuating between reality and fantasy become a construct only a knife can put order to.

              Yet, my argument would differ. I believe that I can prove that the beauty of Dorian (aka. the West End) is a façade. Just like when Walkowitz explains that “the public landscape of the privileged urban flaneur of the period had become an unstable construct threatened internally by contradictions and tensions and constantly challenged from without by social forces that pressed these dominant representations to be reworked, shorn up, reconstructed (17)” I would suggest that Wilde created a satire to explain the obscene vanity of the bourgeois; as long as they kept up “appearances” they did not have to follow any moral code, and these nocturnal wanderings were part of this unstable construct of ethics of the hypocritical rich; a group of West Enders who ridicule the poor as dirty, but enjoy the entertainment provided to them.

            And another way I will prove this (as I believe I am passionate enough about this idea to write my second paper on it) is by taking all the descriptions that Wilde uses to describe the portrait as it changes, and the immoral actions of Dorian and compare the diction to the descriptions that historians use to define the East End. Once Dorian’s soul is defined to be a symbol of the East End, I will then show how the hypocrisy of the bourgeois façade makes Wilde’s novel a satire of his own West End social class.

Visibility is a Trap

          Foucault highly esteems Bentham’s Panopticon, which is verified when he describes this “laboratory of power” as “royal,”  “a victory” and ”ingenious.” Foucault also worships this “power” that the Panopticon exerts as it’s a “subtle coercion,” with many “great essential functions” that such an “ideal” and “privileged” place of supervision may impose. And, as an architectural structure, yes, the Panopticon does create a strategic platform for surveillance. As a chapter in a book titled Discipline and Punish, Foucault gives a clear look at a functional structural system for discipline.

            Yet, the horror I felt when reading this work made me want to analyze why I was having such a repulsion to this idea being presented. Garrett had presented me this Panopticon idea in a Critical Theory course last year and I did not have this terrible reaction to the structure. In fact, as my brother is a C.O. at a Federal Prison, I completely understood the layout, and the reasoning. So, why am I repulsed now? After looking over what I underlined, I noticed a theme, it was the diction and therefor the tone Foucault created in this chapter, which frightens me. The actual threat is felt in  the oppressiveness of the “authority’s” rights to instill social moral behaviors upon the "unknowing."

            I understand completely about contamination and deadly medical issues, which is a great way to begin his chapter, as it is obvious that some type of quarantine is needed to stop a plague, and so presenting the reader with a surefire reason to have such a “surveillance” makes sense. But then to change the dynamic of the issue, to go from patient to implied ROBOT really exerts hatred on my part. This illusion of control, which the Panopticon creates, is based solely on the fact that the criminal, or society member, “thinks” they are being watched. This “fear” of a consequence keeps their behavior in line.(I understand this concept, as I am raising a boy).  This is NOT my issue with Foucault’s obsession with the Panopticon. It is when he shows himself to be obsessed with the “power of the mind over mind” that irks me. By having such an infatuation to control the masses scares me. Not only is he idolizing the authority’s position among society, but he is no longer viewing people as individuals, but as machines, in a “structure” with a “function.”

            The fact that this “surveillance” structure "instigates progress" scares me! If the watcher is continuously threatened by rules and regulations then this fear of punishment "to produce" becomes the basis of his actions. There is no longer a natural desire to perform, which corrupts what is defined by America as the “pursuit of happiness” or really the universal acceptance of “living” life. When these watchers are surveyed, they become where they are placed, the criminal, the patient, the school children. To say that this “discipline” forces and "increases the skill of each individual, coordinates these skills, accelerates movements" (on the firing line of military) shows completely that PEOPLE become machines in a MANufactured system.

            To even say that this structure will help those who have the “ignorance of God” grosses me out. As if ONE religion, one view of morals, one option of praise imposed upon others can civilize and satisfy all. Foucault writes that “it is not that the beautiful totality of the individual is amputated, repressed, altered by our social order, it is rather that the individual is carefully fabricated in it, according to a whole technique of forces and bodies.” I would rather carefully fabricate myself thank you to a structure of my choosing. (Yet, I do believe in conspiracy theories, and know that since I can afford sushi and holiday vacations, that the illusion that I am not a slave is instilled in me, but I’m playing along with taxes and landlords- because I -unlike others in class LOVE VEGAS).

            OK. I am getting anxious, and have surpassed my 500 word count (another means of surveillance in a way right?) and can’t wait to find out in class tomorrow night that I have read Foucault’s essay completely backwards, that he is a loving and caring man whose ideals of the “spectacular manifestations of power” is just a 19^th century satirical essay.

           

Through Which to Think the City

            When I am feeling lonely, tired, delaying cleaning my home, or about to write an essay, I always find myself putting Under the Tuscan Sun into my DVD player. The escapism I feel watching the movie’s visuals relaxes me. Not only do I get to travel to Italy, as a divorcee author, buy and fix up a run down Tuscan villa, meet the community and fall in love with a backpacker, I get to do all of this while sitting in sweats on my couch; no fuss of airport lines, bumpy taxi rides, foreign conflicts or financial worries. I am able to be transported to an imagined city through media which represents to me a 'collection of signs,' 'representational spaces,' and transporting 'productive transactions' of urban realities as I sit comfortably in my Los Angeles home. (note: in this blog I am viewing Tuscany as a city, not a country setting).  

            As James Donald explores Des Esseintes’ experience with London in "The Immaterial City: Representation, Imagination, and Media Technologies,"  I follow suit by exploring Frances’ experience in Italy. However, if I want a real experience, without flying, “as it would be madness to risk spoiling such unforgettable experiences by a clumsy change of locality,” I could go to  San Francisco’s Cow Palace next month to experience Dickensian London of the 19^th century at the Dickens Fair. Whichever “representational space”  (Lefebvre) of any “entwined reality” I choose, will create such an imagined and immaterial city.

            Yet, this imagined view from the “panoptic” and “estheticizing gaze” on my television, never fully represents the reality of Frances’ memoir. Watching Diane Lane for the 200^th time stand on her balcony and wave to the old man replacing flowers for his dead loved one, sheds tears for the audience, when at the resolution of the movie he finally waves back to her . We cry, not because this action shows that she has become part of the community (for the old man’s accepting wave signals that he finally allows a foreigner’s intrusion and she can can call Tuscany home and move on from her cheating spouse), but we shed tears as we can only ever be a watcher, a “flaneur” of reality, as we can never “know” this feeling of acceptance, as we are not truly experiencing it ourselves, we are only watchers. This loss of ours, from being disconnected from understanding of the “social force” which exists as a public space in a city,  is what Donald suggests is the ultimate variable in making an illegible or imaginable city intensely coherent.

            This “city as a state of mind,” while watching Audrey Wells’ version of Tuscany, becomes a state of memory, state of prophecy, state of fiction. Not only is our experience “internal,” as sociologist Robert Park suggests, but fictionally internal. The subjective plural distances created for me - from the memiorist’s representation (a second remove), the movie director’s representation (a third remove) and my fantastical media forced representation (a fourth remove) all distort any perception of an ‘Italian Tuscan Villa’ truth. Then, as the movie ends, I still want to prolong my journey in Italy, I Google maps Tuscany and walk along the paths of the city center by using my thumb to hit and enlarge and watch on a computer screen another visual version of the truth, again distancing my imagined city into a fifth remove.

            Besides the lack of social force behind my Googling, the other missing factor is the “superficial individualization” which disconnects me to any chance of being in Tuscany. See, just as the city stimulates Des Essientes, the city also disconnects him from his surroundings. Simmel also explained this by saying the “the intensification of nervous stimulation” forces us to ignore all the passer-bys, for if we were to care deeply for everyone we passed it would be too much stimulation. So, we see with Des Esseintes that his senses too are “dulled by the monotonous chatter drifting into a daydream,” which becomes more real than the reality of the urban landscape. Even if I were to physically go to a village piazza in Tuscany, the foreign language and customs would differ so much from my own, I would often find myself escaping into my English/American perceptions, and not “see” Italy at all.

            (When I lived in New Orleans, there were customs the tourists did not see; umbrellas were carried by locals and busses were empty between 2 and 4 pm. It was only after I had lived there for enough time did I notice these Southern customs. It rained in the early afternoon everyday, locals knew this, and carried their umbrellas. Because of the rain, and wet, no one was out and about between 2 and 4 pm. As a tourist, these details could not be seen as the “overwhelming fullness of crystallised and impersonalized spirit” did not “see” the true locality, but saw only the jazz bars on Bourbon Street. (The most meaningful custom I learned in Nawlins was looking every single person in the eye, while saying “hello,” as I passed them on the sidewalk, which frightens people in Los Angeles immensely).

            In any case, Donald’s essay gave me enough ideas in “which to think the city” that I thoroughly enjoyed his take on using characters from literature to explain his thesis, so I wanted to copy his experience. Connecting to his ideas of ‘publicness’ and the question of community taught me that it is in the “phantom spheres” which truly define a city for me, and gives me many more ingredients to create many more imagined spaces.

Imagined and Remembered: Inventing Cities

           Michel de Certeau’s Spatial Practices section Walking in the City evoked so many emotions from me, specifically because 1) I couldn't understand shit 2) when I did understand pieces I felt love for language 3) I thought he was ridiculous with his examples 4) I loved how one of his examples used language as a metaphor for being a pedestrian in the city and 5) I couldn't understand shit. 
            As people experience cities, and as they "name" and label their experiences, they create the city. What interests me are the subjective perspectives of each "name," so the city then, is created by metaphors. There is no "original" or "authentic" city. de Certeau states that the "concept of the city is decaying" but really, it is just an imagined or remembered concept in the first place.

          I connect this with the “names [which] make themselves available to the diverse meanings, given them by passers-by; they detach themselves from the places they were supposed to define and serve as imaginary meeting points on itineraries which, as metaphors they determine for reasons that are foreign to their original value but may be recognized or not by passers-by”(104). I connected this with my grandfather's memories of being a youth in Los Angeles, and my students' imagined experiences of their Euro trip adventures.

            To begin, de Certeau made me aware of our “memories” of each place we experience, before occupying the space presently . This idea is reminiscent of how lovers, when they meet in their 20s never see the aging 80 year old in front of them, but still see their loved one as the 20 year old they fell in love with. I can’t see West Adams the way my grandfather does, when he rode the trolley down Olympic to dance at the Biltmore in downtown. I can’t “see” the city with trolleys, I see Verizon, Rite Aid and Ross stores. In this example, my grandfather’s meaning of “Los Angeles” is an “imagined” city to me, however, very recognizable to him, as he sees the buildings that have replaced his own “original value” of the city.

            de Certeau  also brought up these same “fictional” cities that tourists invent before they are in the spaces. I brought high school graduating Seniors to Europe for eight consecutive summers. When choosing where they wanted to visit on their six city trip, they had “ideas” of places that they wanted to experience. It was not St. Paul’s Cathedral that they wanted, nor Versailles, nor the Coliseum which connects with Malaparte stating  “The place de la Concorde does not exist,”...“it is an idea.” These young walking visionaries wanted not to “see” the city, but “experience” it by eating at the restaurants, dancing at the clubs and spending money at the Parisian H&M. They had fictionalized London, Paris and Rome, and they had their experience prior to getting on the airplane, so that when actually occupying that foreign space, their fictional perceived planned expectation of the city polluted the true “city”;  they did not let the authentic “city” as it’s own space, unfold before them.

            What I have, hopefully, prepared is an understanding that the subjective “superstitions” of stories and legends of the inhabitants with past experiences of the space they occupied, and a tourists’ imagined “dreamed-of places” both show how the present space of the city cannot be “seen” by the local, nor the tourist. These liberated spaces become occupied by the “meaning” which people give to them.

            By declaring that all cities are imagined spaces, allows me to view Prague, Paris, Los Angeles and Amsterdam by my imagination, not by the reality of the place.

            So, what then differentiates the cities? Language, botany, weather, earth surface and also movement of the city all create a “feeling” of the individual “city” but, again, that feeling becomes subjective. The culture of each city and the symbiotic nature of all of the residences make up a “character” and that takes on a life of it’s own. Ever evolving to match the “make up” of the character, and ever changing to match the economy, these cities although are differentiated to a objective lens, the subjective “experienced” observer cannot see, as a fish cannot see water. They exist in the fiction that the observer has imagined the city to encompass. 

           de Certeau states that “the concept-city is decaying”, but I say the “city” hasn’t decayed, it has just metamorphosed into a fictionalized synecdoche of our imagined spaces and of our memories.

All Battle is Misunderstanding

          Refreshing as it was to hear Carlyle bash the ones chosen to be the teaching and guiding force of humanity, by not only showing their duty to all persons, and not just by being labeled Aristocracy, but regarding all “hearts [which] are created by Heaven,” as having roles and a possible dream that everyman should be given what is his, along with the responsibility which Carlyle made his persuasive essay points to reveal who the real guilty party in the discontent of the Working Class; with all of the obvious comparisons to irresponsible parties of history, I was most interested in his opening statement of Chapter 6 “Events are written lessons…: the terror and horror they inspire is but the note of preparation for the truth they are able to teach; a mere waste of terror if that be not learned,” since I have been raised to believe that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (G. Santayana) and “history repeats itself” (noted to be attributed to Marx and Hegel). In any case, my Indian adage theory that one must “walk a mile in another man’s moccasin” before judging them is true as the theme for this week, again. 

          In any case, Elizabeth Gaskell’s romantic historical fiction, Mary Barton, the terrible and horrible event, which persuades the Aristocracy, or in this case, Mr. Carson, to change is the death of his most loved, and only son. Mr. Carson’s love for his son, is not what Carlyle views as a legitimate guiding force for leadership though. Gaskell is able to show us that one’s selfishness and greed, self-centeredness and personal gain are the misguiding variables in the upper classes of society. Carlyle states that the true insight and genuine understanding of the upper classes to the needs of the “under” classes, stems from the real battle of misunderstanding. If the parties were to know one another, the battle would cease. Gaskell completes Carlyle’s advice by having Jem and Job Legh converse with Carson about the master’s conduct and Carson’s personal duties. Carson admits that he is not capable of remedying the  evils the Working Class complain of. Legh adds that it is not power that the masters have that would eliminate the evils, but the lack of the master’s own suffering and sympathy towards the Working Class. Carlyle adds to this that “when there is no heart, but a monstrous gangrene pretending to exist there as a heart” is when the soul of Truth cannot create an Idea to solve any disease.    

"God made us rich and poor---of what do these complain?"

          Manchester 1842: Filth, starvation, rags, barefooted hordes of ragged women and children eating from piles of refuse, living in cellars with three families in a 10x12 room, two families to one bed (if there was a bed), mostly just laying on dirty rags. Alleys of putrid wretchedness, damp with illness and sickening ghostlike beggars. “A physically degenerate race, robbed of all humanity, degraded, reduced morally and physically to bestiality” Engels (75). Or should we compare Manchester with Babylon and Thebes, Carthage and Rome? Well, Vaughn swears that “nations come to abound in great cities”(47) and “cities are at once the great effect, and the great cause, of progress in this department of knowledge”(50). How can such a polarity of views exist? This then becomes the discrepancy between the apparent social immobility between classes which produces two separate truths and perceptions of The City.

            Elizabeth Gaskell hands us a novel, which tries to combine these two perceptions. Yet, she creates an even more ghastly view than Engels, as we see “into” the character’s motives, from both Mr. Carson, the bourgeois and John Barton, the starving working class who, living in polar opposites of The City, viciously enforce Gaskell’s theme that one must wear another man’s shoes before any change can happen. Gaskell presents this romantic theme, but Engels presents a possible solution; “that if all proletarians announced their determination to starve rather than work for the bourgeoisie, the latter would have to surrender to monopoly”(88). And, since, Engel’s solution is an impossibility, for what man would choose to starve and die than work for meager wages? the only possible solution we are given is Gaskell’s fictional romance. In any case, she tries to give hope.

            The Davenport’s home is a clear and concise representation of Engel’s cellar dwellings, where two children and a husband die of cholera. (Ch.VI) It is in this scene where Mr. Wilson is determined to make a difference for Mr. Davenport who was a “steady, civil worker” for Mr. Carson. In the “luxurious” library where father and son “lazily enjoyed their nicely prepared food” Gaskell emotes the obvious differences of the social spheres. When Carson wonders to Wilson “who is this Davenport?” the reader is plenty aware of the “machine” like qualities that Carson has bestowed upon his workers. To dehumanize his workers is just one factor that Gaskell uses to show Engels’ Competition facts to be true; that 100 men are fighting for one position at a factory and the manufacturers do not, even for a moment, feel the need to respond to human ills or deaths of workers, as the spots are filled before a coffin has been made for the deceased.   

            This is also the scene that produces a true activist in John Barton who becomes a Trades’ Union leader, and goes to Parliament, with the voice of the workers. Unfortunately, Parliament won’t listen to him, which sets into motion the motives of revenge of the workers, which just so happens to intertwine his daughter’s love triangle into the sordid events.

            My question to the class: What is Gaskell saying about Parliament, and law-making (Ch.15), when given my chosen theme esp. regarding the master’s son’s death and his meeting with Job and Jem (Ch.35)? Is this a truly romantic idea, or is it the means necessary to evoke empathy into lawmakers? and finally, was Gaskell posing John Barton’s action as another possible solution to Engel’s impossible proposed solution?

Strange Customs

Strange Customs; going inward to yield outward results. 

When Silas communicates in a “slow and difficult process” to Dolly about the “dark shadows” of his past, it is not because of the wickedness he encountered that was not part of her outward experience that she didn’t understand, but that every novelty Silas explained to her of his past, became a source of wonder (118).  Raveloe produced the naïve and humble Dolly, in George Eliot’s 1861 novel Silas Marner.  In Thomas Carlyle “Signs of the Times” essay of 1829, he predicted that “knowledge, education are opening the eyes of the humblest; are increasing the number of thinking minds without limit.” The basis of the interaction between Silas and Dolly is the personal relationship that is lacking in The City of the 19^th Century along with the debate about where does man’s purpose lie; within him, or without, inward or outward? The main question to begin this debate would be; do relationships, or possessions guide the motives of man?

Carlyle reacts against the motives of society, which he believes has also become a machine. The public policing is shown when Dolly explains Raveloe’s expectations of Silas; to spend Sunday’s with the community and bring Eppie to Sunday church. Eliot is showing the gulf between the strange differences of City and Country customs, which completely contrast with each other as well as showing that if one wants a satisfying inward personal relationship, one must acquiesce to the outward. So even if one’s motives begin from within, they cannot be fulfilled unless society gives its approval.

Eppie, the product of Silas, and of her godmother, Dolly, evolves into the symbol of innocence and virtuous freshness. Although there is not a genius to her, (which would have proven Carlyle’s Dynamic inspiration theory with more emphasis, darn it Eliot), there is a wonderful sense of loyalty to humanism seen; Eppie is not persuaded by class structures, or riches, and in turn Eliot shows her rejecting the Industrial and Mechanical era. She has surpassed Marner’s greed with her grace. And this action places emphasis on Carlyle’s summation that “Beauty is no longer the god it worships, but some brute image of Strength; which we may call an idol, for true Strength is one and the same with Beauty…” Eppie’s strength to turn down Cass’ offer, choosing a familiar custom instead, guarantees that the “inward”, although proving to shield no results in the Mechanical Age, produces what Carlyle suggests the greatest element of a wise man; the “human enjoyment, the attainments and possessions that exalt man’s life to its present height.” By outwardly rejecting the royalties of her lineage is a slap in the face of the industrial age; clearly the internal virtues of love and devotion outweigh any external gifts; being it come wrapped up nicely by one's bloodline, riches, social class or land ownership. Eliot is reacting against the Industrial age and fulfilling what Carlyle considers “the thinking minds of all nations call for change.” Eppie becomes the symbol of one’s inward and virtuous Nature, which the readers of Eliot romanticized about emanating.