Power Freedom Allen Ginsberg Howl Footnote to Howl

Power & Freedom Allen Ginsberg Howl & Footnote to Howl (Political Science 506)

The Disciplined Society • The functional inversion of the disciplines – Example: free schools founded on negative justification (combat godlessness, idleness, gangs of beggars), but move to positive justification (prepare child for job market, develop the mind) • The swarming of the disciplinary mechanisms – Disciplinary mechanisms emerge into society – Example: schools supervise children’s families • State control of mechanisms of discipline – Police, interested in everything, omnipresent surveillance – Police are disciplinary mechanism that fills the gaps between other mechanisms 2

The Disciplined Society • Disciplines as “infra-law” (222) – System of omnipresent but uncertain surveillance – “systems of micro-power that are essentially non-egalitarian and asymmetrical” • Example: female sexual morality, health, violence, surveillance – Treated as very foundation of society, without which it will collapse • “a series of mechanisms for unbalancing power relations definitively and everywhere; hence the persistence in regarding them as the humble, but concrete form of every morality, whereas they are a set of physico-political techniques. ” (223) – “The formation of knowledge and the increase of power regularly reinforce one another in a circular process” (224) – Names and power • How could this system of power be resisted? 3

Allen Ginsberg • 1926 -1997 • “Beat” poet • Ginsberg’s mother, Naomi Livergant Ginsberg – Politically radical and mentally unwell, hugely influential on Ginsberg’s life & work – His other most famous poem, “Kaddish”, written at her death • Carl Solomon – Ginsberg met him in a mental institution during a period when each was briefly institutionalized. Formed lifelong friendship. 4

Howl • 1957 Obscenity trial in San Francisco – "filthy, vulgar, obscene, and disgusting language. ” – Judge: “Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemisms? ” • 2007 Obscenity fear – Pacifica radio planned to broadcast in order to commemorate 50 th anniversary of Howl’s protection under First Amendment – But feared fines from the FCC, put it online – Differing basis of censorship: public morals vs. “offensiveness” and affordability of free speech 5

Escape & Transcendence • Over a world of power, materialism, and time: • “Who threw their watches off the roof / to cast their vote for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks / fell on their heads every day for the next decade” (16) – Desperate attempts to transcend in failure • “…or were run down by the / drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality” (16) – What could be more crudely real than that? 6

Escape & Transcendence • Modes of transcendence – Spirituality – Humiliation of the flesh – Sex – Drugs – Art – Violation of taboo 7

Moloch! • Leviticus 18: 21: “And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD. ” • A divine commandment to disdain • Worship of Moloch equated to profaning the name of God. • Cannibal-god of the Canaanites, the enemies of the children of Israel – The enemies of the few, the chosen, the faithful • Idolatry and abomination 8

I’m with you in Rockland • where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul / is innocent and immortal it should never die / ungodly in an armed madhouse – The spiritual elevated over the material • But it can be killed – Ungodly armed madhouse sounds a lot like Moloch • The asylum is the world in microcosm 9

Footnote to Howl • Holy! Holy! – Radical tonal shift, from sadness and solitude, futility and self-destruction, cannibal-gods and insane asylums to ecstatic recognition of universal holiness – Holiness ≠ sacredness • Holiness is the mark of the presence and/or favor of God • The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! / The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand / and asshole holy! – Continues theme that the despised are in fact the elevated – But begins to attack the duality present in the poem so far, as both the spiritual and the material are presented as of like holiness 10

Footnote to Howl • Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours! / bodies! suffering! magnanimity! – Holiness here is achieved, as the “best minds” failed to do – Not in transcendence, but in immanence – Not “lifting Moloch to Heaven, ” but recognizing the “Angel in Moloch” • Not elevating the earthly into the divine, but recognizing the presence of divinity in the mundane. The world, good and bad, spiritual and material, is itself holy. • Breaking every boundary 11