 So just one more announcement, there will be a screening of Apocalypse Now on Thursday at 3 o'clock in the sunset room. If you can't make that screening, find the video store, they do still exist, or iTunes, or... Not on Netflix. Or I would not recommend, of course, that you do anything illegal. No. Oh, it is in the library, yes. Okay, so, good afternoon. You have the joy, I think, or otherwise, of having me for the final two lectures of Arts 1 Group B. It is Seamus' birthday, he stars also in this lecture, so that's very exciting for somebody, him presumably. This lecture you'll see is a response in part to Seamus, in part to Rob, in part to other things. We'll see how that goes. As you know, or as I've said before, there's going to be a lot of repetition here, by the way. So there's going to be a lot of, as I said before, and I'm in part, I want to justify and defend that. I like to find a little metaphor of some sort, taken from the text, ideally, for what we're doing today. Today we're going to be wrestling with things fall apart. I couldn't find any images of wrestling in Nigeria amongst the Ibo or Igbo, but this is, I presume, or less the same thing, who knows, in the Gambia. I want to suggest that we should wrestle with texts in general. Wrestling with a text is part of becoming an active reader. And in the end, what we're trying to do here, I think, and that's one, is encouraging you, teaching you how to become active readers. And becoming an active reader is also about, wrestling is also, I think, about respecting the text as well, understanding its difficulty, not trying to master the text necessarily, right? The whole point of the wrestle is, there's not simply a walk over or a push over, right? It's a struggle that takes some time. By having a difficulty with a text, I want to suggest that something's going wrong. If you're not actively wrestling, then something's going wrong. I like to say that what I think that I do, or I try to do at least as a teacher, is two things. Make the difficult easy, but make the easy difficult. If a text looks too easy, we need to make it difficult. If it looks difficult, we need to make it easy. Either way, a one-sided contest is no contest at all, and holds little interest. I want to suggest that this book, Aetubis Things Fall Apart, is perhaps deceptively simple at first sight, deceptively easy. Especially compared to Heart of Darkness. I'm going to talk about Heart of Darkness at some length here. I'm interested by the way in which we might be deceived by apparent simplicity. Because there's something there, I think, that replicates the general relation between north and south, between center and periphery. We tend to think either the other is, on the one hand, completely illegible or completely transparent. The challenge, I think, is to see that it's neither, to wrestle with the other. And that includes the text, the text being as a kind of instantiation or example or representation of the other, to wrestle it with it on more or less equal terms. So here is, I wanted at first, I had this dream of organizing this lecture simply around words that began with re. It did pretty well, but it was forcing it too much, everything being the name of re. But this is a lecture which is more or less brought to you by the words, the letters R and E. Reprise, review, response, repetition. Repetition is probably the central one here. And then I have an I word. I'm afraid, identity, reaction, back to re again, and history. So let's start with a reprise. A reprise, I think, of what I think that we're doing here. What I think that this theme is about. What remaking and remodeling is about. In part a response to this gentleman, Mr. Sheamus Farrah, who writes a blog that he tells us is the best blog ever. But it's a pretty good blog and I recommend it to you. Best blog ever, I think, is going too far. And this is what Mr. Sheamus Farrah had to say this past week. I've reduced it a little. It's worth going to the source and reading the whole thing as it always was. Sheamus is relatively uninhibited in his blogging, which I like. I think that's part of the point of the blog. I tell my group that these blogs should be written quickly. I have the sense that Sheamus' blogs are written quickly, which is as it should be a sort of stream of consciousness. Okay, so things really fell apart. He likes these kind of puns. Things really fell apart in the reading list this term. I still have yet to really see the whole remaking, remodeling in these books. Like I see the connection in Kant and Genesis and Butler and Sophocles. But that's all. Oh, oh, oh, maybe Hobbes and Rousseau if I knew what the hell the form was saying. I know that this isn't necessarily a class of great books, but I think they could use a bit more greatness and less Haiti. Everything goes back to Haiti. Thank you Mr. Sheamus Farrah, whose birthday it was yesterday. So, I have a few things to say about this. So the first thing is, I think greatness is overrated. Coming from a country that has great in its title, but which never lives up to or seldom lives up to that greatness. And even when it did, it produced the kinds of atrocity that you see in Heart of Darkness. I think greatness is overrated and it's not a particularly interesting aspiration. I'd say also there's text that's great. Then you can and should read them in your own time. The whole point of an education is to 40 to read books that you wouldn't otherwise read. It's not meant to be fun. For God's sake, what are you doing in your spare time? If you want to read Shakespeare, go off and read Shakespeare. I'm just going to stop you. You're not going to read... I may say there in your spare time, I don't think, or do this, Butler in your spare time. Unless you've got a very twisted and perverted sense of fun. I had the chance, by the way, to see Judith Butler in the flesh this weekend, but I passed it up. A friend of mine who did... She was at a conference that I was at. I went out drinking and eating instead of going to Judith Butler's lecture. But I was told two things about her lecture. One, that there was a line up a mile long outside the door to get in. And the second, that she's about this big, small, perfectly formed. But I think that what's at stake... Well, I think there's a couple of things at stake here. In part, I agree with Seamus' critique that perhaps something of the remake remodel theme has dissipated a little bit. I aim to bring it back with a vengeance today. I also think that what's at stake here, and it's a kind of struggle within arts one, is what exactly it's about, whether this is a great books course or not a great books course. I'm interested also in the way a tendency within arts one, within the structure of arts one, to reduce difference. You're encouraged, especially for instance in the final exam, to make these massive connections, these broad connections and leaps between whatever ancient Israel, for example, and 20th century Nigeria, for instance, or between romanticism and modernism. We're looking for common themes, and that's what the final exam is basically going to be asking you to do. Which is sort of a reduction of some of the particularities and differences between contexts. The assumption is that we can translate easily between these different contexts. I want to suggest that we should try and... There's a certain caution that we need before making such leaps, before making such assumptions that we can reduce things that are so very different to common, supposedly universal themes. So I'm interested in looking at difference within sameness. I think that's part of what the remake remodel is about. There are two or more texts that seem on the surface to be telling the same story, seem on the surface to be the same, and looking at their differences. Rather than a more generalized model, which is, I think, to take texts which are on the surface wildly divergent, and Tiffany's claim, and I don't know what Leviathan say, and to try and find their commonality to try and find what's the same within them. So this is from the Selectors and Power Responses Shameless, also to say a part to Rob, I think, last week, but also a re-articulation of the theme of remake remodel. As such, I will unashamedly and unabashedly reuse slides, as I always do. This is a slide that I showed you in the very first lecture last semester, the sort of introduction to remake remodeling. I used it then under the title of Lexicon, how many ways to say repetition. This is, one could add, other ways to say repetition. The interesting thing I want to point out here, for our purposes here, is that repetition is itself different. We have all these different ways of saying what seems to be the same thing. But there are the subtle but important differences between all these different approaches to the concept or the idea or the notion of repetition or sameness. So within the heart of repetition or sameness, there are these differences or fractures which make it a more complicated notion than it might apparently seem. Again, making the easy difficult. And this is another slide that I showed you in that first preliminary lecture, trying to suggest a correlation between repetition and life. In this lecture, I'm going to talk about that quite a lot, but talk about this idea quite a lot, but also complicate it again. I suppose I'm going to be talking about life and death. My argument or part of my argument is that this book is a book about death on a whole number of different levels. And it is a book also about the relationship between repetition and death. So as I said at the beginning of last semester, it is life about repetition, a series of repetitions, the heart, breathing, generation, reproduction, all these kinds of things, circadian rhythms that enable life to continue all the sort of habits, birthdays, seasons, anniversaries and so on and so forth. Is it true that on the one hand, without repetition, life is impossible? If your heart stopped breathing, that's it, if you stop breathing, these unconscious repetitions that we don't even think about. But without which none of us will be here. What does not repeat is dead. And we can think about this in terms of culture as well. Because I want to suggest this is a book about the death of an individual, the death of individuals, but it's also a book about the death of a culture, the death of a tribe, the death of the people. So if certain practices, rituals again, those repeated activities that are part of what make a culture, part of what define us as what we are, Canadians, Brits, Igbo, whatever, if those things don't get transmitted, don't carry on, then that seems to be the death of that culture. They just become, what do they become? That's another question I want to ask. What becomes of, what happens when things don't get repeated? What kind of inheritance or legacy is there after such activities or rituals come to an end? But I want to suggest at the same time that without difference, and this is where I'm complicating a little bit the previous slide, without difference life is equally impossible. What simply repeats like a metronome is dead, that life is also about change, adaptation. And again, I think that that's a central theme here to this book. The extent to which adaptation is possible, the extent to which change is possible. And then the question is, well, how much change leads you to something else to a different identity? When does change stop becoming life enhancing or preserving, enabling you to survive and to continue? And when does change become the end of repetition? And so the end of what you previously had. Again, I think this book is all about that. And in some ways the book, again, incarnates or instantiates or is an example of that. So this is a book which is, in some ways, a book about memory, or of memory. She knew Achebe's memory of the kinds of practices, the kinds of rituals, the kind of routines that not so much that he grew up with or to some extent that he heard that were told to him and that he is perpetuating in writing this book and publishing it a book which then gets mass reproduced has been printed and reprinted hundreds of thousands, if not millions of times and taught over and over in classes such as this and I believe some of you read it in high school and so on and so forth. The fact that the book is able to continue and be re-read, reproduced enables us to know something about this perhaps lost culture, the culture of the e-bowl before or at the time of contact with Europe. On the other hand, it's a massive transformation because this is a book written in English. This is a novel. It's a book, right? The e-bowl did not have books. There's been a massive act of change and translation and transculturation or alteration of the form in which these memories are preserved. How much does that matter? How much does this book actually contribute perhaps to culling the thing that it otherwise also preserves? Okay, this is for the people who are itching to get back on the Facebook or ordering to do their online shopping or whatever some of you sometimes attempted to do during the lecture. So listen up before you get to that. More important stuff. This is I guess the thesis of the lecture. This is what I'm trying to argue. Again, you don't have to buy it. You don't have to agree with it. This is to get you to think about the text to help you to wrestle with it which we can take two ways either if you found it too difficult. This is to help you or if you find it too easy to try and ensure that you're wrestling with it that you're finding it a little bit more difficult. So I want to suggest I want to put it to you. What Echebe is doing is he's trying to portray the life so this is a book about life in that sense of an e-bowl or e-bowl and I'm interested in the way in which this culture has both names. In the rest of this lecture I'm actually going to put it with a G in parentheses, a little sort of typographical conceit that some of us like. Echebe is trying to portray the life of this community on his own terms. That's part of his response to Conrad, for instance. Like, how do you write from the position of the other, essentially, or the native? He feels that Conrad did not do that. And not simply in its interaction with Europe. So that's why I think also he's choosing this sort of liminal border moment just before and at the point of contact with the Europeans. At the point at which the book starts the characters within it have not had contact with the Europeans. By the end the world is utterly transformed because of it. So it's this moment of change or rupture. And he's trying to summon up the moment just before that change, just before that rupture. Just before perhaps things fall apart. So it's not simply about the relationship between Europe and its other. It's also on its own terms how this society functions when Europeans were best a rumour. Not even that, perhaps. But his tragic vision, I think I'm trying to offer you a critique of things fall apart. If you thought it was great, I'm trying to tell you this is not such a great book. If you like. Sorry, shall I? His tragic vision does evil society few favours. Or conquer rarely or never acts, only reacts. He's doomed, and he's doomed because of repetition. He's doomed on the one hand both to simple repetition, to doing the same things over and over again. I think that's part of his tragedy. He's sort of stuck in a strange kind of rut. And because repetition becomes impossible. Because he can no longer carry on doing the things that he always did. He's caught between the need to repeat, the compulsion to repeat, if you like. And the inability to repeat. That sort of brick wall that he feels he's he's come up against. But I want to suggest that in both he's desperately trying to act and fails. He's always reacting. So he doesn't become an agent. You might dispute this. We'll see. But I want to say that ultimately in a Chebe's account, and this is meant to be the best account, the account from the point of view, from the perspective of the Igbo. But in his account, Igbo have neither history, nor future, nor present. So this book kills the Igbo. Again, you don't have to buy this. But this is my... OK, write that down, get back to your Facebook. The rest of you, come with me. So this book is... This book Things Fall Apart is a response or a remaking or remodeling, if you like. It's more a response. That's the term I'm going to use. In various ways, we set it up as a response to Heart of Darkness. It is which it is, and I'm going to try and suggest the ways in which it is so. It's also, of course, a response in some ways to Yeats, as Rob mentioned. The title comes from Yeats. We've got this epigraph at the beginning from... from Yeats. He only quotes the first four lines of Yeats as the second coming. I'm going to give you the whole poem because... and talk about it a little bit, I think it's worth thinking about. Thinking about the relationship between this book, this novel, and the poem. Turning and turning and the wide-ling gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold. Anarchy is loosed upon the world. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned. The best lack or conviction, while the worst, are full of passionate intensity. One of the questions we might ask is what kind of response is this to this poem? Is this... No, it's this epigraph. If you're using this poem, to suggest that Yeats has already in some ways described the situation in late 20th, early 20th century Nigeria. That seems to... If so, and I think that's the first response, or the first notion that hits us, then that's a little odd because this book becomes a little bit redundant. A redundancy being a kind of useless repetition. If Yeats has already said it in far fewer lines, in far fewer words, why does that say they have to say it all over again? So the thought that might come after that is, this is a critical response to Yeats. In the same way as it's a critical response to Conrad that a Chebe disagrees with Yeats in some ways. That he's rewriting or remaking Yeats' vision but from a different perspective. So then, the question might be what are the things that fall apart? What is the centre that cannot hold? Is it the same centre? So one possibility is, I'm not giving you... Here I'm not giving you one reading. I'm giving you trying to open this up for thought. Is the centre for Yeats, Europe and the centre for a Chebe, Africa? If so, is this the kind of mutually assured destruction? At the same time that for the modernist intellectuals in Europe Rob gave you a list of them. Joyce and Wolfe and so on and so forth. They're falling apart, right? In the industrial north or western Europe. At the same time as that's happening another centre is also falling apart in Africa. The central Africa. The centre of the supposedly dark continent. If so, what's the relationship between those two centres? Those two falling apart? This violence, this anarchy again, when Yeats is writing and the modernists are writing, they'll be thinking of things like the so-called World War which was essentially a European War, World War I at least. What is the relationship between that inter-Nessian intra-European warfare and the colonial violence that has preceded it? Or even we could think about the relationship between World War II and the colonial violence that has preceded it. For instance the scandal of Guernica the Spanish town which is bombed in the Spanish Civil War often said to be the first instance of mass bombardment of a civil population actually it's not, not in the slightest. The first instance of mass bombardment of a civil civilian population probably took place either in Libya or in Iraq. What is now Iraq. But that colonial violence didn't matter. Somehow that was allowed by the violence against others. The modernists get all upset when the violence comes home, comes home to roost because that's what's going on. I want to suggest I want to point out to a couple of other things about this poem it begins with a repetition turning and turning in the Widening Jire it is about a repetition the second coming but a repetition that seems to be a second coming which seems to be in some ways a disappointment a sort of inversion of that Jewish Christian messianism, right? The Jewish Christian notion is that when the Messiah comes there's a redemption of the world here when the Messiah comes it's anarchy the end of innocence violence or just disappointment or disillusion surely the second coming is a hand, the second coming more repetitions there are a lot of those words out and a vast image of the Spiritus Mundi troubles my sight we've got a repetition within this poem too there's an illusion here I think to Shelley who of course is famous for writing the Mask of Anarchy but what's being described here is his poem Ozymandias which is about a sphinx type statue in the middle of the desert you've got this hybrid statue a shape of lion body in the head of a man a gaze blank and pitiless of the sun all around it real shadows and indignant desert birds a sense of ruin in the desert the desert however being a non-European landscape and then we get the darkness drops again now I know that 20 centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle now there seems to be some sort of cognitive dissonance here right there's something that doesn't seem to quite make sense right rocking a cradle okay this is a violent rocking rather than a sort of lullaby although rocking is also an image of that kind of repetitive action which somehow is is letting loose or overturning something however there seems to be a dead stony sleep not a sleep stony sleep vexed to nightmare that's a whole sort of complex of quite paradoxical thoughts there about life and death I think and then we finally get this line slouches towards Bethlehem to be born that's the kind of anti-climax at the end of it when the so-called savior comes it's a slouch towards Bethlehem okay again is this the same crisis is that Chele is the same crisis as Yatesis is this a repetition as agreement I'm quoting this I'm using this title because yes Africa is somehow caught up in the same problematic or is this Yates didn't know nothing look at what's going on in Nigeria okay but let's talk about a Chele on Conrad in what ways is this a response to Conrad there's our man if he is our man who we don't know who we so I want to go back to the review now the literal review that Rob also mentioned last time the review that a Chele makes actually quite a lot later about 15 years or so later then he publishes this book but he writes he gives a lecture actually then gets published gets changed in the publication so it's another repetition with difference they're all over the place so he gives a lecture about Conrad which is and Heart of Darkness which is taken to be quite scandalous he calls in the oral version so there's also a we've got something about the relationship between the oral delivery and the written publication and it's in the oral delivery that he calls Conrad a bloody racist in the written version he calls him an outrageous racist I don't know if that's a backing down or something but let's have a look at the reasons he gives for this critical critical account of Heart of Darkness I don't think it's simply about saying this doesn't belong in the canon in fact he wouldn't bother to respond so vehemently so violently towards Conrad if it weren't worth it I think so he says Africa is setting a backdrop which eliminates the African as human factor Africa is a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognisable humanity into which the wandering European enters at its peril and I think Rob's account of the critical reception of Heart of Darkness kind of proves that she'd be right actually the way in which for decades people were able to talk about this in a battlefield about, I don't know, fate or will or the unconscious or something like this right were able to extract as if it weren't about Africa at all as if Africa didn't count actually they're saying well there's something in the text that enables that reading that allowed people to talk for so long about Heart of Darkness as though it could have taken place anywhere Africa is mere setting, mere backdrop for what's basically a European story and their anxieties their crisis that crisis that Yates is writing about can nobody see he says the preposterous and beverse arrogance in thus reducing Africa to the role of props for the breakup of one petty European mind so I got this theatrical metaphor right this is just the setting, the stage and in some ways we're going to be doing apocalypse now next week in some ways the very fact that the remake of Heart of Darkness could take place in a completely different setting completely different historical setting completely different geographical setting seems to make a tremendous point Heart of Darkness, yeah we can do it let's do it, but let's do it in Vietnam why not in the 1970s it'll be the same thing it's about Americans but still, again the Vietnamese so they count or do the Africans count if they can be substituted so easily for the Vietnamese props for the breakup of one petty European mind one petty American mind, okay it turns out to be in apocalypse now but that is not even the point that's not a real problem it's okay if the Europeans talk about Europeans that's what they've always been doing after all it's their thing I suppose but the real question is then the effect that it has on Africa and on Africans the dehumanization on Africans which this age-long attitude has fostered and continues to foster in the world so European self-absorption has an effect on others this version of Orientalism as Rob also mentioned gesturing to the book by Edward Said it's true it doesn't really say anything about Africans but it has an effect on Africans, it has an effect on the other it enables, continues perpetuates this dehumanization viewing Africans as less than human, as less than people so it's not so much that Conrad is a bad book he doesn't say it's a bad book it's not even that Conrad doesn't commit doesn't criticize colonialism he does I think it's absolutely true but again as Rob laid out last week it's a critique of well actually Rob was suggesting the more critique of modernity than of colonialism per se the comparisons he was making with the Holocaust for instance but one can read it also as a critique of colonialism as the European endeavor in the third world Conrad does indeed criticize colonialism, yes actually he says, absolutely, yes he does but the basis for that critique is that things are out of place that things are not in their right places that the European has become estranged that the European has overreached and that curves his problem, right he kind of takes he's like this uber-colonialist overstretch, overreach he has more ivory than everyone else put together and vice versa Africans should stay in Africa their place is Africa Europe's place is in Europe it's sort of remarking of that fundamental that fundamental binary, that fundamental difference the other should stay over the saints should stay at home that's what Achebe says that Conrad's pointing out of darkness is and the Conrad's Africans in the course of this are not granted agency they are not people I think this is Edward Said's point two it's not that Achebe just doesn't the Conrad just doesn't want to write about the Africans there but they don't figure as human subjects as people the people are missing that's a quote from a guy called Gilles Deleuze who I sort of like so what do you do about such a thing how does one respond I think it's interesting or notable that what Achebe does not do is respond in a way for instance that Achebe says there responded to Shakespeare when he rewrote the Tempest as in Tempet or even the way that Walker responds to Shakespeare he doesn't keep the form of the original tale in some ways if you didn't know any better you wouldn't see any connection at all it's not that he's rewritten it with I don't know black curts or something inverting things that way keeping the basic structure or form he hasn't done that in some ways there's a more radical response although again I'm going to suggest quite fundamental similarities or repetitions that continue between the two but in part Achebe responds by just ignoring Conrad doing his own thing again at first sight writing something that doesn't seem to have anything to do with Conrad but Achebe and Conrad however are inextricably linked in part because of this lecture this critique that Achebe makes of Conrad in this 1975 lecture later publication we're challenged to see them side by side but I think the part of the reason for not simply adapting or adopting the form is Achebe is centrally interested in how to act rather than simply reacting so to respond in a way that is not simply reactive resentful because if you simply react then you're dependent on the person or the thing that you're reacting against and yet that's the inevitable context and the inevitable background that Achebe is working with so how can he tackle the problem of the European representation of Africa and the third world more generally without simply reacting against it how to act rather than simply reacting how to rediscover or invent an entire people okay I want to talk about the ways in which the relationship between now no longer in the critique that Achebe makes directly of Conrad but compare the two books a little bit this is Achebe but I'm going to tell you absolutely nothing oh I might accidentally tell you a couple of things but basically tell you absolutely nothing about Achebe my aim is to tell you nothing about Achebe so I would suggest the response goes along at least the following lines agency versus passivity culture versus nature I realize I'm sort of replicating a whole series of binaries but this is a short cut I suppose dignity against objection diversity, sameness, orality literacy we'll go through these things one by one so the first of them agency versus passivity again this is the fundamental part of the critique of Conrad that in Conrad the Europeans are agents the Africans are not I like the fact that Kurtz is an agent twice over at least I mean he's called an agent in a way that sense of agent is a representative of somebody doing the bidding of the company but he's also kind of an agent despite the company or an agent who takes his agency too seriously and rebels or betrays the company so he gets to be an agent in two distinct ways both of the representatives of a greater power and as an individual who is able or seems to be able or seems to be on the verge at least of breaking free from escaping that greater power Africans by contrast tend to passivity in Conrad's book even their attack the point at which they attack the bolt turns out to be that was Kurtz's idea right? Kurtz is the one pulling the strings we see few if any Africans who seem to make their own decisions perhaps perhaps the African woman that we see but again she's associated so closely with Kurtz it's a quite ambiguous and ambivalent right how much is she even an agent of her own destiny perhaps more than any of the others there's something of that in things fall apart the central figure of course is himself African on concord African also both a concord sorry also both follows and rebels in some ways he's also an agent twice over in I'd say this book he follows he's an agent of in that he is a representative of he's the prime example of Igbo culture but he's also in some ways a very bad person he doesn't quite follow the script that he's supposed to which is why he's exiled for instance he's exiled precisely ostracized precisely for breaking the rules of the community so he's both typical the sort of instantiation of African masculinity and he sees himself in that way and he's sort of portrayed in that way especially at the end sort of like Last of the Mohicans with this futile futile defiance but he's also a rebel he's also atypical he's also the one who's done what nobody's done for living living memory is violent in this time of what's supposed to be peace and then in Achebe by contrast the Europeans tend to follow a script again quite literally because it's the book they're the people of the book so Achebe inverts this particular binary now Achebe the people, the Africans who are passive in Conrad become active vice versa the second binary analysis is culture versus nature in Conrad Africans are part of nature almost indistinguishable at times again it's like going up the river you get this point as you know he's steering towards the bank and all of a sudden out of the foliage he's he's sort of dismembered body parts which are part of the the nature part of the jungle and then later we get some point at which I think it says the wilderness inhaled and the Africans all disappear towards the end I mean nature is actually given much more agency in Conrad than the Africans are I think we'll come to this quotation later but Conrad says it's the wilderness that gets revenge not the Africans that get revenge the Africans don't get to do anything but nature now there's a terrible agent, a terrible force so they're sort of absorbed at sort of peripheral parts or parts of the sort of machine of nature Europeans by contrast in Conrad are cultured even if there's something ambivalent about that culture again think of that scene in which Marlowe goes to see the intended the piano and so on and so forth it's all the accoutrements of culture even though Marlowe is questioning the foundation of that culture but what the intended has managed to do and what all the Belgians have managed to do if precisely raise themselves above the natural transcend so the door of the intended and the mahogany thing we know the relationship between the mahogany and the jungles but it's been reworked and reformed and taken from nature rested from nature in some ways been cultivated in Atelier by contrast is the Africans who define by culture culture is what's important here not race or language about which Atelier has virtually nothing to say and then the Europeans are sort of natural they're a kind of perverse nature I'm thinking about the comparison with the Europeans and the albinos right freaks of nature, something's gone wrong genetically right there's some kind of accidental byproduct some natural mistake dignity against objection in Conrad almost no one has very much dignity I think Marlowe doesn't get off lightly for instance here perhaps Kurtz and both his women I think those are three characters who perhaps keep a sense of of dignity I think in Conrad both Europeans and Africans sort of tend to objection sort of disgrace in some ways I think Marlowe certainly feels this sense of disgrace especially again when he returns he doesn't fully where he doesn't fully fit or feel part of it he feels everything is tainted after his experience of the Congo in Atelier dignity is the basic state dignity is what's important for Conrad in particular I mean money or the number of poverty shells or yams and so on and so forth they don't strictly have money in the same way but what that's a standing for is prestige status and then dignity is also what is at stake I think for the community too both vis-à-vis in reference to other villages defending one's honour hence these wars and transactions are precisely about that and then when the Europeans come and the Europeans are felt to bring a sort of pollution or desecration ultimately there's lots of faith for the Igbo fear even if that faith is in fact a mask we're going to talk about identity a bit later but the moment of greatest desecration is where the spirit is unmasked or revealed or purportedly unmasked or revealed and yet that's also the moment he's losing face or the Africans are losing face they're losing face at precisely the same moment their face is revealed for the first time resistance versus idolization and this is the strangest thing I think about out of darkness is the strangest thing to get one's head around why the Africans idolize their enemy or a portrayed as idolizing their enemy we don't know because Conrad never again it's not of interest to Conrad in some ways or work and the Africans don't have a psyche to some extent if Kurtz who's genius is to this notion of the cargo cult the sort of the worship of what comes from outside and that's the summary of his report which he writes up for the company we're sort of distracted by the bit at the end which is much more dramatic, exterminate the brutes but the report itself the content of the report the body of the report is about the way in which one can trade on the fact that the Africans supposedly will idolize will see the outsiders as divine in some ways very common trope of the colonial of course same notion that the Aztecs mistook the Spaniards, Cortez and so on for gods when they arrived in Mexico or what is now Mexico on the other hand Europeans fear Africans idolize their enemy Europeans fear their ally is immense distrust for Kurtz the Europeans Marlow accepted they want Kurtz to die there's no mourning when Kurtz dies in some ways that's the object even though Kurtz is even though Kurtz is the most successful of all the traders of all the companies agents precisely because he's too successful the Europeans fear him and deeply anxious about him it's also I think because he reveals the truth of the colonial enterprise his violence, his thuggery again that's part of what Rob was saying last time revealed the process was complicit that's disturbing you've got to get rid of Kurtz for us to live with colonialism in Aztec religion isn't the point at which the Europeans and the Africans the Europeans are able to get the Africans to their bidding but quite the contrary religion is the point of conflict it's the Africans who feel the need to maintain and keep separate and distance from their own religious practices whereas in fact the Europeans or one particular European here is more apt to tolerance indeed it's interesting the person does the ripping of the mask the desecration is actually an African who has been converted and then about resistance the entire novel I think is about resistance to fate which is a doomed resistance to fate to resist what's coming fate is to resist history or the future okay just quickly before the break let me do the last two points here diversity and sameness again in Conrad Africans are reduced to body parts as I said before they're kind of interchangeable with again the possible accession of the woman with whom Kurtz is associated whereas the Europeans though they're equally they're differentiated by role the encounter, the lawyer, the doctor and so on the European modernity provides a division of labour indeed if you remember in in Rousseau it's the division of labour which is precise to the moment at which culture is initiated for Rousseau it's terrible but still it's the point at which culture starts, civilization starts Africans because they live at the beginning of time it's a sign of their privativeness in Conrad that there's no division of roles there's no division of labour and whereas in Conrad there are few if any names in Etiobian names and naming a paramount separation and in fact when things are too similar I'll talk about this a little bit later that's where the horror is and that's the strange thing about the twins that have to be killed and that's because similarity is horrifying in Etiobian's account at least and then the immediate conflict is between Africans rather than between Africans and Europeans so Conrad for Conrad it's all one mass one African mass which melds with the wilderness and the jungle whereas Etiobian wants to have differences differences between generations as well between Okonkwo's father and Okonkwo and so on and for Etiobian it is when people are too similar to each other that we get a problem and then orality versus literacy this is interesting and I think this is one of the points of which the two novels meet perhaps precisely because they're both novels precisely because at least to that extent but in Conrad writing is at the center of the text and yet the tale is delivered orally so the writing is at the center of these documents that Kurtz has produced that become the key for Marlow and yet the whole story is recounted in the frame narrative orally by Marlow to these guys who are sitting around waiting and on the other hand what's important about Kurtz is in part his writings, part his documents that everyone wants to get hold of afterwards the company tries to get back and so on and so forth and yet he's marked above all by his speech his pure voice for Marlow as Marlow goes up the great regret for Marlow is he doesn't get to talk but most importantly listen to Kurtz in Achebe so again it's sort of reversed but they come together in the first instance it seems that it's the oral that's at the center folk tales and proverbs abound and yet on the one hand the form of the book is the western novel on the other hand writing has a significance and importance it is writing for instance that saves a concord's father sort of inscription there's a way in which the Igbo aren't completely without writing I'm going to show you a picture about this a little bit later I have few pictures in this lecture I'm afraid that's one reason I shamed us in there bit of eye candy for you all so there's so there's a shared ambivalence I think around speech there's a shared uncertainty about this and perhaps especially at the end at the end when the whole tone of the book in the last few pages I think changes when suddenly we get the perspective the book has been so solidly written from the perspective of the African the last four or five pages are quite shocking I think when we get inside the mind of the European as he walked back to the court he thought every day brought him some new material the story of this man who killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading but that's the story we've just read of course so it's not just the district commissioner who thinks of putting this story down in writing Achébe himself has done that there's some complicity between Achébe and the district commissioner I mean he tries later to suggest there's a difference that the district commissioner's book will be short there'll be a paragraph or different title and so on and so forth but they're doing the same thing there's a sort of quasi anthropological impulse in both and this is the picture I talked about so this is an Igbo man with facial scarification so there's a whole system of Igbo African inscription which may be inscription more directly on the body but there's a complicated sort of play I think between even orality amongst the Africans as well as amongst the Europeans okay we'll take a break there okay I'm going to start again I know some people still outside but that's tough because they miss I can always repeat because it's about repetition so I'm moving on to the section specifically about repetition I've got little subtitles for my sections this time I'm quite pleased about that you may not notice these things but we think about these lectures I don't have all the fancy whiz whiz stuff that you know makes you dizzy you go zoom in and zoom out with the whole presi I'm not as smart when it comes to these things but you know I have subtitles now repetition the burden of inheritance that's just eye candy different kind of eye candy for the famous but eye candy nonetheless an Igbo chief ringing his bell okay but back to Conrad so there's a strange repetition I think in Conrad something that seemed very odd to me a whole series of little phrases in which the same word or couple of words are directly repeated obviously the most famous instance of this is the horror the horror but as I was going through it there are a whole series of them this is a few here at least a solitude a solitude luckily luckily no restraint no restraint a voice a voice to endure to endure destiny my destiny and then this one which is three times this is from the intended I loved him I loved him I loved him one of the questions there is what changes why do things get repeated like this isn't it again redundant to do the same thing twice that's what Charlotte thinks but Conrad did it so you know good enough for Conrad good enough for me I figure but why why does Conrad do it why isn't the horror enough what changes when you repeat even when you say exactly the same thing what is the difference in the horror and the horror the horror how does the second the horror alter remake remodel the first even though they're apparently exactly the same again how does repetition let difference in when does registration become redundancy where does difference enter in why does need for mediation or remediation again I mean that's the again that's the whole story of how that this as well we are having the stories told at least twice right that's the frame narrative that Marlowe tells the story to this guy who tells the story to us why what difference would it make if Marlowe just told the story why this apparently unnecessary repetition I think I'm not entirely sure especially these little phrases they really jumped out of me while I was reading through I think part of it that Conrad is much happier and more comfortable with sameness and it's difference that is horrific that is fearful so in some ways by repeating I'm not sure if this is good this is I'm really not sure about this but in some ways by repeating the horror it's a way of managing it I think that's what a Freudian reading might be right that the Freudian notion is that's what repetition compulsion is about you repeat the trauma in order to manage it are we seeing that sort of in a nutshell in the horror the horror in that central phrase of Conrad's book there's a fear of what can't be repeated so often Marlowe tells us that this incomprehensible unintelligible what is incomprehensible is precisely what you can't properly account for that's what's horrific it's better to live with the same and I think in this there's a whole essay to write about this by the way but the lie at the end because the lie is interesting is lie I want to suggest to you that the lie is living with the same but also of course it's the moment at which he changes the account it's not a repetition it's the point at which in order to keep things the same he has to change he has to introduce a difference there's a famous novel precisely about this Italian novel who sort of phrases in order to keep everything the same then everything must change so something about that here in order to keep the illusion that sustains the European life he has to tell a lie to the intended he can't repeat the phrase the repeated phrase from Kurtz so he says when asked what is the last words that he says your name it's a difference that enables repetition that enables things to remain the same in a chebe okay so here's a couple of quotations there's the well there's the fear okay this is the fear of as I put it in the subtitle of inheritance of repeating the mistakes of his father which becomes a fear of himself as well a fear of his personal identity what if it turns out that I am just like my father it's the fear of himself lest he should be found to resemble the father so I'm suggesting that this is this is at least a first sight the opposite from Conrad in Conrad there's a fear of difference in a chebe there's a fear of repetition resemblance or this came the second quotation comes from whatever his name is ife me kuma the adopted son at the point in which he is being taken away to be killed and that's what is ominous about that is the fact that there's something the same here as a previous trauma so that the repetition is not the mastering of the trauma but in fact it's enhancement or exaggeration the second time is worse the first time he was merely transported from one village to another second time is a death sentence repetition as death but again I want to suggest the centrality of repetition for a chebe this is a story about death it's therefore also a story about inheritance it's about what you get after someone dies what is left after the fact that death can never be the end there's always some ruin ash inheritance of some sort or another even if it's not a material inheritance genetic or something psychic inheritance that's what Okonko really fears being possessed is the term they use as if he fears he's forever haunted by his father his father's failure this is what drives him the wish to avoid that repetition the wish to avoid repeating his father's supposed uselessness but we see again a number of versions of that I've already mentioned about the twins that can't be allowed to live there's also this phenomenon of the Okbanji right the child that gets born over and over again in the glossary they call it a changeling but the point is that it doesn't change right the point is it's insistent repetition that is what's so fearful about it and the lengths that need to the community needs to go to break the cycle of repetition and again the final indignity is this unmasking of the sameness that's the final desecration to pull the mask off and say you are the same as this other guy you are not a spirit this is the same as this guy you know at other times this is a spirit this is a evil spirit interestingly I think that the spirit of a girl portrayed by a man we're going to talk about gender a little bit a little bit later so there's something about the same but different going on here and so ok the first of these quotations is from the district commissioner it says the most infuriating habits of these people is their love of superfluous words it's a notion that they repeat themselves they go on over and over they don't get to the point in part this is about the notion of efficiency Rob talked about later but it's also about like yes they just natter on and on and don't get to the point and we see in numerous occasions when that happens but the way in which Igbo culture seems to welcome this verbosity wordiness my seminar group like to call it that's a word I try to ban and then the death knell or apparent death knell of the whole community is this sound that has never been heard before and will never be heard again it's this utterly singular sound it's a strange and fearful sound not even the oldest man in Umophia had ever heard and was never to be heard again that is the really shocking thing the unrepeatable sound is the very soul of its tribe that weeps for a great evil that was coming its own death death at least in some sense for the Igbo comes with difference I'm contradicting myself here aren't I I just realized that it's complicated isn't it I'm trying to say it's complicated alright so I'm benevolent about it difference I'm benevolent about it there we are we'll keep it that way so here I'm okay so because how am I how did I do that what did I get there from it's a little slide made sense and then I put them all together it's fearful and yet suddenly it's absolute difference it's fearful alright we'll come together because it's true that some doubling is welcomed so for instance we all know that the spirit priestess is also this one Cielo Agbalo is also Cielo the custom and culture depend upon as I was saying before repetition the tragedy of the Igbo is when the repetition comes to an end when ritual repetition disappears or goes culture dies oh I think the previous slide was preparing us for this though that's how it works there was the if to be told at high school on the one hand the other hand okay let's talk about identity who are or were the Igbo and again I like the notion that there's a certain fluidity we don't even know how quite to name them in the book they called the Igbo nowadays people generally call them the Igbo this is a mask from again more or less the period we're talking about is the description of the mask as interesting as it is about this is the man wearing a mask with exaggerated versions of women's dancing so again there's the notion of the mimicry with difference going on in these ceremonies but what's the issue here is that the question of who one is how one defines a cultural community what are the possible ways in which define any community perhaps but particularly this one is it in term of the name but again on the one hand the the name seems to be uncertain it seems to fluctuate and on the other hand there are other ways in which names change does names change and things stay the same or does the change of name as in the case of Noyer when it comes to Isaac signal a change in state or has there actually been a change in state as Noyer becomes Isaac is he no longer Igbo I think for Conqueror he is no longer Igbo but I think that's part of Conqueror's problem in fact again he said practices as rituals are those what define a cultural community but we see the ways in which practices are interrupted and which they too change is it clothing these religions particular ways of thinking or thought so then is Achoebe himself Igbo Achoebe in fact he was born in 1930 and went to Christian school lived then moved to the United States for much of his life has he renounced Igbo identity in some ways is he in fact another writing about a different culture from his own is he in the same position as Conrad in other words what kind of if this is an ethnography or anthropology what kind of ethnography or anthropology is it the very fact of writing again in English writing a novel is that his break at the same time as his attempt to preserve it is interesting that the things that that Achoebe talks about things that he doesn't talk about I think one of the things that is interesting is that this is a very unvisual novel as I was trying to find images of the Igbo from Wikimedia Commons or wherever I realized how different they were from what I had imagined as I was reading the book that these kinds of actually repetitive patterns for instance weren't mentioned at all in fact the interesting thing is that Igbo culture is a creation of colonialism this book suggests that colonialism is the end of Igbo culture but in fact there's a way in which Igbo identity doesn't come together until after the arrival of the British for a number of reasons this is the Wikipedia entry I thought was interesting the very first line says Igbo, a nation caught inside of southeast Nigeria but the very notion of nation nationality is a notion foreign to the Igbo themselves so here the definition given what seems to be itself a betrayal of whatever the Igbo might be or might have been the whole idea of the nation of course is the Latin American concept you didn't already realize that but the British also they encouraged political centralization they encouraged bringing the different warring often warring or conflictual tribes together under a king they did various other places too they sort of replicated they tried to replicate we I suppose we British we tried to replicate the form of political argument organization with which we they were familiar at home the nation the sovereign and so on and so forth so the very notion that the Igbo could form a state as they later tried to do in fact in the late 1960s the succession of an area of Nigeria which got called Biafra that was subsequently a war I think it was very associated with the cause of Biafra but that very notion would have been possibly impossible, utterly unthinkable were enough for the colonial templates that the British brought with them and then that's the question of their language as well one of the it's quite controversial the fact that that Achebi should write this novel in English and his defense or his explanation is that Igbo language, especially Igbo-rithin language is essentially a colonial construction but before there were many different dialects but the standardization produces a language that effectively no one speaks this attempt to transcribe or translate or record in Igbo language is in fact the introduction of a difference so it is completely unnatural to write in what in Igbo in some ways it's therefore become more natural for him to write in a language that is utterly foreign, that is a colonial in position so the Igbo turned out to be a lot more a lot more hybrid in some ways especially the post the post-contact Igbo I think we see a moment of realization of that in the tale of Ikeme Fuma who is actually obviously this is sort of hybridity a child brought from another village this child is not actually the child he is adopted or captured or whatever he is not actually Okonkwo's descendant but he is the individual in which Okonkwo I think gradually sees most hope but he himself destroys that possibility of hybridity in the name purity there is something self-destructive about that I mean it is I think in terms of the book's plot as well that's the moment in which it all goes wrong for Okonkwo when he insists on when he goes along with to some extent when he goes along with his villages his villages norms to some extent and there are the moments of hybridity that we see as well which may help to define identity so the one point of which Ikeme talks about the heart beats of the people is when you have this frantic rhythm which of course is a mode of repetition which swallows up individuals or there is this point of which there is something like the public secret of these spirits of these in which everyone knows that the Iwuwu are actually the men of the community everyone knows that everyone can see or might well have seen that at least one of them has the same walk as Okonkwo I just thought that was wrong anyway but they keep that with themselves that's the secret that they maintain an illusion that they maintain in talking about identity I think we've got to talk at least briefly about gender so the women in this community in the novel occupy a sort of strange interesting place I think and that's registered by some of these quotations on the one hand there's the importance of women to the continuation of the culture precisely through repeating the same old stories it's the women after all who seem to be the ones who are most involved in raising the children that's often the case the women are ones who are given a particular have a particular status in the continuation of the culture for various reasons partly because they're more generally confined to the home whereas men are driven out into the market where they find other influences so we get these low voices from his wives huts each woman and her children told folk stories I mean women are the women in some ways represent the hope for the community the hope for its survival and yet at the same time we hear Okonkwo saying things like how could he have begotten a son like Noye degenerate and effeminate he mourned for the clan which he saw waking up and falling apart he mourned for the warlike man who had so unaccountably become soft like women so for Okonkwo gender and degeneration are associated rather than regeneration and reproduction and yet it is the women who raise the children who ensure the continuity of this oral tradition so within the novel I think there is an ambivalence in that the women represent both passivity and reproduction or continuity when the men become passive they are given up the fight and they are the ones without whom none of this could take place and in that way I think there is an internal doubling within the plot of the ambivalent role of women is like the ambivalent role or the ambivalent place of Igbo identity after all I don't know how we sum up this book in one phrase or one sentence or whatever but it's got to be something about a man insecure in his masculinity isn't it in some ways what's defined Okonkwo for that reason he's so determined to accentuate to draw the line between male and female reaction this is a guardian spirit or the image of a guardian spirit I think also from the 19th century with a sword and with a sorenoff head in its hand I'm going to go back to comparing Konrad and Achebe here Konrad's a story of vengeance or revenge in which what triumphs is apparently the wilderness the heart of a conquering darkness the moment of triumph for the wilderness an invading and vengeful rush in Achebe there's a fantasy of revenge which of course doesn't work out when he feels the prospect of annihilation if such a thing were ever to happen he or Konkwo would wipe them off the face of the earth of course he doesn't know such thing in fact the only person he destroys is himself actually that's not true he destroyed a couple of other people earlier too but in that act at the end he does no lasting damage to the Europeans he just destroys himself there's something so paradoxical here that in Konrad is Africa the triumphs even Kurtz finally fails and is betrayed Marlowe betrays his legacy which doesn't do his justice doesn't give him the justice that he seeks there's something apocalyptic end of history about Konrad's text I'm going to talk more about history in my last little section whereas in the center in Achebe what depends on what we mean by the center but it's not we don't get a sense that it's the European center that can't hold we don't get in that sense a reflection of Yeats's crisis it's unstoppable revenge is useless even counterproductive or Konkwo betrays and is betrayed it's a power effect so in this this is a semi-rhetorical question because I'm trying to give you because I've got my own answer but I'd like you to ask does Konkwo ever really become an agent if the whole proposition back to my thesis for this lecture if the whole point of Achebe's book is to show Africans as agents as subjects as humans as people isn't it ironic not in the sense of that damn song like a rain a cigarette break isn't there some irony or tension in the fact that Konkwo never really becomes an agent he never really gets out of various routes again in both ways both because he is repeating and because he fails to repeat on the one hand he's tried his repetition he makes the same mistakes continuously he fails to evade his father's legacy he fails to adapt as his son will be able to adapt with perhaps he fails to change he fails to return to some nostalgic notion of warlike masculinity which is impossible or is his tragedy different that he doesn't properly fit in his crimes against his own people or the difference represented by the coming of the Europeans but either which way he fails to establish himself as a distinct agent he fails to achieve agency to act rather than to react I would suggest that throughout the book all he does is react again in a book whose whole purpose is supposedly to show the African as agent as actor so my last section on history and the people without it enable family or gathering in 1913 the guy at the center with his mother, brother and rather more wives than Oconco managed to get for himself I don't know whether that's good or bad and then a naming ceremony in Washington DC half a dozen years ago is that the same do we see continuities or do we see differences or do we see divergences what about that historical passage of almost a hundred years both Conrad and Achebe in some ways writing historical novels in the first instance because they're both writing about the past they're both writing incidentally about probably more or less the same period the 1890s Conrad's writing about years after his own experience in the Congo which he's writing about Achebe's writing in the early 1960s but they both have recourse to the past even if it's more or less recent in the case of Conrad and yet they both there's something ahistorical about both there are no dates for instance I think this is partly how they've both become representative or allegorical of broader things that's part of the way in which Conrad's book can be taken as not really about the Congo in whatever 1892 or whatever it might have been but about colonialism at large and I think that's part of the success of Achebe's book too the reason for success is it's not read as an account of what happened in a particular region in Nigeria in the turn of the 19th, 20th centuries it's read as a sort of allegory for how colonialism and post-colonialism work as a whole they become exemplary texts standing in for the big picture and context gets lost to some extent even though in other ways they're all about context but the broad themes are drawn for it they're taught in courses like this where we say we ask you to write essays comparing I don't know Achebe and Conrad in the first instance but you know Achebe and something else we abstract from history and they kind of enable or allow us to abstract from history I think in some ways they tell the same history which is kind of interesting the history of the European penetration of Africa even if it's not the same story even if the stories are very different I'm interested in the difference between history and history I think in Achebe history is unidirectional it's one direction again I'm not talking about some rubbish pop group it's teleological there you are I wait for the boy band called teleology it's a irresistible force right? in Achebe even if he's critical of progress progress cannot be denied in Conrad progress can history vacillates it's one step forward two steps back the more modern we become the more savage we become Kurtz right? going native to some extent again in some ways he's the very spear tip or advanced guard of white civilization in Africa and on the other hand he is the most savage of all so Achebe's text as well is linear the narrative is linear basically it has sort of flashbacks I suppose has repetitions whereas Conrad's text despite the fact that the basic structure is apparently a quest we go from one place to another place that sounds pretty linear but then to the last part the narrative I think the structure is much more circular or rather perhaps what's at work in both is a kind of tension between linearity and circularity between teleology and whatever it is that undermines teleology I was kind of interested in it I recommend to Christina's post as well she does a sort of structuralist analysis of the plot and the direction in which it goes again I think there's I think we hit a sort of limits of that kind of analysis here but they agree on one thing Achebe and Conrad and it's not a good thing to agree on that the Africans are people without history and not simply because they lack writing and written history so for Conrad Conrad the Africans don't have history because they're right of the origin of the history going up the Congo you're going to before history has begun this geographical journey is also a journey back in time to the origin so maybe before history has begun but for Achebe they're without history because history is what threatens and destroys them as soon as history comes then precisely that sort of circularity and repetition and the intactness of the cultural community disappears I'm reminded a little of something that Rob said last week which I actually disagree with when he suggests the politics haven't changed much at all in Africa from the 1890s to the present I think that's another denial of history that's another suggestion that there's no place elsewhere not in Africa it's the same old same old condemning Africa to repetition in other words I think there's something deeply problematic about this notion that the Africans are people without history this is precisely the anthropological conceit and this is the ways in which Achebe is almost as much an anthropologist as a novelist he's trying to portray the society that is contained in itself in their own terms and no societies do exist in their own terms no societies are self-sufficient in these ways and in fact there's something very much like the anthropological thing that's what anthropologists do they go and try and find well that's what they used to do they're a bit smarter than that now but the founding premise of anthropology is you go and find primitive peoples untouched by history and see them of absolute difference ignoring the ways in which there have always been interactions with others in which they are historically shaped but there's something about Achebe is in part an anthropologist here trying to give the life of the community and translating it to us on the terms in fact not of the Africans but of the target language of English but it's by telling us by suggesting us that the Igbo have no history that he also suggests to us that they have no future he also suggests that this is the death in the end of the Igbo he buys into that notion perpetuates it I think that is deeply problematic so finally the challenge I think is how are we going to think about history as both repetition both as a series of regularities but the way in which they change over time and a series of changes that gain their own regularity and also to think about identity not as something fixed but not as something that is just an arctic and all over the place everything falling apart how the thing of identity in terms of of I being another the conjunction of sameness and difference and this I put it to you is the point of remaking and remodeling I started with an image of wrestling I am going to end with an image of wrestling I am going to end with the very first text that you read in this course Genesis Jacob a wrestling of an angel in the course of which he gets renamed Jacob becomes Israel how if we really wrestle with something then we get changed where we stay the same in some ways and a remaking and remodeling of Jacob wrestling with the angel and some final resources that's it