Category: In the news

The Warrior (and the Ghost) in our Genes

In our previous discussion on Ibsen’s Ghosts, we interpreted what Mrs. Alving means by her use of ghosts in the following passage:

“Ghosts. When I heard Regine and Oswald in there, it was just like seeing ghosts. But then I’m inclined to think that we are all ghosts, Pastor Manders, every one of us. It’s not just what we inherit from our mothers and fathers that haunts us. It’s all kinds of old defunct theories, all sorts of old defunct beliefs, and things like that. It’s not that they actually live on in us; they are simply lodged there, and we cannot get rid of them” (Ibsen, p.120)

We reached a possible interpretation of the ghosts Mrs. Alving refers to: social constructs, gender norms, culture, family rituals…etc we inherit that we have no control over. We do not have the power or opportunity to choose the kinds of things to inherit, to what extent they influence us, or even when they start affecting us. Thus raises the question: Are we capable of escaping this predicament?

Image credit: Psychlite, WordPress

Earlier this year in February, New Mexico Supreme Court upholds the murder sentence of Anthony Blas Yepez, who was convicted in 2015 for beating George Ortiz, a 75-year-old man, to death in 2012. According to the testimony given by his girlfriend, Yepez struck the man in the face, leading to his death. Yepez claimed that he didn’t remember what exactly happened next, only that when he woke up, he was lying on top Ortiz’ body. The couple then poured cooking oil over the corpse and set it ablaze, leaving the crime scene by fleeing in Ortiz’ car. 

Yepez’ public defender tried to present evidence about Yepez’ genetic information and history of childhood abuse. However, the Supreme Court rejected the evidence, with the state District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer saying that she felt “iffy” about whether it was “reliable enough to prove what it proposes to prove.” The warrior gene theory dates back to a discovery made by a Dutch scientist in the 1990s, which claimed that all the male relatives from a family in New Zealand with a history of aggressive violence lacked a specific gene critical for regulating anger. The theory has been hotly debated ever since. 

The finding naturally leads to this question: if the theory is true, is anyone accountable for the crimes they committed? Who should be responsible for their crimes? Is it the offender, or is it the lineage which he or she has no control over? Mrs. Alving proclaims we are all ghosts, and that when she “picks up a newspaper,” she seems to “see ghosts gliding between the lines” (p.120). Perhaps ghosts not only lurk in newspapers, they also lurk in our genes. 

AIDS, COVID-19, Angels

Yesterday, December 1st, was World AIDS Day, an international day designated to further awareness about the AIDS pandemic and evaluate the world’s progress in ending it. Each year international agencies such as WHO (World Health Organization), UNAIDS (Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS) and other grassroots organizations dedicated to tackle HIV/AIDS also choose themes for the day, and UNAIDS theme for this year was “Global solidarity, Shared responsibility”. Needless to say, this theme is inspired by the experiences of the the current COVID-19 pandemic and this short video statement from the UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima explains it quite well:

Winnie Byanyima’s World AIDS Day Statement

Pandemics and Epidemics thrive on and exacerbate the already existing inequalities as we have been seeing during COVID-19 and through our readings. While the nature of the diseases might differ, there is a huge overlap between which groups are most affected, mostly the ones that are are already marginalized. This year, COVID-19 made the HIV/AIDS pandemic even worse by disrupting care and medical supply networks and it affected the populations that were suffering from or highly vulnerable to HIV even more severely. However, the fight against these pandemics cannot be fought by some groups alone and hence a “shared responsibility” is needed.

The differences between the abilities of different countries based on the development of their public health infrastructure also requires “global solidarity” to eradicate the pandemic from the face of the world. Organizations such as UNAIDS recognize COVID-19 as the most immediate threat to furthering the progress against AIDS pandemic and are urging governments and companies from countries that have been able to develop vaccine candidates to waive their IP rights. Only this sort of a global collaboration will make sure that vaccines reach vulnerable populations in countries that do not have the capacity to develop them. Otherwise, the pandemic will create even more inequality across the globe. (A great opinion piece regarding this was published in the gazelle this week as well!)

On a different note, amfAR (American Foundation for AIDS Research) is another organization that has been funding research to end AIDS but is now focusing on COVID-19 as well. Recently, they organized a fundraising film on YouTube for these initiatives: “The Great Work Begins: Scenes from Angels in America”, where as the title suggests, 5 key scenes from the play were re-created. All the filming was done by the actors in isolation, and then put together using computer wizardry. The whole 50 minutes of the film are just amazing and I especially liked the effects and background score that complemented the acting. Even if you have not finished the play, as the title card suggests, you can “let the scenes was over you”. So I am not going to bore you further now and will leave you with the link for the film:

amfAR’s The Great Work Begins: Scenes from Angels in America

Denialism is No Foreigner (Conveners Post)

    Donald Trump may be (outwardly) the most powerful COVID denier in the world, but he is not the only one. Denialism runs deep inside the minds of people, whether due to their distorted allegiance to rationality (or rationalization) or thanks to the conditioned privilege of not encountering catastrophes on a daily basis before the disaster kicks their doors open and tells them to wake up. In Camus’s The Plague, we encounter denialism through witnessing the plague unravel from the perspective of Dr. Rieux, who unmasks the reality of the sickness taking over the French-Algerian city of Oran.  

Figure 1. Variations in the book cover for Albert Camus’ The Plague

Premiere et derniere de couverture depliees de l’edition en 1955 dans le “Livre de poche” du roman d’Albert Camus “La peste” (n°132). Il s’agit de la premiere publication en livre de poche d’un ouvrage de Camus. “L’etranger” y sera publie en 1959, malgre les reticences de Camus a voir ce livre figurer dans cette collection. L’illustration de couverture de La peste est signee CS, un portrait photo de Camus, yeux baisses et cigarette aux levres, figure au dos du livre, avec la mention “l’un des plus grands romans de nortre epoque”. ©Gusman/Leemage

Figure 2. First and last cover unfolded from the 1955 edition in the “Pocket Book” of Albert Camus’ novel “La peste.” ‘L’un des plus grands romans de notre epoque,’ is translated to ‘One of the greatest novels of our time.’ / Â © Gusman / Leemage

    Among the many book covers (Fig. 1) of Albert Camus’ The Plague, the one at the bottom left corner, a 1955 version from the first paperback publication of the author’s work (Fig. 2), seems to best reflect the environment where the plague of denialism can spread among the denizens. The pastel roofs of the houses in the city Oran, painted lightly in blue, purple, green, yellow, orange, etc., aptly corresponds to how the town is pictured by Camus, with “a serene blue sky flooded with golden light each morning,” where “all seemed well” (58). The soft colors belie how at the beginning the people of the city take the progression of the plague ‘lightly,’ in the tranquility that is “so casual and thoughtless [that it] seemed almost effortlessly to give the lie to those old pictures of the plague,” allowing the rats, as depicted in the cover, to infiltrate the town, just as soldiers during the war would conduct their surprise-attacks (39). Rats aside, the optimistic colors of the city are in contrast with the foreboding figure in the foreground. Could the figure be an anthropomorphized representation of a plague, a secondary one that is birthed by the epidemic of denialism? Why is the figure positioned at the outside of Oran, as if he is a foreigner to the city?

The figure of the plague is always a migrant, someone that arrives from abroad, rather than something in the population itself. That’s true for COVID- it jumped from animals to humans, a taxonomic leap that destabilized the entire human colony on earth. Yet barring the foreigner from entry is the most appealing tactic in a time of plague- that’s the first, measly step President Trump took to stem the flow of the contagion in February, and he focused only on China. That was never going to be sufficient, but the denier in chief of the US thought it would be enough. Denialism is no foreigner to us.

This previous conveners post touches upon denialism in society in The Plague through framing it as a “conflict between confidence and fear”, highlighted in the interaction between the authorities and the doctors and the reluctance to alarm people about the pestilence in concern of spreading fear. Adding to this previous conveners post, it is crucial to account for the dynamics between doctors and political authorities, and the roles each assume (which are still concerningly relevant to this day), described accurately in the following  excerpt: 

“… It’s not a question of painting too black a picture. It’s a question of taking precautions.”

While doctors are concerned with protecting citizens and taking the necessary precautions to curb the spread of a contagion, authorities, in their PR-full roles, worry about image, response, and appeal. With a clash in intent and concern, citizens are often left in a state of confusion caused by a lack of information (and the abundance of misinformation). This could lead to difficulty in understanding the true extent of the plague, even when presented with numbers and official notices. 

“And since a dead man has no substance unless one has actually seen him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination. ”We see similar issues taking place today with how people are becoming numb to COVID death counts, despite more creative efforts in explaining to the populace how many people have died. COVID no longer surprises us. COVID is no longer a foreigner.

The city in tears

Defoe illustrates in great detail how the face of London drastically changed as a result of the plague. Once a cosmopolitan, buzzing city, he now describes it as “desolate”, stating that “London might well be all in tears”. This dark description of a once lively city reminded me of the impact that the pandemic had on New York City. Having experienced the initial phase of the pandemic in New York myself, this article and photo essay of the city resonated deeply.

As we scroll through the photos, we see a mere shell of the former metropolis, empty streets and eerily vacant public spaces. The photographer explains that as people “pass in the street, they keep a wary distance; if they acknowledge each other it is with terse, silent nods”. He also captures the same air of melancholy that Defoe describes in London through his pictures which highlight the concern and worry in his subjects’ faces. I drew this parallel between London and New York as despite being afflicted with different plagues and in different time periods, the impact of the contagion on both cities was jarringly similar, as both cities came to a grinding halt.

Finally, this piece in the New Yorker from April vividly describes the look and feel of New York City during the initial stages of the pandemic.

Chaos Syndrome: A Systemic Reason for Madness?

The following is an excerpt from an article written by Jonathan Rauch for the Atlantic about a political ‘disease’ in America that he has dubbed the ‘chaos syndrome’. It reminded me of the chaos prevalent in Pushkin’s play that the conveners’ discussed earlier and that time we talked about the similarities between a demagogue like Trump and Oedipus the King. It’s a contemporary example of how disease can be used as a metaphor for a breakdown in sociopolitical systems and relationships.  The parallels between the dysfunction in the current American (and perhaps global) political climate and in the fictional plagued societies we have been reading about are striking. Can you spot the common threads and themes running through them? Rauch suggests chaos syndrome leads us into positive feedback loops of self-destructive behavior antithetical to our shared commitment to the greater good. Could you say Walsingham and the revelers are in a similar predicament? Have you come across a treatment or cure for ‘chaos syndrome’? Also here’s link to a PBS News Hour Interview with Rauch.

“Trump, however, didn’t cause the chaos. The chaos caused Trump. What we are seeing is not a temporary spasm of chaos but a chaos syndrome.

 Chaos syndrome is a chronic decline in the political system’s capacity for self-organization. It begins with the weakening of the institutions and brokers—political parties, career politicians, and congressional leaders and committees—that have historically held politicians accountable to one another and prevented everyone in the system from pursuing naked self-interest all the time. As these intermediaries’ influence fades, politicians, activists, and voters all become more individualistic and unaccountable. The system atomizes. Chaos becomes the new normal—both in campaigns and in the government itself.

Our intricate, informal system of political intermediation, which took many decades to build, did not commit suicide or die of old age; we reformed it to death. For decades, well-meaning political reformers have attacked intermediaries as corrupt, undemocratic, unnecessary, or (usually) all of the above. Americans have been busy demonizing and disempowering political professionals and parties, which is like spending decades abusing and attacking your own immune system. Eventually, you will get sick.The disorder has other causes, too: developments such as ideological polarization, the rise of social media, and the radicalization of the Republican base. But chaos syndrome compounds the effects of those developments, by impeding the task of organizing to counteract them. Insurgencies in presidential races and on Capitol Hill are nothing new, and they are not necessarily bad, as long as the governing process can accommodate them. Years before the Senate had to cope with Ted Cruz, it had to cope with Jesse Helms. The difference is that Cruz shut down the government, which Helms could not have done had he even imagined trying.
 Like many disorders, chaos syndrome is self-reinforcing. It causes governmental dysfunction, which fuels public anger, which incites political disruption, which causes yet more governmental dysfunction. Reversing the spiral will require understanding it. Consider, then, the etiology of a political disease: the immune system that defended the body politic for two centuries; the gradual dismantling of that immune system; the emergence of pathogens capable of exploiting the new vulnerability; the symptoms of the disorder; and, finally, its prognosis and treatment.”

AIDS in China: Blood debts

I found this really interesting article on The Economist about China’s biggest health scandal: the AIDS Scandal. I feel that it’s written very much from the western perspective. However, it provides a great insight into the China’s biggest health scandal. The article also quotes Yan Lianke, the author of Dream of Ding Village, in the second last paragraph on issues about censorship of his book. It’s a interesting read. I highly recommend you to read it. It is just about 1000 words long:

It is not just local officials who are sensitive. The party’s propaganda department, which is under the supervision of Li Changchun (the former Henan chief), is just as prickly. Yan Lianke, a well-known writer who wrote a semi-fictional novel based on visits to an AIDS village in Henan, says his work was banned in a secret order issued by the propaganda department and the government’s General Administration of Press and Publication as soon as it reached bookshops a year ago.

Mr Yan says that he had even deleted some details of official involvement in the blood business. The publisher, in Shanghai, submitted a court claim in September arguing that it was no longer bound by some of its contractual obligations, including a donation of 50,000 yuan ($6,400) to the victims. The book, said the claim, had “harmed the country’s reputation”. The court’s decision is awaited.

Find the entire article here.

I also found this Youtube video from Duke University where Yan Lianke talks about censorship in China:

Plasma economy & plasmapheresis

Plasma Economy in China in the 1990s

As we all found out by reading Lianke’s Dream of Ding Village, in the early 90s, the Chinese higher-ups stared a campaign called the Plasma Economy to encourage locals to sell their blood and thus boost their income. Easy money, isn’t it? Go, sit, give your blood, come home with new red silk jacket. Completely painless, at least for the short term. In the long term, millions of people who sold their blood got infected with HIV and hence sentenced to inevitable death.

The blood-selling business was founded on plasmapheresis, a procedure that separates the cellular elements from the blood and then returns the remaining liquid back into the organism. More illustrative description is provided in the image below.

Plasmapheresis Diagram

Since the campaign was such a boom and resources were scarce (and blood heads did not really care much about the health of others), needles were reused, containers recycled and blood mixed together before being returned back to the patients. In all that mess, diseases spread like crazy. In this case, HIV/AIDS infected more than 40% of those who sold their blood. Millions of people died for money, money stained with blood.

And for those infected, life was not easy. The government refused to accept the existence of the epidemic while people were dying like moths. Instead of being sent into hospitals, people were being sent into jail.

And last but not least, what you get if you google Plasma Economy:

Keep reading!

 

Resources:

Plasma Economy

Plasmapheresis

Who’s feasting today?

On the 23rd of July 2014, Barack Obama spoke at a $32,400 per plate fundraiser. Meanwhile, Vladimir Yakunin, a Russian businessman whose assets are being frozen and his visas blocked, updated his Facebook page with pictures of his family sailing in the Caribbean.

These factoids are especially crucial to us, analysts of Pushkin’s ‘A Feast During the Plague’ because they bring up ideas that resonate with much of what’s going on in the text. The satirical street-art on the left tells the story. Thankfully there isn’t a plague epidemic going around at the moment but the references to Pushkin in both articles are appropriate. For starters, many Americans believe that Obama giving yet another talk at a Silicon Valley fundraiser means that he is ignoring more pressing domestic and international concerns and instead feasting (literally). Yakunin’s Facebook posts show that he’s clearly escaping his personal issues (again, literally). 

The characters in the play make a choice in how they react to the literal or figurative plagues that they respectively survive. We are given to understand that Yakunin and Obama are making a conscious decision too. But if we’ve escaped a plague, or something similarly nasty, do we have to behave in a certain way or do we have no such obligation? Would Yakunin be behaving in a more “sensitive” way if he locked himself inside his home in St. Petersburg and never saw anyone again? What’s wrong with taking your family on a cruise of the Caribbean when you can?

In the play and in the two articles, there is a kind of social removal. But the major difference between the articles and the play is what side of society the audience gets to see. In the play, we see the people who have escaped society and the plague, whereas the articles and the street-art reflect the thoughts of the larger society that the characters escape. His role as the President dictates that Obama has an obligation towards the people who face the problems he doesn’t immediately deal with, but do the characters in the plague have a similar responsibility towards society? Pushkin introduces the priest who raises this question. He tries to make the chairman feel guilty in the same way as the street-art tries to do. We don’t know what Obama or Yakunin feel, but we are given a glimpse of this survivor’s guilt towards the end of the play. 

The moral debate continues.

Keep reading!

Abhimanyu

You Shoot, You Score

From today’s class discussion on Welcome to Our Hillbrow, we identified a number of themes that emerge in the text, such as xenophobia in South Africa and the issue of cultural identity. Another important aspect of the novel is euphemism and metaphor, of which soccer (a.k.a. football) is a notable example.

In both the novel and reality, football plays a major role in South African culture, as it brings a common sense of pride to the nation and it represents the best (and worst) aspects of the contemporary South African society. Interestingly, the narrator mentions soccer in the first sentence of the text: “If you were still alive, Refentše, child of Tiragalong, you would be glad that Bafana Bafana lost to France in the 1998 Soccer World Cup fiasco” (1). For the South Africans, soccer is the only event in which they “momentarily [forget] xenophobia” (27), as it serves as a platform for fans to unite in support for Bafana Bafana  – “The Boys”.

However, soccer is not merely a sport. It reflects its society, much like how theatre and fictional writing reflect reality. The passive act of watching soccer is unfortunately similar to the common act of spectatorship in society. For instance, in the following passage, the citizens of Hillbrow witness a 7-year-old girl die from a reckless car driver:

“Most people, after the momentary stunned silence of witnessing the sour fruits of soccer victory, resumed their singing. Shosholoza … sounded its melodies from Wolmarans Street, at the fringe of the Johannesburg downtown, to the head of Clarendon Place, at the boundary of the serene Parktown suburb. Shosholoza … drowned the choking sobs of the deceased child’s mother” (2).

An unfortunate consequence of a soccer victory is the unnecessary celebratory violence that follows, which is evident from the above passage. However, what is even more unfortunate is the reaction of society to this violence. Like spectators watching soccer, society is detached from the action and from the foul play of violence, and respond accordingly.

Soccer also serves as a metaphor for other “social disease”, as the narrator uses soccer terms to describe Terror’s, a rapist’s, malicious thoughts and intentions toward Refentše’s love: “Because he was full of spite towards you, Terror wanted to take Lerato’s thighs for a playing field, in which his penis would be player, referee and spectator simultaneously” (65).

In terms of the issue of xenophobia, though soccer temporarily distracts the Hillbrowans from their hatred of foreigners, it actually makes xenophobia more noticeable since its absence highlights the fact that it is usually present. In reality, South African football also highlights the issue of xenophobia, which can be seen in this article and this account of soccer’s history in Africa. 

It is often said that soccer is truly an international sport. Why is soccer such a popular sport, in both the novel and in reality? Why is soccer such an effective means of analyzing society? What are the implications of this metaphor, and how else does soccer reflect society?

P.S. On a side note, this article discusses the recent murder of South Africa’s national soccer captain and its implications. (Take note of the article’s mention of Ebola.) Again, what is the role of soccer in highlighting current societal issues? How does the victim’s identity as a soccer player in this case add to the severity of the murder?