Power & FreedomAllen Ginsberg

Howl & Footnote to Howl(Political Science 506)

2

The Disciplined Society

• The functional inversion of the disciplines– Example: free schools founded on negative justification (combat

godlessness, idleness, gangs of beggars), but move to positive justification (prepare child for job market, develop the mind)

• The swarming of the disciplinary mechanisms– Disciplinary mechanisms emerge into society– Example: schools supervise children’s families

• State control of mechanisms of discipline– Police, interested in everything, omnipresent surveillance– Police are disciplinary mechanism that fills the gaps between

other mechanisms

3

The Disciplined Society• Disciplines as “infra-law” (222)

– System of omnipresent but uncertain surveillance– “systems of micro-power that are essentially non-egalitarian and

asymmetrical”• Example: female sexual morality, health, violence, surveillance

– Treated as very foundation of society, without which it will collapse• “a series of mechanisms for unbalancing power relations definitively and

everywhere; hence the persistence in regarding them as the humble, but concrete form of every morality, whereas they are a set of physico-political techniques.” (223)

– “The formation of knowledge and the increase of power regularly reinforce one another in a circular process” (224)

– Names and power• How could this system of power be resisted?

4

Allen Ginsberg• 1926-1997• “Beat” poet• Ginsberg’s mother, Naomi

Livergant Ginsberg– Politically radical and mentally

unwell, hugely influential on Ginsberg’s life & work

– His other most famous poem, “Kaddish”, written at her death

• Carl Solomon– Ginsberg met him in a mental

institution during a period when each was briefly institutionalized. Formed lifelong friendship.

5

Howl

• 1957 Obscenity trial in San Francisco– "filthy, vulgar, obscene, and disgusting language.”– Judge: “Would there be any freedom of press or speech if

one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemisms?”

• 2007 Obscenity fear– Pacifica radio planned to broadcast in order to commemorate

50th anniversary of Howl’s protection under First Amendment– But feared fines from the FCC, put it online– Differing basis of censorship: public morals vs.

“offensiveness” and affordability of free speech

6

Escape & Transcendence

• Over a world of power, materialism, and time:• “Who threw their watches off the roof / to

cast their vote for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks / fell on their heads every day for the next decade” (16)– Desperate attempts to transcend end in failure

• “…or were run down by the / drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality” (16)– What could be more crudely real than that?

7

Escape & Transcendence

• Modes of transcendence– Spirituality – Humiliation of the flesh – Sex – Drugs– Art– Violation of taboo

8

Moloch!

• Leviticus 18:21: “And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD.”• A divine commandment to disdain• Worship of Moloch equated to profaning the name of God.• Cannibal-god of the Canaanites, the enemies of the

children of Israel– The enemies of the few, the chosen, the faithful

• Idolatry and abomination

9

I’m with you in Rockland

• where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul / is innocent and immortal it should never die / ungodly in an armed madhouse– The spiritual elevated over the material• But it can be killed

– Ungodly armed madhouse sounds a lot like Moloch• The asylum is the world in microcosm

10

Footnote to Howl

• Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! – Radical tonal shift, from sadness and solitude, futility and self-

destruction, cannibal-gods and insane asylums to ecstatic recognition of universal holiness

– Holiness ≠ sacredness• Holiness is the mark of the presence and/or favor of God

• The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! / The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand / and asshole holy!– Continues theme that the despised are in fact the elevated– But begins to attack the duality present in the poem so far, as both

the spiritual and the material are presented as of like holiness

11

Footnote to Howl

• Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours! / bodies! suffering! magnanimity!– Holiness here is achieved, as the “best minds” failed to

do– Not in transcendence, but in immanence– Not “lifting Moloch to Heaven,” but recognizing the

“Angel in Moloch”• Not elevating the earthly into the divine, but recognizing the

presence of divinity in the mundane. The world, good and bad, spiritual and material, is itself holy.

• Breaking every boundary