Exploring the Facets of Revenge [1 ed.] 9781848880894, 9789004403215

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Exploring the Facets of Revenge

Probing the Boundaries

Series Editors Dr Robert Fisher Dr Daniel Riha Advisory Board Dr Alejandro Cervantes-Carson Dr Peter Mario Kreuter Professor Margaret Chatterjee Martin McGoldrick Dr Wayne Cristaudo Revd Stephen Morris Mira Crouch Professor John Parry Dr Phil Fitzsimmons Paul Reynolds Professor Asa Kasher Professor Peter Twohig Owen Kelly Professor S Ram Vemuri Revd Dr Kenneth Wilson, O.B.E

A Probing the Boundaries research and publications project. http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/ The Persons Hub ‘Revenge’

2012

Exploring the Facets of Revenge Edited by

Helena Yaklovev-Golani and Charity Givens

Inter-Disciplinary Press Oxford, United Kingdom

© Inter-Disciplinary Press 2012 http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/id-press/

The Inter-Disciplinary Press is part of Inter-Disciplinary.Net – a global network for research and publishing. The Inter-Disciplinary Press aims to promote and encourage the kind of work which is collaborative, innovative, imaginative, and which provides an exemplar for inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of Inter-Disciplinary Press.

Inter-Disciplinary Press, Priory House, 149B Wroslyn Road, Freeland, Oxfordshire. OX29 8HR, United Kingdom. +44 (0)1993 882087

ISBN: 978-1-84888-089-4 First published in the United Kingdom in eBook format in 2012. First Edition.

Table of Contents Introduction Helena Yakovlev-Golani and Charity Givens PART I

PART II

PART III

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Revenge in Philosophy Revenge as Wild Justice: A Research Note on Francis Bacon’s ‘Of Revenge’ Erin A. Dolgoy

3

Resentment and Valuation in the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche Bogdan Dragomirescu

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Imagine Less Resentment: An Outline of an Ethical Encounter between Nietzschean and Bataillean Thought Concerning Revenge and War Stein A. Hevrøy

21

Revenge in History Survival and Decline of the Right to Vengeance at the Turn of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period in a City of the Low Countries (Namur, 14th-17th Centuries) Aude Musin

3

A Right to Kill Traitors: Revenge and Racial Strife in the American Civil War West (1863-1865) John Ringquist

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Revenge towards Professional and Social Reasons: Gendarmeries Purges after WWII Jonas Campion

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Revenge in Society ‘You Made Me What I Am. You Added to the Rage’: School Shooters in the United States and the Cultural Script of Vengeance Selina E. M. Doran

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PART IV

Revenge, the Volcano of Despair: The Story of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Helena Yakovlev-Golani

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The Domestication of Vengeance in Ancient Greece and South India Charles W. Nuckolls

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Revenge at the Service of Social Justice: An Afrocentric View Boniface Anusiem

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Revenge in Literature ‘Blood Will Have Blood’: Revenge and Injustice in Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown Roxanne Barbara Doerr

10

Tender Toxicity: Desire and Revenge in Elizabeth Bowen’s Eva Trout Heather Levy

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‘As I Have Been Made’: Social Revenge in Dickens’ Great Expectations Lydia K. Christoph

12

The Snooper and the Scribbler: Literary Revenge in Poe’s Dupin Trilogy Charity Givens

13

Introduction Helena Yakovlev-Golani and Charity Givens The present book is a manifestation of multidisciplinary efforts to assess the multifaceted phenomenon of revenge. Scholars and practitioners were engaged in this fascinating task and presented their research at the Inter-Disciplinary.Net’s 2nd Global Conference on Revenge, which took place in July, 2011 at Mansfield College in Oxford University. The conference and the current volume are part of a Probing the Boundaries project that aims to explore Persons and ‘how persons stand in relationships to each other, to local and social communities, and within the wider contexts of national and international communities.’ The influence of revenge on human relations and on persons’ behaviour, therefore, was a pivotal topic of the discussions during the three-day conference. The discussion of revenge is an important one that should be continued. In the first panel discussion of the conference, the attendees attempted to define revenge and discuss what might be its opposite. While many people advocated forgiveness as the polar opposite of revenge, others offered the idea that passiveness or disinterest might be the opposite of revenge, since revenge seems to imply a caring for justice or a way to right a wrong. In a round-table discussion on the death of Osama Bin Laden as a potential act of revenge, many of the elements of discussion tied this topic to an extremely emotional response from many participants, and there was no concrete answer to the idea of revenge in this act. These two discussions provided a more nuanced view of revenge, and the idea that revenge is a many-faceted concept was reflected throughout the duration of the conference. This publication offers a unique opportunity to hear the voices of diverse participants from all around the globe who, through incisive and multidisciplinary interactions, tried to open a window to the human comprehension of vengeance, its roots, roles and functions in philosophy, history, societies and literature. We are honoured to present these distinctive chapters as part of this collection. Furthermore, we are strongly convinced that the variety of studies presented here may contribute to academic discourse on the subject of vengeance and to stimulate further research of the topic in multidisciplinary milieu. The philosophical section opens the volume. The works of philosophers who dare to coin the rationale of human nature and to propose their evaluation of vengeance are presented by the following authors. Erin A. Dolgoy discusses Francis Bacon’s account of revenge and infers that humans’ self-love and selfinterest induce them to take revenge and thus to be eventually avenged by others. She addresses Bacon’s famous notion of revenge as ‘wild justice’ and compares it to law and to Solomon’s model of perfect justice. Her chapter explores Bacon’s ideas of revenge and shows rational reasons for why humans might want revenge, providing a solid basis for the discussion of revenge throughout this compilation. Tying revenge to specific human needs for justice and explaining how revenge

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__________________________________________________________________ might be properly introduced, this chapter gives the study of revenge a critical examination that attempts to explain and justify the idea of revenge as a part of human nature. Bogdan Dragomirescu, on the other hand, introduces Fredrich Nietzsche’s vision of vengeance. He discusses the connection between resentment, the process of virtual assertion, and the valuation it e ntails, as a prospect of questioning creative action. He addresses Nietzsche’s concepts of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and expounds on a Nietzschean interpretation of ‘priests’ and ‘warriors.’ This chapter provides a g ood parallel to the concepts of Bacon and shows another facet of revenge as a justification or explanation of human behaviour. Stein A. Hevrøy develops Dragomirescu’s argument further and examines the ethical importance of Nietzsche’s notion of revenge in connection with Georges Bataille’s concepts of expenditure and war. He argues that both Nietzsche and Bataille are ethical thinkers who underline the problem of violence in connection with resentment and destructive effects of an accumulation of energy. He parallels Nietzschean priest with Bataille’s führer and concludes that they both have the power to channelize the affects of the masses in the direction they desire. Connecting philosophy and history, the second chapter deals with the problems of revenge and history, focusing on how legal systems and war can institutionalize revenge. Aude Musin’s chapter on vengeance in the Middle Ages bridges the gaps between the philosophy behind revenge and the inevitable public uses of revenge. Focusing on the institutionalization of revenge in the Low Countries’ legal system, Musin’s ideas give a physical example of how resentment and self-love turn to more rational ways of turning the power of revenge to the authorities, lest the people destroy themselves. She shows how revenge was carried out originally and traces the changes in the legal system, providing an examination of how revenge might be used to benefit the people instead of destroying the people. Her chapter gives a better understanding of how taming ‘wild justice’ helped to form a legal system that brought together the people in the Low Countries. Following the idea of legal and institutionalized forms of revenge, the last two chapters deal with both corporate and personal forms of revenge in war times. John Ringquists’s chapter on revenge in the American Civil War outlines several personal campaigns of revenge in the Civil War West on behalf of the coloured troops. He examines the motivations behind these campaigns and the results of the revenge taken. He shows how revenge can be a powerfully destructive force that may result from the ravages of war. The stories in this chapter provide a compelling picture of revenge in a corporate setting, enacted as military campaigns against aggressors. It shows some of the extreme forms that revenge can take. From corporate military revenge, the ideas turn to more personal forms of revenge against war in Jonas Campion’s chapter on revenge against the gendarmes after the Second World War He examines motivations behind revenge, connecting corporate forms of revenge in a s ociety ravaged by fear and regret to personal

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__________________________________________________________________ forms of revenge where the formerly impotent could stand up to their oppressors. This look at how a society revenged itself against an oppressor shows an important connection between revenge and justification. Where a people were relatively impotent during the Second World War, after the war, they were able to take revenge against the injustices dealt to them from the gendarmes. Campion examines the motivations behind revenge as a n eed for the people to separate themselves from the political and legal systems established in the Occupation of France. He shows that, in this case, revenge was used to change the public face of France to show how much they were opposed to the actions taken during the war. Furthering the line of previous reasoning, revenge is then analysed empirically in the chapter on ‘Revenge in Societies.’ This section embraces various contemporary cultures and societies and scrutinizes the influence of vengeance on peoples’ beliefs and behaviour. The first chapter, authored by Selina E. M. Doran, echoes ideas of rising up against oppression in two instances of school shootings in the United States. She contends that school shooters’ fragile sense of identity, the homophobic insults and bullying they receive from their peers, and lack of romantic success with girls motivate them to seek revenge against both their offenders and the social institution that failed to address their marginalization and ostracism within the school community. Their revenge starts by adopting a cultural script of extreme ‘hypermasculinity.’ After dealing with the disastrous consequences of vengeance as a result of the process of victimisation in social conflicts, the next author, Helena YakovlevGolani, turns to the international arena. She questions the commonality of revenge in international conflicts in the Middle East and discusses roots, types and functions of vengeance in this area. Furthermore, she evaluates the connection between revenge and the protracted nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, underscoring the dynamics of vengeance in both Israeli and Palestinian societies. Yakovel-Golani shows how revenge can spiral out of control as it becomes a system of retribution that shows power and strength. She explains how cessation of revenge could be viewed as a sign of weakness, which causes it to be enacted in perpetuity. Charles W. Nuckolls, however, proves that the existence of conflict is not a critical component in preserving the relevance of vengeance in the societies. Vengeance sometimes stems from social norms of the communities centred around their traditions. He assesses the role of vengeful goddesses, ‘Sati Polamma’ and Erinyes, in enforcing and maintenance of marital and kinship norms in contemporary South India and ancient Greece. He vividly portrays and underlines the similarities between these two deities and argues that both of them were domesticated but to different sociological ideals – Erinyes to the ideal of the democratic polis, while ‘Sati Polamma’ to a symbol of kinship solidarity. Expanding on the social analysis of the communities and their cosmologies, Boniface Anusiem takes the readers to Sub-Sahara, Africa. Stressing the centrality

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__________________________________________________________________ of the community in the lives of individuals in Africa, he evaluates the benefits of revenge in certain African societies and argues that revenge, as a phenomenon with strong socio-cultural and religious relevance, might be seen as having some contributive values to social justice when it i s appropriately applied to pacify relations in the community. The final section in this book deals with revenge and literature. Literature ties together the section on philosophy, history, and society by providing a lens through which readers can examine the motivations, actions, and reactions of people as they deal with revenge against persons, institutions, and cultures. Following up Boniface Anusiem’s ideas of social justice, Roxanne Barbara Doerr’s chapter on Shalimar the Clown examines social justice on a personal level. She traces the idea of justice and revenge through the account of a young woman who is affected by revenge and so seeks vengeance herself. Because society is unable to give her the revenge she desires, the heroine of this story seeks not only vengeance but also justice for crimes committed against her and her family. This chapter draws insights on personal vengeance and societal justice—or the lack thereof. The next chapter, by Heather Levy, continues to examine personal revenge for personal reasons. Her chapter dissects the reasons behind the title character’s acts of revenge in the novel Eva Trout. However, different from Doerr’s chapter, the focus is not on justice for Eva, but rather revenge for lover’s quarrels. This chapter shows how revenge is an intimate act that affects not only the two parties directly involved, but also people who may be on the outskirts of the problem. The final two chapters in this section examine literary revenge against institutions and cultures. Lydia K. Christoph’s chapter on the classic Great Expectations connects revenge for personal reasons with revenge against institutions. As she discusses the motivations behind Magwitch and Miss Havisham, two characters in the novel, Christoph also shows how Charles Dickens used his book as a written form of revenge against an upper class society that never really accepted him. Interestingly, this chapter also shows how revenge can bring about great tragedy and loss, as the characters who want revenge are immolated in the fire of their desire for revenge. In a similar vein, Charity Givens’ chapter on three short stories by Edgar Allan Poe inspects Poe’s personal act of revenge against the literary culture of his time. She discusses how Poe uses the detective story as a form of revenge, paralleling Poe and his literary milieu with Dupin and the police. Poe’s literary revenge cries out for justice in the world of literature, paving the way for good literature in the midst of the good ol’ boys’ club mentality pervading publishing houses in his time. The chapters presented here are presented as they were in the conference. There is room for discussion and debate even though the ideas have been typed, preserved for an audience. It is our desire that through this project and reading these chapters, our audience forms a better image of what revenge is and why it is enacted. Although these chapters are not an answer to the big questions of revenge,

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__________________________________________________________________ they should at least generate dialogue about revenge, and in studying the question, perhaps we can understand it better.

PART I Revenge in Philosophy

Revenge as Wild Justice: A Research Note on Francis Bacon’s ‘Of Revenge’ Erin A. Dolgoy Abstract Francis Bacon (1561–1625) states, ‘Revenge is a kinde of Wilde Justice.’ In his essay ‘Of Revenge,’ Bacon argues that revenge is a natural desire which can be understood and controlled, but cannot be extinguished. Our vengeful desires are based upon our self-love, which also serves as the basis for our longings for justice. Knowing this about ourselves, this paper attempts to explain Bacon’s fundamental question relating to our desire for revenge: ‘why should I be angry with a Man, for loving himselfe better then mee?’ Three of Bacon’s essays are particularly relevant to a consideration of revenge: essay four, ‘Of Revenge;’ essay fifty-five, ‘Of Honour and Reputation;’ and essay fifty-six, ‘Of Judicature.’ This consideration is divided into four parts: part one explicates the relationship between revenge and justice; part two establishes the relationship between self-love, honour, reputation, and revenge; part three outlines the two types of vengeance seekers and the two types of revenge; and part four provides a s ummary of Bacon’s teaching on revenge, as presented in his Essays. Key Words: Francis Bacon, revenge, wild justice, essays, judicature, self-love. ***** In Francis Bacon’s Essays, the fourth essay, ‘Of Revenge’ 1 concerns man’s desire for justice, which serves as the foundation from which one can live the good life: a life dedicated to truth. 2 Essential to our ability to live a good life is a belief in two truths: 3 first, one’s good deeds will not only be unpunished, but will be rewarded; and second, the ill actions of others, particularly those that cause one to suffer, will be punished. Justice undergirds our ability to act. When divine justice and legal justice fail to fulfill our longings to live in a world that is fair, wherein bad behaviours are punished and good ones rewarded, we turn to vengeance. In his essay, ‘Of Revenge,’ Bacon provides a rubric by which to consider our own vengeful longings, and to assess our personal suppositions regarding justice. The present analysis considers Bacon’s fundamental question regarding revenge: ‘why should I be angry with a Man, for loving himselfe better then mee?’ 4 1. The Relationship between Revenge and Justice is Made Explicit Bacon does not begin by defining justice, presumably because most individuals have a commonsense understanding of justice. Instead, he highlights the relationship between justice and our desires for vengeance. According to Bacon, revenge is not justice; it ‘is a kinde of Wilde Justice’ 5 or unbridled justice. 6

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__________________________________________________________________ Although we long for justice, or at least an approximation of justice, human beings, since we have a vested interest in the outcome of our own suits, cannot mete out justice in our own cases. 7 In a previous essay, Bacon has already questioned the possibility of divine justice by discounting death as ‘the wages of sinne.’ 8 If there is no afterlife and thus no postmortem divine judgment, or if divine justice is deemed insufficient, otherworldly punishments and rewards will neither fulfill one’s desires for justice nor serve as an impetus for good behaviour in this life. Law—or legal justice—is created by men to fill this void. 9 Moral justice, Bacon posits, is the foundation of legal justice; however, in a secular state, legal justice trumps moral justice. 10 Yet, in legal disputes, one party is likely to be upset by the ruling. Where religious and legal justice fail, ‘Wilde Justice’ can triumph: unlike divine justice, the effects of revenge are immediately visible; unlike legal justice, the instigator of the revenge is an individual who is also a judge in his own case. Since each person is likely a biased arbiter, revenge is a b iased undertaking. Our understanding of revenge is connected to our understanding of right and wrong, our place in the world, and our principles regarding how we believe that we ought to treat other people and that we ought to be treated. Bacon states, ‘Wilde Justice’ puts the law—codified justice—‘out of office.’ 11 The initial wrong is illegal, but the second wrong—the ‘Revenge of that [first] wrong’ 12—in effect returns us to the state of nature, as it undermines the foundations of the law. 2. Self-Love, Honour and Reputation as the Natural Sources of Revenge According to Bacon, the reason that we seek revenge and the reason that revenge is sought against us is twofold: first, feelings of self-love; and second, desires for honour and reputation. 13 Self-interest coupled with self-sufficiency are the foundations of Bacon’s understanding of revenge. Bacon claims, ‘No man, doth a wrong, for the wrongs sake.’ 14 Rather, a man does a wrong because he believes that he thereby obtains some type of benefit. 15 As a result, why should one ‘be angry with a Man, for loving himselfe better then mee?’ 16 Experience reveals that one loves oneself more than one loves other men; since each man loves himself most, unless one is either hypocritical or ignorant, why would one expect other men to behave other than one does? Bacon, however, neither endorses unconditional abuse, nor advocates the unnecessary exploitation of others. 17 We commit harms for material, personal, or social benefits. Those individuals who commit wrongs, simply to commit wrongs—that is, those individuals who cannot explain why they behave in the manner in which they behave—are sick. 18 Affronts to honour are particularly tied to vengeance. Honesty and integrity of action are not the subjects of Bacon’s consideration of honour, since one need not be honourable to obtain honour and reputation. In order ‘to purchase himself, Profit, or Pleasure, or Honour, or the like,’ 19 a man may need to commit dishonourable acts. Therefore, there may be a tension between good or virtuous

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__________________________________________________________________ action and the procurement of one’s desired ends. Since virtue itself is not at issue, Bacon is able to state that obtaining honour is ‘without Disadvantage,’ 20 for if a tension exists, one need not sacrifice one’s immediate desires in pursuit of justice and virtue. Reputations are contingent on the ability of the public to identify virtue and value. As discussed in essay fifty-three, ‘Of Praise,’ the public does not necessarily accurately identify worth. 21 If one’s reputation is based solely on opinion— especially false opinion—then it is subject to extreme changeability. However, if one’s reputation is based on merit—especially actual worth—then it is less subject to changeability than if one’s reputation is based purely on perception. As such, one must control and discourage envy, since envy can erode one’s reputation and lead to vengeance. Our desire for honour and reputation is connected to our sense of justice. We all have a sense of our just desserts: we want to be rewarded for our honourable acts and accomplishments, and others to be punished for their dishonourable acts and behaviours. Our self-love guides these evaluations. Since true virtue and honour are difficult to quantify, reputation and material well-being are considered approximations of worth or merit. When we consider essay fifty-five, ‘Of Honour and Reputation,’ in conjunction with essay four, ‘Of Revenge,’ the unattainability of our aspirations for justice becomes clear. Since we each have a strong sense of self-love and rationally understand that we should not ‘be angry with a Man, for loving himselfe better then mee,’ 22 all honour and all reputation are based on perspective, rather than on virtue or merit. Human justice, according to Bacon, can only ever be approximate, while human honour can only ever be relative. Men who are desirous of revenge do not live in the present; they dwell on the wrongs that they believe they have suffered in the past, and plot the revenges that they will exact in the future. According to Bacon, men must learn to accept some of the wrongs—that is, affronts to their honour and reputation—that they have suffered. 23 Since nothing can change past events, wise men, Bacon claims, are able to live in the future and disregard past wrongs that they have suffered. Unwise men, on the other hand, live in the past and fixate upon past wrongs that they have suffered: ‘This is certain; That a Man that studieth Revenge keeps his owne Wounds greene, which otherwise would heale, and doe well.’ 24 One cannot heal from the initial hurt, 25 if one is constantly striving to payback the wrong that one has suffered. 3. Two Types of Vengeance Seekers and Two Types of Revenge Based on our self-love, men of different natures have different understandings of how they ought to be treated and ought to treat others. As such, which actions we believe deserve revenge, why we want revenge, and how we exact our vengeance differ according to the people and circumstances involved. For those who are predisposed to seek revenge, law is designed to mitigate that natural

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__________________________________________________________________ tendency. 26 In order to ensure that the law is not undermined, revenges, Bacon argues, must be undertaken cautiously. When one exacts revenge, one is equal to the one who inflicts the initial wrong—‘A Man is but even with his Enemy’ 27— since he, too, commits a wrong; however, ‘in passing it [the initial wrong] over, he is Superiour: For it is a Princes part to Pardon.’ 28 If a man can overlook a wrong that he has suffered, Bacon claims that ‘he is Superiour’ to his enemy, 29 although the exact nature of his superiority is unstated by Bacon. If it is a prince’s part to pardon, then a man need not pardon his enemy, but rather simply allow the law the opportunity to pass judgment. Here, Bacon divides revenges into two types and ranks them based on their social consequences. First, ‘The most Tolerable Sort of Revenge is for those wrongs which there is no Law to remedy.’ 30 If there is no formal legal avenue for recompense, then revenge is required to assuage any feelings of injustice. In cases such as these, the only way that the wrong can be repaid is to take matters into one’s own hands. 31 When there is no law, revenge is ‘most Tolerable,’ because there is no formal mechanism in place to remedy ‘the first Wrong.’ 32 However, one must ensure that the avenging act is not, itself, punishable by law. If it is, one’s enemy will be ahead twice: first, having inflicted the initial or ‘the first Wrong’; 33 and second, in seeking legal compensation for the avenging act. The less tolerable revenge, which Bacon does not make explicit, is one wherein there is a law. For those who decide to exact revenge, there are two approaches: first, vengeance seekers who want their victim to know who they are and why they are punishing him; and second, vengeance seekers who either do not want their victim to know who they are and why they are punishing him, or do not care whether or not their victim knows who they are and why they are punishing him. According to Bacon, the first type of vengeance seekers are ‘the more Generous’ of the two. 34 The primary motive of this type of vengeance seeker is not to harm or damage the other party, but rather to educate him and have him reflect upon his previous behaviour. Vengeance seekers of this sort are not motivated by a desire to harm their victim; rather, their motivation, first, is to have their victim admit that he actually did the initial wrong, and second, in doing so, to encourage their victim not commit the same wrong a second time. Therefore, the first type of vengeance seeker believes in rehabilitation. The second type of vengeance seeker, ‘the Base and Crafty Cowards, are like the Arrow, that flyeth in the Darke.’ 35 That is, one cannot see them coming. The purpose of their vengefulness is for the detriment of the one who harmed them—to cause a compensatory ‘Hurt’ 36—rather than for the purpose of reform. As such, these vengeance seekers do not care whether their victim is aware of the relationship between the immediate harm that he suffers and his previous actions. Bacon’s distinction between the two types of vengeance seekers, and their accompanying ranking, is consistent with his account of our sovereign good. If truth is our good, then there is nothing worse, according to Bacon, than being

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__________________________________________________________________ ignorant. In the first case, vengeance is meted out for the purposes of compensation and education: since the victim is aware of who harms him and why he is being harmed, there is a r ehabilitative potential. The person who inflicts the original wrong, and who is now the victim of revenge, is made aware of the consequences of his actions and thus provided with the opportunity to repent and ensure that he does not, again, commit the same offense that has motivated revenge. In the second case, rehabilitation and repentance are irrelevant to the vengeance seekers, to whom it does not matter that the wrongdoer knows why he is suffering; it only matters that he does suffer. Of the utmost importance, then, is not to extinguish vengefulness, 37 but rather to decide how best to exact revenge. 38 4. Summary: What We Can Learn from Bacon Regarding Revenge Bacon’s account of revenge rests on his account of human nature: people are self-interested, yet sane men are not cruel—men do not lie, simply to lie, nor do they harm other men, simply to cause harm. Since we all love ourselves more than we love other men, it is highly likely that, at some point, we will seek vengeance and will have vengeance sought against us. 39 Our understanding of and desire for revenge is inseparable from our belief in our reputations. Even if our material needs are satisfied, our reputational requirements may compel us to seek vengeance. As such, revenge, as Bacon explains it, is connected to how we understand the nature of existence and how we see ourselves in relation to other men. Yet, revenge is not justice: it is unfettered justice; it is ‘Wilde Justice.’ 40 Law stands as a co mpromise between perfect justice and wild justice: perfect justice demands a wise, benevolent, unbiased judge, who, based on the model of Solomon, Bacon’s example of a just judge, metes out flawless justice; wild justice assumes that each individual is the judge in his own case, who metes out justice based on individual interest and self-love. 41 Barring a Solomon-like judge, there must be a way to temper wild justice despite our inability to have perfect justice. If one believes in a divine order, then God and the church provide a solution: it is incumbent on man to behave justly in this life in order to garner the benefits of the next life. Therefore, when one suffers an inevitable injustice in this life, one’s desire for wild justice must be tempered by one’s knowledge that while there is no perfect justice in this life, there must be in the next. However, if one is not a believer, then one is left with the approximation of perfect justice that is provided by law. Since legal justice is manmade, it is conventional, and varies from place to place and time to time. It is, at its base, subject to human error. The same impetus that compels one towards wild justice can affect judicature. Self-love is powerful and must not be underestimated. As such, law serves as the foundation of civil society and a fundamental means of social organization; it provides compelling reasons to behave well in this life, without a divine impetus. If we are not satisfied by either divine justice or legal justice, which questions, according to Bacon, must we ask ourselves regarding our vengeful longings? First,

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__________________________________________________________________ we must consider whether or not we, too, would have behaved as did the one who has harmed us. That is, we must ask whether or not our anger is justified. Second, we must ask whether or not there is a law to punish the one who has harmed us. If there is such a law, Bacon recommends allowing the legal system to pass manmade justice; if there is not such a law, our desires for vengeance are more justified. Third, we must decide whether or not we want our victim to know who is harming him and why he is being harmed. If we choose to inflict revenge with a partially educative end, we are above our victim; however, if we choose to inflict anonymous revenge, we are as bad as, if not worse than, our victim. Fourth, we must determine the method of our revenge—that is, what action we are going to take. Bacon’s argument is not prohibitive; it is educative: while Bacon advocates against vengeance seeking as an end in itself, he does acknowledge that our desires for revenge are natural. As such, we have a duty, based on our highest good, to understand the truth about revenge.

Notes 1

‘revenge’ in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) OED Online, accessed 28 February 2011, http://www.oed. com.ezproxy.torontopubliclibrary.ca. ‘An act of repaying a wrong or injury suffered. Formerly also of the person inflicting the original wrong.’ A passage illustrative of Bacon’s use of revenge, although not the current passage, is cited in the OED. The OED passage cited occurs later in this essay: ‘Publique Revenges, are, for the most part, Fortunate.’ Francis Bacon, The Essays (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 4.38. (Essays are references by their number and line). 2 Bacon, Essays, 1.36–42. 3 According to Bacon, a life arranged according to ‘the Poles of Truth’. Bacon has established this premise in his first essay, ‘Of Truth.’ Ibid., 1.59–61. 4 Ibid., 4.16. In his essay, ‘Of Revenge,’ Bacon discusses private revenges and public revenges. This present analysis concerns only private revenges. For a discussion of public or political revenges see Howard B. White, ‘Bacon’s Imperialism’, The American Political Science Review 52.2 (1958): 487. 5 Bacon, Essays, 4.3. For a discussion of revenge in Bacon’s Wisdom of the Ancients see Heidi Doris Studer, ‘“Grapes Ill-Trodden…” Francis Bacon and the Wisdom of the Ancients’ (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 1992), 213-217. 6 ‘justice, n.,’ OED, Viewed 25 March 2011, http://www.oed.com.ezproxy. torontopubliclibrary.ca. ‘The administration of law, or the forms and processes attending it; judicial proceedings; in early use, Legal proceedings of any kind (obs.).’ This particular passage from Bacon is not cited by the OED as an explicit example of this usage of ‘justice.’

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If we were judges in our own cases, we would undermine both moral justice, which is a universal standard beyond the particular, and legal justice, which is an impartial standard applied to the particular. 8 Bacon, Essays, 2.5. 9 Ibid., 54. 10 Bacon quotes Timothy I, 1:8, and argues that it is essential to have just laws that are entrusted to competent and fair judges, who ‘remember, that their Office is…To interpret Law, and not to Make Law or Give Law.’ Bacon, Essays, 56.3. 11 Bacon, Essays, 4.6. 12 Ibid. 13 Faulkner, during a discussion of the ordering of the Essays, states that revenge and anger are provoked ‘as the human situation emerges as a state of aloneness in adversity.’ Robert K. Faulkner, Francis Bacon and the Project of Progress (London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1993), 43. 14 Bacon, Essays, 4.13. 15 There is, of course, a problem with this argument: Bacon does not establish a criteria or limit to what constitutes pleasure or profit. As such, any range of nefarious activates can be justified by this argument. 16 Bacon, Essays, 4.16. 17 Throughout the Essays, Bacon emphasises the essential goodness of man. Ibid., 4.14, 10.55, 11.34, and 13. 18 According to an extreme interpretation of Bacon’s argument, an inability to explain one’s behaviour is tantamount to exoneration. 19 Bacon, Essays, 4.14. 20 Ibid., 55.5. 21 Ibid., 53.3. 22 Ibid., 4.16. 23 Bacon states, ‘That which is past, is gone, and Irrevocable; And wise Men have Enough to doe, with things present, and to come.’ Ibid., 4.10-13. 24 Ibid., 4.36-37. 25 ‘green, adj. and n.,’ OED, Viewed 28 February 2011, http://www.oed.com.ez proxy.torontopubliclibrary.ca. ‘Unaltered by time or natural processes; fresh, new. Of a wound: Recent, fresh, unhealed, raw.’ 26 Bacon, Essays, 4.4. 27 Ibid., 4.7. 28 Ibid., 4.8-9. 29 Ibid., 4.8. 30 Ibid., 4.20. 31 There is, however, a danger in doing so: ‘Else, a Man’s Enemy, is still before hand, And it is two for one.’ Ibid., 4.23.

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Ibid., 4.5. Ibid. 34 Since they ‘are Desirous the party should know, when it commeth.’ Ibid., 4.2427. 35 Ibid., 4.27-28. 36 Ibid., 4.24. 37 In contrast, see Ronald Broude, ‘Revenge and Revenge Tragedy in Renaissance England,’ Renaissance Quarterly 28.1 (1975): 41; Moody E. Prior, ‘Bacon’s Man of Science,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 15.3 (1954): 364. 38 I follow Faulkner on this point: Bacon ‘shows that the problem is not the passion for revenge but choosing a foolish vehicle for one’s revenge, that is, a private vehicle.’ Faulkner, Francis Bacon and the Project of Progress, 102. 39 Vengeance need not be sought on a grand scale. 40 Bacon, Essays, 4.3. 41 Ibid., 4.16. 33

Bibliography Bacon, Francis. The Essays or Counsels, Civill and Morall. Edited with introduction and commentary by Michael Kiernan. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. Broude, Ronald. ‘Revenge and Revenge Tragedy in Renaissance England.’ Renaissance Quarterly 28, no. 1 (1975): 38-58. Faulkner, Robert K. Francis Bacon and the Project of Progress. London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1993. Prior, Moody E. ‘Bacon’s Man of Science.’ Journal of the History of Ideas 15.3 (1954): 348-370. Studer, Heidi D. ‘“Grapes Ill-Trodden…” Francis Bacon and the Wisdom of the Ancients.’ PhD diss., University of Toronto, 1992. White, Howard B. ‘Bacon’s Imperialism.’ The American Political Science Review 52.2 (1958): 470-498. Erin A. Dolgoy is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at Michigan State University.

Resentment and Valuation in the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche Bogdan Dragomirescu Abstract In the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche the analysis of resentment holds a pivotal place, being a focal point as regarding his investigation into the concepts of force, will, action and, most importantly, his work on the genealogy of morals. Due to the keen relation that ties resentment to morals, values and valuation, it i mplies primarily a movement of reevaluation, which Nietzsche sees as originating in the negative. The domain of the ethics becomes merely an extension of the moral judgment, as the values of good and evil are transformed into the ethical revaluations of good and bad, representing concepts that are derived from utilitarian perspectives. Thus resentment brings forth an act of reasoning that is of a dialectical nature and is derived from a process of active negation, expressing itself as a reaction. Reaction is entwined with passivity, as reaction is a non-action, while passivity is the non-acting. This is a consequence of the subject marked by the inability to act, as force becomes internalized and therefore force is no longer in the realm of acting, but a perception; hence, the moral qualifications are determined by the effect of the action as pertaining to the person suffering it. As the subject rejects an action as immoral, abstaining from acting becomes an emblem of a moral quality. Between force and revenge, resentment operates an ontological shift; the factual inability to act out resentment translates into opposition of forces. This does not occur in a quantitative fashion, approach which Nietzsche disputes, but as existent forces that the subject cannot act. The resulting opposition issues for resentment a positive act as it states itself as illusionary dialectical affirmation. This chapter will discuss the connection between resentment, the process of virtual assertion and the valuation it entails as a prospect of questioning creative action. Key Words: Resentment, revenge, morality, valuation, creation, decadence, herd, Christianity. ***** 1. Morality and Interpretation When Nietzsche states that there are no facts but only interpretations, 1 he fathoms not only the metaphysical way of thinking (namely Kant) as an illusion, but he goes against religious views as well. There are two statements that underline this fact: in his earlier Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche already considered that ‘there is no such thing as moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.’ 2 This was reiterated in the Will to Power, stating that it is his ‘leading

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__________________________________________________________________ doctrine;’ morality is an interpretation, a process of valuing that as such is guided by life itself. For the impact of the acts of interpretation and valuation, we can look at Twilight of the Idols, the section How the ‘True World’ Finally Became a Fable: the ‘true’ world is the world of the metaphysics, the world that since Plato’s intelligible realm of Ideas shadows the apparent world—appropriated by religion, then by philosophy (targeting namely Immanuel Kant). This ‘true’ world entangles the apparent one as merely a copy (see Plato), as the knowable surface grasped as phenomena (Kant) or as the preparatory stance of life before the ‘true’ world can be attained (Judeo-Christian interpretation). What this last assumption implies is, as Nietzsche sees it, a d enial of nature, instincts and senses, of the so called ‘apparent’ world in order to be able to reach nothing more than a promise. When he takes into consideration the interpretation that Christianity applies to the world, the first talk is of a moral interpretation. Nietzsche rises against it because moral interpretation is the manner in which life comes to be negated; against it he opposes the prospect of a naturalization of morals, aiming to take into question the nihilistic stance that a moral founded by appeal to the ‘beyond’ presupposes: ‘in place of ‘moral values,’ purely naturalistic values. Naturalization of morality.’ 3 2. Moralization and Destruction Moralization of the world is just another process through which values are created and attributed to life. This process is natural and is a compelling manifestation of force. Nietzsche states that ‘life itself compels us to fix values; life itself values through us, when we fix values.’ 4 But the problem with morality is that in applying its values it goes against life, against nature, positing values as repudiations; this process would be similar to active nihilism 5 by which destruction, namely of traditional views, is required prior to the creation of new values. Morality, in its Christian extension, attacks nature, the senses, instincts, attempting to de-naturalize man. Moralities and religions are the principal means by which one can modify men into whatever one likes; provided one is possessed of an overflow of creative, and can cause one’s will to prevail over long periods of time. 6 Taking into account the Christian process through which new values are ascribed to the world, multiple constitutive sources are identified: decadence, slave morality and herd mentality. These sources are not necessarily divergent prior to their unification in the Christian morality, as some of their values and constitutive elements are shared; what we focus on here is the prevalence of a specific character of opposition in the three perspectives that we indicate. This opposition converges into the stances of resentment and revenge and this convergence is seen as fundamental for Christian morality. Although different levels of employment are

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__________________________________________________________________ brought under scrutiny, they hold similar the requirement of a new interpretation, of a system of values that commonly go against life as force while maintaining it in the form of sickness and decrepitude. 3. Sources of Resentment and Revenge The positing of a ‘true’ world ‘promised to the wise, the pious, and the virtuous man’ 7 is primarily a consequence of refuting nature. This characterization of Christianity places it among the symptoms of decadence since decadence is defined as what goes against nature: ‘to have to combat the instincts—that is the formula for decadence.’ 8 The Christian chosen ones, represented by the ascetic priests, present traits that go against the affirmation of life—pity, compassion, virtue (defined morally, for Nietzsche suggests a return to the amoral virtu of the Renaissance, ‘virtue free from moralic acid,’ 9) but more crucially here is the mortification of the instincts and the refutation of the sense, therefore a denial of nature. Christianity cannot combat decadence; it only precipitates exhaustion. It is not decadence that pushes towards this revaluation that later comes to be incorporated into the Christian morals; the main antagonist is the positing of imaginary causes—morality set the cause in the beyond, and thus identifying guilt or sin in oneself is of consequence for the well-being of the individual. 10 Nietzsche, however, stresses the fact that decadence is not the outcome of the beyond; he contradicts this view because ‘cause and effect are confounded: decadence is not understood as physiological, and its results are taken to be the causes of the general indisposition: this applies to all religious morality.’ 11 The opposition to existing values follows the opposition to nature; here Nietzsche has in view the slave morality and the slave revaluation of the concepts of ‘good’ and ‘bad’. These concepts stem from the action of the agent and are viewed as ethical precepts. The revolt of the slaves operates a shift of values into the realm of morals. Nietzsche’s etymology of the concepts ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in The Genealogy of Morals, questionable though it may be, is nevertheless essential in discussing the nexus between revenge and values. Slave morality states an essential ‘No’ and through this act it is engaging in the sole affirmative act that it is capable of. This is because its ‘No,’ addressing the actions of the noble, means positing values, and thus creating, but these values are rooted in negation. As such, it does not operate an original creation, even its ‘Yes’ being a false affirmation. 12 The slave revolt in morality begins when the ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of those beings who are prevented from a genuine reaction, that is, something active, and who compensate for that with a merely imaginary vengeance. 13

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__________________________________________________________________ The initial couple (‘good’ and ‘bad) relates to the affirmation of life as a force, whereas the second one (‘good’ and ‘evil’) scrutinizes fractions of life in the immediate, social space. Action is transferred from its value in regard to life to a utilitarian perspective. The slave defines what is morally good as actions that have utility for him and the lot. The inseparability of agent and action 14 makes way for considerations of moral nature when the two become distinct. Thus, when the act is regarded as exterior to the subject but nevertheless as a continuation of the subject’s decision, the act becomes moral and consequently the subject faces blame or praise. The invention of free will is founded on this precept and it is here that resentment proceeds towards becoming vengeance—what is deemed as ‘evil’ 15 is not negated in this world. Inaction as the incapacity to act makes it necessary that revenge is reserved for another sphere, that of the ‘beyond.’ The utilitarian view is shared with the existence of the herd, a sphere that finds its apogee in the Christian moral world. Nietzsche mentions several times that Christian morals are those of the herd; same as with the former, the herd strives on the negation of the individual qua individual; it le vels every character, it r ises against the exceptional to the point that the herd is ‘where it is a virtue to be naught.’ 16 The positive accent the herd employs is the protection it provides for the individual; however, it demands complete submission. Translated into the Christian semiotic, the herd is the place where one specific figure can separate itself, presenting an ideal set of characteristics—the ascetic priest appears as the ideal figure of this morality and imposes himself as leader, demanding submission, 17 while on the other hand it can resolve the most dangerous conundrum inherent to this structure: defusing the resentment that otherwise, projected unto the ‘same,’ unto the internal lot, can lead to the disintegration of the social cluster. Imported into the Christian evaluation, the herd is marked by devaluation because it wilfully embraces the promise characteristic of the decadent spirit. If ‘the priest rules through the invention of sin,’ 18 he does so while importing a revengeful decadent mentality and attributing it to valuations of utility. 19 Since valuation within the herd is directed towards the existence of the herd as a whole, it promotes what is deemed beneficial on a l arge scale while meeting with opposition and distrustfulness all that appears as detrimental to its existence or that which cannot be fitted to a Procrustean set of rules. 20 4. Resentment, Revenge, and the Creation of Values Fundamental for the conception of Christian morality is the resentment it inherits from the world interpretation of the slaves. Slave morality begins with negation, but we must take notice that this act does not take the form of a fundamental negation as Nietzsche conceives it. He sees the act of creation as necessarily preceded by an act of negating the previous, traditional values, as we see for example in Zarathustra’s speech on the three metamorphoses, 21 and this act has to be one pertaining to critique. But as we see from The Genealogy of Morals,

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__________________________________________________________________ slave revolt does not entail looking back and evaluating; instead it looks outside. This outside is indispensable because negating is, here, a negation not of values, but of actions. ‘Slave morality always requires first an opposing world, a world outside itself’ 22—and against this world they release their ‘No’. Attributing a moral qualification of ‘evil’ to the outside, its own values are deducted logically as positive. Opposition to the ‘evil’ agent is defined as the suppression of the instinct to act the same way; Nietzsche questions this stance scrutinizing not the refraining from acting, but the inability to respond by acting. The slave world revolves around the realm of morality and its interpretation is always filtered through the optics of resentment. Thus, when Nietzsche refers to ancient Hebrew culture, he sees two classes of leaders—the priests and the warriors; the first gradually overcomes the latter as they impose precepts that contradict the actions regarded as natural in the ‘healthy’ individual. Nietzsche follows here two ideas; the powerlessness of the priestly caste leads to the manifestation of a co nceptual creation of values; on account of their powerlessness, the priests embody the most extreme hate 23 and both factors find an outlet through revaluation at the hands of a new moral that is their expression for revenge against the strong. Revenge is at this point of a transcendent order as Nietzsche makes a note of it in The Genealogy of Morals: the priests ‘knew how to get final satisfaction from their enemies and conquerors through a radical transformation of their values, that is, through an act of the most spiritual revenge.’ 24 However, in order to exact revenge to its fullest, it has to be ordained into the immediate. This is the manifestation of a continuous attempt to ‘improve’ mankind and, first of all, the noble caste. This act can only draw on the most profound expression of decadence, as ‘improving’ consists in depravation of the concrete by the beyond. Nietzsche emphasises this stance more than once; for instance: Moral sentiment has this in common with religious sentiment: it believes in realities which do not exist. Morality is only an interpretation of certain phenomena, or, more definitely, a misinterpretation of them. Moral sentiment belongs, like religious sentiment, to a stage of ignorance in which the very notion of the real, the distinction between the real and the imaginary, is yet lacking. 25 Christianity appears only as an exaggerated copy of the Jewish morality; 26 above this, however, dominates its being the homogenization of slave morality, decadence and herd mentality. Of this, decadence would appear as the basest as it attempts revenge on life itself. Against the other two ideologies, decadence appears as lacking practical consequences; it just deploys the concept of ‘cause’ in the ‘beyond.’ But second to the revenge against the nobles and to the revengeful

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__________________________________________________________________ tendencies exacted within the herd as exclusion of the ‘evil’ doer, decadence is instated in a similar position by moralizing nature—the senses become antagonists. The ascetic priest dominates this homogenization. He is resembled to the tarantulas and named the most dangerous master of creation. His values are founded by the appeal to the idea of justice, but the source of his justice is resentment and denial, the tendency and desire to punish and rule. 27 Therefore do I tear at your web, that your rage may lure you out of your den of lies, and that your revenge may leap forth from behind your word ‘justice.’ Because, for man to be redeemed from revenge - that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms. 28 What does the priest actually create if resentment becomes active only as a mechanical negation and opposite stance? Ideologically, he creates the promise of eternal blessedness; he establishes the realm of guilt and sin as a means of empowerment and for his opportunity to punish. The priest is a logical consequence of the unification of the three world views discussed above, as he negates nature (decadence), justifies inaction (slave morality) and acts as element of cohesion (the herd). 29 Nevertheless, his motives are selfish and a d erivative of the will to power; will to power valuating—this turns the priest into a genuine creator. But creative action is affirmative action, i.e., affirmative force, opposed to the reactive forces that derive from resentment. Nevertheless, Nietzsche emphasises that ‘judgements, valuations with regard to life, for or against, can ultimately never be true: they only possess value as symptoms, they only come into consideration as symptoms.’ 30 In the end, the priest himself represents a symptom of the demise of Christianity at the hands of its own morality. 31 Nietzsche’s considerations for the priest are problematic; when he sees the priest as ‘that professional denier, calumniator and poisoner of life,’ 32 he talks about the implications that the moral judgements entail regarding life; the same, in a fragment dated shortly after the publication of The Genealogy of Morals, he states that ‘moral valuations are condemnations, negations; morality is the abdication of the will to live.’ 33 But in The Genealogy of Morals the priest is, on the contrary, only an ‘apparent enemy of living’, because Nietzsche goes on adding that ‘this man who denies—he belongs precisely with all the great conserving and affirming forces of life.’ 34 This stance does not imply inconsistency; denying life in its entirety goes against the priest’s impulse of imposing himself over life. He does not want its suppression because he is not a passive nihilist, i.e., the slaves that stop at the ‘No’ of the judgement. 35 He passes into the negation pertaining to the act; as a creator of values the priest passes into the active aspect of nihilism, aspect that does not concern itself with mere destruction, but implies an ongoing revaluation and positing of values. Granted, this revaluation goes against tradition for all active

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__________________________________________________________________ nihilism—Nietzsche saw himself as a decadent and a symptom of modern nihilism; but what tradition does the priest oppose? ‘An ascetic life is a self-contradiction’ 36 because its ‘No’ is addressed to forces, not concepts. It is through this optic that the priest must be understood, as he devalues life by ‘perverting’ its manifestations through morals, in order to empower himself over its basest constituents. 37

Notes 1

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values II, trans. Anthony M. Ludovici (Edinburgh and London: T.N. Foulis, 1914), §481. As it is customary in referencing Nietzsche’s works, all quotes and references are indicated in respect to the section and/or paragraph or aphorism in question. If not stated otherwise, emphasis is in the original text. 2 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, ed. Bill Chapko, trans. Helen Zimmern (1909), Viewed March, 2011, http://www.feedbooks.com/userbook/12170/pdf, §108. 3 Nietzsche, Will to Power I, §462. 4 Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer, ed. Bill Chapko, trans. Thomas Common (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1899), section Morality as Anti-nature, §5, accessed March, 2011, http://www. feedbooks.com/userbook/12170/pdf. 5 See Nietzsche, where active nihilism is seen ‘as a sign of an enhanced spiritual strength,’ and ‘as a powerful destructive force.’ Nietzsche, Will to Power I, §§ 22, 23. 6 Nietzsche, Will to Power I, §144. 7 Nietzsche, ‘How the True World finally became a Fable,’ Twilight of the Idols, section §4. 8 Nietzsche, ‘The Problem of Socrates,’ Twilight of the Idols, section §2. 9 Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘Why I Am So Clever, Part II,’ Ecce Homo: How One Becomes what One Is, ed. Bill Chapko, trans. Anthony M. Ludovici (Edinburgh and London: T. N. Foulis, 1911), §1, accessed March, 2011, http://www.feed books.com/ userbook/ 12170/pdf. Nietzsche also references this concept of virtu in The Will to Power I, §§ 317, 327. 10 Compare Nietzsche: ‘Fundamental aspect of the nature of decadence: what has heretofore been regarded as its causes are its effects.’ Nietzsche, Will to Power I, §41. 11 Nietzsche, Will to Power I, §44.3. 12 Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘The Awakening,’ Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, ed. Bill Chapko, trans. Thomas Common (Edinburgh and London: T. N. Foulis, 1909), Part IV, §17, accessed March, 2011, http://www.feedbooks.com/ userbook/12170/pdf.

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Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic, ed. Bill Chapko, trans. Horace B. Samuel (Edinburgh and London: T. N. Foulis, 1910) §10, accessed March, 2011, http://www.feedbooks.com/userbook/12170/pdf. 14 Compare Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom (‘La Gaya Scienza’), ed. Bill Chapko, trans. Thomas Common (Edinburgh and London: T. N. Foulis, 1910) §370, accessed March 2011, http://www.feedbooks.com/userbook/12170/pdf; Nietzsche, ‘The Pale Criminal,’ Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part I, §6, and Part II, §13, ‘The Sublime Ones.’ Most notably in Nietzsche, ‘“the doer” is a mere appendage to the action. The action is everything.’ Nietzsche, ‘Essay 1,’ On the Genealogy of Morals, §13. 15 This is one of the main consequences pertaining to the Christian morality; compare Nietzsche, ‘evil seemed full of meaning.’ Nietzsche, Will to Power I, §4.2. 16 Nietzsche, Will to Power I, §53. 17 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, trans. H. L. Mencken (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923) §26, accessed March 2011, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19322/ 19322-h/19322-h.htm. 18 Ibid., §49. 19 It must be observed that this act emerges from the priest alone; as Nietzsche mentions: ‘The instincts of the herd tend to a s tationary state of society; they merely preserve. They have no creative power.’ Nietzsche, Will to Power I, §285. 20 The herd employs a utilitarian morality; the superior exceptions – ‘the strong, the mighty, the wise, and the fruitful’ – become extensions of functions useful for the herd: herdsmen, watchmen, guardsmen. Compare Nietzsche, Will to Power I, §280. 21 Nietzsche, ‘The Three Metamorphoses,’ Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part I, §1. 22 Nietzsche, ‘Essay 1,’ On the Genealogy of Morals, §10. 23 Ibid., §7. 24 Ibid. 25 Nietzsche, ‘The ‘Improvers’ of Mankind,’ Twilight of the Idols, §1. 26 Nietzsche, Antichrist, §24. 27 All social virtues—pity, philanthropy, justice, etc.,—are viewed as physiological conditions. Compare Nietzsche: ‘justice as the development of the passion for revenge.’ Nietzsche, Will to Power I, §255. 28 Nietzsche, ‘The Tarantulas,’ Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part II, §7. 29 The priest is seen, within society, as being ‘support, resistance, protection, compulsion, discipline, tyrant, god. He has to defend his herd.’ Compare Nietzsche, ‘Essay 3: What Is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideals?’ On the Genealogy of Morals, §15. 30 Nietzsche, ‘The Problem of Socrates,’ Twilight of the Idols, §2.

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Compare Nietzsche, ‘Essay 3,’ On the Genealogy of Morals, §27. Man remaining sinful is necessary for the propagation of Christian morality, a state that contributes to the downfall of Christianity. See also Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits, trans. Helen Zimmern (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1914) §119, accessed March 2011, http://en.wikisource.org/ wiki/Human_All-Too-Human. 32 Nietzsche, Antichrist, §8. 33 Nietzsche, Will to Power I, §11. 34 Nietzsche, ‘Essay 3,’ On the Genealogy of Morals, §13. 35 Compare: ‘the negation by deeds proceeds from their nature.’ Nietzsche, Will to Power I, §24. 36 Nietzsche, ‘Essay 3,’ On the Genealogy of Morals, §11. 37 ‘Here a ressentiment without equal is in control, something with an insatiable instinct and will to power, which wants to become master, not over something in life but over life itself, over its deepest, strongest, most basic conditions.’ Ibid.

Bibliography Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. Edited by Bill Chapko. Translated by Helen Zimmern. 1909. Accessed March 2011. http://www.feedbooks.com/userbook/12170/pdf. ——— Ecce Homo: How One Becomes what One Is. Edited by Bill Chapko. Translated by Anthony M. Ludovici. Edinburgh and London: T. N. Foulis, 1911. Accessed March 2011. http://www.feedbooks.com/userbook/12170/pdf. ——— Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits. Translated by Helen Zimmern. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1914. Accessed March 2011. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Human_All-Too-Human. ——— On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic. Edited by Bill Chapko. Translated by Horace B. Samuel. Edinburgh and London: T. N. Foulis, 1910. Accessed March 2011. http://www.feedbooks.com/userbook/12170/pdf. ——— The Antichrist. Translated by H. L. Mencken. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923. Accessed March 2011. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19322/19322h/19322-h.htm.

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__________________________________________________________________ ——— The Dawn: Reflections on Moral Prejudices. Edited by Bill Chapko. Translated by J. M. Kennedy. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1911. Accessed March 2011. http://www.feedbooks.com/userbook/12170/pdf. ——— The Joyful Wisdom (‘La Gaya Scienza’). Edited by Bill Chapko. Translated by Thomas Common. Edinburgh and London: T. N. Foulis, 1910. Accessed March, 2011. http://www.feedbooks.com/userbook/12170/pdf. ——— The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values I, II. Translated by Anthony M. Ludovici. London and Edinburgh: T.N. Foulis, 1914. ——— Thus Spoke Zarathustra. A Book for All and None. Edited by Bill Chapko. Translated by Thomas Common. Edinburgh and London: T. N. Foulis, 1909. Accessed March 2011. http://www.feedbooks.com/userbook/12170/pdf. ——— Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer. Edited by Bill Chapko. Translated by Thomas Common. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1899. Accessed March 2011. http://www.feedbooks.com/userbook/12170/pdf. Bogdan Dragomirescu is currently following doctorate studies at the ‘BabeşBolyai University,’ Cluj-Napoca, Romania. This work was funded by the operational program ‘Investing in people!’

Imagine Less Resentment: An Outline of an Ethical Encounter between Nietzschean and Bataillean Thought Concerning Revenge and War Stein A. Hevrøy Abstract This chapter emphasizes the ethical importance of Friedrich Nietzsche’s notion of revenge in connection with Georges Bataille’s conceptions of expenditure and war. What these two thinkers share is an understanding of the possibility of a damming up of affects that can lead to destructive outcomes if and when these affects finally burst out. The question, then, is how to avoid these destructive tendencies. In The Genealogy of Morals, the spirit of revenge is encapsulated by Nietzsche in the formula ‘I suffer: it must be somebody’s fault.’ Furthermore, Nietzsche says that the resentful man creates imaginary causes of his suffering in order to give this suffering meaning. This implies producing both an imaginary legitimization of revenge and a scapegoat as the focus of that revenge. According to Gilles Deleuze, the resentful individual described by Nietzsche is better characterized by the way of imagining revenge than the acting out of his or her vengeance. Although Deleuze seems only partially correct concerning Nietzsche’s thinking here, I see the fruitfulness of incorporating some of Bataille’s insight into my argument. Following neither Nietzsche nor Bataille to the letter, I argue that Bataille’s view of the heterogeneous fuehrer, a t ype that is able to channelize the affects of the masses, should be taken into account in order to illuminate, and further develop, the potentiality the concept of resentment presents in Nietzsche’s texts. This chapter offers an ethical reading of Nietzsche’s philosophy as it u nderlines the potential violent effects of resentment while drawing upon insights from the Nietzsche-inspired Bataille, namely that war is generated from certain affective tendencies. The task is to investigate how vengeful affects are generated, and their possible effects, in order to understand how these destructive affects and effects may be avoided. Key Words: Nietzsche, Bataille, ethics, ethical, resentment, revenge, amor fati, war. ***** 1. Introducing Nietzsche: Meaning, Resentment and the Figure of the Priest One of Nietzsche’s important insights is that one can withstand suffering, as long as it is not experienced as meaningless suffering. 1 When encountering meaningless suffering, the tendency is to create meaning in order to be able to cope with it. The strategy of meaning creation is that of finding someone to blame, i.e. a

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__________________________________________________________________ scapegoat towards whom the sufferer may direct his or her hatred. Thus understood, resentment involves the production of meaning. According to Nietzsche, becoming human involves refusing the body’s spontaneous outbursts of energy: the child’s play must be controlled so that it is possible to inscribe language and the social onto its body. 2 The problem is that when forces cannot be released they will turn inwards. What this means for Nietzsche is that the process of subjectivation leads to a lasting suffering since we from the beginning of life have been taught, or even forced, to keep our energies in check. Energy thus turned inwards is in confrontation with the body, resulting in suffering. Furthermore, this suffering lies at an unconscious level since it has happened to us at such an early age. Nietzsche writes that: All instincts which do not find a vent without, turn inwards – this is what I mean with the growing ‘internalization’ of man: consequently we have first growth in man, of what subsequently was called his soul. The whole inner world, originally as thin as if it had been stretched between two layers of skin, burst apart and expanded proportionally, and obtained depth, breadth, and height, when man’s external outlet became obstructed. … this is the origin of the ‘bad conscience’… But thereby he introduced that most grave and sinister illness, from which mankind has not yet recovered, the suffering of man from the disease called man… 3 The ‘bad conscience’ that Nietzsche is talking about here (what Freud would call the ‘sense of guilt’) is an unconscious suffering that has arisen from our process of subjectivation. It thus follows that resentment is likely to occur since this suffering is experienced as meaningless (as this suffering is impossible to unravel as a result of its unconscious cause). An important ethical insight for Nietzsche is seeing suffering as necessary, which he formulates in amor fati, ‘love of (one’s) fate,’ 4 i.e. to love all sides of life, suffering included. What is ethically fruitful is here derived from Nietzsche’s ‘yes’ to all facets of life, since the resentful ‘no’ to suffering is likely to increase what it seeks to cope with. The logic of resentment in Nietzsche’s thinking implies that any suffering in life can generate resentment as long as it isn’t interpreted as necessary. From the perspective of the resentful, blame is legitimate and just. For Nietzsche so-called legitimate blame is rooted in an imaginary cause connected to giving meaning to suffering. As an ethical critique, Nietzsche thus writes: … many of them suffered too much – so they want to make others suffer. … And others are proud of their handful of justice and for its sake commit outrages against all things, such that the

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__________________________________________________________________ world is drowned in their injustice. … when they say: ‘I am just’, it always sounds like: ‘I am just avenged!’ 5 The resentful seeks revenge, but this revenge does not need to be physically violent. As Deleuze points out, Nietzsche often calls resentment ‘the spirit of revenge’. The term is not understood by Deleuze primarily as a designation of an action of vengeance but to a greater extent as revenge imagined in spirit. But, as I will show later, resentment may also have actual violent consequences. The dangers concerning the problem of revenge lie not only in the logic of resentment, but also in that resentful forces may be controlled by authorities. In The Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche interprets the figure of the priest as one that is capable of turning the affects of resentment against the resentful themselves: from saying that somebody else is to blame for one’s suffering, one now blames oneself. This is called sin. My point is that the priest is an example of a figure that has power over how others people’s affects are directed and let out (if let out at all). I will return to this later. 2. Introducing Bataille: The General Economy and Fascism’s Affective Character The general economy in Bataille’s work is a cosmology which focuses on the sun’s giving of energy and the earth’s reception of it. There is excess of energy since the sun gives without taking anything back, which results in growth on the earth. Bataille’s insight regarding this cosmologic is that growth has to stop at some point: the excess energy will rid itself either by willed squandering or by an unwilled catastrophe. 6 It is an accursed share. Bataille sees the willed squandering of excess energy in, for example, the sacrifices of ancient festivals. Today we lack such a pressure valve in society. In Theory of Religion Bataille emphasizes the importance of willed destruction: The principle of sacrifice is destruction, but though it sometimes goes as far as to destroy completely (as in holocaust), the destruction that sacrifice is intended to bring about is not annihilation. 7 War is the most destructive and likely outcome of an ongoing accumulation of energy. This is why Bataille’s ethical focus is that of gift, expenditure. We can see a co nnection between Nietzsche and Bataille here, namely that danger is involved when forces are detained and accumulated. For Nietzsche forces that are refused their outlet generate resentment: for Bataille accumulation of energy generates war. Both movements are destructive. As early as 1670 Spinoza identified a ce ntral aspect of fascism, namely the dangerous tendency to desire one own slavery which makes people invest all their

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__________________________________________________________________ power into one person (the tyrant). 8 In 1933 Reich had similar insights as Spinoza, recognizing that the masses welcomed their own subordination with an ‘intense desire for a führer.’ 9 As Spinoza and Reich, Bataille does not accept that the people are being misled when following a tyrant: rather, a necessary condition for fascism is that people desire to ‘fight for their servitude’ 10 when they follow their leader. The general insight we must bring forth from these thinkers is that fascism is grounded in affective tendencies rather than being ideological and rational. On this matter, Bataille writes that: The affective flow that unites him [the führer] with his followers … is a function of the common consciousness of increasingly violent and excessive energies and powers that accumulate in the person of the leader and through him become widely available. 11 What the führer leads is the bodily affects of the masses as he manages to channelize these affects: The opportunity of a führer is given when the affects of a people reach the boiling point. Such pent up energies are the material for the führer´s work. Not unlike the figure of the priest, the führer’s capacities are linked to him being treated as a sacred person by his followers, making it possible for him to direct and control affects. 12 3. The Encounter: Bringing Nietzsche together with Bataille According to Nietzsche, the spirit of revenge is a result of reactive forces. In Nietzsche and Philosophy, Deleuze underscores that the resentful are not capable of re-acting; resentment is the mere result of a lasting imprint, a pain one cannot rid oneself of. Although Deleuze finds that ‘ressentiment’s revenge’ 13 may be actual and not only imagined, the strong emphasis placed by Deleuze is on the incapability, the impotence, of the resentful regarding action. Contrary to Deleuze, my focus is on the actual violence which resentment might generate. This is because someone may actually become the target of the ‘ressentiment’s revenge’ even though the resentful sufferer’s scapegoat is the result of an ‘imaginary cause.’ 14 The priest’s need to control the masses indicates the actual dangers of resentment. The trick of the priest is to turn the direction of blame against the resentful so that they blame themselves: ‘Ressentiment said ‘it is your fault,’ bad conscience says ‘it is my fault’.’ 15 Sin is a tool for the priest who has to continually work with the problem of destructive affects in the masses since it ‘builds up a destructive potential within the masses that threatens to burst all the close and necessary relationships...’ 16 In The Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche is aware that resentment has a violent potential and he relates this problem to the function of the priest:

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__________________________________________________________________ … he [the priest] protects them also against themselves, against the sparks (even in the centre of the herd) of wickedness, knavery, malice, and all the other ills that the plaguey [Süchtigen] and the sick are heir to; he fights with cunning, hardness, and stealth against anarchy and against ever imminent break-up inside the herd, where resentment, that most dangerous blasting-stuff and explosive, ever accumulates and accumulates. … Every sufferer, in fact, searches for a cause of his suffering; to put it more exactly, a d oer, – to put it s till more precisely, a sentient responsible doer, – in brief, something living, on which, either actually or in effigy, he can on any pretext vent his emotions [affekte]. 17 In the quote above, Nietzsche underlines the problem of violence in connection with resentment. It is thus my understanding that the problem of resentment may soon become the problem of annihilation, and that the priest and the führer know this. Both the priest and the führer have the power to channelize the affects of the masses in the direction they desire: the priest tries to diminish it while the führer seeks to use it for annihilation. It may be fruitful to see the problems Bataille is striving with, namely fascism in 1933, through a Nietzschean optic: is not resentment, i.e. the persisting desire for blaming someone else for one’s suffering, a necessary condition for Nazism and fascism? And, to see a N ietzschean problem through Bataille’s eyes: those affective blow outs that the priest tries to hinder, the führer will channelize through warfare. Thus, in the insights regarding excess of energy in Bataille’s thought, and the logic of resentment from Nietzsche’s, we find both worries and ethical fruitfulness. Worries since we, given that we take Nietzsche and Bataille seriously, can see the destructive outcomes which resentment and accumulated energies might have. It is ethically fruitful since Nietzsche and Bataille present antidotes to the tendency of annihilation through their philosophies of the affirmation of life (Nietzsche) and willed expenditure (Bataille). 4. The Ethics of Surplus Squandering is vitally present in both Nietzsche’s and Bataille’s ethics. For Nietzsche there is something healthy and ethical in giving and forgetting. On this, Schrift writes that: ‘Without forgetting, the gift will stand as a debt to be repaid later rather than as a generous donation.’ 18 As Bataille, Nietzsche sees the nonuseful gift, the bestowing, as virtuous. We can connect these ethical notions of gift with the dangers of the spirit of revenge and destructive squandering (which Schrift points out when he writes on ‘Nietzschean Economics’, claiming that it goes ‘From Revenge to Expenditure’ 19). What Nietzsche calls the ‘Bestowing Virtue’ is radically different from the resentful that thirsts for revenge. Where the vengeful is

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__________________________________________________________________ driven by a feeling of a lack of justice, the healthy is characterized by generosity. Nietzsche’s conception of amor fati is important in this connection. In order to love (one’s) fate one must love all of it. The ethical logic I find in Nietzsche’s thinking is: if we accept the suffering of the past we are less inclined to seek revenge. The ethics of surplus I propose calls for a Nietzschean perspectivism. Nietzsche claims that it is with our bodies we understand. Inspired by Spinoza who emphasizes the relation between understanding and the body’s capacity to be affected, 20 Nietzsche sees that it is through affects we understand. According to Nietzsche, we are cut off from understanding if we are not open to the affects of the body. 21 Being open to bodily change (sickness, ecstasy, aging…), as Nietzsche suggests through the ethics of amor fati, is vital for creating new insights. Nietzsche is especially concerned with sickness in regards to opening up new insights, saying that ‘A philosopher that has passed through many kinds of health … has passed through an equal number of philosophies.’ 22 Thus, not only is there excess energy, but these forces can also make themselves count philosophically as an excess of perspectives. In contrast to the spirit of revenge that presents an (imagined) clear understanding concerning who is to blame, who is good and who is evil, Nietzsche’s thinking goes beyond good and evil, problematizing how these categories are generated and what the value of these values are. In other words, the perspectivism that Nietzsche presents is in stark contrast to the viewpoint of a follower of a führer. 23 Thus, although my reading of resentment differs from Deleuze’s view, the following words on Nietzsche seem striking: ‘Nazism is a recent disease on this earth. … Nietzsche thought of the philosopher as the physician of civilization.’ 24 According to Nietzsche, resentment is a symptom of sickness which amor fati may be the remedy for; Bataille finds medicine to be willed expenditure against the unwilled destructive effects of accumulation. My proposal is thus that these two thinkers may well be read, individually or together, as ethical thinkers from which we have much to learn.

Notes 1

I am very grateful to Ralph Jewell, Torolf Myklebust, Helge Pettersen, Kristin Sampson and Anel Méndez Velázquez for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. Thanks to Helge Pettersen for inspiration and encouragement. Any shortcomings in this chapter are of course my own responsibility. 2 Compare Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals (New York: Dover Publication Inc, 2003), 56. 3 Ibid., 56-57. 4 ‘Love of (one’s) fate’ is the translation of amor fati used in Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 157.

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__________________________________________________________________ 5

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and Nobody (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 78, 82. 6 Compare Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy I (New York: Zone Books, 2002), 21. 7 Georges Bataille, Theory of Religion (New York: Zone Books, 2001), 43. 8 Compare Baruch de Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (Leiden & New York: Brill Paperbacks, 1991), 51. 9 Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism (London: Souvenir Press (E&A) LTD, 1997), 281. 10 Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 51. 11 Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 143. 12 Compare Ibid., 144. 13 Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy (London & New York: Continuum, 2002), 116. 14 Compare Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (London & New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 61. 15 Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 132. 16 Helge Pettersen, Nietzsche: Lidelse og Menneskedannelse (Bergen: Ariadne Forlag, 1991), 102. (Translation mine). 17 Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, 91. 18 Allan D. Schrift, Nietzsche’s French Legacy: A Genealogy of Poststructuralism (New York & London: Routledge, 1995), 152. 19 Ibid., 84. 20 Compare Baruch de Spinoza, Ethics (London: Wordsworth Editions, 2001), 62. 21 Compare Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, 86. Note that the word Nietzsche used is ‘affekte’, while it is translated into ‘emotions’ here. 22 Nietzsche, Gay Science, 6. 23 Clarity is something Deleuze and Guattari warn against as well in their analysis of microfascism. See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (London & New York: Continuum, 2003), 227-228. 24 Gilles Deleuze, ‘On Nietzsche and the Image of Thought,’ in Desert Island and Other Texts, ed. David Lapoujade (Los Angeles & New York: Semiotext(e), 2004), 140.

Bibliography Bataille, Georges. The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy I. New York: Zone Books, 2002.

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__________________________________________________________________ ———. Theory of Religion. New York: Zone Books, 2001. ———. Visions of Excess. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Deleuze, Gilles. Nietzsche and Philosophy. London & New York: Continuum, 2002. ———. ‘On Nietzsche and the Image of Thought.’ In Desert Island and Other Texts, edited by David Lapoujade, 135-142. Los Angeles & New York: Semiotext(e), 2004. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. London & New York: Continuum, 2003. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Anti-Christ. London & New York: Penguin Books, 1990. ———. The Gay Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ———. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and Nobody. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. ———. The Genealogy of Morals. New York: Dover Publication Inc, 2003. ———. Twilight of the Idols. London & New York: Penguin Books, 1990. Pettersen, Helge. Nietzsche: Lidelse og menneskedannelse, Fortolkningsforsøk i Nietzsches filosofi. Ariadne Forlag, Bergen, 1991. ———. Vinden fra utsiden. Bergen: Filosofisk institutts skriftserie nr. 23, Universitetet i Bergen, 2004. Reich, Wilhelm. The Mass Psychology of Fascism. London: Souvenir Press (E&A) LTD, 1997. Schrift, Allan. D. Nietzsche’s French Legacy: A Genealogy of Poststructuralism. New York & London: Routledge, 1995. Spinoza, Baruch. Ethics. London: Wordsworth Editions, 2001.

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__________________________________________________________________ ———. Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Leiden & New York: Brill Paperbacks, 1991. Stein A. Hevrøy has an MA in philosophy from the University of Bergen, Norway, and is a member of the research groups ‘Subjectivation and late modernity’ and ‘Philosophy, language and art’ at the Department of Philosophy, University of Bergen.

PART II Revenge in History

Survival and Decline of the Right to Vengeance at the Turn of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period in a City of the Low Countries (Namur, 14th-17th Centuries) Aude Musin Abstract In his study on people’s morals and the right to vengeance in the Low Countries, a highly urbanised and populated area, in the 15th century (1908), Charles PetitDutaillis established a distinction between two trends: whereas public action was superseding vengeance in Flanders as a way to settle conflicts, vengeance was still to endure a long time in the counties of Namur and Hainaut, as well as in Brabant. The Haute Cour, the court in charge of judicial matters in the capital of the County of Namur, has produced many archives from the 14th century until the end of the Ancien Regime. These archives shed light on vengeance appearing within cases of physical violence. A true right to vengeance indeed still existed at the end of the Middle Ages in the County. The court knew the rules according to which vengeance was allowed to be carried out, and many examples show how families asked the court for advice when they had doubts. Concurrently, urban authorities tried to restrict the use of vengeance, at least from the 14th century onwards. By punishing less serious cases of violence through a fine system according to which vengeance was more expensive, they made an attempt for stopping the process escalating as long as they still could. They encouraged peaceful solutions to conflicts and restricted the possibilities for carrying out vengeance, notably as for homicidal vengeance. The Namur’s case testifies to the part that towns, at first, played in framing vindicatory violence. Chronologically speaking, the State was the second actor to come into play with an attempt for eradicating vengeance. I will therefore consider the trails left by vengeance in urban judicial sources, the way urban justice framed it, and how urban and state authorities’ perception of vengeance changed from the 14th century until the beginning of the 17th century. Key Words: Justice, Violence, Assault, Homicide, Middle Ages, Early Modern Period, Low Countries, Cities. ***** In the highly urbanised and populated area of the Low Countries, ruled by the Burgundians, and later on by the Habsburgs, the urban judicial authorities have left a great amount of sources. Their study shows how violence takes part in urban life, how it takes form within it, and how communities have dealt with the bursts of emotions that risked jeopardising the order within the city through private agreements and modulated sanctions pronounced by the urban courts. 1 Towns would thereby have contributed to the decline of violence in the long run. 2

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__________________________________________________________________ In 1908, Charles Petit-Dutaillis published a study on people’s morals and the right to vengeance in the Low Countries in the 15th century. He established a distinction between two trends: whereas public action was superseding vengeance in Flanders, vengeance was still to endure for a long time in the Counties of Namur and Hainaut, as well as in Brabant and in Saint-Omer. 3 The city of Namur was the only real city of the rural County of Namur, with 8,000 inhabitants in the beginning of the 15th century. It was the political, economic, administrative, and judicial centre of the county. The Haute Cour (a body regrouping magistrates and aldermen of the city) was in charge of judicial matters in all cases involving town’s burgers or in the urban area and the surrounding villages. 4 This court has produced a great many archives from the 14th century until the end of the Ancien Regime. Analysing these archives makes it possible to shed light on the way vengeance was considered in the framework of interpersonal violence and on the changes in the way it was perceived. We will therefore consider the trails left by vengeance in urban judicial sources, the reasons why it was recorded, the way urban justice framed it at the beginning of the analysed period, and how the perceptions of vengeance changed from the 14th century until the beginning of the 17th century. 1. How and Why Vengeance was Recorded within Judicial Sources It is impossible to determine what triggers violence in all cases. It is only explicitly specified for a very restricted share of violent acts, that is to say, for one homicide in five and only for 6.5 % of assault cases. Among the cases for which the motivation of violence is specified, insults, blows, or a homicide committed on a third party justify nearly 20 % of homicides and assaults. Most often, violence is triggered by a p ersonal offence. By crossing the available sources, it is also possible to consider that other types of violence may be explained by vengeance. For instance, in 1377, disrespecting a non-aggression agreement sealed between two families (the Robart and the de Flawinne), Jehenin de Flawinne attacked a cousin of the Robart. A few months later, a member of the Robart family killed Ernart de Flawinne, who was Jehenin de Flawinne’s uncle. Two years later, Henon Robart died after being attacked by one of the de Flawinne’s relatives. 5 These different events are not explicitly related to each other in sources, but any historian would consider them as connected and would imagine that an initial violent act (unknown in this case) might have triggered a cy cle of violence between both households concerned. In the sentence records of the urban aldermen, 6 vengeance is recorded for different reasons. First, an act of violence may have been declared to judicial authorities by the offender: if the author of a serious act of violence confessed his offence to the justice within a determined timeframe, he would get away with the penal consequences of his crime. When they denounced themselves to the authorities, the authors of violence explained the circumstances and the reasons for what they had done. A vengeance could also be mentioned in the records

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__________________________________________________________________ establishing peace between the warring parties or enabling to avoid war; or because a contestation had been filed after the end of the conflict (breaking of peace, truces and etc.); or following a request to clarify the rules of vengeance by the parties: the members of the lineages requested the aldermen for advice in order to know which individual had to lead the war – notably when the closest male heir was minor of age – or to stay out of the conflict. 7 Vengeance does not appear in these records because vindicatory violence was prohibited, but rather because several procedures were implemented that enabled framing it and preventing the emergence of a never-ending cycle of violence over time and in the number of potentially involved individuals. So there are trails of the existence and survival of a ‘right to vengeance’ in Namur in the 14th century and until at least the mid-15th century. 2. The Restrictions of the Right to Vengeance Revenge was theoretically forbidden on the territory of Namur’s franchise (that is to say the town and the surrounding villages), at least from the last third of the 14th century. 8 In 1377, the mayor of the Haute Cour pleaded for the death penalty against a man that committed a homicide par bonne vengance (out of justified revenge) within the area of the franchise. This means that homicides motivated by vengeance were only sued according to the place where they were committed. 9 In 1477, the Grand Privilège decreed by Mary of Burgundy aimed at restricting feuds. Indeed, this text forbids extending revenge to relatives who did not take any part in the quarrel under pain of corporal punishment. However, the charter never mentions a s trict ban on the practice of vengeance. 10 Other measures were advocated for in order to restrict the number of feuds: for instance, the injures (coming from the Latin word injuria, encompassing both verbal and physical violence) that are likely to provoke such feuds had to be handled by justice courts. Can we regard this text as a will of the prince to restrict vengeance? 11 The charter was granted in the wake of the States’ claims that followed Charles the Bold’s death. The region of Namur, as other principalities, ‘took advantage of central power’s weakness to be granted privileges that confirmed local and regional ambitions.’ 12 As a matter of fact, the Namur’s States were widely dominated by the urban aspect at the time. The content of the Grand Privilège was mainly dictated by the corporations and by the urban aldermen. 13 Therefore, it was probably the urban authorities’ will to restrict the consequences of vengeance to the offenders and to ban retaliations carried out against the offenders’ relatives. The same went for the measures taken in order to prevent feuds from being triggered. Though the urban aldermen respected the right to vengeance of the people without necessarily condemning it, its practice was nonetheless regulated. Moreover, the aldermen authorised, and sometimes imposed, procedures to conclude agreements in order to avoid vengeance and never-ending violence: truces, asseurements and peace agreements, concluded under the aegis of aldermen or private arbitrators, were written down in the records of the aldermen.

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__________________________________________________________________ Theoretically serious punishments – that is death – were pronounced if these agreements were broken. Besides these agreements between parties concerned that enabled to stem the tide of vengeance, violence also had to be redeemed before justice by paying a certain amount of money. Within the more specific framework of assault, justice also intervened in order to frame vengeance. Two types of fines were used as sanctions for assault: according to the custom of Namur, assaults defined as sans haine (without premeditation) were sanctioned by a fine of one obole, whereas a fine of ten oboles 2/3 punished the violence committed d’aguet apensé, sur haine ou ragressement (assault with premeditation, heinous assault, or revenge). 14 Thus, assaults were distinguished according to their purpose. The fine used for sanctioning vindicatory violence was severe, as it corresponded to 160 days of work for a mason apprentice in 1465. Nonetheless, of the 335 fines for mêlées sur haine (heinous assault), only twenty were completely paid. The amount of the fine was reduced: it only comprised between three and four oboles in more than half the cases. The moderation of the fine indicates a ‘certain trivialisation of violence,’ 15 but not a lack of interest for it b y urban justice. By sanctioning middle-range violence with moderated fines and by more severely punishing vengeance and premeditation, its purpose was to prevent violence from degenerating into conflicts with more dramatic consequences. It tried to put an end to the vengeance process while it still could. 3. The Changes in the Perception of Vengeance From the second half of the 15th century, letters of remissions were preserved that were related to the town or the rest of the county, and granted by the Dukes of Burgundy and the first Habsburgs. As for homicide, from that period onwards, it is mainly that source that provides with information on its motivations. The way vengeance is addressed in these letters testifies to a change towards its rejection. Vengeance was never explicitly put forward as an excuse in any of the letters granted to people falling within the jurisdiction of Namur’s aldermen. However, some letters referred to it indirectly. 16 By contrast, several counter-murders avenging the death of a relative, committed in the rest of the county, were granted a remission by the prince. 17 For instance, Raesquin de Froidebise had been murdered by one of his rivals for the position of mayor. Five years later, the assassin's uncle was killed par vengance by Raesquin’s relatives, among whom was the supplicant of the remission. The supplicant’s narratives indicated that no request for clemency had been sent to the prince since it was unnecessary for vengeance cases that occurred in the countryside. 18 The remission request was only made after the supplicant was sued nearly fifty years after the facts. So, revenge homicide could still give way to a remission at the end of the reign of Charles The Bold, but it was no longer so tolerated as to let its author get away with his crime without a remission granted by the prince. Another letter, granted at the beginning

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__________________________________________________________________ of the 16th century, forgave a gentilhomme (gentleman) of the county for the murder of one of those responsible for the death of his father, who was murdered d’aguet et de fait appensé (with premeditation) when the supplicant was only two years old. According to his narrative, the inhabitants constantly criticised him for not avenging his father’s death. 19 This indicates that the need for avenging one’s kin’s death still persisted in the countryside population’s minds at the beginning of the 16th century. Subsequently, as well in letters concerning the city and the countryside, supplicants denied having acted out of vengeance: the supplicants were attacked by someone who wanted to take revenge on them, allegedly for a false pretext, and they merely defended themselves after trying to avoid the fight. This change in the letters does not necessarily imply that vengeance was abandoned by the population, but rather that there was a new conception of the homicide, which was regarded as a crime from which one could be redeemed thanks to the prince’s clemency. From that time on, vengeance was no longer a valid argument to be granted forgiveness. In the Low Countries during the 16th century, the only types of homicide for which offenders could be granted a remission were those committed out of self-defence or by accident, a trend that continued over the next century. 20 As a result, the supplicant’s narratives had to present the homicide as an act of legitimate defence and/or committed out of fear, anger, drunkenness, or by accident. The way the act was presented did not necessarily match the reality. This change has to be placed in the more general context of the regulation of homicide, and its criminalisation under the impulse of the prince. This vision is tributary of sources and mostly reflects a new conception of homicidal violence by urban authorities. Yet did vengeance truly disappear? In the 16th century, yet, at least one example remains of vengeance claimed before the urban authorities as a justification for blows: in 1524, Gerardin Bauduin assaulted a woman in his house. She died as a result of her wounds. As the event took place at night and in secrecy, Gerardin was suspected of committing a murder. The defendant explained that he meant to take revenge on her for the insults she had uttered against him. The aldermen, who dropped the charges for murder, only sanctioned him for the wounds he inflicted the woman. He had to make amends by paying a fine and making a pilgrimage to Rome. 21 This sole 16th century example of a homicide judged by the aldermen without death penalty still reflects the positive conception of revenge homicide. In the minds of the aldermen, vengeance constituted at least a mitigating circumstance and could not lead to death penalty. In view of the sources taken into account, which were produced by judicial institutions, possible changes in the perception of vengeance by the population are extremely difficult to comprehend. They mostly provide information on its perception and treatment by urban and princely authorities. However, as of the beginning of the 16th century, civil trial records have been preserved in which the accusatory procedures between parties were written down in order to get a

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Survival and Decline of the Right to Vengeance

__________________________________________________________________ compensation for injuries or insults. 22 These procedures between parties concerned, of which no example was preserved before the 16th century, could be a sign of an increasing resort to the judiciary instances to settle conflicts, rather than resorting to violence. However, it would be appropriate to analyse how the practice of duel developed, as several cases were pursued by Namur’s authorities in the 17th and 18th centuries, which seems to indicate that vengeance was still positively regarded by the population. 4. Conclusion The Namur’s case testifies to the part that two institutional entities played in framing vindicatory violence: the towns and the prince. A true right to vengeance indeed still existed at the end of the Middle Ages in the County. The aldermen knew the rules according to which vengeance was allowed to be carried out, and many examples show how families asked them for advice when they had doubts on it. Concurrently, urban authorities tried to restrict the use of vengeance, at least from the 14th century onwards. By punishing less serious cases of violence through a fine system according to which vengeance was more expensive, they made an attempt to stop the escalation process as long as they still could. They allowed and encouraged peaceful solutions to conflicts and restricted the possibilities for carrying out vengeance. Revenge homicide was forbidden within the town and its franchise’s area. This ban implies that the right to vengeance would legitimately endure until a later stage in the countryside. This seems to be confirmed by the analysis of the letters of remission. The remission was only granted for homicides committed in town that avenged personal harms or harms to family honour. This did not apply to vengeance that followed a relative’s homicide. By contrast, in rural areas, letters of remission were granted for homicidal vengeance until the early 16th century. Later on, vengeance was only mentioned in letters of remission as the victim’s intent and gained a negative connotation. This change is to be integrated with the wider context of homicide criminalisation, under the impulse of the prince. So, chronologically speaking, the State was the second party to come into play with an attempt for eradicating vengeance. The clemency policy of the prince gradually contributed to making people acknowledge vengeance as an unacceptable conflict settlement method.

Notes 1

Several scholars studied the mechanisms of violence regulation in an urban context, especially in Flanders, where 36% of the population lived in town at the end of the Middle Ages. Compare Raoul C. Van Caenegem, Geschiedenis van het strafrecht in Vlaanderen van de XIde tot de XIVde eeuw (Bruxelles: Koninklijke Vlaamse academie voor wetenschappen, letteren en schone kunsten van België,

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__________________________________________________________________ 1954); David M. Nicholas, ‘Crime and Punishment in Fourteenth-Century Ghent,’ Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 68 (1970): 289-334, 1141-1176; Robert Muchembled, Le temps des supplices. De l’obéissance sous les rois absolus. XVeXVIIIe siècle (Paris: Armand Colin, 1992); Corien Glaudemans, Om die wrake wille. Eigenrichting, veten en verzoening in laat-middeleuws Holland en Zeeland (Hilversum: Verloren, 2004); Xavier Rousseaux, ‘Taxer ou châtier ? L’émergence du pénal. Enquête sur la justice nivelloise (1400-1650)’ (PhD diss., Université Catholique de Louvain, 1990); Maarten Van Dijck, ‘De pacificering van de Europese samenleving. Repressie, gedragspatronen en verstedelijking in Brabant tijdens de lange zestiende eeuw’ (PhD diss., Universiteit Antwerpen, 2007). 2 Xavier Rousseaux, Bernard Dauven and Aude Musin, ‘Civilisation des mœurs et/ou disciplinarisation sociale ? Les sociétés urbaines face à la violence en Europe (1300-1800),’ in Histoire de l’homicide en Europe de la fin du Moyen Âge à nos jours, ed. Laurent Mucchielli and Pieter Spierenburg (Paris: La Découverte, 2009), 273-321. 3 Charles Petit-Dutaillis, Documents nouveaux sur les mœurs populaires et le droit de vengeance dans les Pays-Bas au XVe siècle. Lettres de rémission de Philippe le Bon (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1908), 44-45, 131-132. 4 Regarding the Haute Cour, see Isabelle Paquay, Gouverner la ville au bas Moyen Âge : les élites dirigeantes de la ville de Namur au XVe siècle (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008). 5 Namur, State Archives in Namur (SAN), Haute Cour (HC), n° 1324, fol. 97v, 102v-103v, 109, 111 (1377), fol. 146 (1379). 6 Records preserved for years 1363-1383, 1383-1389, 1399-1415, 1416-1425, 1463-1467 and 1522-1540 (SAN, HC, n° 1324, 1325, 6, 1331, 1326, 1327). 7 Regarding the rules of the right to vengeance and war in the customs of the Namur’s area and concrete examples of war leaders' appointments by the aldermen, see Louis Wodon, ‘Le droit de vengeance dans le comté de Namur (XIVeXVe siècles)’, Annales de la faculté de philosophie et lettres de l’Université Libre de Bruxelles 1 (1889): 119-96. 8 This rule was formulated in a 1 377 record that was related to the abovementioned homicide of Ernart de Flawinne by Robechon Robart (SAN, HC, n° 1324, fol. 102v-103v, 109, 111 (11/12/1377)). 9 Wodon, ‘Le droit de vengeance,’ 133-35. 10 As assumed by Cécile Douxchamps-Lefèvre, ‘Le privilège de Marie de Bourgogne pour le comté de Namur (mai 1477),’ in Marie de Bourgogne, 1477, ed. Wim Blockmans (Heule: UGA, 1985), 249. 11 As suggested by Wodon, ‘Le droit de vengeance,’ 196. 12 Wim Blockmans, ‘L’histoire parlementaire dans les Pays-Bas et la Belgique, e e XII -XVII siècles’, in Las Cortes de Castilla y León, 1188-1988. Actas de la tercera

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__________________________________________________________________ etapa del Congreso Cientifico sobre la Historia de las Cortes de Castilla y León (26-30 de septiembre de 1988) (Valladolid: Cortes de Castilla y León, 1990), 182. 13 Josy Muller, ‘Les États du pays et comté de Namur au XVe siècle (1421-1510),’ (PhD diss., Université catholique de Louvain, 1948), 33. 14 Joseph Grandgagnage, ed., Coutumes de Namur et de Philippeville (Bruxelles: CAD, 1869), 16. 15 Muchembled, Le temps des supplices, 33. 16 Lille, Archives Départementales du Nord (ADN), B, n° 1708, fol. 30v (October 1492). 17 ADN, B 1694, fol. 74v, (December 1470); ADN, B 1695, fol. 18-18v (November 1473) ; ADN, B 1698, fol. 17v-18 (August 1475). Some other letters were published by Petit-Dutaillis, Documents nouveaux, 184-85, 198-99. 18 ADN, B 1698, fol. 17v-18 (August 1475). 19 […] pluiseurs des manans dudit lieu lui disoient journellement qu’il estoit bien laz de couraige qu’il ne vengoit le mort de sondit pere [many inhabitants of the place told him every day that he was a coward because he did not take revenge for his father’s death]. ADN, B 1714, fol. 30-31 (October 1502). 20 Marjan Vrolijk, Recht door gratie. Gratie bij doodslagen en andere delicten in Vlaanderen, Holland en Zeeland (1531-1567) (Hilversum: Verloren, 2004), 163233; Marie-Sylvie Dupont-Bouchat and Vincent Noel, ‘Le crime pardonné : les lettres de rémission du Conseil Provincial de Namur au XVIIe siècle,’ in Crimes, pouvoirs et sociétés (1400-1800). Anciens Pays-Bas et Principauté de Liège, ed. Marie-Sylvie Dupont-Bouchat and Xavier Rousseaux (Heule: UGA, 2001), 261-264. 21 SAN, HC, n° 1327, fol. 24-24v (1524). As for judicial pilgrimages in the Low Countries, compare Jan Van Herwaarden, Opgeledge bedevaarten. Een studie over de praktijk van opleggen van bedevaarten (met name in de stedelijke rechtspraak) in de Nederlanden gedurende de late middeleeuwen (ca 1300-ca 1550) (AssenAmsterdam: Van Gorcum, 1978). Étienne Van Cauwenbergh, Les pèlerinages expiatoires et judiciaires dans le droit communal de la Belgique au Moyen Âge (Louvain: Bureaux du Recueil de travaux publiés par les membres des conférences d’histoire et de philologie 1922). Charles Lamsoul, ‘Les pèlerinages judiciaires dans l’ancien droit namurois,’ in Études d’histoire et d’archéologie namuroises dédiées à Ferdinand Courtoy (Namur: Société archéologique de Namur, 1952), 419-22. 22 SAN, HC, from n° 1285.

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Bibliography Blockmans, Wim. ‘L’histoire parlementaire dans les Pays-Bas et la Belgique, XIIee XVII siècles’. In Las Cortes de Castilla y León, 1188-1988. Actas de la tercera etapa del Congreso Cientifico sobre la Historia de las Cortes de Castilla y León (26-30 de septiembre de 1988), 171-192. Valladolid: Cortes de Castilla y León, 1990. Douxchamps-Lefèvre, Cécile. ‘Le privilège de Marie de Bourgogne pour le comté de Namur (mai 1477).’ In Marie de Bourgogne, 1477, ed. Wim Blockmans, 235250. Heule: UGA, 1985. Dupont-Bouchat, Marie-Sylvie and Noel, Vincent. ‘Le crime pardonné : les lettres de rémission du Conseil Provincial de Namur au XVIIe siècle.’ In Crimes, pouvoirs et sociétés (1400-1800). Anciens Pays-Bas et Principauté de Liège, ed. MarieSylvie Dupont-Bouchat and Xavier Rousseaux, 219-271. Heule: UGA, 2001. Glaudemans, Corien. Om die wrake wille. Eigenrichting, veten en verzoening in laat-middeleuws Holland en Zeeland. Hilversum: Verloren, 2004. Grandgagnage, Joseph, ed., Coutumes de Namur et de Philippeville. Bruxelles: CAD, 1869. Lamsoul, Charles. ‘Les pèlerinages judiciaires dans l’ancien droit namurois’. In Études d’histoire et d’archéologie namuroises dédiées à Ferdinand Courtoy, 419422. Namur: Société archéologique de Namur, 1952. Muchembled, Robert. Le temps des supplices. De l’obéissance sous les rois absolus. XVe-XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Armand Colin, 1992. Muller, Josy. ‘Les États du pays et comté de Namur au XVe siècle (1421-1510).’ PhD diss., Université catholique de Louvain, 1948. Nicholas, David M. ‘Crime and Punishment in Fourteenth-Century Ghent.’ Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 68 (1970): 289-334, 1141-1176. Paquay, Isabelle. Gouverner la ville au bas Moyen Âge : les élites dirigeantes de la ville de Namur au XVe siècle. Turnhout: Brepols, 2008.

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__________________________________________________________________ Petit-Dutaillis, Charles. Documents nouveaux sur les mœurs populaires et le droit de vengeance dans les Pays-Bas au XVe siècle. Lettres de rémission de Philippe le Bon. Paris: Honoré Champion, 1908. Rousseaux, Xavier, Bernard Dauven, and Aude Musin. ‘Civilisation des mœurs et/ou disciplinarisation sociale ? Les sociétés urbaines face à la violence en Europe (1300-1800).’ In Histoire de l’homicide en Europe de la fin du Moyen Âge à nos jours. Edited by Laurent Mucchielli and Pieter Spierenburg, 273-321. Paris: La Découverte, 2009. Rousseaux, Xavier. ‘Taxer ou châtier? L’émergence du pénal. Enquête sur la justice nivelloise (1400-1650).’ PhD diss., Université Catholique de Louvain, 1990. Van Caenegem, Raoul C. Geschiedenis van het strafrecht in Vlaanderen van de XIde tot de XIVde eeuw. Bruxelles: Koninklijke Vlaamse academie voor wetenschappen, letteren en schone kunsten van België, 1954. Van Cauwenbergh, Étienne, Les pèlerinages expiatoires et judiciaires dans le droit communal de la Belgique au Moyen Âge. Louvain: Bureaux du Recueil de travaux publiés par les membres des conférences d’histoire et de philologie, 1922. Van Dijck, Maarten. ‘De pacificering van de Europese samenleving. Repressie, gedragspatronen en verstedelijking in Brabant tijdens de lange zestiende eeuw.’ PhD diss., Universiteit Antwerpen, 2007. Van Herwaarden, Jan. Opgeledge bedevaarten. Een studie over de praktijk van opleggen van bedevaarten (met name in de stedelijke rechtspraak) in de Nederlanden gedurende de late middeleeuwen (ca 1300-ca 1550). AssenAmsterdam: Van Gorcum, 1978. Vrolijk, Marjan. Recht door gratie. Gratie bij doodslagen en andere delicten in Vlaanderen, Holland en Zeeland (1531-1567). Hilversum: Verloren, 2004. Wodon, Louis. ‘Le droit de vengeance dans le comté de Namur (XIVeXVe siècles).’ Annales de la faculté de philosophie et lettres de l’Université Libre de Bruxelles 1 (1889): 119-196. Aude Musin is F.R.S.-FNRS postdoctoral researcher at the Université catholique de Louvain in the Centre for Law and Justice History. She wrote a PhD Sociabilité urbaine et criminalisation étatique. La justice namuroise face à la violence de

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__________________________________________________________________ 1363 à 1555. Her research is devoted to violence regulation in the cities of the Low Countries, during the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period.

A Right to Kill Traitors: Revenge and Racial Strife in the American Civil War West (1863-1865) John Ringquist Abstract Race relations during the American Civil War were not resolved in a neat, tidy or legal manner. Confederate military defeats in the Civil War western theatre generated intense wellsprings of hate toward the soldiers and officers of the United States Coloured Regiments. When Confederates took revenge on their perceived tormentors: rebellious slaves and their insidious abolitionist allies, their methods shocked observers with the degree of savagery. However revenge seldom ends with a single act, and victims exact their own retribution, thus generating a cycle of violence that is difficult to break. The American Civil War west, especially the Indian Territory, Arkansas, and Missouri, was the stage for several incidents of ‘Black Flag’ warfare in which rules of ‘civilized’ warfare were flouted in the name of revenge. The skirmishes of Sherwood, Missouri and Flat Rock, Indian Territory, as well as the battles of Poison Springs and Jenkins’ Ferry contain all the elements of revenge, and exceeded the boundaries of accepted conventions; the massacre of wounded prisoners, execution of unarmed civilians, and refusal to honour surrenders make these episodes of revenge stand out for their brutality. Confederates dealt with defeats by Union forces by extracting revenge against United States Coloured troops, a class of men who both defied racial conventions and constituted a vital factor in Union victories. Key Words: Massacre, slavery, race warfare, American Civil War, Sherwood, Poison Springs, revenge. ***** 1. Background Over 200,000 African-Americans served the Union cause in the American Civil War between 1863 and 1865. These soldiers and sailors came from a variety of backgrounds but were predominately former slaves that willingly enlisted in the Union army. The armies and leaders of the Confederacy opposed AfricanAmerican enlistment: military service threatened the basis for Southern society and its slave-sustained plantation system. Therefore, former slaves in Union uniforms could not be treated the same as white soldiers and were correspondingly met with threats of violence that made the choice of former slaves doubly perilous for them; the price for military failure would be at best re-enslavement, or at worst, execution with their white officers. Confederate President Jefferson Davis’s response to the Emancipation Proclamation came in an address to the Confederate Congress on January 12, 1863.

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__________________________________________________________________ Davis derided the proclamation as a m easure of desperation that encouraged ‘assassination of their masters’ and ordered that Union ‘officers [in command of such troops] may be dealt with in accordance with the laws of those states providing for the punishment of criminals engaged in exciting servile insurrection.’ 1 The Confederate proclamation presaged the sort of treatment that African-American soldiers could expect in the future. However, some of the white officers of United States Coloured Troops regiments regarded the Confederacy’s declaration of ‘Black Flag,’ or no quarters war, as a boon to regiments, and the very real possibility of execution an effective bar to shirkers and office seekers. 2 The Confederacy’s willingness to deny white officers special treatment if captured while in command of African-American soldiers intertwined the fates of white and black. The abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson wrote ‘Black prisoners of war had nowhere to hide, and they were exclusively at the mercy of the rebels,’ knowing they [the white officers] shared the same noose became ‘a position of pride and esprit de corps.’ 3 Both black and white faced the possibility of execution together on the battlefield. One of the first African-American regiments to fight for the Union was the First Kansas Coloured Infantry, which was raised in Kansas. The regiment was overwhelmingly composed of former slaves and officered by former abolitionist officers, some of whom had a history of anti-slavery violence that reached back to the ‘Bleeding Kansas’ period of the 1850s. White southerners could not and would not willingly grant recognition to African-American soldiers, and black soldiers demanded nothing less than the respect and freedom due their white comrades. The stage was set therefore in May 1863 w hen the First Kansas Coloured Infantry marched south along Kansas’ dusty roads to Baxter Springs, where the regiment would protect wagon trains and secure the Union line of communications against Confederate marauders and bushwhackers. 2. Sherwood, Missouri The first incident of massacre and retaliation in the First Kansas Coloured’s history occurred on May 18, 1863 as the result of an escalating war of deeds and words. The Confederate guerrilla commander in southwest Missouri, Thomas Major Livingston, launched a lightning attack on foraging elements from the First Kansas Coloured Infantry. The regimental detachment had been foraging for corn at the Radnor farm, part of the district that Livingston considered a co re base of supporters for his guerrilla band. The First Kansas Coloured’s soldiers had confiscated supplies and livestock as well as prisoners—Union Colonel James Williams held secessionist civilians as hostages for the safe treatment of his soldiers as a contingency—over the preceding weeks, a direct challenge to Livingston’s control of the region. 4 Williams, the commander of the First Kansas Coloured, challenged the Confederates, labelling them ‘thieves and robbers who lurk in secret places, dishonourable murderers unworthy of the fate of chivalrous

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__________________________________________________________________ soldiers engaged in honourable warfare.’ 5 Livingston, in response to the various provocations, attacked a foraging party from the regiment with tragic results. The attack at Sherwood, Missouri claimed the lives of 23 First Kansas Coloured Infantry soldiers, the bluecoats separated from their stacked muskets and caught unawares as they threw corn into wagons. 6 Livingston’s guerrillas executed all Union soldiers that they caught, with no quarter offered to the fleeing men. The Union dead lay where they fell, and many were stripped of clothing and valuables. The response of the First Kansas Coloured Infantry to the massacre proved equally savage. Finding over a dozen mutilated, nude bodies of his dead soldiers around the Radnor farm, Colonel Williams ordered a s earch of the area. A man by the name of Bishop was discovered wearing a bloody shirt and Union brogan boots. Because Bishop was a paroled prisoner, Williams ordered the man shot and then thrown into the farmhouse where the Union dead were burned. 7 The town of Sherwood also paid a frightful price for its complicity in past guerrilla raids, and over a dozen homes burned within a five-mile radius of the massacre site. 8 Williams’ revenge raised the level of rancour and hate between former slaves and masters to a f ever pitch. Confederate Major Livingston’s report to his superiors contained all the elements of the archetypical ‘savage slave’ stereotype: murder, robbery, and cruel acts of unspeakable vileness. Livingston’s report filtered the events through Southern racial constructs, but confirmed Williams’ willingness to engage in battle, and if denied that opportunity, his readiness to punish those that supported the secessionist cause. The black soldiers also violated the accepted conventions of warfare by murdering Bishop, a civilian, and then immolating his body with those of the dead black soldiers in Mrs Radnor’s home. 9 Burning Bishop with the black soldiers represented a dire insult, as did the regiment’s threats against a Southern white woman. Confederate nursed a powerful thirst for vengeance, and attempted to crush the First Kansas Coloured during Union’s summer 1863 campaign in Indian Territory at the battle of Honey Springs. 3. Honey Springs, Indian Territory The battle of Honey Springs occurred south of the key Union supply post of Fort Gibson in Indian Territory. The Union General, James Blunt, assembled an army that included Native Americans, whites, and African Americans for battle against Confederate regiments from Texas and Native Americans from the Cherokee and Choctaw tribes. The battle at Honey Springs was a crushing blow to the Confederate cause and a particularly galling one for the Twenty-Ninth Texas Cavalry, which lost forty prisoners and its colours to the soldiers of the First Kansas Coloured Infantry. 10 The loss of regimental colours brought great share and disgrace on the regiment and ensured their next battle would be to the last man. Colonel Williams spared no sympathy for the defeated Confederates. Williams expressed his sentiments in harsh terms. Williams believed that the Confederates

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__________________________________________________________________ ‘received a l esson, which in [his] opinion taught them not to despise on the battlefield, a race they had long tyrannized over as having no rights which a white man was bound to respect…this race had a right to kill traitors and this day proved their capacity.’ 11 The regiment’s victory stunned their Confederate opponents. The First Kansas Coloured fought against an enemy committed to destroying the regiment; Confederate General Kirby Smith and others supported a p olicy that opposed taking black soldiers and their officers prisoner. 12 A defeat for the First Kansas Coloured Infantry would have been a death sentence as sure as if the men had been sentenced by tribunal. Their crime would have been joining the criminal Union army in order to fight against the righteous slave-owning South. Going into the battle, few Texans believed that a regiment of former slaves officered by abolitionists could defeat them. An escaped slave of a T wenty-Ninth Texas officer claimed that few ‘Southern officers believed that coloured soldiers would fight and could be captured simply by marching up to the men.’ 13 This supposition proved very wrong, and to the credit of the soldiers of the First Kansas Coloured, despite discovering five hundred pairs of shackles intended for the regiment’s black soldiers, after the battle no mistreatment of Confederate prisoners or wounded occurred. Colonel Moonlight claimed that the black soldiers ‘grinned ear to ear when sighting their old companions, the shackles.’ 14 Confederate soldiers thought that they would break the spirit of black soldiers, and instead they lost their vaunted air of invincibility and reputation for unwavering bravery in battle. The desire for revenge therefore burned in the hearts of the Texans and their Choctaw allies, and in 1864 quenched itself in the blood of their enemies at the gruesome denouement of the Battle of Poison Springs in Arkansas. 4. Poison Springs, Arkansas The Union Army’s Camden Campaign of 1864 di sintegrated after logistical difficulties forced the army into the city of Camden. Although the Union army had proved victorious thus far, the defeat of a s eparate Union army under General Nathaniel Banks in Louisiana freed additional southern troops to complete a trap designed to encircle the Union army at Camden. Lacking corn to feed his men and horses, General Steele, the Union commander of the Army of Arkansas, sent forth a foraging train composed primarily of the First Kansas Coloured Infantry on April 17, 1864. The foraging train located the corn with little problem, but the following day, on the return march to Camden, the supply train was caught by a Confederate force of nearly four thousand cavalry supported by eight pieces of artillery. The Union escort fought off three Confederate charges between 11 AM and 2 PM, but was forced to retreat after ammunition supplies were exhausted and the command surrounded. 15 The regiment left behind a number of men captured or wounded, and when the battle ended the Confederates indulged their appetites for slaughter. The men remaining on the battlefield suffered great outrages: witnesses alleged that his wounded suffered instant executions where they fell. Texans were accused

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__________________________________________________________________ of shooting the wounded, taunting the fallen men with a sing-song rhyme, ‘Where is the First Nigger now? ...All Cut to pieces and gone to hell by bad management.’ 16 Revenge for Honey Springs and the desperate need of southern men to purge the idea of black military competence appear to be prime motivations for the actions of the victorious Texans. Confederate Arkansas regiments also engaged in attacks on African American prisoners. Union Coloured Regiments encouraged slaves to desert their masters as the Union army marched through Confederate Arkansas. One Confederate expressed the opinion ‘It is far better for the deluded victims, as for us, that the fate which may be considered inevitable, should come upon them in hot blood, and the excitement of the battlefield.’ 17 Better death and execution befall black soldiers than liberation and loss of white control, a philosophy many Arkansans carried out at Poison Springs. Arkansan General Cabell reported so many black soldiers killed that ‘You could track our troops by the dead bodies lying on the ground. I estimated his loss as 450 [ N]egroes killed, 7 I ndians, 30 w hite troops…’ 18 The annihilation of the First Kansas Coloured clearly stood at the forefront of many Confederate leaders and soldiers’ minds, the First Kansas Coloured a symbol of Yankee perfidy and the abolitionist threat to the southern way of life. Although official reports fail to detail the execution of prisoners or wounded black soldiers, Confederate newspapers such as the Washington Telegraph reported that Confederate Arkansan and Choctaw soldiers mutilated the Union dead in an abominable fashion. One Confederate newspaper, the Washington Telegraph reported Choctaws stripping and scalping fallen soldiers, and desecrating them in gruesomely inventive manners: the Choctaws, after the battle, ‘buried a Yankee in an ordinary grave. For a headstone they put up a stiff [N]egro buried to the waist. For a footstone another [N]egro reversed out from the waist to the heels,’ Arkansas troops ‘Vied to see if [they] could crush the most ‘nigger heads’ under his wagon wheels.’ 19 Although most newspapers traded in sensational accounts, the casual manner in which the dead were desecrated after the battle reveals a sinister, almost hysterical reaction to the threat posed by black enlistment. The victorious Choctaws, their nation subjected to the depredations of Union foraging trains throughout the summer and fall of 1863, revenged the plundering of their nation by executing black prisoners. Colonel Tandy Walker, the commander of the Choctaw Brigade, justified his men’s actions on grounds that the First Kansas Coloured murdered Choctaw families. The Choctaw regarded the First Kansas Coloured as ‘the ravagers of their country, the despoilers of their homes, and the murderers of their women and children…’ a ‘despised enemy’ to destroyed. 20 General Maxey also approved of the Choctaw’s actions, and elaborated upon Colonel Walker’s descriptions by adding ‘The Choctaw brigade fought the very army that had destroyed their once happy homes, insulted their women, and driven them with their children destitute upon the world, and many an

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__________________________________________________________________ avenging blow was struck.’ 21 No mention of scalping, mutilations, head crushing or executions appeared in the official reports. Several days after the Battle of Poison Springs a second supply train was sent forth from the Union lines to link-up with Union cavalry near Pine Bluff, Arkansas; the Confederates were alert however, and attacked the train at Marks Mills. The Confederates killed large numbers of ‘negroes and Arkansas refugees,’ 22 a toll that included men, women and children. 23 The Confederate racial hierarchy could not permit slaves to escape or black men to bear arms, either as soldiers or as teamsters in the employ of the Union. Other Union survivors of the battle recorded in early May that a Confederate surgeon had confirmed that it was ‘a settled rule of action of the Confederates to show no quarter to colored men in our military service.’ 24 Taken in isolation, this report could be interpreted as biased, a p iece of propaganda, but Confederate witnesses told a s imilar tale of bloodshed and mayhem. The Union African American soldiers had their revenge several weeks later at the Battle of Jenkins’ Ferry. The Second Kansas Coloured Infantry’s officers had sworn to kill all Confederate prisoners in retaliation for the execution of the First Kansas Coloured’s men. 25 During the battle, when the Second Kansas Coloured Infantry overran a Confederate battery, its soldiers set to honouring their grim oath. White Union combatants recorded savage deeds: one witness observed a b lack soldier smashing at a wounded Confederate gunner with the butt of his gun. Various anecdotes illustrate the perceived degeneration of the black race: a severely wounded Confederate officer claimed to have lost his lower jaw to a gunshot wound sustained after the battle. Wounded Confederates suffered mutilation at the hands of black soldiers, and witnesses confirm reports of wounded soldiers being stabbed, and ears cut off. 26 Confederate massacres and mistreatment of African Americans sustained the cycle of revenge and the alternating pattern of reprisals continued unabated. 5. Conclusion Revenge proved a bitter pill for both sides of the American Civil War in the west. Union and Confederate armies alike suffered from racially related massacres and reprisals, and although both sets of combatants believed their cause to be the ‘righteous,’ the bloodshed in incidents of revenge was often blood shed needlessly. Revenge strips away the veneer of civilized warfare and brings out the basest emotions. The war in the American Civil War west involved men of many motivations, and took upon itself the character of a religious war, the men of both sides seeking to force a change in national affairs through violence rather than negotiation. The battle between former slaves and their one-time masters could be nothing less than a war of annihilation, for the status of one precluded the rights of another. Freedom could not be gained without bloodshed, and a cherished way of life could not be preserved unless those that threatened it were forever

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__________________________________________________________________ exterminated. Revenge was the ultimate tool for combatants, a co mbination of resolve and message to enemies.

Notes 1

‘Message of Jefferson Davis to the Confederate Congress dated January 12, 1863,’ in War Department, Adjutant General’s Office, The Negro in the Military Service of the United States, 1639-1886, IV, ‘Record Group 94,’ Microfilm M858, Roll 3-4, (Documents 1965-1968). 2 Samuel J. Crawford, Kansas in the Sixties (Chicago: A.C. McClurg and Co, 1911), 108. 3 Wiley Britton, The Civil War on the Border II (3rd Edition) (Ottawa: Kansas Heritage Press, 1994), 78; Michael Barton and Larry M. Logue, The Civil War Soldier: A Historical Reader (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 148, 243. 4 Richard Hinton, ‘The War in the Far West,’ The New York Times, 27 May 1863. By May 17, 1863, Hinton claimed the regiment held a dozen bushwhackers and twenty-five or thirty prominent disloyal citizens. 5 ‘Letter Williams to Livingston, 11 May 1863,’ (Camp Joe Hooker), in War Department, Record Group 94: Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, Book Records of Voluntary Organizations, 79th USCT, Regimental Order Book II, E112115, PI-17. 6 Hugh Thompson, Baxter Springs as a Military Post, 1862-1863 (Kansas City: Press of Jerry Ward, 1895), 14. 7 John H. Graton, ‘Sherwood Letter,’ in John H. Graton Collection, MS 9113.02, Microbox 913 (Topeka, Kansas: Kansas State Historical Society). 8 Ibid. 9 ‘Livingston to Major General Sterling Price, May 28, 1863,’ in War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, series I, vol. 22 (I), vol. 34 (I) (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1880-1901), 322. 10 ‘The Battle of Elk Creek,’ The New York Times, 5 August 1863; War Department, War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol. 22(1), 449; Benjamin Van Horn, ‘Letter, July 17, 1863,’ Benjamin Van Horn Collection (Topeka, Kansas: Kansas State Historical Society, Military History Collection, Manuscript Division). 11 James M. Williams, ‘Report, July 30, 1863,’ James M. Williams Papers, MS 545, (Topeka, Kansas: Kansas State Historical Society, Military History Collection, Manuscript Division). 12 John Grady and Bradford Felmly, Suffering to Silence: 29th Texas Cavalry, CSA, a Regimental History (Quanah, Oklahoma: Nortex Press, 1975), 84.

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Mark Christ, ed., All Cut to Pieces and Gone to Hell: The Civil War, Race Relations, and the Battle of Poison Spring (Little Rock: August House Publishers, 2003), 81. 14 Kip Lindberg and Matt Matthews, ‘The Eagle of the 11th Kansas: Wartime Reminiscences of Colonel Thomas Moonlight,’ Arkansas Historical Quarterly 62, No.1 (Spring 2003): 32. 15 ‘Report Number 24, Colonel Williams Engagement at Poison Spring,’ in War Department, War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol. 34 (I): Reports 743-746; Britton, Civil War on the Border II, 290. 16 Britton, Civil War on the Border II, 291. 17 Washington Telegraph, 25 May 1864, as quoted in Anne J. Bailey and David Sutherland, Civil War Arkansas: Beyond Battles and Leaders (Fayetteville Arkansas: The University of Arkansas Press, 2000), 221; Ethan Earle, Journal of Captain Ethan Earle, Company F, First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry Regiment (Manuscript, Boston: January 1873) (Boston, Massachusetts: New England Historical & Genealogical Society, transcription by Fort Scott National Historic Site), 54. 18 ‘Report 48, Major General Sterling Price, Camden, May---, 1864,’ in War Department, War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol. 34 (I): reports 781, 786; ‘Report 52 Brigadier General Cabell, HQ Cabell’s Brigade, April 20, 1864,’ in War Department, War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol. 34 (I): reports 791-792. 19 Randy Findley, ‘In War’s Wake: Health Care and Arkansas Freedmen, 18631868,’ Arkansas Historical Quarterly 51 (1992): 137 as quoted in Bailey and Sutherland, Civil War Arkansas, 53. 20 ‘Report No. 77, Col Tandy Walker, Second Indian Brigade, April 19, 1864,’ in War Department, War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol. 34 (I): report 849. 21 ‘Report No 75 BG Samuel B. Maxey, Camp on Camden Road, April 23, 1864,’ in War Department, War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol. 34 (I): reports 841-844. 22 ‘Colonel Francis Drake to Headquarters Second Brigade, Third Division, Seventh Army Corps, Marks Mills, April 25, 1864,’ in War Department, War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol. 34 (I): reports 714-715. 23 Bailey and Sutherland, Civil War Arkansas, 224-225. 24 ‘Brigadier General C.C. Andrews to Lieutenant Samuel T. Brush, AAAG, Little Rock, May 3, 1864,’ in War Department, War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol. 34 (I): reports 415. 25 Crawford, Kansas in the Sixties, 108, 117. 26 Ibid., 124-133; John Q. Anderson, A Texas Surgeon in the CSA (Tuscaloosa, Alabama: SWS Printers, 1957), 99.

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Bibliography Anderson, John Q. A Texas Surgeon in the CSA. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: SWS Printers, 1957. Bailey, Annie J. and Daniel E. Sutherland, Civil War Arkansas: Beyond Battles and Leaders. Fayetteville Arkansas: The University of Arkansas Press, 2000. Barton, Michael and Larry M. Logue. The Civil War Soldier: A Historical Reader. New York: New York University Press, 2002. Britton, Wiley. The Civil War on the Border II (3rd Edition). Ottawa: Kansas Heritage Press, 1994. Christ, Mark, ed. All Cut to Pieces and Gone to Hell: The Civil War, Race Relations, and the Battle of Poison Spring. Little Rock: August House Publishers, 2003. Crawford, Samuel J. Kansas in the Sixties. Chicago: A.C. McClurg and Company, 1911. Earle, Ethan. Journal of Captain Ethan Earle, Company F, First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry Regiment (Manuscript, Boston: January 1873). Boston, Massachusetts: New England Historical & Genealogical Society, transcription by Fort Scott National Historic Site. Findley, Randy. ‘In War’s Wake: Health Care and Arkansas Freedmen, 18631868.’ Arkansas Historical Quarterly 51 (1992): 135-163. Grady, John and Bradford Felmly. Suffering to Silence: 29th Texas Cavalry, CSA, a Regimental History. Quanah, Oklahoma: Nortex Press, 1975. Graton, John. ‘Sherwood Letter.’ John H. Graton Collection. MS 9113.02. Microbox 913, Topeka, Kansas: Kansas State Historical Society. Hinton, Richard. ‘The War in the Far West.’ The New York Times. 27 May 1863. ———. ‘The Battle of Elk Creek.’ The New York Times. 5 August 1863.

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__________________________________________________________________ Lindberg, Kip and Matt Matthews. ‘The Eagle of the 11th Kansas: Wartime Reminiscences of Colonel Thomas Moonlight.’ Arkansas Historical Quarterly 62, No. 1 (Spring 2003): 1-41. Thompson, Hugh. Baxter Springs as a Military Post, 1862-1863. Kansas City: Press of Jerry Ward, 1895. Van Horn, Benjamin. Benjamin Van Horn Collection. Topeka, Kansas: Kansas State Historical Society. Military History Collection. Manuscript Division. War Department, Adjutant General's Office, The Negro in the Military Service of the United States, 1639-1886.’ IV, ‘Record Group 94,’ Microfilm M858, Roll 3-4. War Department. Record Group 94: Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, 79th USCT Regimental Order Book II, E112-115, PI-17. War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I, Vol. 22 (I) and Vol. 34 (I). Washington: Government Printing Office, 1880-1901. Williams, James M. ‘Report, July 30, 1863,’ James M. Williams Papers. MS 545. Topeka, Kansas: Kansas State Historical Society, Military History Collection, Manuscript Division. John Ringquist is a Major in the United States Army, and a History instructor at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York.

Revenge towards Professional and Social Reasons: Gendarmeries Purges after WWII Jonas Campion Abstract Accused of collaboration with Germans due to their presence in occupied territories, European gendarmes (Belgian, French and Dutch) were considered traitors after the liberation. Consequently, they were subjected to a purging process (‘épuration’ or ‘repression of collaboration’). In a resistance context, legal and internal procedures were initiated to repress the occupation’s faulty behaviours. The aim was to restore the legality and legitimacy of these police institutions. At the same time, extra-legal violence struck the gendarmes and their symbols, emanating from Resistance or popular movements. In this case, the goal was to punish them for treason, but also to challenge their role and missions in liberated societies. Registered within an exceptional framework of justice and political transition, purges can be understood like a phenomenon of revenge. In theory, repressing the faulty behaviours defined by internal discipline and the Penal Code, purges draw, in practice, new relations within the bodies. Gendarme’s ‘victims’ claim an individual revenge – and not only reparation – for the wrongs incurred during the war. In the same way, at the institutional level, some gendarmes wanted to be collectively avenged from their colleagues with abnormal behaviours during the war (promotion, course of career etc.). They wanted to punish the traitors to the nation, but also to professional ideal, in order to restore the resistant legend of the institutions. Between institutional, professional and personal needs, we understand the outcomes of revenge claim which crosses purges within the three studied gendarmeries. Using the legal and administrative purges archives, we propose to highlight dynamics and logics, sometimes contradictory, between the behaviours requiring revenge; forms that this one should take; symbolic effects which it involves; and answers concretely brought by the military and legal authorities. Key Words: Gendarmerie, Second World War, purges, justice, revenge, collaboration, Nazi occupation, Western Europe. ***** The gendarmerie is a national military force, charged with judicial, administrative and military police missions. Organized during French Revolution, this institution knew an expansion with European wars. At the end of the 19th century, Belgium, France and the Netherlands had a gendarmerie force at the heart of their police organisation. 1

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__________________________________________________________________ 1. Occupations and Gendarmeries: An Unprecedented Crisis Time Second World War was a crisis time for the gendarmerie. Indeed, although gendarmes were soldiers, they stayed in defeated and occupied countries because of common interests. For German authorities, this was necessary to maintain quiet and public order without mobilizing too many men. Occupied authorities hoped to defend national interest by using these police forces. This situation was transnational, whatever the nature of occupied and occupation authorities (French political regime of the ‘Etat français’ or administrative authorities in Belgium and Netherland; German Militar or Zivil Verwaltung). Furthermore, international law, like The Hague Convention of 1907, pushed gendarmes to cooperate with German armies as de facto authorities in occupied countries. 2 WWII was a specific conflict, with a great ideological scope. Therefore, national and international laws are insufficient to regulate gendarme’s policing facing political missions asked by the Germans (persecution against the Jews, fighting Resistance, implementation of obligatory work service). In all occupied countries, troubles increased during the war. The frontier between legality and legitimacy of gendarme’s daily practises grew day after day. For all policemen, it was very difficult to deal with this situation. They were alone in a ch anging environment in terms of gendarmerie’s organization, of colleagues, of the rise of violence characterised in some areas by a C ivil War perspective between Resistants, Germans and Collaborators (especially in France, but also in some areas of the Netherlands or Belgium). On the field, gendarmes were responsible for their way of working among Collaboration, Passivity, Resistance or all intermediate choices (also depending of geography and chronology). 2. A Misunderstood Service in Occupied Territories At the end of the War, gendarme’s work in occupied countries was misunderstood by new political authorities and by a large part of population or Resistance’s movements. For all of them, the gendarme’s continuous presence in occupied territory was seen like treason. 3 Treason is more than a crime; 4 this is a breakdown of the values of the Nation, the Resistance, and also of the Institution. No political, practical or juridical arguments were accepted to understand gendarme’s policing. In Europe, during the fall 1944, the atmosphere was resistancialist: each one wanted to be seen as a resistant, to punish the Collaborators. Due to their public role in social regulations, gendarmes were in the front line of this need for Justice. Gendarmes were subjected to purges process to deal with the Occupation’s faulty behaviours. 5 Legal and internal procedures were initiated. Purges were widespread into all units and all hierarchy of the gendarmeries. Their aim was to restore the legality and the legitimacy of these police institutions. At the same time, extra-legal violences struck the gendarmes and their symbols, emanating from Resistance or popular movements.

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__________________________________________________________________ For the gendarmes, the process was expectable but misunderstood. During the Occupation, it was already clearly announced to civil servant that they would be prosecuted for their false acts. 6 Further, in occupied territories, some gendarmes were already threatened by Resistance Groups. In the Netherlands, an officer was warned: ‘Gaat gij met uw werk door, dan zult gij sterven.’ 7 For gendarmes, the situation was unsafe. During an inquiry, a French Officer explained he only did his work during War: je suis condamné pour avoir exécuté les ordres du gouvernement de Vichy. Alors je ne comprends plus! Quand je suis entré dans la gendarmerie, j’ai prêté serment: je jure d’obéir à mes chefs… Qu’ai-je fait en exécutant les ordres de Vichy? Sinon obéir à mes chefs. Alors pourquoi me condamner? 8 3. Revenge or Justice? If we define Justice as an official redemption process in a correction and reintegration perspective, to recognize and punish wrongs and crimes in name of society, purges only partially fit with this definition. For people who criticize gendarmeries, the object of purges can be read like a revenge dynamics. First, personal and private interests were at the heart of proceedings against gendarmes. The goal was not to impose a just sentence in an equal and reparative perspective. Claimers against gendarmes wanted disproportionate and fast sanctions. Second, these people wanted to punish gendarmes by private procedures, outside official institution like Penal Courts, or disciplinary procedures. Beyond this definition, the revenge was plural: in 1944-1945, different processes overlap around European gendarmeries. They differed from their originators and from their goals. 9 On one hand, gendarmes wanted revenge against other gendarmes because they had undermined the values and personal visions of gendarmerie. On the other hand, members of Resistance or civilians were seeking revenge for arrest, interrogation and brutality made by gendarmes, or for gendarme’s public contacts with the Germans or collaborators. Between institutional, professional and personal needs, we want to understand the outcomes of revenge claims from three related Gendarmeries: the French, the Belgian and the Dutch Marechaussee. Using legal and administrative purges archives, we propose to highlight dynamics of behaviours requiring revenge; forms that this one should take; symbolic effects which it involves; and answers concretely brought by the military and legal authorities. By crossing cases of three institutions, we clarify professional and national logics of revenge during a state’s reorganization period. Revenge against gendarmerie is a plural concept, without fundamental break between countries. In a war context, revenge is a p olitical and exceptional perspective related to state

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__________________________________________________________________ reconstruction. Its goal is to punish traitors and collaborators, who act against the Nation. But we also find a personal, human and material component into this phenomenon. Firstly, the claim of revenge is an internal dynamic. Some gendarmes wanted to sanction other one on a professional perspective. After the war, it seemed necessary to punish gendarmes whose career paths grew during occupation. By accepting responsibilities or promotions, they broke normal functioning of gendarmeries and created an unfair competition into promotions. People who then refused to be promoted now wanted to have compensation. They wanted promotions and tributes, but also better treatments or better housing in a difficult material situation (shortages, frauds, black market). Furthermore, gendarmes who accepted promotions broke the resistancialist spirit and apparent unity of gendarmeries which was highlighted in liberated areas. So, applicants wanted revenge in order to restore their career, but also for their own perception of gendarmeries. Officers were arrested by suborders. 10 Denunciations were increasing among colleagues. Hierarchy was shaken. 11 The situation was murky, and offered opportunities for making false allegations, which were useful to reduce competition for later career developments. Accused gendarmes lived with bitterness over what happened. A French Officer had difficulty accepting that ‘ces accusations sont portées directement ou par intermédiaire, par un de mes subalternes, un sous-officier de gendarmerie ambitieux et méprisable.’ 12 Outside the gendarmeries, the claim of revenge came from people who were killed, arrested, questioned, denounced or tormented by gendarmes. A gendarme who killed a civilian in 1942 was obliged to transfer to avoid violence against him. 13 Not only Resistance members, but also civilians wanted revenge. Violence was increasing against gendarmes. In France, before and after the Liberation, some fifty gendarmes were killed by Resistants or civilians without any judgement. Everywhere, gendarmes were threatened. Some barracks were invaded, soiled by painting, destroyed, attacked or bombed by Improvised Explosive Devices. 14 The political perspective in these claims is obvious. In France or in Belgium, revenge was called by communists’ parties to compete gendarmeries into policing functions. 15 By mobilizing some arrests or suffering of civilians, they were able to reduce legitimacy of police forces into public space. The situation of gendarmerie in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais is very representative of this situation. Nord-Pas-deCalais was a working area, with a strong communist presence before the war. After 1941, activists engaged themselves into underground networks. Vichy policemen and gendarmes struck very hard in collaboration with German police. In September 1944, communist activists capitalized the losses of war by claiming sanctions against gendarmes in a typical strategy of tension.

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__________________________________________________________________ 4. Revenge is Violent: What are Official and Gendarme’s Reactions? Coming from gendarmeries or outside them, revenge takes form of symbolic or interpersonal violence. From September 1944 t o at least the end of 1945, gendarmes and their symbols were attacked by press, 16 by lobbying, by demonstrations or by public violence. This was a consequence of increasing of violence during war. 17 When liberation occurred, the situation did not change: in France, Free French in London called for national insurrection. In Belgium or in the Netherlands, Resistants fought with Allied armies. Furthermore, weapons were everywhere. Facing this situation, gendarmes authorities needed to take back control on revenge needs by reintegrating them into a judicial and official way. 18 From private to public spheres, the purges achievements have this goal, which was a very long and difficult process in the three countries. Yet, in each country, the gap was great between internal and judicial pronounced sanctions and their perceptions by population or Resistants. 19 With internal purges, sanctions were professional. They were often misunderstood outside gendarmerie forces because of their career, hierarchical, or financial consequences which were invisible, although very disadvantageous for gendarmes and their families. 20 Further, around 50% of suspected collaborators were finally cleared of charges. 21 Criticisms grew against gendarmes, and increase the need for a second wave of revenge. This situation explains some outbreak of violence that locally occurred during the second half of 1945 or in 1946. We must examine them related to the (non) progress or failure of the purges, like perceived in the local sociability. Inside the gendarmeries, the issue was identical: to legalize procedures coming from the field. More than ever, the situation was dangerous for gendarmerie’s cohesion. Indeed, dynamics of revenge threatened professional habitus and values like obedience, compliance orders and hierarchical working. 22 For the gendarmeries, the need for revenge was a centrifugal factor which was considered very seriously by the authorities. A game of influence arose to integrate extra-legal back into a formal dynamic. In the daily policing, gendarmeries attempted to move up from private vengeance to public and official justice. Revenge had no place in reorganization process. This was a condition of re-establishment of gendarme’s legality and authority in all their field of interventions. The process was slow, difficult, and far from always being successful. Some gendarmes had completely broken from the formal structures. 23 However, according to official speeches, vengeance—or the exceptional character of procedures—should be mobilized as needed. This is one of the huge ambiguities of the gendarmeries’ restructuration. Authorities called for revenge and exceptional punishment for traitors, 24 and tried at the same time to insert reorganization into legal and normal process. The gap between speeches and practices existed, offering the possibility to meet need of ‘justice’ and the need of

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__________________________________________________________________ gendarmes’ implication into reorganization process without compromising participation in state’s life. At the end of purges procedures, only a minority of policemen, well identified, were actually punished and publicly denounced. This confirmed the patriotism of the remaining institutions. 25 The purge procedures did not fundamentally change traditional values. Although the subject is nuanced in the specific occupation context, immediately and fully following orders remained a major characteristic of the gendarme ideal. In all gendarmeries, the liberation saw a strong reaffirmation of the importance of such behaviour. Order is always a priority, and the necessity is to avoid excessive disruptions of gendarmeries. Inside the institutions, soldiers raised claims against attacks and procedures they endured. By refusing exceptional perspective about War and purges, they appeared like victims of personal conflicts and professional competition. 26 Their defence strategy was normalizing and denied any need for justice, revenge or punishment. Because they had correctly and effectively done their job during and before WWII, they were now the subject of complaints. The gendarme’s purpose was to discredit their critics by presenting them as jealous, frustrated offenders who hoped to revenge a previous conviction. 5. To conclude: Revenge and Transitional Justice Revenge was, at the end of WWII, plural in European police institutions. Due to specific context of occupations and due to specific role played by gendarmes in each of occupied territories, it to ok on a political and extraordinary meaning. Ordinary justice was not enough; official institutions were insufficient to repair the harm done by gendarmes to the nations. Each one wanted to participate in the German defeat, to take revenge against collaborators of German armies. In liberated Europe, many gendarmes were now considered traitors because they exercised their missions in occupied territories. To strengthen a breakdown with occupied gendarmerie, revenge was also mobilized into gendarme’s official speeches. It was a way to legitimate their policing against Resistance competition. For some gendarmes, revenge was also necessary against colleagues who had benefited the war for their career, or had broken the fundamental values they believe for the institutions. If revenge was claimed and sometimes put into practice by Resistants, civilians of gendarmes, it was firmly opposed by the official authorities. Revenge at the whims of private justice was dangerous for survival of gendarmeries. Revenge shows the difficulties of political transition. At the end of the War, revenge rimed with violence. All attacks against gendarmes constituted a major threat to democratic transition: they competed with the state monopoly of violence; they refused the central authority; they challenged the unifying and national Justice. The refusal of this situation was obvious. That is why the gendarmeries were a priority during the liberations by a massive retooling (weapons, cars, materials), human action, purges, and a work of valorisation and homage.

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__________________________________________________________________ This situation explains the link between vengeance processes and weakness of the central state. During the political transition, central authorities had difficulty imposing themselves in public life, challenged by Resistants or occupying armies. Further, the situation in Western Europe was characterized by geographical localization, because of transportation or communication difficulties. The insufficiencies of central state were a necessary condition to see revenge processes take place in contemporary Europe. Abnormality was necessary to see revenge dynamics. So, the end of revenge processes should be read like a revealing of normality and re-legalization of public life. This phenomenon was transnational. Challenges and responses to revenge against gendarmes were identical from one country to another. Despite the different experiences of the War in France, Belgium and the Netherlands, 27 they fit here into the logic of the regulation of modern society more than in a national perspective. In the understanding of justice/revenge dynamics around gendarmeries, job function took priority over national elements. This brief overview of gendarmeries during wartime helps the understanding of Justice and private competition of state functions in contemporary society. Through its missions, the study of the gendarmerie is particularly interesting to understand the stakes of these transition processes. We hope to have provided food for further thought about this question, comparing other periods or countries (Central or Eastern Europe for example).

Notes 1

On the European gendarmeries, see Arnaud-Dominique Houte, Le métier de gendarme national au XIXe siècle (Rennes: PUR, 2010); Jean-Noël Luc, ed., Soldats de la loi. La gendarmerie au 20e siècle (Paris: PUPS, 2010). See also Clive Emsley, Gendarmes and the State in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Cyrille Fijnaut, De geschiedenis van de Nederlandse Politie. Een staatinstelling in de maalstroom van de geschiedenis (Amsterdam: Boom, 2007); Jos Smeets, De Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse Politie. Verdeelheid en eenheid in het rijkspolitieapparaat (Amsterdam: Boom, 2007). 2 On this question, see Jonas Campion, ‘Le rétablissement de la légalité policière après la Seconde Guerre mondiale: les gendarmeries belge, française et la Koninklijke Marechaussee néerlandaise’ (PhD diss., UCL/Paris IV Sorbonne, 2009). 3 Jonas Campion and Emmanuel Chevet, ‘Quand (dés)obéir rime avec trahir: pratiques professionnelles des gendarmes 'occupés' durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale,’ in La trahison de l’adultère au crime politique, ed. Claude Javeau and Sébastien Schehr (Paris: Berg International, 2010), 96-108.

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It must be noted that treason is not always clearly defined by the law. If the French Penal Code speaks about it, in Belgium, it is a ‘breakdown of external state security.’ See the Penal Code and all the changes in legislation during the war. Peter Romijn, Snel, Streng en Rechtvaardig. Politiek beleid inzake de bestraffing en reclassering van ‘foute’ Nederlanders (Amsterdam: Olympus, 2002); MarcOlivier Baruch, ed., Une poignée de misérables, l'épuration de la société française après la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Paris: Fayard, 2003); Luc Huyse and Steven Dhondt, La répression des collaborations. 1942-1952. Un passé toujours présent (Bruxelles: CRISP, 1993). 5 Campion, ‘Le rétablissement de la légalité policière.’ 6 Bruxelles, CEGES, ‘Services du Premier minister. Archives des commissions d’enquête sur l’attitude des fonctionnaires pendant l’Occupation 1944-1950,’ AA 1326, No. 214, ‘note from Information minister to Prime minister’ (20 September 1943). 7 ‘If you go on with your work, you will die’ (translation mine). La Haye, NA 2.09.09, No. 65259, file Feenstra, ‘waarschuwing’ (18 October 1943). 8 ‘I am condemned to have carried out the orders of the Vichy Government. I don’t understand any more! When I engaged to the gendarmerie, I lent oath: I swear to obey to my hierarchy. What did I make by carrying out the orders of Vichy? If not to obey to my officer… Then why to punish me?’(translation mine). Vincennes, SHD-DGN, 1A 206, No. 2189, ‘A Letter to the Director of the French Gendarmerie’ (5 May 1946). 9 Without taking into account the discourses of purged gendarmes, claiming to be victims of hate, personal revenge, jealousy or resentment. For example, Vincennes, SHD-DGN, 1A 212, no. 2326, ‘a report from maréchal des logis Chef H.’ (9 March 1947). 10 Bruxelles, Police fédérale-DGP, file maréchal des logis T., ‘A Letter from T. to Commandant de Corps’ (4 February 1945). 11 See the ‘comité directeur du Front National de Résistance de Gendarmerie de l’île de France et de l’Orléanais’ in the barracks of Paris Region in Augustus 1944. Vincennes, SHD-DGN, 1A 190, No. 179, file Chef-d’escadron G., ‘Notices individuelles modèle 1’ (10 November 1944). 12 ‘These charges are carried directly or by intermediary, by one of my subordinates, an ambitious and contempible non-commissioned officer’ (translation mine). Vincennes, SHD-DGN, 1A 53, ‘A Report from Chef-d’escadron Gérardin’ (23 September 1944). 13 Vincennes, SHD-DGN, 62E 66, ‘R/2 brigade de Boudringhien, note no. 579/2’ (11 December 1944). 14 Bruxelles, SHP, file adjudant A., ‘A Letter from lieutenant Vilain to Commandant Burton’ (7 September 1944).

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See Geoffroy Warner, ‘La Crise Politique Belge de novembre 1944. Un coup d’état manqué?’, in Courrier Hebdomadaire du CRISP 797 (1978): 1-26; José Gotovitch, Du rouge au tricolore: résistance et parti communiste (Bruxelles: Labor, 1992); Philippe Buton, La joie douloureuse. La Libération de la France (Bruxelles: Complexe, 2004). 16 Bruxelles, SHP, file maréchal des logis H., ‘rapport du service des enquêtes’ (4 November 1947). 17 See, for example, the Belgian case related to homicides. Xavier Rousseaux, Toon Vrints and Frédéric Vesentini, ‘Violence and Wars. Measuring Homicide in Belgium (1900-1950),’ in Violence in Europe. Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Sophie Body-Gendrot and Peter Spierenburg (Berlin: Springer, 2008), 177-205. 18 Vincennes, SHD-DGN, 1A 484, ‘A Letter from Lieutenant-Colonel Girard to War Minister’ (21 October 1944). 19 Jonas Campion, ‘Les sanctions des gendarmes au titre de l’épuration: légitimations plurielles pour une institution étatique (1944-1948),’ in La sanction judiciaire dans l’espace belge (13e – 20e siècles), ed. Marie-Amélie Bourguignon, Bernard Dauven and Xavier Rousseaux (Louvain-la-Neuve: PUL, forthcoming in 2011). 20 La Haye, NA 2.13.25, No. 1515, ‘sectie I Militair Gezag, rapport no. 5580’ (11 August 1945). 21 Campion, Le rétablissement de la légalité policière. 22 François Dieu, La gendarmerie, secrets d’un corps (Bruxelles: Complexe, 2002). 23 See the case of Commandant Jean, in reality a ‘maréchal des logis’ of Belgian gendarmerie, who took the head of a Resistance Groupement, implemented a purge politic in the Hainaut, and refused to go back into service. Jambes, Collection privée du colonel Claessens, doc 208, ‘A Letter from Major Godfroid’ (13 October 1944). 24 See Buren, Marechaussee Museum, Collection Marechaussee, doc 21, MG, ‘Handleiding voor Chef van Gemeentelijke Politiecorpsen en commandant van afdeling der KM’ (1945). 25 Vincennes, SHD-DGN, 62E 68, R/4 section de Béthune, ‘note no. 76/4’ (19 April 1945). 26 . ‘L’esprit de vengeance est le trait dominant des attaques dirigées contre les militaires de la 1ère légion et l’on retrouve parmi les plaignants un grand nombre d’individus ayant eu maille à partir avec la gendarmerie pour vol ou trafic illicite’. (in mine translation : ‘The revenge spirit dominates attacks against the soldiers of the 1st legion and we find among the plaintiffs a large number of individuals having had problems with the gendarmerie for stealing or illicit traffic’). Vincennes, SHDDGN, 1D1 16, R/2, ‘note no. 3591’ (17 August 1945).

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Furthermore, in each country, differences are great between regions.

Bibliography Baruch, Marc-Olivier, ed. Une poignée de misérables, l'épuration de la société française après la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Paris: Fayard, 2003. Buton, Philippe. La joie douloureuse. La Libération de la France. Bruxelles: Complexe, 2004. Campion, Jonas. ‘Le rétablissement de la légalité policière après la Seconde Guerre mondiale: les gendarmeries belge, française et la Koninklijke Marechaussee néerlandaise.’ PhD diss., UCL/Paris IV Sorbonne, 2009. ———. ‘Les sanctions des gendarmes au titre de l’épuration: légitimations plurielles pour une institution étatique (1944-1948).’ In La sanction judiciaire dans l’espace belge (13e – 20e siècles). Edited by Marie-Amélie Bourguignon, Bernard Dauven and Xavier Rousseaux. Louvain-la-Neuve: PUL, 2011. Campion, Jonas and Emmanuel Chevet. ‘Quand (dés)obéir rime avec trahir : pratiques professionnelles des gendarmes ‘occupés’ durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale.’ In La trahison de l’adultère au crime politique, edited by Claude Javeau and Sébastien Schehr, 96-108. Paris: Berg International, 2010. Dieu, François. La gendarmerie. Secrets d’un corps. Bruxelles: Complexe, 2002. Emsley, Clive. Gendarmes and the State in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Fijnaut, Cyrille. De geschiedenis van de Nederlandse Politie. Een staatinstelling in de maalstroom van de geschiedenis. Amsterdam: Boom, 2007. Gotovitch, José. Du rouge au tricolore: résistance et parti communiste. Bruxelles: Labor, 1992. Houte, Arnaud-Dominique. Le métier de gendarme national au XIXe siècle. Rennes: PUR, 2010. Huyse, Luc and Dhondt, Steven. La répression des collaborations. 1942-1952. Un passé toujours present. Bruxelles: CRISP, 1993.

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__________________________________________________________________ Luc, Jean-Noël, ed. Soldats de la loi. La gendarmerie au 20e siècle. Paris: PUPS, 2010. Romijn, Peter. Snel, Streng en Rechtvaardig. Politiek beleid inzake de bestraffing en reclassering van ‘foute’ Nederlanders. Amsterdam: Olympus, 2002. Rousseaux, Xavier, Toon Vrints and Frédéric Vesentini. ‘Violence and Wars. Measuring Homicide in Belgium (1900-1950).’ In Violence in Europe. Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Edited by Sophie Body-Gendrot and Peter Spierenburg, 177-205. Berlin: Springer, 2008. Smeets, Jos. De Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse Politie. Verdeelheid en eenheid in het rijkspolitieapparaat. Amsterdam: Boom, 2007. Warner, Geoffroy. ‘La Crise Politique Belge de novembre 1944. Un coup d’état manqué?’ In Courrier Hebdomadaire du CRISP, 797 (1978): 1-26. Jonas Campion is FRS-FNRS Postdoctoral Researcher attached to the Centre of Law and Justice History (UCLouvain, Belgium). He gained his Ph.D in History at UCLouvain and Paris IV Sorbonne (2009) on European Gendarmeries after the Second World War (published in 2011 by André Versaille Editeur). He is now working within the research programme ‘Justice and Society: sociopolitical history of justice administration in Belgium (1795-2005),’ http://www.just-his.be, (Interuniversity Attraction Pole P6/01, Belgian State – Belgian Science Policy).

PART III Revenge in Society

‘You Made Me What I Am. You Added to the Rage’: School Shooters in the United States and the Cultural Script of Vengeance Selina E. M. Doran Abstract The title quote was said by Dylan Klebold, one of the perpetrators of the Columbine school shooting incident (1999), and implies that others influenced his identity and, as a result of this, caused him carry out the attack. This chapter looks at a number of school shootings from the past twenty years in the United States to examine the influences pertaining to Klebold’s statement. It is discovered that identity is, in fact, a motivational factor in school shootings as school shooters tend to be male and have a fragile sense of identity; they also occupy low status in the school hierarchy, and are oppressed by other students. As the opinion of peers and one’s status in the school hierarchy are pivotal to how students construct their own identities, school shooters feel ‘ostracized, marginalized, and threatened with emasculation.’ 1 In order to resolve this feeling and repair their ‘fragile male identities,’ school shooters follow a cultural script of extreme ‘hypermasculinity’enmeshed in violence and revenge-in an attempt to ‘take down’ the entire institution of their schools. The purpose of this research chapter is to examine in more detail the importance of this notion of ‘hypermasculinity’ and the school hierarchical structure in affecting the identities of school shooters and, thus, influencing them to implement their plan for revenge. Key Words: School shootings, identity, masculinity, hierarchy, cultural script, vengeance, United States. ***** 1. Introduction In the United States, school shootings are a contemporary social problem. The definition of a ‘school shooting’ in the context of this chapter relates to shooting incidents which occur in a school-related environment, result in multiple persons being injured or killed, and are perpetrated by current or former students as an act of retaliation against the school, thus meaning that shootings on school grounds for other reasons, such as gang-related violence, are excluded. 2 Until the 1990s, incidents pertaining to the aforementioned definition were quite sporadic in the United States and tended to be limited to ‘problematic’ urban schools; thereafter, the occurrence of them in suburban and rural areas increased, making them disconcerting and unprecedented events. The purpose of this research chapter is to offer an examination beyond specious, incomplete explanations for school shootings by acknowledging the pertinence of ‘fragile male identities’ to the

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__________________________________________________________________ ‘cultural script of vengeance’ adopted by shooters. To take this argument further, it has been said that any attempt to evaluate school shootings must take gender seriously [emphasis added]. 3 To clarify, it has been pointed out that these incidents are almost always perpetrated by males in a number of studies. 4 This fact, however, tends to be omitted from media reports and gender-neutral terms such as ‘youth violence’ are used, erroneously implying that girls also partake in school shootings. 5 In order to assess the gender issue, this chapter uses a sample of eight school shooters involved in six school shootings from the past twenty years-these were selected from the twelve shooters analysed in Langman’s book. 6 In terms of layout, this chapter will discuss and evaluate identity construction of school shooters in relation to the school hierarchy and their marginalization, as well as their ‘failed masculinity;’ detail the cultural script adopted by the shooters in order to exact revenge against the entire institution; offer a discussion of the aforementioned elements and thereafter suggest future areas of research. 2. Fragile Male Identities To begin with, it must be clarified what is meant by the concept of ‘identity’ and how it i s constructed. Firstly, essentialist thought contends that identities are innate, biological entities which are singular and unproblematic. 7 This explanation is, however, too simplistic and idealistic, for it fails to acknowledge the complex, fragmented, and malleable nature of human beings. A more convincing approach, conversely, is the social constructionist approach, which argues that identities are developed through social forces (i.e. social institutions, such as schools, workplaces, and so forth, the opinions of others, and other social factors, such as cultural values), thus meaning that a person is ‘not himself from the outset, [rather] he becomes what he is.’ 8 In this approach, identities are being constantly developed and redeveloped. 9 Moreover, ‘one’s identity is never a final or settled matter.’ 10 Pertinent to the validation of identities are the opinions of others. 11 It could, therefore, be said that ‘identity is never possible in isolation.’ 12 With that in mind, it has been said that adolescence, existing in the middle of the continuum from childhood to adulthood, is a pivotal period for the formation of identity. 13 Moreover, adolescents tend to ‘define, over-define and redefine themselves and each other in often ruthless comparison [emphasis added].’ 14 The phrase ‘ruthless comparison’ was highlighted in the previous sentence because it insinuates brutality almost in the way in which adolescents assess themselves and their peers-when examining the school hierarchical structure in more detail, this certainly seems to be the case. Like any other social institution, school students are categorized vis-à-vis its hierarchy, where each group (e.g. jock, nerd) prescribes particular attributes and behaviours, and denotes a particular status. 15 Popularity for male students is predicated on what Klein calls the ‘cultural capital model,’ which demands the following attributes: proving one’s manhood; athletic prowess; sophisticated social skills (also known as ‘savoir-faire’); prioritising sporting

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__________________________________________________________________ ability over academic success; high socio-economic class. 16 Success with females is another indicator of popularity, with jocks and preps being the two social groups in the hierarchy most likely to ‘score’ with girls. 17 Boys may also gain higher status by displaying other typically prescribed ‘masculine’ traits, such as toughness, challenging authority, belligerence, and dominance over others, as well as repressing emotions and avoiding any behaviour considered to be ‘feminine’ in nature. 18 To return the argument to school shooters, it has been found that school shooters occupied lower statuses in the school hierarchy and were labelled as ‘nerds’ or ‘geeks,’ leading to them being bullied, marginalised and ostracized by their peers. 19 Given the fact that school shootings tend to be perpetrated by males, it seems that notions of ‘masculinity’ are pivotal to their motivations for carrying out the attacks, especially given ‘the shooters not only had fragile identities, they had fragile male identities [emphasis added].’ 20 To take this argument further, Kimmel and Mahler purport that a nexus exists between homophobia, masculinity and violence, whereby heterosexual males who have been bullied as though they were gay thereafter feel a need to prove they are ‘real men’ by executing a school shooting. 21 This becomes evident when one considers the notion that males who do display ‘feminine’ behaviour in schools are likely to be referred to in derogatory terms, such as ‘sissy,’ ‘fag’ and ‘homo[sexual].’ 22 In this sense, the definition of ‘masculinity’ prescribed in schools is formulated in relation to ‘femininity,’ where behaviour which is ‘masculine’ exists in opposition from that which is ‘feminine’ 23. Consequently, this results in a male-female binary model, which states that males are to possess traits of power and dominance, whereas females are thought to be far weaker and emotional. 24 Clearly, this is a reductive, stereotypical approach to analysing gender, therein lies its problematic nature; for instance, according to this model, homosexual men lack masculinity thus are considered not to be ‘real men.’ 25 The rapper Eminem concurs with this sentiment: ‘The lowest degrading thing that you can say to a man...is to call him a faggot and try to take away his manhood.’ 26 This goes some way to explaining the reasoning behind the claim that ‘there is probably no more powerful source of stigma for an adolescent boy than being labelled gay.’ 27 Kimmel and Mahler attribute this to ‘the fears that heterosexuals have that others might (mis)perceive them as gay’ [original emphases]. 28 This link between homosexuality and manhood has infiltrated its way into schools: ‘Walk down any hallway in any middle school or high school in America and the single most common put-down is ‘that’s so gay’.’ 29 Harding et al.’s study found that, within the school environment, being called gay is the ‘worst possible insult.’ 30 Concurrently, it has been noted in several studies that a number of school shooters were called ‘gay’ by their peers, although there was no actual evidence to suggest they were. 31. It can, therefore, be deduced that this ‘gay-baiting’ was used to insinuate the boys had failed at being ‘real men.’ 32 For instance: Luke Woodham

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__________________________________________________________________ was called ‘gay’ and ‘fag’ by other students; the school newspaper printed a story purporting Michael Carneal was gay; Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were said to be lovers and other students said things like ‘nice dress’ to them. 33 Consequently, these school shooters deemed the ‘gay-baiting’ and bullying they received to be a threat to their manliness. In addition to this, school shooters tended to have their romantic advances spurned by girls. Success with females, as previously mentioned, is a marker of status within the school hierarchy, but it is also a way to validate one’s heterosexual masculinity [original emphasis]. 34 For instance: Evan Ramsey’s girlfriend had just broken up with him; Mitchell Johnson and Andrew ‘Drew’ Golden both had been rejected; Kipland Kinkel was said to be obsessed with a girl prior to his attack, and wrote, ‘I think I love her, but she could never love me;’ Dylan Klebold would fill his diary with longings for romance, such as: ‘I know its [sic] her...my love is genuin [sic].’ 35 3. The Cultural Script of Vengeance As has been established thus far, school shooters have fragile male identities, ergo must find a way to assert their ‘masculinity:’ they construe this as displaying aggressive and physical strength as per the male-female binary model. The nexus between masculinity and violence has been taken further in the more extreme form ‘hypermasculinity:’ this denotes that the only acceptable display of emotion for men is ‘rage’ against those who disrespect them. 36 It has been said that the ideology of hypermasculinity, which emphasises ‘physical aggression, domination, sexism and the celebration of victory,’ is prevalent in many American High Schools. 37 Taking the cultural interpretations of masculinity into consideration, it becomes evident that school shootings are used as an extreme method to assert masculinity. For instance, school shooters were able to translate the tenuousness of their masculinity into feelings of empowerment through the use of guns: when using guns, Eric Harris said: ‘I feel more confident, stronger, and more God-like,’ whilst Michael Carneal said: ‘More guns is [sic] better. You have more power.’ 38 The feelings of power which transcribed from gun usage is clear to see when one considers that: ‘From a Freudian perspective, every assault with a bullet, knife, or spear is, like rape, an act of forced penetration into another person’s body by a violent aggressor seeking power, domination and control.’ 39 Moreover, notions of masculinity have also been translated into a ‘cultural script’ of vengeance prescribing violence and killing; once this has been infiltrated into the public sphere vis-à-vis the news media and other outlets, potential school shooters then have a framework of action to carry out. It could, therefore, be said that it acts as the ‘rationale’ for school shooters to perpetrate the shooting, in order to solve their fragile manhood problem, as well as to exact revenge on those who threatened it. 40 At the crux of this script are the cultural norms in a hypermasculine society, which prescribe a willingness to partake in violent behaviour and physical

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__________________________________________________________________ prowess as a way to earn and subsequently maintain respect from others. 41 In the culture of hypermasculinity, ‘when someone questions your manhood, we do not just get mad, we get even.’ 42 Illustrating this point is the following quotes: recorded in a videotape, Harris and Klebold stated respectively: ‘People constantly make fun of my face, my hair, my shirts’ and ‘I’m going to kill you all. You’ve been giving us shit for years;’ Harris wrote in his diary: ‘Everyone is always making fun of me because of how I look, how fucking weak I am…well, I will get you all back: ultimate fucking revenge here;’ Kip Kinkel’s journal stated: ‘…people that are breathing will stop breathing. That is how I will repay all you mother fuckers for all you put me through.’ 43 Concurrently, much like school shootings, the transformation from victim to victimiser is a staple component of revenge films, in which the redefining of roles transpires through violence. 44 In addition to this, Klein and Chancer note the symbolism in school shootings, where perpetrators tended to target people who threatened their ‘masculine identity:’ the higher status boys (i.e. jocks and preps) who bullied them, as well as girls who rejected them romantically. 45 For instance, Luke Woodham, Mitchell Johnson, and Drew Golden all targeted their former girlfriends, whilst Michael Carneal killed two girls who spurned his advances. 46 However, although school shooters do target particular people who threatened their masculine identities, their revenge plan is also more generally aimed at the entire institution which, as a social structure, marginalised them and instead gave groups such as jocks higher status; their attack showcases a message to their peers within the school, as well as the larger community. 47 For instance, the Columbine shooting was originally intended to be a bombing attack, even though this would have killed Harris and Klebold’s friends. Harris’s diary even stated: ‘There are probably about 100 people max[imum] in the school alone who I dont [sic] want to die.’ 48 4. Discussion To conclude, this research chapter has examined the nexus between the cultural script of vengeance and notions of ‘masculinity.’ As has been argued, high status in the school hierarchy for males is predicated on the ‘cultural capital’ model, which prescribes physical prowess and aggressive behaviour; school shooters, conversely, do not fulfil said requirements, thus are marginalised and ostracized within the school community. Further adding to their feelings of ‘failed masculinity’ are the homophobic insults and bullying they receive from other students, as well as their lack of romantic success with girls in the school. Consequently, the ‘cultural script of vengeance,’ enmeshed in violence and hypermasculinity, acts as a tool for shooters to exact revenge against those that threatened their masculinity, as well as the institution as a whole for rejecting them; it also allows them to assert their ‘masculinity’ as per the male-female binary model. Future research could examine the connection between the cultural script of vengeance and notions of masculinity further by performing a more detailed

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__________________________________________________________________ content analysis on a s ample of materials left by the shooters (journals, etc.) and news articles pertaining to school shooting incidents.

Notes 1

Katherine S. Newman, et al., Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings (New York, Basic Books, 2004), 58. 2 Ibid., 50. 3 Michael S. Kimmel and Matthew Mahler, ‘Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence: Random School Shootings, 1982-2001,’ American Behavioural Scientist 46 (2003): 1440. 4 See Jessie Klein, ‘Teaching Her a Lesson: Media Misses Boys’ Rage Relating to Girls in School Shootings,’ Crime Media Culture 1, No. 1 (2005): 90-97; Jessie Klein and Lynn S. Chancer, ‘Masculinity Matters: The Omission of Gender from High-Profile School Violence Cases,’ in Smoke and Mirrors: The Hidden Context of Violence in Schools and Society, ed. Stephanie Urso Spina (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2000), 129-162; Mark R. Leary, et al., ‘Teasing, Rejection and Violence: Case Studies of the School Shootings,’ Aggressive Behaviour 29 (2003): 202-214; Joseph A. Lieberman, School Shootings (New York: Kensington Publishing Corp, 2008); Newman, et al., Rampage. 5 See Klein, ‘Teaching Her a Lesson;’ Klein and Chancer, ‘Masculinity Matters;’ Kimmel and Mahler, ‘Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence.’ 6 Peter Langman, Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009). 7 Craig Calhoun, ‘Social Theory and the Politics of Identity,’ in Social Theory and the Politics of Identity, ed. Craig Calhoun (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1994), 13-14. 8 Amin Maalouf, In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong (New York: Arcade, 2001), 25. 9 See Cedric Cullingford, Prejudice: From Individual Identity to Nationalism in Young People (London: Kogan Page, 2000), 2. 10 Richard Jenkins, Social Identity (3rd Edition) (Oxon: Routledge, 2008), 17. 11 Ibid.; Cullingford, Prejudice; Maalouf, In the Name of Identity. 12 Cullingford, Prejudice, 203. 13 See generally: Erik H. Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis (London: Faber and Faber, 1967); David J. Harding, Cybelle Fox and Jal D. Mehta, ‘Studying Rare Events through Qualitative Case Studies: Lessons from a Study of Rampage School Shootings,’ Sociological Methods Research 31, No. 174 (2002): 174-217; Newman, et al., Rampage. 14 Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis, 87. 15 Jenkins, Social Identity, 45.

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__________________________________________________________________ 16

Jessie Klein, ‘Cultural Capital and High School Bullies: How Social Inequality Impacts School Violence,’ Men and Masculinities 9, No. 1 (2006): 53-75. 17 Ibid., 63. 18 Patricia A. Adler, Steven J. Kless and Peter Adler, ‘Socialization to Gender Roles: Popularity among Elementary School Boys and Girls,’ Sociology of Education 65, no. 3 (1992): 169-187. 19 Harding, Fox and Mehta, ‘Studying rare events;’ Kimmel and Mahler, ‘Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence;’ Klein, ‘Teaching her a lesson;’ Klein and Chancer, ‘Masculinity Matters;’ Leary, et al., ‘Teasing, Rejection and Violence.’ 20 Langman, Why Kids Kill, 147. 21 Kimmel and Mahler, ‘Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence.’ 22 Adler, Kless and Adler, ‘Socialization to Gender Roles,’ 174. 23 Arthur Brittan, Masculinity and Power (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 4. 24 Anthony Clare, On Men: Masculinity in Crisis (London: Chatto and Windus, 2000), 69. 25 Brittan, Masculinity and Power, 1; Raewyn W. Connell, Masculinities (2nd Edition) (Berkley: University of California Press, 2005), 143. 26 Quoted in Richard Kim, ‘Eminem-Bad Rap?’ The Nation (25 March 2001), Viewed 6 January 2010, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20010305/kim. 27 Newman, et al., Rampage, 145. 28 Kimmel and Mahler, ‘Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence,’ 1446. 29 Ibid., 1453. 30 Harding, Fox and Mehta, ‘Studying Rare Events,’ 196. 31 Ibid.; Kimmel and Mahler, ‘Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence;’ Klein, ‘Cultural Capital and High School;’ Klein and Chancer, ‘Masculinity Matters.’ 32 Kimmel and Mahler, ‘Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence,’ 1440, 1453. 33 Ibid., 1447-1448. 34 Ibid., 1451. 35 Klein, ‘Teaching her a lesson,’ 91; Quoted in ‘Kip Kinkel’s Writings,’ ‘School Shooters Info,’ Viewed 30 J une 2011, http://www.schoolshooters.info/PL/Orig inal_Documents_files/Kinkel%20writings.pdf. Quoted in ‘Dylan Klebold’s Writings: Journals, Diaries and School Papers,’ ‘A Columbine Site,’ Viewed 30 June 2011, http://acolumbinesite.com/dylan/writing.html. 36 Hans Toch, ‘Hypermasculinity and Prison Violence,’ in Masculinities and Violence, ed. Lee H. Bowker (London: Sage Publications, 1998), 173.

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__________________________________________________________________ 37

Ralph W. Larkin, Comprehending Columbine (Philadelphia, PA.: Temple University Press, 2007), 208-209. 38 Quoted in ‘Columbine Shooter Eric Harris’ Journal and Writings,’ ‘A Columbine Site,’ Viewed 30 J une 2011, http://www.acolumbinesite.com/eric/writ ing/journal.html. Quoted in Newman, et al., Rampage, 146, 148. 39 Lieberman, School Shootings, 224. 40 Harding, Fox and Mehta, ‘Studying Rare Events,’ 189, 199; Newman, et al., Rampage, 230. 41 Clare, On Men, 36; Harding, Fox and Mehta, ‘Studying Rare Events,’ 196-197; Toch, ‘Hypermasculinity and Prison Violence,’ 170. 42 Kimmel and Mahler, ‘Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence,’ 1451. 43 Quoted in Ibid., 1448; Quoted in ‘Columbine Shooter;’ Quoted in ‘Kip Kinkel’s Writings.’ 44 William Ian Miller, Humiliation and Other Essays on Honour, Social Discomfort and Violence (London: Cornell University Press, 1993), 61. 45 Klein and Chancer, ‘Masculinity Matters;’ Klein, ‘Teaching Her a Lesson’; Klein, ‘Cultural Capital and High School Bullies.’ 46 Klein, ‘Teaching Her a Lesson,’ 91. 47 Klein, ‘Cultural Capital and High School Bullies;’ Langman, Why Kids Kill; Newman, et al., Rampage. 48 Quoted in ‘Columbine Shooter.’

Bibliography Adler, Patricia A., Steven J. Kless, and Peter Adler. ‘Socialization to Gender Roles: Popularity among Elementary School Boys and Girls.’ Sociology of Education 65, No. 3 (1992): 169-187. Brittan, Arthur. Masculinity and Power. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989. Craig Calhoun. ‘Social Theory and the Politics of Identity.’ In Social Theory and the Politics of Identity, edited by Craig Calhoun, 13-14 (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1994). Clare, Anthony. On Men: Masculinity in Crisis. London: Chatto and Windus, 2000. ‘A Columbine Site,’ ‘Columbine Shooter Eric Harris’ Journal and Writings.’ Viewed 30 June 2011. http://www.acolumbinesite.com/eric/writing/journal.html.

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__________________________________________________________________ –––, ‘Dylan Klebold’s Writing: Journals, Diaries and School Papers.’ Viewed 30 June 2011. http://acolumbinesite.com/dylan/writing.html. Connell, Raewyn W. Masculinities (2nd Edition). Berkley: University of California Press, 2005. Cullingford, Cedric. Prejudice: From Individual Identity to Nationalism in Young People. London: Kogan Page, 2000. Erikson, Erik H. Identity: Youth and Crisis. London: Faber and Faber, 1967. Harding, David J., Cybelle Fox, and Jal, D. Mehta. ‘Studying Rare Events through Qualitative Case Studies: Lessons from a S tudy of Rampage School Shootings.’ Sociological Methods Research 31, No. 174 (2002): 174-217. Jenkins, Richard. Social Identity (3rd Edition). Oxon: Routledge, 2008. Kim, Richard. ‘Eminem-Bad Rap?’ The Nation (25 March 2001). Viewed 6 January 2010. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20010305/kim. Kimmel, Michael S. and Matthew Mahler. ‘Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence: Random School Shootings, 1982-2001.’ American Behavioural Scientist 46 (2003): 1439-1458. Klein, Jessie. ‘Cultural Capital and High School Bullies: How Social Inequality Impacts School Violence.’ Men and Masculinities 9, No. 1 (2006): 53-75. –––, ‘Teaching Her a Lesson: Media Misses Boys’ Rage Relating to Girls in School Shootings.’ Crime Media Culture 1, No. 1 (2005): 90-97. Klein, Jessie and Lynn S. Chancer. ‘Masculinity Matters: The Omission of Gender from High-Profile School Violence Cases.’ In Smoke and Mirrors: The Hidden Context of Violence in Schools and Society, edited by Stephanie Urso Spina, 129162. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2000. Langman, Peter. Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009. Larkin, Ralph W.. Comprehending Columbine. Philadelphia, PA.: Temple University Press, 2007.

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__________________________________________________________________ Leary, Mark R., Kowalski, Robin M., Laura Smith, and Stephen Phillips. ‘Teasing, Rejection and Violence: Case Studies of the School Shootings.’ Aggressive Behaviour 29 (2003): 202-214. Lieberman, Joseph A. School Shootings. New York: Kensington Publishing Corp, 2008. Maalouf, Amin. In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong. New York: Arcade, 2001. Miller, William Ian. Humiliation and Other Essays on Honour, Social Discomfort and Violence. London: Cornell University Press, 1993 Newman, Katherine S., Cybelle Fox, David J. Harding, Mehta Jal and Wendy Roth. Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings. New York, Basic Books, 2004. ‘School Shooters Info,’ ‘Kip Kinkel’s Writings,’ Viewed 30 J une 2011, http://www.schoolshooters.info/PL/Original_Documents_files/Kinkel%20writings. pdf., Toch, Hans. ‘Hypermasculinity and Prison Violence.’ In Masculinities and Violence, edited by Lee H. Bowker, 168-17. London: Sage Publications, 1998. Selina E. M. Doran is a Doctoral Candidate at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. Current doctoral research focuses the news media coverage and policy implications of school shootings in the United States. Her areas of research interest are: gender, television, media, new media, and crime.

Revenge, the Volcano of Despair: The Story of the IsraeliPalestinian Conflict Helena Yakovlev-Golani Abstract Vengeance has acquired its undeniable place in philosophy, fiction, history and religious studies. In the past, revenge has always been the ultimate means to subdue injustice in various cultures. Duels and vendettas were popular all over Europe. Today, however, revenge is viewed by western societies as a primordial response. Nonetheless, as this research reveals, the West, as well as the East, continues to use retaliation as a means of justice restoration. However, revenge issues have not extensively been examined in a comprehensive manner in conflict research, despite their outstanding relevance to this field. The present study, therefore, goes some way towards addressing this lacuna. The chapter addresses the questions of why revenge is so common in conflicts, especially in the Middle East, and why it is difficult to stop it o nce it s tarts. Awareness of revenge and detection of its influence on conflict dynamics is a cr ucial step that needs to be taken before returning embattled parties to the path of peace. Furthermore, this research examines the roots of vengeance. It reviews the cultural sources of revenge and demonstrates that vengeance has a unique place in world history. In fact, revenge is ingrained in cultures and it influences the life of religious, as well as secular communities. In addition, the research discusses various types of revenge—blood revenge, collective and individual revenge—that influence people’s code of behaviour and social norms. It also sheds light on diverse functions of vengeance and the context in which they are formed. Finally, this essay evaluates the connection between revenge and the protracted nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, underscoring the role of vengeance in both Israeli and Palestinian societies. Key Words: Revenge, vengeance in religions, honour, conflict resolution, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ***** 1. Roots of Vengeance Revenge is generally viewed today by western societies as a b arbaric, primordial response to a p erceived wrongful affront that aims to restore justice. Nonetheless, vengeance has acquired its irrefutable place in philosophy, fiction, history and religious studies. It has been claimed 1 that primary revenge principles appeared in the ancient Code of Hammurabi:

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__________________________________________________________________ 229. If a builder builds a house for some one [sic], and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death. 230. If it kills the son of the owner the son of that builder shall be put to death. 231. If it k ills a slave of the owner, then he shall pay slave for slave to the owner of the house. 2 In this case, the law regulates the execution of revenge. It prescribes a wellknown formula of justice, ‘an eye for an eye,’ in which the murder of one is used to avenge the death of another. Philosophical literature illustrates this point. Sir Francis Bacon declares that ‘revenge is a kind of wild justice, the more man's nature runs to the more ought law to weed it out.’ 3 Similarly, Marongiu and Newman maintain that ‘all acts of vengeance arise from an elementary sense of injustice.’ 4 Their arguments seem to be true when the motive of restoring justice or making things equal repeatedly appears in nearly every literary work that deals with vengeance. Writers, philosophers, and researchers remarkably portray the pessimistic face of revenge and simultaneously introduce the full range of precautions that should be considered. Almost every play of Shakespeare is rife with dilemmas and aphorisms concerning vengeance and emphasizes the humanity and universality of this emotion: If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? 5 Revenge, however, is not only a fictional phenomenon. Some of the most destructive wars were triggered by vengeance. The First World War, for instance, erupted as a result of the reaction to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Examples of war revenge can be found in modern history as well. The 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States (US) in 2001, and those beforehand in Africa in 1998, were presented by their plotter Osama Bin-Laden, the ex-leader of the al-Qaeda, as an act of revenge in defence of Islam against the US and its allies. 6 These acts, in their turn, gave birth to Western wars of revenge against the terror in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as to Bin Laden’s targeted killing. The American public gave a clear permission to exact vengeance that aimed ‘to bring the guilty parties to justice, and right their wrong.’ 7 However, the terminology that has been used to present these wars publicly was soften and they became known as ‘defence military operations’ or ‘the war on terror,’ since the quest of revenge in modern western democratic and cultural society does not fit its status and its development.

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__________________________________________________________________ In addition to issues of justice, there is also a crucial religious factor that highlights its influence at the facade of international arena. In religious communities, religion is often seen as an ultimate source of behavioural norm, and, therefore, these laws are compulsory for each member of the community. Nevertheless, even in secular countries that pronounce the separation of religion and the state, the population is deeply influenced by religious norms. Consequently, it is important to examine the dominating religious rules regarding vengeance in order to understand the effect they have on people’s views. In contrast to Christianity, which forbids revenge, there are no clear answers on this subject in neither Judaism nor Islam. Although these two condemn vengeance inside the believers’ or in-group community, they definitely tolerate, if not promote, its application towards nonbelievers. In Judaism, there is no clear difference between believers and nonbelievers as in Islam. The book of Exodus declares without mentioning the identity of the aggressor that: …if any mischief follows, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. 8 However, there is a clear prohibition of personal vengeance inside the Jewish collective: ‘Thou shalt not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ 9 Thus, while the Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh) suggests a just punishment for the provoker of the insult, similar to Hammurabi’s Code, it excludes blood feuds or personal vendettas at any cost within the Jewish people or towards their neighbours, since the right to avenge is reserved for God. 10 Islam also guards the right to exact vengeance to God (Allah); nevertheless, it justifies revenge against nonbelievers in various parts of the Qu’ran: ‘…the unbelievers, they shall have a severe punishment,’ 11 and therefore: …kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out, and persecution is severer than slaughter, and do not fight with them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you in it, but if they do fight you, then slay them; such is the recompense of the unbelievers. 12 According to surah 22:39, ‘Sanction is given unto those who fight because they have been wronged; and Allah is indeed able to give them victory;’ 13 however, revenge must be proportional to the offense: ‘…whoever then acts aggressively against you, inflict injury on him according to the injury he has inflicted on you...’ 14 In contrast to what has been cited, the Qu’ran preaches that ‘…whoever is patient and forgiving, these most surely are actions due to courage.’ 15

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__________________________________________________________________ By presenting inconsistent messages to their believers, both Islam and Judaism allow a wide range of interpretations and manipulations. In Judaism and Islam, therefore, vengeance might seem to be a legitimate means for restoring justice, at least towards nonbelievers. In Christianity as well, vengeance is a d ivine prerogative: ‘Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.’ 16 Christianity ‘sets itself up as the religion of mercy’ 17 and that is why humans are obliged to forgive. However, history proves quite the opposite. Feuds such as the English-Irish conflict and many wars inside the Christendom demonstrate that Jesus’ rulings were not followed. Nevertheless, it is important that Christianity discourages revenge as a legitimate technique to resolve conflicts and teaches that ‘…whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.’ 18 2. Revenge and Its Functions In this section, I would like to underline various types of revenge and analyse their functions in the broader social context. That is not to say that all the types are universal and appear in every culture; in fact, different types of revenge are culture-specific phenomena. To better understand the concept of vengeance, the functions of each mode of retaliation will be examined subsequently. One common confusion regarding revenge is its equivalence with retribution, which is ‘punishment inflicted as deserved for a past wrong.’ 19 Robert Nozick distinguishes revenge from retribution by outlining five arguments: 20 First, revenge ‘need not be done for a wrong. It may be done because of an injury or a harm or a slight,’ 21 while retribution is taken to restore wrongs. Second, ‘retribution sets an internal limit to the amount of the punishment, whereas revenge internally need set no limits to what is inflicted.’ 22 Third, ‘revenge is personal, whereas …retribution need have no special or personal tie to the victim of the wrong…’ 23 Fourth, in contrast to retribution, ‘revenge involves a particular emotional tone, pleasure in the suffering of another.’ 24 Finally, retribution is general, while revenge need not be general, but rather dependent on how the avenger feels at the specific time. Nozick’s first argument appears to be vague, and indeed, Peter French criticizes him, wondering whether it is possible to draw ‘a clear distinction between wrongs and harms, slights or injuries.’ 25 Nevertheless, Nozick’s attempt to draw a line between revenge and retribution exemplifies the existence of two autonomous entities, which in many cases overlap but still represent different motives. One of the types of vengeance is blood revenge; it is ‘a retaliatory killing in which the initial victim’s close kinsmen conduct a revenge raid on the members of the current community of the initial killer.’ 26 Blood revenge may escalate to a feud if there is a series of killings, one following the other. 27 In some societies, vendetta or blood revenge are obligatory; thus, peoples in the Balkans and in the Caucasus, South American and African tribes, as well as Middle Eastern countries, have deep

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__________________________________________________________________ rooted social conventions that govern the act of revenge. These social conventions or norms differ from legal ones. 28 Jon Elster argues ‘for norms to be social, they must be shared by other people and sustained by their approval and disapproval.’ 29 Social norms in feuding societies enforce the call for the blood vengeance and present it as ‘an executive virtue.’ 30 If the potential avenger does not follow this call, he might find himself and his family isolated from society or even banned by it, since deviation from the norm is perceived as a weakness; and hence, a disgrace to the entire community. It may be hard to understand blood feud mechanisms and their pressure on people’s behavior without first recognizing the role of honour in feuding societies. The protection of ‘a face,’ ‘a good name’ or ‘reputation’ is a matter of honour; therefore, by avenging, the avenger feels as if he restores the previous state of dignity and justice as a part of a memorial ceremony 31 that aims to keep faith with the injured party. According to Michael Ignatieff, ‘revenge is a profound moral desire to keep faith with the dead, to honor [sic] their memory by taking up their cause where they left off.’ 32 Honour in feuding societies, thus, became a kind of heritage that passes from generation to generation and if any damage is caused, it may authorize family or community members to retaliate against an offender pending the restoration of the initial ‘balance of honour’ that preceded the perceived injury. This cycle of honour traverses its margins and brings at first family members and then the entire community into the brand-new cycle of revenge that may pervade generations.

Image 1 – Revenge Dynamics Consequently, revenge can be collective. Joseph Ginat explains that revenge is a mechanism that guards collective unity: ‘A leader who is anxious to promote cohesiveness within the group will encourage revenge. By deliberately increasing tension, a l eader can make his group aware of their collective responsibility.’ 33 Therefore, to create an atmosphere of unification, the leaders exploit revenge dynamics in order to increase their legitimacy by distracting people’s attention from domestic issues.

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__________________________________________________________________ Unlike Western countries, the Middle East ‘cultivates a collective existence,’ 34 and thus any affront leads to a collective responsibility that is shared by all the members of the community. Collective revenge may be implemented against nations or groups, blaming them for the perceived damage and ignoring the personal responsibility of each member individually. Revenge of this type can be an instrument in leaders’ hands that may use it as an excuse to act in accordance with their own interests. In addition to the aforementioned functions of vengeance, there are others that are more subtle. An avenger, by transferring the reason of the penalty to a target, enters a ‘psychological state’ 35 that makes their relationships extremely intimate. This fills the retaliator with a sense of satisfaction and contentment which cannot be achieved when the villain has perished naturally. Furthermore, revenge as a message has another important role, whereas the retaliator, in addition to restoring justice, desires to attain other goals such as educating or deterring the wrongdoer from performing the same pattern of behaviour in the future. The idea is to make the target understand that his act was improper, and therefore, deserves penalty. 36 Braithwaite and Pettit call this type of revenge ‘target retributivism.’ 37 3. Revenge as a Flame of Conflict A conflict often involves different emotions. With respect to the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, mistrust, fear, anger, despair, hostility and mainly revenge are those that fuel and characterize it most. In the Palestinian Authority, revenge has become almost a co mmon phenomenon. The Palestinians resort to vengeance, feeling that nothing else will improve their situation as a desperate response to the on-going occupation, the social conditions, the refugee problem, the numerous prisoners and the checkpoints which have all contributed to an aura of frustration. These circumstances and the despair they caused have led many Palestinians to experience the conflict personally on a daily basis and to pursue revenge against Israel, the perceived oppressor, as a way of coping with the harsh reality they face. The lack of a strong central authority, such as an effective government and institutions which are able to practice justice, makes revenge the only perceived means to amend the situation. Revenge has even become a p art of the national theme and appears twice in the Palestinian national anthem: ‘With my determination, my fire and the volcano of my revenge,’ and later: ‘Palestine is my home, Palestine is my fire, Palestine is my revenge.’ 38 The anthem places revenge in the everyday life of all Palestinians, and subconsciously, vengeance becomes the first and not the last resort to handle the conflict. This allows militant movements to take advantage of individuals using religious ideals and to harness them to their cause. Thus, a teenager can be converted into a legitimate martyr in ‘the holy war’ and pay the ultimate personal price as part of the collective vengeance crusade.

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__________________________________________________________________ This situation may be compared to one that existed in Palestine during the British Mandate before the birth of the State of Israel. The National Military Organization’s (Etzel) retaliation acts against the Arab population in the late thirties 39 were initiated in order to protect the Jews from Arab attacks and to signal the other side of possible consequences to its violence. In fact, many similarities between the two nations may be found during the process of society consolidation and formation of a new state. In contrast to Palestinians, Israelis do not experience revenge personally. They rely fully on the Israel Defence Forces as the only legitimate retaliator. Revenge, therefore, became an institutionalized form of justice, where the army carries the role of avenger and guards the right to deter. Unfortunately, revenge became the only sound message for both sides that aims to transfer the reason of the penalty to the potential target, to emphasize each side’s strength and relevance, to convey the message of despair to the other and to make him/her feel the pain. Both sides are deeply involved in the cycle of revenge, killing innocents and humiliating each other as deliberate acts of revenge, which in their turn light up further vengeance. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in large measure, reveals the story of revenge. The two sides sanctify vengeance and occasionally use it unfoundedly, recognizing that it will escalate the conflict; however, they both fear to do the first crucial step of reconciliation that may be interpreted by the other as a sign of weakness. In this conflict, vengeance has become a cynical instrument at the hands of those who seek to continue the bloodshed and to protract the conflict. I can only hope that through intensive engagement the both sides will consider Mohandas Gandih’s famous assertion: ‘an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,’ which perfectly illustrates the protracted dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Notes 1

Peter French, The Virtues of Vengeance (Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2001), 9. 2 David Koeller, ‘Code of Hammurabi Laws on T rade,’ in ‘Then Again…,’ Viewed 13 March 2011, http://www.thenagain.info/Classes/Sources/HammurabiTrade.html. 3 Francis Bacon, ‘Of Revenge’ (1625), Viewed 21 April 2011, http://www. textlog.de/3480.html. 4 Pietro Marongiu and Graeme Newman, Vengeance: The Fight against Injustice (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1987), 9. 5 William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene I (1597), Viewed 13 March 2011, http://shakespeare.mit.edu/merchant/full.html.

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Joyce M. Davis, Martyrs: Innocence, Vengeance, and Despair in the Middle East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), Viewed 18 March 2011, http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fatwa.htm, 93. 7 Christopher Phillips, Six Questions of Socrates: A Modern-Day Journey of Discovery through World Philosophy (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004), 121. 8 Exod. 21:23-25, The Holy Scriptures: The Tanakh, ‘Jewish Virtual Library,’ Viewed 26 April 2011, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Bible/jpstoc. html. 9 Lev. 19:18 (Tanakh). 10 Deut. 32:35 (Tanakh). 11 The Qu’ran 42:26, Viewed 14 December 2010, . 12 Ibid., 2:191. 13 Ibid., 22:39. 14 Ibid., 2:194. See also 2:190. 15 Ibid., 42:43. 16 Rom. 12:19, The Bible (Authorized (King James) Version), Viewed 26 April 2011, http://bibleresources.bible.com/bible_kjv.php. 17 Laura Blumenfeld, Revenge: A Story of Hope (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), 202. 18 Matt. 5:39 (AV). 19 Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1981), 366. 20 Ibid., 367-368. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 French, Virtues of Vengeance, 67. 26 Napoleon A. Chagnon, ‘Life Histories, Blood Revenge, and Warfare in a Tribal Population,’ Science 239, no. 4843 (1988): 985. 27 Joseph Ginat, Blood Revenge: Family Honor, Mediation and Outcasting (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1997), 21. 28 Jon Elster, ‘Norms of Revenge,’ Ethics 100, no. 4 (1990): 865. 29 Ibid., 864. 30 French, Virtues of Vengeance, 142. 31 Brandon Hamber and Richard A. Wilson, Symbolic Closure through Memory, Reparation and Revenge in Post-conflict Societies (Johannesburg: Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, 1999), 18.

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Ibid. Ginat, Blood Revenge, 26. 34 Blumenfeld, Revenge: A Story of Hope, 153. 35 French, Virtues of Vengeance, 69. 36 Ibid., 85. 37 John Braithwaite and Philip Pettit, Not Just Deserts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 42. 38 The Palestinian National Anthem: Biladi, Viewed 18 April 2006, http://www. palestinehistory.com/anthem.htm. 39 ‘Etzel,’ Viewed 19 March 2011, http://www.etzel.org.il/english. 33

Bibliography Bacon, Francis. ‘Of Revenge.’ In Essays, 1625. Viewed 13 March 2010. http://www.textlog.de/3480.html . The Bible. Authorized (King James) Version. Viewed 2 July 2011. http://bibleresources.bible.com/bible_kjv.php . Blumenfeld, Laura. Revenge: A Story of Hope. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002. Braithwaite, John and Philip Pettit. Not Just Deserts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. Chagnon, Napoleon A. ‘Life Histories, Blood Revenge, and Warfare in a Tribal Population.’ In Science 239, no. 4843 (1988): 985-992. Davis, Joyce M. Martyrs: Innocence, Vengeance, and Despair in the Middle East. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Viewed 18 M arch 2011. http://www.fas. org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fatwa.htm. Elster, Jon. ‘Norms of Revenge.’ In Ethics 100, No. 4 (1990): 862-885. ‘Etzel,’ Viewed 19 March 2011, http://www.etzel.org.il/english. Ginat, Joseph. Blood Revenge: Family Honor, Mediation and Outcasting. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1997.

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__________________________________________________________________ Hamber, Brandon and Richard A. Wilson. Symbolic Closure through Memory, Reparation and Revenge in Post-Conflict Societies. Johannesburg: Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, 1999. The Holy Scriptures: The Tanakh. ‘Jewish Virtual Library.’ Viewed 26 April 2011. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Bible/jpstoc.html. French, Peter. The Virtues of Vengeance. Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2001. Marongiu, Pietro and Graeme Newman. Vengeance: The Fight Against Injustice. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1987. Nozick, Robert. Philosophical Explanations. Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1981. Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice. 1597. Viewed 13 March 2011. http://shakespeare.mit.edu/merchant/full.html. The Palestinian National Anthem: Biladi, http://www.palestinehistory.com/anthem.htm.

Viewed

18

April

2006,

Phillips, Christopher. Six Questions of Socrates: A Modern-Day Journey of Discovery through World Philosophy. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004. The Qu’ran. Viewed 14 December 2010. http://www.hti.umich.edu/koran/browse. html. Helena Yakovlev-Golani is a P hD candidate at the Swiss Centre for Conflict Research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The present research was inspired by the project ‘Emotions in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,’ which included meetings between Israeli and Palestinian students under the framework of the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies.

The Domestication of Vengeance in Ancient Greece and South India Charles W. Nuckolls Abstract Primal deities associated with the maintenance of kinship norms appear in the mythologies of ancient Greece and contemporary South India. The Erinyes (‘Furies’) are the Greek counterpart to what the Jalaris (a Telugu-speaking fishing caste on the south-eastern coast of India) call ‘Sati Polamma.’ Both are female deities that react swiftly and violently to transgression; their purpose is to uphold the importance of kinship relations. This chapter examines the ‘domestication’ of vengeful goddesses to the different cultural ideals represented in Aeschylus’ Oresteia and South Indian narratives of sexual guilt. It will be shown that the Erinyes become subject to the will of democratic Athens while ‘Sati Polamma’ undergoes transformation from a vengeful spirit to a symbol of kinship solidarity. Key Words: ‘The Furies,’ Aeschylus, goddesses, Hindu India. ***** In both contemporary South India and ancient Greece, ‘a kind of wild justice,’ to use Bacon’s expression, wreaks vengeance on transgressors of vital kinship norms. Justice is ‘wild’ because it is believed to be embodied in autochthonous spirits that live outside the political dimensions of society. These spirits, in Greece and South India, are associated with the earth, and with a time that antedates the birth of the gods and the order they uphold. They are also female – recognized, in dream and public drama, by loose and dishevelled hair, bulging eyes, and association with blood sacrifice. The norms they protect are understood as fundamental to the primary relationships between parent and child; husband and wife; and siblings. But wild justice, when it is uncontained, threatens the social system no matter how righteous the norms it maintains. Primal vengeance must therefore be ‘domesticated.’ In Aeschylus, domestication takes place by subordinating vengeful spirits to the rule of law and the political order represented by the democratic city-state of Athens. Avenging spirits in South India are handled rather differently: once ritually propitiated, they become tokens of family solidarity and continuity through time. What do the spirits of vengeance do in Greek drama and contemporary Hindu South India? How, and why, must they be domesticated? Here we consider two cultures, separated by thousands of years and thousands of miles: the Greek world of the fifth century B.C. and a Telugu-speaking fishing village on the south-eastern coast of India. In the Athens of Aeschylus, vengeance as retributive justice undergoes partial replacement by the deliberative justice of the democratic polis.

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__________________________________________________________________ Autochthonous spirits associated with a society governed by kinship are subordinated to the Olympian gods and the emerging nationalism of the city-state. In South India, retributive justice assimilates itself over time, and in each generation, to the ideal of family solidarity. Both can be viewed as processes of domestication, but whereas Greek vengeance becomes deliberative justice, South Indian vengeance is recycled within the household to become a g enealogical symbol, an emblem of family continuity. In ancient Greek, avenging spirits were known as Erinyes, ‘the angry ones,’ pitiless pursuers of those who violate filial duties. Aeschylus describes them as ‘accursed virgins, the ancient hags from some bygone age whose presence neither god nor man nor best can bear.’ 1 In fact, the Erinyes were considered a f orce so instinctive and primeval that the Greeks said of them, ‘Even dogs have their Erinyes.’ 2 Sacrifices to them consisted only of ‘natural’ products, of nothing that is produced by farming, and in the sacrifice the offerings were totally consumed. ‘There is no need for knife and altar, for my feasting shall be upon your living flesh, you, the victim fattened ready for my sacrifice.’ 3 Not surprisingly given Greek gender notions, they are also female, and act the way women are thought to act – viscerally, without reflection or deliberation, and with violence. Their power is especially potent because they are unmarried; they therefore lack the patriarchal containment that is supposed to insure female energy is properly located and directed. But this makes the Furies even more diligent in enforcing kinship norms; in fact, since the rule of men is associated with communal debate and decisionmaking in Greek drama, the authority of the Erinyes assumed the terrible capacity to act automatically, without deliberation, in defence of ancient kinship norms the Greeks defined as natural or prior to social organization. The South Indian counterpart to the Erinyes is ‘Sati Polamma’, a goddess (ammavaru) who afflicts those who have sworn false oaths in matters of sexual fidelity. She, too, is a primordial female deity, who creates the world by laying eggs and then tries to satisfy her lust by committing incest with her three sons. Later, reduced to ash by the god Vishnu, one of her sons, she rises again as the goddess whose principle assigned task is to punish sexual oath-breakers, thereby protecting the marital relationship. The original ‘Sati Polamma’, however, is not exactly the same as the ‘Sati Polamma’ that afflicts sexual oath-breakers in the present. In fact, each act of oath-breaking brings into existence its own ‘Sati Polamma’, and there are families in the fishing village that have more than one, because more than one transgression has taken place. Like the Erinyes, ‘Sati Polamma’ responds immediately and violently to breaches in the social order, especially where sexual misconduct and the violation of kinship norms are concerned. Let us say a married woman makes an oath that she has not committed adultery. If she has lied, ‘Sati Polamma’ will attack her, and no amount of rationalization or self-justification will suffice to assuage the goddess.

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__________________________________________________________________ In the Oresteia it is true that the Erinyes relentlessly pursue Orestes to avenge his murder of Clytemnestra, his mother. The Furies cannot be mollified or dissuaded by force of argument, since they represent primal beings that in Greek thought existed before the development of reason. Their function is to punish violations of kinship norms without consideration of motivation or circumstance. Orestes defends himself in two ways, first with reference to the motive behind his deed – he killed his Clytemnestra, his mother, in order to avenge her murder of his father, Agamemnon – and second, by naming the god Apollo as the one who commanded to take vengeance. Surely these were good reasons. After all, of the four main characters (Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Orestes, Electra), Orestes is the only one who claims explicit divine sanction for transgressing kinship norms. That is why the Chorus can call the murder of his mother ‘blameless;’ 4 in fact, the word they use is not murder, but ate, the term that denotes divine punishment, and they say ‘Justice guided his hand.’ 5 But the Furies are not susceptible to argument, and pursue Orestes until he finally seeks refuge in the temple of Athena and invokes her protection. There Orestes is put on trial before the Areopagus and Athena herself presides as judge. The two sides, Orestes and the Erinyes, present their cases, and a jury composed of the men of Athens votes. Orestes argues from reason and divine justification; his intent is pure, and uncontaminated by the one emotion Greek drama invariably condemns the most – hubris. The Furies, on the other hand, are not at all concerned about these matters, but only with the unnatural death of a person at the hands of a relative. 6 They say, ‘For where is there such incentive to kill one’s mother?’ 7 The question comes down to choice between the emerging democratic ethos of modern Athens – with its stress on motivation and intention – and the older Homeric ethos of blood vengeance. The men of Athens are evenly split between exoneration and conviction. They are, as Helm points out, caught between the old and the new, ‘where the new has its allure but the old retains its claims.’ 8 The remarkable shift in emphasis observed here involves not simply a substitution of a political institution for family vengeance in the administration of justice, important though that step is, but also allows for the consideration of motives in the judgment of guilt or innocence 9. As ultimate arbiter, Athena casts the deciding vote and frees Orestes, but not before compensating the Erinyes: henceforth they will be known euphemistically as the Eumenides, ‘the beneficent ones,’ and worshipped in a new shrine within in the city. In effect, the Furies are domesticated by making them subject to the will of men and the Olympian gods who represent the city’s developing status as a nationalist democracy. That is not to say they relinquish their power to avenge offenses against kinship, but their power to do so is implicitly circumscribed by the deliberative councils of the city. Similar to the Erinyes is ‘Sati Polamma’, a South Indian goddess whose purpose is to afflict transgressors, especially those who have sworn false oaths in

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__________________________________________________________________ matters of sexual fidelity. 10 Like the Erinyes, ‘Sati Polamma’ is worshipped in no temple; she is thought to exist prior to, and independently of, mainstream gods and goddesses; and she is associated with the earth. Once she attacks, she attaches herself to the transgressor and his descendants forever, and must be propitiated once a year with sacrifice. That might seem like a case of inherited guilt, making ‘Sati Polamma’ similar to the Erinyes, since Orestes and his family bear the taint of sins committed by earlier generations. But ‘Sati Polamma’, once installed in a family’s pantheon, becomes a protecting deity, and afflicts people of other households who fail in their kinship obligations to the first family. She is, as it were, something of a spiritual first- responder, known to attack immediately and violently the perpetrators of misdeeds. Could this not be seen as kind of domestication of vengeance, not unlike what happens to the Erinyes when Athena accommodates them as protecting spirits of Athens? Let us consider an example, and one that the Jalaris consider typical. A woman undertakes an adulterous affair, but denies it, and is then forced by her husband to swear an oath. She stamps the earth three times, and swears that he is innocent on pain of attack by the goddesses of broken promises, ‘Sati Polamma’. Later, the oath she has broken provokes the goddess ‘Sati Polamma’ to wrath, and the woman (or someone close to her) is attacked and made to suffer. She and her family consult a diviner, who reveals that the source of the attack is ‘Sati Polamma’, and that if the woman and her family wish to avoid more suffering, they must make a sacrifice to the goddess. The sacrifice is made and thereafter, every year (usually around the last week of December), the woman and her husband must sacrifice a chicken or goat to the goddess. After they die, their children must continue the practice, and so must their grandchildren, if they are descendants in the male line. It is not typical for the village as a whole to know when and where the sacrifices to ‘Sati Polamma’ take place, since husband and wife do their best to keep the ritual as secret as possible. After all, there is stigma associated with adultery and broken oaths, and most families do not want others to know such things have happened. Husband and wife generally make their ritual offerings to ‘Sati Polamma’ at a location outside the village, either near the hill-top temple of Simhachalam or in downtown Visakhapatnam, in close proximity to the temple of Ellamma. But as time passes, and the first generation passes away, the sacrifice to ‘Sati Polamma’ takes on more and more of the character of a household goddess ritual – an entirely public event, and one to which family and friends are invited. The sacrifice takes place on the beach, near the fishing village, and is announced by singing, dancing, and fireworks. No one refers to the misdeed that originally caused the goddess to come to this family, although they do know about, and will discuss it if asked. What, then, is the meaning of ‘Sati Polamma’ at this point, and would it be fair to say it has changed? ‘Sati Polamma’ is not household goddess in the conventional sense because of her association with sexual transgression and oath-breaking. But the logic of the

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__________________________________________________________________ household and family solidarity eventually win out, and ‘Sati Polamma’ is partly domesticated – that is, she is assimilated to the household pantheon of goddesses and becomes ‘like them’ in her role as upholder of family solidarity and continuity through time. Domestication, in other words, means subordination to the most important principles in South Indian kinship. She is only partly domesticated, however, since her association with sexual guilt and oath-breaking make her unique, difficult to appease or placate, and always in need of blood sacrifice. Even the families that propitiate her, openly and publicly, do not feel entirely comfortable identifying her as a household goddess. She remains in a category by herself, not unlike the Erinyes, which do not relinquish their role as agents of vengeance even after Athena installs them as city goddesses. The Erinyes undergo domestication in a different way, by being made subservient to the polis itself. The city represents the triumph of deliberative over retributive justice, of the younger Olympian gods over the spirits of blood vengeance. It is the strength and stability of the city, not the family, that Aeschylus celebrates. Now, according to Aeschylus, justice must pass through the democratic process of the Areopagus, and ultimately, the solution must reflect the triumph of the polis over everything. The Oresteia’s main purpose may not have been Athenian nationalism, but it certainly served that objective, because in the end, the Furies becomes subject to the city-state and must stand as its defenders. There is nothing similar in the Jalari case, because there is no political objective to be reached or political pride to be celebrated. It is the not the village that wins out in the end, but the household unit, to whose generational continuity everything can be sacrificed. The Greeks of Homer’s time would have understood this better than Aeschylus and his counterparts, for whom the family was already being subsumed in the larger conditions of the city-state. For this reason, the South Indian dynamic would seem like a reversion to a much more primitive ethos, but this should not surprise us. There has been no transformation, as there was in fifth century Athens, to a p artial replacement of kinship-governed politics with the politics of democracy. The South Indian village remains a society largely governed by the norms of patrilineal succession and cross-cousin marriage. And this is true despite that fact that India is changing, and the village itself has gone from being an isolated coastal hamlet to a suburb of the expanding city of Visakhapatnam, one of the most important ports on the eastern coast of India. In the end, what we see is that the Furies are domesticated, but to different sociological ideals – in the case of Athens, to the ideal of the democratic polis, and in the South Indian village, to the kinship dynamics that still inform and control the system.

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Notes 1

Alan H. Sommerstein, ed. and trans., Aeschylus, II, Oresteia: Agamemnon. Libation-Bearers. Eumenides (New York: Loeb Classical Library, 2009), 68-70. 2 Peter Monaghan, The New Books of Goddesses and Heroines (Llewellyn Publications, 2002), 222. 3 Sommerstein, Aeschylus, II, Oresteia, 304-305. 4 Ibid., 830. 5 Ibid., 948-949. 6 Ibid., 948-949: 212, 421-427. 7 Ibid., 427. 8 James Helm, ‘Aeschylus’ Genealogy of Morals,’ Transactions of the American Philological Association 134 (2004): 50. 9 Ibid., 51. 10 Charles Nuckolls, The Cultural Dialectics of Knowledge and Desire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996).

Bibliography Alan H. Sommerstein, Ed. and trans. Aeschylus, II, Oresteia: Agamemnon. Libation-Bearers. Eumenides. New York: Loeb Classical Library, 2009. Helm, James. ‘Aeschylus’ Genealogy of Morals.’ Transactions of the American Philological Association 134 (2004): 23-54. Monaghan, Peter. The New Books of Goddesses and Heroines. Llewellyn Publications, 2002. Nuckolls, Charles. The Cultural Dialectics of Knowledge and Desire. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996. Charles W. Nuckolls (Ph.D. University of Chicago) is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology, Brigham Young University.

Revenge at the Service of Social Justice: An Afrocentric View Boniface Anusiem Abstract African cosmology is basically communal. In traditional African societies, individuals are born with their lives, plans and aspirations built within the framework of the community. The community as a superstructure with a suprasensible prowess has a central role to play in the lives of individuals and groups within the community. In the traditional African society nothing essentially happens without necessary connection with the community. This stretches to even small details as a child’s insubordination. Revenge is generally seen as a negative response to injury or harm, whether intended or accidental. It may come with one or more of the following reasons: the desire to get even, retaliation for injury, loss, or humiliation, an attempt to transform shame into pride, seeking symmetrical injury, harm, or loss. In traditional African societies where the community transcends the individual, revenge becomes a v iable socio-cultural arsenal when the life of the society is at stake. This seemingly primitive approach to adverse reciprocity of actions forms a strong basis for social justice in most communities Sub-Sahara Africa. In this section, the author employs the rich ingredients of African studies to evaluate in broad lines the benefits of revenge in certain African societies when its occurrence adds value to the life of the immediate community. This expository study addresses revenge as a p henomenon with strong sociocultural and religious relevance. Revenge is seen as having some contributive values to social justice when it is appropriately applied to appease the vertical and horizontal lines of relationship evident in the community. This afro-centric assessment of revenge is instructive while initiating scholarly discussions. Key Words: Revenge, Afro-centric, community, religion, morality, cosmology, Africanity, society. ***** 1. Introduction Afro-centric studies and committed reflections on traditional African value systems are topical in our day and age. Scholars within and without the African continent have continued to explore the rich African traditional landscape in view of readdressing and re-evaluating those socio-cultural and religious attributes that are typically African and thus contribute to authentic ‘Africanity.’ Revenge as an action of paying back hurt or harm is not unknown in African communities. It is not only factual; it is also recommended especially when the peace and well-being of the community in question is threatened. This chapter has



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__________________________________________________________________ the task of exploring and establishing when revenge is justifiable considering the prerequisites of social justice. To address this important and indeed very sensitive act, our insight goes through a deeper understanding of African traditional cosmology: revenge generally and particularly as it seen in African communities. This further goes into the relationship that exists between revenge and social justice. For Alyward Shorter, one cannot speak and write about Africa as if it were a single, homogeneous society, or even a series of isolated, ethnic groups, all basically similar or comparable; instead, there is and was social and cultural fragmentations. In the first place, there are diverse physical environments to which the various human groups in African communities have been adapted to both economically and socially. Furthermore, there has been no uniformity in these adaptations, but a variety of independent traditions and inventions even in similar environments. The different traditional systems have also been modified in different ways, according to the effect of historic personalities and the significant contact among ethnic groups. Consequently, there is a huge variety of social and political systems, of languages, cultures and religions. 1 In the midst of this pluralism it is possible to discover certain regularities. This is particularly because of the notable flexibility and absorbability of traditional African societies that exchanged ideas and practices over wide areas without the need for great movements of peoples, conquests or reforms. Local cultures accepted ideal on their own terms, integrating them into their own systems of thought and symbolism. The consequence of all this is that, while there is no single concept of social justice which can be called universally African, there are a number of differing experiences which have a relatively wide currency. These experiences relate to different social levels: the family community and the political structure; and to the different styles of life dictated by the various environments and cultural traditions. Considering the foregoing, the research and presentation have particular focus on the worldview of Sub-Sahara African. 2. Understanding African Cosmology African cosmology simply refers to the peculiar way the African understands the world and operates within it. For the African, the world is made up of two inter-penetrating and inseparable yet distinguishable parts, namely, the world of spirits and the physical world. These two realms are in active dialogue. For Uzodimma Nwala, ‘there is no sharp line separating the two. The spirits are involved in the day to day affairs of men.’ 2 Within the aforementioned realms we have some identifiable hierarchy. In the spiritual realm there are, as Parrinder would denote, fourfold classification of categories, namely, the Supreme God, divinities or gods, ancestors, and charms or amulets. On the other hand, the human realm is made up of human beings, animals, plants and other realities. These are, however, involved in a progressive

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__________________________________________________________________ interaction. 3 There are basically in the strict sense no inanimate realities as even animals and plants are involved the cosmic dialogue. Some African folktales explain this very well. One will notice the interaction with among the various entities in both realms. A deeper appreciation of African cosmology can be seen in the African concept of religion. 3. African Concept of Religion African traditional religion (ATR) has proved to be very difficult to define. There is no single simple and precise definition to describe it. Unfortunately, many writers have misunderstood ATR by trying to define it under misleading terminologies such as animism, fetishism, magic, superstitions, primitive religion, ancestor worship, paganism etc. 4 Actually, the difficulty to define ATR seems to come from the fact that its propagation is carried out by living it rather than by preaching it. Its followers are more preoccupied with its practice than with its theory. In ATR, dogmas and doctrines have a very little role to play in the life of its followers. Its definition becomes even more difficult because of its integral, holistic character. There is no separation between the religious (sacred) and the profane. Its influence covers all aspects of life, from before the birth of a person to long after s/he has died. It is a way of life and life is at its centre. It is concerned with life and how to protect it and augment it. Hence the remark: For the African, religion is literally life and life is religion. The sense of religion is the most significant of all the values that are pertinent to Africans. J.S Mbiti was right to remark that in African traditional societies there are no atheists. 5 In a more obtrusive way, he maintained that the African is notoriously religious. This view point is plausible judging from the fact that every activity undertaken by the African has a direct or indirect connection with his or her religious creed. Giving reason for this, Oliver Onwubiko remarked that: Religion in the indigenous African culture, was not an independent institution. It is an integral and inseparable part of the entire culture. Religion in the African sense was practical. One’s entire action is reflective of one’s religious concept and practice as seen in the ordering of society. 6 African traditional religion is not limited to beliefs in supernatural beings (God and spirits) or to ritual acts of worship, but affects all aspects of life, from farming to hunting, from travel to courtship. Like most religious systems (including Christianity, Islam and Judaism), African religion focuses on the eternal questions of what it means to be human: what is the meaning of life, and what are the correct relations among humans, between humans and spiritual powers, and with the natural world? African religious systems also seek to explain the persistence of evil and suffering, and they seek to portray the world as operating with some degree of

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__________________________________________________________________ order and predictability. They uphold certain types of ethical behaviour. These ideas are expressed in sacred oral and written traditions, handed down from generation to generation through the performance of ritual (dance and music) and through intensive periods of education, including rites of passage. From the forgoing we understand that religion pervades all aspects of the life of an African. In this direction everything happens under an anticipated religious ambient because of the continuous intervention and obtrusion of the spiritual realm on the physical. We shall be looking at revenge from the point of view of morality. 4.

The Phenomenon of Revenge in African Morality Revenge generally and from the African point of view implies, but is not strictly restricted to, the following: a) b) c) d)

The desire to get even, Retaliation for injury, loss, or humiliation, An attempt to transform shame into pride. Seeking symmetrical injury, harm, or loss

Morality in Africa, on the other hand, has to do with what is right and what is wrong in human actions and relations. Joseph Ilori sees it a s compliance with a code of conduct covering a broader field. In his estimation: A moral person is one who does what is right, according to approved standards. Or more frequently, he is identified as one who does no wrong. To be moral, for example, a person must not be dishonest, must not steal, and must not hurt other people. 7 Notably, morality has a lot to do with the religious creed. In fact, morality derives its force and mandate from religion. From the viewpoint of T.N Quarcoopome, In West African Traditional Religion morality is the fruit of religion. This means that in the traditional context there is no such distinction between morality and religion because there is close relationship between religion and the moral life. The social and moral ordinances are the injunctions of God, who had himself, instituted them. 8 The consideration of revenge as a negative reciprocal action is based on the fact that it seeks to address an anomie. It seeks to redress some misapplication of justice and fairness; revenge is sought for as a n ecessary compliance with the ethical prerequisite of the community. In Africa the community is a very important

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__________________________________________________________________ entity. To be is to be a member of a given community. For Oliver Onwubiko the community is the custodian of the individual, hence he must go where the community goes. The community thus owns the individual. 9 It is actually on the basis of what the community says that revenge is applied and used. 5. Revenge at the Service of Social Justice The definition of Social Justice as a concept is notoriously hard. This is on account of the fact that societies and communities differ on many grounds on what is socially just. However we understand in essence that social justice is concerned with equal justice, in all aspects of society. This concept demands that people have equal rights and opportunities; everyone, from the poorest person on the margins of society to the wealthiest deserves an even playing field. Social justice as a term was the original thought of the Jesuit Luigi Taparelli based on the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas. 10 It was given further exposure in 1848 by Antonio Rosmini-Serbati. 11 The idea was further elaborated by the moral theologian John A. Ryan, 12 who initiated the concept of a living wage. Father Coughlin also used the term in his publications in the 1930s and the 1940s. Religiously it is a part of Catholic social teaching and the Social Gospel of Episcopalians. Politically it is one of the Four Pillars of the Green Party upheld by green parties worldwide. By the late twentieth century, it became more of a secular concept influenced primarily by philosopher John Rawls. Many critics are of the view that social justice is a figment of imagination, nay, an Eldorado. They adopt this viewpoint on the grounds that equality and solidarity among the diverse elements of a given society are naturally unattainable. In this chapter, social justice is seen as productive of peace and social harmony. This is actually the purpose of justice in African communities. We have so far presented revenge as a payback action for an injury or hurt. In Africa it is not every offense that calls for revenge. In fact a distinction should be made between revenge and punishment. Punishment is a penalty given for a fault or an offense. In the case of punishment the retribution is known to a r easonable degree. Revenge on the other hand is a step above punishment. The offender gets a penalty not basically on account of the offense in question but more on the perceived consequences it brings to the offended. Hence revenge is only supported when the injury or hurt in question counter balances or is capable of counter balancing peace and harmony in the society. When an act is capable of aggravating the anger of the spirits and unleashing disaster for the community, revenge is necessarily sought. For instance, wilful murder of an innocent person is immediately avenged because the blood of the person in question will appeal to the spirits for some form of retribution that can cause cataclysmic distortion of harmony. The spirits are in constant contact with the humans such that human activities receive their infallible approval or disapproval.

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__________________________________________________________________ Ultimately revenge is sought based on some reasonable grounds which primarily include (but may not be restricted to) the following: • For justice: This appears to be the foremost reason for revenge. It bears on giving each person his or her due. It functions in restoring lost dignity and respect occasioned by the injury or hurt. The Igbos of southeast Nigeria would say: ‘egbe bere ugo bere nke si ebe ya ebela nku kwakwa ya!’ That means ‘let kite and the eagle perch anyone that says the other will not perch let its wings twist;’ • For deterrence: This is a dispassionate response calculated to change the other's behaviour in an on-going relationship or negotiation by imposing a negative consequence (punishment) for their decision. Here revenge functions in precluding a p ossible reoccurrence of the hurt. The Igbos of southeast Nigeria would say: ‘onye anu agbara na atu okporokporo ijiji ujo!’ That is ‘Anyone bitten by a bee fear large fly;’ • For reprisal: This is a retaliation for an injury with the intent of inflicting at least as much injury in return; • For retribution: This is a measured or restrained reprisal; a proportional response intended to communicate a message: for instance ‘this is how wrong your actions were;’ • For reparation: This has to do with payments intended to compensate a victim for a loss. While these may be largely effective in repairing the damages resulting from loss or theft of material goods, it is impossible to restore a lost life, a physical injury, loss of health, destruction of unique objects or those with sentimental value, or a missed opportunity such as a successful career or time spent with a loved one. It is also difficult to restore lost pride. The goal of reparations is to keep promises and restore a damaged community; • Eliciting remorse: Remorse is feeling genuinely bad about the hurt I have caused and taking responsibility for the hurtful choices made. The idea is to make the offender enter into the state of the offended and feel the hurt or injury; • For atonement: Atonement is seen as remorse followed by reparations. It is similar to apology but not apology; • For retaliation: This is the idea of fair payback, often expressed as ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’ and is captured in many primitive traditions. The concept is to cause as much pain to the aggressor as he has caused the offended

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__________________________________________________________________ to suffer. Unfortunately the magnitude gap—the fact that pain felt is more intense than pain inflicted—often causes the violence of the retaliation to exceed that of the original offense. Unending escalation, destruction, and violence often results. Also, because many losses cannot be restored or undone, the retaliation does not provide satisfying reparations to the victim; • As a precondition for reconciliation: In some situations, revenge in terms of paying back a hurt done to someone serves as a veritable ground for reconciliation. If an offense is not revenged, the offended often feel humiliated even after peace talk has been made. 6. Conclusion Moral actions in Africa are connected with religious creed. Religion itself forms the basis of African life. Life cannot be lived by the African without reference to spirits. Hence there is a co nnection between the physical and the metaphysical, the human and the spiritual. Human actions are thus under the surveillance of the spiritual being. Based on the aforementioned, human actions are continuously directed in such a way that they will be accepted and acceptable to the spiritual segment of the African cosmology. Revenge is one of those actions that are speedily applied to certain offensive actions in view of not disrupting the social harmony in the community and at the same time instituting social justice and peace.

Notes 1

Alyward Shorter, ‘Concepts of Social Justice in Traditional Africa,’ Pro Dialogo Bulletin, 12 (1977): 32. 2 Uzodimma Nwala, Igbo Philosophy (Lagos: Literamed Publications, 1985), 57. 3 Edward Parrinder, African Traditional Religion (London: Sheldon Press, 1962), 17. 4 Theophilus Quarcoopome, West African Traditional Religion (Ibadan: African University Press, 1987), 5. 5 John Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (London: Heinemann, 1975), 262. 6 Oliver Onwubiko, African Thought, Religion and Culture (Enugu: Snaap Press, 1991), 24. 7 Joseph Ilori, Moral Philosophy in African Context (Zaria: Ahmadu Bello University Press. 1994), 4. 8 Quarcoopome, West African Traditional Religion, 160.

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Onwubiko, African Thought, Religion and Culture. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) says, ‘Justice is a certain rectitude of mind whereby a man does what he ought to do in the circumstances confronting him.’ 11 Antonio Rosmini-Serbati was an Italian Roman Catholic priest and philosopher. He founded the Rosminians, officially the Institute of Charity or Societas a charitate nuncupata. 12 John Ryan was a theologian of create repute and thoroughly orthodox. He is also known as the prophet of Social Justice. 10

Bibliography Ilori, Joseph. Moral Philosophy in African Context. Zaria: Ahmadu Bello University Press, 1994. Mbiti, John. African Religions and Philosophy. London: Heinemann, 1975. Nwala, Uzodimma. Igbo Philosophy. Lagos: Literamed Publications, 1985. Onwubiko, Oliver. African Thought, Religion and Culture. Enugu: Snaap Press. 1991. Parrinder, Edward. African Traditional Religion. London: Sheldon Press, 1962. Quarcoopome, Theophilus. West African Traditional Religion. Ibadan: African University Press. 1987. Shorter, Aylward. ‘Concepts of Social Justice in Traditional Africa.’ Pro Dialogo Bulletin, 12 (1977): 32-51. Boniface Anusiem PhD is the Chief Media Consultant of Trinity Media Consults Abuja, Nigeria. He is a motivational speaker, writer, and human development enthusiast. He has interest in effective media use in human development and African cultural studies. He has authored five books and a good number of articles in magazines, newspapers, and journals. He intends to bring Inter-disciplinary.net to Africa.

PART IV Revenge in Literature

‘Blood Will Have Blood’: Revenge and Injustice in Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown Roxanne Barbara Doerr Abstract Revenge, as a v iolent redressing following the perception of injustice or wrongdoing by others, is a complex sentiment that links contrasting concepts such as love, hate, history, pain and justice in Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown. The assassination of prominent politician and World War hero Max Ophuls in front of his illegitimate daughter India by a Kashmiri known as Shalimar the Clown provokes an unstoppable chain of events that reveals a wealth of undiscovered changes of identity and unaddressed crimes. After discovering his wife had left him for Max, Shalimar’s suffering and burning desire to deliver revenge on a cold platter of his own gradually involves entire families, religious and political groups and the justice system itself, thus surpassing boundaries of morality, culture, time and space. Likewise, upon discovering the truth about her parents and their assassin, India – who regains her true name Kashmira in the process – is deeply affected and also seeks revenge. Her confused state of mind leads her to ponder on how problematic it i s to delimit righteous revenge and relate it with justice, be it official or ‘poetic’. Shalimar’s subsequent capture marks the beginning of a duel between the two protagonists who use different means to punish the other. Kashmira combines psychological torture and a determining testimony in court that dismisses Shalimar’s solid ‘reasonable betrayed Muslim man’ legal defence. He, on the other hand, defies the law by breaking out of prison and persistently hunting down his prey. Rushdie’s novel is therefore a telling story of the deep and troubled roots of the constant cycle binding revenge and justice, wrong and right, and of the various forces, be them avenging, legal or cosmic, through which an amendment of wrongs may be attained in a postmodern and multicultural world such as the one we live in today. Key Words: Revenge, injustice, legality and morality, vengeance, retaliation, reasonable person doctrine, multiculturalism, Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown. ***** Revenge, as a v iolent redressing following the perception of injustice or wrongdoing by others, is a complex sentiment that links contrasting concepts such as love, hate, history, pain and justice in Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown. After two young Kashmiri lovers, a t alented acrobat known as ‘Shalimar the clown,’ and the town pundit’s beautiful daughter, Boonyi Kaul, made love for the very first time, Shalimar told his beloved that if she ever left him he would have

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__________________________________________________________________ his revenge by killing her and any children she had with another man. 1 Years after Boonyi left him in search of a better life with former World War II h ero and Ambassador Maximillian Ophuls, Shalimar relentlessly hunted down and murdered the two lovers. The novel opens when Boonyi and Maximillian’s lovechild India Ophuls personally witnesses her father’s death without knowing anything about the Kashmiri driver with bloody hands or the true fate of the mother she was told had died giving her birth. When Shalimar enacts his murderous promise, India is deeply affected and seeks revenge against him. The characters’ different reactions to ‘the pain of injustice and unacknowledged loss’ 2 reflect the complex and ever-changing history of this universal human sentiment. As Regina Barreca points out: [R]evenge is the handiwork of the powerless. Those who are unable to prevent an action from occurring because they lack the conventional power will not lack the power to revenge the action once it has occurred. 3 In ancient times, revenge was embodied by violent and terrifying deities such as the Erinnyes and Nemesis, who incarnated the emotional force and violence with which wrongdoers had to be implacably pursued and punished. The ‘lex talionis’ conception of retribution was extremely fierce and aimed at restoring the initial state of balance. Other punishments were based on coincidence or chance, so if the culprit could survive or avoid death he or she would be freed. 4 Shalimar embodies these early forms of vengeance by personally punishing all those who are even remotely involved in his wife’s treachery. In time, following Athena’s intervention as recounted in Aeschylus’ Oresteia, 5 legend has it that trials were instated and gentler and diplomatic goddesses such as Themis and Dikē 6 began to oversee criminal cases. Like their Roman counterpart Justitia, 7 they were aloof and solved disputes in an orderly and impersonal way, as opposed to their vengeful predecessors. Similarly, courts became the official place for disputes to be settled, and physical punishment was substituted by monetary retribution, from which the idea of ‘payback’ 8 derives. The law therefore began to deal exclusively with visible and unequivocally measurable pain and damage concerning the body and material objects. Today the right to retaliation remains confined to legal and monetary compensation, but such an approach does not often satisfy the victim’s desire for justice. References to emotions and the spirit are limited when present, and only recently have concepts such as ‘emotional distress’ and ‘verbal violence’ come to play within the realm of legislation, and even then only when it has led to extreme consequences. 9 In truth, the idea of what is ‘just’ in a legal sense differs from the moral concept going by the same name by which people commonly recognize it. As Thane Rosenbaum underlines:

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__________________________________________________________________ Justice is a legal term. It involves the administration and maintenance of the legal system, the manner in which it is institutionally organized, the way it presents itself to the outside world. Justice lives according to its own set of internal rules. It is governed by its own proprietary rituals and formalities. It exists within a vast labyrinthine maze of bureaucratic and technical procedures, fed by an inexhaustible supply of lifeless statues and precedent-affirming cases, choked by all those court records, docket numbers, and written forms. […] The word ‘just,’ however, quite separate from the word ‘justice,’ implies a moral dimension. It speaks entirely to the moral realm of our humanity. Doing what’s just is the experience of providing, and ultimately receiving, true relief. To be just is not a legal aspiration but a moral one. When someone is acting justly, the outcome makes sense not just to the mind, but also in the heart and soul. 10 As a result, people are often unaware of the difference between the two and are lead to believe that the law has the responsibility of providing an ending which they perceive as morally just. Knowing the gap between the law’s solutions to her grievances and those she feels she deserves helps explain why India wants revenge instead of the law’s intervention: Where was justice? Shouldn’t justice be done? Where were the forces of justice, where was the Justice League, why weren’t superheroes swooping down out of the sky to bring her father’s murderer to justice? But she didn’t want the Justice League, really, those goody-goodies in their weird suits, she wanted the Revenge League, she wanted dark superheroes, hard men who wouldn’t meekly hand the killer over to the authorities, who would gladly kill the bastard […] She wanted avenging angels, angels of death and damnation, to come to her aid. Blood called out for blood and she wanted the ancient Furies to descend shrieking from the sky and give her father’s unquiet spirit peace. She didn’t know what she wanted. She was full of thoughts of death. 11 Revenge gives immediate and physical satisfaction as opposed to the orderly yet ‘cold’ justice offered by the legal system. This explains India’s unrest while knowing that Shalimar is still free and at large, which expresses itself through excessive sexual activity and physical training. Such impulses are manifestations of the immense emotional and physical overload that cannot be discharged by the

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__________________________________________________________________ impersonal and slow legal machine. She would like to take direct action, yet it appears that Shalimar can only be punished by the court after a regular trial. The justice system in fact is founded on the need for society to punish the culprit through specific laws and regulations, rather than let the injured individual uncontrollably dispense justice on his or her own. The perpetual sense of community solidarity in the face of wrongdoing is present throughout the entire novel, albeit almost always in its primitive form, as if archaic vindictive methods were still deemed the most appropriate. The women in India’s apartment voice their ‘rebellion’ by chanting of the uselessness of ‘justice’ in the face of tragedy and hardship, 12 and India’s maternal friend, self-proclaimed witch Olga Simeonovna, encourages her by saying that she would be able to find him through the power of her ‘potato magic’. 13 Said magic recalls the archaic forms of magic used for revenge that were common in primitive civilisations; the fact that she later attributes Shalimar’s capture to her incantations and not to the authorities is also indicative in this sense. The discovery of unknown sides of her father’s life and of the existence of Shalimar the Clown and his devastating hate gives life to a confusing multiplication of Max’s identities and to the ghostly resurrection of a mother who had only been present in India’s dreams. Her confused state of mind leads her to ponder on how problematic it is to distinguish between right and wrong, guilty and innocent, and therefore to delimit the boundaries of righteous revenge or relate it to any sort of justice, be it official or ‘poetic’: What then was justice? Was she, in mourning her butchered parent, crying out (she had not wept) for a guilty man? Was Shalimar the assassin in fact the hand of justice, the appointed executioner of some unseen high court, was his sword righteous, had justice been done to Max, had some sort of sentence been carried out in response to his unknown unlisted unseen crimes of power […]? 14 In order to reconstruct what truly happened and recover any sort of certainty, the newly renamed Kashmira must go to Kashmir and visit the places where the novel’s main events took place. There she meets a woman who tells her family’s story; from that moment on, she is no longer haunted by the questions and dreams she used to have and is therefore prepared to face Shalimar, who is coincidentally captured three days after her return. Shalimar’s arrest marks the beginning of a vengeful duel between the two protagonists, who use different means to punish the other. Kashmira combines psychological torture through the constant and forceful blaming and remembrance of her parents in the letters she sends him before his trial, and a d etermining testimony in court. She is associated with Scheherazade, a legendary figure that

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__________________________________________________________________ represents entrancing storytelling and wishes to become a ‘black Scheherazade’ 15 in order to condemn and torment her victim, the same way he had done through his first loving, then hateful letters to her mother Boonyi years before: He understood at once what Boonyi’s child was telling him: that she had set herself up as his nemesis, and whatever the judgement of a Californian court might be she would be his real judge; she, and not twelve Americans in a jury box, would be his only jury; and she, not a prison executioner, would somehow carry out whatever sentence is imposed. 16 Shalimar accepts the challenge and even seeks to turn the tables by accusing her of witchcraft. The question of the ‘reasonable person’ legal doctrine arises during Shalimar’s trial: was he justified in killing Boonyi and her lover by the fact that in his culture a wife’s betrayal is perceived as more deplorable than in Western culture? Would such behaviour make him a ‘reasonable cuckolded Muslim man?’ 17 Amartya Sen, in commenting the idea of reasonable and unreasonable persons, sustains that reason is based on reciprocity, which implicates measure and exchange on the same level. 18 This is confirmed by a study on acts of revenge by Thomas Tripp, Robert Bies and Karl Aquino, who sustain that part of the aesthetic appeal of revenge (i.e. making the act of vendetta ‘good’, ‘approvable’ or ‘appealing’) consists in its being symmetric in consequences (and therefore proportionate to the harm inflicted by the wrongdoer) but asymmetric in method, i.e., its recalling but not copying the original injury. This, however, is not the case because Shalimar exchanges his wife’s consensual betrayal and abandonment with the killing of two people and the premeditation of that of a third external person. 19 Shalimar’s crimes are aggravated by the fact that both Boonyi and Max had repented and paid their dues long before (Boonyi was exiled from her village and considered bureaucratically ‘dead’ by her family and friends, while Maximillian had fallen into disgrace following the public scandal their relationship caused) and that he accomplished the deed when they were both defenceless yet fully aware and accepting of the danger. Shalimar is almost justified on the account of an excessively relativistic and ‘anything goes’ mentality. His lawyer hopes to get him acquitted thanks to his foreign origins, good looks and charisma, as well as to the supposed fact that he is not acquainted with the American language and culture (which is not true because in other instances it is observed that he speaks English well) and is far from his family and homeland. This recalls Susan Jacoby’s seminal work Wild Justice, where she points out that in literature episodes of revenge are located in distant and mythic worlds as a way of observing them from afar. 20 Viewing the matter from this ‘reasonable Muslim man’ perspective, Shalimar was unjustly humiliated, and

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__________________________________________________________________ in his environment this is the way one reacts. His attorney believes such a portrayal of character, as well as the argument that he was being influenced by Kashmira’s guilt campaign, called ‘the sorcerer’s defence,’ 21 will help Shalimar win the jury’s favour. Moreover, he takes the fact that the crime of passion is not a legal category in his jurisdiction into account and therefore attempts to use the legal system to his advantage, although his client is guilty. Such an endeavour to exploit legal doctrine is however thwarted by the fact that Kashmira is undoubtedly even more a victim than his client because she had done nothing and nevertheless lost both parents and was in peril. Instead of deflating her, the subpoena summoning her to court gives her the chance to tell her own version of what happened, thus dismantling the defence’s carefully crafted case. 22 Kashmira finds satisfaction and punishes her enemy after making justice for herself by telling her side of the story: The best way to heal a grievance is to name it, to have it proclaimed, to discover the underlying truths, to unbury the silences, to find the facts that are true both literally and emotionally – so that the pain becomes acknowledged to the world. 23 As a result, not only is Shalimar not acquitted, but on the contrary his sentence is upgraded to the death penalty. The decreed loss of his life represents the most reciprocal solution in an ‘eye for an eye, life for a l ife’ perspective. Looking at Kashmira, he heeds the concluding menacing message she cannot utter in court but conveys all the same. 24 Settling the matter in court is still not enough: Shalimar in fact openly proves the law’s insufficiency after his incarceration by breaking out of a high security prison and persistently hunting down his prey. By doing so he confirms Judith Shklar’s assertion that: Legal justice exists to domesticate, tame, and control all forms of vengeance in the interest of social peace and fairness. However, while civilized living depends on it, even retributive legal punishment does not and cannot answer the more primitive urges... 25 The law is incapable of containing the threat of crime because the force of emotion brought by the desire for revenge is too strong. Accordingly, when Kashmira discovers that Shalimar has managed to break into her home, she does not call the authorities but rather locks herself and her adversary in a r oom and prepares to face him. The situation can therefore only be solved through a violent and masculine face-off between the two adversaries for, in Judith Shklar’s words,

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__________________________________________________________________ ‘when people defend themselves against aggressors bent upon pure extermination, they have been forced to return to the state of nature where there is no justice, only a struggle for bare survival.’ 26 It is a fight whose outcome is based on who will strike first, and no mistakes are allowed: He came towards the dressing room. She was ready for him. She was not fire but ice. The golden bow was drawn back as far as it would go. She felt the taut bowstring pressing against her parted lips, felt the foot of the arrow’s shaft against her gritted teeth, allowed the last seconds to tick away, exhaled and let fly. There was no possibility that she would miss. There was no second chance. There was no India. There was only Kashmira, and Shalimar the clown. 27 The novel concludes with the continuation of the circle of emotion and vengeance, for the outcome of Kashmira and Shalimar’s final faceoff is never revealed; consequentially, the reader is left with the impending impression that this cycle will never end. Salman Rushdie’s novel can therefore be considered a telling story of the deep and troubled roots of the constant bond linking revenge and justice, wrong and right and of the various forces - be them avenging, legal or cosmic - through which the addressing and amendment of wrongs may be attained in a postmodern and multicultural world.

Notes 1

‘Don’t you leave me now, or I’ll never forgive you, and I’ll have my revenge, I’ll kill you and if you have any children by another man I’ll kill the children also.’ Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown (London: Vintage Books, 2006), 98. 2 Thane Rosenbaum, The Myth of Moral Justice: Why Our Legal System Fails to Do What’s Right (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2004), 48. 3 Regina Barrecca, Sweet Revenge: The Wicked Delights of Getting Even (New York: Berkley Books, 1997), 237; Susan Jacoby, Wild Justice: The Evolution of Revenge (London: William Collins Sons & Co., 1985), 5. 4 For more on punishment within primitive communities, see William Edward Armytage Axon, ‘Law Amongst Primitive Races,’ in The Lawyer in History, Literature and Humor, ed. William Andrews (London: William Andrews & Co., 1896), 7-23. 5 For more on this, see Jacoby, Wild Justice, 66-113. 6 For more on these divinities see Costas Douzinas and Ronnie Warrington, Justice Miscarried: Ethics and Aesthetics in Law (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994), 68-69.

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Judith Shklar compares the emotional power of Injustice to the benign yet detached authority of Justice by analysing Giotto’s paintings in Judith Shklar, The Faces of Injustice (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), 46-49, 103-105. 8 See Marlena Cocoran, ‘Aristotle’s Poetic Justice,’ Iowa Law Review 77 (1991): 837-850; William I. Miller, ‘Clint Eastwood and Equity: Popular Culture’s Theory of Revenge,’ in Law in the Domains of Culture, ed. Austin Sarat and Thomas Kearns (Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 2000), 161-202; Dennis Klimchuk, ‘Retribution, Restitution and Revenge,’ Law and Philosophy 20, no. 1 (January, 2001): 81-101. 9 Rosenbaum, Myth of Moral Justice, 266-284. 10 Ibid., 17-19. See also Charles K.B. Barton, Getting Even: Revenge as a Form of Justice (Illinois: Open Court Publishing Company, 1999). 11 Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown, 538. 12 They chant: ‘what was justice […] your husbands died, your children abandoned you, your fathers were murdered, there was no justice but revenge.’ Ibid., 531. 13 ‘The LAPD, excuse me, couldn’t catch a cold in a Russian draft […] But by the power of potato magic we will haul in that asshole’s ass.’ Ibid., 532. 14 Ibid., 545. 15 Ibid., 609. 16 Ibid., 613. 17 Thane Rosenbaum mentions the ‘reasonable man test’ in a negative way and underlines how it would be better to follow a ‘conscience stricken man doctrine,’ which takes account of emotions and is more realistic. Rosenbaum, Myth of Moral Justice, 22-29. 18 Sen Amartya, The Idea of Justice (London: Penguin Books, 2010), 79. 19 Thomas Tripp, Robert Bies and Karl Aquino, ‘Poetic Justice or Petty Revenge? The Aesthetics of Revenge,’ Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 89 (2002): 966-984. 20 Jacoby, Wild Justice. 21 Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown, 612. 22 This recalls Rosenbaum’s discourse on the importance of moral and emotional reconciliation and relief through retelling and acknowledging the truth as a way for the system to be more just. 23 Rosenbaum, Myth of Moral Justice, 58. 24 ‘Now I have killed you […]. Now my arrow is in your heart and I am satisfied. When the time comes to execute you I will come and watch you die [original italics].’ Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown, 628. 25 Shklar, Faces of Injustice, 12. 26 Ibid., 73.

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Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown, 649.

Bibliography Andrews, William, ed. The Lawyer in History, Literature and Humour. London: William Andrews & Co., 1896. Barrecca, Regina. Sweet Revenge: The Wicked Delights of Getting Even. New York: Berkeley Books, 1997. Barton, Charles. Getting Even: Revenge as a Form of Justice. Illinois: Open Court Publishing Company, 1999. Cocoran, Marlena. ‘Aristotle’s Poetic Justice.’ Iowa Law Review 77 (1991): 837850. Douzinas, Costas and Ronnie Warrington. Justice Miscarried: Ethics and Aesthetics in Law. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994. Jacoby, Susan. Wild Justice: The Evolution of Revenge. London: William Collins Sons & Co., 1985. Klimchuk, Dennis. ‘Retribution, Restitution and Revenge.’ Law and Philosophy 20, no. 1 (January 2001): 81-101. Miller, William. ‘Clint Eastwood and Equity: Popular Culture’s Theory of Revenge.’ In Law in the Domains of Culture, edited by Sarat Austin and Thomas Kearns, 161-202. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 2000. Rosenbaum, Thane. The Myth of Moral Justice: Why Our Legal System Fails to Do What’s Right. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2004. Rushdie, Salman. Shalimar the Clown. London: Vintage Books, 2006. Sen, Amartya. The Idea of Justice. London: Penguin Books, 2010. Shklar, Judith. The Faces of Injustice. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990.

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__________________________________________________________________ Tripp, Thomas, Robert Bies and Karl Aquino. ‘Poetic Justice or Petty Revenge? The Aesthetics of Revenge.’ Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 89 (2002): 966-984. Roxanne Barbara Doerr is a doctorate (PhD) student of English Studies at the department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Verona and winner of an international scholarship for a partnership doctoral project with the University of Cologne. Her research areas include: law and literature, law and equity, law and culture, postmodern literature, literature and the visual arts.

Tender Toxicity: Desire and Revenge in Elizabeth Bowen’s Eva Trout Heather Levy Abstract Eva Trout is Elizabeth Bowen’s last novel. Early critics dismissed it as a b izarre and unresolved caprice. However, recent feminist critics who are invested in readings that emphasize the impact of gender and sexuality focus on the compelling equations surrounding desire and revenge. This chapter examines how Eva Trout in spite of her extravagant wealth and social privilege, is forced into a life of abstinence and pain. Her passions for men and women are severely punished. However, her former teacher becomes the most potent agent of her destruction. Once the object of Eva’s passion, the failed intellectual plans her expupil’s public execution at a train station during her mock wedding departure. She uses Jeremy, Eva’s adopted and physically challenged son as her most destructive weapon. Paradoxically, this revenge delivers Eva from her chronic restlessness and rescues her from a conventional sexual and emotional life. Key Words: Lesbian, desire, Elizabeth Bowen, Levinas, revenge, passion, abstinence, sacrifice, punishment. ***** Hermione Lee suggests that although ‘Elizabeth Bowen deals very unsympathetically with homosexuals in Eva Trout, there’s a cl ear expression of understanding lesbian feelings.’ 1 This chapter counters Lee’s optimism and examines the fatal consequences of sexual revenge. All erotic desire is punished in apocalyptic proportions in Elizabeth Bowen’s last novel, but lesbian desire is particularly lethal. Eva is the psychologically and physically maimed offspring of bisexual Willy and promiscuous Cissie. Willie kills himself after an unhappy affair with the relentless Constantine years after Cissie is incinerated in a plane wreck when she attempts to leave her deeply flawed marriage. The narrator is so explicit about the curse overshadowing Eva at the beginning of the novel that she is framed as ‘Jepthah’s daughter.’ 2 At least she managed to coax her father not to kill her for two years so that she could try to enjoy life in the uncompromising Old Testament Book of Judges, which ends up being more permissive than Eva’s harsh environment. The novel is fittingly subtitled Or Changing Scenes, and every scrim finds Eva punished for her urgent, although unconsummated, passions for men or women. However, her former English teacher is the most vengeful. Iseult intellectually seduces Eva and then abruptly drops her after marrying Eric, a local mechanic. Eva tries to recover by buying a child from a black market dealer in the United States.

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__________________________________________________________________ She returns to England several years later with him and pretends that Iseult’s husband is his father. Iseult returns from a protracted disappearance in France and briefly kidnaps Eva’s son. She also deliberately plants Eric’s loaded revolver within his reach after giving him shooting lessons with a toy gun. Eva is gunned down by her young son when she is boarding a train to take her to her honeymoon. All of her remaining family and Iseult witness the execution. The narrator wittily observes that ‘one was at least on the verge of the Henry James country.’ 3 Hermione Lee concludes that Eva Trout describes ‘an almost unbearable present.’ 4 This chapter will determine to what extent revenge and erotic anger contributed to Eva’s bitter world. Emmanuel Levinas in Entre Nous states that he believes that ‘I am in reality responsible for the other even when he or she commits crime … we are all responsible for one another and I more than anyone else.’ 5 Eva Trout demonstrates an interlaced complicity where sexual rebukes lead to lies, kidnapping and two women joyfully using fecundity and children as agents of revenge. Mooney characterizes this novel as ‘strikingly strange.’ 6 Ellman describes it as ‘Bowen’s folly.’ 7 Cullingford observes that Eva’s gender identity and sexual orientation are mobile. 8 But they are really mobile disasters. Despite her extravagant wealth, Eva never manages to enjoy her life and spends most of her years frantically travelling and hiding in metropolitan diversions in London, Paris, the Northeast and Midwest of the United States. It is her passion for women that sets her on her most dangerous trajectory. Elsinore, the first object of her passionate erotic adoration, is sickly and nearly drowns after she throws herself in a river. She slips into a coma and the Hungarian house matron warns Eva not to touch Elsinore. This is the first act of revenge directed against Eva in the novel. She also threatens to move Eva to another room: ‘And as for you, Eva where am I to put you? No other place at all in this small castle.’ 9 The nameless house warden has always been distrustful of Eva because at fourteen she showed no signs of puberty. Eva agrees not to ever touch Elsinore and purchases her right to remain Elsinore’s roommate. Elsinore languishes in their turret room and the narrator asks ‘What made Eva visualize this as a marriage chamber?’ 10 Love is signified by physical restraint for Eva throughout the novel. She only permits herself to put her hand on Elsinore’s blanket: ‘Nothing forbade love, This deathly yet living stillness, together, of two beings, this unapartness, came to be the requital of all longing. An endless feeling of destiny filled the room.’ 11 Although Eva is the patron’s daughter, she always suffers from an awkward physical and emotional displacement which is partially caused by her large frame and years of being hauled around with her philandering father and carelessly deposited with random caregivers and resentful governesses and tutors. Her classmates at the doomed castle ask her if she is an hermaphrodite and muse about the fate of Joan of Arc. The schoolboys snicker about Joan of Arc being burned at

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__________________________________________________________________ the stake, smugly noting that she was carbonized, while the schoolgirls optimistically note that she was later canonized. 12 Eva declares that she doesn’t know if she is an hermaphrodite but would like to be Joan of Arc. This prepares the reader for her self-sacrificing and self-destructive tendencies throughout the novel which really began during her obsession with Elsinore who is eventually withdrawn from school and improbably surfaces years later in Kansas addicted to cigarettes. Elsinore is still mentally unwell and has to remind herself not to throw herself into rivers or walk on half frozen lakes. The fact that she has married and had children almost bewilders her and she throws herself on Eva and begs her to take her with her. Eva is impatient with this display but is still partially loyal to her first love and promises to come back and see her. However, she realizes that in her rush to get back to her hotel so that she can answer the telephone call from the blackmarket infant dealer that she does not have Elsinore’s address or telephone number. She could follow Elsinore back to the apartment but will miss the call and risk losing the baby. She leaves Elsinore with the oversize teddy bear that she intended to give to her own child. This is a t ypical tendency for Eva, who will later send her former schoolteacher and second obsession, Izzy, a large cheque as compensation for the unfortunate outcome of their troubled liaison. Eva vacillates between calling it a tip or an acknowledgement of damage. Eva lied to Izzy and openly suggested that her husband Eric is really Jeremy’s father. She intimates that Eric’s night time visit to Cathay nine months before produced the child. This is Eva’s revenge for Izzy’s emotional aloofness and physical withdrawal. Ironically, Eva’s desperate wish to procure a child to bolster the lie leads to her murder. Izzy, as Miss Iseult Smith, at the start of the novel, abandons her fiduciary duties and intellectually seduces Eva and then drops her. Eva is very vulnerable since Elsinore has been withdrawn from the school and needs the intellectual care that Izzy initially offers: ‘To anyone looking back (Eva never did) there could have seemed to be something occult about the pact entered into.’ 13 Eva recites metaphysical love poetry for her and begins to depend on her despite Izzy’s warning that she cares for her ‘only as much as she can’ that ‘time is very long and dangerous.’ 14 Izzy wearies of Eva’s awkwardness and devotion and secretly castigates her for being ‘stuck in a groove in that subject of love …her consuming eyes and shoving Jaguar.’ 15 She agrees to let Eva live at Larkins only because she wants to augment her meagre income from translating classics. Eva disrupts her already awkward marriage with Eric and Izzy begins to hate her ‘patient, encircling abiding will of a monster.’ 16 However, near the end of the novel, she cultivates her own obsession with Eva whose largesse enables her to try and write novels while living in France. She eventually returns from her protracted disappearance to kidnap Eva’s son Jeremy. She also deliberately plants Eric’s loaded revolver within Jeremy’s reach after buying him a toy gun.

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__________________________________________________________________ Izzy has been abetted by Constantine, the selfish guardian of Eva’s estate. Izzy’s jealously declares that ‘Eva is eternal.’ 17 However, Eva reaps Daisy Millerlike consequences for her attempts to see the coliseum in the moonlight with men or women. Hermione Lee aptly concludes that Eva Trout ‘in its account of alienation, describes an almost unbearable present, with which the traditional novel of order and feeling can no longer deal.’ 18 Eva Trout suggests that sustained sexual and emotional happiness cannot be found either with men or women but that lesbian attachments lead to physical frustration, revenge and finally a violent death. At least Daisy was able to see the coliseum. Although Eva rushes around the world, she never enjoys stillness or earthly satisfaction beyond those few days of freedom at Cathay collecting seashells and the skeletons of birds. This reprieve was interrupted by Eric and Constantine, who threatens to institutionalize her and take away her inheritance because Izzy and the local real estate agent, Mr. Denge, have both complained about her irregularity and unpredictability. Later when she is questioned by Constantine’s new obsession Father Clavering Haight about whether she was involved in Sapphic embraces with Izzy, she wittily declares that Izzy was always too busy. Her afternoon date with Henry at the castle is also marred by reality. Insects aggressively attack her and bite her arms and the lake is ‘weed throttled.’ 19 She is plagued by memories of Elsinore trying to drown herself, the swans have left, she gets entangled in briars and Henry cruelly reminds her that she is not a nymph, reminding her of her oversized body and physical awkwardness. Even after he declares that he is uncertain whether he loves her but he is certain that he will not marry her, she still asks him to pick a wild rose for her. Despite the fact that the roses proliferate even though it is early in the season, he is unable to secure even one bloom for her. He is not forthcoming physically. On the ride back to the city, he declares that he could make love to her, that he is not afraid and he makes a half-hearted attempt to sweep the map from her lap: ‘He slanted over her erotic counterpane.’ 20 He puts his hand in the air above her knee but then withdraws it. 21 Eva rejects these timid gestures by admonishing him to remember the other drivers and that they cannot park in a curve and the reader is reminded of the deadly car crash which served as the deux ex machine in To the North. Henry even tried to cheer up Eva after his rejection by reminding her that they could be killed on the ride home. This is a p erfect ending to an afternoon which was filled with Eva’s macabre fears about Henry, Jeremy and herself all being drowned in a ‘deluge, with dead arms flapping like swimmers.’ 22 Eva was also filled with ‘caves of apprehension.’ 23 She is like Antigone, who was brave enough to resist authority and bury her brother, yet gave up immediately after being walled into the cave. And Henry is like Haemon, who is not decisive enough to help. He admits to Constantine during the wedding send off at Victoria Station that he ‘suffers from morbid indecisions.’ 24 He identifies with the thrush that is trapped in the church vestibule during his father’s sermon and faints when it dies after hitting the stained

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__________________________________________________________________ glass window above his head. He decides to agree to Eva’s wedding scheme and appears at the station like the expectant bridegroom with a carnation in his buttonhole. Secretly he has decided that he is not getting off the train. However, he has not decided to marry Eva; he only declares that he is not getting off the train Nevertheless, Eva is so ecstatic at this meagre announcement that she is able to cry for the first time in her life. She rhapsodizes: ‘A coronation being living today.’ 25 Reneé Hoogland interprets this scene as the acquisition and refusal of a heterosexual gendered identity. 26 However, the narrator makes it clear that this is a performance for Eva. She is preparing a vengeful public spectacle and her arrival is appropriately theatrical: ‘There stood Eva…she stood tall as a can dle, some accident of light rendering her luminous from top to toe...’ 27 In this passage, the narrator is underscoring the fact that for the first time Eva looks thin and is conventionally attractive. However, it is an apparition constructed by ‘the accident of light’ and the flattering cut of her departure suit. Her corsage is the ultimate gesture of irony. She is wearing an outsize diamond brooch that her mother wore on her own wedding day. Constantine snidely remarks that he hopes she has kept up the insurance payments and Eric gruffly admires it. It was public knowledge that Cissie’s marriage with Willy was characterized by mutual betrayals, a p lane crash and a suicide. After Henry declares that he is not getting off the train her tears baptize the outsized diamond brooch. For the first time since her mother’s death, Eva can now cry and opens her arms to receive Jeremy even though just days ago she callously told Madame Bonard that he would be sent away and would only come back on visits after her marriage. She ignored Madame Bonard’s warnings and in the last scene of the novel, Jeremy executes her. Even Eva’s last reaching out to him is interrupted by a well meaning observer who keeps the boy from falling on his mother’s corpse. Her last question to Henry is left unanswered which is fitting since she was never able to link her chaotic experiences in a co hesive series. She dies never having even kissed Elsinore, Izzy or Henry and as Elman notes, her only human contact was the strange shaking that Eric offered her at Cathay. 28 He stopped this because he thought she was ‘enjoying it too much.’ 29 Eric is bitter and later tells Constantine that he would like to murder Eva for ruining his marriage with Izzy. By the end of the novel Izzy and Eric have reunited and Henry’s parents seem as happy as ever. Neither of these relationships is rooted in sexual longing and perhaps that is why they are not aborted or punished. Coates argues that ‘like her biblical analogue, Eva is a human sacrifice, offered through rash paternal commitments.’ 30 Bennett and Royle are more optimistic and celebrate Eva Trout’s indefinable possibilities. 31 Eva assembles the characters that beguiled and wounded her at Victoria Station and garners their admiration through the spectacle of the wedding departure. She asks Henry a question and doesn’t live long enough to take the train ride and discover that he likely does not know the answer. She becomes the Joan of Arc she longed to be and is captured and executed in such a public

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__________________________________________________________________ place. She is relieved of the burden of mothering a resentful child and her chronic need to lie. She honours her declaration that ‘she is nobody’s girl.’ 32 Ironically, Izzy’s revenge finally frees Eva from her chronic restlessness. The harsh envoy of abstinence becomes her friend and revenge paradoxically saves her from a conventional sexual and emotional life.

Notes 1

Hermione Lee, Elizabeth Bowen: An Estimation (Vision Press, London, 1981), 209. 2 Elizabeth Bowen, Eva Trout (Anchor Books, New York, 2003), 46. 3 Ibid., 28. 4 Lee, Elizabeth Bowen, 211. 5 Emmanuel Levinas, Entre Nous (Columbia University Press, New York, 1998), 107. 6 Sinéad Mooney, ‘Unstable Compounds: Bowen’s Becktettian Affinities,’ Modern Fiction Studies 53, No. 2 (2007): 241. 7 Maude Ellman, Elizabeth Bowen: The Shadow across the Page (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2003), 203. 8 Elizabeth Cullingford, ‘Something Else: Gendered Onliness in Elizabeth Bowen’s Early Fiction’, Modern Fiction Studies 53, No. 2 (2007), 289. 9 Bowen, Eva Trout, 52. 10 Ibid., 54. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid., 48. 13 Ibid., 60. 14 Ibid., 67. 15 Ibid., 95. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid., 97. 18 Lee, Elizabeth Bowen, 211. 19 Bowen, Eva Trout, 259. 20 Ibid., 265. 21 Ibid., 268. 22 Ibid., 260. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid., 293. 25 Ibid., 199. 26 Reneé Hoogland, Lesbian Configurations (Columbia University Press, New York), 189. 27 Bowen, Eva Trout, 194.

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Ellman, Elizabeth Bowen, 208. Bowen, Eva Trout, 90. 30 John Coates, ‘The Misfortunes of Eva Trout,’ Essays in Criticism 48, No. 1 (1998), 3, ‘General One File,’ 31 July 2010. 31 As quoted in Ibid., 1. 32 Bowen, Eva Trout, 88. 29

Bibliography Bowen, Elizabeth. Eva Trout. Anchor Books, New York, 2003. Coates, John. ‘The Misfortunes of Eva Trout,’ Essays in Criticism 48, No. 1 (1988), ‘General One File.’ 31 July 2010. Cullingford, Elizabeth. ‘Something Else: Gendering Onliness in Elizabeth Bowen’s Early Fiction’, Modern Fiction Studies 53 (2007): 276-305. Ellman, Maude. Elizabeth Bowen: The Shadow across the Page. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2003. Hoogland, Reneé. Lesbian Configurations. Columbia University Press, New York, 1997. Lee, Hermione. Elizabeth Bowen: An Estimation. Vision Press, London, 1981. Levinas, Emmanuel. Entre Nous. Columbia University Press, New York, 1989. Mooney, Sinéad. ‘Unstable Compounds: Bowen’s Beckettian Affinities.’ Modern Fiction Studies 53, No. 2 (2007): 238-256. Heather Levy is an Assistant Professor of English at Western Connecticut State University. She is the author of The Servant of Desire in Virginia Woolf’s Shorter Fiction. Her current research interests include the gender of jealousy and envy in Elizabeth Bowen’s shorter fiction. Her email address is [email protected].

‘As I Have Been Made’: Social Revenge in Dickens’ Great Expectations Lydia K. Christoph Abstract Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations contains two complex and vividly-illustrated accounts of parallel vengeance. Two victimized individuals, the reclusive heiress Miss Havisham and the fearsome convict Magwitch, make it their goal to enact revenge on the societal groups representative of the people who have wronged them. This retaliation takes a unique form: although Miss Havisham and Magwitch are both unable to get back at the parties that originally injured them, both the heiress and the convict become guardians of children whom they raise, more or less deliberately, to be instruments of revenge on society. Ironically, however, the children eventually come to display the same social prejudices that originally injured their guardians. Great Expectations explores the way in which past injustices motivate Magwitch and Miss Havisham to manipulate the innocent Pip and Estella into becoming forms of vengeance on society, a vengeance which initially reverses into the corruption of the children by that same society, but is finally atoned for. Key Words: Multi-generational revenge, Dickens, Great Expectations, reversal, society, children. ***** 1. Introduction Vengeance and violence have been almost inextricably connected throughout all of history and revenge literature. Violent retribution abounds in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, but often it is of a more emotional rather than physical kind. Two wronged individuals, the proud Miss Havisham and the poor convict Magwitch, seek drastic vengeance. This retaliation takes a unique form: both the heiress and the felon become guardians of children whom they raise, more or less deliberately, to be agents of revenge upon society. The paradoxical complication of this vengeance, however, is that the children eventually come to display the very characteristics of society that originally injured their guardians. Great Expectations explores the way in which past injustices motivate two individuals to manipulate two innocent children into becoming forms of vengeance on society, a vengeance which reverses into the corruption of the children by that same society; once their guardians are removed, however, the children are able to break free of the cycle of vengeance and social decay.

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__________________________________________________________________ 2. Plot In Great Expectations, the poor and uneducated convict Magwitch, a t hief by necessity rather than choice, contrasts sharply with the gentleman criminal Compeyson, who lies, cheats, and steals simply because he wishes to. Paul Chatham Squires notes that ‘Dickens condemns [Compeyson] to the deepest regions of hell.’ 1 Miss Havisham, a member of the upper classes like Compeyson, does not commit open crimes against society like the two felons, but Dickens blames her nonetheless because as an heiress she fails in her responsibility to use her wealth for the benefit of society, haughtily isolates herself from everyone, and raises the orphan child Estella to be cruel and unfeeling. Miss Havisham’s revenge is more deliberate than Magwitch’s, but both characters openly state their desires to get even with the society that wronged them. Miss Havisham tells Estella to ‘break [men’s] hearts and have no mercy!’ 2 and Magwitch says to the orphan Pip, ‘If I ain’t a gentleman, nor ain’t yet got no learning, I’m the owner of such.’ 3 While attempting to gain an impossible revenge on Compeyson, who betrayed them both, Magwitch and Miss Havisham inexorably distort the lives of the two innocent children, Estella and Pip. 3. The Past Revenge always involves remembering and failing to release past wrongs and injuries. The injustices of the past provide a central theme for Great Expectations. Set in the early nineteenth century but written in the latter part of the century, Great Expectations illuminates the violence and injustice of pre-Victorian England. Speaking of the story’s protagonist, Pip, Robin Gilmour explains the social situation that applies to the lower-class Pip as well as to the convict Magwitch: [Pip’s] predicament is representative of a social class in the act of emergence; specifically, of the Victorian middle class in its emergence from primitive origins. He needs civilization because he is so acutely aware . . . of its opposite, and consequently he overvalues it. 4 Pip wants desperately to become a gentleman and distance himself from his lowerclass past because that same past was such a s hamefully-defining part of his life. Dickens himself, like Pip and Magwitch, faced horrors in his childhood. When forced to work in a blacking factory as a young teenager, he learned to fear the emotional violence inherent to the Victorian lower classes. Like Dickens, Pip is haunted by his brutal past, despite his efforts to escape it. In the pre-Victorian era in which the story is set, society approves of the fact that Pip is beaten by his sister and that Magwitch is treated as less than human by his captors. No matter how hard Pip tries to leave behind his violent and lower-class past, he is tragically unable to do so as he discovers that his encounter with

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__________________________________________________________________ Magwitch, the most violent and terrifying incident of Pip’s past, is ironically responsible for his violence-free upper-class lifestyle. Despite Pip’s move from lower to upper class status and his gentlemanly education, and Estella’s social mobility and exodus from Satis House, both characters find themselves corrupted by the injustices of their society, drawn inescapably into the past through their guardians’ vengeful machinations while embracing society’s corrupting influences. 4. Magwitch One of the victims of this violent society’s injustice, Abel Magwitch, has been despised by an upper-class jury who levelled a much harsher sentence against him than against his treacherous partner Compeyson. Despite these grievances, however, Magwitch does not immediately respond with the desire for revenge, although Squires writes that he bears ‘an ineradicable grudge against the society that rejected him.’ 5 After being kindly treated by Pip and transported to Australia where he is allowed the chance to work for a living, Magwitch decides to secretly send Pip thousands of pounds to turn the boy into the sort of gentleman who would never be despised by society for his lack of manners and education. Although Magwitch’s actions certainly include the generous desire to aid Pip, his motivations also involve the selfish desire for revenge. Humphrey House states: ‘Magwitch is no benevolent idealist whose goodness may regenerate society; he is a power-lover and a s nob, whose specious generosity all but corrupts Pip.’ 6 Although House’s assessment of him is perhaps a bit harsh, Magwitch is both a victim and a product of the unjustly stratified society that spawned him. He recognizes and ‘overvalues’ the social, monetary, and educational powers of the upper classes as only a poor man can. John Hagan remarks that instead of trying to injure the ‘gentleman class,’ Magwitch ‘fashions a gentleman of his own to take his place’ 7 amidst that society. Although Magwitch genuinely loves Pip, ultimately risking his life to see him, at the same time Magwitch is eager to see the results of his social vendetta experiment. Magwitch tells Pip that all the years of hard labour were worth the price because ‘it was a recompense to me, look’ee here, to know in secret that I was making a g entleman.’ 8 Unfortunately, Magwitch’s hard-earned money strongly contributes to Pip’s distortion into an upper-class snob. 5. Miss Havisham Like Magwitch, Miss Havisham too has been nearly destroyed by Compeyson. After the swindler jilts her on her wedding day, Miss Havisham chooses one of the most deliberate, cruel, and ironically most self-destructive paths possible in her attempt to find satisfaction for the wrong done to her. She stops the clocks in her house, wears her wedding dress constantly, and refuses to leave her home, continually surrounded by the ruins of her wedding preparations and feast. After the lawyer Jaggers presents her with the child Estella, Miss Havisham deliberately raises the girl to break men’s hearts in general since Compeyson’s heart is

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__________________________________________________________________ unavailable. Miss Havisham’s relative Herbert informs Pip that the old lady is shaping Estella into an unattainable goddess who will ‘wreak revenge on all the male sex.’ 9 Miss Havisham herself acknowledges of Estella, ‘I stole her heart away and put ice in its place.’ 10 Miss Havisham is one of the best examples of revenge in all of literature, as she teaches Estella day by day to use men cruelly and reminds herself at all times of the wrong done to her through her time-frozen surroundings. 6. Estella Estella is brought up with no truly viable recourse other than to submit to the vengeful schemes of her guardian, as Pip is. Unlike Pip who had the kindly brother-in-law Joe, however, Estella has no one in the world who genuinely, selflessly loves her, and as a result she grows up without the capacity to give or receive love. When Miss Havisham asks for her love, Estella says, ‘If you ask me to give you what you never gave me, my gratitude and duty cannot do impossibilities… I must be taken as I have been made.’ 11 As an instrument of Miss Havisham’s revenge, she learns her part too well, for not only does she break men’s hearts, but she also accidentally breaks Miss Havisham’s heart and deliberately marries a p hysically abusive man in order to save any decent man from the blight of her heartlessness. Estella is unequivocally corrupted by the only society available to her, that of Miss Havisham. Harry Stone comments: Estella is a ‘lady’ in the same ironic sense that Pip is a ‘gentleman’—both have been ‘made’; both have been fashioned impiously as instruments of revenge. . . b oth see their sinning shapers die for their sins; both must suffer for their own assent in those sins and must be reborn. 12 In the end, the beautiful heiress Estella is discovered to be Magwitch’s daughter, and consequently both she and Pip eventually find themselves in nearly impossible situations as an indirect result of Magwitch’s social and moral irresponsibility. 7. Pip Although Miss Havisham uses Estella as an agent of revenge upon society, and Magwitch uses Pip, Miss Havisham uses Pip as well. William F. Axton comments that Miss Havisham’s ruinous efforts to persuade Pip to love Estella and believe himself her protégé result in great harm to Pip. 13 Pip is corrupted from multiple sources; Hagan explains that Pip ‘becomes for both Magwitch and Miss Havisham a means by which, in their different ways, they can retaliate against the society that injured them.’ 14 Magwitch uses Pip, Pip’s sister abuses him, and Miss Havisham encourages Pip to fall in love with Estella so that the girl can break his heart. In an attempt to escape the shame of his poverty-stricken and plebeian past, Pip snubs his true friends Joe and Biddy because of their lack of polish and education

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__________________________________________________________________ and visits them as little as possible. Pip says that he feels ‘ashamed of home,’ 15 and after going to London and living as a gentleman, when the kind and honest Joe comes to visit, Pip says, ‘if I could have kept him away by paying money, I certainly would have paid money,’ 16 because Joe’s lower-class dress and manners remind him of his uncomfortable and mortifying past. Enamoured with the upperclass lifestyle, Pip embraces the very prejudices that had earlier victimized Magwitch. 8. Society Although Miss Havisham and Mrs. Joe, Pip’s sister, contribute to Pip’s corruption, it is Magwitch who bears the greatest culpability. Jerome Meckier blames English society for this: ‘Thanks to a system that neglected, then punished him, Magwitch lacks a lofty ideal, a worthier goal than revenge.’ 17 Magwitch earns money in order to gain vicariously through Pip the power and respect that money affords. Consequently, Magwitch does not provide Pip with any moral guidance or social responsibility injunctions about how to spend his wealth, so, partly as a result of this lack of guidance, Pip comes to embrace the same attitudes that first condemned Magwitch. Hagan explains: ‘[Pip] too takes on society’s vices, its selfishness, ingratitude, extravagance, and pride… Thus the worst qualities of society seem inevitably to propagate themselves in a kind of vicious circle.’ 18 Although as a poor boy Pip is kind to the convict, as a gentleman believes he is socially far above that same convict and is horrified to discover that this epitome of the lowest class has made possible his upper-class lifestyle. 9. Consequences Magwitch never realizes the effects of his revenge on Pip. Unwilling to take the convict’s money after discovering its source, the financially irresponsible Pip is unable to sustain his upper-class lifestyle. Too educated to be a blacksmith but too poor to be a gentleman, Pip is trapped in the shadowy world between the Havishams and the Magwitches of London. Magwitch does not realize the position he has put Pip in by sustaining his lifestyle with ‘dirty’ money, or recognize Pip’s initial reaction of disgust for him. Magwitch’s revenge is in large measure successful, therefore, as he has created a g entleman and enjoyed the fruits of his labour. He kills his archenemy Compeyson in a struggle and dies peacefully in bed, loved by Pip. He does die under a death sentence in prison, a result of his return to England, but he dies peacefully nonetheless. Miss Havisham, however, is not so fortunate. Unlike the convict, Miss Havisham eventually comes to realize the terrible consequences of her revenge and is both shocked and remorseful. Miss Havisham’s desire for vengeance results in as much damage and destruction to herself as it does to others. Her house falls to ruins and is eventually burned down, all the significant relationships in her life are destroyed, and she avoids fresh air and sunshine for

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__________________________________________________________________ many decades. When Miss Havisham realizes the devastating emotional results of her revenge on Estella, and when she understands how badly she has hurt Pip by encouraging him to love the loveless Estella, she is very contrite. She wails to Pip, ‘What have I done! What have I done!’ 19 and begs him to forgive her. Dickens condemns her to die in a fiery inferno despite her repentance, however, and she expires from her injuries a broken, heartsick old woman. 10. Redemption Both Pip and Estella must learn how to find restoration through the suffering of their guardians and the suffering they themselves have inflicted on others. Hagan writes of this restoration: In [Pip’s] lonely struggle to work out his salvation, he is atoning for the guilt of society at large. In learning to rise above selfishness, to attain to a selfless love for Magwitch, he brings to an end the chain of evil that was first forged by the selfish Compeyson. 20 Estella, after being abused by her husband Bently Drummle, has learned through suffering to have compassion for others. Axton says that ‘both Pip and Estella must be brought by suffering to understand their own wrongdoing and seek forgiveness from those who were the victims of their injustice.’ 21 When Pip finally embraces Magwitch as his father, this act works a bit to make English society both more compassionate and progressive, causes furthered even more when Pip uses his education and upper-class social abilities to hold a r espectable job and make an honest living. 11. Conclusion Pip and Estella, the hapless victims of Magwitch and Miss Havisham’s separate but parallel vendettas, are indelibly shaped by their vengeance-filled upbringings. Despite the initial helplessness of their complicity in their guardians’ revenge, both children grow up and learn to abuse their guardians and society at large in the same way in which their guardians were hurt years earlier. However, after the past, embodied in Magwitch and Miss Havisham is dead, and Pip and Estella have suffered for the injustices that they have perpetrated on society, both of the young people come to find a measure of peace and redemption.

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Notes 1

Paul Chatham Squires, ‘Charles Dickens as Criminologist,’ Journal of Law and Criminology (1931-1951) 29, No. 2 (July-August 1938): 172, Viewed 12 January 2011, http://www.jstor.org. 2 Charles Dickens, Great Expectation (A Norton Critical Edition), ed. Edgar Rosenberg (New York: Norton, 1999), 77. 3 Ibid., 242. 4 Robin Gilmour, The Idea of the Gentleman in the Victorian Novel (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981), 137-38. 5 Squires, ‘Charles Dickens as Criminologist,’ 180. 6 Humphry House, ‘George Bernard Shaw on Great Expectations,’ in All in Due Time: The Collected Essays and Broadcast Talks of Humphry House (London: Hart-Daivs, 1955), 217. 7 John H. Hagan, Jr., ‘The Poor Labyrinth: The Theme of Social Injustice in Dickens’s Great Expectations,’ Nineteenth-Century Fiction 9, No. 3 (December 1954): 171, Viewed 12 January 2011, http://www.jstor.org. 8 Dickens, Great Expectation, 242. 9 Ibid., 139. 10 Ibid., 298. 11 Ibid., 230-231. 12 Harry Stone, ‘Fire, Hand, and Gate: Dickens’ Great Expectations,’ The Kenyon Review 24, No. 4 (Autumn 1962): 677, Viewed 27 June 2009, http://www.jstor.org. 13 William F. Axton, ‘Great Expectations Yet Again,’ Dickens Studies Annual 2 (1972): 290. 14 Hagan, ‘The Poor Labyrinth,’ 171. 15 Dickens, Great Expectation, 86. 16 Ibid., 169. 17 Jerome Meckier, ‘Great Expectations and Self-Help: Dickens Frowns on Smiles,’ The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 100, No. 4 (Oct. 2001): 548, Viewed 12 January 2011, http://www.jstor.org. 18 Hagan, ‘The Poor Labyrinth,’ 171-72. 19 Dickens, Great Expectation, 298. 20 Hagan, ‘The Poor Labyrinth,’ 174. 21 Axton, ‘Great Expectations Yet Again,’ 291.

Bibliography Axton, William F. ‘Great Expectations Yet Again.’ Dickens Studies Annual 2 (1972): 278-93.

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__________________________________________________________________ Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations (A Norton Critical Edition). Edited by Edgar Rosenberg. New York: Norton, 1999. Gilmour, Robin. The Idea of the Gentleman in the Victorian Novel. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981. Hagan Jr., John H. ‘The Poor Labyrinth: The Theme of Social Injustice in Dickens’s Great Expectations.’ Nineteenth-Century Fiction 9, No. 3 (December 1954): 169-78. Viewed 12 January 2011. http://www.jstor.org. House, Humphry. ‘George Bernard Shaw on Great Expectations.’ In All in Due Time: The Collected Essays and Broadcast Talks of Humphry House, 201-20. London: Hart-Daivs, 1955. Meckier, Jerome. ‘Great Expectations and Self-Help: Dickens Frowns on Smiles.’ The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 100, No. 4 (October 2001): 53754. Viewed 12 January 2011. http://www.jstor.org. Squires, Paul Chatham. ‘Charles Dickens as Criminologist.’ Journal of Law and Criminology (1931-1951) 29, No. 2 ( July-August 1938): 170-201. Viewed 12 January 2011. http://www.jstor.org. Stone, Harry. ‘Fire, Hand, and Gate: Dickens’ Great Expectations.’ The Kenyon Review 24, No. 4 ( Autumn 1962): 662-91. Viewed 27 June 2009. http://www.jstor.org. Lydia K. Christoph is Scholar in Residence at Liberty University. She is extraordinarily curious, and has presented papers on Greek Tragedy, Detective fiction, fantasy, and Victorian fiction, and is currently studying Arthurian legend adaptations.

The Snooper and the Scribbler: Literary Revenge in Poe’s Dupin Trilogy Charity Givens Abstract If revenge is a dish best served cold, Edgar Allan Poe would have none of it. Poe would have his revenge heaped upon his enemies (literary or no) like the flaming desserts of the French. Indeed, Poe’s literary career was a study in revenge against the literary elite. He accomplished this in several areas: his public lectures, his fierce literary criticism, and in his literature. In his public lectures, he lambasted the literati; in his literary criticism, he lashed them; and in his literature, he lampooned them. However, his literary revenge was not all obvious references to poor writers of his time; in fact, much of his literary revenge was subtle, swept under the rug, and only those who cleaned the carpets would understand. Nowhere is Poe’s literary revenge as masterfully displayed as in his detective stories with the detective Msr. Auguste Dupin. Critics have recognized the obvious similarities between Poe and Dupin. What has not been as clear is the role of the stories. I posit that these three short stories were used for the specific purpose of Poe revenging himself on the literati. What better forum to attack his opponents than in popular fiction, the fiction of the masses, the masses that the literati seemingly ignored? Here, Poe could achieve the recognition and accolades that were out of his reach during his day. Moreover, Poe’s revenge continues to this day. While many of the Boston and New York literati are now obscure, unknown names in dusty tomes, Poe’s stories continue to be read, reviewed, and adapted. And since Poe never quite reached that literary pinnacle, his revenge is complete as people continue to read his stories and discover the hidden message that he offers in the Dupin trilogy. Key Words: Edgar Allan Poe, Dupin, detective stories, literary criticism. ***** 1. Introduction If revenge is a d ish best served cold, Edgar Allan Poe would have none of it. Poe would have his revenge heaped upon his enemies (literary or no) like the flaming desserts of the French. Indeed, Poe’s literary career was a study in revenge against the literary elite. However, his literary revenge was not all obvious references to poor writers of his time; in fact, much of his literary revenge was subtle, swept under the rug, and only those who cleaned the carpets would understand. Nowhere is Poe’s literary revenge as masterfully displayed as in his detective stories with the detective Msr. Auguste Dupin. Critics have recognized the obvious similarities between Poe and Dupin. What better forum to attack his opponents than in popular fiction, the fiction of the masses, the masses that the

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__________________________________________________________________ literati seemingly ignored? Here, Poe could achieve the recognition and accolades that were out of his reach during his day. The three short stories in the Dupin trilogy were used for the specific purpose of Poe revenging himself on the literary establishment, as seen in Dupin’s interactions with the police. 2. The Murders in the Rue Morgue: Poe and the Literati Beginning the discussion with the start of the trilogy seems most appropriate, though there are several points which will blend in with other stories. His first Dupin story, ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ begins the series of stories in which Poe takes his revenge on the literary establishment. Poe makes an argument in the story ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ that a good detective—and by extrapolation, a good writer—is profound, and this argument leads to his attack on the literary elite of his time through the means of Dupin’s commentary on the police. The accepted authority presiding over criminal cases, the French police force arrives first at the scene of the crime to establish its authority. However, though they arrive first, they are initially unable to solve any particulars, and even though they have the best access to the crime scene, they cannot solve the crime, and thus begins Poe’s first attack. Dupin notes that the police ‘err continually by the very intensity of [their] investigations.’ In seeking too closely the solution, the police miss the ‘matter as a whole.’ 1 Likewise does Poe comment on one Charles Anthon, another member of the New York Literati, noting, ‘[h]is accuracy is very remarkable… even in his MS., which is a model of neatness and symmetry… It is somewhat too neat, perhaps, and too regular, as well as diminutive, to be called beautiful.’ 2 Here, Poe comments on being so concerned with particulars that one misses the big picture, the beauty of a piece of writing. Like the police, who miss the ultimate goal of solving the crime, certain members of the Literati miss the ultimate goal of creating good literature. Through Dupin’s commentary on the police, Poe reinforces his opinion of the Literati in a way that is subtle and sophisticated. Poe’s use of puns in this story provides another avenue for attack. Puns represent Poe’s skilful use of language, something he did not believe all writers had. One important pun in ‘Murders at the Rue Morgue’ is the use of the word ‘clew’ – the police could not find any ‘clews’ to solve the crime. Laurence Howe, in his article ‘Poe and the Critical Pun,’ explains that some of the puns Poe uses are macaronic, that is, ‘puns whose method of operation is veiled behind what appears to be a meaning in another language.’ 3 In French, the word for nail is ‘clou.’ While Dupin examines the crime scene, he discovers a nail, and the rest of his deductions centre around the position of the nail. Howe explains that this clue shows the solution at the outset. The homophones ‘clew’ and ‘clou’ show how obvious the solution should be. 4 If the police were able to look at this obvious clue, the crime

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__________________________________________________________________ would have been solved more easily, but because the police had predetermined the outcome, they were not able to look for ideas that would lead them to the truth. In his criticism, Poe does address the use of puns, and he suggests that ‘the combination of the pun be unexpected and secondly…the most entire unexpectedness in the pun per se.’ 5 Poe comments on one writer, Thomas Hood: ‘In fact, he was a literary merchant whose principal stock in trade was littleness – for during the larger part of his life he seemed to breathe only for the purpose of perpetrating puns – things of such despicable platitude, that the man who is capable of habitually committing them, is very seldom capable of anything else.’ 6 Poe wanted the use of puns to be subtle, unexpected, and significant. To use a pun to illustrate the police’s deficiency shows that the police are incapable of recognizing the subtle, unexpected, and significant, unable to complete their duties as police. So are the literary elite. Though they have the tools of literature at their disposal, Poe might contend that they use them as broadswords, hacking away at a stump to create a grotesque sculpture, whereas Poe uses a chisel to chip away at a piece of wood to create an elaborate and sophisticated work of art. 3. The Mystery of Marie Roget: Poe and the Transcendentalists The middle story in the Dupin trilogy, this story has a convincing argument against the Transcendentalists. Some critics contend that Poe was a cl oset Transcendentalist. 7 (See Ottavio M. Cassale’s article on ‘Poe on Transcendentalism’ for a more complete discussion of this issue.) He was concerned with ideals of truth and beauty, as were many of the Transcendentalists, and he did have obvious emotion in his works – look at any of his poetry for more evidence on that. However, Poe disapproved of the excess of emotion he saw in Transcendentalist work. He objected to the ideas of Transcendentalism that intuition and free-thinking could replace the processes of rational thought. Poe speaks of coincidences at the beginning and end of his story, coincidences that point out similarities between real life and the life taken on in the short story. For Poe, coincidences are not just random events strung together in life. He equates them with a certain precision, ‘the Calculus of Probabilities.’ 8 The only problem with the rational mind is that it does not immediately order together correctly these seemingly haphazard circumstances. Poe argues that some people are ‘startled into a vague yet thrilling half-credence in the supernatural, by coincidences of so seemingly a marvellous character that… the intellect has been unable to receive them.’ 9 According to Poe, then, that ‘the calmest thinkers’ 10 should be tricked into believing in supernatural and ‘præter-natur[al]’ 11 is a slight against the rationality of the world and of man’s mind. Thus, a random collection of activities is not just a haphazard smattering of actions, but instead a chain of events, linked together by a silver cord, however fine that cord might be. To Poe, Transcendentalism suffered from ‘continual and obstrusive excess [of affectation].’ 12 Poe allowed that a writer might be moved by the emotion in his

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__________________________________________________________________ work, but the danger lies not in feeling the emotion of the work, but rather too strongly feeling an emotion, and seeing the emotion gush upon the page like a cut and spurting artery. Poe condemns Tennyson for having ‘an opinion of the sublimity of everything odd.’ 13 This sentiment of Tennyson runs counter to Poe’s assertion that the ‘odd’ – like the coincidences he references in his story – can be explained and is not something to be promoted to a position of awe. This idea helps explain Poe remained at odds with Transcendentalism, given its lavish excess of emotion and its tendencies to paint every single instance with such deep inspirational or super-spiritual tones that overwhelm the rationality that Poe sees in the world. Where the Transcendentalists magnify and glorify the unforeseen and the goodness and power of man, Dupin suggests ‘that modern science has resolved to calculate upon the unforeseen.’ 14 Those seeming coincidences in the world lead from and to new discoveries possibly only by observing and calculating the scientific and practical nature of odd happenings. The Transcendentalists might take odd coincidences and attach some kind of overly spiritual significance to them, but to Poe there is no spiritual significance, as he suggests that everything is submitted to calculation and rationalization. 15 Here is no Romantic view of the wheel of fate; here is a pragmatic and mathematical view of the accidents. They are merely subsumed into the calculations of what life is. There is no magical and sublime unseen; there is only the calculable and the means of calculation. Thus, in ‘Marie Roget,’ the reader finds a compelling argument by Poe against Transcendentalism. The solving of the mystery is not completed by working from overarching truths to some kind of result, but rather from understanding the details and clues that line the path to the truth. For Dupin, truth is not a mystical thing, but rather something ‘sprung from the collateral.’ 16 It is in the gritty details, the seeming coincidences surrounding Marie Roget’s death, that the truth may be found, and it is in the gritty details that Dupin must plough in order to discover the truth of the matter. The Transcendentalist’s rebellion against detailed, unemotional writing is portrayed as being noncompliant with reality and the discovery of truth. For Poe, truth is an end, not a means to an end, or a mystical force knowable only by connection with an Oversoul, as Emerson suggests. 4. The Purloined Letter: Poe and the Plagiarists The final tale in the Dupin trilogy, ‘The Purloined Letter’ shows a d etective motivated by revenge solving a crime of revenge. Dupin’s motivation in this story differs from the other stories in which his motivation springs from intellectual curiosity. Poe’s motivation in his criticism seems to be focused on the idea of creating a good national literature. Though he thinks the masses are too stupid to appreciate new and novel writers, he still believes that America is capable of creating good literature. Poe’s revenge against the uncreative and the plagiarists can be seen in how the story deals with the crime of stealing.

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__________________________________________________________________ Like Poe, Dupin attacks the problems of stealing, in a literal sense, in his role as a detective. Whereas in the other stories Dupin solves the crimes for the purpose of finding the truth of the matter, in this story he diverges from that motivation. Dupin enacts a form of revenge on the criminal in this case, the Monsieur D---. Charles Rzepka comments on this attack by Dupin that his ‘motives, unlike those of the official police, are personal… [his] revenge is a k ind of duelling with verbal weapons.’ 17 Poe also has a p ersonal motive in attacking writers and employs methods of ridicule, usually in the form of advanced rhetorical skills, to make his point about what he thinks about the writing in question. According to Brett Zimmerman, ‘The linguistic weaponry that Poe sometimes resorted to entailed much more than merely vulgar name-calling—although he did stoop to that now and then.’ 18 A literary critic does not necessarily need to resort to name-calling, yet Poe does. Perhaps, as Zimmerman suggests, Poe ‘feel[s] like a man of genius surrounded by dolts, boors, pretenders, toadies, sycophants.’ 19 Through Dupin’s public humiliation of Msr. D---, Poe is able to enact his revenge against the literary laziness he saw present in American literature. Poe railed against authors who were too lazy to create good literature. For Poe, one of the most serious crimes an author could commit, beyond butchering good literature, beyond grievous grammatical mistakes, even beyond awkward wording, was that of plagiarism. Poe accuses several people of the crime of plagiarism, but one of the most famous cases involves Longfellow and Poe, an episode wherein Poe accuses Longfellow of plagiarizing in his poetry. Poe describes a plagiarist as a thief who either steals out of rare books because no one will see them or steals from poor geniuses who cannot combat the muscle of the Literati. 20 Since Poe was attempting to break down the barriers of the Literati and the club mentality in the world of publication, for him, it would be a major crime to plagiarize someone who wrote something well but was not rich and could not get his work published. That the plagiarists do not have a clear idea in their heads and must resort to stealing works from another is a cr eative failure (not to mention demonstrates a l ack of common sense and decency), a characteristic that Poe detests. The sense here is that like Dupin, Poe ferrets out this crime of stealing from another to right a wrong and to bring order back to the victim. Dupin’s punishment of the dishonest Minister, leaving him humiliated upon the eventual public discovery of his guilt, mirrors Poe’s recommendation that instead of rushing to defend plagiarist, people sympathize with the original creator because ‘[n]ot only is he robbed of his property – of his fame – of that which, if he be a man of genius, is more to him than life; but he is rendered liable by the crime of the plagiarist to the suspicion of being a plagiarist himself.’ 21 However, for Poe, the attention needs to be focused away from the plagiarist and rather directed toward the victim – doubly ignoring the plagiarist and heaping ignominy on his head by extending sympathy to the victim. Poe recommends leaving a t ype of planted purloined letter when he exposes Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s

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__________________________________________________________________ plagiarism by printing side-by-side copies of the material Longfellow wrote and (in Poe’s opinion) the original source, baring the shame of the plagiarism for all to see. Like the Minister whose duplicity will be revealed when the original letter and the fake copy are seen side by side, the plagiarist’s duplicity will also be revealed when his copy is compared to the original author’s writing, leaving no doubt as to the crime that has been committed. Poe accuses writers in his time of a lack of creativity, illustrated most vehemently by the crime of plagiarism. Instead of thinking and writing creatively and as an individual, certain writers chose to appeal to the masses and write material that was popular but not good, a p roblem Poe attributes to a cr azed fervour for ‘national literature.’ 22 For Poe, the solution to this crime would be to find good authors and writers and allow them to publish, breaking the barriers of the club mentality of publishers in his time. Only then could the ‘purloined letter’ of literature be returned to its rightful place: out of the hands of the criminals and into the hands of the true owners of the literature, the good authors. 5. Conclusion Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin trilogy is more than a series of detective stories. In this trilogy, he deals with three persistent problems during his time: the literati, the transcendentalists, and the plagiarists. Written into each story is a commentary on these problems, and though many of the Literati and Transcendentalists have been forgotten, Poe’s work is still widely read and anthologized. One of the most influential authors in American Literature, Poe’s literary revenge reaches throughout time, forever pointing the finger of disdain at those writers who did not meet his exacting standards.

Notes 1

Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ in Selected Tales, ed. David Van Lear (New York: Oxford UP, 1998), 92-122. 2 Edgar Allan Poe, Essays and Reviews, ed. G. R. Thompson (New York: The Library of America, 1984), 1142. 3 Lawrence Howe, ‘Poe and the Critical Pun; or The Revenge of the Detective Tales,’ Literature, Interpretation, Theory 3, No. 3 (1992): 189-203. 4 Ibid., 191. 5 Poe, Essays and Reviews, 274. 6 Ibid. 7 Ottavio M. Casale, ‘Poe on Transcendentalism,’ The Emerson Society Quarterly 50 (1968): 85-97. 8 Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Mystery of Marie Roget,’ in Selected Tales, ed. David Van Lear (New York: Oxford UP, 1998), 149-192.

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Ibid.,149. Ibid. 11 Ibid., 191. 12 Poe, Essays and Reviews, 460. 13 Ibid., 461. 14 Poe, ‘Mystery of Marie Roget,’ 174. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Charles Rzepka, Detective Fiction (Malden, MA: Polity P, 2005), 76. 18 Brett Zimmerman, Edgar Allan Poe: Rhetoric and Style (Montreal: McGillQueen’s UP, 2005), 87. 19 Ibid., 91. 20 Poe, Essays and Reviews, 720. 21 Ibid., 2. 22 Ibid., 1028. 10

Bibliography Casale, Ottavio M. ‘Poe on Transcendentalism.’ The Emerson Society Quarterly 50 (1968): 85-97. Givens, Charity. ‘Poe’s Poisoned Pen: A Study in Fiction as Vendetta.’ MA Thesis., Liberty University, 2009. Howe, Lawrence. ‘Poe and the Critical Pun; or The Revenge of the Detective Tales.’ Literature, Interpretation, Theory 3, No. 3 (1992): 189-203. Poe, Edgar Allan. Essays and Reviews. Edited by G. R. Thompson. New York: The Library of America, 1984. –––, ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’. In Selected Tales. Edited by David Van Lear, 92-122. New York: Oxford UP, 1998. –––. ‘The Mystery of Marie Roget’. In Selected Tales. Edited by David Van Lear, 149-192. New York: Oxford UP, 1998. –––, ‘The Purloined Letter’. In Selected Tales. Edited by David Van Lear, 249265. New York: Oxford UP, 1998. Rzepka, Charles. Detective Fiction. Malden, MA: Polity P, 2005.

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__________________________________________________________________ Zimmerman, Brett. Edgar Allan Poe: Rhetoric and Style. Montreal: McGillQueen’s UP, 2005. Charity Givens is an adjunct instructor at Liberty University. When not reading mystery and fantasy for fun, she enjoys discovering what the author really meant to say in those stories.