[lit-ideas] Re: A Fine Distinction

We are discussing the only OED quote for 'nice  distinction'

"There is a  nice distinction between suicide, self-sacrifice, and 
martyrdom."  

"The Mission  of Metaphor in Expressive Culture [and Comments and  Reply]"    
                    
 
by JAMES FERNANDEZ
     JOHN BLACKING
     ALAN DUNDAS
     MUNRO S. EDMONDSON
     K. PETER ETZKORN
     GEORGE G. HAYDU
     MICHAEL KEARNEY
     ALICE B. KEHOE
     FRANKLIN LOVELAND
     WILLIAM C. McCORMACK
     DANIEL N. MALTZ
     MICHAEL PANOFF
     RICHARD PRESTON
     CHARLES K.  WARRINER
ROGER W. WESTCOTT
             and
     ANDREAS ZAKAR.
 
                 In: Current Anthropoly 1974, vol. 15, 119-145.  



I will consider McCreery's comments below.
 
---- The relevant quote is from p. 134.
 
'Comments' 
AUTHOR: John Blacking
AFFILIATION: Belfast, Northern Ireland 5 X 73. 
 
Some quotes:

"I am much in sympathy with what I understand  [but may also misunderstand. 
JLS]
to be the author [James Fernandez]'s aim of achieving greater  objectivity in 
the analysis of 'expressive culture'".
 
"Fernandez rightly advocates 'participant  observation'"
 
-- which is a trick when researching suicide, I  trust.
 
Fernandez is engaged in an "analysis of a Christian  ceremony"
 
which with a surname like Fernandez I take to mean "Catholic"; for  surely if 
the ceremony were Episcopialian or Anglican, Fernandez and Blacking  would 
say so!
 
Blacking writes:

"I am worried that too much importance is  attached to the face value of 
words"
 
--- for surely we want endodermal beauty too?
 
--- "and too little to the the different experessive content of the  same 
sets of words in different social contexts"
 
Well, we are supposed to be dealing with the TEXT, and surely we  can do that 
in abstraction with the CO-TEXT, PRE-text, or what have  you!
 
What kind of a noble word can any word be that it cannot survive  
'de-co-text-ualisation?!
 
    BOROGOVE, perhaps.
 
 
----
 
Blacking: 
 
"The concept if a category of 'expressive culture' seems to me as  
INAPPROPRIATE
[flame. JLS] as the lumping together of a collection of activities  as 'the 
arts'. It ignores the differences in forms and motivations that must  surely 
[derogatory towards Fernandez. JLS] be the focus of STUDIES of affective  
behaviour."
 
Blacking then explodes in tree successive rhetorical  questions, the meaning 
to which is NO NO NO- but which I feel like answer YES  YES YES -- and the 
trick is that he interperses the quote under consideration  [regarding 'a nice 
distinction between..."] just before the third 'capping'  double [loaded] 
rhetorical question:
 
"Can we be sure that possession by the Holy Spirit and by a spirit  are 
different experiences? Is there really a difference between homicide by a  hero 
and 
homicide by a soldier, a terrorist, a murderer, an assassin, a killer,  or an 
executioner? There is a nice distinction between [sic. JLS] suicide,  
self-sacrifice, and martyrdom; but is their expressive content a metaphor of  
human 
experience or are they statements of class interests?"
 
So back to the 'sati'. Citing McCreery, 
 
    IF [agent A] 
 
is willingly participates in her burning alive in the funeral pyre of her  
husband
 
AND 
 
* escapes despair at the state in which the loss of her husband leaves  her
 
                        she _commits suicide_.
 
[difficult to prove that. As Grice says in "From the banal to the bizarre",  
"We may understand why a squarrel grabs nuts [to eat them] but surely it's  
harder for any manifestation of behaviour to ascribe a distinct _psychological_ 
 
cause, and vice versa" re: "No inner state without outward manifestations"
 
    "Since Nature is only to install psychological  apparatus
     on rational creatures in so far as it is reuqired  for the
     generation of operations which would promote  survival 
     [rather than self-destruction. JLS] in a posited  living-
     condition, no psychological concept can be  instantiated
     by a [rational agent] without the supposition of  behaviour
     which manifests it. An explanatory concept has no  hold
     if there is nothing for it to explain. Why is why  [as good
     ol G. Elizabeth M. A. put it,] 'inner 
     states must have outward manifestations'."
 
                        Grice,  "The Conception of Value", p. 143
                            originally (1975) Presidential Address of the APA
                               [Pacific Division, i.e. not the Bellicose
                               Atlantic one!]
 
 
            
     'inner  
states must have outward manifestations'."
 
So McCreery should provide outward manifestations, elicited from  'participant
observation' of the 'sati' that the widow
 
 

* escapes despair at the state in which the loss of her husband leaves  her   
    
 
-- and best done in -etic, rather than -emic terms, unless it's  Hindi.
 
 
Now if the clause is 
 
+ she sacrifices herself for the sake of her family's reputation
 
         she self-sacrifices.
 
And finally, since this is a triple in-between:
 
If the clause is
 
+ she fulfills a religious obligation in an extreme form for which  the
label "martyrdom" is appropriate
 
              she is a martyr.
 
---- McCreery calls this first stab and chestnut, so perhaps the onus is on  
him to illuminate the Oxonian types amongst us who would run such a delightful 
 interview with the WIDOW that she WILL change her mind!
 
 
NEW DELHI. AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER from MEMPHIS in 'participant observation'  
sames RESTLESS NATIVE.
 
In a ritual ceremony of 'sati', Miss Isola Gupta was persuaded not to kill  
herself. This was 
achieved by the American philosopher J. M. Geary who runs a school of  
scholsaticism in Memphis. The following is a transcript of his conversation 
with  
the estranged woman:
 
GEARY.    Isola!?   What do you think you are  doing?
 
ISOLA.      Jumping. Why?
 
GEARY.    But -- why?! I thought you _loved_ me.
 
ISOLA.      I did. I mean, I do. But I also love,  urm, loved my Husband.
 
GEARY.   But he's almost ashes now! (holding her arm, and kissing  her 
passionately)
 
    Hindu Official:
          Sir, you are not  allowed to indulge in foreign talk with the widow.
 
GEARY. Fuck off
 
ISOLA.   Let go, Mike. We knew from the beginning I would  never adapt to 
               the multiculturalism of Memphis. We have one culture here 
only, and this
               is it [attempts to jump again -- but Geary tightens her 
towards his chest]
 
GEARY.  But this is _silly_.
               And fuck Memphis multiculturalism. At least it's not your silly
               human congestion. Look at that avenue, there: congested [he 
points
               with his right arm]; and look at that broad street there, 
where the
               market is held, another congestion [points with his left arm,  
unintentionally
               [?] releasing Isola
 
ISOLA    Aaargh!!!! [as she is burned by the pyre]
 
That night, Geary wrote to his fellow Irish philosopher John  Blacking,
 
"Dear John,
    You shouldn't believe what I participated in  today".
 
And the rest, as we say, is _current_ anthropology.

Cheers,
 
JL 
   Buenos Aires, Argentina
 
 
---- McCreery:
 
"as a plausible first stab, I offer

Suicide= to escape one's own  pain or despair
Self-sacrifice= for the sake of others, e.g., women,  children, family,
members of the same fire brigade or military  unit
Martyrdom=for the sake of a transcendent, religious or ideological,  cause

As a prototypical case where which of the three is the most  likely
explanation, I offer an anthropological chestnut, the Indian custom  of
suttee (or sati), in which a widow is burned alive on the funeral pyre  of
her husband. If she willingly participates in this event, is the widow  in
question (1) escaping despair at the state in which the loss of her  husband
leaves her; (2) sacrificing herself for the sake of her family's  reputation;
or (3) fulfilling a religious obligation in an extreme form for  which the
label "martyrdom" is appropriate?"







**************************************See AOL's top rated recipes 
(http://food.aol.com/top-rated-recipes?NCID=aoltop00030000000004)

Other related posts: