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Cervantes’s pen silenced today

His words still shape our consciousness, even if we fail to read him. This is not due to some hackneyed idealism (“tilting at windmills”), but rather to his pervasive impact on the genre that taught us to think like moderns: the novel. He pioneered the representation of individual subjectivity and aspiration, which today undergirds the construction of agency in any narrative, whether in novels, films, television, or the daily self-fashioning by millions of users of social media. Thus William Egginton recently bestowed upon him the title, “the man who invented fiction.” He discovered the fictive within each of us.

Ever since his 1605 prologue incited the reader to “say of the book what you will,” Cervantes has been associated with that extra province of Imagination annexed to every territory in the world, where humans explore unrealized possibilities and enjoy, regardless of material or political circumstances, a modicum of freedom. This association has drawn creators of all periods and lands to pay homage to the author of Don Quixote. From such networks of adaptation and allusion the cultural fabric of modernity is woven.

Yet no sooner do we begin reading Don Quixote than that tradition threatens to unravel before our eyes.

Despite his familiarity, Cervantes is among the most misunderstood of Old Masters. When we actually read his masterpiece, preconceived expectations quickly fade. Quixote is not presented to the reader the way the hero of a modern novel should be. Instead of an unbiased narrator transparently revealing the character’s mind, we find one who sarcastically mocks him, encouraging us to laugh at his absurd behavior and anachronistic beliefs. Gradually, however, Cervantes complicates this picture—especially through the addition of Sancho Panza, whose peasant worldview provides a constant counterpoint to Don Quixote’s aristocratic one. As their ongoing conversation blossoms into friendship, despite ourselves we begin to sympathize with the mad knight, and thus are gripped in an irreducible ambiguity. Are we to laugh at the hero or admire him? Or should we focus on the playful interaction of multiple genres and levels of narration, which reveal the discursive nature of subjectivity, its emergence from an array of conventional literary styles and the metafictional slippage between them? Indeed, Don Quixote demands to be understood as experimental fiction.

The historical context of Cervantes’s life may be our best guide among these readings. Returning to Spain from Algerian captivity, he sought a public voice as a playwright, exploiting his firsthand knowledge of the timely issue—then and now—of Muslim-Christian tensions in the Mediterranean. Yet the popularity of Lope de Vega’s formulaic comedia nueva drove him from the stage, forcing him to invent a new kind of writing through which to cultivate a different relation to his audience. Much has been written on the marvelous companionship between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, but seldom mentioned is the extent to which that friendship models our own with the author. Simultaneously frank and oddly evasive, his stance is both intimate and shot through with an irony that keeps the reader off balance, provoking reflection on the applicability of episodes to social and political realities of the time, among them crime, justice, and abuse of power; militarism and empire; marriage and parental authority; class, privilege, and racial-cum-religious identity; and free thinking vs. censorship. Cervantes neither permits the reader to remain comfortably complacent nor simply to adopt the eccentric viewpoint of the lunatic knight. Quixotic anachronism dislodges us from unthinking adherence to the status quo, but provides no readymade solutions. Thus we arrive at an understanding of Don Quixote as satire, between the lines of which we may read non-conformity. Its marvelously ambiguous anti-hero works on two levels: a ruthless parody against the ideology of chivalry, coupled with the affirmation of the protagonist’s self-invention, his autonomy to make of his life what he chooses.

Portrait of Cervantes with his pen by Jacob Folkema, 1768, via Wikimedia Commons.

Here the professor in me admonishes: if you would understand Cervantes, read his other works, especially the Exemplary Stories and The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda, his posthumously published literary testament. These books are filled with characters who improvise identity: tricksters confounding societal norms, wanderers taking to the road to escape repressive communities, cross-dressing women willfully defying the men who surround them. Moreover, Persiles and Sigismunda evinces Cervantes’s ambition to be, not merely a Spanish, but a cosmopolitan writer. He deploys a fascinating array of people from across Europe and the New World, imaginatively joining North Africa, America, England, Ireland, Iceland, Denmark, Poland, Portugal, Spain, France, and Italy, winding up in Rome. This final extravagant romance epitomizes Cervantes’s humanism, thematizing the boundary-crossing individual human’s ontological superiority to all representations that serve as its mirror images, and to any judicial structure that would curtail its freedom.

The twenty-second of April is the 400th anniversary of the day Cervantes’s restless pen was stilled forever. This was entirely against his will, for, unlike the equally illustrious writer to the North who died a few days after him—Shakespeare—, Cervantes never retired from writing. On his deathbed, after receiving extreme unction, he dedicated Persiles and Sigismunda, promising that if God by some miracle granted him life, he had several unfinished works he still hoped to complete. Nor did he spare the reader a parting shot of dark humor: “Farewell, graces; farewell, witty remarks; farewell, ebullient friends; for I am dying as I go (que yo me voy muriendo), and I look forward to seeing you soon, content in the next life!”

He bequeathed us a birthright we squander at our peril.

Featured image credit: Honoré Daumier [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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The impeachment of Dilma Rousseff

On Sunday, 17 April 2016, the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies approved a motion to forward a petition to the Senate to impeach President Dilma Rousseff. What led Brazil to this moment? Looking back, the re-election of Dilma Rousseff to a second term as President of Brazil in October 2014 was viewed by her supporters in the Workers Party (PT) as confirmation of the rise of the working class to power in Brazil.  The election of Luiz da Silva (“Lula”), the “Godfather” of the PT, in October 2002 after three unsuccessful campaigns was a decisive break with the tradition in Brazil of talking to the Left but voting to the Center-Right in national campaigns. International financial markets were very suspicious of Lula, whose career had been markedly anti-capitalist. With Lula in 2002, the campaign rhetoric of the PT changed dramatically.  Lula stated that all contracts would be respected if he won the race for the presidency.  After his victory, defeating the center-right Social Democratic Party (PSDB) that had governed during the previous eight years, he quickly signaled his intentions of fiscal austerity by appointing a well-known private sector banker as head of the Central Bank.

Much of life in politics is luck.  And Lula and Brazil were lucky in 2003-2004. China rapidly became a major economic power. To fuel growth, Beijing needed natural resources. Latin America was a prime target of Chinese economic growth. Brazil, in particular, became a major trade partner and, indeed, within a few years, China would replace the United States as the principal partner of Brazil.  Suddenly, the prices of raw materials soared. Exports of iron ore to make steel – beef and soy beans to feed a burgeoning urban population – made Brazil a wealthy country.  At about the same time, Goldman Sachs, the New York investment firm, needing a good marketing strategy, identified the BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – as the future global economic leaders.  Lula quickly became President BRICS.  He travelled widely vaunting the “new Brazil.”

Conditional Cash Transfer programs were created to bring tens of millions of poor Brazilians into the lower middle class. Bolsa Familia (Family Package) became a global model for poverty reduction.  As if the soaring foreign exchange generated by the trade with China was not enough, massive oil deposits were discovered off the southeast coast of Brazil. The “pre-salt” petroleum (it was found under thick layers of ocean salt), Lula said, was Brazil’s ticket to prosperity and developed economy status. Lula pondered that God had to be a Brazilian for the country to be so lucky.

But suddenly, in the middle of his first term in office, it was discovered that his legislative successes were tied to a “mensalao” – a big monthly payment to legislators to induce them to vote for the government program.  “Teflon” Lula escaped prosecution but many of his close aides were sent to jail. Easily re-elected in 2006, the sky began to darken in the second term.  Chinese growth slowed. Oil prices fell.  Then the financial crisis of 2008-2009 stopped the flow of direct foreign investment. But the charismatic Lula finished his term with high popularity ratings and passed the baton to his Chief of Staff, Dilma Rousseff.  It was expected that this third PT government would be an extension of the first eight years of PT rule, but the train suddenly went off the tracks. Dilma (as she is known) is a technocrat with no electoral experience. She found it difficult to do the bargaining with a multiparty Legislature that required skill, guile, and lots of money. But the well was drying up.  Her government decided to stoke the fire to maintain popularity. There was a credit boom. Prices were frozen. The transfer programs continued and were extended. Dilma appeared immune to warning signals.

She barely won reelection in 2014, running on a traditional PT populist platform – but she won. Then it all began to fall apart. Federal prosecutors began to look into a massive corruption scandal in the state-oil company, Petrobras. Millions of dollars were spent on phony contracts, the money from which went into political campaigns. The country’s major construction companies were identified as conduits for the cash transfers. Leading business figures were indicted and sentenced. Suddenly, impunity, a long standing political tradition for the wealthy and influential, was under siege. Then Dilma’s government was accused of using state bank funds to cover a budget deficit during her reelection campaign. While not accused of personal corruption, she had served as the Chair of Petrobras during the height of the corruption scheme. It did not help that inflation and unemployment were trending upward.  The three credit rating agencies had downgraded the country to junk status. Trade was flat, as was FDI.  Politically inept, Dilma tried to undermine Eduardo Cunha, the leader of the lower Chamber in the Parliament.  In return, Cunha, himself under investigation for massive corruption and money laundering, accepted a petition to impeach the president. Now, the Chamber of Deputies has approved a motion to forward an impeachment petition to the Senate.  The 81 federal senators will now decide the fate of Dilma and, indirectly, the future of the PT. The heady expectations of 2003 are now in ruin. Brazilians anxiously await the next general election in 2018 to redirect the political fortunes of Brazil.

Feature Image: Flag of Brazil by jorgeribas. Public Domain via Pixabay

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Shakespeare’s Not-So Sceptered Isle

In 2012, when the world tuned in for the opening ceremony of London’s Olympic Games, they were witness in part to a performance of one of Shakespeare’s most famed speeches, delivered by one of today’s most revered Shakespearean actors. Kenneth Branagh, dressed as English engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, offered these lines in the spirit of the ceremony’s larger theme, “The Isles of Wonder”:

Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises,


Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.


Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments


Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,


That, if I then had waked after long sleep,


Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,


The clouds methought would open and show riches


Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked


I cried to dream again.

In isolation, as part of a larger tribute to the British Isles, the speech has a powerful effect. But of course Shakespeare is often misleading out of context. At this particular moment in The Tempest, set not in Britain but on a remote isle long associated with the “New World,” the island “monster” Caliban tries to calm the nerves of his fractious guests, who have sought first to subdue him and use his knowledge of the island to help them colonize it. For readers who come to sympathize with Caliban, the moment is poignant—a tribute to a homeland over which he has no control, on which he has been held as a prisoner and slave.

Stratford-8 by Jen Hunter, CC BY 2.0 via Flickr

Branagh—and Danny Boyle, who directed the ceremony—might have chosen something else for Shakespeare’s big moment; there are, after all, moments of panegyric actually about England in his plays. Perhaps most memorable is John of Gaunt’s famed “sceptered isle” speech from Richard II, in which England is figured as “This other Eden, demi-paradise” (2.1.42). But perhaps it is right to locate Caliban’s speech in a British context; after all, Shakespeare often wrote of other places—of the thirty-six plays in the First Folio, twenty-three are set outside the British Isles, and while their settings are varied and sometimes entirely invented, they often invoke the realities of life in England. It may have been Athens in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but it is also a world in which Bottom & Co. look suspiciously like amateur players in an earlier incarnation of the English theatrical practice that became so wholly professional in Shakespeare’s lifetime.

When Shakespeare does, in fact, write about the “Isles of Wonder,” the result is deeply rewarding for readers and audiences. Most of these treatments are found in the plays where Shakespeare wrestles with the land’s past, a notable exception being his lone England-set comedy, The Merry Wives of Windsor. The histories, especially, call forth the land at crucial moments: think of Hal hanging with the “good lads in Eastcheap” (2.4.13), a locale that comes to signify the prince’s carefully cultivated relationship with those he will eventually rule; or the Forest of Galtres in 2 Henry VI, where the landscape, “like a broken limb united” (4.1.161) comes to signify the stratagems of war. In Richard III, the looming specter of the Tower of London, mentioned twenty-five times, no doubt would have reminded audiences of their own experiences of the place, which sat not far from Shakespeare’s Globe. And when, in Henry VIII, the king decides where to hold the trial for his annulment, he calls on the very place where audiences may well have been sitting: “The most convenient place I can think of / For such receipt of learning is Blackfriars” (2.2.136-7).

Audiences in Shakespeare’s day would have heard here references to land in which they lived and worked, to land from which they may have hailed. But those audiences were not, of course, exclusively English, and readers of even the “English” plays should be mindful of the ways in which Shakespeare maps “Britain” more generally: Scotland, of course, is the setting for Macbeth; Ireland, too, engaged in wars with English forces throughout Shakespeare’s career, is invoked in 2 Henry VI, its “gallowglasses and stout kerns” (4.9.26) marching back with York to claim the throne. Wales, bordering close to Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford, figures prominently: Richard II attempts refuge at Flint Castle; Hotspur hatches rebellion with Glendower and Mortimer at Glendower’s castle in Bangor; the future Henry VII lands at Milford Haven—also appearing in Cymbeline—and marches through Wales to Bosworth Field, where the Tudor dynasty is born. And by the time Shakespeare is writing Lear, “Britain,” of course, is a crucial political subject, tied to James’s ill-fated efforts to unify all his kingdoms under one crown.

These are just a few examples of how Shakespeare maps his “Isles of Wonder.” But it’s important, even as we celebrate Shakespeare’s status as England’s most revered literary figure, that we recall the ways in which he did not so comfortably share John of Gaunt’s vision of a “sceptered isle.” For Shakespeare, the land was more plural, more textured, more spacious than Gaunt allowed.

Featured image credit: Winding by Richard Walker, CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

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What we talk about when we talk about being disoriented

Disorientations—major life experiences that make it difficult for individuals to know how to go on—are deeply familiar, in part because they are so common. It is rare to have never experienced some form of disorientation in one’s own life, perhaps in response to grief, illness, or other significant events. What could we notice if we reflected on our everyday conversations about being disoriented?

We will notice different things about disorientations depending on, among other things, who we talk to about them, what kinds of relationships we have with these people, and when we have these conversations. The information we get from these conversations won’t conclusively determine what counts as a disorientation, nor will it tell us how disorientations affect all people. Even so, reflecting on what conversations about disorientation are like may point to interesting and important questions about disorientation that could be taken up in future philosophical and psychological research.

Consider two questions that might arise in our reflections. First, where can conversations about disorientations go? That is, what can conversations about disorientation lead us to talk about? And second, what can conversations about disorientations do? In particular, what effects can such conversations have on the people in them?

Conversations about disorientations may go in any number of directions, but, in my experience, they rarely go nowhere. For a person to whom disorientations signal danger, such conversations might tend to lead to discussions of how best to avoid or overcome them. Philosophers from Plato to the pragmatists and beyond have described disorientations as occupying an important place in human lives, but many have seen periods of not knowing how to go on as chiefly debilitating and threatening to an individual’s agency. As such, discussions of, for example, how disorienting it is to doubt one’s beliefs have led to discussions of beliefs that cannot be doubted, and discussions of the disorientations of ambivalence have led to discussions of how indecisiveness can be resolved.  In these and other contexts, conversations about disorientation are often the preface to articulating strategies for reorientation.

Where else might conversations about disorientations go?

Reflecting on such conversations can point to the need for more attention to disorientations in conceptual and empirical research

After describing a period of disorientation in their own life, a person might open up about how disorientations have shaped their identity or their understanding of the conditions within which they live. A friend is diagnosed with cancer; he says I’m no longer the same person. A coworker’s spouse dies suddenly; she says we can’t take anything for granted. We don’t only talk about our own disorientations. A neighbor loses his home in foreclosure, an acquaintance has a miscarriage; we talk about how we would have reacted and how we perceive their capacity to cope. Where might these conversations be going? They may not point towards reorientation, but instead raise questions about character, responsibility, and how to relate to others who are disoriented. In other words, everyday conversations about disorientation may in some cases become conversations about the moral significance of these experiences in our lives as agents.

We might see conversations about disorientations as typically having the function of allowing someone who has been disoriented to express something she already knows about herself and her experience—she gets something off her chest, and her conversation partner is a sounding board. As such, perhaps we think the main thing that conversations about disorientation do is allow for information to be shared, and facilitate some kind of (hopefully supportive) response.

What else might conversations about disorientations do?

For instance, how could these conversations alter an individual’s experience of disorientation itself? Some philosophers have considered how having the opportunity to express feelings to a sympathetic interpreter might make a difference to whether or how a person is able to have those feelings (see the work of Sue Campbell, Naomi Scheman, and Elizabeth Spelman). From this perspective, conversations about disorientation might do more than simply allow a person to express things about an experience she has already had and understood — they might shape whether or how a person experiences and understands her disorientations. Were these conversations not to happen, she could be prevented from having and understanding her experience of disorientation in the same way.

Furthermore, how could conversations about disorientation shape the way interlocutors relate to, respond to, or trust each other? If I tell you about my own disorientation in a way that resonates with your own experience, or with an experience you agree would be disorienting, how might our relationship be affected? Conversely, if I describe a trivial experience of mine as being on a par with your own much more strenuous examples of disorientation, how might our relationship change? Conversations about being disoriented might be, like other everyday occasions of relating to others, important contexts of moral action, where we can participate more or less responsibly, and where others can hold us responsible.

Reflecting on such conversations can point to the need for more attention to disorientations in conceptual and empirical research. What is the role of conversations about being disoriented in moral development? What are the responsibilities of interlocutors in these conversations? Though these conversations are only a starting point, they can spur examinations of the complicated power of disorientations in moral lives.

Featured image credit: Night time scene. Public domain via Pixabay.

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Sepsis: What we need to know now

The man doing a spot of gardening cleaning out his fishpond in Europe, the woman who becomes unwell after giving birth in rural India, the child with pneumonia in Rwanda, and the senior citizen who develops diverticulitis in Singapore – the triggers are different but they all die from the same disease process: sepsis.

Sepsis is a condition of impaired homeostasis involving the immune and neuroendocrine systems. Colloquially it may be referred to as “blood poisoning” or “septicaemia”. The immune response to sepsis is a complex balance between pro- and anti-inflammatory components triggered by the infection or insult to the body (e.g. an episode of diverticulitis). This results in immune suppression, altered cellular bioenergetics, failure of endothelial and epithelial cell barriers, organ dysfunction, and coagulation abnormalities. The balance between these responses is, in some cases, affected by genetic differences between individuals and explains why the same trigger may produce minimal impact in some people and produce life-threatening organ system failures in others.

Death is always a tragedy, but survival can be profoundly debilitating with chronic ill health, or loss of limbs and function. Those who have needed admission to critical care will have often suffered failure of several organ systems including blood circulation, the lungs, and the kidneys and will have needed these to be artificially supported during the worst of their illness. As a result, survivors from severe sepsis have often required prolonged treatment in the hospital, followed by long term physical, cognitive, and psychological complications impacting both the sufferer and their family.

Worldwide, there are 19 million cases of severe sepsis annually with a mortality of 26-40%. In the UK alone, there are 150,000 cases annually and 44,000 deaths – more than breast and bowel cancers combined. The incalculable human cost also carries a financial burden, estimated at £170 million to the NHS in the UK, and $20 billion in hospital costs worldwide. It is the most common and pervasive form of critical illness, and is the worldwide cause of many thousands of admissions to intensive care units each year.

Sepsis should be attracting finance for large multicentre research projects aimed at heightening public awareness, improving treatment pathways, and targeting drug treatments but its multifactorial origins work against it. Most major research grants are structured to provide finance for issues affecting a single patient group or underlying disease state. However, because it occurs in a wide range of situations and lacks a single validated diagnostic test, research into sepsis suffers. For the same reasons, it is unfortunately not always easy to diagnose and treat. This is particularly important because outcome is improved by early treatment.

Attention recently has focussed on clarifying terminology, with the production of international ‘Sepsis 3’ definitions based on clinical signs and symptoms. Sepsis is now defined as a “life-threatening organ dysfunction due to a dysregulated host response to infection” with evidence of two points or more of hypotension, an altered mental status, and tachypnoea. These parameters have been identified by multivariable logistic regression analysis as the three variables most likely to be found in patients with sepsis.

A severe subset of sepsis, septic shock, is defined as evidence of persistent hypotension despite volume resuscitation requiring vasopressors to maintain a mean arterial blood pressure > 65 mmHg and a blood lactate level > 2mmol/l.

Both definitions, whilst useful in a hospital or developed world setting, don’t reflect the clinical needs and facilities of low and middle income countries where sepsis is often unrecognised. Additional considerations have been raised about these definitions in high-income healthcare environments, but overall, the simplification is to be welcomed in helping to make it easier to ensure timely treatment and attract funding and recruitment to the necessary research studies.

So what’s needed now?

Antibiotic susceptibility test by disk diffusion shows resistance of this bacterial strain to all the tested antibiotics. Photo by Microrao. CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Source control and early administration of appropriate antibiotics is vital for improving outcome. Bacteria are multiplying in the blood, but may not always be diagnosed with confidence, because blood cultures only reveal micro-organisms in 60% of cases. Antibiotics are often selected on a ‘best guess’ basis pending further information or test results. Recognition and timely empirical treatment has the potential to improve worldwide outcomes considerably, and failure to act quickly may have disastrous consequences for patients.

Future research into sepsis is needed in four broad categories.

Techniques that speed and add reliability to early recognition are a priority.
Research is also needed into how best to support patients who are being resuscitated from or are recovering from septic shock. Sepsis damage affects all the body’s systems and organs. Often survivors are so weak that they cannot even breathe for themselves as they start to recover, and having survived the initial infection they may go on to die because they lack the physiological and body reserves to fend off new problems. In an attempt to offset this, complex bundles of treatments to reduce this ongoing risk to patients have been introduced. Often these packages of care are aimed at reducing the adverse effects of the very treatments that are keeping the person alive.
More fundamentally, targeted treatments that impact the complex generic processes that are triggered by sepsis are vital. Unfortunately, so called ‘magic bullet’-type treatments have so far failed to reduce deaths from sepsis. The two most prominent attempts to clinically reduce the impact of septic shock have been “Centoxin”, a monoclonal antibody product aimed at reducing endotoxin produced by gram negative bacteria and activated protein C (Drotrecogin Alfa, “Xigris”), which was designed to reduce the abnormal clotting caused by sepsis in capillaries and so reduce organ damage. Both have now been removed from use. Sepsis is a complex process that expresses itself differently in individuals and is caused by many different infections. Expecting a single treatment to halt it universally is almost certainly naïve, just as it would be to expect a single drug to treat all cancers or to cure all aspects of HIV.
Future research needs to be a systematic exploration of sepsis from the laboratory to the bedside. It will be expensive and difficult, with many avenues and differences in human response to explore. It may well rely on early confirmation of the type of infection, the varied and complex modes of human response to sepsis, and will involve a range of possible therapies.

Finally, a better understanding of the interaction between different infectious agents including viral, bacterial, and fungal infections and continued research into new antimicrobial agents will be key for the successful treatment of sepsis and septic shock.

Featured image credit: Amoxicillin capsules by Brett_Hondow. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

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Getting to know Mark Carnes, previous Co-General Editor of the American National Biography

In April 2016, the American National Biography updated with 50 new lives. In honor of the occasion, we asked Dr. Mark Carnes to answer a few questions about his experience with the ANB. Dr. Carnes is the author of numerous works on American social and cultural history, and served as Co-General Editor of the ANB alongside Dr. John Garraty since its inception, until current General Editor Dr. Susan Ware came on board in 2012. Dr. Carnes also is the author of the new biography on Dr. Garraty, now available on the ANB.

Could you briefly describe your background and field of study?

In graduate school, I became interested in 19th-century gender and social history. My first two books were usually categorized as early ventures in the history of masculinity. But I disagreed with the premise of many proponents of the field. I did not believe that the history of men could be understood apart from that of women, and vice versa. Gender emerged from a much more complex concatenation of interrelated factors. My dissatisfaction with the direction of “men’s history” opened me up to other intellectual pursuits.

Why did you decide to become co-editor of the American National Biography?

Chiefly because of John Garraty, who became my chief advisor at Columbia. Though he was not especially interested in gender history, he was a zealot about the craft of writing. His quest for the short clean sentence resembled Ahab’s pursuit of  the great white whale. When my sentences grew clause-ridden tentacles, he hacked them to pieces; and when my writing inclined to prettiness, he bludgeoned it. The author’s job, he insisted, was to say something.  The art of writing was to do so simply and clearly. This stern doctrine flies in the face of contemporary academic convention, which often equates convoluted prose with complex thought. I accepted Garraty’s contrary notion as gospel.  By learning how to edit my writing, I became better at that task—and at editing. Garraty apparently identified me as a True Believer, because while I was still in graduate school he then invited me to serve with him as co-editor of Supplement VIII of the Dictionary of American Biography.  When he began work on the ANB, I joined him in that work.  As the project progressed, and after I received tenure at Barnard and Columbia, Steven Wheatley, Vice President of the the ACLS—and Garraty–asked me to serve as Co-General Editor of the ANB.  I was honored; I remain so.

What are you currently reading (personally or work related)?

I almost never read history for pleasure.  Partly that’s because I become distracted by awkward sentences, and intuitively begin to “fix” them. That is not much fun. So I’ve fallen into the habit of reading nonfiction quickly.  At bedtime I’m drawn to historical fiction. I’ve just finished Aline Ohanesian’s Ohran’s Inheritance, about the Armenian genocide, and Robert Harris’s Dictator, about Cicero. My favorite authors include Patrick O’Brian, Thomas Flanagan, Tim O’Brien, Gore Vidal. Flawless prose. Rich historical sensibility. What joy!

Dr. Mark Carnes, photo courtesy of of Mark Carnes.

Which figure(s) in your field would you invite to a dinner party and why?

J.S. Bach, though he is not in my field. But if we’re doing the impossible, why accept constraints? Bach’s creative genius transcends the capabilities of our species, or so it seems to me. I would want to poke and probe, though I doubt if his words would help illuminate his creative genius.

What is your favorite bookstore or library?

The Newburgh Free Library, an oasis in a community thirsting for knowledge.

As Co-General Editor of the ANB, did you have difficulty deciding whom to include and leave out?

Actually, this posed no real problem at all, except that we had difficulty keeping up with the proliferation of historical fields.  For example, after reading a book on “freak studies,” then a sub-discipline of disability studies, I added the category—and several figures—to the ANB. But I knew that we were missing scores of new subjects of emerging scholarly interest.   But by then, as the online version of the ANB began to take shape, we knew that the ANB would not be forever entombed within hard covers, but could grow and change in its online iteration. What we missed back in the 1990s would be addressed later on.

How have you seen ANB grow over the past 15 years?

We had expected that the ANB would serve as the standard biographical reference work for four or five decades. Wikipedia’s ease of access has to some extent supplanted the ANB. Some Wikipedia essays are excellent; but many are not. Crowd-sourced knowledge is something of an oxymoron. If you have a pain in the abdomen, you prefer the diagnosis of a physician; similarly, if you wish to understand an historical figure, the ANB will nearly always surpass Wikipedia, or so it seems to me.

What, in your mind, has been ANB’s greatest achievement thus far?

Providing solid historical judgment on famous figures in American history—but especially on those people of middling importance.

Which of your own entries did you most enjoy writing?

I don’t know which essay I enjoyed writing most, but I do know that the entry on Garraty was among my greatest challenges as a writer. More so than anyone I have met, Garraty saw the world with brutal clarity. I admired him, but I also knew that he regarded puffery with contempt. So I did my best to appraise his work dispassionately and critically. Whether I succeeded I cannot say. But as I typed, I could hear his skeptical judgments—“Look at those adverbs—‘dispassionately,’ really?” And always the refrain: “Too many words!”

What is your current project?

Since the completion of the American National Biography, I have focused on a pedagogical initiative called Reacting to the Past. In Reacting, college students play complex games, set in the past, their roles informed by classic texts. During the past decade, Reacting has spread to over 350 colleges and universities.

 

Headline image credit: Photo by Jackmac34, CCO public domain via Pixabay.

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No “mere servant”: The evolving role of the company secretary

Discussion on company law and corporate governance tends to focus on the role of the board of directors, the shareholders, the creditors, and the auditor, but surprisingly little attention is paid to company secretaries. Indeed, outside of the corporate sector, it is likely that many people would never have heard of the office of company secretary and, of those who have, it is common to misunderstand the role due to the word ‘secretary’ in the title. Their role is, however, an extremely important one, with a 2014 report entitled The Company Secretary: Building Trust Through Governance, stating that the CEO, chairman, and company secretary form “the triumvirate at the top.”

The starting point is the law relating to the appointment of the company secretary (hereafter referred to as the “secretary”). Under the now-repealed Companies Act 1985, all companies were required to appoint a secretary. Section 271 of the Companies Act 2006 states that public companies are required to appoint a secretary. Section 270, controversially, states that private companies (which account for around 99.6% of all registered companies) are not required to appoint a secretary, but may do if they so wish. This has led to concerns that the role of the secretary has been downplayed, and that private companies, the vast majority of which are small businesses, are exactly the types of business that would benefit most from the services of a secretary. This is a view that appears to have prevailed in Ireland, as the Irish Companies Act 2014 mandates that all companies must appoint a suitably qualified secretary (further providing that if a company only has one director, then that person may not also hold the office of secretary).

The role of the secretary is not statutorily defined, nor does the Companies Act 2006 actually provide any tasks that must be undertaken by the secretary (although it does establish that officers of the company, which would include the secretary, can be liable if certain obligations are not met). The precise role and powers of the secretary are a matter of agreement between the company and the secretary. Historically, the role of the secretary was limited. In the 1887 case of Barnett, Hoares & Co v South London Tramways Co (1887) 18 QBD 815, Lord Esher MR described the secretary as “a mere servant” who must “do what he is told.” This led to the secretary being primarily viewed as an administrator, who would engage in tasks such as ensuring the filing of documents at Companies House, maintaining the statutory registers, preparing the agenda and minutes of board/general meetings, and ensuring that general meetings are conducted in accordance with the procedures established in the Companies Act 2006 (tasks that are still undertaken by many secretaries today).

As time progressed, however, the work undertaken by the secretary broadened and increased in importance. This was, to a degree, recognised in the case of Panorama Developments (Guildford) Ltd v Fidelis Furnishing Fabrics Ltd [1971] 2 QB 711 (CA), where Lord Denning MR stated that:

“[T]imes have changed. A company secretary is a much more important person nowadays than he was in 1887. He is an officer of the company with extensive duties and responsibilities. This appears not only in the modern Companies Acts, but also by the role which he plays in the day-to-day business of companies. He is no longer a mere clerk. He regularly makes representations on behalf of the company and enters into contracts on its behalf which come within the day-to-day running of the company’s business…. He is certainly entitled to sign contracts connected with the administrative side of a company’s affairs, such as employing staff, and ordering cars, and so forth.”

The role of the company secretary is evolving beyond the administrative.

Lord Denning MR acknowledged that, in the decades prior to the case, the role of the secretary had grown into becoming one of the most important within the company. However, he still viewed the role of the secretary as broadly administrative, and the law’s view of the secretary’s role has not changed since then. This is despite the fact that there can be little doubt that the role of the company secretary has broadened considerably, especially in larger companies. This is evidenced in a number of ways.

First, a 2012 report published by the All Party Parliamentary Corporate Governance Group found that around 70% of FTSE 100 companies combined the role of secretary with some other role. In over 50% of cases, the most common role was that of Head of Legal/General Counsel, an extremely important role (although one that many argue is not compatible with the role of the secretary). Second, it is clear that the secretaries’ perception of their role has changed. The same report found that only 25% of secretaries questioned regarded their role as administrative – 33% characterized the role as strategic, and 42% characterized it as a mixture of the two. However, the exact role of the secretary will depend upon the views of the board, and 71% of directors viewed the secretary’s role as being administrative, with only 10% viewing the role as strategic. Despite this disparity, there was broad agreement that the responsibilities of the secretary had increased over the previous five years, with 71% of secretaries and 45% of directors opining that the secretary’s role will continue to increase over the next five years.

In conclusion, there can be little doubt that the role of the company secretary (especially in larger companies) is evolving beyond the administrative, and is increasingly becoming more strategic and compliance-focussed. However, the law still has little to say regarding the role of the company secretary. Perhaps this is a reflection of the disparity of thought that exists between secretaries and directors, and the desire to allow companies to define the secretary’s role. What is certain is that the role of secretary is one of the most important in the company, and perhaps the time has come for UK company law to fully recognise more the importance of the company secretary.

Featured image credit: office worker headache by dnfcnlsrn0. Public domain via Pixabay.

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Why the future of social change belongs to community research

People don’t exist as isolated entities, and social programs, movements, or data analytic methods that assume they do are not aligned with reality—and may be doomed to fail. We all know that providing therapy or tutoring to a child may be less effective than hoped if the child’s parents, peers, school, and neighborhood are not also operating in a way that’s conducive to the child’s growth and well-being. Yet too often, we pass social policies or create interventions that are targeted only at the individual level. In a culture that overemphasizes the individual, community research draws on truths that are frequently ignored.

Community Psychology is probably one of the more complex fields in the social sciences because it embraces multiple levels of influence rather than simple individual differences. We are not always aware of the potent effects of an individual’s context, and there is evidence that the environment can have profound effects even on things that have been considered genetically derived. Before Community Psychology really began to form cohesive ideas around contextual impacts, sociologists were attempting to develop theories and methods that capture social contexts. Their Sociology-of-Knowledge theories are illustrative and have been used to understand people’s perceptions of reality, social change, and the role of social institutions. Present-day community researchers are not only interested in understanding the different levels of influence, but also in understanding the interplay between these levels, and working with community members to use this knowledge to build stronger communities.

Our methods of analysis reflect a focus on a systems point of view — on complex transactional systems in particular. For example, dynamic social network analyses are now being used to model how social relationships affect long-term sobriety in Oxford Houses, which are a national network of self-help operated sober living residential settings. In DePaul’s 25 year collaborative relationship with Oxford House, many of the topics studied were initially raised by members of the self-help organization, such as the social dynamics within houses and the best predictor for long-term recovery. Previous studies performed in partnership with this community based organization have incorporated a wide range of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods.

The integration of community members in the research and design process has led to deep understanding of the unique cultural context of the communities in which they’re implemented, which can be furthered by the use of qualitative or mixed methods. Participatory practices and methodological pluralism are requirements for community researchers, as we understand that statistics and stories both provide valuable information. A more diverse toolbox makes us better equipped to address a wide range of issues in varied and changing contexts.

Social change comes in many forms, but all forms of change can benefit from an increasingly informed and engaged world. As the availability of data increases, so will opportunities to facilitate individual and collective action based on data. Community psychologists and other researchers have been serving this kind of role for decades, positioning ourselves not as experts with pre-determined solutions to social issues, but as facilitators with a certain set of tools that can help people understand and improve their communities. When people are able to work together to develop solutions to community problems, or see where larger societal barriers make that change difficult, they can act accordingly. This kind of change, catalyzed and sustained by the people most affected and taking into account the complex realities of our social systems, is most likely to lead to long lasting success.

Featured image credit: “Data Visualization of Street Trees” by Intel Free Press, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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100 years after the Easter Rising

This year marks the one hundredth anniversary of the Easter Rising, a violent attempt by Irish republicans to end British rule in Ireland. Though a momentous event in itself, the Rising should be understood in the context of a decade of revolutionary activity during which Irish political culture was profoundly radicalized and partition came to look inevitable. It must also be understood in the context of the First World War which was the single most important influence on the political development of modern Ireland.

The connection between the War and the Rising was clear to contemporary observers but links between the two were often elided by subsequent commentators, until relatively recently. Yet the links between the commemorations of these two events are also strong. Both present modern governments and other vested interests with considerable challenges as well as opportunities.

The Great War now allows Dublin, Belfast and London to speak of an Irish past which was characterized, albeit fleetingly, by common sacrifice rather than enmity. This provided a useful backdrop to the ongoing peace process, as well as to the effort to highlight improvements in Anglo-Irish relations. The Easter Rising, however, has provided no such opportunity for the celebration of a shared past. Nevertheless, its centenary, like those relating to the Great War, was planned with Anglo-Irish relations and contemporary politics in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland firmly in mind.

IRA and loyalist guns may have fallen silent in recent years, but a number of proxy intellectual and political wars have continued to be fought in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland about sovereignty, national identities and North-South relationships. History remains central to the perceptions which underpin these: the commemoration of the Easter Rising provoked violence in the past precisely because it encouraged the airing of profoundly different versions of modern Irish history. These fundamentally different understandings continue to matter because contemporary political agendas and justifications continue to be based on them. But these days, the two main tribes on the island have learned how to defuse or avoid any prospect of direct confrontation over such commemorations.

What has changed since the less diplomatically choreographed, more strident celebrations of the Easter Rising in 1966? The Rising itself and the nationalism it represented has been subjected to searching critiques, set in the context of Irish membership of the European Union, of Anglo-Irish and ongoing relations between the Republic and Northern Ireland, as well as the enormous shift in international opinion on terrorism since 9/11. The armed force wing of Irish republicanism had played its violence out and by this year’s centenary of the Easter Rising sat as part of the cross-party coalition government in Northern Ireland, having renounced violence as a way of achieving its aims. The context in which the violence of 1916 was remembered had therefore changed completely from 1966.

Though a momentous event in itself, the Rising should be understood in the context of a decade of revolutionary activity during which Irish political culture was profoundly radicalized and partition came to look inevitable.

Historians have watched these developments carefully and have, on the whole, adopted an interested yet guarded position on the centenary of the Easter Rising. Wary of earlier attempts to politicize history and aware of the tendency of politicians to recast Irish history, academic or otherwise, as propaganda, historians have been alive to the potential impact of large scale commemoration of the Rising and of their collusion in this. A number of us have been slightly alarmed at times by the sheer scale of commemorative activity and concerned about some directions of travel. But I doubt that I am the only historian of modern Ireland who has been impressed by the originality of some commemorative initiatives and relieved to see the availability of a number of opportunities for the expression of interests of all kinds. Some of us have been relieved at the relative absence of triumphalism, but also exasperated at times by what seem to be highly contrived expressions of broad mindedness and conciliation.

Yet, while many of us have complained about 1916 overload, it would be churlish not to recognize how fortunate we are to work on a period of modern history which continues to excite and which genuinely continues not only to matter to a wide range of constituencies, but which continues to shape the way many people think about the past and the present in the two Irelands. Very few historians work in fields or periods which attract as much public and institutional attention and therefore, which provide all sorts of possibilities for dissemination of research and the development of our field.

The effect of this has been to produce much public history, though live events, TV, radio, and newspaper articles, that tells the story of the Easter Rising in ways that were not possible fifty years ago. We now see the Easter Rising of 1916 not only through the eyes of its leaders and their supporters, but through the eyes of others caught up in the mayhem; through the eyes of British troops and the RIC; and through the eyes of those killed, most of whom were not among the rebels and had not chosen that fate. At the same time, we have not lost the story of the rebels themselves, a remarkable and unusual group of individuals. Some might argue that the result of this expansion of interest is a failure or refusal to deal with some of the hard questions posed by the Rising and its political legacy. They have a point, but new questions, some of them equally challenging, about feminism, internationalism, violence and resistance to the Rising, have in recent years become central to debates about 1916. The commemoration has have given them audiences and platforms and debates about the legacy of the Rising have been the richer for it.

Featured image credit: Easter Rising: British Soldiers, by Unknown. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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International criminal law and Daesh

On 20 April 2016, after hearing harrowing testimony coming from victims, the UK House of Commons unanimously adopted a resolution declaring “That this House believes that Christians, Yazidis, and other ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and Syria are suffering genocide at the hands of Daesh; and calls on the Government to make an immediate referral to the UN Security Council [SC] with a view to conferring jurisdiction upon the International Criminal Court [ICC] so that perpetrators can be brought to justice” (HC Hansard 20 April 2016 columns 957-1000). It is the purpose of this comment to discuss the accuracy of this determination and its legal significance.

The Crimes

There are three international crimes that are of specific relevance to Daesh’s conduct: war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

The core of the law of war crimes that applies to all armed conflicts is stated in Common Article 3 to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. There is other law applicable here, but it suffices to comment here that although this was drafted in 1949, and amongst other things, prohibits the killing of civilians, it could have been written specifically to cover Daesh’s conduct.

Crimes against humanity are defined in Article 7 of the ICC’s Statute, as including killing and rapes as a part of a widespread or systematic attack on a civilian population. Again, although it preceded Daesh’s founding, it could have been drafted with it in mind.

With war crimes and crimes against humanity, the issue is not whether Daesh members have committed such crimes, but what to do about them. The most controversial issue, however, is whether the conduct of Daesh is genocidal. Sociologically, the definition of genocide is often taken to cover all mass killings. The law, however, is narrower. The legal definition of genocide is contained in Article 2 of the Genocide Convention of 1948, which reads:

genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;


(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;


(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;


(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;


(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

By virtue of treaty or customary international law this is the definition that binds all States.

The Nature of Genocide

Genocide is characterised by its special intention, which is to destroy, in whole or in substantial part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. This has been determined by international courts, including the International Court of Justice (ICJ), to be physical rather than cultural. Even so, actions that target culture may be good evidence of genocidal intent.

A person may also be guilty of genocide in the absence of an overall plan or policy. The quintessential examples of genocide have occurred pursuant to policies, but it is not a formal requirement for guilt under general international law. There is a difference between determining (in the overall sense) that a genocide has occurred and that an individual is guilty of genocide (known as being a génocidaire).

Legal Obligations of States

Some (including some British MPs) think that declaring that there is a genocide gives rise to obligations on parties to the Genocide Convention to intervene, including militarily, owing to the obligation to prevent and punish genocide in Article 1 of the Convention. However, the ICJ made clear in the Bosnian Genocide case, the fact that a genocide has occurred does not mean that all parties to the Genocide Convention have such legal obligations. Absent direct State responsibility, or a very special relationship between a State and those committing genocide, there is no legal obligation to take direct unilateral action. Morality may suggest differently.

As a matter of law, for the Security Council to invoke its coercive powers under Chapter VII of the UN Charter (which can involve referring the matter to the ICC, or even mandating military intervention), what is required is that the Council declare there to be a threat to international peace and security under Article 39 of the Charter. Proof of genocide is not necessary for this, and, the situation involving Daesh clearly amounts to such a threat, as was (entirely lawfully) confirmed by the SC in Resolution 2253 of December 2015.

Daesh and Genocide

Prior to the House of Commons resolution, on 17 March 2016, US Secretary of State John Kerry said that:

Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yazidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims. Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions – in what it says, what it believes, and what it does.

There is very good evidence for this. There have been killings and rapes of members of the Yazidi community, who are a religious group protected by the Genocide Convention. Furthermore, any evidence of a ‘convert or die’ imperative mentioned as being a Daesh policy by Lord Alton (HL Hansard 3 February 2016, column 1860) would be very strong evidence of genocidal intent.

Indeed Daesh may be condemned from its own words. In issue 4 of Dabiq, Daesh’s mouthpiece, they stated

[u]pon conquering the region of Sinjar…the Islamic State faced a population of Yazidis, a pagan minority existent for ages in regions of Iraq and Shām. Their continual existence to this day is a matter that Muslims should question as they will be asked about it on Judgment Day.

Although the piece continues to say that if Yazidis convert, mercy is to be shown to them, it is very strong evidence of a genocidal policy.

Daesh’s actions with respect to other religious groups, are almost certainly, at least, war crimes and crimes against humanity, and likely to be genocidal. Also, even if a policy could not be proved, individuals have almost certainly acted with genocidal intent and may be convicted as génocidaires.

To summarise, a genocide against the Yazidis is almost definitely occurring, and is probably happening in relation to other groups. The Security Council is acting within its powers when it deals with Daesh. It is not necessary that a genocide be declared for further action to be taken.

Nonetheless, the resolution of the House of Commons is a welcome acceptance that where genocides occur they should be recognized as such, and of the importance of the ICC. Although political realities in the SC mean that there may be a veto on a resolution sending the matter to the ICC, the political importance of the House of Commons declaration is significant, as it will pressure the government, as a permanent member of the SC, to go to that body and ask for action.

Featured image: Bullet Holes on wall with a Window. (c) AbdukadirSavas via iStock.

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