The message of Uncle Tom's Cabin - Forgotten Classics

A superior podcast recommendation is Julie Davis's reading of Uncle Tom's Cabin at the podcast Forgotten Classics. First of all, she reads the story in a most excellent fashion, bringing it forcefully to life. In addition she helps the listener with special terms and with explanations and interpretations she picked up from her research. Last but not least, she engages in dialog with her audience and makes their reactions part of the evaluation of the book and the reading. Julie makes this into more than an audio book, this is the Uncle Tom experience.

The Uncle Tom experience is, for me at least, a recovery of the book. A recovery from my memory - I read the book as a child - and a recovery from the standard criticism that has been delivered to us. The book would be too obedient, too stereotype and eventually racist and not serving the cause of the suppressed slaves and their descendants at all. Julie attempts to refute that and allow the book a come-back as a piece of literature and a sincere pamphlet for the sake of the oppressed. By all means, the alleged soft and sweet romanticism of the book, is quite refuted. Uncle Tom's Cabin is quite a grim book, even if it is devoutly religious, moralistic and concealed in its references to violence and sex.

The accusation of racism is not so easy to set aside and Julie and I have been talking back and forth about the subject. As we progress in the book, I have found Harriet Beecher Stowe at times outright racist and then outright anti-racist. Putting all the ideological passages together, the overall picture is not so clear. Therefore, I would suggest to put that aspect aside and not take the book or the writer to be of superior political, philosophical insight. Rather, the quality of the book, we discover more and more, lies with the drama and the humanity.

In the latest episode, where Julie reads chapters 35 through 37 of Uncle Tom's Cabin, she makes a remark that can be expanded upon. She says of the character Cassy, that she represents the worst of the plight of being a slave. It did not help her she grew up as the woman of an estate; she was sold as a slave after all. And it did not help her to have good masters along the way; she ended up with Simon Legree and the hellish existence that went with that.

This is not just true for Cassy, it is true for all characters in the book, even those that end up well, or are not slaves at all. The brilliance of Uncle Tom's Cabin, I would argue, turns out to be that Stow has succeeded in building a multi-charactered drama in which being a slave or a slave-holder for that matter is corrupting in the end. No good intentions and humane treatment can help the ever present danger of deliverance to the downside of slavery, to the excesses. For those who are not slaves, it presents too big a responsibility. For those who are slaves, it proves an unjust fate necessarily intertwined with their bounds. This, possibly, explains why the book was such a tremendous success even to the extent it can be argued it helped abolition come about. Stowe showed the American society their was no good way around slavery.

Apart from that being a drama that is extremely well crafted, it can easily be taken into a wider social context of subservience. How is the slavery of Uncle Tom's Cabin fundamentally different from segregation, low-wage countries, poverty and other social circumstances that render parts of society or the wider world powerless and another part in comfortable denial they can alleviate the powerlessness by their humanity.

Picture: Title-page illustration by Hammatt Billings (wikimedia commons)

More Forgotten Classics:
Uncle Tom's Cabin - Forgotten Classics,
The hidden opinions of Harriet Beecher Stowe,
The racism of Uncle Tom's Cabin,
Uncle Tom's Cabin revisited,
Cooking with Forgotten Classics.

Jan Wolkers - Het Marathon Interview 1986

Hij is er weer. Het allerleukste Marathon Interview uit de reeks. Ronald van den Boogaard spreekt met Jan Wolkers. Het was 1986. Het Marathon Interview was nog maar juist uitgevonden. De uitzendingen zouden 5 uur duren en niemand wist wat te verwachten. Voordat ik er de eerste keer naar luisterde (via podcast dan wel) en over schreef had ik al geluisterd naar de interviews met Kees Fens en Johnny van Doorn en daarin leken de gast en de interviewer op voorhand al moe van de lange zit en was lamlendigheid troef in het eerste uur, zodat ik het vervolg maar meteen opgaf. En daarna schreef ik over het interview met Jan Wolker het volgende:

Ik begon al bijna te denken dat 5 uur, in alle gevallen teveel van het goede is, maar toen begon ik aan het interview dat Ronald van den Boogaard in 1986 had met Jan Wolkers. Dat begint niet alleen goed, dat wordt ook steeds beter. Zo onvoorstelbaar goed zelfs, dat Cor Galis bij de aankondiging van een volgend uur de heren vraagt of het niet wat minder kan. Waarom zo'n oproep, dat snap ik niet helemaal, maar het is, hoe krom ook, wel een sterke indicatie hoe dit sprankelende radio is, die je aan je oordopjes gekluisterd houdt.

Wat mij geweldig bekoort in het interview is het onverstoorbare zelfbewustzijn van Wolkers. Hij stelt dat hij zich niet voorbereid heeft en zo komt het ook over. En zo gedraagt hij zich impromptu en zo vers van de lever is hij geweldig authentiek en authentiek geweldig. Voeg daarbij dat de interviewer zich uitstekend ingelezen heeft en Wolkers waardeert, zonder te vervallen in ademloze bewondering en de twee heren gaan geanimeerd op pad en laten elkaar niet meer los. Op zeker moment laten ook de radiopauzes (nieuws op het hele uur en een kleine storing) de heren niet meer van hun a propos brengen. Je zit er als stille deelnemer aan het intieme gesprek bij. Wat een delicaat genoegen.

Meer Het Marathon Interview:
Henk Hofland (o.a.),
Diepenhorst en andere politici,
W.F. de Gaay Fortman,
Freek de Jonge,
Het Marathon Interview - vernieuwde VPRO podcast.

Meer Ronald van den Boogaard:
Marathon Interview met Arie Kleywegt,
Ersatz TV,
Marathon Interview met G.A. Wagner,
NRC speelt Radio,
Marathon Interview met Ina Muller-Van Ast.

Boffins and WW I - Thinking Allowed

Here is a quick heads up about BBC's sociology program Thinking Allowed, before the newest will be put on line.

There was a fine show last week with two interesting issues. One, about so-called Boffins or Nerds or whatever the high achieving school children are pejoratively called. Presenter Laurie Taylor spoke with researcher Becky Francis from Roehampton University who studied the children and found out how they struggle in the balancing act between being good at school and being popular. What struck me the most is how thoroughly kids are aware of their position in the school class hierarchy - as if I did not remember.

The second subject may interest listeners beyond sociology. I know I have a lot of history podcast listeners among my readers who are profoundly interested in World War I. They might consider taking up Thinking Allowed's second subject. A study was made of letters sent home by soldiers in WWI and Laurie Taylor speaks with Michael Roper and Joanna Bourke what can be learned from these.

More Thinking Allowed:
Richard Hoggart,
Secular vs. Religious,
Renoir and Slumming,
Mizrahi Jews,
The weekly social science stop.

Yuval Malchi's History Pieces - קטעים בהיסטוריה

I love Yuval Malchi's podcast קטעים בהיסטוריה (pieces of history). It is one of those amateur history podcasts, where the author occasionally finds the time to share his knowledge with us. In Yuval's case this means jumping back and forth through periods and subjects in history, just as his personal research has come up - I assume.

And so, apparently, Yuval has taken up an economics perspective on history. His previous episode was about the Tulip Mania in 17th century Netherlands as the oldest and most obvious example of market bubble. Now, Mr. Malchi has come with two issues with more stories of economic history, this time from 19th and 20th century US. Why this had to be cut into two episodes, escapes me. The chapters came out simultaneously and neatly connect on to another. But this is merely a side step.

The stories we get are presented as the biggest enterprise mistakes on the last centuries, but although they are about enterprise decisions that were proven wrong by consecutive events, one can hardly cast the label mistake in advance. If Western Union didn't see anything in Bell's telephony or Mars didn't want to sponsor the movie ET, consecutive events may have caused the decision makers to deeply regret the route taken, but they must still have felt that the considerations were sound. There must be business decisions taken on much worse grounds and regardless the consequences, they could be regarded as more faulty. Still, the stories are very poignant, making the podcast informative and entertaining.

More קטעים בהיסטוריה (Pieces of History):
The Tulip Mania,
American Independence,
Lewis and Clark.

The empire - Ferguson and Khalidi

Big Ideas frequently reruns old lectures. For example there was one with Niall Ferguson on his book Empire. I had been looking for quite some time for a podcast with Ferguson, but abandoned the Big Idea lecture (mp3), because it dated 2002. With all the remarks Ferguson makes about Iraq, I felt this was hopelessly outdated.

But then I was following Columbia University's course Conceptual Foundations of International Politics, with a lecture by Rashid Khalidi about 'alternate views of American Supremacy' in which is mentions that in his opinion the US are an empire and takes that perspective to analyze how American Foreign policy is viewed and how it fails and succeeds. Khalidi mentions Ferguson as one who supports that view that the US is an empire and refers to him. And this made me take up the Ferguson lecture at Big Ideas again.

The point to take away from Ferguson's lecture is that the US are an empire by all means of its hegemony (especially in 2002) and that in comparison to its predecessor Great Britain, actually enjoys some significant advantages in the sense that it has fewer contesters and a huge hinterland. Yet, Ferguson makes a point why the US are not succeeding in being an empire in comparison to the British, for lack of two factors. One is that those that rule in name of the empire abroad and are military and not regular elite and therefore not the most qualified to rule and let prosper. Another is that nobody from the US thinks of moving abroad and making a life across the empire, as did so many Brits.

This connects well with what Khalidi points out at Columbia, are the weaknesses of the US foreign position. Still, this course is also rather dated (2007) and so my next podcast in this subject will be Khalidi's recent lecture (March 2009, at the University of Chicago) that came out in UChannel. (Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East)

More:
Conceptual Foundations of International Policy - Columbia University,
Lawrence Freedman - Big Ideas,
New Learning - Don Tapscott on Big Ideas,
On Crime,
Why isn't the whole world developed?.

Henk Hofland, Herman Bianchi - Het Marathon Interview

Nog twee marathon interviews die ik er deze week tussendoor gepropt heb, zijn Ischa Meijer's gesprek met Henk Hofland uit 1986 (in de offciele feed) en Ger Jochem's marathon interview met Herman Bianchi uit 1992 (in mijn Huffduffer feed).

Van Hofland heb ik enorm genoten. Dat wil zeggen, van Hofland en Meijer samen, want niet alleen is Hofland fascinerend om naar te luisteren, maar Meijer is ook lekker op dreef als interviewer. Op allerlei manieren draait het gesprek rondom journalistiek, waarbij het persoonlijk aspect aan de orde komt, net zo zeer als het maatschappelijke. Met de uitspraak dat de verzorgingsstaat de journalistiek de das om heeft gedaan, kunnen we het gesprek beginnen en behalve dat dat een leuke, provocerende binnenkomer is, blijkt het ook nog haast onopgemerkt een rode draad.

Hofland vertelt over het bombardement op Rotterdam in 1940 en dat doet Bianchi ook, maar verder komt er bij Bianchi vooral veel vertrouwds uit. Ik moet er bij zeggen dat ik bij Bianchi gestudeerd heb en daarom zijn betogen voor de afschaffing van het strafrecht uitentreure heb aangehoord. Aangezien dit geen main stream, maar wel een heel serieus te nemen mening is, is het voor de argeloze luisteraar zeer aan te bevelen om Bianchi te horen. Ik voor mij ken de argumenten al, en wind mij er haast over op hoe onscherp Bianchi ze uitdrukt. Lag zijn hart er na het emeritaat niet meer in? Of was zijn mening altijd al zo sjabloonmatig? Hoe dan ook, vermeld dient ook te worden dat Ger Jochems hier een voortreffelijk interviewer is.

Meer Het Marathon Interview:
Diepenhorst en andere politici,
W.F. de Gaay Fortman,
Freek de Jonge,
Het Marathon Interview - vernieuwde VPRO podcast,
Karel van het Reve.

Meer Marathon Interviews via Huffduffer:
Arie Kleywegt.