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Toril Moi
LANGUAGE AND ATTENTION
An edited and rewritten translation of
Sprk og oppmerksomhet (2013)
Introduction
On 22 July 2011, Anders Behring Breivik detonated a bomb in Oslo
which killed
eight people and injured over two hundred others. Then he drove
to Utya, a small island in
the lake of Tyrifjorden where the Norwegian Labor Party was
having its annual youth camp.
At Utya, he killed 69 persons one by one, at extremely close
range: inches, not yards.
Almost all the victims at Utya were under twenty. Some were as
young as fourteen.
If ordinary language philosophy teaches us anything, it is that
when our sense of the
meaning of words disappears, so does our sense of reality. The
terrorist of Utya turned out
to have written a manifesto, mostly made up of excerpts from
conservative and racist
websites. For years he had been cutting and pasting, citing and
recirculating other people's
words. His relationship to language was profoundly alienated. So
was his relationship to
reality. To him, the callous killing of children was simply the
"marketing operation" for his
manifesto.1 He had lost -- or maybe he never really had -- any
sense of the weight of words.
1 Moi, Toril. "Markedslogikk Og Kulturkritikk: Om Breivik Og
Ubehaget I Den
Postmoderne Kulturen." Samtiden.3 (2012): 20-30. Print.
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In Norway, Anders Johansen, a professor of non-fiction at the
University of Bergen,
wrote that the terror at Utya changed our relationship to
language: Serious attempts to
make words conform to reality are no longer immediately
dismissed as nave. To many of us
it has been crucial to find ways to say something true about
what happened, in a language
that is accurate both to facts and emotions.2
After reading this, I realized that it was not by coincidence
that I began to write about
language and attention in May and June 2012, at the same time as
I attended parts of the 22
July trial at Oslo District Court.3 The trial made me realize
that questions of language and
attention are not esoteric topics. On the contrary: if we want a
good society, one devoted to
justice for all, we should encourage every citizen to develop
the capacity to look at reality,
other people, themselves, with the kind of attention the British
philosopher Iris Murdoch calls
a just and loving gaze.4
Wittgenstein tells us to despise the craving for generality and
instead cultivate the
keenest attention for particulars. He also reminds us that we
often fail to see the most obvious
and ordinary things, precisely because they are obvious and
ordinary. We need to learn to see
the ordinary and the everyday afresh, learn to pay attention to
the obvious. We also need to
develop our capacity to face the difficulty of reality, focus on
the things we prefer to avoid,
2 Alvorlige forsk p bringe ord i samsvar med virkelighet blir
ikke uten videre
avfeid som naive lenger. For mange har det vrt maktpliggende
kunne si noe sant om det som skjedde, i et sprk som kan vre
dekkende bde saklig og emosjonelt. Anders Johansen,
Virkelighetssjokk, Prosa nr. 5, 2012: 18.
3 I would like to thank Trygve slund, who invited me to give a
talk at Aschehougs Summer Seminar in June 2012. Without his
invitation the original essay this chapter is based on would never
have been written. But without Nora Campbells enthusiasm for the
project, I would never have considered turning the talk into a
proper manuscript. Nora is an excellent editor: her comments were
always both challenging and inspiring. Nazneen Khan strem helped to
convince me that this ought to become a text in the Voices-series.
Ane Farseths deserves special gratitude, for she heroically agreed
to read and comment on the original lecture draft on one hours
notice.
4 Ref. to David L. Paletz and Toril Moi op-ed in the New York
Times. 2012.
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the things we really dont feel we have the energy truly to take
in. (The "difficulty of reality"
is Cora Diamond's expression. I shall return to it.)
This is not a "theory." One doesn't need to study Wittgenstein
to do these things. For
me, however, Wittgenstein, Cavell and Austin remain necessary.
Because I am an intellectual
and an academic, and because I care about the life of the mind
in the university, the
wonderful, liberating, freeing thing about Wittgenstein and
Austin and Cavell too, is that
they offer an intellctually convincing way back to the ordinary.
I have no wish to break with
academic inquiry, or turn into an anti-intellectual. On the
contrary, I want intellectual life to
engage with ordinary life, with human experience, in a language
that can tell the difference
between confused abstraction and genuine insight. Ordinary
language philosophy sets us free
to look at whatever we are interested in: Ordinary language
philosophy is about whatever
ordinary language is about, Cavell writes.5 That freedom is
fantastic, but with freedom, as
Sartre and Beauvoir always said, comes responsibility. To write
about what we are interested
in is to reveal what we take ourselves to be responsible
for.
This chapter is about the importance of attention, and of
language. In this chapter I
examine a moral attitude that we can call attention, or, more
precisely, a just and loving
gaze. This attitude is personal, existential, ethical, and
potentially (but by no means always)
political. It can be an intellectual or artistic practice, too.
I draw on Iris Murdoch (who draws
on Simone Weil), and Cora Diamond, but unlike them, I emphasize
the need to find a
language to express what the just and loving gaze sees.
For attention alone is not enough. It is also crucial to learn
to express what we see,
learn to find the words (or the artistic forms) with which to
show what the world looks like
from the position we find ourselves in. This is why literature
matters. Writers spend their
lives trying to find the right words. They can teach us
differences. If we learn to pay
5 Cavell, Aesthetic Problems, p. 95.
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attention, and to express ourselves as well and fully as we can,
then we will also increase our
faith in language, and help overcome the widespread skepticism
against languages capacity
to express something real. By training our attention, and our
capacity to use language
attentively, well gain a deeper understanding of our real need
(108).
If we imagine a utopian world in which we all looked at reality
with a just and loving
gaze, we wouldnt all see the same things in the same way. Social
and political debates would
be at least as pointed as they are now. But per definition, the
just and loving gaze cant just be
interested in its own vision. We must assume a willingness to
direct that gaze, that attention
to what other people say they see. If we spent more time trying
to understand why they can't
see exactly what we see, maybe we would become less quick to
dismiss those who disagree
with us, and thus a little better at acknowledging the point of
view of others. If nothing else,
such habits would surely improve the quality of political and
ethical discussions.
By language I certainly dont mean what is usually called
literary language. (I
seriously doubt that such a thing exists.) When Henry James had
to explain what it takes to
become a good writer, he didnt say that writers should work hard
to develop a specifically
literary language, but that they should try to notice
everything: Try to be one of the people
on whom nothing is lost.6 Literature teaches us how to unite
attention and language. The
best literary writing forces us to open our eyes, to see both
language and reality as crucially
important, as something we need to engage with, take in and
think through. The best literary
writing expresses an unusual capacity for attention, and as a
result it inspires others to
become more attentive. And while it is true that writers
specialize in linguistic labor, one
doesnt have to be a writer to use language with maximal
attention. Some people manage to
do it in everyday life, or in court.
6 Henry James, The Art of Fiction, Longmans Magazine 4 (oktober
1884): 510.
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The opposite of attentive language is language used to conceal
reality. Unfortunately
bureaucrats and academics are among the worst culprits. They
often express themselves in
ways that land us in a quagmire of words that dont mean
anything, words that only serve one
purpose: to make us acquiesce in ideas, actions and projects we
dont actually understand.
This is dangerous for intellectual life, and even more dangerous
for democracy.7
An Attentive Gaze is a Just and Loving Gaze
By attention I don't mean the vigilance of evil. I just said
that I thought an attentive
gaze has to be a just and loving gaze. I hesitated for a long
time before I decided to adopt
Iris Murdochs formulation. It is, after all, only too easy to
take just and loving to mean
sentimental and moralizing. And the last thing I want is to
imply that I am in favor of a
judgmental and saccharine gaze.
Attention comes from the Latin ad + tendere: to reach or stretch
towards
something. Both in English and French the word gathers a whole
cluster of meanings around
itself: to direct the mind or observant faculties, to listen,
apply oneself; to watch over,
minister to, wait upon, follow, frequent; to wait for, await,
expect. The idea of caring for, or
serving others here converges on the idea of listening, waiting,
and watching.
Two women, one French and one British, have turned attention
into a fascinating
philosophical concept. The first was the philosopher and mystic
Simone Weil (190943),
who studied philosophy at the Sorbonne at the same time as
Simone de Beauvoir. The second
was Iris Murdoch (1919-99). For Weil, to be attentif is to be
waiting, watchful, open to what
may arise: Above all our thought should be empty, waiting, not
seeking anything, but ready
7 I think of The unknown known, Errol Morriss film on Donald
Rumsfeld, 2014, as a
great example of this.
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to receive in its naked truth the object that is to penetrate
it, Weil writes.8 To be attentive is
to be disponible pour la vrit: to be open, ready, available for
the truth.9
For Weil the ultimate truth is God: prayer consists of
attention.10 But one doesnt
have to be a mystic to follow Weil; an interest in earthly truth
will suffice. Weil herself, in
fact, analyzes the value of attention through a discussion of
schoolwork. Any training of
attention is an unqualified good, she claims, because it trains
the mind to open itself to the
truth. Even the most banal school studies, such as math problems
or translation to or from a
foreign language provide valuable training in attention. The
right sort of attention, however,
only arises if we manage to find joy and pleasure in the work:
The joy of learning is as
indispensable in study as breathing is in running, she
writes.11
Attention, then, is not the same thing as willed concentration.
The student isnt
supposed to focus on her schoolwork because she wants to achieve
the best possible grades,
but simply because it is valuable to learn to carry out any task
with clear attention. We must
also train ourselves into looking at our own mistakes the bad
essay, the math exam we
failed with unbiased attention. The result of the training will
show itself when we least
expect it, Weil assures us: Never in any case whatever is a
genuine effort of the attention
wasted.12
8 Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to
the Love of God,
in Waiting for God, trans. Emma Crawfurd (New York: Harper
Colophon, 1973), p. 112. Et surtout la pense doit tre vide, en
attente, ne rien chercher, mais tre prte recevoir dans sa vrit nue
lobjet qui va y pntrer. Simone Weil, Rflexion sur le bon usage des
tudes scolaires en vue de lamour de Dieu, i crits de Marseille
(194042): Philosophie, science, religion, questions politiques et
sociales, redigert av Florence de Lussy, uvres compltes (Paris:
Gallimard, 2008), 260.
9 School Studies, 112; tudes scolaires, 260. 10 School Studies,
105; La prire est faite dattention, tudes scolaires, 255. 11 School
Studies, 110; La joie dapprendre est aussi indispensable aux tudes
que
la respiration aux coureurs. tudes scolaires, 259. 12 School
Studies, 106; Jamais, en aucun cas, aucun effort dattention
vritable
nest perdu. tudes scolaires, 256.
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When Weil discusses attention and school studies, she probably
imagines a studious
youth bent over translations to and from Latin and Greek in
France around 1940. For us, who
live in an era of distraction, it is harder than ever to develop
the capacity for attention. We are
pulled in every direction by multitasking and incessant
electronic interruptions. Simone Weil
would probably have been quite horrified at students or
professors for that matter who
listen to music, surfs the web and replies to text messages
while they are trying to finish a
philosophical essay, a translation or a math problem.
For Weil attention is neutral, waiting and open. It rests on
joy, a pleasurable wish to
see the truth. Attention is neither striving nor self-promoting.
It tries to understand, not
destroy. Iris Murdoch stresses these aspects of Weils concept by
saying that attention
express[es] the idea of a just and loving gaze directed upon an
individual reality.13
Murdoch takes the idea that focused attention has to be both
loving and just from Weil, who
writes: Not only does the love of God have attention for its
substance; the love of our
neighbor, which we know to be the same love, is made of this
same substance.14 Warmth
and compassion are not at all synonymous with attention: too
much sympathy can blind us to
reality. To manage to see another human being with the openness
of genuine attention, is
truly difficult: it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle, Weil
writes.15
Weil writes about attention because she wants to pray. Murdoch,
on the other hand,
wants to turn us into active moral agent[s], persons capable of
having a genuinely moral
relationship to reality and to act accordingly.16 Murdochs
understanding of attention is far
more action-oriented than Weils.
13 Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (London: Routledge,
2001), 33. 14 Weil, School Studies, 114. Ce nest pas seulement
lamour de Dieu qui a pour
substance lattention. Lamour du prochain, dont nous savons que
cest le mme amour, est fait de la mme substance. Weil, tudes
scolaires, 261262.
15 School studies, 114; cest presque un miracle; cest un
miracle. tudes scolaires, 262.
16 Murdoch, Sovereignty, 33.
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But is just and loving the right expression? Murdoch stresses
repeatedly that she
wants nothing to do with sentimentality and misplaced
compassion. So does Weil. A just and
loving gaze enables us to see the world as it is. It is the best
strategy we have when we want
to discover the truth about a person or a situation. We will
never understand whatever it is we
are looking at if we dont do our utmost to see the situation
from the other persons point of
view, yet without relinquishing our own perspective. A just and
loving gaze tries to explain
everything in the kindest way, but in the end, it does not shy
away from criticism. A just gaze
doesnt accept just any excuse. It is willing to judge, yet never
becomes judgmental. If we
really want to become active moral agents, there is no better
alternative than Murdochs
(and Weils) recommendation that we look at the world with a
combination of justice and
love.
Murdoch does not write about politics. But a just and loving
gaze is needed in politics
too, perhaps more than anywhere else. The boundary between
morality and politics is not
absolute. It is both politically and morally urgent, for
example, to find the right relationship
to the Other, to groups or individuals who have been defined as
different or deviant. In
the 1920s and 30s, Simone Weil directed her attention towards
the French working class. In
spite of her bad health, she worked in a factory before leaving
for Barcelona to fight in the
Spanish Civil War: Her attention was as political as it was
religious.
In the 1970s, the womens movement set out to train womens
attention, to develop
womens capacity to see the ordinary and the everyday afresh.
This is not to say that the
feminist gaze of the 1970s was always just and loving. Sometimes
it was angry, defiant, and
deeply unjust. But the right response to a defiant or rebellious
gaze is not to dismiss it, or to
react with hatred and anger, but to pay attention to the reality
it tries to convey. The task is to
try to understand both why the anger arises, what it responds
to, and what it is trying to
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achieve. At the same time we must acknowledge where the defiant
or angry gaze grates
against the reality it is trying to grasp.
A just and loving gaze is open and waiting in relation to
reality, but it is not passive.
To be attentive is to let reality reverberate in us. Attention
answers, responds and takes
responsibility.17
The Value of Attention: Cora Diamond
Cora Diamond has long been interested in attention: attention to
particulars, attention
to and in literature; and attention in the sense of Murdoch's
just and loving gaze. For her, as
for Weil and Murdoch, moral reflection is a specific kind of
attention, a particular response to
the world, a way of seeing things (the world, other people,
oneself).
For Diamond, moral philosophy -- moral thought -- has to focus
on the particular
case, on the individual, the specific and the unique. She
disagrees with the widespread idea
that moral reflection is always expressed through deliberation
on clear-cut choices, or in
explicit evaluations: right, wrong, evil, good. Like Iris
Murdoch, she thinks there are "moral
attitudes which emphasise the inexhaustible detail of the world,
the endlessness of the task of
understanding."18 Deep insights can arise unexpected places, not
least in literature. To show
what she means by attention, Diamond quotes the last stanza of
"Ducks," a children's poem
by Walter de la Mare. Having described many different kinds of
ducks, the poet concludes:
All these are kinds. But every Duck
Himself is, and himself alone:
Fleet wing, arched neck, webbed foot, round eye,
17 I couldnt have written this without reading Cavell on
acknowledgment as response.
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And marvellous cage of bone.
Clad in this beauty a creature dwells,
Of sovran instinct, sense and skill;
Yet secret as the hidden wells
Whence Life itself doth rill.19
In this text, a perfectly ordinary duck is transformed into a
creature of beauty and
dignity, deserving of respect and admiration. Diamond wants us
to see that there is something
morally important about the quality of his attention. Lets call
this an example of a just and
loving gaze.
Traditional moral philosophy, Diamond writes, takes a far too
narrow view of what
counts as relevant insights and thoughts about morality. It
takes for granted that moral
philosophy is only a matter of deciding what the right action is
in situations where we have to
make a difficult choice. The famous trolley problem is the
quintessential example of this
attitude. Here is one example from among the multitudes of
different versions: A runaway
railway trolley comes down the railway line. If nothing is done,
it will kill five workers
further down the track. I am standing on a bridge over the
track, next to a very fat man.
Should I push this stranger down on the line in order to save
the five workers? Versions of
the trolley problem has been used to get clear on everything
from the influence of insomnia
on our capacity for moral deliberation, through gender
differences in the moral domain, to
where to draw the limits between different moral
doctrines.20
18 Iris Murdoch, Symposium: Vision and Choice in Morality,
Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes 30 (1956): 46. 19
Walter de la Mare, Ducks, i The Complete Poems of Walter de la Mare
(London:
Faber, 1969), 817. 20 Iversen, Jokaim ien, Betydningen av n
natts svn for moralske valg. .
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Diamond thinks the trolley problem is truly useless (my
interpretation, not her words)
when it comes to explaining the kind of moral reasoning we
actually engage in in everyday
life. First, it is overly focused on dramatic choices. Second,
it divorces the question of moral
action from the question of how we see the world. Thus it turns
morality into something that
is placed on top of already existing knowledge.
More generally, Diamond objects to the idea that epistemology
and metaphysics
provide the framework for what we can say about reality, and
then, once that framework is in
place, moral philosophy can tell us what is to count as good or
evil, right or wrong. In this
way morality is reduced to the question of how to label people
and their actions, and divorced
from questions concerning truth and insight (for those questions
are taken to be settled before
the moral reflection can begin.)
Such a view is perfectly compatible with naturalistic and
scientistic world views, but
not with ordinary language philosophy. In a naturalistic world
view, moral reflection may be
an interesting pastime, unconnected to actual knowledge. Such
attitudes also think of
language as an overlay, as something external to truth,
something additional, without intrinsic
moral relevance. Ordinary language philosophy is sharply opposed
to this view. Words and
world are intertwined, and it is impossible to use language
without simultaneously expressing
a human subjectivity: as soon as we speak, we also make
judgments, show others what we
see.
Diamond reminds us that in reality moral action only rarely take
the form of a clear
choice, in which we can make lists of arguments for and against.
In real life, we often feel
that we have no choice. Or we discover that we already have done
something with huge
moral implications, without really thinking about it. Sometimes
we make long lists of
arguments, consider them carefully, and decide what to do. Then
we go out and do the
opposite. Or we dont actually do anything. In such situations,
the trolley problem is no help.
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At the beginning of Iris Murdochs novel The Bell (1958), Dora
Greenfield takes the
train on a hot summers day. The train, of the kind with a long
corridor running along the side
of the compartments, is hot and overcrowded. As Dora squeezes
into her middle seat in her
compartment, she feels sweaty and fat, for her skirt is tight
and she is only too aware that she
has put on weight. An old lady struggles through the crowded
corridor and reaches Doras
compartment, delighted finally to have found Doras neighbor, a
rather large old lady. Dora
stopped listening because a dreadful thought has struck her. She
ought to give up her seat.
She rejected the thought, but it came back.21
Dora spends over a page thinking about her new moral dilemma.
Should she give up
her seat? Couldnt the elderly lady just as well stand in the
corridor herself? But she looks
rather frail, and the corridor is really crowded. Nobody else in
the compartment look as if
they are even thinking of getting up. But Dora took the trouble
to get to the train early. She
deserves her seat. Doesnt the elderly lady deserve to stand in
the corridor? In any case, Dora
was tired. She certainly deserved to rest:
She regarded her state of distress as completely neurotic. She
decided not to
give up her seat.
She got up and said to the standing lady Do sit down here,
please. Im
not going very far, and Id much rather stand anyway.22
It turns out that the elderly lady already has a corner seat by
the window in a different
carriage, and that she is only too pleased to change seats with
Dora. Everyone in this
carriage was thinner, Dora thinks as she settles into her
comfortable corner.23
21 Iris Murdoch, The Bell (New York: Penguin, 1987), 910. 22
Mudoch, The Bell, p. 10. 23 Mudoch, The Bell, p. 11.
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The scene is comic: we smile at the contrast between Doras smug
deliberations and
her spontaneous leap out of her seat. But there is an edge to
the comedy. The scene tells us
that the relationship between moral reflection and action is
more complicated than we think.
Dora is by no means a saint. Her reflections arent particularly
subtle. She has a tendency to
be selfish, and she loves feeling physically comfortable. She is
also a little too pleased to be
rewarded with a better seat. (Murdoch herself considered
thoughts of rewards to be alien to
moral deliberations.24) Dora clearly has a fairly shaky
understanding of why she does
whatever she does. This turns out to be the case for her train
journey too. Without really
understanding why, she is on her way to be reunited with her
husband, a man she fears.
However, Dora still has the right attitude. While the other
passengers bury themselves in their
newspapers or determinedly stare out of the window, Dora is
attentive. She takes in the
situation. She gets up. Murdochs attitude towards Dora is
humorous, but loving and just, too.
The Difficulty of Reality
To devote ones full attention to a phenomenon or a person, and
to find a language in
which to express what we see, is difficult. Even when we do our
best, others may never
understand us. Sometimes we are overcome by our own inadequacy:
we simply cant find the
words.
Cora Diamond writes about the difficulty of reality. She defines
it as something we
arent capable of thinking about, maybe because it is too
painful, maybe because it is
inexplicably good:
24 In the case of morality, although there are sometimes
rewards, the idea of a reward
is out of place. Murdoch, Sovereignty, 65.
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The difficulty of reality []. That is a phrase [for] experiences
in which we
take something in reality to be resistant to our thinking it, or
possibly to be
painful in its inexplicability, difficult in that way, or
perhaps awesome and
astonishing in its inexplicability. We take things so. And the
things we take so
may simply not, to others, present the kind of difficulty, of
being hard or
impossible or agonizing to get ones mind round. 25
Diamond is clearly not just talking about traumas. And even when
she does discuss
traumatic experiences, she does not share the post-Saussurean
conviction that traumas
necessarily fall outside language. To her, the difficulty of
reality is something that has to do
with the way we take it, or in other words: our response. When
wecant find words, the
problem is not language, it is us.
Finding the words to express goodness is not necessarily easier
than finding the words
to express evil. Diamonds example of the way in which goodness
can be experienced as the
difficulty of reality is thought-provoking. Ruth Klger was sent
to Auschwitz when she
was thirteen.26 During the initial triage, the SS-officers
female assistant, herself a prisoner in
the extermination camp, walked up to Ruth and asked how old she
was. Thirteen, she replied.
Tell him you are fifteen, the woman said. When the SS-officer
asked about her age, Ruth said
fifteen. The officer thought she was small. The assistant
pointed out that she seemed strong.
Thats how she became registered as a prisoner in the camp, and
thus got a small chance to
survive. Klger writes:
I have always told this story in wonder, and people wonder at my
wonder.
They say, okay, some persons are altruistic. We understand that;
it doesnt
surprise us. The girl who helped you was one of those who likes
to help. []
25 Cora Diamond, The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of
Philosophy, i
Stanley Cavell, Cora Diamond, John McDowell, Ian Hacking og Cary
Wolfe, Philosophy and Animal Life (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2008), 4445.
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But dont just look at the scene. Focus on it, zero in on it, and
consider what
happened. [] Her decision broke the chain of knowable causes. []
She saw
me stand in line, a kid sentenced to death, she approached me,
she defended
me, and she got me through. What more do you need for an example
of perfect
goodness? [] Listen to me, dont take it apart, absorb it as I am
telling it and
remember it.27
Klger experiences this moment as an incomprehensible miracle,
something she
simply cant understand with ordinary logical criteria. After the
war, she encounters people
who dont think there is anything special at all in her
experience. Their attitude eradicates
Klgers own deep and lasting sense of wonder. Diamond makes us
see that there is
something morally defective about such an attitude. If we are to
meet Ruth Klger with a
just and loving gaze, we have to be able to see what she sees,
to take in the permanent state
of amazement and wonder in which Ruth Klger lives.
The Realism of Attention: Little Eyolf
Ruth Klgers case shows that the right kind of attention isnt
simply a cool, clinical
noting down of features of reality. It takes imagination and
empathy to be able truly to get
inside the experiences of the other. I think this is what Simone
de Beauvoir has in mind
when she speaks of being absorbed by a novel, to the point of
feeling the taste of another
life.28 At the same time, however, we need to avoid what Murdoch
calls fantasy.
According to Murdoch we engage in fantasy when we project our
own proliferation of
26 I am expanding on Diamonds example, which she discusses in
The Difficulty of
Reality, 6162. 27 Ruth Klger, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood
Remembered (New York: The
Feminist Press at CUNY, 2001), 108109. 28 See The adventure of
Reading, ch. 5 here for the quote.
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April 14, 2015 / Toril Moi
16
blinding self-centred aims and images on to reality.29 The just
and loving gaze requires
detachment, a kind of impersonality: The freedom which is a
proper human goal is the
freedom from fantasy, that is the realism of compassion.30
Misplaced sentimentality has
neither moral nor artistic value.
Both Murdoch and Diamond use the word realism about the capacity
for attentive
moral response: in the elaboration and application of moral
concepts, we come to an
understanding of what the world is, what life is, Diamond
writes.31 For Murdoch, realism is
a moral achievement, a liberation of the self, the result of an
unusual capacity for unselfish
attention. Moral philosophy therefore has to be a kind of
realism. But this realism is almost
impossible to achieve: How is one to connect the realism which
must involve a clear-eyed
contemplation of the misery and evil of the world with a sense
of the uncorrupted good
without the latter idea becoming the merest consolatory dream?
32
I am not quite sure what Murdoch means by uncorrupted good. If
she means
something like a Platonic ideal, I cant follow her. Let me
translate her idea into a more
ordinary register: We must develop and preserve a sense of
goodness as an ordinary,
everyday phenomenon, something that doesnt have to be either
extraordinary or saintly. To
be a morally responsive human being is to look at reality with a
just and loving gaze. This
gaze, if we can develop it, makes it possible to try to do the
right thing in relation to others.
(That any action can fail, or have unanticipated consequence is
part of the grammar of the
word: thats just what an action is.)
29 Murdoch, Sovereignty, 65. 30 Murdoch, Sovereignty, 65. 31
Diamond, Murdoch the Explorer, Philosophical Topics 38, no. 1
(2010): 57We
have already discussed Diamonds realistic spirit.see chapter 2.
32 Murdoch, Sovereignty, 59.
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To learn to love is to learn to see. Ibsens late play Little
Eyolf (1894) provides an
excellent example.33 Ibsens critics have often complained that
this play is difficult to
understand. They have been particularly concerned with what they
take to be the plays
inferior structure. According to them, it is a problem that the
plays dramatic event the
death by drowning of Rita and Alfred Allmers ten year old son,
Eyolf happens already at
the end of the first act. Eyolf drowns because he follows a
strange ratwife into the fjord.
Critics who think this is the high point of dramatic action of
the play, can't figure out what
Ibsen wanted to do in the remaining two acts.
The play ends with a scene in which Rita and Allmers hoist the
flag, after they have
decided to do something for the poor boys who live down by the
fjordside, the same boys
who often poked fun at Eyolf, who was lame in one leg.34 Many
critics have found this end
unbearably sentimental and melodramatic.
If we take Weil, Murdoch, and Diamond seriously, its not that
difficult to understand
what Ibsen is interested in in Little Eyolf. The play is about
two ordinary, well-intentioned
human beings who refuse to look attentively at themselves, other
people or the world. When
their son dies, suffering enters Allmerss and Ritas lives. The
last two acts show how that
suffering, the awareness of human finitude -- changes the
protagonists, how it slowly makes
them realize that they cant continue to live in their egocentric
cocoon. At the end of the play,
Rita wants to develop Something that could ressemble a kind of
love in relation to other
people.35 But that requires her to shed her illusions and learn
to look at themselves, and
others, with a realistic a just and loving gaze.
33 This section draws on my essay on Little Eyolf, published in
Chris Gray and Susan
Wolfs collection ADD REF. 34 I follow Ibsens habit of referring
to male principal characters with their last names. 35 Noget, som
kunde ligne en slags krlighed .Henrik Ibsen, Hundrersutgave:
Henrik Ibsens samlede verker, ed. Francis Bull, Halvdan Koht,
and Didrik Arup Seip, 21 vols. (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1928-57), bind 12:
266.
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April 14, 2015 / Toril Moi
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If we read the play in this way, the structure isn't mysterious
at all. In the first act
Ibsens genius shows us Ritas and Allmerss egoism and blindness.
Then the worst happens.
In the second act we witness the emergence of the protagonists
increasing self-insight, which
culminates in the wish to care for others, in the third act.
In the end, Rita and Allmers decide to do something for the poor
children down by the
fjordside, the children whose screams we hear, but whom we never
get to see on stage. It is
quite possible that they wont be able actually to carry out
their project. But as they stand
there hoisting the flag in the last scene, they want to try. To
them, the thought of working for
the children of others is an attempt to free themselves from
illusions and try to see reality as it
is. Ibsens own gaze at these characters is neither sentimental
nor judgmental. At the end of
the play, they are neither heroes nor villains, but two ordinary
people who have to live in a
world they now know to be as fallen and imperfect as they
are.
Even the structure of Ibsens play brings out the connection
between realism and love.
For Little Eyolf is structured as a double movement away from
selfishness and towards love,
away from fantasy and towards reality. The controversial end
emphasizes Ritas and
Allmerss attempt to go on living without closing their eyes to
suffering. Metatheatrically,
the play struggles to develop a just and loving gaze on its own
imperfect characters. But
the play is not just a narrative of their attempts. The very
form of the play, the form that
annoyed so many critics, represents an enormous effort to escape
from traditional forms of
theater (tragedy, comedy, melodram) and reach a new form of
realism, a realism capable of
showing the right kind of compassion.
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I Am Learning to See: Rilke and the Attention of Modernism
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910) are as different
from Little Eyolf as it
is possible to be. Yet Rilke too is interested in the way egoism
blocks the possibility of an
attentive gaze. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge is a fiery
defense of the modernist
understanding of writing. In order to grasp what is real,
important, and necessary in an
alienated and alienating world, one must write. Through his
writing, Malte questions
absolutely everything he has been told by others, everything he
has learned and heard.
Writing is a counter-strategy to deception and inauthenticity.
To write is to convey something
genuine, something true. A true writer needs to be able to see,
to experience the world for
himself:
I am learning to see. Why, I cannot say, but all things enter
more deeply into
me; nor do impressions remain at the level where they used to
cease. There is
a place within me of which I knew nothing. Now all things tend
that way. I do
not know what happens there.36
This is fascinating passage sets up the Notebooks investigations
of the relationship
between the inner and the outer. By inner I mean the inner life,
what Wittgenstein
sometimes calls the soul. By outer, I mean whatever surrounds
the writer. Rilke brings
out the paradoxical nature of writing. Writing is expression, in
the most literal sense of the
word, for it turns the inner into something outer. At the same
time, however, the writer
doesnt have a soul, an inner life, until he learns to see.
36 Rilke, Notebooks, Penguin Classics, p. 4. Ich lerne sehen.
Ich wei nicht, woran es
liegt, es geht alles tiefer in mich ein und bleibt nicht an der
Stelle stehen, wo es sonst immer zu Ende war. Ich habe ein Inneres,
von dem ich nicht wute. Alles geht jetzt dorthin. Ich wei nicht,
was dort geschieht. Rainer Maria Rilke, Die Aufzechnungen des Malte
Laurids Brigge, vol. 5, Gesammelte Werke (Leipzig: Insel Verlag,
1927), 9.
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The implication is that if we dont see anything, if we dont pay
attention to the
outside, we have no inner life. Or rather: paying attention to
the outer produces an inner
space we ourselves dont understand. If we dont turn our
attention to the world around us,
we will either remain empty, or become utterly predictable,
because utterly without an
unknown inner space. When Malte learns to see, he becomes a
mystery to himself, but this is
an enrichment, the very condition of writing.
For Malte, the more he learns to see, the more he ends up
feeling unknown,
unknowable by others. After all, he himself doesnt understand
what goes on in his new,
secret interior space. There is an incipient skepticism at work
here, a skepticism which
necessarily leads to thoughts of loneliness, madness and death.
But the alternative, which is
not to open ones eyes, is worse, for that leads to inner
emptiness, to the death of the soul.
In a brief passage, Malte describes his parents strained
relationship to the local
parson, Dr. Jespersen:
When he visited us, Dr. Jespersen had to content himself with
being some sort
of private person; but that was precisely what he had never
been. As long as
he could remember, he had been in the souls department. The soul
was a
public institution, which he represented, and he contrived never
to be off duty,
not in even in his relations with his wife, his modest, faithful
Rebekka,
beatified by the bearing of children, as Lavater put it when
writing of another
case.37
The passage reveals that Jespersens problem is that something
that should be inner
the soul somehow has become something outer. This externalized
innerness is clearly
37 Penguin edition p. 71.Dr. Jespersen mute sich bei uns darauf
beschrnken, eine
Art von Privatmann zu sein; das gerade aber war er nie gewesen.
Er war, soweit er denken konnte, im Seelenfach angestellt. Die
Seele war eine ffentliche Institution fr ihn, die er vertrat, und
er brachte es zuwege, niemals auer Dienst zu sein, selbst nicht im
Umgang mit
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neither a mask nor a costume, nor is it a deliberate
performance. Rilke describes it as a
department, an institution, a clunky and impractical
administrative unit which Jespersen
either doesnt want to or doesnt know how to break loose from. As
a result, Jespersen has
become impossible to relate to for anyone who doesnt piously
submit to his ecclesiastical
authority. He simply no longer knows how to behave like an
ordinary human being (a
private person). No wonder, then, that young Maltes parents find
Jespersen the most boring
guest imaginable: To be candid, there was nothing whatsoever to
talk about; remnants were
dragged out and disposed of at unbeliveable prices everything
had to go.38 Without an
inner life, language and expression becomes impossible. But to
get an inner life, we need to
learn to see.
For Rilke, Jespersens state is a serious matter. If authenticity
requires the outer to
correspond to the inner, then Jespersen can neither be authentic
or inauthentic. Since
Jespersen is the outer shell he shows the world, the distinction
becomes meaningless. For this
reason, we cant call him a hypocrite, either. In a way,
Jespersen is a postmodern subject a
hundred years ahead of time: he is his priestly performance. No
concept of falsity or
inauthenticity can apply to him, yet paradoxically, this is
precisely what makes him seem so
hopelessly inauthentic.
The difference between the young Malte and Jespersen is that
Malte tries to see, to
take in the world, whereas Jespersen has become a bureaucrat of
the soul: his role as the
representative for an organization has made it impossible for
him to be an individual, a
private person, a self. The irony is that this bureaucrat works
precisely in the soul-business.
I dont think Rilke thought of himself as a writer particularly
concerned with moral
issues. To convey what a shallow and self-obsessed person is
like, Rilke simply shows us
seiner Frau, seiner bescheidenen, treuen, durch Kindergebren
seligwerdenden Rebekka, wie Lavater sich in einem anderen Fall
ausdrckte. Rilke, Aufzeichnungen, 5, 132.
38 Rilke, pp. 70-71.
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22
how he talks, without sticking moral labels on any specific
point, but also without shrinking
from judgment. Yet his insistence that we must learn to see has
obvious moral (or political)
implications. Rilkes style, his way of presenting his material,
his utterly original engagement
with the relationship or non-relationship between the inner and
the outer challenges his
readers: can we see what he sees?
Virginia Woolf and Reality
Rereading A Room of Ones Own, I realize that Virginia Woolfs
project actually is to
unite language and attention. (If that is true, then this
chapter is also a homage to Woolfs
wonderful essay on women and literature.) The message is that
women must write, not just
for their own sake, but for the sake of the world: When I ask
you to write more books I am
urging you to do what will be for your good and for the good of
the world at large. How to
justify this instinct or belief I do not know, for philosophic
words, if one has not been
educated at a university are apt to play one false.39 But of
course she goes on to justify her
instinct anyway.
In ordinary life, we only catch fleeting glimpses of reality.
Usually we are far too
filled with superficial and selfish thoughts to realize what
actually is there, around us. A
writer is privileged to live more than other people in the
presence of this reality. It is his
business to find it and collect it and communicate it to the
rest of us (Room, 108). (I find
Woolf a touch too Romantic here, just a shade too convinced that
writers always have god-
given powers of insight, but I cant let that deter me. At least
I agree that writers are
specialists in language and attention.) In modernity, a human
being risks living her whole life
in a kind of unreality, unless she learns to see. To read texts
like King Lear, Emma, or In
39 Virginia Woolf, A Room of Ones Own (New York: Harcourt,
2005), 108.
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April 14, 2015 / Toril Moi
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Search of Lost Time opens our senses: one sees more intensely
afterwards; the world seems
bared of its covering and given an intenser life (Room,
109).
Reading matters as much as writing. (Few writers have read as
much as Virginia
Woolf, I think.) Reading texts that genuinely grasp reality, we
learn to pay attention. Even if
we cant find the words to express our experiences, we can focus
our attention on them.
According to Woolf, the reward for our attention, and for our
struggle to express its insight, is
a stronger and more vital experience of life itself.
For Woolf, attention is disinterested and impersonal.
Self-consciousness is destructive
for any writer, but particularly for women: It is fatal for any
one who writes to think of their
sex, she declares (Room, 102103). Dont dream of influencing
other people. [] Think of
things in themselves (Room, 109). If it is crucial for women to
enter literature, to become
part of our literary tradition, it isnt because they womens only
literary task is supposed to be
that of shedding light on an otherwise neglected subspecies of
the human (so that the woman
writers only raison dtre would be to write about her gender),
but because each individual
woman writer shows us the world as she experiences it, without
hidden agendas of any
kind.40
A writer is always searching for truth, Woolf writes. But truth
has a deplorable
tendency to slip out of our hands, just like Woolfs thought fish
swims out of her head
when she is told that because she is a woman, she is not allowed
to walk on the grass. A
writer, she insists, must communicat[e] his experience with
perfect fullness. There must be
freedom and there must be peace ( Room, 103). When women enter
literature, well get
greater insight both in women and in the world. Each woman has
to find her own voice, focus
her attention on the world, and find a language in which to
express her vision. Although
Woolf doesnt say that this is a political task, it can easily
become one. In the 1970s, we
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April 14, 2015 / Toril Moi
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learned from the womens movement that under the right
circumstances, such a seemingly
simple project can be political dynamite.
Like Beauvoir, Woolf appears to think that only creative writing
truly gives us
another world. Moreover, she does seem to believe that only some
few, hugely talented
individuals have the capacity to create a genuine language with
which to communicate their
vision. If she means the capacity to create a language, and a
vision, that will remain in history
for centuries, she is surely right. But writing is not only
valuable for a Dante or a
Shakespeare. Non-fiction, and philosophy too, can change
lives.
Luckily it is easy to read A Room of Ones Own from a more
democratic perspective.
Woolf's fundamental insight is true for everyone: it is valuable
to try to see reality as it is, and
to find a language for what one sees. The result doesnt have to
be War and Peace. An
attempt to pay attention at the breakfast table, or in the next
office meeting will also help
change the world, however imperceptibly.
Must We Read Literature?
I have deliberately placed great emphasis on the importance of
reading literary texts.
For me, the best literature gives us the most brilliant examples
of attentive language. So I
have been quoting poetry, plays, novels, autobiographical
testimony and non-fiction (if we
can call A Room of Ones Own non-fiction). But of course it is
not necessary to have read a
single book in order to be able to look at others with a just
and loving gaze. The value of
attention is certainly not something that must be learned from
philosophy and literature.
40 I discuss some of the implications of this view on I am not a
woman writer
(2008).
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April 14, 2015 / Toril Moi
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This is why I disagree with Martha Nussbaums claim that we
necessarily will
develop the capacity for compassion through reading
literature.41 As if people who dont
have the education, the leisure, or the money to sit down to
read a book somehow are doomed
to remain less sensitive and compassionate than those who do.
History, of course, offers
plenty of examples to the contrary. We have all heard stories
about the concentration camp
commanders who enjoyed Goethe and Schiller in their spare
time.
I suspect that the relationship between attention and the love
of literature is the other
way around: people who are interested in attention, will often
find joy and insight in
literature, if they have the opportunity to become readers. The
reason why literature is
valuble isnt that it makes us good. It is that it helps us to
see the world more clearly. It
does this, not because writers are the only attentive people in
the world, but because they
work so hard on their language.
If it is expressed, the vision of the attentive gaze sees can
have significant social and
political implications.42 To work with language is to train
oneself to see more clearly. Writing
is thinking. There is no such thing as "literary language."
There is only language that makes
us see, and language which doesn't. And all the shades of
transitional uses of language that
end up somewhere on the sliding scale between them: language
that makes us glimpse
something; language that has caught hold of a "thought fish,"
but fails to reel it in, and so on.
The call to look at reality with a just and loving gaze is the
opposite of formalism:
whatever form that enables the writer to express her own vision
is the right one. Non-fiction,
or even academic writing, can have as much impact as poetry. As
literary scholars we dont
need to don the formalist straight-jacket. Instead we can simply
train ourselves to look at
41 Se Martha C. Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs
the Humanities
(Princeton og Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010). 42 Cf.
Sartre and Beauvoirs unveiling through writing.
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April 14, 2015 / Toril Moi
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literature with the right attention, and strive to find the
right language, style and form in
which to share our vision with others.
Language and Attention after 22 July
Ane Farsethss recent book about contemporary Norwegian
literature shows that in
the decade leading up to the 22 July 2011, much of the best
Norwegian literature was haunted
by a sense of unreality. In this decade, Norwegian society, with
its combination of oil-fueled
affluence and social-democratic traditions, appeared to breed a
desire for reality in many of
its most talented artists.43 The postmodern fascination with
performance and performativity
had lost much of its hold, and writers as well as characters
often worried about authenticity,
veering between a fear of being seen and the wish to remain
hidden.
In an essay in the Norwegian journal Samtiden, I wrote about the
mass murderer of 22
July that He is the worst possible incarnation of a culture in
search of reality.44 For at least
a generation, it has been chic to claim that language fails to
grasp reality. This made us lose
any faith we may have had in the power of language to change
reality.45 But if we lose faith
in language, the alternative is action. In Ibsen's Rosmersholm,
Rebecca West throws herself
into the waterfall because she realizes that nothing she can say
to Rosmer will overcome his
doubt in her, and in himself.46 To find reality is to find our
faith in the power of language to
do something in the world. But there is no need to get
melodramatic about it, to think
exclusively in large-scale terms. Even de la Mares insignificant
little duck pushes our
43 Ane Farseths, Herfra til virkeligheten: Lesninger i
00-tallets litteratur (Oslo:
Cappelen Damm, 2012). 44 Toril Moi, Markedslogikk og
kulturkritikk: Om Breivik og ubehaget i den
postmoderne kulturen, Samtiden, nr. 3, 2012: 24. 45 Cf. Sartre
and Beauvoir, committed literature, etc. 46 See my chapter on
Rosmersholm in Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism.
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April 14, 2015 / Toril Moi
27
understanding of the life of animals just a little further, just
because the writer looks at it with
such tremendous attention.
This is why I read Vigdis Hjorths 2012 novel Leve posthornet!
with such pleasure.
(The title, which refers to Kierkegaards Repetition, means Long
live the Posthorn!").
Written in the aftermath of 22 July, this novel truly tries to
break down the belief that
language cant say or do anything real. The story about Ellinor,
a communications advisor
who has completely lost the sense of the meaning of her words;
who literally cant see clearly
when she looks out of the window; who no longer is able to feel
anything for the people that
surround her, whether it is her lover, her family, or her
colleagues, is simultaneously a
profound and witty allegory of postmodern societys alienated
relationship to language.
Leve posthornet! asks about the meaning of life without becoming
tragic. Hjorth finds
the right comic tone -- her novel is a Norwegian counterpoint to
the British tradition of comic
novels from Jane Austen to Zadie Smith. Hjorth joins this
tradition without giving up her
modern and postmodern taste for game-playing. Her novel is full
of genuinely funny
references to other Norwegian novels (not least Dag Solstads
parable of the faithful postman
in Maos China, in Arild Asnes 1970), and offers us a piece of
magic realism in the story
about a teacher who is chased off an island off the coast of
northern Norway because she
makes her young students realize that they are unhappy. It is
also a fine satire of political and
commercial bureaucratic complacency.
The title may well be derived from Kierkegaards ode to the
posthorn in Repetition
(he praises it because it is said never to sound the same tone
twice), but it may also be a sly
reference to that pioneering postmodern novel, Thomas Pynchons
The Crying of Lot 49, in
which a posthorn is the symbol of a conspiracy which may or may
not exist. Furthermore,
Derridas well-known claim that the letter never arrives, is also
under attack here, for in
Hjorths novel, the mail actually does arrive.
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As the novel develops, Ellinor manages to find both language and
action. She learns
to mean what she says, and to work with something she has faith
in, namely the heroic
struggle to stop Norway from adopting the European Unions Third
Postal Directive. (One of
the best parts of the novel is the way it uses pits ordinary
language to satirize bureaucratic
language.) When Elinor develops a more genuine relationship to
language, she even manages
to shed her disdain for clichs, realizing instead that sometimes
a clich expresses exactly
what she feels. Over time, her emotional numbness leaves her,
and she begins to admire and
learn from the experiences of others.
It is no coincidence that the action of Leve posthornet, a novel
written after the
massacre at Utya, ends in April 2011. It would be difficult to
set a story about Ellinors
new-found attention and optimism to a period that included 22
July. Yet the novel expresses
the longing for reality, for a more genuine faith in language
that intensified in the aftermath
of those atrocious events.
For Norwegians the terror of 22 July was, and remains, a deeply
traumatic example of
the difficulty of reality. We could not find the words. If a
genuine understanding of 22 July
demands that we be capable of looking at everything that
happened that day with a just and
loving gaze, only saints will succeed.
Yet Oslo District Court nevertheless made huge efforts to look
at the events of that
day precisely with such a gaze. After the presentation of the
post-mortem report for each
victim, the court looked at a photograph of the victim while a
one-minute long biography,
usually written by his or her family, was read out. Many
survivors from Utya spoke in court
about their suffering. The accused was also given hours to
express himself, both at the
beginning and at the very end of the trial.
Towards the end of the 22 July trial, Morgenbladet's
commentator, Kristopher Schau,
wrote that after the experience of sitting in court every day
for ten weeks, he only had one
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29
conclusion: let us be good to one another. (The word he used was
snill, which hovers
somewhere between good and kind, and is often used about
children.) I understand what
he means. There is something so awful about contemplating the
pain and horror of terrorism,
day after day, that we naturally want to remember that goodness
too belongs to the range of
human capacities. The same impulse makes us join rose marches to
seek comfort in
community. (On 25 July 2011, 200,000 people marched in the
center of Oslo, carrying roses
as a symbol of their revulsion for the horrors in Oslo and at
Utya. Similar marches took
place all over Norway.)
But here I need to stress that being "good" is not at all the
same thing as to look at
others, or the world, with a just and loving gaze. To be good is
not always a virtue. When
we tell a child to be good, we usually dont mean that he is to
show compassion, but that he is
to obey us, and follow the rules. Children brought up to be good
often grow into expert
pleasers, at the cost of their own voice and identity. Moreover,
what may look as good
behavior, may in fact be motivated by all kinds of more or less
obscure feelings: a sense of
guilt; a misunderstood sense of duty; masochistic
self-sacrifice. A person looking at the
world through the lens of such feelings certainly doesnt see it
clearly.
For Simone Weil, to look at ones neighbour with the right
attention is to see him so
clearly that we give him the help he actually needs, not the
help we intellectually believe he
needs.47 To give that sort of help may not make us look good, in
either sense of the word. If
we are obsessed with our own efforts to appear good, we also
risk underestimating evil, or
not seeing it for what it is. An attentive gaze isnt moralizing,
but it doesnt shrink from
judgment when required. In fact, to describe a phenomenon as
clearly as we can is to express
a judgment. In Norway, we often believe that to be good is to
make sure we never say
anything critical about someone else. But avoidance is not a
moral virtue. To withhold the
47 Se Weil, tudes scolaires, 262.
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truth from someone is to deprive him of an opportunity to face
reality. The attentive gaze
the just and loving gaze must be capable of contemplating evil,
otherwise its aspirations
will be hollow.
Maybe it is because I believe in the power of ordinary language
to say something true
about reality that I was so shocked by the first two expert
psychiatrists testimony in court. In
their report, and during the trial, Synne Srheim and Torgeir
Husby revealed what a
scientistic understanding of psychiatry, based entirely on the
checklists of the diagnostic
manual ICD-10.48 They were deeply skeptical about ordinary
languages capacity to convey
truth. They appeared not to have a moral vocabulary, and they
were quite incapable of
reflecting on their own categories.
However, in spite of their allegiance to pure science, they
inevitably based key
findings on their own understanding of what is to count or not
count as ordinary language,
apparently without realizing it. One example would be their
claim that the mass murderers
language, in interviews and in his manifesto was full of
neologisms of the kind typical for
psychosis. Under cross-examination, however, it turned out their
criterium for a neologism
was simply their own sense of what counts as ordinary language:
a neologism, they said, is a
word that we take to be used in an incomprehensible way.49
But if this is the only language we have to speak of what
happened on 22 July, well
never understand what happened that day. In court, this became
very apparent. On Thursday
14th June, during the cross-examination of Srheim and Husby, the
presiding judge, Wenche
Arntzen, had to take on the role as a moral philosopher:
48 ICD-10 is WHOs diagnostic manual. It is organized according
to similar principles
as the American Psychiatry Associations handbooke DSM-V. 49 ord
som brukes p en uforstelig mte for oss VG-Nett, 22/7-rettssaken:
Ord-
for-ord dag 38 (torsdag 14. juni), VG-Nett, 15. juni (endret 17.
juni) 2012. .
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April 14, 2015 / Toril Moi
31
Judge Arntzen: As to this question about who shall live and who
shall die. Is it
a delusion because it so immoral?
Psychiatrist Srheim: Now you confuse me.
Arntzen: You are saying that nobody can decide who shall die,
that morally
speaking nobody can have this responsibility?
Srheim: The way we see it, no single individual has the
responsibility for
who gets to live and die.
Arntzen: Well, many people have that responsibility in the sense
of the death
penalty, and in war. These are phenomena that exist.
Srheim: Yes, you are of course right.
Arntzen: But to call it a delusion. Is it because it is so
immoral?
Srheim: No, I am thinking of the examples you mentioned about
war, and to
sentence someone to death, its impossible that he, sitting there
in his
childhood bedroom would belong in one of those categories, and
really
believe that he was in a position to discover who should live
and who should
die.
Arntzen: Yes, there is a transition from legitimate through a
wide spectrum to
illegitimate homicide. Terrorist actions may have an ideological
basis.
Couldnt this be experienced as a vocation, however absurd it
might be?
Srheim: I think we begin from a simpler starting point than you,
in your
position as judge, has the opportunity to do. Our starting point
is that he was
sitting there alone, and quite seriously spent years figuring
out who would
have to die. []50
50 Dommer Arntzen: Ogs dette med hvem som skal leve og hvem som
skal d, er det
en beskrivelse av en vrangforestilling fordi det er s umoralsk?
Rettspsykiater Srheim: N ble jeg forvirret.
Arntzen: Dere sier at ingen kan bestemme hvem som skal d, men
ingen kan vel i moralsk forstand ha dette ansvaret. Srheim: Snn som
vi vet det, er det ingen enkeltindivider som har et ansvar for hvem
som skal leve og hvem som skal d. Arntzen: Det er jo mange som har
ansvaret for det i betydningen ddsstraff og krig. Det er et fenomen
som eksisterer. Srheim: Ja, det har du selvflgelig rett i. Arntzen:
Men det fre det som en vrangforestilling. Er det fordi det er s
umoralsk? Srheim: Nei, jeg tenker de eksemplene du sa om krig og
ved ilegge noen ddsstraff, det er umulig at hvordan han p
gutterommet skulle komme inn i en av de kategoriene og mente han
var i posisjon til finne ut hvem som skulle leve og d.
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April 14, 2015 / Toril Moi
32
The very fact that Srheims reaction was to be confused by
Arntzens clear
questions about morality and ideology, reveal that it is
possible to practice psychiatry at the
highest level without ever engaging in moral reflection. Judge
Arntzens questions, on the
other hand, show that the persons who actually were carrying the
burden of deliberating
about the sanity or insanity of the mass murderer, to assess the
degree of responsbility he had
for his actions, discovered that they simply couldnt do this
from a purely positivistic
perspective.
The 22 July trial certainly demonstrated that a scientistic
understanding of the soul is
neither infallible nor particularly interesting. But it wasnt
just the trial that showed that we
need different concepts, a different gaze, a gaze that doesnt
immediately reduce the
difficulty of reality to the simplistic and flattening
categories on a questionnaire. The debate
raging around every aspect of what happened on 22 July has shown
that we have to develop
our capacity to discuss moral questions about action and
responsibility. This is why we need
a new focus on language and attention.
The mass murderer of 22 July is the product of a society in
which nobody has
troubled themselves with the need for a just and loving gaze. He
is a distorted caricature of
the worst in postmodern society. He is Gordon Gekko and Patrick
Bateman rolled into one.51
Maybe this is even more striking in the case of the Norwegian
terrorist, since his horrendous
actions, and his unspeakably chilling manifesto with its deadly
marketing metaphors were put
together after the financial crisis, which mercilessly revealed
how the same logic, and the
Arntzen: Ja, du har en overgang fra rettmessig drap og et
spekter over [til] fullstendig urettmessig. Terrorhandlinger kan
vre ideologisk begrunnet, er ikke det et selvopplevd kall s absurd
det enn kan vre? Srheim: Jeg tror vi tar et enklere utgangspunkt
enn dommeren har anledning til ta. Vrt utgangspunkt er at der satt
han alene og i dypeste alvor brukte han r finne ut hvem som mtte d.
[...22/7-rettssaken: Ord-for-ord dag 38 51 Maybe I should add
Jordan Belfort, so memorably portrayed by Leonardo di Caprio
in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).
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April 14, 2015 / Toril Moi
33
same language, led to economic catastrophe for millions of
ordinary workers all over the
world.
A society that refuses to take the demand for genuine attention
seriously, and rejects
the very idea of a just and loving gaze as so much unscientific
sentimentalism, will be cold
and bureaucratic. In such a society, leaders will consider
themselves managers, content to
have carried out correct protocol. They wont ask themselves if
they have looked at the
situations for which they are responsible with genuine
attention. Nor will they ask themselves
whether they really understand what actions are required to
solve the problems they are
dealing with. Instead, they will continue to make and follow
bureaucratic rules. When
disaster strikes, they will hide behind their rules and
regulations, and their vague, lifeless and
peculiarly impersonal language. When we have to sort through the
rubble, and find out what
such people take responsibility for, we will certainly feel that
reality keeps slipping through
our fingers.