The
Language-Power Nexus : disenchantment with omnipotence
“Freedom in a positive sense is possible only among
equals, and equality itself is by no means a
universally valid principle, but, again, applicable only within
limitations and even within spatial limits.” – Hannah Arendt, On Revolution
Historicizable
Ahistorical “Scylla & Charybdis”
“Was it not agreed that the rulers, in telling their
subjects what to do, sometimes make a mistake, and miss their own advantage,
but whatever the rulers enjoin upon them it is just for their subjects to do?”
Plato, The Republic
Eden--torpid and deadly
sanitized--is being saturated with a sulfur virus. Rotten odor spreads. Miraculously,
its molecules undergo a transformation resulting in consolidation of gaseous
masses into crystalline formations. Those, under the impalpable touch of an
invisible wand, are being transformed into constituent ingredients of--an
apple! The myth has it that the embodiment of rebellion to mark the beginning
of eons of attempts to replicate the original revolt was demonstrated in
breaching the ban on eating from an epistemological source--the tree of
knowledge, the fruit of power. To imagine obedience as ignorance would imply a
logical impossibility, i.e., to perceive the counterdemonic as darkness. How,
then, is one to reconcile those perplexing paradoxes and figure out the puzzle
of the early days of Genesis, as
Judeo-Christian narrative presents it? Is the key to the conundrum in the
missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle? Are they missing because they are lost?
May this quizzical nature of knowledge in the crevices of the tale be part of
John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost
(1667)? One would like to know.
we
are not robozombies!
Turmoil
at Pandemonium, generated through an accumulation of ill-conceived energies, is
suggested through the saturation of the sinister atmosphere with evil forces
epitomized in names such as Mammon, Chaos, and Babel. The power of the presence
of those names is proportional to the increase in militant aspirations in their
midst. They are throne thirsty. They are heights hungry. They might know what
they do in a similar way Gonerill in William Shakespeare’s King Lear (1606) does, or, so her sister, Regan, claims (4.2.228).
If so, do they know indeed? One would like to know.
we
are not robozombies!
Uneasiness
exuding from unlikely cohorts soaks each and every foot of Milton’s profoundly
insightful and incredibly accurate depiction of inner tension between
fluctuations and equilibrium. The intensity of the dynamic is conjured up
through the combination of lyricism woven in the epic and the moral dilemma
underscoring the verbal tapestry. The narration is steadfastly focused on the
quirky antagonism and ethical collisions. It can easily echo the innerness of a
Parliamentarian confronting Royalist oppression. It may reflect friction caused
by antithesis, ambivalence, and duplicity challenging the heart and the mind of
a rebel not averse to orderliness, and yet, highly critical of illogicalities
under the disguise of lawfulness.
Milton’s poem, indeed,
exceeds the boundaries of the epoch that saw a Stuart ruler -- Charles I -- on
the English throne dethroned, a monarchy overthrown, and the civil war ravaging
the country. It resonates with the eras preceding it, when death of the last Tudor monarch --Elizabeth
I -- demarcated the turning point in the constellations of dynasties and
brought to England a neighboring, yet nevertheless, foreign royalty, thereby inflicting
on the subjects a considerable amount of bewilderment, insecurity, and
discomfort. It can also be perceived from the modern day perspective – from Ireland’s struggle for
independence to contemporary cultural realities where regal figures are almost
reducible to the notion of celebrities within an eerie spectacle of mindlessly mechanized, indiscriminately
legalistic and legalized, overwhelmingly formalistic and formulaic, overregulated
anomie.
Those aporias miltonian
parliamentarian is confronted with are in the antecedent works manifested in
the imagery of enraged nature, as Shakespeare colors the world of Lear’s reasoning and power obscured by a
looming dark cloud of greed, unscrupulousness, moral vacuity, and filial
bestiality. So are they depicted in sometimes hardly understandable mismatch
within the respective characters of Bloom, a.k.a., “childe Leopold” (Ulysses 317) and Stephen with regard to
maturity and stability. Fatherly son…”womanly man” (Ulysses 403)…age defying young surgeon passionately dedicated to
his calling (Ulysses 332)…words of
encouragement with which Edgar presents his blind father Gloucester:” Think
that the clearest gods, who make them honors / Of men’s impossibilities, have
preserved thee” (King Lear 4.5.73-74)…and
the edifying power of Cordelia’s affection: Lear learns patience, which he
knows and claims to need (2.4.264), as if reflecting Edgar’s words of consolation
to his tormented father:”Bear free and
patient thoughts” (4.5.80)…”The wise father knows his own child” (Ulysses 337).
Uncritical,
stereotypical, and—above all—reductionist fantasy of the fallen angel presumes
a heavenly demand for refraining from knowledge. To say that such blockage of
the imagination makes a crude error by premising the Genesis myth on the idea of
humans as an ignorant bunch is superfluous. It is also epistemologically
flawed. There is no such demand: human capacity to know is by default limited;
so is human power. That, however, makes human beings neither bereft of vitality
nor deprived of knowledge. It certainly does not threaten freedom. Quite the
opposite. By virtue of limitation, by virtue of restraint.
Does this justify
oppression by analogously claiming hierarchy based orderliness, thereby
perpetuating social relations thriving
on dominance, injustice, and inequities? Certainly not. Should rebellion
against tyranny of rule void of authority be articulated in the vocabulary
different from that which by being so fraudulent poses a threat to the
perception and critique of hypocrisy? One would find it reasonable to believe
so.
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