Two Forms of Environmental-Political Imagination: Germany, the United States, and the Clean Energy Transition Realism, Perspective, and the Act of Looking A Comparison of Chinese Cinematic Representations of the Second Sino-Japanese War Isaac Leong Brown University Author Zoe Zacharopoulos Alexander Vaughan Williams Lillian Schoeller Nicole Tsung Editors Spring 2019 Download full text PDF (28 pages) Introduction Jiang Wen’s Devils on the Doorstep (2000) and Lu Chuan’s City of Life and Death (2009) belong to a new generation of Chinese cinema representing the traumas of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-45). As sixth-generation Chinese filmmakers, Jiang (born 1963) and Lu (born 1971) both began their filmmaking careers in China’s post-socialist era when the gradual opening of China’s film market to foreign investment transformed the landscape of Chinese cinema.[1] Their films, in many ways, reflect on the social contradictions of their time—not only in regard to China’s unequal economic rise, but also to the amnesia that celebrates China’s spectacular imperial past while ignoring its more recent and less glorious history.[2] In this context, China’s “War of Resistance against Japan” is perhaps the most brutal part of its “century of humiliation and exploitation.”[3] Undeniably, the atrocities inflicted on the Chinese people during the Sino-Japanese War have left a lasting wound on the national psyche. Yet, collective memory of this period—more specifically, its cinematic representations—has evolved alongside the changing priorities of the Chinese government. With fierce contestations for political legitimacy between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the exiled Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) party, early Chinese films depicting the war tended to glorify the CCP as the only resolute and successful force fighting Japanese imperialism. Simultaneously, these films typically portrayed the KMT as corrupt, incompetent, or otherwise traitorous collaborators.[5] Echoing the Japanese narrative that pinned wartime responsibility on a narrow “military clique,” the socialist “Red Classics” of this period also avoided elaboration on Japanese war crimes for fear of “disseminating sentimentalism and capitalist humanism.”[5] It was not until the 1980s, with the attempt to heal the Communist-Nationalist fissure, that the official narrative of the war began to sharply change emphasis, stressing the Chinese-Japanese conflict much more than the domestic, ideological one. In these representations, the nationalistic message of popular resistance against the Japanese enemy is emphasized, and anyone who collaborates with the Japanese is quickly and uncritically denounced as an unpatriotic traitor. This narrative of righteous resistance offers a kind of vindication for the Chinese nation who, while remaining historically defeated by the Japanese, can find celebration of victorious battles on screen. As Chinese writer Yu Hua notes, there is “a joke that more Japanese have been ‘killed’ at Hengdian (China’s largest film studio) than at all the actual battlefields put together—more, even, than the total population of Japan.”[6] Set against this new backdrop of Chinese war films, Devils on the Doorstep and City of Life and Death seem to depart radically from traditional cinematic representations of the War of Resistance, and perhaps as a consequence, caused significant controversy in China. The former was banned from formal release in China, with the Chinese Film Bureau citing “errors in historical representation” and labelling the film as being “insufficiently patriotic.”[7] The latter, although not banned, was criticized by the Chinese media for its sympathetic portrayal of, and even identification with, its protagonist: a Japanese soldier plagued by guilt for witnessing the atrocities committed by his fellow soldiers against the Chinese. In this regard, the strong reaction to both films indicates how uneasily they sit with usual nationalist narratives about the Chinese “self” and Japanese “other.” Not only is the Japanese enemy humanized in some way, both films also problematize the issue of wartime collaboration and sideline the CCP’s role in leading the national resistance. The relationship between both films extends beyond the content of their similarly controversial and unconventional representations of the war. Though utilized for somewhat different purposes, Lu Chuan’s use of the black-and-white format in City of Life and Death owes a certain “creative debt” to Jiang Wen’s Devils on the Doorstep , which pioneered the use of the medium to represent the Second Sino-Japanese War in an age of color cinema.[8] Undoubtedly, this aesthetic decision to film in black and white is an attempt by both films to grapple with the broader issues of realism and artificiality, especially within the context of historical trauma. In representing the traumas of the war, both films also employ first-person perspectives and narratives, albeit in different ways. While Devils on the Doorstep depicts the experiences of war from the narrow perspective of an ordinary Chinese peasant, City of Life and Death adopts an approach common in the genre of docudramas by switching between different perspectives, though focusing on the experiences of a conscience-stricken Japanese soldier. Despite both films showing some commitment to representing the ordinary and subjective experiences of the war, the latter’s approach effaces individual histories and uses the victim’s perspective merely as melodrama in a more conventional narrative of Chinese victimhood.[9] By comparing both films in their relationship to realism and nationalist remembrances of the war, I argue that while the representation of the war in City of Life and Death reflects predominant historiographical problems concerning the Sino-Japanese War, Devils on the Doorstep is a more self-reflexive attempt to subvert and deconstruct nationalist narratives of the war. Set in the last year of the war in the Japanese-occupied part of northern China, Devils on the Doorstep captures the horrors and absurdity of the war from the perspective of a group of Chinese villagers who are mysteriously tasked by the Communist resistance to house and interrogate two captives—a Japanese soldier and his Chinese translator. Among the villagers, Ma Dasan—a strong, straight-minded, credulous and bumbling peasant—becomes the unwilling protagonist. Initially a farcical comedy depicting the confusion of the villagers who are unsure about how to deal with this unexpected and unwanted disruption of their lives, the story takes a darker turn when Dasan is tasked with killing the two prisoners. Partly because Dasan is unable to do the deed, and partly because the executioner he employs turns out to be a fraud, Dasan and the villagers eventually agree to return the prisoners to the Japanese army in return for food. While this deal is initially honored by the Japanese army, the celebratory banquet unexpectedly turns into a cold-blooded massacre of the entire village by the carousing Japanese soldiers, leaving Dasan as the sole survivor and witness of the massacre. When the war ends and the Japanese soldiers are pardoned by the returning Nationalists, Dasan finds himself unable to deal with the guilt and tries to kill every Japanese soldier he can in revenge. However, he is quickly subdued and in an ironic turn of events, executed, at the order of the returning Nationalist government by the same Japanese soldier that he saved. As a docudrama about the Nanjing Massacre, City of Life and Death adopts a vastly different approach to represent the traumas of the Sino-Japanese War. Switching primarily between the perspectives of the ordinary Japanese soldier Kadokawa Masao, the Nazi Party member John Rabe, and his fictional secretary Tang, the film tells a “collaged” story about the fall of Nanjing and the establishment and subsequent dissolution of the Nanjing Safety Zone.[10] Without a coherent dramatic narrative, three plot points stand out in the film, each centering around one of the three main characters: Rabe is pressured into providing the Japanese army with one hundred Chinese comfort women from the Safety Zone he sets up; Tang collaborates with the Japanese in an attempt to protect his family after Rabe announces his recall to Germany; and Kadokawa, stricken by guilt after witnessing the horrors and brutality of war, releases two Chinese prisoners and commits suicide at the end of the film. Given Lu Chuan’s style of realistic representation, it is needless to say that scenes of executions, mass shooting, and rape form the mise-en-scène of the film. The Gaze in Cinematic Realism Borrowing from Daniel Morgan, I propose that cinematic realism can be thought of in two different ways that correspond with the two films discussed in this paper.[11] Following the canonical understanding of André Bazin’s theorizations of film realism, the first conception, corresponding with Lu Chuan’s interpretation in City of Life and Death, sees realism as “a recreation of the world in its own image, an image unburdened by the freedom of interpretation of the artist or the irreversibility of time.”[12] On the other hand, as Morgan argues, realism need not be understood as a set of stylistic conventions that have come to define the realist aesthetic. Instead, he suggests that Bazin “sees a more complicated relation between style and reality. Though a film, to be realist, must take into account… the ontology of the photographic image, realism is not a particular style, lack of style, or a set of stylistic attributes, but a process and mechanism.”[13] Seeing realism as a way of interpreting reality thus enables “realist” films, like Devils on the Doorstep , to explore alternative stylistic and imaginative resources in their representation of reality. Discussing the use of black and white in City of Life and Death , the film’s cinematographer Cao Yu explained how the use of black and white not only provided the film with “a sense of reality” and “spiritual abstraction,” but was also necessary in avoiding the gory excesses and pornographic pleasures of the horror genre.[14] However, when mediating between these sometimes conflicting goals, the film seems to prioritize the achievement of authenticity and realism. In conducting research for the film, Lu Chuan and the rest of the production team spent weeks on end at the Jianchuan Museum Cluster in Sichuan combing through close to five hundred thousand photographs depicting the Sino-Japanese War with the main purpose of imitating the “reality effect” of the most compelling historical photographs.[15] The pursuit of realism and authenticity in cinematic representations of the Nanjing Massacre is not new and is perhaps, in the context of Japanese denial of the massacre for more than half a century, a symptom of a broader national anxiety to “‘prove’ that it actually happened.”[16] A comparison can be made here between City of Life and Death and its cinematic precedent, Mou Tun-fei’s Black Sun (1995). Blurring the line between documentary and fiction, Black Sun integrates documentary footage of the Nanjing Massacre into its dramatized and fictional narrative. In one of the most shocking images of the film, the meticulously reenacted execution of an elderly Chinese monk by a Japanese soldier cuts to the actual photograph which the scene is based on just as the gunshot is heard. In many ways, the recreation of such gory and violent images seems to be, at best, an attempt to bear testimony to the most excessive, horrific, and spectacular scenes of the Nanjing Massacre, and at worst, an exploitative atrocity film. Even though Lu Chuan disavows the medium of horror in representing the Nanjing Massacre and does not use archival footage to shock the audience in the same way that Black Sun does, there is a similar attempt to mimic reality in City of Life and Death . Using the existing visual culture of the Sino-Japanese War to create the film’s “aura of authenticity,” Lu Chuan develops the setting of the film by drawing on documentary photographs that would be familiar to a Chinese audience exposed to scenes of a war-ravaged Nanjing.[17] The appropriation of and reference to archival footage in the name of historical realism, however, poses its own problems. In referring to “historical analogues” in the name of realism, there is an underlying assumption that archival photographs and film footage can capture the past as it happened—an objective, dispassionate record of scenes and events.[18] Yet, as Susan Sontag suggests, this is an impossible task for photography as “people quickly discovered that nobody takes the same picture of the same thing, the supposition that cameras furnish an impersonal, objective image yielded to the fact that photographs are evidence not only of what’s there but of what an individual sees, not just a record but an evaluation of the world.”[19] In the context of war and genocide, however, the issues of realism are not only a theoretical debate, but have implications for our attempts to understand that past. Aside from film footage taken by the American missionary John Magee and a few other exceptions, the vast majority of all surviving visual records of the massacre were produced by the Japanese.[20] The collection of photographs that City of Life and Death was based on was in fact acquired from Japan and taken by Japanese soldiers and camera crew during the invasion of and subsequent massacre in Nanjing.[21] Although the motivations that lie behind the production of these images were very different from those of contemporary filmmakers like Lu Chuan, the mimicking of these photographic visions risk reproducing the very gaze of the perpetrator. As Elie Wiesel discusses in the context of the Holocaust: For the most part the images derive from enemy sources. The victim had neither cameras nor film. To amuse themselves, or to bring back souvenirs back to their families, or to serve Goebbel’s propaganda, the killers filmed sequences in one ghetto or another…The use of the faked, truncated images makes it difficult to omit the poisonous message that motivated them…Will the viewer continue to remember that these films were made by the killers to show the downfall and the baseness of their so-called subhuman victims?[22] Yet as Wiesel recognizes, these photographs serve an important purpose, whether for “eventual comprehension of the concentration camps’ existence” or as a representation of how the perpetrators perceived their role in war and genocide.[23] In this context, the problem with Lu Chuan’s appropriation of the photographic record is how it treats these photographs as an objective truth that allows one to unproblematically access the past. Rather than acknowledging the limits of the visual archive for our understanding of the Nanjing Massacre, City of Life and Death seems to reproduce the gaze of the perpetrators without self-reflexivity. In a startling sequence, hundreds of disheveled Chinese men, mistaken by the Japanese to be Chinese soldiers, are passively herded to the execution grounds and later mowed down by a barrage of bullets. At the end, the audience is almost made to identify with the Japanese perpetrators as the camera zooms in on the back of a Japanese soldier looking down on a sea of individually indistinguishable corpses, accompanied by non-diegetic and somewhat triumphant martial music. A Japanese soldier, standing on a pedestal, gazes out on a sea of Chinese corpses after a mass shooting. Scene from City of Life and Death. In relying on historical photographs, the realist cinematography of City of Life and Death also runs the risk of being tacitly pornographic in its depiction of sexual atrocities committed as part of the Nanjing Massacre. By transforming grainy photographs of women’s bodies into the aesthetic medium of cinema, the naked bodies of rape victims become a spectacle to fulfill the “public fantasies” associated with watching rape on-screen.[24] The relationship between reality and interpretation must again be problematized, and the gaze of the perpetrator is even more pernicious in inscribing meaning onto sexual atrocities. As film scholar and feminist Tanya Horeck argues, since the same scene of rape can be interpreted differently depending on the viewer and context, representations of rape in cinema are “battles over the ownership of meaning and of reality.”[25] In the context of City of Life and Death , sexual assault survivors are depicted as passive and disenfranchised victims whose voices never get heard. The subjectivity of the rape victim is not only effaced by the photographic gaze of the Japanese perpetrator, but continues to be suppressed in representations of rape within national discourse. As Chungmoo Choi convincingly argues in reference to the comfort women issue in Korea, “comfort women discourse displaces the women’s subjectivity, which is grounded on pain, and constructs the women only as symbols of national shame. As such, the primacy of the discourse on comfort women attends not to the welfare of women’s subjectivity but to the national agenda of overcoming colonial emasculation.”[26] Applying Choi’s analysis to the context of the Nanjing Massacre, it is telling how the “Rape of Nanking” continues to persist as a popular moniker for the “Nanjing Massacre,” which has been for many years the standard in both English and Chinese language scholarship. By conflating actual experiences of sexual atrocities with the metaphorical rape/penetration of the national homeland, the name appropriates rape into a masculine national discourse that obfuscates individual experiences of pain and trauma. In its representation of rape, City of Life and Death operates firmly within this national discourse. Depicting most of the Chinese characters in the film as an indistinguishable mass, Lu again represents the massive scale of sexual victimization at the cost of reducing the nature of these women to mere victims of rape. Like the “numbers game” which dominates national contestations over the history of the Nanjing Massacre between China and Japan, it is not the individual and subjective experiences of trauma, but its scale that counts towards the national narrative of victimhood.[27] Images of rape and sexual abuse abound in the film, but two female Chinese characters seem to stand out: Xiao Jiang, a prostitute, and Jiang Shuyun, a teacher. In one of two moments of dramatic self-sacrifice in the film, Xiao Jiang is the first to volunteer herself as one of the “100 comfort women” given to the Japanese army so as to spare the rape of other girls within the Safety Zone. While in the other sequence the Nationalist soldier Lu Jianxiong calmly stands up to face a certain but heroic death, Xiao Jiang’s sacrifice of her body is “naturalized by virtue of her being a prostitute in the first place.”[28] Raped to death, Xiao Jiang’s nude body is tragically and unceremoniously tossed into a pile of other bodies. Conversely, Shuyun’s death happens in a far more merciful and sympathetic manner. Captured by Japanese soldiers near the end of the film, Shuyun begs Japanese soldier Kadokawa to shoot her so as to save her from being sexually abused. It is thus implied that while Shuyun’s chastity is more important than her survival, for Xiao Jiang the sacrifice of her body and ultimately her life to protect the “pure” schoolgirls is an expectation. In doing so, the film fetishizes both the chastity of the schoolgirls and the illicit sexuality of the prostitutes. Such a portrayal fails to explore the individual subjectivities of the female characters, instead presenting them as symbolic rather than real figures. Like the discourse surrounding comfort women that prioritizes “a narrative of virgins forcefully kidnapped and raped over other experiences of victimhood,” the filmic representation of rape in City of Life and Death marginalizes the traumas suffered by individual rape victims, as it is the “compromised” and “indecent” women who are raped and their deaths neatly mark the national humiliation as a distant past.[29] Objectivity and Authenticity Entangled with the film’s quest to “recreate the world in its own image,” the pursuit of an objective representation of the Nanjing Massacre seems to be the film’s raison d’être. In this regard, a significant portion of City of Life and Death is framed from the perspective of the detached and presumably impartial Western observer.[30] Without a coherent narrative arc, the film is framed by a series of postcards written in English, by the American missionary Minnie Vautrin.[31] The film opens with a series of postcards that establish the historical background of the Nanjing Massacre, narrating the progress of the Japanese army from Beijing to Shanghai and finally to the then-capital Nanjing. Interestingly, there is no evidence that Vautrin actually wrote and sent postcards like these during the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, even though she and Rabe—the two Westerners central to the film—detailed the fall of Nanjing extensively in their own diaries.[32] It is thus revealing that the film chose to imagine what Vautrin, rather than any Chinese character, would have written in her correspondence. In this case, the film’s quest for authenticity is implicated by the same notions of objectivity and detachment that plague the historiography of the Nanjing Massacre. Even though a vast collection of oral testimonies given by survivors has been collected, historical scholarship on the Nanjing Massacre has been slow to acknowledge and use these testimonies as reliable evidence.[33] Significantly, when Japanese reporter Honda Katsuichi published an extensive collection of interviews with Chinese survivors of the Nanjing Massacre and other Japanese war crimes, he was accused of “presenting the Chinese side of the story uncritically” and deniers were quick to seize on any discrepancies in the testimonies as “evidence of the fabrication of the Nanjing Massacre.”[34] While there are undoubtedly limits to the ability of oral testimonies to serve as unquestionable facts, the testimonies of victims illuminate a particular contingent and subjective truth that cannot otherwise be understood. The fetishization of objectivity and neutrality thus leads one to prioritize the written records of detached Western observers, consequently obscuring a historically significant part of the Nanjing Massacre. Considering how Western foreigners were either expelled from the city by December 15 or otherwise confined within the Safety Zone, they could have only witnessed at best “a fraction of what actually happened afterwards in a larger area with hundreds of thousands of residents.”[35] In the face of continuing Japanese denial, reflected most notably in a statement made in 2012 by Mayor Takashi Kawamura stating that the “so-called Nanjing Massacre is unlikely to have taken place,” the quest for objective detachment is simultaneously understandable and obfuscating.[46] On one hand, the eyewitness testimonies of detached Western observers like John Rabe and the American missionaries present at the scene of the Nanjing Massacre are perceived, even within China, to provide an objective account of the massacre that can be used in the battle against denial. Yet on the other, the testimonies of Western observers can only be testimonies of themselves and of their immediate context. If, as Leo Tolstoy suggests, the gap between a real event and the various fragmentary and distorted recollections of it can only be overcome “by collecting the memories of every individual (even the humblest soldier) who had been directly or indirectly involved in the battle,” then the attempt to frame and understand the Nanjing Massacre from the narrow perspective of Western observers elides the voices of Nanjing residents and survivors who undoubtedly experienced and remembered very differently from foreign bystanders.[37] Even though the choice to emphasize the role played by Western observers may not have been an ideal one for Lu Chuan, it is nonetheless an inadvertent effect of historiography that relies on written-documentation generated by Western observers—the famous The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang is one prominent example.[38] Belonging to a different world, the computer-animated yet realist postcards written in Vautrin’s hand reveal the limits of a Western perspective in representing the trauma of the Nanjing Massacre—its language is detached and devoid of the emotions that often underlie the testimonies collected from Nanjing residents and survivors. One of the postcards written by Minnie Vautrin shown immediately after brutal scenes of massacre and rape. Scene from City of Life and Death. Rethinking Realism Even though City of Life and Death and Devils on the Doorstep share the distinctive stylistic feature of black-and-white cinematography, its use in the latter film subverts the canonical understanding of realism and reveals the constructed nature of the photographic image. Jiang’s endeavor is an interesting and ambitious one, not only because cinematic realism originated in black-and-white cinematography, but also because, as highlighted earlier, war newsreels are frequently incorporated into documentary and docudrama films to enhance the authenticity of historical narratives. In a similar way, historical documentation is often perceived to possess a certain realist quality as a black-and-white text with fixed meaning, even though like photography, it is mediated by layers of language and interpretation.[39] Like City of Life and Death , Jiang’s film shares a close relationship with historical photographs of the Second Sino-Japanese war. In an interview, Jiang revealed how, in preparing for the film, they “took photographs of our actors in their costumes and made Xerox copies of them and placed them next to Xeroxes of actual historical photographs. No one could distinguish between them.”[40] Yet, unlike City of Life and Death , Devils on the Doorstep makes neither pretension to being a documentary nor attempts to imply the historicity of the narrative.[41] Instead, the film uses the visual medium associated with realism to make a self-reflexive critique of the relationship between history as the past and history as a representation. In the final moments of Devils on the Doorstep , the black-and-white aesthetic switches to color just as Ma Dasan is beheaded in an execution ordered by the returning Nationalist government. In this scene, we are shown Dasan’s execution first from the perspective of a Chinese villager watching the public execution, and then, in the only subjective shot in the entire film, from the disturbing perspective of Dasan’s decapitated head, watching as the crowd cheers.[42] Unlike scenes of execution and death in City of Life and Death , the depiction of violence in this scene is swift and hardly pornographic. The lack of sentimentality and horrific excess—the two elements that characterize portrayals of violence in City of Life and Death —makes this scene, in some ways, even more brutal and disturbing. On one level, by shifting attention away from the violence and to the act of watching it, Jiang criticizes the passive act of spectatorship that the surrounding Chinese villagers are guilty of and that we, as the audience, are complicit in. The spectating peasants exhibit no sympathy for Dasan, laughing and howling in a manner reminiscent of how the Japanese soldiers laughed and watched while butchering Dasan’s entire village. While parallels can be drawn between the reactions in these two situations, the contexts and the actors within it are obviously not analogous. Yet it is also the semblance of law and order in the case of Dasan’s execution that makes this scene especially troubling. While the Nationalist government claims to restore civilization to a village previously ruled by the savage Japanese devils,[43] they are guilty of what Michael Taussig calls “mimetic excess” by appropriating the very savagery they are meant to abolish.[44] Of course, this critique folds back on and implicates the spectators, who are not troubled by the brutality but behave with a veneer of civility which they believe divorces them from the plight of the victims. On another level, the shifts in perspective in this final scene expose the inherent gap between representation and reality, and consequently, the appropriation of wartime suffering and trauma by national narratives of the past. As the camera shifts away from Dasan’s perspective and to a frontal shot of Dasan’s decapitated head, the moving picture transforms into still photography and then into iconography.[45] Not only is this implied by the woodcut-like texture of the final shot, the image itself closely resembles widely-circulated atrocity photographs that have become a cliché in depicting Japanese wartime cruelty. In this way, the multiple shifts in perspective force the audience to question the truth and reliability of each perspective and to eventually acknowledge the gap between these different representations of reality and reality itself. Jiang further interrogates the relationship between representation and reality using Lu Xun’s The True Story of Ah Q, to which Jiang frequently compared his film.[46] The novella tells the story of an ordinary Chinese peasant with the ability to transform personal humiliations and defeats into victories through deliberate renaming and misnaming. Though Ah Q is eventually publicly executed for committing theft, the narrator turns away from his satirical tone and presents this moment in a sympathetic and reflective manner. Lu Xun writes at the end of the novella: “Naturally all agreed that Ah Q had been a bad man, the proof being that he had been shot; for if he had not been bad, how could he have been shot?”[47] Turning the target of satire from Ah Q to the villagers, Lu Xun highlights the artifice of allegedly true representations: whether Ah Q’s stories of his defeats/victories, the court’s narrative of Ah Q’s guilt, or even, in a self-reflexive turn, the narrator’s/ Lu Xun’s “true story” of Ah Q.[48] While the motivations for Lu Xun’s literature must be read against the social and intellectual milieu of the May Fourth Movement, his critique of the “violence of representation” and of the privileging of certain voices over others remains highly relevant to the study of Chinese representations of the War of Resistance.48 In this regard, Jiang’s dialogue with The True Story of Ah Q highlights how conventional historical narratives about the war, framed as narratives of heroic national resistance and eventual triumph, ultimately purge history of its horrors and violence. Deconstructing Nationalist Tropes Like Lu Xun’s novella, Devils on the Doorstep must also be situated within the social context in which Jiang grew up. In various interviews, Jiang reveals how the images of Japanese “devils” in the film are based on “their looks, as I remembered them.”[49] Born in 1963, Jiang obviously did not see Japanese soldiers firsthand, but nonetheless had a certain image of them based on the representations of the war he grew up with. Growing up during the Cultural Revolution, Jiang was familiar with images of the Japanese devil created in the “Red Classics” and other revolutionary films of that time. In these black-and-white propaganda films, such as Railroad Guerrillas (1956) and Mine Warfare (1962), the Japanese soldiers, always referred to colloquially as guizi,[50] were treacherous but ultimately silly and comical figures that would be easily ambushed and defeated by patriotic villagers.[51] Cognizant of the problems with such representations, Jiang resists conventional stereotypes of the Chinese peasant as ones which would avenge the nation for Japan’s brutal occupation. Devils on the Doorstep attempts to do this by considering how ordinary people experienced the war and faced up to the “prospect of imminent death during wartime.”[52] Like “Survival,” the novella from which the film was adapted, Devils on the Doorstep shifts away from the dominant perspective of patriotic Chinese soldiers and focuses on ordinary peasants’ quotidian struggle for survival.[53] Even though the mysterious resistance fighter catalyzes the tragic chain of events, he is ultimately a marginal figure in the film, appearing only once to drop off the two prisoners and, unlike in the “Red Classics” that Jiang alludes to, is never a heroic figure that leads the peasant resistance. Thus, resistance against the Japanese, the arch-signifier of the Chinese war mythology, is represented in the film as an abstract ideology foisted on the reluctant peasants, with a heavy and palpable dose of the absurd.[54] Rather than portray heroic and martial resistance, the film depicts the daily life of a Chinese village under Japanese occupation as if told from the perspective of the peasants themselves.[55] Devils on the Doorstep opens not with a scene of soldiers fighting or of Japanese “devils,” but of daily life in an ordinary village in Japanese-occupied China. It is clear from the opening sequence that despite having been a base for Japanese navy reservists for eight years, the village has been relatively untouched by the war. As Japanese sailors parade through the village playing their jaunty naval song, local Chinese children clamor in excitement while waiting for the Japanese commander to hand out candy. The commander then stops to bark instructions at one of the adult villagers to bring him clean water that night and the latter responds pliantly, like one of the children, even calling the Japanese soldier sensei (Japanese for “teacher”). While there is certainly a clear sense of hierarchy governing their interactions, and perhaps some fear in the peasant receiving the orders, there is no hatred and vengefulness as one might expect. Instead, the villagers adapt to the occupation with ingenuity, compromising with Japanese soldiers so as to create for themselves a space of autonomy and local “resistance.” From this perspective of the peasants, one can appreciate how the daily life of the war was motivated by a palpable sense of survival more than any abstract and ideological notion of nationhood. Yet it is also the everyday struggle for survival that reveals both the cruelty of war and the resilience of humanity, whose historical struggles against violence often get drowned in “black-and-white versions of history that pay attention only to the grand schemes of antagonism, such as class, nation, and ideology.”[56] Chinese peasant children dancing to the tune of the Japanese naval song, excitedly awaiting candy from the Japanese naval commander. Scene from Devils on the Doorstep. By representing the War of Resistance from below, Jiang also blurs the lines between wartime collaboration and resistance, perhaps explaining state and popular censure against Devils on the Doorstep .[57] The issue of collaboration during the War of Resistance has been a thorny issue in Chinese national memory. Broadly remembered as a “good war” which legitimized the nation, the party and the experiences of some who lived through it, national remembrances of the Second Sino-Japanese War tend to emphasize the Chinese as “positive and patriotic figures who are at the same time victims of savagery by others, rather than authors of their own misfortune.”[58] In this national narrative, collaborators, like the translator Dong Hanchen in Devils on the Doorstep and Rabe’s secretary Mr. Tang in City of Life and Death , are dismissed and demonized as hanjian, a term that is conventionally used to mean “traitor” but literally means a “betrayer of the Chinese race.”[59] Even though both films address the issue of collaboration, the discourse of salvation in City of Life and Death ultimately places the nation above the individual and fails to challenge nationalistic representations of collaboration. Hoping to protect the rest of his family from the brutality of the Japanese army, Tang collaborates with the Japanese by informing on Chinese “soldiers” living within the Safety Zone, simultaneously earning for himself the titles of tomodachi (Japanese for “friend”) and hanjian.[60] While this portrayal of Tang humanizes him far more than most representations of collaborators in Chinese cinema, and consequently seems to put him in a moral gray zone, the film ultimately adopts the nationalist narrative as Tang redeems himself and sacrifices his life for the sake of another, morally untainted Chinese compatriot.[61] By making Tang atone for his sin of collaboration, Lu projects patriotic heroism as a form of fantasy and an imaginative attempt at self-salvation. By telling the story of wartime collaboration as a heroic narrative of salvation, City of Life and Death not only obfuscates individual narratives and understandings of collaboration, but also suggests that the individual may somehow lose his life to save the nation to which he belongs. It is telling that Tang’s last words to his Japanese executioner were “my wife is pregnant again,” suggesting again that his patriotic death ensures the longevity of the Chinese nation.[62] In this regard, the film seems to be an attempt to “undo Japanese imperialism and injustice through a patriotic narration of the unity of the Chinese nation,” subordinating the individual to the nation, and ultimately failing to uphold collaboration as a possible moral choice.[63] In contrast, Devils on the Doorstep problematizes the meaning and morality of collaboration. Even though the most obvious collaborator—the translator Dong Hanchen—dies at the end of the film, his death is not a heroic one that absolves him of his guilt or puts the Chinese nation on a pedestal. It is instead an absurd execution filled with grim irony. When the KMT soldiers return and replace the Japanese dictatorship with a Nationalist one, the first order of business is the punishment and execution of wartime collaborators. Made an example by the Nationalist government, Hanchen is denounced as “scum who aided the Japanese to slaughter their own compatriots.” He is portrayed by the KMT military spokesperson, a comical figure speaking with a high-brow accent that distinguishes him from the village folk, as having “aided tyranny and avoided arrest,” his hands “stained with Chinese blood,” and “only execution will quell the masses anger.”[64] The irony of the KMT’s statements cannot be more clear—not only are Hanchen’s hands not “stained with Chinese blood,” Hanchen himself is not the typical opportunistic collaborator who has betrayed his people to serve the enemy. Rather than acting strictly as a translator for Hanaya, the Japanese soldier for whom he works, Hanchen deliberately mistranslates Hanaya in an attempt to preserve the peace. For example, the comical opening encounter between the villagers and the prisoners reads something like this: Village head: So, what’s his name? Have him tell us himself. Hanaya (in Japanese): Shoot me! Kill me! If you’ve got the guts, cowards! Villagers: How come his name is so long? Village head: Has he killed Chinese men? Violated Chinese women? Hanaya (in Japanese): Of course, that’s what I came to China for! Hanchen (translating): (hesitating) He’s new to China. Hasn’t seen any women yet. He’s killed no one. He’s a cook. (turning to Hanaya) Why are you doing this? Hanaya (in Japanese): I want to anger these cowards! I won’t cooperate with swine! Hanchen (translating): He begs you not to kill him! From this sequence, it can be observed how Hanchen is not a spineless stooge of the Japanese and does not merely “turn Japanese into Chinese and Chinese into Japanese.”[66] Through his mediation of language, he instead opens up a “humane channel of communication” that offers some hope of rapprochement between the Chinese and the Japanese.[67] In contrast, without a translator, the town square becomes like the Tower of Babel when the Chinese KMT first return. It is comical how the KMT representative and the accompanying American and British soldiers, despite their military rank, are unable to “order” a Japanese peddler to move his goods off the road or even just to stand still. Unable to communicate with each other whatsoever, they eventually drive their military jeep over his goods and use the language of force to achieve their goals. Seen in this context, Hanchen is not merely a passive translator who is servile to his Japanese masters but is instead an active agent who uses language as a way to shape reality and avoid violence. In his use of language, Hanchen can perhaps be compared to Guido in Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful (1997), a controversial film that similarly used both humor and surreal scenes to represent the Holocaust. As the main character who generates most of the comedy of the film, Guido turns the threats issued by concentration camp guards into instructions for a game so as to shelter his son from the horrors of their experience. Unable to stop the perversity of the camp and the likely death that awaits both of them, Guido’s translations are at least an attempt to protect his son’s childhood and innocence. In this regard, Guido and Hanchen both purposefully severe the link between words and their signified reality so as to seek a way out of an otherwise entrapping situation and to reclaim the possibility of survival.[68] Crucially, Hanchen’s “translations” help the peasants overcome the social and cognitive distance that Hanaya strives to enlarge with his racist vitriol and yearnings for martyrdom, possibly avoiding violent confrontation and defusing the situation. Dong Hanchen and Hanaya Kosaburo panting after frantically shouting over each other during the interrogation – Hanaya shouting in Japanese and Hanchen in Chinese. The latter deliberately mistranslates Hanaya’s demands to be killed. Scene from Devils on the Doorstep. By looking at the discourse surrounding collaboration (hanjian) from the perspective of the villagers, Devils on the Doorstep also exposes the ambiguous and populist aspects of the label. Even though the Nationalist legislature established the hanjian crime as early as August 1937, in the immediate aftermath of the Japanese attack in Beijing, the term was broadly defined and indiscriminately used.[69] In part, this may have been because positions about collaboration and resistance were constantly evolving. Despite its efforts to present itself as a resistance government, the KMT practiced a policy of non-resistance towards Japan for years and did not completely reject the idea of peace talks with Japan until August 1937.[70] Combined with the encouragement of popular vigilantism in the prosecution of collaborators, the label of collaboration gained a populist valence that empowered passive victims of the war with “an opportunity to redeem their passivity with a display of patriotic fervor.”[71] Not only is this evident at Hanchen’s public execution, the villagers in the film constantly throw around the term hanjian, struggling to reach a stable meaning for the term and to reconcile that meaning with their own understandings of right and wrong. Is it collaboration to return the prisoners to the Japanese? Is it collaboration to feed the prisoners? Conversely, what if one were to starve them to death instead? What about the simple act of referring to the Japanese soldiers as “teacher” (sensei)? Eventually, however, the decisions made by the villagers remain outside the demands of nationalistic loyalties and discourse. When they find out the Japanese prisoner Hanaya is a peasant like them, the villagers, rather than “coming out with hackneyed expressions of hatred for a despised enemy,” acknowledge respect for someone with whom they have common ground and find solidarity with.[72] While their identification with Hanaya and exchange with the Japanese army may be seen through the nationalist lens as collaboration and fraternization with the enemy, the villagers ultimately complicate the nationalist dichotomy between collaboration and resistance, and open up the possibility of acknowledging the indiscriminate use of the demonizing label hanjian.[73] Unlike in City of Life and Death , collaboration in Devils on the Doorstep is always presented as an active choice, albeit under the oppressive conditions of war and occupation. By representing the war from the perspective of a single village, Jiang Wen confronts the complexity of communal decision-making in the village and avoids portraying his characters as one-dimensional and passive victims of the war. In contrast, the capacity for choice is evaporated in City of Life and Death when a kaleidoscope of perspectives is presented without interrogating any single one. Tang’s collaboration with the Japanese is presented as a natural consequence of his fear and uncertainty upon hearing about Rabe’s recall to Germany. Likewise, even the film’s protagonist—the sympathetic Japanese soldier Kadokawa—is presented as a character stripped of choice. In many ways, he is the morally upright and pure Japanese soldier corrupted by the brutality and arbitrariness of war. In the only scene where he kills, his shooting is an impulse without any lethal intention.[74] He is also only an observer to the brutal scenes of rape and massacre, seemingly absolving him of responsibility by attributing these acts to the universal character of war. Forced to witness the brutality, yet in no position to stop it, Kadokawa endures the trauma and guilt of war, himself becoming a victim of the war he is complicit in perpetrating. Confronted with this choiceless situation, Kadokawa ultimately commits suicide to rid himself of his guilt.[75] Such representations of the dehumanizing aspect of the Sino-Japanese war are, however, neither new nor exclusive to cinematic depictions of the war. Many soldiers who testified to the atrocity in Nanjing put the blame squarely on the war, and while these statements are truthful and useful to some degree, ...blaming everything on the war is at best inadequate and at worst can be used as an excuse to avoid confronting the crucial issue of agency, for even in the most brutal of wars not everyone killed or raped civilians. Acknowledgment of the dehumanizing impact of war, although highly important, cannot replace a critical analysis of the individual decisions as well as the particular political institutions.[76] Even though Devils on the Doorstep focuses more significantly on the Chinese experience of the war, it can be considered a cinematic attempt at critically analyzing the individual decisions made during the war. Jiang’s attempt at doing so can be appreciated by comparing his film with the original novella on which it is based. Told using the mode of heroic resistance, You Fengwei’s “Survival” presents the village chief who receives the two prisoners as acting primarily out of a sense of political duty. As kind-hearted folks, the villagers treat the prisoners humanely; but when it is revealed by the communist leadership that the prisoners are no longer of use and should be executed in situ, the villagers eventually carry out what amounts to a military command.[77] When confronted by the interpreter-prisoner, the chief’s only defense is: “Tell you what, you and the Jap devil’s capital punishments were decided by the resistance fighters, not us. We are just carrying out their orders. Understand?”[78] By justifying their actions as an order, the villagers are able to relieve themselves of the moral burden. In contrast, the film version presents the choices available to Dasan even amidst the oppressive conditions of occupation. Even though the mysterious resistance fighter forced Dasan to take in the prisoners at gunpoint, Dasan is later conscious of the choices available to him and his fellow villagers. For example, he speaks out against the option of killing the two prisoners even though they present a palpable and constant threat to the lives of the villages. To Dasan, killing the prisoners is “just not right” and he insists that “we [the villagers] can’t just decide to kill them. It’s just not good.”[79] Even though he eventually fails to convince the other villagers and it is decided through the drawing of lots that the task of executing the prisoners would fall on him, Dasan is still able to carve out space for himself to do what intuitively feels right to him. Acting against fate, he chooses to hide the prisoners instead of killing them as was ordered by his fellow villagers. Thinking of himself as an active agent rather than a passive victim, Dasan ultimately blames himself for the Japanese massacre of his village and attempts to seek revenge for it. While holding himself responsible for the deaths of his fellow villagers denies him “the complication of moral luck,” it is nonetheless clear that attributing what happened purely to luck “voids the subject of moral responsibility.”[80] In this context, Devils on the Doorstep presents the possibility for choice, no matter how limited, under the conditions of war and occupation. For Jiang, the conditions of nationalism and war are no longer adequate or exculpatory justifications for acts of violence—not only did Dasan choose to shelter the prisoners in spite of an execution order, the Japanese soldiers also chose to commit the senseless acts of violence even after the Japanese Emperor Hirohito’s surrender. In the final scene of the war, the burning village is disturbingly set against Hirohito’s radio announcement of unconditional surrender, ironically asserting: “Should we continue the fight, not only would the Japanese nation be obliterated, but human civilization would be totally extinguished.”[81] Framed in this way, the orgy of violence at the end of the war is not so much a direct military command even if it is linked symbolically with the Emperor, but is instead a choice made by Japanese soldiers, having fraternized with the Chinese, to purge themselves of the polluting effects of proximity. Conclusion By visualizing wartime atrocities, cinema claims a place in the public consciousness of history by recording, re-envisioning, and investigating the past. For City of Life and Death , the representation of trauma is an indisputable testament to the violence and brutality of the Second Sino-Japanese War. In adopting the aesthetics of conventional cinematic realism, the film posits that the past can be recreated in its own image and that the audience can thus be somehow transported back into that past. Referring to the use of three-dimensional dioramas in the War of Resistance Museum just outside Beijing, the museum guide states that by “cleverly taking models, artifacts and tableaux and making them into one, so that the eye cannot distinguish between what is painting and what is a model, [it feels] as if you were placing yourself on the battlefield at the time [of the event itself].”[83] While used in a different context, the realist sensibilities of dioramic representation seem to be equally characteristic of City of Life and Death . Yet as Hayden White argues, the scale and intensity of the traumatic events of the twentieth century make it impossible for any single human agent to have a full and conscious view of the causes, effects and moral implications of such events. Consequently, any expectation of representational objectivity must be set aside as well. The failure of humanist historiography for White means abandoning realist storytelling techniques and seeking literary modernism, which “provide the possibility of de-fetishizing both events and the fantasy accounts of them which deny the threat they pose, in the very process of pretending to represent them realistically.”[84] Nonetheless, the relationship between realism and other modes of representation are far more complicated. In this regard, Devils on the Doorstep is realistic without necessarily being realist.[85] By acknowledging that the past cannot be recreated in its own image, the film forces a critical rethinking of cinematic realism that achieves, in some ways, a more truthful representation of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Endnotes [1] Vivian Lee, “The Chinese War Film: Reframing National History in Transnational Cinema,” in American and Chinese-Language Cinemas: Examining Cultural Flows, eds. Lisa Funnell and Man-Fung Yip (New York: Routledge, 2014), 101. [2] Gary Xu, Sinascape: Contemporary Chinese Cinema (Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 38-39. [3] Yinan He, “History, Chinese Nationalism and the Emerging Sino-Japanese Conflict,” Journal of Contemporary China 16, no. 50 (February 2007), 8. [4] Timothy Tsu, Sandra Wilson and King-fai Tam, “The Second World War in postwar Chinese and Japanese film,” in Chinese and Japanese Films on the Second World War, eds. King-fai Tam, Timothy Tsu and Sandra Wilson (New York: Routledge, 2015), 2-3. [5] Yinan He, “Remembering and Forgetting the War: Elite Mythmaking, Mass Reaction, and Sino-Japanese Relations, 1950-2006,” History & Memory 19, no. 2 (Fall 2007), 49. ‘Red Classics’ (translated from the Chinese term hongse jingdian) refer to art works that reflect the ideological underpinnings of the CCP and often are used with reference to works that were approved during the Cultural Revolution. [6] Yu Hua, “China Waits for an Apology,” New York Times, April 9, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/10/opinion/yu-hua-cultural-revolution-nostalgia.html. [7] Timothy Tsu, “A genealogy of anti-Japanese protagonists in Chinese war films, 1949-2011,” in Chinese and Japanese Films on the Second World War, 23. [8] Jie Li, “Discolored vestiges of history: Black and white in the age of color cinema,” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 6, no. 3 (2012), 250. [9] Dai Jinhua, “I Want to Be Human: A Story of China and the Human,” Social Text 29, no. 4 (2011), 141-142. My understanding of melodrama is borrowed from Amos Goldberg’s exploration of the relationship between the victim’s voice and melodrama. See Amos Goldberg, “The Victim’s Voice and Melodramatic Aesthetics in History,” History and Theory 48, no. 3 (Oct 2009), 220-237. [10] Yanhong Zhu, “A past revisited: Re-presentation of the Nanjing Massacre in City of Life and Death,” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 7, no. 2 (2013), 87-88. While most of Lu’s characters are ostensibly “historical analogues” inspired by real characters that have been written about, the two Western foreigners in the film—John Rabe and Minnie Vautrin—are actual people who lived in Nanjing during the massacre and documented it extensively in their diaries and correspondence. Together with other foreigners, they helped to set up the Nanjing Safety Zone. [11] Daniel Morgan, “Rethinking Bazin: Ontology and Realist Aesthetics,” Critical Inquiry 32, no. 3 (Spring 2006), 443-481. [12] André Bazin, What is Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 25. [13] Morgan, “Rethinking Bazin,” 445. [14] Li Yue, “Dancing with the Camera: A Special Interview with Nanjing! Nanjing!’s Cinematographer Cao Yu” (in Chinese), May 11, 2009, http://old.pku-hall.com/WYPPZZ.aspx?id=456. Note that Nanjing! Nanjing! is the alternative English-language title for Lu Chuan’s City of Life and Death. [15] He Xi, “Nanjing! Nanjing!’s Sichuan Connection” (in Chinese), April 24, 2009, http://www.cinema.com.cn/YingYuTianXia/2245.htm. I borrow the concept of the “reality effect” from Roland Barthes, who argues that what we call “real” is “never more than a code of representation.” See Roland Barthes, S/Z: An Essay, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974), 80. [16] Michael Berry, “Cinematic Representations of the Rape of Nanking,” East Asia 19, no. 4 (2001), 88. [17] Rebecca Nedostup, “City of Life and Death (Nanjing! Nanjing! 2009) and the Silenced Nanjing Native” in Through a Lens Darkly: Films of Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing, eds. John Michalczyk and Raymond Helmick (New York: Peter Lang, 2013), 64. [18] Shao Yan, “In the film we have kept our integrity: Exclusive interview with Lu Chuan” (in Chinese), Dianying shijie, April 2009, 24-29. [19] Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977), 88. [20] Berry, “Cinematic Representations of the Rape of Nanking,” 95. [21] He Xi, “Nanjing! Nanjing!’s Sichuan Connection.” [22] Elie Wiesel, “Foreword” (trans. Annette Insdorf) in Annette Insdorf, Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), xii. [23] Wiesel, “Foreword,” xii. [24] Amanda Weiss, “Contested Images of Rape: The Nanjing Massacre in Chinese and Japanese Films,” Journal of Women in Culture and Society 41, no. 2 (Winter 2016), 437. [25] Tanya Horeck, Public Rape: Representing Violation in Fiction and Film (New York: Routledge, 2013), 13. [26] Chungmoo Choi, “The Politics of War Memories towards Healing” in Perilous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War(s), eds. Takashi Fujitani, Lisa Yoneyama and Geoffrey White (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 399. [27] Daqing Yang, “The Challenges of the Nanjing Massacre: Reflections on Historical Inquiry,” in The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography, ed. Joshua Fogel (Berkley: University of California Press, 2000), 151. See also Fujiwara Akira, “The Nanking Atrocity: An Interpretive Overview,” in The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-38, ed. Bob Wakabayashi (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), 51-52. [28] Nedostup, “City of Life and Death,” 65. [29] Weiss, “Contested Images of Rape,” 437. [30] As Michael Berry notes, the reliance on presumably impartial and objective foreigners to authenticate the Nanjing Massacre is not new to Chinese cinema, and he traces this “legitimizing power of the West” to Luo Guanqun’s Massacre in Nanjing (1987). See Berry, “Cinematic Representations of the Rape of Nanking,” 90-91. [31] Kevin Lee, “City of Life and Death,” Cineaste 35, no. 2, Spring 2010, https://www.cineaste.com/spring2010/city-of-life-and-death/. [32] John Rabe, The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe, trans. John Woods (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998). Minnie Vautrin, Terror in Minnie Vautrin’s Nanjing: Diaries and Correspondence, 1937-38 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008). [33] Yang, “The Challenges of the Nanjing Massacre,” 139-143. Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking also describes the Chinese trauma of the Nanjing Massacre primarily through the lens of Western observers, relying heavily on the diaries of American missionaries Minnie Vautrin and John Magee, as well as the German businessman and Nazi Party member John Rabe. See Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (New York: Basic, 1997). [34] Yang, “The Challenges of the Nanjing Massacre,” 142; Honda Katsuichi, The Nanjing Massacre: A Japanese Journalist Confronts Japan’s National Shame (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1998). [35] Yang, “The Challenges of the Nanjing Massacre,” 139. [36] Paul Armstrong, “Fury over Japanese politician’s Nanjing Massacre denial,” CNN, February 23, 2012, https://www.cnn.com/2012/02/23/world/asia/china-nanjing-row/index.html. [37] Carlo Ginzburg, “Just One Witness” in Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the “Final Solution,” ed. Saul Friedlander (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 95. [38] Lu Chuan declined an offer to direct a film about the Nanjing Massacre that, according to him, “valorized” the role of John Rabe. See Keen Zhang, “City of Sorrow: Competing film portrayals of the Nanjing Massacre,” China.org.cn, April 30, 2009, http://china.org.cn/culture/2009-04/30/content_17702091.htm. Interestingly, the heavy influence of Western-centric historiography on City of Life and Death can be observed from how the main character Kadokawa Masao was reconstructed from a “historical analogue” found in Vautrin’s diaries. See Vautrin, Terror in Minnie Vautrin’s Nanjing. [39] This is encapsulated in the Chinese phrase “白纸黑字” (baizhi heizi), which literally means “white paper with black words” and refers to the fixity/conclusiveness of written evidence. [40] Li, “Discolored vestiges of history,” 250. [41] Jerome Silbergeld, Body in Question: Image and Illusion in Two Chinese Films by Director Jiang Wen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 150. [42] In doing so, the film departs the realm of conventional realism and into the realm of surrealism. See Kristof Van den Troost, “War, Horror and Trauma: Japanese atrocities on Chinese screens,” in Chinese and Japanese Films on the Second World War, 62-63. [43] This is, of course, a reference to the eponymous “devils” in the film. In fact, Jiang Wen’s connection of the “devils” to the Japanese soldiers is even clearer in the original Chinese-language title of the film “鬼子来了” (guizi lailie), with the guizi (literally “devils”/”ghosts”) being frequently invoked in both wartime and postwar parlance to refer to the Japanese. See Julian Ward, “Filming the anti-Japanese war: the devils and buffoons of Jiang Wen’s Guizi Laile,” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 2, no. 2, September 2004, 107-108. [44] Michael Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (New York: Routledge, 1992). David Wang applies the same concept to his analysis of Lu Xun’s literature, who was traumatized by his experience of the First Sino-Japanese War and subsequent turned to writing literature as a way of ‘saving China’s soul’. See David Wang, The Monster That Is History: History, Violence, and Fictional Writing in Twentieth-Century China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 35. [45] Li, “Discolored vestiges of history,” 254. [46] Lu Xun, “The True Story of Ah Q,” in Call to Arms (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 2010), 141-212. Cheng Qingsong and Huang Ou, My Camera Doesn’t Lie (in Chinese) (Beijing: Zhongguo Youyi, 2002), 72-73. [47] Lu Xun, “The True Story of Ah Q,” 209. [48] Feng Zongxin, “Fictional Narrative as History: Reflection and Deflection,” Semiotica 170, no. 1, 2008, 189; Andrew Jones, “The Violence of the Text: Reading Yu Hua and Shi Zhicun,” Positions 2, Winter 1994, 593. See also Martin Huang, “The Inescapable Predicament: The Narrator and His Discourse in ‘The True Story of Ah Q’,” Modern China 16, no. 4, October 1990, 435. [49] Cheng and Huang, My Camera Doesn’t Lie, 75. [50] A derogatory term referring to the Japanese and other foreigners. See note 42. [51] Ward, “Filming the anti-Japanese war,” 107-108. See also Xu, Sinascape, 43-44. [52] You Fengwei, From ‘Survival’ to ‘Devils on the Doorstep’ (in Chinese) (Beijing: Beijing Publishing House, 1999), 5. [53] You Fengwei, “Survival,” in Life Channel (in Chinese) (Beijing: Renmin Wenxue, 2005). [54] Haiyan Lee, The Stranger and the Chinese Moral Imagination (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), 256. [55] Much of the film is shot within the claustrophobic interiors of village houses, where the villagers discuss and deliberate what to do with the prisoners. The use of language and poetry also reflects the playfulness and lyricism of peasant storytelling methods. See Ward, “Filming the anti-Japanese war,” 112. [56] Xu, Sinascape, 44. See also Ward, “Filming the anti-Japanese war,” 113. [57] Even though Devils on the Doorstep won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, Jiang’s success was almost completely ignored in China. His film was later banned for release in China. Chinese critics have argued that the film was “insufficiently patriotic” and had “grave errors in the representation of historical truth.” See Wang Fanghua, “Devils on the Doorstep’s Black and White Emotions through a Color Filter” (in Chinese), Dianying Pingjie, August 2013, 36-37. [58] Rana Mitter, “China’s ‘Good War’: Voices, Locations, and Generations in the Interpretation of the War of Resistance to Japan” in Ruptured Histories: War, Memory, and the Post-Cold War in Asia, eds. Sheila Miyoshi Jager & Rana Mitter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 188-189. [59] Yun Xia, Down with Traitors: Justice and Nationalism in Wartime China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017), 5. [60] Not only is the line between “soldier” and “civilian” blurred in the film and in reality, where a significant portion of the Chinese resistance army was composed of poorly trained and ill-equipped conscripts, most of the “soldiers” in the Safety Zone were also injured and disarmed, as Tang makes clear. [61] Zhu, “A past revisited,” 102. [62] Lu Chuan, Nanjing! Nanjing!: City of Life and Death, 2009. [63] Siu Leng Li, “The theme of salvation in Chinese and Japanese war movies,” in Chinese and Japanese Films on the Second World War, 82. [64] Wen Jiang, Devils on the Doorstep, 2000. [65] Paola Voci, “The Sino-Japanese War in Ip Man: From miscommunication to poetic combat,” in Chinese and Japanese Films on the Second World War, 46. [66] Jiang, Devils on the Doorstep. [67] Silbergeld, Body in Question, 93. [68] Paola Voci, “The Light out of the tunnel: Re-thinking Chinese cinema’s war film realism,” Parol XXVII, no. 25, 2014, 93. See also Ruth Ben-Ghiat, “The Secret Histories of Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful,” Yale Journal of Criticism 14, no. 1, 2001, 255. [69] Xia, Down with Traitors, 11-12. [70] Rana Mitter, Forgotten Ally (London: Penguin Books, 2013), 203. [71] Xia, Down with Traitors, 7. [72] Ward, “Filming the anti-Japanese war,” 114. [73] Xia reaches a similar conclusion from the analysis of postwar trial records of Chinese hanjian. See Xia, Down with Traitors, Chapter 2. [74] Stephanie Brown, “Victims, Heroes, Men, and Monsters: Revisiting a Violent History in City of Life and Death,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 32, no. 6, 2015, 531. [75] Zhu, “A past revisited,” 95-97. [76] Yang, “The Challenges of the Nanjing Massacre,” 157-158. [77] Tian Yu, “From Red Sorghum to Devils on the Doorstep: Conceptual evolution in Chinese film adaptations,” Postscript 23, no. 3, Summer 2004. [78] Translation from Haiyan Lee. See Lee, The Stranger and the Chinese Moral Imagination, 258. [79] Jiang, Devils on the Doorstep. [80] Translation from Haiyan Lee. See Lee, The Stranger and the Chinese Moral Imagination, 262. [81] Jiang, Devils on the Doorstep. [82] Silbergeld, Body in Question, 105. See also Xu, Sinascape, 49. [83] Rana Mitter, “Behind the Scenes at the Museum: Nationalism, History, and Memory in the Beijing War of Resistance Museum, 1987-1997,” China Quarterly 161, March 2000, 288. [84] Hayden White, “The Modernist Event,” in The Persistence of History: Cinema, Television and the Modern Event, ed. Vivian Sobchack (New York: Routledge, 1996), 32. [85] Silbergeld, Body in Question, 82-86. Bibliography Armstrong, Paul. “Fury over Japanese politician’s Nanjing Massacre denial.” CNN. 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Author Name < Back Interview with Geoff Mulgan Catherine Nelli JPPE: Great. So, we'll start off speaking about your new book, Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination . Could you explain what political imagination and radical political imagination are before speaking about what the book is about, your argument, and your process researching and writing it? Mulgan: So I became more and more concerned in the last few years that we might have a worsening problem of political imagination. And there were various signs of this, there was a kind of obvious one which the many activists, the many people who are politically enthusiastic can very easily see into the future, how things could go horribly wrong, could see ecological disaster, climate catastrophe, and so on. Which in many ways is a good thing, but very much harder to imagine or describe almost any kind of social progress, what would be a significantly better way of organizing welfare, or democracy, or health, or education. I observed that we have a huge capacity now for technological imagination. Vast sums of money spent on think tanks and conferences, looking at smart homes or smart cities or AI and so on, but almost nothing comparable in terms of serious work thinking about how our future society or economy could be run, rather than just the hardware. Politics—it's very striking. On the one hand, how many leaders now talk about going back to make America great again, or France or Britain or China or India. The last US election was a contest between two old men who haven’t really said very much about where they would want the world to be in a generation or two from now. I have increasingly felt that this sort of failure of imagination was fueling in a very subtle way a sort of fatalism—a sense that actually the world won't get better. Just as in our own individual lives, if we can't see something good on the horizon, something which might be better for us a year, five years down the line, it's quite hard to be happy and thriving. I think there's something equivalent for societies and the whole world. What I did in the book is partly researching the past of social and political imagination. And there'll be many ways in which people tried to look ahead; they did it through writing utopias, and there are hundreds, if not 1000s, of utopian writings from feminist utopias of the 15th century through to the great 19th century ones, like Bella , which was, I think, at the time the second best selling author ever in the US. There were attempts to create model communities, model towns, model organizations. There's the role of generative ideas. And one of the things I point out in the book is that often quite generic ideas like human rights or a circular economy may be a bit vague at first, but they then spawn lots of other ideas which become useful and change the world. And a large part of the book is about methods: what are the methods we could be using now to get better at thoughtful, rigorous imagination of the future a generation or two from now? How do you use methods, often from creativity and design, to expand your menu of options, you can then interrogate each of those, many of them might not be attractive, but at least to cultivate the habit towards the muscle of thinking creatively ahead. I look at the role of universities in that, I look at the role of political parties, which at times in history have played a big role in imagination, but have largely vacated it in much of the world. And also the role of places—how to create museums, galleries, physical places where people can come together to imagine into the future. And if nothing else, I hope the book will spark at least a bit of a debate on the question: Do we have a problem? Maybe some people will say we don't have a problem. Some people may say, well, actually, imagination is always bad, it leads to terrible results, and many of the blueprints in the last century, and many of the utopias did have horrible results. And one of the arguments I make is that now, we need to combine imagination with experiments. So you don't impose a fully formed blueprint on a city or a society; you try it out in a much more organic, experimental way. And others may say actually, technology is the answer to everything and we don't have social imagination because we don't need it. We can fix everything with a new anti-aging drug or some fantastic ecology, which will sequester carbon and so on. As I say, I think all of those will be wrong, but at least hopefully that will get a debate going. JPPE Do you look at a sort of comparative analysis of case studies from different countries? Or is the structure of the book more idea based? Mulgan It’s ideas. Basically, there were lots of references to real examples, either from history or from the present. And one of the parts of the book which is a bit more like comparative political analysis is trying to compare the dominant political imaginaries of the next 20 or 30 years globally. What are they? And I argue probably the most powerful ones or the strongest ones are nationalist techno authoritarian ones, particularly China, Xi Jinping thought, but in a different way the BJP’s to visions of the future in India. Putin doesn't really have one in Russia. But he and Erdoğan are other examples. And I argue that this is a very powerful semi-imaginary which actually is rather vague about the future but tries to tie together, in some ways, quite traditional authoritarian nationalism with high technologies. It's very 19th century Prussian militarism. I look at different imaginaries of the Green Movement and some of the frictions and issues in deep and less deep ecological thought. I look at what might happen to liberalism, a revived neoliberalism, and different strands of conservatism. But essentially, that is an attempt at a comparative analysis of both current and future imaginaries. JPPE Do you think digital technologies detract from or contribute to radical political imaginations? What are the different ways that they could contribute or detract? And in what way should they be conceptualized and used to the benefit of imagination? Mulgan So I've got quite a background in digital technology—my PhD is in telecoms and I've probably been immersed in all these things. And my answer is essentially “both and.” So sometimes thinking about things digitally can be very useful because as happened to retailing, or banking, or relationships, all sorts of things, if you look at it through a digital lens, you often deconstruct what's going on. And then you can remake it in a completely different way. So you end up with Amazon, not with, you know, high street shops or with match.com rather than people meeting in bars. And in that sense, actually, digital technology is quite useful for social imagination. And any imagination of where democracy might be in 50 years time has to have a substantial digital element. And those places like Taiwan and Iceland are reinventing democracy. The US still seems to be stuck in an 18th century model of democracy. We don't quite understand why, but that's another story. Digital is part of that, but if you only think in a digital way, as so much of the movement around smart cities, smart data, and smart homes did, you usually end up with results which are not very pleasant for humans to live in or which lose all sorts of dimensions of the present. And I think this was a big failure of the internet, where there was some incredibly naive techno optimism about how on its own the internet would spread democracy, equality, removal, corporations, etc. And often the exact opposite happened. And that tells us there was a major intellectual failure amongst the sort of Silicon Valley thinkers who simply didn't understand what they were part of. And that's why thinking simultaneously with a social lens and a technological lens is vital for the next 50 or 100 years. JPPE What’s the difference between social and political imagination? How do they coincide and interact? Mulgan I think they overlap with each other. There isn't a straightforward boundary line. By politics we tend to mean the things which politicians end up talking about put into their programs, maybe pass laws about in Congress or Parliament or the Bundestag. And that is the world of politics, which often does include or has at times included powerful visions of where society might head. There are many examples of where that happens outside politics much more through social movements and daily life. And people are getting on with social innovation and were ignoring the political realm. And often things start off social and then become political, so many ecological ideas, like the idea of a circular economy and radical recycling or veganism, you know, these tended to begin very much with social movements, and much, much later, became politicized, became an issue for laws and elections and programs and carbon taxes and so on. So one of the things I try to look at in the book is this dynamic between the social and the political, and then back into the social. For example, when you pass new laws on equality they in turn then affect the norms within every organization, ultimately, maybe back to the household and the family too. JPPE You speak about the tapering off of visions of the future. There seems to be a desire for change within the social world but very few productive outlets to channel this desire. How do you foresee this changing over time and how would you wish it to change to spark future action? Mulgan I think one answer to that lies with institutions and what role they play, especially powerful institutions can either encourage this sort of work or discourage it. So take universities. I've been doing a parallel strand of work, looking at why it is that in universities, and particularly in social science, the sort of exploratory design work, thinking ahead work, has largely disappeared from most universities all over the world. It's disappeared partly for good reasons, as people have become more data driven and more empirical, and partly because a lot of the radicals moved into a safe space of critique, rather than proposal. That was one of the weird things which happened to Marxism in universities in the last 20 or 40 years. It moved out of real active politics into academic critique. And founders haven't rewarded it because they've tended to reward deepening work within disciplines, whereas exploratory creative work has spread across multiple disciplines. And in a paper I published last year in Germany, I tried to set out in more detail what a probe of exploratory social sciences would be; what it would look like for the universities to have significant interdisciplinary teams working on the design options of a zero carbon economy or a radically transformed mental health system. And that's what I hope universities could do. At the moment they have almost no role in this and it’s incredible in a way. There's so much brain power in universities, and they don't play an active role. JPPE What would it take for them to do that? Mulgan Leadership. Money. You have to have a debate, you have to believe there's a problem. People at universities acknowledge there is a problem needing to be solved. So one of my purposes is at least a debate about that. And then political parties. I mean, the political parties in much the world have rather atrophied, hollowed out, hardened. And often it's the new political parties who are more creative than the old ones, which dominate your country and my country and some others. But if you were inventing a political party now, it would probably have much more of its core purpose being to organize a dialogue with the public about options for the future, about ideas. Instead, they tend to be captured by interest groups. They just work on winning elections or their money goes into election fighting rather than thinking. They’ve lost the capability of having broad open dialogues as opposed to campaigning, and so on. And it's interesting. Some of the newer parties have experimented with much more interesting methods of social dialogue like the Five Star Movement in Italy, Podemos in Spain, and there are quite a few others. I wouldn't say they've got there. But a political party which aspires to run a country should be owning part of this conversation about the options for the future. I think cities can do it. Good mayors often do have the resources to bring the whole of a city into a discussion about its physical future. So for example, just now we've just finished a really interesting session with a group of cities. A project I coordinate looks at what can be done over the next five or 10 years for cities to really prioritize population level mental health. And that's something which, you know, much of the public thinks is kind of obvious, that they should be doing that. And yet, politics lags far behind and nearly all the money is still in physical health, and hospitals and things like that. And very few political parties would feel comfortable actually even talking about mental health as a priority. They’re stuck in an anachronistic way of seeing the world. JPPE When did you first become invested in the power of political imagination and creative imagination? And how did you first identify the lack of the imagination that you see now? Mulgan I don't know, I suppose in different ways I’d probably be part of this. I've had a career which has partly been working in governments top-down, and I was part of some quite good exercises of political leaders trying to spark this. So Tony Blair, who has both strengths and weaknesses, but did at various times try to encourage big public conversations about the future and future priorities. I worked for an Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, who did a huge exercise, getting the whole country thinking 15, 20 years ahead on climate change and pensions and water, and then bringing 1000 people into parliament to talk about the results. So I have seen how good leaders can do this from the top down. And from the bottom up, lots of grassroots organizations, social innovation projects, I've automatically tried to think radically about the future. But I guess since the financial crisis in particular, I think horizons have shrunk right in amongst leaders, but also amongst NGOs, social movement organizations, they'd be more in case of trying to survive. And that's happened alongside this growing sense of imminent ecological catastrophe. And these have all contributed to squeezing out the capacity to imagine radically. JPPE So does it require different methods of funding so they can move past survival mode? Mulgan I think there's certainly a big role for philanthropy. Your country has enormous amounts of spare money in philanthropy, but almost none of it goes into this. There are some good reasons for that, obviously, philanthropy tends to come from the beneficiaries of the old system, so they're never likely to be very radical in challenging it. I still think a little bit more effort on the part of the Fords and Rockefellers and Hewletts would have paid off because this isn't very expensive. But who else is going to create the space for people to think, to look ahead, to range a bit more widely? And I’ve spent most of my life on much more short term practical, pragmatic problem solving. But we all need some sense of the bigger picture, what that's leading towards, to help make sense of the actions in the present. And that's what's missing. And I would say in the US, politics, philanthropy, and higher education have all essentially failed their societal role in that respect. JPPE So as you said, it requires opening the debate so that people know that there's a problem. What are the steps after that? Mulgan Well then I think it's about organizing and funding and orchestrating the more detailed work, which needs to be done. And I do use the analogy with art or film or writing. Everyone can take part in it a little bit. We can all make our movies on Tiktok and so on. But actually, if you want really good films, it's actually quite hard, it's quite skilled, it's quite professional. It requires quite a lot of people. Or for a good Netflix TV series. And it’s the same for social imagination. You can start off with sparks and some of it can be very open and participatory. But if you are going to do a detailed thinking through how to regulate or organize a netzero economy that requires a highly specialized knowledge, interrogation, and argument, and so on. That's what universities should be doing. I work with a lot of governments around the world, you know, 10 to 15 at any one point. And if they're looking at a new policy area, you sort of assume there must be off the shelf, lots of lots of options, which they could consider. Let's say a new kind of universal basic income is one, which I've been a bit involved in, and is much talked about in much of the world. And there are quite a lot of pilots now of UBIs, but the quality of the work of it is still very thin. And if you are a government wanting to introduce one, actually, you will have to do most of the work designing it, thinking through its impact. There is not a menu of options you can draw down. And the same is true with almost any field. Let's say bringing the circular economy principles to fashion or whatever, the legwork and hard labor has not been done to prepare the options for others to draw on. And this is also true at a global level. The UN was set up in the 1940s, benefitting from lots of hard work, which had been done imagining what a UN could be in the dark years of the 30s. I've been doing work recently on what could be new global governance arrangements, if conditions became more favorable. There's nothing out there in terms of well thought through options. There's lots of good description, lots of good analysis, lots of good critique of all that's wrong with the UN. But it's as if the people who are the experts feel too nervous to ever put their names to a proposal, which someone else might shoot down. So we have this sort of bizarre deficit of looking ahead, whereas in other fields, like in sciences, or the life sciences or AI, lots of people are paid to think speculatively to design possible new genomic treatments or new algorithms. And the imbalance between a world of science and tech, which was too good looking ahead, and the world of the social and the political, which has given up on it, I think it's really become a serious problem.

Oliver Hicks The Necessity of Perspective: A Nietzschean Critique of Historical Materialism and Political Meta-Narratives Oliver Hicks Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche both contributed immensely to 19th century political philosophy and laid the foundation for countless revisions, interpretations, and new theories throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. While they share a common goal of exposing hidden, socially constructed restraints in order to liberate the individual, they differ sharply on both the nature of those societal restraints and what liberation actually looks like. I present these thinkers as foils: Marx guided by a normative approach that sees liberation as an inevitable conclusion of current social conditions, and Nietzsche describing liberation as necessary but ultimately ambiguous. Ultimately, I assert that this ambiguity is a necessary acceptance of true liberation that ought to humble any assertion of truth, morality, or rationality. I. Introduction But everything is fair It’s a paradox we call reality So keepin’ it real will make you A casualty of abnormal normality - Talib Kweli, Respiration (1) The above remarks are from a verse of the 2002 duet album Mos Def and Talib Kweli Are Black Star , in which artist Talib Kweli describes his inner-city New York landscape. The broader context of the song speaks to the harsh and often hopeless reality of a low-income Black experience. It begins with a dialogue from the seminal hip hop documentary Style Wars , in which a New York graffiti artist describes a recent work titled “Crime in the City.” The work implicitly asks the audience whether “crime” is all his city has to offer or if it is simply what one chooses to see when examining the New York streets. Kweli contributes his own perspective in the aforementioned line, in which he calls his reality a “paradox” where everything in this world is fair. Thus, nothing can be unfair with the proper perspective, lending itself to the paradox of never being able to pin down what is truly right or wrong. Kweli speaks of inter-gang violence, where young Black men are pitted against each other for the scarce resources present in their desolate environment. Yes, success is good, but at what cost to the broader struggle of their community? The second part of his stanza questions the efforts of anyone in this world to be truly “real,” as Kweli plays with a definition that is so integral to one’s identity in the hip hop community. Hip hop and rap are built around delivering viscerally authentic, or “real,” stories, usually about struggle, persecution, and ultimately perseverance against an adverse world. Thus, “keeping it real” becomes the idealized form of living as opposed to whitewashed versions of struggle or falsified stories for commercial success. But what does “realness” actually entail, and is it captured by this idealization? Kweli would answer that it is less objective than it might seem. Any attempt at authenticity is undermined by another perspective, and thus the vanity that accompanies an allegedly “real” individual instead makes them a casualty: they are not truly real, authentic, nor honest versions of themselves, but rather they are only “real” by an externally defined perspective, one that society wants for them. Kweli is inverting a pillar of rap culture by arguing that what is deemed true “realness” by people in the city is actually defined by the same subjective standards used to define its opposite. Put simply, the inner-city stories to which Kweli is referring are authentic as defined by what is expected of the storytellers: to be hard, cold-blooded, and insensitive to the harsh world around them. But does this produce genuine versions of who these individuals could be given different circumstances? Or are they simply buying into the “abnormal normality,” one defined by social constructs that is ultimately abnormal to whatever their “real” selves might be? The question of authenticity amidst veiling social norms is one discussed by a variety of modern political theorists, all seeking to understand who we are in order to understand who we ought to be—and how we ought to be governed. From descriptions of a primordial state of nature proposed by early contract theorists to Karl Marx’s world-encompassing system of historical materialism, these modern thinkers attempt to sketch out the natural, psychological, and social undercurrents of our behavior. Though Marx was the first to usher in a hermeneutics of suspicion by critiquing existing philosophical norms in search of hidden truths, he did so with the intent of outlining his own normative conception of humanity's goal (or his own end point on the linear timeline that is progress): communism. Decades later, Friedrich Nietzsche claimed “we are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge” in his preface to On the Genealogy of Morals. He proposed a philosophy that sought to interrogate reigning value systems that presented themselves as natural or self-evident without replacing them with his own explicit normative solution (2). Nietzsche recognized the limitations of philosophical inquiry while operating within the system he was critiquing. Humans lack a basic sense of what is good as enshrined in the concept of natural law or historical materialism because our entire system of moral values is a product of changing power dynamics. More importantly, we cannot see any semblance of truth unless we shed these artificial moral constructs. The relativity inherent in our ability to make judgements of ourselves and fellow citizens ultimately moves the goalposts of political theory itself: we are no longer moving toward that ideal form with which Plato was so obsessed because we cannot accurately define it. There are no political meta-narratives, no slate of criteria with which we can accurately and objectively identify our deepest human nature—to do so would be to dismiss far too many factors and make far too many assumptions. Rather, we must instead work to interrogate our unwavering beliefs in perceived truths or ideal forms in order to understand how we might escape them as they arise. As shown by Talib Kweli in his aforementioned lyrics, the inability to shed the social, moral, and ethical constructs that surround a particular Black experience raises questions regarding the obscuration of truth and the need for a variety of perspectives. Using Nietzsche’s skepticism of philosophy and morality as a foil for Marx’s historical materialism, I will draw on a number of their works to discuss the validity of any proposed political meta-narrative. First, I will present a brief model for viewing history as forward-facing in the pursuit of a realized ideal form, courtesy of Marx. Then, I will use Nietzsche to reject the notion of an ideal form and instead emphasize the need for perspective to understand any type of truth, political or otherwise, in order to escape the social constructs that mystify this truth and enslave us to normative ideals. II. Historical Progress as Forward-Facing: Marx’s Determinism Marx famously remarked at the beginning of The Communist Manifesto that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”(3). More importantly, however, was the history that Marx was proposing henceforth. Communism was not just a prescription for the ills of capitalism, but a prediction of the inevitable collapse of the market economy itself: the contradictions intrinsic to capitalist function would ultimately lead to its own demise. Communism would simply be the final and best option for a post-revolutionary society. In this way, Marx lays a deterministic view of human progress. If humanity keeps moving forward as is, we will reach an inflection point; if we actively work to deconstruct the status quo, we will reach that same inflection point sooner. Though bleak, this notion of progress posits its own normative assumption that society is moving forward : ideology has simply masked antagonistic class divides while capitalism exploits them, but we will inevitably overcome this stain on history to usher in a new and better world. This deterministic presentation of history, or historical materialism, is one of Marx’s greatest contributions to political philosophy. Using this dialectical approach, Marx identified two main forces that drive historical change: the division of classes and the division of labor. The evolution of class systems is best articulated in the first section of the Manifesto , where Marx focuses primarily on Europe’s transition from feudal to modern societies, namely bourgeois societies. Feudal societies were composed of complex hierarchies: feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs, and more. Among these classes existed a constant dynamic of oppression, wherein higher classes dominated subordinate ones as defined by the material conditions of each (14). Centuries of global exploration, however, produced ever-expanding markets and ever-increasing demand that revolutionized the modes of production and condensed class antagonisms into Marx’s binary: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. This defined the “Modern Industry” that Marx witnessed in the 19th century, wherein “the modern bourgeoisie is itself a product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange” (5). Underlying this series of class revolutions are developments in the division of labor: first in tribal communities, then ancient communes, feudal states, commercial states, and finally the capitalist state of the bourgeoisie. The division of labor reflects both the growth of the productive capacities of these communities as well as the growth of divided interests among individuals. For example, Marx argues that the division of labor within a nation first leads to the “separation of industrial and commercial from agricultural labor, hence to the separation of town and country… [then] to the separation of commercial from industrial labor” and so on (6). Occurring simultaneously are infinitesimal divisions within these branches “among the individuals cooperating in definite kinds of labor” (7). Ultimately, Marx places the modern industrial state, with all of its complex and specialized divisions, on an historical timeline that inevitably moves toward the maximization of its productive capacities since it is constantly in competition with similarly structured nations. This maximization, however, along with its own internal contradictions, begets its own destruction. The consolidation of “scattered private property” into the consolidation of “capitalistic private property” in the hands of an increasingly smaller elite becomes too heavy to support itself, and the fetters that confine the socialization of labor for exploitation ironically lead to the organization of a massive, oppressed class that revolts against their slave-wage masters (8). This revolution, Marx argues, is a smoother transition than the original consolidation of private property via the socialization of labor, since the latter is the “expropriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers,” but the former is the “expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people” (9). However, the light at the end of this tunnel that is capitalism and the driving force behind this expropriation of the few by the many is Marx’s concept of “species-being.” As human beings, Marx considers our most basic and fundamental essence to be our drive to engage in productive activity; it is our “working-up of the objective world,” in which “[man] duplicates himself not only, as in consciousness, intellectually, but also actively, in reality, and therefore he contemplates himself in a world that he has created” (10). This creative process, when done freely, consciously, and socially, is what separates us from animals and satisfies our life purpose: we choose what to make and when to make it in order to survive. Capitalism disrupts this process by commodifying labor and subsequently alienating the laborer first from their product, second from their process, third from themselves, and finally from each other (11). As a result, the worker becomes antagonistic to the entire system of private property: they are resentful of the bourgeois capitalist, suspicious of their fellow worker, and disillusioned with themselves, all because of alienation from their species-being. The rediscovery of our species-being is the natural epilogue to the implosion of capitalism. And yet, this conclusion relies on Marx’s own crypto-normativity. Like the early contract theorists who came far before him, Marx is simply making his own normative assumption regarding human nature: we live to create the world around us, and are only satisfied by seeing ourselves in that world. One could argue that the exploitation of this process is a violation of a Marxist natural law, and that a communist revolution is a means of retributive justice. As noble as it may be to argue that communism is the inevitable end point of a history structured by material conditions, Marx’s theory is limited by its own dogmatic assumptions. However, he was not alone in proposing human history as a deterministic teleology. Marx built his theory off the critique of Hegel, who argued a similar conception of history driven by conflicts in ideas rather than material conditions. Adam Smith falls into this same category, emphasizing the ability to improve society through the accelerating efficiency of mutually beneficial economic transactions and production (he even titled his magnum opus The Wealth of Nations —“Nations” being plural to suggest collective benefit in pursuing capitalistic ends). Immanuel Kant believed in the ability of individual societies to develop the faculties of humankind over time, leading again to the upward trajectory of progress and the inevitable achievement of our full potential. However, each of these thinkers suffer from the same flaw: they boldly claim to know the end stage of humanity and the final form to which political philosophy strives while being limited by their own historical context and intellectual horizons. III. Rejection of the Pure Form: Nietzsche’s Response Though his work is filled with a multitude of social and moral critiques, Nietzsche claimed that “the worst, most durable, and most dangerous of all errors so far was… Plato’s invention of the pure spirit and good as such” (12). Consistent with Nietzsche’s long-standing critique of religion was his belief that Christianity had become “Platonism for ‘the people’” by providing an ideal form to which, by restricting one’s indulgences and taking leaps of faith, one could strive and achieve a good moral life. To Nietzsche, however, faith extends far beyond theology: it applies to every corner of philosophy and knowledge. Philosophers’ pursuits of knowledge are done in vain, since each proposes an alleged “cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic” that is, in reality, simply “an assumption, a hunch, indeed a kind of ‘inspiration’... that they defend with reasons they have sought after the fact” (13). A particularly heinous example of this prejudice is Kant’s “discovery” of a new human faculty, one that allowed him to argue man’s capacity to make synthetic judgements a priori . Nietzsche argues this discovery was in fact not a discovery at all, but a lazy leap of faith that compelled him to answer his own questions “by virtue of a faculty” and essentially invent his own causa sui (14). Consequently, Nietzsche argues that we ought to approach knowledge with suspicion. By questioning the value of truth and certainty in the face of their opposites, Nietzsche rejects the idea of proposing a fully contained and explanatory system for any type of knowledge, since “in the philosopher… there is nothing whatever that is impersonal; and above all, his morality bears decided and decisive witness to who he is ” (15). Dogmatic philosophy and its ideal forms, therefore, are less interesting to Nietzsche than the necessity of our belief in them. Rather than ask what our beliefs say, a better question to pose is what these beliefs say about us . By accusing all philosophy of being dogmatic, Nietzsche is drawing attention to the philosophical limitations of any single individual. As such, a new generation of philosophers ought to embrace “the dangerous ‘maybe’ in every sense,” instead putting their faith in possibilities rather than certainties (16). To recognize one’s own inability to offer an all-encompassing system for the world is to endorse the necessity of perspective, the variety of which is the only way to understand the true nature of anything. To deny this necessity, which Nietzsche calls “the basic condition of all life,” is to instead continue the pursuit of that Platonic good spirit or ideal form (17). Rather than working to defend knowledge as we come to understand it, philosophers should be constantly interrogating knowledge in an attempt to free themselves from their own prejudices. In doing so, one rejects the idea of truth as purely objective and “knows how to employ a variety of perspectives and affective interpretations in the service of knowledge” (18). Nietzsche draws attention to the fact that there is no view from nowhere: “there is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective ‘knowing’; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our ‘concept’ of this thing, our ‘objectivity,’ be” (19). Put differently, one can liken Nietzsche’s concept of truth to a statue: any singular view of the statue only provides a singular picture of it. The view from the front of the statue will give a completely different image than that from the back, assuming we could even agree upon which is front and back in the first place. A plethora of angles upon which to view the statue, therefore, is necessary to truly understand it since any individual view is inherently limited by their position relative to the object. “Free spirits,” then, unlike those who throughout history have proposed their singular view of the statue as correct, are that new generation of individuals who constantly question their own prejudices and adopt new angles (20). In this way, one could argue that Nietzsche rejects the concept of Truth altogether, and perspectivism becomes a practical tool for understanding the world around us as we develop our own concepts of knowledge. At the very least, Nietzsche seems to suggest that regardless of the existence of any Truth, we cannot even begin to understand Truth unless we prioritize an ensemble of perspectives over any individual one. In doing so, we can use the former to prevent us from being limited by the latter. Once again, Nietzsche’s perspectivism has less to do with its relationship to truth (capital-T or otherwise) and more to do with its relationship to the individual and their inherently limited perspective. This concept of agency and power in the face of social restraints is consistent throughout Nietzsche’s works, and one of the most obvious ties is in his critique of Christianity. Nietzsche makes explicit his disdain for the church in The Genealogy of Morals by arguing that the church itself pioneered a type of slave morality that inherently limits the capability of man by suppressing his instincts. Throughout history, however, this morality was used strategically by the weak (namely priests) to seize some semblance of power from the nobility, whose morality is entirely self-affirming, contemptible towards things outside itself, and emphasizes power over restraint (21). Not unlike Talib Kweli’s description of his catch-22 lifestyle as a gangster in inner-city New York, Nietzsche asks us to consider a bird of prey and a lamb: “there is nothing strange about the fact that lambs bear a grudge towards large birds of prey—but that is no reason to blame the large birds of prey for carrying off the little lambs” (22). In fact, he continues, the lambs would be perfectly well off to regard anything like a bird of prey as evil, since it is the source of violence against them; the bird of prey, however, might view this “somewhat derisively, and will perhaps say: ‘we don’t bear any grudge at all towards these good lambs, in fact we love them, nothing is tastier than a tender lamb” (23). The perspective that is intrinsic to these qualitative judgements of good and evil both undermines their objectivity and highlights a cornerstone of Nietzsche’s philosophy: will-to-power. With regard to Marx, Nietzsche dismisses one of his most basic assumptions using this concept of the will-to-power: … life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation; —but why should one for ever use precisely these words on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped? Even the organization within which, as was previously supposed, the individuals treat each other as equal—it takes place in every healthy aristocracy—must itself, if it be a living and not a dying organization, do all that towards other bodies, which the individuals within it refrain from doing to each other: it will have to be the incarnated Will to Power, it will endeavor to grow, to gain ground, attract to itself and acquire ascendency—not owing to any morality or immorality, but because it lives, and because life is precisely Will to Power… “Exploitation” does not belong to a depraved, or imperfect and primitive society: it belongs to the nature of the living being as a primary organic function; it is a consequence of the intrinsic Will to Power, which is precisely the Will to Life (24). By arguing that exploitation is not inherently evil, it is easy to dismiss Nietzsche as equally normative with different assumptions. The difference, however, is that Nietzsche’s critique does not lead him to propose a political solution or theorize a political meta-narrative meant to end suffering as he sees it, for that would be replacing one restraining superstructure with another. Will-to-power, according to Nietzsche, is not a facet of human nature that must be complemented by politics nor economics: the will-to-power is a means to finding that solution. It is the unaffected and unfettered ability of truly “free spirits” to escape the confines of “good” and “evil” themselves. As discussed above, no philosopher is truly impartial nor void of their own prejudices, and political meta-narratives such as Marx’s unwavering rejection of exploitation cannot exist to serve their purpose without accepting some degree of dogmatic assumptions. Nietzsche himself is no exception, which is why he hypothesizes these free spirits rather than identifying with them. But continuing to engage in philosophy, particularly political philosophy, without interrogating these assumptions and prejudices is distracting; we cannot begin to construct new worlds until we have deconstructed old ones. Earlier in Nietzsche’s career, we see a similar critique of Christian morals in a different context. In On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life , Nietzsche argues that Christianity seeks to define an end point for humanity by predicting “an end to life on earth… and [condemning] the living to live in the fifth act of the tragedy” (25). By limiting the scope and potential of humanity, Christianity restrains the true potential of the strong and capable, or those who might have the potential to transcend the social or moral limitations they have inherited. Moreover, Nietzsche argues that “Christianity would like to [destroy] every culture which incites to striving further and takes for its motto memento vivere … [it] rejects with a shrug of the shoulders everything in the process of becoming, and spreads over it the feeling of being very late arrivals and epigoni” (26). Though Marx’s calls to action for the proletarian revolution seem counterintuitive to a feeling of being “late arrivals” or “epigoni,” Nietzsche’s critique holds true with regard to Marxism’s crypto-normative, deterministic approach to social organization. Marx provides an all-encompassing system that is meant to both explain and predict the movement of human progress, which owes itself entirely to factors and conditions that are beyond the individual. In a way, this parallels Nietzsche’s diagnosis that we are products of our society to a degree much higher than we realize. The difference, however, lies in their prognosis. Marx believed that the course of these societal effects, namely material conditions, would inevitably lead to the implosion of the status quo that, if properly prepared for, could usher in his optimal form of social organization. Individuals, therefore, might not be “late arrivals” nor “epigoni,” though Marx certainly seems to think that these individuals are entirely at the behest of their own material conditions. The asymmetrical influence that these material conditions have on us—the proletariat being exploited by these material conditions and the bourgeoisie benefitting from them—leads Marx to draw moral conclusions: exploitation is bad and satisfaction of species-being is good . What Marx fails to do is recognize that he is a product of his own material conditions, and so are his theory and determinations of “good” and “bad.” The quasi-utopian society that is only permitted by the revolution is itself borrowing descriptions from the idealized lifestyles of the bourgeoisie. In The German Ideology , Marx suggests that man in a capitalist society is “a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his livelihood,” which is true for most working-class individuals. He then adds that in a communist society that same man may “hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as [he has] a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic” (27). The ability to actively satisfy one’s species-being, or to do as one pleases without the alienating incentives required by capitalism, is simply the universalization of bourgeois life—it’s not hard to imagine that these hypothesized jacks-of-all-trades did exist in 19th century Europe, they just happened to be the elite. He who can labor (or engage in any productive activity) without being defined by that labor is a privilege of the ruling class—and one that Marx identifies as good and therefore preferable. In other words, a communist society destroys class conflicts by creating the conditions of one class for all classes. This is not to say that Marx is proposing an egalitarian utopia as his positive project, since he does believe in a relatively heterogeneous society living by the mantra “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”(28). Moreover, the concept of class itself is theorized to dissolve post-revolution, but this does not mean that Marx’s ideal conditions for all human beings aren’t plagiarizing the conditions of a single class as observed pre-revolution. When workers own the means of production rather than capitalists, they will have the resources, leisure time, and material conditions to produce in accordance with their species-being and satisfy Marx’s normatively defined purpose (or achieve his own concept of “good”). Like Kant, Marx is creating his own causa sui . A Nietzschean contribution to Marxism might argue, then, that capitalism must be deconstructed in the same way that we might deconstruct Christian morality: not with the intent of replacing these superstructures with our own normative solution, but by interrogating them to essentially see where it takes us. Again, the elusive free spirit is not an indirect, self-congratulatory description of the value of Nietzsche’s own theories, nor is it a pessimistic and nihilistic acceptance that nothing truly matters. Rather, it is a new theory in itself—one that considers the possibilities of a new generation of entirely self-affirming thinkers stripped of their prejudices and social restraints. IV. Conclusion Marx’s ultimate conclusion is that a history of society determined by material conditions leaves us no choice but to reject our current modes of production in favor of a society that complements the satisfaction of our species-being. If we don’t, then capitalism will destroy itself anyway. Marx certainly presents himself as a revolutionary determined to unite the working men of all countries toward a common purpose, but it’s difficult to reconcile this call for individual agency toward a collective purpose with the material conditions that seem to govern us regardless of that agency. Marx’s own logic is, again, itself determined by the superstructures he seeks to identify; he is no more or less a product of them than any of the characters in his theory. The vain assertion of a universal truth that is species-being simply uses his own normative definition of what is good by borrowing language from those who have already determined what is good: the bourgeoisie. Consequently, we see his proposed political meta-narrative, that contradictory principles of capitalism inevitably lead to the realization of human emancipation, is at best incomplete and at worst deeply flawed. In the case of the former, we can at least use Marx’s critique of capital to understand how material conditions have shaped our world views: they can determine incentives, exploit workers based on factors beyond their immediate control, or assign value to both people and commodities. These are invaluable critiques that have wide-ranging implications, but they are nowhere near close enough to providing an all-encompassing system of human behavior. In the case of the latter, however, we are met with the dangerous hubris of which Nietzsche is so suspicious. The true nature of anything can only be understood by simultaneously interrogating our prejudices and assumptions while recognizing the need for multiple perspectives. Truth ought to be sought after, but it is extremely elusive and mystified by social constructs, whether they be political, material, moral, sexual, racial, or otherwise. From a postmodernist perspective, Nietzsche was perhaps prodigal. Today, we live in a pluralist world that is constantly challenging the normative assumptions that structure so much of our interconnected lives. Critical race theory has interrogated the fundamental principles of our facially neutral laws; emerging disciplines of queer and feminist studies have reshaped the way we understand and perform our gender and sexuality; successive generations of increasingly agnostic individuals have undermined religiously-grounded social norms to further liberate the arts and create a vibrant pop culture. Social media alone has become one of the greatest conduits for self-expression and has created channels of communication that the world has never before seen. Everything from college campuses to corporate boardrooms have acknowledged the importance of representation and diversity in order to create more inclusive communities. The 21st century is an era of interrogation that requires one to accept a multiplicity of perspectives. Ultimately, it could be said that we are unified by a common obligation to better understand each other. In a way, Marx becomes the casualty to which Talib Kweli is referring in his verse. The idealization of a satisfied species-being is arguably a normality defined by what is expected of human beings in a capitalistic world: to enjoy their work. It is not difficult to imagine that this is actually abnormal, and the entire concept of labor as we understand it could transform or even wither away in the epochs to come due to technology, climate change, or some other unforeseen development. Nietzsche therefore becomes a critical theorist superseding even Marx, for he seeks to critique not just one superstructure but all the superstructures that limit our ability to define for ourselves what is good, bad, evil, true, rational, or authentic. Political philosophy ought to continue elevating the voices that provide these pointed critiques and encourage generations of free spirits as they come. As Kweli might argue, to truly engage in philosophy is to suspect any normality as actually abnormal, and not suffer as a casualty of its misleading assumptions. Rather, we ought to use these suspicions in the service of life and work towards the most ideal form of social organization we can find while recognizing that there is always work to be done. Endnotes 1 Black Star. “Respiration (feat. Common).” Track 11 on Mos Def and Talib Kweli Are Black Star . Rawkus Records, 1998, CD. 2 Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On the Genealogy of Morals.” Essay. In Basic Writings of Nietzsche , translated by Walter Arnold Kaufmann, 451. New York, New York: Modern Library, 1967. 3 Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. “The Communist Manifesto.” Essay. In The Marx-Engels Reader , edited by Robert C. Tucker, 473. New York, New York: Norton, 1978. 4 Ibid, 474. 5 Ibid, 475. 6 Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “The German Ideology.” Essay. In The Marx-Engels Reader , edited by Robert C. Tucker, 150. New York: Norton, 1978. 7 Ibid, 150. 8 Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “Capital, Volume One.” Essay. In The Marx-Engels Reader , edited by Robert C. Tucker, 437. New York, New York: Norton, 1978. 9 Ibid, 438. 10 Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.” Essay. In The Marx-Engels Reader , edited by Robert C. Tucker, 76. New York, New York: Norton, 1978. 11 Ibid, 72-77; Marx describes species-being at length throughout the Manuscripts. 12 Nietzsche, Friedrich. “Beyond Good and Evil.” Essay. In Basic Writings of Nietzsche , translated by Walter Arnold Kaufmann, 193. New York, New York: Modern Library, 1967. 13 Ibid, 202. 14 Ibid, 207-208. 15 Ibid, 204. 16 Ibid, 201. 17 Ibid, 193. 18 Ibid,. 555. 19 Ibid, 555. 20 Ibid, 242-243. 21 Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On the Genealogy of Morals.” Essay. In Basic Writings of Nietzsche , translated by Walter Arnold Kaufmann, 472–479. New York, New York: Modern Library, 1967.; Nietzsche describes his master-slave dichotomy of morality throughout the first essay of his Genealogy , though particularly in sections 10, 11, 12, and 13. 22 Ibid, 480. 23 Ibid, 481. 24 Nietzsche, Friedrich. “Beyond Good and Evil.” Essay. In Basic Writings of Nietzsche , translated by Walter Arnold Kaufmann, 393. New York, New York: Modern Library, 1967. 25 Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life . Translated by Peter Preuss. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Co., 1980. 44 26 Ibid, 45. 27 Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “The German Ideology.” Essay. In The Marx-Engels Reader , edited by Robert C. Tucker, 160. New York: Norton, 1978. 28 Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “Critique of the Gotha Program.” Essay. In The Marx-Engels Reader , edited by Robert C. Tucker, 531. New York: Norton, 1978. References Black Star. “Respiration.” Track 11 on Mos Def and Talib Kweli Are Black Star . Rawkus Records, 1998, CD. Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On the Genealogy of Morals.” Essay. In Basic Writings of Nietzsche , translated by Walter Arnold Kaufmann, 437–601. New York, New York: Modern Library, 1967. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “The Communist Manifesto.” Essay. In The Marx-Engels Reader , edited by Robert C. Tucker, 469–500. New York, New York: Norton, 1978. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “The German Ideology.” Essay. In The Marx-Engels Reader , edited by Robert C. Tucker, 146–200. New York: Norton, 1978. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “Capital, Volume One.” Essay. In The Marx-Engels Reader , edited by Robert C. Tucker, 294–438. New York, New York: Norton, 1978. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.” Essay. In The Marx-Engels Reader , edited by Robert C. Tucker, 66–125. New York, New York: Norton, 1978. Nietzsche, Friedrich. “Beyond Good and Evil.” Essay. In Basic Writings of Nietzsche , translated by Walter Arnold Kaufmann, 179–435. New York, New York: Modern Library, 1967. Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On the Genealogy of Morals.” Essay. In Basic Writings of Nietzsche , translated by Walter Arnold Kaufmann, 437–601. New York, New York: Modern Library, 1967. Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life . Translated by Peter Preuss. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Co., 1980. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “Critique of the Gotha Program.” Essay. In The Marx-Engels Reader , edited by Robert C. Tucker, 525–542. New York: Norton, 1978. Previous Next

Non-Self Through Time Anita Kukeli Author Hansae Lee Koda Li Nahye Lee Editors Buddhism, like other major religions, has a particular philosophical framework underpinning its teachings. In other words, Buddhism and other religions might be thought of as offering a set of answers to philosophical inquiries, such as questions about moral right and wrong or questions about our position in the universe. The area of philosophical inquiry with which this paper is concerned is the philosophy of self. What does it mean to be a person? Buddhism engages with this debate. Foundational Buddhist thought, or Theravada Buddhism, offers a particular conception of personhood called anatman , or “non-self.” The idea here is that the commonly accepted notion of the self if mistaken; we are not selves. Ordinarily, pre-philosophical reflection on the question of what a person is, one might likely respond that a person it a unified individual entity, such as you or me. Philosophical views depart from this common concept to varying degrees. Some define a person as a human body, comprised of cells and ultimately governed by biological processes. Alternatively, perhaps a person is a mind, constituted most fundamentally by their beliefs and feelings and decisions. Maybe personhood is some mix of the two, or something else entirely. In contrast, the Buddhist conception of personhood rejects the notion of the self as a definable single entity entirely. At first glance, this may seem unacceptable to someone unfamiliar with Buddhist teachings. However, by reproducing the arguments presented in early Buddhist texts, I will show that anatman is on its own a plausible view. I will argue that the real trouble for anatman arises when considered within the broader tradition of Buddhist thought, especially in regard to samsara and karma . Samsara refers to the Buddhist idea of a cycle of rebirth, closely related to karma. Both samsara and karma involve the self persisting from one lifetime to the next. But, if there is no self, how can it persist? Surely, for something to persist through time, that thing must exist. So, it seems that if we accept anatman , and there is no such thing as a self, then we cannot accept samsara or karma. To resolve this tension, there must be a description of this persistence through time that does not require the existence of a self. I will argue that the Buddhist concept of dependent arising accomplishes this, and therefore resolves the tension between anatman on the one hand and samsara and karma on the other. Anatman The argument for anatman derives from the concept of the five aggregates. This is a Buddhist concept that refers to five constitutive parts of a person. The five aggregates are translated various ways, but for the purposes of this paper I will offer them in simple terms. The five aggregates consist of 1) material form, 2) sensation, 3) perception, 4) volitional force, and 5) consciousness. A foundational Buddhist text, the Questions of King Milinda, includes a conversation in which a Buddhist monk named Nagasena purports that the self does not exist. His interlocutor, King Milinda, then asks, what is it that the name Nagesna is denoting? Does it refer to material form? To sensation? He continues through each of the five aggregates, and Nagasena responds that it is none of these (Milinda’s Questions 36). To explain how that may be, he uses an analogy of a chariot. A chariot is not its wheels nor its axle nor its pole, though it is also not an entity separate from these things (37). In this case, the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts. Therefore, the chariot, as an entity, doesn’t exist. Rather, “chariot” is merely a term used to denote a collection of things and nothing more. Similarly, Nagasena’s name is just a useful term referring to the collection of constitutive parts called aggregates, but not to an individual self (34). The self cannot be reduced to any one of the five aggregates, and it is also not an entity separate from them. Indeed, when understood in this way, the self simply doesn’t exist. Samsara Samsara , or the cycle of rebirth, is another foundational Buddhist concept. It posits that when someone dies, they are reborn. This means that each of us have past lives that we don’t remember, from which we died and were reborn. So, we persist through one lifetime into the next. This notion of samsara is closely related to the Buddhist concept of karma , which ascribes a desert component to this cycle. Karma drives the rebirth cycle by attributing the quality of the life into which a person is reborn to the actions of their past lives. If someone commited immoral acts in their past lives, they would face the consequences by being reborn into a hellish miserable life. Conversely, if someone committed good acts, they would be reborn into a happy beautiful life (Sayings 203). This causal explanation between the actions someone undertook in their past lives and circumstances of their current life is what’s referred to as karma . In foundational Buddhist thought, Karma governs the persistence within a person from one lifetime to the next, and thus is related to samsara . The concepts of saṃsāra and karma , hand in hand, appear to be incompatible with anātman . If we grant that no person can point to any of the five aggregates and claim — “That is me!” — but, at the same time, a person is nothing more than those aggregates, we can accept the claim that the self does not exist. That is the structure of the argument presented above by Nagasena. However, accepting that the life a person is living right now is a consequence of a life they lived in the past requires that that person is persisting over time. That is, if we are to correctly say that Anita, for instance, deserves the poor quality of her life because she undertook immoral actions in her past lives, it must be that the Anita experiencing this poor-quality life is the same Anita who undertook those immoral actions. Otherwise, the immoral actions of the past lives couldn’t be attributed to the person who is living the consequentially poor-quality life. So, karma and saṃsāra require persistence. However, if the self doesn’t even exist, surely it cannot have the quality of persisting over time. Persistence necessitates existence. This is the tension that arises with the consideration of anātman in conjunction with saṃsāra ; it seems we cannot accept one without rejecting the other — unless, that is, we have an account of non-self that involves persistence through time. Dependent Arising The concept of non-self can extend through the dimension of time with the inclusion of dependent arising. In another early Buddhist text, the Buddha delineates a series of causal chains. He says, “Conditioned by ignorance there are volitional forces, conditioned by volitional forces there is consciousness, conditioned by consciousness there is mind-and-body, conditioned by mind-and-body there are the six senses…” until he arrives at suffering (Sayings 210-211). This causal chain is called dependent arising. Within this series of states, each caused by an earlier one and causing the next, we find the five aggregates: between volitional forces, consciousness, and mind-and-body. So, the five aggregates we refer to when we speak of the self are themselves just parts within a system that extends beyond them. In this way, the non-self is positioned within a greater system of causal chains. If this understanding is applied to the earlier concepts of saṃsāra and karma , the tension between them and anātman may be resolved. Initially, the idea that there is a cycle of death and rebirth called saṃsāra seems to presuppose the existence of a self, particularly as an individual entity that persists through time. Moreover, the proposition, known as karma , that the conditions of one’s present life are a consequence of past lives ascribes continuity within a self as it undergoes multiple life cycles. It seems to follow from this that one’s past actions result in one’s current experiences, meaning that the person who commits the actions must be the same person who has the current experiences. So, there must be a self that persists. But, if the cycle of rebirth driven by karma is reconsidered through a lens of dependent arising, there is no need to account for the existence of an individual entity called a self. It need not be the case that there is a self who at one point both committed certain actions and is now experiencing the effects. There need not be an individual entity to which these actions are attributed. Rather, there can be certain actions committed and resultant effects being experienced. Indeed, the constitutive parts of a person, the five aggregates, are nothing more than steps within a greater causal chain. By accepting dependent arising, we can understand what was once necessarily the persistence of the self through time as, instead, a causal relationship and no more. Earlier states bring about later states. There is no self. Conclusion By including an account of non-self over time, such as dependent arising, the tensions between saṃsāra and anātman are resolved. The argument for anātman in a given moment, what I’ve referred to as static non-self, derives from the five aggregates. As expressed in the chariot analogy, a person is not any one of the five aggregates and a person is not anything more than them. Therefore, the existence of a unified self is a mere illusion. This is an important claim within Buddhist thought because it is included in a foundational teaching: that clinging to the self is the cause of suffering. This might be enough to motivate letting go of the idea of the self, for the purpose of ending suffering. However, the idea that clinging to the self causes suffering isn’t enough to justify the plausibility of non-self. It must also be consistent with other teachings in Buddhism. Initially, it seems to be incompatible with the teachings of saṃsāra and karma . These teachings seem to necessitate a self that persists through time, because surely it must be the same person who lives through the multiple lives involved in a particular cycle of rebirth driven by their own karma . But, if the self doesn’t exist even for a given moment, how can it exist from one moment to the next? Indeed, it doesn’t. This can be explained through the concept of dependent arising, a dynamic picture of non-self. Through this lens, the five aggregates are placed in a causal chain of events. This way, there can be causal continuity within a person's life — or lives — without there necessarily being a self. Past events cause later events, and so goes the cycle of rebirth. Finally, there is no incompatibility between anatman and the rest of Buddhist teaching, and it can be justifiably accepted as a plausible account. In this manner, dependent arising resolves the tension initially faced between anatman and saṃsāra . References Gethin, Rupert. 2008. Sayings of the Buddha : a selection of suttas from the Pali Nikayas, Oxford world's classics. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press. Gethin, Rupert. 1998. The Foundations of Buddhism. Oxford [England] ; New York: Oxford University Press.

Travis Harper More Than Just a Thought Crime? A Retributivist View of Hate Crime Legislation Travis Harper Most are familiar with the common conception of a hate crime: a violent act that involves some form of animus towards a particular group, usually a protected class. “Hate crimes” are considered to be more morally reprehensible than their counterparts that are not motivated by any particular animus or hatred. Accordingly, different jurisdictions have enacted legislation criminalizing these types of acts, oftentimes associating them with harsher penalties than crimes committed for other reasons. Still, while hate crimes seem like a simple and intuitive concept, the actual statutes that different legislatures enacted to criminalize them tend to vary in their definitions and application. In the United States, for example, anyone who “willfully causes bodily injury to any person... because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin of any person” shall be found guilty of a federal hate crime (1). Germany, however, takes a different approach. While “under German criminal law, ‘politically motivated’ (2) hate crimes do not constitute explicit offenses or give rise automatically to higher sentences,” judges have a wide latitude to take aggravating factors into account when sentencing (3). Germany does , however, have a statute which criminalizes those who “incite hatred against” and “violate the human dignity” of populations or individuals on “account of their belonging to a... national, racial, or religious group or a group defined by their ethnic origin” (4) Clearly, the concept of a hate crime is not as intuitive as it seems to be. Thus, the question remains: What is a “hate crime”? Moral and legal theorists have wrestled with this same question, along with raising other concerns. “Hate crimes” are unique in that their mens rea element, the requisite intent of the perpetrator in order to be found guilty of the crime, typically entails proving some form of hatred or bias. Thus, hate crimes effectively criminalize specific “hateful” mental states. Whether or not a person has committed a hate crime does not depend on their actual physical actions; rather, it depends on their motivations in doing so—whether they did so because of some animus towards their victim or a particular group of people. Naturally, this begs the question: To what extent is this justified? Can we punish offenders for their motivations in committing a crime along with their actions? Heidi Hurd, lawyer and legal theorist, sought to answer questions akin to these in her article, “Why Liberals Should Hate ‘Hate Crime Legislation’.” In doing so, Hurd argues that when “hatred and bias are construed as mens rea elements... they [become] alien to traditional criminal law principles”(5). She also argues that hate crime legislation—at least how it is conceived of today—is unjustifiable. Specifically, Hurd outlines that hate crime legislation has no place within our “act-centered theory of criminal punishment” and “liberal theory of legislation” because of the way it effectively criminalizes “emotional states... [that] constitute standing character traits rather than occurrent mental states (intentions, purposes, choices etc.)” (6). Hurd’s critique is quite comprehensive and forces all advocates for hate crime legislation to ask themselves: is there any justification for hate crime legislation that is in line with a liberal theory of legislation? This is the question that this paper seeks to answer. Through a critical analysis of Hurd’s argument, references to other legal theorists and philosophers, and empirical evidence, I will argue that within a retributivist theory of punishment, hate crime legislation is justifiable and morally accept- able. A retributivist theory of punishment prioritizes proportionality, the principle that the punishment associated with a crime varies based upon the severity of the crime, or how morally reprehensible the crime is, which can be determined by the amount of harm an action causes. I will argue that hate crimes cause more severe harm to the victim than do crimes committed for other reasons. Further, since hate crimes are unique in that they cause harm to both the victim and their community, they constitute both a public and private harm. Thus, not only is it morally acceptable, but rather it is required to make hate crimes distinct within the criminal law with increased punishment compared to crimes that are not committed due to any particular animus. Further, I will argue that hate crime legislation does not merely criminalize mental states or political beliefs; rather it criminalizes the explicit intent to cause increased harm to a specific group of people. This is a standard that any hate crime statute should make abundantly clear. It is worthwhile to clarify what this paper does not seek to address. This paper will not weigh the merits of a retributivist’s conception of punishment against that of a consequentialist; surely, a consequentialist’s justification of hate crime legislation would be vastly different, most likely focusing on the possible benefit that could arise from specifically criminalizing hate crimes. Additionally, the paper will not analyze hate crimes and hate crime legislation from a sociological perspective; rather, it will focus on the moral and philosophical implications that legislators must consider when drafting hate crime legislation. Hurd’s Argument Within her critique of hate crime legislation, Hurd offers two possible arguments in support of making hate crimes distinct within the criminal law, entailing harsh- er punishment. The first of these relies upon a precedent within Anglo-American common law. Specifically, it is not uncommon for those who have “particularly vicious reasons for action” to be more harshly punished (7). For example, some jurisdictions have enhanced punishments for pre-meditated murder, those that deliberately take the life of another. Hurd also highlights the existence of “specific intent crimes,” or “crimes that require defendants to commit prohibited actions with certain further purposes” (8). Burglary, for instance, is an example of a specific intent crime as it requires that someone “must break and enter with some further intention, say to steal, rape, or kill” (9). Hurd posits that neither of these doctrines serve as justifications for hate crime legislation, primarily due to her contention that “hatred” and “bias” are emotional states, not occurrent mental states like intentions. If this is the case, then hate crime legislation is inherently criminalizing mental states, leaving those who support hate crime legislation with two lines of argumentation. Firstly, they might argue that the types of hatred and bias typical to hate crime legislation, contending that, for example, “racial hatred or gender bias is morally worse than greed, jealousy, and revenge” (10), or any other motive for that matter. Secondly, they might further a utilitarian argument, claiming that “hatred and bias are uniquely responsive to criminal sanctions in a way that greed, jealousy and vengeance are not” (11). Both of these arguments, however, violate liberalism in the way that they arbitrarily choose a specific motive to be either considerably more morally reprehensible or responsive to criminal sanctions. I take two main responses to Hurd’s argument. First, I take issue with Hurd’s characterization of hatred and bias when they are construed as mens rea elements; hatred and bias can be considered to be occurrent mental states when they are understood as the intent of the actor to create the increased harms associated with hate crimes, not just the actor’s bigoted views in and of themselves. Second, even if this were the case, and hate crimes did criminalize bigoted views, I argue that considering hatred and bias to be particularly culpable mental states is justified. Hate crimes are considerably more morally reprehensible than crimes committed for other reasons because of the aforementioned increased harm they cause, and they deserve increased punishment accordingly. I will address these two concerns separately. Hate Crimes and Specific Intent Crimes One of the key concerns that Hurd addresses is the extent to which hate crime legislation can be drafted within the bounds of liberalism and Anglo-American Common Law. One of Hurd’s main contentions within her article is that hate crime legislation, at least in the way that it is conceived of today, criminalizes emotions or dispositions, as opposed to occurrent mental states. I argue that this is not the case, because of the fact that hate crime legislation does not and should not criminalize the mere fact that a perpetrator holds a specific belief; rather, it should criminalize their intention to cause specific harms to their victim and the victim’s community at large. Michael Moore, in his work The Moral Worth of Retribution, defines “intentions”—within a retributivist theory of punishment—as “function states whose roles are to mediate between background states of motivation and those (bodily) motion-guid- ing states of volition that are parts of actions” (12). Moore illustrates this distinction through the analogy of a person deciding to get their hair cut. The background state of this action is that they “desire to get a haircut,” their intention is the belief that “if [they] go to the barber shop, [they] will get a haircut” and finally, the “motion-guiding state of volition” is that they indeed make the decision in their mind to “go to that barber shop” (13). Thus, the intention that is relevant in regards to criminal liability is one in which the actor decides on a means to reach a specific goal. Applying this framework to hate crimes, the “emotional states’’ that Hurd references are not the intentions that are legally relevant; rather, they are background states of motivations. They are the deep desires of the actor. The intention , however, is the actor’s decision to act upon their bigoted motivations in order to accomplish a variety of goals, whether that be spreading a message, or intimidating members of the group they are targeting. The intention that is legally relevant is that an actor decided to resort to violence in order to spread their bigoted beliefs. Admittedly, most hate crime statutes do not make clear this distinction. Often, they simply mandate that the perpetrator chose their victim “for reason of” one of their specific identities. Thus, any hate crime statute must be clear in that if someone is to be convicted of a hate crime, then they must have intended to cause some specific harm to a particular community. With this understanding of intentions, the mens rea element of hate crimes does not criminalize an emotional state; rather, it criminalizes a specific intent to cause harm, not just to a person but to a broader community. As I will argue later, these harms are legally relevant because they cause hate crimes to be particularly more morally reprehensible than crimes committed for other reasons. Hurd’s critique, in this case, is mostly doctrinal, but it does carry key moral implications. Even if a hate crime causes considerably more harm, the physical action is not different from crime that is completely devoid of any hatred or bias motivation. Is it reasonable to criminalize someone based on the fact that they have hateful beliefs? Is this a violation of the liberalism that grounds Anglo-American common law? The next section of this paper seeks to answer these questions by discussing the morality of hate crimes. Hate Crime Legislation and the Harm Principle In order to justify the distinction within the criminal law between hate crimes and other crimes—particularly when they tend to carry harsher punishment—we must identify a principle that can aid in determining which actions are crimes, and the extent to which they should be punished, if possible. This principle must have two characteristics: (1) It must align and be consistent with a retributivist theory of punishment by being sufficiently “backward-looking” and (2) it must allow for the differentiation of crimes beyond mere moral intuition— differentiating crimes that are “worse” than others, deserving harsher punishment, while aligning with a liberal theory of punishment. John Rawls has famously characterized this theory as one that emboldens the state to enforce the “right” and not the “good” (14). These two specifications ensure that the justificatory logic underpinning hate crime legislation aligns with traditional Anglo-American common law principles, and falls within the scope of this paper and Hurd’s argument. The first of these specifications naturally flows from the scope of this essay. The principle used to justify any sort of hate crime legislation must be “backward-look- ing” or focused on the act itself. This is in opposition to any sort of principle or justification that is consequentialist or “forward-looking.” A consequentialist “approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question” (15), with the “party” at hand being society as a whole, or even the actor themselves. Clearly, a consequentialist’s justification of hate crime legislation is different than that of a retributivist, which this paper intends to address. The second consideration is directly relevant to Hurd’s argument and, naturally, my critique thereof. One of Hurd’s primary critiques of hate crime legislation is that, if “hate” as a mens rea element is not considered to be an “occurrent mental state,” then hate crime legislation effectively criminalizes emotional states. Further, Hurd argues that criminalizing emotional states shifts from a “liberal theory” to a “perfectionist theory” of criminal law. This “liberal theory” of the criminal law extends from the general theory of Political Liberalism. Specifically, in draft- ing legislation, criminal or otherwise, the “government should be neutral among competing conceptions of the good life” (16). Within a society, there will be multiple conceptions of the good life, and the government should only be emboldened to enforce rights that are the result of an “overlapping consensus” that mediates “among conflicting views” (17). Hatred and bias, when not directly connected to an action, are generally considered to be moral beliefs or character traits—and as Hurd notes, “liberals have long believed that theories that construe certain character traits as virtuous or vicious belong to the province of the Good, rather than the Right” (18). Considering that I intend to argue that hate crimes primarily carry harsher sentences due to their being significantly more morally reprehensible than crimes committed for other reasons, the principle used to justify this distinction must aid us in determining which crimes are indeed “more morally reprehensible” beyond one’s moral intuition which would align with a liberal theory of punishment. It is quite easy and normal to determine what crimes “feel” more morally reprehensible based upon our own individual moral intuitions. Legislators, however, cannot simply draft criminal legislation based upon their own subjective moral intuitions on a case to case basis; that would not be entirely consistent with political liberalism. Any principle that we use in determining which crimes are more morally reprehensible must not only be applicable to hate crimes, but to any crime which is being considered. As Aristotle notes, “all law is universal” and legislators must take into account and legislate based upon “the usual case” (19). Thus, the principle used to justify hate crime legislation must also be one that is universally applicable. The principle that is most fitting is the “harm principle,” or the concept that the only actions that can be considered crimes are those that cause harm to others or the public. The most classic explication of this principle can be found in the work of John Stuart Mill, in which he claims that “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others” (20). Put simply, the government can justify criminalization and punishment, overriding some individual rights, based upon the degree to which one being punished has caused “harm” to others. This principle aligns with the two specifications outlined earlier. The harm principle is sufficiently retributivist; If one were to justify punishment based upon the harm principle they would be focusing on the actions of the individual. Applying the harm principle compels legislators to ask: How much harm did the individual cause in their actions? The answer to this question directly affects whether or not their actions are considered criminal and the extent to which they should be punished. Further, Mill was an ardent liberal, and naturally, the “harm principle” aligns with a liberal theory of punishment. The harm principle works upon the liberal logic that an individual has the right not to be subjected to undue harm. While the harm principle does meet the specifications laid out earlier, “nowhere does [Mill] give an explicit general stipulation” as to what constitutes harm. In order to understand how hate crimes should be considered under the harm principle, we must further define our understanding of “harm” (21). Joel Feinberg, in his work Harm to Others, provides a useful definition of “harm.” Concretely, Feinberg defines it as a “setback to interests” (22) that can relate to an individual or to a wider group of people, where interests are “a miscellaneous collection, [consisting] of all those things which one has a stake” (23). While there are nuisances that could be considered harms—a person’s stock performing poorly, for example, could certainly be understood as a setback to interest—these nuisances only become harms in the legal sense when they are the results of an invasion by others. Further, Feinberg provides that this “invasion” becomes legally relevant if the actor is “in a worse condition than [they] would have otherwise been had the invasion not occurred at all” (24). Take, for example, an instance of a person being physically violent towards another. Physical violence towards another person to which they did not consent would certainly be a setback to the victim’s interests—perhaps to their interests in their own health and wellbeing, especially if they had been injured. Further, they would most definitely be in a worse condition due to the physical “invasion” by the other person. Additionally, harms can also manifest themselves as public or private harms. There are many crimes that most would consider to be harms that do not thwart the interest of one specific person. Take, for instance, those who counterfeit money; they are not harming any one person; rather, they are harming society as a whole, thwarting the interests of society by negatively affecting the economy. Working with this understanding of harm and how it operates within the harm principle, we can begin to analyze hate crimes and the harms that they cause. Subsequently, we can begin to analyze whether or not they are considerably more morally reprehensible, warranting increased punishment. I argue that hate crimes indeed cause significantly more harm because they cause an increased amount of harm to the individual in addition to causing public harm as well. Hate crimes cause increased private harm to their victims given that hate crimes do not just attack a person ; they attack their identity as well, causing a fractured sense of security and identity and leading to a myriad of negative effects, or harms . “Crimes... communicate a message to the victim that they do not count and are not worthy of respect” (25) and once someone becomes the victim of a hate crime, they begin to cope and rationalize why they specifically were targeted. While those who aren’t victims of hate crimes could just cite that they were “at the wrong place at the wrong time,” victims of hate crimes cannot adopt this as a possibility. When one is the victim of a hate crime, they will know that they have been target- ed based upon an aspect of their identity, and this in turn causes their identity to become “central to their internal awareness of why they have been victimized” (26). The unique way in which hate crimes target identity causes a variety of immeasurable harms to victims. They often cite increased sentiments of shame and guilt compared to those that have been victimized for other reasons. Not only that, hate crime victims report increased levels of anxiety and depression compared to those that have been victimized for other reasons. Certainly these negative effects are setbacks to interests as defined by Joel Feinberg. They fracture the victim’s sense of self and cause actual physical ailments, leaving them in a much worse condition than that in which they would have been if they had not been attacked at all, and especially if they had not been victimized because of their identity. Beyond the increased harms that hate crimes cause to their victims, they also cause additional public harm uncharacteristic of crimes committed for other reasons: harm caused to the wider community of the targeted group. While hate crimes are attacks on specific individuals, they are more so “symbolic messages to society about the worthiness of certain groups of people” (27). This message is a signal to minority communities that they are “unequal, unwelcome and undeserving of social respect,” and more pertinently, this message is a threat as well. The message of hate crimes creates a heightened sense of vulnerability and insecurity amongst minority communities that leads to an intense fear of victimization, inhibiting community members from living life without extreme caution. Members of minority communities that have been affected by hate crimes often note that the “fear and anxiety” felt by the victims of hate crimes “spreads to other community members” (28). This can be considered a public harm within the framework of the harm principle that I outlined earlier. The effects that hate crimes cause to minority communities can be defined as a setback to interests; again, it is certainly within our interest to be able to live our lives without fear of persecution or assault. Hate crimes deprive minority communities of their ability to do so. When hate crimes are considered within the framework of the harm principle, it is clear that they are more morally reprehensible. Does this naturally lend itself to the conclusion that they deserve increased punishment? I argue that, within a retributivist theory of punishment, it does lend itself to this conclusion given the principles of proportionality. Within the retributive model proposed by Immanuel Kant, the degree of punishment should adhere to “the principle of equality, by which the pointer of the scale of justice is made to incline no more to the one side than the other” (29). Considering the concept of proportionality within the framework of the harm principle, the degree of punishment for a crime should be proportional to the harm created by the crime. If that is the case, then hate crimes surely warrant increased punishment because of the increased harms that they cause, not only to their direct victims, but also to the communities that they affect. Conclusion This paper sought to provide a justification for hate crime legislation that con- formed to the principles of liberalism and aligned with a retributive theory of punishment. I found that harsher punishment for violent crimes related to hatred or bias towards a specific group can be justified when examined using the harm principle. Because hate crimes cause considerably more harm to their victims and minority communities, they are considerably more morally reprehensible than crimes committed for other reasons. When assessing whether or not these increased harms warrant increased punishment, we can rely on the notion of proportionality —that punishment for a crime should be proportional to the harm it creates. When examined in this way, increasing criminal sanctions for hate crimes is justified. Further, there are a variety of considerations that need to be taken into account when drafting hate crime legislation: specifically, hate crime legislation should be written to construe the mens rea element of the crime to be the intent to cause the increased harms to the individual and the minority community. Hate crimes are intuitively more morally reprehensible. At first we may think that they deserve increased punishment based upon how these crimes make us feel ; however, we should constantly question ourselves, examining whether our gut moral instincts align with the moral doctrines that guide our actions and the criminal law. In this case, hate crimes do indeed deserve increased punishment based upon these moral doctrines. Thus, legislatures intending on criminalizing hate crime legislation, or any crime for that matter, should not only take doctrinal considerations into account, but should also consider the moral justifications for why these actions deserve criminal liability. If this is the case, the law will begin to be much more consistent and comprehensive with the moral doctrines that we have adopted as a society. Endnotes 1 “Hate Crime Acts,” 18 U.S.C § 249 (2009), https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC- prelim-title18-section249&num=0&edition=prelim. 2 According to the German Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection, a “politically motivated” crime includes crimes committed for reasons of the victim’s race, “political opinion, nationality, ethnicity, race, skin color, religion, belief, origin, disability, sexual orientation.” 3 Human Rights Watch, “The State Response to ‘Hate Crimes’ in Germany: A Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper,” Human Rights Watch, December 9, 2011, https://www.hrw.org/news/2011/12/09/state-response-hate-crimes-germany. 4 “Incitement of Masses,” German Criminal Code § 130 (1998), http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_ stgb/englisch_stgb.html#p1241. 5 Heidi Hurd, “Why Liberals Should Hate ‘Hate Crime Legislation,’” Law and Philosophy 20, no. 2 (2001): 216. 6 Hurd, 216. 7 Ibid, 218. 8 Ibid, 218. 9 Ibid, 218. 10 Ibid, 226. 11 Ibid, 226. 12 Michael Moore, The Moral Worth of Retribution (Oxford University Press, 2010), 449. 13 Michael Moore, “The Metaphysics of Basic Acts III: Volitions as the Essential Source of Actions,” in Act and Crime: The Philosophy of Action and Its Implications for Criminal Law (Oxford University Press, 1993), 136–37. 14 John Rawls, Political Liberalism, Expanded Ed., Columbia Classics in Philosophy (Columbia University Press, 2005). 15 Jeremy Bentham, “An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation” (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907), https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/bentham-an-introduction-to-the-principles-of-morals-and-legislation. 16 Michael J. Sandel, “Political Liberalism,” Harvard Law Review 107, no. 7 (1994): 1766. 17 Sandel, 1775. 18 Hurd, 230. 19 Aristotle, “Politics,” trans. Benjamin Jowett, 1994, http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.5.five.html. 20 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (Batoche Books, 1859), 13. 21 D.G. Brown, “The Harm Principle,” in A Companion to Mill, ed. Christopher Macleod and Dale E. Miller (John Wiley & Sons, 2016), 411. 22 Joel Feinberg, Harm to Others, vol. 1, 4 vols. (Oxford University Press, 1984). 23 Feinberg, 1:38. 24 Feinberg, 1:34. 25 Mark Austin Walters, “The Harms of Hate Crime: From Structural Disadvantage to Individual Identity,” in Hate Crime and Restorative Justice (Oxford University Press, 2014), 71. 26 Walters, 73. 27 Mark Austin Walters, 84. 28 Ibid, 84. 29 Morris J. Fish, “An Eye for an Eye: Proportionality as a Moral Principle of Punishment,” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 28, no. 1 (2008): 63. Bibliography Aristotle. “Politics.” Translated by Benjamin Jowett, 1994. http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.5.five.html. Bentham, Jeremy. “An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.” Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907. https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/ben-tham-an- introduction-to-the-principles-of-morals-and-legislation. Brown, D.G. “The Harm Principle.” In A Companion to Mill , edited by Christopher Macleod and Dale E. Miller, 409–24. John Wiley & Sons, 2016. Feinberg, Joel. Harm to Others . Vol. 1. 4 vols. Oxford University Press, 1984. Fish, Morris J. “An Eye for an Eye: Proportionality as a Moral Principle of Punishment.” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 28, no. 1 (2008): 55–71. Hate crime acts, 18 U.S.C § 249 (2009). https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtm- l? req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title18-section249&num=0&edition=pre- lim. Hirsch, Andrew von. “Injury and Exasperation: An Examination of Harm to Others and Offense to Others.” Michigan Law Review 84 (1986): 700–717. Human Rights Watch. “The State Response to ‘Hate Crimes’ in Germany: A Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper.” Human Rights Watch, December 9, 2011. https://www.hrw.org/news/2011/12/09/state-response-hate-crimes-germany. Hurd, Heidi. “Why Liberals Should Hate ‘Hate Crime Legislation.’” Law and Philosophy 20, no. 2 (2001): 215–32. Incitement of masses, German Criminal Code § 130 (1998). http://www.gese-tze-im- internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stgb.html#p1241. Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty . Batoche Books, 1859. Moore, Michael. “The Metaphysics of Basic Acts III: Volitions as the Essential Source of Actions.” In Act and Crime: The Philosophy of Action and Its Implications for Criminal Law , 113–66. Oxford University Press, 1993. Thought Crime 94 ———. The Moral Worth of Retribution . Oxford University Press, 2010. Rawls, John. Political Liberalism . 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Author Name < Back From Sex to Science: The Challenges and Complexity of Consent Matthew Grady I. Abstract Since the beginning of biomedical research on human subjects, the notion of consent has been widely debated and highly contentious. With philosophers and bioethicists focusing on the issue of what constitutes truly informed consent and the proper ethical guidelines for retrieving it, the existing notion of consent in biomedical research fails to fully consider the potentially coercive forces on participants. Consent has also been an issue of import amongst philosophers of sex and feminist scholars. Rallying behind the contemporary idea of a robust version of consent—one that fully encompasses the ways in which agents may be coerced into consenting to a sexual act—these philosophers have argued that societal norms, external pressures, and the nature of consent itself often render consent insufficient to guarantee the moral permissibility of sex. I will argue that these two seemingly distinct concepts of consent in sexual and biomedical spheres face many of the same ethical issues. Borrowing from recent discussions around coercive factors influencing consent in sexual interactions and my own experiences in biomedical research settings, I will draw parallels between these two notions of consent in order to illuminate a more accurate and robust philosophical framework for setting ethical guidelines around obtaining consent in biomedical research settings. II. Introduction As biomedical research has increased exponentially with regard to both enhanced funding for the practice of human-subject experimentation and new research methodologies for promising medical interventions, there is an urgent need for robust ethical guidelines around utilizing human subjects in biomedical research contexts. This paper will focus on the use of human subjects in average biomedical research experiments, which typically recruit and pay individuals to undergo a certain medical procedure, take a specific drug, etc. before approval of the medical intervention for the general population. Across all of the varying perspectives regarding how to best recruit, treat, and compensate human subjects, consent has remained an absolute standard and necessity for conducting ethical biomedical research. While philosophers and bioethicists have contentiously debated over the necessary conditions for obtaining consent, most have widely (if not completely) neglected factors that may wrongfully induce human subjects to consent to biomedical research. Consent has also been a central topic of importance within the philosophy of sex and feminist p hilosophy, yet its development has remained quite distinct from the understanding of consent in the field of biomedical research and subject recruitment. Philosopher and bioethicist Alan Wertheimer has made a connection between the notion of consent in sexual interactions and biomedical research, but my parallels and conclusions will clearly be distinct from his and will primarily focus on developing thoughts inspired by the initial connection made by Quill Kukla in “A Nonideal Theory of Sexual Consent.” In sexual interactions, most philosophers agree that consent is a necessary, but insufficient, element for ensuring the permissibility of sex between p artners. Consent is something to be given freely, and many forces may serve to coerce or influence an individual into granting their consent, thus potentially curtailing the normative goal of “ideal” consent. Traditional discussions of consent are structured around fulfilling the normative goal of obtaining consent that is free from undue influence on one’s agency, autonomy, ability to make rational decisions, etc. Consent, under this view, is either valid or not—anything constraining an agent’s ability to consent automatically invalidates its moral force. Quill Kukla has introduced a “nonideal theory of sexual consent,” which classifies consent as degreed and emphasizes that genuine consent can still be achieved in the presence of potentially coercive factors. Under this conception, agency and autonomy are present in lesser and greater degrees within different sexual interactions, and agents are continually pressured by coercive forces. Thus, consent is not valid or invalid; instead, genuine consent (or robust consent as I will often refer to it) is built when coercive factors are controlled to such a degree that all sexual partners possess sufficient agency to make a fully rational decision to consent. This does not deny our ability to determine whether a sexual act is morally permissible and establish a standard for morally permissible ways to obtain consent. Rather, it allows us to adopt a nuanced view of consent as a nonideal concept, wherein agents can consent under our oft-constrained and coerced statuses. Philosophical inquiries into coercive factors impacting one’s ability to obtain genuine, robust consent in sexual interactions have focused on external pressures, societal norms, and the implications of consent as the dominant framework itself. Yet, bioethicists have neglected this crucial area in their understanding of consent. Much can be gained for our existing notion of consent in biomedical research settings by embracing the approach taken by philosophers of sex. Consent operates in many different facets of life—agreeing to consent forms, consenting to a sexual interaction, consenting to someone entering your home, and many other forms of implicit and explicit acts of consent . However, the nature of consent within sexual interactions and biomedical research settings is distinct from other forms, making them especially morally-laden. Given violations of these kinds of consent are particularly harmful to one’s bodily autonomy, sexual interactions and biomedical research settings are especially deserving of rigid consent guidelines. The genuine robustness of these two forms of consent is also dependent upon the satisfaction of external conditions not always under the control of the agent granting consent (ex. a non-coercive partner in sexual interactions or a biomedical institutional review board that grants approval for a biomedical experiment), opening up the potential for coercive factors to render a certain act morally impermissible. T hese two distinct forms of consent face many of the same ethical issues and should be engaged in a conversation with one another—a conversation that has been neglected thus far. I hope to build a more accurate, encompassing framework in the biomedical sphere by which we can set ethical guidelines for engaging human research subjects in a truly consensual manner based on the progress made by philosophers of sex, like Kukla and others. To conduct this comparative analysis, I will begin by discussing the existing notion of consent within the biomedical research field and detailing the major issues of importance currently debated. I will then proceed to review the ways in which many philosophers of sex have taken a broader approach to defining consent—one that takes into account the coercive factors that may inhibit an agent’s ability to grant consent with full autonomy and agency. I will then draw comparisons b etween these two distinct notions of consent to reveal several coercive factors in biomedical research settings that may render “informed” consent coerced. Finally, I will suggest how we may build a broader philosophical framework to scaffold the agency of human subjects when consenting to potentially dangerous biomedical research experiments. III. The Existing Notion of Consent in Biomedical Research After many instances of harmful treatments being given to vulnerable, often marginalized populations, such as the Tuskegee Syphilis study, bioethicists began to question what truly constitutes informed consent in biomedical research settings. This question has included exploration into both the b est ways to obtain consent, as well as the proper way to interpret the term, “informed.” The p redominant conclusion on how to best define informed consent has overwhelmingly neglected consideration of coercive factors that impact the ability for human subjects to rationally consent to biomedical trials. As will become clear, there are an abundance of underexplored factors that may constrain one’s ability to rationally consent to participate in a biomedical research trial. This paper aims to fill this lacuna in the current understanding of biomedical research consent. There are many interesting debates around the understanding of biomedical consent that will become relevant to my argument later, the first being the therapeutic misconception. This phenomenon occurs quite often in biomedical research settings, where human subjects possess the incorrect belief that they are receiving life-changing or potentially beneficial treatments, despite being told about the potential of receiving a placebo treatment, or the chance that the experimental drug may be ineffective. The implications of the therapeutic misconception for ensuring the genuine nature of a human subject’s consent are vast. Consent hinges upon an agent’s uncoerced ability to make an informed decision, and philosophers of biology have rightfully debated what constitutes truly meeting the informed standard of consent. Can one really be said to have full decision-making agency and possess the needed information to genuinely consent if they wrongly believe, as subjects with the therapeutic misconception do, that they are guaranteed life-saving treatment? This is not to say that consent is in some way unobtainable in biomedical research settings; however, we ought to properly understand the implications of the therapeutic misconception on a subject’s ability to grant their consent in a knowing, informed fashion. In addition to the therapeutic misconception, there is another important debate around whether informed consent requires comprehension in any way. Some argue that full comprehension of what the study entails is the only way to ensure the participant is aware of all of the risks and does not possess the therapeutic misconception. Participants have also been shown to severely misunderstand the actual p rocedures, treatments, etc. they are consenting to, whether that be due to not reading the consent form or not fully understanding the researcher’s explanation of what will occur during the study . By not comprehending both the purpose of the study and the exact particulars involved in it, research subjects may fail to meet the “informed” requirement of informed consent. Regardless of the exact answers to these concerns, it is clear that the current discourse surrounding biomedical consent has yet to satisfactorily explore the intricacies of the coercive factors impacting consent in medical experiments. Participants may be hindered in their ability to grant genuine, uncoerced consent when, as research shows is often the case, they do not understand the purpose or specifics of the research study to which they are consenting. In a way, participants in many biomedical studies consent to a version of the study that does not carry the significant risks of harm they take on when consenting—is this morally permissible? How can we ensure coercive factors, like the therapeutic misconception, do not wrongly influence a human subject to consent to a potentially dangerous experiment? These ethical issues debated within the philosophy of biology can be b etter answered with a revised, robust version of consent—one which thoroughly examines and addresses the coercive factors that unduly encourage someone to grant consent without b eing truly informed and open to participating. IV. Moving Beyond Mere Consent: Philosophy of Sex While consent works to p reserve the agency of a sexual partner, the vast majority of philosophers agree that consent is necessary for sex to be morally permissible, not sufficient. When consenting to a sexual act, a person is utilizing their agency and autonomy—their capacity to make free and independent decisions to meet their own ends—to make a rational choice, so consent both contributes to and draws from one’s agency. We now recognize the ability of rational agents to utilize their agency to consent to sexual acts that may still be morally problematic, whether that consists of morally dubious sexual actions or acts obtained with a coerced notion of consent. Given the importance of sexual consent, we need an understanding of it that can account for any and all factors that may coerce a sexual partner into granting consent when they otherwise would not have. Philosophers have addressed the issue of consensual sex that may be coerced in a variety of fashions. Some feminist scholars, like Catharine MacKinnon, have taken a radical approach, claiming that no consent is truly valid under heteronormative structures. Their understandings of consent highlight the ways in which external societal conditions may render consent insufficient if they constrain one’s options to the point where consent becomes obligatory, rather than freely given. Nicola Gavey provides a compelling account of how heteronormative , oppressive structures may render one’s consent involuntary or obligatory in sexual situations because of societal conditions pressuring women. Women sometimes feel obligated to consent to unwanted sexual advances because of the heteronormative forces that pressure them to enter a subservient, diminutive role within sexual interactions. Other philosophers take a different approach to consent by illuminating varying ways in which traditional consent is not sufficient to guarantee a good moral standard for sex. Power dynamics, a misunderstanding of what will actually take place during sex, the offer of money, socialized b ehaviors, and societal pressures are all examples of coercive factors that may encourage one to say yes, even when one did not originally intend to. A person may not be able to fully, rationally consent to a sexual act if pressured by these sorts of coercive factors. Philosophers operating with this lens focus less on making a valid versus invalid distinction of consent and instead emphasize the way consent can be constrained or limited by oppressive structures and other coercive forces. The moral permissibility of a sexual act depends on the agency and autonomy possessed by all of the sexual partners consenting, which may be constrained by coercive factors. By emphasizing the coercive factors outside of direct threats from a partner that may constrain one’s genuine consent, feminist philosophers have been able to build a more robust understanding of consent—one that accounts for the coercive factors that may wrongfully influence one to consent to a sexual act. To summarize all of this into a more digestible framework, I find Quill Kukla’s non-ideal theory of consent to be particularly illuminating. Essentially, under Kukla’s perspective, consent is a “nonideal concept,” where virtually no sex will turn out to be consensual if consent requires the full autonomy of its participants. Their framework allows for the permissibility of sex and obtaining consent even when coercive forces are present; all agents are constrained in different ways, by different power relations, as a result of different identities, and that does not fully invalidate our ability to consent. Instead, to ensure one’s consent is genuine in the presence of common coercive factors, Kukla argues we must “scaffold” consent by “[being] sensitive to the limits of and possibilities for agency and consent in a given context and [adjusting] accordingly,” to ensure a partner possesses agency and autonomy. Scaffolding can be accomplished socially or interpersonally, where practices, environments, and relationships can help to enable a sexual partner’s agency. Kukla uses the example of a retirement facility embracing guidelines, policies, and management that allow its patients to have sex in such a way that does not threaten their ability to participate safely or diminish their own agency in pursuing sexual relationships. On the interpersonal level, agents can also aid in scaffolding their sexual partner’s (or partners’) agency and autonomy by ensuring their partner feels the, “ability to exit a situation, trust, [and] safety,” among other crucial practices that build and protect one’s ability to genuinely consent. Policies here scaffold consent by examining potential coercive factors and building social practices which are inclusive and protective of sexual agency. Again, philosophers of sex, like Kukla, have explicated external factors, such as power dynamics, money, the traditional, overriding depiction of a woman “giving” consent to a man’s request, and heteronormative structures, that may coerce someone to consent to a sexual act. In identifying these, philosophers can strategically recommend scaffolding structures to ensure the moral permissibility of sexual interactions and to enhance the agency and autonomy of sexual partners. I argue that the bioethicist ought to take on a similar project of identifying coercive factors and scaffolding their designs to preserve agency, autonomy, and genuine consent in biomedical research experiments. This challenge has been neglected thus far, and the current understanding of informed consent fails to fully account for coercive factors; thus, the biomedical research community is in need of a scaffolding strategy to preserve genuine, robust consent. The following section attempts to embrace the approach taken by Kukla and others in developing a more robust theory of consent within biomedical research settings. V. Can Biomedical Research Achieve Genuine, Robust Consent? To curb coercive factors from playing a role in one’s decision to have sex, Kukla proposes a more robust, nonideal theory of consent, which works to scaffold protections for an individual’s autonomy in the process of granting consent. Kukla’s framework understands that agents are constantly influenced by external, coercive factors. I argue that we should embrace this approach in the b iomedical research field, which requires a thorough understanding of the implicit and explicit factors that encourage participants to grant consent to medical experiments and treatments. I will now begin to detail four p rimary coercive factors that have been underexplored by philosophers of biology, highlighting the direct parallels that can be found with the coercive factors that impact sexual consent. In drawing these parallels and embracing a more robust understanding of consent, this paper will aim to demonstrate the need for greater encompassing ethical guidelines around biomedical research experiments. A. Compensation: Fair or Coercive? The standard practice for most biomedical research trials is to compensate their human subjects for their participation and time spent completing the study (and any additional costs incurred, medical expenses, inter alia). To recruit enough human subjects for a statistically valid biomedical study, researchers must offer compensation as an inducement to p articipate. Many ethical questions have been explored by philosophers and bioethicists, including how much to pay human subjects, whether payment for certain kinds of research is morally acceptable, and if payment can truly compensate for the serious risks involved in participating in experimental research. However, most have neglected to explore the role money plays as a coercive factor to participate in potentially dangerous research and its impact from a scaffolding perspective. Participating in biomedical research can be a valuable way to earn both active and p assive income, yet money is known to influence the rational decision-making of moral agents. Might someone “consent” to engaging in a biomedical research study that crosses their ethical and/or physical level of comfort in desperation for money? Philosophers of sex have rightly acknowledged that money can serve as an influential and potentially coercive force for consenting to certain actions because an agent may, in an attempt to earn crucial income for themselves, consent to sex in which they would not normally be comfortable engaging. A very similar ethical dilemma arises in the case of biomedical research. Consider this fictional example: an extremely poor woman who struggles to pay for her basic necessities agrees to take a highly experimental drug that could have damaging, long-term side effects. She would not normally endanger her own health in this way, but she is so desperate for passive income that this compensation is too important to pass up. Under the existing notion of informed consent in b iomedical research, this kind of participation would still be considered fully consensual when, clearly, money played a coercive role in her decision. This is not to say that all sexual interactions and all biomedical research settings involving the exchange of cash are coercive (e.g. sex work depends on the presence of money, but is not necessarily coerced), but we ought to pay crucial attention to these areas because of the morally problematic force money can have on obtaining consent. Money has the potential of encouraging and even forcing one into doing things they would not normally be comfortable with, so compensation is especially deserving of ethical guidelines. See Largent, et. al. for a further discussion of the concerns here. Imagine a case where someone decides to consent to a risky biomedical research trial with full comprehension of the risks and particulars involved with the medical study. They choose to accept all of the accompanying risks with participation because the potential compensation is worth their involvement according to a rational assessment by the agent in question. I concede here that this person may not be making a coerced decision to consent—this person, depending on the background circumstances and personal costs, may be choosing to utilize their agency to make a rational decision to pursue compensation. But, it is equally important for research designers to ask, ‘If this subject were in a greater position of agency and authority, would they still be comfortable with making the same decision?’ This question concerning the potential for coercive influence is neglected and unaddressed in the vast majority of biomedical research settings. Not all cases will reveal coercive factors influencing a subject’s decision, but bioethicists have neglected to fully accept the incredibly powerful and sometimes coercive influence compensation can have on a person’s ability to rationally consent. Furthermore, many research studies design their compensation schedule in a way to coerce participants into completing the entirety of a biomedical experiment by offering a significant “bonus” at the end of the study. Given that consent hinges on the ability for an agent to say “no” at any time to any part of an experiment, compensation can wrongfully be utilized as a tool of coercion, in that a research subject may feel unduly compelled to complete a study in hopes of receiving the bulk of their compensation at the end of the research. Compensation, in this role, can coerce consent and thus render the consent given as less robust, less agential, and likely to be less morally permissible than a more scaffolded version of biomedical consent. B. Underexplored Power Dynamics Furthermore, there exist underexplored power dynamics that may induce individuals to consent to biomedical research that they might not otherwise. It is not uncommon for physicians to offer (or even suggest) participating in an experimental research trial to their ailing patients. The physician here possesses a status of authority and level of power that may wrongfully induce their patient to agree to participate, despite the overwhelming risks, in benefits to their own research or that of their colleagues. This is not to say that all actions by a doctor wrongfully operate on a power dynamic, but recommending someone to consent to a trial with clear and substantial potential for harm rightfully deserves a more critical lens for moral judgments. Another example worth noting is when professors recruit their students to participate in their own b iomedical research. Might a student consent to participate merely because their p rofessor, who is in a position of power, asked them to do so? I argue that both of these cases illuminate a power dynamic that may render the given consent here as below the standard for moral permissibility and fully robust consent. Just as a boss requesting to have sex with their employee possesses an imbalanced power dynamic, so do certain recommendations of research studies by people of authority. By understanding the coercive influence of underexplored power dynamics in biomedical research recruitment, we can begin to build a more robust theory of consent that accounts for this coercive factor. C. The Misunderstanding of Particulars By Research Participants As previously discussed, it has been well documented that human subjects often misunderstand the particular actions and risks involved with their participation in biomedical research trials. While comprehension is difficult to fully impart on human subjects, might some of these knowledge gaps wrongfully encourage one to consent to a research study? As mentioned earlier, if one is under the guise of the therapeutic misconception, they may be more willing to consent to potentially dangerous research in the hope of receiving free treatment; however, there is no guarantee they will receive any sort of efficacious medical intervention. Research participants are also often unaware of the particular procedures, treatments, etc. they will have to undergo, meaning they cannot grant fully informed consent to them. A similar ethical dilemma arises in the case of sexual consent: one may consent to a sexual interaction without knowing the full breadth of what will occur. Biomedical researchers ought to work (or alternatively, “scaffold”) toward ensuring their research participants have full knowledge and comprehension of any factor of the research that might change their decision to consent. Only a more robust consent framework within biomedical research settings can properly protect the autonomy of human subjects to provide truly informed consent. D. Lack of Knowledge Regarding Research Intentions The final factor that I argue merits greater consideration in our ethical guidelines around b iomedical consent concerns the ability of the patient to understand the intentions of the research. Due to the nature of biomedical research, human subjects are often not informed of every detail of the study in order to maintain scientific objectivity and integrity. So, a human subject may be told what the study consists of, while not fully understanding the intentions of the research. What if a human subject consents to participating in a Phase I biomedical trial without knowing that the intention of the research is to produce a drug that only the extremely wealthy will be able to afford (an unfortunately common occurrence in the US)? Or, what if the aim of the research is to reach a conclusion that goes against one’s own morals, like that racial differences are essential rather than constructed? Just as one possesses a right to know the intentions behind their partner asking for consent to have sex, human subjects have a right here as well because the information presented may actively encourage one to not offer consent in the first place. Our existing definition of consent for human subjects in biomedical research experiments does not properly account for preserving, or scaffolding, the full rational decision-making of human subjects. While understanding the need for a certain level of confidentiality, the intentions behind the research itself may serve as a deterrent for someone to grant consent. So, in order to have genuine, robust consent, we must be able to set ethical guidelines that actively inform the participant of any detail that may render their consent below the bar for moral permissibility if unknown. VI. An Argument for a More Robust Consent in Biomedical Experiments I present these four coercive factors not in an attempt to develop a fully-fledged account of proper consent in biomedical research, but rather to demonstrate that our existing notion does not go far enough to protect the autonomy of human subjects. All four of these concerns do not apply equally in every context, but they do merit a greater, more nuanced understanding of consent and how to ethically scaffold against coercive factors. Philosophers of sex, like Kukla, have begun to p opularize the idea of a robust, nonideal theory of consent as a way to scaffold ethical precautions to engaging in sexual acts with a partner. The field of biomedical research ought to embrace a similar strategy and approach, and these four factors can begin to identify the key elements influencing the autonomy and agency of sexual partners. To scaffold a human subject’s ability to grant their uncoerced consent, we need to maximize their knowledge of anything essential to their rational decision-making. This would involve instituting clear and expansive policies to combat the therapeutic misconception and ensure participants understand the potential harms they may undergo. Researchers should also develop pay schedules and formats that work to ensure that the benefit incurred from compensation does not wrongly coerce one into participating or lacking the ability to revoke their participation at any time. Crucially, though, we ought to concurrently reform the issues of capitalism and systemic wealth inequality that force many people in the US to sell their own bodies for lifesaving income. Finally, we should adopt stricter guidelines for participating in biomedical research experiments to both restrict coercive power dynamics and pursue further scaffolding of subjects’ agency and autonomy. It is important to note, though, that this paper is primarily concerned with the philosophical issues that might constrain one’s genuine consent, and I invite bioethicists to create a more concrete and thorough list of ethical guidelines to scaffold agency in experiments. By conducting a rigorous philosophical analysis of coercive factors that influence human subjects, philosophers of biology will be better equipped to develop their own version of robust consent that can account for coercive factors. This new, reinspired lens from a philosopher of sex into scaffolding consent should help to control the damaging effects of coercive factors and grant the human subject greater autonomy in making rational decisions regarding whether and when to participate in biomedical research. Research study designers can utilize the recognition of these coercive forces, scaffold ethical practices to combat their influence on diminishing an agent’s authority and embrace a more robust understanding of consent in biomedical research experiments. VII. Conclusion My aim in this paper has been to draw parallels between the currently distinct notions of consent within sexual interactions and biomedical research to illuminate the similar ethical issues facing both. Many feminist scholars and philosophers of sex have taken an approach of examining the societal conditions, other external pressures, and nature of consent itself to illuminate the ways consent may be unduly coerced in rational agents. In doing so, they have been able to develop a more robust framework around a nonideal theory of consent that socially and interpersonally scaffolds (but not completely) a person’s agency in order to minimize coercive factors in one’s decision to consent to sex. By detailing parallel coercive factors present in the biomedical research field, I hope further philosophical inquiries will be able to develop a similar robust consent framework for biomedical research involving human subjects. On a more practically conclusive note, biomedical research experiments are luring; research designers purposefully advertise their studies to sound like easy, safe ways to make money, despite their risks. As shown by decades of research studies with devastating effects on communities of color, biomedical research experiments target specific populations…populations that are often BIPOC, low-income, young, and most vulnerable to being coerced into consenting in a biomedical research setting (see NIH for more on the crucially important element of structural medical racism). I’ve seen firsthand the consequences of a biomedical research industry that has consistently used advertising to tempt many young people, like myself, to participate in potentially harmful studies—experiments where we may not be in a fully agential capacity due to coercive factors. Money, power relations, a lack of understanding regarding the experiment, and other coercive factors constantly influence the ability for people, especially those of marginalized or fiscally disadvantaged backgrounds, to make a fully rational choice in consenting to biomedical research. 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Noah Tesfaye The Black Bourgeoisie: The Chief Propagators of "Buy Black" and Black Capitalism Noah Tesfaye Introduction Following the murder of George Floyd, there was a resurgence in a phrase all-too-common in the recent US political zeitgeist: “Buy Black.” Instantly, Black businesses received an overwhelming outpour of support as many non-Black people sought performative or material actions to support the Black Lives Matter movement. Centering the narrative and vision behind these ideas of “Buying Black” was not only affluent white people but the Black commercial media and the Black bourgeois at large (1). Amidst claims to defund and abolish the police, wealthy Black people called, as rapper and activist Killer Mike said in reference to Atlanta, “to not burn your own house down” but to instead support Black businesses and seek justice righteously (2). In this press conference with Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, the stark contrast between the masses of Black people who own little to no land in the city and the select few bourgeoisie celebrities who proclaim “Buying Black” as a liberatory practice for Black people was evident. Therefore, developing a framework of a political economy of racialization allows us to view the racialized motivations of capitalism to diversify and maintain power with a critical lens. For instance, revolutionary scholar Cedric Robinson attributes the origins of racism to “the ‘internal’ relations of European peoples” (3). He maintains that racial capitalism arose from “the development, organization, and expansion of capitalist society [that] pursued essentially racial directions” (4). There is a vested interest in subverting claims of Black liberation by the Black bourgeoisie to build up the “myth and propaganda of Black buying power,” as Jared Ball coins in his book of the same title, to maintain their capitalist interests. It is through the collective efforts of the Black bourgeoisie to propagate Black capitalism that they accept the continued exploitation of working-class Black people. A Relevant History to US Racial Capitalism To develop a political economy framework of racialization and examine how Black people have assimilated into capitalism, it is imperative to center the conditions of Black Americans more broadly today. First, we will look at how race has played a role in the justification of the exploitation of Black people in America. Then, we will investigate how wealthy Black people have been able to exploit these conditions to further perpetuate such inequality within a racial capitalist hierarchy. Race is integral to understanding the economic position of Black people, not just because of the way Black people arrived on the continent but also in the legacy of government policies that have contributed to the economic segregation of today. As a result, Black people have next to no wealth in the United States; by 2053, it is estimated that median Black household wealth will be zero (5). The asset that many Americans often associate with wealth-building is buying a home. However, for decades, Black people have had little access to affordable housing and loans at market interest rates. Established in 1933, the Home Owners Loan Corporation institutionalized abstract criteria, such as “desirability,” to fulfill a loan (6). Furthermore, “the HOLC’s actions attributed property values to the racial or ethnic identity of residents then helped codify it into a national housing policy” (7). This resulted in the creation of domestic colonial projects through restrictions on the purchase of real estate and allowed for the “economic serfdom of Negroes by its reluctance to give loans and insurance to Negro businesses” (8). Meanwhile, mortgage lenders redlined neighborhoods by deeming populations as having “detrimental influences,” as a means to justify offering conservative loans with bad terms or no loans at all to Black people (9). Practices executed by the HOLC as well as state and local legislators to justify redlining also expanded into the creation of what is known as the “ghetto tax,” whereby grocery and convenience store items in inner-city communities were sometimes more expensive and sold under exploitative installment plans (10). It is not just that the economic conditions of Black people have been poor or fraught with challenges, but that with that context and contrast, a vision of “Buying Black” is hollow. Today, instead of focusing efforts towards highlighting the much higher risks Black people have faced concerning eviction since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black bourgeois have asked Black people to build and support Black business (11). Origins of Black Buying Power & Black Capitalism The origins in this rhetoric about Black capitalism and “Buying Black” in more modern examples are not from Black Americans but from the US government. Corporate America, in conjunction with the Black bourgeoisie, further developed the rhetoric of Black capitalism to exacerbate racial inequality. As discussed in Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, it was the Nixon administration that began to prop up this vision for Black capitalism as a means towards suppressing radical movements. The author Marcia Chatelain notes that “[i]n lieu of supporting critical civil rights protections for fair housing and school desegregation, Nixon promoted legislation that provided business loans, economic development grants, and affirmative action provisions on federally contracted projects as a means of suppressing black rage and securing black endorsements” (12). Amidst Nixon’s efforts towards building his Southern Strategy and winning the 1968 presidential election, he ran on the premise that Black capitalism would ensure racial equality (13). Yet, due to the logistical restraints of there being so few Black entrepreneurs along with the clear intentions Nixon had in stifling revolutionary activity, Black capitalism was, from the outset, designed to selectively help Black people (14). What is more surprising than the Nixon administration seeking to subvert and crush Black radicals is the way in which wealthier Black people began to propagate Nixon’s agenda. As fast-food restaurants were being established in areas where Black people were offered franchisee licenses during the 1970s, Black “franchise pioneers believed that business would save the day and the days to come for their people” (15). Franchise owners were complicit in letting the federal government and those in control of capital across the country use the support of their businesses as a justification to divest from public programs and instead invest in less accessible resources. In the 1980s, Black fraternities and sororities, one of the more prominent symbols of the Black elite class, even went so far as to partner with McDonald’s on an advertising campaign commercial called the “Fraternity Chant” (16). If corporate America could get the Black bourgeoisie to more openly endorse and support policies centered around Black capitalism, instead of seeking people’s programs or organizing with Black liberation groups such as the Blank Panthers, US racial capitalism could persist. Significance of Race to Studying the Bourgeois There is no shortage of books, New York Times articles, or 60 Minutes segments on the racial wealth gap. Texts like How to Be an Antiracist or articles that imply that racial inequality is simply a matter of a “battle between the souls of America” do not adequately address, with nuance, the Black bourgeoisie’s influence on upholding racial capitalism (17). Rather than seeking to identify how and why these conditions continue to be perpetuated, many point to “the government” or “Republicans.” As Cedric Robinson theorized, race has been integral to capitalism since its foundation. Due to the development of neoliberalism in the US and the heightened sense of individualism in a consumerist society, Black neoliberal politics manifests into upholding the status quo of American politics rather than taking significant measures to directly address inequality. Amidst the advancement of globalization spearheaded by the Clinton administration, the Black working class was abandoned even further due expansion in the prison industrial complex, aided by the passing of the Crime Bill of 1994. This, in conjunction with the rise in the commercialization of hip hop and mainstream Black art writ large, helped propel Black individualism to its prominent position today as an antagonism to the “superpredator” attitude the likes of Hillary Clinton and other politicians had for Black people. Black people can also utilize and exploit racial capitalism to their benefit at the expense of others. To really understand how Black people continue to be exploited and disincentivized from seeking collective organization and liberation, we must look beyond Black entrepreneurship, Twitter, and Black real estate Instagram pages, for these are individualized success stories within racial capitalism. In their article “Black Politics & the Neoliberal Racial Order,” Michael C. Dawson and Meghan Ming Francis attempt to trace through the ways in which Black people have assimilated into neoliberalism and diversified capitalism. As they see it, Black neoliberalism emphasizes “self-reliance, excessive consumerism, and individualism” (18). To buy into capitalism, Black people must shed their traditions in collectivism and community-building. Neoliberalism demands Black people to concede grassroots organizing and to instead make the most of society as it is currently constructed. That became the central mindset and rhetoric espoused as the Black bourgeoisie began to take shape. Former President Barack Obama once equated “raising one’s children, paying a decent salary,” and other private, voluntary acts to “marching” (19). Rather than proposing Black people seek to remedy the conditions they face, the same conditions that are routinely echoed throughout mainstream media, Obama implied that mere existence was a form of fighting for one’s rights. This is an example of individualizing systemic oppression; instead of calling to dismantle the entire class system that exploits poor Black people, the Black bourgeois would rather make poor Black people feel as though they are largely responsible for their class position. Obama is asking Black people to focus on their own immediate conditions as a form of struggle, instead of demanding for a greater fight for Black liberation because that call protects his class interests and not poor Black people. The Black Bourgeois and their Propaganda What makes this development of Black neoliberalism so insidious is how “neoliberalism often allows small segments of communities to be helped through community/voluntary action and activists’ searches for best practices and policies” (20). The emphasis here is “small segments.” It is not that a Black business would not benefit from more financial support as we saw in the summer of 2020, but the larger ramifications of supporting Black businesses can only go so far when correcting for centuries of irreparable harm done to Black people in and by America. Black people can and continue to receive small wins amidst the continuously shrinking wealth within the population as a whole. If Black people are truly building power and seeking to create cooperative businesses that sustain communities instead of cultivating resources within capitalism, corporations would not advertise or publicly support Black businesses like they have since June. Are we supposed to presume that Oprah or Tyler Perry or any prominent members of the Black bourgeoisie are unaware of the centuries of inequality and believe that “Buying Black” will be a substantive fix for the plight of the Black masses? No. It is not to say that wealthier Black people are acting completely with malicious intent; however, Black bourgeoisie members collectively are helping sell and deliver this Black capitalism, “Buy Black” propaganda to the masses of working-class Black people. They continue to perpetuate and oftentimes expand on rhetoric that upholds Black capitalism by blaming individuals for not working hard enough or not being smart enough to make more money. “The Story of O.J” by JAY-Z, a song released in 2017, breaks down how Black people are not building enough wealth and how Jewish people spent money on real estate while Black people would spend it at the strip club. The song in short “is a metaphor for opportunities wasted due to poor individual choices and is meant, as Jay-Z has said, to be more than just a song, saying that it is really about ‘... we as a culture, having a plan, how we’re gonna push this forward...’” (21). In reality, “The Story of O.J.” symbolizes revisionist Black history - of the centuries of exploitation Black people have faced. As JAY-Z continues to profess that the only means towards freedom is to flip buildings, buy paintings, and “Buy Black,” his words limit the scope and imagination of the masses for a politic beyond the present conditions. Even if JAY-Z is from a working class background and he was lucky to attain massive success with his music, his current class conditions prevent him from adequately calling for more substantive changes to correct for centuries of Black inequality. To a similar end “the expressed ‘plan’ is to eschew politics in favor of a sole focus on economics, Black capitalist economics with buying power as a central philosophy as the ‘only hope’ for freedom, and all presented as progressive, pro-Black, empowerment messaging” (22). If there exists any chance to adequately analyze the US through a comprehensive political economy framework of racialization and come up with solutions to free people of such dehumanizing conditions, it must be with the consideration that even those of oppressed backgrounds can uphold racial capitalism. The Black bourgeoisie has shown through their actions that they are not interested in engaging substantively or seeking to liberate the masses because they themselves have become comfortable with the comforts of capitalism evenwhile the rest of their “people” suffer. Looking forward Black radical organizers in America today are not “interested in making capitalism fairer, safer, and less racist. They know this is impossible. Rather, they want nothing less than to bring an end to ‘racial capitalism’” (23). The policy proposition that rose to prominence again this summer, in spite of uprisings and more imaginative visions for a just world, was instead to “buy Black” and “support Black businesses.” It was through the likes of Killer Mike, Beyoncé, and other members of the Black bourgeoisie who touted such demands rather than stand in line with the movement-building going on in the streets. Rihanna, for example, benefits from Black capitalism because her consumers consider supporting her business as “woke” even as it is financed and backed by white capital. “Buying Black” can act as a means not just towards individualizing the ends of this policy plan, whereby the owner of a particular business will reap the benefits of sale, but it also individualizes the way that we as citizens need to behave. We are asked to consume and spend more rather than create and collectively stand together. It is not that the Black elites are unaware of the conditions that working-class, poor Black people face, but rather they collectively have sought to propagate this vision of “Buying Black” as a means to an end to centuries of state-waged war against Black people - an end for which there is no economic policy that could help the masses. There is a reason why James Warren coined this group in 2005 “The Black Misleadership Class.” The Black bourgeoisie traffic misinformation and are purposefully complicit in the continued strife of the masses of Black people in the United States. If we hope to build a political and economic vision for a world where Black people are no longer exploited, oppressed, marginalized, or silenced, it is crucial that we seek to contextualize both the race and class position of Black people within American society to then mobilize against the Black bourgeois and against US racial capitalism. If history is anything to go by, we must be prepared to stand and organize together, collectively, against the Black Misleadership Class to build a world where Black people can truly be liberated. Endnotes 1 The term “Black bourgeoisie” used here is not directly related to E. Franklin Frazier’s text Black Bourgeoisie in which the term is used to refer to the Black middle class rather than the Black capitalist class. Along these lines, by the capitalist class, I am referring to the class that does not earn money solely through labor but also through the accumulation and exchange of assets. 2 Emmrich, Stuart, “Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’s Press Conference Shows True Leadership During A Crisis.” 3 Robinson, Cedric, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, 2. 4 Ibid, 2. 5 Asante-Muhammad, Dedrick et al, "The Road to Zero Wealth: How the Racial Wealth Divide Is Hollowing Out America’s Middle Class,” 5. 6 Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta, “Back to the Neoliberal Moment: Race Taxes and the Political Economy of Black Urban Housing in the 1960s,” 189. 7 Ibid, 189. 8 Ibid, 191. 9 Ibid, 189. 10 Ibid, 195. 11 Thomas, Taylor Miller, “Coronavirus Relief Favors White Households, Leaving Many People of Color at Risk of Being Evicted.” 12 Chatelain, Marcia, Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, 14. 13 Weems, Robert E., and Lewis A. Randolph, “The National Response to Richard M. Nixon’s Black Capitalism Initiative: The Success of Domestic Detente,” 67. 14 Weems, 68. 15 Chatelain, Franchise, 15. 16 Ibid, 177. 17 Kendi, Ibram X, “A Battle between the Two Souls of America.” 18 Dawson, Michael C. and Meghan Ming Francis, “Black Politics and the Neoliberal Racial Order,” 46. 19 Ibid, 48. 20 Ibid, 48. 21 Ball, Jared, The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power, 2. 22 Ibid, 2. 23 Robinson, Black Marxism, xi. Works Cited Asante-Muhammad, Dedrick, Chuck Collins, Josh Hoxie, and Emmanuel Nieves. Rep. The Road to Zero Wealth: How the Racial Wealth Divide Is Hollowing Out America’s Middle Class. Institute for Policy Studies, September 2017. https://ips-dc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/The-Road-to-Zero-Wealth_FINAL.pdf . Ball, Jared A. The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Chatelain, Marcia. Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America. Liveright, 2020. Dawson, Michael C., and Megan Ming Francis. “Black Politics and the Neoliberal Racial Order.” Public Culture, vol. 28, no. 1 78, 2015, pp. 23–62, https://doi.org/10.1086/685540 . Emmrich, Stuart. “Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’s Press Conference Shows True Leadership During A Crisis.” Vogue, May 2020. Frazier, E. Franklin. Black Bourgeoisie. The Free Press, 1957. Kendi, Ibram X. “A Battle between the Two Souls of America.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, November 16, 2020. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/americas- two-souls/617062/ . Robinson, Cedric J. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. University of North Carolina Press, 1983. Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. “Back to the Neoliberal Moment: Race Taxes and the Political Economy of Black Urban Housing in the 1960s.” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, 2012. Thomas, Taylor Miller. “Coronavirus Relief Favors White Households, Leaving Many People of Color at Risk of Being Evicted.” POLITICO. POLITICO, August 7, 2020. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/07/coronavirus-relief-racial-eviction-392570 . Weems, Robert E., and Lewis A. Randolph. “The National Response to Richard M. Nixon’s Black Capitalism Initiative: The Success of Domestic Detente.” Journal of Black Studies 32, no. 1 (September 2001): 66–83. https://doi.org/10.1177/002193470103200104 . Previous Next

The Captain and the Doctor: On the Enchantment of Modern Men George LeMieux Author Alexander Gerasimchuk Fatima Avila Editors Though we be on the far side of the world, this ship is our home. This ship is England. Introduction Modern man is lost. He is not home to himself. He lacks the longings that great men once had. While Nietzsche, Rousseau, or Burke might better articulate or explore this problem, I intend to explore how it might be remedied, a possible antidote to our modern poison. From the Western canon, I have identified three such antidotes or rather three figures who might re-enchant the modern man, the man of the democratic age. They are the vanguard of Marx, the conqueror of Nietzsche, and the disciple, which is first constituted Biblically but later in Toqueville among others. I shall conduct this search through the metaphor of a ship’s captain, in this case, Captain Jack Aubrey as depicted in the celebrated series and film Master and Commander , which I will briefly outline. Before that outline is given, I will first justify this metaphor by the virtue of captaincy itself (despite the fact I would shoehorn this favorite film of mine into anything). Then in the aftermath, I will examine these three figures as our “captains.” In this examination, I hope to reveal that modern man may only be enchanted, or at least enchanted to humanity’s benefit, by a disciple. For our captain, only the disciple offers a path that does not self-destruct and looks beyond worldly motivation. A Metaphor Since there is a long and storied history of philosophers making use of the ship and other nautical nomenclature as metaphor for their sophisticated views on man, government, and what other nonsense comes to their minds, I see no reason to deviate from the tradition. For what is better than a ship with captain and crew? She, like her nation, must suffer through trial and tribulation, storm and battle. She must adjust her sails so that she catches the wind but not let loose so much as to rip her masts apart. She must have a rigid hull built to withstand cannon and carronade, but she must also have flexibility, lest the changing temperatures and humidity crack her hull. She must be led by a captain, strong and decisive in his command. Yet he must not be a tyrant. He must court the hearts of his men so that he may win their will. If not, his men will mutiny. The uninspired crew would have no other reason to entertain the otherwise insufferable conditions of life at sea. Indeed, I do think this will be a fitting metaphor. The Captain Captain Jack Aubrey of His Majesty's Royal Navy is a man caught between two worlds, between two times. Behind him is the aristocracy of old: kings, queens, lords, ladies, and government by the few for the many, at least ideally. In front of him stands modernity: merchants, naturalists, revolutions, counter-revolutions, Napoleon, the new world, America, and democracy. Such is the world of Captain Aubrey as depicted in Patrick O'Brian's novel and Peter Weir’s film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Jack is a man of tradition. He respects the Crown. He reads his scripture. He loves his country. Jack’s hero is none other than Duke and Admiral Horatio Nelson, a brave and sturdy man who dies defending his love of king and country. And yet Jack sees his idols, his pillars crumbling. He has witnessed the chaos of the revolutions in France. He holds the Burkean sentiment that it is the modern radicals that “despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men; [...] they have wrought underground a mine that will blow up, at one grand explosion, all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts of parliament. They have ‘the rights of men.’” It is this modern threat with its rights and revolutionaries that is epitomized by the two foils of the film. The first foil is the Acheron —the ship of the modern age. She is at the forefront of naval technological advancement. Her hull is braced by three layers of live oak and white oak, making her near impenetrable for any ship of her class. She is the largest of any frigate built, able to carry more guns, yet also more aerodynamic, “heavier, but faster spite it” (Weir, Collee). In every way, she outclasses the H.M.S Surprise , Jack’s nimble but aging frigate. And where is the Acheron built? Boston. While Peter Weir had the financial sensibility to make the antagonist of the film French, i.e. Acheron , Patrick O’Brian’s ship was called U.S.S Norfolk . It is with this name that the dichotomy O’Brian intended is much clearer. It is the new world and the old world, His Majesty and Mr. President. And the new world is winning. The second foil is not a figure of oak and iron but of flesh and bone. Doctor Stephen Maturin is the ship’s surgeon and a savant of a surgeon he is. He is also a naturist, collecting, diagraming, and recording the various species he encounters on the ship’s voyages. Upon the ship’s travel to the Galapagos Islands, the parallels to the young Darwin are evident. More important, however, than any of this, he is Jack’s best friend. Despite sharing little common interest, much less a common worldview, Jack confides in Stephen what he confides in no one else. Stephen, in turn, voices his dissent to Jack, when no crew member nor officer would otherwise dare. He is both his greatest ally and greatest challenger. He is the check to Jack’s ambition and the prosecutor of his reason. He is the liberal to Jack’s conservatism. He echoes the voices of democracy, of the social contract, and the danger of tyrants. His respect for Jack comes not from his title or station but from how he leads, how he governs. It is Stephen who most quickly becomes the radical, the revolutionary, when Jack steps out of line. The Jack we see at the film’s beginning is willing to die on the hill of order and naval tradition. He is unable to see anything but the objective of his mission. Stephen and even the other officers are unable to go as far. To Jack’s credit, it is his daring and force of will, despite insurmountable odds, that makes him a great captain. In his pursuit of the Acheron , Jack takes risks that make his moves unpredictable and effective; his crew calls him Lucky Jack for a reason. But those risks do not come without their costs, even if Jack is lucky more often than he is not. Eventually, Jack carelessly pursues the Acheron into a storm and loses a man and a mast in the process. Still, Jack does not turn tail, despite Stephen’s pleas. He refits and refocuses. Only by the film's end does Jack reform and he does so not through reasoning but out of his friendship with Stephen. When Stephen is injured in an accident on board (a marine shoots him while aiming for a bird), Jack sends his ship ashore to one of the Galapagos islands instead of continuing his pursuit, likely to his detriment. This act of compassion, as it turns out, is the saving grace of the Surprise. Not only is the Acheron spotted on the far side of the island, but Stephen inspires Jack on how to capture her. While Jack's act of compassion does not separate him from his ideology, it reveals a complexity in his nature. In not letting his warrior-like nature subjugate the other parts of his conscience, Jack demonstrates his command of self, making him a good captain in more ways than one. His compassion for Stephen, despite their differences, allows him to occupy a middle ground between old and the new, between those of high and low station, between those conservative and radical. Despite their differences, Jack and Stephen end their days together with music, with a duet, playing the cello and violin as the Surprise sails into the sunset. Looking at this time and this day, in this new world, one must wonder if such bonding, such good feeling, such balance between the conservative and the liberal is possible. Every day the position of the radical, of the accelerationist, becomes more compelling even to the conservative. In America, the rigging and line that once held hull and sail together have frayed and torn, not in the harshest winds but in their daily use. The physical lines that once held men together are now virtual, connections in the cloud and the internet. These lines between men were once tangible things; now, there are few of these left. The conservative now must ask himself what he intends to conserve and if he is capable of such conservation. With conservatives far to the right, liberals far to the left, and a confused chasm in between, can those old ropes hold society together any longer? Perhaps, it is time to cut the rope. Perhaps, it is time for both right and left to become radical. Or, perhaps, there is faith to be had in those old ropes. Perhaps, there could be a man to renew their strength, reorganize them, and apply a fresh coat of tar to protect them. Perhaps, there might be a man who could tie new ropes without cutting away the old. Is there such a captain for this ship of modernity? Is there a Jack who can reason with the moderns, take heed of their desires but not be dragged off course? What does such a captain look like? The Captain’s Virtue Before one can talk of any mystical quality a good captain must have, one must first talk about his primary obligation, his duty, his vocation. For if this station is not sound in virtue, the metaphor is not fit for its goal. A captain, such as Jack, is the leader of a warship and of its crew. He would not be a good captain if he could not sail, navigate, or command the ship in battle. He must understand every part of his command and responsibility. It was for such reasons that those men who became captains most often started their time at sea from their early teens as Midshipmen, who were responsible for commanding gun crews of sailors twice their age. It is this good practice, of physical strain and tangible purpose, that makes the vocation virtuous. Virtue is not found in sophistry or the professing of morality but in good works and deeds. Both Rousseau and Marx recognized that the “sensible” men of the world are not the magistrates but the “workers” and the “people.” In this way, the captain is a unique station. It is a position that reaches downward to the grit and servitude that is required but reaches up toward order and inspiration. On one hand, a captain must stand amongst his sailors and with his marines facing the enemy, taking with them every shot fired, equally as likely to be impaled by shrapnel and splinter, equally as likely to take grapeshot from a swivel gun, equally as likely to take a cannonball straight through his gut. On the other hand, a captain must reach upward. He must engage in strategy, diplomacy, and negotiation. He takes his orders from admirals, parliament, and the King. He must, with his officers, stand apart and govern the crew, making sure he does not fraternize with them or become too social. He must whip those who are insubordinate. And it is he who gives the parting sermon after his men die in battle. The captain is both above and below, a man who mediates between king and country, between God and his men. Vanguard For Marx, the nature of our captain is clear. He must be a vanguard, a man who can reach from the high to the low, from bourgeois to proletariat, a man who has the means to lead the proletariat to “acquire political supremacy” and “ constitute itself the nation” (Marx 488). The vanguard can not be of the lower classes as they do not hold the means of production or own sufficient property. The vanguard will not be the bourgeois socialist who wants “all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting from them.” That man would not lead nor fight in the “impending bloody conflicts” that the revolution requires. But the captain might. He, by virtue of his practice, gains access to the epistemic standpoint of the working man. He can call his men into battle because he will be in that battle himself, because he will stand in front, with pistol and cutlass in hand, because he knows their plight and their struggle. Yes, the captain might be the perfect vanguard, if he had the disposition and the courage required to lead the revolution. But no vanguard will heal or reinspire the whole nation. He will take the radicals he agrees with and burn the rest. The ideal vanguard may be the captain, the general, or some other man of higher but not so noble station, that comes down to act on behalf of the proletariat. But the unifying captain is, in the root of his position, opposed to such a severing. More fit, would be the treasonous first officer who leads a mutiny against the captain and the remaining loyal officers. To be a vanguard is to be a “slash and burn” farmer who wreaks devastation on the present vegetation so that the soil may be made fertile again. There will be no healing, under the vanguard. Conqueror Then perhaps the captain, who must fight to re-enchant our new world, must be a conqueror. The conqueror does not require a revolution, or at least not an ideological one, for the conqueror has no need for the traditional radical who operates on moral principles. He is not the vanguard who cries out to the poor that they must liberate themselves. The conqueror only asks for good men, inspired to fight for their home and fatherland, inspired to make something more of what they have been given. The conqueror rises in rank and comes to lead a nation because of his proven success on the battlefield. This captain inspires not because of his pleasant sailing or wise words but because he sinks ships. Nietzsche asks “[m]ust the ancient fire not some day flare up [...] More: must one not desire it with all its might.” Is it not blood that would surely wake the modern man from his slumber, wake the animal instinct inside of him? Perhaps the true conservative can only believe that “antiquity incarnate” arises through a conqueror, a superman, a Napoleon. And yet one must ask of Nietzsche, what is to happen after the conquest? What is to happen after one has conquered all he can or has been defeated? What was Napoleon to do, having failed in Russia? What was Alexander to do when he lay sick and dying in his bed? What is left to hold a nation together when the expansion has stopped and the wars have come to an end? How is a conqueror to at last govern his people? If the measure of man’s vitality is only to be strength and victory, then there will be no man who finds purpose in times of peace. When the soldier again becomes the carpenter after his service is done, he must now aspire to be the superman of carpentry. He must strike down all other table builders and door makers in his path if he is to achieve vitality. He will feel not for his fellow man, now that he does not need him to protect his flank or cover his advance. He will be a frustrated and lonely man, who, in his attempted rationalization to maximize his will and vitality, will frantically look around every corner to become the carpenter of all carpenters, betraying every man who gets in his path. Nietzsche might retort that one should not care for the carpenter, for all carpenters are weak men who failed to rise to a higher station. But if one is to build a society, does one not need the carpenter? Would it not be better to be his friend so that he may more willingly and caringly craft one’s furniture? Perhaps Nietzsche thinks that forcing the carpenter to build a chair would be better to maximize the will than to engage in normal transaction or to politely ask him. Society needs carpenters; a ship needs sailors. Neither will run well if every request is made out of threat or a difference in power. Sure power may be unequally distributed among men, and men will surely wield that power to their advantage, but every interaction need not be a Melian Dialogue . No unification of society, no mending of wounds, could ever take place in such a one-dimensional existence. Even if, for but a fleeting moment, conservative and liberal may be united by the fires of war, such a state is only temporary. While the ancient fires may rise again, they may just as quickly die. For all Napoleon was, how many more revolutions and fragile republics followed? There was no remnant of antiquity to build upon. Instead, it was democratic man who, upon the rubble of Europe, raised his new throne. In his time, Tocqueville correctly surmised that democracy would be here to stay: “I think that in the long run, government by democracy shall increase the real strength of society.” While “slave” in its morality, democracy is dominant in its presence. Its practitioners are no longer just the carpenters or even the priests; they are the captains, the generals, the senators themselves. While European antiquity lay unaware, the strength and size of America, of democratic power, grew. “Something that passed unnoticed a century ago now strikes the attention of all.” Now, antiquity not only lacks the popular momentum to overcome the democratic age, but it lacks the strength. If there is to be a man who rekindles the flame of the West, he will not be a conqueror who slays democratic man. He will be a democratic man himself. And What for God? Purposely absent from the mind of Marx’s vanguard and Nietzsche’s superman is the Kingdom of God. Nietzsche and Marx are the archetypes of, as John Courtney Murray would categorize them, “the postmodern atheist”. The post-moderns not only leave God out of their government, philosophy, and science as the moderns do; they actively strike Him out, act against Him, and demonstrate how He cannot exist. The postmodern is offended that a God could exist and (in Marx’s case) allow for so much scarcity, so much evil, or (in Nietzsche’s case) deprive man of his freedom, the will, that makes man human. God, if he exists, is either a tormenter, imprisoner, or both. Nietzsche further declares that the morality man claims to have derived from God, the morality of the Christian and the Jew is the greatest perversion of the natural order: strength and weakness. Good and evil, concepts of vengeful weaklings, invert the true “morality” by which man once lived and should live again. Of Marx’s and Nietzsche’s cases, Nietzsche’s is the stronger. When one eliminates God from the worldly equation, one must also eliminate the morality that came with Him. Marx may claim scarcity is the great evil, but this concept of evil only comes through sympathy for the suffering of others. What is the evil of inequality or greed or a dominant bourgeois class if there is no concern for fellow man? From where does the humanist goodness, ascribed by Marx to the elimination of suffering, originate? Without an order, ordained above and outside by divine authority, there can be no objective good. No worldly cosmodicy is sufficient to prove an objective good. If one’s ultimate goal is “good” for the nation, one cannot look to Nietzsche for a cure; the concept of good is, in fact, part of the disease. But if one looks to Marx, one cannot find a source of good. Therein, the postmoderns are fruitless. And democratic man seems to agree. The true moral plague is that democratic man is not looking for goodness but instead assumes it. The modern atheist does not kill God but walks away from Him. In His absence, he does not search for truth or morality but merely replicates the idea of good that was passed down to him. He imitates, but his imitations, as they are not rooted in the source, are imperfect: bastardized (Murray and Nietzsche agree). He might even hold some personal religious sentiment but will not act on religious conviction. He does not mix the personal with the external world. He will work, govern, and wage war but will never do so in the name of God. He lives as if God does not exist. This … breed says in effect that, since he cannot know what God is, he will refuse to affirm that God is. But this stupidity, one may well think, surpasses that of the idolater. It is not merely an implicit refusal of God; it is an explicit denial of intelligence. The essence of God does indeed lie beyond the scope of intelligence, but his existence does not. It is this modern man—the man who does not deny God but shoves him aside—that has become commonplace. This modern man feels neither the warm light of heaven nor the scorching hellfire below. He wanders in a cold fog, blind, deaf and dumb. He lingers in the cave only seeing shadows of the truth. Because he does not see the source of the light, he assumes there is no source and does not search for it. It is this modern man who must be re-enchanted. Disciple So how is our captain to deal with the moderns, with the Dr. Maturins that now sail aboard every ship? What is he to do with those who synthesize values of democracy and the equality of man but do not acknowledge the creator who created them equally? Thankfully, the modern agnostic, despite his lack of reason in comparison to the Nietzschean, has not yet thrown off his moral yoke. In some ways, he still feels a connection to the world beyond the material. There are yet some embers left to kindle. There are yet men left to kindle them. There is hardly any human action, however private it may be, which does not result from some very general conception men have of God, of His relations with the human race, of the nature of their souls, and the duties to their fellows. Nothing can prevent such ideas from being the common spring from which all else originates. If man is to truly be re-enchanted—to be inspired and given lasting direction—he must look to that only thing which is transcendent, that is not merely of time and matter. If there is ever again to be unity amongst men, there must be unity with their creator. There must be disciples to show us the way. When man has been enchanted, even democratic man, it has been with and through religious spirit, fostered by disciples and prophets. These men once walked among us. These were the men in between God and humanity, Heaven and Earth, men who heard His voice and acted on His will. They were Moses and Abraham and David and Paul and Peter. God even revealed Himself to man in mortal form, in and through man’s pain and flesh. And yet, despite all of these, man’s faith remains weak. The disciples' task is never finished. He may never stop, for if he does, man is quick to forget and quick to lose his way. He will lose himself in the desert, and never find the promised land, his true home, his self. The disciple must be an ever-present and ever-constant reminder of God. The captain, disciple in his most righteous form, has some divine spark, some glint in his eye, some Promethean fire in his bosom that animates bravery and fortitude. The captain calls his men to voyage into the unknown, across the far side of the world. He calls his men to fight for a home that long disappeared behind a horizon last seen thousands of miles ago. He brings together those born across the empire, those who share little, and those who resent much. The duty the captain must call his men to cannot be incentivized with the stuff of the earth. He can promise them no amount of riches or glory among men to keep them steadfast. There is something the captain must awaken in his men that moves their spirits, their souls, guiding them toward something not here attainable. Only manna sent down from upon high can quell a spiritual hunger. And so the Captain must be like Moses, the interlocutor between man and God—newly the interlocular between conservative and liberal. He does not make the manna nor the law in the heavens, but he does transmit them. He walks down from Sinai to deliver to those below. He understands the plight of his crew, the doctor, and the common man, but he does not let them build golden calves. He has ambition but he does not raise towers of Babble; he does not push onward without cause. Where have these disciples gone? Where is Moses to be seen? Who upholds the commandments given from on high? Might it not be the lack of disciples but man who is the problem? Have there been one too many golden calves built in town squares, one too many towers of Babylon raised to the mockery of Heaven? Are there enough ears today willing to hear a sermon, enough lips willing to say a prayer? I contend there are. While the world may not be presently enchanted, there have been moments, glimpses, of enchantment. There was Reagan who stood in the way of the communist threat with his quick wit but mild manner. There was Dr. King who appealed to the heavens, preached to the masses, and marched hand in hand with the persecuted. There was Churchill who looked the devil right in the eye and spat back at him. There was Lincoln who looked over a battlefield and made a promise those men would not die in vain. There was Washington who led his soldiers, served his time, and ceded his throne. It was these disciples that reminded man of himself, of his nature, of his longings. They called upon God, evoked a higher duty, and bound men to each other. They knew that “[r]eligion [...] imposes on each man [...] obligations toward mankind, to be performed in common [...] and so draws him away from thinking about himself.” Like a captain, those disciples, who were fit to suffer, suffered in common with their men when they could have stood afar. Dr. King marched with his men, was imprisoned for them, and died for them. Reagan too took a bullet for his nation, although he fortunately survived. Lincoln, in his service and his stress, aged himself twenty years in the span of four and was assassinated shortly thereafter, giving the last full measure of his devotion. Washington lost battles for months on end in the bitter cold until he found success in a Christmas night attack. Oh, the joy nations will feel when leaders acquire such courage again when they call upon the heavens as they did not so long ago. Oh, they will know that feeling that gathered hundreds of thousands on the National Mall, that mustered the men who crossed the Delaware, that had black and white Union soldiers singing “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah” as they marched surely to their deaths at Fort Wagner. Only then can man come home to himself. Conclusion Who is our captain to be? What direction would we have him take our ship? Must he not be both a man of the people and a man of the elite, a democratic man who still has a touch, a memory in him, of that antiquity, that nobility, that honor of old? Still, he is not the vanguard of the proletariat, for the vanguard is a mutineer hellbent on revolution, not a captain. Neither is he the conqueror, for the captain must govern his ship beyond the rush of battle. He must lead his crew through those many times at sea which are dull and mundane. He must care for his men beyond their use in warfare. He must be selfless because that is what God calls him to be in times of struggle, a disciple who looks upward before he looks onward. But if those fires are ever to rise again, if the trumpet must once again cry its song of battle, the captain must be ready. He must again be simply a man of his trade, a good seaman and a good officer. He must dexterously maneuver his ship, out-sail, and outsmart his opponents. And when he must call for cannon fire, he must know what to cry to his men. He must have their best, not just for him, but for their God, their nation, and their fellow man. JACK - Want to see a guillotine in Piccadilly? CREW- No! JACK- Do you want to call Napoleon your king? CREW- No! JACK- Want your children to sing The Marseillaise? CREW- No! JACK- Mr. Mowett, Mr. Pullings, starboard battery! References Burke, Edmund, et al. Select Works of Edmund Burke: A New Imprint of the Payne Edition. Liberty Fund, 1999. Marx, Karl, et al. The Marx-Engels Reader. Norton, 1978. Murray, John Courtney. “The Problem of God Yesterday and Today.” Georgetown University Library, 1963, library.georgetown.edu/woodstock/murray/1964c. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. On the Genealogy of Morals. Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, Vintage Books, 1989. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Major Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Two Discourses and the Social Contract. Translated by John T. Scott, The University of Chicago Press, 2014. Tocqueville, Alexis De, et al. Democracy in America. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006. Weir, Peter, and John Collee. Master and Commander: Far Side of the World. Twentieth Century Fox, Aug. 2001.

Eleanor Ruscitti God Save the Fish: The Abyss of Electoral Politics in Trade Talks—a Brexit Case Study Eleanor Ruscitti “The EU is continuing to make demands that are incompatible with our independence... we cannot accept a deal that doesn’t leave us in control of our own laws or waters” ~ Boris Johnson on December 20, 2020 (1-2). Abstract During the “exit negotiations” between the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU), the relatively economically insignificant fishing industry received a disproportionate share of not just UK media attention, but global press as well; not to mention an array of political machinations, which almost halted a free trade agreement between two of the world’s largest trading partners. This evaluation seeks to understand why such disproportional influence existed. Why were both the EU and the UK coming to blows over something as seemingly innocuous as fishing, and willing to risk the most significant trade agreement in recent European history? Existing subject matter literature cites history and symbolism as the main factors that brought fishing into the limelight, almost killing a multi-billion-dollar trade deal between these two primary trade partners. While this paper concurs with existing analysis, it finds further illumination in the murky waters of electoral politics. It argues that the Conservative Party brought fishing to the trade talk surface to demonstrate that they were protecting a disenfranchised industry while aiming to convey the benefits of Brexit to maintain votes and prevent Scottish secession. More broadly, this paper sheds light on the potential ramifications that domestic politicians have on free trade agreements, especially in this new global populist era where the leverage of the disenfranchised is key; an affirmation of the American colloquial- ism that “all politics is local” (3). I: Introduction A Fishy Paradox From many perspectives, most of the Brexit drama did not make sense. From an economic point of view, it made more sense for the United Kingdom (UK) to remain in the European Union (EU) to keep access to the European Single Market (Single Market) and their largest and longest trading partners, especially in an era of increasing globalization. However, even though the vast majority of expert opinions concluded that leaving the EU would be economically disastrous for the UK, in the summer of 2016, its citizens voted to leave. Brexit was not just about economics, though. It was a reaction of nostalgia and entrenchment vis-à-vis a world that was rapidly becoming more interconnected with the EU leading the way. As the offshoring of lower productivity sectors of the economy and the development of more technologically advanced goods and services providers sailed ahead, once-thriving industries were no longer key to the economy. These changes left many in the UK workforce feeling stranded in an unnavigable wake of market disruption, while Brussels charted a course toward ever-increasing globalization. The disenfranchised felt as though they were under the thumb of Brussels, having to abide by laws that they believed were unfavorable to the UK. A rather sentimental notion of sovereignty and the call for “taking back control” resonated within certain portions of the British populace. Their goal was to withdraw from their largest economic market to regain full regulatory control yet maintain access to the Single Market via a free trade deal that represented over 40 percent of its exports (4). When the time came to negotiate this free trade deal, economic reasoning took a back seat, again. As the final days of the deal approached, most of the negotiations had been settled. However, over a dinner of pumpkin soup, scallops, and steamed turbot with mashed potatoes (a not-so-subtle nod to the feud) UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and EU President of the Commission Ursula von der Leyen almost derailed the entire deal for the seemingly economically insignificant fishing industry (5). Johnson left the dinner asserting that “very large gaps remain between the two sides (regarding a fishing deal) and it is still unclear whether these can be bridged.” Von der Leyen said that “we understand each other’s positions. But [we] remain far apart” (6). With only 15 days left to seal the deal, and no consensus on fishing in sight, many were left confused and frustrated. The fishing industry employs roughly 12,000 workers out of a UK workforce of over 33 million (excluding the processing industry, which employs a larger portion); represents 0.1 percent of British domestic output; 0.2 percent of EU GDP; and accounts for just 0.8 percent of total EU-UK trade (7, 8, 9, 10). It produces a little more than £1 billion of the total £300 billion worth of UK exports. It seemed that the UK was effectively putting at risk over 99 percent of its trade with the EU to defend an industry that accounted for a mere fraction of the world’s sixth-largest economy. Even Harrods in London contributes more to the British economy (11). Many questioned why the British government was prepared to risk the most important trade negotiations in recent British history over an industry that barely even touches the economic needle, let alone moves it. Literature Review Academics and journalists alike, such as Professor Anand Menon (12), Jeremy Phillipson (13), Sophia Kopela (14), and Stijn Billiet (15) tried to address the paradox, but the vast majority failed to account for the genesis of the paradox by failing to consider the role of elections and electoral politics. Professor Menon argued that the British government’s focus on the repatriation of fishing rights was instrumentally relevant because it was symbolic and represented a commitment to the “left behind.” Menon asserted that the media’s amplification of the issue brought it to relevance, and in a sense, forced Johnson to act (16, 17). Other scholars, such as Craig McAngus, Christopher Huggins, and John Connolly concluded that since fishing was one of the most Europeanized policies for the UK, it would receive the most attention throughout the trade talks (18, 19). On par with the rest of Brexit, the answer lies in convoluted domestic politics rather than economic reasoning. As mentioned in previous analyses, the fishing industry was perceived as a symbol for the wider movement fueling Brexit: “taking back control” and revitalizing a domestic industry that was lost under the heel of the EU boot. Politicians focused on it in order to create an image that the government was helping the citizens, and particularly, the disenfranchised (20). The cause for this might not be just because of the media’s influence, as per Menon’s analysis, but rather because of a synergistically strong confluence of the Scottish fishing lobby, an upcoming Scottish general election, and the Conservative party’s political agenda. II: Why Do Politicians Protect and Amplify Certain Industries in Free- Trade Agreements? Theoretical Frameworks: Lobbying Influence and the Self-Serving Politician There are a multitude of theories regarding the significance of certain industries in trade talks, often finding answers in lobby groups and politicians’ electoral objectives. Typically, democratically elected/appointed officials ultimately determine trade agreements. As theorized by Robert Putnam in 1988, the politics of trade agreements are often a two-level game in which public sector officials/politicians are simultaneously in negotiations at both the international and the domestic levels (21). Putnam assessed that domestic groups pressure the officials to adopt favorable policies and, in turn, these officials seek to amplify their power by developing relationships with these groups who offer support via votes or campaign contributions (22). Politicians then go to the international level and seek to maximize their ability to satisfy domestic pressures while balancing the needs of their international partners (23). Following Putnam’s two-level game theory, Gene Grossman and Elhanan Helpman introduced special-interest politics into the analysis, analyzing profit-maximizing lobbying groups. They found that, “lobbies seek to curry favor with politicians who covet their financial support... seeking to maximize the aggregate welfare of the lobby groups’ members” (24). As the politician’s objective is to maximize their own political welfare––which often relies on having a large number of contributions––they champion the policy of those who donate the most. In other words, those who donate the most have purchased the most access to influence during trade talks. Sometimes, though, the most influence comes from industries that do not have deep pockets. In 1982, Arye Hillman assessed why politicians put their support behind declining industries that have little special-interest money and/or little economic or voting influence (25). Hillman found that politicians protect and promote declining industries for self-interest motives to maximize political support, rather than for altruistic ideals, as the industry will still typically decline even with protection (26). However, a strong influence of a declining industry may not solely manifest from a politician’s political agenda. In “Entry and Asymmetric Lobbying: Why Governments Pick Losers”, Richard Baldwin and Frederic Robert-Nicoud use Grossman and Helpman’s 1994 pressure group approach to conclude that while government policy is influenced by pressure groups that employ expensive lobby- ing tactics, losers (such as declining industries) lobby more diligently through less expensive means (27). They concluded that it is not just the government that picks the losers, but rather it is also the losers that pick the government (28). The Fishing Industry as a “Loser” Lobbyist It is helpful to use Grossman and Helpman’s campaign finance lobbying, Hillman’s self-serving/re-election interests, and Baldwin’s and Robert-Nicoud loser lobbying framework to contextualize the fishing paradox. To begin, one must view the fishing industry as a lobbyist and Johnson as a political welfare maximizer. However, the fishing industry is not the lobbyist illustrated by Grossman and Helpman. After analyzing over 7,000 donations to both Conservative Party and Unionist Party between 2016-2020, the Scottish Fishing Federation and the National Federation of Fishermen did not appear to make meaningful contributions to the party. Several material contributions came from the fishing towns, yet such donations did not correlate with the amount of influence achieved. From 2016-2020, of the £169,449,385 donated to both parties, only £275,950 came from relevant coastal towns––roughly 0.163 percent (29). It is a bit of a conundrum, as according to Grossman and Helpman, the more robust sectors that donate the most would receive the highest levels of government support. When applying Baldwin and Robert-Nicod’s theory, though, it becomes clear that the fishers were not campaign contribution lobbyists, rather they were “loser” lobbyists who were loud and deliberate. They saw the Brexit movement as their policy opportunity and harnessed their symbolic nature to make themselves quite relevant in final trade talks. Concurrently, Johnson acted as a political welfare maximizer. When applying Hillman’s theory, the declining fishing community became relevant to the Conservatives, who hoped to maximize political support for electoral gains, re-election, and legacy. The newly formed Johnson administration needed to amplify an easy-to-understand industry that resonated with Brexit supporters and exemplified regained sovereignty. But it is often overlooked that the Conservatives also needed an industry that could help maintain the Tory Scottish Parliament seats and form a bulwark against the growing post-Brexit Scottish independence movement. The industry that conveniently and succinctly represented these values was the Scottish fishing industry. To see how this fits together, the story of Brexit and the fishing industry should be traced. First, we will examine the path to Brexit and the ways in which fishing––particularly the Scottish fisher––was influential from the beginning. Then we will scrutinize the trade talks and the political machinations of each actor. We will see that the political endgames of politicians are apparent in trade talks and domestic electoral gains often materially influence their tack as they adjust for the ever-changing political winds. III: A Deep-Seated History Part 1: How Did the UK Get to Brexit? An Overview of UK/EU Relationship: A Troubled Beginning As Professors Vivien Schmidt and Jolyon Howorth note, “Brexit was, in many ways, an accident waiting to happen” (30). The UK and the EU always had an am- bivalent relationship––a noncommittal half-in, half-out—in which the UK has been referred to as the “awkward partner” that never really embraced the deeper political, cultural, and ideological ambitions of her partners across the Channel. In the aftermath of WWII, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was created in 1951 to ensure stability across the continent by linking economies. While the UK embraced the idea of a united Europe, she saw herself as a separate entity––not just physically, but culturally as well. She was an island empire on which the sun had never set. But as the empire declined in stature and size during the post-war recovery period, she realized that in order to achieve her global ambitions in the new post-imperial world, she may find herself in a useful position to be the bridge between the US and the new ECSC: the European Economic Community (EEC). After two prior attempts, the UK finally joined in 1973 under Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath (31). However, Euroscepticism reigned from the get-go. Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell argued that a federal Europe would mean the “end of Britain as an independent European state” and promised to hold a referendum if elected (32). Two years later, in 1975, Labour formed a government under Harold Wilson and held the UK’s first EU referendum (33). Although closely divided, the UK would vote “Yes” to a united Europe, with the then-Europhile Conservative leader Margret Thatcher leading the way for the Conservatives, while Labour remained extremely divided over the subject (34). Thatcher’s Europhilism, however, was short-lived. A staunch supporter of the Single Market, Thatcher ultimately changed course due to the contentious Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and its budget contributions (35). She felt that the UK contributed more than its fair share of funding. Rhetoric of losing power and control to Brussels became common in her speeches and while her Eurosceptic agenda and rhetoric would ultimately become her downfall, it planted the seed for a growing anti-Europe movement that divided both parties internally (36). This seed later found its political moment amongst the disenfranchised in 2016 after a Conservative political opportunist called another EU referendum in hopes of bridging a divided Tory Party and securing a re-election win. Divisions within the Tories regarding Europe had been brewing since the Thatcher years, and were proving to be problematic for David Cameron’s upcoming general election as the rise of a relatively new right-wing populist party, the UK Independence Party (UKIP), began siphoning off the Conservative Eurosceptic votes. Hoping to mitigate Tory Europhile defections, Cameron promised an EU membership referendum if re-elected, believing that the party would vote to remain (37). The result was a complete miscalculation as he underestimated just how powerful Euroscepticism had become. The country split into two camps: Leave vs. Remain. The Remain campaign took a negative approach, focusing their argument on the economic consequences of a vote to leave (38). As mentioned, however, Brexit was not about economics and, as such, it did not resonate at the doorstep. The Leave campaigns led by Boris Johnson and former UKIP leader Nigel Farage took a more emotional, visceral approach that resonated well with the disenfranchised who felt that the globally interconnected EU was the source of all their problems. They had seen their employment opportunities evaporate as the industrial sector left the country and viewed the EU as their scapegoat. The campaigns of Vote Leave and Leave.EU tapped into this discontent, arguing to “take back control” of a trade by creating their own trade deals, revitalizing declining industries, and bringing jobs back to Britain (39). The Take Back Control mantra percolated throughout the country and was succinctly exemplified with the vignette of the fishing industry. The fishing industry perfectly embodied the Conservative Leave movement––it was an industry key to the British identity, but was disenfranchised and felt powerless and expendable, and held deep-seated resentment towards Europe. This resentment was a manifestation of an EU policy known as the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) that seeks to conserve fishing stocks and ensure fair competition in European waters by setting catching quotas for European fishing vessels based on 1983 catch activity (40, 41). The EU can determine quotas in each boundary as the policy requires that each member state pool its sovereignty and open its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) to all member states, creating a ‘European Water’ and overriding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (42). To understand why the British held deep resentment towards this policy, one must understand the fishing wars. Part 2: Fishing Wars To Control or Not to Control, That is the Question As an island nation, Britain has had an obsession with claiming ownership and sovereignty of its waters, at times to the point of belligerency. Fishing has always been key to British identity, especially Scottish identity, which makes it a rather sensitive topic. The tension between the Island and the Continent regarding the open seas dates back to the Anglo-Dutch wars and grew throughout the Anglo-French rivalry and crescendoed with the infamous 1950s-70s Cod Wars where the UK and Iceland faced off over British access to the rich cod waters off the coast of Iceland (43, 44). These violent showdowns repeated throughout multiple decades, with Iceland almost leaving NATO and falling into the Soviet orbit (45). The clash ended with the UK’s long-distance fishing fleets losing access to Iceland’s lucrative fishing grounds followed by a sharp decline in fishing industry revenues. Around the same time, the UK joined the EU and was required to join the contentious CFP. The UK’s fishing industry was wary about entering the CFP and pooling access to its waters, relinquishing control over its EEZ. Academics, politicians, and journalists alike wondered why the Heath government did not try to negotiate an opt-out of the CFP––an action for which the UK is famous––or even negotiate a better deal for the UK (46). The answer circles back to Iceland. When the UK lost its long-distance access to Iceland, there was little inshore activity to replace it as the nation had become so dependent on the white fish from the more northern seas (47). British fishers were not fishing near the British coast. As such, most of the quota rights for inshore fishing went to the French, Dutch, and Danish fishers during the accession negotiations (48). The Resentful Fishers This did not sit well with the fishers, particularly the Scottish fishers, who watched their industry decline just as the EU gained access to UK waters. When asked about Britain’s entrance into the CFP, Scottish fisher Baden Gibson insisted that: “The EU and its fisheries policy have destroyed businesses beyond fishing... If you fish outside of your quota the penalties can be fierce— my worry would be that I would lose my boat and then I would lose everything. I realize that there must be quotas, but it should be fishing organizations who set those quotas” (49). Fishers felt a loss of control and that the government sold them out for access to the Single Market. This was further exacerbated when it came down to ownership of the quotas. Over the years, more and more foreign entities started to own Brit- ish fishing fleets, with 50 percent of all English quotas “owned” by British-flagged ships that were actually Spanish, Dutch, or Icelandic; that is about £160 million worth of England’s fishing quota (50, 51). The feeling of loss of control was palpable. It must be noted that it was not necessarily Brussels causing the decline. Rather, it was overfishing and advances in technology that prevented fishers from achieving previous catching thresholds as well as the aftermath of the Cod Wars that prevented them from fishing in certain areas. Another factor was the rise of multimillion-dollar fishing companies in the UK (52). Nonetheless, British fishers did not see it this way. From their perspective, the correlation was objectively clear: the UK fishing industry thrived before EU membership, but as part of the EU, it died at the hands of the quotas. Reforming the Common Fisheries Policy Calls were made by the fishing industry to reform the CFP, and in 2014, the European Commission tried to do so, putting forth reforms that would increase the labor market mobility of fishers (53). These schemes were criticized as they did not consider the local and cultural factors enough and did not give countries sufficient control over the quota issue. The reforms adjusted the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund and allowed member states to manage 89 percent of it, while the European Commission would manage 11 percent (54). However, that still did not fix the unpopular element of being too distant and top-down with rules dictated by Brussels, far away from the UK and even further from understanding the local fishers’ needs (55). The fishers wanted a greater say in fishery management; they wanted to decentralize the decision-making structures as they felt like bystanders in decisions that impacted them greatly. Part 1: The Referendum Brexit as a Policy Window for Fishers The EU referendum was the fishing industry’s “policy window” under Leave’s rally cry of “Take Back Control.” It was finally time to expel the European vessels from British waters and manage their fish stocks independently. Rather than lobbying via campaign contributions, as Grossman and Helpman’s theory predicts, the fishing industry-aligned more with Baldwin and Robert-Nicoud’s theory of lobbying diligently through less expensive means. In this case, the less expensive means came in the form of a new 21st-century campaign tool: social media. UKIP’s Nigel Farage teamed up with the campaign group Fishing for Leave (FFL) to storm social media and conduct demonstrations, calling for the UK to leave the EU and leave the CFP. To make a public display of discontent and grievances a few days before the referendum, Farage led a 35-boat flotilla of fishers up the Thames, asserting that “today’s flotilla is not a celebration or a party but a full-throttled protest. We want our waters back” (56). He also said that “one thing I can promise you, is that you are about to hear a lot about the fishing industry” (57). They were vociferous lobbyists who would become a key electoral constituency for the Conservatives. The hope, and promise, was that leaving the EU would allow the UK to reclaim fishing dominance and sovereignty over their territorial waters, which would, in turn, see fishing communities thrive again with replenished stock and the return of jobs. On June 26, 2016, the referendum was held, and the UK voted to leave 51 percent to 48 percent. The fishing industry, as predicted, was a firm supporter, especially the Scottish fishers (58). A pre-referendum survey indicated that 92 percent of Scottish fishers intended to vote to leave (59). Fishing communities such as Banff and Buchan voted for Brexit, with around 54 percent voting to leave, but were outnumbered by the rest of Scotland who largely voted to remain (60). They were a small, disenfranchised group within a larger community that found a policy window and representation within the Brexiteers. They would become incredibly important to the Conservatives who needed to keep a seat at the team in Scotland. Part 2: The Trade Talks The Conservative’s Seat at the Scottish Table: The Rise of the Politically Important Scottish Fishers The Scottish fishers were Brexiteers, but that did not necessarily mean they were pro-Tory. After Heath’s historic 1973 betrayal of fishing, Scotland’s northeast fishing community channeled its anger by voting with the pro-independence, social democratic Scottish National Party (SNP) for the following decades. The Tories were treacherous in the eyes of the fishers, best underscored by the 1973 quote from a UK civil servant: “In light of Britain’s wider European interests they, the Scottish fishermen, are expendable” (61). While the Scottish Tories initially lost the community’s trust, gaining it back was easier than one may think as the Scottish fisheries did not ideologically align with the rest of Scotland and the SNP. Leading up to the referendum, Scottish scholar Dr. Craig McAngus conducted a survey of Scottish fishers’ demographic characteristics as well as their political, social, and constitutional attitudes. McAngus found that they were: (1) a unionized industrial working class made up of mostly middle-aged men with standard grade qualifications who value self-sufficiency and sense of freedom to succeed in their profession and take on a libertarian ideology that is skeptical of state intervention; (2) very Eurosceptic, portraying themselves as “victims of an overly bureaucratic and unsympathetic governance regime,” and would lean towards the Conservative Party rather than the Labour Party whose values of collectivism and socialist principles conflicted with their notion of an unsympathetic governance regime; (3) differing from the rest of the Scottish population in that they tended to trust the UK Government more than the Scottish Government, which seems contradictory at first given Heath’s 1973 betrayal for access to the Single Market, however, their support relates to the Scottish independence movement. As the Scottish Government is currently led by the SNP, and as the fishers tend to be more British-unionist, conflicts often arise between the secession-seeking Scottish government and the union-seeking fishing industry. How the British Government Attempted to Divert Fisher’s Support Away from SNP to Scottish Tory via Brexit Scottish independence from the UK has been a divisive topic ever since Scot- land joined the UK in 1707. In a 2014 independence referendum, Scotland voted to remain in the UK, 55 percent to 45 percent, but the debate never settled. Scot- land’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon continued to push for another referendum, rather than receiving additional devolved powers from Westminster (which had been done in the past as a way for Westminster to circumvent Scottish independence). After the Brexit referendum, her calls for independence grew louder than ever as the majority of Scotland voted to remain in the EU––62 percent to 32 percent. Sturgeon argued that it was undemocratic for Scotland to be “dragged out of the EU against its will,” demanding another independence referendum–– indyref2––and then hoping to re-join the EU.62 But, to hold another referendum on Scottish independence, the UK’s Prime Minister must grant formal permission and the newly minted PM Boris Johnson did not support such. Johnson and other supporters of a unified UK argued that the 2014 referendum was a once-in-a-generation opportunity––a phrase Sturgeon campaigned on back in 2014––and asserted that under this reasoning, another referendum should not be held for another 40+ years. On the horizon, however, was the upcoming May 2021 Scottish Parliament election, thus Johnson and his Scottish Tory counterparts were finding themselves in a political pickle. Opinion polls saw a sizable shift from a slight majority of pro-independence voters in 2019 to a solid majority in 2020. Analysts attributed this shift to Brexit, and also to Sturgeon’s handling of the Coronavirus, which many believed had been better than Johnson’s. With polls indicating that the SNP was on course to win an overall majority in the May 2021 Scottish Parliament election, polling expert Sir John Curtice said that the country “seem[ed] headed for a significant clash between the UK and Scottish governments over whether another independence referendum should be held” (63). Conservatives started to worry that if they lost their Scottish Tory seats to the SNP, the Scottish Parliament would be comprised mostly, if not all, of the SNP. Scottish Tories would lose their voice in the Scottish Government, and Westminster would have to grant an independence referendum if asked, or risk being further branded as undemocratic. There was, however, a Brexit-supporting Scottish constituency that could potentially save the Scottish Tories: the Scottish fishers. As mentioned previously, fisheries have been caught between supporting the SNP and the Tories for decades. The fisheries voted SNP in the years after Heath’s “betrayal,” as the then-SNP Leader Alex Salmond sought to bring Scotland out of the CFP (64). During the 2014 independence referendum, Salmond made fishing a material role in the SNP’s campaign, asserting that if independence was gained, fishing would be the #1 national priority and would have direct representation in the EU (65). The issue, however, was that the fishers wanted out of the CFP, not more EU representation, which is what Salmond was campaigning for. As a result, SNP lost a large majority of the fisheries in the 2015 Scottish Parliament election. The hemorrhaging of fishing votes continued when the Brexiteers campaigned to “Take Back Control” during the 2016 EU/UK referendum. The 2017 Scottish Parliament elections saw a loss of fishing votes from SNP to Scottish Conservatives. The Tories increased their hold from one seat in 2015 to 13 in 2017, gaining the northeast fishing community seats as per figure 11 (66, 67). Figure 11 (68) Yellow indicates SNP seats, orange indicates Liberal Democrats, red indicates Labour, and blue indicates Scottish Tory. Brexit was the perfect opportunity for the Conservative Party to regain both the fishers’ trust and seats in the Scottish Parliament. Once they regained that support, they could potentially prevent independence by keeping the vote. The game was not over, though. The SNP made it its goal to regain coastal communities by illustrating that the Tories could not be trusted in looking out for Scotland’s best interests.69 Conservatives then countered by making fishing a key part of the “exit-negotiations.” A Hiccup: When May did not prioritize the Fisheries After the referendum, Cameron stepped down and Theresa May assumed Tory leadership in 2016. May called a snap election in 2017 in hopes of increasing her party’s slim majority in the lower house and having a stronger mandate to negotiate a Brexit deal with the EU. However, due to a resurgent Labour Party, May did not gain a majority and had to form a confidence-and-supply agreement with ten MPs of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) (70). That being said, May did gain some Scottish coastal seats due to the 2017 surge in Scottish Tory support. Suddenly, Scottish fishers––as well as the DUP––became one of the preeminent interest groups for May’s coalition, as they were some of the few who kept her party from anemic minority status. Appeasing them and creating and maintaining trust would be necessary to get her Brexit deal approved and to keep Scottish Parliament seats. May proceeded with her Brexit plans and announced a Fisheries Bill to take back control of British waters and remove fishing quotas after the country with- drew from the EU (71). This pleased the fishers, but as 2017 progressed, the EU countries whose fishing industries were heavily dependent on access to UK waters became worried that access to the waters would be completely severed and that the EU would set an undesirable precedent for its member nations. Denmark claimed it had historical rights to fish in British waters dating back to the 1400s, while other EU countries claimed that the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea stated that countries must respect each other’s “traditional fishing rights”, and the ability to access British waters fell under traditional rights (72). In March of 2018, then-Brexit Secretary David Davis and the EU’s Brexit Negotiator Michel Barnier announced that the UK and the EU had agreed on a Brexit transition deal. However, to achieve the deal, the UK partially conceded its fishing contentions: fisheries would be required to follow the CFP rules until the end of the December 2020 Brexit transition period (73). The UK fishing industry was infuriated. Bertie Armstrong, CEO of the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation, said, “This falls far short of an acceptable deal. We will leave the EU and leave the CFP, but hand back sovereignty over our seas a few seconds later... Our fishing communities’ fortunes will still be subject to the whim and largesse of the EU for another two years” (74). Again, Nigel Farage protested on a fishing boat floating along the Thames outside of Parliament while chucking dead haddock into the river. SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon took to Twitter hoping to sway the fishers back over to the SNP stating: “This is shaping up to be a massive sellout of the Scottish fishing industry by the Tories” (75). The thirteen Scottish Conservative MPs announced that the deal was like “drink[ing] a pint of cold sick” and assured that they would be prepared to vote against their own party if they did not see a return to full control of British waters as “the EU does not care about Scottish fishermen and neither do the SNP government who wants us to re-join the Common Fisheries Policy and the EU” (76). A sense of betrayal was palpable, and May’s fellow Conservative politicians started to understand that prioritizing fishermen would need to be on their political agenda. May would go on to put forth two other Brexit deals but was met with sound political rejection. In June 2019, she stepped down and Boris Johnson assumed leadership in July. The Hiccup Continues: Johnson Learning to Prioritize Fish With May’s Brexit failure in the rearview mirror, Johnson was keen on steering the UK out of the EU. However, after May’s perceived slight, he found little support amongst the Scottish Conservatives and fishers. In August, Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson resigned. She worried that a Johnson government would boost support for independence, given that his hard-liner Brexit stance stood in complete opposition to the majority opinion of Scotland and the SNP (77). Johnson, however, had a different agenda; one that was keen on maintaining the union and appeasing the fishing industry was one way of doing so. In July 2019, Johnson made his first visit to Scotland and pledged that fishing access would not be sacrificed in the new Brexit deal.78 The Scottish fishers welcomed his rhetoric, with Bertie Armstrong stating, “We have been looking for a straight and direct answer and that’s exactly what we have got... Scottish fishing’s sea of opportunity lies on the other side of Brexit” (79). Additionally, Johnson assured fishers that he would “strengthen the union” and pledged £300 million for boost- ing growth in the devolved nations (Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland) as a way to try to counteract critics who said his no-deal strategy would break up the UK (80). Among those critics was Nicola Sturgeon, who branded Johnson as the “last prime minister of the UK” (81). After a series of controversial events in the Fall of 2019––proroguing Parliament and then withdrawing the whip from 21 MPs (effectively expelling them from the party)––Johnson was left with no majority in Parliament and found it impossible to get Brexit legislation through. He enacted the Benn Act to extend the divorce date from October 19th, 2019 to January 31st, 2020, and then called a snap election for December 12th, 2019. While Johnson took a strong stance against Scottish independence, his attention to fishing seemed to wane during the snap election. Johnson did keep Scotland in his sights, but most of his attention was to mainland England, hoping to gain back the English voters who defected to Labour in 2017 (82). He visited Scotland once during the campaign, where he delivered the Scottish Conservative manifesto and claimed that Scotland was “paralyzed” by the SNP. Johnson asserted that “a vote for the Scottish Conservatives is a vote to stop a second independence referendum and to get Brexit done... Only a vote for the Conservatives will stop the SNP’s plans to break up the UK” (83 , 84). However, given that May lost many British votes to Labour in 2017, he also needed to prioritize issues that were of interest to larger voting blocs, such as the NHS, the police, and the British education system. To do so, as is now second nature to many politicians, Johnson harnessed Twitter to connect with constituents. On Twitter, Johnson spoke less about fishing and more about those three campaign stances. In total, Johnson tweeted 62 times regarding his campaign agenda on those issues, while only tweeting about fishing five times and Scotland nine times. Figure 13 (85) Illustrates the number of times Johnson Tweeted about a specific subject: 5 times about fishing; 9 times about Scotland; and 62 times about the NHS, policing, and schooling. With much focus on Johnson’s campaign, fishers in coastal Scottish towns were growing worried that fishing was not his top priority. These fishers became more apprehensive and began questioning Johnson’s true intentions: “There’s a calculation that the fishing industry is making that there’s a heavy risk they will get sold out on the way out of the EU, just like they did on the way in” and that maybe “the SNP might get a better deal for Scottish fishing from the EU” (86) especially since Johnson “changes his mind like the weather” (87). A growing number of fishers were unsure whether Johnson would protect the fishing industry or divert his focus towards other aspects in the UK during the trade talks. Election day came, and while Johnson won the largest Parliamentary majority since Thatcher in 1987, he lost several crucial seats in Scotland, which resulted in a small swing back to the SNP, who won 48 out of 59 seats (88). Although a tabloid journalist, Torcuil Crichton provided some thoughtful insight by noting that Scottish Tory 2017 gains were halved in 2019, and any further “betrayal” of the fish- ing industry “will fuel the independence argument and undermine the principles Brexit was fought on” (89). Suddenly, the importance of Scottish independence began to sink in. Johnson needed to show Scotland the benefits of staying in the UK and that Brexit was good for Scottish communities. The fishing industry was the perfect political tool for this end. Johnson could argue that he was going to secure them a good deal, stand up for the disenfranchised against an “overbearing” Brussels, and bring back the domestic industry. He could argue that the UK’s government was paying attention to Scottish needs and, as such, Scotland should stay in the UK rather than back the independence-preoccupied SNP. It is for this reason that fishing was greatly amplified during the trade talks. The Tories needed to secure the Scottish fishing industry a good deal––the rare Scottish industry that embodied the Brexit movement, had yet to back SNP fully, and were against independence––or else potentially be forced to consider calling an independence referendum. Fishing was the fulcrum for Johnson’s political leverage. The Talks and the Deal With the general election behind him and the risk of Scottish independence at the forefront of his mind, Johnson entered the trade talks as a strong counter to Macron and other EU officials who wanted the status quo ante . The issue has now come full circle, back to the famed scallop and turbot dinner on December 9th, 2020, when Johnson and von der Leyen sat down to hash out the final open issue. Britain demanded 80 percent of the EU’s catch to be returned to the UK, but reduced this to 60 percent as a compromise; the EU countered with 20 percent (90). The UK demanded that this transition would take no longer than three years, while the EU asked for a 14-year transition period, which they then reduced to seven. The EU asked for its fishing vessels to be able to fish in the six-to-twelve-mile zone from the British coastline, but the UK insisted that EU vessels be banned from this zone. Von der Leyen left the dinner saying the two sides remained “far apart” (91). The whole trade deal was on the line, with only a few days to go. Finally, on Christmas Eve, after four-and-a-half years of bitter negotiations and only a week to spare before the UK would crash out of the EU, they came to a deal. The 1,200-page document was passed by MPs on December 30th, 521 to 73, and it goes as follows: The transition will be phased over five and a half years, during which EU vessels will still be able to fish in the UK waters. During the adjustment period, EU quotas will decrease by 15 percent in the first year, and then two and a half percent for the following four years. That means by year five, the UK will regain 25 percent of the current EU catch in British waters; Fish will continue to be traded between the two parties with no tariffs imposed; After the five-year adjustment period is over, the UK and EU will enter annual negotiations to determine the quota of fish that EU vessels are allowed to catch in UK waters (92). Johnson announced the deal while wearing a fish patterned tie and praised it as a great deal in which fishers would see their hauls increase from half of the fish quota in British waters under CFP, to about two-thirds by the end of the adjustment period (93). However, neither the fisheries, the French, nor the other EU nations, saw it this way. A deal had been made, but the saga was far from over. V: Conclusions Summary of Findings While fisheries were the “losers” that lobbied hard to grab the government’s attention initially during the Brexit campaign (much like Baldwin and Robert-Nicoud’s theory), it appears that the Conservatives needed the fishers during the exit negotiations and thus took a hard position on access to UK waters, not for social merit, but rather for their electoral and political gains (much like Hillmen’s theory). Matt Bevington, an analyst with the UK in a Changing Europe, pointed out that Johnson saw fishing as one of the few areas where the government would be able to score a “win” to tout as evidence of Brexit’s success (94). Barrie Deas, CEO of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organization, said that the fishing industry was a “litmus test’’ for Brexit since we will not know most of the effects of the Brexit deal for many years, but the effects for fishing will be realized immediately (95). The Guardian journalist Daniel Boffey noted that fisheries were important to Johnson as he needed to show some benefit of Brexit to Scottish communities as Sturgeon was ramping up her demands for another independence referendum (96). In a similar vein, Denis Staunton of the Irish Times emphasized that North East Scotland is now essential to Johnson’s electoral constituency and will play an important role in the Scottish independence debate over the next few years (97). However, if he remains unable to please the Scottish fishers, the SNP may snatch up those who feel expendable to the Tories. This will again potentially embolden the independence movement since no politician wants to be known as the last Prime Minister. Lessons Learnt While the deal itself was a “Christmas miracle” to the Tories, in many respects, its aftermath has not been so merry. Johnson was unable to provide the fishing industry the deal that they wanted, and more importantly, that they were expect- ing. While the Scottish Tories matched their 2016 performance in the May 2021 Scottish elections, the fishing debacle still plagues the Johnson government with many lessons to be taught to future politicians (98). Hoping to illustrate the UK government’s commitment to the disenfranchised and their commitment to taking back control from the EU, many promises were made. These promises, however, were not plausible, let alone achievable––especially in regards to the fishing industry. Now, the Scottish independence movement has re-emerged, with the SNP harnessing the fishing failure as another reason for why they should leave the UK. Electoral politics influenced the amplification of the industry during the talks. In so doing, it amplified a delicate social, economic, and political bond that is about to snap. However, the main lessons scholars may glean from this case study is the extreme influence of domestic electoral politics in trade agreements: 1. An industry being economically insignificant does not mean that it will be insignificant in the international arena. Not everything in trade talks distills down to economics. More likely than not, declining domestic industries will be protected in trade talks for political purposes. 2. That is not to say, however, that economics is not influential. Johnson was a champion of the industry throughout the trade talks, but ultimately, he had to secure a deal that would allow European vessels access to UK waters for a limited time in order to salvage a trade relationship. In other words, economic interests were prioritized over politics towards the end of the talks. As Barrie Deas said, “It’s what we always feared... When you get to the endgame in the negotiations it becomes a binary choice and economics prevails over politics. I think that’s what’s happened and it’s really not good news.” Ultimately, for better or for worse, Johnson needed a deal (99). 3. Politicians often pick easily understood industries to get their message across. While much of the fishing industry is quite complex, once dissected, its disenfranchised status is not. Johnson harnessed the underserved with a message centered around one question: “what does Brussels know about potholes in London?” His intent with the fishing industry was to illustrate an example of him protecting locals to show (1) that Brexit can be a success and (2) that he was fighting for the British (and Scottish) industry. Fishing was an industry that many people could understand as it portrayed Brussels as treating them unfairly with “draconian quotas.” It would have been difficult if, for example, Johnson had tried to highlight intellectual property rights; few people would latch on to that due to its highly technical nature. Here, success revolves around clear messaging, which is something the Remain camp struggled to achieve. In the eyes of the Brexiteers, these were local fishers––the heart and soul of the UK, even if they were no longer as economically significant––being taken advantage of by Brussels. Fishers also happened to be politically right-leaning and resided in the “hostile” territory of Scotland. As the world enters a more global epoch, there has been a greater emphasis on interdependence and trans- nationalism, which often glazes over domestic factors. But, as former Speaker of the House of Representatives Tip O’Neill (D-MA) famously quipped: “all politics is local,” or, rather, “all local politics are global,” especially in free-trade agreements. Constituents care more about what is happening on the home front, rather than what is going on in Brussels. They care about how Brussels affects them at home more than being in an economically efficient partnership with the EU. 4. Thus, as Putnam theorized in 1988, international negotiations are a two-level game in which domestic groups pressure the government to adopt favorable policies, as the politicians seek to amplify their power by consulting coalitions of these groups. The politicians then go to the international level and seek to maximize their ability to satisfy domestic pressures while balancing the needs of their international partners. However, the need to get reelected and to preserve legacy presides over the strategy they bring to the negotiation table and the industries they choose to protect. Electoral politics is at the heart of all politics, especially in free trade arrangements. Future Research It has been eight months since this paper was originally completed, and fishing still remains top of the fold. The UK and France are in continuous disputes, threatening sanctions and denying each other licenses to harvest in each other’s seas. To understand this continued conflict, scholars and politicians must look at the EU’s perspective as well as the British perspective. While this paper sought to understand why British politicians amplified the fishing industry during the talks, the UK was not its only amplifier. Just as with the UK, fishing is an economically insignificant industry for the EU overall, yet it continues to be amplified by EU member states. From the EU’s perspective, British waters have fish that are the staple of the European diet: herring, mackerel, sole, and shellfish (100). Herring and mackerel are Denmark’s most popular seafood, and it would be impossible to catch their quota if they could no longer fish in UK waters. This would devastate Denmarks’ industry, culture, and customs. For France, on the other hand, it is more about political weight, similar to what we saw in Scotland with Prime Minister Johnson. As journalist John Lichfield pointed out, “The north of France, around Boulogne, is hugely important for the presidential election in 2022... The regional president... might well be one of Macron’s main rivals at that time, so [Macron] needs to be seen to be supporting what is already a struggling area economically” (101). Additionally, the EU was determined to not set an undesirable precedent. They could not let Britain dictate access to such waters, which could potentially portray the EU as weak to other countries trying the same. This was one of the reasons the EU insisted that the previous level of access to UK waters be maintained, and why Phil Hogan, the EU’s Trade Commissioner, assured Johnson that if he wanted to gain access to EU financial markets, the UK would have to allow EU vessels in British fishing waters (102) Both sides took hardline positions for their constituents, thinking that they were doing their best while also serving their political agendas. Now, though, both British and EU constituents and their businesses are the ones suffering from the fallout of the deal. As stated by Olivier Lepretre, the head of the Hauts-de-France regional fishers association, they want to move on with their lives: “Fishers really don’t care about the politics” anymore, “they just want to work, to go to sea” (103). But, Brexit always was, and still is, a political initiative at its core, and as such, the politics remain. The continued fishing feud illuminates much larger and more profound structural relationship issues that will play out over the next few decades as the two former partners navigate these uncharted waters and tack against the political winds. Endnotes 1 Robert Fisk, “Boris’s Last Push for Brexit Sees Him Kissing Fish and Posing for Selfies as New Poll Gives Leave the Narrowest of Leads,” The Sun (The Sun, June 22, 2016), https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1326026/boriss-last-push-for-brexit-sees-him-kissing-fish-and-posing-for-selfies-in-a-gruelling-final-day-of-campaigning/ . 2 Raf Casert, “EU-UK Trade Talks Floundering over Fish as Cutoff Day Nears,” Associated Press , December 20, 2020, https://apnews.com/article/brexit-europe-global- trade-boris-johnson-europe-94ead6da2c46c87efc51328893cd3590 . 3 Thomas Phillip “Tip” O’Neill. 4 Avery Koop, “Visualizing the UK and EU Trade Relationship,” Visual Capitalist, February 9, 2021, https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-the-uk-and-eu-trade- relationship/ . 5 Adam Coghlan, “Breaking Bread Over Brexit With Fish in Brussels, a Short Story,” Eater London , December 10, 2020, https://london.eater.com/2020/12/10/22167244/no-deal-brexit-fishing-boris-johnson-ursula-von-der-leven-dinner . 6 Daniel Boffey, “The Brexit Brussels Dinner: Fish and Frank Talk but No One Left Satisfied,” The Guardian, December 10, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/ dec/10/the-brexit-brussels-dinner-fish-and-frank-talk-but-no-one-left-satisfied . 7 Elena Ares et al., “UK Fisheries Statistics,” House of Commons Library, November 23, 2020, https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn02788/ . 8 Reuters Staff, “PM Sold out Fish in Brexit Trade Deal, Fishermen Say,” Reuters, December 26, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-fish/pm-sold-out-fish- in-brexit-trade-deal-fishermen-say-idUSKBN2900KG . 9 Kat Haladus, “Fisheries: An Industry That’s Worth 0.1% of the UK’s GDP Is Holding up the Talks,” UK Customs Solutions, December 23, 2020, https://ukcustomssolutions . co.uk/2020/12/23/fisheries-an-industry-thats-worth-0-1-of-the-uks-gdp-is-holding-up-the- talks/. 10 Matt Bevington, Professor Anand Menon, and Professor Jonathan Portes, “Fishing: Why Is It Such a Tricky Issue in UK-EU Negotiations?” UK in a Changing Europe, November 10, 2020, https://ukandeu.ac.uk/explainers/fishing-why-is-it-such-a-tricky-issue-in-uk-eu-negotiations/ . 11 British Sea Fishing, “Brexit and Britain’s Fisheries,” British Sea Fishing, January 20, 2021, https://britishseafishing.co.uk/brexit-and-britains-fisheries/ . 12 Anand Menon and UK in a Changing Europe Team, “Fisheries and Brexit,” The UK in a Changing Europe , June 2020, https://ukandeu.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/ Fisheries-and-Brexit.pdf . 13 Jeremy Phillipson and David Symes, “‘A Sea of Troubles’: Brexit and the Fisheries Question” 90 (2018): pp. 168-173, https://doi.org/10.31230/osf.io/fxnqj . 14 Sophia Kopela, “Historic Fishing Rights in the Law of the Sea and Brexit,” Leiden Journal of International Law 32, no. 4 (2019): pp. 695-713, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0922156519000438 . 15 Stijn Billiet, “Brexit and Fisheries: Fish and Chips Aplenty?” The Political Quarterly 90, no. 4 (2019): pp. 611-619, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923x.12748 . 16 Tom McTague, “Why Britain’s Brexit Mayhem Was Worth It,” The Atlantic (Atlantic Media Company, December 24, 2020), https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/12/brexit-trade-deal-uk-eu/617509/ . 17 Anand Menon and UK in a Changing Europe Team, “Fisheries and Brexit”. 18 Craig McAngus and Christopher Huggins, et al., “The Politics and Governance of UK Fisheries after Brexit.” Political Insight 9, no. 3 (September 2018): 8-11, https://doi.org/10.1177/2041905818796570 . 19 John Connolly et al., “The Governance Capacities of Brexit from a Scottish Perspective: The Case of Fisheries Policy,” Public Policy and Administration , January 2020, https://doi.org/10.1177/0952076720936328 . 20 Matt Bevington, Professor Anand Menon, and Professor Jonathan Portes, “Fishing: Why Is It Such a Tricky Issue in UK-EU Negotiations?” 21 Robert D. Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: the Logic of Two-Level Games.” International Organization 42, no. 3 (1988): 427–60. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2706785 . 22 Corneliu Bjola and Ilan Manor, “In the Long Run,” In the Long Run, July 19, 2018, http://www.inthelongrun.org/criaviews/article/revisiting-putnams-two-level-game-theory- in-the-digital-age-domestic-digita/ . 23 Eugénia da Conceição-Heldt and Patrick A. Mello, “Two-Level Games in Foreign Policy Analysis,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.496 . 24 Gene Grossman and Elhanan Helpman, “Trade Wars and Trade Talks,” Journal of Political Economy 103, no. 4 (1995): pp. 678, https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3450062/Helpman_TradeWars.pdf . 25 Arye L. Hillman, “Declining Industries and Political-Support Protectionist Motives.” The American Economic Review 72, no. 5 (1982): 1180-187. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1812033 . 26 Hilman, 1186. 27 Richard E. Baldwin and Robert-Nicoud, Frédéric, “Entry and asymmetric lobbying: why governments pick losers.” PSPE working papers, March 2007. Department of Government, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK. 28 Ibid. 29 Data collected by Eleanor Ruscitti via the UK Electoral Commission donation reports from 2016-2020, http://search.electoralcommission.org.ukcurrentPage=1&rows=10&sort=AcceptedDate&order=desc&tab=1&open=filter&et=pp&isIrishSourceYes=true&isIrishSourceNo=true&prePoll= false&postPoll=true®ister=gb®ister=ni&optCols =IsAggregation . 30 Vivien Schmidt and Jolyon Howorth, “Brexit: What Happened? What Is Going to Happen?” Politique Étrangère, no. 4 (2016): pp. 123-138, https://doi.org/10.3917/pe.164.0123 . 31 Ibid, 4. 32 Kevin H. O’Rourke, “A Short History of Brexit: from Brentry to Backstop,” in A Short History of Brexit: from Brentry to Backstop (London: Pelican, 2019), p. 74. 33 James Walsh, “Britain’s 1975 Europe Referendum: What Was It like Last Time?” The Guardian, February 25, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/feb/25/britains-1975-europe-referendum-what-was-it-like-last-time . 34 Ibid. 35 Pan Pylas, “Britain’s EU Journey: When Thatcher Turned All Euroskeptic,” Associated Press, (January23,2020), https://apnews.com/article/64855d1ff67454443db5132bdfb22ea6 . 36 Ibid. 37 Vivien Schmidt and Jolyon Howorth, 7. 38 Ibid, 4. 39 Jorge Martins Rosa and Cristian Jiménez Ruiz, “Reason vs. Emotion in the Brexit Campaign: How Key Political Actors and Their Followers Used Twitter,” First Monday 25, no. 3 (March 2, 2020), https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v25i3.9601 . 40 European Commission, “The Common Fisheries Policy (CFP),” European Commission, 2015, https://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/cfp_en . 41 Andy Forse, Ben Drakeford, and Jonathan Potts, “Fish Fights: Britain Has a Long History of Trading Away Access to Coastal Waters,” The Conversation, March 25, 2019, https://theconversation.com/fish-fights-britain-has-a-long-history-of-trading-away-access- to-coastal-waters-112988 . 42 Convention on the Law of the Sea , New York, 10 December 1982, United Nations Treaty Series, pg. 40. https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e. pdf 43 Thomas Wemyss Fulton, “The Fisheries,” in The Sovereignty of the Sea: an Historical Account of the Claims of England to the Dominion of the British Seas, and of the Evolution of the Territorial Waters; with Special Reference to the Rights of Fishing and the Naval Salute (London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1911), pp. 25-57. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/54977/54977- h/54977-h.htm . 44 Keith Johnson, “So Long, and Say Thanks for All the Fish,” Foreign Policy, February 28, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/02/28/fishing-uk-european-union-brexit-trade- talks-cfp/ . 45 Ibid. 46 Dan Roberts, “‘We Have Been Hijacked’: Fishermen Feel Used over Brexit,” The Guardian (Guardian News and Media, March 23, 2018), https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/23/we-have-been-hijacked-fishermen-feel-used-over-brexit . 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Serena Kutchinsky, “Is Nigel Farage the Fisherman’s Friend?” Newsweek, June 27, 2016, https://www.newsweek.com/eu-referendum-brexit-fishing-policy-nigel-farage- scotland-snp-473435 . 50 John Litchfield, “Ukip Is Wrong: British Fishing Answers to Westminster Not Brussels,” The Guardian, April 6, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/06/ ukip-british-fishing-westminster-brussels-brexit . 51 Oliver Barnes and Chris Morris, “Brexit Trade Deal: Who Really Owns UK Fishing Quotas?” BBC News, January 1, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/52420116 . 52 Keith Johnson, “So Long, and Say Thanks for All the Fish.” 53 European Commission, “The Common Fisheries Policy (CFP): the essentials of the new CFP,” 2015. 54 Ibid. 55 Craig McAngus, “A Survey of Scottish Fishermen Ahead of Brexit: Political, Social and Constitutional Attitudes,” Maritime Studies 17, no. 1 (2018): pp. 41-54, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-018-0090-z . 56 Daniel Boffey, “UK Fishermen May Not Win Waters Back after Brexit, EU Memo Reveals,” The Guardian, February 15, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/15/uk-fishermen-may-not-win-waters-back-after-brexit-eu-memo-reveals . 57 Severin Carrell, “Nigel Farage to Lead pro-Brexit Flotilla up Thames,” The Guardian, June 3, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/03/nigel-farage-pro-brexit- flotilla-thames-eu-referendum-leave-campaign . 58 Chris Morris and Oliver Barnes, “Brexit Trade Deal: What Does It Mean for Fishing?” BBC News, January 20, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/46401558 . 59 Craig McAngus, “A Survey of Scottish Fishermen Ahead of Brexit: Political, Social and Constitutional Attitudes.” 60 The Newsroom, “Scottish Constituency of Banff and Buchan ‘ ̃Voted for Brexit’,” The Scotsman, November 22, 2016, https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/scottish-constituency-banff-and-buchan-voted-brexit-1462018 . 61 Kevin McKenna, “Scotland’s Fishermen Feel a Sickening Sense of Betrayal Yet Again,” The Guardian, March 24, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/ mar/24/scotland-fishermen-betrayal-peterhead-brexit . 62 “Scottish Independence: Will There Be a Second Referendum?” BBC News (BBC, March 22, 2021), https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-50813510 . 63 Ibid. 64 Scotland Correspondent, “SNP Tries to Dump EU Fisheries Policy” (The Times, March 31, 2010), https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/snp-tries-to-dump-eu-fisheries- policy-7b8tnlq3gw5 . 65 Scottish Government, “Scotland’s Future and Scottish Fisheries,” Scottish Government, August 14, 2014, https://www.gov.scot/publications/scotlands-future-scottish-fisheries/pages/2/ . 66 “General Election 2017: Former SNP Leader Alex Salmond Loses Seat,” BBC, June 9, 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-40212541 . 67 “General Election 2017: SNP Lose a Third of Seats amid Tory Surge,” BBC News, June 9, 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-40192707 . 68 Ibid. 69 “Letters: Tories Could Not Be Trusted to Negotiate in Good Faith in Independence Talks,” HeraldScotland, November 11, 2020, https://www.heraldscotland.com/ news/18864349.letters-tories-not-trusted-negotiate-good-faith-independence-talks/ . 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid. 72 British Sea Fishing, “Brexit and Britain’s Fisheries.” 73 Ibid. 74 The Newsroom, “Fishing Industry’s Anger as UK and EU Strike Brexit Transition Deal,” The Scotsman, March 19, 2018, https://www.scotsman.com/country-and-farming/ fishing-industrys-anger-uk-and-eu-strike-brexit-transition-deal-318889 . 75 Ibid. 76 Jenni Davidson, “Brexit Deal for Fisheries like ‘A Pint of Cold Sick’, Conservative MP Douglas Ross Says,” Holyrood Website, October 4, 2019, https://www.holyrood.com/news/view,brexit-deal-for-fisheries-like-a-pint-of-cold-sick-conservative-mp-douglas-ross- says_13762.htm . 77 Libby Brooks, “Scottish Tories Still Anxious over Johnson’s Impact on the Union,” The Guardian, July 23, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/23/scottish-tories-still-anxious-over-johnson-impact-on-the-union-independence-ruth-davidson . 78 Tom Peterkin, “Boris Johnson Pledges That Access to Fishing Will Not Be Sacrificed in New Brexit Deal,” Press and Journal, July 30, 2019, https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/politics/scottish-politics/1807666/boris-johnson-pledges-that-access-to-fishing-will-not-be-sacrificed-in-new-brexit-deal/ . 79 Ibid. 80 Rowena Mason and Libby Brooks, “Boris Johnson Heads to Scotland to Deliver £300m Pledge,” The Guardian, July 28, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/28/boris-johnson-heads-to-scotland-to-deliver-300m-pledge . 81 Ibid. 82 Tim Ross, “Boris Johnson’s Tories Abandoned Scotland to Win Their Big Victory,” Bloomberg, December 23, 2019, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-23/how-johnson-s-tories-ditched-scotland-to-rule-a-divided-kingdom . 83 “General Election 2019: Boris Johnson Claims Scotland ‘Paralysed’ by SNP,” BBC News, November 26, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/election-2019-50561993 . 84 Reuters Staff, “Boris Johnson to Tell Scotland: Vote Conservative to Stop Independence Bid,” Reuters, November 6, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-election- scotland/boris-johnson-to-tell-scotland-vote-conservative-to-stop-independence-bid-idUSKBN1XG333 . 85 Data collected by Eleanor Ruscitti via Boris Johnson’s Twitter account 86 Alistair Grant and Rohese Devereux Taylor, “Constituency Profile: Fishing for Votes in Scottish Coastal Communities,” HeraldScotland, December 1, 2019, https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18072191.general-election-2019-fishing-votes-scottish-coastal- communities/ . 87 Ibid. 88 “Results of the 2019 General Election,” BBC News, https://www.bbc.com/news/election/2019/results . 89 Torcuil Crichton, “Why Scottish Fishing Rights Are a Brexit Deal Breaker in EU Trade Talks,” Daily Record, October 15, 2020, https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/.politics/scottish-fishing-rights-brexit-deal-22850163 . 90 British Sea Fishing, “Brexit and Britain’s Fisheries.” 91 Ibid. 92 Chris Morris and Oliver Barnes, “Brexit Trade Deal: What Does It Mean for Fishing?” 93 Harry Taylor, “Kipper Tie: Boris Johnson Sports Fish Symbol in Brexit Message,” The Guardian, December 24, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/24/net-gains-boris-points-up-his-ties-to-the-fishing-industries . 94 Jeremy Kahn, “A Fine Kettle: How Fishing Became the Issue That Could Sink a Post- Brexit U.K.-EU Trade Deal,” Fortune, October 15, 2020, https://fortune.com/2020/10/15/fishing-rights-brexit-u-k-eu-trade-deal/ . 95 Barrie Deas, “Opinion Piece,” NFFO, October 9, 2020, https://nffo.org.uk/news/opinion-piece.html . 96 Daniel Boffey, “Catches, Quotas and Communities: the Key Fisheries Issues at Stake,” The Guardian, October 17, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/oct/17/catches-quotas-and-communities-the-key-fisheries-issues-at-stake . 97 Denis Staunton, “Johnson Covers Brexit Win on Fish to Show He’s ‘Taking Back Control’,” The Irish Times, December 4, 2020, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/johnson-covets-brexit-win-on-fish-to-show-he-s-taking-back-control-1.4426956 . 98 “Scottish Election 2021: Conservative Match Best Scottish Election Results,” BBC News (BBC, May 8, 2021), https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-57042432 . 99 Dan Roberts, “‘We Have Been Hijacked’: Fishermen Feel Used over Brexit.” 100 Laura Hughes, “Brexit: Why Fishing Threatens to Derail EU-UK Trade Talks.” 101 Lucy Williamson, “Brexit: Why France Is Raising the Stakes Over Fishing” (BBC, October 13, 2020), 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Brooklyn Han, Patrick Leitloff, Sally Yang, Eddy Zou Is a UK Government commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals good for the economy and business in general? Brooklyn Han, Patrick Leitloff, Sally Yang, Eddy Zou One aspect of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) is a sustainable use of natural resources and comprehensive environmental protection, mandating a significant change in economic and industrial practices (1). This discussion paper investigates the impact of a government commitment to the implementation of the UN SDGs relating to natural capital on the economy and business in the United Kingdom. We evaluate existing research and governmental policy declarations. The investigation finds that greater certainty around environmental regulations has a net benefit on business performance and that positive spillovers exist already. Policy gaps in waste and energy regulation exist. We also argue that a more accurate tracking of the progress in the SDGs leads to more commitment and better policymaking. This paper won the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) Renaissance Prize in April 2020 (2). I. Introduction In recent years, rising concerns over the environmental sustainability of human-driven economic practices have called for significant action. Len- ton et al. argue that the world may have already crossed several “tipping points” beyond which environmental degradation becomes irreversible, mandating immediate political and economic response (3). We thus choose to focus on natural capital-based Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in our discussion. Natural capital, defined as “stocks of the elements of nature that have value to society,” is used in combination with human, financial, and social capital to produce valuable goods and services (4). This differs from “natural resources” in the sense that natural capital is natural resources utilised to add value to society and the economy. It directly sustains human life, is not easily replenished, and is non-substitutable in certain cases, highlighting the need for sustainable use (5). We explore this with examples throughout our paper. Our SDGs of focus are: - Goal 12: Efficient use of natural resources and effective waste management - Goal 13: Climate change mitigation and adaptation - Goals 14 and 15: Preservation of water and land ecosystems Henceforth we refer to these goals as NC-SDGs. Figure 1. Natural capital-based Sustainable Development Goals (NC-SDGs) and auxiliary NC-SDGs We consider Goals 6, 7, and 9 as auxiliary NC-SDGs as they have targets relating to water ecosystems, fossil fuels as subsoil natural resources, and “environmentally sound technologies and industrial processes” respectively (6). Figure 1 provides a graphic summary. We refer to “commitment” as the integration of SDG targets and indicators in the design and evaluation of policies, as well as promoting awareness towards achieving SDGs in the indicated timeframe. In the following sections, we outline the UK-specific businesses and economy-wide benefits, then examine positive spillovers from current sustainable development policies. After identifying policy gaps, we reflect on the recent developments in measuring SDGs. II. Improved Business Performance There is strong evidence that environmentally sustainable practices improve business performance. Clark et al’s 2014 review of 200 studies on sustainability and corporate performance found that high environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards lowered costs of sourcing capital and improved financial performance in 90 percent of cases (7). Similarly, Flammer identified a positive causal impact of adopting Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) proposals, such as incorporating SDGs in business operations, on accounting performance, labour productivity, and business sales in 2015 (8). Flammer did so by exploiting variation in corporate proposals that are mostly independent of confounding factors, such as the passage of shareholder proposals on CSR that pass or fail by a small margin of votes. Figure 2. The size of incremental SDG-related business opportunities in 2030. Notes : Only the largest opportunities are shown. Source: Business and Sustainable Development Commission, 2017. The implementation of SDGs also opens up new markets for UK businesses. A 2017 report by the Business and Sustainable Development Commission estimates that delivering SDGs in the four “economic systems’”—food and agriculture, energy and materials, cities, and health—can generate over £10 trillion (9) worth of business opportunities per year by 2030 (10). These closely relate to NC-SDGs (summarised in Figure 2) and are highly applicable in the UK. For instance, product-re- formulation strategies, which improve the nutritional content of processed food in the UK and enhance sustainable consumption (SDG 12), require total business investments of approximately £3.7 billion. This is significantly smaller than the estimated gains in Figure 2 (11). Further, this improvement to processed food is projected to improve the health of the population, saving a total of 1.7 million disability-adjusted life years. Healthy workers reduce the burden on the National Health Service by avoiding economic costs associated with falling ill or being hospitalised; they also work and consume more, which are major drivers of GDP. Figure 3. The size of incremental SDG-related business opportunities in 2030, with externalities added. Notes: Evidence at the global level suggests that pricing externalities adds market opportunities substantially. Source: Business and Sustainable Development Commission, 2017. In addition, as shown in Figure 3, adjusting prices to reflect the positive exter- nalities generated by a business focus on SDGs can add up to 40 percent of busi- ness opportunities in the four economic systems identified (12). Figure 4. Low-carbon innovation activity of EU ETS regulated companies compared with the counterfactual scenario. Source: Calel & Dechezleprêtre, 2014 Carbon pricing policies can have a significant effect on business incentives in creating sustainable innovations (13). Figure 4 shows that the introduction of the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) has led to an increase in the number of low-car- bon patents from companies. There is potential for the UK government to further commit to SDGs through measures such as maintaining carbon pricing. Such a commitment would result in even greater benefits from encouraging businesses to invest in low-carbon innovations and creating new business areas. As Europe’s centre of sustainable funds management, the UK’s financial industry has long incorporated ESG standards into its investment criteria to support the growth of sustainable finance. One common method of sustainable finance is investment in an eco-friendly fund which applies ESG criteria and focuses its investment options in companies which are less carbon-intensive or earn green revenues. Eco-friendly funds generally design their own metrics of “climate aware- ness” and adjust portfolios towards companies and assets that perform better along those metrics. One example is the Future World Fund managed by Legal & General Investment Management, which only includes companies meeting minimum environmental standards and exposes itself more to companies which, in addition to meeting environmental standards, engage in environmentally friendly activities (14). In 2016, HSBC placed £1.85 billion of its UK employees’ pension savings into the Future World Fund (15). Reasons for HSBC’s decision are reportedly greater expected returns, improved company engagement, and a more widespread perception that addressing climate change should be the “new normal” (16). The notion that eco-friendly funds can generate returns is supported by empirical evidence: Morningstar, a global research agency, compared average return, success and survival rates of 745 sustainable funds with those of 4150 traditional funds. They found that irrespective of the type considered (bond or equities), and the country of origin (UK or abroad), rates of return on sustainable funds either matched or beat their traditional counterparts. Many businesses also publicly urge the government to further commit to strengthening private-public coordination in delivering SDGs (17). While SDGs are beneficial to businesses, without an active governmental commitment to NC-SDGs to address market failure, firms and the economy more broadly may not fully realise these benefits. Market failures, whereby markets fail to achieve socially efficient resource allocations, necessitate government intervention. Many green investments are currently uncompetitive as they involve early-stage innovations yet to be commercialised. Gillingham and Stock use 2018 data from the US Energy Information Administration to compute the costs of abating each ton of CO2 by replacing electricity generated by an existing coal-fired power plant with the cleaner alternative (18). As a comparison, the UK in 2019 proposed a £16 ($19.2) tax per tonne of CO2 emitted by installations. This effectively means abatement costs for switching to most feasible “cleaner alternatives” are much higher than social costs reflected by carbon tax schemes. Furthermore, solar and wind are among the cleanest forms of energy (Figure 5), yet Gillingham and Stock show that solar thermal and offshore wind are the most costly to implement (Table 1) (19). Table 1. New source generation costs when comparing to existing coal generation. Notes : The table shows engineering costs per ton of CO2 abated by replacing electricity gener- ated by a current coal-fired power plant with the new generation source. Source: Gillingham and Stock, 2018 The UK Energy Research Centre’s review of evidence on the timescale of technological innovations showed that across 14 innovations studies, it takes an average of 39 years for an innovation to be commercialised and deployed (22). Furthermore, Gillingham and Stock suggest that much of the “green investments” in renewable energy suffer from path dependence, whereby rates of return go up in the long run only with sufficiently high inputs (23). Furthermore, environmental externalities in current pollutive technologies are not internalised, leading to overproduction. Greener innovations thus tend to be under-funded by private markets, causing deadweight welfare loss for both consumers and producers (24). Consumers continue to suffer the consequences of pollution, while producers forego the opportunity to achieve better business performance in the long run as outlined above (25). Government finance such as the UK Energy Entrepreneurs Fund, which was launched in 2012 and invested £75 million of grant money by 2019, can support the incubation of businesses before they generate revenues. Figure 5. Solar and wind are among the cleanest forms of energy. Source: Ritchie & Roser, 2020. In addition, the government can provide a regulatory base to correct “imperfect information”. Standardisation prevents greenwashing, the act of labelling projects or bonds with detrimental or negligible impact on the environment as “green” to attract investors. Addressing the lack of clear common standards, cited as the largest source of investor uncertainty, can fuel demand for green bonds, which are bonds earmarked primarily for projects improving energy efficiency (SDG 7) (26). This is exemplified by the ASEAN’s adoption of comprehensive Green Bond Standards that categorise projects and specify the exclusion of fossil fuels (27). These actions reduce information asymmetries between firms and investors and may encourage the latter group to more confidently invest in green projects and bonds. The government can also help establish common reporting standards to lower the implementation costs of sustainability practices. HSBC found that 26 percent of the 1000 UK firms surveyed suggested that a confusion with ESG reporting undermined their sustainability practices (28). KPMG also found that one of the biggest barriers to sustainability for firms was the lack of common metrics to assess and compare performances (29). In 2020, the British Standards Institution (BSI) launched the first of its five-year initiative with the UK Government (BEIS) and the UK industry (City of London’s GFI) to develop consensus-based standards in sustainable finance (30). We argue that such country-wide standardisation is only achievable through regulatory changes directed by the government. While firms in the private sector can also attempt to establish uniform standards, their lack of enforcement power gives other businesses considerable discretion over which standards to adopt. This inconsistency not only raises search and adoption costs of standards, but also undermines uniform comparisons of companies’ performances along relevant dimensions. By contrast, government directives provide the incentive to report some common metrics, allowing investors and other stakeholders to better assess such information. Moreover, government-induced standards can go beyond helping companies assess their environmental impacts by tailoring case-specific solutions to incorporate environmental sustainability into existing business practices. This is illustrated by the BSI’s new ISO standards, which aim to allow businesses of all sizes to consider climate change adaptation while designing new policies, strategies, plans, and activities (31). The government can also exercise its authority to endorse consistent information and nudge consumer behaviour. For example, mandating businesses to disclose the environmental impact of their products through labelling highlights the impact of consumption choices and addresses consumers’ behavioural bias (32). Finally, government commitments to SDGs have the potential to improve coordination in the private sector. An example of such improved coordination is industrial symbiosis, where governments promote mutual synergies between firms from different industries. The UK’s National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP), matches participating firms that can use each other’s byproducts with the view that “one company’s waste is another’s raw material.” For example, the waste filter cake produced by an air conditioner manufacturer is used by a fuel manufacturer as an oil absorption agent. In five years, NISP diverted over 47 million tonnes of industrial waste, contributing to improvements in SDG 12, production expansions and costs reductions (33). III. Current Policies and Positive Spillovers In the first year alone, 90 percent of the actions in the 25 Year Environment Plan have been delivered or are being progressed (34). Further, complex interactions and positive spillovers between goals occur. In the NC-SDGs framework, the key areas include air quality, water quality, urban planning, and waste management. Commitments to cleaner air have shown significant progress. The World Bank suggests that 100 percent of the UK population has access to clean fuels and technology for cooking in 2020 (SDG 7.1.2) (35). The ONS also finds that the share of renewable energy in total energy consumption rose exponentially from 0.7 per- cent in 1990 to 10.3 percent in 2017 (SDG 7.2.1) (36). This is expected to enhance climate resilience and encourage the transition to an economy with a lower reliance on high-emission technologies (SDG 13.2.1). Recent policies further support the attainment of NC-SDGs. The Clean Growth Strategy seeks to align economic growth with “clean” development by improving industry efficiency and encouraging the transition to low-carbon transport (37). Climate change policies may shape incentives in technological change, promoting innovation (SDG 9) and sustainable infrastructural development (SDG 11). Secondly, a commitment to cleaner water sources is “good business” because it raises productivity and cuts costs for firms, according to researchers at the Stock- holm International Water Institute (38). Current policies such as the Nitrates Directive and the Water Framework Directive reduce contamination risk to water bodies while enhancing their quality. Such policies ensured that 100 percent of UK households have access to safe drinking water and are connected to wastewater treatment (39). Access to sanitary drinking water is vital for personal health, and healthy workers make valuable contributions to business and the economy. Thirdly, urban planning policies encourage infrastructure innovation. Congestion is a huge cost for the economy in terms of lost time spent waiting in traffic and the continuous emission of pollutants from vehicles. TomTom’s London traffic reports in 2017 to 2019 show that just shy of 150 hours per year are spent by each driver waiting in rush hour traffic jams (40). Further, greenhouse gas emissions from road transport make up 21 percent of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions, which motivate the importance of making road planning easier for vehicle owners (41). To maximise the value of public investment, the UK government has established a Transforming Cities Fund worth £2.5 billion to tackle congestion and promote smart traffic management. The government is also considering new vehicle types and innovative ways to simplify journey planning and payments as a part of their Future of Mobility Urban Strategy. The aspects of this strategy are to be tested with a £90 million investment in four “future mobility zones.” These policies complement the goal of achieving cleaner air; as the transport sector is the largest single contributor to greenhouse gas emissions at 34 percent of total emissions, introducing smarter vehicles and tackling traffic congestion can significantly reduce air pollution (42). Furthermore, there is a strong link between the sustainability of cities and communities (SDG 11) and the sustainability of an environmental ecosystem with which the cities and communities interact (43). Finally, waste management policies have also shown promise in maintaining cleaner environmental standards. Since 2000, the UK’s material footprint has shown a downward trend (44). Plastic waste has been a major area of focus for the government, with an aim to reach zero plastic waste by 2042 (45). Better waste management will benefit ecosystems on land and in water and preserve the quality of the resources that are necessary to everyday production and consumption. Further, achieving the sustainable management of natural resources (SDG 12.2) and promoting policies that are in accordance with such management (SDG 12.7) are closely associated with the development of sustainable transport and infrastructure (SDG 9). IV. Shortcomings of Current Policies Despite considerable progress in some areas, there is strong evidence to suggest that gaps still exist, particularly in waste management and energy efficiency. Current trajectories pose a considerable threat to the future availability of natural capital. This necessitates immediate action to be taken against these issues. Hazardous waste generated, such as used oils and chemical waste, rose by over 10 percent between 2010 and 2016 (46). This waste pollutes water bodies and threat- ens aquatic biodiversity. It necessitates greater purification efforts, resulting in major costs of production (47). Energy efficiency is plagued by policy inconsistencies. Relaxations on fracking rules, freezes on fuel duty, uncertainty around the future of carbon pricing, and the end of hybrid vehicle subsidies damage expectations about the government’s commitment to a low-carbon economy (48). Low per capita spending on improving household energy efficiency and uncertainty in the government’s target to up-grade “fuel-poor” homes have caused the improvement in median energy efficiency ratings to level off (Figure 6). The proportion of households in fuel poverty has not changed significantly despite the fuel poverty gap decreasing since 2014 (49). Households are considered fuel poor if their fuel costs are above the national median level and their residual income after fuel costs would fall below the poverty line. A combination of slack minimum energy efficiency regulations, high fixed costs and the fact that returns are typically distributed over the long term means that private incentives, which are based on a series of myopic optimisation, do not bring enough investments to meet current targets (50). Given that energy efficiency is one of the most effective ways to tackle fuel poverty, stagnant improvements in this area stall progress in indicators such as 9.4.1 (CO2 emission per unit of value added) (51). Figure 6. The improvement in median energy efficiency ratings between 2010 and 2015 has lev- elled off in recent years for fuel-poor households and all households Source: Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, 2018. V. Opportunities for Better Measurement Existing improvements in measurement enable policymakers to track progress on specific SDGs, analyse root causes of challenges in delivering SDGs and de- sign policies that address problems for specific stakeholders, to “Leave No One Behind” (52). The ability to establish quantitative targets for indicators that currently lack clarity will further enhance governmental commitment by reducing the propensity to take discretionary action and exploit the vagueness of said indicator(s). 70 percent of 180 SDG indicators reported using UK data are disaggregated (broken down into subcategories) by at least one variable, such as geographic region (53). This data can be used to compare the socio-economic impact of policies across regions, enabling policymakers to identify and target regional economic disparities. For example, researchers can use UK regional Google patent rank data to quantify regional distributions of economic spillovers from innovation in- vestments (Figure 7). Policymakers can then direct innovation spending to regions with stagnant productivity. Figure 7. A scatter plot of relative regional productivity and relative regional average spillovers for NUTS2 regions of the UK Notes : From this estimation, it is clear that targeting regions with below national average produc- tivity and high innovation spillovers can generate higher benefits. Source: Rydge, Martin & Valero, 2018. For NC-SDGs, we argue that the UK government can leverage the 100 percent coverage of climate action indicators and existing micro-level data to incorporate climate change-induced dynamics when investing in different parts of the UK. Existing literature suggests that foresighted infrastructure investments that con- sider dynamic effects of climate change, including inundation, sea-level rises, and floods, bring significant long-term economic welfare gains (54). An understanding of inter-linkages between SDGs allows policymakers to con- sider the distributional and long-term consequences of their decisions, thereby avoiding policy conflicts between different departments or omitting key areas of policy focus (55). For instance, the UN Statistical Division is collaborating with the ONS and other statistical agencies across developing countries to harmonise the use of indicators in understanding positive linkages between targets, to direct statistical reporting and policies to those with the greatest potential for positive externalities. Figure 8. Proportion of Global Indicators for each SDG that have data reported on the UK National Reporting Platform, as of June 2019. Source: UK Government, 2019b Greater governmental commitment to NC-SDGs is essential to accelerate im- provements in data measurement. As shown in Figure 7, among specific goals we focus on, there is substantial scope for improved data availability in Goals 12, 14, and 15. Many indicators require more details on how they can be met. For instance, none of the transboundary basin areas in the UK currently have an operational agreement on water cooperation (56). In addition to improving local and international water resource management, clarification will also help the UK maintain international ties, the importance of which has only increased since Brexit. VI. Conclusion Sustainable growth cannot be left to the private sector alone; a consistent, well-measured UK government commitment helps deepen the symbiotic relationship between stakeholders. This can help address market failures such as imperfect information and coordination problems in the private sector, where sustainable economic activity has the potential to take place on a large scale. Our assessment of current policies show that a stronger government commitment is consistent with current policy trajectories and that bridging existing policy gaps can deliver large gains. We have demonstrated the ways in which SDGs benefit the UK economy and businesses, such as reducing production costs through the maintenance of water sources, incentivising sustainable innovations through carbon pricing schemes, and strengthening the relationship between environmental ecosystems and the city. Environmental sustainability and economic growth are not always on a collision course. Rather, they should be viewed as complementary aims under the overarching goal of sustainable growth. With the advent of improved data collection methods and measurement of SDG indicators, we can better quantify progress towards a more sustainable future that benefits businesses and the economy. Endnotes 1 We thank Chiara Sotis and Judith Shapiro for their continued support and guidance. We are grateful to the ONS for initiating the prize and agreeing to the publication of the modified version of the paper. We would also like to thank the editors, Alice Jo and Jacob Zeldin, for their comments and suggestions which have significantly improved the paper. 2 www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/whatwedo/programmesandprojects/economicstatisticstransformation/ theonsrenaissanceprize 3 Lenton, T. M., Rockström, J., Gaffney, O., Rahmstorf, S., Richardson, K., Steffen, W., & Schellnhuber, H. J. (2019). Climate tipping points—too risky to bet against. Nature, 575(7784), 592-595. doi: 10.1038/d41586-019- 03595-0. 4 HM Treasury (2020). The Green Book: Central Government Guidance On Appraisal and Evaluation. 5 Neumayer, E. (1998). Preserving natural capital in a world of uncertainty and scarce financial resources. International Journal Of Sustainable Development & World Ecology , 5(1), 27-42. doi: 10.1080/13504509809469967 6 United Nations General Assembly (2015). Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable development , A/RES/70/1. 7 Clark, G. L., Feiner, A., & Viehs, M. (2015). From the stockholder to the stakeholder: How sustainability can drive financial outperformance. Available at SSRN 2508281 . 8 Flammer, C. (2015). Does corporate social responsibility lead to superior financial performance? A regression discontinuity approach. Management Science, 61 (11), 2549-2568. 9 The original data is in USD. We employ an exchange rate of $1=£1.2. 10 Business and Sustainable Development Commission. (2017). Better Business Better World: The report of the Business & Sustainable Development Commission. 11 Dobbs, R., Sawers, C., Thompson, F., Manyika, J., Woetzel, J., Child, P., ... & Spatharou, A. (2016). Overcoming obesity: An initial economic analysis. McKinsey Global Institute, 2014. 12 Business and Sustainable Development Commission. (2017). Better Business Better World: The report of the Business & Sustainable Development Commission. 13 Calel, R., & Dechezleprêtre, A. (2016). Environmental policy and directed technological change: evidence from the European carbon market. Review of economics and statistics , 98(1), 173-191. Around 300 companies regulated under the EU ETS are included in the sample. “Non EU ETS companies” are a group of 3000 European companies that are not regulated under the EU ETS but operated in the same country and the same economic sector and are comparable in size and innovation capacity to companies regulated under the EU ETS. 14 Legal & General Investment Management (2016). The Future World fund range . 15 Flood, C. (2016, November 8). HSBC’s UK pension scheme to invest £1.85bn in eco-friendly fund. The Financial Times . 16 Bioy, H. & Boyadzhiev, D. (2020). How does European sustainable funds’ performance measure up? Morningstar. 17 UKSSD Network (2018). Measuring up: How the UK is performing on the UN Sustainable Development Goals. 18 Gillingham, K., & Stock, J. H. (2018). The cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Journal of Economic Perspectives , 32(4), 53-72. While they conclude that solar thermal and offshore wind technologies are the most costly to implement, we caution that these measures represent underestimates of true costs of abating CO2, given that they only consider mechanical switching and differ from costs of policy responses needed to encourage switching. 19 Ibid. 20 The original data is in USD. We employ an exchange rate of $1=£1.2. 21 While the technical note was later withdrawn due to further developments in Brexit negotiations, there have since been new calls and consultation processes for implementation of a Carbon Emissions Tax. 22 Hanna, R., Gross, R., Speirs, J., Heptonstall, P., & Gambhir, A. (2015). Innovation timelines from invention to maturity. UK Energy Research Centre . 23 Gillingham, K., & Stock, J. H. (2018). The cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Journal of Economic Perspectives , 32(4), 53-72. 24 Owen, R., Lyon, F., & Brennan, G. (2018). 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A Death Sentence Beyond Death Row: Helling v. McKinney and the Constitutionality of Solitary Confinement Hallie Sternblitz Author Lachlan Edwards Aditi Bhattacharjya Editors Originally written for U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui & Assistant U.S. Attorney Olivia B. Hinerfeld Abstract On any given day, there are 80,000 to 120,000 Americans living in solitary confinement. Restricted to their cells for twenty-two to twenty-four hours a day, these inmates are deprived of human interaction for days, weeks, years, or even decades. While the practice is intended as a means of protection for the general prison population or vulnerable inmates, researchers have found extreme and irreversible psychological damage in inmates who were placed in an isolated unit for both short and long periods of time. In fact, Dr. Grassian, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, determined that there was a specific psychiatric disorder associated with solitary confinement, which is now referred to as Special Housing Unit (SHU) Syndrome. Others have since found higher rates of suicide, self-harm, violence, and premature death associated with this form of isolation. Though the practice has become a longstanding custom in American prisons, I argue that solitary confinement is unconstitutional, as it violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment by subjecting inmates to serious and unreasonable dangers to their future health and safety. Through a two-pronged parallel with Helling v. McKinney , a SCOTUS case in which a former inmate successfully defended his freedom from cruel and unusual punishment after being subjected to secondhand smoke while incarcerated, I demonstrate that there is clear precedent for ruling the practice unconstitutional. Here, I employ the Deliberate Indifference Doctrine as well as the previous rulings that informed it to establish the application of Helling v. McKinney to the case of solitary confinement. Finally, I conclude with alternatives that better achieve solitary confinement’s intended outcomes. A timid Boy Scout with a knack for mathematics and writing, Benjamin van Zandt was sentenced to four years in prison for a property crime at age seventeen. While incarcerated, he sought out counseling, coursework, and several other opportunities to fulfill his intellectual potential. After being named valedictorian of his inmate GED program, he eventually enrolled in the Bard College Prison Initiative to begin his college degree. Despite his model behavior, he was caught bringing a piece of bread from the prison cafeteria back to his cell and was immediately transferred to New York’s Fishkill prison as a consequence. There, he was repeatedly harassed, beaten, and sexually assaulted by inmates twice his age, most of whom were seasoned criminals dominating the prison network. Still a reserved adolescent, Van Zandt was immediately preyed upon and coerced into being a carrier of contraband. As a result, he was placed in solitary confinement. Ten days later, he was found hanging from his sheets and shoelaces. Introduction: What is Solitary Confinement? On any given day, there are 80,000 to 120,000 Americans living in solitary confinement. Restricted to their cells for twenty-two to twenty-four hours a day, these inmates are deprived of human interaction for days, weeks, years, or even decades. They are often denied reading material, natural light, visitation, and participation in group activities. Though originally a pacifist Quaker initiative led by Benjamin Franklin the late 1700s meant to be an opportunity for spiritual reflection and moral contemplation, solitary confinement has quickly been weaponized in the U.S. as a disciplinary act meant to maintain order and deter violence within the general prison population. Today, it is common practice to move inmates to solitary confinement for three primary reasons: (1) discipline for nonviolent transgressions, such as possessing contraband or insolence toward a prison official, (2) protection of others due to an inmate exhibiting violent behavior or the threat of violent behavior, or (3) protection of an inmate who is in danger of being victimized by the violent behavior of inmates in the general prison population. Thus, any inmate regardless of their behavior while incarcerated could be subjected to solitary confinement, which is often the case for LGBTQ+, neurodivergent, or mentally ill inmates, as well as inmates of color. In fact, one study indicates that 11% of all black men born in the late 1980s experienced solitary confinement by their thirty-second birthday. This disproportionality partially stems from the bias of prison officials, who often allow an inmate’s race, mental illness, or other identifying factor to dictate their perception of the events. Despite its protective intent, solitary confinement has been shown to amplify rates of violent recidivism. This is a direct result of the mental health issues caused from extreme solitude. Thus, the motivations for placing inmates in Special Housing Units (SHU), a euphemistic title for solitary confinement, are void. However, in this paper, I will focus not on why the U.S. should terminate all solitary confinement units but why it must . Shown through a parallel analysis with Helling v. McKinney , I argue that solitary confinement is an unconstitutional practice, as it violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment by subjecting inmates to serious and unreasonable dangers to their future health and safety. To support this argument, I will first provide an overview of the inadequacies of legal action taken against the extreme isolation in prisons thus far. Then, I will dive into the case of Helling v. McKinney and its two-pronged application to the practice of solitary confinement. Finally, I will introduce alternative methods of accomplishing the intended goals of SHUs that will facilitate the realization of ruling solitary confinement unconstitutional. Looking through a Legal Lens: Eighth Amendment Implications The Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” Both the most controversial and most subjective clause, cruel and unusual punishment is at the forefront of modern debates on penitentiary justice. Originally, the phrase was intended to prevent torture as a technique of coerced confession or simply as a punishment. It was also meant to outlaw the use of barbaric instruments and public humiliation in formal sentencing. Today, the amendment is commonly employed for criminal defendants facing excessive bail or lengthy sentences at a young age. However, its use as a preventative measure against torture is often overlooked due to the lack of resources provided to victims subjected to torture during incarceration. However, the tide of Eighth Amendment cases may be shifting towards an inter-prison perspective, which has the potential to include solitary confinement. In the 2012 class action suit Ashker v. Governor of California , thousands of plaintiffs subjected to long periods of isolation in SHUs across the state due to alleged gang membership, 78 of whom spent over 20 years in solitude, sued the governor for violating their Eighth Amendment freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. They eventually agreed to a settlement that required the state to reduce their SHU population both by capacity and maximum sentence length, remove gang membership as a qualification to be placed there, and provide alternatives for those unable to serve their sentence in the general prison population. However, since this settlement, the state of California has repeatedly violated the terms and minimal change has emerged. Similarly, in Jensen v. Thornell (2012), Arizona inmates in isolation units sued for changes to the prison healthcare system, agreeing to a settlement by which the Arizona government had no intention of abiding. As such, the District Court judge rescinded approval of the settlement, bringing the parties back to trial in 2021 with new guidelines for managing medical care and health-related conditions in the state’s isolation units. Along with a handful of others, these two cases show the inadequacy of litigation over the constitutionality of solitary confinement in civil court. Though the plaintiffs may have won their cases, little has been done to reform SHUs, and tens of thousands of people remain subject to these abusive conditions daily. According to UN Special Reporter on Torture Juan Mendez, any time in forced isolation longer than fifteen days is considered abusive by UN standards. Thus, torture and abuse are commonplace within American prisons, as the average SHU inmate spends one to three months in solitude, with the longest remaining there for over forty years. As such, I argue that reform is insufficient; solitary confinement is unconstitutional and must be outlawed. Helling v. McKinney : A Potential Path Forward The Supreme Court has already laid the groundwork for ruling that solitary confinement is an unconstitutional practice under the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment. Helling v. McKinney questions whether future health risks imposed by prison officials is a form of cruel and unusual punishment, and thus a violation of an inmate’s Eighth Amendment rights. In a Nevada state prison, William McKinney was placed in a cell with an inmate who smoked five packs of cigarettes each day. As a result, McKinney inhaled unhealthy levels of second-hand smoke, which he argued posed a serious risk to his current and future health. He sued the warden of the prison as well as several other prison officials for violating his Eighth Amendment freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. The federal Magistrate Judge ruled that the Eighth Amendment did not guarantee McKinney’s right to a smoke-free environment, arguing that McKinney failed to prove any serious medical needs that the prison neglected to address. However, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the federal Magistrate Judge’s decision, holding that McKinney should be given a second opportunity to prove that the levels of second-hand smoke constituted an unreasonable danger to his future health. Yet, during the litigation of Helling v. McKinney , SCOTUS ruled on Wilson v. Seiter , a case in which a formerly incarcerated individual claimed he experienced cruel and unusual punishment and sought financial reparations from two prison officials but lost the case because he did not prove the officials had a “culpable state of mind.” The justices held that conditions of incarceration or confinement that are not explicitly outlined in an inmate’s sentencing require a subjective component that comes from the Deliberate Indifference Doctrine. This doctrine was created in Estelle v. Gamble in 1974 in which SCOTUS held, “Deliberate indifference by prison personnel to a prisoner's serious illness or injury constitutes cruel and unusual punishment contravening the Eighth Amendment.” Exerting “deliberate indifference” has been characterized by SCOTUS as a transgression greater than negligence but less than omission with malintent. Thus, the doctrine is rather subjective in application. Nonetheless, a new dimension was added to McKinney’s case. Now, prison officials could be held accountable for a lack of adequate action with knowledge of a serious health or safety risk to an inmate. Appealing all the way to the Supreme Court, McKinney found himself in a battle with the government over whether the Deliberate Indifference Doctrine applied only to current health and safety risks or future risks alike, as his case emphasized the future health issues resulting from extreme inhalation of second-hand smoke. SCOTUS sided with McKinney, affirming his right to sue under the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment and the Deliberate Indifference Doctrine. In the majority opinion, Justice Byron White argued that the doctrine in no way specified that it only applied to current health risks and should thus include future health and safety risks as well. As such, McKinney, despite not being sick at the time, successfully demonstrated a violation of his Eighth Amendment freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, as prison officials acted indifferently to his future health. Drawing a Parallel: Helling v. McKinney and Solitary Confinement Helling v. McKinney greatly expanded the rights of vulnerable inmates, as they can now sue for damages that they are likely to experience post-release. When considering the constitutionality of solitary confinement, one can clearly draw a parallel between second-hand smoke and the mental illnesses that directly result from isolation. For one, solitary confinement aligns with the qualifications to employ the Deliberate Indifference Doctrine stated in Wilson v. Seiter ; it is a condition of incarceration not explicitly stated in judicial sentencing. Once eligibility has been established, there are two axioms of Helling v. McKinney that solitary confinement must satisfy in order to prove that victims of SHUs have a reasonable case to sue prison officials for violating their Eighth Amendment freedom from cruel and unusual punishment: (1) solitary confinement poses a serious and unreasonable danger to the future health of inmates and (2) those overseeing SHUs exhibit deliberate indifference to said danger. Future Health Effects of Solitary Confinement Initial research on the psychological dangers of extreme isolation was funded by the Canadian Defense Research Board and eventually the U.S.’s Central Intelligence Agency in the early 1950s to harness a psychological warfare defense to combat the Soviets, who were brainwashing prisoners of war. Led by Dr. Donald Hebb at McGill University, student volunteers were placed in isolation boxes meant to deprive them of all their senses. Each student was to remain in the box for as long as they felt they could, only leaving to use the restroom and eat meals, during which a facilitator of the experiment would guide them. Dr. Hebb expected to observe changes in their behavior over the course of six weeks; however, the experiment only lasted six days. The results were jarring: the students complained of vivid hallucinations, “blank” periods in their minds, inability to write or solve a basic math problem, hyperrealism of external stimuli, new fears, separation of mind and body, and even the sensation of being hit with pellets. Dr. Hebb’s findings have since been weaponized as a punitive practice for convicted criminals. Though, opponents of solitary confinement have reclaimed his work and used it to demonstrate that solitary confinement is in fact cruel and unusual punishment. Since then, more research has emerged specifically studying the correlation between solitary confinement in prisons and mental illness. For instance, a study on incarceration in New York found that inmates in solitary confinement for any length of time were five times more likely to die by suicide and 3.2 times more likely to self-harm than an inmate in the general prison population. Similarly, a California study found that hypertension was three times more common among SHU inmates. Across the U.S., those subjected to solitary confinement for any length of time were 24% more likely to die within the first year after release, including 78% more likely by suicide and 54% more likely by homicide, demonstrating an increase in violence as a result of the very practice that was meant to curb it. Furthermore, they were 127% more likely to fatally overdose on opioids in the first two weeks following release. Similar research has been conducted to determine if short stays in solitary confinement would fulfill the intended purposes while avoiding the detrimental effects; however, this was not the case. One study only included subjects that had spent less than a week in solitary confinement, yet this group had significantly higher death rates from unnatural causes such as suicide, violence, and vehicular accidents than those who had only spent time in the general prison population. Dr. Stuart Grassian, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, concentrated his research on the set of traits emerging in formerly solitarily-confined inmates post-release. After conducting several series of interviews and experiments, Dr. Grassian determined that there was a specific psychiatric disorder associated with solitary confinement, which is now referred to as SHU Syndrome. In a 2006 publication, he outlines the seven key symptoms consistent among nearly every inmate he studied: (1) hyperresponsivity to external stimuli, (2) perceptual distortions, illusions, and hallucinations, (3) panic attacks, (4) difficulties with thinking, concentration, and memory, (5) intrusive obsessional thoughts, (6) overt paranoia, and (7) impulse control. These symptoms are remarkably similar to those found in Dr. Hebb’s isolation experiment in 1951. Moreover, Dr. Grassian notes that this combination of reactions is unique to SHU Syndrome and cannot be found in nearly any other psychiatric disorder. He characterizes the condition as a form of an acute organic brain syndrome. Confirming this research, neuroscientist Huda Akil suggests that solitary confinement can permanently alter the structure of an inmate’s brain, as the functioning and structure of the human brain changes in response to environmental stimuli. As such, solitary confinement for any length of time can cause a distinct health defect that often permanently affects the inmate, even after release. Therefore, solitary confinement fulfills the first axiom presented in Helling v. McKinney , as it poses a significant and unreasonable danger to the future health of inmates. Deliberate Indifference in the Case of Solitary Confinement Wilson v. Seiter , which established that the Deliberate Indifference Doctrine in Estelle v. Gamble applies to conditions of prison confinement, cites Whitley v. Albers in its holding, stating “the ‘wantonness’ of conduct depends not on its effect on the prisoner, but on the constraints facing the official.” Therefore, the second axiom of applying the Helling v. McKinney precedent to the case of solitary confinement, which requires deliberate indifference on the part of prison officials, relies on the ability of prison officials to inhibit the placement of inmates in solitary confinement, which, as shown, is a grave danger to their future health. This proposition is fulfilled in two parts: (1) by demonstrating that prison officials have the capability to terminate or avoid placements in solitary confinement but deliberately choose to place inmates in SHUs and (2) by demonstrating that prison officials are likely aware of the health effects of extreme isolation but choose to exercise indifference. The decision to place an inmate in solitary confinement is almost entirely up to the discretion of guards and prison officials. As stated previously, inmates are sent into SHUs for a vast range of reasons, including for unprohibited behavior like talking back to a guard. As a result, a large portion of inmates in solitary confinement were placed there at the subjective discretion of a prison employee, despite never engaging in malicious behavior that would make them a danger to the general prison population. Instead, many inmates in SHUs are victims rather than perpetrators and are thus subjected to the rights violations of solitary confinement due to no actions of their own. This issue has been especially rampant in New York state prisons, where investigations show that much of the SHU population is constituted by victims of prison guard abuse, which can either be physical abuse or a guard’s abuse of power over the inmate. In fact, one investigation found 160 lawsuits of inmates who were sentenced to solitary confinement by guards who fabricated assault allegations. Often, these inmates were subjected to physical abuse at the hands of prison guards, some even resulting in permanent injury or death. However, this abusive network of guards is largely protected by their membership in an officers’ union, with which the state signed an agreement to allow arbitrators from the union to be the final determinator of an officer’s employment status. This means that when an inmate accuses a guard of abuse or misplacement in solitary confinement, the guard’s peers have the right to reinstate them in their position even if higher prison officials chose to terminate their employment. Consequently, 88% of the guards accused of fabricating reports to conceal abuse in the 160 lawsuits were reinstated in their roles, as only a court can overrule the decision of the arbitrators. This leads to a demoralizing cycle in which inmates are subjected to abuse, isolated from the general prison population, and then denied the ability to hold their abuser accountable, often leading to further abuse if they try. Once a guard places their victim in an SHU, they are usually the only form of human contact the inmate receives, thus leaving the inmate in an increasingly vulnerable position with no resource but their abuser for help. As such, a prison official can exploit their position of authority over inmates and send anyone who threatens that authority, whether it be their victims or someone who simply verbally offended them, to solitary confinement. This is not to say that all guards or prison officials have malintent in their discretion over SHU placement; yet enough are malicious and are protected by the system that the issue must be addressed. Due to the structural nature of SHUs, inmates’ placement in solitary confinement and thus their future health is often in the hands of prison guards who are neither trained mental health professionals nor judges determining the inmate’s sentence. Nonetheless, they are left to use their discretion in a life-or-death matter. As a result, placements in solitary confinement are the deliberate decision of prison officials, satisfying the first criteria of exercising deliberate indifference: the ability to terminate or avoid placing an inmate in a SHU but instead choosing to send or keep them there. Secondly, prison officials must have the knowledge that an inmate’s health will suffer as a result of placing them in solitary confinement in order to show culpability of indifference. This can be addressed by providing evidence that a prison official was aware of a health or safety risk but failed to act to resolve it. As previously stated, every prison official is in the position to act, which in the case of solitary confinement means removing an inmate from an SHU or avoiding placing them there in the first place. However, their knowledge of the risks involved is somewhat more difficult to prove. One way to establish their awareness of the practice’s dangers is through their direct experience working in a correctional facility. Research shows that prison officials are also physically and mentally affected by working in a solitary confinement unit. One study found that SHU correctional staff witness “intense human suffering” such as “smearing feces, ingesting objects, self-injury, violent outbursts” which causes “vicarious trauma” to the official. As a firsthand witness to the deterioration of inmates subjected to solitary confinement, any competent prison guard can recognize that the health and safety of the inmate are in danger as a result of extreme isolation. Furthermore, reports show that prison officials experience significantly increased stress levels when working in solitary confinement, providing them with empirical indicators of the mental risks associated with spending time in an SHU. Additionally, corrections officials assigned to solitary confinement units are at higher risk of heart disease, hypertension, PTSD, and suicide, which are some of the same health risks for isolated inmates. These rates were found to be significantly higher than both the national average and among individuals with other stressful jobs, such as the military or police force. Thus, knowledge of these personal health effects coupled with the visual sight of inmates suffering from the seven symptoms outlined in Dr. Grassian’s research of SHU Syndrome are clear indicators to prison officials of the dangerous consequences of solitary confinement. Moreover, there is a consensus among the American public that extreme isolation can be a danger to one’s health, as 86% of voters support removing inmates from solitary confinement at the first sign of an adverse health effect. This demonstrates that knowledge of the risks of solitary confinement is prevalent throughout the nation’s people, who are largely in consensus about the dangers of the practice. The deliberate indifference doctrine requires that prison officials deliberately choose to place inmates in solitary confinement over other alternatives, which has already been established, and also requires that the officials know that placing an inmate in solitary confinement will have negative health effects. Thus, this common knowledge paired with being a firsthand witness to symptoms of SHU Syndrome establishes that prison officials know the health and safety risks associated with solitary confinement, are indifferent to them, and deliberately choose to not prevent them, therefore satisfying the Deliberate Indifference Doctrine. Motivations to Outlaw Solitary Confinement As shown, solitary confinement poses a serious and unreasonable danger to the mental health of inmates and is a practice in which a prison official must exercise deliberate indifference, thus making it unconstitutional under the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment. Helling v. McKinney implies that any condition of confinement that puts the future health and safety of an inmate at risk and that a prison official knowingly ignores is a violation of the rights of the inmate guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. Helling v. McKinney set an important precedent in the litigation of prisoners’ rights; however, solitary confinement remains a common practice in each of the fifty states despite the parallel that has been established. Moreover, based on the research provided, the future health risks of solitary confinement are arguably much more extreme than those of second-hand smoke inhalation, with a disturbing portion of inmates like Ben van Zandt not even surviving their sentence. Yet, being subjected to second-hand smoke has been regarded as a violation of the Eighth Amendment for nearly three decades, and solitary confinement remains commonplace. As such, it is time that SHUs across the nation are put on the stand and examined for their compliance with the Constitution of this country. As Helling v. McKinney stands, solitary confinement should be unconstitutional and must be outlawed. Moreover, solitary confinement is not currently adding any benefit to the functioning of American prisons or the rehabilitation of subjected inmates. The practice is employed to protect the general prison population from violent inmates, protect vulnerable inmates who are common targets among others, or discipline inmates who disrespect the rules or officials that govern the prison. However, solitary confinement does not actually achieve any of its intended goals. Rather, it has been found to exacerbate the very issues it sets out to solve. The vast majority of studies on the effects of solitary confinement on future inmate behavior and inter-inmate violence within the general prison population has reached a consensus that there is no statistically significant correlation. This is true for both crime frequency and intensity. In fact, one study found that solitary confinement increased rates of recidivism post-release. An even stronger correlation was found between time spent in solitary confinement and violent re-offenses, indicating that the community was less safe than it would have been in the absence of the practice. As such, SHUs are not fulfilling their intended goals of reducing inter-prison violence. Instead, they are subjecting up to 120,000 people to irreversible psychological damage on any given day. Alternative Solutions to Solitary Confinement Rather than continue this practice, the precedent set by Helling v. McKinney must be employed to rule solitary confinement unconstitutional under the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment. However, I acknowledge that inter-prison violence and rule violations must be addressed. I propose three alternatives: specialized units for inmates with mental illnesses, de-escalation training for prison staff, and increased programming. The state of New York has already begun implementing these practices through its Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act, which was passed in 2021 and went into full effect in 2022. Prior to the ratification of this bill, the state began to reform its solitary confinement units by introducing the Clinical Alternative to Punitive Segregation, or CAPS, program. Instead of being punished for violating prison rules with isolation, inmates who exhibit serious mental illnesses are directed to the CAPS program where they receive in depth counseling, treatment, and rehabilitative intervention. As a result, the rates of self-harm for inmates who otherwise would have been sent to SHUs decreased drastically. Hence, specialized units, whether it be for inmates with mental illnesses or other groups that may be targets in the general prison population and thus require isolation, provide a realistic alternative to solitary confinement that maintains an inmate’s humanity and sociability while providing them the rehabilitative resources necessary to reenter society. Secondly, Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) for prison staff is a crucial method for creating safer communities within correctional facilities. One study found that prison officials who were trained in crisis management had a significantly decreased bias in the distribution of reported incidents. Furthermore, CIT officials were more likely to seek out less common and less severe alternative punishments rather than choose to send an inmate into isolation. As a result, less inmates were subjected to the cruel and unusual punishment of solitary confinement and were instead given the opportunity to rehabilitate themselves and discuss their actions. As such, de-escalation training for prison staff has the ability to change both the inequitable discrepancies and frequency of use that are associated with placement in SHUs. Finally, educational and transitional programming is key to the rehabilitation of inmates, especially those who have spent time in isolation. In one Minnesota facility, there has been a transition away from the isolating nature of solitary confinement towards the rehabilitative intention of placing an inmate in an SHU. This was primarily achieved through three programs: the introduction of Prison To Community (PTC) specialists, a companion program, and accessible treatment resources. For instance, an inmate who needed to be placed in an SHU would be assigned a PTC specialist to meet with them and discuss a plan to re-enter both the general prison population and society. Similarly, they would be given a hired companion inmate from the general prison population who would be screened to sit outside of their cell and keep them company while in isolation. This is beneficial for the SHU inmate and provides employment to the general population of inmates. Lastly, the isolated inmate would be given a variety of reading, audiovisual materials, and assignments related to addressing emotional, psychological, or behavioral issues, prompting the inmate to self-rehabilitate throughout their time in an SHU. While these programs are still not ideal in the sense that they do not eliminate the use of solitary confinement completely, they are a valuable step in transitioning prisons across the country from relying heavily on the practice to maintain order as they do now to terminating the practice in its entirety. These three alternatives provide a realistic path forward in the aftermath of ruling solitary confinement unconstitutional. Though it may require a shift in public attitude on the rights of inmates, the road to ending extreme isolation in prisons is clear and necessary. The case of solitary confinement, though more dire, parallels McKinney’s battle for his future health. As shown through its future health effects, the presence of deliberate indifference, and the strong precedent set in Helling v. McKinney , solitary confinement is a clear violation of the Eighth Amendment. The practice has existed unrightfully in this country for far too long, and it is time to rule on it for what it is: it is cruel, it is unusual, it is unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court ought to act accordingly. [Prisoners subject to solitary confinement] fell, after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane; others still, committed suicide; while those who stood the ordeal better were not generally reformed, and in most cases did not recover sufficient mental activity to be of any subsequent service to the community. It became evident that some changes must be made in the system. – SCOTUS, 1890 References ACLU Staff. “Ashker v. 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