Perceived Lack vs. Meaningful Absence; or, Springsteen in the Classroom

The question vexes me: "What does something not in a text mean to a text?"

Because most of my experience teaching literature focused on teaching race in courses with a historical mandate—think from Sophocles to Faulkner—I've come to consider the act of teaching literature as a prolonged negotiation with unsatisfactory answers to that question.  For example:

The perceived lack of African-Americans in Greek drama is an artifact of my course design; ergo the absence of African-Americans in Greek drama is not meaningful.  (I can discuss the process of "othering" or equally vague abstractions, but the racial dynamic at the heart of American literature differs fundamentally from the abstractions intended to explain it.)  The students balk at my distinction: 

"But there are no black people in Sophocles, so there's an absence there." 

"There are also no Martians in Sophocles, so there's an absence there too," I respond. 

At this point it almost sinks in: textual absences differ from perceived lacks inasmuch as they're structural elements of the text themselves.  The perceived lack of African-Americans in Sophocles is the product of the structure of my course, not the text itself.  The absence isn't meaningful.  (Unless you care to indict me for poor course design.) 

Students try to wrap their head around this distinction, but they invariably fail.  The sloppy pedagogy of my peers is partly to blame for this failure: demonstrating the importance of the silenced voices of women, minorities, and homosexuals to sheltered undergraduates often demands the subtlety of a brickbat: 

"But no one here is gay!" 

"Then why do these guys go to such great lengths to establish their heterosexual masculinity?" 

"But they're not gay!"

The burden of instilling nuance often falls on my shoulders and, more often than not, debilitates me.  Long and hard have I sought to find an example of a text which screams its throat raw for the thing not in it.  I may have found my answer. 

It will date me, this I know.

The children, they will laugh ... but they'll get it.  They'll be able to tell a meaningful absence from a perceived lack.  How?

First, they'll listen to Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road" (.mp3), from Born to Run, released on August 25, 1975.  (Which, for the record, was a year before I was born.  I'm old, but not that old.)  Then I'll have them listen to "Wings for Wheels" (.mp3), from a February 5, 1975 performance.   

The pedagogical usefulness of the comparison can't be underestimated.  The most obvious (some would say iconic) image from the album version is noticeably absent from the earlier performance.  The song demands the unifying image the album version provides: cars, streets, freedom, escape, loneliness, loudness, bravado, &c.  All the themes are present in the live performance, and they all point toward ... something not there until the album version. 

If they can forgive me the music, I think they'll grab the distinction intuitively.  Or am I merely a wrongheaded fanboy?

Comments

[Vance Maverick]

I don't get it. But then I'm a good bit older than you are (my older cousins were in S's first generation of fans). Are you talking about the coda, which replaces the strange irruption of "On Top of Old Smokey" into the live version?

Both exhibit the most obvious sort of musical absence -- the rhythm section laying out at the beginning, particularly under the first verses (past the conventional exemption of the intro). You can really hear the bass and drums actively doing nothing.

Long ago, I asked my composition teacher why Sibelius gives the flutes a middle C in the last chord of the 7th Symphony. The rest of the orchestra is blasting away together, and that note is the weakest one in the flute's range -- there's no way they can make a difference to the sound. He said, "If they weren't playing, you'd really hear that."

[Luther Blissett]

Scott, isn't the absence of black folks in Sophocles a function of the absence of black folks in Greek society and not a function of your syllabus? (Unless, of course, you go the *Black Athena* angle, and then there's the Sphinx, who in Egyptian figuration has black African physical characteristics.)

In the end, reading absences is indeed a dangerous tightrope walk, albeit one too often turned into a ridiculous cakewalk. The absence of anything like an African *character* in *The Heart of Darkness* is an interesting point to make, and I think a class can have a constructive conversation about why Conrad didn't consider including an African character, especially given his representation of a black man in *The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'*.

Otherwise, any use of Bruce in the classroom is fine by me. William Saletan is beginning a series in *Slate* about the genetic origins of Bruce fandom in boys from New Jersey. He's measuring my skull as we speak.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Actually, I'd guess that there may well be some reference in Sophocles to the "blameless Ethiopians" referred to by Homer, who were often mentioned in later Greek literature. Whether there is any connection between the Greek stereotypes of these Ethiopians (actually, they were Nubians, who seem to have been the only people that would be considered "black" in the contemporary sense that ancient Greeks had contact with) and stereotypes of African-Americans is a matter of some academic work, that you could probably trace down more easily than me if you were interested.

But the idea of the presence of "African-Americans" in Sophocles is a grating anachronism, worse than Martians. There could conceivably be Martians in Sophocles. There couldn't be Americans, because the whole concept hadn't come into existence yet. There could be "black people", but the whole meaning of "black" has changed so much over history that wondering whether the Ethiopians in Grteek literature have any real connection to African-Americans is a matter for, well, detailed historical research.

The American racial dynamic is of course missing from Sophocles, but Sophocles isn't necessarily missing from the American racial dynamic. Greek society was, after all, a slave society. I have an interesting couple of books, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology and Slavery Defended: the Views of the Old South, and I vaguely remember that one of them goes into justifications of American slavery (and, of course, racism) through reference to Greek civilization.

[JPool]

I don't get it either, but then I've never gotten Springsteen. I presume the lack you're refering to is the titular one, though that doesn't seem at all to be the same category of abscence that you start off saying you're talking about (on that point, I would think the introductory chapter to Said's Culture and Imperialism would be useful).

Which gets me around to my bigger confusion: are your students morons, that they actually expect BCE Greek tradegy to include references to African Americans, or are they really just talking about your course design and you're focusing on their inappropriate use of jargon? Which then brings up the parallel question: are your departmental powers that be morons, that they have temporal sweep requirements for their courses that can then be satisfied by tacking Sophocles onto a course on American literature (I don't know a lot about Greek lit, but I think first about Euripides for material on slavery in the ancient world)?

OK, maybe I'm just cranky today, but, if you don't just want this to be a Springsteen post, what I wish you would do is unpack the this part,
I can discuss the process of "othering" or equally vague abstractions, but the racial dynamic at the heart of American literature differs fundamentally from the abstractions intended to explain it.

Oh, and to Vance's point, I hear very much what you're saying about the absence of drums and bass. What I notice most about the "Wings and Wheels" version is how much the middle part sounds like a Van Morrison cover; that is, before Clarence Clemens comes in and it gets all wanky.

[JustKristin]

Scott - I have to agree with Luther in this. Perhaps if you explained the difference in terms of relevance at the time of authorship?

I love your blog, btw. I am preparing to embark on my grad studies, and I consider you a role model. :)

[JPool]

Rich is of course right about the uses of Classical writings to justify/make sense of 18th and 19th century systems of race and slavery (and also that, before the introduction of the camel in the third century CE, and the later intensification of the trans-Saharan trade with the spread of Islam, there was little contact between sub-Saharan and Mediterranean peoples outside of the north-eastern/Red Sea part of Africa). There's also a literature on thinking in the ancient world about Africa in terms of civilization and color that, while different from later conceptions of race, had an influence on the long relationship between Europe and Africa.

[Ahistoricality]

On the larger point, it's a question that historians deal with constantly as well, in the classroom and out: getting students sufficiently comfortable with a historical context so that they understand the difference between lacunae and anachronisms does take some work. It's the next step after convincing them that historical sources can be unreliable, especially self-serving, but that skepticism has to be moderated by reality....

[Jesse A.]

Point of clarification: Is the reason that you teach Sophocles in this class in order to teach the distinction between meaningful and non-meaningful absences?

Point of pedantry: Rich, I'm not sure Martians are any better than African-Americans. In Aristotelian cosmology there isn't any space between the spheres for Martians to squeeze themselves into. (Now, of course, you'll one up me with some other Greek conception of what the planets are. But that's the risk the pedant takes. Sorry, it was an itch I needed to scratch.)

Moving on to substance/ridiculous Bruce fanboyism: Was this supposed to turn into a guessing game, or is it an experiment to see if we can hear what you hear, in order to better tell if it will be useful in the classroom? Musically it isn't all that different from the various other live versions I've heard. Vance is certainly right that the rhythm section is missing from the beginning, but that is how he usually plays the song live. I think the most substantial musical difference is the missing harmonica. "Wings for Wheels" almost aches for it, it seems so glaringly absent. Its also missing a bunch of what are, to me, some of the most powerful images from the album and other later versions, but the harmonica is the most significant difference.

Frankly, I'm not sure how to tie this in to the larger point you're trying to make. The absence of something (harmonica? rhythm section? some image from the lyrics?) is parallel to the absence of African-Americans from Sophocles, because... why? We are used to African-Americans in our lives, as we are used to the album version of Thunder Road, so we feel their lack, even though before such a thing as the album version (or an African American) existed, it cannnot be expected to be there? Or does the parallel work the other way? I'm intrigued, but a bit lost...

[Jesse A.]

And, of course, I committed the pedant's gravest sin, screwing up the name of what I was talking about. I meant the Ptolemaic model of the universe, not Aristotle's cosmology.... Dammnit. That's why they put cones around the heads of wounded animals, so they won't scratch their itches.

[SEK]

I'll admit to being a bit surprised that people are having a hard time figuring out what's missing from "Wings for Wheels," so maybe this is a case of fanboyism ... but really, it's the organizing metaphor of "Thunder Road," so maybe it's not fanboyism. What's missing from "Wings for Wheels"?

Thunder Road. The reason it sounds like Van Morrison in the middle is that the chorus dances around instead of settling in on the words "Thunder Road." All the other metaphors are there, save for the street itself.

What's interesting is this may be a case of you hearing what's not there, somewhat analogous to our ability to "see" around familiar corners: the words "Thunder Road" don't appear in the song, but you "hear" them anyway because you're so familiar with the album version.

[SEK]

Didn't mean to hit post there:

What I mean to say is that Vance et al are trying to hard. Yes, the rhythm section's absent early; and yes, there's an aching need for the harmonica; but the real absence is the title itself, as JPool notes. To answer his question directly, I'm not saying this is an equivalent absence, merely a vivid demonstration of something important to the structure of a text being absent.

In the past, I've tried to teach this using two versions of "To Build a Fire": the first, earlier one with a happy ending and the second one with which we're all familiar. They're almost identical, except in the later version, London admits to that the premises, so constructed, don't entail a happy ending. (There are no deus ex machina in naturalism.) The absence of a grisly end is palpable in the early version ... but you can see why this fails to work.

Luther puts it well:

In the end, reading absences is indeed a dangerous tightrope walk, albeit one too often turned into a ridiculous cakewalk.

Ahistoricality also:

Getting students sufficiently comfortable with a historical context so that they understand the difference between lacunae and anachronisms does take some work.

The problem is, in an English class in which the historical material isn't foregrounded, there's often no room to do that work. (Esp. when you range from ancient Greece to yesterday.) So I'm always on the hunt for shortcuts, and thought the Springsteen might be more dynamic, more memorable ... even if all they remember is "My teacher brought in two versions of a stupid song." Sometimes self-humiliation's a wicked pedagogical ally.

To answer some of the other questions:

Are your students morons, that they actually expect BCE Greek tradegy to include references to African Americans, or are they really just talking about your course design and you're focusing on their inappropriate use of jargon?

Answer to the first part: yes, but understandably (in that undergraduate sort of way) so, in that I have to remind them that before there were African-Americans, there were ... ? My course design abets their initial confusion, since they know they'll be reading Huck Finn later in the quarter.

Are your departmental powers that be morons, that they have temporal sweep requirements for their courses that can then be satisfied by tacking Sophocles onto a course on American literature (I don't know a lot about Greek lit, but I think first about Euripides for material on slavery in the ancient world)?

The courses I'm talking about are the general introduction to literature courses like this one. I was required to teach two plays by Shakespeare, and plead my way out of having to teach something classical by including Beckett. (At least one must be a work of translation, and the Beckett sort of, if barely, counts.)

[Vance Maverick]

Well, not fanboyism exactly, but your solution does require that we care about the song, or at least know it well. The "organizing metaphor" does nothing for me, present or absent, because I find the nonverbal aspects of the song unengaging.

I wouldn't argue against your using this on your students. It's a gamble, though: how many of them will be caught up enough to register the absence of those words?

[SEK]

Didn't mean to hit post there either. What is wrong with TypePad today?

To continue:

Kristin, please don't think of me as a role model. You want to finish grad school, something I don't seem to be able to do.

Jesse:

Was this supposed to turn into a guessing game, or is it an experiment to see if we can hear what you hear, in order to better tell if it will be useful in the classroom?

The latter. I try not to screw with my audience for the sake of screwing with my audience. (At least, I don't think I do, nor do I remember doing. But I've been wrong before.)

Rich:

The American racial dynamic is of course missing from Sophocles, but Sophocles isn't necessarily missing from the American racial dynamic.

This is the point I try to make when I teach O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Elektra. (Among many others, obviously, but it's one of the most significant.) As for the slavery-qua-slavery angle, I usually excerpt from Orlando Patterson's Slavery and Social Death and something from Eric Williams, depending on how receptive the class is to the idea that slavery sucked. (You'd be surprised how blithe students can be to the realities of slavery. The increased attention -- I'm thinking of the Oprah ouevre -- has atrophied the horror, somehow.)

[SEK]

How many of them will be caught up enough to register the absence of those words?

This is partly what I was trying to gauge. Were I to do this in a classroom, there'd be a discussion of "Thunder Road" after I played it, so that we could talk about cars, freedom, roads, &c. and what Thunder Road-qua-road represents, then I'd play "Wings for Wheels." I didn't replicate the exercise perfectly because, well, maybe I do screw with my audience? (More likely: I thought it'd be obvious; instead, it's all ergo my obvious fanboyism.)

[Vance Maverick]

BTW, I wasn't "trying hard" in my comment about the absence of the rhythm section -- to me, that's a glaringly salient feature of the song (in either version), far more so than the presence or absence of a phrase or image could be. Our sensibilities are obviously very different. I don't expect that your students would necessarily share mine, but I would expect that theirs would vary at least as widely from yours.

[Jesse A.]

I, on the other hand, was trying WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too hard. Go figure.

[JPool]

OK, that makes more sense about your powers that be, if even less sense about your students. I agree with Ahistoricality that anachronism, strategies of historical representation and historical memory are not simple things to teach or to understand. I've had students make all sorts of anachronistic assumptions, as well as false assumptions of other kinds. But, while I've taught students who weren't the sharpest knives in the drawer, none of them have raised such unthinking objections as these. I guess the fact that they had to remeber at some point that they were signing up for a history class might help.

To get back to the larger point again. While the Springsteen Excercize would probably work as a good substitute for the London one, I don't think it would help you at all with the fallacies you start with. While both of these problems have to do with when and why an absence is significant, the London-Springsteen ones have to do with literary/lyrical structure, while the Sophocles one (or to be parallel not that one, but some other one where the absence is significant) has to do with the veracity of the world represented. That's why I was thinking about Said and his point that these Victorian authors were living in a colonial world, but the importance of that world was either played down in their literature or pushed to the background.

[JPool]

To make the point another way, I recently went to a performance of Brian Friel's "The Home Place" at the Guthrie Theater, which fronts up a wider colonial world, and the ideas about whiteness, race and civilization, which you wouldn't have found in dramas about Ireland written during the period the play is set. There are a couple of anachronistic elements to the play, such as a reference to British settlements in Kenya, which wouldn't have existed in the 1790s, but do do a nice job calling up the parallel between Mau Mau and the anxieties of the Anglo-Irish.

[Mike Russo]

Scott: I immediately understood what you were getting at with the two songs (though I found the missing refrain most glaring in the extended outro), but as someone who's also a Springsteen fan, I'm not sure that lends you much in the way of vindication.

[Rich Puchalsky]

To out-sidetrack if not out-pedant Jesse A., I still think that Martians are more reasonable.

First, literal Martians. We're really very sure that there were no African-Americans (in the sense of "black people" from Africa living in America, even without the sociopolitical connotation) in Sophocles' time. But there could conceivably have been now-hidden Martians who contacted Sophocles and gave him pieces that might be later discernable in his plays, or something, in the way that anachronistic information about Phobos and Deimos is in Gulliver's Travels. That's probably so unlikely that the unlikeliness of a lost colony of Africans living in America, that escaped the historial record, and that had someone sail across the Atlantic to talk to Sophocles, is probably still more likely. But it doesn't grate in the same way.

Second, Sophocles mentions Ares, of course, and Ares had divine descendents, mortal descendents, and attendants (i.e. Phobos, Deimos, Eris.) I haven't checked all texts of Sophocles to find out, but maybe he mentions one or more of them. In that sense, there are Martians in Sophocles.