NOSTALGIA AND HISTORY
Hamilton, Richard
The distinctive feature of what I'll call here the literary-political mode of analysis is a reliance on personal sensibility, in the literary meaning of that term, as the basic "method" for...
...But the actual performance is quite different...
...Much of "contemporary" social theory was generated in this time of great transition, and, not unexpectedly, it is saturated with the image of helpless, isolated, rootless people...
...they may mix with the neighbors...
...It is almost truistic to say so...
...There are people working right now on finding cures for heart disease and cancer, the two leading killers in RICHARD HAMILTON economically advanced countries...
...In an era of "expanding educational opportunities," where there is ever more "liberal arts" education, thousands of students, some with zeal, some with reluctance, take up these notions...
...Our sensitive intellectual sums them all up with a capsule term—"the nomad...
...It is not sufficient, therefore, to declare that "more money ought to be given for...
...The handed-down notions in intellectual circles certainly sound like the coin of the realm...
...We have some vague monolith called "the state" and of its own free will (malevolently, of course) it puts the economy first...
...There were and are some people who care very much for the kinds of life idealized in this literature...
...A related favorite is the "impersonal life we live nowadays...
...It would be an extraordinarily reckless "state" that would make any other ordering of priorities...
...he inserts a parenthesis noting that "the standard view that it is inevitably Fascist is crude and untrue...
...As good an introduction as any is provided by a review-essay commenting on Simone de Beauvoir's The Coming of Age...
...If the insensitivity were a private matter without consquences for other groups, one might simply let it pass...
...From a sensitive person one might expect a sensitive reading of the events of this world...
...It is not even orginal fantasy since for many "creative" writers it amounts to a reworking of someone else's original...
...They spell out no implications...
...It standardizes the nomad...
...Many American farmers in the 19th and 20th centuries were basically land speculators...
...That too is almost a truism...
...And feeding the horses and hogs...
...In this case, for example, the problem first appeared after the medical innovations of this century...
...It does have a peculiar centrality for any human community...
...If one were to take a community that had passed from 100,000 to 500,000 in a half century, a large proportion would have to say they did not have their roots there, they came from somewhere else...
...That is to speak of their attitude...
...In the face of urban renewal, however, they sometimes prove to be intrepid reactionaries...
...they probably lead the list for mobility...
...But that is simply blinding oneself (and perhaps one's audience) to a later political struggle...
...Here most people have limited means and hence limited control...
...They offer only a sweeping condemnation of current practice...
...The distinctive feature of what I'll call here the literary-political mode of analysis is a reliance on personal sensibility, in the literary meaning of that term, as the basic "method" for forming judgments about social and political affairs...
...That will happen, beginning perhaps next year, or in five or seven years...
...This is like a children's book...
...Since most people do not like "anomie" as a condition, they do what they can to avoid it...
...the family, once the shelter of the old, is scattered...
...It is probably true that there is more movement now than in most of the previous 30 or so centuries...
...No matter what the subject, an exultant censure is never far removed...
...And the solution...
...Orphaned children and fatherless or motherless families were a commonplace in older times...
...And then, what do people do once they arrive in the city...
...But then too, if that community were to stabilize at the latter figure and some 20 or 30 years later one were to ask the same question, the percentage saying they had their roots there would show a considerable increase...
...Now, it is amazing what ordinary people know and what the extraordinary people, like the intellectuals, do not know...
...One alternative would be to work out a plan that would allow one to get better housing while at the same time maintaining the community and, if possible, holding down costs...
...Just how much community life were we ready for after we had finished work...
...The passage contains a number of standard features of a world view, the first being the failure-of-our-civilization cliche...
...There are also a few maiden aunts...
...One could put forward this kind of explanation as an object lesson, that it was at some point in the past the fault of a group of intellectuals, with their peculiar traditions and influence...
...By doing so they restrict the choice available to those affected by the renewal to one of the developer's plan vs...
...Just another note on the urban renewal question...
...The explanation is rather simple...
...After all, one might be taking money from the nonaged poor, from general welfare programs, from housing subsidies, or from food stamp programs...
...It is these innovations that make "growing old" possible...
...What they are doing is creating, or in some cases recreating, a community...
...And most people, liking the idea of long life and complete families, would probably count that as one area of civilization's partial success...
...Did "we" love the morning chores...
...Some decision-makers feel that such eminent intellectuals must be right and so they are moved to bend their policies accordingly...
...Government farm programs in most advanced countries might well be described as involving "maniacal unproductiveness...
...It is "pseudocommunity," or more frequently, "pseudo-Gemeinschaft...
...One can always adopt a "devil take the hindmost" position and declare that we should "put more money" into this...
...The subject of Beauvoir's book (and of Pritchett's excursus) might well be taken as a sign of at least some success for the civilization...
...Scientists, medical specialists, experts in preventive medicine developed innovations that allowed people to live longer...
...Without the latter one may simply be "filling in" with school verities...
...And in discussing this class he sharply rejects the standard literary-political claim...
...Note the final comment in the last quotation from Pritchett: "It standardizes the nomad...
...We" loved the hearth and the old homestead...
...If one were to write a human account, one might include some remarks on the mistakes made in coping with the problem...
...One could point out the more or less obvious facts...
...it goes back to problems of "method...
...Elsewhere in society, particularly in stable working-class areas, rootedness and extended kinship linkages are much more frequent...
...But the common consent of mankind or even of a specially knowledgeable segment of mankind is no substitute for investigation...
...That separation, however, is not made by our "sensitive" commentators...
...But how many people in "our civilization" actually behave that way...
...Where new housing replaces the old, that should provide a basis for a longer-lasting community...
...One would think the task of intellectuals is to make moral and intelligent demands...
...But, regrettably, some people do pay attention to this kind of thing...
...For the rest of the population—for those who have to live in the contemporary world, for those whose work makes that world possible, for those who have not been granted the benefits of leisure and luxury which allow the development of such fancies, for those who make the life of the literary-politicos possible and might in turn anticipate something worthwhile in return—they get nothing...
...He describes his method as "the free mingling of fact and imagination...
...Some sociologists, political scientists, and culture critics also make use of this subjective method...
...Printers set type that will never be used...
...Undaunted by the obvious, the summary judgment is nevertheless—"maniacal productiveness...
...Since most of them are from the upper middle classes (other groups in the population being too close to the realities of life to be moved by such fancies), they have an influence disproportionate to their numbers...
...Sit around in an icy state of anomie...
...One of these days, they will find cures...
...Literarypoliticos display an almost embarrassing penchant for this kind of condemnation...
...It is a matter of either success or failure of the entire civilization...
...Will the people now condemned to park benches for 10 years of their life have the sentence increased to 25 years...
...This style of analysis reifies something called "our civilization," treating all persons in it as if they were fully aware of the dynamics of its operation, as if they were able to influence and direct its course, and as if they had willfully contributed to an obvious inhumane accomplishment...
...Some writers do in fact believe that this falling apart is just around the corner...
...It can give one a feeling of great profundity...
...An economy generates food, clothing, housing, and superfluities...
...It should also be noted that there is an unquestioned judgment made here—that the life of "the sedentary" is certainly to be preferred to that of "the nomad...
...The answer provided by most research is unambiguous: no, they do not...
...they were swept away by plague and pox, by tuberculosis, malaria, typhoid, and a dozen other major killers...
...Will Social Security be able to handle the additional demand...
...The state sat idly by, while hundreds of thousands of redundant man-hours were wasted by so-called firemen in Diesel locomotives...
...For the first time in human history large numbers of people survived to old age...
...For them, the will and the act are one...
...Intellectuals, on the other hand, are RICHARD HAMILTON different...
...This was written by the well-known English critic V. S. Pritchett and appears in the New York Review of Books (July 20,1972), a diocesan newspaper for an important branch of the literary-politicos...
...This is to suggest that the future is likely to be a period of settlement rather than one of continued or increased movement...
...They provide only the crudest of maps detailing the problem...
...ability to influence or control events something quite different...
...But not all of them are on the road either...
...agricultural societies do tend to be rather settled...
...Most of the people being talked about are fathers and mothers...
...Municipal governments display a rich array of featherbedding...
...Again, the zeal for condemnation...
...Many of them denounce such activities as not "real...
...Here we are, talking about hundreds of thousands of human beings with diverse wants and interests...
...it was a sad and bitter day when "we" were forced to leave it...
...When resources are allocated to a given purpose, one is simultaneously denying them to another...
...there are no in-betweens, no partial or differentiated assessments...
...how will their life be humanized...
...That development, in turn, brought attendant problems noted by Beauvoir and others: problems of housing, income, medical care, and, most serious, of meaning for those lives...
...94 FOR ALL ITS CLAIM of profundity, the statement is actually naive...
...But one element of the picture never appears in this intellectual whimsy...
...Most make the move with the aid of the family and members of the community...
...A work is not complete until they have been able to conclude with "the failure of...
...THE LITERARY-POLITICAL STYLE, in summary, has the following characteristics: Simplistic, all-or-nothing, condemnatory attitudizining...
...A realistic analysis, one that makes an intellectual contribution, would indicate NOSTALGIA AND HISTORY what is going to be sacrificed by the adjustment of priorities...
...Nor is it the case that "we" are continu ously forced to move...
...A highly simplified theory of history that allows an unfavorable contrast between some past Golden Age and a sadly deficient present...
...When the overwhelming majority of the population in an economically advanced country moves off the land, as in the last 100 years, there will be a very considerable disruption of social relationships...
...they are made with the aid of kin and community linkages...
...One might note that the lessons learned from this review of past experience would also apply to the future...
...This position is cultivated within the intellectual subcommunity —though, fortunately, it is a rather rare occasion when one of them meets with the "other people" to let them know that their social life is a fraud...
...they may join sociable churches...
...We are becoming closer to the nomads, I think, simply because modern economic life forces us to be mobile...
...Studies of the movement of Italians to the United States find that entire communities resettle from the old country, bringing everyone including the undertaker...
...Not all writers for the New York Review, of course, are literarypoliticos...
...Pritchett quotes the following from Beauvoir with evident approval: The fact that for the last fifteen or twenty years of his life a man should be no more than a reject, a piece of scrap, reveals the failure of our civilization: if we were to look upon the old as human beings, with a human life behind them, and not as so many walking corpses, this obvious truth would move us profoundly...
...They have deluded themselves with their own highly selective presentations thus contributing to their own alienation...
...But the allembracing condemnation does not do that...
...Some people are isolated...
...But their work, curiously, lacks the human dimension...
...Instead, they make a blanket condemnation of urban power structures...
...In so far as it breaks up real communities the new capitalism is antihuman...
...That is the case —a truism again—with any rapidly growing community...
...The counterpart to the sweeping condemnation is a championing of "human" virtues by these authors...
...A refusal to undertake a detailed analysis of societal problems and a refusal to work out plans for amelioration of the human condition or strategies for implementing plans...
...Literary-politicos present themselves as radical critics of the society...
...They acknowledge no possibility of a separation— otherwise the "obvious truth would move us profoundly...
...Some do, some do not...
...Their thrust comes to seem toward maintaining what is typically the oldest and most dilapidated housing in the metropolis...
...Pritchett "deduces" that: it is the clan or community that is the real educator and the genuine source of a sustaining culture...
...The literary-politicos might have a serious point about these other priorities, but one would only know it if they were spelling it out...
...In reality part of "the state's" effort consists of doing the opposite of what Pritchett says...
...There is no guarantee that money will be taken from some "bad" purpose...
...In former times people died young...
...But the problem arises in the sweep of the claim, its application to the entire human population...
...Some, however, are moved about and isolated because their comNOSTALGIA AND HISTORY munities have been destroyed through the operations of urban renewal programs...
...At present, in the economically advanced countries, they are rarities...
...Some "pioneers" go first and later they bring younger brothers and fathers and mothers...
...A humane intellectual might also be expected to give a "human" reading of those events...
...What they are able to do, with respect to housing, and care is another matter...
...how will they be provided with income...
...The uprooting in this century is probably the greatest in the history of the race...
...They would sell and move whenever the opportunity was right...
...The established cliche stands in the way of thought, even in the life of the gifted intellectual...
...The life "nowadays" is characteristically set in contrast to the wholesome conditions in the days of old (the dates of this Golden Age being rarely specified...
...Without a realistic specification of the options, the demand is moral but at the same time rather childlike ("I want it...
...And when that happens the average person will have another 10, 20, or 30 years added on to his or her life...
...It would take a rather unusual set of circumstances to allow any other result (circumstances, say, that would lead the population of Youngstown to exchange places with the population of Akron...
...Did we love plowing the fields on those hot and humid days out there in southern Illinois...
...There is a disjunction between Pritchett's observations in the essay from which I have quoted and those in his novels, literary criticism and autobiographical volumes...
...Possibly the most 96 ironic feature is that this fantasy is perpetuated by upper-middle-class urban intellectuals who have had little or no contact with the kind of life they idealize...
...One might put this fantasy view of the world together with concrete living flesh-and-blood people...
...Some are that way as a result of quirks of personality...
...They are doing exactly what the literary-political intellectuals would counsel, though even that does not satisfy them...
...how will their new medical needs be met...
...the status quo...
...communities destroyed, people relocated and forced into more expensive housing...
...A further difficulty with the literary-political romantic tradition is that it selects out the community-disrupting events and overlooks the less visible or dramatic communityforming events...
...reality adjusts itself accordingly...
...Now most people, I suspect, treat their fathers and mothers and maiden aunts with solicitude and concern...
...doctors, lawyers, independent busi nessmen, and many middle-level managers stay put...
...These problems loom very large at present and in many ways the "solutions" to them are failures...
...In this sentimental view, people, ("we" once again) are moved against their will...
...Roots" and "community" were very low on their scale of values...
...And when it comes to working out plans and programs, the effort is even rarer...
...Their "education" consists of learning the grounds for rejection of the contemporary world— in its "totality...
...Most of those who do are upper-middle class...
...The problem with the literary-political method is that it depends on highly personal judgment and on faith...
...It might be amusing if it were not so tragic...
...After all, everybody one knows vouches for them...
...It says that "we" do not look on the old as human beings and instead treat them as "walking corpses...
...t^ he state," Pritchett tells us, "puts the economy first and the economy is directed to maniacal productiveness...
...Where that mingling is based on fact it proves very instructive...
...One certain thing primitive life shows: the old are better off in rich societies, but not rich societies like ours, where the wealth depends on each being out for himself...
...And "we," humble victims all, are forced onto the road, pawns subject only to the forces of "modern economic life...
...A poor working-class family with three or four children and not much space in the flat has a father living off in some nursing home where he is treated like a "walking corpse...
...A highly simplistic account of "the state" and an equally simplistic account of its role vis-a-vis "the economy...
...Given the negative and/or backwardlooking character of the literary-political world view, these students do not acquire knowledge that allows them to understand the present, let alone the change in it...
...A more humane line of analysis would provide both an accurate, detailed description of the current state of the problem and a delineation of alternative solutions, so that we might proceed into the immediate future better armed than in the past...
...Many of the moves, in short, do not break ties...
...What one is actually discussing is the rest of the priorities, not whether the economy comes first...
...they may join special interest organizations...
...In such accounts only one process occurs...
...But the literary-politicos, far removed from laissezfaire traditions (or so they say), also make the same kind of noncontribution...
...That is to say, he has had direct experience with what for intellectuals is an "unusual" range of fact...
...we move on from one exhausted hunting ground to another conveniently like it...
...The "we are becoming nomads" claim is still another hoary standby...
...Regrettably, there was little advance thought given to what would follow from the innovations...
...Concern is one thing...
...He hates it and they hate it...
...RICHARD HAMILTON...
...It is even rumored there is some dalliance in the executive suites of the nation...
...Much of this is pure fantasy...
...In his autobiography Pritchett writes of his own personal experience, events he has experienced directly...
...As a consequence, considerable amounts of human effort are turned in peculiarly backward direction...
...Human beings sense problems and will solutions...
...Where one does not have a fact in one's own experience and is not inclined to undertake the onerous research necessary to establish it, the inclination will be to "fill in" with a quick substitute...
...It would be difficult to make any serious case that their isolation results from the dynamics of advanced capitalism...
...They may welcome the Welcome Wagon...
...Many of the literary-politicos purport to be Marxist in orientation—and at the same time, curiously, they purvey this notion of a prior Golden Age of Community...
...A peculiarity of economic decisions is that every choice is two-edged...
...Not all literarypoliticos are writers of fiction...
...And then what shape will the problem take...
...But to get a "human" understanding of the situation one might also note that in the ordinary run of events the first solutions to most social problems are likely to be the least adequate ones...
...Speaking of the forces of "modern economic life" he stated that at least they had rescued people from the "idiocy of rural life...
...And there his sensitivity and intelligence come through for all to appreciate...
...With each medical improvement there is a predictable consequence—some people will live longer...
...Pritchett differs from most intellectuals, who have upper- or upper-middleclass backgrounds, in that he comes from the lower middle class...
...Recognizing that, one could consider other implications—how will they be housed...
...In this respect Pritchett is no different...
...The idea of treating them as "walking corpses" seems appalling to most people...
...In their new location they "settle in" and form connections with people like themselves...
...But the kinds of intellectuals I am discussing do not do that...
...There may be certain distortions in priorities: one can drain the economy to build a church or to further culture or, for that matter, to provide for the aged—but when all is said and done, in some rather decisive ways the economy, here, there, now and everywhere, has to be placed first...
...Perhaps it is a residue of a laissez-faire heritage that few people think out the implications of such an innovation...
...But if •that were really the case, society should have fallen apart some time ago...
...There can be no question that in practice urban renewal has had many deleterious consequences...
...A very simplistic account of the dynamics of social change...
...Marx's position on the subject was very simple...
...But they also have a simple question for our literary-politico magicians: "what can we do...
...Over the years, "unproductiveness" has been built into the common law of the construction trades...
...Some people within "our" civilization, however, have made innovations that, to put it simply, save lives...
...Its portrait is one of peculiarly undetermined people—there they are, feeling, empathizing, and willing...
Vol. 20 • January 1973 • No. 1
