Inventing : ToMaTo

Spring Quarter 2006 Jeff Glassman/Arun Chandra Contents

Gregory Bateson and : For God’s Sake, Margaret! 1

Gregory Bateson: The Position of Humor in Human 15

Arturo Rosenblueth, and Julian Bigelow: Behavior, Purpose and Teleology 40

Heinz von Foerster: On Constructing a Reality 44

Invitation to Dance: A with 53

Ernst von Glasersfeld: Distinguishing the Observer 57

William S. Condon: Communication: Rhythm and Structure 63

Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness 75

Herbert Br¨un: Declarations 81

Marianne Br¨un: Designing 83

Mark Enslin: Teaching Composition: Facing the Power of the Respondent 87 1 Preface...... 87 2 ThePoweroftheRespondent...... 87 3 ImagesofTeacherandofComposer ...... 91 4 ComposingthePerformanceofTeaching...... 93 5 WhatDoITeachsuchthatITeachComposition? ...... 99 6 CompositionsthatTeach:OpenForm ...... 101

Fredrick Engels: The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man 108

Fredrick Engels: Socialism: Utopian and Scientific 114 1 TheDevelopmentofUtopianSocialism ...... 114 2 TheScienceofDialectics ...... 119 3 HistoricalMaterialism ...... 122

Karl Marx: The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof 132

Mark Sullivan: The Performance of Gesture: Musical Gesture, Then, And Now 139 Preface...... 139 1.Prologue ...... 139 2.AMedium ...... 141 3. Formulation: TheProcedureofDistinguishing ...... 146 4.ContextualHistory ...... 147 5.Address...... 148 6.Performance ...... 149 7.Configurations ...... 152 8.OneorAnother...... 154 9.ProcessesofInvention ...... 155 10.Posture ...... 156 11.MusicalGesturesandMovements ...... 159 12.AVignette...... 162 13.AcousticGesture ...... 163 14.LinguisticGesture...... 164 15.MusicalGestureandLinguisticGesture ...... 167

SPRING QUARTER 2006 ii Inventing Systems: ToMaTo 16.Movement,SpeechandMusicalGesture ...... 180 17.MusicalGestureandMusicalGesture ...... 180 18.MusicalGesture,Now ...... 180 SelectedBibliography...... 181

SPRING QUARTER 2006 iii Inventing Systems: ToMaTo For God’s Sake, Margaret! Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead , CoEvolutionary Quarterly, June 1976

Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson were married in mation, and (this year) the American Association for the 1936. They had met and fallen in love in 1932 while Advancement of Science, and a Curator of the Ameri- both were doing anthropological fieldwork on the Sepik can Museum of Natural History, which continues as her River in (Margaret was at the same time headquarters. In public affairs she seems to have taken with her second husband, ). In New Guinea over the Eleanor Roosevelt niche. Gregory’s unusual sense of theory met Margaret’s im- After and the Gregory Bateson proved field methodology and sparked much of the qual- went on to work with schizophrenics, alcoholics, artists, ity in Gregory’s opus on the latmul tribe Naven. dolphins, students, and a steadily more general set of Newly-wed in Bali, they spent two collaborative years understandings of what they have in common. He co- in the most intense and productive fieldwork of their authored a book, Communication: The Social Matrix of lives, developing, among other things, a still unmatched Psychiatry (1951–68, Norton), with Jurgen Ruesch, and photographic analysis of the . edited Perceval’s Narrative — A Patient’s Account of his Their daughter Mary Catherine, Margaret’s only child, Psychosis, 1830–1832 (1961, Stanford). Mary Cather- was born in 1939 in the United States. Gregory and Mar- ine, his and Margaret’s daughter, wrote a book about one garet worked together on the result of their Bali field- of Gregory’s conferences, Our Own Metaphor (1972, work, Balinese Character — A Photographic Analysis, Knopf). His collected papers appear in Steps to an Ecol- and then were separated increasingly by World War II ogy of Mind (1972, Ballantine), a book that wowed me and their own diverging interests. out of my shoes. If Gregorylives long enoughhe will get After the war they both were involved in starting the his Nobel for the Theory of Schizophrenia. somewhat famous Macy Conferences (1947–53) that in- Margaret is now 75, Gregory 72. They meet seldom vented . This interview begins with their joint though always affectionately. Gregory has a son John, recollection of that critical period. 23, by his second wife, and a daughter Nora, 9, by Lois Margaret Mead is one of the world’s most remarkable Bateson his present wife. This meeting with Margaret women. She got a full mixture of praise and notori- took place at Gregory’s home near Santa Cruz, Califor- ety (notorious in that day because women weren’t sup- nia, in March of this year [1976]. posed to talk about sex) with her first book, Coming of Stewart Brand: I need a little background,if it’s all right, Age in Samoa (1928). Since then there have been ten on how this whole Macy thing got rolling, why, and other books and numerous honors and positions, includ- when, and what the sequence was. ing President of the American Anthropological Associa- Gregory Bateson: There was this Macy meeting in what, tion (1960), and of Scientists’ Institute on Public Infor- ’42?1

1The Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, 1930–1955. New York: The Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, 1955, p.20

For God’s Sake, Margaret! 1 MEAD, BATESON AND BRAND Brand: Who started it, and what was it about? paper on cybernetics.3 Bateson: This was a meeting called “Cerebral Inhibi- Bateson: Rosenblueth, Wiener and Bigelow. ‘Behavior, tion,” which in fact was a meeting on hypnosis.2 “Cere- Purpose and Teleology,’ Philosophy of Science, 1943.4 bral inhibition” was a respectable word for hypnosis. Mead: That’s it, you see. Most of what was said about ‘’ was said over Bateson: It could just have been published at the time of lunch. the Cerebral Inhibition conference. Margaret Mead: Well, I know that’s what you always Mead: It was just coming out or just had come out. tell people, but I didn’t sit at the same place at lunch, and Brand: What was the experiment that that paper I heard what was said at that conference. But at that con- recorded? ference, which is the one where Milton Erickson hyp- notised that Yale psychologist, it was at the end of that Bateson: It didn’t record an experiment, it reported on conference that you really had the design of what needed the formal character of seeking mechanisms, essentially. to be done. And then you were caught up in war work Self-corrective mechanisms such as missiles. The mis- and went overseas and there was that long period. sile measures the angle between its direction and the tar- I think that you actually have to go back to that earlier get it’s seeking, and uses that measure to correct itself. meeting that was held in the basement of the old Psycho- Mead: But using some very simple psychological exper- Analytic building on the West Side the day of Pearl Har- iments that Rosenblueth had been doing at the University bor. of Mexico. Bateson: They didn’t go on from year to year, those Brand: Do you recall what they were saying that you early ones. Larry Frank was chairman I bet. overheard that got you excited? Mead: No, Larry never was chairman, you know. He al- Bateson: It was a solution to the problem of purpose. ways sat on the sidelines and made somebody else be From Aristotle on, the final cause has always been the chairman. Kubie was a very important person at that mystery. This came out then. We didn’t realize then (at point. least I didn’t realize it, though McCulloch might have) Bateson: Yes. Kubie was an important bridge because that the whole of logic would have to be reconstructed Kubie had respectable-ized Milton. There’s a whole for recursiveness. When I came in from overseas in ’45 I series of papers which are jointly Kubie and Erickson. went within the first two or three days to Frank Fremont- Now, in fact, they were Erickson’s papers. Smith, and said, “Let’s have a Macy Conference on that stuff.” Mead: And Kubie didn’t know what was in them. That’s the truth. Mead: You and Warren McCulloch had an exchange of letters when you were in Ceylon. Bateson: But Kubie did get right the energy problem. He was the first person that really took Freud’s ‘energy’ Bateson: We did? and said, “Look, look, look, it makes no sense.” There is Mead: Yes. You told me enough about it in some way. a very good paper by Kubie on the errors of Freudian en- I talked to Fremont-Smith. McCulloch had talked to ergy theory. [Goes to find the references] Huh. Kubie, Fremont-Smith. “Fallacious Use of Quantitative Concepts in Dynamic Bateson: Fremont-Smith told me, “Yes, we’ve just ar- Psychology.” ranged to have one, McCulloch is the chairman, go talk Mead: Now when was that? to McCulloch.” Bateson: That was ... guess. Mead: And McCulloch had a grand design in his mind. Mead: No, I don’t guess that one. He got people into that conference, who he then kept from talking. Bateson: Published in ’47. Psychoanalytic Quarterly. For which I suspect he very nearly got read out of the Bateson: Yes, he had a design on how the shape of the church. He never said it again. conversation would run over five years — what had to be said before what else had to be said. Mead: It was very hard to read Kubie out of the church because he had once been a neurologist, and that was Mead: He wouldn’tlet Ralph Gerard talk. He said, “You the thing that they were all scared of. Now, where is the can talk next year.” He was very autocratic. Rosenblueth, Wiener and Bigelow paper? The first great Bateson: Yes, but an awfully good chairman in many

2The twenty participants included representatives of , psychobiology, physiology, psychiatry, neurology, psychology, medicine, anatomy and electronics. Among those present were Gregory Bateson, Lawrence K. Frank, Frank Fremont-Smith, Lawrence Kubie, Warren Mc- Culloch, Margaret Mead, Arthur Rosenblueth. 3I am told a paper by W. Ross Ashby predated this by a year but we didn’t know it. — Mead 4Rosenblueth, Arturo, Norbert Wiener, and Julian Bigelow. ‘Behavior, Purpose and Teleology,’ Philosophy of Science. Vol. 10, 1942, 18.

For God’s Sake, Margaret! 2 MEAD, BATESON AND BRAND ways. It’s very rare to have a chairman who knows what ways had to reduce them to concepts — he went away it’s about at all. with the idea of feedback as something that when you Brand: What was his grand design? did anything with a group you went back and told them Bateson: Who knows? later what had happened. And he died before anything much else happened. So the word ‘feedback’ got intro- Mead: Well, I think more or less what happened was. duced incorrectly into the international UNESCO type Bateson: How did the first meeting differ from the sec- conferences where it’s been ever since. ond meeting? Bateson: In the small group cult, feedback now means Mead: There wasn’t even any usable terminology. At either telling people what they did, or answering. first we called the thing ‘feedback,’ and the models that Mead: Yes. “I don’t get any feedback from you,” or we were presented with at that point were the guided “I can’t go on with this without some feedback.” It missile, targetseeking. Now there had been another even wouldn’t have survived if Kurt had lived. He would un- that’s worth considering here. That is that Wiener had doubtedly have got it right. written an article in the Atlantic, or Harper’s, refusing to give the war data on guided missiles. Remember that? Brand: I would like a little more detail back at the initial time when you knew you had hit something. Bateson: Oh, yes. Bateson: We knew we had, well, for me, I had analysed Mead: He’d worked on them all through the war, and of the latmul of Sepik River in Naven5 and I had analysed course they had the material if they had hunted for it, but out the fact there were interactions which must stockpile. they made the mistake of asking him for some, and at that point he said that he would not give it to them, the Brand: This was your ? war was over, and this was data that could only be used Bateson: This was schismogenesis, yes. We named it in for war-like purposes. He would not give it to them. ’36. Bateson: That’s right, it was the Atlantic. Mead: It hadn’t been named yet. You’re starting back Mead: They were talking almost entirely of negative before you named it schismogenesis. feedback. By this time, Wiener and Bigelow and Johnny Bateson: Well, Naven was published. I’m talking about von Neumann of course, were members of the group, the state I was in when this stuff appeared. and Rosenblueth, Kurt Lewin, Molly Harrower, Eve- Mead: In ’43. lyn Hutchinson, Leonard Savage, Henry Brosin and that Bateson: Yes. The next thing that followed that was Hungarian who always knew who was sleeping with who ‘Generalised Foreign Policies.’ L.F. Richardson.6 I went and it was the only thing he was interested in, I’ve for- back to England in ’39. Hitler had invaded Poland. gotten his name. Well, the lists survive all right. Bartlett said, “You might be interested in that,” throw- There were three groups of people. There were the ing it across the room in contempt. mathematicians and physicists — people trained in the Mead: I’m glad I have another count against Bartlett, I physical sciences, who were very, very precise in what didn’t know he had contempt for Richardson. they wanted to think about. There was a small group of Bateson: For Richardson and for me, you see. It was us, anthropologists and psychiatrists, who were trained contemptible that I would be interested in the con- to know enough about psychology in groups so we knew temptible. So I ran off with that and kept it (probably what was happening, and could use it, and disallow it. it’s Bartlett’s copy of his files that we now have), and And then there were two or three gossips in the middle, brought it back to this country. who were very simple people who had a lot of loose in- tuition and no discipline to what they were doing. In Brand: What was in that paper? a sense it was the most interesting conference I’ve ever Bateson: This is the mathematics of armaments races. been in, because nobodyknew how to manage this things How do you build the mathematics of a in which yet. what I do depends upon what you do, and what you Brand: So you had one group of people that was to an- do depends upon what I do, and we get into a thing. other group on a level they were not used to. Richardson set a limit by invoking ‘fatigue.’ He started with a simple pair of differential equations in the premise Mead: Yes, and shifting back and forth between these that my rate of armament could be a linear function of levels and keeping everything straight was very interest- your strength; and vice versa. That led immediately to an ing. So we used the model, ‘feedback,’ and Kurt Lewin exponential runaway. He added a ‘fatigue’ factor repre- — who didn’t understand any known language, but al- senting the drain on your and my resources. The question

5Bateson, Gregory. Naven. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936. 2nd edition, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958. 6L.R. Richardson. “Generalized Foreign Policies,” British Journal of Psychology, Monography Supplement XXIII, 1939.

For God’s Sake, Margaret! 3 MEAD, BATESON AND BRAND then was whether the system could settle. Are we going they don’t blow their tops. to settle a mutual ... there’s a word in international rela- Brand: This was a word and an idea you heard about in tions for slapping the other people’s aggression back by ’43? threat ... Bateson: That’s when came in. Mead: You mean deterrence? Mead: We had things about reversals of sign ... Bateson: Yes, mutual deterrence. That word hadn’t been Bateson: That was another story, that’s before Richard- invented then. Then in the appendix, he had some re- son, even, and way before feedback. Already in Naven vised equations in terms of what is your strength and there is a statement that complementary schismogenesis what is my strength, but what is the difference between neutralises symmetrical, and vice-versa. If you get into our strengths. He worked it out in terms of the relation of too-long a contrast between the bosses and the workers two nations where each is stimulated by the amount the (which is complementary schismogenesis), you put them other side is ahead. This was obviously symmetrical — all out on the cricket field and make them play cricket, latmul Sepik River schismogenesis — right? which puts them in a symmetrical situation. And it I thenwrote to him at that stage, and said, “What about doesn’t matter who wins the game of cricket, you know. the other case, when you are stimulated to aggression by Brand: As long as they’re in that mode ... the weakness of the other side?” Which is the comple- mentary schismogenesis, right? He worked out the al- Bateson: Or if they’re too far in symmetrical rivalry, gebra for that, and said, “It’s very unpromising. I don’t such as a quarrelling husband and wife, when one of recommend nations to get into that all. The orders of them sprains in his ankle, in comes them complementary instability they get into are then very serious.” with dependency. They suddenly feel much better. Brand: Because that one would accelerate the difference Brand: It doesn’t matter who sprains? rather than reduce the difference? Bateson: It doesn’t matter who sprains his ankle, of Bateson: Accelerate the difference, yes. course not. Brand: A large amount of this strikes me as being the Brand: So you had some notion that all of these various war. Would cybernetics have begun without the war? pathologies were structurally the same? Richardson’s armaments race, and Wiener’s missiles ... Bateson: No, structurally related, that there was a sub- Bateson: Wiener without a biologist wouldn’t have done ject matter of inquiry defined by all these. You see the it. fantastic thing is that in 1856, before the publication of the Origin of Species, Wallace in Ternate, Indonesia, had Mead: Wiener was working on Rosenblueth’s stuff. a psychedelic spell following his malaria in which he in- Now Richardson is a very peculiar character. He was vented the principle of natural selection. He wrote to a Quaker school teacher of mathematics. He did all the Darwin and he said, “Look, natural selection is just like basic work on weather prediction. It was used in World a steam engine with a governor.” The first cybernetic War II and he was never told how it worked, because of model. But then he only thought he had an illustration, security. He died without knowing about it. he didn’t think he’d really said probably the most power- Bateson: Richardson was responding to . As ful thing that’d been said in the 19th Century. a Quaker he refused to bear arms in World War I, and he Mead: Only nobody knew it. became an ambulance man. He sat in the trenches wait- ing for the next call for the ambulance working out the Bateson: Nobody knew it. And there it is, still in the mathematics of armaments races. Because he was sure text. Nobody picked it up. Well, there was the machin- that if only this could be got straight, the whole mess ery, the governor itself. There was the mathematics of wouldn’t have to happen, which indeed might be true. the machine with the governor, which was done by Clerk Maxwell in 1868, because nobody knew how to write Mead: Now, there were some other things like this that a blueprint for these bloody things — they would go were being talked about, and one was what was called a into oscillation. Then there’s about 1890 vicious circle. Milton Erickson had written a paper on a with the milieu interne — the internal matrix of the body, girl who quarrelled and had headaches and got alienated control of temperature, control of sugar, and all that.7 from people, which led to further quarrels, and so on. Brand: Which later became ? Bateson: Yes, all the stuff was ready. 8 And that presented the problem: why don’t these sys- Bateson: Which later became homeostasis in Cannon. tems blow their tops? And the moment they came out But nobody put the stuff together to say these are the for- with negative feedback, then one was able to say why mal relations which go for natural selection, which go

7Claude Bernard. Le cons sur les Phenomenes de la Vie Communes aux Animaux et aux Vegetaux. 2 vols. Paris: J.B. Bailliere, 1878–1879. 8W.B. Cannon. The wisdom of the Body. New York: Norton, 1932.

For God’s Sake, Margaret! 4 MEAD, BATESON AND BRAND for internal physiology, which go for purpose, which go Mead: I remember Robert Merton saying once that for a cat trying to catch a mouse, which go for me pick- there wasn’t a person in the country who was thinking ing up the salt cellar. This was really done by Wiener, hard about problems who didn’t have a folder some- and Rosenblueth and McCulloch and Bigelow. And who where marked something like “circular systems.” Hor- really put the truth through, I don’t know, do you? ney’s book, The Neurotic Personality of Our Times9 dis- Mead: No. Wiener and McCulloch were first partners in cusses the vicious circle, and interventions in the circle, this thinking, and then became rivals when McCulloch and the effect of intervention. Milton’s paper on that went to MIT. As long as McCulloch stayed at Illinois and girl with migraine headaches and quarrelling with her Wiener at MIT they were working right together. With friends, there was lots of stuff around ... both of them at the MIT they became totally alienated, Bateson: On positive feedback. and then got involved. He was the youngest Mead: But also about possible intervention. member of the group. Bateson: But the essence of the other thing is that it’s Bateson: Oh god, he was so clever. You’d set him a not an intervention. problem, you know, and he would reach up to his hair Mead: Yes, but an intervention is a precursor of thinking and take a couple of strands, and he would say, “Well, of... now, if you say that, you see, um, no then, you see,” and Bateson: Yes, yes. All cybernetic entities are displaced he’d work it all out with his hair. small boys. Mead: He was a very odd boy. Now, one of the im- Mead: Displaced small what? portant points at this stage was one that Gregory kept making, that a possible cross-disciplinary mathematical Bateson: Boys. They’rejacks. You know what a jack is? language was available. We never got very far with that A jack is an instrument to displace a small boy. A boot because all you could ever get out of people like Wiener jack is a thing for pulling off boots ’cause you haven’t a was, “You need a longer run.” We used to drive them ab- small boy to pull it off for you. solutely out of their minds because they were not willing Mead: I’ll remember that next time. This is an English to look at pattern, really. What they wanted was a terribly joke that no one will understand. long run of data. Bateson: I can’t help it. On the first steam engines, Bateson: Of quantitative data, essentially. you’ve got a pair of cylinders and you’ve got valves, and Mead: Quantitative data, and we never got them really you pull this valve to run the steam into this one, close it, to look at the problem of pattern. Von Neumann came letit drivethepiston, pullit —this is doneby hand. Then the closest to it. they invented the idea of having the flywheel control the valves. This displaced a small boy. Bateson: Yes, he was in games theory, you see. Brand: The governor displaced another one? Brand: How many of you were thinking you had some kind of a general solution? Bateson: And the governor displaced another small boy, who was to keep the engine going at a constant rate, Mead: Gregory thought so, and Larry Frank thought so, that’s right. Now then, the John Stroud stuff is the study Evelyn Hutchinson; we had Ross Ashby over, how about of the psychology of the human being between two ma- Savage? chines. Bateson: I don’t think so, no. You see, one of the es- In any device such as an ack-ack gun you’ve got a sentials, Stewart, for understanding it, was to have been whole series of small boys in the situation of being broughtup in the age when it wasn’t there, when purpose between a machine and another machine. What John was a total mystery. Naven is a disciplined book, written Stroud worked on was the psychology of that situation. without teleology. The rule was that you must not invoke He found what I still think are some very interesting teleology. Now, people like Savage, who was a math- things, namely that the orders of equations (you know, ematician, for one thing he never faced biological data, equations in X, or in X 2, or X 3 ,or whatever) are discon- you see. He didn’t know what a mystery it is that you tinuous in the human mind, as well as being discontinu- have a nose between two eyes, and you don’t have noses ous in mathematical paper work. Where is John Stroud on the outside here, you know. All that sort of mystery now, do you ever see him? wasn’t a question for him. Now, if you say to somebody Mead: He is retired, teaching at Simon Fraser some- like that, “Why is the trunk of an elephant a nose?” they what, and he’s been brought back by Gerry O’Neill into can’t tell you without an awful sweat that it’s because discussions of space colonies. it’s between two eyes. The formal-puzzle has never been presented to them. Brand: Good lord.

9Karen Horney: The Neurotic Personality of Our Time. New York: Norton, 1937.

For God’s Sake, Margaret! 5 MEAD, BATESON AND BRAND Mead: He was very much interested in space colonies. Mead: You’d better verbalize this diagram if it’s going He told me all about them twenty-five years ago, and I to be on the tape. was interested in all the problems then, the selection of Bateson: Well, youcan carrya piece ofpaperall the way people, and what not. home with you. The electric boys have a circuit like that, Bateson: Stewart, you should get hold of John Stroud. and an event here is reported by a sense organ of some Mead: Now Gerry has John Stroud’s manuscript and kind, and affects something that puts in here. Then you he’s not going to read it until he’s finished his own. I now cut off there and there, then you say there’s an input said, “I think that’s unscientific and childish.” and an output. Then you work on the box. What Wiener Bateson: He wants credit for inventing anything that says is that you work on the whole picture and its prop- John Stroud had invented. erties. Now, there may be boxes inside here, like this of all sorts, but essentially your , your organism- Mead: Well, he did invent it separately, that’s true, and plus-environment, is to be considered as a single circuit. he wants to prove it, because after all, what does a phys- ical science have in the world except priority? I don’t Brand: The bigger circle there ... blame them you know, because they haven’tgot anything Bateson: And you’re not really concerned with an input- else. All they’re interested in is priority. They spend output, but with the events within the bigger circuit, and weeks and months discussing priority. It’s so boring. you are part of the bigger circuit. It’s these lines around Somebody mailed a letter three days before somebody the box (which are just conceptual lines after all) which else did, and they made a whole meeting about it. mark the difference between the engineers and ... Brand: Margaret, what was your perception at the time Mead: ... and between the systems people and general of the early Macy meetings as to what was going on? , too. Mead: The thing that cybernetics made the most differ- Bateson: Yes. ence to me, aside fromall the things that youknow,in the Brand: A kind of a Martin Buber-ish breakdown, “I — social organisation field, was the interaction between the it”, where they are trying to keep themselves out of that mother and child. There had been too much emphasis which they’re studying. The engineer is outside the box that there were temperamental differences among chil- ... and Wiener is inside the box. dren, so that you responded differently to a hyperactive Bateson: And Wiener is inside the box; I’m inside the babythanyoudid to a quiet baby. But the extentto which box ... there was a system in which the mother was dependent Mead: I’m inside the box. You see, Wiener named the on what the child had learned as the stimulus for the next thing, and of course the word “cybernetics” comes from position wasn’t well articulated until we got the cyber- the Greek word for helmsman. netics conferences going. Bateson: It actually existed as a word before Wiener — Bateson: The link-up between the behavioral sciences it’s a nineteenth century word. spread very slowly and hasn’t really spread yet. The cy- Mead: Yes, but he wrote the book Cybernetics10 and sort berneticiansin the narrow sense of the word went off into of patented the idea to that extent. And then he went input-output. to Russia, and was very well received. The Russians Brand: They went off into computer science. were crazy about this right away — it fit right to their Bateson: Computer science is input-output. You’ve got lives. But one of the big difficulties in Russian psy- a box, and you’ve got this line enclosing the box, and the chology is that they have great difficulty learning that science is the science of these boxes. Now, the essence of anything’s irreversible. So cybernetics spread all over Wiener’s cybernetics was that the science is the science the Soviet Union very rapidly, and in Czechoslovakia, of the whole circuit. You see, the diagram... whereas what spread here was systems theory instead of cybernetics. Brand: How did that happen? It seems like something went kind of awry. Mead: Americans like mechanical machines. Bateson: They like tools. Brand: Material tools more than conceptual tools. Bateson: No, because conceptual tools aren’t conceptual tools in America, they’re not part of you.

10Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Technology Press, 1948.

For God’s Sake, Margaret! 6 MEAD, BATESON AND BRAND Brand: How about McCulloch? He loved machinery. Brand: Some data flowing through the system? Did he also see himself as inside the box? Bateson: Yes. I set my classes an assignment. If they Mead: Well, one of the things he spent a great deal of can, they will handle it purely abstractly. And they time on was perception machines, separate sensory ap- then get off into an awful mess of ill-drawn abstractions paratus for the deaf or the blind. which act upon other ill-drawn abstractions. But if you [After reminiscence about other meetings following the can make them fool around with data of any sort, while Macy period the subject ‘feed forward’ comes up.] they’re playing with the abstractions, then you get some- Bateson: As far as I was ever able to make out ‘feed thing. I keep a fish tank going there, because a fish tank forward’ was implicit and more or less explicit in the is a nice thing, really, to have in the back of your mind original Wiener paper. The feed forward process is what while you’re thinking about ever it might be. Norbert you get by using not the primary variable, but the deriva- Wiener, when he had a problem, used to sit with the wind tive of the variable. You’ve got a machine for steering a blowing on a curtain. ship, an automatic steerer, and you set her loose in the Mead: I thought that was von Neumann. Atlantic, and you want her to go to London or some such Bateson: It could have been von Neumann. Pitts did it place: she’s to sail east. You have a compass card, and by disturbing his hair. you measure the error between the compass card and the Now, this goes along with: ‘always the multiple ap- direction the ship’s , and you use that angle to proach.’ Any Hebrew poetry is like this. ‘The candles control the steering machine, which pulls a rudder this are white, as translucent fishes,’ you know. ‘Lilies for way and that, right? Depending on the error. So, when joy, and lilies for funerals.’; ‘How are the mighty fallen the error is northward, the machine tells the rudder to and the weapons of war perished.’ You get away from swing it across southward, right? When it is going due the pure verbalism by double-phrasing. east, the ship has way on, rotational momentum, and is You make two statements, and what is true of both of going to go way over to the south of east, and now it’s them is the formal truth. This is what is called explana- going to yawing all across the Atlantic, right? tion. Brand: This is hunting, technically. Brand: It’s not that it’s a repetition of the message, it’s Bateson: This is technically hunting, and if you want to different derivations of the same message from different cut that down, what you’vegot to do is to have a machine sources. on top of that machine, another machine which measures Bateson: Often. In psychoanalysis if you can recognize the rate at which the ship is correcting its error. The the same formal pattern in a dream and in a childhood faster it is correcting its error, the slower you have it cor- memoryand in how you’retreating your analyst, you will rect its error. It will then, you see, actually hold itself say, “Aha, it’s true.” You’ve got it. before it gets to due east. If you’ve ever handled the tiller Mead: And when your studying a culture. of a small boat, you know the problem. Brand: What would be an example there? Brand: It’s a double layer in other words. The first ma- Mead: Well, you find the same pattern recurring in dif- chine is treating the boat as something which needs to be ferent aspects of the culture. You find, for instance, a given negative feedback, and then the second machine is house in which there’s no ornamentation inside, all the treating the first machine as something which needs to be ornamentation’s on the gate. You find a people who are given negative feedback. preoccupied with the external aspects of their skin and Bateson: That’s right. You’ve got a hierarchy of logical believe that any breakage will impair them so that they’re types there, and their various complexities. imperfectfor something else, and so forth. With that kind Brand: Is feed forward a kind of a discounting of part of of understanding, if you’re told something, you can tell the corrective signal? whether it fits or not. Bateson: It’s a discounting of the corrective signal in For instance, the Balinese told us that they had mar- terms of the error which the corrective signal will gen- riage by capture, which didn’t suit anything we’d under- erate if allowed to continue. stood abouttheir culture. Our cookwas goingto carryoff Mead: Now, Stewart, what we thought we were going a girl by capture, so Gregory went outside the gate with to talk about, but you didn’t let us say what we wanted him early in the morning, and the girl was there waiting. to talk about, you started something else under the pre- They looked around and there was nobody else there, tense that you wanted to start the tape recorder (I want to so she trotted off with him. If there had been another point out I followed all those manoeuvers) what we had group there, she would have pretended, she would have said we were going to talk about was the need of having screamed and been carried off, because that was correct ‘some data flowing through the system.’ etiquette.

For God’s Sake, Margaret! 7 MEAD, BATESON AND BRAND Thenwe had the case of a verystupid boy who thought ligious conversion and get over it; to have a psychotic it was true. He carried off a girl who had already planned episode and get over it; or to have a love affair with an to elope with somebody else. It took the society months Old Russian. And I stopped saying that when a little to sort that out. dancer in the front row put up her hand and said, “Does From a complex culture like Bali you take a lot of he have to be old?” chunks — birthday ceremonies and funeral ceremonies, Brand: How many of those have you done? children’s games, and a whole series of things, and then [Blank here while cassette was changed. Dr. Mead said you analyze them for the patterns that are there. she had studied infants and primitive people. When she Bateson: In latmul they have flutes. The flutes are long got to animals in the list, the conversation swerved to hollow bamboo, an inch and a half thick, five feet long, Konrad Lorenz.] and one hole here, which you blow across. And from that Mead: Watching Konrad Lorenz be simultaneously a you can get about five notes by overblowing, by harmon- bird and a worm, is one of the really magnificent things ics. All right. You have a flute, you’re blowing with me, in the world. You’ve seen that, haven’t you, when he’s and yours is tuned one tone higher than mine. So your describing a bird catching a worm, and he’s both? Talk harmonics fit between mine, right? Between us we’ve about the whole system, there it is. got quite a bit of scale. If we blow alternatively we can Bateson: One of the things I’ve already regretted is that make a tune. Well, nowthis is howthe generationsare ar- I didn’t film him lecturing in Hawaii. One could’ve, I ranged. The grandparents go with the grandchildren, and think. Lorenz is an Aurignacian. the initiation grades are like seniors — juniors — sopho- Brand: How do you mean? mores — freshmen, in which when you get a fight over initiation, the seniors and the sophomores go together, Bateson: I mean that he is identified with animals. Au- and the juniors and the freshmen go together. And so on. rignacians are the people who did the cave paintings, the good ones. Lorenz goes to the blackboard and there is a Brand: So what is the truth? live dog, hesitating between attacking and retreating. He Bateson: The truth is that latmul like to make this pat- takes the eraser, and he wipes the tail off, changes the an- tern. This is a pattern of organization that they think is gle by ten degrees, and flattens out the hair on the back nice. of the neck, and he says, “That dog’s going to run.” He Mead: When Gregory and Waddington talked to each sticks it the other way, and “That dog’s going to attack.” other, I learned what I know about the way English biol- And he is the dog while he’s talking about it. And this ogists think, by listening to the two of them. They would goes for cichlid fishes, bees, any goddamn thing. And pick their illustrations right across the field. One minute then, in the final lecture he gave in Hawaii, he got all from embryology, the next from geology, the next from mixed up, you know, the way scientists do, with physics anthropology, back and forth, very freely, so that the il- and the Einsteinian universe, and his body got twisted, lustrations from one spot illuminated, corrected and ex- as he started to talk about the Einsteinian universe where pandedthe one from another. This is the thing that Amer- the straight lines are not straight anymore. That’s what I icans are not taught to do. In our school system you have wish I had on the camera. The others all think that this is one year of chemistry, then you’re through with chem- very unfair you know, he has all of this that istry probably, and then you have one year of physics. they simply don’t have. Whereas in the English system they took all of them at Mead: He contributes tremendous zest. If Lorenz is in a once in smaller doses that went along. meeting, I can retire and take notes and think and have no Nora Bateson: Goodbye. responsibility to keep it going; whereas if he isn’t there, Mead: Goodbye. Are you going to school now? I very often have to keep it awake . . . Nora: Yes. Gregory, have you any ideas on the subject of the Mead: Well, it’s been lovely to see you, Nora. harm that is done by television because of the rigidity of the body of people watching TV? Sartre discussed at Nora: It’s been lovely to see you, too. Bye bye. one point what happened when you peek into a keyhole. Bateson: Goodbye. When you look through a keyhole, the whole body is Nora: Bye Daddy. focussed to try to use this very small aperture, and he Brand: Margaret, an old student of yours told me you described what happens if you touch somebody who is have a list of reliable sources of insight. What’s the list? looking through a keyhole. They jump. I have a big Mead: I used to say to my classes that the ways to get set, now, of comparative pictures of family groups (they insight are: to study infants; to study animals; to study weren’t taken for this, they were taken for family al- primitive people; to be psychoanalyzed; to have a re- bums) and looking at TV. When the family is

For God’s Sake, Margaret! 8 MEAD, BATESON AND BRAND reading, they’re a thousand years away from each other, had. You don’t, then, alter the material. There’s a bunch their eyes are all down, but you get a sense of community of film makers now that are saying, “It should be art,” and relaxation. Their bodies are very loose, and undoubt- and wrecking everything that we’re trying to do. Why edly there’s movement going on as they read. But when the hell should it be art? they’re watching television, the same people sit like this, Bateson: Well, it should be off the tripod. they don’t touch each other, and they’re very rigid. Mead: So you run around. We havelots of materialthat if youmovein your mind, Bateson: Yes. your muscles don’t get stiff. For years we had this very funny problemwith catatonics, such as a man who would Mead: And therefore you’ve introduced a variation into stand all day long in a ward with his eyes up and his it that is unnecessary. hands together in prayer, never moving. They’d pick him Bateson: I therefore got the information out that I up at night, tip him into a bed, feed him artificially, and thought was relevant at the time. then after five years or something, there’s be a fire. He’d Mead: That’s right. And therefore what do you see walk across the ward, pick up a telephone, report, “Fire later? in ward five,” help get all patients out, and then when the Bateson: Ifyouputthedamnthingona tripod,youdon’t fire was out, back he went to his position. But he was get any relevance. not stiff. Whereas if you take the ordinary person and Mead: No, you get what happened put them in bed for three months, they have to relearn Bateson: It isn’t what happened. how to walk. All the data we now have on monitoring muscles with tiny transistor monitors shows, if you think Mead: I don’t want people leaping around thinking that about skiing or exercising, the muscles that you use to a profile at this moment would be beautiful. ski will respond. Bateson: I wouldn’t want beautiful. If you inhibit movement, as one does watching TV, Mead: Well, what’s the leaping around for? with no empathy, no muscular involvement at all, I think Bateson: To get what’s happening. this is the thing that’s doing harm. Mead: What you think is happening. Bateson: I was wondering about looking through, for Bateson: If Stewart reached behind his back to scratch example, a camera. himself, I would like to be over there at that moment. Mead: Remember Clara Lambert and when you were Mead: If you were over there at that moment you trying to teach her? That woman who was making pho- wouldn’t see him kicking the cat under the table. So that tographic studies of play schools, but she was using the just doesn’t hold as an argument. camera as a telescope instead of as a camera. You said, Bateson: Of the things that happen the camera is only “She’ll never be a photographer. She keeps using the going to record one percent anyway. camera to look at things.” But you didn’t. You always used a camera to take a picture, which is a different ac- Mead: That’s right. tivity. Bateson: I want one percent on the whole to tell. Bateson: Yes. By the way, I don’t like cameras Mead: Look, I’ve worked with these things that were on tripods, just grinding. In the latter part of the done by artistic film makers, and the result is you can’t schizophrenic project, we had cameras on tripods just do anything with them. grinding. Bateson: They’re bad artists, then. Mead: And you don’t like that? Mead: No, they’re not. I mean an artistic film maker can Bateson: Disastrous. make a beautiful notion of what he thinks is there, and Mead: Why? you can’t do any subsequent analysis with it of any kind. That’s been the trouble with anthropology, because they Bateson: Because I think the photographic record had to trust us. If we were good enough instruments, and should be an art form. we said the people in this culture did something more Mead: Oh why? Why shouldn’t you have some records than the ones in that, if they trusted us, they used it. But that aren’t art forms? Because if it’s an art form, it has there was no way of probing further material. So we been altered. gradually developed the idea of film and tapes. Bateson: It’s undoubtedly been altered. I don’t think it Bateson: There’s never going to be any way of probing exists unaltered. further into the material. Mead: I think it’s very important, if you’re going to be Mead: What are you talking about, Gregory? I don’t scientific about behavior, to give other people access to know what you’re talking about. Certainly, when we the material, as comparable as possible to the access you

For God’s Sake, Margaret! 9 MEAD, BATESON AND BRAND showed that Balinese stuff that first summer there were Bateson: I don’t understand Dead Birds at all. I’ve different things identified — the limpness that Marion looked at Dead Birds, and it makes no sense. Stranahan identified, the place on the chest and its point Mead: I think it makes plenty of sense. in child development that identified. I can Bateson: But how it was made I have no idea at all. go back over it, and show you what they got out of those Mead: Well, there is never a long-enough sequence of films. They didn,t get it out of your head, and they didn,t anything, and you said absolutely that what one needed get it out of the way you were pointing the camera. They was long, long sequences from one position in the direc- got it because it was a long enough run so they could see tion of two people. You’ve said that in print. Are you what was happening. going to take it back? Brand: What about something like that Navajo film, In- Bateson: Yes, well, a long sequence in my vocabulary is trepid Shadows?11 twenty seconds. Mead: Well, that is a beautiful, an artistic production Mead: Well, it wasn’t when you were about Ba- that tells you something about a Navajo artist. linese films. It was three minutes. It was the longest that Bateson: This is different, it’s a native work of art. you could wind the camera at that point. Mead: Yes, and a beautiful native work of art. But the Bateson: A very few sequences ran to the length of the only thing you can do more with that is analyze the film winding of the camera. maker, which I did. I figured out how he got the anima- Mead: But if at that point you had a camera that would tion into the trees. run twelve hundred feet, you’d have run it. Bateson: Oh yes? What do you get out of that one? Bateson: I would have and I’d have been wrong. Mead: He picked windy days, he walked as he pho- Mead: I don’t think so for one minute. tographed, and he moved the camera independently of the movement of his own body. And that gives you that Bateson: The Balinese film wouldn’t be worth one quar- effect. Well, are you going to say, following what all ter. those other peoplehave been able to get outof those films Mead: All right. That’s a point where I totally disagree. of yours, that you should have just been artistic? It’s not science. Brand: He’s saying he was artistic. Bateson: I don’t know what science is, I don’t know Mead: No, he wasn’t. I mean, he’s a good film maker, what art is. and Balinese can pose very nicely, but his effort was to Mead: That’s all right. If you don’t, that’s quite simple. hold the camera steady enough long enough to get a se- Ido. [To Stewart] With the films that Gregory’s now re- quence of behavior. pudiating that he took, we have had twenty-five years of Bateson: To find out what’s happening, yes. re-examination of the material. Mead: When you’re jumping around taking pictures ... Bateson: It’s pretty rich material. Bateson: Nobody’s talking about that, Margaret, for Mead: It’s rich, because they’re long sequences, and God’s sake. that’s what you need. Mead: Well. Bateson: There are no long sequences. Bateson: I’m talking about having control of a camera. Mead: Oh, compared with anything anybody else does, You’re talking about putting a dead camera on top of a Gregory. bloody tripod. It sees nothing. Bateson: But they’re trained not to. Mead: Well, I think it sees a great deal. I’ve worked with Mead: There are sequences that are long enough to ana- these pictures taken by artists, and really good ones ... lyze ... Bateson: I’m sorry I said artists; all I meant was artists. Bateson: Taken from the right place! I mean, artist is not a term of abuse in my vocabulary. Mead: Taken from one place. Mead: It isn.t in mine either, but I ... Bateson: Taken from the place that averaged better than Bateson: Well, in this conversation, it’s become one. other places Mead: Well, I’m sorry. It just produces something dif- Mead: Well, you put your camera there. ferent. I’ve tried to use Dead Birds,12 for instance ... Bateson: You can’t do that without a tripod. You’re stuck. The thing grinds for twelve hundred feet. It’s a

11Sol Worth and John Adair. Through Navajo Eyes. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1972. Intrepid Shadows was made by Al Clah, a 19-year old Navajo painter and sculptor. 12Dead Birds. Directed by Robert Gardner for the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, color, 83 minutes, 1964. Available through New York Public Library.

For God’s Sake, Margaret! 10 MEAD, BATESON AND BRAND bore. stills, they’re magnificent, and you can do a great deal Mead: Well, you prefer twenty seconds to twelve hun- with them. And if you hadn’t stayed in the same place, dred feet. you wouldn’t have those sequences. Bateson: Indeed, I do. Brand: Has anybody else done that since? Mead: Which shows you get bored very easily. Mead: Nobody has been as good photographer as Gre- Bateson: Yes, I do. gory at this sort of thing. People are very unwilling to do it, very unwilling. Mead: Well, there are other people who don’t, do you know? Take the films that Betty Thompson studied.13 Brand: I haven’t seen any books that come even close to 15 That Karbo sequence — it’s beautiful — she was willing Balinese Character. to work on it for six months. You’ve never been willing Mead: That’s right, they never have. And now Gregory to work on things that length of time, but you shouldn’t is saying it was wrongto do what he did in Bali. Gregory object to other people who can do it, and giving them the was the only person who was ever successful at taking material to do it. stills and film at the same time, which you did by putting There were times in the field when I worked with peo- one on a tripod, and having both at the same focal length. ple without filming, and therefore have not been able to Bateson: It was having one in my hand and the other subject the material to changing theory, as we were able round my neck. to do with the Balinese stuff. So when I went back to Bali Mead: Some of the time, and some not. I didn’t see new things. When I went back to Manus, I Bateson: We used the tripod occasionally when we were did, where I had only still photographs. If you have film, using long telephoto lenses. as your own perception develops, you can re-examine it Mead: We used it for the bathing babies. I think the dif- in the light of the material to same extent. One of the ference between art and science is that each artistic event things, Gregory, that we examined in the stills, was the is unique, whereas in science sooner or later once you get extent to which people, if they leaned against other peo- some kind of theory going somebody or other will make ple, let their mouths fall slack. We got that out of exam- the same discovery.16 The principal point is access, so ining lots and lots of stills. It’s the same principle. It’s that other people can look at your material, and come quite different if you have a thesis and have the camera to understand it and share it. The only real information in your hand, the chances of influencing the material are that Dead Birds gives anybody are things like the thing greater. When you don’t have the camera in your hand, that my imagination had never really encompassed, and you can look at the things in the background. that’s the effect of cutting off joints of fingers. You re- Bateson: There are three ends to this discussion. There’s member? The women cut off a joint for every death that the sort offilm I wantto make, there’sthe sortof film that they mourn for, and they start when they’re little girls, they want to make in New Mexico (which is Dead Birds, so that by the time they’re grown women, they have no substantially), and there is the sort of film that is made by fingers. All the fine work is done by men in that soci- leaving the camera on a tripod and not paying attention ety, the crocheting and what not, because the men have to it. fingers to do it with, and the women have these stumps Mead: Who does that? of hands. I knew about it, I had read about it, it had no Bateson: Oh, psychiatrists do that. Albert Scheflen14 to me until I saw those pictures. There are lots leaves a video camera in somebody’s house and goes of things that can be conveyed by this quasi-artistic film, home. It’s stuck in the wall. but when we want to suggest to people that it’s a good Mead: Well, I thoroughly disapprove of the people that idea to know what goes on between people, which is was want video so they won’t have to look. They hand it over you’ve always stressed, we still have to show your films, to an unfortunate student who then does the rest of the because there aren’t any others that are anything like as work and adds up the figures, and they write a book. We good. bothobject to this. But I do thinkif youlookat yourlong Brand: Isn’t that a little shocking? It’s been, what, sequence of stills, leave out the film for a minute, that years? those long, very rapid sequences, Koewat Raoeh, those Mead: Very shocking.

13Betty Thompson. Development and Trial Applications of Method for Identifying Non-Vocal Parent-Child in Research Film, (Teachers College, New York, 1970, PhD thesis). 14Albert E. Scheflen. Body Language and the Social Order: Communication as Behavioral Control. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice- Hall, 1973. 15M. Mead and G. Bateson. Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis. New York: The New York Academy of Sciences, Special Publica- tions, II, 1942; reissued 1962. 16M. Mead. “Towards a Human Science,’ Science, vol. 191 (March 1976), pp. 903–909.

For God’s Sake, Margaret! 11 MEAD, BATESON AND BRAND Bateson: It’s because people are getting good at putting Mead: The lack of integration. You get it on radio in cameras in tripods. It isn’t what happensbetween people. New Guinea: “Kruschev has been deposed, there was a Mead: Nobody’s put any cameras on tripods in those jewel robbery in the American Museum of National His- twenty-five years that looked at anything that mattered. tory, two small boats off Port Moresby have sunk,” that’s Bateson: They haven’t looked at anything that mattered, the news. anyway. All right. [Lois Bateson leans in on her way to an errand. Mar- garet will be gone by the time she returns. “OK, you Brand: I have a question that maybe relates to that, people. See you in a while. I’m really glad you came, maybe not. What about field workers that join the tribe? Margaret. Come again.”] Frank Cushing with the Zuni, and , and such. Mead: Well, it’s been lovely to see you. Mead: Castaneda hasn’t joined the tribe. Brand: You mentioned Gerry O’Neill a while ago, as though you’re somewhat involved in the space colony Brand: He hasn’t joined the tribe, he’s tried to join the business. practice. Mead: Well, I’ve been interested in them, because of the Mead: No, only intermittently. We have examples. Ed- possibilities of diversity. You see, I’ve always lived the mund Carpenter’s been making a study of these people. Pacific islands, because they have such high degrees of Brand: I’ve got some, too. Everyone that knows anthro- diversity. When John Stroud first told me about space pologists knows someone who’s a little wiggy because colonies, the picture was that you could have an area of some overzealous participation in something. And I about the size of Los Angeles, and they would be undis- wonder about that. turbed for 1500 years, so they could vary. Mead: It’s the temptation for another culture. We also Brand: I have a questionthat goes backto the Macycon- have a case of a man who was studying the Chinese, ferences, and it also relates to projects that Gregory’sget- and he married a Chinese girl. Which he then thought ting interested in now. What is the history of the failure was enough anthropology; for quite a while he couldn’t of conceptual cybernetics to become public knowledge? do anything else. It’s a lot easier to study the culture You said that the later Macy meetings were starting to get where you can’t marry people, where there’s such a gulf a sense that you had something that everybody ought to that that kind of over-identification doesn’t occur. The know. minute you study a culture where you might marry them, Mead: It wasn’t quite as deep as that. We thought or adopt their children, or be adopted by them, you get we had something that would be cross-disciplinary lan- complications. Extreme ones. guage. The meeting we had with the Academy of Sci- Brand: Sometimes the ones who lose track of where ences was to include more of the scientific community. they are, they find a place to be confused between, and Now, I worked a lot on that idea. Continuities in Cul- proceed to be confused between it. tural deals with the fact that in , Mead: I think that’s a function of people who are con- unless you can carry the public with you, you can’t use fused wherever they are, anyway. One difference be- your findings. I think that we could trace part of the tween pre-World War II anthropology and post-World lack of response to the American preference for linear War II is that most of us who did the pre-war work grew sequences, which is very high. It’s like the Manus, too. up in reasonably coherent , and we knew what a They’re both moral cause-and-effect . You do pattern was when we saw one.17 Remember that paper this, and that happens. that I wrote that you invented the word “quizbits” for? A problem I was going to raise, to Gregory, is why do (But the paper is called “Customs and Mores.’18) It was you think the United States has more run-away positive a discussion of the extent to which information was be- feedback than most cultures? ing broken up into meaningless bits and fed to people. Brand: Such as? All your experience is chopped, everything out of scale. Mead: Such as, gasoline taxes that can only be used on The news over the radio — one event is of world signif- roads. With the tax you build more roads, which makes icance, the next is nothing. Contemporary young people it possible to have more cars, which uses more gasoline. have had the things that are presented to them so chopped It’s a perfect endless runaway. We have hundredsof them up. in this country. Brand: You mean just the speed with which they change, Bateson: I think one of the things that’s serious in this or the lack of integration? country is using the value one can catch hold of, rather

17M. Mead. “From Intuition to Analysis in Communication Research,” Semiotica, Vol. 1 (1969), pp. 13–25. 18M. Mead. “Customs and Mores,” American Journal of , Vol. 47 (1942), pp. 971–980.

For God’s Sake, Margaret! 12 MEAD, BATESON AND BRAND than the real value. Such as, catching gangsters for their Bateson: At that first cybernetic meeting we had a Rus- income tax returns. I had a whole series of examples of sian talk. He hadn’t much idea what it was all about, I this at one stage. The actual feedback circuit runs upon thought. a collateral variable and you don’t, from the circuit, get Mead: I don’t remember what he said at all. insight into the whole structure. Bateson: He had fifteen slides of circuit structures that Brand: Still, you say that’s good when it comes to some- would do various sorts of things like pattern recognition, thing like oxygen or carbon dioxide being the controller or control temperature, or something. It was a sort of of breathing rates. about the level of the McCulloch and Pitts papers. With- Bateson: This is exactly the problem. When do you out, as far as I could make out, the enormous theoretical want to do this, and where do you want not to do it? At spin-off that those papers had. one stage I was saying, the thing to do is never to use the Mead: And evidently I wrote him off so I can’t remem- lethal variable to control the feedback. ber. Brand: The lethal variable? Bateson: I think you wrote him off. I wrote him off very Bateson: This was in asphyxia. The rate of breathing is quickly. not affected by the lack of oxygen but by the surplus of Mead: Well, we had a period where I thought we could carbon dioxide in the blood. If you try to regulate by the take cyberneticsand use it as a languagefor communicat- lack of oxygen, it’s already too late. ing with the Russians, and then somebody in this country Mead: Well, we said the same thing, that if you’reteach- decided that the Russian cybernetic were very danger- ing children nutritional habits, don’t do it with something ous, and we had a big intelligence report on cybernetics. that’s related to nutrition. It’s much safer to say, “We’ll It ceased to be politics-free and was no longer useful. take you to a circus if you eat your spinach,” than to say, I wrote a discussion to that, and decided anyway, that “If you eat your spinach, you can have ice cream.” instead of having a methodology or conceptual scheme Brand: Safer means? for communication, it was much better to have agreed- Mead: Safer socially when you’re bringing up children on sub goals for communication between two systems as 19 and you want them to learn to eat nutritionally good diets antithetical as the Soviet and U.S. effortlessly. When you tie the eating to the food itself, if Brand: Well then something funny seemed to happen a child wants to fight about it, they fight about it by not with the whole general systems bunch. I’ve never un- eating the rightfood. So that you put all the troublein the derstood that. system. The Balinese say to a child when dressing a cut, Mead: Well, there are a dreadful lot of systems people “Listen to the gong, listen to the orchestra, go and see in the Society for General Systems Research. Then von an orchestra!” There’s no orchestra. She’s just present- Bertalanffy died. Anatol Rappaport runs a very isolated ing something pleasant. Italian mothers do that. They group. Now, when the Society for General Systems Re- say, “Ice cream! Ice cream! Lovely ice cream! Lovely search was formedin Atlanta, andAnatol was in the chair ice cream!” while the child’s having a cut fixed. Amer- (I had never met him), and Ross Ashby was there on the icans say, “But she didn’t mean it, she didn’t give him front row, and there were about twenty people there, I any ice cream.” Watergate, of course, was an outstanding went back to the correspondence, Gregory, where you example. We didn’t have to get Nixon because of Wa- had proposed that we plan an organization in relation to tergate. We were using Watergate because he was taking its purposes. This was before the cybernetics meetings, the countryapart and had delusionsof grandeur. I think if while you went overseas. When the Society for General we’d known about the income tax, that would have done Systems Research was formed, I proposed that we apply it. general systems to our society. Nobody knew who I was I’ve wondered, Gregory, whether all of these things and I was feeling like the little old lady in tennis shoes. I go together — the non-recognition of cybernetics in this went up at the end of it and talked to Ashby, and he said, country, as compared with the Soviet Union. I figure that “You mean we should apply our principles to ourselves”? they have about a hundred times as many people that un- Bateson: In what tone of voice? derstand the whole thing. Mead: He was repudiating it, in a light playful voice that Brand: Understanding it creatively and coming up with was appropriate, but he was repudiating it. new thoughts? Brand: So it was stillborn. Mead: That one doesn’tknow. We do know that they are Mead: So now, the Society for General Systems Re- using it for purposes of social organization, especially in search, which is proliferating, is proliferating by the stan- Czechoslovakia.

19M. Mead. “Crossing Boundaries in Social ,” Social Science Information, vol. 8 (1969), pp. 7–15.

For God’s Sake, Margaret! 13 MEAD, BATESON AND BRAND dard methods that are used in this country — regional using different units, and they were both ignoring the fact chapters. I said to Dick Erickson, “I don’t think we that China existed, and therefore were making hopeless should be so conventional, we ought to think of some- mess when you knew you had a universe to deal with. thing better.” We can’t get anybody to use any kind of What I was telling them was to use cybernetic thinking constructive thinking on the problems of organization. as it had developed into general systems theory. The next And, of course, there’s no place where you can get a well morning I was on a chartered plane bringing me back, rounded degree in General System Theory. Rand has a and there was a man on it who said, “You left me way school that is almost entirely military. behind. I couldn’t understand a word you said.” I said, One of the most crazy situations — I was asked to “What are you?” He said, “I’m an electronic specialist.” speak at a dinner of the Air Force celebrating their fifth Americans are always solving problems piece-meal. decade of Air Force intelligence. I talked about the fact They’re always solving them de nouveau and artificially that they weren’t paying attention to the whole; the Air because they’re all newcomers and they don’t have deci- Force was modeling the Soviet Union as a system, and sions grounded in a culture. the Army was modeling the United States as a system,

For God’s Sake, Margaret! 14 MEAD, BATESON AND BRAND The Position of Humor in Human Communication Gregory Bateson Macy Conferences 1952

Participants: Gregory Bateson (presenter), Lawrence S. Kubie, W. Ross Ashby, J. Z. Young, John R. Bowman, Ralph W. Gerard, G. Evelyn Hutchinson, Walter Pitts, Henry Quastler, Margaret Mead, Warren McCullough.

To discuss the position of humor in the equilibration discover that we are not communicating in the same way, of human relationship, I shall build up from things that we become anxious, unhappy, angry; we find ourselves have previously been talked about in this room. at cross-purposes. Consider a message of a very simple kind, such as, Ongoing interchanges are very useful in building up “The cat is on the mat.” That message contains, as has among a group of persons the conventions of communi- been emphasized here, many other things besides the cation. These conventionsrange from vocabulary and the piece of information which may be defined as the “Yes” rules of grammar and syntax to much more abstract con- or “No” answer to the question which would be created ventions of category formation, such as the conventions by inverting the same words and adding an interrogation for structuring the universe and the conventions of epis- mark. It contains a series of things of which one set temology. The conventions of communication include would be answers to other informational questions. Not the material of at the simplest level, but also only does it give the answer to: “Is the cat on the mat?”, under this heading comes material which is the field of but also to “Where is the cat?”, which is a much wider study of psychiatry and of . When question. The message also contains, as McCulloch has I, as an anthropologist, say there is something different stressed, something in addition to a report about the cat, about those English or those Balinese, I don’t only mean namely, a mandatory aspect; it urges the recipient of the that they eat their vegetables in a rather uncooked form message to pick the cat up, to kick the cat, feed it, ignore or that they go to boarding schools. I do not refer to a it, put it out, according to taste, purpose, and so forth. set of simple descriptive statements of action or a set of The message is a command or stimulus as well as being descriptive statements at the vocabulary level. I mean a report. also that their actual conventions of communication are There is a further range of implicit communication in different from those of some other culture1. this message, two additional categories of implicit con- I classify together the simplest conventions of com- tent. One category includes the implicit communication munication and the most abstract cultural and psychiatric between A and B that the word “cat” shall stand for a premises, and insist that a vast range of premises of this particular furry, four-footed thing or for a category of sort are implicit in every message. For example, I be- furry, four-footed things. People are not necessarily in lieve that the world is “agin” me and I am in commu- clear agreement about what their messages mean. The nication with some other person, the premise about the senders have their rules or habits in constructing mes- world being “agin” me is going to be built into the way sages; the recipients have their rules and habits in inter- in which I structure my messages and interpret his. In a preting them; and there is not always agreement between sense, a philosophy of life is describable as a set of rules the rules of the sender and the rules of the recipient. One for constructing messages, and the individual’s culture of the most important uses of messages, and especially or Weltanschauung, call it what you will, is built into his of their interchange — the single message doesn’t mean conventions of communication. much or do much in this respect — is to bring the two There is another set of implicit contents in such a persons or the many persons together into an implicit message as: “The cat is on the mat,” namely, implicit agreement as to what the words are to mean. That is statements about relationship. We are trying to tell each one of the most important social functions of talking. It other that we love each other, that we hate each other, is not that we want to know where the cat is, but that we that we are in communication, that we are not in com- terribly want it to be true that both persons are talking the munication, and so on. The implicit statements about the same “language” in the widest sense of the word. If we conventions of communication are messages about the 1Ruesch, J., and Bateson, G.: Communication. The Social Matrix of Psychiatry. New York, Norton, 1951 (See: The Conventions of Communi- cation, p. 212).

GREGORY BATESON 15 Humor in Human Communication “how” of communication, but these (about relationship) forms are implicit in the background. When the point of are messages about the fact of communication. “We are a joke is reached, suddenly this background material is communicating” is a statement by two persons. brought into attention and a paradox, or something like You meet somebody in the street and he turns and it is touched off. A circuit of contradictory notions is looks into a shop window. You noticed that he saw you completed. coming; you observed that he turned and looked into the There is a very simple and not very good joke go- shop window. He may be transmitting the very peculiar ing around — for some reason, those who discuss hu- message: “We are not communicating.” Whether he is or mor from the scientific point of view always use rather is not communicating is a question which brings us to dull jokes: A man working in an atomic plant knew the Epimenides’ paradoxes. guard at the gate slightly, and one day he comes out with One of the rather curious things about homo sapiens a wheel-barrow full of excelsior. When the guard says, is laughter, one of the three common convulsive behav- “Say, Bill, you can’t take that out,” he says, “It’s only iors of people in daily life, the others being grief and excelsior, they throw the stuff away, anyway.” The guard orgasm. I don’t want to say that they do not occur at says, “What do you want it for?” Well, he said he wanted animal levels, partly because I am not competent to say to dig it into his garden because the soil was a bit heavy, such a thing, partly because I suspect that there are pre- and the guard let him go. The next day he comes out figurations in certain mammals but all three phenomena again with a wheelbarrow full of excelsior. This goes on certainly are not developed among mammals to the ex- day after day, and the gateman is increasingly worried. tent that they are among homo sapiens. Because they are Finally, he says, “Bill, look, I’m going to have to put you involuntary, or partially so, one tends to think of these on the suspect list. If you tell me what it is you’re steal- phenomena as lower functions, animalish functions, but ing from this place, maybe we can keep it quiet between since the full development of these phenomena is char- us, but I’m perfectly sure you’re stealing something.” Bill acteristically human, it seems that laughter, sobbing, and says, “No, it’s only excelsior. You’ve looked through it orgasm are perhaps not lower functions in a simple neu- every day and dug to the bottom of it. There’s nothing rophysiologic sense but have evolved because of the hy- there.” But the guard says, “Bill, I’m not satisfied. I’m pertrophy of the upper levels and the resulting peculiar going to have to protect myself by putting you on the list relationship between the cortical-intellectual processes if you won’t tell me what this is all about.” Finally, Bill and those which go on below. says, “Well maybe we can get together on this. I’ve got These three phenomena, and also the convulsions of a dozen wheelbarrows at home now.” epilepsy and shock therapy, have the characteristic that We have talked a good deal at these Conferences there is a build-up, a so-called tonic phase, in which about figure-ground relations. If we name something as something called “tension” — which it certainly is not a person, a face, or a table, or whatever, by the fact of — builds up for a period; then something happens, and naming it, we have defined the existence of a universe the organism begins quaking, heaving, oscillating, espe- of not-this, a ground. We have also discussed, although cially about the diaphragm. I leave it to the physiologists not, I think, as much as we should have, the Russellian to discuss what happens. paradoxes, especially the class of classes which are not These three convulsive phenomena are subject to im- members of themselves. These paradoxes arise when a pairment in mental illness. The inability to weep, the im- message about the message is contained in the message. pairment of orgasm, and the impairment of laughter are The man who says, “I am lying,” is also implicitly say- among the indices of illness that the psychiatrist looks ing, “The statement which I now make is untrue.” Those for. If those three things are functioning nicely, the indi- two statements, the message and the message about the vidual probably is not doing so badly. If one of them is message crisscross each other to complete an oscillating hypertrophied, or two or three impaired or absent, then system of notions: if he is lying, then he is telling the the psychiatrist knows that something is not functioning truth; but if he is telling the truth, then he is not lying; right. and so on. Of the three types of convulsion, laughter is the one The paradox of the class of classes which are not for which there is the clearest ideational content. It is members of themselves arises similarly from examining relatively easy to discuss what is a joke, what are the the implicit message. The first step toward building the characteristics that make a joke, what is the point of a paradox is to say that the man who speaks of elephants joke. The sort of analysis that I want to propose assumes is thereby defining the class of non-elephants. The pos- that the messages in the first phase of telling the joke sibility of the class being a member of itself is then in- are such that while the informational content is, so to troduced via the class of non-elephants, which class is speak, on the surface, the other content types in various evidently not an elephant and therefore is a member of

GREGORY BATESON 16 Humor in Human Communication itself. The circuit of ideas which is the paradox is closed logical alternatives, the freedom to ignore the theory of or completed by treating seriously the background: the types, is probably essential to comfortable human rela- non-table, the non-elephant. The ground is a part of the tions. implicit information. It just is. You can’t ever really get In sum, I am arguing that there is an important in- away from it. gredient common to comfortable human relations, hu- The hypothesis that I am presenting is that the para- mor, and psychotherapeutic change, and that this in- doxes are the prototypic paradigm for humor, and that gredient is the implicit presence and acceptance of the laughter occurs at the moment when a circuit of that kind paradoxes. It appears that the patient (especially the is completed. This hypothesis could be followed up with Freudian analysand) makes progress via the mental flux, an analysis of jokes, but rather than do that, I should confusion, or entropy stirred up by paradox, that, pass- like to present to you the notion that these paradoxes are ing through this state of inner disorder, he is partly free the stuff of human communication. As scientists, we try to achieve a new affective organization of experience or very hard to keep our levels of abstraction straight; for new premises for the codification of his thoughts. instance, in these conferences we have gotten into very The alternative to the freedoms introduced by para- great trouble when the levels of abstraction became tan- dox is the rigidity of logic. Logic is a very peculiar hu- gled and the theory of types showed itself. In ordinary man invention, more or less timeless. We say, “If A, then life, as distinct from scientific talk, we continually accept B,” but in logic, the word, “then” does not mean “at a the implicit paradoxes. If the psychiatric patient says, “I later time.” It means that statement B is synchronously dreamed,” and then narrates his dream, he is making a set implicit in statement A. But when we speak of causes and of statements within a framework not unrelated to that of say, “If I drop the glass, then it will fall,” the words “if . . . Epimenides. If an artist paints a picture and says, either then” refer to a sequence in time and are quite different implicitly or explicitly, “This picture is a truth, this pic- from the “if ... then” of logic. When logic encounters ture is an attempt to convinceyou,” he is, if I may say so, the theory of types and paradox is generated, its whole probably not an artist but a scientist or a propagandist. exposition breaks down — “Poof!” It is perhaps some If he says, “This picture is in an Epimenides frame,” he terror that mental process may go “poof” which compels is a “real” artist. Or consider the old difference between many patients and persons at large to cling to logic. But Ruskin’s true and false grotesque2. The true grotesque casual systems do not go “poof” in this way. As in an is, I suggest, created by the man who says frankly, “I am electric buzzer, there is sequential contradiction, and the lying,” and who goes on to create a thing whose truth is system merely oscillates. that it is created. The man who says, “This is a horrible One of the hypotheses in this group is that men- dragon,” and tries to make his work of art into a factual tal processes can appropriately be described in terms of statement is the one who produces the false grotesque. causal hypothesis with all due qualification of the word He is the propagandist. “cause.” I would suggest that these processes absolutely The setting of the psychotherapeutic interview has cannot be described in terms of timeless logic. The study a peculiar relationship to reality. Is it real or is it not? of mind through the causal approach, however, will lead The fantastic exchanges that go on within it are paradox- us into accepting the paradoxesof thinking, which are re- ical. The patient who says, “I walked around the grounds lated to humor, which are related to a freedom to change this morning and I said, ’I will be honest. I am going to the system of thought related to humor, and in general get something straight,’ ” fairly certainly will not achieve are related to mental health and human amenity. much that day. The likelihood of his making an advance I think that opens enough subjects for discussion, but depends much more on his ability to say to himself, “Let there is just one other thing I should like to speak of. me freely imagine what I want to imagine and see what I want to refer back to some talk which we have had comes up.” Indeed, the whole free association technique in the past over the words, “unconscious” and “the un- is an attempt to give that freedom. conscious.” Conventional theories about humor usually But the therapy situation is not unique. It is, perhaps, refer to repression, release of repression, Schadenfreude a specialized version of what, after all, goes on between — the pleasure which we feel in somebody else’s pain us all the time. The therapy situation is a place where — and so on. I want to say that the various types of the freedom to admit paradox has been cultivated as a implicit content of messages constitute what I person- technique, but on the whole this flexibility exists between ally would understand by the content of the unconscious. two people whenever, God willing, they succeed in giv- Those are the items which, when we think only of the cat ing each other a freedom of discussion. That freedom, and its location, we are likely not to notice as messages the freedom to talk nonsense, the freedom to entertain il- which we havereceived. It seems to me that the Schaden-

2Ruskin, J.: The Stones of Venice. London, Smith, 1853, and New York, Dutton, 1907 (Vol. III).

GREGORY BATESON 17 Humor in Human Communication freude theory, which, after all, is classic for this subject, to be aware of all the time in the psychological sciences, arises because the implicit enjoyment of another’s pain namely, the danger of taking a dichotomy, such as figure- is among those things which we prefer not to notice. It ground, and equating it with every other dichotomy, such is a premise which we leave implicit among those mes- as affect-cognition or consciousness-unconsciousness. I sages which we receive without noticing that we received set the stage by, using the yes-or-no answer to the ques- them. All or most of the cultures of the world have some tion, “Is the cat on the mat?” as in some sense a primarily degree of restriction and taboo upon hostile expressions conscious, figure-ish item, and I defined the other things and hostile actions, and, therefore, in all cultures of the as backgrounditems. But it is importantto insist that that world that type of material is likely to be sidetracked into was a purely arbitrary selection on my part. the implicit and to be unnoticeduntil a joke is completed. In talking about the character structure of a certain And that is as near as I can get to an explanation of why individual or about the thought habits or the communica- people make Schadenfreude theories about humor. tion habits distinguishing a certain culture, it may be im- Frank: Gregory Bateson referred very briefly to the portant to say which categories of content appear in the figure-ground concept. We could further our thinking by forefront of consciousness. There are, certainly, many emphasizing the selective awareness and patterned per- people who are enormously more conscious of some of ception of each person, and some of the problems which the items which I labeled as “implicit” than they are of seem to be involved. For example, we were talking in the concrete information. After the conversation, they this room earlier this week3 about the primary discrimi- don’t know whether the cat was on the mat but they do nation of self and nonself in the child, discussing the fact know whether somebody loves or hates them, and so on. that primary discrimination is not to an outside objective I don’t think it can be said that affect is necessarily the reality but is always to an idiomatically highly-patterned more unconscious component. nonself. Later on, the child may have to learn to modify Frank: I didn’t want to separate affect and cognition. I that objective nonself and accept the social-cultural def- merely wanted to point out, in discussing and conceptu- initions of the environing world. Some children do not alizing the picture, that the affective reaction might be wholly accept these cultural definitions, as we know, and looked upon as analogous to the way we adjust to the perhaps that is how psychiatric patients develop, from temperature and barometric pressure in this room with- those who have not made the transition from the purely out being aware of it, that is, they are part of the ground idiomatic to the public world. in which this meeting is taking place. The figure-ground concept is further illuminated if May I make just one other point? I think you would the joke is thoughtof as involving a shift between the fig- agree, wouldn’t you, Gregory, that the individual is not ure and ground, where the figure is altered or the ground only communicating to somebody else but at the same is reconstituted or a reversal of the figure-ground situa- time he is trying to reaffirm and re-establish his own id- tion takes place. iomatic version of the word? Another aspect that may be worth examining is to Bateson: Surely. think of the figure-ground in these terms: that the figure Frank: There is, then, the problem of whether the indi- is a cognitive pattern perception, selectively chosen be- vidual is consciously aware of trying to communicate or cause of learning, constitutional susceptibility, and so on, of his attempt to reassure himself as I suggested at one of while the ground is that to which an affective response our earlier meetings, we should discuss internal is made. In all experience, we selectively perceive, de- because that is a highly significant aspect of this prob- fine, and impute meanings to the different figures that are lem. largely personal, idiomatic versions of socially and cul- von Bonin: In the joke that was told, all of a sudden turally patterned ideas and beliefs. Concurrently, in ev- the figure-ground relationship switched over into another ery situation we respond affectively without being aware constellation. The wheelbarrow was background and of it. If we can use the conceptofpeoplegrowingup with was not noticed, but I don’t think it had any affective highly conflicting responses, one, a cognitive, meaning- tone. I can’t see that the background was anything to ful one to the figure, the other an affective response to which we reacted emotionally. the ground situation, which is in conflict to the first, we might get a chance to make some kind of an interpreta- Bateson: I cut down the affective tension of that joke, if tion of what we call “emotional conflicts” and the “un- I may use the word tension, knowingthat I don’t mean it, conscious” bias in perception. by saying that the man with the wheelbarrowand the gate guard were friends. By making it obvious that they were Bateson: I think I am responsible for a possible misun- going to get in cahoots, there was no serious danger in derstandingat this point. There is a dangerwhich one has

3Conference on Problems of Infancy and Childhood, sponsored by the Josiah Macy, Jr.] Foundation.

GREGORY BATESON 18 Humor in Human Communication the situation. There would have been more laughter after not attend to, we now attend to, and what was not impor- that joke had I not said that. tant becomes important. But, certainly, the vast majority von Bonin: I don’t think it matters much whether you of these transitions are not regarded as humorous by us; say that or not. I heard the joke before in a slightly differ- thus, there must be something else which is a common ent version, and it evoked the same laughter because one characteristic of humor beyond the reconstructing of the simply does not think of the wheelbarrow and it makes a figure-ground relationship or the distribution of tension. completely different structure of the whole situation. Bateson: There is a rather poor joke going round the As you told that, I thoughtof another. It is not a good West Coast about two men playing golf. A couple of one. We were in the north woods and a man drove into women are on the course ahead of them, playing very the camp with a huge, sixteen-cylinder Cadillac. The In- slowly. The men want to pass, and one fellow says to dian guide said, “Big car.” The man said, “Yes, very big the other, “You go forward and talk to those gals and ask car; sixteen-cylinders.” The guide said, “Can go fast?” permission to pass them.” He goes forward, returns and and the man said, “Yes.” The guide spit on the ground says, “Gee, I can’t talk to them. One of them is my wife and said to me, “Every time a cylinder misses he saves a and the other is my mistress. You do it.” So the other guy dollar.” goes forward and he comes back and says, “It’s a small Again, the point can be made that what one first has world.” Now, it is practically impossible to tell that joke in view is a battery of cylinders as a complete whole, without somebody guessing that that particular reversal doing certain things. Then, all of a sudden, attention is is going to occur, and it is less of a joke because it has directed to an individual cylinder. You’ve never thought that leak in it. of sixteen cylinders as sixteen individuals, so the situa- McCulloch: There is no surprise. tion becomes completely restructured. The man on the Bateson: The surprise of the point is lost. I have now banana peel is the same sort of thing, although I think heard it told twice and I have told it twice, and none of Bergson makes the point that the essence of a joke is those four tellings has taken place without leakage. when the laws of gravity or the laws of the inert universe Gerard: There is a joke which exemplifies all the points suddenly apply to something that lives and topple it over. made so far, except for Walter’s question of why the shift Young: Couldn’t laughter be defined as the sign of sud- is not always humorous,which I think is a critical one. A den agreement? A smile is the sign of agreement. Laugh- fellow says to his friend, “Do you know these ice cubes ter appears when there is sudden agreement, for a variety with the hole in them?”; and the reply, “Know them? of reasons. It may be recognition of a nonmember of Hell, I’m married to one.” That has the sudden inversion, the group, for example. It may be reversal of figure and the carrying of the inanimate to the human, the problem ground, as mentioned. But it is a communication sign; it of tensions and expression and suppression. is the sign of a sudden achievement of communication. I told this joke deliberately to raise the question of Bateson: I would agree, but I would narrow it to say that the difference between ordinary jokes and so-called dirty laughter is the sign of agreement that X is both equal to ones. There is a very real differencein the kinds of things Y and not equal to Y. It is agreement in a field in which that elicit laughter and the kind of laughter that is elicited paradox has been presented. dependingupon the setting, the group, and so on. The re- Quastler: Isn’t it true that you have introduced, surpris- action of this group is illustrative. I have told that story ingly, a new dichotomy between Z and non-Z, with no twice to small groups this morning and they laughed up- reference to the Y and non-Y dichotomy? It turns out roariously, right here in this room. I have now told it that X is equal to Z, but it still is equal to Y; the man still publicly, in the presence of a woman, and the guilt feel- has the excelsior. ings almost suppressed any laughter. Bateson: Yes, he’s still got the excelsior. The previous Klver: What about the relationship between humor and figure is not denied; only its relevance is. We know that irony? the figure is the excelsior. Suddenly, we are told, no, it Bateson: Do you mean irony in the classical sense, such is the wheelbarrow. But it is still the excelsior, too. The as occurs in Greek tragedy when the final disaster is original figure survives, and it is that doubling, I think, implicitly or explicitly predicted in the beginning by a which promotes laughter. speaker who doesn’t know what he is predicting? Or do Pitts: One of the essences of humor consists in the re- you mean irony in the sense of saying the opposite of structuring or reversal of the figure-ground relationship, what is meant? but, of course, there is a great difficulty in explaining Teuber: One would be the irony of the situation of Oedi- why not all of these cases are jokes. It is one of the most pus who does not know what everybody else knows, and frequent components of our experience that what we did the other would be the Socratic irony. Socrates insists he

GREGORY BATESON 19 Humor in Human Communication doesn’t know what everybody else presumes to know ... Bateson: Yes, and the situations should be subject to for- Pitts: No, he doesn’t want to say he does, but the other mal analysis. We should be able to say how we would person doesn’t, either. construct a cybernetic machine of some kind which Teuber: He knows one thing that the other fellow would show this characteristic which would be thrown doesn’t: he knows that he doesn’t know. into some sort of oscillating condition by certain types of contradiction. Pitts: And the other man supposes he does, and the irony is directly implicit in the fact that the other man doesn’t, Wiesner: It would laugh whenever the input and the cod- either. ing did not match properly. von Bonin: May we know how the Greeks defined Bowman: There can be a very simple network of two irony? They talked a lot about it. tubes in such form that if one conducts, it cuts off the other. A circuit of that type may have two stable states. Pitts: In relation to the tragedy. If it is put in any state, it will asymptotically approach von Bonin: Yes. one of the two stable states and stay there. On the other Mead: Just a moment. Why are we getting so literary? hand, with the same components in slightly different val- Pitts: Well, who started it? ues of the circuit constants, it can oscillate. Mead: I am just raising it as a question. Why this out- Bateson: I am always prepared to say that an electric crop of literary-historical erudition here? buzzer is laughing. Gerard: Maybe we haven’t anything constructive to say. Bowman: It has no stable state. Monnier: Why does laughter not exist in animals? Bigelow: I don’t understand what we are trying to do Laughter implies a comparison of the code of one in- here. Are we trying to construct a definition which will dividual with the code adopted by the group. Laughter be adequate for all types of humor? arises, for instance, when the individual observed does Mead: No; we are not studying humor. not behave accordingto the code of the observers. A man Gerard: We seem to be trying to equate humor and walking on a curb is expected to see the edge and to step laughter. to the street properly. If he behaves like an automaton, McCulloch: We are trying to study the role of humor in does not see the edge of the curb, and falls, the observer communication. laughs. Bergson pointed out the biological function of laughter, that it tends to protect society against egocen- von Bonin: I am guilty of this digression, for I wanted to tric mechanical behavior of individuals at variance with speak about figure-ground and used a joke as an exam- outer reality. ple because it seemed to me to illustrate the point more clearly than the cat on the mat. Throwing in another joke Mead: I would be willing to accept that laughter can oc- got the discussion off on a tangent. May I bring it back cur when there is a contrast between the code of the col- by bringing up another point. In language, there are not lectivity and the individual event or remark, but not that only the actual words which are announced but there are it necessarily requires that something has gone wrong; also the overtones in the language. there is also the laughter when something goes right. In studies being done in Chicago, the experimenters Laughter is one of the easiest human responses to evoke are putting forward that there is a difference between by someone saying what everybodyis feeling but nobody laryngeal and oral speech. It as been shown that you has expressed it or is quite willing to say it in that way. It can frequently understand the emotional state of a per- isn’t that the remark is wrong to make, but that there is a son even when you don’t understand a word he says. discrepancy between what is correct to express and what We have had, for instance, a man talking in Hungarian, everybody feels. The discrepancy is the thing that pro- which none of us understands, but we have gotten a faint duces the laughter. People laugh when the cork is pulled idea of what he said. from the bottle. Bigelow: What could you tell? Young: Children’s laughter. von Bonin: Whether he related a story, whether he was Wiesner: People often laugh when they are upset or ner- trying to express his displeasure, whether he approved vous. The situation in itself is not humorous, but when heartily — that sort of thing. the relationship between the external and internal world is not quite right, laughter is one way of bridging the gap. Mead: That won’t stand up cross-culturally. Mead: So there is again a discrepancy. von Bonin: I don’t think it will at all. For instance, you can’t ask a question in Chinese by raising your voice at Wiesner: The discrepancy seems to be a common thing. the end of the sentence because the last syllable would Young: Humor is only one of the situations that evoke mean something entirely different. laughter. That is what we want to say.

GREGORY BATESON 20 Humor in Human Communication Mead: What does stand up cross-culturally is that in ev- tones contain something else besides the usual emotion; ery society that has been analyzed so far there seems they contain a lot of information separate from emotion. to be a tendency to symbolize certain states by cer- Bateson: The tone languages and the use of drum sig- tain sounds. The sounds are not constant but they have nals should be mentioned. There are languages in which enough physiological congruence so they may recur. words have significance on a flat tone or a rising tone or Wiesner: May not there be physiological changes in the a falling tone. In Chinese and in many of the African mechanisms of speech which can be universally recog- languages, this occurs. The pitch or pitch structure of a nized and deciphered? For example, when an individual word discriminates that word from others which would is angry, his muscles tighten so the format structure is otherwise be homonyms. very different, thus changing his tone. This problem of homonymy arises in reverse in von Bonin: That is the problem the Chicago group stud- African drum signals4. The Bantu spoken languages ied, whether his voice can be meaningful without an un- have significant pitch, but in sending messages by drum, derstanding of the words. only the pitch can be transmitted. This would lead to se- Pitts: That is, do all people in all cultures raise their rious homonymy except that it is avoided by transmitting voices when they are angry. whole phrases instead of single words. Thus the word “girl” is conventionally replaced in drum messages by Bigelow: Does the aspect of information content involv- the phrase: “The girl will never go to the linginda fishing ing emotion remain across cultures? net.” (The use of this type of net is a traditionally mas- Mead: No. culine occupation.) The long tonal sequence provided by Bigelow: Can you enumerate cultures in which these the whole phrase precludes homonymy. overtones do not contain, essentially, emotion but some For the purposes of this discussion, the important other information? thing is to treat the word “language” as including all of Wiesner: In other words, do people always talk faster this. We should drop the idea that language is made up of when they get excited? words and that words are toneless sequences of letters on Mead: As far as is known at present, there are no univer- paper, although even on paper there are possibilities for sals of that order. The universal is that every culture, if poetic overtones. We are dealing here with language in the language is properly analyzed, includes what Trager a very general sense, which would include posture, ges- and Smith are coding as superscripts; that is, every lan- ture, and intonation. guage has a recognizable intonational pattern. Similarly, Klver: First, I should like to remind you that Yerkes once every culture has a code of emotional expression but the pointed out that the chimpanzee resents being laughed at code differs from one society to another. by man or other animals. Second, I wonder whether what Bigelow: But is it emotion in every case? has been said here should not be related to more general Mead: The best example I can give are the shouting sig- considerations. The factor of discontinuity which has nals of the Arapesh, in which they use words. The words been emphasized in this discussion is, of course, char- may be, “Somebody is coming,” but nobody hears the acteristic of many psychological phenomena. For exam- words. Some words are shouted that nobody can un- ple, all our dealings with inanimate and animate objects, derstand, that communicate only a degree of affect by with humans and animals, involve processes of “typifi- their loudness and their frequency. The people hearing cation.” One may doubt whether personality “types” ex- the shouts sit down and figure out what is meant entirely ist, but one cannot doubt that processes of “typification” in terms of their knowledge of the probabilities of the constantly occur in our response to environmental ob- situation, which are quite reasonable. They translate a jects and events. The great psychological and sociolog- message which has the form of information but which ical significance of such “typifications” was recognized 5 never gets across. They sit there and say, “Now, that long ago by philosophers, such as Simmel . came from there. Who do you think would be there now? It seems to be the fate of many “typifications” to suf- Who would be shouting that loud and that often? And if fer sudden breaks or reversals. You encounter a man on it were he who is shouting, what does it mean? Does it a beach and after talking to him for a while you learn mean that his mother-in-law who has been quite sick has that he is, let us say, a priest or a colonel. As a result, died?” They work up a whole series of probabilities and the whole field may suddenly become restructured and then they set out to the funeral. reorganized. Or let us consider our reactions to objects of the visual environment. We are in optical contact with Bigelow: In such a case as that, then certainly the over- an object, and we may go to the trouble of performing

4Carrington, J. F.: The Talking Drums of Africa. London, Carey, Kingsgate, 1949. 5Simmel, G.: Soziologie. Untersuchungen fiber die Formen der Vergesellschaftung. Leipzig, Duncker & Humblot, 1908.

GREGORY BATESON 21 Humor in Human Communication numerous and diverse motor reactions to stay in optical worse, he is investigating a dynamic system more or contact. However, it happens again and again that the less in the dark with a flexible stick, his own personal- contact is broken since the appropriate movements ei- ity, the characteristics of whose flexibility he does not ther cannot be performed or cannot be performed quickly fully know. There is, therefore, a set of unknowns in enough. Thus, optically induced behavior constantly in- the observer, which are also subject to investigation. Ev- volves discontinuities and breaks resulting in loss of con- ery statement we make about the observed derives from tact or coherence between ourselves and the object. premises about the self. I say this glass of water is there More generally speaking, life seems to be a sequence because I can touch it with my hands and feel it there of jokes, the humor of which we often fail to recognize. with my eyes shut. In order to make this statement, “It Ashby: Perhaps this repeats what has just been said, but is there,” I have to know where my arm is, and, on the the language is sufficiently different to suggest that there premise that my arm is out in that direction, I conclude may be some more general principle behind both. I want that the glass is there. But the premise about myself is to consider the question of an observer getting informa- built into my conclusion. The whole gamut of projection tion from some , either an inanimate sys- phenomena follows. tem or another human being. Every physical system lives There are premises about one’s self, in terms of in a physical universe. The system is surrounded or sup- which one understands something else. But the events in ported by a great number of variables that are in some ef- interaction between oneself and the something else may fective contact with it. The observer can profitably study lead to a revision of premises aboutone’s self. Then, sud- only systems in which these surrounding variables are denly, one sees the other thing in a new light. It is this constant. If the surrounding variables are held constant, sort of thing that leads to the paradoxes and to a good the constancy is sufficient to isolate the system, and the deal of humor, I would suspect. observer can get useful information out of it. But be- Ashby: A paradox might start in this way. You begin by cause the surrounding variables are constant does not in thinking that parameter alpha is at zero, but, after you any way prejudge what values they are constant at. Thus, have gone on for a time, you suddenly realize it must be when the observer is studying the system, this is one of at one, and you start to re-explore on the assumption it is the first things he must find out. In ordinary language, he one. If the system has something rather peculiar in it, it must find out what the person takes for granted. might force you back to the deduction that alpha is zero. The number of surrounding variables is usually un- Obviously, if you go on without any further change, you countable. If one started to write down what we are tak- are caught because you will go on changing in opinion ing for granted this morning, for instance, that we are backwards and forwards. What it means is that, simply talking in 1952 A.D. and not in 1952 B.C., the list would from the physical point of view, the two, observer and get sillier and sillier but it would have no end. Conse- system, have gotten into a cycle. There is nothing strange quently, all the information that is coming out of here in the physical aspect, although it may be disturbing to this morning is related to these values, even though they the observer. can’t be given explicitly. Bateson: And if those are two human beings, when that What may happen is that the observer, taking for point is reached, laughter is likely to occur. granted that a surrounding variable has the value of, say, Ashby: Very likely. zero, may go on collecting information about the system Teuber: Wasn’t it Gregory’s point that it is quite desir- until suddenly some astonishing event shows him that the able for the benefit of the process of communicationto let variable must really have been at one all the time. He jokes, or riddles of a certain sort, point up the schematism suddenly has to re-interpret all his past information on a that is shot through all of our communicative processes new basis. That is the critical moment, when he realizes and without which we could not communicate? that the variable which he had assumed to have one value evidently must have some other value. Bateson: A schematism which we cannot communicate by itself. Wiesner: This is the situation you have when somebody talks at you in a foreign language and you don’t realize Teuber: Yes. There have to be schemata; we cannot talk it for a moment; then you suddenly switch. If you go or communicate, even in nonverbal forms, without some to England and expect an accent that you have to adjust schematism. At the same time, I want to point out, and to, and a man talks French to you or German, it some- this, I think, was also Klver’s point, that the schemata are times takes many words before you realize it and make quite limited. We have constantly to pick and choose, the translation and get information. shift or be pushed from one to another. Whether the sud- den transitions are frightening or exhilarating probably Bateson: The social scientist is not only in the sort of depends on very many things that have not been enumer- position that Ashby has suggested for his observer but,

GREGORY BATESON 22 Humor in Human Communication ated. But I think it is no accident that jokes and riddles on things other than the emotional state. For instance, the tend to appear together in child development. When the meaning of some phrase can be well understood but the child begins to make jokes, he usually will ask riddles for phrase does not carry the humorous message it should. I the first time in his life. Similarly, the so-called primitive am thinking about the fractured French jokes on napkins. riddle seems to lie somewhere between the pun and the Since I am French, I was interested in them. My emo- prototype of a lyrical metaphor. These riddles exist in tional state at the time I saw them was quite adequate. I all sorts of languages and cultures, although I would not was at parties; I had been laughing already; I had been know whether they are really universal. drinking, and I was set to laugh easily. But the fact that Mead: No, these riddles are not universal. Some people those jokes were not made for French people and that I do not have them. had to make an effort to understand them put me in an Teuber: Still, those that do exist are surprisingly simi- intellectual attitude rather than a humorous one. I had lar in structure. For example, “bird without feathers flies to be led to understand that in America such and such a to a tree without leaves.” The answer: “fire consumes a phrase was pronounced with such and such an inflection log.” Such a primitive riddle seems to play at making a or such and such an accent so that it could refer to such definition. and such a situation. But I wasn’t happy with it; it wasn’t funny. Pitts: Is notthe definition of a goodriddlethat its answer is a good joke? Wiesner: Well, I, as an American, don’t find them very funny, either. Teuber: Certainly, or a poem. All these forms of expres- sion have this in common: they point simultaneously at Remond: Sometimes I can see that some are funny, but the value and at the limitations of all schemata. They I have to analyze their positive meaning to understand force us to realize that the communication process is them and I don’t feel them really, which is quite differ- what it is — it cannot do without the schemata. They ent. make communication, for a moment, about communica- Bateson: The diaphragm is not really involved. tion. Gerard: And that factor vitiates a great deal of the dis- Young: Laughter is the recognition of the achievement cussion that has gone on this morning. There is some- of that communication. thing quite unique and explosive when the diaphragm Mead: But Walter made the point that all such occasions gets out of control, but most of the discussion has not do not provoke laughter, for instance, Dr. Ashby’s pic- dealt with that semiphysiological aspect of it. Laughter ture of the scientist who has worked for years and then may become as uncontrollable as the other two elements he discovers he has made a mistake in attributing a cer- you mentioned, or as a fourth one that I think is probably tain value to a variable. The response there might well be related, the yawn. convulsive sobbing instead of laughter. I think if we keep McCulloch: Domarus worked up a set of jokes ranging laughter in the context originally suggested, of a tension from those which will make a man laugh under almost release that is related to other tension releases, we shall any circumstances to those which are so dull and bor- do much better. In such a context, laughter has the func- ing that you just don’t see how anybody could laugh at tion of a safety valve. them. He told these deliberately and systematically to Remond: That brings up the point of the emotional sta- people in various degrees of fatigue, and found that the tus of the individual at the times when humor has a pos- ease of provoking laughter was dependent in large mea- sibility of occurring. For instance, A can say a particular sure on fatigue. Dusser de Barenne and I were among phrase to B, and in a certain emotional state, it will not his guinea pigs. He would never forewarn us, of course. be humorous; at another time, because of what has been He would simply be around while we worked. We were said before or what he has lived through before, B will really horrified that, at the end of seventy-odd hours of laugh uproariously. There is, therefore, a very important work without more than a few minutes snatched in sleep, difference between the reaction of a human being and he couldtell us that one and one made two and we would a machine. Man adapts to the moment and a machine burst into laughter. We became furious with ourselves at should be, at all times identical to itself, not changed by the ease with which laughter was evoked when we were emotions built up for a variety of reasons not absolutely tired. The physiological state of the organism is crucial, relevant to the joke being made. but just how, I don’t know. Some people laugh very easily. They see something Mead: The most laughter I have ever gotten was when I to laugh at immediately in everything. Some people, who gave the last lecture to a group of social workers who had are extremely cold or who are sad for some reason, will had a week’s conference. They laughed at anything. It not laugh at anything. But sometimes laughter depends didn’t make the slightest difference. They laughed virtu-

GREGORY BATESON 23 Humor in Human Communication ally before I opened my mouth. But there was something the same joke. The joke must be considered in the con- in what I said that gave them permission to laugh, just text of the person who hears it, and his past. The fifth as when a joke was told to you. All the cue you needed time you hear a joke, you rarely laugh. Naturally, the re- at that state of fatigue was, “It’s all right to laugh.” A constructuring of the situation in your case is in that case comparable situation is when one has been repressing absent because, well, you can predict the future course of yawns with a terrific effort. The minute the chairman the joke, and so, when you begin hearing it, you have the says, “Let’s have some coffee,” the yawn will burst out whole situation in mind and that simply persists without in that same way. any restructuring, all the way to the end. Fremont-Smith: There is another element in Warren’s With respect to the additional quantum, there is only situation, that he had been trying for seventy-odd hours one suggestion as far as I can see, namely, Gregory Bate- to focus his attention on a problem. He really wanted re- son’s, that there is a kind of self-reference of the type lief from that. The “one and one makes two” provided seen in the logical or pre-Socratic paradoxes which is su- a situation for a withdrawal of attention and a moment’s perimposed on the restructuring of the situation to pro- relief and relaxation. duce the humorous element. However, that is something One point that seems to me important is suddenness I can’t easily understand and, consequently, I should like of shift; I don’t know whether there is such a thing as to ask him how he would apply this additional element a slow development of a sense of humor. I suspect that in the case of the joke he gave. I don’t think there is any what happens is that a series of sudden steps must be in- process of self-reference in the story about the man with volved rather than a gradation. the wheelbarrow and the excelsior. Another thing I should like to bring up is, shall we Bateson: When the story is told, the hearer is invited to put a little more attention on the humorless person and identify himself either with the gate guard or with the on the person who is at a given moment humorless? It man with the excelsior. “If you were in that situation” has seemed to me that the humorless person is the per- is the premise which is introduced. That is one part of son who lacks perspective or lacks the capacity to see the problem of self-reference. The other part is related, something in several different perspectives. Isn’t that the I think, to a peculiarity of human communication, which figure-ground situation again? The humorless persons I think was implicit in what you said, Dr. Monnier, that sees things only in a very narrow frame of reference, and when two human beings are talking or communicating therefore he cannot shift. in any form, there is a mutual awareness of the fact that Teuber: For that reason, if we are working on a difficult they are communicating. It is not clear that similar mu- experiment, we ordinarily don’t appreciate any sudden tual awareness is always present among animals. In the increase in difficulty as humorous. courtship of sticklebacks, for example, there is an ex- McCulloch: If a man already has investigated those pos- change of signals in quite a complex sequence. The male sibilities and you bring up one of them, he isn’t likely to has to do A and in reply (as we say) to A, the female laugh. does X; and X sets free the next step in the male’s be- havior which is B; which sets off the next step in the Pitts: I should like to say several things, of which a num- female’s behavior which is Y; and so on: A–X, B–Y, C– ber are meant as a summary. First, I should say that we Z; ending with a completion of the driving of the female are probably agreed that, in some sense of the term, a into a nest which the male has built, where she lays her restructuring of the situation is necessary to a joke, and eggs and he looks after them. A, B, X, and Y are var- we should probably also agree that a certain suddenness ious sorts of perceptible behavior, exhibitionism, as we is required if it is to produce an effect. The restructuring might say: raising the spines, exposing the colored belly, will explain Dr. Fremont-Smith’s case of the man who etc. But it is fairly doubtful in such sequences how much is humorless because of his incapacity for restructuring each communicates or is adjusting his communication to his point of view, and the suddenness will presumably the circumstance of whether it is or is not perceived by explain Tony’s case of the joke whose point cannot be the recipient. The male will, I think, start doing his belly perceived without a considerable intellectual application, dance in parts of the aquarium where the female can’t see that is to say, not except by a relatively slow process. him. In addition, I still maintain, in agreement with Dr. When human beings try to communicate with each Klver, that some additional quantum is required to make other, we raise our voices, for example, according to the something into a joke. I would like to deviate from that, distance that the recipient is from us. We modify our however, for one further point, namely this, that one speech in all sorts of ways and include in our speech all must, although this is not the kind of thing I customar- sorts of messages about how the speech is to be inter- ily say, not suppose that a joke, every time it is said or preted. At the end of the message, we say, “Over,” in every time it is heard by a given person, is necessarily

GREGORY BATESON 24 Humor in Human Communication some form or other. We punctuate. We stop and ask at Fremont-Smith: And something you wanted to do be- a given moment, “Have you got me so far?” We watch fore. the faces of the people we are talking to, to see whether Mead: As to grief, if one takes Erich Lindemann’s stud- the message is getting through, and what they do with ies of grief6, there is, again, identification involved. His their faces is a very important contribution to the com- studies, which are the best that I knowof, are cases where munication because it tells us about the success of the the total identification with the person who was lost was communication. The faces give us a message about com- such that it was unbearable. Tension was built up to an munication at this higher level of abstraction. In human unbearable point and was released in a different type of communication, the essence of it, almost, is the fact of a diaphragmic breakdown. Identification is required be- mutual awareness of the other person’s perception. Of- fore there is grief or laughter, but in one case it may be ten, it gets distorted; often, we don’t behave rationally something that is terribly dangerous. in terms of this awareness. We may repeat and repeat Once, I was presiding at a conference of dreadfully when we know very well that the other person got the solemn people on family life. It was just before Mother’s message. But that mutual awareness seems to me to be Day, and everyone was tired. Our P.T.A. delegate had very important in human communication. announcedshe was going home to take up her duties as a Young: Why do you say “awareness” rather than “re- mother, and I wanted to give the audience a sense of not peated exchange of signs”? being worried if people went out early on this last morn- Bateson: Because I want to stress again the implicit con- ing so I said, as chairman, “Our principal mother has al- tent. Many of the implicit messages are about that aware- ready gone because she wanted to be home on Mother’s ness. Day, and we will all understand that this is the day before Pitts: But what about all this as peculiar to a joke? Mother’s Day and anybody who leaves is going home to be .” And then I thought, well, I have to deal Bateson: The involvement of self in a joke is the thing I with the men, and I said, “Or going home to help their was getting to. You can’t stand to hear a joke more than wives be mothers.” The audience roared with delight. If three or four times. By the fifth time, you don’t laugh. I had said it knowingly, they would not have laughed be- However, a very large number of people will laugh at a cause they would have been frightened. You can’t have joke the twentieth time they tell it. chairmen, you know, at a conference on family life who Gerard: Well, that was a shift. Tell it or hear it? make dirty jokes. Pitts: There was a shift. Fremont-Smith: The audience laughed at you. There Torre: That is the point now. probably was in that situation a recognition that you had Bateson: The teller of the joke is able to be self-involved slipped without meaning to, and they were enjoying your in the joke because he can hear it as if it were new. discomfiture. Granted he hears through his Eustachian tubes and not Mead: No, the essence of it is, surely, a safe recognition as a simple recipient, but he can identify with the hearer of the communicationof sex, which is one of the funniest of the joke as a creature who has never heard it before things. I think the element of relaxation when it is safe is and therefore he can laugh. the pertinent thing. The release of tension when unsafety Fremont-Smith: Two elements come in there. One is the has built up, ties in with what happens in grief and, in a business of contagion; very often, somebody who has not sense, in orgasm, because orgasm is a problem of safety, heard the joke or has not understood it at all will laugh too, of trust. if the group laughs. But the man hearing a joke for the Pitts: I will accept that as an explanation rather than fifth time does not laugh because the element of surprise identification. Many of the most amusing things people or suddenness is absent. say are not said with the intention of being funny. Mead: But the significant thing still is the conditions un- Bigelow: Isn’t there some element of personal discov- der which laughter will or will not be evoked as they re- ery? late to the question of identification that Walter brought Young: Or group discovery. up. Humor is a playful change of identification, which is Mead: If it isn’t too painful. safe. One of the things you communicate to an audience, when you keep them laughing, is, “It is safe to think like Gerard: To follow up a point that Frank made about the this, it is safe to think like me, it is safe for a minute to contagion of laughter, you probably all have heard these say it like that. Nobody will keep you there. You can get “laughing” records. If I hear one by myself, I am quite back. You can move around. It is play. It is free.” able not to laugh; but in a group, when laughing starts, I

6Cobb, S., and Lindemann, E.: Neuropsychiatric observations. Management of the Cocoanut Grove Burns at the Massachusetts General Hospi- tal. Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1943 (p. 14–34).

GREGORY BATESON 25 Humor in Human Communication cannot avoid an uncontrollable laughing response. This von Bonin: The question as to how we participate in and is a case, then, of laughter itself provoking laughter, with- how we perceive the emotional state of another being is a out any symbolic or conscious or logical or other mean- large problem which I don’t believe anybody has tackled ing. very clearly. Mead: Yawning, too, provokes yawning. Bateson: When I was talking of mutual awareness of Fremont-Smith: Laughter has memory meaning, and perception, I was leading up to empathy. therefore symbolic meaning, I would think. von Bonin: Mutual awareness of perception? Gerard: I don’t know that it has to have any memory Bateson: Yes, in human communication. meaning. Pitts: It does not generate laughter. Fremont-Smith: Would someone who has never laughed Wiesner: One does not laugh hard where these is not go off that way? I think it almost inevitable that hear- the possibility of feedback. If you are listening to the ing laughter and seeing other people laugh would evoke radio by yourself or reading a book, you will chuckle, memories of laughing situations, unconscious memories. whereas the same stimulus, in a group, may evoke enor- Gerard: It would be interesting to try it out on somebody mous laughter. who has never laughed, if such a person could be found. Mead: A complete sequence can be proposed from the Fremont-Smith: There is contagious coughing at a con- smile to the socialized dance or to copulation, but then cert or in a whooping cough ward; if one person starts to grief cannot be handled in it. Grief, in a sense, would whoop, they will all whoop; and if somebody has tears have to be regarded as a failure in social interaction. The come to his eyes and you watch him, tears are very likely sobbing that goes with grief is not dependenton the pres- to spring to your eyes. ence of anotherperson,and yet it has the same convulsive Young: Have we sufficiently recognized the place of aspects. laughter in communication signs? The difference be- In the conference on “Problems of Consciousness” tween man and the stickleback is that we have specific held last week, one of the problems raised was the pro- signs to indicate communication in general; a series of tective function of breaks in tension. those, which are very complicated, start on the face. I Pitts: Does anyone know what the word “tension” is a wonder if there is any significance in the proximity of metaphor for? I think that is the most promising avenue the face area, the mouth area, and the laryngeal areas of of approach, but this is the difficulty that strikes me first. speech in the cortex. Is it an accident that the smallest Mead: It is an idea that has arisen in the course of stud- communication signs appear in the face and are part, al- ies on epilepsy. If all convulsive states could be regarded most, of the speech mechanism itself? From the face, a as having protective functions in breaking rising tension, whole series of communication signs for use in express- then they could be differentiated in terms of how much ing more emphatic and sudden achievements of commu- need of protection one has. Laughter protects in a real nication spread down. The diaphragm has been men- communication system with other people. Grief protects tioned, but convulsions of the entire organism may be against a moving out of communication, against such an used to indicate sudden and important intercommunica- identification with that one is no longer in com- tion, as, for example, in dancing. munication at all. They both are protective and they both Klver: In connection with Dr. Young’s remarks, it is a are comments on communication, but one of them oc- very interesting point that many animals communicate curs in a real intercommunication system and one occurs with the face of man instead of some other part of the hu- outside it. man anatomy. It may be worth while to study this form Monnier: I have the impression that the physiological of communication and also to get some information on basis of these two expressions, laughter and grief, is animals which do not communicate with the face. As far different. Both these expressions have different physi- as our own reactions to the human face, it is somewhat ological inductors. There are cases in which paroxysmal surprising that we speak so often of sweet, sour, and bit- laughter leads to loss of tone, patients who, when laugh- ter faces. There seems to be a strong tendency in man to ing at a joke, lose their tone and fall prone. This is called communicate in terms of gustatory qualities. catalepsy and may be the result of a generalized emotion von Bonin: I think most emotions are contagious, or tension. In grief, as we know from primitive soci- whether they appearin the face or not. If somebodycries, eties, a generalized emotion may end in rhythmic vocal many will start crying. You may not and I may not, but expression and not in a collapse of tone. In both cases, very many people will. relaxation of tension is obtained. Gerard: At least you won’t go around giggling, chuck- Mead: But either control or loss of control is possible. ling, or laughing. Grief can be controlled; Mourning can be patterned so

GREGORY BATESON 26 Humor in Human Communication that it is highly stylized and has a rhythmic quality which McCulloch: And the orangutan. is reassuring, or it can be of the type that moves more Monnier: The common feature of the two conditions and more towards loss of control. One can be helpless which produce the tickling sensation and laughter is the with sobbing or helpless with laughter. There are two repetitive action of very slight, or even subliminal, stim- possibilities in the same system, really, either to achieve uli. This gives rise to a spreading process, which acti- oscillatory steadiness or to move toward the point where vates consciousness. We spoke, in the meeting on con- people throw themselves on the ground and no longer sciousness7, of the ascending activating reticular sys- have any control at all. tem, which has been identified by Moruzzi and Magoun Fremont-Smith: The small child so frequently goes back and which induces the arousal reaction. The mecha- and forth between laughter to crying. nisms which increase consciousness, pain or laughter McCulloch: Well, isn’t it true that with most people, if producedby a tickling sensation, have something in com- they get to laughing very hard, are apt to end up weeping, mon. They are put in action by repetitive stimuli and they too? I don’t think the two mechanismsare completely in- induce a generalized excitatory state. If the increase in dependent. tension becomes too great, it may suddenly be cut by a Fremont-Smith: I think it is interesting, after what Dr. protective mechanism which produces, in one case, loss Monnier said, to touch on narcolepsy. There are patients of consciousness or tone and, in other cases, rhythmic who have a lesion in the hypothalamic area and are con- vocal expression. But these various forms of expression stantly dropping off to sleep. They are relieved of this are always the result of repetitive stimuli, ending in a sleep tendency by the benzedrine group of drugs but they widespread (irradiated) paroxysmal excitation. cannot go to the movies frequently because the comics McCulloch: There are two varieties of tickling. We use throw them into unconsciousness. one word for two entirely different things, I am sure. Pitts: Do you know anything of the effect of grief on There is tickling in the sense in which a fly tickles you such patients? or a straw up your nose tickles you, and there is the tick- ling produced by a rather strong stimulus of a fluctuating Fremont-Smith: No. kind, which results in laughter. That kind of tickling can McCulloch: I had to go over the literature about four rarely be done to oneself. The kind with the straw up years ago. At that time, there was no recorded case in one’s nose certainly can. They differ in the self-reference which grief precipitated sleep, at least none I could find. componentin them. The one that produces laughter loses On the other hand, I myself have seen cases, and there its effect in many postencephalitic patients, while the are several instances in the literature, in which anger pre- other does not. Postencephalitic patients do not laugh, cipitated it. and almost all of them show also a remarkable reduction Fremont-Smith: And conflict. I have seen emotional in sexual activity. Those who have lost laughter have lost conflicts in the narcoleptic precipitate the sleep state in sex, for the most part. It is the common mechanism in- exactly the same way as any other psychosomatic phe- volved. nomenon was precipitated. von Bonin: Does the straw ever evoke laughter in any- Quastler: What happens to the narcoleptic if you make one? him laugh just by tickling him, without any humor being Pitts: It is rather more like itching than tickling. involved at all? Mead: You have a problem here, Warren, if you equate Fremont-Smith: I think they lose their tone and may go repetitive tickling with various varieties of sexual fore- right into sleep. play that act as sexual stimulant, for that can be some- Quastler: It is the laughing that causes it? thing self-administered or other-person administered. Fremont-Smith: Yes. McCulloch: That’s right, it can be; there is only the von Bonin: Lachschlag, in German. question of whether it must be brushed off or whether it Bateson: Tickling for some reason hasn’t been men- switches over to sexual excitement. But the kind of tick- tioned, or the relation between laughing and the scratch ling that evokes laughter is lost in the postencephalitic reflex. I wish somebody who knows about such things whose sexuality is also down. would speak about them. Bowman: The straw can cause a sneeze. Is that an allied Bateson: We use tickling metaphorically; we laugh effect? when “tickled.” Mead: Quite. Klver: So does the chimpanzee. Bateson: Do you think one could discriminate between

7Monnier, M.: Experimental work on sleep and other variations in consciousness. Problems of Consciousness. Abramson, H. A., Editor. Third Conf. New York, Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, 1952 (p. 107).

GREGORY BATESON 27 Humor in Human Communication these two sorts of tickling in a dog? of the communicator or what is aroused in the mind of McCulloch: Yes, very decidedly, and in the cat it is even the recipient. It seems to me very, very important for so- easier. ciocultural investigation and for psychologic and physi- von Bonin: You can tickle the ear of a cat. ologic investigation to begin from some fairly sharp cri- terion for what is in the message. Dr. Mead told a story McCulloch: Yes, and the ear starts to snap, to get rid of about herself as a president. Von Bonin said that it was the tickle, and then the paw comes up. a Schadenfreude joke. He heard an overtone which Dr. Bateson: That is one type. How about the other? Mead, so far as consciousness is concerned, is prepared McCulloch: The other type is produced usually by stim- to deny, perhaps correctly. She, after all, was present at ulation in the small of the back of a rhythmical kind. The the meeting and von Bonin wasn’t. But it is awfully hard cat will start arching and its tail goes up. The dog is tick- to test any statement of that kind. One uses one’s sensi- lish in the same region, and it is in this region that man is tivity and one’s imperfect knowledge of his own commu- also most ticklish. nicative habits. One predicts. The question is, if one had Pitts: It seems to be wholly pleasant, though, in the case a satisfactory working hypothesis, or some idea of the of the cat or dog, whereas we don’t usually enjoy being types of paradigm which lead to something like laughter tickled. — could the occurrence of laughter be used as an indi- Teuber: Oh, it can end by the cat biting. The transition cator for what there was implicit in the communication? can be sudden. That is the question in which I would be interested, not Mead: There are cases where tickling is a definite form so much in the significance of the laughter as in using its of foreplay and other contexts where tickling is regarded occurrence as an indicator. as unpleasant. Take the tickling that occurs among ado- McCulloch: May I say that we have two questions still lescents, for instance, where it is very common. This is before us. It is fairly clear that one item of value in jests an age that goes in fora greatdeal of tickling. If it cannot leading to laughter is that the joke sets up some kind of a be allowed to go to a sexual conclusion and it is unpleas- relation in which it is safe to play. The second thing that ant, it becomes a rejected activity, but in an approved sit- is fairly clear is that there is always some re-shuffling or uation of very rough forms of courtship of certain sorts, restating of the problem, which in itself may be valuable tickling goes right into a developing sexual sequence. in the transfer of information. But it is by no means clear Klver: We have discussed a number of situations in that these are the only functions that humor may have in which a sudden break, reversal, or discontinuity leads to communication. There is the double role of the jest, one, a restructuring or reorganizing of the whole field. Such the reorganization within the person, and the other, the situations occur on all levels of behavior, ranging from reorganization between people, and I don’t believe this the perceptual to the emotional. It seems impossible to has been sufficiently disclosed. Can we have Bateson say discuss all these situations profitably in a general way once more what he thinks is communicated besides what without recourse to a scientific analysis of particular sit- formally appears in the jest? Is it the relation of people uations. Only such an analysis can specify the proper- to one another? Is it the relation of people to themselves ties of a given structure as well as the conditions in the in the situation? external and internal environment related to this struc- Bateson: In human exchange, in general, we deal with ture and governing the transition from one structure to material which cannot be overtly communicated: the another. Let us suppose such an analysis of a concrete premises of how we understand life, how we construct situation, for example, of a certain phenomenon in the our understandings, and so forth. These are very, very field of laughter, has been successful in specifying the difficult matters for people to talk about with precision, numerous psychological, physiological, and other factors but if these premises are out of kilter between two peo- involved and let us suppose the results of such a scientific ple, the individuals grow anxious or unhappy. Humor analysis are handed to Dr. Bateson. The question I wish seems to me to be important in that it gives the persons to raise is whether at this point there are any problems an indirect clue to what sort of view of life they share or left unsolved? And if so, what are these problems? might share. Bateson: Yes. I opened the discussion with the focus on As to the way in which humor does that: Consider laughter and humor, but the thing that I would be inter- some swallows that are migrating, we will say, from Lon- ested in fromsuch a study would be to use the occurrence don to New York and suppose that we are scientists who of laughter as an indicator, a sort of litmus paper. This face the problem of finding out how the swallows know would be helpful in studying the implicit content of com- the route. We invite the swallows to communicate to us munication. It is an extraordinarily hard thing to study, how their conceptual world is made up: what sense data actually, because we do not know what is in the mind they use and how these data are fitted together to enable

GREGORY BATESON 28 Humor in Human Communication them to find their way. If we watch the swallows and we such as dilatation of the skin vessels, which are opposed find, for example, that they travel on a great circle with- to those found in an anxiety reaction. Anxiety is almost out error, it is true we know something about the swal- always associated with the absence of a smile and with a lows now that we did not know before, but we are left fall in skin temperature. pretty much in the dark on the question of how they do it. Bateson: I think we are clear on the reassurant aspects The only way in which we can have the swallows com- of laughter, the in-group statements, the affirmation of municate to us how they know is either by their making group membership which is implied when both individ- errors and correcting them or by our performing exper- uals laugh or smile; and we are clear enough that laugh- iments which will put them in error and then observing ter, especially thoracic rather than belly laughter, is a which errors they can correct and which they cannot. conventional sign which people use to each other, quite It seems to me that a very important element is added apart from whether it is the “real thing.” Such laughter in human communicationwhen B is able to observe what becomes almost a part of the vocabulary and is almost corrections A makes in his (A’s) course. One of the as voluntary as the use of words, not quite but nearly questions which the young psychiatrist asks is, “Is it a so. The problem, which I want to push toward, is that of bad thing to say such-and-such to a patient in such-and- involuntary laughter and its antecedents, rather than the such a situation?” to which the only answer is, if it be a problem of the function of laughter between two persons bad thing and the patient react unfavorably to that “bad” in melting the ice. thing, and if it be later possible to communicate to the McCulloch: The latter says, “I got you,” and “I got you patient that that was the thing to which he reacted un- at the level of premises.” favorably, then all may be well. In fact, if the therapist Bateson: At the level of premises, and it is indicated that is able to correct his course and thereby communicate to the premises are right because there is a crisscross of the patient some hint of how matters appear to the thera- them. We define a point not by drawing a line but by pist, the original error may become a very important and making two lines cross. useful thing in the communication. A great deal of com- munication occurs not directly but by the commission of Kubie: Laughter is in itself a language, and, like all lan- error and its later correction. guages, it can say many things. In the rectangleof Figure It seems to me that the nature of a jest is somehow 1 are represented two poles of meaningfulness. At one is related to this point, that when the joke breaks open and the uncheckedor uninhibited belly laugh, and at the other the implicit levels have been touched, have met each the inhibited laughter. The major difference between the other, and oscillation has occurred, the laughter veri- two poles is that at the one extreme there is a general fies an agreement that this is “unimportant,” it is “play,” sense of group-support and group-acceptance; whereas and yet, within the very situation which is defined by at the other end, the laughter is group-alien. Group- the laughter as play, there is a juxtaposition of contrast- supported as opposed to “group-alien” refers to the re- ing polarities, which contrast may be compared to the lationship that is communicated between the person who commission and correction of an error. The laughter lets starts the laughter and the group to which he is talking, those who laugh know that there is a common subsump- or the group that is represented, or that he represents. It tion of how they see the universe. Do I answer the ques- may be a group that is present in the flesh or a group tion that you asked? that is there only in his thinking and in his own words or actions. McCulloch: Exactly. Fremont-Smith: I wonder if we don’t have to go back to the earliest development of laughter or smiling in the infant to get some idea of all the meaning of the shared experience? One of the early ways of communicationbe- tween the mother and the baby is the mother’s smile to the baby, which a little later is responded to by a smile on the part of the baby. The mother’s smile is one of the basic means of reassurance to the small child. It seems to me that when two people are talking and one of them In the unchecked belly laugh, there may be a loving smiles at the other, the smile contains the element of re- element. Therefore, it is guiltless and is not held in check assurance. The person is saying, “I like you, I like what by guilt feelings; whereas, in the inhibited laughter, as you are saying, I understand you,” so that it is a sign of we all know, it is difficult sometimes to tell whether a the effectiveness of their communication; it is a reassur- person is laughing or is grimacing with hostility. It car- ance. A smile is associated with physiological changes, ries an implication of masked , with an enormous

GREGORY BATESON 29 Humor in Human Communication guilt factor which stifles the laughter even as one laughs. conscious, either to repeat that experience in the future Finally, there is an element of triumph in the unchecked or else to avoid it in the future. Emotions give experi- belly laugh. The person is unafraid, free of all apprehen- ence either a plus or a negative sign. I believe that one sion of defeat and of the fear that inhibits the ordinary can group all emotional states in these two categories. tense laughter, with which, I am afraid, we are far more Sometimes their influence is relative and the same expe- familiar. rience evokes both plus and minus reaction, for special One other point: I drew this line slanting in this way reasons; but, basically, the emotion always falls on one purposely to indicate diagrammatically that these never side or the other. By and large, anger and elation are the occur in pure culture but that there are always varying emotional qualities which tend to be repeated, whereas admixtures of the two components. It must also be added fear and depression are the emotional qualities that we that these differences can exist on conscious and/or un- avoid if we can. conscious levels of psychological function. We can be The relationship of an affect to a drive of any kind triumphant and loving on a conscious level, yet full of can, therefore, best be understood in these terms. To hate and guilt on an unconscious level, or vice versa. put this succinctly, my thesis about tension is that the This makes the phenomena of laughter as complex as word is a figure of speech by which we characterize are all other mental acts. Finally, in any consideration that state which arises within us whenever there is some of the problems of laughter, as in all emotional prob- compelling inner necessity towards some action against lems, we must include a consideration of the role of trig- which at the same time there are countervailing forces. ger mechanisms. Laughter is par excellance released by These countervailing forces can be external or internal such mechanisms. In this respect, it is closer to a pho- or both. They can be conscious or unconscious or both. bic mechanism than is usually realized. This trigger ele- But where there are no countervailing forces, the mere ment, which I plan to discuss in connection with the role existence of an impulse towards something does not give of feedback mechanisms in emotional processes, is one rise to that inner experience which we characterize with of the basic elements in laughter which has been over- the particular word “tension.” The countervailing force looked. may be nothing more important than the unavoidable de- Bateson: With shared guilt as a very important element, lay which is inherent in the transport of chemicals in any down in the lower right side of the diagram. multicellular organism. Tension, like all psychic phe- Kubie: When guilt is shared, you receive some degree of nomena, is inconceivable without delay. In human life, group support. onesees thisin its simplestform in theinfant, wherea de- lay of only a few seconds is enoughto evoke randomdis- Bateson: Yes. What I was getting at is that these com- charge which is the infantile precursor of the controlled ponents of yours keep crisscrossing on each other. tensions of adult life. Thus, tension, as we know it in Kubie: They are all mixed together. To represent all pos- adult life, implies an aggregate of forces moving in one sible permutations and combinations diagrammatically, direction opposed by an aggregate of internal and exter- we would need a series of planes in a three dimensional nal forces moving in another. nomogram8. Bateson: When we say that a man is tense, we mean, McCulloch: Larry, how about attempting to state what I suppose, that while his hand is lying on the table, or we are talking about when we speak of the release of wherever it is, there is more muscular activity going on tension that comes with laughter? What are we talking in it than need be; that not only is there the necessary about? tension in the flexor to support the hand in the position Kubie: That is Chapter IV of the manuscript I have in which it is, but also some antagonistic contribution in brought with me9. the extensor. The metaphor of tension is a psychologi- McCulloch: How do we go at it? cal metaphor but often it is worked out or exemplified by Kubie: I hesitate to leap into the middle of an exposi- extensor-flexor opposition in the body. tion which requires step-by-step logical elaboration, but McCulloch: In other words, it is a rise in tension in the in essence, my thesis is that the peculiar attribute of emo- muscle that we are talking about when we say a man is tions in psychological affairs is that they impose an au- getting tense? tomatic value-judgment on experience, which does one Bateson: Or it is from that rise of tension that we derive of two things: this creates an impulse, conscious or un- the psychological metaphor. I don’t want to suggest that

8nomogram: A diagram representing a relationship between three or more variables by means of a number of straight or curved scales, so arranged that the value of one variable corresponding to given values of the others can be found by a simple geometrical construction (e.g. by means of one or more straight lines drawn to intersect the scales at the appropriate values). Also called alignment chart. 9Dr. Kubie refers to Chapter IV of a manuscript on which he draws more extensively in the next section.

GREGORY BATESON 30 Humor in Human Communication language precedes the physiology or vice versa. I don’t can be precipitated in various directions. Although in it- know about that. self it is undifferentiated, out of it can come tears, laugh- Young: Is it physiological? Is the physiology correct? I ter, anger, elation, depression, fear, and even sleep or an think not. The balance, if you are speaking of a balance obsessional-compulsive furor. It is this diffuse, undiffer- between antagonists, will not be at different levels, as far entiated state for which we seek a name. It is not the as I know. same as alertness, yet it is quite different from a state Gerard: I think what Gregory says is certainly valid in of sleep or apathy. We must use some figurative word many cases. I don’t think it is universal. to characterize it. The particular example which Gre- gory Bateson used is, in some ways, the simplest, be- Young: I don’t think it is the basis of what we mean by cause there the tension is expressed in muscular terms tension. It is a false clue, if I may say so. and is related to a close balance between aggression and Bateson: That is the question I was asking. Would it be its withholding. Yet, one can also find its expression false or true? in speech, or in specific somatic language, such as that Young: I would suspect it. of the gastrointestinal tract, among people who, on the Bateson: There are people whose psychological tension somato-muscular side, are quite relaxed. The particu- is expressed with a general limpness. lar somatic vehicle which is used varies from individ- McCulloch: People complain of a headache when they ual to individual. Nobody has ever found a satisfactory report tension, and tension of the scalp muscles can be definition of it, but nobody can think in this field with- recorded. It appears in many EEG tracings. out accepting the existence of this phenomenon because Young: But that is different from his thesis altogether. subjectively we are aware that there is something which Certainly, there would be other somatic manifestations we have to characterize by some such word as tension. accompanying so-called tension. Call it “X” if you prefer, as long as we all know that we are thinking and talking about a state which arises in Gerard: He is equating tension and tonus10. What is it human beings and which can, under appropriate internal specifically that you are objecting to, John? I don’t quite and external circumstances, be channeled into any of var- understand. ious directions. Tension is not a bad word with which to Young: I think the danger is that we should use this rela- characterize it figuratively, and its use crops us again and tively low-level metaphor for more than a metaphor. The again precisely because it gives us a sense of knowing tension you are speaking of is surely at an altogether dif- what we are communicating about with one another. ferent level. Hutchinson: I want to add two points: first, it seems to Bateson: We don’t know how much the levels echo each me that the very fact that some people, as Gregory said, other. show a sort of limpness suggests that this psychological Gerard: What I understand Gregory is asking is whether tension can be modified or reversed by a learning pro- there is a sufficient correlation between this internal state cess. If so, this leaves the whole thing wide open, so that or emotional state that is called tension and a mani- objections are probably irrelevant until they are further fest physiological state in terms of muscle tension so analyzed. that there could be an etiological11 relationship between My second point is that, etymologically or semanti- them. Now, you feel that is entirely wrong? cally, there are probably two things involved: the obvious Young: I should doubt it. observation made in many cultures that there is increased Gerard: Why do you react so strongly? I would have tension of the fingers, and, something which continually doubts about it but, on the whole, I would be inclined to crops up even in the most respectable writing on com- be hospitable to thinking along those lines. parative behavior, a consideration of the discharge as a Kubie: I wonder whether one of the reasons why this release of something like potential energy, so that one concept seems so difficult (and I have heard it batted particular kind of potential energy, and its release, occur- around a hundred times) is because of the implicit as- ring, in our example, in the musculature of the fingers, sumption that some kind of undifferentiated emotional occupies a considerable semantic area in discussions of state can form in us which cannotitself properlybe called this kind. an emotional state. It might be called a pre-emotional Bateson: Would we get on better if, instead of saying we state, or a larval emotional state, or a precursor state out must conceptualize this state that Kubie has just offered of which emotional feelings and actions and expressions us, we said that the important thing might be to build a classification of the resolutions of such states? Later, we

10tonus: The condition or state of muscular tone; the proper elasticity of the organs; tonicity. 11etiologist: One who studies etiology or the science of causes.

GREGORY BATESON 31 Humor in Human Communication could ask about the states themselves. from the seductive tendency to oversimplify nature in the Young: That is rather my objection. From a physiologi- interests of our theories. cal point of view, I would say it is dangerous to simplify, Young: How do you identify the state before it has as Kubie suggests, by postulating a central reservoir of reached the extremes you mention? tension. I would say that was a dangerous approach for von Bonin: Being a biologist, I can’t talk in abstractions, the cerebral physiologist and that, however hard it may so take the example of a man who hears a shoe thrown be, we must dissect these individual manifestations that down by somebody who is undressing above. He ex- we classify as tension and identify their cerebral compo- pects, of course, the next shoe to be dropped too, but the nents. sound never comes. What happens, as I see it, is that Kubie: I am not assuming the existence of a single cen- he forecasts in his mind the noise of the second shoe tral mechanism. I am saying only that clinically an ex- falling down. I would look in the cerebral cortex for traordinary transmutability among various kinds of ten- some configuration which makes that forecast effective, sion states is observed. This suggests that there is some- and I would expect that the noise that actually follows thing which precedes any of the various differentiated destroys the configuration that is forecasted and lets the forms of emotional experience, acting almost as a com- nerve cells resume their normal rhythm. mon root out of which all can evolve. This inescapable Young: I would accept that. clinical fact has to be included among the phenomena von Bonin: Whether the thing forecast is a happening in that we are trying to understand and explain. the outside world or something the individual programs McCulloch: May I put it somewhatdifferently? Suppose for himself, as the boy who washes his hands or wants a man is tense; in that man is there any place where one to count, when something that the brain has made up could look and find a particular change? its mind should happen, either within or without, does Kubie: I shall counter the question with a question. Let not come about, then that release of the neuronal pattern us picture three youngsters. One has an intense eating which would come about if the program were carried out compulsion. The second has a handwashing compulsion. is inhibited. The third has a counting compulsion. As we have said, if Gerard: Gerhardt, I like that. But why do you call it a the subject does not fight against his own inner drive and biological or physiological explanation? if there is no external person or force which acts against von Bonin: The two shoes will fit. it, the drive will be expressed freely and insatiably. The Fremont-Smith: From the biological aspect, it is very one will eat voraciously, even until he vomits and af- concrete. You said “when the brain had made up its ter. The other will wash his hands until soap and towels mind.” and water are exhausted or until the skin peals from his hands, leaving open sores. The third child will count un- Frank: May I remind you that Howard Liddell has said til there is nothing around to count. As long as one of that he can distinguish in his experimental animals be- the individuals is carried on the flood tide of his drive, tween an acute alarm reaction and what he has called the neither another’s observations of him nor his own self- state of watchfulness? He has various criteria, both phys- observation will lead to a state of “tension,” whatever iological and motor for doing so. In the experimental an- that may be. On the other hand, if anyone tries to stop imal, the expectancy that something is going to happen 12 him, or if he tries to stop himself, a state arises in him at produces a sort of subacute emotional state, if it can be once for which the observer, whether he be uneducated called that. or the most highly trained and sophisticated psycholo- McCulloch: The expectancy is definitely revealed by gist, will automatically turn to the word “tension.” For motor manifestations. this state, we have no other name at present. In this state Frank: But some physiological variables were also of “tension,” many different things can happen. The per- recorded. son can have an attack of what the layman calls “hyster- Monnier: It is hardly necessary to recall what happens ics,” and laugh and cry. He can become overwhelmingly to the electrical activity of the brain when a subject depressed and morose. He can go into a state of panic or suddenly awakens and become alert or excited. There rage or elation. He can get bowel upsets. He can vomit. is a real spectrum of changes paralleling the transition Or he may even, paradoxically enough, go to sleep. I from deep sleep to alertness or an excitatory state, or am not trying to explain tension. I am trying, rather, to from deep narcosis13 to wakefulness. The chief changes characterize it in all of its complexity, to save ourselves are accompanied by electrical activities of increased fre-

12subacute: Between acute and chronic. 13narcosis: A state of drowsiness, stupor, or insensibility; dagthe ability to produce such a state (obs.); the production of such a state, esp. by means of a drug.

GREGORY BATESON 32 Humor in Human Communication quency and lower voltage, the so-called desynchroniza- weak way of objecting to the use of the word tension. tion of electrical patterns. At the same time, the cortex von Bonin: Does anybody object? I thought we had becomes more reactive to afferent stimuli. All organs, made neurologistsof the physiologists. I thoughtwe took including the cortex, which can be considered as a ter- it for granted there is such a thing as a brain. minal organ, simultaneously show a change in reactiv- Teuber: It was not Kubie but Bateson who started the ity and functional readiness. This shift may be due to a argument about physiology. Gregory was the one who 14 greater generalization of afferent stimuli, or to a greater suggested that “tension,” in Kubie’s sense, might be cor- reactivity of the sensory, cortical, and motor organs to related with some measurable tonus, either postural or the same stimuli. On the contrary, in deep sleep there central. Such correlations have been looked for in many is a decrease in reactivity on all levels: cortex, muscles, places but, as Dr. Young said, just about every correlation sensory organs. This is particularly obvious of increased that has been claimed to exist has turned out to be unre- tension, manic excitement or anxiety. In these cases elec- liable. We certainly can’t expect any simple one-to-one trical fast activities of low voltage are found in increased correlations, no matter whether we use the electromyo- proportion in the precentral and postcentral region of the gram, the galvanic skin response, or even the EEG. The cortex, as a symptom of greater reactivity of the cortex EEG, though, may be a special case. If worked with on to afferent stimuli. the head end of the animal, one seems to get fairly good von Bonin: The precentral gyrus receives radiations correlations not with tension but, at least, with relaxation. which come from cerebellum, as I understand. Is that It has always bothered me that the most reliable thing correct? an EEG can show is that the brain is not doing anything Monnier: Yes, the whole area, precentral and central, significant at the time of recording. At such times, the becomes a place for afferent stimulation, not only from EEG shows characteristic regular activity; but as soon as the primary sensory afferents but also from other parts of the brain is doing something (usually it is very difficult to the brain. say what), this regular activity disappears. For that rea- von Bonin: Oh, yes, surely. son, I have never been too sure that searching for corre- McCulloch: Even photic stimulation comes through to lations between mental states and EEG signs would lead precentral areas, is that right? very far. But you were challenging people to show some electrophysiologic correlates of multiplication, perhaps Monnier: That’s right. with tongue in cheek, and I want to pick that up. von Bonin: The afferent activity can be picked up pre- A young lady, Lila Ghent, has investigated the ef- centrally even after the cerebellum has been destroyed. fects of various types of tasks on the slow-wave activ- Bigelow: I understood the question as to what trace can ity shown by the EEG of patients who have had elec- be found of the existence of tension to be one raised in troshock. During the rather long periods after the elec- objection to the use of concept of “tension,” at least to troshock when the EEG showed slow waves, these pa- its use as if it were something centralized or local. It tients were asked to perform various tasks, for instance, seems to me that this is a very weak objection because tapping with a stylus on a drum. Such rhythmic tapping there are certainly changes which occur in the neurolog- abolished the slow-wave activity for a short time; if they ical system, which we know must occur because of exte- went on tapping, the slow waves reappeared. The picture rior evidence, of which we cannot find any direct trace by was somewhat different with patients who were asked anatomical means. For example, if a man is multiplying to perform more complex tasks. If they were told to go a sum in his head, I challenge anyone to find out from through a reaction time experiment, the slow-wave activ- external changes whether he is multiplying, and yet it ity was abolished for quite a long time. Another effective can be determined that he is multiplying by the answers way of abolishing the abnormal slow-wave activity was he gives to questions. There should be no objection to to ask them to count back from one hundred by sevens. Kubie’s using the word tension as he pleases. His ob- This serial subtraction very markedly reduced their slow- servation that tension, in his sense, is something that is wave activity. probably widely spread over a number of different loca- Bigelow: Can you distinguish by that method, say, sub- tions, of concepts or type situations, is not negated sim- traction from multiplication? ply by the fact that Kubie can’t put his finger on exactly Teuber: I should suppose not. However, it wasn’t tried. what physiological or neurological change occurs when There is no reason to believe that division or multiplica- tension exists. tion would have effects different from addition or sub- McCulloch: I am not sure Kubie can’t, sooner or later. traction. There was something rather odd though: the Bigelow: I am not sure, either, but I say this is a very

14afferent: Bringing or conducting inwards or towards. Chiefly in Phys. as afferent nerves, vessels.

GREGORY BATESON 33 Humor in Human Communication most effective way of getting rid of the slow waves was be different but have some common property? Isn’t the when the patients made errors. When a patient made a answer to the question this: that if “tension” is to be a mistake in counting, his slow waves disappeared for a useful word, it must cover some properties which are in particularly long time. some way different but have a common aspect? Bigelow: Mental processes may be determined by termi- Gerard: I was going to say another word on the physio- nal performance only, perhaps. logical side. It seems to me that if we substitute the phys- Teuber: Surely. iological term “irradiation,”which is not too well-defined Gerard: What happens to the Cheshire cat’s smile when in terms of its mechanisms but is objectively quite mea- the cat disappears, in other words. surable, and then think of irradiation as increasing in quantity as an excitation state builds up in neuron pools, Young: The danger is, surely, if terminal effects which it will help. Then when we want to ask, “What do we are similar are referred to one postulated central source, mean by excitation state?”, we shall have to go back to which then turns out not to be one. the concentration of energy-rich phosphates in the mem- Bigelow: It depends upon whether the oneness is criti- brane or the number of potassium ions that have crossed cal. Is it in this case? It hasn’t been demonstrated yet, it or something like that, in other words, to perfectly real so far as I can see. I grant it is a possibility, but it hasn’t things whether or not we know just which they are. been shown. We are not too far away from this general concept Young: That is what we are asking Dr. Kubie. of tension, and that is why I feel there is a good deal of Gerard: The only personwho has made even a presump- validity in the kind of tie-up Gregory is trying to make. tive attempt so far to give this any kind of an organic We recognize an increase in tension, subjectively in our- mechanism has been Monnier, who tried to tie these selves and objectively in others, in terms of increasing things up to changes in the measurable behavior of neu- neuronal irradiation, whether it is increased contraction rons, at least through their distant signals of the EEG of antagonist flexors and extensors or whether it is tap- changes. Nobodyelse tried to do it so nobodyelse should ping the table with the fingers or whether it is shifting be criticized. That is why I did not think your objection, around restlessly in a chair or whether it is performing a Dr. Young, to what Gregory said was valid. You were ritualistic act or whether it is merely counting mentally a reacting to the kind of dangerous verbal analyzing that series of numbers. There is greater activity of some sort, Evelyn Hutchinson was warning against, the idea of the greater neurological discharge, spreading over a wider building up of potential energy. It is hard to avoid this and wider group of neurons, it seems to me. Do any idea. Adrian told me he could not do so. The reason why of you physiologists take exception to that in biologi- one gets a little bit apprehensive about it is that we are cal terms, and do any of the psychological people feel perfectly sure that the kind of thing a neurophysiologist that that is too far away from what we really do mean by means when speaking of inhibition and so on — well, we “tension?” are sure he does not mean “inhibition” in the psycholog- Klver: From a psychological point of view, it is worth ical sense but perhaps we are not even sure of that! But mentioning that tension, whatever it is, and the percep- Gregory’s original question, it seemed to me, did not im- tion of tension are two different things. The fact that one ply a positive answer, merely being an attempt to get at is able to perceivetension in the face of a person does not the origin of the use of the figure. I think it was entirely necessarily imply that the observed person is in a state of legitimate from that point of view. tension. Nor does it imply that the observer is tense. Ei- McCulloch: Well, may I put the question in a slightly ther the observer or the observed person or both of them different way? Is the word “tension” simply one name may or may not be in a state of tension. Under patho- for a host of different affairs or have they some common logical conditions, there may be an inability to perceive factor in the sense that in all of them there is some part tension, sadness, cheerfulness, etc.; that is, there may be of the nervous system or of the body which is in a given an agnosia15 for physiognomic16 characteristics. A pa- state or exhibiting a general pattern of activity? I think, tient may be able to recognize his wife and see that her for example, we use the word “memory” altogether too eyes are blue and that her mouth is red, but he may no loosely. We use it often for processes which are inher- longer be able to recognize tension or sadness in her face. ently or essentially dissimilar, and I am not sure we may The visibility of emotions is undoubtedly as important a not be doing the same with the word “tension.” problem as the visibility of colors. Bigelow: Isn’t it essential, if a word is to be useful, that Pitts: I should doubt whether a satisfactory correlation it cover a class of phenomena which may, in some sense, can be made between the psychological concept of ten-

15agnosia: Freud’s term (Zur Auffassung der Aphasien, 1891) for loss of perception. 16physiognomic: Relating to the a person’s face, physical form, or appearance

GREGORY BATESON 34 Humor in Human Communication sion and the mere number of excited neurons. Consider Kubie: I have two complications in mind. One concerns the case of a boy with a handwashing compulsion. We sit the basic feedback function of emotional processes. I him in a chair and we don’t allow him to wash his hands. am thinking of a patient who is an exceptionally effec- Presumably, his inner tension increases as he sits there. tive, competent, and able person, who thinks problems Then we set him free and he promptly goes and washes through extremely well, reaches decisions, and then acts his hands. As soon as he washes his hands, allegedly his on them. At present, he is juggling ten different balls inner tension declines very sharply, but a large number in the air at once and doing it well. But the moment of neurons, namely, those involved in washing his hands, of reaching and implementing a decision precipitates in now accelerate, so he may have a greater number of neu- this patient an obsessional furor of doubt. Consequently, rons discharging per se than he had when the state of after a decision is made and after appropriate action is tension was at its height. taken, when he reaches the very point at which he should Gerard: Excuse me, but you imply total number, which be able to relax, heave a sigh, take a drink, and be com- I did not. Irradiation is not just a volume-conductor type fortably free from tension, a storm erupts. This storm of thing. It is usually along a defined path. is a reaction to the fact of having made a decision and Pitts: It is usually along a definite line of activity in acted upon it, which arouses fear and guilt and an obses- which the person engages and is accompanied by a re- sional furor of extraordinary severity. Doubts go round duction of tension. and round in his mind like squirrels in a cage, with an enormous piling up of something that can be described Gerard: That can no longer be called irradiation. only with this same figurative word. I describe this clin- Pitts: Then irradiation excludes channelization. ical phenomenon as another example of the complexity Young: Would it be fair to say that your attempt to use of the manifestations of the feedback systems in the emo- the concept of irradiation and to give it a quantitative tional sphere. meaning is the best one can do with physiological terms, The second complication centers around the fact that but that you would not regard it as a completely satisfac- there are such things as chronic emotional states. Up to tory statement of the cerebral process involved? the present, our discussion has dealt only with acute emo- Gerard: Of course not. tions, as though emotions were always sharp processes. Young: You are putting up a preliminary model. What about those individuals who seem to have a fixed Pitts: Then you must mean by irradiation something center of emotional gravity to which they always return, more than the mere engagement of a large number of no matter what forces swing them temporarilyaway from neurons in the process. it? They function as though some persistent emotional set or emotional potential formed the center of gravity of Kubie: Something akin to the old Pavlovian concept of a their emotional lives. Sometimes, this is a pleasant and diffuse overflowing irradiation of some kind of activating comfortable center which they do not want to disturb. or inhibiting process. The chronic hypomanic17 is an example. (Unfortunately, Young: To my mind, there is a danger there. however, in the end this usually catches up with them; Gerard: No, I don’t like that either, Larry. but that is another story.) Sometimes, the emotional cen- Monnier: The word irradiation is misleading because it ter is a chronic rage state, a disguised temper tantrum. has been used in many different senses. The process re- I have known patients who lived out their entire lives sponsible for such changes has something to do with an in disguised temper tantrums, masking these in a thou- increased propagation of impulses; the Germans call that sand different ways. Sometimes, it is chronic depression, Ausbreitung. which may arise in very early years and last throughout Gerard: Yes, a spread. life. I know two eighty-year-old patients who face today Monnier: But it is probably in this meaning that you use the problems with which they were dealing when they the word irradiation loosely. were four years old. Indeed, they have lived with their reactions to these problems as their fundamental emo- Gerard: I was avoiding bringing this down to the indi- tional base or potential throughout their lives. Clinically, vidual neuron because I think that does impinge on the this is an inescapable, basic, and puzzling fact. next level. This is not simply total number of neurons, How can we put this in terms which are descriptively but number and pattern. If that is your point, Walter, I accurate? The first requirement for such a term is that agree with you. it shall be an adequate representation of observable phe- Pitts: The spread is perhaps all-important. nomena in nature. The second is that the term should

17hypomania: A minor form of mania, often part of the manic-depressive cycle, characterized by elation and a feeling of well-being together with quickness of thought.

GREGORY BATESON 35 Humor in Human Communication at the same time lead one’s mind to explore possible ex- spond, the left half starts again. This is perfectly sim- planations while avoiding figures of speech which beg all ple to understand. Because the animal has lost its aer- essential questions. For me, a term such as “chronicemo- ation, it becomes progressively asphyxiated, there is a tional potential” or “chronic emotional set” meets these change in the carbon dioxide and oxygen situation in the requirements perhaps a little better than “tension.” Yet brain nourishment, the cells become more irritable, and it does not help us to escape the word tension, because, messages coming down the brain stem, not quite able to although in these particular cases there is a chronic emo- break across at the ordinary level of excitability, now do tional set with a specific quality, there are also other clin- break across from right to left, across the midline, and ical states in which the emotional set is undifferentiated, set off the left phrenic. The only trouble with this sim- with no qualitatively differentiated feeling tone, but out ple explanation is that it is not true. As shown by Arturo of which the more highly differentiated emotional states Rosenblueth, if the right phrenic is blocked (by a cur- can precipitate. Thus, there would seem to be two con- rent, which stops nerve messages as fully as a cut but trasting clinical manifestations: the differentiated and the can be turned off again and the experiment repeated), the undifferentiated chronic emotional tensions. very next respiration comes through on the left. Thus, Young: But these particular words are very valuable, the switchover is not due to an accumulation of carbon aren’t they, because they give us a picture? One could dioxide, or to any other slowly built-up change. imagine that they would equally well describe chronic Here, then, is a case of a building of tension until it states of activity of parts of the nervous system. You escapes, if I may use that word, and a case of suddenirra- could really cover everything you said without using the diation. It would be verynice and verysimple to interpret word “emotion.” this in a perfectly mechanistic way, in terms of a change Kubie: Only by paraphrasing it with some neologism; of threshold of neurons and of the gradual accumulation and in the end that is no gain. of summated impulses until they can escape, neuron by neuron. It just happens not to work. If anybody has yet Young: One could visualize a condition of parts of the come up with an explanation of this that is physiologi- brain being responsible for these states throughout life, cally acceptable, I have not heard of it. It is a mystifying, by virtue of the particular activity of one or another as- very real phenomenonthat any student can repeat at will. pect of cerebral physiology. Bigelow: Are there no local cross fibers there of any Kubie: Isn’t there a danger that that may also beg the sort? question, although it is possible, of course, that an undif- ferentiated tension or potential existed first, subsequently Gerard: No. There are many of these intriguing neuro- and for special reasons acquiring specific coloring. physiological paradoxes. For example, after denervating the lower cord, changes in the reflexes of the fore limbs Young: We do know that local lesions may produce, in are still producedby cutting away some of the denervated both man and animal, syndromesof that sort. A lesion in lower cord. the midbrain of the cat produces the syndrome of obsti- nate progression, as it has been called, in which the cat McCulloch: The interesting thing about it is that this just walks and walks and walks. That could be described happens in certain animals but not in all. The dog and in terms of an emotional state. the rabbit work one way and the cat the other, or vice versa, which means that there must be either an anatom- Gerard: This is going back a little bit but I think it may ical or physiological substrate which is different in the be useful in pointing up to our friends who deal with the two kinds of animals. more difficult levels of the brain that we too sometimes run up against difficult and seemingly insoluble problems Bigelow: Is there anything else that characterizes the of analysis at a level where we would not expect it. I two animals? could not help but think, as we discussed the building up von Bonin: The cat has much larger cells than the dog or of tension, of a strict physiological analogy, one which rabbit. points up the irradiation problem. McCulloch: There is a possibility, of course, that we are Nerve paths descend on each side of the brain stem dealing with some “pup” coming back up the nerve when from the respiratory centers in the medulla to the upper the main impulse goes down, that there is a backfiring, spinal cord, from which come the two phrenic nerves for when we have actual collaterals, it is quite a different that innervate the diaphragm. If a cut is made halfway story. “Pup” is laboratory slang for back impulses over across the neuraxis on, say, the left side, the correspond- the motor nerve. If there are axonal collaterals, then, in ing half of the diaphragm stops. The right side goes on the case in which there is a returnvolley of this kind from working perfectly well. If the right phrenic nerve is then the muscle, far more impulses in the axonal collaterals cut, so that the right half of the diaphragm cannot re- would be expected than otherwise.

GREGORY BATESON 36 Humor in Human Communication Gerard: Oh, obviously, it is explicable sooner or later. It state also have certain chemical changes (8). In this state, isn’t gremlins. patients lie motionless for long hours, without any sense McCulloch: That’s right, but there must be a new way to of the passage of time, without restlessness or movement. attack it. Afterwards, they report that little, if anything, was going Gerard: There must be another way of patterning it be- on in their thinking processes, although they were not sides the simple interaction of neurons and axons. asleep. McCulloch: I don’t think so. Klver: Do these patients, instead of reporting that little or nothing has happened, ever say that a given period of Fremont-Smith: Would we gain anything by going back time appeared infinitely long, like an eternity? to a state of “un-tension,” examining it, and then moving on to consider the state of so-called tension? I should like Kubie: I do not know. They have not been fully explored to start off by saying I don’t believe there is any state of psychologically as yet. This phenomenoncalls our atten- absolute “un-tension” other than death; in other words, tion to the relationship of the central respiratory nuclei to the organism is constantly reacting to its internal and ex- the level of activity in the nervoussystem as a whole, and ternal environment. The closest it comes to an absence of also to the influence of the ascending reticular substance, 20 tension, presumably, is in deep narcosis. From that level, which has been studied by Magoun . These investiga- there is a progression through varying states of activity. tions give us clues as to certain processes in the central nervous system which may influence levels of tension or McCulloch: May I bring us back for a moment? The of activation. crucial thing that we are talking about here is tension in the sense in which it is somehow a trouble in communi- McCulloch: Do you happen to know what the electroen- cation between people, directing our attention to our own cephalograms of patients in this state look like, and do carcass or our own brain, making us heed our own effort you know whether they are more or less responsive to instead of heeding what the other man is saying. information at the time? Kubie: Because it is relevant, I want to remind you of Kubie: There have been technical difficulties about get- the work of Barach18. It bears directly on this matter of ting good electroencephalograms under these circum- tension, even though his observations were made during stances. It has not been done as yet. studies of a quite different problem. He was evaluating a McCulloch: Using earphones or signal boxes to commu- method of producing complete respiratory rest by plac- nicate with these patients is their reception better at such ing patients entirely within a chamber in which alternate times, with the tension down, than it is at a time when increases and decreases of the pressure of the air cause they are attending to something? sufficient diffusion of O and CO2 between pulmonary Kubie: They can communicate with you, but I don’t alveoli and the blood stream to maintain respiratory ex- know the exact answer to that. change without any actual motion in the diaphragm or Fremont-Smith: Larry, doesn’t it take some time for peo- chest wall. For some reason, not all patients can stop ple to go into this hypnoidal state? breathing in this chamber, an interesting fact which has Kubie: Some go very promptly, some very slowly. not yet been explained. What is more important, a large McCulloch: If they have a familiarity with the situation, number of those who can stop breathing soon enter into a do they go in much more rapidly? curious state, as close an approximation to a completely relaxed hypnoidal state as has ever been achieved with- Kubie: Yes, usually. out hypnosis or drugs. It is even more complete, I think, Fremont-Smith: I was in it once, and it is a surprising than are those hypnagogic reveries which Margolin and I thing to discover that one doesn’t have to breathe; but used to induce by having patients listen to their own res- nobody told me that I went into a hypnoidal state and I piratory sounds brought back to their ears through throat wasn’t aware of it if I did. microphones and an amplifier19. Remond: Theremay be a state of tension in an individual Those of Barach’s patients who achieve this nearly even when unconscious, deeply unconscious, in coma. complete respiratory rest and who go into the hypnoidal If, while taking the electroencephalogram of a comatose

18Barach, A. L.: Continuous immobilization of the lungs by residence in the equalizing pressure chamber in the treatment of pulmonary tubercu- losis. Dis. of Chest 12, 3 (1946). Barach, A. L., Eastlake, C., Jr., and Beck, G. J.: Clinical results and physiological effects of immobilizing lung chamber therapy in chronic pulmonary T.B. Dis. of Chest 20, 148 (1951). 19Kubie, L. S., and Margolin, S.: A physiological method for the induction of states of partial sleep and securing free associations and early memories in such states. Transactions of the American Neurological Association, Richmond, Va., Byrd, 1942. Kubie, L. S., and Margolin, S.: An acoustic respirograph. A method for the study of respiration through the graphic recording of the breath sounds. J. Clin. Investigation 22, 221 (1943). 20Magoun, H. W.: An ascending reticular activating system in the brain stem. (cf. Bibliog.) Arch. Neurol. & Psychiat. 67, 145 (1952).

GREGORY BATESON 37 Humor in Human Communication person, some sort of sensory stimulus is produced, a creases gradually until finally, when it reaches one, it is noise, for example, a K complex can be recorded, just as flat. And, say, when A is greater than one, it even inverts. in sleep, a change in the encephalogram which is quite As soon as it reaches this point, of course, the situ- recognizable. If the stimulus is repeated after a certain ation is quite different from any deviation from equilib- time, the response will be less marked. If repeated a rium. As soon as A reaches the value of one, or possibly third time, it will be barely apparent. But if, at the time slightly beyond it, then a slight push, of course, is go- when the reaction has become unnoticeable, the stimulus ing to send the state of the dynamic system off to a dif- is altered, if, instead of making a noise, there is a sud- ferent position of equilibrium, or, in any case, to some den, important change in the lighting of the room, then completely different form of behavior. Exactly what will once again there is a strong response in the electroen- happen is not determined simply by knowing the value cephalogram, which will vanish with repetition of the of A when it approaches one. There are several possibil- stimulus. When stimuli have been given with less and ities. But if you know the initial position and you know less response, and if new kinds of stimuli are no longer that the disturbing forces are not too great, as long as A efficient even at their first introduction, the name of the has values between zero and one, there will be an equi- patient pronounced very softly may “awaken” him. But librium position which can be fixed in advance. It can be that patient is absolutely “unconscious,” and he will not said that if the particle is not there, it will at least be there remember at all what happened. Nevertheless, he has verysoon, or it will oscillate a small degreeaboutthis po- some sort of attention, he is able to be attentive uncon- sition, and so forth. But assume, roughly, that, as soon as sciously, and he loses that state of attention when getting the curvature of the pocket in which it is becomes zero, accustomed to the stimulus. it inverts, then, of course, this system behaves in quite a Wiesner: If a particular stimulus is repeated at a later different way. time, will there be a response? I suggest that the kind of dynamic variable which ten- Remond: Yes, if there is a wait of a long enough time, sion, in this sense we are using it, is really analogous to say, half an hour, to let the patient lose his adaptation to is not the value of a potential energy but of something stimulation. like this curvature. This is a perfectly general sort of situation. Consider the case of rotating liquid masses, Pitts: I wonder if anyone would be interested in a some- for example, rotating stars, and assume the velocity of what frivolous, dynamic analogy to the concept of a state rotation and the mean angular momentum would con- of tension? It seems to me that the proper correspon- stantly increase. Up to a certain point, there is a gradu- dence to make is not between tension and potential en- ally increasing deviation from the spherical shape. But as ergy but between tension and the second derivative of soon as it reaches a certain point, the rotating liquid mass the mean rate of change of potential energy. bcomes unstable, and, thereafter, small deviations in its When tension reaches a critical degree, apparently shape cause it to break up — or to have a furrow which the state of the organism begins changing in a rather vi- increases in size, and one can no longer say, from merely olent way; the actions of the individual change rapidly, knowing its angular velocity, what its subsequent history but in what way is not determinate from the value of will be. As long as the velocity of rotation is smaller than the tension. Suppose we consider the simple case of a the critical amount, then, if one knew nothing else about marble in a cup, a perfect analogy with the most general that sphere of liquid except that it was rotating with that dynamic instances. Naturally, if we consider small de- angular velocity, it could be said it would have a certain viations from the position of equilibrium at the bottom, shape and would stay very nearly about that shape. the rapidity with which the marble will return to its equi- The critical parameter there would be what corre- librium position depends, in essence, upon the curvature sponds to the curvature of the cup in the example of the of the cup; the more curved the cup is, the smaller the marble, namely, those coefficients of the second deriva- deviations produced by any given disturbing force will tives of potential energy that determine the stability in be, and the more rapidly the marble will return to equi- characteristic grooves. I should say the tension in this librium. But what very often happens with dynamic sys- case is really something like the reciprocal of the abso- tems is that their character depends upon some sort of lute magnitude of the real part of the largestcharacteristic external parameter. We might suppose there was an ex- groove; that is, it is a number which measures the ten- ternal force, for example, which went through a series dency of the system to return to equilibrium after a small of fixed values, and this external parameter, as it varied, disturbance, and when the tension becomes too large, it would change the curvature of the cup, so that, say, when corresponds essentially to an inversion, to the case where the external force, A, was equal to zero, the cup might there is instability because the curvature turns out nega- possibly be extremely highly curved. As A vanishes, it tive. I would say that tension is essentially a measure varies between zero and one; the curvature of the cup de-

GREGORY BATESON 38 Humor in Human Communication of the rate of return to an equilibrium after small distur- and the system is conservative, of course it will keep os- bances rather than potential energy itself. If this analogy cillating indefinitely. is exact, potential energy is a bead sliding on wire. The McCulloch: May we hear from LarryKubie and then we potential energy, of course, is proportional to the height will stop. of the wire from the ground. But what matters in the case Kubie: I want to explain why I brought up the exam- of tension, so to speak, is the curvature of the wire rather ple of the extremely efficient person who becomes upset than its absolute height from the ground. precisely at the point at which, if he was strictly analo- Bigelow: Walter, you don’t really mean that the rapidity gous to any simple physical system, he ought to achieve with which the system returns to equilibrium is a func- equilibrium. At this very point, the unconscious sym- tion of the curve, do you? It is not a function of the bolic values of his decisive behavior throw into action a coefficient of the second derivative, but a function of the new set of forces which disturb the equilibrium all over decrement, of the dissipation factor. again. That is the kind of event which makes life difficult Pitts: In part, naturally; if it is moved to a small degree for the psychologist.

GREGORY BATESON 39 Humor in Human Communication Behavior, Purpose and Teleology Arturo Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener and Julian Bigelow in: Philosophy of Science, 10(1943), S. 18–24.

This essay has two goals. The first is to define the be- purposeless (or random) and purposeful. The term pur- havioristic study of natural events and to classify behav- posefulis meant to denotethat the act or behavior may be ior. The second is to stress the importance of the concept interpreted as directed to the attainment of a goal — i.e., of purpose. to a final condition in which the behaving object reaches Given any object, relatively abstracted from its sur- a definite correlation in time or in space with respect to roundings for study, the behavioristic approach consists another object or event. Purposeless behavior then is that in the examination of the output of the object and of the which is not interpreted as directed to a goal. relations of this output to the input. By output is meant The vagueness of the words may be interpreted as any change produced in the surroundings by the object. used above might be considered so great that the distinc- By input, conversely, is meant any event external to the tion would be useless. Yet the recognition that behavior object that modifies this object in any manner. may sometimes be purposeful is unavoidable and useful, The above statement of what is meant by the be- as follows. — The basis of the concept of purpose is havioristic method of study omits the specific structure the awareness of voluntary activity. Now, the purpose of and the instrinsic organization of the object. This omis- voluntary acts is not a matter of arbitrary interpretation sion is fundamental because on it is based the distinction but a physiological fact. When we perform a voluntary between the behavioristic and the alternative functional action what we select voluntarily is a specific purpose, method of study. In a functional analysis, as opposed not a specific movement. Thus, if we decide to take a to a behavioristic approach, the main goal is the intrin- glass containing water and carry it to our mouth we do sic organization of the entity studied, its structure and its not command certain muscles to contract to a certain de- properties; the relations between the object and the sur- gree and in a certain sequence; we merely trip the pur- roundings are relatively incidental. pose and the reaction follows automatically. Indeed, ex- From this definition of the behavioristic method a perimental physiology has so far been largely incapable broad definition of behavior ensues. By behavior is of explaining the mechanism of voluntary activity. We meant any change of an entity with respect to its sur- submit that this failure is due to the fact that when an ex- roundings. This change may be largely an output from perimenter stimulates the motor regions of the cerebral the object, the input being then minimal, remote or irrel- cortex he does not duplicate a voluntary reaction; he trips evant; or else the change may be immediately traceable efferent, output pathways, but does not trip a purpose, as to a certain input. Accordingly, any modification of an is done voluntarily. object, detectable externally, may be denoted as behav- The view has often been expressed that all machines ior. The term would be, therefore, too extensive for use- are purposeful. This view is untenable. First may be fulness were it not that it may be restricted by apposite mentioned mechanical devices such as a roulette, de- adjectives — i.e., that behavior may be classified. signed precisely for purposelessness. Then may be con- The consideration of the changes of energy involved sidered devices such as a clock, designed, it is true, with in behavior affords a basis for classification. Active be- a purpose, but having a performance which, although or- havior is that in which the object is the source of the out- derly, is not purposeful — i.e., there is no specific fi- put energy involved in a given specific reaction. The ob- nal condition toward which the movement of the clock ject may store energy supplied by a remote or relatively strives. Similarly, although a gun may be used for a immediate input, but the input does not energize the out- definite purpose, the attainment of a goal is not intrin- put directly. In passive behavior, on the contrary, the ob- sic to the performance of the gun; random shooting can ject is not a source of energy; all the energy in the output be made, deliberately purposeless. can be traced to the immediate input (e.g., the throwing Some machines, on the other hand, are intrinsically of an object), or else the object may control energywhich purposeful. A torpedo with a target-seeking mechanism remains external to it throughout the reaction (e.g., the is an example. The term servo-mechanisms has been soaring flight of a bird). coined precisely to designate machines with intrinsic Active behavior may be subdivided into two classes: purposeful behavior.

ROSENBLUETH, WIENER AND BIGELOW 40 Behavior, Purpose and Teleology It is apparent from these considerations that although certain direction; an even stronger stimulus will then be the definition of purposeful behavior is relatively vague, delivered which will turn the machine in the opposite di- and hence operationally largely meaningless, the concept rection. If that movement again overshootsa series of in- of purpose is useful and should, therefore, be retained. creasingly larger oscillations will ensue and the machine Purposeful active behavior may be subdivided into will miss the goal. two classes: feed-back (or teleological) and non-feed- This picture of the consequences of undamped feed- back (or non-teleological) The expression feed-back is back is strikingly similar to that seen during the perfor- used by engineers in two different senses. In a broad mance of a voluntary act by a cerebellar patient. At rest sense it may denote that some of the output energy of an the subject exhibits no obvious motor disturbance. If apparatus or machine is returned as input; an example is he is asked to carry a glass of water from a table to his an electrical amplifier with feed-back. The feed-back is mouth, however, the hand carrying the glass will execute in these cases positive — the fraction of the output which a series of oscillatory motions of increasing amplitude reenters the object has the same sign as the original in- as the glass approaches his mouth, so that the water will put signal. Positive feed-back adds to the input signals, spill and the purpose will not be fulfilled. This test is typ- it does not correct them. The term feed-back is also em- ical of the disorderly motor performance of patients with ployed in a more restricted sense to signify that the be- cerebellar disease. The analogy with the behavior of a havior of an object is controlled by the margin of error at machine with undamped feed-back is so vivid that we which the object stands at a given time with reference to venture to suggest that the main function of the cerebel- a relatively specific goal. The feed-back is then negative, lum is the control of the feed-back nervous mechanisms that is, the signals from the goal are used to restrict out- involved in purposeful motor activity. puts which would otherwise go beyond the goal. It is this Feed-back purposeful behavior may again be subdi- second meaning of the term feed-back that is used here. vided. It may be extrapolative (predictive), or it may All purposeful behavior may be considered to require be non-extrapolative (non-predictive). The reactions of negative feed-back. If a goal is to be attained, some sig- unicellular organisms known as tropisms are examples nals from the goal are necessary at some time to direct of nonpredictive performances. The amoeba merely fol- the behavior. By non-feed-back behavior is meant that in lows the source to which it reacts; there is no evidence which there are no signals from the goal which modify that it extrapolates the path of a moving source. Predic- the activity of the object in the course of the behavior. tive animal behavior, on the other hand, is a common- Thus, a machine may be set to impinge upon a lumi- place. A cat starting to pursue a running mouse does not nous object although the machine may be insensitive to run directly toward the region where the mouse is at any light. Similarly, a snake may strike at a frog, or a frog given time, but moves toward an extrapolated future po- at a fly, with no visual or other report from the prey after sition. Examples of both predictive and non-predictive the movement has started. Indeed, the movement is in servo-mechanisms may also be found readily. these cases so fast that it is not likely that nerve impulses Predictive behavior may be subdivided into different would have time to arise at the retina, travel to the central orders. The cat chasing the mouse is an instance of first- nervous system and set up further impulses which would order prediction; the cat merely predicts the path of the reach the muscles in time to modify the movement effec- mouse. Throwing a stone at a moving target requires a tively. second-order prediction; the paths of the target and of As opposed to the examples considered, the behav- the stone should be foreseen. Examples of predictions of ior of some machines and some reactions of living or- higher order are shooting with a sling or with a bow and ganisms involve a continuous feed-back from the goal arrow. that modifies and guides the behaving object. This type Predictive behavior requires the discrimination of at of behavior is more effective than that mentioned above, least two coordinates, a temporal and at least one spatial particularly when the goal is not stationary. But contin- axis. Prediction will be more effective and flexible, how- uous feedback control may lead to very clumsy behav- ever, if the behaving object can respond to changes in ior if the feed-back is inadequately damped and becomes more than one spatial coordinate. The sensory receptors therefore positive instead of negative for certain frequen- of an organism, or the corresponding elements of a ma- cies of oscillation. Suppose, for example, that a machine chine, may therefore limit the predictive behavior. Thus, is designed with the purpose of impinging upon a mov- a bloodhoundfollows a trail, that is, it does not show any ing luminous goal; the path followed by the machine is predictive behavior in trailing, because a chemical, olfac- controlled by the direction and intensity of the light from tory input reports only spatial information: distance, as the goal. Suppose further that the machine overshoots indicated by intensity. The external changes capable of seriously when it follows a movement of the goal in a affecting auditory, or, even better, visual receptors, per-

ROSENBLUETH, WIENER AND BIGELOW 41 Behavior, Purpose and Teleology mit more accurate spatial localization; hence the possi- predictive behavior, a class particularly interesting since bility of more effective predictive reactions when the in- it suggests the possibility of systematizing increasingly put affects those receptors. more complex tests of the behavior of organisms. It em- In addition to the limitations imposed by the recep- phasizes the concepts of purpose and of teleology, con- tors upon the ability to perform extrapolative actions, cepts which, although rather discredited at present, are limitations may also occur that are due to the internal shown to be important. Finally, it reveals that a uniform organization of the behaving object. Thus, a machine behavioristic analysis is applicable to both machines and which is to trail predictively a moving luminous object living organisms, regardless of the complexity of the be- should not only be sensitive to light (e.g., by the pos- havior. session of a photoelectric cell), but should also have the It has sometimes been stated that the designers of ma- structure adequate for interpreting the luminous input. chines merely attempt to duplicate the performances of It is probable that limitations of internal organization, living organisms. This statement is uncritical. That the particularly of the organization of the central nervous gross behavior of some machines should be similar to system, determine the complexity of predictive behav- the reactions of organisms is not surprising. Animal be- ior which a mammal may attain. Thus, it is likely that havior includes many varieties of all the possible modes the nervous system of a rat or dog is such that it does not of behavior and the machines devised so far have far permit the integration of input and output necessary for from exhausted all those possible modes. There is, there- the performance of a predictive reaction of the third or fore a considerable overlap of the two realms of behav- fourth order. Indeed, it is possible that one of the fea- ior. Examples, however, are readily found of man-made tures of the discontinuity of behavior observable when machines with behavior that transcends human behavior. comparing humans with other high mammals may lie in A machine with an electrical output is an instance; for that the other mammals are limited to predictive behavior men, unlike the electric fishes, are incapable of emitting of a low order, whereas man may be capable potentially electricity. Radio transmission is perhaps an even bet- of quite high orders of prediction. ter instance, for no animal is known with the ability to The classification of behavior suggested so far is tab- generate short waves, even if so-called experiments on ulated here: telepathy are considered seriously. A further comparison of living organisms and ma- chines leads to the following inferences. The methods of study for the two groups are at present similar. Whether they should always be the same may depend on whether or not there are one or more qualitatively distinct, unique characteristics present in one group and absent in the other. Such qualitative differences have not appeared so far. The broad classes of behavior are the same in ma- chines and in living organisms. Specific, narrow classes may be found exclusively in one or the other. Thus, no machine is available yet that can write a Sanscrit- Mandarin dictionary. Thus, also, no living organism is It is apparent that each of the dichotomies established known that rolls on wheels — imagine what the result singles out arbitrarily one feature, deemed interesting, would have been if engineers had insisted on copying leaving an amorphousremainder: the non-class. It is also living organisms and had therefore put legs and feet in apparent that the criteria for the several dichotomies are their locomotives, instead of wheels. heterogeneous. It is obvious, therefore, that many other While the behavioristic analysis of machines and lines of classification are available, which are indepen- living organisms is largely uniform, their functional dent of that developed above. Thus, behavior in general, study reveals deep differences. Structurally, organ- or any of the groups in the table, could be divided into isms are mainly colloidal, and include prominently pro- linear (i.e., output proportional to input) and non-linear. tein molecules, large, — complex and anisotropic; ma- A division into continuous and discontinuous might be chines are chiefly metallic and include mainly simple useful for many purposes. The several degrees of free- molecules. From the standpoint of their energetics, ma- dom which behavior may exhibit could also be employed chines usually exhibit relatively large differences of po- as a basis of systematization. tential, which permit rapid mobilization of energy; in or- The classification tabulated above was adopted for ganisms the energy is more uniformly distributed, it is several reasons. It leads to the singling out of the class of

ROSENBLUETH, WIENER AND BIGELOW 42 Behavior, Purpose and Teleology not very mobile. Thus, in electric machines conductionis as synonymous with purpose controlled by feed-back. mainly electronic, whereas in organisms electric changes Teleology has been interpreted in the past to imply pur- are usually ionic. pose and the vague concept of a final cause has been of- Scope and flexibility are achieved in machines ten added. This concept of final causes has led to the largely by temporal multiplication of effects; frequencies opposition of teleology to determinism. A discussion of one million per second or more are readily obtained of causality, determinism and final causes is beyond the and utilized. In organisms, spatial multiplication, rather scope of this essay. It may be pointed out, however, that than temporal, is the rule; the temporal achievements are purposefulness, as defined here, is quite independent of poor — the fastest nerve fibers can only conduct about causality, initial or final. Teleology has been discredited one thousand impulses per second; spatial multiplication chiefly because it was defined to imply a cause subse- is on the other hand abundant and admirable in its com- quent in time to a given effect. When this aspect of tele- pactness. This difference is well illustrated by the com- ology was dismissed, however, the associated recogni- parison of a television receiver and the eye. The televi- tion of the importance of purpose was also unfortunately sion receiver may be described as a single cone retina; discarded. Since we consider purposefulness a concept the images are formed by scanning — i.e. by orderly necessary for the understanding of certain modes of be- successive detection of the signal with a rate of about 20 havior we suggest that a teleological study is useful if it million per second. Scanning is a process which seldom avoids problems of causality and concerns itself merely or never occurs in organisms, since it requires fast fre- with an investigation of purpose. quencies for effective performance. The eye uses a spa- We have restricted the connotation of teleological be- tial, rather than a temporal multiplier. Instead of the one havior by applying this designation only to purposefulre- cone of the television receiver a human eye has about 6.5 actions which are controlled by the error of the reaction million cones and about 115 million rods. — i.e., by the difference between the state of the behav- If an engineer were to design a robot, roughly simi- ing object at any time and the final state interpreted as the lar in behavior to an animal organism, he would not at- purpose. Teleological behavior thus becomes synony- tempt at present to make it out of proteins and other col- mous with behavior controlled by negative feedback, and loids. He would probably build it out of metallic parts, gains therefore in precision by a sufficiently restricted some dielectrics and many vacuum tubes. The move- connotation. ments of the robot could readily be much faster and more According to this limited definition, teleology is not powerful than those of the original organism. Learning opposed to determinism, but to non-teleology. Both tele- and memory, however, would be quite rudimentary. In ological and non-teleological systems are deterministic future years, as the knowledge of colloids and proteins when the behavior considered belongs to the realm where increases, future engineers may attempt the design of determinism applies. The concept of teleology shares robots not only with a behavior, but also with a struc- only one thing with the concept of causality: a time axis. ture similar to that of a mammal. The ultimate model of But causality implies a one-way, relatively irreversible a cat is of course another cat, whether it be born of still functional relationship, whereas teleology is concerned another cat or synthesized in a laboratory. with behavior, not with functional relationships. In classifying behavior the term teleology was used

ROSENBLUETH, WIENER AND BIGELOW 43 Behavior, Purpose and Teleology On Constructing a Reality Heinz von Foerster (1973)

Abstract: “Draw a distinction!”1 the following postulate: the environment as we perceive The Postulate: I am sure you remember the plain cit- it is our invention. izen Jourdain in Moliere’s Bourgeois Gentilhomme who, The burden is now upon me to support this outra- nouveau riche, travels in the sophisticated circles of the geous claim. I shall proceed by first inviting you to par- French aristocracy, and who is eager to learn. On one ticipate in an experiment; then I shall report a clinical occasion with his new friends they speak about poetry case and the results of two other experiments. After this and prose, and Jourdain discovers to his amazement and I will give an interpretation, and thereafter a highly com- great delight that whenever he speaks, he speaks prose. pressed version of the neurophysiological basis of these He is overwhelmed by this discovery: “I am speaking experiments and my postulate of before. Finally, I shall Prose! I have always spoken Prose! I have spoken Prose attempt to suggest the significance of all that to aestheti- throughout my whole life!” cal and ethical considerations. A similar discovery has been made not so long ago, I. Blindspot. Hold [Figure 1] next page with your right but it was neither of poetry nor prose—it was the envi- hand, close your left eye and fixate asterisk of Fig. 1 with ronment that was discovered. I remember when, perhaps your right eye. Move the book slowly back and forth ten or fifteen years ago, some of my American friends along line of vision until at an appropriate distance, from came running to me with the delight and amazement of about 12 to 14 inches, the round black spot disappears. having just made a great discovery: “I am living in an Keeping the asterisk well focused, the spot should re- Environment! I have always lived in an Environment! I main invisible even if the figure is slowly moved parallel have lived in an Environmentthroughoutmy whole life!” to itself in any direction. However, neither M. Jourdain nor my friends have as This localized blindness is a direct consequence of yet made another discovery,and that is when M. Jourdain the absence of photo receptors (rods or cones) at that speaks, may it be prose or poetry, it is he who invents it, point of the retina, the “disc”, where all fibers, leading and likewise when we perceive our environment, it is we from the eye’s light sensitive surface, converge to form who invent it. the optic nerve. Clearly, when the black spot is projected Every discovery has a painful and a joyful side: onto the disc, it cannot be seen. Note that this localized painful, while struggling with a new insight; joyful, when blindness is not perceived as a dark blotch in our visual this insight is gained. I see the sole purpose of my pre- field (seeing a dark blotch would imply “seeing”), but sentation to minimize the pain and maximize the joy for this blindness is not perceived at all, that, is, neither as those who have not yet made this discovery; andfor those something present, nor as something absent: whatever is who have made it, to let them know they are not alone. perceived is perceived “blotch-less”. Again, the discovery we all have to make for ourselves is

Figure 1

1Brown, G. S., Laws of Form. New York, Julian Press, page 3, 1972.

HEINZ VON FOERSTER 44 On Constructing a Reality II. Scotoma. Well localized occipital lesions in the brain, e.g., injuries from high velocity projectiles, heal rela- tively fast without the patient’s awareness of any per- ceptible loss in his vision. However, after several weeks motor dysfunction in the patient becomes apparent, e.g., loss of control of arm or leg movements of one side or the other, etc. Clinical tests, however, show that there is nothing wrong with the motor system, but that in some cases there is substantial loss of a large portion of the vi- sual field (scotoma) (Fig. 2)2. A successful therapy con- sists of blindfolding the patient over a period of one to two months until he regains control over his motor sys- tem by shifting his “attention” from “non-existent” vi- sual clues regardinghis posture to “fully operative” chan- nels that give direct postural clues from “Proprioceptive” Figure 2 sensors embedded in muscles and joints. Note again the absence of perception of “absence of perception”, and also the of perception through sensor-motor interaction. This prompts two metaphors: “Perceiving is Doing”; and, “If I don’t see I am blind, I am blind; but if I see I am blind, I see”.

III. Alternates. A single word is spoken once into a tape who were exposed to a repetitive playback of the sin- recorder and the tape smoothly spliced, without a click, gle word Cogitate: agitate; annotate; arbitrate; artistry; into a loop. The word is repetitively played back with a back and forth; brevity; ca d’etait; candidate; can’t you high rather than low volume. After one or two minutes see; can’t you stay; cape cod you say; card estate; car- of listening, from 50 to 150 repetitions, the word clearly dio tape; car district; catch a tape; cavitate; cha cha che; perceived so far abruptly changes into another meaning- cogitate; computate; conjugate; conscious state; counter ful and clearly perceived word: an “alternate”. After 10 tape; count to ten; count to three; count yer tape; cut the to 30 repetitions of this first alternate, a sudden switch to steak; entity; fantasy; God to take; God you say; got a second alternate is perceived, and so on3. a date; got your pay; got your tape; gratitude; grav- The following is a small selection of the 758 alter- ity; guard the tit; gurgitate; had to take; kinds of tape; nates reported from a population of about 200 subjects majesty; marmalade.

Figure 3: Trial 1 (no behavioral evidence of learning) Figure 5: Trial 4/20 (hypothesizes)

Figure 4: Trial 13 (begins to wait for tones) Figure 6: Trial 6/9 (understands) 2Teuber, H. L., “Neuere Betrachtungen uber Sehstrahlung und Sehrinde” in Jung, R., Kornhuber H. (Eds.) Das Visuelle System, Berlin, Springer, pages 256–274, 1961. 3Naeser, M. A., and Lilly, J. C., “The Repeating Word Effect: Phonetic Analysis of Reported Alternates”, Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 1971.

HEINZ VON FOERSTER 45 On Constructing a Reality IV. Comprehension. Literally defined: con ⇒ together; of smell, heat and cold, sound, etc.: they are all “blind” prehendere ⇒ to seize, grasp. Into the various sta- as to the quality of their stimulation, responsive only as tions of the auditory pathways in a cat’s brain, micro- to their quantity. electrodes are implanted which allow a recording, “Elec- Although surprising, this should not come as a sur- troencephalogram”, from the nerve cells first to receive prise, for indeed “out there” there is no light and no color, auditory stimuli, Cochlea Nucleus: CN, up to the Au- there are only electro-magnetic waves; “out there” there ditory Cortex4. The so prepared cat is admitted into a is no sound and no music, there are only periodic varia- cage that contains a food box whose lid can be opened tions of the air pressure; “out there” there is no heat and by pressing a lever. However, the lever-lid connection is no cold, there are only moving molecules with more or operative only when a short single tone (here C6, that is less mean kinetic energy, and so on. Finally, for sure, about 1000 Hz) is repetitively presented5. The cat has to “out there” there is no pain. learn that C6 “means” food. Figures 3 to 6 show the Since the physical nature of the stimulus—its pattern of nervous activity at eight ascending auditory quality—is not encoded into nervous activity, the funda- stations, and at four consecutive stages of this learning mental question arises as to how does our brain conjure process6 The cat’s behavior associated with the recorded up the tremendous variety of this colorful world as we neural activity is for Fig. 3: “Random search”; Fig. 4: experience it any moment while awake, and sometimes “Inspection of lever”; Fig. 5: “Lever pressed at once”; in dreams while asleep. This is the “Problem of Cog- and for Fig. 6: “Walking straight toward lever (full com- nition”, the search for an understanding of the cognitive prehension)”. Note that no tone is perceived as long as processes. this tone is uninterpretable (Figs. 3, 4; pure noise), but The way in which a question is asked determines the the whole system swings into action with the appear- way in which an answer may be found. Thus, it is upon ance of the first “beep” (Figs. 5, 6; noise becomes sig- me to paraphrase the “Problem of Cognition” in such a nal) when sensation becomes comprehensible, when our way that the conceptual tools that are today at our dis- perception of ‘’beep”, “beep”, “beep”, is in the cat’s per- posal may become fully effective. To this end let me ception “food”, “food”, “food”. paraphrase (→) “cognition” in the following way: Interpretation. In these experiments I have cited in- stances in which we see or hear what is not “there”, or in COGNITION → computing a reality. which we do not see or hear what is “there”, unless coor- dination of sensation and movement allows us to “grasp” With this I anticipate a storm of objections. First, I what appears to be there. Let me strengthen this obser- appear to replace one unknown term, “cognition” with vation by citing now the, “Principle of Undifferentiated three other terms, two of which, “computing” and “re- Encoding”: ality”, are even more opaque than the definiendum, and with the only definite word used here being the indefinite The response of a nerve cell does not encode article “a”. Moreover, the use of the indefinite article im- the physical nature of the agents that caused plies the ridiculous notion of other realities besides “the” its response. Encoded is only “how much” only and one reality, our cherished Environment; and fi- at this point on my body, but not “what”. nally I seem to suggest by “computing” that everything, from my wristwatch to the Galaxies, is merely computed, Take, for instance, a light sensitive receptor cell in and is not “there”. Outrageous! the retina, a “rod”, which absorbs the electro-magnetic Let me take up these objections one by one. First, radiation originating from a distant source. This absorp- let me remove the semantic sting that the term “comput- tion causes a change in the electrochemical potential in ing” may cause in a group of women and men who are the rod which will ultimately give rise to a periodic elec- more inclined toward the humanities than to the sciences. tric discharge of some cells higher up in the post-retinal Harmlessly enough, computing (from com-putare) liter- networks with a period that is commensurate with the in- ally means to reflect, to contemplate (putare) things in tensity of the radiation absorbed, but without a clue that concert (com-), without any explicit reference to numer- it was electro-magnetic radiation that caused the rod to ical quantities. Indeed, I shall use this term in this most discharge. The same is true for any other sensory recep- general sense to indicate any operation, not necessarily tor, may it be the taste buds, the touch receptors, and all numerical, that transforms, modifies, re-arranges, or or- the other receptors that are associated with the sensations ders observed physical entities, “objects”, or their repre-

4Worden, F. G., “EEG Studies and.Conditional Reflexes in Man”, in Brazier, Mary A. B., The Central Nervous System and Behavior, New York, Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, pages 270–291, 1959. 5“Hz” means 1 cycle per second, is the unit for oscillations named after Heinrich Hertz who generated the first radio signals. 6op cit.

HEINZ VON FOERSTER 46 On Constructing a Reality sentations, “”. For instance, the simple permuta- tion of the three letters A, B, C, in which the last letter now goes first: C, A, B, I shall call a computation. Sim- ilarly, the operation that obliterates the commas between the letters: CAB; and likewise the semantic transforma- In summary, I propose to interpret cognitive pro- tion that changes CAB into TAXI, and so on. cesses as never ending recursive processes of computa- I shall now turn to the defense of my use of the in- tion, and I hope that in the following tour de force of definite article in the noun-phrase “a reality”. I could, neurophysiology I can make this interpretation transpar- of course, shield myself behind the logical argument that ent. solving for the general case, implied by the “a”, I would also have solved any specific case denoted by the use of Neurophysiology “the”. However, my motivation lies much deeper. In fact, there is a deep hiatus that separates the “The”-school-of- thought from the “A”-school-of-thoughtin which respec- tively the distinct concepts of “confirmation” and “corre- lation” are taken as explanatory paradigms for percep- tions. The “The-School”: My sensation of touch is con- firmation for my visual sensation that here is a table. The “A-School”: My sensation of touch in correlation with my visual sensation generate an experience which I may describe by “here is a table”. I am rejecting the THE-position on epistemological grounds, for in this way the whole Problem of Cognition is safely put away in one’s own cognitive blind spot: even its absence can no longer be seen. Finally one may rightly argue that cognitive pro- cesses do not compute wristwatches or galaxies, but compute at best descriptions of such entities. Thus I am yielding to this objection and replace my former para- phrase by:

COGNITION → computing descriptions of a reality. I. Evolution. In order that the principle of recursive Neurophysiologists, however, will tell us that a de- computation is fully appreciated as being the underlying scription computed on one level of neural activi ty, say a principle of all cognitive processes—even of life itself, projected image on the retina, will be operated on again as one of the most advanced thinkers in assures on higher levels, and so on, whereby some motor activ- me—it may be instructive to go back for a moment to ity may be taken by an observer as a “terminal descrip- 7 the most elementary—or as evolutionists would say, to tion”, for instance the utterance: “here is a table” . Con- very “early”—manifestations of this principle(6). These sequently, I have to modify this paraphrase again to read: are the “independent effectors”, or independent sensory- motor units, found in protozoa and metazoa distributed over the surface of these animals (Fig. 7). The triangu- lar portion of this unit, protruding with its tip from the surface, is the sensory part, the onion-shaped portion the contractile motor part. A change in the chemical concen- where the arrow turning back suggests this infinite re- tration of an agent in the immediate vicinity of the sens- cursion of descriptions of descriptions ... etc. This for- ing tip, and “perceptible” by it, causes an instantaneous mulation has the advantage that one unknown, namely, contraction of this unit. The resulting displacement of “reality” is successfully eliminated. Reality appears only this or any other unit by change of shape of the animal implicit as the operation of recursive descriptions. More- or its location may, in turn, produce perceptible changes over, we may take advantage of the notion that comput- in the agent’ s concentration in the vicinity of these units ing descriptions is nothing else but computations. Hence: which, in turn, will cause their instantaneous contraction,

7Maturana, H. R., “Neurophysiology of Cognition,” in Garvin, P., Cognition: A Multiple View,. New York, Spartan Press, pages 3–23, 1970.

HEINZ VON FOERSTER 47 On Constructing a Reality etc. Thus, we have the recursion:

Separation of the sites of sensation and action ap- pears to have been the next evolutionary step (Figure 8). The sensory and motor organsare now connected by thin filaments, the “axons” (in essence degenerated muscle fibers having lost their contractility), which transmit the sensor’s perturbations to its effector, thus giving rise to III. Transmission. Since these perturbations are electri- the concept of a “signal”: see something here, act ac- cal, they can be picked up by “microprobes”, amplified cordingly there. and recorded. Fig. 11 shows three examples of periodic The crucial step, however, in the evolution of the discharges from a touch receptor under continuous stim- complex organization of the mammalian central nervous ulation, the low frequency corresponding to a weak, the system (CNS) appears to be the appearance of an “inter- high frequency to a strong stimulus. The magnitude of nuncial neuron”, a cell sandwiched between the sensory the discharge is clearly everywhere the same, the pulse and the motor unit (Fig. 9). It is, in essence, a sensory frequency representing the stimulus intensity, but the in- cell, but specialized so as to respond only to a univer- tensity only. sal “agent”, namely, the electrical activity of the afferent IV. Synapse. Fig. 12 sketches a synaptic junction. The axons terminating in its vicinity. Since its present activ- afferent axon (Ax), along which the pulses travel, ter- ity may affect its subsequent responsivity, it introduces minates in an end bulb (EB) which is separated from the element of computation in the animal kingdom, and the spine (sp) of a dendrite (D) of the target neuron by gives these organisms the astounding latitude of non triv- a minute gap (sy), the “synaptic gap” (Note the many ial behaviors. Having once developed the genetic code spines that cause the rugged appearance of the dendrites for assembling an internuncial neuron, to add the genetic in Fig. 10). The chemical composition of the “trans- command “repeat” is a small burden indeed. Hence, I mitter substances” filling the synaptic gap is crucial in believe, it is now easy to comprehend the rapid prolif- determining the effect an arriving pulse may have on the eration of these neurons along additional vertical layers ultimate response of the neuron: under certain circum- with growing horizontal connections to form those com- stances it may produce an “inhibitory effect” (cancella- plex interconnected structures we call “brains”. tion of another simultaneously arriving pulse); in others II. Neuron. The neuron, of which we have more than a “facilitory effect”’ (augmenting another pulse to fire ten billion in our brain, is a highly specialized single the neuron). Consequently, the synaptic gap can be seen cell with three anatomically distinct features (Fig. 10): as the “micro-environment” of a sensitive tip, the spine, (a) the branch-like ramifications stretching up and to the and with this interpretation in mind we may compare side, the “dendrites”; (b) the bulb in the center housing the sensitivity of the CNS to changes of the internal en- the cell’s nucleus, the “cell body”; and (c), the “axon”, vironment (the sum-total of all micro-environments) to the smooth fiber stretching downward. Its various bi- those of the external environment (all sensory receptors). furcations terminate on dendrites of another (but some- Since there are only a hundred million sensory receptors, times [recursively] on the same) neuron. The same mem- and about ten-thousand billion synapses in our nervous brane which envelopes the cell body forms also the tubu- system, we are 100,000 times more receptive to changes lar sheath for dendrites and axon, and causes the inside in our internal than in our external environment. of the cell to be electrically charged against the outside with about one tenth of a volt. If in the dendritic region this charge is sufficiently perturbed, the neuron “fires” and sends this perturbation along its axons to their termi- nations, the synapses.

HEINZ VON FOERSTER 48 On Constructing a Reality Figure 12 Figure 14 VI. Descartes. This perspective is a far cry from that be- ing held, say three hundred years ago: “If the fire A is near the foot B (Fig. 14), the particles of this fire, which as you know move with great rapidity, have the power to move the area of the skin of this foot that they touch; and in this way drawing the little thread, c, that you see to be attached at the base of toes and on the nerve, at the same instant they open the entrance of the pore, d, e, at which this little thread terminates, just as by pulling one end of a cord, at the same time one causes the bell to sound that hangs at the other end9. Figure 13 Now the entrance of the pore or little conduit, d, e, V. Cortex. In order that one may get at least some per- being thus opened, the animal spirits of the cavity F, en- spective on the organization of the entire machinery that ter within and are carried by it, partly into the muscles computes all perceptual, intellectual and emotional expe- that serve to withdraw this foot from the fire, partly into riences, I have attached Fig. 13 which shows magnified a those that serve to turn the eyes and the head to look at it, section of about 2 square millimeters of a cat’s cortex by and partly into those that serve to advance the hands and a staining method which stains only cell body and den- to bend the whole body to protect it.” drites, and of those only 1% of all neurons present8. Note, however, that some behaviorists of today still Although you have to imagine the many connections cling to the same view with one difference only, namely, among these neurons provided by the (invisible) axons, that in the meantime Descartes’ “animal spirit” has gone 10 and a density of packing that is a hundred times that into oblivion . shown, the computational power of even this very small VII. Computation. The retina of vertebrates with its as- part of a brain may be sensed. sociated nervous tissue is a typical case of neural com- putation. Fig. 15 is a schematic representation of a mam- malian retina and its post-retinal network. The layer la- beled #1 represents the array of rods and cones, and layer #2 the bodies and nuclei of these cells. Layer #3 identi- fies the general region where the axons of the receptors synapse with the dendritic ramifications of the “bipo-

8Sholl, D. A., The Organization of the Cerebral Cortex, London, Methuen, 1956. 9Descartes, R., L’Homme, Paris, Angot, 1664. Reprinted in Ouevres de Descartes, XI, Paris, Adam and Tannery, pages 119-209, 1957. 10Skinner, B. F., Beyond Freedom and Dignity, New York, Knopf, 1971.

HEINZ VON FOERSTER 49 On Constructing a Reality lar cells” (#4) which, in turn, synapse in layer #5 with Consider now Fig. 17 in which an obstruction is the dendrites of the ganglion cells (#6) whose activity is placed in the light path illuminating the layer of recep- transmitted to deeper regions of the brain via their axons tors. Again all neurons of the lower layer will remain which are bundled together to form the optic nerve (#7). silent, except the one at the edge of the obstruction, for it Computation takes place within the two layers labeled #3 receives two excitatory signals from the receptor above, and #5, that is, where the synapses are located. but only one inhibitory signal from the sensor to the left. We now understand the important function of this net, for it computes any spatial variation in the visual field of this “eye”, independent of intensity of the ambient light and its temporal variations, and independentof place and extension of the obstruction. Although all operations involved in this computation are elementary, the organization of these operations al- lows us to appreciate a principle of considerable depth, namely, that of the computation of abstracts, here the no- tion of “edge”. Figure 15 I hope that this simple example is sufficient to sug- As Maturana has shown, it is there where the sensation gest to you the possibility of generalizing this principle in of color and some clues as to form are computed11 the sense that “computation” can be seen on at least two Form computation: take the two-layered periodic levels, namely, (a) the operations actually performed,and network of Fig. 16, the upper layer representing recep- (b) the organization of these operations represented here tor cells sensitive to, say, “light”. Each of these recep- by the structure of the nerve net. In computer language tors is connected to three neurons in the lower (comput- (a) would again be associated with “operations”, but (b) ing) layer, with two excitatory synapses on the neuron with the “program”. As we shall see later, in “biolog- directly below (symbolized by buttons attached to the ical computers” the programs themselves may be com- body), and with one inhibitory synapse (symbolized by a puted on. This leads to the concepts of “meta-programs”, loop around the tip) attached to each of the two neurons, “meta-meta-programs”, ... etc. This, of course, is the one to the left and one to the right. It is clear that the consequence of the inherent recursive organization of computing layer will not respond to uniform light pro- those systems. jected on the receptive layer, for the two excitatory stim- uli on a computer neuron will be exactly compensated by the inhibitory signals coming from the two lateral recep- tors. This zero-response will prevail under strongest and weakest stimulation as well as to slow or rapid changes of the illumination. The legitimate question may now arise—“Why this complex apparatus that doesn’t do a thing?”’

Figure 18 VIII. Closure. By attending to all the neurophysiolog- ical pieces, we may have lost the perspective that sees an organism as a functioning whole. In Fig. 18 I have put these pieces together in their functional context. The black squares labeled N represent bundles of neuronsthat

11Maturana, H. R., “A Biological Theory of Relativistic Colour Coding in the Primate Retina”, Arch. Biologia y Medicina Exper., Suppl. No. 1, Soc. Biologia de Chile, Santiago, Universidad de Chile, 1968.

HEINZ VON FOERSTER 50 On Constructing a Reality synapse with neurons of other bundles over the (synap- transparent when this prefix is replaced by the noun, “au- tic) gaps indicated by the spaces between squares. The tonomy” becomes synonymous with “regulation of regu- sensory surface (SS) of the organism is to the left, its lation”. This is precisely what the doubly closed, recur- motor surface (MS) to the right, and the neuropituitary sively computing torus does: it regulates its own regula- (NP) the strongly innervated mastergland that regulated tion. the entire endocrinal system, is the stippled lower bound- Significance. It may be strange in times like these to stip- ary of the array of squares. Nerve impulses traveling hor- ulate autonomy, for autonomy implies responsibility: If I izontally (from left to right) ultimately act on the motor am the only one who decides how I act then I am respon- surface (MS) whose changes (movements) are immedi- sible for my action. Since the rule of the most popular ately sensed by the sensory surface (SS), as suggested by game played today is to make someone else responsible the “external” pathway following the arrows. for my acts—the name of the game is “heteronomy”— Impulses traveling vertically (from top to bottom) my arguments make, I understand, a most unpopular stimulate the neuropituitary (NP) whose activity releases claim. One way of sweeping it under the rug is to dis- steroids into the synaptic gaps, as suggested by the wig- miss it as just another attempt to rescue “solipsism”, the gly terminations of the lines following the arrow, and view that this world is only in my imagination and the thus modify the modus operandi of all synaptic junctures, only reality is the imagining “I”. Indeed, that was pre- hence the modus operandi of the system as a whole. Note cisely what I was saying before, but I was talking only the double closure of the system which now recursively about a single organism. The situation is quite different operates not only on what it “sees” but on its opera- when there are two, as I shall demonstrate with the aid of tors as well. In order to make this twofold closure even the gentleman with the bowler hat (Fig. 20). more apparent I propose to wrap the diagram of Fig. 18 around its two axes of circular symmetry until the arti- ficial boundaries disappear and the torus (doughnut) as in Fig. 19 is obtained. Here the “synaptic gap” between the motor and sensory surfaces is the striated meridian in the front center, the neuropituitary the stippled equator. This, I submit, is the functional organization of a living organism in a (dough)nut shell. (Fig. 19)

Figure 19 The computations within this torus are subject to a non-trivial constraint, and this is expressed in the Postu- late of Cognitive Homeostasis: The nervous system is organized (or orga- nizes itself) so that it computes a stable real- ity. Figure 20 This postulate stipulates “autonomy”, i.e., “self reg- He insists that he is the sole reality, while everything ulation”, for every living organism. Since the seman- else appears only in his imagination. How ever, he can- tic structure of nouns with prefix “self-” becomes more not deny that his imaginary universe is populated with

HEINZ VON FOERSTER 51 On Constructing a Reality apparitions that are not unlike himself. Hence, he has to monologue, and my logic mono-logic. If I adopt it, nei- concede that they themselves may insist that they are the ther me nor the other can be the center of the universe. sole reality and everything else is only a concoction of As in the heliocentric system, there must be a third that their imagination. In that case their imaginary universe is the central reference. It is the relation between Thou will be populated with apparitions, one of which may be and I, and this relation is IDENTITY: he, the gentleman with the bowler hat. According to the Principle of Relativity which rejects Reality = Community a hypothesis when it does not hold for two instances What are the consequences of all this in ethics and together, although it holds for each instance separately aesthetics? (Earthlings and Venusians may be consistent in claiming The Ethical Imperative: Act always so as to increase to be in the center of the universe, but their claims fall the number of choices. to pieces if they should, ever get together), the solipsistic The Aesthetical Imperative: If youdesire to see, learn claim falls to pieces when besides me I invent another how to act. autonomous organism. However, it should be noted that since the Principle of Relativity is not a logical necessity, nor is it a proposition that can be proven to be either true Acknowledgement or false, the crucial point to be recognized here is that I I am indebted to Lebbeus Woods, Rodney Clough and am free to chooseeither to adoptthis principle or to reject for offering their artistic talents to embel- it. If I reject it, I am the center of the universe, my real- lish this paper with Figs. (7, 8, 9, 16, 17), (18, 19), and ity are my dreams and my nightmares, my language is (20) respectively.

HEINZ VON FOERSTER 52 On Constructing a Reality Invitation to Dance A Conversation with Heinz von Foerster Christina Waters Santa Cruz, California, November 1999

Meeting with Heinz von Foerster last month at his hope somebody will listen to. home nestled in the Santa Cruz Mountains, it was my Q: Who is doing the real inventing today? hope that he discuss some of the premisses that have un- A: Everybody is, only they want not to recognize that. derwritten not just his professional life as a cyberneti- Everybodywho opens his mouth says something, invents cian, but his personal life extending from youth in Vi- something that has never been said before—because we enna to a variety of entrepreneurial adventures in this are not machines. You say a new thing, even if it’s sim- country. Seated with the 88-year-old physicist—his frail ply a question that is clumsy, or as silly or as funny as body somehow persistent, eyes flashing with intellectual you wish. There are no stupid questions-there are only vigor—what emerged was a clear commitment to a set stupid answers. Ja? of guiding principles. Famed as a robust raconteur, von Q: Why do we not want to accept responsibility? Foerster explicated his dedication to the path that has led him, with characteristic dignity, to these penultimate A: Because the most horrible thing is to be responsible days he enjoys at Rattlesnake Hill in coastal California. for something. We have invented every trick to avoid re- sponsibility. One way is to invent a hierarchy if you’re an Q: Do you think that in the end, from where you are institutional organization. In a hierarchy everybody can right now, that you’ve been an inventor or a discoverer? say, ‘I didn’t want to do it, I was told to do it.’ That gets A: Always an inventor. A discovery means, you see, this rid of responsibility. is to uncover, to take a blanket away. Discover means you Or there are the famous statements from politicians— undo a cover from a thing which is already there. Take a “I had no choice.;” And the moment somebody says that, cover off. The inventor is doing something which is new, they are really saying ‘I refuse the responsibility for what which is not already there. I’m doing.’ They always have all the choices, Ja? And my position is, we create all the time, when we’re Q: So it’s hard to accept responsibility. sitting down and talking with each other. It’s always something absolutely new, which was never there before. A: Yes—that’s why we invent things like hierarchy— The discoverer position, which people are very fond and objectivity. Objectivity is one of the great tricks to to maintain, is in a sense being not responsible for that get rid of responsibility. which you are talking about. Because if you are only tak- You know what objectivity is all about—it says that ing a cover away from something which is already there, the properties of the observer shall not enter a descrip- then you are only telling how it is. With this, you avoid tion of his observation. Now if that’s so, what remains? all the responsibility. This was brought home to me at No description, no observation. Because these are all a class I had at Stanford University Journalism School. properties of the observer. There was a banner that said “Tell it Like It is”—so I Q: Don’t you think that language, however, traps us into walk into that class and tell them, “my God gentlemen, a subject-object orientation? do you want to get rid of the responsibility of being a A: Oh yes, it does that all the time. writer by telling it like it is?” Nobody knows how it is. It Q: How then can we make sense, speak meaningfully to is how you tell it. each other, and yet still avoid reference to objectivity? That is very important. Because now you see you cre- Don’t we almost have to reinvent language? ate the reality which all the people take as it is. A: No. We can use language as a dance. Language for It is as you tell it. This point is so important yet most me is an invitation to dance. When we are dancing we people don’t recognize it. are using language to suggest to each other what steps Q: Do you feel that you’ve helped to create reality by we would like to do. doing the cybernetics you’ve engaged in? Two partners are dancing out on a big floor—and no- A: I have no idea whether I have. I’m just saying what I body leads. Both lead. Both help the other to make the

HEINZ VON FOERSTER 53 Invitation to Dance swing to the right, to the left, etc. These steps are not went out to see the doctor she thanked me. prescribed. Steps are only there as a reference to be able I thought this was interesting. You need a physicist to use them. When we do a waltz we know how to do a from California for the international conference of social waltz, but whether we do it to the left or the right, for- psychiatrists to find out that the wife of one has earaches ward, backward, is a choice of the couple. And not the and can’t think. choice of he or she. The point is, it was so obvious to me. In a tenth of a So when we are talking with each other, we are in di- second, I could see this. And here the great professores alogue and invent what we both wish the other would could not even tell that one of them was in distress. invent with me. Togetherness is the point in a dialogue. Q: You have very strong diagnostic skills. And language is an invitation to dialogue and not an in- A: No I’m just feeling my way around. I always ask, vitation to monologue. Who is the other? I always think about the other. The Q: How can someone in the everyday world see this other is the one who interprets my experience. most easily, this dance metaphor? In poetry? Q: Yes, and that I think is why you tell stories. You tell a A: I think it is played out in every way that anybody great many stories—but it’s never just to talk about your- talks to each other. If I buy a ticket for the movie, I have self. You are engaging your listener. You have always a conversation with the lady behind the window. And I told stories have you not? smile, and she smiles back. And we have become friends A: Yes—of course. Our family was a story-telling fam- for two seconds. And we have contacted another human ily. My grandmother was telling stories, my uncle was being. And this is probably what makes some people a telling stories, we were all always telling stories. Perhaps little bit queasy about me. This is my personal fun which it’s a Viennese habit—it could be a cultural hang-up. [He I have in life, to contact other people in such a way that laughs.] the other is taking notice of me. Q: It could explain why conversation became so impor- You know my funny statement—the hearer and not the tant to you. speaker determines the meaning of an utterance. And if you know that, then you need to determinehow you must A: My uncle was in Siberia, my father was in Serbia. speak so that the hearer is dancing with you. One of my uncle’s co-prisoners escaped, my uncle told him to contact my mother and tell her that he was still Q: So it makessense that someonewho is a performer— alive. So he left. Six months later, he had walked from you—would use some of that body language to help that Siberia and popped up in Vienna. Which was possible dance take place. in the year 1916, because it was before the collapse of A: Yes. But I don’t play the tricks. What I do is, I aim the Russian Empire. So he came to my grandmother and that way. If I step up to the ticket counter, I know I’m said I have a letter from your son Ervin in Siberia. She speaking to a human being. invited him in for a coffee and asked how he had made [He conveys an incident in which he was trying on it, how he had succeeded in walking for six months from shoes and he sensed immediately that something was Siberia to Vienna. And he says, yes it was tough. And wrong with the salesperson.] I said, “What is wrong?” that was the story. That was an example in our family of She said she had destroyed her car today, and she began good story telling. crying. And you see, this is what happens. I aim at the Very quick and to the point. [He laughs.] human being.[He relates another story about a huge in- Q: Why didn’t cybernetics become a mainstream en- ternational conference in Hamburg in one of the largest deavor? Why don’t people all over the United States conference centers in the world.] know what cybernetics is? So I came to this huge psychiatric conference with all the most important, great professors of the field. I was A: But look! It is. Cybernetics is in every second word. there 2 minutes before starting time. I went to a room If you open the newspaper there is cyber space, cyber where I could get a cup of coffee. And here were these sex, cyber this and cyber that. Everything is cyberized. giants of social psychiatry, and I started introducing my- Q: That’s not cybernetics, [We’re both laughing.] self and then began to look for the coffee. It was on a far A: No, but “cyber” is there. Look at terms like “feed- table and next to it was a big leather couch. There was a back. ” Everybody knows what feedback is. Cybernetics woman sitting on the couch who was clearly in distress. did that. Things of that sort. I think cybernetics connects I went over to her and asked if I can help her. No, I have underneath. It’s implicit. Underneath, it’s completely an extraordinary miserable earache, she tells me. I can’t alive. But not explicit. even think, I can’t even see. I offer her my Tylenol. I call In some cases I find it more important that something someone over to ask whether there’s a doctor who can is acting implicitly, than explicitly. Because the implicit help, and ask if he can take the lady to the doctor. As she has much more power.

HEINZ VON FOERSTER 54 Invitation to Dance Q: So you think that in a way it has infiltrated the intel- Q: Would that apply to making a movie? Or fighting a lectual mainstream? war? A: Absolutely! Nobody can talk without at least the A: Of course. presence of cybernetics being operational. The presence Q: Has your life itself evolved utilizing feedback? Have of these notions is absolutely alive, only not explicitly you learned, recursively, from the various referred to. and, even mistakes that you made? I find it very powerful that it’s underground. Because A: [He nods his head vigorously] Without them there people are unaware of it—and therefore don’t reject it. wouldn’t be any life at all. The whole thing is based [We laugh.] on interaction. A living organism interacts with the Q: It’s gone underground and we in fact use it whether universe—with every other thing. They are constantly we know it or not. rolling along and changing each other. And this is how A: Ja, exactly. life can function, because life is indeed a non-trivial sys- Q: Who is furthering cybernetics today? tem, Ja? Any action changes itself and changes all the A: All the internet people, all computer people today. rest. They are all cyberneticians whether they like it or not. There are two fundamental positions which one can take when talking about anything. The one is the posi- Q: In what sense, Heinz? tion that I can say, I’m sitting here and looking at the A: Because they initiate dialogues. Internet dialogues world as through a peephole at what’s going on in this are initiated and then they expand over and over. You universe. expand the network’s interaction. The other position is, I’m a part of the world. I am a Q: So initiating conversations is critical. Why are con- memberof it, not separated from the world. And what- versations so important? ever I do I change not only myself, I change the world as A: It’s the humanness which is expressed in the conver- well. sation that is so important. But as far as looking back at my own life, funnily Q: And so conversations multiply the ways in which hu- enough, I’m not reflecting about my life. I’m doing it. manness is expressed? Q: Is self-reflection something you’ve never done? A: Exactly—and so you find your own. Because in the A: I’m always surprised that I’venever donethat. I don’t reflection, in the eyes of the other, your own humanity reflect about my life. I can tell you lots of lovely stories begins to develop. Which you cannot do in a monologue. about my life, but that is not reflecting about my life. You have to dance with somebody else to recognize It’s probably a cultural affair. We in my family, and who you are. the climate in Vienna—it was a story-telling climate. Q: So you are a humanist? I just don’t reflect upon myself. I don’t even reflect A: I don’t know that I’m a humanist—I’m entertaining about whether I reflect or not. It’s not my habit. myself. I enjoy myself—dancing together with some- Q: Would you say that to be within the dance is better? body else. A: I’d say that it’s a good thing. I would never say that Q: Has this been a goal in your life, this dancing with anything’s better. Better for whom? No, I don’t see uni- somebody else? versal values—I don’t like to play that game. Lots of A: I don’t know—that I have to leave to my observers. people like to—I don’t. I avoid universal judgments. I’d The wonderful thing is that it crept by itself into like to undermine them as much as possible, wherever I the underground—because of its interesting usefulness. hear them. I was always like that. Yes, as a boy. I was Look for instance how and understanding of systems, always the worst student in class. I always understand like teamwork, is used in corporations, teamwork in that it’s me who sees something a certain way. And that building a motor car—having teams who make the whole it’s me who has a responsibility for saying that. I do not car. Twenty people build a car and they cooperate with want to drop it and shift to other people. I want to say each other and they feel very creative and not this passive my thing and it is my thing. trivial, mechanical labor.They can go home at the end of But I would not make judgments for others. The point the day and say, “We built twenty cars. We did it.” is—and this is a distinction I love to make—in morals you always tell the other how he has to act—“Thou Q: And this is the implicit conversation at work. shalt not.” It’s always told by someone who’s outside the A: Absolutely—what they do is converse. Everybody moral arena, telling someone else how to behave. gives the other something—to hold, or to put together. But ethics is when you say, “I shall” or “I shall not,” So it is a cooperative dance. when you make a decision how you want to be. We al-

HEINZ VON FOERSTER 55 Invitation to Dance ways have the freedom to decide what we want to be- the rejection of a priori knowledge. come. You cannot explain anything, you can only invite to We are all free—we are damned to be free, as Ortega y dance. You don’t reflect, you just do it. Gasset said. I always thought this existential insight was Q: Is that why you have never written a book? great. Other people might think it’s horrifying to be free. A: I don’t have the breath for writing a book—I can They would like to be told what to do. write short stories, or little articles, this idea or that idea I had several fascinating experiences as a child along is illuminated by me, but I don’t have the gigantic, tak- with my cousin Martin—we were always playing to- ing a big breath and exhaling five hundred pages. I can gether. We both became very interested in magic. And exhale about 20. we got a gift package bought in one of those fun stores Two difficulties which stop me from writing a book- with lots of wonderful magic tricks for children. So we the one was the first motto which Wittgenstein uses in opened it and wanted to perform these things, and found his Tractatus. Everything which you understand you can that they were utterly silly. They had nothing to do with say in three words. And the last words of the Tractatus: magic—it was just stupidity. So we thought—let’s do “Of which you cannot speak, you must pass over in si- some real magic. We were about 13 or 14—we observed lence.” that magic is exactly the same thing—the hearer, in this Q: What do you think of people who do write books? case the audience—interprets or makes the meaning of Who go on and on and on? what is being shown or talked about. So we have to think about what the others are experiencing when we A: They have never read Wittgenstein. [He laughs.] do magic. They are not ashamed to write a sentence which is four The question is: How do you tell a story so that it words long. transforms? First to see an elephant on the stage and Q: You’ve said act so as to always increase choice. then suddenly it’s gone. Of course it’s not gone—they You’ve also said that the purpose of the brain is to com- just don’t see it. How do you persuade them that they pute a stable reality. don’t see the elephant which is on the stage? That is the A: Yes, It is the function of the brain. The brain keeps problem for the magician. [He grins.] us from exploding—actually I should have long ago ex- What it is of course is pure magic. You can’t explain ploded. it—but you do it. Q: How do those two statements work together? Magic can’t be explained—it can just be done. A: The one is choice—the other is about reality. They And much of my thinking comes from this period. don’t conflict. Then later on slipping into the Vienna Circle of philoso- I have many choices of things even within just this dis- phers, particularly with the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein cussion. And every question you ask me is an invitation whose Tractatus I knew by heart. to increase my number of choices, because I could tell He would even talk to his family in terms of specific you this, or that, etc. etc. propositions in this work. But fortunately a nephew of And what you do in your interview, is keeping me Ludwig Wittgenstein was also enamored of this work and alive, to maintain the free choice of many other branches we would test each other about the propositions. So we of the stories I’m going to tell you. While we are sitting knew uncle Ludwig very well. here and I’m telling you this story, this reality is abso- This influences me very much—magic, Uncle Lud- lutely stable because you invited me to give you the story wig, and of course the idealistic school of philosophy, and here comes the stories. The point is to consider what Schopenhauer, Kant, to some extent Nietzsche. The a kind of a cognitive network there must be in order that priori, what is that except a trick to avoid responsibility. this stability which we experience is maintained. He admits that he’s still influenced by Wittgenstein and That is the interesting question.

HEINZ VON FOERSTER 56 Invitation to Dance Distinguishing the Observer An Attempt at Interpreting Maturana

Humberto Maturana is one of the few authors that nowadays engage it has gleaned through some process of abstraction from the construction of a wide, complete, esplicatory system, comparable the domain of its own experience. This insight, which to those of Plato or Leibniz. His “autopoietic” approach includes also Maturana expresses by saying that all cognitive domains the origin of the observer, meant as a methodological prius who pro- vide itself a view of the world. Here I try to follow the way Maturana arise exclusively as the result of operations of distinction sees the birth of res cogitans (entity which gains awareness of what which are made by the organism itself, was one of the it’s doing). I try to demonstrate that the basic activity of distinguishing points that attracted me to his work the very first time I can certainly lead to the distinction with which the observer is sepa- 13 rated from anything observed. But I conclude that—at least for this came across it . interpreter—the origin of active consciousness remains obscure, that On the basis of considerations, far from those that is, what works as the agent of distinguishing. induced Maturana to formulate the biological idea of au- I am indebted to Heinz von Foerster for useful critical comments topoiesis, I had come to the same conclusion. My own on a draft of this paper. path (some-what abbreviated and idealized) led from the early doubts of the Pre-Socratics via Montaigne, Berke- If there is no other, there will be no I. If there is no I, there will be none to make distinctions. ley, Vico, and Kant to pragmatism and eventually to Cec- —Chuang-tsu, 4th Cent., B.C.12 cato’s “Operational School” and Piaget’s “Genetic Epis- temology”14. This might seem irrelevant here, but since “Languaging”, as Maturana occasionally explains, Maturana’s expositions hardly ever refer to traditional serves, among other things, to orient. By this he means philosophy, it seems appropriate to mention that quite a directing the attention and, consequently, the individ- few of his fundamental assertions can be substantiated by ual experience of others, which is a way to foster the trains of thought which, from time to time, have cropped development of “consensual domains” which, in turn, up in the conventional history of . Although are the prerequisite for the development of language.— these trains of thought have occasionally irritated the of- Although the sentence (you might say, the languaging) ficial discipline of philosophy, they never had a lasting with which I have here begun is at best a pale imitation effect and remained marginal curiosities. I would sug- of Maturana’s style, it does perhaps represent one impor- gest, that the reason for this neglect is that throughout tant aspect of Maturana’s system: The circularity which, the occidental history of ideas and right down to our own in one way or another, crops up again and again. days, two requisites have been considered fundamental In my interpretation, it is absolutely indispensable in any epistemological venture. The first of these requi- that one diligently repeats to oneself, every time one no- sites demands that whatever we would like to call “true tices circularity in Maturana’s expositions, that this cir- knowledge” has to be independent of the knowing sub- cularity is not the kind of slip it would be in most tra- ject. The second requisite is that knowledgeis to be taken ditional systems of our Western philosophy. It is, on seriously only if it claims to represent a world of “things- the contrary, a deliberately chosen fundamental condi- in-themselves” in a more or less veridical15 fashion. tion that arises directly out of the autopoietic model. Ac- Although the sceptics of all ages explained with the cording to Maturana, the cognizing organism is informa- help of logical arguments that both these requisites are tionally closed. Given that it can, nevertheless, produce unattainable, they limited themselves to observing that descriptions; i.e., concepts, conceptual structures, the- absolute knowledge was impossible. Only a few of them ories, and eventually a picture of its world, it is clear went a step further and tried to liberate the concept of that it can do this only by using building blocks which

12Fung Yu-lan, Chuang-tzu: A new selected translation. Shanghai: The Commercial Press, 1933. Quoted by Alan Watts in The Watercourse Way, Pantheon Books, New York, 1975, p. 52. 13One difference is that, for me, with the activity of distinguishing, there arises the activity of relating, without which there would be no con- struction of more complex conceptual structures. That all knowing begins with making distinctions, was said not only by the ancient Chinese philosopher, but in our days also by George Spencer Brown (cfr, his Laws of Form, London: Allen & Unwin, 1969). 14Cf. my “Wissen ohne Erkenntnis”, in Gerhard Pasternak (Ed.), Philosophie und Wissenschaften: Das Problem des Apriorismus, Frankfurt/Bern: P. Lang, 1987. 15veridical: coinciding with reality.

Distinguishing the Observer 57 ERNST VON GLASERSFELD knowledge from the impossible constraints so that it the possibility of acquiring knowledge about an objective might be freely applied to what is attainable within the reality, a world-in-itself, as Kant would have said, can be acting subject’s experiential world. Those who took that demolished without biology or autopoiesis by the argu- step were branded outsiders and could therefore be dis- ments formulated by the sceptics. What then remains, regarded by professional philosophers. from my point of view, is the necessity to substitute a new explanation for the relation between our knowledge (i.e. every conceptual structure we use successfully) and A Closed Experiential World the “medium” in which we find ourselves living. This new explanation must be one that does not rely on the It is not my intention here to examine why the philo- assumption of an isomorphy that can never be demon- sophical climate has changed in the past twenty or thirty strated. years. The fact is that today one can defend positions that In this context it is crucial to remember that Matu- take a relativistic view of knowledge without at once be- rana set out to describe and explain all the phenomena ing branded a nihilist or dangerous heretic of some other that are called “cognitive” from a biological foundation. kind. Insofar as his project is successful, he can afford to dis- It is fortunate for Maturana, and for us, that he sur- regard the traditional theory of knowledge and to refer vived the last two decades in spite of his opposition to the to it only for the purpose of emphasizing the difference reactionary Chilean dictator Pinochet. I say fortunate, of his way of thinking. By departing from the history of because Maturana is undoubtedly one of those thinkers philosophy without entering into it, however, he runs the who, in past centuries, would have been led to the pyre risk of being misunderstood by all those whose notion of without recanting. cognition is still tied to the conventional idea of knowl- In philosophy the authoritarian dominance of the re- edge. Maturana therefore often finds himself having to alist dogma (be it materialistic or metaphysical) has cer- face misconceptions of the same kind as Piaget had to tainly been shaken by the manifested unreliability of po- face, who also reiterated that, in his theory, cognition is litical and social “truths” as well as by the revolution in not a means to acquire knowledge of an objective real- the views of physics. But the aversion against models of ity but serves the active organism in its adaptation to its cognition that explain knowledge as organism-dependent experiential world. and even as the product of a closed circuit of internal op- What Murana calls “operational effectiveness” cor- erations, has by no means disappeared. responds, in my constructivist perspective, to “viability” The comprehensive conceptual flow-chart that Matu- and coincides in the history of philosophy with the slo- rana often shows during his lectures, has on the left (from gan launched by the Pragmatists at the turn of the cen- the audience’s point of view) the break-down of explana- tury: “True is what works”. Maturana’s “operational ef- tion with objectivity, and on the right side, explanation fectiveness”, however, is more successful in its applica- without objectivity. Whether, in one’s own describing, tion than the Pragmatists “functioning”. All operations one chooses to be on the left or the right side is, accord- and their effectiveness, according to Maturana’s defini- ing to Maturana, a matter of emotion. As far as knowl- tion, lie and must lie within a domain of description that edge and language are concerned, the left side must cling is determined by the distinctions the particular observer to the belief that knowledge can capture objective reality has made. The generalized “functioning” of the Pragma- and that language can refer to and signify it. The concept tists, in contrast, fostered the temptation to look for an of objectivity that Maturana has in mind, is dependent on access to an “objective” world, on the basis that certain this belief. Maturana himself, if I have understood him ways of acting “function”, while others do not. Matu- correctly, does not share it, and places himself unequiv- rana’s model thwarts any such temptation in the bud, be- ocally on the right side, where objectivity is discarded cause it makes clear that “effectiveness” is a judgement (“put in parentheses”) and the only realities possible are made within a domain of experience which itself was realities brought forth by an observer’s operations of dis- brought forth by an observer’s activity of distinguishing. 16 tinction . That experiential worlds and their domains can be It seems to me that the left side of the schema was brought forth only by an acting observer is, I believe, added only to explain the misguided paths of conven- the one insight Hans Vaihinger lacked when he wrote his tional philosophy and does not have the same didactic brilliant Die Philosophie des Als Ob (The Philosophy of functions the right. That it is to be understood in this As If)—and because of this lack he was unable to close way, seems unquestionable to me, because the belief in

16Objectivity, in Maturana’s texts, does not indicate the opposite of the “subjectivity” of a single individual, but is used in the sense of clas- sical philosophy, namely to signify the intention or requirement to represent the world as it is “in itself”, without any additions, subtractions, or distortions caused by the experiencer.

Distinguishing the Observer 58 ERNST VON GLASERSFELD his system without shifting the theory of evolution into out someone’s activity of distinguishing. Just as Vico, an ontic17 reality18. the first constructivist thinker, said, the cognitive subject can know only facts, and facts are items the subject itself has made (Latin: facere). The observer, thus, arises from The Birth of the Observer his or her own ways and means of describing, which is to say, by distinguishing him- or her-self20. For me, one of the most difficult points in Maturana’s Here, then, I do see a connection to Descartes, but it conceptual edifice was his oft repeated assertion that the is not the connection to Cartesian dualism that was men- observer, too, could be derived, without further assump- tioned by Volker Riegas in his “Conversation with Mat- tions, from his formulation of the basic biological con- urana”. Descartes, set out to defeat scepticism by using ditions governing the interactions and the linguistic ac- doubt as the tool to separate all that was dubious from tivity of autopoietic organisms. It took me more than a the certain truths he hoped would be left. He found at decade to construct for myself an interpretation of this the end of his endeavor that there was only one thing he derivation. If I present it here, I do so with the emphatic could be certain of, namely that it was he himself who warning that it is, indeed, a personal interpretation that was engaged in the reflective activity of doubting. Since makes no claim whatever to authenticity. his investigation had been motivated by the hope that, in According to Maturana, all linguistic activity or “lan- spite of the sceptics’ arguments, a way could be found to guaging” takes place “in the praxis of living: we hu- reach an ontic reality, he now formulated the certainty of man beings find ourselves as immersed his own doubting as an ontological principle: cogito ergo in it”. Languaging, for Maturana, does not mean con- sum. veying news or any kind of “information”, but refers to a For Maturana this formulation is not acceptable, pre- social activity that arises from a coordination of actions cisely because the “sum” asserts existence in the onto- that have been tuned by mutual adaptation. Without such logical sense. Had Descartes seen—as Maturana explic- coordination of acting there would be no possibility of itly does—that the doubting he was so certain of, rested describing and, consequently, no way for the distinctions necessarily on distinctions which he himself was making made by an actor to become conscious. To become aware in his own experimental world, and not in any ontic real- of distinctions, is called observing. To observe oneself ity, then he might have said: “by distinguishing, I create as the maker of distinctions, therefore, is no more and no myself as observer.”—If I have understood Maturana, he less than to become conscious of oneself. Maturana has could easily accept this new formulation of the Cartesian recently described this very clearly: principle. . . . if we accept that what we distinguish depends on From my perspective, Maturana supplies, as it were, what we do, as modern physics does, we operate under the ladder which a consciousness must ascend in order the implicit assumption that, as observers, we are endowed with rationality, and that this need not or cannot be ex- to become observer. About the origin of that conscious- plained. Yet, if we reflect upon our experience as ob- ness he says nothing. That I, as a living organism, “find servers, we discover that our experience is that we find myself immersed in language”, means to me that I have ourselves observing, talking, or acting, and that any ex- the capability to find myself, and this capability, which planation or description of what we do is secondary to our experience of finding ourselves in the doing of what we involves a kind of reflection, belongs to what I call con- do19. sciousness. The salient point in this closed circle is the basic con- dition that Maturana repeats so frequently, namely that Representation and Memory what is observed are not things, properties, or relations of a world that exists “as such”, but rather the results of dis- In “The bringing forth of pathology”, an article Maturana tinctions made by the observer himself or herself. Con- recently wrote together with Carmen Luz Mendez and sequently, these results have no existence whatever with- Fernando Coddou, there is a section about language and 17ontic: of or relating to entities and the facts about them; relating to real as opposed to phenomenal existence. 18Hans Vaihinger, Die Philosophie des Als Ob. Berlin: Reuther & Reichard, 2nd edition, 1913. In the “Preliminary Remarks” to the introduction to his brilliant work, Vaihinger reproaches Pragmatism because, as he says, it sinks to “Utilitarianism of the worst kind” (p. XI), when it calls true “whatever helps us to put up with life”. Some 300 pages later, however he writes: “. . . today’s set of categories is merely the product of natural selection and adaption”. He is referring to “categories” in Kant’s sense. With this statement he clearly places Darwin’s theory of evolution into an ontological reality and turns the “categories”, i.e., the key elements in our conceptualisation of the experiential world, into “utilitaristic” tools of survival. 19Cf. . “Ontology of observing: The biological foundations of self-consciousness and the physical domain of existence”. Texts in Cybernetic Theory, American Society for Cybernetics, 1988; p. 36. 20Cf. Humberto Maturana, “Reality: The search for objectivity or the quest for a compelling argument”. The Irish Journal of Psychology, 1988, 9 (1), p. 26.

Distinguishing the Observer 59 ERNST VON GLASERSFELD the various forms of conversation. Two of these forms presentations of experiences that are now projected into are described in some detail: the direction of the not-yet-experienced. The first we shall call conversations of characterisation This consideration leads to another question that of- if they entail expectations that have not been agreed upon ten remains unanswered in the context of Maturana’s the- about the characteristics of the participants. The second ory: the question of memory and the mechanism that we shall call conversations of unjustified accusations and makes it possible to remember. As Maturana reiterates, recriminations if they entail complaints about unfulfilled expectations about the behaviors of the participants that also in this context everything one can say lies on the were not previously agreed upon21. (p. l55) level of descriptions, a level that is determined by the fact that one makes certain distinctions and not others. Given that Maturana, at various places in his writ- Maturana discards—as does Heinz von Foerster—the no- ings, makes it very clear that he considers unacceptable tion of a “storage” in which impressions, experiences, the concept that is usually linked with the word “repre- actions, relations, etc., could be deposited and preserved. sentation”, it may surprise one at first that, in the passage I fully agree with this. From my point of view, however, quoted here, he bases a discrimination of conversations it is nevertheless clear that the observer who describes on “expectations”. In my analysis, to have an expectation something as re-living, must have some indication that is to use one’s imagination in order mentally to compose the experience referred to is one that has been lived at something out of distinctions made earlier in the flow of least once before; and this realization of the repetition re- experience, but not available in the actual, present per- quires a mechanism that plays the role of what one calls ceptual field. To imagine such compositions, however, “to remember” in ordinary English. requires the ability to represent to oneself at least parts of In an autopoietic organism, every perturbation, ev- past experiences. The apparent contradiction disappears, ery experience, every internal event changes the struc- however, if one considers that the English word “repre- ture of the network that constitutes the organism. These sentation” is used to designate several different concepts, changes, of course, are not all of the same kind. Some two among which are designated in German by the two could be the forming of new connections and thus of words Darstellung and Vorstellung22. The first comes to new pathways in the network; others could be what one the mind of English-speakers whenever there is no ex- might call “lubricating” or facilitating an already exist- plicit indication that another is intended. This concept ing path. The observer, who speaks of re-living, must be is close to the notion of “picture” and as such involves able to distinguish a path that is being generated for the the replication, in a physical or formal way, of some- first time, from one that uses connections made at some thing else that is categorized as “original”. The second prior occasion. This would seem necessary, regardless concept is close to the notion of “conceptual construct”, of whether the description concerns the operations of an- and the German word for it, Vorstellung, is central in the other organism or the observer him- or her-self. But the philosophies of Kant and Schopenhauer. repetition of an experience can be ascertained only if the Maturana’s avversion against the word “representa- observer is able, at least temporarily, to step out of the tion” springs from the fact that, like Kant and Schopen- stream of experience, in order to distinguish the use of hauer, he excludes conceptual pictures or replications an already trodden path from the opening of a new one. of an objective, ontic reality in the cognitive domain In my terminology that means the observer must be ca- of organisms. In contrast, re-presentations in Piaget’s pable of reflection. sense are repetitions or reconstructionsof items that were Maturana makes it clear that in his model all act- distinguished in previous experience. As Maturana ex- ing and behavior of an organism is fully determined by plained in the course of the discussions at the ASC Con- the organism’s structure and organisation; hence it re- ference in October 1988, such representations are possi- quires no reflection. On the level of descriptions, how- ble also in the autopoietic model. Maturana spoke there ever, where what can be described is brought forth by of re-living an experience, and from my perspective this nothing but the observer’s operations of distinction, one coincides with the concept of representation as Vorstel- cannot, as far as I can see, manage without reflection. To lung, without which there could be no reflection. From my knowledge, Maturana says nothing about this point. that angle, then, it becomes clear that, in the autopoi- I assume, however, that the observer generates his or her etic organism also, “expectations” are nothing but re-

21Carmen Luz Mendez, Fernando Coddou & Humberto Maturana. “The beginning forth of pathology”, The Irish Journal of Psychology, 1988, 9 (1), 144–172. 22Further discussion of the conceptual muddle arising from the word “representation” will be found in my “Preliminaries to any theory or representation”, in C. Janvier (ed.), Problems of representation in the teaching and learning of mathematics. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Earlbaum, 1987—Here I would merely mention that it would be quite wrong to conclude from this example that German is a richer or more precise language. Coincidences of different concepts can be found in the other direction as well. (e.g., the two English words “to isolate” and “to insulate” are invariably translated with one and the same German word, in spite of the fact that there is a clearly specifiable conceptual difference).

Distinguishing the Observer 60 ERNST VON GLASERSFELD own ability to reflect simply by distinguishing him- or clearly, because, like Maturana, they have realized that her-self as the acting, observing, and eventually reflect- it is their own concepts, their own operations of distinc- ing subject in the particular domain of experience. tion that bring forth the experiential world which they describe in their science. The Excluded Reality Coherence instead of Foundation The question concerning the origin of the observer in Maturana’s theory is answered for me by continually At the beginning I spoke of the circularity in Maturana’s keeping in mind that not only the entire experiential theory, and then I tried to explicate, from my perspective, world must be considered the product of distinctions one some sectors of the conceptualcircle. If I have been at all makes oneself, but also that the flow of experience is successful, it should now be easy to dismantle one of the brought about by one’s own distinguishing oneself as the major objections that are made from more than one side observer. This, of course, is not a metaphysical answer against Maturana. Gerhard Roth’s precise formulation that purports to explain the genesis of an entity which may serve as an example. “exists” as ontic subject capable of “knowing” an on- The conception of such a cyclical theory raises the prob- tic world. Maturana does science and is careful to do it lem of the foundation and of the beginning. Either one be- in a scientific manner. This entails that he refrains from gins with the epistemological explication concerning the smuggling metaphysical assumptions into his model, as- observer, the conditions and the objects of his observations (distinction of objects, system-parts, etc.) in order, then, to sumptions that cannot be justified because they are log- reach a constructivist theory of living systems; or one be- ically unjustifiable. He has expressed this in various gins with an objectivist explanation of the organisation of ways: living systems which then leads to a theory of the brain, of cognition, and eventually to a theory of the observer. . . . an observer has no operational basis to make any Maturana attempts both simultaneously. . . statement or claim about objects, entities or relations as if 23 This conception must fail, because it gets entangled in they existed independently of what he or she does . the contradiction between the constructivist and the objec- And in the interview with Riegas he says: “nothing tivist approach24 (p. 88). can be said about a transcendental reality” (p. 53). The problem of foundation and the problem of be- This position is by no means new. One cand find ginning, as becomes clear already from this introduc- it in Vico, Kant, Schopenhauer, and recently in Richard tory passage of his critique, are in Roth’s view closely Rorty. New, however, is the biological interpretation of interwoven with one another. This may be adequate in the experiential world, which lays out the circumstances the treatment of traditional theories of knowledge, but in under which an observer can be brought forth. If one the critique of an epistemology that explicitly excludes takes this interpretation as working hypothesis, it has knowledge of an objective world-in-itself, such interlink- far-reaching consequences for our conceptual relation to ing seems to me inadmissible. the experiential world. Like all scientific models, Mat- This lack of ontological foundation is a criticism that urana’s “explains” the how of the phenomenon it deals has been voiced by quite a few readers of Maturana. In- with—the genesis of the observer—not the why. This terestingly, it is identical to the main criticism made by is par for the scientific course. Physics for example ex- the anonymous reviewer of Vico’s De antiquissima Italo- plains how it comes about that heavy objects “fall”, by rum sapientia in the Giornale de’ letterati in 171125. means of the concept of gravity; that heavenly bodies Vico, the review said, had produced an excellent expo- exert a gravitational pull, can perhaps be reduced to the sition of his philosophy but had not furnished a proof of curvature of space; but why space should be curved in an its truth. For a constructivist who has deliberately dis- ontic world is a question to which the physicist neither carded the notion that knowledge should correspond to has nor needs an explanatory answer—he may merely an independent ontological “reality”, the request of such observe that the assumption of curved space makes pos- a proof is an absurdity because he could not supply it sible some useful calculations and predictions. Those without contradicting the central thesis of his philoso- physicists who have become aware of the epistemolog- phy, namely that knowledge cannot and need not reflect ical foundations of their science, have said this quite an ontological world but must be judged by its function

23Humberto Maturana, ”Reality: The search for objectivity or the quest for a compelling argument”. The Irish Journal of Psychology, 1988, 9 (1), p. 30. 24Gerhard Roth, “Wissenschaftlicher Rationalismus und holistische Weltdeutung”. In Gerhard Pasternak (Ed.), Rationalitaet und Wissenschaft, (Vol. 6), Bremen: Zentrum Philosophische Grundlagen der Wissenschaften, 1988. 25Vico’s De antiquissima was published with an excellent Italian translation by Francesco Saverio Pomodoro and the discussion in theVenetian journal by Stamperia de’ Classici Latini, Naples, 1858.

Distinguishing the Observer 61 ERNST VON GLASERSFELD in the experiential world and by its coherence. nies that possibility, and it is therefore quite consistent Maturana, even more explicitly than Vico, says that that he does not specify an obligatory external starting- knowledge manifests itself in “effective action”. He also point, for this would be equivalent to an “unconditional makes it clear that his theory is deliberately circular. metaphysical principle” which would have to be consid- Thus it inappropriate to demand a beginning. A circle is ered valid without experiential justification. On which characterized by, among other things, the fact that it has the theoretical edifice could be erected by pure logic. The no beginning. In Maturana’s edifice every point arises critics’ misunderstanding may have originated from the out of the preceding one—much as when, in thick fog fact that Maturana, like the rest of us, is obliged to use a on an Alpine glacier, one places one foot in front of the language in his expositions that has been shaped and pol- other without ever seeing what lies further ahead or fur- ished by more than two thousand years of realism—naive ther behind one; and as sometimes happens in such a fog, or metaphysical—a language that forces him to use the after hours of walking, one realizes that one is walking word “to be” which, in all its grammatical forms, implies in one’s own footsteps. The fact that one has begun the the assumption of an ontic reality. An attentive reader of circle at a specific place could be perceived only from a Maturana, however, can hardly help noticing that almost highervantagepoint, if the fog hadlifted andmade possi- everything he says, is intended to “orient” us away from ble a comprehensive view. But the fog that obstructs our that inevitable implication. view of ontic reality cannot lift, because, as Kant already Insofar as my interpretation of Maturana’s autopoi- saw, it is inextricably built into our ways and means of etic theory is a viable one, I cannot discover any incon- experiencing. For that reason, a meticulous investiga- sistencies in it that would destroy its coherence. tion such as Maturana’s, can only show that, regardless From my point of view, however, coherence is a nec- of where we step into the circle, we can neither come essary but not a sufficient criterion for the evaluation to an end of the path, nor, if we retraced our steps, to a of an all-comprehensive philosophical system. Leibniz’ beginning. At best we could perhaps recall the point we monadology, for example, left nothing to be desired with distinguished as a presupposition at the beginning of our regard to coherence; nevertheless it did not succed as an search. applicable view of the world. In the final analysis, the If everything said is said by an observer on the ba- value of Maturana’s work will depend on whether the sis of his or her operations of distinction, this must be success, which its applications in the praxis of our expe- considered valid not only for particular domains of the rience are having at present, will turn out to be a lasting experiential world but for everything we do, think, or one. And finally—what to me seems “emotionally” more talk about. In Maturana’s view of the world, one can important—we shall have to see whether the beginnings request neither external ontological foundations nor an of an ethic he has recently brought forth will help to ful- “absolute” beginning. Both demands are not only mean- fill the hope that a consensual domain can be created on ingless but also superfluous. “Foundation” in the onto- our endangered planet, a domain established around the logical sense presupposes that one considers access to consensus on collaboration that might make possible the an observer-independent world possible. Maturana de- survival of a human culture.

Distinguishing the Observer 62 ERNST VON GLASERSFELD Communication: Rhythm and Structure William S. Condon

Human history demonstrates the fundamental role of normal listener behavior and has been observed in many reason in human existence and identity. The universe is different cultures. It is also a basic characteristic of in- ordered and the human mind can perceive and know as- fant behavior and has been observed as early as twenty pects of that order. Nature’s structure and power become minutes after birth. The same organizational processes available for human purposes. That we can know, use, which mediate self-synchrony may mediate interactional and communicate to each other about the universe im- synchrony. The organization of movement of the lis- plies a fundamental participation in the order pervading tener’s body thus is in precise rhythmic synchrony with that universe. Observations from the sound-film micro- the rhythmic pattern of the speech of the person he is lis- analysis of human communicationalbehavior, which will tening to. This occurs very rapidly, i.e., within the first be the central topic of this chapter, may provide insight frame following sound onset, which is 42 milliseconds into some aspects of that participation. (msec). Similar synchronization with sound has been ob- Humans evolved in a universe which has optical and served in Rhesus monkeys and may exist in most hearing acoustic properties. In this process eyes and ears devel- creatures. The hearing creature reflects the structure of oped. Eyes and ears are one form of Nature’s expression the acoustic universe in which it exists. Human behav- of her optical and acoustic structure. Ears and hearing ior and communication are also rhythmically organized would probably not exist in a universe lacking acoustic and this will be discussed. The parallelism between the properties. The ears and the acoustic properties of nature acoustic order of nature and that same order revealed re- are distinguishable but not separate aspects of a unitary ceptively in human behavior implies a linkage with na- system within which “hearing” activity occurs. There ture which may be basic to perception and the acqui- must always be continuous and stable natural structures sition of knowledge. This would also be fundamental constituting and supporting human behavior. Intensive for human communication. Sound-film microanalysis of sound-film micro-analysis of human speaking and listen- various disorders such as autism, dyslexia, hyperactivity, ing behavior has revealed a linkage or participation of the Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, schizophre- organization of human behavior with the structure of na- nia, and stuttering has revealed “jumps” and “jerks” in ture. While speech is emitted by another human being the body following sounds. This lead to the hypothe- and, at the present time, can be built into machines, the sis of an abnormal multiple entrainment to sound. The point of actual contact is through sound waves imping- normal entrainment appears to be out-of-phase in these ing on the listener’s ear. This linkage involves forms of disorders, resulting in one side of the body entraining rhythmic synchronization. The present chapter will seek in a delayed fashion relative to the other. There are usu- to explore this with observation from the microanalysis ally four such abnormal entrainments within the first sec- of speaking and listening behavior. The following para- ond following sound onsets, hence the term “multiple en- graph briefly summarizes the material to be presented in trainment.” The. existence of abnormal entrainment in- this chapter1. directly supports the general hypothesis of entrainment. A speaker’s body is observed to move in organiza- tions of change which are precisely synchronized with the articulatory structure of his own speech across mul- Communication tiple levels. This is a unified, rhythmic, and hierarchic organization of great precision which has been called There is a translation of the order of the universe around self-synchrony. Further, and surprisingly, the body of us into forms of mental order. This seems to be achieved a listener moves in organizations of change which are by the passage of forms of order through different kinds precisely synchronized with the articulatory structure of of media yet preserving the form of the order. Through a speaker’s speech, and often with inanimate sounds as a complex and little understood process the order consti- well. This has been called interactional synchrony or en- tuting the speaker’s thoughts (which may be microneu- trainment. It appears to be a universal characteristic of roelectric patterns) is transformed into ordered muscular

1Note: This research was partially supported by BRSG Grant No. RR 05487.

WILLIAM S. CONDON 63 Communication: Rhythm and Structure operations of breath, vocal cords, tongue, and mouth, re- constitute units. In time this led to the development of sulting in ordered vibrations in the air. The vibrations an organizational view of the structure of human com- may also come from a loud speaker or a recording. In munication where forms of organization as organization 1930 investigators listened in a distant telephone receiver were studied rather than discrete, atomistic items. The to the output from a cat’s auditory nerve in response to behavior had to be studied intensively over and over for words spoken to the cat’s. ear and could clearly under- the forms of organization which it exhibited. The inves- stand the speech. The airwaves, in turn, transport that tigator could not know in advance what they might be or order to a listener where forms of re-transformation oc- how they would be manifested. cur. The listener’s eardrum vibrates in synchrony with Speaker and listener behaviors need to be preserved the ordered pattern conducted through the air. This or- or stored so that these complex and rapid communi- der is then mechanically conducted through the ossicles cational events can be studied intensively. The basic to the oval window and then into the fluid in the cochlea method used in micro-behavioral analysis is the sound which moves the hair cells. The hair cells transform the motion picture film with special analyzing equipment. order into electrical impulses which are transmitted to the The films are frame-numbered, thus providing a unique brain to become thoughts of the listener. This all occurs number for each frame. Since there are a given num- very rapidly. There is no vacuum between the speaker ber of frames per second, usually 24, the film also serves and the listener or between man and his universe. There as a clock to time the behavior stored on it. The units is a translation of order from one form into another. of speech are segmented in relation to frame numbers at the one frame level using an Audio-Visual Analyzer (AVA). This requires linguistic training. The body mo- Method tion of the interactants can also be analyzed at the same one frame level with a Time-Motion Analyzer (TMA). The investigator’s method often contains implicit per- This is a 16rnm movie projector which can be operated spectives which may blind him to many forms of or- manually to study body motion frame-by-frame. How der. This interferes with the observation of new forms. the body parts change in relation to each other and to He tends to perceive what his own perspectives constrain speech can be evaluated in relation to the frame numbers him to perceive, obscuring forms which his method does (Condon, 1970). not provide for. The viewpoint shapes the categories by which the material is analyzed. Many investigators se- lect their units prior to analysis and look for connections The Micro-Units of Human Behavior between these a priori units. The experimental paradigm is of this type. The variables are selected in advance and Human speech and body motion are rapid, complicated, controlled so that inferences about the relationships can and essentially continuous processes. Sound-film micro- be made. analysis, which covers an approximaterange from 1/96th An “intensive analysis” approach, where the data are of a second up to two-or three-seconds, provides a “mi- studied over and over in the search for natural order and croscope” to study the complicated organization of both units (as in the writer’s laboratory), can lead to the obser- normal and pathological behavior. When a normal per- vation of new patterns. It cannot replace the experimental son speaks there are often many parts of the body mov- paradigm,but it can be veryvaluable. The universeis just ing at the same time. The arms, hands, fingers, head, as ordered outside the laboratory as it is in the laboratory. etc., may be moving together almost constantly in com- For example, a few years ago little was known about the plex,’changing patterns. While this is occurring, speech micro-organization of natural, everyday human speaker is emerging simultaneously. This ongoing complexity, and listener behavior. The first task was to determine where several body parts are moving together simultane- the units and levels of units in that process. The method ously while speech also is occurring, must be faced by used was that of viewing sound films of human interac- any investigator seeking the micro-units of behavior. A tion over and over, often at the frame-by-frame level, for unit of behavior has to be something in the relationships literally thousands of hours until the nature of the units these changing aspects of behavior have with each other of behavior was discovered. In time it became clear that since they are occurring at the same time. The units of it was not the individual body parts per se which con- behavior are not an arm unit, which is added to a head stituted the units of behavior but characteristic forms of unit, which is added to a leg unit, etc. The body parts are organization which the body parts seemed constrained not the units of behavior. The organization of the rela- to follow when they moved. These forms of organiza- tionships of change of the movements of the body parts tion were the only systematic and continuously present (and speech) constitute the units of behavior. A unit of features of behavior at the micro-level which seemed to behavior is a form of organization, and has been called

WILLIAM S. CONDON 64 Communication: Rhythm and Structure a “process unit” to emphasize this (Condon, 1963). This tion is continuous yet there are “discrete-like” unit forms is a new hypothesis concerning the nature of units of hu- (process units) within the on-going process. man body motion at the micro-level. It may also apply to In Figure 1 a young woman, approximately 25-years- most animal behavior. In summary, behavior is already old, is seated talking to a young man of the same age. As organized at the minimal level and is not composed, of part of her conversation she rapidly says, “an so I’d get pieces which are put together to form organized behav- put back in that way.” The process unit at the micro-level ior. has the following characteristics, using the movements Figure 1 illustrates units of behavior as forms of or- co-occurring with the /s/ of “so” to illustrate: there is ganization. It shows the sound-film microanalysis of a a synchronous change of the body parts together, i.e., segment of a speaker’s speech and body motion from a where they change direction and/or velocity. Not all film taken at approximately 96 f.p.s. (high speed). It in- body parts need change, some may sustain a given direc- dicates the surprising amount of behavioral change that tion for a longer interval, which is part of a longer form can occur within one second. Process units (which seem (a higher order process unit in a hierarchy of units). The like pulses) are characterized by a “sustaining of a rela- changes which initiate the beginning of a process unit al- tionship together” for a brief period of time by whatever ways differ from the changes which indicate the ending body parts happen to be moving at that moment. Behav- of that process unit, which is also the beginning point of ior is a serial flow of such pulse-like forms. Body mo- a new process unit.

Figure 1: Sound-film microanalysis of the hierarchically synchronized speech and body motion of a woman saying, “an’ so I’d get put back in that way.” Film was taken at approximately 96 f.p.s. The notation is fairly simple. For example, E = extend, F = flex, U = up, D = down, AD adduct,AB = abduct, S = Supinate, P = pronate, RO rotate out, Q = incline of the head, etc. The lower case letters refer to speed: f = fast and s = slow.

The sustaining of the same movement by each of the set of the process unit co-occurringwith /s/, for example, body parts moving during that brief interval (which is there is a change of direction in the head, eyes, fingers also the sustaining of a relationship between them) forms 1 and 2 of the right hand, and the right shoulder. There the “content” of the process unit. This “quantum pulse” is a change in velocity of the right wrist and the right el- or “bundle” nature of organization always seem to be bow. No changewas detectedin the extensionof the right there no matter what body parts happen to be moving so thumb which continued to extend. Again, that which that forms of organization are the most pervasive struc- forms the content of the process unit is the sustaining tural features of behavior. It seems obligatory that body of the same relationship between the moving body parts. motions follow these organizational forms. At the on- That. these quanta or pulses of body motion also co-

WILLIAM S. CONDON 65 Communication: Rhythm and Structure occur isomorphically with the units of speech provides the minimal level appears to be formed of an on-going additional support for their existence. Across the emis- flow of unified speech and body motion process units. sion of /s/ the head sustains a left and up slight move- Both seem to be the product of a more basic neurologi- ment, while the eyes move left, down, and the lids close cal organization. The body motion process unit or pulse beginning a slight blink, while the right thumb continues accompanying the /n/ of “an” has a sustained organiza- to extend, while fingers 1 and 2 of the right hand hold, tional integrity which is isomorphic with the articulation while there is acceleration in the left wrist and elbow, of /n/. This is different from a similarly sustained body while the right shoulder rotates out and adducts. One can motion organization accompanying /s/ and this, in turn, sweep manually back and forth across these five frames is different from that accompanying /of, etc. The words with the analyz- ing projector and there is a smooth pulse also usually have different body motion forms accompa- or flow of motion where all the body parts are sustaining nying them. Across “an” the head goes left, right finger their relationship of movement together. No interstitial 1 extends and the thumb extends. Across “so” fingers changes can be detected in any of the movements. 1 and 2 hold, i.e., do not move. Across “I’d” the right This “sustaining together” also illustrates another ba- elbow extends and fingers 2, 3, and 4 flex slightly, etc. sic principle of the organization of normal behavior, i.e., There are three phrases that have co-occurring but differ- interaction across multiple levels. The phones are emer- ent body motion forms. Her right arm which is resting gently accompanied by a form of body motion (or pro- in her lap sweeps up and right to shoulder height across cess unit), the words are accompanied by other forms of the phrase, “an so I’d get.” It sweeps left in front of her body motion, and the phrases and sentences are accom- body during “put back” and then directly down to her panied by still other forms of body motion. It is this lap across, “in that way,” reaching her lap just as the ut- sustaining together of the units of speech/body motion terance ends. The utterance, as a totality which lasts ap- across varying temporal durations which character-’ izes proximately one second, is accompanied by the right arm the hierarchic organization of speaker behavior. For ex- leaving and returning to the lap. As will be seen later, ample, fingers 1 and 2 of the right hand ceased movingat such one second movement forms also are characteris- the end of the /n/ of “an,” held their lack of movementex- tic of speaker behavior. Thus, normal behavior follows actly across the emission of the total word “so” and then forms of structural organization. The study of pathologi- began to flex at the beginning of “I’d.” A model where cal behavioralso reveals forms of organization,but forms discrete lower parts or pieces are put together to form which differ from normal structural organization. larger parts which are in turn put together to form still There is high reliability between independent judges larger parts is inadequate to deal with such organization. in segmenting inanimate sound, speech, and body mo- The process unit sustaining across /s/ differs from that tion process units at the one frame level (Condon, 1981). sustaining across /o/. The /o/ process unit was not added For example, Plooij (in press) in speaking about self- to the /s/ process unit to create a larger /so/ body mo- synchrony says, tion sustaining unit. There is no way the /o/ unit added “at certain moments (frames) in time several body seg- to the /s/ unit could go back in time to create the hold ments such as the head, a hand, a finger or a foot change of fingers 1 and 2 which sustained precisely across the direction of movement. Condon calls these moments entire word “so.” This principle also applies to the larger process-unit-boundaries. Personally I verified Condon’s finding in newborn babies, although my study was not set forms of body motion which accompany speech across up with this purpose in mind. Instead, I studied the devel- wider forms such as phrases. We seem to be dealing with opment of preverbal communication in the human mother- a form of hierarchic organization where multiple levels infant interaction in a face-to-face situation. The main are emerging together simultaneously. Behavioral orga- part of this study consisted of frame-by-frame analysis of nization is not “composed of” or “more than” these mov- filmed sessions. In doing so, one could not help noticing the self-synchrony. For instance, the eyes would blink and ing body parts and speech synchronized together, it is in a foot would bend at the same time.” all of them at all levels simultaneously. The investigator While more work needs to be done to demonstrate begins with organized behavior, the living, talking peo- the ability of independent judges to reliably segment be- ple in the film, and discovers their behavior to consist of havior at the micro-level, the work that has been done many forms of organization integrated together. All nor- supports the ability to do so. mal behavior studied thus far is similar in organizational principle to that presented in Figure 1. The precision with which the speaker’s body accom- Behavior as Wave Phenomena panies his/her speech in a hierarchically organized fash- ion also can be seen in Figure 1. Most of the phone types The hypothesis was presented that the normal speaker’s have co-occurring process units. A speaker’s speech at speech and body motion are forms of organization which

WILLIAM S. CONDON 66 Communication: Rhythm and Structure are precisely synchronized across multiple levels simul- As noted earlier, it is as if there is an on-going,multi- taneously. As a person talks he uses small sounds (the level organizational rhythm hierarchy in terms of which phone types) which are integrated together into words, behavior behaves. Both speech and body motion obey the words into phrases, and phrases into sentences. The this hierarchic rhythm structure and are simultaneously head, arms, fingers, legs, etc. move in complex patterns synchronized across these multiple levels in their co- of sustaining and changing together which accompany occurring. The on-going flowing and changing together these units of speech across multiple levels simultane- of the body parts seems to reflect an underlying orga- ously. Speech and body motion also exhibit character- nizational structure. The characteristic form of order of istic periodicities and can be interpreted as wave-like. the organizational flow of speaker behavior is thus quite Thus, the movements, gestures, and speech that one sees clearly revealed to be that of an on-going process which and hears when a person speaks can be interpreted as is formed of several levels of waves emerging simulta- wave forms which are hierarchically organized. This also neously. The behavior forming the longer wave begins at suggests that they may be producedby similarly synchro- the same moment that the smaller wave forms begin. The nized brain processes. smaller waves are integrated with the longer wave but are In one analysis of phone types the mean length not added together to form it. Metaphorically, it is as if of 1055 consecutively analyzed phones was 1.61 film the organism were constantly generating an integrated, frames (or 15 per second using 24 f.p.s. film). Short, multi-Ievel wave hierarchy which behavior necessarily rapidly spoken words would also fit this periodicity at followed. All behavior appears to be integrated together times, depending upon speed of articulation. In the word as a function of a basic, organized rhythm hierarchy,e.g., length analysis the polysyllabic words were divided into the speaker’s eye blinks, which might seem to occur ran- their component syllables. The mean length of 365 con- domly, actually occur synchronously with the rest of the secutive words (pauses omitted) from the same film was behavior and tend to occur at articulatory change points, 4.5 frames (5.3 per second). Utterances are seen very primarily at phone boundaries. (This was seen in relation clearly in body motion with a marked one second pe- to the word “so” in Figure 1.) riodicity observed in one study. In that study 96 con- Behavior appears phenomenologically to be both secutive speech sequences from both speakers in an in- discrete-like and continuous simultaneously, without teraction were analyzed. The one second rhythm form contradiction, providing all organizational form where was usually manifested by a head, or arm, or other body the discrete-like is fused into the continuous. The smaller part sustaining a given direction across an utterance, or wave forms get integrated into the larger wave form. Fur- some aspect of the body moving from a given position thermore, the speech/body motion wave hierarchy of nor- then back to that position. Twelve of the 96 utterances mal speaker self-synchrony appears to exhibit periodici- were approximately 1/2 second in length and the others ties similar to the Delta, Theta, Alpha, and Beta (DTAB) aver-aged 23.9 frames (24 frames equal one second). The waves of the brain revealed by electroencophalography range was from 1929 frames (Condon & Ogston, 1967). (EEG). This may simply be coincidence, but the similar- Another study was conducted to further explore the ities are striking. The DTAB waves may occur together at one second rhythm. One-hundred and eighty-eight (188) the same time in the brain (Duffy,1981). This is also true consecutive natural speech sequences from both speak- of the behavioral waves. The brain waves are sequen- ers in another 24 f.p.s. filmed dyadic interaction were tially continuous and so are the behavioral waves. The analyzed. Thirty of the 188 sequences consisted of one body motion organization accompanies the phone types, or two word replies to questions with “yes” or “no” or while it accompanies the words, while it accompanies “um hum.” These were excluded so that 158 sequences the phrases and sentences. This simultaneous multi-level were examined. The major criteria for segmentation at accompaniment was seen in Figure 1. The present hy- this level were the sustained body motion forms, as de- pothesis is that human speech/body motion behavior can scribed above, occurring during a spoken sequence. The be interpreted as behavioral waves having continuous, hi- mean frame duration of the 158 sequences was 24 with a erarchically integrated series of waves. The analyses of range from 1930 frames. Among the 158 sequences were behavior from 1/96th of a second up to one or two sec- 48 which occurred in relative isolation, i.e., the speech onds are revealing forms of order which appear to link sequence was preceded and followed by silence. All of brain and behavior. If the hierarchic organization of the these fell within the 19-30 frame range, so that study- behavioral waves is synchronous with, or a reflection of, ing speech length alone (without the accompanyingbody the brain waves, sound-film microanalysis can contribute motion forms) also showed a marked one second period- to the study of how behavior reflects brain wave pro- icity. The number of frames per word in the sequences cesses. For example, it may suggest that the brain waves examined ranged from 1-8 with a mean of 4.56 frames. are operating together synchronously and hierarchically

WILLIAM S. CONDON 67 Communication: Rhythm and Structure like the behavioral waves. It would also suggest that the ior and communication may be organizationally linked brain wave organization of a listener may entrain with the together. Behavior and the brain processes which me- structure of the incoming speech of a speaker. This will diate it are not separate systems, but may constitute an be seen below in the discussion of listener behavior. A organizational integrity in the individual and between in- view is emerging that multiple aspects of human behav- dividuals.

Figure 2: Illustrative schema of behavioral wave periodicities compared to brain wave periodicities.

Figure 2 presents a speculative schema of behavioral small words and vowels have their rhythm, the words wave periodicities compared to brain wave periodicities have their rhythm, and the phrases and sentences have based on phone, word, and sentence length analyses. The their rhythm. The body motion also exhibits levels sentence length utterances tend to have a periodicity sim- of rhythms which are synchronized with these speech ilar to the Delta waves. Words may have similar periodic- rhythms. The significant fact, however, is that these lev- ity as Theta waves. Vowels, rapidly spoken short words, els of waves are also hierarchically integrated together. and syllables appear to be of Alpha frequency. Phone This hierarchic integration, where the different levels are types seem to exhibit Beta periodicity. There is a great synchronized, provides a continuous organizational form deal of flexibility, so that units of varying size can fit into which may contribute to the integration of smaller units the hierarchy. within larger units. Figure 1 illustrates the rhythmic pattern which is characteristic of speaker behavior. Rhythm is not a sep- arate force added to this behavior from outside. It is a Listener Entrainment to Speaker form of order or organization discovered in behavior and Speech is an aspect of behavioral organization. Rhythm seems to provide predictable pulses or points which may facili- The preceding section concerned the sound-film micro- tate synchronizationof the sustainings and changes of the analysis of speaker behavior. The following section body parts which give rise to the process units. Speaker will deal with the synchronization or entrainment of behavior is rhythmically organized and this appears to the listener’s body motion organization with the artic- facilitate the emergence of hierarchically synchronized ulatory pattern of the speaker’s speech. The listener’s structure. In a sense rhythm adds power to behavior. body moves almost as synchronously with the speaker’s All aspects of behavior are integrated together and speech as the speaker’s body does. Entrainment of the function together. Each serves as the context for the other listener’s body motion with the speaker’s speech occurs during analysis. Rhythm, enabling behavioral changes within a 42 msec latency, like a car following a continu- to occur synchronously, may help link them in an orga- ously rapidly curving road. This suggests that there may nizational structure. Several levels of behavior seem to be a basic short-latency, auditory-motor (striatal) link- emerge simultaneously in terms of a rhythm hierarchy. age in the brain stem where the motor processes reflect The phone waves have their characteristic rhythms, the the structure of the incoming auditory signals, especially

WILLIAM S. CONDON 68 Communication: Rhythm and Structure speech. Figure 3 below illustrates the precision which /§/ occurs next and lasts three frames. Finally, the termi- is characteristic of entrainment. Two adult males who nal, voiced /r/ occurs, lasting four frames. The total word never met before are seated and talking. The sound film covers 11 frames or just slightly under V2 second. The was made at 24 f.p.s. The speaker says, “Put the pres- body motion of the listener exhibits micro-movement or- sure on people on the job market.” The word “pressure,” ganizations (process units) which occur isomorphically which will be used to illustrate entrainment, exhibits a with the lengths of the units of the speaker’s speech. contrasting sequence of voiced and unvoiced segments. This is seen particularly well in the listener’s process An oscilloscopic display of the speech is presented to unit that occurs with the three frames of /§§§/ in “pres- show that the sound pattern can be displayed visually. sure.” Fingers 1 and 2 of the right hand’had been flex- The voiced / 5 / sound terminating the word “the” is fol- ing. They change direction and extend slightly across the lowed by the /p/ of “pressure” which is unvoiced and three frame duration of /§§§/ and then flex again at the lasts two frames. This is then followed by the voiced /re/ end of the segment. The head also moves down slightly also lasting two frames. The /r/ flows smoothly into the in contrast to a preceeding upward movement and a fol- /E/, forming a unitary articulatory gesture. The unvoiced lowing left movement.

Figure 3: Sound-film microanalysis of speaker and listener body motion during the word “pressure” shows interac- tional synchrony or entrainment. The listener’s process units entrain with the speaker’s speech.

The behavior of the listener in Figure 3 is not like listener happens to be moving at that moment will be or- that of a robot. His process units seen at normal projec- ganized and will follow the organization of the speaker’s tion speed transform smoothly into each other and cannot speech. Further, the listener’s body often speeds up and be seen by the nakedeye. Theyare part ofthe flow of on- slows down in relation to the softness or loudness of the going behavior, but they are precisely synchronized with speaker’s speech. For example, there is accelerated lis- the articulatory structure of the speaker’s speech. Such tener movement with the voiced /re/ and with the voiced precise synchrony occurred constantly throughout this terminal /r/ in contrast to the unvoiced /p/ and /§/. This 12 minute sound-film. It has been observed in all nor- is seen in the subscript f which means “fast.” There is a mal interactants studied thus far, including films of many precise isomorphism between the flow of the speaker’s different cultures. The form of organization of the lis- speech and the body motion of the listener. This occurs tener’s process units seems to be modulated by the struc- all the time and the illustration of it in Figure 3 is not an ture of the speaker’s speech. Whatever body parts the isolated instance.

WILLIAM S. CONDON 69 Communication: Rhythm and Structure The concept of synchrony is central to the hypotheses phrases are rarer. of self-synchrony and entrainment. The units of speech A normal infant as young as twenty minutes follow- and body motion are forms of organization or order. The ing birth can entrain with adult speech almost as well patterns which form the process units of body motion as an adult. This suggests a biological preparedness for during speaking behavior are forms of organization and speech and human communication. (Entrainment may are identified by their ’order and not directly by the spe- even occur in utero.) An example of the phenomenon of cific body parts which happen to be expressing that or- entrainment in a two-day old infant is shown in Figure der at a given moment. No matter what body parts may 4 (based on a 30 fps, 16 mm sound film). The infant is be,moving during speaking they tend to occur with char- awake and alert lying in a crib. The male physician is acteristic forms of order which are synchronous with the standing to the infant’s left out of view and says, “Look co-occurring flow of speech. This is also true of listen- over here ... hum ... not over there.” The infant’s or- ing behavior, but the phone types and word levels are pri- ganizations of movement during “not over there” were marily entrained with, while larger movements covering microanalyzed and are shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Description of 2-day-old infant’s movements during “not over there” spoken to the infantby a male physician out of the infant’s range of view.

The first word “not” lasts for seven frames or approx- The whole phrase lasts 32 frames or just slightly over one imately V5 of a second. What can be seen most clearly second and illustrates again how much movementcan oc- is the left arm sweeping up and out through frames cur in such a brief period, even in a two-day-old infant. 013208–013214. The baby had been still and begins to There are three clear process units which occur isomor- entrain at the onset of the word “not.” The second word phically with the three words uttered by the adult. This “over” takes 10 frames, from 013215–013224. The left infant entrained in this same precise fashion across 89 arm now moves back in toward the face and across it. consecutive words (in phrases) spoken by the physician. The arms cross each other oveer the baby’s face. As this This infant was among 16 normal 2–4-day-old neonates is occurring the baby’s left leg sweeps rapidly outward who exhibited precise entrainment to adult speech (Con- horizontally. Across the word “there” the left arm now don & Sander, 1974). A recent intensive analysis of a 48 moves back to the left. The word “there” occurs across f.p.s. film (high speed) of a two-day-old infant showed frames 013225–013239. The left leg comes down rapidly marked entrainment to adult speech. There was precise toward the mattress and the fingers of the right hand flex. entrainment of the organizationsof change of the infant’s

WILLIAM S. CONDON 70 Communication: Rhythm and Structure body motion with both speech and tap sounds. The in- enough to detect the phenomena.” Peery (1980) exam- fant soon habituated to the tap sounds. It was as if the ined the facial approach and withdrawal between mother organization of the infant’s body motion was being gen- and infant. He states, “The most powerful relation is erated by the structure of the mother’s speech. The infant the simultaneous one. This simultaneity reflects the syn- exhibited micro-startle movements in response to the tap chronous coordination of changes in direction of move- sounds within the first two frames following sound on- ment by the adult-infant dyad.” He later says, set (within 42 msec). These were quite clear and con- “The same processes that produce interactional syn- vincing. The sustainings and changes of the articula- chrony may be influencing the simultaneous regulation of tory units of the mother’s speech were paralleled by al- the facial behavior we observed. In utero the fetus has most simultaneous sustainings and changings in the or- considerable experience with adult (mother’s) rhythms of movement and with the relation between adult speech and ganization of change of the infant’s movements. The movement. This experience may provide the base for the infant’s movements would also accelerate in synchrony high degree of movement coordination required in both in- with louder sounds, especially the vowel sounds. (Speak- teractional synchrony and the simultaneous changes in fa- ers also characteristically accelerate movementwith their cial behavior reported here.” own vowel sounds.) Kato et al. (1983) in Japan conducted an intensive Reliability studies have been conducted on entrain- replication study of infant entrainment to adult speech. ment. In an unpublished study, a judge segmented the His group studied 32 full term healthy infants. The speaker’s speech blind from the listener’s body motion mother, pediatrician, and a nurse were asked to talk to the using a film with only numbers and a sound track. The infants using a carefully designed paradigm. The infants same judge then segmented, the listener’s body motion were videotaped and the results analyzed through linkage using. a different frame-numbered film and without of the TV with a computer. The neonates were found to sound. This blind analysis resulted in an agreement of synchronize with adult speech but not with white noise, 97%. This procedure has obvious defects but is sugges- tapping sounds, and non-patterned sounds. They state, tive. In another more rigorous unpublished study 188 “Our work showed that the discrimination of voices was consecutive frames of two speakers’ speech were seg- established within only the first week and that a neonate mented by one judge and the body motion of two lis- can correlate his movement with the voice not only from teners’ behavior was segmented by another judge with his mother but also from a doctor and nurse, who had an agreement of 87%. In a third study two independent been taking care of the neonates.” And, further on they judges analyzed the body motion of six normal children say, “Our results suggest not only that the organization in response to 20 sounds for 10 frames following the of the neonate’s motor behavior reacts to and is synchro- onset of each sound. A significantly greater number of nized with the organized speech behavior of adults in process unit boundaries occurred in relation to the frame his environment, but that the neonate’s movements in- following sound onset for both judges for all six subjects. fluence adult speech.” Szajnberg and Hurt (in press) in a In another study Condon and Ogston (1971) found that recent study of entrainment state, “These data suggest listener eyeblinks tended to occur at articulatory change that infant’s movements show both quantitative (total points in the speaker’s speech, thus further supporting in- movements/second) and qualitative (growing and unipo- teractional entrainment. lar movements/second) changes in response to mother’s There have been a series of studies concerned with speech.” Kendon (1982) has studied human interaction replicating interactional entrainment. McDowall (1978) intensively at the frame-by-frame level and states, “The conducted the first study on adult entrainment. His study phenomenon of synchrony has, in my view, been clearly had several defects. He used the wrong analyzing equip- demonstrated.”Beebe et al. (1979) have found that moth- ment, the wrong criteria for body motion change, and the ers and infants can follow the movements of each other wrong hypothesis. His study has been criticized by Gate- at a mean rate of four film frames (100 msec). In some wood and Rosenwein (1981) and Peery (1980). Austin instances this can occur as rapidly as one film frame. and Peery (1983) conducted an intensive study of in- This seems to be visually mediated. Human infants also fant entrainment with adult speech, spending at least 1/2 seem to be able to entrain to different languages. A two- hour on each of the 2400 frames of mother-infantinterac- day-old,American infant was able to entrain to Chinese tion. They state, “This research corroborates the Condon speech (Condon & Sander, 1974). studies which showed synchrony or entrainment between Entrainment seems to be an involuntary, organized neonates and adults in interactional situations. It is possi- motor reflex to sound stimuli, especially to speech in hu- ble that McDowell did not find such levels of synchrony mans. It may exist in all hearing creatures. Entrainment because, as indicated before, his use of an electronically may have species specific characteristics such that each operated projector did not allow observations meticulous species will entrain more readily to its own species vo-

WILLIAM S. CONDON 71 Communication: Rhythm and Structure cal patterns. The listening organism clearly reflects the Abnormal Entrainment to Sound minute patterns of change in the incoming signal in its own patterns of movement. (There is some evidence that The existence of a basic auditory-motor reflex system this may also be visually mediated and perhaps even me- which precisely, rapidly, and organizationallymirrors the diated by several sensory processes.) This entrained and pattern of both spoken and heard speech would suggest organized response on the part of the auditory-motorsys- that this system might become disordered. This seems to tem may reflect the organization of the brain. be the case. An abnormal multiple entrainment to sound The highly speculative nature of the following com- was postulated from an analysis of slight “jumps” and ments on how interactional synchrony might be medi- “jerks” observed in the bodies of dysfunctional children ated between interactants must be emphasized. Since in relation to sound (Condon, 1974). In some cases of the speaker’s behavior is rhythmic and the listener moves dyslexia, for example, the right side would entrain with in synchrony with the speaker, the listener’s behavior is sound within 42 msec as if normal, while the left side also rhythmic. Human interaction thus appears to be fun- would entrain with the same sound after a delay which damentally rhythmic in nature. Interactional synchrony could range from 100 to 266 msec depending on the has a dual nature with drive and rhythm aspects working child. This multiple entraining gave the appearance of together. The listening organism moves synchronously “jumps and jerk” in the body. The multiple entrainment with the rapidly varying speech sounds of the speaker. It pattern remained stable for a given child. A similar pat- is difficult to imagine how the listening organism could tern was observed in autistic subjects, but the right side predict these changes in advance, e.g., whether a phone was delayed behind the left. type would last two or five frames or when a new sound Continued intensive analysis revealed that multiple might begin. This would seem to require a drive model. entrainment exhibited a characteristic pattern having four On the other hand, the rhythmic nature of the behavior, repeating entrainments within the first W3 of a second by providing expectable periodicities, could enhance the following sound onsets. Entrainment 1 occurs within the effectiveness of a drive model. Two organisms, having first frame following sound onset. Entrainment 2 ranges, similar rhythm systems, might find it easier to entrain as indicated, between 100 msec (3 film frames) and 266 with an on-going drive process. msec (8 film frames) following sound onset. Entrainment Different cultures exhibit different rhythm patterns. 3 tends to occur at 333 msec (10 film frames) follow- Over time the infant may take on the specific rhythm ing sound onset. Entrainment 4 follows entrainment 2 by style of its culture. Subtle rhythm differences may cause 333 msec (10 film frames). For example, one child might difficulties when people from different cultures inter- have a multiple entrainmentof 1–4-10–14frames and an- act. In an unpublished study, eight people listening to other a pattern of 1–6-10–16 frames. Speculatively, it a speaker were sound-filmed and found to move syn- appears as if there is a normal bilaterally synchronized chronously with the speaker’s speech. This would sug- 333 msec auditory input cycle from entrainment to ori- gest that audiences move in rhythm with the speaker. enting., The precision of the abnormal 333 msec pattern, Each member of the audience would behave as an indi- where entrainment 4 follows entrainment 2 by 333 msec, vidual listener in relation to the speaker’s speech. Since suggests this. When a person is called by name his body all were listening to the same speaker there would also begins to entrain to the sound within the first film frame be a group synchrony. Such group synchrony may create following sound onset (33.33 cosec using 30 fps film). a new out-of-conscious-awarenessphenomenon which is Then, at approximately 10 film frames (333 msec using absent in dyadic interaction. If a listener could see many 30 f.p.s. film) from the time of onset of his name he others in the audience they would all be moving, if they will begin to turn toward the caller. In multiple entrain- moved, in relation to the sound. This might create a ment it looks as if this input cycle is out of phase, with richer participant effect. While it has not been studied, entrainments 1 and 2 being one 333 cosec cycle and en- group synchrony may be occurring in situations such as trainments 2 and 4 being an out of phase 333 msec cycle. the movies and watching television. Some speakers can Several studies were conducted which strongly support arouse audiences more than others. Hitler, for example, the hypothesis of an abnormal multiple entrainment to was known for an ability to appeal to audiences. I once sound (Condon, 1975; Condon, 1978). A similar pattern studied a close-up of a film of Hitler during a speech has also been observed in Huntington’s disease, Parkin- and at one point (and at the same moment) his right eye son’s disease, cerebral palsy, schizophrenia, and stutter- moved right and his left eye moved left. ing. Multiple entrainment occurs in relation to most of the sounds occurring around such persons including their own voice. Plooij (in press) studied an 11-year-old dyslexic child and his normal control in response to 58 random sounds

WILLIAM S. CONDON 72 Communication: Rhythm and Structure using two TV cameras linked to a computer. At frame an essential aspect of the determination of the process 1 following sound onset in both the dyslexic and the units. These units also exhibit a characteristic periodic- normal child there was a sharp increase or decrease of ity or rhythm. The boundaries of the higher level units movement which supports the hypothesis of normal en- (words, phrases, sentences, and the body motion form trainment within 42 cosec. The graphs of the dyslexic, accompanying them) are precisely synchronized with the however, were quite different from those of the normal boundaries of the lower levels, yet they are also rhythmic control. The computer selected several peaks centering in nature. Synchronization tends to relate to the determi- around frames 1, 4, 9–10, and 1415 in the dyslexic child. nation of the unit boundaries and the sustaining of the Plooij states, “This is reminiscent of Condon’s multiple same relationship between the body parts (i.e., the con- entrainment.” That a computer could pick-up an almost tent of the unit). Rhythm relates to the length of time identical multiple entrainment pattern as that predicted these relationships are sustained. A boundary is the point is promising. The existence of multiple entrainment also at which a relational sustaining begins and is not separate provides strong indirect support for normal entrainment from it. Figure 1 illustrates this hierarchic organizational as a phenomenon. process. What is revealed is a form of organization hav- ing multiple levels of rhythms (where each level can vary slightly) which are, however, synchronized together in a Summary continuous, on-going fashion.

An ability to participate within a shared order seems to be essential for interaction. In perceiving and knowing, REFERENCES the organism participates in the order of the universe in which it exists and replicates aspects of that order within Austin, A. M. and Peery, J. C. Analysis of adult-neonate synchrony itself. This involves a process of translation of that or- during speech and nonspeech. Perceptual and Motors Skills, 1983, 57, 455–459. der through different media. “Sharing?’ of many kinds Beebe, B. , Stern, D. , and Jaffe, J. The kinesic rhythm of mother- and at many levels between interactants are primary fac- infant interactions. In Siegman, A. and Feldstein, S. (Eds.), Of tors in communicational maintenance and transforma- Speech and Time. Hillsdale, N. J. : Erlbaum Associatesr 1979. Condon, W. S. Synchrony units and the communicational hierarchy. tion. Sustaining movement together and sharing pos- Paper presented at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, ture are thought to reflect rapport in both humans and Pittsburgh, Pa.: 1963. lower animals. The courtship dances of the various an- Condon, W. S. Method of micro-analysis of sound films of behav- imal species are examples. To speak the same language ior. Behavioral Research Methods and Instruments, 1970, 2, 51–54. means to share the same sounds and the same grammar. Condon, W. S. Multiple response to sound in autistic-like children. A rapidly spoken foreign language is incomprehensible. Proceedings of the National Society for Autistic Children Con- Sharing or “sustaining forms of order together” is a fun- ference, Washington, D. C. : June 1974. damental principle of the structure of the organization of Condon, W. S. Multiple response to sound in dysfunctional children. Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia, 1975, 5, 37– behavior and interaction at the micro-level. 56. In this chapter I have focused on the nature of the Condon, W. S. Asynchrony and communicational disorders. In Pro- structure of organization revealed by intensive micro- ceedings of Symposium on Research in Autism. Canada Soci- analyses of behavior. Human existence appears to in- ety for Autistic Children. Vancouver: 1978. Condon, W. S. Sound-film microanalysis: A means for correlating volve a profound synchronization of the organism with brain and behavior. Paper presented at Institute for Child De- the universe in which it exists and with other human be- velopment Research Symposium. Philadelphia, Pa.: 1981. ings. A speaker’s body is precisely synchronized with Condon, W. S. , and Ogston, W. D. A segmentation of behavior. Jour- his own speech across multiple levels. And between hu- nal of Psychiatric Research, 1967, 5, 221–235. Condon, W. S. , and Ogston, W. D. Speech and body motion syn- man beings there is an exquisite, rhythmic synchroniza- chrony of the speaker-hearer. In D. L. Horton, and J. J. Jenkins tion. As indicated, the listener’s body moves in rhyth- (Eds.), Perception of Language. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. mic organizations of change which precisely reflect the Merrill, 1971. Condon, W. S. and Sander, L. W. Neonate movement is synchronized speaker’s speech. This is observable even in infants. Hu- with adult speech: Interactional participation and language ac- man communication is fundamentally synchronous and quisition. Science, 1974,183, 99–101. rhythmic. Synchrony and rhythm are primary aspects of Duffy, F. Personal Communication, 1981. human individual and interactional behavior. They are Gatewood, J. and Rosenwein, R. Interactional synchrony: Genuine or spurious? A critique of recent research. Journal of Nonverbal not separate forms added to the structure of behavior, but Behavior, 1981, 6. are forms of organization discovered in behavior. They Kato, T. , Takahashi, E. , Sawada, K. , Kobayashi, N. , Watanabe, T. , are elements in the structure of behavior. & Ishii, T. A computer analysis of infant movements synchro- The temporal patterns (process units) of the organi- nized with adult speech. Pediatric Research, 1983, 17, 625– 628. zation of behavior can be described. Synchronization is

WILLIAM S. CONDON 73 Communication: Rhythm and Structure Kendon, A. Coordination of action and framing in face-to-face in- velopmental Psychology, 1980, 16, 245–250. teraction. In M. Davis (Ed.) Interaction rhythms. New York: Plooij, F. The relationships between and paedology. Ams- Human Sciences Press, 1982. terdam, Netherlands, In press. McDowell, J. Interactional synchrony: A reappraisal. Journal of Per- Szajnberg, N. & Hurt, S. Infant cross modal movement response to sonality and Social Psychology, 1978, 36, 963–975. maternal speech. (in press). Peery, J. C. Neonate-adult head movement: No and yes revisited. De-

WILLIAM S. CONDON 74 Communication: Rhythm and Structure In Praise of Idleness Bertrand Russell (1932)

Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the a Government is in the same position as the bad men in saying: “Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do.” Shakespeare who hire murderers. The net result of the Being a highly virtuous child, I believed all that I was man’s economical habits is to increase the armed forces told, and acquired a conscience which has kept me work- of the State to which he lends his savings. Obviously it ing hard down to the present moment. But although my would be better if he spent the money, even if he spent it conscience has controlled my actions, my opinions have in drink or gambling. undergone a revolution. I think that there is far too much But, I shall be told, the case is quite different when work done in the world, that immense harm is caused savings are invested in industrial enterprises. When such by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs enterprises succeed, and produce something useful, this to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite may be conceded. In these days, however, no one will different from what always has been preached. Every- deny that most enterprises fail. That means that a large one knows the story of the traveler in Naples who saw amount of human labor, which might have been devoted twelve beggars lying in the sun (it was before the days to producing something that could be enjoyed, was ex- of Mussolini), and offered a lira to the laziest of them. pended on producing machines which, when produced, Eleven of them jumped up to claim it, so he gave it to the lay idle and did no good to anyone. The man who invests twelfth. This traveler was on the right lines. But in coun- his savings in a concern that goes bankrupt is therefore tries which do not enjoy Mediterranean sunshine idleness injuring others as well as himself. If he spent his money, is more difficult, and a great public propaganda will be say, in giving parties for his friends, they (we may hope) required to inaugurate it. I hope that, after reading the would get pleasure, and so would all those upon whom following pages, the leaders of the YMCA will start a he spent money, such as the butcher, the baker, and the campaign to induce good young men to do nothing. If bootlegger. But if he spends it (let us say) upon laying so, I shall not have lived in vain. down rails for surface cars in some place where surface Before advancing my own arguments for laziness, I cars turn out not to be wanted, he has diverted a mass must dispose of one which I cannot accept. Whenever of labor into channels where it gives pleasure to no one. a person who already has enough to live on proposes to Nevertheless, when he becomes poor through failure of engage in some everyday kind of job, such as school- his investment he will be regarded as a victim of unde- teaching or typing, he or she is told that such conduct served misfortune, whereas the gay spendthrift, who has takes the breadout of other people’s mouths, and is there- spent his money philanthropically, will be despised as a fore wicked. If this argument were valid, it would only fool and a frivolous person. be necessary for us all to be idle in order that we should All this is only preliminary. I want to say, in all se- all have our mouths full of bread. What people who say riousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the such things forget is that what a man earns he usually modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and spends, and in spending he gives employment. As long that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an orga- as a man spends his income, he puts just as much bread nized diminution of work. into people’s mouths in spending as he takes out of other First of all: what is work? Work is of two kinds: people’s mouths in earning. The real villain, from this first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s pointof view, is the man who saves. If he merely puts his surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling savings in a stocking, like the proverbial French peasant, other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and it is obvious that they do not give employment. If he in- ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. The sec- vests his savings, the matter is less obvious, and different ond kind is capable of indefinite extension: there are not cases arise. only those who give orders, but those who give advice One of the commonest things to do with savings is as to what orders should be given. Usually two opposite to lend them to some Government. In view of the fact kinds of advice are given simultaneously by two orga- that the bulk of the public expenditure of most civilized nized bodies of men; this is called politics. The skill Governments consists in payment for past wars or prepa- required for this kind of work is not knowledge of the ration for future wars, the man who lends his money to subjects as to which advice is given, but knowledge of

BERTRAND RUSSELL 75 In Praise of Idleness the art of persuasive speaking and writing, i.e., of adver- To this day, 99 per cent of British wage-earners would tising. be genuinely shocked if it were proposed that the King Throughout Europe, though not in America, there is should not have a larger income than a working man. a third class of men, more respected than either of the The conception of duty, speaking historically, has been classes of workers. There are men who, through owner- a means used by the holders of power to induce others to ship of land, are able to make others pay for the privilege live for the interests of their masters rather than for their of being allowed to exist and to work. These landowners own. Of course the holders of power conceal this fact are idle, and I might thereforebe expected to praise them. from themselves by managing to believe that their inter- Unfortunately, their idleness is only rendered possible by ests are identical with the larger interests of humanity. the industry of others; indeed their desire for comfortable Sometimes this is true; Athenian slave-owners, for in- idleness is historically the source of the whole gospel of stance, employed part of their leisure in making a perma- work. The last thing they have ever wished is that others nent contribution to civilization which would have been should follow their example. impossible under a just . Leisure is es- From the beginning of civilization until the Industrial sential to civilization, and in former times leisure for the Revolution, a man could, as a rule, produceby hard work few was only rendered possibleby the laborsof the many. little more than was required for the subsistence of him- But their labors were valuable, not because work is good, self and his family, although his wife worked at least as but because leisure is good. And with modern technique hard as he did, and his children added their labor as soon it would be possible to distribute leisure justly without as they were old enough to do so. The small surplus injury to civilization. above bare necessaries was not left to those who pro- Modern technique has made it possible to diminish duced it, but was appropriated by warriors and priests. enormously the amount of labor required to secure the In times of famine there was no surplus; the warriors necessaries of life for everyone. This was made obvious and priests, however, still secured as much as at other during the war. At that time all the men in the armed times, with the result that many of the workers died of forces, and all the men and women engaged in the pro- hunger. This system persisted in Russia until 1917,1 and duction of munitions, all the men and women engaged still persists in the East; in England, in spite of the In- in spying, war propaganda, or Government offices con- dustrial Revolution, it remained in full force through- nected with the war, were withdrawn from productiveoc- out the Napoleonic wars, and until a hundred years ago, cupations. In spite of this, the general level of well-being when the new class of manufacturers acquired power. In among unskilled wage-earners on the side of the Allies America, the system came to an end with the Revolu- was higher than before or since. The significance of this tion, except in the South, where it persisted until the Civil fact was concealed by finance: borrowing made it appear War. A system which lasted so long and ended so re- as if the future was nourishing the present. But that, of cently has naturally left a profound impress upon men’s course, would have been impossible; a man cannot eat thoughts and opinions. Much that we take for granted a loaf of bread that does not yet exist. The war showed about the desirability of work is derived from this sys- conclusively that, by the scientific organization of pro- tem, and, being pre-industrial, is not adapted to the mod- duction, it is possible to keep modern populations in fair ern world. Modern technique has made it possible for comfort on a small part of the working capacity of the leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small modern world. If, at the end of the war, the scientific privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed through- organization, which had been created in order to liberate out the community. The morality of work is the morality men for fighting and munition work, had been preserved, of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery. and the hours of the week had been cut down to four, all It is obvious that, in primitive communities, peasants, would have been well. Instead of that the old chaos was left to themselves, would not have parted with the slender restored, those whose work was demanded were made to surplus upon which the warriors and priests subsisted, work long hours, and the rest were left to starve as un- but would have either produced less or consumed more. employed. Why? Because work is a duty, and a man At first, sheer force compelled them to produce and part should not receive wages in proportion to what he has with the surplus. Gradually, however, it was found pos- produced, but in proportion to his virtue as exemplified sible to induce many of them to accept an ethic accord- by his industry. ing to which it was their duty to work hard, although This is the morality of the Slave State, applied in cir- part of their work went to support others in idleness. By cumstances totally unlike those in which it arose. No this means the amount of compulsion required was less- wonder the result has been disastrous. Let us take an ened, and the expenses of government were diminished. illustration. Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain

1Since then, members of the Communist Party have succeeded to this privilege of the warriors and priests.

BERTRAND RUSSELL 76 In Praise of Idleness number of peopleare engagedin the manufactureof pins. no unemployment—assuming a certain very moderate They make as many pins as the world needs, working amount of sensible organization. This idea shocks the (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention well-to-do, because they are convinced that the poor by which the same number of men can make twice as would not know how to use so much leisure. In America many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any men often work long hours even when they are well off; more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world, such men, naturally, are indignant at the idea of leisure everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would for wage-earners, except as the grim punishment of un- take to working four hours instead of eight, and every- employment; in fact, they dislike leisure even for their thing else would go on as before. But in the actual world sons. Oddly enough, while they wish their sons to work this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work so hard as to have no time to be civilized, they do not eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go mind their wives and daughters having no work at all. bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in mak- The snobbish admiration of uselessness, which, in an ing pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just aristocratic society, extends to both sexes, is, under a as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men plutocracy, confined to women; this, however, does not are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this make it any more in agreement with common sense. way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause The wise use of leisure, it must be conceded, is a misery all round instead of being a universal source of product of civilization and education. A man who has happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined? worked long hours all his life will become bored if he be- The idea that the poor should have leisure has al- comes suddenly idle. But without a considerable amount ways been shocking to the rich. In England, in the early of leisure a man is cut off from many of the best things. nineteenth century, fifteen hours was the ordinary day’s Thereis no longer any reason why the bulk of the popula- work for a man; children sometimes did as much, and tion should suffer this deprivation; only a foolish asceti- very commonly did twelve hours a day. When med- cism, usually vicarious, makes us continue to insist on dlesome busybodies suggested that perhaps these hours work in excessive quantities now that the need no longer were rather long, they were told that work kept adults exists. from drink and children from mischief. When I was a In the new creed which controls the government of child, shortly after urban working men had acquired the Russia, while there is much that is very different from vote, certain public holidays were established by law, to the traditional teaching of the West, there are some things the great indignation of the upper classes. I remember that are quite unchanged. The attitude of the govern- hearing an old Duchess say: “What do the poor want ing classes, and especially of those who conduct edu- with holidays? They ought to work.” People nowadays cational propaganda, on the subject of the dignity of la- are less frank, but the sentiment persists, and is the source bor, is almost exactly that which the governing classes of of much of our economic confusion. the world have always preached to what were called the Let us, for a moment, consider the ethics of work “honest poor”. Industry, sobriety, willingness to work frankly, without superstition. Every human being, of long hours for distant advantages, even submissiveness necessity, consumes, in the course of his life, a certain to authority, all these reappear; moreover authority still amount of the produce of human labor. Assuming, as we represents the will of the Ruler of the Universe, Who, may, that labor is on the whole disagreeable, it is unjust however, is now called by a new name, Dialectical Ma- that a man should consume more than he produces. Of terialism. course he may provide services rather than commodities, The victory of the proletariat in Russia has some like a medical man, for example; but he should provide points in common with the victory of the feminists in something in return for his board and lodging. To this ex- some other countries. For ages, men had conceded the tent, the duty of work must be admitted, but to this extent superior saintliness of women, and had consoled women only. for their inferiority by maintaining that saintliness is I shall not dwell upon the fact that, in all modern so- more desirable than power. At last the feminists decided cieties outside the USSR, many people escape even this that they would have both, since the pioneers among minimum amount of work, namely all those who inherit them believed all that the men had told them about the money and all those who marry money. I do not think desirability of virtue, but not what they had told them the fact that these people are allowed to be idle is nearly about the worthlessness of political power. A similar so harmful as the fact that wage-earners are expected to thing has happened in Russia as regards manual work. overwork or starve. For ages, the rich and their sycophants have written in If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours praise of “honest toil”, have praised the simple life, have a day, there would be enough for everybody and professed a religion which teaches that the poor are much

BERTRAND RUSSELL 77 In Praise of Idleness more likely to go to heaven than the rich, and in general while the nobility of toil is being displayed amid the ice- have tried to make manual workers believe that there is fields and snowstorms of the Arctic Ocean. This sort of some special nobility about altering the position of mat- thing, if it happens, will be the result of regarding the ter in space, just as men tried to make women believe virtue of hard work as an end in itself, rather than as a that they derived some special nobility from their sexual meansto a state of affairsin which it is no longer needed. enslavement. In Russia, all this teaching about the ex- The fact is that moving matter about, while a certain cellence of manual work has been taken seriously, with amountof it is necessary to our existence, is emphatically the result that the manual worker is more honored than not one of the ends of human life. If it were, we should anyone else. What are, in essence, revivalist appeals are have to consider every navvy superior to Shakespeare. made, but not for the old purposes: they are made to se- We have been misled in this matter by two causes. One cure shock workers for special tasks. Manual work is the is the necessity of keeping the poor contented, which has ideal which is held before the young, and is the basis of led the rich, for thousands of years, to preach the dignity all ethical teaching. of labor, while taking care themselves to remain undig- For the present, possibly, this is all to the good. A nified in this respect. The other is the new pleasure in large country, full of natural resources, awaits develop- mechanism, which makes us delight in the astonishingly ment, and has has to be developed with very little use of clever changes that we can produce on the earth’s sur- credit. In these circumstances, hard work is necessary, face. Neither of these motives makes any great appeal to and is likely to bring a great reward. But what will hap- the actual worker. If you ask him what he thinks the best pen when the point has been reached where everybody part of his life, he is not likely to say: “I enjoy manual could be comfortable without working long hours? work because it makes me feel that I am fulfilling man’s In the West, we have various ways of dealing with noblest task, and because I like to think how much man this problem. We have no attempt at economic justice, can transform his planet. It is true that my body demands so that a large proportion of the total produce goes to a periods of rest, which I have to fill in as best I may, but I small minority of the population, many of whom do no am never so happy as when the morning comes and I can work at all. Owing to the absence of any central con- return to the toil from which my contentment springs.” trol over production, we produce hosts of things that are I have never heard working men say this sort of thing. not wanted. We keep a large percentage of the working They consider work, as it should be considered, a nec- population idle, because we can dispense with their labor essary means to a livelihood, and it is from their leisure by making the others overwork. When all these methods that they derive whatever happiness they may enjoy. prove inadequate, we have a war: we cause a number of It will be said that, while a little leisure is pleasant, people to manufacture high explosives, and a number of men would not know how to fill their days if they had others to explode them, as if we were children who had only four hours of work out of the twenty-four. In so far just discovered fireworks. By a combination of all these as this is true in the modern world, it is a condemnation devices we manage, though with difficulty, to keep alive of our civilization; it would not have been true at any the notion that a great deal of severe manual work must earlier period. There was formerly a capacity for light- be the lot of the average man. heartedness and play which has been to some extent in- In Russia, owing to more economic justice and cen- hibited by the cult of efficiency. The modern man thinks tral control over production, the problem will have to be that everything ought to be done for the sake of some- differently solved. The rational solution would be, as thing else, and never for its own sake. Serious-minded soon as the necessaries and elementary comforts can be persons, for example, are continually condemning the provided for all, to reduce the hours of labor gradually, habit of going to the cinema, and telling us that it leads allowing a popular vote to decide, at each stage, whether the young into crime. But all the work that goes to pro- more leisure or more goods were to be preferred. But, ducing a cinema is respectable, because it is work, and having taught the supreme virtue of hard work, it is dif- because it brings a money profit. The notion that the de- ficult to see how the authorities can aim at a paradise sirable activities are those that bring a profit has made in which there will be much leisure and little work. It everything topsy-turvy. The butcher who provides you seems more likely that they will find continually fresh with meat and the baker who providesyou with bread are schemes, by which present leisure is to be sacrificed to praiseworthy, because they are making money; but when future productivity. I read recently of an ingenious plan you enjoy the food they have provided, you are merely put forward by Russian engineers, for making the White frivolous, unless you eat only to get strength for your Sea and the northern coasts of Siberia warm, by putting work. Broadly speaking, it is held that getting money is a dam across the Kara Sea. An admirable project, but good and spending money is bad. Seeing that they are liable to postpone proletarian comfort for a generation, two sides of one transaction, this is absurd; one might as

BERTRAND RUSSELL 78 In Praise of Idleness well maintain that keys are good, but keyholes are bad. who never thought of anything more intelligent than fox- Whatever merit there may be in the production of goods hunting and punishing poachers. At present, the univer- must be entirely derivative from the advantage to be ob- sities are supposed to provide, in a more systematic way, tained by consuming them. The individual, in our soci- what the leisure class provided accidentally and as a by- ety, works for profit; but the social purpose of his work product. This is a great improvement, but it has certain lies in the consumption of what he produces. It is this drawbacks. University life is so different from life in divorce between the individual and the social purpose the world at large that men who live in academic milieu of production that makes it so difficult for men to think tend to be unaware of the preoccupations and problems clearly in a world in which profit-making is the incentive of ordinary men and women; moreover their ways of ex- to industry. We think too much of production, and too lit- pressing themselves are usually such as to rob their opin- tle of consumption. One result is that we attach too little ions of the influence that they ought to have upon the importance to enjoyment and simple happiness, and that general public. Another disadvantage is that in univer- we do not judge production by the pleasure that it gives sities studies are organized, and the man who thinks of to the consumer. some original line of research is likely to be discouraged. When I suggest that working hours should be reduced Academic institutions, therefore, useful as they are, are to four, I am not meaning to imply that all the remaining not adequate guardians of the interests of civilization in a time should necessarily be spent in pure frivolity. I mean world where everyone outside their walls is too busy for that four hours work a day should entitle a man to the unutilitarian pursuits. necessities and elementary comforts of life, and that the In a world where no one is compelled to work more rest of his time should be his to use as he might see fit. It than four hours a day, every person possessed of scien- is an essential part of any such that educa- tific curiosity will be able to indulge it, and every painter tion should be carried further than it usually is at present, will be able to paint without starving, however excellent and should aim, in part, at providing tastes which would his pictures may be. Young writers will not be obliged to enable a man to use leisure intelligently. I am not think- draw attention to themselves by sensational pot-boilers, ing mainly of the sort of things that would be considered with a view to acquiring the economic independence “highbrow”. Peasant dances have died out except in re- needed for monumental works, for which, when the time mote rural areas, but the impulses which caused them to at last comes, they will have lost the taste and capacity. be cultivated must still exist in human nature. The plea- Men who, in their professional work, have become inter- sures of urban populations have become mainly passive: ested in some phase of economics or government,will be seeing cinemas, watching football matches, listening to able to develop their ideas without the academic detach- the radio, and so on. This results from the fact that their ment that makes the work of university economists often active energies are fully taken up with work; if they had seem lacking in reality. Medical men will have the time more leisure, they would again enjoy pleasures in which to learn about the progress of medicine, teachers will not they took an active part. be exasperatedly struggling to teach by routine methods In the past, there was a small leisure class and a larger things which they learnt in their youth, which may, in the working class. The leisure class enjoyed advantages for interval, have been proved to be untrue. which there was no basis in social justice; this neces- Above all, there will be happiness and joy of life, in- sarily made it oppressive, limited its sympathies, and stead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia. The caused it to invent theories by which to justify its priv- work exacted will be enough to make leisure delight- ileges. These facts greatly diminished its excellence, but ful, but not enough to produce exhaustion. Since men in spite of this drawback it contributed nearly the whole will not be tired in their spare time, they will not de- of what we call civilization. It cultivated the arts and mand only such amusements as are passive and vapid. At discovered the sciences; it wrote the books, invented the least one per cent will probably devote the time not spent philosophies, and refined social relations. Even the liber- in professional work to pursuits of some public impor- ation of the oppressed has usually been inaugurated from tance, and, since they will not depend upon these pursuits above. Without the leisure class, mankind would never for their livelihood, their originality will be unhampered, have emerged from barbarism. and there will be no need to conform to the standards set The method of a leisure class without duties was, by elderly pundits. But it is not only in these exceptional however, extraordinarily wasteful. None of the mem- cases that the advantages of leisure will appear. Ordinary bers of the class had to be taught to be industrious, and men and women, having the opportunity of a happy life, the class as a whole was not exceptionally intelligent. will become more kindly and less persecuting and less The class might produce one Darwin, but against him inclined to view others with suspicion. The taste for war had to be set tens of thousands of country gentlemen will die out, partly for this reason, and partly because it

BERTRAND RUSSELL 79 In Praise of Idleness will involve long and severe work for all. Good nature is, we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, starvation for others. Hitherto we have continued to be and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a as energetic as we were before there were machines; in life of arduous struggle. Modern methods of production this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; being foolish forever.

BERTRAND RUSSELL 80 In Praise of Idleness Declarations Herbert Brun¨ (1974–78) need: argument: I use the word need whenever I wish to speak of condi- I use the word argument whenever I wish to speak of a tions which must be met continuously and uncondition- deliberately stipulated premise to whose consequences I ally if living organisms are to be motivated to maintain wish to attribute the status of necessity explicitly in order themselves, their identities, their existence. to confirm the validity of all the evidence which supports Continuously: because the conditions continue in the attribution. consequence of having been met. Deliberately stipulated premise: because its being Unconditionally: because without the conditions itself a consequence is to be considered irrelevant. called need having been met, no other conditions ex- Attribute: because I know that I do not speak of a ist. need, but of a want for consistency. To confirm the validity of supporting evidence: be- necessity: cause an argument must become itself valid evidence before the status of necessity can be attributed to its I use the word necessity whenever I wish to speak of consequences. something which is to meet the conditions called need, I use the word argument whenever I wish to speak of or whenever I wish to emphasize, by metaphorical anal- the consistency of just that evidence whose consistency ogy, the urgency with which I wish to establish a relation raises my desire for changing the evidence; and when- or a connection found missing. ever I wish to demonstrate the contradiction in which I have to argue: evidence: the evidence which raises my desire for change is always a subset of the evidence which supports every I use the word evidence whenever I wish to speak of a argument against change. configuration (= human made image) of reality used as an argument in support of the reality of this configura- desire: tion. I use the word evidence only rarely, and then with I use the word desire wheneverI wish to speak of a delib- embarrassment. Shamefacedly I am forced to admit that erately stipulated premise to whose consequences I wish I am a member, and speak the languages, of such soci- to attribute the status of necessity explicitly in order to eties as must not yet be encouraged to waive the argu- question the validity of all the evidence which fails to ment and to deal directly with the configuration as the support the attribution. only reality worth dealing with. Deliberately stipulated premise: because its rea- Not yet: because evidence, now, is reality against sonability, that is, its being a consequence itself, is to change, and change, now, reality against evidence. be considered irrelevant. Shamefacedly: because, as long as the word which Attribute: because I do not know whether I am, or I wish to define defines me, I can not define it with- am not, speaking of a need; and because I know that I out defining myself, whom I desire to be defined quite am speaking of an urgency. differently. To question the validity of non-supporting evi- I wish to use the word evidence whenever I wish to dence: because the same configurationof reality which speak of desires fulfilled, and the consequences, as be- allows us to correctly state the impossibility of the ful- ing arguments for or against the desirability of the ful- fillment of a desire, may prevent us from recognizing fillment. our need for a different configuration of reality.

HERBERT BRUN¨ 81 Declarations truth: composition: I use the word truth whenever I wish to speak of the I use the word composition whenever I wish to speak of time during which the intent and content of a person’s the composer’sactivity and the traces left by it. The com- statement can not and will not be accidentally in con- poser is motivated by a wish of bringingabout that which flict or accidentally in contradiction with the intent and without him and human intent would not happen. In par- content of any other statement which this person would ticular, the composer’s activity consists in constructing make in response to any situation, question, or statement contents, systems, stipulated universes, wherein objects presented. and statements, selected by the composer, not only man- The time: because I refer to the passing presence ifest more than their mere existence, but have a function of a relational event rather than to the value of time- or value or sense or meaning which without his construc- less forms in formalized logics. tion they would not have. Not: because were I to write only instead, I should Occasionally the composer’s activity brings about use the words knowledge and error instead of the word that which without him and without human intent could truth; and were I to write not only instead, I should not have happened, leaving traces which nothing else use the word belief instead of truth and instead of the could have left. words knowledge and error. The wish which motivates the composer’s activity is motivated by an exclusively human property, which communication: thus exhaustively and sufficiently defines the term hu- man: a need which is generated by a want. Among I use the word communication whenever I wish to speak all biological systems only the human system contains of a human relation between persons and things which that self-observing dimension whence comes, beyond the emerges and is maintained through messages required system’s need, the system’s want to survive. Thence the and permitted by already available systems or mecha- want, beyond the need, of survival, and thus the exclu- nisms. sively human concept of an intent that would or will re- I use the word anticommunication whenever I wish tard decay; in particular the decay of information, the to speak of a human relation between persons and things ordering of a system, any system, stipulated, discovered, which emerges and is maintained through messages re- or dreamed of. quiring and permitting not yet available encoding and de- coding systems or mechanisms. freedom: communication feeds on, and speeds, the decay of in- formation in systems on which depends the significance Every social system we know till now grants its members of human relations. its freedom. Its freedom consists in the kind and number anticommunication not only retards this decay, but of alternatives open for choice to its members. even creates systems whose significance depends on hu- In all known systems, however, every choice made man relations. leads to a loss of freedom: Insistence on communication ultimately leads to so- the structure of these systems tends, in conse- cial and physical violence. quence of the choice made, to render at least some not anticommunication ultimately leads to the insistence chosen alternatives, from then on, inaccessible to the on composition and peace. members who made the choice. The freedom granted by these systems, therefore, re- duces the freedom of those of its members who use it. Choice results in loss of freedom. Loss of freedom can only be prevented by a society so structured, that it would remain desirable to its mem- bers, even if, therein, the freedom of choice were never to reduce, at least to preserve, and often to increase, the number of alternatives open for choice.

HERBERT BRUN¨ 82 Declarations Designing Society Marianne Brun¨ (1984)

I that brought them into existence. In 1981 and 1984, I offered a class I called “Design- The attempts thus far, in the 20th century, to cre- ing Society” at Unit One (an experimental program for ate a desirable socialist society have taken place under undergraduate students at the University of Illinois). I impossible circumstances, and have been made by sin- know of no other place where such a course is being of- gle countries in which there existed extreme poverty, and fered, although I think it should be part of every curricu- thus a backwardness in industry, education, technology, lum. science, and almost everything else. Whether or not they Except in utopian and science fiction novels, little could have succeeded despite those extreme difficulties, has been written about a future society radically differ- we will never know, for each revolution, each new soci- ent from our own. Even the societies depicted in those ety, has been attacked at every level, subverted, stifled, novels, and in the of the great socialist vision- hindered and scorned by just those who now gloat over aries of the 19th century, still are based on many of the the failures they caused. same premises and beliefs as is the society in which we There is another,an olderproblem: throughall of his- live. And, despite everything we hear from those who tory, and up to the present, those ideas for revolutionary have never read Marx and Engels, neither of them ever change, for new societies, that were implemented, have wrote a prescription or left us a blueprint for the society been based on the plans and initiatives of one man, or to come; they devoted their work to an analysis of society a small group of men. And when they died or became as it was and is, of capitalistic society. Their references corrupted by power, the whole edifice of the new society, to a future society were fragmentary, except, of course, the ideas of the revolution, and everybody’s hopes and to the extent that negation implies also assertion. dreams, crumbled. This story is so old that it can only be When I studied Marx and Engels, and a number of fittingly told in the form of a folk ballad. I am no longer the political thinkers and economic theorists who fol- interested, therefore, in any , however at- lowed, modified, and newly applied their analysis, I was tractive it may sound, that requires, or even allows for, unable to comprehend why those analyses, why the un- leaders or permanent hierarchies or, worse, that requires derstanding of the structure and functioning of the soci- a reward oriented hierarchy, as we now have it. ety we live in, did not, and does not, suffice to impel us The society I want needs every person everywhere to intervene in our collective destiny and to change it. to design it. The “Designing Society” class was a very Is it that fear of the unknown, fear of any change that small, but not modest, step in that direction. deserves that name, even the change of something recog- It began with the assignment: nized as disastrous, is so immense that most of us would Under the title “Right or Wrong: My Desires”, and us- rather cynically and despairingly accept society’s return ing the word “desire” to mean something wanted with the to barbarism than take a single decisive step toward the momentary urgency of a need, write a list of statements of yet untried? which you would say: “While it is not the case, I desire it I am sure that it is our moral, ethical and religious to be the case.” upbringing that stands in our way as well: the glorifica- List the statements in such an order that the fulfillment of desires earlier in the list may include or, at least, imply tion of poverty and suffering, of hard work, and, above the fulfillment of desires later on the list, but not vice versa. all, the glorification of renunciation, leads most people to envision a “just society” as being bleak and gray, as When the students arrived with a list of desire in merely distributing poverty equally among us, requiring hand, at the beginning of the second class, we formed hard labor and a spartanic life style. That image would five groups of five to six people each. The assignment not entice me either. then was that each group integrate the desire of all its Unfortunately, that image has seemingly been cor- members. The discussions that took place in the group roborated by the post-capitalist societies that we collo- of which I was a member were some of the most ex- quially call “socialist”, although that word can, at best citing, and most encouraging, in which I have been in- be used to refer to the socialist origin of the revolutions volved anywhere: nobody wanted to leave a meeting, no- body minded coming to yet another one. The reports and

MARIANNE BRUN¨ 83 Designing Society results from the other groups indicated they must have After all five lists had be read and discussed, every- been similarly exciting. I think the impact of the first one in the class wanted to proceed with the designing assignment fully manifested itself only during these dis- of a new society immediately. At that point, however, I cussions: the students realized they had really been asked changed the course of events abruptly and, instead, we about their desires, and that they were really spending embarked on the study and analysis of our present soci- a whole two hours in a university class discussing their ety, with the help of the book The Capitalist System by desires with one another. I do not think I have seen stu- Edwards, Reich, and Weisskopf. dents so intensely and enthusiastically involved in any- I did not present the material; the students did. It thing. The meetings went on all week and even then was agreed that while everyone in the class would read some groups needed more time to come to an agreement the whole book, each chapter would be the particular re- on the formulation and sequence of their integrated de- sponsibility of a group of 3–4 students. These groups sires. prepared and delivered: 1) a brief written summary of We never made one list out of the five that were com- their chapter; 2) a presentation of whatever in the chap- pleted, and I am not going to read all those desire on the ter they wanted to stress (these presentations could be in five lists here now. There are, however, a few desires the form of skits, stories, songs, lectures, paintings, po- that appear in some form on all of the five lists from both ems, or whatever means considered appropriate); and, 3) classes. I will read just those desires, in one of their for- a discussion with the class about the chapter and about mulations: their presentation of it. We had a wide variety of ex- cellent, informative, and very entertaining presentations. 1. We desire the immediate, continuing, and un- While the students were learning about the capitalist sys- questioned satisfaction of all human needs, where tem, they were also learning how to teach one another, “need” refers to conditions which must be met for slowly making me superfluous in my role as a teacher— an organism to be able, and motivated, to maintain at the same time I did not become superfluous at all as a its existence. member of the class. When we were at last through with the capitalist sys- 2. We desire to live in a world community in which tem (it had lasted much too long), we moved briefly on each person shares in the significant decision- to utopias. Each of the students read one book dealing making processes of the society. with a utopia from a list I had prepared. Our discussions 3. We desire that no status and no taboos be attached of these writings showed that students did not find much to sexual preferences, to forms of relationships, to in these utopias that they considered desirable for the so- living arrangements, and that interaction be based ciety they wanted to design. on an ever increasing abundance of alternatives. By this time the semester was almost at an end and we still had not designed our new society. We hurriedly 4. We desire that the family be eliminated, at least as formed committees, each of which took on the design of an economic unit. a specific part of the society. The following categories were, with some difficulty, agreed upon: 5. We desire that people develop an affection for, and competence in, language. constraints culture 6. We desirethat arts as well as sciencebeunderstood education town and country planning as essential. distribution and transportation science, technology, and research 7. We desire that competition be abolished. industrial and agricultural production health care 8. We desire the end of all violence and violence- producing behaviors (including, of course, all As work on designing the new society got underway, forms of sexism, racism, ageism, and all argu- we decided that, in addition to the lists of desires, which ments based on biological distinctions). we had made at the beginning of the class, we now also neededa list of needs. It was not easy to reach agreement 9. We desire the elimination of the nation state. on this list. The following, although possibly containing some redundancies, was finally approved by all: 10. We desire that belief be distinguished from thought, arguments be distinguished from report, need of food (nourishment) need of water (for drinking and irrigation, etc.) and that belief not be used as an argument. need of rest need of shelter (from exposure, weather, noise) need of protective clothing (exposure, weather, safety, san-

MARIANNE BRUN¨ 84 Designing Society itation) was derived from a presentation I had made at a time need of care (and health care) when all the committees designing our society brought need of access to fresh air and sunlight up the need for some kind of computer system, proces- need of interaction need of mental stimulation sor, or similar electronic device. I took that as a cue to need of retardation of decay read to the class a two-page description, I had written, of need of peace and security a processor that Herbert Br¨un and I had long been dis- need of pleasure (joy, eros, or whatever you prefer to call cussing. I will read these same two pages now, to end it) this presentation. It is in connection with the computer The remaining few weeks of the semester were con- system therein described that I am turning to cyberneti- sumed by committee meetings and committees meeting cians for help. For I suspect that even though the tasks committees. Our final two classes were devoted to short of this device are described, its realization might require papers, from each committee, “statements toward a new the invention and generation of hitherto untried methods society”, and long discussions. The title “Traces of a Be- and techniques. I understand the proposition of cyber- ginning Made by the Designing Society Class.” netics to be the attempt at solving this class of non-trivial The introduction reads: problems. “The premise of the society shall be the continual and unconditional satisfaction of all human needs; its II purpose shall be the development of ever more satisfac- If I were invited to participate in serious deliberations tory means of producing the necessities that will meet meant to arrive at the “Design of a Society” that would these needs; the development and use of the freedom embody an implementablealternative to our present soci- from need for the enjoyment of diversity and difference; ety, my initial contribution would consist of the descrip- the invitation and implementation of ideas and inventions tion of a “Computer System” which is so programmed which provide new procedures for the solution of old and that its response to any and every user’s input will be recurrent problems. based on the current network generated by all and any The purpose of the society, thus, shall be the justifi- previous users’ inputs. ably hopeful pursuit of all those alternative paths of con- Temporarily, I will call the computer system a “So- sequences, which, be they ever so audacious, unheard cially Beneficial Information Processor” or “SBIP”; and of, unspeakable, do not interfere with their indispensable I stipulate that it consists of a large number of intercon- premise: the satisfaction of all human needs. nected, technically equal components distributed all over The society of which we speak is a global society in the world, wherever there are people, and that it be ac- which there are no nation states or entities that would cessible to anyone and everyone who wants to use it. take on the function of the nation state. A great variety When first offered to the world, the system if virtu- of communities, large and small, will be established, ac- ally “empty”: it requires input of various kinds before it cording to people’s needs and desires. It is hoped, by us, can begin to become responsive and deliver output. This that these communities will develop in ways that make may take hours or days. Once started, however, its re- them significantly distinct from one another. The priori- sponsiveness grows rapidly. ties of a community, its organization, the ways of living An input may be a statement, a question, a piece of there, the design, planning, architecture and landscap- proseor poetry,a set ofrules for a game, a logic, a theory, ing, the kind of work done, the things planted and energy a computer-program, a spoken sentence, music, a photo- used, will be decided upon by the members of the com- graph, a film, and so on. Some of the input will be data munity. and some will be programs, rules, algorithms, and proce- There will be no world government, in the usual dures. The data are entered by users so that they be avail- sense of that term; instead there will be a “socially ben- able either for retrieval and inspection or for processing. eficial information processor” to which every person ev- As the number and variety of entered data increases, the erywhere will have equal access, thus, having equal ac- responsive flexibility of the system also increases. Ev- cess to all human knowledge and to the decision-making ery user can use what all previous users have entered: process of the entire world system. Never, in this way, a user can ask the system for the solution of a problem will the world system be maintained at the expense of its and receive a positive response only if a previous users members. The members will be maintained, even at the has entered, a minute ago or a year ago, a procedure or expense of the system: that is, whenever the system no program or algorithm which is capable of solving that longer meets the needs of all the people, the system will kind of problem. Otherwise it will now be the task of the be changed.” asking users to create and enter such a procedure. Ev- The term “socially beneficial information processor” ery time someone enters new data or a new procedure, in short, new input, the system changes. Significant in-

MARIANNE BRUN¨ 85 Designing Society put, thus, enables the system to change its responses, to temis boundto raise issues ofconcernto the users, and to update them, and to better serve all users. enrich (educate) SBIP’s network, so that, gradually, the I estimate that with intensive user participation from user acquires an awareness of the fact that she or he is sit- all walks of life, all fields of interest, all age-groups, all ting in the very midst of all current human knowledge, is possible regions of preferred preoccupation, and all pos- a part of it, is having a dialog with it and making a differ- sible regions of the globe, it will take less than a year for ence to it. To the extent that SBIP can assist in designing the system to present a more than mere equivalent to cur- a society, the user becomes conscious and aware of being rently available “best” human knowledge, and to serve a welcome, needed, yes, an indispensable participant. as such in all its capacities. If a users wishes to access If a user’s input is a proposition, a theory, a plan of the information processor, the users goes to the nearest solving a stated problem, a suggested way of thinking, or terminal space; it may be in the users’ home, or in the a suggested strategy for action, then SBIP will respond local community center. The terminal space contains in- by using the entire current network in constructing a fic- teractive audio-visual devices which allow the users to tional prediction of what would ensue, if the input were be heard and seen by SBIP and, in turn, to hear and see true or accurate or implemented, and then present this responses from SBIP. construction to the users. If technology will serve, I en- The user now writes and speaks to the processor. If vision this response to sometimes come in form of a film, the input is a question, SBIP responds either by answer- in which the user’s likeness is shown, not so much as ing the question, or by modestly stating something like: the initiator of the input, but rather as one of the people “Could not yet find an answer to your question. Can you to whom the consequences of the input are happening. help? Can you reformulate? Or, would you rather wait, I assume that many users, having seen the film, would while I search and you think, and come back in an hour modify, qualify, or even withdraw the input in its present or a day?” form. If the input is an independent statement (to show or To summarize: Every person everywhere is a poten- to tell)—a report, neither demonstrating nor reasoning— tial user; by logging into the network a person becomes then the response will be: “Thank you. This statement an active user. The user’s input not only uses the net- has been input 732 times verbatim, and 8933 times ap- work, it also changes the network. Unless a users with- proximately containing its sense and intent, the first time draws the input, it is stored in one of the network’s nodes January 1, 1985.” and there becomes active in SBIP’s construction of its If the input is a dependent statement (to demon- response. It can happen, and in the beginning will fre- strate or to reason)—an argument, formulated whether quently happen, that due to some user’s input on Tues- as a premise pointing at its consequences, or as a day, SBIP’s response to a question posed on Wednesday consequence pointing at its premise and its further is quite different than its response to the same question consequences—then SBIP will respond by saying: “This on Monday. Thus it can be understood, that both, SBIP statement has been argued, consistent with the way you and the user, are always an continuously parts of any cur- argue (Logic 5), seven times since 1702, not consistent rent human knowledge, both using and changing one an- (Logic 3, Logic 11, Logic 17) thirty-eight times since other, and that they are actively integrated components 1820. The complete and detailed response requires 12 of a self-referentially self-organizing system: a human minutes speaking time, 2 minutes printing time. Please society, in which every living person is a member, and request: Speak on! or Print! or Cancel!” If the users re- whose structural constraints are continuously influenced, quest Print!, the answer is printed in the terminal space established, and again changed by the integrated input of for the user to read at leisure (Speak on! will call forth a all its members. spoken response). While, as would be the case with any suggestion, my To any response that SBIP delivers, the user is invited proposition and its description and promise invite cri- in turn to respond, by criticizing the response received, tique and criticism, I claim, for once, a significant dis- by reformulating the initial input, by requesting that the tinction: all comments can be input to SBIP and thus, re- input not be stored yet, and so on. The mutually respon- gardless of my opinions, will become its content, namely sive interaction between the users and the computer sys- active components of current human knowledge.

MARIANNE BRUN¨ 86 Designing Society Teaching Composition Facing the Power of the Respondent Mark Enslin (1989)

Acknowledgments composer need not assume helplessness in the face of the dynamics of reception. If such speculation is taken seri- The participants in a discussion in May 1987 of some ously, then experiments in the composition of the condi- of the ideas and texts of this paper—Jeff Gibbens, Su- tions of reception become necessary. Though other ex- san Parenti, William Brooks, Herbert Br¨un, Ja’acov Ziso, isting forums for this experimentation ought not to be Lesley Olson, and Candace Walworth—were, through dismissed, one can distinguish those forums by their con- their responses that afternoon, helpful at several stages straints. Some of the constraints peculiar to the teaching of the writing process. Several brief excerpts from the situation, for instance the regularity of meetings and thus transcript of that discussion are included in the text. The the potential for follow-up, offer distinct possibilities for speakers are identified by their initials. a beneficial tampering with the dynamics of reception. In Conversations with others also played a role: Drew the paper, I refer most often to that aspect of the dynam- Krause, Sever Tipei, Arun Chandra, Mark Sullivan, Bar- ics of reception which goes by the name: The Power of bara Freeman, Larry Ende, Kenneth Gaburo, Mark Free- the Respondent. man, Chou Long, David Kelley, Larry Richards, Tucker The disjunctness of the writing style results mainly Robison, to name a few. from choices guided by several negative criteria: to avoid Thanks to Keith Johnson for suggestions of sequence truism; to avoid the tone of giving advice (while retaining and layout. the option of imperative syntax); to avoid the impression Many of the concepts herein developed and con- of a single line of argument where the subject appears to nected, including that of the power of the respondent, I call for several intersecting consistencies or lines of argu- learned in classes and conversations with Herbert Br¨un. ment. The style also reflects positive attempts to have the writing illustrate some of the ideas put forward: the em- phasis on formulation; the preference for suggestiveness 1. Preface over exhaustiveness; the interest in pieces which make a production of eliciting from their respondents an aware- The initial interest in the subject of this paper came from ness of the possibility of composed interpretation, com- conversations with students of composition about the de- posed response. sirable situation for continuing to be composers when If one approaches this paper looking for practical we would no longer be students. We wanted to com- suggestions for teaching composition, a few can be pose. However, the degree toward which we were work- found; the overall aim, however, is to construct images ing was preparing us to take faculty positions in theory- of teaching and composition which could orient or pro- composition departments: we were to become teachers. voke one to invent answers to the how-to questions. Noticing this fact caused us some unease, for our re- ceived images of what it means to be a teacher (though occasionally contradicted by particular teachers) clashed 2. The Power of the Respondent with both our received and developing images of what it means to be a composer. The respondent to a statement, coming after the state- In this paper I present the outline of an alternative ment, determines how the statement is spoken about, de- view, which requires reformulation of the received im- termines in which context the statement is placed, and ages of both teacher and composer. In the exploratory thus what it meant. To the extent that every statement tinkering with received images, I became intrigued by makes an appeal to the respondent to give the state- the possibility that the teaching situation offers to a com- ment a social life, to show changes attributable to the poser something which can’t be found elsewhere. The statement—to that extent statements submit to the power teaching situation allows speculation about the idea that a of the respondent.

MARK ENSLIN 87 Teaching Composition A respondent has the power to declare an utterance any given;—(the given, not being able to talk back, so- to be a response. to-speak, therefore, de facto, allows the pollution to con- If you say “it is”, then it’s as good as is; in the social tinue). . . ” (Gaburo, LA) world, the validity of the assertion is of no consequence. What is crucial is the fact that you say it is. I can tell the difference between a tangent, a change The often-heard complaint that a person “always has of subject which has the effect of erasing the previous to have the last word” is a commonplace acknowledg- subject, and a leap of thought which transforms the sub- ment of the respondent’s power. The respondent always ject under discussion. has the last word. The composer’s imaginary respondent is partly con- A respondent is a respondent to a statement only structed by the composer and partly collected from ob- when showing traces in the respondent’s language which servations of people, texts, behaviors (choice of the pool would not have been left but for that statement—so says in which one would like to make a splash, in which one a respondent. wishes to be celebrated and admired, but wants also to The respondent has the power to determine how the upset, to confound, to cause controversy, to have oppo- respondent’s listeners label, describe, conceive, remem- nents and partisans). ber, judge—the responded-to. That the respondent’s lis- The composer’s image of the respondent: not only in teners could themselves subsequently become respon- terms of that to which the composer responds, but also dents and so have the power to contest the labeling, de- in terms of the play of predicting how the addressee will scription, conception, memory, and verdict determined respond. by the first respondent does not diminish the power of “A hybrid medium [gesture] limits the field of response that response while it holds sway. with the consistency of its constraints. The composer What makes the ability of a respondent to determine chooses to preserve one set of borrowed characteristics in- stead of another. The significance of the choice is a func- the social life of the responded-to a power is the preva- tion of the chosen set’s power to limit the interpretations lence of misrepresentation, falsification, slander of vari- available to the respondent. If a change of the set of bor- ous sorts, and dismissal. rowed characteristics would elicit a change of interpreta- The power of the respondent is frequently amalga- tion, the gesture has the power required to limit the field of response. . . . Gesture limits the interpretations available to mated with other sources of power: the power of posi- a respondent.” tion, the power of authority, the power in numbers, the (Sullivan The Performance of Gesture, 29) power of technical reproducibility. A composition’s limiting of the availability of inter- pretations requires a respondent who acts as a witness 2.1 In the Face of speaking up for the composition against its falsification. It is easy to learn to recognize the power of the respon- “In discourse or in a composed work, gestures are made dent, difficult to learn how to behave facing it. in anticipation of response. Unless the addressee gathers something that requires interpretation, the gesture will not “The power of the respondent must be recognized, mod- function. An addressee has to gather something that re- erated, and if necessary, temporarily suspended. Not the quires interpretation before [the addressee] can become a response, but its falsification of the responded to, must be respondent.” noted and rejected. Again, any violent manifestation of the (Sullivan, 29) respondent’s power must be boldly testified to by an alert witness.” If a speaker, having the power of response by sheer (Br¨un, My Words and Where I Want Them, 99) dint of following an event with an utterance, is to be I speak of the power of the respondent when I want called the respondent, then it is up to the respondent to someone to ‘bear witness’ to a speaker’s exercise of feel addressed, to become the addressee. power to dismiss. Learning about composition, learning to compose, learning to be a composer, learning to de- 2.2 Audience sire a social role for composition would include learning how the composer’s composition is dismissed, how the “We discovered that what induces even more resentment than taking music seriously is taking talking about music composer is dismissed, how dismissal takes place, and seriously . . . Music is talked about before it is listened to, learning to become a witness (loudly!) to dismissals. while it’s listened to, and instead of being listened to. And “. . . Some have described a composition they would who does this talking about the music which determines have preferred to make . . . some have simply mapped onto what is the little bit that’s recorded, the tiny bit that is the given work, words drawn from bags of accumulated published, and, therefore, what can be heard, and there- ‘music language’, learned who knows where, and regarded fore what is listened to, and therefore what is learned and as a kind of general-purpose tote bag whose words, (so it eventually, therefore, what is composed? Well, this talking seems), can be pulled out without notice, and applied to is done mainly by a group of past and present masters of

MARK ENSLIN 88 Teaching Composition the detached normative, the dangling evaluative, those who dles it with the same precision as a traditional one, and that have created an epistemological situation which is usually it has meaning in his hands, know where the opportunity satisfied by a self-comforting tautology: ‘If I don’t under- lies for an uncompromising composer in motion pictures. stand it, it’s not worth understanding; therefore I under- Masterful handling of resources carries a certain weight of stand everything worth understanding.”’ its own, even when it is directed against every idea toler- (Babbit, Words about Music, 174–5) ated by the industry. Orchestra players are in spite of ev- erything most sensitive to it, and their confidence spreads, “A reminder: as described earlier, a listener brings to under certain circumstances, to everyone concerned with music an image which he has created of it, this image con- the production of the picture.” sisting of wishes and desires for what he wants music to be, (Eisler and Adorno, Composing for the Film 126) articulated in the language available to him, and he will re- act to what he hears within the context of those wishes. For ... versus an image of the composer who is not inno- him, the music will appear as a kind of ’candidate’ for the cent, fulfillment of those wishes and desires, and its suitability who wants the manifest level of difficulty for that candidacy will determine the listener’s response to or: the music. Thus the capabilities of the listener’s language will interview what he is perceiving, and act as a measur- who wants to estrange music from the conventions of fit- ing standard to the perceived.” ting with the instrument, (Br¨un, “The Political Significance of Composition”) who wants to change the current status of what is consid- ered possible, “Language cannot change itself. It will continue to in- terrogate any acoustical event which comes its way in the who wants to entice those interpreters who will bring terms it has learned from past music. The presence of new about the necessary changes in order to perform the com- music, then, not only confronts what music has been, it poser’s work, and create a music which could become fun also confronts present-day language and its capabilities. to play. (We could say that the music ’perturbs’ the language.)” (Parenti, “Self-Reference and the Language about New Music, 42) 2.4 Composer “If the respondent neglects to search for an address Composition as Reply: “Brahms is lost on you because [addr´ess], or assumes that the composition has no intended address when it does not articulate its address the way you don’t know that to which he responds.” Another compositions did in the past, then the composition will be framing of the problem of reference: not to know the falsified by the respondent.” quotations only, but know the sense of the composer’s re- (Sullivan, 40) sponse. “You can’t understand Berio and Boulez if you The composition’s gesture limits the field of non- don’t know Sch¨onberg and Webern; and you can’t under- falsifying response; or puts obstacles in the path of a stand Sch¨onberg and Webern if you don’t know Wagner respondent to speak uncontested by other respondents. and Brahms”—and so on. “Where do you start?” Otherwise the description, verdict, interpretation—the Composers make reference not only to what precedes response—remains undisturbed. them but also to that which is contemporaneous with Notice the difference between having the power of them. Thus it is more difficult to understand the com- the respondent and being aware of the power of the re- posers of 200 years ago than it is to understand new mu- spondent. sic. Dialectics of response: being able to appoint one’s teachers; being able to respond to one’s contemporaries, 2.3 Performer currenttrends, and that which is held to be true—but hav- The performer acts as a respondent to the composer’s ing only one’s contemporaries, only the current trends, score on the basis of an image of the composer: and only that which is held to be true, to respond to. the not-quite-competent composer, who produces writing which doesn’t fit the instrument, 2.5 Student which is unreasonably difficult to play on the instrument, which is impossible to play on the instrument, A respondent to a composer makes a contribution only which damages the instrument, if the respondent succeeds not merely in challenging the which hurts or the strains the player, composer to defend the composer’s preferences, but in which is not fun to play ... offering a new defense of the composer’s preferences. “Those who have seen how orchestra players, who per- Transformations of the adage ‘We learn from our form only reluctantly an advanced modern work under a mistakes’: conductor unsympathetic to and intellectually suspicious We declare our deeds to be mistakes in order not to of modern music, change their attitude the moment they learn from them. realize that another conductor knows the score and han- We learn to declare our deeds mistakes in order to justify

MARK ENSLIN 89 Teaching Composition our repeating them. power as respondents to a composition: the composer We declare our deeds mistakes and do not realize that can ask them to imagine that the composition responds “success in an undesirable social system is social fail- to them. ure”. HB ... No I don’t think so. I think the only question We declare our deeds mistakes, vacillating in the deci- of the power of the respondent is whether the per- sion where to draw the line between consequences of our son who has that power, namely the respondent, choices and consequences of our respondent’s choices. is knowing, conscious of what he’s doing, of his We declare our deeds mistakes before the correctness of power or not. So the consciousness of that power our deeds has emerged. ... enormous ... Only then if you have a con- To the category of unintended message might cor- sciousness of the power can you follow the next respond a category of “unintended teaching”, such that instruction namely—what is the word? to ... someone might say “I learned this from you” about something the teacher never intended to teach. To be able ME Yield. to tell you what you taught: this is within the power of HB ... yield some of that power to the composition, the respondent. either to the composition you have heard or the composition you are in the process of writing in 2.6 Teacher the hope that you can turn it into the respondent with all the power. This is what you are saying, “A ‘difficult’ student tries to make a new start and is quiet that’s what I understand. However, if it is not up to and obedient. His teacher responds to this behavior by say- a respondent whether to have that power, then all ing, ‘You’re off to a good start this year,’ and so informs that one can ask of respondents is that they change the student that a bad start was expected of him. The stu- their way of exercising that power. Then the invita- dent becomes angry and defiant. A supposedly dull student gives a correct answer in class and is praised excessively. tion to respondents would be that they—with their He is embarrassed and becomes withdrawn.” power as respondents—grant the power of respon- (Kohl, The Open Classroom, 19) dent to a composition. Kohl focuses on the expectations which are the cri- JG That’s what I asked: what is the power ... teria for the teacher’s choice of response. The teacher’s HB The power is afterwards, afterwards. response, “You’re off to a good start this year”, declares LO That’s what I was getting at, I think. I’m not sure. an expectation whether the teacher holds that expectation Howmuch ... Howis someoneawarethatthey are or not. From what field of alternatives could a response coming after something? A lot of times you may be chosen? not even know that you are coming after some- One kind of power: to be able to deliver someone thing, and only after coming after something, hav- from something to which that person would otherwise be ing seen something happen, you realize that you helplessly delivered; not necessarily able to ‘control’ or came in the middle of something, that you deter- coerce, but able to rescue. mined the direction of something. “Power is a problem for all of us. The development of open, democratic modes of existence is essentially the HB It is a tragedy. problem of abandoning the authoritarian use of power and LO Yeah. of providing workable alternatives. That is a problem that must be faced by all individuals and institutions that pre- HB Yeah, there’s nothing you can do except conscious- sume to teach.” ness and administration of that power. You can- (Kohl, 16) not measure it, you cannot decide anything about A teacher offers a new image of the composer’s re- it except be aware of the power. When you use the spondent. The teacher manifests this image through the word “power”, please be aware that there is noth- teacher’s (composed) performance. ing to substitute for that term. Power is that which you can’t budge. Otherwise it’s not power. 2.7 Yielding ‘Yielding’? Conferring, conceding, abdicating, abro- gating ... sharing ? Out of desperation, having faced the power of the respon- Three notions of sharing: dent in the concert hall, the commercial world, the “pub- lic sphere”, the composer turns to teaching. When teach- 1. When that which is offered is given up to the re- ing, the composer still faces the power of the respondent, ceiver (donation); but in a new context. In this context, a composer can ask 2. When part of that which is offered is given up and listeners (students, respondents) to yield some of their part is kept (parceling out);

MARK ENSLIN 90 Teaching Composition 3. When that which is offered is still retained by the the two incompatibilities: 1) between the composer’s one who makes the offer (sharing with). concept of teaching and the composer’s concept of ‘I’; 2) between the composer’s concept of teaching and the These notions can be applied to time as well as to things. composer’s concept of composition. The second incom- The teacher, having the power of position within an patibility, between teaching and composition, and more institution, the power of knowledge, and the power of specifically the incompatibility between teaching com- the respondent to boot, will be frustrated in the attempt position and composing, raises my curiosity: to investi- to give up these powers by the necessity of giving up gate whether a conceptof teaching and a conceptof com- position, knowledge, and response (as if that were possi- position can be so formulated that teaching—contrary to ble!). Since a teacher cannot get rid of these powers (at the grumble and yet no consolation—might be consid- least the last two) and remain a teacher, “power sharing” ered indispensable for composition. in the teaching situation refers to the notion of “sharing Not teaching, but the argument for teaching has to with”, where that which is offered is still retained by the change; then teaching will change as a consequence. one who makes the offer. Ambivalent attitudes toward teaching composition So it is with the respondent who might wish to “yield reflect two clashing images of the composer: indepen- power to a composition”. The respondent who attempts dent, feisty rugged individualist and socially responsive not to falsify the composition, volunteers to be vulnera- contributor to a discourse, participant in debate. The ble to a composition’s input. rugged individualist doesn’t need to be taught and fears Good teacher: good respondent—i.e., the proposal followers; the participant in debate finds school to be al- put forward by the student’s network of connections is most the only, though insufficient, public forum avail- taken by the teacher and tied in (preferablywith manyfil- able. aments) with the teacher’s network of connections. The The teacher (at least as currently conceived) assumes friction generated by the two networks intersecting in the that a description of what is and has been provides in- shared proposition is teaching. struction for what is to be. The composer asserts that a From this experience the student might learn to take description of what is and has been shows what is to be this structure from the student- teacher relationship and no longer. apply it by analogy to the piece-listener relationship. In The teacher (at least as currently conceived) and the the analogy, the piece would have to be so interrogated composer conflict in their treatments of standards: for a that the answers of the piece can be taken by the listener teacher, standards are to uphold, hand down, judge by; and given the form of a proposed network of connections. for a composer, a standard is to challenge, to make moot. The listener could probe the piece’s network of connec- For a composer to consider composed teaching indis- tions for moments of friction with the listener’s network pensable, this composer would have to cherish an image of connections. of social consequences of compositions, either in terms ... so having fled the audience and become a teacher, of a goal, statement, protest desired by the composer to the composer finds another audience: the students. In ‘come across’ to addressees, or in terms of a level of that new context, facing the students, the composer dis- (public?) discourse which would detect, describe, admire covers that there are certain things that can be asked of and criticize the particular contribution of a composition: them that cannot be asked, so far, in the concert hall. the discourse of a community of thinking people who are eager for change, who welcome the new. 3. Images of Teacher and of Com- So long as society maintains a profit-oriented culture industry, it will remain inimical to composition (compo- poser sition is inimical to it) and this situation requires of the composer the generation of an enclave, letting composi- 3.1 Two Incompatibilities tion guide the generation of its social context, against the social context it was born into. Teaching in the educa- Many composers who teach, grumble about having to tional system is at best a band-aid attempting to supply teach. Though the particular grumblings express dissat- something which is missing from the society at large: isfaction with the working conditions which “take time intelligent, caringly critical discussion of the work one away from composing”, the grumblings also express dis- wants to contribute. satisfaction with having to teach. This stress could mean Obedience, also inimical to composition, is tacitly “I would enjoy teaching if I didn’t have to teach”. What demanded by current teaching situations. The composer is usually meant, however, is: “I wouldn’t teach if I didn’t who proposes to teach composition thus stands between have to.” This last statement, the underlying enduring the teaching situation and the desire to compose. The grumble, can be understood to point to at least one of

MARK ENSLIN 91 Teaching Composition composition teacher’s desire to teach composers, and to cept and a generalization of what is to follow, will act teach composition, calls for ideas which undermine the inconsistently with the pedagogies they know. implicit demand for obedience in the teaching situation. Since the problem appears as a dilemma it requires com- Formulation position to approach a solution. Two sources of the aversion to teaching are (1) the attack 3.2 Arguments Against? on hierarchy, and (2) the neglect of formulation. Some are averse to teaching because they dislike the visibility “It has often been said that composition cannot be taught, of hierarchy; others are averse to teaching only because and though this statement, like many generalizations, is too they have neglected formulation. sweeping, it contains a good deal of truth.” If the activity of formulating ideas—taking care in (Jacob The Composer and his Art, 1) ‘putting them into words’– were seen as crucial, indis- “For all practical purposes you can learn all there is to pensable for composition, that is, if composition were be learned from someone in the space of six months, and taken to imply radical thinking, then one would need the even that would be slow: sometimes a week is enough.” pesky insistence of a curious person, a person who sus- (Boulez, Conversations with Deli`ege) pects that one’s ideas might be needed, not as a help but Since the composer’s activity is to make music which as an ally. has not been before, the composer can be taught, at most, A teacher can offer the formulation of a thought what has been music before, but not what music is to be which might provoke a student to engage in a new pro- next, for deciding what is to be music next is the activity cess of thinking, and to apply the new process of thinking of the composer. in a process of composition which will give rise to a per- “Deliberately self-taught [vs. ‘accidentally self-taught’] sonal style and perhaps a new thought, distinct from the . . . that is, those who have the strength of will to have done teacher’s thinking, composition, style, and thought. If with models that existed before them.” this were to happen, it might provoke a student to engage (Boulez, 36) in a process of composing based not on the wish to adopt “This does not mean that the study of the theory a style, to do something liked, to conform to the taste and of composition is superfluous or even harmful. At sense of reasonability of society as it is, but on the wish all times composers—even the great masters—learned to explore the consequences of the thought in a thinking through study to express their musical thoughts more process, with ideas and ways of composing which could pointedly, fluently, and clearly. In order to fulfill its role properly, the teaching of composition must keep two points propose the style, liking, taste, and sense for society not in view. By abstracting general principles from the works yet existing. of the great masters, it enables the average musical person with no special gift for composition to ‘compose’ music, i.e. to put it together. This happens every day in musi- 3.3 Desired Consequences I cal academies, where the students write fugues, canons, rondos and so on. But there is one thing which the most A teacher makes the audacious claim that the goal of conscientious pursuit of the study of composition cannot teaching is the obsolescence of the teacher. do—that is, replace inspiration, through which alone music A composer makes the equally audacious claim that the becomes the immediate creative expression of thoughts.” goal of composing is the indispensability of the com- (Rufer, Composing with Twelve Tones, 3) poser. A teacher who would teach composition can think To draw this distinction links the contradictions to to- that the student composer may come up with the ideas, day’s society which teacher and composer find them- and then may learn from the teacher how to realize, de- selves in: current society denies teachers their obsoles- velop, or embed the ideas. But the realization, develop- cence and composers their indispensability. ment or embedding of an idea must be determined ac- An imaginatively composed teaching is indispens- cording to the idea, not according to the teacher. able for having one’s contemporaries enter into the con- Originality, spontaneity, insight, irony, sense of hu- versations with compositions (what has been referred to mor, tactical ingenuity, serendipity might be learned, as the desired consequences for a composition). but cannot be taught. Teaching concerns itself with The discussion of criteria consulted by a composer method, while the attributes of a good composer (orig- touches on the potential significance of the composition, inality, spontaneity, insight, etc.) circumvent method; its input, contribution, social consequences, its ‘mes- they are, possibly, anti-method. Every pedagogy, even sage’; this discussion also holds the potential to teach when aimed at liberation, is composed of precepts and composition to those who would be its students. generalizations. Composers, themselves wanting to set “When asking students the question: ‘Why do you want up each particular composition as though it were a pre- to compose?’,

MARK ENSLIN 92 Teaching Composition the best answer given to me thus far has been: The purpose of teaching composition , of learning ‘I HAVE NO CHOICE!’ ” skill in composing, is to prevent squandering good ideas (Gaburo, Collaboration One: The Beauty of Irrelevant in bad pieces: where the idea is not only wasted in a con- Music) text that doesn’t need it, but is also spoiled for a context Gaburo’s glee on hearing this answer—bad news that that might need it. it is—must have come not only from the linking of com- position with a sense of necessity, but also from the dou- ble entendre: composition does something about the sit- 4. Composing the Performance of uation of having no alternative, where ‘to do something Teaching about it’ in this case means response to a lack of choice as a problem provoking creation. Composition creates If teaching is to be understood as responding to students alternatives. by sharing power and offering alternatives and criteria, a To the extent that a composition shows how alterna- composer who would teach composition confronts three tives were chosen according to criteria, it teaches. Thus compositional problems: formulating alternatives and a teacher who asks students to compose thereby invites criteria, couching the offer and response, and creating those students to become teachers. The teacher who the context of sharing power. Teaching must then be ap- would make such an invitation confronts three compo- proached as composition, and the teaching situation is sitional problems: formulating alternatives and criteria, then a place where the function of teacher overlaps with creating the context of sharing, and the performance of the function of composer. offer and response. Teaching must then be approached The composing teacher tries to get students to grap- as composition, and the teaching situation is then a place ple with issues which the teaching composer does not where the function of teacher and the function of com- outgrow: the current constitution of ‘I’, the description poser overlap. of the current epoch, and the selection of strategies for “To the extent that a composition shows how alterna- I’s confrontation with the epoch. tives were chosen according to criteria, it teaches.” This Composition of performance—composition, that is, extent might equal zero, for a composition shows crite- taken to be the synthesis, according to socially condi- ria only to a person who has inferred the criteria; that tioned and society-conditioning preferences, of the con- is, only a person who has inferred the criteria will say sequences of a premise established by human (anti- that a composition ‘showed’ the criteria. Under current natural) fiat—is an attempt indispensable to the perfor- conditions, it is already a feat if a composition has suc- mance of compositions. ceeded in signaling to the listener that something was chosen. The audience which understands that something was chosen must hold some image—even if not the com- 4.1 Environment of Discourse poser’s image—of a set of alternatives from which the A composition can assert its distinction, its provocation, composer chose. its statement only if it is treated as though it wants to be Criteria, then, are a matter of discussion, and the dis- distinguished, as though it aims to provoke, as though it cussion must havea context,a time anda space anda cer- wishes to make a statement. Listeners (students?) will tain level of discourse, in which it can take place. Where distinguish, respond to provocation, and formulate state- else is such a context to be made if not in a ‘teaching ments only if they are treated as though they want to de- situation’? scribe, as though they want to respond, as though they I am aware that education is not a miraculous process want to formulate. capable by itself of effecting the changes necessary to Ideas are welcome, but they are not what a student move a nation from one epoch to another. Indeed, it is true that by itself education can do nothing, because the of composition needs from a teacher. The contribution very fact of being ‘by itself’ (i.e., superimposed on its urgently needed from a teacher is increased sensitivity, context) nullifies its undeniable power as an instrument of and sensitivity increases when a distinction is introduced. change . . . Precisely because education is not the lever for Distinctions might be introduced with hints, gestures, ex- the transformation of society, we are in danger of despair amples, but not without formulations. The formulation and of cynicism if we limit our struggle to the classroom. (Schor and Freire, A Pedagogy for Liberation, 129) of a distinction establishes a moment of increased free- dom. Since the context (the time, the space and especially Waive the privilege of access to the absolute truth, the level of discourse) for the discussion of criteria can- and a kind of discussion is then possible which would not simply be found, it must be created. The creation of not be possible without waiving the privilege of access a context, if not to be thought of as composition, at least to absolute truth. requires the thinking of a composer.

MARK ENSLIN 93 Teaching Composition The premise of teaching has been that better knowl- such that phrases that once allowed one to “get by” no edge leads to better actions, that is, to actions chosen af- longer pass unchallenged. One of the performances that ter consulting better knowledge as criterion. Teachers becomes available when phrases fall under suspicion is know better than to rely on this premise. Teachers could that of catching oneself. If, for example, I am one of the begin to look at the environmental conditions in which a participants in a discussion in which we have decided to person will consult better knowledge in choosing actions. dispense with all phrases that imply faith in objectivity, Teaching: when I bring about an environment of dis- and unwittingly I begin the next sentence with “It seems course in which those whom I claim to teach learn what to me...”, and stop, this performanceshows the moment I would have them know. I may not know afterwards in which usage clashes with thought. whether I taught, or the environment of discourse taught. I also learned how to give up my power as a teacher (not In a social world which responds to the manifestation delegate it but abrogate it) and how to help my pupils as of desire with contempt, apathy, oblivion, preaching, and well as become someone they could talk with. I learned to derision, a teacher not only asks for the manifestation of listen to them, to be led by their interests and needs. In turn I became involved in creating things in the classroom—in desire, but also asks for allies in the attack on contempt, doing research on myths and numbers, in learning from apathy, oblivion, preaching, and derision. the experience of the students. My students and I resem- If hierarchy is inherent in the teaching situation, then bled a community much more than a class, and I enjoyed a project for the composing teacher would be to expose being with them. We worked together in an open environ- it, to undermine it, to jostle it. ment which often spilled out of the school building into the streets, the neighborhood, the city itself. If the concept of composition excludes imitation of (Kohl, 14) models, and models are not to be done away with, then As teaching situations necessarily involve im- how else to treat a model? (Problem for a respondent) promptu moments, casual conversation, banter, “ice- “... the pupil would have to gather from them the fact breaking”, one could let compositional thinking and that one must come to grips with all the problems—not playfulness reach into these preludes and postludes to how to.” (Sch¨onberg, Style and Idea) getting down to business. I construct the consistency which connects the con- sistency of one composer with the consistency of an- other composer. In presenting a composer’s work and 4.2 Witness views, I distinguish the consistency of the views investi- JZ ... I not only say ‘that’s what I saw’, but ‘given this gated, written about, presented, from the consistency of context, that’s what I saw’, and would call that a my viewing the consistencies. witness. I’m checking. Is this what you wanted? Two teachers: ME I was thinking of situations, for instance, a lecture 1. “I have to prepare!” in which some lecturer has given a presentation 2. “I have to prepare the first sentence of a class; the and then there’s a question-answer period, and a first sentence has to be composed. From there I young student raises a hand and asks a question have to provoke, respond, demonstrate the devel- of the lecturer that perhaps questions one of the opment of an idea.” premises of this person’s lecture. Instead of ad- dressing the question, the lecturer will find one of First statements apply leverage to the level of dis- numerous ways of saying ‘Yeah yeah, that’s very course. nice. I’m always glad to get a question like that. Carefully chosen first statements can protect the dis- Now are there any other questions?’ [laughter] and cussion at the outset against the avalanche of agreement. this happens so frequently that nobody even finds “The choice is gloomy: conscientious functionary or it funny anymore. free artist, the teacher escapes neither the theater of speech nor the Law played out on its stage: the Law appears not JG It’s not funny. [laughter] I’m laughing but that in what is said but in the very fact of speech. In order to doesn’t mean it’s funny. [laughter] subvert the Law (and not simply get around it), the teacher would have to undermine voice delivery, word speed, and CW That’s one of Lesley’s tragedies. rhythm to the point of another intelligibility.” SP So in that situation you’re putting what? (Barthes, “Writers, Intellectuals, Teachers”) ME In that situation what’s missing is someone to wit- “In the teaching situation, no one should anywhere ness the interaction between the lecturer and the be in his place.” (Barthes) The fall-back phrases which student. oil the usual discourse with unreflected-upon agreement are to be made out of place. Teaching could change the HB Witness would be a whole roomful of lecture atten- state of knowledge by changing the state of language, dants getting up and leaving upon that.

MARK ENSLIN 94 Teaching Composition CW Mm hm. is expressed in several fairy tales, but there the moral of ME Mm hm. the story condemns desire—which it equates with over- reaching ambition and acquisitiveness. On the contrary, HB That would be a demonstration of witnesship. This to favor desire and fulfillment while maintaining critical is so ridiculous if such a thing happens everybody scrutiny is what a composer teaches—to support desire must leave. Just go. But it doesn’t happen. Be- so that one may scrutinize the consequences of desires cause witnessing does not seem to be an instruc- fulfilled rather than the consequences of obligations met. tion to action. It seems to be an instruction to doc- Paraphrase is incorrectly assumed to be the most umentation. It is absorbed by research. credible form of receipt that one has understood—or has The concept of ‘witness’, as distinguished from been understood. Paraphrase is often accompanied by ‘observer’, ‘spectator’; from ‘advocate’, ‘judge’, the phrase “Do you mean ...?”, which shows the re- ‘recorder’, and ‘reporter’, indicates that a person spondent to be overlooking the fact that a paraphrase is a sees, hears, and speaks publicly about what she transformation of the initial statement. Verbatim repeat is sees and hears. A witness is called for when underestimated as a credible receipt. A respondent who a doubt has been raised—publicly—whether an checks by verbatim repeat gives a sign that this respon- event has taken place, or not. The concept of wit- dent considers the formulation to be of significance. ness admits of a variety of motivations, guided, Paraphrase has other functions besides conveying a however by the motivation to make public a so- falsely reassuring “I know what you mean”. It can func- cially functioning statement of what has taken tion as correction or refusal. It plays a role in brain- place. storming, in the attempt to develop an answer to an unan- WB Not that anyonewould care but that term has a long swered question, where the aspect of transformation is history that way going back at least to the ... precisely what is wanted. SP Which word has a long history to it? Witness? To respond with a paraphrase is different from re- sponding with an analogy, so long as analogy is under- WB To witness in that capacity. To witness as in to stood as the attempt to point at a structure applied in two give, to bear testimony to, rather than to witness distinct systems. The colloquial threat to analogy is “It’s as in to passively observe. The witness to an ac- like ...”; contrary to this usage, response by analogy em- cident does not bear testimony to it. That’s what’s phasizes the difference between the two systems. becoming the law, in the eyes of the law. In the history of social protest to witness means indeed to bear testimony to that which occurred, but with 4.3 Criticism, Dismissal, Correction the implication that the testimony which is born is Dismissal need not result from malice; casual remarks an action rather than simply a relation, a report. and attempts to compliment easily exhibit the features A listener and serve the function of an effective put-down. The aim will not become a witness of the dismissal—intended or not—is to banish a prob- without having had one. lem, issue, or offer from public discourse, and so deny The current state of listening—to music and to talk— them a social function. suffers from lack of witness. “All student input needs to be appreciated and re- We in music seem to be the only ones who are living in sponded to: ‘Nice question’, ‘Good point’, ‘Thanks for that impossible world in which unjustified, false belief not the clarification’.” (Thomas Benjamin, “The Learning only parades as but is published as knowledge. We have Process and Teaching”) Hear, hear! All input needs to a very serious situation in that regard. Music has become be appreciated and responded to—or: on the contrary, all the final resting place for all of those hoary psychophysi- input needs to be appreciated and responded to. cal dualisms such as heart and brain, the cognitive and the sentient. Well, we’re having a problem and that is part of Speech is irreversible: a word cannot be retracted, ex- our problem. The notion of serious discourse about music cept precisely by saying one retracts it. To cross out is is a concern to me not because I have to be concerned es- here to add: if I want to erase what I have just said, I can- sentially about the state and fate of discourse, but because not do it without showing the eraser itself (I must say: ‘or I’m concerned about the state and fate of music. rather . . . ’ ‘I expressed myself badly . . . ’); paradoxically (Milton Babbit, Words about Music, 175) it is ephemeral speech which is indelible, not monumental writing. A teacher of composition must be two witnesses: (Barthes, “Writers, Intellectuals, Teachers”) a witness to the student and a witness to what the student Dismissal wishes to act as such an eraser for the did. responded-to. I learn how to witness what that which I do, does. When a composer has the reputation of being a bad The fulfillment of a desire has consequences. This idea

MARK ENSLIN 95 Teaching Composition teacher and yet is known as someonefrom whom onecan wishes to write for the trumpet could be asked to watch learn, the conflict in reputations could be due to a failure the player’s neck while high and low notes are attempted, to distinguish between criticism and dismissal, but also to see what a pianissimo attack looks like, to sit in on a to the appearance of criticisms among the dismissals. rehearsal and watch what the players do when they have The word ‘correction’ conceals, under the one notion to change mutes, etc. of static hierarchy, a variety of behaviors: correction ac- To give instructions when an orientation would suffice, cording to the consistency toward which the student was and to persist with orientation when instruction is needed, aiming; correction according to a criterion not yet con- both are condescending. sulted by the student; correction according to a set of (Humberto Maturana visiting Br¨un’s seminar) rules to which the student tried to conform; correction To show an alternative orients a respondent to according to a set of rules to which the work generally choose. conforms, unbeknownst to the student; ‘correction’ ac- To offer several instructions can function as orienta- cording to rules which are appropriate neither to the stu- tion. (Alternative instructions, or a compound or constel- dent nor to the work. lation of instructions) Implicit invitation by the student affects the gesture of correction: 4.5 Gesture 1. invitation to regard and admire; Gestures of scolding, 2. invitation to check for self-consistency (immanent warning, critique); holding forth, 3. invitation to check for consistency with a set of reminding, rules; teasing, indicting, bantering, 4. invitation to brainstorm on continuation of work in looking askance, progress; confiding, 5. invitation to discuss the desirability of the conse- confessing, quences of desired choices. prescribing, pleading, A teacher can offer alternatives to the invitation as- Gesture: not to ‘do’, but to ‘perform’. Sullivan’s sumed by the student. Uninvited correction, when not description of gesture as a hybrid medium wherein one itself an invitation, dismisses an offer. medium borrows distinctions from another, could be ap- plied to the performance of teaching. 4.4 Instruction and Orientation To be able to imagine and perform, with attention to voice, vocabulary, and gesture, the most insidious of Within the power of the respondent, i.e., among the slanderers and flatterers. choices open to the respondent is the choice to respond If all teachingis also a performance(and not the other by instruction or by orientation. Instruction tells you ex- way around), then when does a performanceteach? For a plicitly what to do. Orientation makes a change in the performanceto succeed in entertaining is not sufficient— environment according to which you tell yourself what most successful entertainments confirm only the already to do. An instruction would be when I say, “Please, turn believed, and stave off reflection. Neither will an un- up the heat”; you obey or don’t. Orientation would be entertaining performance suffice. One requirement most when I hunch my shoulders, rub my arms, breathe on my likely is that the performance include an element of self- hands, and shiver, and you, detecting that the tempera- reference. ture of the room makes me uncomfortable and acting on Gestures of being astonished, your sense of hospitality, decide to turn up the heat. calling a bluff, I could instruct a person who wishes to write for the conceding a point, trumpet to avoid the low range, especially in muted pas- bragging, boasting, sages, to be sparing of the high range, to make sure that burlesquing ... high notes are prepared, to take advantage of the trum- Giving advice grates for want of variety of gesture. pet’s agility, incisive attack, large dynamic range, etc. To be able to imagine and perform, with attention Or: I could orient a person who wishes to write for the to voice, vocabulary, and gesture, the most insidious of trumpet to the phenomenon of the trumpet and trumpet slanderers and flatterers could help to remove hope from players. I could invite a trumpet player to meet with us, its favored status as criterion for making decisions. try out a few exercises, show mutes. The person who

MARK ENSLIN 96 Teaching Composition It is in the power of the respondent to disregard the 5. playing by the rules rather than playing along: gesture with which a remark is made, by taking it at its obedient word—that is, responding to the sentence as though it were spoken within another gesture. In this way an at- Two contemporary performances of being a student: tempt at dismissal by sarcasm, taken as a proposal, can (1) the student knows it already, and therefore it is of become unexpectedly a contribution. little interest; (2) the student is not interested in it, and “Showing a painting of a white area [I said] ‘Master therefore knows it already. How to perform facing such Kandinsky, I have finally succeeded in painting an absolute a performance? picture of absolutely nothing.’ Kandinsky took my picture “In an open situation the teacher tries . . . to deal with completely seriously. He set it up right in front of us and each situation as a communal problem.” said: ‘The dimensions of the picture are right. You are aim- (Kohl, 16) ing for earthliness. The earthly color is red. Why did you choose white?’ I replied ‘because the white plane repre- sents nothingness.’ ‘Nothingness is a great ideal,’ Kandin- 4.7 Question sky said. ‘God created the world from nothingness.’ He took brush and paint, set down on the white plane a red, Sometimes an offered question is sufficient impetus for a yellow, and a blue spot and glazed on a bright green those who have learned the question to supply the in- shadow by the side. Suddenly a picture was there, a proper sights necessary to invent answers. Sometimes an of- picture, a magnificent picture.” (A student of Kandinsky, quoted in Frank Whitford, fered question conveys the sufficient insight for those Bauhaus, 98) who know the question to invent answers. If the teacher poses legitimate questions (that is, ... disputing, questions to which the answers are not known by the bemoaning, teacher), then the teacher and student are, or become— mocking, vis-a-vis the question—colleagues. exhorting, venturing a suggestion, harping on something, 1. The teacher addresses problems of the student applauding, which the teacher has already mastered (‘Illegiti- shutting up, mate questions’). commiserating ... Suggestion for a director—also appropriate for a 2. The teacher’s mastery of approach emerges while teacher?—create a distinct style of address for each actor, offering the student a problem which the teacher for each student: speed, humor, level of friction, in-joke, has not mastered (‘Legitimate questions’). In goal, vocabulary, tones of voice, gestures. this instance the teacher shares power, but not di- rectly with the student; rather indirectly through the problem. 4.6 The Performance of Being a Student Socrates’ every response is a question. Most of the “Lessons, then, where advanced students of composition are concerned, should be in the nature of friendly discus- questions are placed as open moments within a chain of sions illustrated if necessary by master and pupil with rele- argumentation, wherein he seeks assent to those com- vant quotations from the works of composers of excellence ponents of the argument which he thinks unlikely to be of all periods, and the pupil should state clearly what his contested. Since the initial assertion of his conversation difficulties and problems are . . . A pupil who puts his work partner is contradicted by the culmination of conceded in front of his master and then sits like an oyster, mum and dull, is really more of a cross than one who is too talkative, points, Socrates’ process of questioning appears not to severe trial though the latter can be.” ‘make an argument of his own’ but to dismantle the ar- (Jacob, 6) gument of his partner in conversation. And if a pupil does not, or can not, or will not state Socrates satirizes his conversation-partners’ assump- clearly what the difficulties and problems are? tion of reductionist logic: that the whole argument (to Five initial poses of a student meeting a teacher: which Socrates’ addressees disagree) is the sum of its parts (to each of which his addressees almost cannot but 1. tolerant (knowing it all) agree). Since they agreed to the parts, they swallow the whole. 2. reveling in contrariness A question and the way it is asked lead a respondent 3. unable to begin, not knowing how to choose, stuck by pointing at a range of answers it considers admissible. 4. secure, but interested, that is, not completely se- The respondentneed not remain in thrall to the question’s cure range of admissible answers.

MARK ENSLIN 97 Teaching Composition 4.8 Assignment images referred to in discussing a problem or to intro- duce and explore a few terms so that a shared vocabulary ME... Yousaid youwouldwanttofind outa lotofdif- can become the means for generating new ideas—from ferent things about this student, where this person which a usage develops. had been, what they were thinking of, and what they wanted to do. What would you do with that “After three or four years of working together, we have developed a shared vocabulary which allows explorations, description of the student? conjectures, and formulations to be discussed on a high JG Make an assignment. level. Then new people come in and don’t know what we’re talking about.” ME Hm. (Gaburo in a conversation) SP Hm. The generation of an enclave affords one the luxury HB That’s what it’s for. of such problems.

Josephus comes up with ideas for fulfillments of assign- 4.11 Sharing Power ments not given by Aloysius; that is, both Aloysius and Josephus are busy generating assignments. Those who contemplate pedagogy assume a dichotomy: (Fux, Gradus ad Parnassum, 29ff, for example) either encouragement through ‘being nice’, positive Formulate an assignment such that it creates a con- statements, rewards, etc., or encouragement through be- text in which a student wants you to teach. Let the as- ing ‘tough’, enforcing discipline, administering punish- signment create the context. ment. If contemplation of pedagogy were coupled with critical observation of the (discouraging) social environ- 4.9 Face to Face ment against which teaching labors, then both policies would be seen as standing among the generators of dis- A composer is most likely to consult another when feel- couragement. ing stuck on a problem, at an impasse (thus the dispar- “One of the basic elements of the relationship between agement of composition teaching as ‘therapy’). Since the oppressor and oppressed is prescription. Every prescrip- compositional problem is concocted by the composer, an tion represents the imposition of one man’s choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the man pre- outsider might be puzzled that the composer doesn’t de- scribed to into one that conforms with the prescriber’s con- cide to drop it and move to some other. The puzzled sciousness. Thus, the behavior of the oppressed is a pre- outsider would be missing several points: that a stuck scribed behavior, following as it does the guidelines of moment might be a sign of potential breakthrough; that the oppressor . . . pedagogy of the oppressed, a pedagogy it is the difficulty of the posed problem that is seductive; which must be forged with, not for, the oppressed (whether peoples or individuals) in the incessant struggle to regain that the posed problem is likely of interest for its links to their humanity . . . How can the oppressed, as divided, in- a problem not posed by the composer; and that the im- authentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of passe might derive from a lack of problem: the composer their liberation?” might be mistakenly inspecting the ideas that are there in (Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 31) the posed problem instead of looking for an additional “I learn by teaching.” (Thomas Benjamin, On Teach- idea which is not there. ing Composition) Lacking committed stress, this sen- tence would convey the unintended message that you 4.10 Vocabulary (and everyone but I) don’t learn by teaching. Use of the third-person I (Br¨un)—‘I learns by teaching’—could fer- Artists use and hear jargon terms of which understand- ret out an insight about learning: that everyone who says ing is assumed precisely because the terms are jargon. ‘I’ learns by teaching, including students. Upon examination, often the assumption is seen to be “In order to elicit the current self-description of a sys- unfounded, if not also the confidence in the usefulness of tem I wish to understand, I have to grant it the power of the the terms. respondent.” Some terms which have acquired a precise technical (Br¨un, My Words and Where I Want Them, 111) meaning serve the development of thinking about com- The teacher is a respondent; the student is a respon- posing (and thus also of composing) when these terms dent; the phenomenology of these two respondents de- are temporarily uncoupled from their technical meaning. pends, in part, on whether the teaching situation is treated In the performance of teaching, a decision is to be as a one-way medium, a two-way medium, or a more- made regarding vocabulary: whether to renew the vo- than-two-way medium. cabulary of discourse frequently, rapidly changing the

MARK ENSLIN 98 Teaching Composition 5. What Do I Teach such that I In the notes on the first production of the lehrst¨uck The Mother, Brecht says of the set that only those props were Teach Composition? used without which the play could not happen.

The question “what do I teach?” points at the not-yet- “ . . . the stage . . . was not meant to simulate an actual known alternatives and not-yet-consulted criteria which locality. Instead the stage itself assumed a position, as it the teacher would like to present to, or investigate with, were, in regard to the events: it quoted, recounted, antic- students. Under the image of teaching I would like to ipated, and reminded. With its sparse indications of fur- niture, doors and the like, it was kept to the objects that support, however, these alternatives and criteria form played a role; objects, that is, which, were they missing, only part of the subject matter. The other part is to be would require the action to proceed differently or not at derived from the teaching situation: who is present, what all.” has been brought; local trends, hot topics, and simmering (Brecht, performance notes for The Mother, 133–4) controversies. The purpose of teaching composition, of learning skill in For the situation to be a teaching situation the composing, is to prevent squandering good ideas in bad participants—students and teachers—must attempt to pieces: where the idea is not only wasted in a context that connect the subject matter which they constitute with the doesn’t need it, but is also spoiled for a context that might title under which they meet. need it. The following list of answers to the question “what do I teach such that I teach composition?” represents a “A compositional method exists to write pieces. It is not sacred, and when the piece has reached through application network of ways to approach, work on, think about what of the method a sufficient degree of completeness, it will I have learned to call—and currently prefer to call— begin to assert its own rights and needs. These may often composition. seem to contradict the original method or call for changes What do I teach? in the work’s design. Do not hesitate when such a situation The desirability of ... arises. If the method has served long enough to allow the work it has produced to contradict it, it has more than ful- Fear of... filled its function.” Aversion to. . . (Wuorinen, Simple Composition, 164) The abundance of... Preference for... This paragraph could have been the first of a book which To ask when... would bracket the notion of method, and change it from being the tool for making acceptable products efficiently, The difference between... to being a probe where the method is half object of interest The dialectics of... and half pretext for serendipity. (Composition as planned The ability to discern between... serendipity.) The necessity of ... The synthesizer teaches a readiness for ready-mades. The Attention to. . . counter move will have to be made by composers, whether The desirability of coming up with an idea which by turning away from the synthesizer, or subverting the requires the medium chosen, the structure chosen; synthesizer, or thinking of an idea which requires the syn- the requirements of an idea. thesizer. Fear of the decay of information Experience with the technique of ‘brainstorming’ illus- trates how widespread is the ability to come up with ideas. I distinguish between tendencies which can be avoided, Scarcity is introduced by qualifications: new ideas, really which must be ‘guarded against’, which can only be re- new ideas, good ideas, very good ideas, lots of ideas, the tarded. right idea. Thus the problem is not having ideas but having That which I can avoid will not happen unless I do it. an idea of what to do with ideas such that they play a role, That which I must guard against will visit uninvited unless fulfill a need or desire, solve a problem. I take precautions. That which takes its course sooner or later according to The composer asks questions of the initial idea and the pro- what we currently know as laws of nature, namely: decay, posed medium regarding the traces which the idea requires as in “decay of information” (Shannon and Weaver), can to have left and the traces which the medium is capable of only be retarded. (Br¨un) preserving. (Sullivan, “The Performance of Gesture”)) Facing the one-way inexorable process of the decay of information, I am loath to try to exhaust all the possibilities In the process of composing, the idea acts as a pretext. The of an idea. composer forms a web of consistencies around this idea, A teacher’s response to a student’s work in progress which becomes a pretext for the statement that emerges. could point out repeats, constancies, and periodicities That a respondent may later discover this idea and attach (which speed the loss of information) that the student over- significance to it, does not deny that the idea was a pretext looked. for the composition and statement which emerged from it. In some cases, a drone-like constancy results from too little redundancy.

MARK ENSLIN 99 Teaching Composition Variations on ‘simple’: might neglect to foresee the undesirable interpretations to A listener apprehends components without yet compre- which the work is prey. A teacher can orient a student to hending the arrangement. the negative thinking necessary for taking protective mea- A listener perceives the simplicity of an arrangement on sures. Better that the piece remain an unsolved puzzle than which complexity has been conferred by complex compo- leave itself open to unwanted easy understanding. nents. Choose such consistencies as will help a witness defend A listener is subjected to a simple arrangement of simple the composition against its unintended messages. components (leaving open only the question of why it was Find the threshold between 1) a structure which has ac- done). cumulated a history of meanings and can still be alienated Ongoing projects: from its accumulated history of meanings in the creation composition of prose: prevention of meter of a new meaning; and 2) a structure which has accumu- composition of atonality: prevention of tonality lated a history of meanings and can no longer admit new composition of dramaturgy: prevention of drone. meanings. Instruments and instrumental combinations are subject “ . . . this return of the tabooed should not take the form to the dynamics of decay. They have heydays, become of a harking back to unproblematic categories and solu- used up, suffer entire epochs in which their social function tions; rather, what may legitimately return are past prob- renders them untouchable, even when a compositional idea lems.” calls for them. The pipe organ, for example, still resists all (Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 53–4) attempts to disentangle it from the church. A person who would compose expects, correctly, that To compose a consistency which is inconsistent with all this person’s first act as composer would confront the per- messages unwanted by the composer opens the possibility son as an interesting and admirable stranger. The person is, that even unintended messages might become wanted. however, incorrectly preoccupied with inherited standards Preference for creating the illusion of something, the of interest and admirability, and neglects the technical re- quirements of estrangement. effect of something, over the reproduction of the real The subjection of an initially interesting idea to in- thing. versions, reversals, disguises, twists, deletions, exagger- Compositions partake of the power of the respondent ations, condensations,—focusing on the hitherto taken- in the nesting of events which can be spoken of as ‘ref- for-granted, specifying what has hitherto been left to erences’. The reference names the statement or event to accident—such that it is no longer interesting in the way which the composition responds. it was initially, opens the possibility that it could become Contrary to common practice, however, ‘reference’ interesting. need not mean ‘quotation’. Instead of lifting directly from Aversion to imitation. that to which it responds, a composition could quote itself in the name of the other. The ideology which presumes the uniqueness of the in- The antagonism of composition toward facts suggests dividual hinders the teaching of composition. (The pattern that quotation be turned to reluctantly. A more sophisti- of the presumption: “Every person is unique. Therefore cated procedure would be to invent one’s quotations. In every product of that person’s activity is unique.” A varia- the process one might identify what it was in the struc- tion on this ideology assumes that nothing new, original, or ture of the quoted which prompted one initially to quote it. unique is ever to be expected or desired.) The thought that Since quotation links the present work to the context which makes uniqueness into a problem which requires experi- originally gave the quoted item meaning, the variety of the mentation and construction, and risks error and failure— quoted and its original context drowns out the quality one this thought helps create a social context wherein compo- wanted to emphasize in quoting it. sition is needed. Thus technique can be judged according Two assumptions made regarding the practice of quot- to its adequacy in meeting the criterion of distinguishabil- ing: (1) that the item (and not its context) generated the ity. meaning apparently conveyed by the item; (2) that the Good improvisers panic at the claustrophobia induced quoted item somehow acts as a representative of the con- by the repertory under the fingertips; the sensitivity re- text it came from. mains a reflex, in contrast to a composer, who reflects on To ask when the claustrophobia-inducing situation and thus can choose repetition is not repetition to preserve the moment panic, or discard it in favor of an- activity becomes stasis other situation, or disguise it as a deliberate set-up and so a step is seen to have been a leap invite witnesses to the situation rather than spectators of a simple process yields a complex result the improviser’s predicament. a small change gives rise to a large change. Contributing to a general attempt: I make my predeces- “Consistent and nothing but” (Adorno) describes frac- sor my ally. Respect for the composer to whom I wish to tals and the delusion that they are the meeting place of sci- pay homage rules out imitation; on the contrary, it requires ence and art. Likewise symmetry, since it can integrate the distinctness of my offer, temporarily linked to the other anything into an aesthetic whole, meets no resistance and by the description of a shared attempt. therefore accomplishes nothing. The abundance of unintended messages; protection Technique: Learn technique as a solution to a particu- lar problem, but also as a solution of a set of problems, to against unintended messages. which, through an act of creation, a problem can be added, A composer follows a line of thought in realizing an thus requiring a change of the technique, and contributing idea. In concentrating on the line of thought, the composer to its evolution.

MARK ENSLIN 100 Teaching Composition Ambiguity: when an element is understood as capable The necessity of having something preserve its iden- of functioning in more than one consistency. ‘Clarifica- tity so that change may be known (to have change there tion’ of an ambiguity: when the functions suggested by must be something which undergoes change)—the ne- an ambiguity are reflected unambiguously elsewhere, thus connecting the several possible consistencies in one con- cessity of a carrier for modulation. sistency. ‘Having something . . . ’ could mean something imme- The difference between element and function, and inter- diately recognized, or something conjectured, imputed, in- est in preserving the identity of an element under change ferred, pieced together, discovered, revised . . . in each case of function. some of the features of the ‘something’ are to remain con- Function: what an element does in the system which stant in order for it to show change. gives it a function. (In a tonal piece, an F# might be an element; surrounded by a D and an A the F# might func- Attention to dramaturgy, emphasis, upbeat and tion as the third of a triad; within a harmonic progression downbeat, speech behavior, gesture ... the triad might function as dominant and the F# function Here the list of answers breaks off; the question as leading tone.) “what do I teach such that I teach composition” is one Preserving an element under change of function: the el- of the open questions, that is, questions which remain ement F#, having functioned as the third of a D major triad and as a leading tone in G, becomes surrounded by a D and legitimate even after having been answered. a B, in the company of which it now functions as the 5th of a b minor triad: the pitch is preserved; the function given it by the harmony changes. 6. Compositions that Teach: Open A function might be treated as an element which can preserve its identity and acquire other functions. Form The aversion to ornament might be temporarily sus- pended when the composer hits on an idea which gives 6.1 ‘Open’ and ‘Didactic’ to an ostensible ornament a structural function required by the whole in formation. There exist pieces about which it is said that they were The ability to discern between the significance of an composed for didactic purposes. Those pieces remain event for a composed system and the significance of an event for perception. of interest to the extent that the pieces exceed didactic A compositional idea might call for 20 gradations of an purposes, or to the extent that the pieces dignify didactic attribute where perception can barely discern 20; a com- purposes (against the pejorative sense given to ‘didac- positional idea might call for 20 gradations of an attribute tic’), or to the extent that the pieces and didacticism are where perception can discern 5 or 6. A transposition of a pitch might also transpose its tim- at cross-purposes. bre. Instances: The books of preludes and fugues by Two notations of one sequence of durations might each Bach, Die Kunst der Fuge; Chopin Etudes and Preludes; call forth from a performer a distinct performance. Debussy Etudes—but with ‘etudes’, ‘studies’, the ques- Sophistication in teaching composition would include tion arises whether these are studies for their composers, sophistication of insight into perception. Aside from the sometimes surprising ability to ‘learn’ new psychoacousti- or studies for their students? Etude books for instrumen- cal boundaries, ambiguities arise in the boundary between talists could, while ostensibly posing problems for play- ‘just noticeable difference’ and significant difference. ing technique, also address problems of composition. One index of such changes is the attribution of unplaya- Bartok and Ravel took the assignment to write easy- bility to a piece of music. Compositions once declared un- to-play pieces as an opportunity to create effects they playable are now included in instrumental repertoire. would not have been able to achieve without this con- The dialectics of significance: when an increase in straint. Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite could almost be con- the number of alternatives increases, and when it de- sidered didactic in two directions, in that one could learn creases, the significance of a choice. from inexperienced pianists the potential for expressive- If a piece for piano is inadvertently confined to the mid- ness of “non-expressive” playing technique. dle registers, then a reminder of the possibility of high and The first of Debussy’s Etudes distances itself from low increases the significance of the time during which the piece stays in the middle. The middle register appears cho- pedagogywith the rhythmicand harmonicpranks it plays sen; the piece performs confinement to the middle rather on the Czerny five-finger exercise. In literature, Que- than simply being it. neau’s Exercises de Style shows what happens when an Instances in which an increase of the number of alterna- anecdote is told ninety-nine times, each time with a dis- tives flips from raising the level of significance over to low- tinct rhetorical or narrative style. One would not study ering the level of significance: the expansion of possibil- ities for rapid modulation allowed by the diminished sev- this work in order to master the ninety-nine styles; rather enth chord; change in the significance of dynamic changes one would study the composition of its way of calling when each note has a new dynamic marking; the entrance into question the importance of plot to narration. of the second voice as opposed to the entrance of the third Brecht’s lehrst¨ucke are examples of compositions voice as opposed to the entrance of the sixth voice. which show alternatives and criteria. Brecht attempted in

MARK ENSLIN 101 Teaching Composition these “teaching pieces” to show an unresolved dilemma randomly open to every pragmatic accident.” in a context of descriptions of the dilemma which could (Eco 7)) make it appear as a solvable problem. “The sonata movement of Viennese classicism was a Brecht, after all . . . wished not to dispense words of wis- closed form despite its dynamic quality, and no matter dom and pithy slogans, but to activate thought processes in how precarious the closure might have been. By contrast, the audience . . . Brecht’s attempts to kill subjective nu- the rondo, with its deliberate vagueness and oscillation be- ances with the aid of a blunt instrument, and to do so con- tween refrain and ‘couplets’, is a decidedly open form.” ceptually as well, are technical means of his art. In his best (Adorno Aesthetic Theory, 314)) works, they are a principle of stylization, far removed from any pedagogical fabula docet [the story teaches]. The other strategy is to is to admit that all works are (Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 47) open, and retain the distinction as one of degree rather than kind. There exist pieces about which it is said that their form or structure is “open”. What you [G. M. Koenig] said now about the score— in some sense all scores are open. I would subscribe to it Usage varies. completely. It’s a question of degree then. Something like Some have used the term in the attempt to distinguish Variations II or Variations I of Cage is open in a way that compositional experiments in variability of form. Debussy’s Jeux is not. And yet both of them are still open “Aleatorio can be played several times in succession, in the sense that they’re waiting for some kind of realiza- provided that the interpreters change the character of par- tion which we know will vary depending on who does it, ticular parts . . . These possibilities for change are not how they interpret it and so forth. So there’s always some chance—they present only a field of possibilities—and margin of openness in any text before it is rendered into ask of the interpreters to make an arrangement of them. sound.” Aleatorio is an open composition. . . ” (Christian Wolff, quoted in Fuller, panel discusssion) (Evangelisti, performance notes for Aleatorio) “So called open texts are only the extreme and most “For many listeners one of the clear experiences of a provocative exploitation—for poetic purposes—of a prin- score of this kind . . . [is that] there is a definite perception ciple which rules both the generation and the interpretation that this structure is only one of a constellation of possible of texts in general.” structures.” (Eco) (Fuller, 187) “Every work of art, even though it is produced by fol- “This search for ‘suggestiveness’ is a deliberate move lowing an explicit or implicit poetics of necessity, is effec- to ‘open’ the work to the free response of the addressee.” tively open to a virtually unlimited range of possible read- (Eco, The Role of the Reader, 53) ings, each of which causes the work to acquire new vitality in terms of one particular taste, or perspective, or personal “Today’s artists would rather do away with unity alto- performance.” gether, producing open, unfinished works, or so they think. (Eco) The problem is that in planning openness they necessarily impart another kind of unity unbeknown to themselves.” “A work of art therefore, is a complete and closed form (Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 204)) in its uniqueness as a balanced organic whole, while at the same time constituting an open product on account of its Some have responded to the fact that many of the susceptibility to countless different interpretations which descriptions which purport to distinguish open works ap- do not impinge on its unadulterable specificity. Hence, ev- ply to other works as well. Two strategies are adopted ery reception of a work of art is both an interpretations and a performance of it, because in every reception the work in these responses. One strategy is to retain the distinc- takes on a fresh perspective for itself.” tion open/closed, and introduce a new formulation of the (Eco) distinction. The controversy over when to call a work ‘open’ and “For musicians the term ‘open structure’ has curious ‘indeterminate’ has survived several versions of an answer and rather limiting connotations. It has been associated al- which should have settled it. most exclusively with various random procedures of com- (Eco, Br¨un) position, the use of which may, in fact, just as readily yield a closed structure as an open one. In its most characteris- “Every score is determinate and specific in that it de- tic manifestation, the open work seems to be one in which fines the finite set of questions to which it offers answers.” perception replaces object. In other words, the focus of the (Br¨un, My Words and Where I Want Them) open composition seems to be not so much upon the object of perception but rather upon the process of perception . . . open form, open structure, form becomes a model of the self as it first encounters the open ended, world . . . ” open society, (Delio, Circumscribing the Open Universe, 2) open book, “What I call open texts, are, rather, reducing . . . indeter- open classroom, minacy, whereas closed texts, even though aiming at elicit- opening, ing a sort of ‘obedient’ cooperation, are in the last analysis

MARK ENSLIN 102 Teaching Composition gala opening, among alternatives which the performer must generate. opening to democracy, The difference between a row and an oracle is the open door, open air, open field, placement of artifice. open spaces, Boulez promotes the idea of the deliberately self- open-and-shut case, taught composer. open mind, From whom does the self-taught composer learn? open face, From himself. Herself. open heart, open person, open wound: From what does the self-taught composer learn? the word ‘open’ has a rich contextual history. From compositions. There exist pieces about which it is said that the Under what circumstances would one learn from a com- openness of their forms links them to didactic purposes. position? “This music is drawn from the interaction of the peo- When one asks it questions. ple playing it. It requires for its performance independent Is that all? self-discipline (unpoliced by a score defining fixed rela- When the composition offers alternatives. tionships and timings) and a capacity and special alertness And? for responding to what one’s fellow performers are doing, the sounds they are making or changing and their silences. And criteria. The responding can be variously deliberate (there is time The ability of an audience member to elevate the mere and you are free) or must be quick and sudden (there are existence of hearing to a level of listening, must come from precise requirements which appear unpredictably). . . In the a desire to do so. If composers prefer an audience educated meantime others pointed out the pedagogical character of to listen, composers must assist in that educational process this activity and some social implications (for instance, a by composing works which help bridge the gap between kind of democratic interdependence).” hearing and listening. It seems self-evident that a signifi- (Wolff, liner notes the Opus One recording of For 1, 2, cant percentage of music does not promote listening at all. or 3 People by the Percussion Group of Cincinnati) (Udow) “The one merit of such a purely formal score [Cage’s Every composition bridges a gap between some hear- Variations I] is that it releases the initiative of the ing and its listening. A composition can help teachers performer—it gives participation in the act of composition who are capable of listening to raise the desire of students and hence a genuinely educative experience.” for the listening which that composition promotes. A (Cardew 37) composer would assist this process by composing works “ . . . the score and its requirements for making this mu- which offer a gap to be bridged. sic is such that anyone seriously wishing to, whether or not (A distinction between hearing and listening: the lis- musically trained or professional, can read and use it; the music might be an incentive to do that, that is, to make of tener’s awareness of what the listener’s language does to listeners performers.” what is heard.) (Wolff) “An author who teaches writers nothing, teaches no one. What matters therefore is the exemplary character of pro- “Brecht’s plays also end in a situation of ambiguity . . . duction, which is able first to induce other producers to the specific concreteness of an ambiguity in social inter- produce, and second to put an improved apparatus at their course, a conflict of unresolved problems taxing the inge- disposal. And this apparatus is better the more consumers nuity of the playwright, actors and audience alike. Here the it is able to turn into producers, that is, readers or specta- work is ‘open’ in the same sense that a debate is ‘open’. A tors into collaborators.” solution is seen as desirable and is actually anticipated, but (Walter Benjamin, The Author as Producer, 233) it must come from the collective enterprise of the audience. In this case the ‘openness’ is converted into an instrument One learns from the ‘closedness’ of a good composi- of revolutionary pedagogics.” tion. One observes how its ambiguities are pinned down (Eco 55) on both sides by consistencies. One observes how that The ‘open form’ score offers alternatives; the per- which we know from inherited aesthetics to be wrong, former must appoint the criteria—however the manner bad, risky, tasteless, ugly, weak, unheard-of is nested in in which the open-form work offers alternatives may in- such a context as makes it a necessary consequence of a vite the performer to draw distinctions which could then quasi-axiomatic construction. become criteria. The difference between the composer as teacher and An exception is Cage’s Variations II, which asks that the composition as teacher is that the composer begins the performer put those questions which may arise into a with the power of a respondent; the composition begins form such that they can be answered by the ‘score’ (mea- bereft of this power—which it acquires only through an surements of the distances of five points to six lines). ‘as-if’: it is treated as if it had the power of response by This instruction would indicate that the score provides a its respondent. sort of generalized set of criteria (an oracle) for choosing If a composition is new and experimental, it is pos-

MARK ENSLIN 103 Teaching Composition sible that the performer of such a piece undertakes ac- withholding of potential criteria, and a withdrawal from tions the significance of which the performer does not dialogue by the dialogue partner. An astronomical num- yet know. ber of alternatives with few limiting criteria brings on Is the composition then to be thought of as incapable paralysis or obedience. The history of new, experimental of showing? No, but the composition, in order to realize compositions that have been treated by performers with its potential for showing, relies on the presence of some- resentful obedience is well known. Under what circum- one speaking up for it: a respondent. stances would I say that the piece elicited resentful obe- The desire to open possibilities is haunted by the ten- dience? dency to exhaust all possibilities. The opening of possi- The reason for that multiplicity is that you would not bilities risks usurping possibilities; thus ‘openness’ and then be able to exercise choice. If you’re making eighty- ‘exhaustive’ must be faked in order to function as pointer eight loops, very quickly you get uninterested in what it is rather than as usurper. you are doing. (John Cage, quoted in Kostelanetz, 118) What von Foerster says about the conceptof informa- tion reflected in the use of ‘audio-visual aids’ in teaching The mix of instruction and orientation peculiar to a could also apply to the presentation of a composition, for score, meeting the requirements for mix of instruction pedagogical purposes or not. and orientation peculiar to a player, determines, in part, We only have to perceive lectures, books, slides and the kind of initiative the score is able to elicit. films, etc., not as information but as vehicles for poten- Some would say that that was a lot of trouble to go tial information. Then we shall see that in giving lectures, through just to get at some cookies. And it was. Others writing books, showing slides and films, etc., we have not would say that that was just some trick to take up space solved a problem, we just created one, namely, to find in with something other than cookies. And it probably was. which context can these things be seen so that they create Yet others would say that I was the very sucker for which in their perceivers new insights, thoughts, and actions. that was designed. And I am. There is another view. I see (von Foerster, “The Perception of the Future and the the care with which the packaging was done as an invita- Future of Perception”, 91) tion to enjoy what I found there, to take this perhaps first chance the whole day to unravel something, to speculate on the kind of person who might have designed that pack- 6.2 Obedience aging of those contents, to do almost anything but gobble up the contents The performers who have decided to perform a piece (Harlock Verkade: 1969, 2) which explicitly asks them to take initiative and make I can imagine a context in which to utter the word decisions do what they are told. One shouldn’t be sur- ‘any’ has a liberating effect, and I can imagine a con- prised if the conscientious performers, having been told text in which to utter the word ‘any’ discourages, disap- to take initiative and make decisions, attempt to second- points, provokes resentment. It is hoped that a performer guess the decisions the composer would have made. of a score which uses the word ‘any’ feels called upon Let’s go back to Variations I (1958) which I regard as to compose, in that it is up to the performer to create the a key work in Cage’s output. Unlike Cheap Imitation, the score of Variations I emphasizes the total interdependence context wherein the word ‘any’ has a liberating effect, of all the attributes of sound. Transparent sheets of lines since the composer did not. and dots make up the score. The dots (sound events) are If I emphasize ‘you may’, I point to a backdrop of read in relation to a number of lines representing various expectations which assumes ‘you may not’ (I dare not?). aspects of sounds . . . The one merit of such a purely for- Eco shows the corollary, that works which aim at mal score is that it releases the initiative of the performer— it gives participation in the act of composition and hence “eliciting a sort of ‘obedient’ cooperation”, which he a genuinely educative experience. In the balance on the refers to as ‘closed’, are the ones most ‘open’ to inter- other side is the total indifference (implicitly represented pretation. by such a formalistic score) to the seriousness of the world Open form scores rarely distinguish between instruc- situation in which it occurs. Can that one merit tip the scales? tion, invitation, and assignment. (Cardew, 37) Open-form orchestral works show the current con- tradiction between the concert situation and the teaching The gesture with which an assignment is given situation in that these works require the technical accom- prompts the respondent in the way to receive the assign- plishment of a top-notch professional orchestra whose ment. (The respondent, though, retains the power to fol- members have the spirit of adventure of a group of stu- low the promptingor not.) Manyworks which havemade dents. explicit that they are giving an assignment to the per- former, do so by attaching the word ‘any’. Though ‘any’ seems at first to be a generous offer; soon the absence of constraint or preference can be detected to represent a

MARK ENSLIN 104 Teaching Composition 6.3 A Composition’s Assignment to teaching. The tradition of open rehearsal retains a promise of the bridging of the gap between the concert The openness of a work of art can be taken by a respon- situation and the teaching situation. dent as that work’s assignment. Missing from both the musician’s rehearsal and the The pieces composed under the assignment: Open listener’s rehearsal is a forum for speaking about the form! began to make explicit the possibility that a work perceptions and connections which the rehearsal situa- of art (with its degree and kind of openness) could be tion made possible. Conversation—as yet—rarely in- accepted by its respondents as an assignment. Its re- vites pursuing in detail what were the “things” that the spondents (listener and performer) are asked to imagina- musician took such pleasure in hearing. tively reconstruct the alternatives from which the com- poser chose and the criteria consulted while choosing. “To compose, at least by propensity, is to give to do, not to give to hear but to give to write. The modern location The respondent might in some cases possess more than for music is not the concert hall, but the stage on which the one imaginative reconstruction, and thus be able to exer- musicians pass, in what is often a dazzling display, from cise choice of interpretation. one source of sound to another. It is we who are playing, A composition’s assignment to a listener is different though still it is true by proxy; but one can imagine the concert—later on?—as exclusively a workshop . . . where from the composition’s assignment to a performer inso- all the musical art is absorbed in a praxis . . . Such is the far as listener and performer exist in differing situations utopia that a certain Beethoven, who is not played, teaches in which to try out their constructions. us to formulate—which is why it is possible now to feel in The idea of versions relies on hearing the varied him a musician with a future.” against the repeat: varied repeat. The first condition of (Barthes, “Musica Practica”) significant alteration is the declaration by the ‘altered’ of The workshop-concert would have to have those as- its antecedent (though error, doubt, change of mind, illu- pects of a class that allow the sustaining of an environ- sion may be involved in the declaration). ment of discourse, for instance the possibility of follow- That which Evangelisti asks explicitly of the players up. The concert-workshop would differ from a lecture- of Aleatorio for string quartet—that they agree on a ver- demonstration in that, instead of reporting about the an- sion among the numerous possible versions, and that if swering of a legitimate question, the workshop would the piece is done more than once on a program, each per- invite the assembled participants to address legitimate formance should be a distinct version—this is an assign- questions. ment ideally given by every piece. Chamber music poses problems of group decision-making. What distinguishes SP How does this fit—witness and now dismissal—into a piece in this respect is its degrees and kinds of variabil- teaching composition? I’ve been evading ... You ity. In the case of Aleatorio, for instance, the assortment have the composition of teaching. When people of alternate playing techniques and ossiae provide tools ask ‘How can you teach young students composi- with which to tackle one of the main problems posed by tion? Don’t you brainwash them? You tell them the piece: the problem of giving a distinct “character” to your style?’ That’s what my father said, ‘How do, each of the three sections. you know, how does one guy teach another person “In other words the author offers the interpreter, the per- how to be creative?’ It seems like it’s, you know, a former, the addressee a work to be completed.” fallacy. (Eco 62) LO It seems similar to problems we’ve talked about in The respondent who takes up an assignment may be relation to designing society which is that if you interested in the assignment for reasons other than those stipulate the structure under which something is of the respondent who gave the assignment. going to take place, take shape, have existence, When does the assignment given by a work require then you will prevent exactly that which you want composition to fulfill it? to have happen, which is a living, growing, and (When is an assignment a composition assignment?) changing-itself, designing-itself society. And so the difficulty is to raise the awareness of the prob- 6.4 Desired Consequences II lems and of how to solve problems I think on the level of, in that particular area of designing society Occasionally one hears musicians report about the re- and in teaching composition. hearsing of a piece in which they had no initial interest SP Mm hm, good point. that they were beginning to “hear things”, which they hadn’t expected to find in the piece. Such reports hint LO This doesn’t answer what you brought up which is at the significance of the situation of rehearsal for the ... connects... possibility of letting a composition have a function akin SP Well, it does bring up this notion of self-organizing,

MARK ENSLIN 105 Teaching Composition self-designing. What would you have to teach, Barthes, Roland. “Writer, Intellectuals, Teachers” in Image—Music— or how would we speak of teaching such that it Text. Selected and Trans., Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and doesn’t take out the very vital thing which is the Wang, 1977. person wants to self-organize, self-design, self- Benjamin, Thomas. “The Learning Process and Teaching.” Paper (typewritten. revised 1981) compose. . “On Teaching Composition.” Paper (typewritten) “The Song of Art” and “The Nest of the Song” Benjamin, Walter. “Author as Producer” in Reflections/Essays, Apho- risms, Autobiographical Writings. Ed., Peter Demetz. Trans., (1979), two titles for one experiment designed and insti- Edmund Jephcot. New York and London: Harcort Brace gated by Patrick Daugherty (in collaboration with many Javonovich, Inc., 1978. others), made a contribution to the idea of composing Boulez, Pierre. “Alea” in Perspectives of New Music, Fall-Winter a process of eliciting. The structure of the experiment 1964, Volume 3, No. 1, p. 42. Trans., David Noakes and Paul was as follows. “The Song of Art” (“an interaction be- Jacobs. tween the work of artists and the work of other commu- . Conversations with C´elestin Deli`ege. London: Eulenberg nity groups”) consisted of two events: (1) a workshop Books, 1975. to which some twenty artists and representatives from Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practise. Ed., Jack Goody. Trans., Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, some twenty community advocacy groups were invited, 1977. and (2) a concert the next evening. The group representa- Brecht, Bertolt. The Mother. Ed., Eric Bentley. Trans., Lee Baxan- tives were asked to prepare for the workshop by writing dall. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1965. a statement of the “desired consequences” of the group’s Br¨un, Herbert. My Words and Where I Want Them. Urbana: Princelet activity. At the workshop, the statements were read, and Editions, 1986. then the representatives of each group wrote a statement . “Drawing Distinctions Links Contradictions” in Perspectives of the desired consequences of a piece which they had of New Music, Fall-Winter 1973 Spring-Summer 1974, Volume never seen or heard, and would have liked to. The state- 12, No.’s 1 and 2, p. 26. ments were then taken by the artists as points of depar- . “The Political Significance of Composition.” Lecture (type- ture for the composition of pieces to be presented two written) read at Ohio State University May 28, 1969. months later. The next evening after the workshop was a Br¨un, Marianne, and Respondents. Designing Society. Urbana: Princelet Editions, 1983. concert of compositions of music and theater by Daugh- Cage, John. Silence. The Wesleyan University Press, 1961; Cam- erty, interspersed with of statements of the de- bridge: M.I.T. Press, 1966. sired consequences of each piece written by the partici- Cardew, Cornelius. Stockhausen Serves Imperialism and Other Arti- pating artists; the concert was open to the public. cles. London: Laitimer new Dimensions, 1974. “The Nest of the Song” was the name given to the Cardew, Cornelius, Ed. Scratch Music. Cambridge: The MIT Press, follow-up event two months later. During that time the 1972. artists had composed and rehearsed pieces filling three DeLio, Thomas. Circumscribing the Open Universe. Lanham, Mary- programs—performedat the public library and two com- land: University Press of America, 1984. munity centers—keeping in mind the descriptions of de- Drath, Andreas and Sullivan, Mark. Composition lessons with Mark sired consequences written by the community group rep- Sullivan, transcribed by Andreas Drath. (typewritten) resentatives. Eco, Umberto. The Role of the Reader. Bloomington: Indiana Uni- The didactic intention of the project was to have versity Press, 1978. the term ‘desired consequence’ enter the vocabularies of Eisler, Hanns. Composing for the Films. New York: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 1947. the participants, so that: one would have an alternative to ‘goal’ and ‘activity’, and, as I now say, the friction Evangelisti, Franco. Performance notes in the score of Aleatorio. Darmstadt: Edition Tonos, 1964. generated by the networks of connections of composers Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other and activists working under one proposal would elicit a Writings 1972–1977. Ed., Colin Gordon. Trans., Colin Gor- change of image from both. don, Leo Marshall, John Mepham, and Kate Soper. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans., Myra Bergman Selected Bibliography Ramos. New York: The Seabury Press, 1970. . Education for Critical Consciousness. Ed. and trans., Myra Adorno, T. W. Aesthetic Theory. Trans., C. Lenhardt. London: Rout- Bergman Ramos. New York: Continuum Publishing Corpora- ledge and Kegan Paul,1984. tion, 1980. . Philosophy of Modern Music. Trans., Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley Fuller, preface to proceedings of conference of open structure Wesley V. Blomster. New York: The Seabury Press, 1973. Interface Vol. 16, 1987, pp 187–199. Milton Babbit. Words about Music. Ed., Stephen Dembski and Wesley Fuller, Ed. Panel discussion on “Open Structure”. Proceed- Joseph N. Straus. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, ings of conference on open structure. Interface Vol. 16, 1987, 1987. pp 187–199.

MARK ENSLIN 106 Teaching Composition Fux, Johann Joseph. The Study of Counterpoint/from Johann Joseph Rufer, Josef. Composition with Twelve Tones/Related Only to One Fux’s Gradus ad Parnassum. Ed. and trans., Alfred Mann. Another. Trans., Humphrey Searle. London: Barrie and Rock- New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1971. liff (Barrie Books, Ltd.), 1965. Gaburo, Kenneth. Collaboration One: The Beauty of Irrelevant Mu- Sch¨onberg, Arnold. Theory of Harmony. Trans., Roy E. Carter. sic (linguistic composition no. 7, 1970). La Jolla: Lingua Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles: Press, 1976. 1983. . “LA” in Perspectives of New Music, Winter-Summer 1987, . Style and Idea. Ed., Leonard Stein. Trans., Leo Black. Volume 25, No.’s 1 and 2, p. 496. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984. Giroux, Henri A. Theory & Resistance in Education. Massachusetts: Bergin & Garvey Publishers, Inc., 1983. Sch¨on, Donald A. The Reflective Practitioner/How Professionals Think in Action. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1983. Jacob, Gordon. The Composer and his Art. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1986. Shor, Ira, and Freire, Paulo. A Pedagogy for Liberation/Dialogues on Transforming Education. Massachusetts: Bergin & Garvey Harlock, Allan. “Verkade: 1969 an assortment of biscuits and Publishers, Inc., 1987. wafers.” (typewritten), 1969. Shannon, Claude E., and Weaver, Warren. The Mathematical Theory Illich, Ivan. Deshooling Society. New York: Harper & Row Publish- of Communication. Urbana, Chicago, London: University of ers, 1971. Illinois Press,1978. Kohl, Herbert. The Open Classroom/A Practical Guide to a New Way Sullivan, Mark. The Performance of Gesture: Musical Gesture, Then, of Teaching. New York: The New York Review, 1969. and Now. D.M.A. Thesis. The University of Illinois at Urbana- Kostelanetz, Richard, ed.. John Cage. New York and Washington: Champaign, 1984. Praeger Publishers, 1970. Whitford, Frank, Bauhaus: Masters and Students by Themselves. Newlin, Dika, Br¨uckner, Mahller, Sch¨onberg. New York: W.W. Nor- London: Thames and Hudson, 1984. ton, 1978. Wolff, Christian. Notes on Wolff’s For 1, 2, or 3 People in the accom- Parenti, Susan. “Self Reference and the Language about New Music.” panying booklet of the recorded realization by The Percussion D.M.A. Thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Group of Cincinnati. Greenville, Maine: Opus One, 1981. 1985. Wuorinen, Charles. Simple Composition. New York: Longman, 1979.

MARK ENSLIN 107 Teaching Composition The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man Fredrick Engels

Labour is the source of all wealth, the political mainly for gathering and holding food in the same way economists assert. And it really is the source—next to as the fore paws of the lower mammals are used. Many nature, which supplies it with the material that it con- apes use their hands to build themselves nests in the trees verts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. or even to construct roofs between the branches to pro- It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, tect themselves against the weather, as the chimpanzee, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say for example, does. With their hands they grasp sticks to that labour created man himself. defend themselves against enemies, or bombard their en- Many hundreds of thousands of years ago, during an emies with fruits and stones. In captivity they use their epoch, not yet definitely determinable, of that period of hands for a number of simple operations copied from hu- the earth’s history known to geologists as the Tertiary man beings. It is in this that one sees the great gulf be- period, most likely towards the end of it, a particularly tween the undeveloped hand of even the most man-like highly-developed race of anthropoid apes lived some- apes and the human hand that has been highly perfected where in the tropical zone—probably on a great con- by hundredsof thousandsof years of labour. The number tinent that has now sunk to the bottom of the Indian and general arrangement of the bones and muscles are Ocean.1 Darwin has given us an approximate descrip- the same in both hands, but the hand of the lowest savage tion of these ancestors of ours. They were completely can perform hundreds of operations that no simian hand covered with hair, they had beards and pointed ears, and can imitate—no simian hand has ever fashioned even the they lived in bands in the trees. crudest stone knife. First, owing to their way of living which meant that The first operations for which our ancestors gradually the hands had different functions than the feet when learned to adapt their hands during the many thousands climbing, these apes began to lose the habit of using their of years of transition from ape to man could have been hands to walk and adopted a more and more erect pos- only very simple ones. The lowest savages, even those in ture. This was the decisive step in the transition from whom regression to a more animal-like condition with a ape to man. simultaneous physical degeneration can be assumed, are All extant anthropoid apes can stand erect and move nevertheless far superior to these transitional beings. Be- about on their feet alone, but only in case of urgent need fore the first flint could be fashioned into a knife by hu- and in a very clumsy way. Their natural gait is in a half- man hands, a period of time probablyelapsed in compari- erect posture and includes the use of the hands. The ma- son with which the historical period known to us appears jority rest the knuckles of the fist on the groundand, with insignificant. But the decisive step had been taken, the legs drawn up, swing the body through their long arms, hand had become free and could henceforth attain ever much as a cripple moves on crutches. In general, all the greater dexterity; the greater flexibility thus acquired was transition stages from walking on all fours to walking on inherited and increased from generation to generation. two legs are still to be observed among the apes today. Thus the hand is not only the organ of labour, it is The latter gait, however, has never become more than a also the product of labour. Only by labour, by adaptation makeshift for any of them. to ever new operations, through the inheritance of mus- It stands to reason that if erect gait among our hairy cles, ligaments, and, over longer periods of time, bones ancestors became first the rule and then, in time, a ne- that had undergone special development and the ever- cessity, other diverse functions must, in the meantime, renewed employment of this inherited finesse in new, have devolved upon the hands. Already among the apes more and more complicated operations, have given the there is some difference in the way the hands and the human hand the high degree of perfection required to feet are employed. In climbing, as mentioned above, the conjure into being the pictures of a Raphael, the statues hands and feet have different uses. The hands are used of a Thorwaldsen, the music of a Paganini.

1In the 1870s, when this was written, British zoogeographer Philip Lutley Sclater put forth the theory that a continent (he called “Lemuria”) existed which reached from modern Madagascar to India and Sumatra—and this continent has since submerged beneath the Indian Ocean.

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 108 The Part Played by Labor... But the hand did not exist alone, it was only one when it has been tamed by man. The dog and the horse, member of an integral, highly complex organism. And by association with man, have developed such a good ear what benefited the hand, benefited also the whole body it for articulate speech that they easily learn to understand served; and this in two ways. any language within their range of concept. Moreover In the first place, the body benefited from the law of they have acquired the capacity for feelings such as af- correlation of growth, as Darwin called it. This law states fection for man, gratitude, etc., which were previously that the specialised forms of separate parts of an organic foreign to them. Anyone who has had much to do with being are always bound up with certain forms of other such animals will hardly be able to escape the conviction parts that apparently have no connectionwith them. Thus that in many cases they now feel their inability to speak all animals that have red blood cells without cell nuclei, as a defect, although, unfortunately, it is one that can no and in which the head is attached to the first vertebra by longer be remedied because their vocal organs are too means of a double articulation (condyles), also without specialised in a definite direction. However, where vo- exception possess lacteal glands for suckling their young. cal organs exist, within certain limits even this inability Similarly, cloven hoofs in mammals are regularly asso- disappears. The buccal organs of birds are as different ciated with the possession of a multiple stomach for ru- from those of man as they can be, yet birds are the only mination. Changes in certain forms involve changes in animals that can learn to speak; and it is the bird with the the form of other parts of the body, although we cannot most hideousvoice, the parrot, that speaks best of all. Let explain the connection. Perfectly white cats with blue no one object that the parrot does not understand what it eyes are always, or almost always, deaf. The gradually says. It is true that for the sheer pleasure of talking and increasing perfection of the human hand, and the com- associating with human beings, the parrot will chatter for mensurate adaptation of the feet for erect gait, have un- hours at a stretch, continually repeating its whole vocab- doubtedly, by virtue of such correlation, reacted on other ulary. But within the limits of its range of concepts it can parts of the organism. However, this action has not as yet also learn to understand what it is saying. Teach a parrot been sufficiently investigated for us to be able to do more swear words in such a way that it gets an idea of their here than to state the fact in general terms. meaning (one of the great amusements of sailors return- Much more important is the direct, demonstrable in- ing from the tropics); tease it and you will soon discover fluence of the development of the hand on the rest of that it knows how to use its swear words just as correctly the organism. It has already been noted that our simian as a Berlin costermonger. The same is true of begging ancestors were gregarious; it is obviously impossible to for titbits. seek the derivation of man, the most social of all ani- First labour, after it and then with it speech—these mals, from non-gregarious immediate ancestors. Mas- were the two most essential stimuli under the influence tery over nature began with the development of the hand, of which the brain of the ape gradually changed into with labour, and widened man’s horizon at every new ad- that of man, which’for all its similarity is far larger and vance. He was continually discovering new, hitherto un- more perfect. Hand in hand with the development of known properties in natural objects. On the other hand, the brain went the development of its most immediate the development of labour necessarily helped to bring the instruments—the senses. Just as the gradual develop- members of society closer together by increasing cases ment of speech is inevitably accompanied by a corre- of mutual support and joint activity, and by making clear sponding refinement of the organ of hearing, so the de- the advantage of this joint activity to each individual. In velopment of the brain as a whole is accompanied by a short, men in the making arrived at the point where they refinement of all the senses. The eagle sees much farther had something to say to each other. Necessity created the than man, but the human eye discerns considerably more organ; the undeveloped larynx of the ape was slowly but in things than does the eye of the eagle. The dog has a surely transformed by modulation to produce constantly far keener sense of smell than man, but it does not dis- more developed modulation, and the organs of the mouth tinguish a hundredth part of the odours that for man are gradually learned to pronounce one articulate sound after definite signs denoting different things. And the sense another. of touch, which the ape hardly possesses in its crudest Comparison with animals proves that this explana- initial form, has been developed only side by side with tion of the origin of language from and in the process of the development of the human hand itself, through the labour is the only correct one. The little that even the medium of labour. most highly-developed animals need to communicate to The reaction on labour and speech of the develop- each other does not require articulate speech. In its nat- ment of the brain and its attendant senses, of the in- ural state, no animal feels handicapped by its inability to creasing clarity of consciousness, power of abstraction speak or to understand human speech. It is quite different and of conclusion, gave both labour and speech an ever-

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 109 The Part Played by Labor... renewed impulse to further development. This develop- tools. And what are the most ancient tools that we find— ment did not reach its conclusion when man finally be- the most ancient judging by the heirlooms of prehistoric came distinct from the ape, but on the whole made fur- man that have been discovered, and by the mode of life ther powerful progress, its degree and direction varying of the earliest historical peoples and of the rawest of con- among different peoples and at different times, and here temporary savages? They are hunting and fishing imple- and there even being interrupted by local or temporary ments, the former at the same time serving as weapons. regression. This further development has been strongly But hunting and fishing presuppose the transition from urged forward, on the one hand, and guided along more an exclusively vegetable diet to the concomitant use of definite directions, on the other, by a new element which meat, and this is another important step in the process came into play with the appearance of fully-fledged man, of transition from ape to man. A meat diet contained namely, society. in an almost ready state the most essential ingredients Hundreds of thousands of years—of no greater sig- required by the organism for its metabolism. By short- nificance in the history of the earth than one second in ening the time required for digestion, it also shortened the life of man2—certainly elapsed before human soci- the other vegetative bodily processes that correspond to ety arose out of a troupe of tree-climbing monkeys. Yet it those of plant life, and thus gained further time, mate- did finally appear. And what do we find once more as the rial and desire for the active manifestation of animal life characteristic difference between the troupe of monkeys proper. And the farther man in the making moved from and human society? Labour. The ape herd was satisfied the vegetable kingdom the higher he rose above the an- to browse over the feeding area determined for it by ge- imal. Just as becoming accustomed to a vegetable diet ographical conditions or the resistance of neighbouring side by side with meat converted wild cats and dogs into herds; it undertook migrations and struggles to win new the servants of man, so also adaptation to a meat diet, feeding grounds, but it was incapable of extracting from side by side with a vegetable diet, greatly contributed to- them more than they offered in their natural state, except wards giving bodily strength and independence to man in that it unconsciously fertilised the soil with its own ex- the making. The meat diet, however, had its greatest ef- crement. As soon as all possible feeding grounds were fect on the brain, which now received a far richer flow of occupied, there could be no further increase in the ape the materials necessary for its nourishment and develop- population; the number of animals could at best remain ment, and which, therefore, could develop more rapidly stationary. But all animals waste a great deal of food, and perfectly from generation to generation. With all due and, in addition, destroy in the germ the next generation respect to the vegetarians man did not come into exis- of the food supply. Unlike the hunter, the wolf does not tence without a meat diet, and if the latter, among all spare the doe which would provide it with the young the peoples known to us, has led to cannibalism at some time next year; the goats in Greece, that eat away the young or other (the forefathers of the Berliners, the Weletabians bushes before they grow to maturity, have eaten bare all or Wilzians, used to eat their parents as late as the tenth the mountains of the country. This “predatory economy” century), that is of no consequence to us today. of animals plays an important part in the gradual trans- The meat diet led to two new advances of decisive formation of species by forcing them to adapt themselves importancethe harnessing of fire and the domestication to other than the usual food, thanks to which their blood of animals. The first still further shortened the digestive acquires a different chemical composition and the whole process, as it provided the mouth with food already, as physical constitution gradually alters, while species that it were, half-digested; the second made meat more copi- have remained unadapted die out. There is no doubt ous by opening up a new, more regular source of supply that this predatory economy contributed powerfully to in addition to hunting, and moreover provided, in milk the transition of our ancestors from ape to man. In a race and its products, a new article of food at least as valuable of apes that far surpassed all others in intelligence and as meat in its composition. Thus both these advances adaptability, this predatory economy must have led to a were, in themselves, new means for the emancipation of continual increase in the number of plants used for food man. It would lead us too far afield to dwell here in de- and the consumption of more and more edible parts of tail on their indirect effects notwithstanding the great im- food plants. In short, food became more and more var- portance they have had for the development of man and ied, as did also the substances entering the body with it, society. substances that were the chemical premises for the transi- Just as man learned to consume everything edible, tion to man. But all that was not yet labour in the proper he also learned to live in any climate. He spread over sense of the word. Labour begins with the making of the whole of the habitable world, being the only animal

2A leading authority in this respect, Sir William Thomson, has calculated that little more than a hundred million years could have elapsed since the time when the earth had cooled sufficiently for plants and animals to be able to live on it.

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 110 The Part Played by Labor... fully able to do so of its own accord. The other animals things. We have seen how goats have prevented the re- that have become accustomed to all climates—domestic generation of forests in Greece; on the island of St. He- animals and vermin—did not become so independently, lena, goats and pigs brought by the first arrivals have suc- but only in the wake of man. And the transition from ceeded in exterminating its old vegetation almost com- the uniformly hot climate of the original home of man to pletely, and so have prepared the ground for the spread- colder regions, where the year was divided into summer ing of plants brought by later sailors and colonists. But and winter, created new requirements—shelter and cloth- animals exert a lasting effect on their environment un- ing as protection against cold and damp, and hence new intentionally and, as far as the animals themselves are spheres of labour, new forms of activity, which further concerned, accidentally. The further removed men are and further separated man from the animal. from animals, however, the more their effect on nature By the combined functioning of hand, speech organs assumes the character of premeditated, planned action and brain, not only in each individual but also in society, directed towards definite preconceived ends. The ani- men became capable of executing more and more com- mal destroys the vegetation of a locality without realis- plicated operations, and were able to set themselves, and ing what it is doing. Man destroys it in order to sow achieve, higher and higher aims. The work of each gen- field crops on the soil thus released, or to plant trees or eration itself became different, more perfect and more vines which he knows will yield many times the amount diversified. Agriculture was added to hunting and cat- planted. He transfers useful plants and domestic animals tle raising; then came spinning, weaving, metalworking, from one country to another and thus changes the flora pottery and navigation. Along with trade and industry, and fauna of whole continents. More than this. Through art and science finally appeared. Tribes developed into artificial breeding both plants and animals are so changed nations and states. Law and politics arose, and with them by the hand of man that they become unrecognisable. that fantastic reflection of human things in the human The wild plants from which our grain varieties origi- mind—religion. In the face of all these images, which nated are still being sought in vain. There is still some appeared in the first place to be products of the mind dispute about the wild animals from which our very dif- and seemed to dominate human societies, the more mod- ferent breeds of dogs or our equally numerous breeds of est productions of the working hand retreated into the horses are descended . background, the more so since the mind that planned the It goes without saying that it would not occur to us labour was able, at a very early stage in the development to dispute the ability of animals to act in a planned, pre- of society (for example, already in the primitive family), meditated fashion. On the contrary, a planned mode of to have the labour that had been planned carried out by action exists in embryo wherever protoplasm, living al- other hands than its own. All merit for the swift advance bumen, exists and reacts, that is, carries out definite, even of civilisation was ascribed to the mind, to the develop- if extremely simple, movements as a result of definite ment and activity of the brain. Men became accustomed external stimuli. Such reaction takes place even where to explain their actions as arising out of thought instead there is yet no cell at all, far less a nerve cell. There is of their needs (which in any case are reflected and per- something of the planned action in the way insect-eating ceived in the mind); and so in the course of time there plants capture their prey, although they do it quite uncon- emerged that idealistic world outlook which, especially sciously. In animals the capacity for conscious, planned since the fall of the world of antiquity, has dominated action is proportional to the development of the nervous men’s minds. It still rules them to such a degree that system, and among mammals it attains a fairly high level. even the most materialistic natural scientists of the Dar- While fox-hunting in England one can daily observe how winian school are still unable to form any clear idea of unerringly the fox makes use of its excellent knowledge the origin of man, because under this ideological influ- of the locality in order to elude its pursuers, and how well ence they do not recognise the part that has been played it knows and turns to account all favourable features of therein by labour. the ground that cause the scent to be lost. Among our Animals, as has already been pointed out, change the domestic animals, more highly developed thanks to as- environment by their activities in the same way, even if sociation with man, one can constantly observe acts of not to the same extent, as man does, and these changes, cunning on exactly the same level as those of children. as we have seen, in turn react upon and change those For, just as the development history of the human em- who made them. In nature nothing takes place in isola- bryo in the mother’s womb is only an abbreviated repe- tion. Everything affects and is affected by every other tition of the history, extending over millions of years, of thing, and it is mostly because this manifold motion the bodily development of our animal ancestors, starting and interaction is forgotten that our natural scientists are from the worm, so the mental development of the hu- prevented from gaining a clear insight into the simplest man child is only a still more abbreviated repetition of

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 111 The Part Played by Labor... the intellectual development of these same ancestors, at natural idea of a contrast between mind and matter, man least of the later ones. But all the planned action of all and nature, soul and body, such as arose after the decline animals has never succeeded in impressing the stamp of of classical antiquity in Europe and obtained its highest their will upon the earth. That was left for man. elaboration in Christianity. In short, the animal merely uses its environment, and It required the labour of thousands of years for us to brings about changes in it simply by its presence; man learn a little of how to calculate the more remote natu- by his changes makes it serve his ends, masters it. This ral effects of our actions in the field of production, but is the final, essential distinction between man and other it has been still more difficult in regard to the more re- animals, and once again it is labour that brings about this mote social effects of these actions. We mentioned the distinction. potato and the resulting spread of scrofula. But what Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on is scrofula compared to the effects which the reduction account of our human victories over nature. For each of the workers to a potato diet had on the living condi- such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, tions of the popular masses in whole countries, or com- it is true, in the first place brings about the results we pared to the famine the potato blight brought to Ireland expected, but in the second and third places it has quite in 1847, which consigned to the grave a million Irish- different, unforeseen effects which only too often can- men, nourished solely or almost exclusively on potatoes, cel the first. The people who, in Mesopotamia, Greece, and forced the emigration overseas of two million more? Asia Minor and elsewhere, destroyed the forests to obtain When the Arabs learned to distil spirits, it never entered cultivable land, never dreamed that by removing along their heads that by so doing they were creating one of with the forests the collecting centres and reservoirs of the chief weapons for the annihilation of the aborigines moisture they were laying the basis for the present for- of the then still undiscovered American continent. And lorn state of those countries. When the Italians of the when afterwards Columbus discovered this America, he Alps used up the pine forests on the southern slopes, so did not know that by doing so he was giving a new lease carefully cherished on the northern slopes, they had no of life to slavery, which in Europe had long ago been inkling that by doing so they were cutting at the roots done away with, and laying the basis for the Negro slave of the dairy industry in their region; they had still less trade. The men who in the seventeenth and eighteenth inkling that they were thereby depriving their mountain centuries laboured to create the steam-engine had no idea springs of water for the greater part of the year, and mak- that they were preparing the instrument which more than ing it possible for them to pour still more furious torrents any other was to revolutionise social relations throughout on the plains during the rainy seasons. Those who spread the world. Especially in Europe, by concentrating wealth the potato in Europe were not aware that with these fari- in the handsof a minorityand dispossessing the hugema- naceous tubers they were at the same time spreading jority, this instrument was destined at first to give social scrofula3. Thus at every step we are reminded that we and political domination to the bourgeoisie, but later, to by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a for- give rise to a class struggle between bourgeoisie and pro- eign people, like someone standing outside nature—but letariat which can end only in the overthrow of the bour- that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, geoisie and the abolition of all class antagonisms. But in and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it con- this sphere too, by long and often cruel experienceand by sists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other collecting and analysing historical material, we are grad- creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them ually learning to get a clear view of the indirect, more correctly. remote social effects of our production activity, and so And, in fact, with every day that passes we are ac- are afforded an opportunity to control and regulate these quiring a better understanding of these laws and getting effects as well. to perceive both the more immediate and the more re- This regulation, however, requires something more mote consequences of our interference with the tradi- than mere knowledge. It requires a complete revolution tional course of nature. In particular, after the mighty in our hitherto existing mode of production, and simul- advances made by the natural sciences in the present taneously a revolution in our whole contemporary social century, we are more than ever in a position to realise, order. and hence to control, also the more remote natural con- All hitherto existing modes of production have aimed sequences of at least our day-to-day production activi- merely at achieving the most immediately and directly ties. But the more this progresses the more will men not useful effect of labour. The further consequences, which only feel but also know their oneness with nature, and appear only later and become effective through gradual the more impossible will become the senseless and un- repetition and accumulation, were totally neglected. The

3scrofula: tuberculosis of lymph nodes especially in the neck.

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 112 The Part Played by Labor... original common ownership of land corresponded,on the sion. As individual capitalists are engaged in production one hand, to a level of development of human beings and exchange for the sake of the immediate profit, only in which their horizon was restricted in general to what the nearest, most immediate results must first be taken lay immediately available, and presupposed, on the other into account. As long as the individual manufacturer or hand, a certain superfluity of land that would allow some merchant sells a manufactured or purchased commodity latitude for correcting the possible bad results of this with the usual coveted profit, he is satisfied and does not primeval type of economy. When this surplus land was concern himself with what afterwards becomes of the exhausted, common ownership also declined. All higher commodity and its purchasers. The same thing applies forms of production, however, led to the division of the to the natural effects of the same actions. What cared the population into different classes and thereby to the antag- Spanish planters in Cuba, who burned down forests on onism of ruling and oppressed classes. Thus the interests the slopes of the mountains and obtained from the ashes of the ruling class became the driving factor of produc- sufficient fertiliser for one generationof very highly prof- tion, since production was no longer restricted to pro- itable coffee trees—what cared they that the heavy trop- viding the barest means of subsistence for the oppressed ical rainfall afterwards washed away the unprotected up- people. This has been put into effect most completely per stratum of the soil, leaving behind only bare rock! In in the capitalist mode of production prevailing today in relation to nature, as to society, the present mode of pro- Western Europe. The individual capitalists, who domi- duction is predominantly concerned only about the im- nate production and exchange, are able to concern them- mediate, the most tangible result; and then surprise is ex- selves only with the most immediate useful effect of their pressed that the more remote effects of actions directed actions. Indeed, even this useful effect—inasmuch as it to this end turn out to be quite different, are mostly quite is a question of the usefulness of the article that is pro- the opposite in character; that the harmony of supply and duced or exchanged—retreats far into the background, demand is transformed into the very reverse opposite, as and the sole incentive becomes the profit to be made on shown by the course of each ten years’ industrial cycle— selling. even Germany has had a little preliminary experience of Classical political economy, the social science of the it in the “crash”; that private ownership based on one’s bourgeoisie, in the main examines only social effects of own labour must of necessity develop into the expropri- human actions in the fields of production and exchange ation of the workers, while all wealth becomes more and that are actually intended. This fully corresponds to the more concentrated in the hands of non-workers; that ... social organisation of which it is the theoretical expres- the manuscript breaks off here.

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 113 The Part Played by Labor... Socialism: Utopian and Scientific Fredrick Engels 1880

1. The Development of Utopian So- government of reason, the Contrat Social of Rousseau, cialism came into being, and only could come into being, as a democratic bourgeois republic. The great thinkers of the Modern Socialism is, in its essence, the direct product 18th century could, no more than their predecessors, go of the recognition, on the one hand, of the class antag- beyond the limits imposed upon them by their epoch. onisms existing in the society of today between propri- But, side by side with the antagonisms of the feu- etors and non-proprietors, between capitalists and wage- dal nobility and the burghers, who claimed to represent workers; on the other hand, of the anarchy existing in all the rest of society, was the general antagonism of ex- production. But, in its theoretical form, modern Social- ploiters and exploited, of rich idlers and poor workers. It ism originally appears ostensibly as a more logical ex- was this very circumstance that made it possible for the tension of the principles laid down by the great French representatives of the bourgeoisie to put themselves for- philosophers of the 18th century. Like every new the- ward as representing not one special class, but the whole ory, modern Socialism had, at first, to connect itself with of suffering humanity. Still further. From its origin the the intellectual stock-in-trade ready to its hand, however bourgeoisie was saddled with its antithesis: capitalists deeply its roots lay in material economic facts. cannot exist without wage-workers, and, in the same pro- The great men, who in France prepared men’s minds portion as the mediaeval burgher of the guild developed for the coming revolution, were themselves extreme rev- into the modern bourgeois, the guild journeyman and olutionists. They recognized no external authority of any the day-laborer, outside the guilds, developed into the kind whatever. Religion, natural science, society, polit- proletarian. And although, upon the whole, the bour- ical institutions—everything was subjected to the most geoisie, in their struggle with the nobility, could claim unsparing criticism: everything must justify its existence to represent at the same time the interests of the different before the judgment-seat of reason or give up existence. working-classes of that period, yet in every great bour- Reason became the sole measure of everything. It was geois movement there were independent outbursts of that the time when, as Hegel says, the world stood upon its class which was the forerunner, more or less developed, head1; first in the sense that the human head, and the of the modern proletariat. For example, at the time of principles arrived at by its thought, claimed to be the ba- the German Reformation and the Peasants’ War, the An- sis of all human action and association; but by and by, abaptists and Thomas Munzer; in the great English Rev- also, in the wider sense that the reality which was in con- olution, the Levellers; in the great French Revolution, tradiction to these principles had, in fact, to be turned Babeuf. upside down. Every form of society and government These were theoretical enunciations, corresponding then existing, every old traditional notion, was flung into with these revolutionary uprisings of a class not yet de- veloped; in the 16th and 17th centuries, Utopian pictures the lumber-room as irrational; the world had hitherto al- 2 lowed itself to be led solely by prejudices; everything of ideal social conditions ; in the 18th century, actual in the past deserved only pity and contempt. Now, for communistic theories (Morelly and Mably). The demand the first time, appeared the light of day, the kingdom of for equality was no longer limited to political rights; it reason; henceforth superstition, injustice, privilege, op- was extended also to the social conditions of individuals. pression, were to be superseded by eternal truth, eternal It was not simply class privileges that were to be abol- Right, equality based on Nature and the inalienable rights ished, but class distinctions themselves. A Communism, of man. ascetic, denouncing all the pleasures of life, Spartan, was We know today that this kingdomof reason was noth- the first form of the new teaching. Then came the three ing more than the idealized kingdom of the bourgeoisie; great Utopians: Saint-Simon, to whom the middle-class that this eternal Right found its realization in bourgeois movement, side by side with the proletarian, still had a justice; that this equality reduced itself to bourgeois certain significance; Fourier and Owen, who in the coun- equality before the law; that bourgeois property was pro- try where capitalist production was most developed, and claimed as one of the essential rights of man; and that the under the influence of the antagonisms begotten of this,

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 114 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific worked out his proposals for the removal of class dis- from feudal fetters, now veritably accomplished, turned tinction systematically and in direct relation to French out to be, for the small capitalists and small proprietors, materialism. the freedom to sell their small property, crushed under One thing is common to all three. Not one of them the overmastering competition of the large capitalists and appears as a representative of the interests of that pro- landlords, to these great lords, and thus, as far as the letariat which historical development had, in the mean- small capitalists and peasant proprietors were concerned, time, produced. Like the French philosophers, they do became “freedom from property”. The development of not claim to emancipate a particular class to begin with, industry upon a capitalistic basis made poverty and mis- but all humanityat once. Like them, they wish to bring in ery of the working masses conditions of existence of so- the kingdom of reason and eternal justice, but this king- ciety. Cash payment became more and more, in Car- dom, as they see it, is as far as Heaven from Earth, from lyle’s phrase, the sole nexus between man and man. The that of the French philosophers. number of crimes increased from year to year. Formerly, For, to our three social reformers, the bourgeois the feudal vices had openly stalked about in broad day- world, based upon the principles of these philosophers, light; though not eradicated, they were now at any rate is quite as irrational and unjust, and, therefore, finds its thrust into the background. In their stead, the bourgeois way to the dust-hole quite as readily as feudalism and vices, hitherto practiced in secret, began to blossom all all the earlier stages of society. If pure reason and jus- the more luxuriantly. Trade became to a greater and tice have not, hitherto, ruled the world, this has been the greater extent cheating. The “fraternity” of the revolu- case only because men have not rightly understood them. tionary motto was realized in the chicanery and rivalries What was wanted was the individual man of genius, who of the battle of competition. Oppression by force was re- has now arisen and who understands the truth. That he placed by corruption; the sword, as the first social lever, has now arisen, that the truth has now been clearly under- by gold. The right of the first night was transferred from stood, is not an inevitable event, following of necessity the feudal lords to the bourgeois manufacturers. Prosti- in the chains of historical development, but a mere happy tution increased to an extent never head of. Marriage it- accident. He might just as well have been born 500 years self remained, as before, the legally recognized form, the earlier, and might then have spared humanity 500 years official cloak of prostitution, and, moreover, was supple- of error, strife, and suffering. mented by rich crops of adultery. We saw how the French philosophersof the 18th cen- In a word, compared with the splendid promises of tury, the forerunners of the Revolution, appealed to rea- the philosophers, the social and political institutions born son as the sole judgeof all that is. A rationalgovernment, of the “triumph of reason” were bitterly disappointing rational society, were to be founded; everything that ran caricatures. All that was wanting was the men to formu- counter to eternal reasons was to be remorselessly done late this disappointment, and they came with the turn of away with. We saw also that this eternal reason was in re- the century. In 1802, Saint-Simon’s Geneva letters ap- ality nothing but the idealized understand of the 18th cen- peared; in 1808 appeared Fourier’s first work, although tury citizen, just then evolving into the bourgeois. The the groundwork of his theory dated from 1799; on Jan- French Revolution had realized this rational society and uary 1, 1800, Robert Owen undertook the direction of government. New Lanark. But the new order of things, rational enough as com- At this time, however, the capitalist mode of produc- pared with earlier conditions, turned out to be by no tion, and with it the antagonism between the bourgeoisie means absolutely rational. The state based upon reason and the proletariat, was still very incompletely devel- completely collapsed. Rousseau’s Contrat Social had oped. Modern Industry, which had just arisen in Eng- found its realization in the Reign of Terror, from which land, was still unknown in France. But Modern Indus- the bourgeoisie, who had lost confidence in their own try develops, on the one hand, the conflicts which make political capacity, had taken refuge first in the corrup- absolutely necessary a revolution in the mode of produc- tion of the Directorate, and, finally, under the wing of tion, and the doing away with its capitalistic character— the Napoleonic despotism. The promised eternal peace conflicts not only between the classes begotten of it, but was turned into an endless war of conquest. The society also between the very productive forces and the forms of based upon reason had fared no better. The antagonism exchange created by it. And, on the other hand, it devel- between rich and poor, instead of dissolving into gen- ops, in these very gigantic productive forces, the means eral prosperity, had become intensified by the removal of ending these conflicts. If, therefore, about the year of the guild and other privileges, which had to some ex- 1800, the conflicts arising from the new social order were tent bridged it over, and by the removal of the charitable only just beginning to take shape, this holds still more institutions of the Church. The “freedom of property” fullyas to the means of endingthem. The “have-nothing”

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 115 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific masses of Paris, during the Reign of Terror, were able put up for sale, and partly by frauds upon the nation by for a moment to gain the mastery, and thus to lead the means of army contracts. It was the domination of these bourgeois revolution to victory in spite of the bourgeoisie swindlers that, under the Directorate, brought France to themselves. But, in doing so, they only proved how im- the verge of ruin, and thus gave Napoleon the pretext for possible it was for their domination to last under the con- his coup d’etat. ditions then obtaining. The proletariat, which then for Hence, to Saint-Simon the antagonism between the the first time evolved itself from these “have-nothing” 3rd Estate and the privileged classes took the form of an masses as the nucleus of a new class, as yet quite in- antagonism between “workers” and “idlers”. The idlers capable of independent political action, appeared as an were not merely the old privileged classes, but also all oppressed, suffering order, to whom, in its incapacity to who, without taking any part in production or distribu- help itself, help could, at best, be broughtin from without tion, lived on their incomes. And the workers were not or down from above. only the wage-workers, but also the manufacturers, the This historical situation also dominated the founders merchants, the bankers. That the idlers had lost the ca- of Socialism. To the crude conditions of capitalistic pro- pacity for intellectual leadership and political supremacy duction and the crude class conditions correspond crude had been proved, and was by the Revolution finally set- theories. The solution of the social problems, which as tled. That the non-possessing classes had not this capac- yet lay hidden in undeveloped economic conditions, the ity seemed to Saint-Simon proved by the experiences of Utopians attempted to evolve out of the humanbrain. So- the Reign of Terror. Then, who was to lead and com- ciety presented nothing but wrongs; to remove these was mand? According to Saint-Simon, science and indus- the task of reason. It was necessary, then, to discover a try, both united by a new religious bond, destined to re- new and more perfect system of social order and to im- store that unity of religious ideas which had been lost pose this upon society from without by propaganda, and, since the time of the Reformation ? a necessarily mystic wherever it was possible, by the example of model ex- and rigidly hierarchic “new Christianity”. But science, periments. These new social systems were foredoomed that was the scholars; and industry, that was, in the first as Utopian; the more completely they were worked out place, the working bourgeois, manufacturers, merchants, in detail, the more they could not avoid drifting off into bankers. These bourgeois were, certainly, intended by pure phantasies. Saint-Simon to transform themselves into a kind of pub- These facts once established, we need not dwell lic officials, of social trustees; but they were still to hold, a moment longer upon this side of the question, now vis-a-vis of the workers, a commanding and economi- wholly belonging to the past. We can leave it to the liter- cally privileged position. The bankers especially were ary small fry to solemnly quibble over these phantasies, to be called upon to direct the whole of social produc- which today only make us smile, and to crow overthe su- tion by the regulation of credit. This conception was in periority of their own bald reasoning, as compared with exact keeping with a time in which Modern Industry in such “insanity”. For ourselves, we delight in the stupen- France and, with it, the chasm between bourgeoisie and dously grand thoughts and germs of thought that every- proletariat was only just coming into existence. But what where break out through their phantastic covering, and to Saint-Simon especially lays stress upon is this: what in- which these Philistines are blind. terests him first, and above all other things, is the lot of Saint-Simon was a son of the great French Revo- the class that is the most numerous and the most poor lution, at the outbreak of which he (“la classe la plus nombreuse et la plus pauvre”). was not yet 30. The Revolution was Already in his Geneva letters, Saint-Simon lays down the victory of the 3rd estate—i.e., of the proposition that “all men ought to work”. In the same the great masses of the nation, work- work he recognizes also that the Reign of Terror was the ing in production and in trade, over reign of the non-possessing masses. the privileged idle classes, the no- “See,” says he to them, “what happened in France at the bles and the priests. But the vic- time when your comrades held sway there; they brought tory of the 3rd estate soon revealed about a famine.” itself as exclusively the victory of a But to recognize the French Revolution as a class Figure 5: Saint-Simon smaller part of this “estate”, as the war, and not simply one between nobility and bour- conquest of political power by the socially privileged geoisie, but between nobility, bourgeoisie, and the non- section of it ? i.e., the propertied bourgeoisie. And possessors, was, in the year 1802, a most pregnant dis- the bourgeoisie had certainly developed rapidly during covery. In 1816, he declares that politics is the science of the Revolution, partly by speculation in the lands of the production, and foretells the complete absorption of pol- nobility and of the Church, confiscated and afterwards itics by economics. The knowledge that economic con-

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 116 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific ditions are the basis of political institutions appears here into four stages of evolution—savagery, barbarism, the only in embryo. Yet what is here already very plainly patriarchate, civilization. This last is identical with the expressed is the idea of the future conversion of politi- so-called civil, or bourgeois, society of today—i.e., with cal rule over men into an administration of things and a the social order that came in with the 16th century. He direction of processes of production—that is to say, the proves “that the civilized stage raises every vice prac- “abolition of the state”, about which recently there has ticed by barbarism in a simple fashion into a form of ex- been so much noise. istence, complex, ambiguous, equivocal, hypocritical”— Saint-Simon shows the same superiority over his that civilization moves “in a vicious circle”, in contradic- contemporaries, when in 1814, immediately after the en- tions which it constantly reproduces without being able try of the allies into Paris, and again in 1815, during the to solve them; hence it constantly arrives at the very op- Hundred Days’ War, he proclaims the alliance of France posite to that which it wants to attain, or pretends to want and England, and then of both of these countries, with to attain, so that, e.g., “under civilization poverty is born Germany, as the only guarantee for the prosperous de- of superabundance itself”. velopment and peace of Europe. To preach to the French Fourier, as we see, uses the dialectic method in the in 1815 an alliance with the victors of Waterloo required same masterly way as his contemporary, Hegel. Using as much courage as historical foresight. these same dialectics, he argues against talk about illim- If in Saint-Simon we find a comprehensive breadth itable human perfectibility, that every historical phase of view, by virtue of which al- has its period of ascent and also its period of descent, most all the ideas of later So- and he applies this observation to the future of the whole cialists that are not strictly eco- human race. As Kant introduced into natural science the nomic are found in him in em- idea of the ultimate destruction of the Earth, Fourier in- bryo, we find in Fourier a criti- troduced into historical science that of the ultimate de- cism of the existing conditions struction of the human race. of society, genuinely French Whilst in France the hurricane of the Revolution and witty, but not upon that swept over the land, in England a quieter, but not on account any the less thorough. that account less tremendous, revolution was going on. Figure 6: Fourier Fourier takes the bourgeoisie, Steam and the new tool-making machinery were trans- their inspired prophets before the Revolution, and their forming manufacture into modern industry, and thus rev- interested eulogists after it, at their own word. He lays olutionizing the whole foundation of bourgeois society. bare remorselessly the material and moral misery of the The sluggish march of development of the manufactur- bourgeoisworld. He confronts it with the earlier philoso- ing period changed into a veritable storm and stress pe- phers’ dazzling promises of a society in which reason riod of production. With constantly increasing swiftness alone should reign, of a civilization in which happiness the splitting-up into large capitalists and non-possessing should be universal, of an illimitable human perfectibil- proletarians went on. Between these, instead of the for- ity, and with the rose-colored phraseology of the bour- mer stable middle-class, an unstable mass of artisans and geois ideologists of his time. He points out how every- small shopkeepers, the most fluctuating portion of the where the most pitiful reality corresponds with the most population, now led a precarious existence. high-sounding phrases, and he overwhelms this hopeless The new mode of production was, as yet, only at the fiasco of phrases with his mordant sarcasm. beginning of its period of ascent; as yet it was the nor- Fourier is not only a critic, his imperturbably serene mal, regular method of production—the only one possi- nature makes him a satirist, and assuredly one of the ble under existing conditions. Nevertheless, even then greatest satirists of all time. He depicts, with equal power it was producing crying social abuses—the herding to- and charm, the swindling speculations that blossomed gether of a homeless population in the worst quarters out upon the downfall of the Revolution, and the shop- of the large towns; the loosening of all traditional moral keeping spirit prevalent in, and characteristic of, French bonds, of patriarchal subordination, of family relations; commerce at that time. Still more masterly is his crit- overwork, especially of women and children, to a fright- icism of the bourgeois form of the relations between ful extent; complete demoralization of the working-class, sexes, and the position of woman in bourgeois society. suddenly flung into altogether new conditions, from the He was the first to declare that in any given society the country into the town, from agriculture into modern in- degree of woman’s emancipation is the natural measure dustry, from stable conditions of existence into insecure of the general emancipation. ones that change from day to day. But Fourier is at his greatest in his conception of the At this juncture, there came forward as a reformer a history of society. He divides its whole course, thus far,

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 117 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific manufacturer 29-years-old—a between the wealth consumed by 2,500 persons and that man of almost sublime, child- which would have been consumed by 600,000?”3 like simplicity of character, The answer was clear. It had been used to pay the and at the same time one of proprietors of the establishment 5 per cent on the capi- the few born leaders of men. tal they had laid out, in addition to over £300,000 clear Robert Owen had adopted the profit. And that which held for New Lanark held to a still teaching of the materialistic greater extent for all the factories in England. philosophers: that man’s char- “If this new wealth had not been created by machin- acter is the product, on the one ery, imperfectly as it has been applied, the wars of Eu- hand, of heredity; on the other, rope, in opposition to Napoleon, and to support the aris- Figure 7: Owen of the environment of the indi- tocratic principles of society, could not have been main- vidual during his lifetime, and especially during his pe- tained. And yet this new power was the creation of the working-classes.” riod of development. In the industrial revolution most of his class saw only chaos and confusion, and the opportu- To them, therefore, the fruits of this new power be- nity of fishing in these troubled waters and making large longed. The newly-created gigantic productive forces, fortunes quickly. He saw in it the opportunity of putting hitherto used only to enrich individuals and to enslave into practice his favorite theory, and so of bringing order the masses, offered to Owen the foundations for a recon- out of chaos. He had already tried it with success, as struction of society; they were destined, as the common superintendent of more than 500 men in a Manchester propertyof all, to be worked for the common good of all. factory. From 1800 to 1829, he directed the great cotton Owen’s communism was based upon this purely mill at New Lanark, in Scotland, as managing partner, business foundation, the outcome, so to say, of commer- along the same lines, but with greater freedom of action cial calculation. Throughout, it maintained this practical and with a success that made him a European reputation. character. Thus, in 1823, Owen proposed the relief of A population, originally consisting of the most diverse the distress in Ireland by Communist colonies, and drew and, for the most part, very demoralized elements, a up complete estimates of costs of founding them, yearly population that gradually grew to 2,500, he turned into a expenditure, and probably revenue. And in his definite model colony, in which drunkenness, police, magistrates, plan for the future, the technical working out of details is lawsuits, poor laws, charity, were unknown. And all this managed with such practical knowledge—ground plan, simply by placing the people in conditions worthy of hu- front and side and bird’s-eye views all included—that the man beings, and especially by carefully bringing up the Owen method of social reform once accepted, there is rising generation. He was the founder of infant schools, from the practical point of view little to be said against and introduced them first at New Lanark. At the age of the actual arrangement of details. two, the children came to school, where they enjoyed His advance in the direction of Communism was the themselves so much that they could scarely be got home turning-point in Owen’s life. As long as he was simply a again. Whilst his competitors worked their people 13 philanthropist, he was rewarded with nothing but wealth, or 14 hours a day, in New Lanark the working-day was applause, honor, and glory. He was the most popularman only 10 and a half hours. When a crisis in cotton stopped in Europe. Not only men of his own class, but states- work for four months, his workers received their full men and prince listened to him approvingly. But when wages all the time. And with all this the business more he came out with his Communist theories that was quite than doubled in value, and to the last yielded large profits another thing. Three great obstacles seemed to him espe- to its proprietors. cially to block the path to social reform: private property, In spite of all this, Owen was not content. The exis- religion, the present form of marriage. tence which he secured for his workers was, in his eyes, He knew what confronted him if he attacked these— still far from being worthy of human beings. “The people outlawry, excommunication from official society, the were slaves at my mercy.” The relatively favorable con- loss of his whole social position. But nothing of this pre- ditions in which he had placed them were still far from vented him from attacking them without fear of conse- allowing a rational development of the character and of quences, and what he had foreseen happened. Banished the intellect in all directions, much less of the free exer- from official society, with a conspiracy of silence against cise of all their faculties. him in the press, ruined by his unsuccessful Communist “And yet, the working part of this population of 2,500 experiments in America, in which he sacrificed all his persons was daily producing as much real wealth for so- fortune, he turned directly to the working-class and con- ciety as, less than half a century before, it would have tinued working in their midst for 30 years. Every social required the working part of a population of 600,000 to movement, every real advance in England on behalf of create. I asked myself, what became of the difference the workers links itself on to the name of Robert Owen.

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 118 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific He forced through in 1819, after five years’ fighting, the 2. The Science of Dialectics first law limiting the hours of labor of women and chil- dren in factories. He was president of the first Congress In the meantime, along with and after the French phi- at which all the Trade Unions of England united in a sin- losophy of the 18th century, had arisen the new German gle great trade association. He introduced as transition philosophy, culminating in Hegel. measures to the complete communistic organization of Its greatest merit was the taking up again of dialectics society, on the one hand, cooperative societies for retail as the highest form of reasoning. The old Greek philoso- trade and production. These have since that time, at least, phers were all born natural dialecticians, and Aristotle, given practical proof that the merchant and the manufac- the most encyclopaedic of them, had already analyzed turer are socially quite unnecessary. On the other hand, the most essential forms of dialectic thought. The newer he introduced labor bazaars for the exchange of the prod- philosophy, on the other hand, although in it also dialec- ucts of labor through the medium of labor-notes, whose tics had brilliant exponents (e.g. Descartes and Spinoza), unit was a single hour of work; institutions necessarily had, especially through English influence, become more doomed to failure, but completely anticipating Proud- and more rigidly fixed in the so-called metaphysical hon’s bank of exchange of a much later period, and dif- mode of reasoning, by which also the French of the 18th fering entirely from this in that it did not claim to be the century were almost wholly dominated, at all events in panacea for all social ills, but only a first step towards a their special philosophical work. Outside philosophy in much more radical revolution of society. the restricted sense, the French nevertheless produced The Utopians’ mode of thought has for a long time masterpieces of dialectic. We need only call to mind governed the Socialist ideas of the 19th century, and still Diderot’s Le Neveu de Rameau, and Rousseau’s Discours governs some of them. Until very recently, all French sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inegalite parmi less and English Socialists did homage to it. The earlier Ger- hommes. We give here, in brief, the essential character man Communism, including that of Weitling, was of the of these two modes of thought. same school. To all these, Socialism is the expression When we consider and reflect upon Nature at large, of absolute truth, reason and justice, and has only to be or the history of mankind, or our own intellectual activ- discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own ity, at first we see the picture of an endless entanglement power. And as an absolute truth is independent of time, of relations and reactions, permutations and combina- space, and of the historical development of man, it is a tions, in which nothing remains what, where and as it mere accident when and where it is discovered. With was, but everything moves, changes, comes into being all this, absolute truth, reason, and justice are different and passes away. We see, therefore, at first the picture as with the founder of each different school. And as each a whole, with its individual parts still more or less kept in one’s special kind of absolute truth, reason, and justice the background; we observe the movements, transitions, is again conditioned by his subjective understanding, his connections, rather than the things that move, combine, conditions of existence, the measure of his knowledge and are connected. This primitive, naive but intrinsically and his intellectual training, there is no other ending pos- correct conception of the world is that of ancient Greek sible in this conflict of absolute truths than that they shall philosophy, and was first clearly formulated by Heracli- be mutually exclusive of one another. Hence, from this tus: everything is and is not, for everything is fluid, is nothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average So- constantly changing, constantly coming into being and cialism, which, as a matter of fact, has up to the present passing away. time dominated the minds of most of the socialist work- But this conception, correctly as it expresses the gen- ers in France and England. Hence, a mish-mash allowing eral character of the picture of appearances as a whole, of the most manifold shades of opinion: a mish-mash of does not suffice to explain the details of which this pic- such critical statements, economic theories, pictures of ture is made up, and so long as we do not understand future society by the founders of different sects, as ex- these, we have not a clear idea of the whole picture. In cite a minimum of opposition; a mish-mash which is the order to understand these details, we must detach them more easily brewed the more definite sharp edges of the from their natural, special causes, effects, etc. This is, individual constituents are rubbed down in the stream of primarily, the task of natural science and historical re- debate, like rounded pebbles in a brook. search: branches of science which the Greek of classical To make a science of Socialism, it had first to be times, on very good grounds, relegated to a subordinate placed upon a real basis. position, because they had first of all to collect materi- als for these sciences to work upon. A certain amount of natural and historical material must be collected be- fore there can be any critical analysis, comparison, and arrangement in classes, orders, and species. The founda-

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 119 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific tions of the exact natural sciences were, therefore, first yond which the killing of the child in its mother’s womb worked out by the Greeks of the Alexandrian period 4, is murder. It is just as impossible to determine absolutely and later on, in the Middle Ages, by the Arabs. Real the moment of death, for physiology proves that death natural science dates from the second half of the 15th is not an instantaneous, momentary phenomenon, but a century, and thence onward it had advanced with con- very protracted process. stantly increasing rapidity. The analysis of Nature into In like manner, every organized being is every mo- its individual parts, the grouping of the different natural ment the same and not the same; every moment, it as- processes and objects in definite classes, the study of the similates matter supplied from without, and gets rid of internal anatomy of organized bodies in their manifold other matter; every moment, some cells of its body die forms—these were the fundamental conditions of the gi- and others build themselves anew; in a longer or shorter gantic strides in our knowledge of Nature that have been time, the matter of its body is completely renewed, and made during the last 400 years. But this method of work is replaced by other molecules of matter, so that every has also left us as legacy the habit of observing natural organized being is always itself, and yet something other objects and processes in isolation, apart from their con- than itself. nection with the vast whole; of observing them in repose, Further, we find upon closer investigation that the not in motion; as constraints, not as essentially variables; two poles of an antithesis, positive and negative, e.g., are in their death, not in their life. And when this way of as inseparable as they are opposed, and that despite all looking at things was transferred by Bacon and Locke their opposition, they mutually interpenetrate. And we from natural science to philosophy, it begot the narrow, find, in like manner, that cause and effect are concep- metaphysical mode of thought peculiar to the last cen- tions which only hold good in their application to indi- tury. vidual cases; but as soon as we consider the individual To the metaphysician, things and their mental re- cases in their general connection with the universe as a flexes, ideas, are isolated, are to be be considered one whole, they run into each other, and they become con- after the other and apart from each other, are objects of founded when we contemplate that universal action and investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks in reaction in which causes and effects are eternally chang- absolutely irreconcilable antitheses. His communication ing places, so that what is effect here and now will be is ’yea, yea; nay, nay’; for whatsoever is more than these cause there and then, and vice versa. cometh of evil.” For him, a thing either exists or does not None of these processes and modes of thought en- exist; a thing cannot at the same time be itself and some- ters into the framework of metaphysical reasoning. Di- thing else. Positive and negative absolutely exclude on alectics, on the other hand, comprehends things and their another; cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis, one representations, ideas, in their essential connection, con- to the other. catenation, motion, origin and ending. Such processes as At first sight, this mode of thinking seems to us very those mentioned above are, therefore, so many corrobo- luminous, because it is that of so-called sound common- rations of its own method of procedure. sense. Only sound commonsense, respectable fellow that Nature is the proof of dialectics, and it must be he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has said for modern science that it has furnished this proof very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into with very rich materials increasingly daily, and thus has the wide world of research. And the metaphysical mode shown that, in the last resort, Nature works dialectically of thought, justifiable and necessary as it is in a number and not metaphysically; that she does not move in the of domains whose extent varies according to the nature eternal oneness of a perpetually recurring circle, but goes of the particular object of investigation, sooner or later through a real historical evolution. In this connection, reaches a limit, beyond which it becomes one-sided, re- Darwin must be named before all others. He dealt the stricted, abstract, lost in insoluble contradictions. In the metaphysical conception of Nature the heaviest blow by contemplation of individual things, it forgets the connec- his proof that all organicbeings, plants, animals, and man tion between them; in the contemplation of their exis- himself, are the products of a process of evolution going tence, it forgets the beginning and end of that existence; on through millions of years. But, the naturalists, who of their repose, if forgets their motion. It cannot see the have learned to think dialectically, are few and far be- woods for the trees. tween, and this conflict of the results of discovery with For everyday purposes, we know and can say, e.g., preconceived modes of thinking, explains the endless whether an animal is alive or not. But, upon closer in- confusion now reigning in theoretical natural science, the quiry, we find that his is, in many cases, a very complex despair of teachers as well as learners, of authors and question, as the jurists know very well. They have cud- readers alike. gelled their brains in vain to discover a rational limit be- An exact representation of the universe, of its evolu-

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 120 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific tion, of the developmentof mankind, and of the reflection tual connection of things in the world. Correctly and of this evolution in the minds of men, can therefore only ingeniously as many groups of facts were grasped by be obtained by the methods of dialectics with its constant Hegel, yet, for the reasons just given, there is much that regard to the innumerable actions and reactions of life is botched, artificial, labored, in a word, wrong in point and death, of progressive or retrogressive changes. And of detail. The Hegelian system, in itself, was a colossal in this spirit, the new German philosophy has worked. miscarriage—but it was also the last of its kind. Kant began his career by resolving the stable Solar sys- It was suffering, in fact, from an internal and in- tem of Newton and its eternal duration, after the famous curable contradiction. Upon the one hand, its essential initial impulse had once been given, into the result of a proposition was the conception that human history is a historical process, the formation of the Sun and all the process of evolution, which, by its very nature, cannot planets out of a rotating, nebulous mass. From this, he find its intellectual final term in the discovery of any so- at the same time drew the conclusion that, given this ori- called absolute truth. But, on the other hand, it laid claim gin of the Solar system, its future death followed of ne- to being the very essence of this absolute truth. A sys- cessity. His theory, half a century later, was established tem of natural and historical knowledge, embracing ev- mathematically by Laplace, and half a century after that, erything, and final for all time, is a contradiction to the the spectroscope proved the existence in space of such fundamental law of dialectic reasoning. incandescent masses of gas in various stages of conden- This law, indeed, by no means excludes, but, on the sation. contrary, includes the idea that the systematic knowledge This new German philosophy culminated in the of the external universe can make giant strides from age Hegelian system. In this system—and to age. herein is its great merit—for the first The perception of the the fundamental contradiction time the whole world, natural, histor- in German idealism led necessarily back to materialism, ical, intellectual, is represented as a but—nota bene—not to the simply metaphysical, exclu- process—i.e., as in constant motion, sively mechanical materialism of the 18th century. Old change, transformation, development; materialism looked upon all previous history as a crude and the attempt is made to trace out heap of irrationality and violence; modern materialism Figure 8: Hegel the internal connection that makes a sees in it the process of evolution of humanity, and aims continuous whole of all this movement and develop- at discovering the laws thereof. With the French of the ment. From this point of view, the history of mankind 18th century, and even with Hegel, the conception ob- no longer appeared as a wild whirl of senseless deeds of tained of Nature as a whole—moving in narrow circles, violence, all equally condemnable at the judgment seat and forever immutable, with its eternal celestial bodies, of mature philosophic reason and which are best forgot- as Newton, and unalterable organic species, as Linnaeus, ten as quickly as possible, but as the process of evolution taught. Modern materialism embraces the more recent of man himself. It was now the task of the intellect to discoveries of natural science, according to which Na- follow the gradual march of this process through all its ture also has its history in time, the celestial bodies, like devious ways, and to trace out the inner law running the organic species that, under favorable conditions, peo- through all its apparently accidental phenomena. ple them, being born and perishing. And even if Nature, That the Hegelian system did not solve the problem it as a whole, must still be said to move in recurrent cy- propounded is here immaterial. Its epoch-making merit cles, these cycles assume infinitely larger dimensions. In was that it propounded the problem. This problem is one both aspects, modern materialism is essentially dialectic, that no single individual will ever be able to solve. Al- and no longer requires the assistance of that sort of phi- though Hegel was—with Saint-Simon—the most ency- losophy which, queen-like, pretended to rule the remain- clopaedic mind of his time, yet he was limited, first, by ing mob of sciences. As soon as each special science is the necessary limited extent of his own knowledge and, bound to make clear its position in the great totality of second, by the limited extent and depth of the knowl- things and of our knowledge of things, a special science edge and conceptions of his age. to these limits, a third dealing with this totality is superfluous or unnecessary. must be added. Hegel was an idealist. To him, the That which still survives of all earlier philosophy is the thoughts within his brain were not the more or less ab- science of thought and its law—formal logic and dialec- stract pictures of actual things and processes, but, con- tics. Everything else is subsumed in the positive science versely, things and their evolution were only the realized of Nature and history. pictures of the “Idea”, existing somewhere from eternity Whilst, however, the revolution in the conception of before the world was. This way of thinking turned ev- Nature could only be made in proportion to the corre- erything upside down, and completely reversed the ac- sponding positive materials furnished by research, al-

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 121 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific ready much earlier certain historical facts had occurred of ending the conflict. But the Socialism of earlier which led to a decisive change in the conception of his- days was as incompatible with this materialist con- tory. In 1831, the first working-class rising took place ception as the conception of Nature of the French in Lyons; between 1838 and 1842, the first national materialists was with dialectics and modern natural working-class movement, that of the English Chartists, science. The Socialism of earlier days certainly criti- reached its height. The class struggle between prole- cized the existing capitalistic mode of production and tariat and bourgeoisie came to the front in the history its consequences. But it could not explain them, and, of the most advanced countries in Europe, in propor- therefore, could not get the mastery of them. It could tion to the development, upon the one hand, of modern only simply reject them as bad. The more strongly industry, upon the other, of the newly-acquired politi- this earlier Socialism denounced the exploitations of cal supremacy of the bourgeoisie. facts more and more the working-class, inevitable under Capitalism, the strenuously gave the lie to the teachings of bourgeois less able was it clearly to show in what this exploita- economy as to the identity of the interests of capital and tion consisted and how it arose. but for this it was labor, as to the universal harmony and universal prosper- necessary— ity that would be the consequence of unbridled compe- to present the capitalistic mode of production in its his- tition. All these things could no longer be ignored, any torical connection and its inevitableness during a particu- more than the French and English Socialism, which was lar historical period, and therefore, also, to present its in- their theoretical, though very imperfect, expression. But evitable downfall; and to lay bare its essential character, which was still a se- the old idealist conception of history, which was not yet cret. This was done by the discovery of surplus-value. dislodged, knew nothing of class struggles based upon economic interests, knew nothing of economic interests; It was shown that the appropriation of unpaid labor production and all economic relations appeared in it only is the basis of the capitalist mode of production and of as incidental, subordinate elements in the “history of civ- the exploitation of the worker that occurs under it; that ilization”. even if the capitalist buys the labor power of his laborer The new facts made imperative a new examination of at its full value as a commodity on the market, he yet ex- all past history. Then it was seen that all past history, tracts more value from it than he paid for; and that in the with the exception of its primitive stages, was the his- ultimate analysis, this surplus-value forms those sums of tory of class struggles; that these warring classes of so- value from which are heaped up constantly increasing ciety are always the products of the modes of production masses of capital in the hands of the possessing classes. and of exchange—in a word, of the economic conditions The genesis of capitalist production and the production of their time; that the economic structure of society al- of capital were both explained. ways furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can These two great discoveries, the materialistic concep- alone work out the ultimate explanation of the whole su- tion of history and the revelation of the secret of capital- perstructure of juridical and political institutions as well istic production through surplus-value, we owe to Marx. as of the religious, philosophical, and other ideas of a With these discoveries, Socialism became a science. The given historical period. Hegel has freed history from next thing was to work out all its details and relations. metaphysics—he made it dialectic; but his conception of history was essentially idealistic. But now idealism 3. Historical Materialism was driven from its last refuge, the philosophy of history; now a materialistic treatment of history was propounded, The materialist conception of history starts from the and a method found of explaining man’s “knowing” by proposition that the production of the means to sup- his “being”, instead of, as heretofore, his “being” by his port human life and, next to production, the exchange of “knowing”. things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that From that time forward, Socialism was no longer in every society that has appeared in history, the manner an accidental discovery of this or that ingenious in which wealth is distributed and society divided into brain, but the necessary outcome of the struggle be- classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, tween two historically developed classes—the prole- how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. tariat and the bourgeoisie. Its task was no longer to From this point of view, the final causes of all social manufacture a system of society as perfect as possi- changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not ble, but to examine the historico-economic succes- in men’s brains, not in men’s better insights into eternal sion of events from which these classes and their an- truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of produc- tagonism had of necessity sprung, and to discover tion and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the phi- in the economic conditions thus created the means losophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch.

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 122 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific The growing perception that existing social institutions Ages—the system of petty industry obtained generally, are unreasonable and unjust, that reason has become un- based upon the private property of the laborers in their reason, and right wrong5, is only proof that in the modes means of production; in the country, the agriculture of of production and exchange changes have silently taken the small peasant, freeman, or serf; in the towns, the place with which the social order, adapted to earlier eco- handicrafts organized in guilds. The instruments of nomic conditions, is no longer in keeping. From this labor—land, agricultural implements, the workshop, the it also follows that the means of getting rid of the in- tool—were the instruments of labor of single individu- congruities that have been brought to light must also be als, adapted for the use of one worker, and, therefore, of present, in a more or less developed condition, within the necessity, small, dwarfish, circumscribed. But, for this changed modes of production themselves. These means very reason, they belonged as a rule to the producer him- are not to be invented by deduction from fundamental self. To concentrate these scattered, limited means of principles, but are to be discovered in the stubborn facts production, to enlarge them, to turn them into the pow- of the existing system of production. erful levers of production of the present day—this was What is, then, the position of modern Socialism in precisely the historic role of capitalist production and of this connection? its upholder, the bourgeoisie. In the fourth section of The present situation of society—this is now pretty Capital, Marx has explained in detail how since the 15th generally conceded ? is the creation of the ruling class century this has been historically worked out through the of today, of the bourgeoisie. The mode of production three phases of simple co-operation, manufacture, and peculiar to the bourgeoisie, known, since Marx, as the modern industry. But the bourgeoisie, as is shown there, capitalist mode of production, was incompatible with the could not transform these puny means of production into feudal system, with the privileges it conferred upon in- mighty productive forces without transforming them, at dividuals, entire social ranks and local corporations, as the same time, from means of production of the individ- well as with the hereditary ties of subordination which ual into social means of production only workable by constituted the framework of its social organization. The a collectivity of men. The spinning wheel, the hand- bourgeoisie broke up the feudal system and built upon its loom, the blacksmith’s hammer, were replaced by the ruins the capitalist order of society, the kingdom of free spinning-machine, the power-loom, the steam-hammer; competition, of personal liberty, of the equality, before the individual workshop, by the factory implying the co- the law, of all commodity owners, of all the rest of the operation of hundreds and thousands of workmen. In capitalist blessings. Thenceforward, the capitalist mode like manner, production itself changed from a series of of production could develop in freedom. Since steam, individual into a series of social acts, and the production machinery, and the making of machines by machinery from individual to social products. The yarn, the cloth, transformed the older manufacture into modern industry, the metal articles that now come out of the factory were the productive forces, evolved under the guidance of the the joint product of many workers, through whose hands bourgeoisie, developed with a rapidity and in a degree they had successively to pass before they were ready. No unheard of before. But just as the older manufacture, in one person could say of them: “I made that; this is my its time, and handicraft, becoming more developed un- product.” der its influence, had come into collision with the feu- But where, in a given society, the fundamental form dal trammels of the guilds, so now modern industry, in of production is that spontaneous division of labor which its complete development, comes into collision with the creeps in gradually and not upon any preconceived plan, bounds within which the capitalist mode of production there the products take on the form of commodities, holds it confined. The new productive forces have al- whose mutual exchange, buying and selling, enable the ready outgrown the capitalistic mode of using them. And individual producers to satisfy their manifold wants. And this conflict between productiveforces and modes of pro- this was the case in the Middle Ages. The peasant, e.g., duction is not a conflict engendered in the mind of man, sold to the artisan agricultural products and bought from like that between original sin and divine justice. It ex- him the products of handicraft. Into this society of in- ists, in fact, objectively, outside us, independently of the dividual producers, of commodity producers, the new will and actions even of the men that have brought it on. mode of production thrust itself. In the midst of the old Modern Socialism is nothing but the reflex, in thought, division of labor, grown up spontaneously and upon no of this conflict in fact; its ideal reflection in the minds, definite plan, which had governed the whole of society, first, of the class directly suffering under it, the working now arose division of labor upon a definite plan, as orga- class. nized in the factory; side by side with individual produc- Now, in what does this conflict consist? tion appeared social production. The products of both Before capitalist production—i.e., in the Middle were sold in the same market, and, therefore, at prices at

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 123 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific least approximately equal. But organization upon a defi- poses the private production of individuals, under which, nite plan was stronger than spontaneous division of labor. therefore, every one owns his own product and brings it The factories working with the combined social forces to market. The mode of production is subjected to this of a collectivity of individuals produced their commodi- form of appropriation, although it abolishes the condi- ties far more cheaply than the individual small producers. tions upon which the latter rests.6 Individual producers succumbed in one department after This contradiction, which gives to the new mode of another. Socialized production revolutionized all the old production its capitalistic character, contains the germ methods of production. But its revolutionary character of the whole of the social antagonisms of today. The was, at the same time, so little recognized that it was, on greater the mastery obtained by the new mode of pro- the contrary, introduced as a means of increasing and de- duction over all important fields of production and in all veloping the production of commodities. When it arose, manufacturing countries, the more it reduced individual it found ready-made, and made liberal use of, certain ma- production to an insignificant residuum, the more clearly chinery for the productionand exchange of commodities: was brought out the incompatibility of socialized produc- merchants’ capital, handicraft, wage-labor. Socialized tion with capitalistic appropriation. production thus introducing itself as a new form of the The first capitalists found, as we have said, along- production of commodities, it was a matter of course that side of other forms of labor, wage-labor ready-made for under it the old forms of appropriation remained in full them on the market. But it was exceptional, complemen- swing, and were applied to its products as well. tary, accessory, transitory wage-labor. The agricultural In the medieval stage of evolution of the production laborer, though, upon occassion, he hired himself out by of commodities, the question as to the owner of the prod- the day, had a few acres of his own land on which he uct of labor could not arise. The individual producer, could at all events live at a pinch. The guilds were so or- as a rule, had, from raw material belonging to himself, ganized that the journeyman of today became the master and generally his own handiwork, produced it with his of tomorrow. But all this changed, as soon as the means own tools, by the labor of his own hands or of his family. of production became socialized and concentrated in the There was no need for him to appropriate the new prod- hands of capitalists. The means of production, as well as uct. It belonged wholly to him, as a matter of course. the product, of the individual producer became more and His property in the product was, therefore, based upon more worthless; there was nothing left for him but to turn his own labor. Even where external help was used, this wage-worker under the capitalist. Wage-labor, aforetime was, as a rule, of little importance, and very generally the exception and accessory, now became the rule and was compensated by something other than wages. The basis of all production; aforetime complementary, it now apprentices and journeymen of the guilds worked less for became the sole remaining function of the worker. The board and wages than for education, in order that they wage-worker for a time became a wage-worker for life. might become master craftsmen themselves. The number of these permanent was further enormously Then came the concentration of the means of pro- increased by the breaking-up of the feudal system that duction and of the producers in large workshops and occurred at the same time, by the disbanding of the re- manufactories, their transformation into actual socialized tainers of the feudal lords, the eviction of the peasants means of production and socialized producers. But the from their homesteads, etc. The separation was made socialized producers and means of production and their complete between the means of production concentrated products were still treated, after this change, just as they in the hands of the capitalists, on the one side, and the had been before—i.e., as the means of production and producers, possessing nothing but their labor-power, on the products of individuals. Hitherto, the owner of the the other. The contradiction between socialized produc- instruments of labor had himself appropriated the prod- tion and capitalistic appropriation manifested itself as uct, because, as a rule, it was his own product and the the antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie. assistance of others was the exception. Now, the owner We have seen that the capitalistic mode of production of the instruments of labor always appropriated to him- thrust its way into a society of commodity-producers, self the product, althoughit was no longer his product but of individual producers, whose social bond was the ex- exclusively the product of the labor of others. Thus, the change of their products. But every society based upon products now produced socially were not appropriated the production of commodities has this peculiarity: that by those who had actually set in motion the means of the producers have lost control over their own social production and actually produced the commodities, but inter-relations. Each man produces for himself with such by the capitalists. The means of production, and produc- means of production as he may happen to have, and for tion itself, had become in essence socialized. But they such exchange as he may require to satisfy his remain- were subjected to a form of appropriation which presup- ing wants. No one knows how much of his particular

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 124 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific article is coming on the market, nor how much of it will ers of commodities. It became apparent that the produc- be wanted. No one knows whether his individual prod- tion of society at large was ruled by absence of plan, by uct will meet an actual demand, whether he will be able accident, by anarchy; and this anarchy grew to greater to make good his costs of production or even to sell his and greater height. But the chief means by aid of which commodity at all. Anarchy reigns in socialized produc- the capitalist mode of production intensified this anarchy tion. of socialized production was the exact opposite of an- But the production of commodities, like every other archy. It was the increasing organization of production, form of production, has it peculiar, inherent laws in- upon a social basis, in every individual productive estab- separable from it; and these laws work, despite anar- lishment. By this, the old, peaceful, stable condition of chy, in and through anarchy. They reveal themselves in things was ended. Wherever this organization of produc- the only persistent form of social inter-relations—i.e., in tion was introduced into a branch of industry, it brooked exchange—and here they affect the individual producers no other method of production by its side. The field of as compulsory laws of competition. They are, at first, labor became a battle-ground. The great geographical unknown to these producers themselves, and have to be discoveries, and the colonization following them, multi- discovered by them gradually and as the result of expe- plied markets and quickened the transformationof handi- rience. They work themselves out, therefore, indepen- craft into manufacture. The war did not simply break out dently of the producers, and in antagonism to them, as between the individual producers of particular localities. inexorable natural laws of their particular form of pro- The local struggles begat, in their turn, national conflicts, duction. The product governs the producers. the commercial wars of the 17th and 18th centuries. In mediaeval society, especially in the earlier cen- Finally, modern industry and the opening of the turies, production was essentially directed toward satis- world-market made the struggle universal, and at the fying the wants of the individual. It satisfied, in the main, same time gave it an unheard-of virulence. Advantages only the wants of the producer and his family. Where re- in natural or artificial conditions of production now de- lations of personal dependence existed, as in the country, cide the existence or non-existence of individual capital- it also helped to satisfy the wants of the feudal lord. In all ists, as well as of whole industries and countries. He this there was, therefore, no exchange; the products, con- that falls is remorselessly cast aside. It is the Darwinian sequently, did not assume the character of commodities. struggle of the individual for existence transferred from The family of the peasant produced almost everything Nature to society with intensified violence. The condi- they wanted: clothes and furniture, as well as the means tions of existence natural to the animal appear as the final of subsistence. Only when it began to produce more than term of human development. The contradiction between was sufficient to supply its own wants and the payments socialized production and capitalistic appropriation now in kind to the feudal lords, only then did it also produce presents itself as an antagonism between the organiza- commodities. This surplus, thrown into socialized ex- tion of production in the individual workshop and the change and offered for sale, became commodities. anarchy of production in society generally. The artisan in the towns, it is true, had from the first The capitalistic mode of production moves in these to produce for exchange. But they, also, themselves sup- two forms of the antagonism immanent to it from its very plied the greatest part of their individual wants. They origin. It is never able to get out of that “vicious cir- had gardens and plots of land. They turned their cattle cle” which Fourier had already discovered. What Fourier out into the communal forest, which, also, yielded them couldnot, indeed, seein his timeis that thiscircle is grad- timber and firing. The women spun flax, wool, and so ually narrowing; that the movement becomes more and forth. Production for the purpose of exchange, produc- more a spiral, and must come to an end, like the move- tion of commodities, was only in its infancy. Hence, ex- ment of planets, by collision with the centre. It is the change was restricted, the market narrow, the methods of compelling force of anarchy in the production of society production stable; there was local exclusiveness without, at large that more and more completely turns the great local unity within; the mark in the country; in the town, majority of men into proletarians; and it is the masses of the guild. the proletariat again who will finally put an end to anar- But with the extension of the production of com- chy in production. It is the compelling force of anarchy modities, and especially with the introduction of the in social production that turns the limitless perfectibility capitalist mode of production, the laws of commodity- of machinery under modern industry into a compulsory production, hitherto latent, came into action more openly law by which every individual industrial capitalist must and with greater force. The old bonds were loosened, the perfect his machinery more and more, under penalty of old exclusive limits broken through, the producers were ruin. more and more turned into independent, isolated produc- But the perfecting of machinery is making human

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 125 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific labor superfluous. If the introduction and increase of possibility of extending the field of production is trans- machinery means the displacement of millions of man- formed for him into a similarly compulsory law. The ual by a few machine-workers, improvement in machin- enormous expansive force of modern industry, compared ery means the displacement of more and more of the with which that of gases is mere child’s play, appears to machine-workers themselves. It means, in the last in- us now as a necessity for expansion, both qualitative and stance, the production of a number of available wage quantative, that laughs at all resistance. Such resistance workers in excess of the average needs of capital, the for- is offered by consumption, by sales, by the markets for mation of a complete industrial reserve army, as I called the products of modern industry. But the capacity for it in 18457, available at the times when industry is work- extension, extensive and intensive, of the markets is pri- ing at high pressure, to be cast out upon the street when marily governed by quite different laws that work much the inevitable crash comes, a constant dead weight upon less energetically. The extension of the markets cannot the limbs of the working-class in its struggle for exis- keep pace with the extension of production. The colli- tence with capital, a regulator for keeping of wages down sion becomes inevitable, and as this cannot produce any to the low level that suits the interests of capital. real solution so long as it does not break in pieces the Thus it comes about, to quote Marx, that machinery capitalist mode of production, the collisions become pe- becomes the most powerful weapon in the war of capi- riodic. Capitalist production has begotten another “vi- tal against the working-class; that the instruments of labor cious circle”. constantly tear the means of subsistence out of the hands As a matter of fact, since 1825, when the first gen- of the laborer; that the very product of the worker is turned into an instrument for his subjugation. eral crisis broke out, the whole industrial and commer- Thus it comes about that the economizing of the instru- cial world, production and exchange among all civi- ments of labor becomes at the same time, from the outset, lized peoples and their more or less barbaric hangers- the most reckless waste of labor-power, and robbery based on, are thrown out of joint about once every 10 years. upon the normal conditions under which labor functions; Commerce is at a stand-still, the markets are glutted, that machinery, “the most powerful instrument for shortening labor products accumulate, as multitudinous as they are un- time, becomes the most unfailing means for placing ev- saleable, hard cash disappears, credit vanishes, factories ery moment of the laborer’s time and that of his family at are closed, the mass of the workers are in want of the the disposal of the capitalist for the purpose of expanding means of subsistence, because they have produced too the value of his capital.” (Capital, English edition, p. 406) Thus it comes about that the overwork of some be- much of the means of subsistence; bankruptcy follows comes the preliminary condition for the idleness of oth- upon bankruptcy, execution upon execution. The stag- ers, and that modern industry, which hunts after new con- nation last for years; productive forces and products are sumers over the whole world, forces the consumption of wasted and destroyed wholesale, until the accumulated the masses at home down to a starvation minimum, and in mass of commodities finally filter off, more or less de- doing thus destroys its own home market. “The law that always equilibrates the relative surplus- preciated in value, until production and exchange gradu- population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and ally begin to move again. Little by little, the pace quick- energy of accumulation, this law rivets the laborer to capi- ens. It becomes a trot. The industrial trot breaks into a tal more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan did Prometheus canter, the canter in turn grows into the headlong gallop to the rock. It establishes an accumulation of misery, cor- of a perfect steeplechase of industry, commercial credit, responding with the accumulation of capital. Accumula- tion of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time and speculation, which finally, after breakneck leaps, accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, ends where it began—in the ditch of a crisis. And so brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on over and over again. We have now, since the year 1825, the side of the class that produces its own product in the gone through this five times, and at the present moment form of capital (Marx’s Capital, p. 661) (1877), we are going through it for the sixth time. And And to expect any other division of the productsfrom the character of these crises is so clearly defined that the capitalist modeof productionis the same as expecting Fourier hit all of them off when he described the first the electrodes of a battery not to decompose acidulated “crise plethorique”, a crisis from plethora. water, not to liberate oxygen at the positive, hydrogen at In these crises, the contradiction between socialized the negative pole, so long as they are connected with the production and capitalist appropriation ends in a violent battery. explosion. The circulation of commodities is, for the We have seen that the ever-increasing perfectibility time being, stopped. Money, the means of circulation, of modern machinery is, by the anarchy of social pro- becomes a hindrance to circulation. All the laws of pro- duction, turned into a compulsory law that forces the in- duction and circulation of commodities are turned upside dividual industrial capitalist always to improve his ma- down. The economic collision has reached its apogee. chinery, always to increase its productive force. The bare The mode of production is in rebellion against the mode

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 126 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific of exchange. dustry in a particular country unite in a “Trust”, a union The fact that the socialized organization of produc- for the purpose of regulating production. They determine tion within the factory has developed so far that it has the total amount to be produced, parcel it out among become incompatible with the anarchy of production in themselves, and thus enforce the selling price fixed be- society, which exists side by side with and dominates it, forehand. But trusts of this kind, as soon as business be- is brought home to the capitalist themselves by the vi- comes bad, are generally liable to break up, and on this olent concentration of capital that occurs during crises, very account compel a yet greater concentration of asso- through the ruin of many large, and a still greater number ciation. The whole of a particular industry is turned into of small, capitalists. The whole mechanism of the cap- one gigantic joint-stock company; internal competition italist mode of production breaks down under the pres- gives place to the internal monopoly of this one com- sure of the productive forces, its own creations. It is no pany. This has happened in 1890 with the English alkali longer able to turn all this mass of means of production production, which is now, after the fusion of 48 large into capital. They lie fallow, and for that very reason works, in the hands of one company, conducted upon a the industrial reserve army must also lie fallow. Means single plan, and with a capital of £6,000,000. of production, means of subsistence, available laborers, In the trusts, freedom of competition changes into its all the elements of production and of general wealth, very opposite—into monopoly; and the production with- are present in abundance. But “abundance becomes the out any definite plan of capitalistic society capitulates to source of distress and want” (Fourier), because it is the the production upon a definite plan of the invading so- very thing that prevents the transformation of the means cialistic society. Certainly, this is so far still to the bene- of production and subsistence into capital. For in capital- fit and advantage of the capitalists. But, in this case, the istic society, the means of production can only function exploitation is so palpable, that it must break down. No when they have undergone a preliminary transformation nation will put up with production conducted by trusts, into capital, into the means of exploiting human labor- with so barefaced an exploitation of the community by a power. The necessity of this transformation into capital small band of dividend-mongers. of the means of production and subsistence stands like In any case, with trusts or without, the official a ghost between these and the workers. It alone pre- representative of capitalist society—the state—will ul- vents the coming together of the material and personal timately have to undertake the direction of produc- levers of production; it alone forbids the means of pro- tion8. This necessity for conversion into State property duction to function, the workers to work and live. On the is felt first in the great institutions for intercourse and one hand, therefore, the capitalistic mode of production communication—the post office, the telegraphs, the rail- stands convicted of its own incapacity to further direct ways. these productive forces. On the other, these productive If the crises demonstrate the incapacity of the bour- forces themselves, with increasing energy, press forward geoisie for managing any longer modern productive to the removal of the existing contradiction, to the abo- forces, the transformation of the great establishments for lition of their quality as capital, to the practical recogni- production and distribution into joint-stock companies, tion of their character as social production forces. trusts, and State property, show how unnecessary the This rebellion of the productive forces, as they grow bourgeoisie are for that purpose. All the social functions more and more powerful, against their quality as capi- of the capitalist have no further social function than that tal, this stronger and stronger command that their social of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gam- character shall be recognized, forces the capital class it- bling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capi- self to treat them more and more as social productive talists despoil one another of their capital. At first, the forces, so far as this is possible under capitalist condi- capitalistic mode of production forces out the workers. tions. The period of industrial high pressure, with its un- Now, it forces out the capitalists, and reduces them, just bounded inflation of credit, not less than the crash itself, as it reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus- by the collapse of great capitalist establishments, tends to population, although not immediately into those of the bring about that form of the socialization of great masses industrial reserve army. of the means of production which we meet with in the But, the transformation—either into joint-stock com- different kinds of joint-stock companies. Many of these panies and trusts, or into State-ownership—does not do means of productionand of distribution are, from the out- away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. set, so colossal that, like the railways, they exclude all In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious. other forms of capitalistic expansion. At a further stage And the modern State, again, is only the organization of evolution, this form also becomes insufficient. The that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the producers on a large scale in a particular branch of an in- external conditions of the capitalist mode of production

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 127 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific against the encroachments as well of the workers as of tion gives place to a social regulation of production upon individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what a definite plan, according to the needs of the community its form, is essentially a capitalist machine—the state of and of each individual. Then the capitalist mode of ap- the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total na- propriation, in which the product enslaves first the pro- tional capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of ducer, and then the appropriator, is replaced by the mode productive forces, the more does it actually become the of appropriation of the products that is based upon the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The nature of the modern means of production; upon the one workers remain wage-workers—proletarians. The capi- hand, direct social appropriation, as means to the mainte- talist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought nance and extension of production—on the other, direct to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State- individual appropriation, as means of subsistence and of ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of enjoyment. the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical con- Whilst the capitalist mode of production more and ditions that form the elements of that solution. more completely transforms the great majority of the This solution can only consist in the practical recog- population into proletarians, it creates the power which, nition of the social nature of the modern forces of pro- under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accom- duction, and therefore in the harmonizing with the so- plish this revolution. Whilst it forces on more and more cialized character of the means of production. And this of the transformation of the vast means of production, al- can only come about by society openly and directly tak- ready socialized, into State property, it shows itself the ing possession of the productive forces which have out- way to accomplishing this revolution. The proletariat grown all control, except that of society as a whole. The seizes political power and turns the means of production social character of the means of production and of the into State property. products today reacts against the producers, periodically But, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, disrupts all productionand exchange, acts only like a law abolishes all class distinction and class antagonisms, of Nature working blindly, forcibly, destructively. But, abolishes also the State as State. Society, thus far, based with the taking over by society of the productive forces, upon class antagonisms, had need of the State. That is, the social character of the means of productionand of the of an organization of the particular class which was, pro products will be utilized by the producers with a perfect tempore, the exploiting class, an organizationfor the pur- understanding of its nature, and instead of being a source pose of preventing any interference from without with of disturbance and periodical collapse, will become the the existing conditions of production, and, therefore, es- most powerful lever of production itself. pecially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited Active social forces work exactly like natural forces: classes in the condition of oppression correspondingwith blindly, forcibly, destructively, so long as we do not un- the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom, wage- derstand, and reckon with, them. But, when once we labor). The State was the official representative of soci- understand them, when once we grasp their action, their ety as a whole; the gathering of it together into a visible direction, their effects, it depends only upon ourselves embodiment. But, it was this only in so far as it was the to subject them more and more to our own will, and, by State of that class which itself represented, for the time means of them, to reach our own ends. And this holds being, society as a whole: quite especially of the mighty productive forces of today. in ancient times, the State of slave-owning citizens; As long as we obstinately refuse to understand the nature in the Middle Ages, the feudal lords; and the character of these social means of action ? and in our own times, the bourgeoisie. this understanding goes against the grain of the capital- When, at last, it becomes the real representative of ist mode of production, and its defenders—so long these the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As forces are at work in spite of us, in opposition to us, so soon as there is no longer any social class to be held long they master us, as we have shown above in detail. in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual But when once their natureis understood,they can, in struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy the hand working together, be transformed from master in production, with the collisions and excesses arising demons into willing servants. The difference is as that from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be between the destructive force of electricity in the light- repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no ning in the storm, and electricity under command in the longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the telegraph and the voltaic arc; the difference between a State really constitutes itself the representative of the conflagration, and fire working in the service of man. whole of society—the taking possession of the means of With this recognition, at last, of the real nature of the production in the name of society—this is, at the same productive forces of today, the social anarchy of produc- time, its last independent act as a State. State interfer-

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 128 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific ence in social relations becomes, in one domain after an- anachronism. It presupposes, therefore, the development other, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the gov- of production carried out to a degree at which appropri- ernment of persons is replaced by the administration of ation of the means of production and of the products, things, and by the conduct of processes of production. and, with this, of political domination, of the monopoly The State is not “abolished”. It dies out. This gives the of culture, and of intellectual leadership by a particular measure of the value of the phrase: “a free State”, both class of society, has become not only superfluous but as to its justifiable use at times by agitators, and as to its economically, politically, intellectually, a hindrance to ultimate scientific inefficiency; and also of the demands development. of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the State This point is now reached. Their political and in- out of hand. tellectual bankruptcy is scarcely any longer a secret to Since the historical appearance of the capitalist mode the bourgeoisie themselves. Their economic bankruptcy of production, the appropriation by society of all the recurs regularly every 10 years. In every crisis, soci- means of production has often been dreamed of, more ety is suffocated beneath the weight of its own produc- or less vaguely, by individuals, as well as by sects, as tive forces and products, which it cannot use, and stands the ideal of the future. But it could become possible, helpless, face-to-face with the absurd contradiction that could become a historical necessity, only when the ac- the producers have nothing to consume, because con- tual conditions for its realization were there. Like every sumers are wanting. The expansive force of the means other social advance, it becomes practicable, not by men of production burst the bonds that the capitalist mode of understanding that the existence of classes is in contra- production had imposed upon them. Their deliverance diction to justice, equality, etc., not by the mere will- from these bonds is the one precondition for an unbro- ingness to abolish these classes, but by virtue of certain ken, constantly-accelerated development of the produc- new economic conditions. The separation of society into tive forces, and therewith for a practically unlimited in- an exploiting and an exploited class, a ruling and an op- crease of production itself. Nor is this all. The social- pressed class, was the necessary consequences of the de- ized appropriation of the means of production does away, ficient and restricted development of production in for- not only with the present artificial restrictions upon pro- mer times. So long as the total social labor only yields duction, but also with the positive waste and devastation a produce which but slightly exceeds that barely neces- of productive forces and products that are at the present sary for the existence of all; so long, therefore, as labor time the inevitable concomitants of production, and that engages all or almost all the time of the great majority of reach their height in the crises. Further, it sets free for the the members of society—so long, of necessity, this so- communityat large a mass of means of productionand of ciety is divided into classes. Side by side with the great products, by doing away with the senseless extravagance majority, exclusively bond slaves to labor, arises a class of the ruling classes of today, and their political repre- freed from directly productive labor, which looks after sentatives. The possibility of securing for every member the general affairs of society: the direction of labor, State of society, by means of socialized production, an exis- business, law, science, art, etc. It is, therefore, the law tence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming of division of labor that lies at the basis of the division day-by-day more full, but an existence guaranteeing to into classes. But this does not prevent this division into all the free development and exercise of their physical classes from being carried out by means of violence and and mental faculties—this possibility is now, for the first robbery, trickery and fraud. it does not prevent the ruling time, here, but it is here9. class, once having the upper hand, from consolidating its With the seizing of the means of production by soci- power at the expense of the working-class, from turning ety, production of commodities is done away with, and, its social leadership into an intensified exploitation of the simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the pro- masses. ducer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by sys- But if, upon this showing, division into classes has a tematic, definite organization. The struggle for individ- certain historical justification, it has this only for a given ual existence disappears. Then, for the first time, man, period, only under given social conditions. It was based in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of upon the insufficiency of production. It will be swept the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal con- away by the complete development of modern produc- ditions of existence into really human ones. The whole tive forces. And, in fact, the abolition of classes in soci- sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and ety presupposes a degree of historical evolution at which which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the do- the existence, not simply of this or that particular ruling minion and control of man, who for the first time be- class, but of any ruling class at all, and, therefore, the ex- comes the real, conscious lord of nature, because he has istence of class distinction itself, has become a obsolete now become master of his own social organization. The

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 129 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face-to- Contradiction between socialized organiza- face with man as laws of Nature foreign to, and dom- tion in the individual factory and social an- inating him, will then be used with full understanding, archy in the production as a whole. and so mastered by him. Man’s own social organiza- C. On the one hand, perfecting of machinery, tion, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by made by competition compulsory for each Nature and history, now becomes the result of his own individual manufacturer, and complemented free action. The extraneous objective forces that have, by a constantly growing displacement of la- hitherto, governed history, pass under the control of man borers. Industrial reserve-army. On the himself. Only from that time will man himself, more and other hand, unlimited extension of produc- more consciously, make his own history—only from that tion, also compulsory under competition, for time will the social causes set in movement by him have, every manufacturer. On both sides, unheard- in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the re- of development of productive forces, excess sults intended by him. It is the ascent of man from the of supply over demand, over-production and kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom. products—excess there, of laborers, without Let us briefly sum up our sketch of historical evolu- employment and without means of existence. tion. But these two levers of production and of so- cial well-being are unable to work together, I. Mediaeval Society—Individual production on a because the capitalist form of productionpre- small scale. Means of production adapted for vents the productiveforces from working and individual use; hence primitive, ungainly, petty, the products from circulating, unless they are dwarfed in action. Production for immediate con- first turned into capital—which their very su- sumption, either of the producerhimself or his feu- perabundance prevents. The contradiction dal lord. Only where an excess of production over has grown into an absurdity. The mode of this consumption occurs is such excess offered for production rises in rebellion against the form sale, enters into exchange. Production of com- of exchange. modities, therefore, only in its infancy. But already D. Partial recognition of the social character of it contains within itself, in embryo, anarchy in the the productive forces forced upon the capi- production of society at large. talists themselves. Taking over of the great II. Capitalist Revolution—transformation of industry, institutions for production and communica- at first be means of simple cooperation and man- tion, first by joint-stock companies, later in ufacture. Concentration of the means of produc- by trusts, then by the State. The bourgeoisie tion, hitherto scattered, into great workshops. As a demonstrated to be a superfluous class. All consequence, their transformation from individual its social functions are now performed by to social means of production—a transformation salaried employees. which does not, on the whole, affect the form of III. Proletarian Revolution—Solution of the contradic- exchange. The old forms of appropriation remain tions. The proletariat seizes the public power, and in force. The capitalist appears. In his capacity by means of this transforms the socialized means as owner of the means of production, he also ap- of production, slipping from the hands of the bour- propriates the products and turns them into com- geoisie, into public property. By this act, the pro- modities. Production has become a social act. Ex- letariat frees the means of production from the change and appropriationcontinue to be individual character of capital they have thus far borne, and acts, the acts of individuals. The social product is gives their socialized character complete freedom appropriated by the individual capitalist. Funda- to work itself out. Socialized production upon a mental contradiction, whence arise all the contra- predetermined plan becomes henceforth possible. dictions in which our present-day society moves, The development of production makes the exis- and which modern industry brings to light. tence of different classes of society thenceforth an A. Severance of the producer from the means of anachronism. In proportion as anarchy in social production. Condemnation of the worker to production vanishes, the political authority of the wage-labor for life. Antagonism between the State dies out. Man, at last the master of his own proletariat and the bourgeoisie. form of social organization, becomes at the same B. Growing predominanceand increasing effec- time the lord over Nature, his own master—free. tiveness of the laws governing the produc- To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is tion of commodities. Unbridled competition. the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thor-

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 130 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific oughly comprehend the historical conditions and this the 6It is hardly necessary in this connection to point out that, even if very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed the form of appropriation remains the same, the character of the appro- proletarian class a full knowledge of the conditions and priation is just as much revolutionized as production is by the changes described above. It is, of course, a very different matter whether I ap- of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to propriate to myself my own product or that of another. Note in passing accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression that wage-labor, which contains the whole capitalist mode of produc- of the proletarian movement, scientific Socialism. tion in embryo, is very ancient; in a sporadic, scattered form, it existed for centuries alongside slave-labor. But the embryo could duly develop into the capitalistic mode of production only when the necessary his- torical pre-conditions had been furnished. Notes 7“The Conditions of the Working-Class in England”— Sonnenschein & Co., p.84. 8 1This is the passage of the French Revolution: I say “have to”. For only when the means of production and distri- bution have actually outgrown the form of management by joint-stock “Thought, the concept of law, all at once made itself felt, companies, and when, therefore, the taking them over by the State has and against this the old scaffolding of wrong could make become economically inevitable, only then—even if it is the State of to- no stand. In this conception of law, therefore, a constitu- day that effects this—is there an economic advance, the attainment of tion has now been established, and henceforth everything another step preliminary to the taking over of all productive forces by must be cased upon this. Since the Sun had been in the fir- society itself. But of late, since Bismarck went in for State-ownership mament, and the planets circled around him, the sight had of industrial establishments, a kind of spurious Socialism has arisen, never been seen of man standing upon his head—i.e., on degenerating, now and again, into something of flunkyism, that with- the Idea—and building reality after this image. Anaxago- out more ado declares all State-ownership, even of the Bismarkian sort, ras first said that the Nous, reason, rules the world; but to be socialistic. Certainly, if the taking over by the State of the to- now, for the first time, had men come to recognize that the bacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon and Metternich must be Idea must rule the mental reality. And this was a magnifi- numbered among the founders of Socialism. cent sunrise. All thinking Beings have participated in cel- If the Belgian State, for quite ordinary political and financial rea- ebrating this holy day. A sublime emotion swayed men at sons, itself constructed its chief railway lines; if Bismarck, not under that time, an enthusiasm of reason pervaded the world, as any economic compulsion, took over for the State the chief Prussian if now had come the reconciliation of the Divine Principle lines, simply to be the better able to have them in hand in case of war, with the world.” to bring up the railway employees as voting cattle for the Government, and especially to create for himself a new source of income indepen- [Hegel: The Philosophy of history, 1840, p.535] dent of parliamentary votes—this was, in no sense, a socialistic mea- Is it not high time to set the anti-Socialist law in action against such sure, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously. Otherwise, teachings, subversive and to the common danger, by the late Professor the Royal Maritime Company, the Royal porcelain manufacture, and Hegel? even the regimental tailor of the army would also be socialistic insti- tutions, or even, as was seriously proposed by a sly dog in Frederick 2Engels refers here to the works of the utopian Socialists Thomas William III’s reign, the taking over by the State of the brothels. More (16th century) and Tommaso Campanella (17th century). 9A few figures may serve to give an approximate idea of the 3From The Revolution in Mind and Practice, p.21, a memorial ad- enormous expansive force of the modern means of production, dressed to all the “red Republicans, Communists and Socialists of Eu- even under capitalist pressure. According to Mr. Giffen, the total rope”, and sent to the provisional government of France, 1848, and also wealth of Great Britain and Ireland amounted, in round numbers “to Queen Victoria and her responsible advisers.” in 4 The Alexandrian period of the development of science comprises the period extending from the 3rd century B.C. to the 17th century 1814 to £2,200,000,000, A.D. It derives its name from the town of Alexandria in Egypt, which 1865 to £6,100,000,000, was one of the most important centres of international economic inter- 1875 to £8,500,000,000. courses at that time. In the Alexandrian period, mathematics (Euclid and Archimedes), geography, astronomy, anatomy, physiology, etc., at- As an instance of the squandering of means of production and of tained considerable development. products during a crisis, the total loss in the German iron industry alone, 5 in the crisis of 1873–78, was given at the second German Industrial Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust Congress (Berlin, February 21, 1878), as £22,750,000.

FRIEDRICH ENGELS 131 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof Karl Marx

A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial the products of labour; and finally the mutual relations of thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, the producers, within which the social character of their in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical labour affirms itself, take the form of a social relation subtleties and theological niceties. So far as it is a value between the products. in use, there is nothing mysterious about it, whether we A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply consider it from the point of view that by its properties it because in it the social character of men’s labour appears is capable of satisfying human wants, or from the point to them as an objective character stamped upon the prod- that those properties are the product of human labour. It uct of that labour; because the relation of the producers is as clear as noon-day,that man, by his industry, changes to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them the forms of the materials furnished by Nature, in such a as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but way as to make them useful to him. The form of wood, between the products of their labour. This is the reason for instance, is altered, by making a table out of it. Yet, why the products of labour become commodities, social for all that, the table continues to be that common, every- things whose qualities are at the same time perceptible day thing, wood. But, so soon as it steps forth as a com- and imperceptible by the senses. In the same way the modity, it is changed into something transcendent. It not light from an object is perceived by us not as the sub- only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to jective excitation of our optic nerve, but as the objective all other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves form of something outside the eye itself. But, in the act out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more won- of seeing, there is at all events, an actual passage of light derful than “table-turning” ever was10. from one thing to another, from the external object to the The mystical character of commodities does not orig- eye. There is a physical relation between physical things. inate, therefore, in their use value. Just as little does it But it is different with commodities. There, the existence proceed from the nature of the determining factors of of the things qua12 commodities, and the value relation value. For, in the first place, however varied the useful between the products of labour which stamps them as kinds of labour, or productive activities, may be, it is a commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physiological fact, that they are functions of the human physical properties and with the material relations arising organism, and that each such function, whatever may be therefrom. There it is a definite social relation between its nature or form, is essentially the expenditure of hu- men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a man brain, nerves, muscles, etc. Secondly, with regard relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an to that which forms the ground-work for the quantitative analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped determination of value, namely, the duration of that ex- regions of the religious world. In that world the produc- penditure, or the quantity of labour, it is quite clear that tions of the human brain appear as independent beings there is a palpable difference between its quantity and endowed with life, and entering into relation both with quality. In all states of society, the labour time that it one another and the human race. So it is in the world costs to produce the means of subsistence, must neces- of commodities with the products of men’s hands. This sarily be an object of interest to mankind, though not of I call the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products equal interest in different stages of development11. And of labour, so soon as they are produced as commodities, lastly, from the moment that men in any way work for and which is therefore inseparable from the production one another, their labour assumes a social form. of commodities. Whence, then, arises the enigmatical character of the This Fetishism of commodities has its origin, as the product of labour, so soon as it assumes the form of com- foregoing analysis has already shown, in the peculiar so- modities? Clearly from this form itself. The equality cial character of the labour that produces them. of all sorts of human labour is expressed objectively by As a general rule, articles of utility become com- their products all being equally values; the measure of modities, only because they are products of the labour the expenditure of labour power by the duration of that of private individuals or groups of individuals who carry expenditure, takes the form of the quantity of value of on their work independently of each other. The sum to-

KARL MARX 132 The Fetishism of Commodities tal of the labour of all these private individuals forms in these articles the material receptacles of homogeneous the aggregate labour of society. Since the producers do human labour. Quite the contrary: whenever, by an ex- not come into social contact with each other until they change, we equate as values our different products, by exchange their products, the specific social character of that very act, we also equate, as human labour, the dif- each producer’s labour does not show itself except in ferent kinds of labour expended upon them. We are not the act of exchange. In other words, the labour of the aware of this, nevertheless we do it13. Value, therefore, individual asserts itself as a part of the labour of soci- does not stalk about with a label describing what it is. ety, only by means of the relations which the act of ex- It is value, rather, that converts every product into a so- change establishes directly between the products, and in- cial hieroglyphic. Later on, we try to decipher the hiero- directly, through them, between the producers. To the glyphic, to get behind the secret of our own social prod- latter, therefore, the relations connecting the labour of ucts; for to stamp an object of utility as a value, is just as one individual with that of the rest appear, not as di- much a social product as language. The recent scientific rect social relations between individuals at work, but as discovery, that the products of labour, so far as they are what they really are, material relations between persons values, are but material expressions of the human labour and social relations between things. It is only by being spent in their production, marks, indeed, an epoch in the exchanged that the products of labour acquire, as val- history of the development of the human race, but, by no ues, one uniform social status, distinct from their varied means, dissipates the mist through which the social char- forms of existence as objects of utility. This division of acter of labour appears to us to be an objective character a product into a useful thing and a value becomes prac- of the products themselves. The fact, that in the partic- tically important, only when exchange has acquired such ular form of production with which we are dealing, viz., an extension that useful articles are produced for the pur- the production of commodities, the specific social char- pose of being exchanged, and their character as values acter of private labour carried on independently, consists has therefore to be taken into account, beforehand, dur- in theequality of everykind of that labour, by virtueof its ing production. From this moment the labour of the indi- being human labour, which character, therefore, assumes vidual produceracquires socially a twofold character. On in the productthe formof value — this fact appearsto the the one hand, it must, as a definite useful kind of labour, producers, notwithstanding the discovery above referred satisfy a definite social want, and thus hold its place as to, to be just as real and final, as the fact, that, after the part and parcel of the collective labour of all, as a branch discovery by science of the component gases of air, the of a social division of labour that has sprung up spon- atmosphere itself remained unaltered. taneously. On the other hand, it can satisfy the manifold What, first of all, practically concerns producers wants of the individualproducerhimself, only in so far as when they make an exchange, is the question, how much the mutual exchangeability of all kinds of useful private of some other product they get for their own? in what labour is an established social fact, and therefore the pri- proportions the products are exchangeable? When these vate useful labour of each producer ranks on an equality proportions have, by custom, attained a certain stability, with that of all others. The equalisation of the most dif- they appear to result from the nature of the products, so ferentkinds of labourcan be the result only of an abstrac- that, for instance, one ton of iron and two ounces of gold tion from their inequalities, or of reducing them to their appear as naturally to be of equal value as a pound of common denominator, viz. expenditure of human labour gold and a pound of iron in spite of their different phys- power or human labour in the abstract. The twofold so- ical and chemical qualities appear to be of equal weight. cial character of the labour of the individual appears to The character of having value, when once impressed him, when reflected in his brain, only under those forms upon products, obtains fixity only by reason of their act- which are impressed upon that labour in every-day prac- ing and re-acting upon each other as quantities of value. tice by the exchange of products. In this way, the charac- These quantities vary continually, independently of the ter that his own labour possesses of being socially useful will, foresight and action of the producers. To them, their takes the form of the condition, that the product must be own social action takes the form of the action of objects, not only useful, but useful for others, and the social char- which rule the producers instead of being ruled by them. acter that his particular labour has of being the equal of It requires a fully developed production of commodities all other particular kinds of labour, takes the form that before, from accumulated experience alone, the scientific all the physically different articles that are the products conviction springs up, that all the different kinds of pri- of labour, have one common quality, viz., that of having vate labour, which are carried on independently of each value. other, and yet as spontaneously developed branches of Hence, when we bring the products of our labour into the social division of labour, are continually being re- relation with each otheras values, it is not because we see duced to the quantitative proportions in which society

KARL MARX 133 The Fetishism of Commodities requires them. And why? Because, in the midst of all ful work of various sorts, such as making tools and fur- the accidental and ever fluctuating exchange relations be- niture, taming goats, fishing and hunting. Of his prayers tween the products, the labour time socially necessary for and the like we take no account, since they are a source their production forcibly asserts itself like an over-riding of pleasure to him, and he looks upon them as so much law of Nature. The law of gravity thus asserts itself when recreation. In spite of the variety of his work, he knows a house falls about our ears14. The determination of the that his labour, whatever its form, is but the activity of magnitude of value by labour time is therefore a secret, one and the same Robinson, and consequently, that it hidden under the apparent fluctuations in the relative val- consists of nothing but different modes of human labour. ues of commodities. Its discovery, while removing all Necessity itself compels him to apportion his time accu- appearance of mere accidentality from the determination rately between his different kinds of work. Whether one of the magnitude of the values of products, yet in no way kind occupies a greater space in his general activity than alters the mode in which that determination takes place. another, depends on the difficulties, greater or less as the Man’s reflections on the forms of social life, and con- case may be, to be overcomein attaining the useful effect sequently, also, his scientific analysis of those forms, aimed at. This our friend Robinson soon learns by expe- take a course directly opposite to that of their actual his- rience, and having rescued a watch, ledger, and pen and torical development. He begins, post festum15, with the ink from the wreck, commences, like a true-born Briton, results of the process of development ready to hand be- to keep a set of books. His stock-book contains a list of fore him. The characters that stamp products as com- the objects of utility that belong to him, of the operations modities, and whose establishment is a necessary pre- necessary for their production; and lastly, of the labour liminary to the circulation of commodities, have already time that definite quantities of those objects have, on an acquired the stability of natural, self-understood forms average, cost him. All the relations between Robinson of social life, before man seeks to decipher, not their his- and the objects that form this wealth of his own creation, torical character, for in his eyes they are immutable, but are here so simple and clear as to be intelligible without their meaning. Consequently it was the analysis of the exertion, even to Mr. Sedley Taylor. And yet those rela- prices of commodities that alone led to the determina- tions contain all that is essential to the determination of tion of the magnitude of value, and it was the common value. expression of all commodities in money that alone led Let us now transport ourselves from Robinson’s to the establishment of their characters as values. It is, island bathed in light to the European middle ages however, just this ultimate money form of the world of shrouded in darkness. Here, instead of the independent commodities that actually conceals, instead of disclos- man, we find everyone dependent, serfs and lords, vas- ing, the social character of private labour, and the social sals and suzerains, laymen and clergy. Personal depen- relations between the individual producers. When I state dence here characterises the social relations of produc- that coats or boots stand in a relation to linen, because it tion just as much as it does the other spheres of life is the universal incarnation of abstract human labour, the organised on the basis of that production. But for the absurdity of the statement is self-evident. Nevertheless, very reason that personal dependence forms the ground- when the producers of coats and boots compare those ar- work of society, there is no necessity for labour and its ticles with linen, or, what is the same thing, with gold or products to assume a fantastic form different from their silver, as the universal equivalent, they express the rela- reality. They take the shape, in the transactions of so- tion between their own private labour and the collective ciety, of services in kind and payments in kind. Here labour of society in the same absurd form. the particular and natural form of labour, and not, as in The categories of bourgeois economy consist of such a society based on production of commodities, its gen- like forms. They are forms of thought expressing with eral abstract form is the immediate social form of labour. social validity the conditions and relations of a definite, Compulsory labour is just as properly measured by time, historically determined mode of production, viz., the as commodity-producing labour; but every serf knows production of commodities. The whole mystery of com- that what he expends in the service of his lord, is a defi- modities, all the magic and necromancy that surrounds nite quantity of his own personal labour power. The tithe the products of labour as long as they take the form of to be rendered to the priest is more matter of fact than commodities, vanishes therefore, so soon as we come to his blessing. No matter, then, what we may think of the other forms of production. parts played by the different classes of people themselves Since Robinson Crusoe’s experiences are a favourite in this society, the social relations between individuals theme with political economists16, let us take a look at in the performance of their labour, appear at all events him on his island. Moderate though he be, yet some few as their own mutual personal relations, and are not dis- wants he has to satisfy, and must therefore do a little use- guised under the shape of social relations between the

KARL MARX 134 The Fetishism of Commodities products of labour. each individual, and of his share in the part of the total For an example of labour in common or directly product destined for individual consumption. The social associated labour, we have no occasion to go back to relations of the individual producers, with regard both to that spontaneously developed form which we find on the their labour and to its products, are in this case perfectly threshold of the history of all civilised races17. We have simple and intelligible, and that with regard not only to one close at hand in the patriarchal industries of a peas- production but also to distribution. ant family, that produces corn, cattle, yarn, linen, and The religious world is but the reflex of the real world. clothing for home use. These different articles are, as And for a society based upon the production of com- regards the family, so many products of its labour, but modities, in which the producers in general enter into so- as between themselves, they are not commodities. The cial relations with one another by treating their products different kinds of labour, such as tillage, cattle tending, as commodities and values, whereby they reduce their spinning, weaving and making clothes, which result in individual private labour to the standard of homogeneous the various products, are in themselves, and such as they human labour ? for such a society, Christianity with its are, direct social functions, because functions of the fam- cultus18 of abstract man, more especially in its bourgeois ily, which, just as much as a society based on the produc- developments, Protestantism, Deism, etc., is the most fit- tion of commodities, possesses a spontaneously devel- ting form of religion. In the ancient Asiatic and other oped system of division of labour. The distribution of the ancient modes of production, we find that the conversion work within the family, and the regulation of the labour of products into commodities, and therefore the conver- time of the several members, depend as well upon differ- sion of men into producers of commodities, holds a sub- ences of age and sex as upon natural conditions varying ordinate place, which, however, increases in importance with the seasons. The labour power of each individual, as the primitive communities approach nearer and nearer by its very nature, operates in this case merely as a defi- to their dissolution. Trading nations, properly so called, nite portion of the whole labour power of the family, and exist in the ancient world only in its interstices, like the therefore, the measure of the expenditure of individual gods of Epicurus in the Intermundia, or like Jews in the labour power by its duration, appears here by its very na- pores of Polish society. Those ancient social organisms ture as a social character of their labour. of production are, as compared with bourgeois society, Let us now picture to ourselves, by way of change, a extremely simple and transparent. But they are founded community of free individuals, carrying on their work either on the immature development of man individually, with the means of production in common, in which who has not yet severed the umbilical cord that unites the labour power of all the different individuals is con- him with his fellowmen in a primitive tribal community, sciously applied as the combined labour power of the or upon direct relations of subjection. They can arise community. All the characteristics of Robinson’s labour and exist only when the development of the productive are here repeated, but with this difference, that they power of labour has not risen beyond a low stage, and are social, instead of individual. Everything produced when, therefore, the social relations within the sphere of by him was exclusively the result of his own personal material life, between man and man, and between man labour, and therefore simply an object of use for himself. and Nature, are correspondingly narrow. This narrow- The total product of our community is a social product. ness is reflected in the ancient worship of Nature, and in One portion serves as fresh means of production and re- the other elements of the popular religions. The religious mains social. But another portion is consumed by the reflex of the real world can, in any case, only then finally members as means of subsistence. A distribution of this vanish, when the practical relations of every-day life of- portion amongst them is consequently necessary. The fer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable mode of this distribution will vary with the productive or- relations with regard to his fellowmen and to Nature. ganisation of the community, and the degree of historical The life-process of society, which is based on the pro- development attained by the producers. We will assume, cess of material production,does not strip off its mystical but merely for the sake of a parallel with the production veil until it is treated as production by freely associated of commodities, that the share of each individual pro- men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance ducer in the means of subsistence is determined by his with a settled plan. This, however, demands for society a labour time. Labour time would, in that case, play a dou- certain material ground-work or set of conditions of ex- ble part. Its apportionment in accordance with a definite istence which in their turn are the spontaneous product social plan maintains the proper proportion between the of a long and painful process of development. different kinds of work to be done and the various wants Political Economy has indeed analysed, however in- of the community. On the other hand, it also serves as a completely19, value and its magnitude, and has discov- measure of the portion of the common labour borne by ered what lies beneath these forms. But it has never

KARL MARX 135 The Fetishism of Commodities once asked the question why labour is represented by the rich, a pearl or a diamond is valuable ...” A pearl or a value of its product and labour time by the magnitude diamond is valuable as a pearl or a diamond23. of that value20. These formulæ, which bear it stamped So far no chemist has ever discoveredexchange value upon them in unmistakable letters that they belong to a either in a pearl or a diamond. The economic discover- state of society, in which the process of production has ers of this chemical element, who by-the-bye lay spe- the mastery over man, instead of being controlled by cial claim to critical acumen, find however that the use him, such formulæ appear to the bourgeois intellect to value of objects belongs to them independently of their be as much a self-evident necessity imposed by Nature material properties, while their value, on the other hand, as productive labour itself. Hence forms of social pro- forms a part of them as objects. What confirms them in duction that preceded the bourgeois form, are treated by this view, is the peculiar circumstance that the use value the bourgeoisie in much the same way as the Fathers of of objects is realised without exchange, by means of a di- the Church treated pre-Christian religions21. rect relation between the objects and man, while, on the To what extent some economists are misled by the other hand, their value is realised only by exchange, that Fetishism inherent in commodities, or by the objec- is, by means of a social process. Who fails here to call to tive appearance of the social characteristics of labour, mind our good friend, Dogberry, who informs neighbour is shown, amongst other ways, by the dull and tedious Seacoal, that, “To be a well-favoured man is the gift of quarrel over the part played by Nature in the formation fortune; but reading and writing comes by Nature.”24 of exchange value. Since exchange value is a definite so- cial manner of expressing the amount of labour bestowed upon an object, Nature has no more to do with it, than it Notes has in fixing the course of exchange. The mode of production in which the product takes 10It is by no means self-evident that this character of direct and uni- the form of a commodity, or is produced directly for ex- versal exchangeability is, so to speak, a polar one, and as intimately change, is the most general and most embryonic form connected with its opposite pole, the absence of direct exchangeabil- ity, as the positive pole of the magnet is with its negative counterpart. of bourgeois production. It therefore makes its ap- It may therefore be imagined that all commodities can simultaneously pearance at an early date in history, though not in the have this character impressed upon them, just as it can be imagined same predominating and characteristic manner as now- that all Catholics can be popes together. It is, of course, highly de- a-days. Hence its Fetish character is comparatively easy sirable in the eyes of the petit bourgeois, for whom the production of commodities is the nec plus ultra of human freedom and individ- to be seen through. But when we come to more con- ual independence, that the inconveniences resulting from this character crete forms, even this appearance of simplicity vanishes. of commodities not being directly exchangeable, should be removed. Whence arose the illusions of the monetary system? To Proudhon’s socialism is a working out of this Philistine Utopia, a form it gold and silver, when serving as money, did not repre- of socialism which, as I have elsewhere shown, does not possess even the merit of originality. Long before his time, the task was attempted sent a social relation between producers, but were natural with much better success by Gray, Bray, and others. But, for all that, objects with strange social properties. And modern econ- wisdom of this kind flourishes even now in certain circles under the omy, which looks down with such disdain on the mone- name of “science.” Never has any school played more tricks with the word science, than that of Proudhon, for wo Begriffe fehlen, Da stellt tary system, does not its superstition come out as clear zur rechten Zeit ein Wort sich ein. [“Where thoughts are absent, Words as noon-day, whenever it treats of capital? How long is are brought in as convenient replacements,” Goethe’s Faust, See Proud- it since economy discarded the physiocratic illusion, that hon’s Philosophy of Poverty. rents grow out of the soil and not out of society? 11Among the ancient Germans the unit for measuring land was what But not to anticipate, we will content ourselves with could be harvested in a day, and was called Tagwerk, Tagwanne (ju- rnale, or terra jurnalis, or diornalis), Mannsmaad, etc. (See G. L. yet another example relating to the commodity form. von Maurer, Einleitung zur Geschichte der Mark, etc. Verfassung, Could commodities themselves speak, they would say: Munchen, 1854, p. 129 sq.) Our use value may be a thing that interests men. It is 12qua: in so far as; in the capacity of. no part of us as objects. What, however, does belong 13When, therefore, Galiani says: Value is a relation between per- to us as objects, is our value. Our natural intercourse sons — La Ricchezza e una ragione tra due persone — he ought to as commodities proves it. In the eyes of each other we have added: a relation between persons expressed as a relation between things. (Galiani: Della Moneta, p. 221, V. III. of Custodi’s collection of are nothing but exchange values. Now listen how those Scrittori Classici Italiani di Economia Politica. Parte Moderna, Milano commodities speak through the mouth of the economist. 1803.) “Value” — (i.e., exchange value) “is a property of 14What are we to think of a law that asserts itself only by periodi- things, riches” — (i.e., use value) “of man. Value, in this cal revolutions? It is just nothing but a law of Nature, founded on the sense, necessarily implies exchanges, riches do not.”22 want of knowledge of those whose action is the subject of it? (Friedrich Engels: Umrisse zu einer Kritik der National¨okonomie, in the Deutsch- “Riches” (use value) “are the attribute of men, value is Franz¨osische Jahrb¨ucher, edited by Arnold Ruge and Karl Marx. Paris. the attribute of commodities. A man or a community is 1844.)

KARL MARX 136 The Fetishism of Commodities 15post festum: after the festival. reason for this is not solely because their attention is entirely absorbed 16Even Ricardo has his stories la Robinson. “He makes the primitive in the analysis of the magnitude of value. It lies deeper. The value hunter and the primitive fisher straightway, as owners of commodities, form of the product of labour is not only the most abstract, but is also exchange fish and game in the proportion in which labour time is in- the most universal form, taken by the product in bourgeois production corporated in these exchange values. On this occasion he commits the and stamps that production as a particular species of social production, anachronism of making these men apply to the calculation, so far as and thereby gives it its special historical character. If then we treat this their implements have to be taken into account, the annuity tables in mode of production as one eternally fixed by Nature for every state of current use on the London Exchange in the year 1817. The parallel- society, we necessarily overlook that which is the differentia specifica ograms of Mr. Owen appear to be the only form of society, besides of the value form, and consequently of the commodity form, and of its the bourgeois form, with which he was acquainted.” (Karl Marx: Zur further developments, money orm, capital form, etc. We consequently Kritik, etc. pp. 38, 39) find that economists, who are thoroughly agreed as to labour time be- ing the measure of the magnitude of value, have the most strange and 17“A ridiculous presumption has latterly got abroad that common contradictory ideas of money, the perfected form of the general equiv- property in its primitive form is specifically a Slavonian, or even ex- alent. This is seen in a striking manner when they treat of banking, clusively Russian form. It is the primitive form that we can prove to where the commonplace definitions of money will no longer hold wa- have existed amongst Romans, Teutons, and Celts, and even to this day ter. This led to the rise of a restored mercantile system (Ganilh, etc.), we find numerous examples, ruins though they be, in India. A more which sees in value nothing but a social form, or rather the unsubstan- exhaustive study of Asiatic, and especially of Indian forms of common tial ghost of that form. Once for all I may here state, that by classical property, would show how from the different forms of primitive com- Political Economy, I understand that economy which, since the time of mon property, different forms of its dissolution have been developed. W. Petty, has investigated the real relations of production in bourgeois Thus, for instance, the various original types of Roman and Teutonic society in contradistinction to vulgar economy, which deals with ap- private property are deducible from different forms of Indian common pearances only, ruminates without ceasing on the materials long since property.” (Karl Marx, Zur Kritik, etc. p. 10.) provided by scientific economy, and there seeks plausible explanations 18 cultus: worship. of the most obtrusive phenomena, for bourgeois daily use, but for the 19The insufficiency of Ricardo’s analysis of the magnitude of value, rest, confines itself to systematising in a pedantic way, and proclaiming and his analysis is by far the best, will appear from the 3rd and 4th for everlasting truths, the trite ideas held by the self-complacent bour- books of this work. As regards value in general, it is the weak point of geoisie with regard to their own world, to them the best of all possible the classical school of Political Economy that it nowhere expressly and worlds. with full consciousness, distinguishes between labour, as it appears in 21“Economists have a singular method of procedure. There are only the value of a product, and the same labour, as it appears in the use value two kinds of institutions for them, artificial and natural. The institu- of that product. Of course the distinction is practically made, since this tions of feudalism are artificial institutions, those of the bourgeoisie are school treats labour, at one time under its quantitative aspect, at another natural institutions. In this they resemble the theologians, who like- under its qualitative aspect. But it has not the least idea, that when the wise establish two kinds of religion. Every religion which is not theirs difference between various kinds of labour is treated as purely quantita- is an invention of men, while their own is an emanation from God. ... tive, their qualitative unity or equality, and therefore their reduction to Thus there has been history, but there is no longer any”] (Karl Marx. abstract human labour, is implied. For instance, Ricardo declares that The Poverty of Philosophy. A Response to the Philosophy of M. Proud- he agrees with Destutt de Tracy in this proposition: “As it is certain that hon. 1847, p. 113.) Truly comical is M. Bastiat, who imagines that our physical and moral faculties are alone our original riches, the em- the ancient Greeks and Romans lived by plunder alone. But when peo- ployment of those faculties, labour of some kind, is our only original ple plunder for centuries, there must always be something at hand for treasure, and it is always from this employment that all those things are them to seize; the objects of plunder must be continually reproduced. It created which we call riches . . . It is certain, too, that all those things would thus appear that even Greeks and Romans had some process of only represent the labour which has created them, and if they have a production, consequently, an economy, which just as much constituted value, or even two distinct values, they can only derive them from that the material basis of their world, as bourgeois economy constitutes that (the value) of the labour from which they emanate.” (Ricardo, The Prin- of our modern world. Or perhaps Bastiat means, that a mode of pro- ciples of Pol. Econ. 3 Ed. Lond. 1821, p. 334.) We would here only duction based on slavery is based on a system of plunder. In that case point out, that Ricardo puts his own more profound interpretation upon he treads on dangerous ground. If a giant thinker like Aristotle erred the words of Destutt. What the latter really says is, that on the one in his appreciation of slave labour, why should a dwarf economist like hand all things which constitute wealth represent the labour that cre- Bastiat be right in his appreciation of wage labour? I seize this oppor- ates them, but that on the other hand, they acquire their “two different tunity of shortly answering an objection taken by a German paper in values” (use value and exchange value) from “the value of labour.” He America, to my work, Zur Kritik der Pol. Oekonomie, 1859. In the es- thus falls into the commonplace error of the vulgar economists, who timation of that paper, my view that each special mode of production assume the value of one commodity (in this case labour) in order to de- and the social relations corresponding to it, in short, that the economic termine the values of the rest. But Ricardo reads him as if he had said, structure of society, is the real basis on which the juridical and political that labour (not the value of labour) is embodied both in use value and superstructure is raised and to which definite social forms of thought exchange value. Nevertheless, Ricardo himself pays so little attention correspond; that the mode of production determines the character of to the twofold character of the labour which has a twofold embodiment, the social, political, and intellectual life generally, all this is very true that he devotes the whole of his chapter on “Value and Riches, Their for our own times, in which material interests preponderate, but not Distinctive Properties,” to a laborious examination of the trivialities of for the middle ages, in which Catholicism, nor for Athens and Rome, a J.B. Say. And at the finish he is quite astonished to find that Destutt where politics, reigned supreme. In the first place it strikes one as an on the one hand agrees with him as to labour being the source of value, odd thing for any one to suppose that these well-worn phrases about and on the other hand with J.B. Say as to the notion of value. the middle ages and the ancient world are unknown to anyone else. 20It is one of the chief failings of classical economy that it has never This much, however, is clear, that the middle ages could not live on succeeded, by means of its analysis of commodities, and, in particular, Catholicism, nor the ancient world on politics. On the contrary, it is the of their value, in discovering that form under which value becomes ex- mode in which they gained a livelihood that explains why here politics, change value. Even Adam Smith and Ricardo, the best representatives and there Catholicism, played the chief part. For the rest, it requires of the school, treat the form of value as a thing of no importance, as but a slight acquaintance with the history of the Roman republic, for having no connection with the inherent nature of commodities. The example, to be aware that its secret history is the history of its landed

KARL MARX 137 The Fetishism of Commodities property. On the other hand, Don Quixote long ago paid the penalty for lute. The opposite is the fact. He has explained the apparent relation wrongly imagining that knight errantry was compatible with all eco- between objects, such as diamonds and pearls, in which relation they nomic forms of society. appear as exchange values, and disclosed the true relation hidden be- 22“Observations on certain verbal disputes in Pol. Econ., particularly hind the appearances, namely, their relation to each other as mere ex- relating to value and to demand and supply” Lond., 1821, p. 16. pressions of human labour. If the followers of Ricardo answer Bailey somewhat rudely, and by no means convincingly, the reason is to be 23S. Bailey, l.c., p. 165. sought in this, that they were unable to find in Ricardo’s own works 24 The author of “Observations” and S. Bailey accuse Ricardo of con- any key to the hidden relations existing between value and its form, verting exchange value from something relative into something abso- exchange value.

KARL MARX 138 The Fetishism of Commodities The Performance of Gesture Musical Gesture, Then, And Now Mark Sullivan (1984)

Preface tween events in different media, a term that makes a dis- tinction which shall become indispensable to me and, I During the last ten years, I have read numerous arti- think, to other listeners, performers, and composers. The cles, essays, and books that treated as their subject mat- term ’musical gesture’ is meant to be taken as an offer. ter some aspect of composing, performing, or listen- ing to music. The majority of these writings dealt with pitch relations. A few dealt with notation, with perfor- 1. Prologue mance problems and interpretation, and even fewer with rhythm, musical dynamics, or timbre, and the list dwin- ”One of the functions of gesture is to point at something. dles on. If, like a pointing finger, one looks at the gesture, instead Lots of the writing, even that which was comprehensive, of what it’s pointing at, then it loses the function which distinguishes it. Analyzing gesture, in this sense, is related dealt separately with each parameter of music. Very little to another problem: Looking in a mirror to find out how of the writing made any attempt to deal with the structure one looks with one’s eyes closed.” of relationships created by interacting parameters. That Mark Sullivan ”Gesture and Music” writing which did make an attempt usually resorted to clumsy phrases and an abundance of hyphenated adjec- Everyday usage links gesture with bodily movement, not tives. Only after searching for better terminology did I with acoustic events. Usage has it that gesture occurs in develop an understanding of the predicament: an actual movement–only in movement. The tag phrase ”only in lack of terminology useful for speaking of relationships movement” underlines the assumption behind most at- between parameters. That prodded me to investigate one tempts to come to grips with the concept and the phe- I had occasionally come across in my reading and in dis- nomenon of gesture: each of them takes for granted, or cussion: the term ’musical gesture.’ tries to show, that gesture is something which can happen Whenever I encountered the term, I figured out some only in movement. I shall neither take this for granted, meaning for it that, at least in the context, fit. Having nor try to show it. I no longer reserve the word gesture collected various meanings, each context-bound and dif- only for those times when I wish to refer to those move- ferent, I began to wonder how they could be reconciled ments that people make instead of, or while, speaking. Nor do I anymore reserve it only for events in those com- with one another. At the same time, I noticed the term ’gesture’ popping up with increasing frequency, partic- posed works that make use of movement. Instead, I now ularly in discussions of new music, where, however, it reserve it for events that are given a certain function, a still seemed stuck in a region of fuzziness. I wondered certain role to play, both in discourse and in composed whether I had understood the term too soon, and whether works: I look at gesture as something that happens in it could be given its distinction at all: that is, I won- movement, in speech, and in music. dered whether the term ’musical gesture’ might be used to find or make a distinction or distinctions, which, hith- Unheeded Precedents erto nameless, escaped analytical attention. This paper presents an initial report on my attempt to I do not claim to make this turn in usage without any show those distinctions that I think can be made only precedents. Precedents for the use of the term ’musi- with the term ’musical gesture’. I now think the term can cal gesture’ can be found scattered throughout the writ- serve, both in my composing and in my attempts to re- ings of several composers. These precedents do not com- spond to the work of other composers, as a required term pletely agree with one another, nor are they all consistent that can be used to speak of relationships created by in- with one another. But each has found it necessary to in- teracting parameters and to speak of the relationship be- troduce and apply a concept of gesture to music.

MARK SULLIVAN 139 1. Prologue “. . . Now, as is well-known, music lacks all capacity for T.W. Adorno The Philosophy of New Music psychological or characterizing effect. Instead, music pos- sesses one capability which is of decisive significance for “Stravinsky is drawn in that direction where music — the representation of man in the theater: it can reproduce in its retarded state, far behind the fully developed bour- the gesture which elucidates the events on stage. It can geois subject — functions as an element lacking intention, even create a type of fundamental gesture which prescribes arousing only bodily animation instead of offering mean- a definite attitude for the actor and which eliminates any ing. He is attracted to that sphere in which meaning has doubt or misunderstanding about the respective incident. become so ritualized that it cannot be experienced as the In the ideal case, it can fix this gesture so powerfully that a specific meaning of the musical act. The aesthetic ideal is false representation of the relevant action is no longer pos- that of unquestioned fulfillment. For Stravinsky — as for sible . . . Music has the potential to define the basic tone Frank Wedekind in his circus plays — bodily art’ becomes and fundamental gesture of an event to the extent that at the watchword. Stravinsky begins as the staff composer of least an incorrect interpretation will be avoided, while it the Russian ballet. Since Petrouchka, his scores prefigure still allows the actor abundant opportunity for deployment gesture and step, thus. . . ” of his own individuality of style. Naturally, gestural music is in no way bound to a text, and if, in general, we per- T.W. Adorno, The Philosophy of New Music ceive Mozart’s music, even the non-operatic compositions, as “dramatic,” we do so because it never abandons its ges- “If played and heard often enough, every musical ges- tural character.” ture is prone to be interpreted, by musicians and listeners, as a gesture of musical speech. Kurt Weill Concerning the Gestural Character of Music As the gesture becomes familiar, and thus recognized by society, the composed structure, in which the context “Manner is the scar which expression leaves behind generates the meaning of its components, will be misun- in a language that is no longer sufficient for expression. derstood, instead, as one in which the components give Mahler’s deviations are speech gesture’s next of kin: his meaning to their context. idiosyncracies cramp themselves together, like in jargon. In order to retard this development, this visitation of In the major key section of the fifth symphony, many of communicative familiarity, for as long as possible, I have the repetitions of motives are paradigmatic, moving con- attempted, in several of my compositions, to anticipate the vulsively back and forth, at the same time vehement and gesture-forming tendencies within the composed structure restrained. Sometimes — by no means merely in recitative and to reduce each of them ad absurdum by way of a non — Mahler’s music has made itself resemble the speaking sequitur. I wanted, thereby, to rob trivial perception and gesture so thoroughly that the music sounds as if it liter- partial recognition of the paralyzing effect that all too com- ally speaks, as was once promised by Mendelssohn’s title monly is mistaken for the understanding of music.” ’Songs Without Words’.” Herbert Br¨un, “Program Note for String Quartet No. 3” T.W. Adorno, Gustav Mahler — A Musical Physiognomy “The category of gesture is bounded on the one side by the category of signal and on another side by the one of “With the gesture of the coda, the chorus mysticus turns character. Signal is pre-gestural, that is, the concept and as if backwards. The characteristic of the movement is category of gesture is derivable from the concept and cate- the combination of intentionally simple harmonic relations gory of signal. Character is post-gestural, derivative of ges- with voice leadings disassociated from those relations.” ture conceptually and categorically. Characters are devel- T.W. Adorno Gustav Mahler — A Musical opmental complexes of gestures just as in theater, mime, or Physiognomy readings. Gesture, loosely speaking, is the musical equiva- lent of such bodily and vocal gestures . . . it is more closely related to the bodily gestures that accompany speech than “The reign of a time beating image can be sustained to speech gestures themselves, except as these latter are un- only over partial contents lacking autonomy and profile, derstood as referring, to the inflections of the voice rather and Wagner’s melodic weakness, often complained about, than to the words and sentences vocally articulated. . . ” does not have its foundation in the simple lack of “a strik- ing idea” but in the beating gesture that dominates his Richard Herbert Howe, “Gesture” work.” T.W. Adorno, About Hauer “Strict or varied repetition of a rhythmic gesture tends to establish the identity of the gesture. The use of similar durations, pitches, textures, timbres, etc., tends to establish “Of the ’themes’ in Schoenberg’s final tonal works — the cohesiveness and unity of a rhythmic gesture; the use and these were the last in which it is possible to speak of of strong contrast in any musical aspect tends to establish themes at all — only the gesture of those themes has sur- the separation of one rhythmic gesture from another.” vived, and even then, they have been detached from the material prerequisites of the gesture. This gestural force is Alan Winold, “Rhythm in 20th Century Music” allegorically charged with the realization of that which is denied them within the tonal structure: stress and direction, “. . . a melodic motif is in essence and origin a vocal the very image of eruption. This is indicated in the desig- gesture; it is a vocal movement with a clearly defined and nations ’driving’ (schwungvoll), ’with energy’ (energico), therefore clearly expressed profile. And . . . it too is sensi- ’impetuously’ (irrpetuoso), and ’lovingly’ (amabile).” tive to initially delicate nuances of tension and relaxation,

MARK SULLIVAN 140 1. Prologue as these are embodied in the breathing which animates the in this case, the voice — and one of its distinct acts — vocal gesture and shapes its contours.” pleading. Roger Sessions, The Musical Experience of Composers The reader could reorient these instructions by imagin- Performer, Listener ing how they could be used to tell someone, not how to “In music, the gesture and the inflection are definite; the make movement gestures, but how to make linguistic ges- sense in terms of images and associations is free; the in- tures: flection and gesture are perhaps the more definite for being given the full weight of the expression.” With your voice, shrug; use loudness and the contour of your pitches to indicate astonishment, doubt, dejection, Roger Sessions, The Musical Experience of Composers disgust, elation, surprise; with your rhythm jump or glide, Performer, Listener rush, snap to a halt.

“Since Ph. E. Bach, gesture has come to the forefront Thus might a reader orient the passage to linguistic ges- of music. Gesture loans music the context which music ture. The phrase “. . . with your voice, shrug” reorients has been able to bring into actuality by itself less and less. the embedded instructions: Use an acoustic medium — Thereby it becomes understandable that since 1750 music has been notated more and more precisely. Every legato in this case, the voice. bowing signifies a gesture. It is as if the bowing must hold Evoke a connection with the medium of movement and together tones that by themselves no longer hold together.” one of its distinct acts — shrugging. Dieter Schnebel, Studies of the Dynamics of Arnold Schoenberg’s Along these lines, a reader could orient the passage to musical gesture, imagining instructions given to a per- Although these statements have yet to budge usage, they former by a conductor: provideprecedentsthat I shall take as points of departure. Make your phrase dance a bit, come to a halt, and then trudge off. Those notes are just a cough. It has to be a shout — use the crescendo to make it a shout. The flute No Precedents? here has to imitate the attack of a trumpet — play it as the opening to a fanfare. Although most literature requires a reading informed by a specific acoustic image of the writing, there has as of To show that gesture happens only in movement, one yet been no treatment of the relationship between linguis- must show that a movement becomes a gesture under tic gesture and literature. For the term ’linguistic ges- conditions not applicable to acoustic events. ture,’ there are few precedents. In the field of linguistics, I have not found any such conditions: Each formulation a basis for creating a precedent can be found in work of the conditions under which a movement becomes a done on the prosodic and paralinguistic features of lan- gesture turns out to be a formulation of conditions appli- guage. But even there, the term ’linguistic gesture’ has cable to acoustic events. as of yet been provided no explicit precedents.

Reorientation 2. A Medium

Much of the writing which treats gesture as something It preserves traces. It wipes out traces. A composer turns that happens only in movementitself provides precedents to a medium with an idea, and wants the idea to leave for speaking of acoustic gesture. If the reader reorients traces in it. The composer wants the traces preserved. some part of a passage, it often reveals a compatibility Not wiped out. The composer turns to a medium that with concepts of linguistic and musical gesture. both preserves and wipes out traces. But the traces it preserves are not those it wipes out. “Gestures of the head can indicate humility, haughti- ness, languor or rudeness . . . The face can be suppliant, A composer wants to know whether a medium will wipe menacing, soothing, sad, cheerful, proud, humble . . . With out the traces an idea leaves or preserve them. your arms and hands: ask, promise, threaten, supplicate; show fear, joy, grief, doubt, acknowledgement, penitence; Each medium, in relation to others, has its order, its or- indicate measure, quantity, number, time . . . ” dering behavior. Distinguished by the kinds of traces Quintillian, Institutio Oratio it preserves and wipes out, distinguished by the ways it wipes out or preserves them, a medium shows the “... with your hands, plead...” is a phrase that has two consistency of its constraints. The idea that leaves the instructions embedded in it: Use the medium of move- traces and the traces left neither budge the constraints ment. Evoke a connection with an acoustic medium — of a medium nor change its consistency. A medium is

MARK SULLIVAN 141 2. A Medium a resistant whole: it provides the perfect resistance to a The Second-Nature of a Medium composer’s intentions. Not the complete resistance, the perfect resistance. But the offer made by a medium draws the composer into a confrontation not only with nature, but also with history and society. In a medium, a composer confronts One From the Other nature’s devastating impact on traces and the historical consequences of the orders composers have already cre- A medium limits the field of response with the consis- ated to thwart the devastation of traces, historical conse- tency of its constraints. quences that stem from the history of practices that have Obviously, one medium wipes out and preserves traces grafted a second-nature onto nature and have created yet in sounds; another, traces in movement and sound; and another trap through which no trace can now pass with- so on. A respondent will not confuse one medium with out being caught up in the affirmation of what’s already another. A medium created by combining media will been done. not have two consistencies but rather one: Theater does “The supposition of a historical tendency of musical not have at the same time the consistency of a medium means contradicts the traditional conception of the ma- that preserves and wipes out traces in movements and terial of music. This material is traditionally defined — the consistency of a medium that preserves and wipes in terms of physics, or in any case, in terms of the psy- out traces in sound; it has the single consistency of a chology of sound — as the very substance of each of the sounds at the composer’s disposal. But the compositional medium that preserves and wipes out traces in movement material is as different from that as the language is from and sound. the stock of its sounds. It doesn’t only increase and de- There are traces that a medium cannot preserve. There crease in the course of history. All of its specific char- acteristics are marks of the historical process . . . Music are traces that a medium can preserve but, under cer- recognizes no laws of nature and that is why all psychol- tain conditions, won’t. A medium is distinguished by the ogy of music is so questionable. This psychology — in kind of phenomena it offers to the composer who wants its efforts to establish an invariant “Understanding” of the to create an order in it and by the way it prevents the music of all times — assumes from the beginning a con- composer from creating some orders. stancy of the musical subject. This supposition is more closely related to that of the constancy of the material of nature than psychological differentiation would like to say is the case. What this insufficiently and inadequately de- Traces scribes is to be sought in the knowledge of material’s own laws of motion. Following these laws, everything is not A choice creates an order. In a medium, a composer, possible at all times . . . The requirements placed on the by choosing, tries to create an order that does not coin- subject by the material are a consequence of the fact that cide with the order offered by the medium’s behavior. If the “Material” itself is sedimented intellect, something so- cially preformed throughout by human consciousness. As the choice doesn’t, then the order created by the com- the subjectivity of a previous time — now forgetful of it- poser is indistinguishable from that which the medium self — such an objective intellect of material has its own offers anyway: all traces left by the composer’s choice laws of motion. Of the same origin as the social process are wiped out; if the choice does, then traces of the com- and continuously penetrated by its traces, what appears to poser’s choice are preserved in the order created which be mere self-propulsion of the material runs its course, in the same sense as the real society, even where the two no is distinguishable from that offered by the medium any- longer know about one another and oppose one another. way. Were it not for the medium’s ordering behavior, Hence, the composer’s dispute with the material is the dis- there would be no way to detect the order created by the pute with society precisely insofar as this dispute migrates choices of the composer. A medium preserves its order into the work and does not stand in opposition to the pro- duction as something merely external, heteronomous, as within that which it offers to be ordered. a consumer or opponent. In immanent reciprocal action A composer turns to a medium if its constraints and its the instructions constitute themselves: the material gives consistency appear, to the composer, as an offer. to the composer instructions which he, in that he follows them, transforms.” A composer wants an idea to leave traces that can be pre- Theodor W. Adorno, The Philosophy of New Music served in one medium and not in any other and wants the traces preserved to be required by an idea that could not The composer has to create, by choosing, an order in leave traces in another medium. a medium that coincides neither with the order offered One idea requires that there be music sounding. Another, by the medium anyway nor with the orders that have al- that there be someone moving. Another, that there be ready been created by other composers. The second na- someone speaking while moving. And so on. ture of a medium is the historical residue that effectively simulates the ordering behavior of a medium by wiping

MARK SULLIVAN 142 2. A Medium out traces, unless a composer’s choice leaves traces that contour on the last duration of the group, thus placing create an order which neither coincides with that of the the ordering behavior that assigns emphasis within pe- medium nor with that of its second-nature. riodicities in conflict with the ordering behavior that as- signs emphasis within a contour. The Power of a Parameter What the result will be, and whether one ordering be- havior overrides another, depends not only on the laws When some trace is not left which a composer thought of nature that affect the medium. It is also dependent on would be, the trace has often been wiped out by the or- the power of the second-nature that has attached itself to dering behavior of the medium (or its second-nature). the medium. The power of each parameter in relation to all the other parameters has not been constant throughout In music, this happens, for instance, when traces are the history of music, and the powers of all parameters are wiped out by some property of an instrument: not equally distributed now. Each sustained note on the piano has the dynamic shape: Turning to a Medium

To acquire an image of how his idea would be affected The dynamic shape of sustained notes on the piano can- by a medium and an image of how his idea requires a not change, and thus, cannot be composed. The notes medium, the composer answers a group of questions: do not have that dynamic shape if the composer so Of all the traces that an idea can leave, which can a chooses, but have it already, whether the composer so medium preserve? None? Some? All? Which? chooses or not. The composer cannot, even if he so chooses, give the sustained notes any other dynamic Of all the traces that a medium can preserve which are required by the idea? All? Some? None? Which? Are there traces among those that a medium can preserve which are reguired by an idea that could not leave traces in any other medium? shape Is there an idea that can leave traces which can be pre- served in one medium and not in any other? Are there traces that a medium has not preserved before that are required by an idea? Is there an idea that has and where the composer cannot choose, he leaves no not left traces in a medium before which requires one traces. medium and not any other? Of course, the traces that can’t be left are not a problem, These questions are representative of those faced by the if the composer’s idea does not require that traces be left composer who has an image of how an idea can require in the dynamic shape of sustained notes. And the traces a medium and of how the ordering behavior of a medium that can’t be left may be a solution, if the composer’s (and its second-nature) can interfere with the leaving of idea requires that traces not be left in the dynamic shape traces. of sustained notes. But, if the composer’s idea requires that traces be left in the dynamic shape of sustained notes, and the composer A Problem turns to the piano (or, in a more complex case, is told to Under certain conditions, choosing a medium presents a choose the piano by a set of rules governing the selection problem. of instruments in an ensemble, a set of rules which prior to that point had always delivered for his selection in- It is a problem that confrontsa composerwho has not yet struments that were able to change their dynamic shape) formed a distinct image of a medium’s resistance, of its then the composer confronts a medium that wipes out the ordering behavior. It is a problem that plagues the early required traces. stages of a search for a formulation which would show that a composer’s idea requires a specific medium — a A composer might place one ordering behavior in con- problem in the application of what the composer knows flict with another. Noticing that within a periodic struc- of the relationship between a specific idea and a medium. ture an emphasis is placed on the first duration of a And, it is a problemthat confrontsa composerwho needs group, the composer might place the upward peak of a to gain information about how his idea will be affected

MARK SULLIVAN 143 2. A Medium by a medium — for a composer who has a concept of Movements can not be created in music, but traces of the what is experimental now. Either the composer can not characteristics of movements, under certain conditions, yet make relevant the criteria he has or the composer has can be preserved in musical events. Thus, for instance, no criteria to help him choose one medium rather than composing for an acoustic medium does not ensure that any other. the medium (and its second-nature) will not preserve the But a composer might not treat any of these conditionsas traces of the characteristics of events that occur in the a problem: they might all be considered desired states. A medium of movement, even though events that occur in composer might like to think that an idea is new enough, the medium of movement do not occur in an acoustic or powerful enough, or general enough, to render the medium. choice of medium trivial. Each medium is distinguished as a whole. Some charac- Once a composer ignores the medium’s interference with teristics of the phenomena in which a medium manifests the leaving of traces, then be has no further choice: He its ordering behavior and some characteristics of the or- can not choose the turn to a medium. He just turns, dering behavior which it manifests can be found in, trans- and no matter to which he turns, he just turns to any ferredto, or shared with other media. But no medium can medium. The turn is insignificant, even if some of its be preserved whole as traces left in another. consequences gain significance only later. A hybrid medium does not combine two orders as wholes, creating another, new whole, one that is not equivalent to the two that combined to produce it. A A Hybrid Medium hybrid medium creates its wholeness from those parts of some order that another order cannotpreserveas a whole. If a composerhas a formulationof an idea that shows that a specific medium is required by it — either a medium A hybrid medium has a name: gesture. created by combining media (such as opera) or not — a Gesture is a hybrid medium. It takes two media to make formulation that shows the idea can govern the making one gesture. of choices which create an order that does not coincide Even if one medium is present only in the memory, or with the orders that composers have already created, then in the cognitive behavior, or in the imagination, of the no further decisions about the medium must be made. If respondent. the order created by the composer in the chosen medium turns out to have a relationship with parts of an order that can be created in anothermedium, then the composer can Gesture only in vain deny that the relationship exists, or admit that it exists and insist that it was not intended. I turn to it when I want an idea to leave traces in a hybrid If, while investigating the requirements of an idea, a medium — traces that will be distinct from those left in composer finds that nothing speaks for a required rela- the medium of gesture by any other idea. tionship between the characteristics of the events that the When composing gesture, I create intended links. By composer needs to create part of the order in the required way of a configuration embedded in an event in one medium chosen and the characteristics of events that cre- medium, I link it to a configuration in another medium, ate part of the orderin other media or in anothermedium, and thus, to the characteristics of an event in another then the idea as formulated either requires no relation- medium, the characteristics of a class of events in an- ship, or does not require a relationship, and whatever other medium, or the characteristics of a class of events relationship is created is unintended, even if not incon- that span several media. sequential. The establishment of a hybrid medium’s consistency of If the composer finds that something does speak for a re- constraints requires the collaboration of the composer. quired relationship, then the medium required by the idea The composer’s idea and the hybrid medium are not sim- is a hybrid. ply compatible. They are made compatible: Accord- The kind of phenomena in which a medium manifests ing to the requirements of an idea, the composer creates its ordering behavior determines what traces can be left links between one medium and others. When the com- in events. The kind of ordering behavior that a medium poser creates a new domain of gesture, he creates a new manifests determines what traces can be left of events. medium. In the events that can be created in a medium can be Instead of combining media, to make a medium, the preserved traces of events that can not be created in the composer combines configurations shared between me- medium. dia.

MARK SULLIVAN 144 2. A Medium Borrowed Distinctions without a change of state of at least one element and no change of an element’s state occurs without a change of Gesture works with borrowed distinctions, with distinc- state in the whole — when I can describe what the inter- tions on loan. action of the elements does, how it functions, then I will Under certain conditions, an event in one medium lends speak of a system. some, or at least one, of its distinctions to an event in an- I use the term ’element’ when referring to something as other medium. If the composer wants to choose the time a whole, which I do not consider something as made up of those conditions, and thus, the distinctions lent, then of a set of elements. It depends on my purpose whether the composer faces a group of questions: I regard something as an element or system: At one time Which characteristics of one medium can be preserved I regard pitch contour as a system which can adopt as in another medium? Of the characteristics that can be many states as its elements allow, each of which can be preserved, which do I want to preserve? Are there char- “on” or “off” at least. At another time, I regard pitch acteristics which can be preserved in a medium that indi- contour as an element which changes the state of a sys- cate not only the medium from which they are borrowed tem called ’gesture.’ but also the event in that medium from which they are Dependenton the number of elements in a system and on borrowed? Which characteristics of an event must be the number of states which each of these elements can at- preservable and preserved in another medium so that the tain, each system has a definite number of states in which gesture be the gesture of that event and not of any other? it can appear. These questions are representative of those faced by a A system is defined by the number of possible states it composer who wants to compose a hybrid medium, in can be in and by the sets of instructions that will con- order to compose gesture. trol the changes of state in the system. Two systems are compatible with each other when they are similarly de- fined. The degree of compatibility of two systems is the The Relationship Between One Medium and degree to which they can simulate each other, the degree Another to which one system may behave in analogy to another.

The composition of gesture is inextricably bound up with the creation of intended relationships between one Analogy medium and another. A medium can be looked at as a system. Thus, it is possible to look at the relationship be- One relationship that can hold between two systems is tween one medium and another as a relationship between that of analogy. I speak of analogy when an event in one two systems, and to look at the composition of gesture as system is equivalent to an event in another system, even the creation of intended relationships between two sys- though the two systems are not equivalent. tems. In the case of gesture, the intended relationships A rising pitch contour might be treated as an event anal- are varieties of the relationship of analogy. ogous to the raising of a limb of the body, even though the system of movement is not equivalent to the system of A System sound. The speed of successive pitches might correspond to the When, in accordance with some set of purposes, I can speed of the movement, the distance between pitches conceptually separate some whole from an environment might correspond to the size of change from one posi- — when I can describe the whole’s consistency of be- tion of the body to another, the degree of loudness might havior by referring to a set of states of the whole that correspond to the force of movement, and so on. are created by a set of interacting elements — when I It may turn out thatthe movementis producedin a system can describe each state of the whole as a consequence with only two perceptible differences of speed whereas of the configuration of states attained by each element the musical event is produced in a system with six per- — when I can describe what each element preserves un- ceptible changes of speed. In this case, several of the der the change from one of its states to another and how states of the element speed in music can be in relation to each of its states is different in relation to its other states, one state of the element of speed in movement. in short, the kind and number of states attainable to each element — when I can describe the relationship between the states of the whole and the states attainable to each element so that no change of state of the whole occurs

MARK SULLIVAN 145 2. A Medium Intended and Unintended Gestures ing prevents the gestures from creating the impression that the composer had an intention that required the ges- Since gesture is a hybrid medium, it is a medium, and tures he in actuality just got. Thus, the composer may thus, gesture can wipe out traces. have the liberty of not choosing the gestures he gets, but The composer has to figure out how the traces left by he does not have the liberty of not getting any. the required idea are to be protected from the ordering It may be difficult to get the gestures I want, but next to behavior adopted by the chosen medium of gesture — a impossible to get none. hybrid medium created to leave traces in configurations The composer who constructs a piece according to a set that preserve the characteristics of events in other media. of rules (using algorithms) may wind up with gestures he The preservation of the characteristics of the events of doesn’t want — even though his wanted rules delivered one system in the events of another system (and thus, in them. this case, a medium) is dependent on the degree to which The performer may wind up playing gestures he doesn’t the number and kinds of states of the one system can be want — gestures which are not required by the composi- in the relationship to those of the other system. tion — even though he is following the score. All the states of system A may be placed in the relation- The listener may wind up listening to and following un- ship of analogy to all the states of system B, and the other intended gestures, even though this activity was initiated way around; all the states of system A may be placed in by questions formulated in relation to answers that the the relationship of analogy to all the states of system B, composition provides. but only a few of the states of system B can be placed in the relationship of analogy to the states of system A; and These are the sorts of problems that can befall the com- so forth. poser, or performer, or listener who neglects the treat- ment of gesture. Applying these notions to that of a medium renders: One medium can preserve all, or some, or none of the charac- A hybrid medium limits the field of response with the teristics of another medium. consistency of its constraints. The composer chooses to preserve one set of borrowed characteristics instead of A specific movement may be looked at as one state in the another. The significance of the choice is a function of system of movement which is brought about by the in- the chosen set’s power to limit the interpretations avail- teraction and current state of a number of elements that able to the respondent. If a change of the set of borrowed include speed, size of change, force of movement, and so characteristics would elicit a change of interpretation, the on. Characteristics of this movement might be preserved gesture has the power required to limit the field of re- in music by establishing correspondences between the sponse. states its elements are in and the states into which ele- ments of the musical system will be brought. Gesture limits the interpretations available to a respon- dent. Turning To A Hybrid Medium In discourse or in a composed work, gestures are made in anticipation of response. Unless the addressee gathers something that requires interpretation, the gesture will The composer faces a problem: The very medium of ges- not function. An addressee has to gather something that ture required to leave traces of an idea in configurations requires interpretation before he can become a respon- may wipe out other traces that have been left. dent. Again it may be a problem of criteria: it may be that I have no criteria to consult when deciding which hybrid medium to choose. Maybe I have no distinct image of 3. Formulation: The Procedure of gesture’s resistance to my idea, and maybe I just haven’t reached that state yet where I can formulate the require- Distinguishing ments of my idea so that I can see that it requires a spe- cific hybridmedium. And, of course, I mightlike to think It is indispensable to gesture. It does not just put into I don’t have a problem. I might like to think that my words what gesture does anyway. It carries out the cog- idea is new enough, powerful enough, or general enough nitive mapping initiated by gesture. to make trivial the choice of a hybrid medium, to make Formulation is part of what gesture does. trivial the choice of gesture. Seeing or hearing a gesture, we start and carry out a Nothing prevents gestures from making it appear that the search for a memory, for some image of a correspon- composer had an intention even though he didn’t. Noth-

MARK SULLIVAN 146 3. Formulation: The Procedure of Distinguishing dence, for the distinguishing description of a set of dy- or timbral groupings in isolation. It is found in configu- namics. Without formulation, gesture doesn’t happen. rations created jointly between parameters. We try out terms and concepts, and we transform them: “. . . Thus we see that the old Italian terms seemed to Terms are proposed, discarded, combined, rearranged; Beethoven ’nonsensical’; they now indicate only a tempo concepts are bent, refigured, extended, translated, imi- and no longer the ’character’ of a piece. The categories tated. It is at the same time the search for a concept and are separated . . . The discrepancy between the sense of the Italian terms and the new ’character’ of the pieces for the search for a name. which they are still used as tempo indications is clearly felt. In one passage of Theodor Adorno’swritings about Wag- This discrepancy sometimes becomes an actual contradic- ner’s music, he uses a phrase that can be rendered in tion. But the metronome has made these old ’barbarous’ signs superfluous. The categories of tempo and charac- English as “the gesture of striking a blow.” The phrase ter may be expressed independently of each other; tempo points at something important — characteristics of an absolutely and exactly by a metronome figure; character action without an agent — autonomy of agency. Along through the really adequate and discriminating terms of the with other formulations found in the literature that treats vernacular . . . We see that Beethoven felt the existence of the problem very clearly and drew the necessary conclu- the subject of musical gesture, this formulation helps un- sions from it. He was conscious of tempo as an essen- derstand how a gesture can be given a name: A statement tial part of his language, co-ordinated with that mysterious about gesture cites a characteristic of an action without category which he himself termed ’character’. A wrong naming the agent. Looking closely at these other pas- tempo would change the character, and for each character sages, it becomes possible to extend the formulation. there is an appropriate tempo. . . ” This yields: A statement about gesture cites a charac- Rudolph Kolisch, “Tempo and Character in teristic of an action without naming the agent, a charac- Beethoven’s Music” teristic of an event without naming the medium, a char- One can read in the literature and know for every state- acteristic of a way of doing something without naming ment about character that gesture is included: couched the one who does it. A formulation about gesture, thus, within comments about character, one finds implications stops short of description, supplying neither motivation that bear on gesture. nor detail. It leaves out all traces of plot.

Two Phrases The Term ’Musical Gesture’ If a gesture seems to be embedded in an event, then I The term ’musical gesture’ is relatively new. The phe- say that the event has a gesture. There are aspects of the nomenon is not. Gesture in music has no history. Only event, details, that are not part of the configurationof dis- a past. Its history has not been documented; the re- tinguishing components. If a gesture becomes identical lationships in its past that bear on its present have yet with an event, then I say that the event is a gesture. All to be articulated. In many passages that employ other other aspects of the event seem to have been minimized terms — terms like motive, gestalt, leitmotif, cell, each so that its gesturality can become the message: the ges- of which can be given its precise distinction, a distinc- ture becomes the event. tion that would not be equivalent to that made with the term ’musical gesture’ — one can find observations and insights that apply to musical gesture. In some cases, one 4. Contextual History would now prefer to substitute the term ’musical gesture’ for the term used. In a context, there may be a continuousstream of gesture, Thus, I prefer to reserve a term like ’melodic motive’, or a stream of different kinds of gestures, movement ges- more precisely, ’pitch motive’, for the time during which tures and acoustic gestures, gestures with different func- I do not want to speak of any corresponding ordering of tions, gestures that establish an emphasis or that mark an rhythm, of loudness, and so forth. It is a term I reserve emphasis, that interrupt, that set the field of meaning for for the order created in one parameter. something that follows, or that retroactively modify the Gesture, in contradistinction, I reserve for the time in meaning of a previously made movement or phrase, ges- which I wish to speak of configurations, that is, an order- tures that point or that help make a pointed address, ges- ing that cannot be found by examining each parameter, tures that mark the opening or the closing or that make one at a time. the link, gestures that emphasize an articulation or that Musical gesture cannot be found by looking at pitch se- articulate a relation, gestures that overlap with one an- quences alone, or by looking at dynamic constellations other, that interrupt, complete, close or initiate one an- other.

MARK SULLIVAN 147 4. Contextual History In discourse, the continuity of a spoken utterance may be None of the forms of gesture are mere illustration. Nor deftly torn by a series of articulating movements, or by are they mere creators of redundancy, although some- a long drawn-out “er”, or the noise of a purring buzz of times they may provide the indispensable degree of re- the lips; a movement gesture may prolong the duration dundancy. of something that would have passed quickly had it been spoken; the noise of an exaggeratedsigh or a quickly said phrase or sentence might attach a significance to the un- Two Histories folding of a movement gesture, creating a meaning that the movement gesture could not create alone (since the Two histories are linked in the formation of a gesture: performer cannot make two movement gestures at once one is the history of contexts in which a gesture has been and cannot interrupt the one movement gesture with an- made, the other is the history of gestures made in a con- other and then complete the first). text. In a music composition (or, the necessary changes being I notice a specific configuration and remember the string made, in a movement composition), there might be dif- of contexts in which it has appeared. I notice a spe- ferent kinds of musical gestures, some that preserve char- cific context and remember the string of configurations acteristics of movements, some that preserve characteris- which have appeared in it. These two strings and their tics of speech gestures, some that preserve characteristics relations to one another constitute the contextual history of musical events; there might be sequences where ges- which along with the specific configuration and context tures that refer to movement follow gestures that refer to noticed establish a gesture. linguistic situations, linguistic gestures and behaviors of I shrug in various contexts: Someone has made a state- speech; various kinds of musical gestures may alternate ment to which I am indifferent — I shrug; I want to indi- with one another or several musical gestures may work cate that something was so ridiculous that I was helpless together to form the musical gesture of a whole series — I shrug; I don’t know any answers to a question — I of events; a musical event which has a gesture may be shrug. punctuated by something that is a musical gesture; a mu- In a context, I make various gestures: Asked about some- sical gesture might be repeated to show how its context thing — I shrug; asked about something — I nod ’yes’; changes. Or, to the contrary, a context may hold still so asked about something — I stare away, feigning bore- that changes in musical gesture come to the fore. dom; asked about something — I throw up my hands, Lookingat the roles played by any one musical gesture in eyelids, and brows in exasperation. a context, it may be transitory, breaking the continuity of something else, coming and going, changing slightly but never losing its identity; it may undergo a development 5. Address and be subjected to a process of transformation that turns it eventually into another musical gesture; or it may, in (Throughout this passage, the intended emphasis is ad- one form or another, always be present, functioning as dress.) part of the noise factor of the composition, that is, that which does not change so that the changes in something Among the limitations created by the medium of gesture else can be noticed; at one point it may stand alone as a can be found the limitations placed on an address: an ad- gesture, at another it may become part of a musical ges- dress that can be created in one medium may not be one ture. that can be created in another. Contexts left, approached, and present are pointed at by Address refers to dynamics which issue from processes gesture. Context refers to the conditions under which that relate two images: the image of the message and the something will manifest more than its mere sequence, its image of the intended recipient. The recipient, either a mere syntax. Without the clues provided by the context, person or a group, is indicated by a mark on the mes- the respondent would be unable to determine the function sage. A mark is that trace left on a message to indicate of gesture; without the clues provided by gestures the re- the intended recipient. spondent would be unable to determine the context. In discourse, imagine that three people face each other, Gesture creates the context that creates it. momentarily silent. Slowly one leans his body towards, raises his arm and points at, one of the other two. With With gesture, from case to case, the generalities hold, hesitant accusation, he begins speaking of ... This is a even though the specifics don’t. Context is the situation sketch of a moment in which an address is created. Both in which specifics arise to confront their partnership with a movement and a linguistic gesture help establish it: the generalities.

MARK SULLIVAN 148 5. Address lean forward marks the message and the tone of hesitant which it was protected, and thus, the composition will be accusation marks the message. falsified. Place the sketched scene on stage in a play and the au- If the respondent neglects to search for an address, or dience will be addressed. But not by a finger pointing assumes that the composition has no intended address at them, not by a tone of hesitant accusation directed to when it does not articulate its address the way compo- them. sitions did in the past, then the composition will be falsi- Initially, an audience member enters into an agreement fied by the respondent. that he will be addressed by a composition. In the course of a composition, a composer can attempt to turn that The Means of Address general address into one made to that specific audience member. The means of address that can be created in composed Gesture is one way of pointing an address: By compos- works are relatives, not copies, of the means of address ing gesture, the composer can create a pointed address. that can be created in discourse. Even though the address A viewer or listener is the intended addressee of a move- starts with the composer, in composed works, it is medi- ment or music composition. The composer can choose ated by the composition, by the score (if there is one), by the address she wants a piece to make. A composed work the performer, and by the listener. can be made to imply an image of an addressee: some- In a musical composition, many things allow the listener one to whom the piece would now have something to say, to make inferences from which he constructs an image of to show, to hear, in short, something to offer now. Ges- the listener addressed. The gestures of the composition ture helps draw the respondent’s attention to some things shape these inferences. From the restrictions a composer and away from others. The composer anticipates which places on a respondent’s interpretations, the listener can configurations will seduce the listener into glossing over infer the respondent the composer anticipated. components and which will draw the listener into think- At any time, from the beginning of the performance of a ing about the components, into grouping some events composition to some subsequent moment of reflection on with others into configurations, into looking for empha- the performance, I can figure out that it offers me some- sis within one set of bounds instead of others, and so on. thing, and thus, find it directed particularly at me. Find- Through the composition of gesture, the composer inter- ing my response has been anticipated, and restricted, I feres with the respondent’s inclination to recognize some have to make another response. If the network of restric- configurations and provokes the respondent to cognize tions has been carefully laid out, I eventually find that I other configurations that cannot be recognized since they have to make a response I have not made before. I decide appear for the first time. By avoiding affirmative ges- that I correspond to my image of the listener addressed. ture, recognizable configurations or configurations that have not been changed by the composer, the composer The perception of address is the first moment in the pro- addresses the respondent, insisting that thought be given cess of becoming a respondent: It is the prereguisite of to the naming of configurations, to the relationship of any search for formulations that correspond to what has configurations in two different media, and to the roles been said to me, formulations that could not have been that the piece has created for the configurations to play. made without what was said to me. The perception of address turns me, the addressee, into a respondent. No Address Responding to a composition, I shape the image of the If the composer forgets to include an address, the results address made by articulating the address taken. are usually disastrous. The respondent flounders around, In that I correspond to an image of the listener ad- picking up on whatever unintended address happens to dressed, I am a correspondent,in thatI respond to a com- attach itself to the composition. The composition with- position which itself is a response, I am a co-respondent. out an intended address cannot articulate or convey its intentions. The performer shapes the address of a composition by 6. Performance choosing, from the intended addresses that a piece can create, the address to make now. If a performer neglects The time of no gesture is noise. to shape the address created by the piece, the composi- Biological existence. Merely. Or necessary movements: tion will be opened up to the unintended address from made just to get somewhere or to do something else.

MARK SULLIVAN 149 6. Performance Accidentally made sounds: Chairs squeaking. A music performance of a composition, the composer has to limit stand clanging. Coughs. Prerequisite movements: The what the performer(or a score-reading listener imagining bow has to be lifted. A breath has to be taken. a performance) can find implicit in the score. Such noise is not the composition’s noise. It is not the composed noise factor of a piece, a factor required so Notation that a signal be noticed. Nor is it a part of a carrier-and- signal relationship. It is environmental noise, to be kept It has often been observed that for the last two hun- below the threshold of the piece’s significance. In this dred years musical notation has become increasingly environmental noise, there is no gesture. specific: more and more explicit instructions have been Within a composition, there is never no gesture. Gesture given to performers about how to treat loudness, stress is either intended or not. There is no keeping it out. For and rhythmic functions, phrasing, articulation, and tim- the performer, this means that there is no getting around bre. This tendency reflects the composers’ desires to pro- it or out of it: gesture has to be performed. tect their compositions from commercial performance For the performer, the question is whether or not the practices, from unwanted understandingsand unintended treatment and performance of gesture bears out traces messages, and it reflects the desire of composers who of the composer’s intent, is required by the composition, wanted to choose the gesture. Conversely, it reflects each and leaves traces of the performer’s intent in interpreta- parameter’s loss of the power to imply gesture. Less tion. An intent in interpretation — an interpretation, not and less have composers been able to treat gesture as a just one of submissively obedient execution’s mere re- concomitant of pitch, rhythm, or of any other parameter, sults — provokes the performer to search for and find at even articulation. least one interpretation which allows the composition to Unwarranted treatment of gesture, once invited by the be performed with a minimum of falsification. lack of explicit instructions, by now ever so often ap- Performance articulates intent and the relationship be- pears invited by the abundance of explicit instructions. tween the significant and the insignificant: doing this No notation can prevent treatments that knowingly aban- requires that a performance articulate the relationship don gesture to accident. between one gesture and another, between gesture and Part of a performer’s interpretation involves deciding whatever is not only gesture, and between gesture and how the composer wanted the notation in a score treated. whatever is not gesture. There are two kinds of notation, descriptive and prescrip- Gesture is not notated by the composer separately: there tive: the former is analog to the desired result (and only are no specific notational elements reserved for musical implies how to get it); the latter is analog to the desired gesture. Musical gesture in a score is implicit. execution (and only implies the result). Either or both, of course, may occur within any single composition. Both kinds of notation can be so densely loaded with instruc- Implicit and Explicit tions that they obscure the configurations embedded in them. What the composer makes explicit while composing a If the notation is required and desired, then it presents a piece becomes implicit in the score. Going on what is problem to be solved, not eliminated, and makes up part made explicit in the score, the performer decides what of the offer made by the composer to the performer: an is implicit. No matter whether the performer faces de- offer to collaborate in finding a solution for a problem. scriptive or prescriptive notation or a combination of the The performer’s interpretation of the notation becomes two, the performer has to interpret. What the performer an indispensable part of the composition’s social func- makes explicit for herself while rehearsing a composi- tion. tion and while developing standards for a performance, becomes for the listener, implicit. In the process of prac- If the composer, working with algorithms, finds that his ticing and rehearsing a composition, the performer must wanted rules deliver unwanted gestures, then the prob- make explicit for herself the gestures implied in the ex- lem is not for the performer, but is the composer’s. In plicit notation of the score. In the performance, then, this case, it may be necessary for the composer to add and implicit in the performer’s treatment of gesture, the to his set of rules those which will not deliver unwanted listener can find and discover what the gestures have ren- gestures, or maybe even to add to his set of rules those dered explicit. which would deliver the gestures desired. Since the composer wants to limit the listener’s interpre- tation, that is, what the listener can find implicit in the

MARK SULLIVAN 150 6. Performance Carrier or Signal of performance standards must begin by considering the performance in question. — The goal of the performance, Both the performerand the listener make a decision: One not the goal of performance. When consideration is given part of interpretation involves deciding what is carrier to performance standards as if there were a goal for (all) performances, there the performance will be a performance and what is signal. of standards rather than a performance of the piece. . . A carrier is something composed that does not change There is not one single aspect of musical performance so that the changes of something else can be noticed that can be elevated to a “standard of performance” with- (through it) — namely, the signal, that is, that which is out danger to the music. Even the most common and rudi- mentary: intonation, tone, and the right notes are suspect to be noticed changing. . . . And this is no matter of bargaining, of trading off some Whenever changes in that which the performer has de- “polish” of performance for the sake of other virtues, such cided to treat as a carrier must occur, the performer has as excitement, profundity, and what not . . . A dynamic range from ppppp to fffff may be absolutely essential for to keep them below the threshold of significance, in this one performance of a piece and just so much trashy embel- case, the threshold of significant change established by lishment for a different performance of the same piece,” the composition. Richard Herbert Howe, “Standards For Performance Whenever the performer turns the carriers of a piece into and The Performance of Standards” signals, this disturbs the intended relationship between Every decision that takes into account the consequences carrier and signal, and thus, falsifies the piece. of performance on detail must at the same time take into Gesture gets involved in the relation between carrier and account the consequences of performance on the config- signal. To avoid playing unintended gestures, the per- uration. Otherwise, gestures will be disfigured or wither. former must decide how the gestures of the piece are to Slowing down at the end of each phrase does not simply be treated: Is gesture a carrier or a signal? Does gesture mark out the phrases, it invites in an unrequired family change from being a carrier to being a signal, or vice- of gestures that have as their distinguishing component versa? Are there some gestures that function as carriers the retarded end. and others that function as signals? These questions are representative of those a performer must answer. Unrequired changes of tempo destroy the proportions that are one component of gesture. An unrequired crescendo gets rid of two composed ges- Disfigured Gestures, Withered Gestures tures and replaces it with one that wasn’t even wanted by the composer; or one composed gesture is turned into In performance, how close one gesture is to another and lots of precious fragments by dynamic changes intended what kinds of gestures there are depends on the number to “bring out” certain notes, and to wipe out the com- and kind of distinctions the performer makes available posed gesture of an outburst by replacing it with several to the listener. The perceptible differences generated in gestures of hesitation. performance lead or mislead the listener as he infers the network of distinguishing components from which con- Unrequired restraint of dynamic levels that protects figurations are created. ”good tone” and unrequired uniformity of timbre sup- plies, instead of the intended gesture, a range of The configurations embedded in events, the configu- cramped, awkward gestures — gestures of restraint or rations in which distinguishing components show the gestures of stifled impulses; just as a mean average dy- traces of the network of distinctions from which they namic level will easily turn into gestures of stasis, of in- were created, have consequences on the respondent’s activity, of muffled articulation. perception of events, of configurations, components, and all details. Decisions taken in relation to configurations carry over into all other decisions. If no decisions are The Listener’s Performance of Gesture taken, that carries over. Conversely, decisions taken in relation to details affect configurations. Performances It is the listener’s interpretations that the composer wants based on standards that were not developed for the com- to limit when she composes gesture: the listener is the re- position frequently generate perceptible differences that spondent anticipated by the composer. As Herbert Br¨un take no heed of the role those differences play in creating has shown, the listener’s interpretation is an experience configurations, and thus, the performance of standards between cause and effect. The composer provides the leads to the disfiguring of gesture. listener with an offer — the musical composition. The “Performance standards are to be created in order to listener creates an image of the music and responds to help achieve a goal for a performance. Every consideration the created image, creating its effect. The listener cre-

MARK SULLIVAN 151 6. Performance ates the cause and the listener creates the effect. louder; getting louder late in the event; slow; getting The listener becomes the medium for the event to which faster; getting faster late in the event. he responds. In the formulation of the image of the composition, the offer, the listener shows intent. Traces of the listener’s intent are left in his response to a composition, traces in his formulations: they are left in the names a respondent gives to configurations. They are left in the concept of Another configuration could be made from the same the preserved characteristics implied in the names. And set by linking the following distinguishing components: they are left in the limits he, in collaboration with the Steady downward fall to a trough; movementby equal in- composer, placed on his interpretation. Through these crements; soft; getting louder; getting louder late in the traces the respondent reveals what he sought and met for event; slow; getting faster; getting faster late in the event. the first time.

7. Configurations

Noticing the gesture of an event, a respondent does not register each component separately, but rather registers the components’ relationship to one another. The config- Obviously, the structuring of the set of distinguishing uration registered is in an event. components assumes several things: there must be a suc- Noticing a gesture, a respondent registers its distinguish- cession of pitches (a single sustained pitch will not gener- ing components in configuration. The distinguishing ate a contour); the pitches must be able to move by equal components cling to the minimum event required to increments (an ordering of the pitches beforehand into present their configuration. The configuration registered a sequence of pitches that move in unequal increments is the event. would preclude creating a set that governs whether the In both cases, the respondent gives the relationship of kind of movements are equal or unequal) ; somewhere linked distinguishing components a name. The name something loud would have to ’ happen so that there corresponds to a single set of linked distinguishing com- could be soft and something fast would have to happen ponents. so that there could be slow, and so forth. Creating a configuration requires the linking of selected When structuring a set of distinguishing components, the components of different sets: the configuration must bear composer can take into account the consequences of that traces of the sets linked. structuring on the structure of other sets: It could be that pitches that get steadily higher seem to a listener to get In an acoustic medium, several configurations could be steadily louder or that pitches that move by equal incre- made from the following sets of distinguishing compo- ments (the composer knows) even though it takes them nents: a set that governs the contour created by the suc- less and less time to make their moves near the end of cession of pitches (steady upward rise to a peak or steady an event (the composer knows that the speed is getting downward fall to a trough); a set that governs the kind of faster) seem to a listener to move through greater dis- pitch movement (movement by equal increments or move- tance at the end than at the beginning of the event (if a ment by unequal increments); a set that governs loudness pulse measured the time it took to move, the distance tra- (soft or loud); a set that governs changes of loudness (no versed by the tones in the time of a pulse is greater). change of loudness or getting louder or getting softer); a set that governs speed (slow or fast); a set that governs All these kinds of considerations must be taken into ac- change of speed (no change of speed or getting faster or count when the composer creates sets of distinguishing getting slower); a set that governs placement of a change components, lest the composer wind up with unintended of loudness (early in the event or late in the event); a set configurations.) that governs placement of a change of speed (early in the event or late in the event. A Set of Distinguishing Components One configuration could be made by linking the follow- ing distinguishing components: Steady upward rise to Creating a distinguishing componentrequires the making a peak; movement by equal increments; soft; getting of a set of interconnected components. Each component

MARK SULLIVAN 152 7. Configurations must be made dependent on each of the other compo- The Borrowed Distinctions of a Configura- nents for its identity, that is, for its ability to contribute tion to the production of a configuration that can be given a unique name. If the speed of succession of pitches is not There are yet other requirements placed on configura- increasing then it must decrease or stay (the same); if the tions and distinguishing components if they are to be- contour created by the succession of pitches is not rising come gesture. To create a hybrid medium, they must be steadily then it must be falling steadily, and so on. In a loaned a significance by their relationship to the distin- configuration of linked distinguishing components, each guishing components of configurations in other media. component must bear some trace of its place in the struc- The respondent who takes in the configuration of a ges- ture of the set of components from which it was chosen. ture’s distinguishing components takes in a relationship After being chosen, it has to stand out as one component between one set of componentsand another, between one selected from a set of componentsfrom which any of the configuration and another. Some, or all, of the distin- other components could have been chosen instead of it. guishing components of a gesture come from a network A respondent should eventually be able to infer the in- of components shared by two media. terconnected net of components from which the one was drawn. Gesture works with borrowed distinctions. In discourse, to the extent that it is not composed, a The configuration bears, at least in part, distinctions cre- speaker creates the configurations of movement gesture ated by componentsthat can be drawn from sets that gov- and of acoustic gesture with distinguishing components ern aspects of events that occur in at least two media. drawn from the existing sets made available to perform- Both a sequence of tones and a sequence of movements ers and respondents in the society; in a composition, to can get faster. In movement, the gesture of a certain way the extent that it does not draw only on existing sets, and of walking will not be confused with the gestures of any to the extent that it attempts to create new gestures, an other way of walking or any of the gestures of other types exposition is required that establishes the structured set of locomotion. If a composer of music were to limit his and the interconnections of components, that is, each choice of musical events to those which share some of the component’s place in the set, so that the components distinguishing components of that way of walking, and when chosen may function as distinguishing components if the response to that musical event were not confused drawn from created sets linked in the configurations of with any other musical event that shared some of the dis- movement and acoustic gesture that can to performers tinguishing components of some other way of walking or and respondents be offered for the first time. of moving, then I would speak of distinctions on loan and Each component of a set of distinguishing components of gesture. must be able to link up with each component of each set For a gesture to happen, a respondent has to be able to that contributes to the production of the configuration. answer the question: Which configuration made from The component of the set that governs the contour cre- which sets of components is it? Which interconnected ated by the succession of pitches, the steady upward rise, network of sets shares which distinguishing components can occur in an event at the same time as the event is of which configurations? Answers to these questions de- soft or loud and at the same time that the event is staying termine the limits established by a gesture. the same speed or getting slower or getting faster and so forth. Affirmative Gestures, New Gestures Each structured set of components is distinguished from the other sets by the aspect of events that its components Gesture initiates cognition or recognition in several govern; when it is chosen, each component of a set of ways: It may initiate recognition by referring to sets of distinguishing components is distinguished by the char- distinguishing components in the respondent’s repertory acteristics it creates in the aspect of events governed by without changing them, that is, by referring to sets cre- the set. ated in other contexts. It may initiate cognition by re- To some extent, the choice of components that govern structuring sets (by calling on sets in the respondent’s contour does not determine which choices of components repertory but changing them), by adding a new compo- that govern loudness are available to the composer; a nent to a set, or by adding a new set to a network of steadily upward rising contour will not be confused with distinguishing components. a steadily falling contour. Since gesture is a hybrid medium, it is a medium, and thus, gesture can wipe out traces.

MARK SULLIVAN 153 7. Configurations Affirmative gestures attempt to conceal the illusions they infer the interconnected network of distinguishing com- create by limiting their callingto what can be foundin the ponents, determines the kind of grid. One piece might respondent’s repertory. The affirmative gesture deliber- require configurations created from two sets, each with ately tries to make gesture seem like the second-natureof two components. Another piece might require configu- music. By exercising the power of repetition, they try to rations created from thirteen sets, each with a different disguise their illusion as nature. The affirmative gesture number of components. The latter case would require a is an attempt to keep cognition to a minimum. finer grid of distinctions: in performance, the distinctions A new gesture presents the respondent with a configu- that would have to be made so that a respondent could ration that links a hybrid set of distinguishing compo- infer the distinguishing components would be nearer one nents. The configuration is shaped by the composer’s in- another. It would take the respondent longer to tune to tent. The intent aims at shaping the respondent’s image the grid. of what the piece offers to see or hearfor the first time. A Based on my description of the grid of distinctions I want new gesture limits calls to the respondent’s repertory to the piece to establish, based on my description of how the minimum required to keep cognition going as long as long it takes a respondent to tune to the grid, and based possible. The composer decides how the configurations on my description of the limitations placed on the re- of linked distinguishing components in one medium shall spondent by the thresholds of perception, I articulate two fertilize, shape, form, or seed those of another medium forms of conjecture about limits: one has to do with the so that the respondent can encounter a configuration, a limits within which each gesture can vary; the other has gesture, for the first time. to do with the limits that each gesture will place on the respondents interpretations — especially with regard to limits on the kind and number of events in other media to 8. One or Another which a gesture points.

If the composer has a choice, he has to create the ges- The Limits Established by Gestures tures he wants. Otherwise, the whole composition may be marred by accidents that wipe out traces the composer The first form of conjecture is inseparably related to the wanted left, by unintended messages that suffocate in- second: The composer faces different cases depending tended ones, or by a range of reference that prevents the on what she wants. She may have to prevent a gesture composition from addressing anyone with anything for from borrowing distinctions from one medium instead the first time. of another. Or, from borrowing distinctions from one Under certain conditions, a gesture can preserve itself medium and from another. Or, from one medium but not under change; under other conditions, it can’t. The com- another. Or yes, maybe even from either or both of two poser has several things to figure out: what parts of a media instead of from neither or some other medium. gesture can change, and how much, and when, before a Depending on what she’s after, a composer of music gesture begins to be confused with, or becomes identical might face the following cases: She might have to pre- with, its closest neighbors. Along with these questions, vent the musical event from being lent the distinctions goes another: How can the composer prevent a gesture of a movement, instead of the distinctions of an event in from sharing characteristics of events to which the com- speech. Or, from being lent the distinctions of an event poser does not want the gesture to refer? Even when the in speech. Or, from being lent the distinctions of a move- composer deliberately seeks out ambiguity, control of the ment, but not the distinctions of an event in speech. Or distinguishing components is required to create it. yes, again, maybe the composer has to prevent the musi- cal event from being lent the distinctions of another mu- A Grid of Distinctions sical event or from being lent no distinctions whatsoever, instead of being lent at least the distinctions of an event A grid of distinctions establishes, in conjunction with in speech or at least the distinctions of a movement or in perceptual thresholds, the conceptual thresholds of sig- the best case of both a movementand an event in speech. nificant difference. It establishes the kind and number of Suppose the composer wants the musical event to bor- important differences. Gesture has to establish its grid row the distinctions of a movement, and not those of an of distinctions. Otherwise its grid will be articulated by event in speech (or those of an event from another mu- something else’s. The number of sets of distinguishing sical composition). Suppose that the event is a leap fol- components, and the number of components in each set, lowed by stumbling, and that the composer has decided and the time it takes a respondent to tune to the grid, to what characteristics of the movement can be preserved in

MARK SULLIVAN 154 8. One or Another music and which characteristics she wants to preserve. 9. Processes of Invention The characteristics of the movement are to be preserved in a configuration with three parts created from the fol- Gesture has been, and can be, invented with several pro- lowing sets: cesses: imitation, translation, and extension. Looking at the history of a single gesture, I may find that these a set that governs speed (fast, slow); a set that governs processes mingle and overlap in successive applications the kind of movement (step, glide, leap) ; a set that governs direction (straight, changing directions) to movements or acoustic events that never were before, that are already, that next will be gestures. Any change which disturbs the configurationchanges the gesture. So long as the configuration is preserved, any- thing can change. A change which moves away from one Imitation and towards another distinguishing component progres- sively weakens the gesture: the substitution of a single Imitation is one way of making an analogy. Imitating fol- distinguishing component changes the gesture, and thus, lows the example of something; it is copying but allows changes the distinction shared with an event in some a margin of incongruity. other medium. As long as a distinguishing component Imitation coaxes one event into the manner of another, is preserved, the gesture will be preserved, and the rela- into the behavior of another: it makes something a close, tion with the event in the other medium. not a distant, relative. If the distinguishing component is an upward leap, then Wheedling is a way of saying a set of statements. It can the size of the interval can vary. With regard to the con- be imitated in movement. Take the instruction: Wheedle figuration, it is more important that it is a leap upwards, with your hands. rather than which leap upwards it is. Pounding or shrivelling up are movements. They can be imitated in speech behaviors. Take the odd instruction: Response Pound on the table or shrivel up to nothing with your voice. Since the composer wants to choose a gesture and wants One movement can copy another. Take the instruction: a gesture to carry traces of the intent with which it was Imitate the movement of a talking mouth with a hand. chosen, he concerns himself with the conditions under Preserved under change are the opening and closing mo- which the respondent interprets. tion and the periodic rhythm. Lost are the syllables, the Response is a historical concept. So is interpretation. resonance — the entire production of structures created The composer’s knowledge and awareness of the his- in sound, the facial expressions. A linguistic gesture that tory of compositional efforts — the composer’s knowl- preserves the characteristics of a yapping mouth can be edge and awareness of the dynamics and history of re- found in the complaint: “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.” sponse — the composer’s description of the respondent’s A composer of music might imitate the yapping gesture repertory and desire for connection making — the com- of a speaker by asking a trumpet to play: poser’s estimate of the extent of exposition and the de- gree of redundancy required so that the interpreting re- spondent can infer the network of distinguishing com- ponents that the composer requires — all of these fac- tors condition the composer’s formulation of what can be presented for the first time. Collectively, these factors condition the composer’s image of gestures which can- not now be created without being merely affirmative of Or, take the phrase: “Aw, come on.” How could move- what already just happens to be the case, they condition ments be used to create an imitative analogy to the se- the composer’s image of gestures which can now for a mantically charged sounds of this utterance? The size of while tease or just now cannot tease, of gestures which movements could correspond to the degree of change of just now for once can appear for the first time, and espe- loudness; changes of direction of movement could corre- cially, the composer’s image of which intervention might spond to the rhythm; a slap of the palm on the forehead only just now again for a while retard the decay of ges- could correspond to the “Aw”; two bobbing shakes of tures thought helplessly lost or old. the palm could correspond to the “come on”. Music?

MARK SULLIVAN 155 9. Processes of Invention tension tries to preserve characteristics of something the way it could be, if it kept going. Extension requires creating something that can be re- ferred to another phase of the process of which its analagon is an output. It demonstrates the application of a procedure in a region that carries further the range of its previous applications, it stretches the scope. Extension creates a continuum of gesture. It doesn’tcopy the event as it is, but as it could be extended. It works out a next-stepness in relation to something. Movements of the arm, hand, and finger used for hailing someone, performed forcefully, can be used to distract someone from what he’s doing, indicating “Come now.” This indication can be transformed into figures of voice: “Hey” is used to hail someone, but can be used to stop someone from doing something, to indicate dismay, or to Take bragging or interrupting. Or winking. What if the indicate both. conductor said that the flute has to play its part as the Extension: totter the head, totter the eyes, totter the pitch musical gesture of one of these? of a statement to indicate indecisiveness; tapping on the Imitation covers the ground between the unsettlingly un- table moves to pounding a fist on the table to a gruff- canny and the elusively faint resemblance. toned voice that heavily emphasizes each word — pound- ing it out word by word. Extension often mixes with imitation, both push trans- Translation lation, and all three can mingle to create movement and acoustic gestures. Translation seeks equivalent consequences without pre- serving the behavior. It does not copy. Translation com- pletes a transfer, getting one event to speak in the terms of another. It has more to do with the preservation of 10. Posture neighborhoods of relations than with items. Historically, the concept of posture has been hound to Translation makes no attempt to correspond in perfor- movement. When set off from gesticulation and gesture, mance; it only tries to correspond in consequences. It posture refers to the general configuration of the body gives up the specifics of performance, foregoing the at- and its parts. Sticking to usage or not, one thing must tempt to copy, foregoing the performance itself. be added: posture is a general configuration of the body that nests the production of other configurations. Ges- Extension ticulatory movements and the configurations of gesture are produced within the embracingconfigurations of pos- Extension is a form of close analogy. Imitation tries to ture. A posture can encompass a range of gesticulation preserve characteristics of something the way it is; ex- and gesture.

MARK SULLIVAN 156 10. Posture MARK SULLIVAN 157 10. Posture Gesticulation Body Gestures, Movement Gestures

Gesticulation seems to approach a configuration even In various forms of discourse, in movement and mime though it does not reach one, seems to have departed compositions, and in compositions for the theater and from a configuration even though it never reached one. opera, gesture in movement flourishes, leaving and wip- Gesticulation often seems close to gesture; it seems as ing out traces. Except in discourse — where they may or if it could become gesture. But it never establishes its may not be marked by the intent of a composing speaker consistency through constraints that establish a configu- — these traces are marked by the intent of a composer. ration. Thus, it does not limit the interpretations available The composer can work from two distinct orientations: to a respondent. A respondentcan not detect the intended a body gesture is a body configuration with a contextual limit placed on his interpretations, and thus, the respon- history that is not the contextual history of the body; a dent is left with nothingbut the awareness that an attempt movement gesture is a configuration of movements with to limit his interpretations was made. Gesticulation fails a contextual history that is not the contextual history of to articulate intended limits. the movements. Still, that which can be changed can be composed. When Working within one, from one or both, or between these composed, both gesticulation and posture become, in two orientations, the composer can emphasize the con- their moments of change, components of gesture (a sud- figurations reached, the ways of reaching the configu- den start and stop of gesticulations, a mighty stretch from rations, or a relationship between the two. The com- cowering to monumental uprightness). poser configures movements so that they articulate ges-

MARK SULLIVAN 158 10. Posture tures that articulate the desired relations between move- gestures in movement has been left out. Other things, ments. Thus a change of articulation frequently results too: How movement gestures work their way into lit- in a change of movement gesture. erature and the visual arts; a presentation of the differ- ences between the way movement gestures function in “. . . the movement notation system arose from the search for the formulation of the world of movement; this discourse, in mime and movement compositions, and in quest was primarily for a way of composing in movement theater, as well as how new gestures are created in each . . . This aim implied the overthrow of prevailing assump- of these media. There is no investigation of how a com- tions about movement; not through startling innovations, poser of movement notates movement gesture, nor any but by a radical change of concept which would make look at how movement gestures become the basis for movement a material in which choices could be made with- out relating them to irrelevant frames of reference . . . what other movement gestures. is important is to do things which are and can be seen to have been deliberately and consciously chosen.” Noa Eshkol, Foreword to “Language, Shape, and 11. Musical Gestures and Move- Movement” ments

Applications Movements and movement in discourse and in compo- sitions are events with characteristics that the composer Alongside the application of concepts of posture, gestic- can preserve in musical gesture. Even though the num- ulation, and gesture to movement runs the potential ap- ber of distinguishing components that make up move- plication of those concepts to sound, to the acoustic uni- ment gestures is much smaller than the total number of verse. Although such an application produces phrases distinct movements that can be made — again, differ- that sound ungainly in relation to usage, there is no loss ences between movements are pushed toward one struc- of accuracy: one component of what is called ’a tone of tural type or another, and several movements that differ voice’ is ’acoustic posture’, or ’the posture of the voice’ from one another (in ways that are considered insignifi- (just as a specific body posture could be called ’a tone of cant by the viewer) are treated as one kind of movement, body’). as insignificant variations of one structural type of move- Acoustic posture refers to a general acoustic configura- ment — the number and kind of distinguishing compo- tion that nests the production of other acoustic config- nents of movements and the configurations they create urations. Gesticulatory sounds and the configurations still provide a staggering number of characteristics which of acoustic gesture are produced vithin the embracing the composer could try to preserve in musical gestures. configurations of acoustic posture. An acoustic posture But this is not what may make the composer pause. It can encompass a range of acoustic gesticulation and ges- is rather that the components and their functions seem ture. Acoustic gesticulation seems to approach but never to be tied to the specific nature of the body and its parts reaches a configuration of sounds. And so through the as a moving system. The entire differentiated network formulations that apply to movement up to acoustic ges- of movement gesture seems to require the differentiated ture: A configuration of sounds with a contextual history network of the body’s parts and the kinds of movements that is not the contextual history of the sounds. they make as its prerequisite.

Left Out The Sample as An Example

What has been, and will be, left out are the connections Taking movements only of the head and face region, an between configurations in movement and the preserved inventory of at least thirty or so distinguishing compo- characteristics of events in other media — particularly nents is required to make a model of the system of move- speech and music. In short, the distinctions loaned to ment gestures made with the head and face: movements. Thus, the whole process of creating new

MARK SULLIVAN 159 11. Musical Gestures and Movements three waysof noddingthe head one nod, two nods, three nods; four speeds (extremely slow, slow, fast, extremely fast); articulation (smooth, jerky) two ways of sweeping the head fromsidetoside one sweep, two sweeps; four speeds (extremely slow, slow, fast, ex- tremely fast); articulation (smooth, jerky) one way of cocking the head one way of tilting the head four ways of moving the brow lift, lower, knit, move a single brow four ways to close the eyelids maximally open, slit, closed, squeezed four ways of shaping the nose wrinklingthenose,compressing the nostrils, flaring both nostrils, flaring one nostril seven ways of shaping the mouth compressed lips, protruded lips, retracted lips, apically withdrawn lips, snarl, lax open mouth, mouth maximally opened two ways of thrusting the chin forward, to the side two ways of shaping the cheeks puffed, sucked

Music has no eyebrows, no limbs, no torso, no physical composer must decide into what characteristics of speech body to move; it cannot stare, roll its eyes, shift them up- or music the spatial characteristics are to be mapped, if ward or jerk them from left to right, nor can it glare or the composer wants any mapped, if any can be mapped even close its eyes. at all. A composer might decide that changes of size of move- Characteristics Movement Loans Musical ment or changes in the distance traversed by a moving limb are to be mapped into musical dynamics, shaping Events the contour of the changes in loudness. Some character- istics are either lost or mapped into other kinds of char- All this means is that music can not make movementges- acteristics — the necessary changes have to be made — tures. Something is always given up in making an anal- or are given up by the composer. ogy. Obviously, music does not order the movements of the face, of the torso and limbs. It does not shape the Although they could be, the temporally-oriented charac- external form and configurations of a moving body and teristics of movement do not have to be mapped in mu- its parts for a viewer. But music can shape the exter- sic or speech into a non-temporal dimension. Movement nal form and configuration of a moving body of sound along with speech and music moves towards and away and its parts for the listener. Two questions become rel- from points of emphasis, creating proportions that gen- evant: What characteristics of movement and movement erate a sense of timing and redundancy which creates the gestures can be preserved in music? With what degree of appearance that events move towards emphasized mo- specificity can musical gesture point to the distinctions ments and away from them, giving some events or mo- loaned it by movement? ments a prominence that other events and moments don’t have. It has often been pointed out that music and movement approach one another by way of their relationship to Shifts of weight initiate movements, emphasize move- time. Physical bodies are said to move throughspace and ments and phases of movements, moving in and out, time, whereas music is said to move only through time. from and towards various configurations that can be dis- Music, in short, is said to have a temporal dimension and tinguished by the way weight is distributed in the body no spatial dimension. and its parts. The amount of weight shifted and the way it is shifted, and the directions in which it is shifted, the But speech too moves through time and not space. motion and energy thereby generated and the way it is Speech shares a temporal dimension with music and stopped, repelled, thwarted or redirected provide charac- movement and both speech and music are cut off from teristics from which music can create its mock moments the spatial dimension of movement. One consequence of movement. of this is found in a required transformation: any char- acteristic of a movement that is distinguished by its spa- If a movementbeginswith a sudden and maximal shift of tial orientation has to be mapped, when it is preserved in weight from one limb to another, a musical event can pre- speech or music, into a non-spatial dimension. Thus the serve the maximal change but not the sense of the limb’s

MARK SULLIVAN 160 11. Musical Gestures and Movements location in relation to the other limb (the limb to which ing). Nor would the composer want that event to be con- the weight is shifted). The maximal change could be pre- fused with musical gestures that preserve characteristics served in musical dynamics again, for instance. If that of any kind of speech events (a hesitantly asked question maximal shift of weight produced a change of configu- or a statement that is punched out) — except perhaps for ration in several limbs, then that change of configuration linguistic gestures that themselves preserve characteris- could be preserved in the configurations of pitch. If the tics of a lurching movement, but maybe not. shift had two distinct phases, each with a noticeable du- ration, and if the beginning phase had an emphasis that the ending phase moved away from, then these character- Not the Movements of Performance istics might be preserved in the duration and proportions of the pitch configurationsand their placement within the At no point have I been referring to the movements made framework of time. In such a way, a musical gesture by performers of music. I am not speaking of what is might preservethe characteristics of a movementgesture. called expressive movements, those ornamental bits of salesmanship wholly superfluous to the execution of the Using such operations, the composer can preserve char- musical event which are the performance of the reaction acteristics in musical gestures of movements that be- the performer is trying to elicit. Nor am I speaking of gin by transferring weight gradually and almost imper- movements that may be required to shape the sound of a ceptibly to some other part of the body, characteristics musical event. As fascinating as it is to watch the move- of movements that lurch and teeter through a series of ments of a performer whose every shift of weight is care- asymmetrical and non-periodicshifts of weight, to move- fully chosen for the traces it will leave on the acoustic ments that disturb the overall distribution of weight as event, this is not what I am speaking of when I refer little as possible while transferring weight from one limb to musical gestures that preserve the characteristics of to another, characteristics of movements that end with a movement — although without doubt these required the weight of the body lifted or of movements that gen- movements may help the listener gather questions and erate an impetus toward motion only to rapidly thwart it. formulations that apply to the acoustic events heard. Configurations of body parts that emerge in relation to When the clarinetist leans quickly forward to begin a other configurationsin a periodic frameworkof time gen- pitch and just as quickly pulls back as she releases the erated by their seguential appearance, their durations rel- note, creating an abruptly beginning and abruptly ending ative to one another, and by the way they are articulated sound — when the percussionist only seems to lift the can be preserved in musical configurations that govern falling mallets from the bars of the marimba or lets them proportion and time. drop deadly onto the bars, stopping all reverberation — Through all these means, music approaches movement. when the string player leans all of his weight on to the Musical gestures can be created that preserve character- bow bringing it to an abrupt halt, producing a swelling istics of running, grinding to a halt, stumbling, unhur- that ends in a hollow crunch — these movements are re- ried walking, tottering, dancing, characteristics of a slow quired to shape the acoustic event; they are not necessar- walk, pacing, treading lightly, stomping, and of trudging ily related to the characteristics of movement preserved — in short, to different kinds of locomotion. Charac- in the musical gesture. teristics of degrees of movement can be preserved: still, frantic, crowding around, thinning out. Characteristics of the degree of change of distance: inching along, leaping, Dance Music? lurching, grabbing. Characteristics of the forcefulness of There is no natural union between music and dance, al- a movement or of the pressure it exerts on something. though the two were already closely connected even in Characteristics of ways of starting and ways of coming the most ancient times. The closeness of the connection to a halt. Music never reaches movement, deliberately. and the resilient second-nature attached to it testify to These are the kinds of answers a composer gets when she the strength of the social forces that brought the two to- asks: What characteristics of movement gestures can be gether to keep them together. It embodiesone of the most used to generate, form, shape, or seed a gesture in music? persistent attempts to overcome the unconnectedness of But with what degree of specificity will these gestures tones and the unbrokenness of movements: the two are refer to movement gestures? A composer might want to simply combinedso that the unconnectedtones can break create a musical gesture that is analog to a lurch. If so, up the movementand so that the unbrokenmovementcan the composer would not want that event to be confused connect the tones. with musical events that preserve characteristics of any Within the history of dance, clues can be found that help other kinds of movements (a slow gradual bend or trudg- locate movements that have left their mark on musical

MARK SULLIVAN 161 11. Musical Gestures and Movements gesture: the leap, the lift, and the glide; the step and a whole composition to call up the relationship between the stretch; the throw, the skip, the lunge, and the whirl; a movement and a musical event and the time when even the wrench. Each of these movements has characteristics a small slice of a musical event could call up the rela- which have been preserved in musical gestures: the skip tionship to a movement, musical gestures emerged that has its set of rhythms, the lift its contours and suspended were related to movement, specifically to dance, musical forward motion on a melodic peak, the glide its articula- gestures which were fleeing the devastation wrought on tion and freedom from downbeats, the step its pace and traces by the affirmative gesture. degree of pitch movement, the whirl its dynamic waves and repetitions, the wrench its displacement of the pulse and dynamic surges, and so on. The Offer Obviously, the placement of a leap within a sequence of Music does not sacrifice any of its autonomy by preserv- pitches can correspond to the moment in time when a ing characteristics of movements in musical gestures. In dancer makes a leaping movement, the size of the inter- music, the characteristics are part of musical events that val to the size of the leap, the dynamic shape to the de- take their logic and their sequitorness from the require- gree of force with which the leap was made. But it was ments of the musical composition, not from the require- just this tendency towards obviousness that drove com- ments of a composition in movement. posers to protect the correspondences they invented from it. The composer’s struggle against the second-nature In music these characteristics go through changes that was a struggle against correspondencesthat already seem they could never undergo in a movement composition to be there. (changes from characteristics of one kind of movement to characteristics of another kind of movement are not Composers did not want to preserve easily recognized bound by the physical constraints of the human body — characteristics of movement but characteristics which that is, by the constraints of physical congruity and spa- could be observed for the first time. They began to cre- tial proximity). ate tension between music and dance, composing music which no longer supported the dancer, abandoning the Musical gesture shows what movement could never show physical constraints of the moving body, creating mu- about itself. sic which itself seemed to dance, but not according to rules that would have produced plausible or implausi- ble sequences of movement. They rather produced musi- 12. A Vignette cal gestures that followed the stipulated laws of musical composition. The song was separated from the dancer, the music was separated from the dancer. The preserved characteristics of movement began to serve musical ends. The First: “Well?” By now, music’s power to measure movement, generat- Head, tilting a little to the side. Pitch, gliding briefly ing discrete bits that cut up the continuity of movement downward and then upward quickly. Loudness, increas- into music’s grid and the power of the second-naturalness ing slightly, gradually. Eyebrows, holding their upward attached to the relationship by its historical development arch, even after the abrupt cutoff of sound. Gaze, eagerly in spite of the extraneousness of music to movement of fixed. All signifying impatient expectancy. This one had the human body has created a situation in which it is nec- decided to seek positive confirmation of something, after essary to supply music with continuity taken from move- nervously deciding that it may never come if it hasn’t by ment and to avoid providing movement with a sense of now. timedness taken from music. From the time in which an entire composition could be based on musical gestures that preserved the char- The Second: “Well.” acteristics of a single kind of dance through periods in Said by the one on whom the first’s gaze had fastened, which the characteristics of several kinds of dances were but only after allowing a few seconds of silence to inter- preserved in the gestures of a single musical composi- vene between the previous question and the tightening of tion, through times in which the preserved characteris- the corners of the lips, the light popping of the tongue tics might change from phrase to phrase, or later, even off of the upper teeth, and the quick sigh which preceded within a phrase, it is possible to discern a tendency to the response, itself accompanied by the raising of the present less and less of more and more preserved charac- eyes which had been cast to the side and down. Pitch, teristics. In between the time when it took the course of gliding upward briefly and then quickly downward. A

MARK SULLIVAN 162 12. A Vignette gliss smaller, a duration shorter than the first’s. Loud- ness, quickly decreasing. The sound ending with the head shaking back and forth in negation. All signify- The Second Again: “Well.” ing reluctant annoyance. This one hovered between not His throat straining. A sort of mild growl on the vowel. mentioning it and giving the other what he asked for. The outer edge of the eyebrows pulled down slightly into a stare, a dare. The Fourth Again: “Well, now, hold on.” The Third: “Well.” Breaking the tempo by lengthening the duration of each A response, again after a few seconds of intervening si- succeeding word. The distance between each successive lence, during which the mouth opened and the eyebrows pitch increasing. Loudness unchanging. Arms extended, arched upwards as far as possible. Pitch, without the ini- with the palms down, not in a shrug, but bobbing in con- tial upward turn, gliding downward. It was the smallest ciliation. gliss, the shortest duration of the three. Breathy noise distorting the sound of the vowel. Loudness: a pop fol- lowed by the rapid dissipation of sound. All signifying astonished exasperation. This one wheeled and stalked 13. Acoustic Gesture off. A configuration of sound in sounds. Initially, a respon- dent registers, not the distinguishing components sepa- The Fourth: “Well.” rately, one at a time, but their relations in configuration. Up to this point, the fourth had been silent. Another up- The acoustic configuration is a structured set of acoustic ward glide, this time without the initial downward turn, a relations that can infest different swathes of sound. little longer than the first’s, but in all other respects sim- From case to case, some details and relations change, ilar to it. All signifying, not expectancy, but amused res- but the relations of the configurations do not. A change ignation. This one emphasized his shrug with extended of the acoustic relations between distinguishing compo- arms, upturned palms, raised eyebrows, and a closed-lip nents would bring about a change from one configuration smile, all to indicate how comfortably he was lodged be- to another, and thus, the one listening would be required tween the sentences “Don’t ask me” and “What can you to interpret within another distinct set of limits. Detect- do?” ing another set of borrowed distinctions and assigning another corresponding significance to the configuration, the listener would confront another acoustic gesture. The First Again: “Well, well, well.” When I speak of acoustic gesture, I speak of two kinds: Imitating the diminishing series of an echo with the loud- linguistic and musical. ness of his response and with the rhythmicshaking of his I find the configurations of linguistic gesture within tem- head in negation. Pitch, gliding downward only on the porarily adopted tones of voice, that is, within temporar- first word; on the next two, it continued downward, but ily adopted ways of saying something. Depending on by steps not glides. Gaze, moving back and forth be- how it is said, an utterance takes on specific functions: tween the fourth and the second. Now signifying not re- luctant annoyance, but incredulous disappointment. His Ways of saying something are required to push a state- ment towards one of its meanings and away from others (to face arranged the display of his dismay. belligerently state something, instead of stating it timidly The Second Again: “Well. Wha’d’you expect?” or patiently); they are required to say one thing and convey another (to say “What are you doing?” and convey “Stop that right A quick, long, downward gliss followed by a long but now.”); slower, upward one on the first word. Blasting the last they are required to indicate the speaker’s attitude to- five syllables with a glare. The loudest yet. wards an addressee, towards an event, towards himself, or even towards the utterance itself (of contempt or indiffer- ence or enthusiasm); The First Again: “Well. Certainly not that.” just as they are required to sound surprised, bossy, or Breathy noise on the vowel again, after a short, down- impatient, to sound rushed, to sound confused or disap- ward gliss on the first word again. Contemptuously siz- pointed. zling the ’s’ sound of ’certainly’. The configurations of musical gesture are to be found

MARK SULLIVAN 163 13. Acoustic Gesture within a temporarily adopted way of performing some- all operatic traditions and admit the principle of musical thing. Dependingon how it is performed,a musical event discourse carried out in all simplicity, The Marriage is an takes on specific functions: opera. If I have managed to render the straightforward ex- pression of thoughts. . . ” Ways of performing something are required so that Modest Mussorgskii, letter to Rimsky-Korsakov something seem to come grinding to a halt instead of glid- ing to a halt; “I am thinking of the second act . . . and observing the peasants around me. This may come in useful later. How they are required so that something seem to shout in- many fresh, racy aspects, hitherto overlooked by art, in the stead of cough or sing; Russian people! A few scraps of what life brought to we they are required so that a musical event seem to hover, I have turned into musical imagery for the benefit of those to plunge, climb, or stretch, to wind upwards or stumble; whom I love and who love me, that is, in the songs . . . What I should like to do is to make my characters speak on just as they are required so that a musical event seem the stage exactly as people speak in everyday life, without to grumble, stutter, blare, or whisper, to boom, to call or exaggeration or distortion, and yet write music which will laugh. be thoroughly artistic.” Linguistic gesture and musical gesture are the performed Modest Mussorgskii, letter to Lulmilla Shestakova distinctions of acoustic configurations that allow the lis- “I am at work on human speech. With great pains I tener to infer the distinctions borrowed by the configura- have achieved a type of melody evolved from it. I have tion from an event in another medium. succeeded in incorporating the recitative into melody (ex- cept, of course, for dramatic movements, when anything, even interjection, may be used) . . . There are foretastes in Marfa confiding her grief to Dosifey, and also in The Fair.” 14. Linguistic Gesture Modest Mussorgskii, letter to Stassov

Within a tone of voice, when is gesture? “What I have tried to do is rather ambitious — namely, to regenerate the Italian opera-bouffe: I mean only the princi- Within a way of saying it, when is gesture? ple. This work is not conceived in the traditional form, like its ancestor — Mussorgskii’s Marriage, which is a faith- Every utterance can be delivered in a number of ways. ful interpretation of Gogol’s play. L’Heure Espagnole is a When it’s being said, a way of saying something takes musical comedy; apart from a few cuts, I have not altered part of its meaning from the way it is being said and part anything in Franc-Nohain’s text. Only the quintet at the from the ways it is not being said. end might, by its general “layout,” its vocalises and vocal effects, recall the typical repertory “ensemble.” But except for this quintet, it is mostly ordinary declamation rather than singing; for the French language, like any other, has A Way of Saying Something its own accents and musical inflections. And I do not see why one should not take advantage of these qualities in Choosing a way of saying something creates an order in order to arrive at correct prosody. The spirit of the work the sounds. A choice creates an order. Within the order is frankly humoristic. It is through the music above all of the sounds of a way of saying something, there are — the harmony, rhythm, and orchestration — that I have sounds of the words and their parts; and there are sounds tried to express irony, and not, as in operetta, by an arbi- trary and comical accumulation of words. I have long been that distinguish a speaker and groups of speakers: both dreaming of a humorous musical work, and the modern of these become a noise factor when someone speaks — orchestra seemed perfectly adapted to underline and exag- a personalized acoustic habit or the acoustic quirks of a gerate comic effects. On reading Franc-Nohain’s L’Heure mere group, they are the constants of a way of speaking Espagnole, I formed the opinion that this droll fantasy was — and have little to do with linguistic gesture. A speaker just what I was looking for. A whole lot of things in this work attracted me — the mixture of familiar conversation can not choose them. But within a way of saying some- and intentionally absurd lyricism, and the atmosphere of thing, there is an order of sounds that is not required to unusual and amusing noises by which the characters are build up words, to break off sequences of words, to in- surrounded in this clockmaker’s shop. Also, the opportu- dicate the sounds of an utterance, to establish syntactic nities for making use of the picturesque rhythms of Spanish music.” relations, and so on; there is an order of sounds that is not required to identify the speaker with a group, or even Maurice Ravel, letter to Jean Godebski to identify the speaker. “. . . On the whole, this first act might serve as an essay in opera dialogue . . . Throughout I try as hard as I can to These sounds stretch across words and are ordered by the note down clearly those changes in intonation which crop speaker’s choice. They are built up in the midst of the or- up in human conversation for the most futile causes, on the der of the sounds required by everything else — words, most insignificant words, changes in which lies the secret syntax, and so on. They are distinct configurations of of Gogol’s humor . . . ” sound in the sounds of a spoken utterance. “I have been surveying my first act . . . If you forget

MARK SULLIVAN 164 14. Linguistic Gesture A way of saying something is distinguished by the con- the rising contour of the question, and contours like the figuration it creates. The configuration emerges in a onethat belongsto “on the one hand ..., but on the other stretch of sound and attaches a significance to what is hand...” Other contours can be assigned a function by said that modifies, or changes — in short, that transforms the speaker. it. The configuration indicates which transformation is to As a component of a configuration, a contour can be as- be carried out by the listener who is trying to determine signed a function: It becomes a part of a linguistic ges- which interpretations are available to him. By indicating ture, and specifies a transformation that the respondent the required transformation, the configuration limits the should make. listener’s interpretations, and thus, the correspondences he can create with events in other media. Several Sentences, One Gesture

One Distinguishing Component A long, rising contour at the beginning of an utterance, in conjunction with other components, marks out one lin- Some contours have a function reserved for them within guistic gesture that can be performed. Several sentences the language: the tiered, slowly rising contour used to in- can be performed with this one linguistic gesture: dicate a list, the descending contour of the statement and

Tempo: slow Accel. Tempo: slow Accel.

(But I didn’t) see that it was there I did it al-read-y Tempo: slow Accel. Tempo: slow Accel.

You can’t do that What are you doing?

The configuration points toward a transformation that But the distinguishing components of the configuration would move in the direction of exasperation, anger, im- cannot be changed without destroying the identity of the patience, and defiance. The listening respondent cer- linguistic gesture: If the tempo is changed from slow tainly would not think that the configuration points to- to fast, if the speeding up is removed or replaced with ward a required transformation that would lead in the di- slowing down, if the initial rising glissando is removed rection of a meek request or of an indifferent dismissal. or replaced with a descending glissando or even with a The configuration can be performed with various com- glissando that descends and then rises, if the crescendo ponents added without losing its identity: it can be per- is removed or replaced with a decrescendo, then the ges- formed with various degrees of whisper, breathiness, ture turns into another; it becomes a gesture that limits huskiness, creak or falsetto, with various degrees of res- the interpretations of the listener in another way. onance; it can be performed through laughing, giggling, The characteristics preserved in this linguistic gesture are sobbing or crying — that is, the utterance can be modu- those of a rebounding whack or of a rebounding jolt. lated by laughing, for instance (the utterance can be per- formed with traces of these events in it). None of these components, however, are required by the configuration Several Gestures, One Sentence to establish its limits and none of them prevent it from None of the sentences must each time it is said be per- establishing its limits. They may add additional limits, formed with this linguistic gesture so that the sentence but their presence would not change the configuration, be understood. Each of the sentences can be performed and thus, would not change the gesture. as other linguistic gestures. Take one:

MARK SULLIVAN 165 14. Linguistic Gesture Tempo: fast Accel. Tempo: extremely fast

What are you do-ing?

Tempo: extremely slow Accel. What are you do-ing?

Tempo: fast What are you do-ing?

Tempo: slow

(breathy) What are you doing? What are you do-ing?

Within Limits change of emphasis within the gesture required so that a different question result: Any one of these linguistic gestures can vary within its limits and still preserve its identity. Take for example, the

Tempo: slow Accel. Tempo: slow Accel.

What are you do-ing? What are you do-ing?

Tempo: slow Accel.

What are you do-ing?

There are no neutral spoken utterances with respect to “Bytheway...” “...but...” linguistic gesture. “Idon’tcare...” “Ican’ttellyou...” “Naturally...” “It’snotthat...” “Ofcourse...” “Itgoeswithoutsaying...” The Gesture of the Marginal Event “Certainly...” “Asusual...” “Hummmmm...” “Inaway...” In some contexts, even the single word — since it can “Ithink...” “Well...” house configurations — can be performed with differ- “Yousee...” “Itseemstome...” ent gestures. Any marginal event of speech — smack- “Inmyopinion...” “Whatif...” ing noises, air exhaled forcefully through the teeth — if “Idisagree...” “Ifyou’djust...” it can function as a configuration with only one distin- “Usually...” “Thefactthat...” guishing component) can in at least one context become a linguistic gesture. The little phrases, the almost meaningless phrases are es- pecially susceptible to the configuring that becomes lin- guistic gesture:

MARK SULLIVAN 166 14. Linguistic Gesture The System of Distinguishing Components Left Out

The structured sets of distinguishing components from Again, things have been, and will be, left out of this pa- which linguistic gestures are created can be looked at per: the way linguistic gesture preserves characteristics as components that are created in different systems. In of movements and music in its configurations; the way many ways these systems resemble the systems available linguistic gesture works its way into representations in to the composer of music, but, in general, the grid of linguistic media and visual media. There has been no distinctions is not so fine: Speaking out of tune would treatment of the ways in which new linguistic gestures mean something quite different from playing out of tune. are created. Nor has there been any treatment of the Still, the speaker who consistently misplaces emphasis different ways linguistic gesture functions in prose and can create as much havoc for a listener as can a performer poetry, when read aloud, in discourse, or in works for who consistently drags or drops a beat. The grids of dis- theater. tinction are different, not unrelated. A speaker creates the configurations of linguistic gesture using distinguishing components drawn from sets that 15. Musical Gesture and Linguistic include articulation and loudness, pitch relations of ad- Gesture jacency, range, and contour, rhythm, stress, tempo, and pause. “Music resembles language. Expressions like musical id- A speaker sometimes uses components drawn from other iom and musical inflection are no metaphors. But music sets: one set — breathiness, whisper, huskiness, creak, is not language . . . Whoever takes music literally as a lan- falsetto, and resonance — includes distinctions that also guage is led astray by it . . . The traditional textbook on indicate the acoustic constants of a group of speakers, form shows an awareness of the sentence, phrase, period, interjection, question, exclamation (or call), and paren- the acoustic markers of a dialect, or of a single speaker, theses; subordinate phrases are found all over the place, the acoustic markers of “his voice.” Under certain con- voices rise and fall, and in all of this the gesture of music ditions, these distinctions can be chosen by a speaker so is borrowed from the voice, it speaks.” that timbal components shape the listener’s interpreta- Theodor W. Adorno, “Music, Language, and Their tion of the configuration. Relationship in Contemporary Composing” Another set — laughing, giggling, trembling, sobbing, Speech and music share some structured sets and even or crying (or even modifications of these such as half- some of the distinguishing componentsthat can be drawn hearted laughter or feigned laughter) — includes compo- from those sets and linked to create acoustic configu- nents that usually exist sequentially with speech, that is, rations: While tempo is created by durations, rhythms, we usually stop talking to produce them. Under certain and proportions unfolding in movements away from and conditions, these events can also become timbal compo- toward moments of emphasis, loudness shapes the con- nents that contribute to the formation of a distinct acous- toured succession of pitches grouped by caesuras and tic configuration. silences into phrases of timbrally marked sound. But Thus there can be linguistic gestures related to the blast, speech and music are kept apart by the components, sets, to the giggle, the grumble, and the snarl, to the wheeze and linkages that are not shared, as well as by the func- and the whimper; linguistic gestures related to dragging, tions given the configurations: Speech acquires its mate- to pulling and stretching, to picking at something, to rial, its order, its distinctions, logics, and functions. Only coaxing, pounding, and tapping; linguistic gestures of by way of analogy can music take hold of the distinct blabbing, whining, and ho-humming. And yes, even lin- characteristics of speech, of the characteristics it does not guistic gestures that seem to march, or dance, or sing. share with music. In spoken language, acoustic indication allows a listener By way of analogy, however, music shows something to figure out what a tone of voice is pointing at. The about speech, about linguistic gesture, that it cannot voice, self-referentially, creates a kind of acoustic point- show about itself. ing: it refers the listener to a part of its own production and uses that part to point at something else. In visual in- dication, the body or one of its parts points; in the acous- The Second-Nature of a Relationship tic indication of speech, it is the voice that points. Still, this mutually transforming reflection supplied by music which contributes to the distinction of both speech and music is created within a historical context. A

MARK SULLIVAN 167 15. Musical Gesture and Linguistic Gesture new musical composition cannot show something about the first time. speech that it cannot show about itself if another com- Since it establishes its consistency in music, the more position has already shown what the new one wants to rigorously the musical gesture adheres to the rules stipu- show. If the new composition tried that, it would only lated by the composer, to the specifically musical logic wind up affirming what has already been shown, show- and requirements of the chosen musical material, the ing it again. The new compositionhas to show something more the difference is articulated between the musical else, something that has not yet been shown. gesture and the speech gesture whose characteristics it What speech cannot show about itself, and what musical preserves, and thus, the more sharply defined is the dis- compositions have already shown, together establish the tance and thereby the distinct closeness of the relation- historical context that faces a composer who wants by ship. The articulated difference makes the distance. drawing on linguistic gestures to create a new musical Musical gesture is not a mere acoustic mirror of speech; gesture. it is reflective only in the most general and futile sense: In the process of making an analogy, something is lost. the distance is created to transform what is reflected and The necessary changes have to be made. Even if mu- that on which it reflects. It is not a playback. The first sic doesn’t give up anything to be like speech, it would moment of noticing something about a configuration of not do to omit all restrictions. Some restrictions must speech cannot be played back. be placed on musical events to preserve the character- Borrowed distinctions are characteristics transformed by istics of a linguistic gesture. For an intended composi- the events that preserve them. At the same time, they tion, there must be some restrictions. The only question are characteristics that transform the respondent’s under- is which, and how to mark the restrictions with intent. standing of the events from which they are derived and From all the restrictions available to him, the composer the events in which they are preserved. In a composi- chooses those that will allow him to preserve in musi- tion, borrowed characteristics become instances of mu- cal gestures the characteristics of speech required by his tual transformation. idea, Some ways of preserving characteristics of linguistic gesture and some of the characteristics preserved have, Lost and Preserved as a consequence of affirmative practices, developed a power to override the composer’s intentions. The rela- Answers to two questions delineate the history of musi- tionship between music and speech which they embody cal gestures related to linguistic gesture: What charac- seems to have become part of music’s second-nature: teristics of speech, of linguistic gesture, can be preserved They do not call attention to the differences between mu- in music? Which of the characteristics that can be pre- sic and speech, but suppress attention to them, and lead served did the composer choose to preserve? to the closeness between music and speech being taken Both questions can apply to musical compositions that for granted. require language and those that do not. For the composer, this second-nature presents a problem: The first question determines what must be left out, if Since the closeness seems to be there already, the com- the composer creates a musical gesture that preserves the poser cannot distinguish himself by putting it there. characteristics of a linguistic event; the second question A composer does not want to create a closeness between determines what the composer chose to leave out. music and speech that exists already. That would not be In instrumental works, the treatment of musical gesture creation, but mere affirmative reproduction, re-creation. that preserves characteristics of linguistic gesture is fre- A composer wants to create a closeness of relationship quently close to its treatment in works that use the voice that without the composer’s intention would not be. So and language. Or rather one extended period in the de- the problem of the second-nature of the relationship is velopment of the relationship between musical gestures one of distance. The composer has to create a distance in and speech gestures is distinguished by this kind of treat- the articulated difference between linguistic and musical ment. There are answers to the question: What charac- gesture so that the closeness be the one he wants, so that teristics of linguistic gesture did the composer choose to the closeness be one that would not just be there anyway, preserve? Within them, the history of the relationship so that the characteristics of speech gesture preserved in can be found. the musical gesture present a relationship that appears for

MARK SULLIVAN 168 15. Musical Gesture and Linguistic Gesture The Gesture of Breaking Off

The chorales of J.S. Bach’s Saint Mathew’s Passion preserve the characteristics of the linguistic gesture of reading something aloud. They are oriented, not to the prayer, but to the behavior of the praying person — specifically, to a group of people reading, or reciting, a text out loud. The contours of the highest placed voice preserve those that would be used by someone speaking the text.

Er ken ne mich, mein Hu ter

Not: Er ken ne mich, mein Hu ter

Not: Er ken ne mich, mein Hu ter

The other three voices do not preserve this contour. Nor is the tempo of speech preserved. The tempo is that which would be used by a group of people reading or reciting together. In the highest placed voice, the placement of peaks in the contour of pitches gives emphasis to those words that would be deemed important by a person reading or reciting the prayer. Not so in all the other voices. Within the highest placed voice, each syllable is generally sung to a single pitch (three exceptions in each of the first four chorales, six in the fifth, as compared to a range from eight to eleven in the other three voices). In spite of the deviations of the other three voices, the musical gesture of the highest placed voice overrides them, and the gesture of the whole preserves that of the linguistic gesture. The final chord of the last chorale which occurs after the text has mentioned that Jesus has died, is a dominant chord without resolution and thus a musical gesture wherein the gesture of a reader is preserved who stops reading without making an end — a musical gesture which preserves the linguistic gesture of breaking off.

Wenn ich ein mal soll schei den, so schei de nicht von mir! Wenn ich den Tod soll lei den, so tritt du dann her für!

8 Wenn ich ein mal soll schei den, so schei de nicht von mir! Wenn ich den Tod soll lei den, so tritt du dann her für!

Wenn mir am al ler bäng sten wird um das Her ze sein, so

8 Wenn mir am al ler bäng sten wird um das Her ze sein, so

reiß mich aus den Äng sten kraft dei ner Angst und Pein!

8 reiß mich aus den Äng sten kraft dei ner Angst und Pein!

MARK SULLIVAN 169 15. Musical Gesture and Linguistic Gesture The Gesture of A Propulsive Sputter

In two parts of Bartolo’s song ’The Vendetta’ in The Marriage of Figaro, Mozart has preserved the characteristics of the linguistic gesture of a propulsive sputter. The configuration is marked by a rebounding through a string of alternating pitches (in the first) and a string of repeating pitches (in the second).

The first string compresses into its rebounding pulse parts of the text that before were said separated from one another by ) and two intervals (the octave and the minor second)).

MARK SULLIVAN 170 15. Musical Gesture and Linguistic Gesture The first time the text is sung, the rebound clings to two pitches; the second time, when it is repeated in its entirety, the rebounding pulse moves through a melodic sequence. Each configuration is marked by a propulsive rebounding effect created by the repeating attacks on each pitch (two attacks per note in the first configuration, three attacks per note in the second). Each word becomes just so many pulsed syllables rebounding through the repetition of pitches in the sequence. The effect, dramatically, is that of a speaker seduced by the drive of a pulse into ignoring the way it robs what he is saying of the emphasis it requires to have an impact.

Gesture As An Attack

In Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg¨ , one character, as is well known, was constructed to represent the critic. Beckmesser, while marking Walter’s song, sings about how a song should be made, or rather the faults he finds in Walter’s song imply what he thinks a song should be. He uses phrases that can be rendered in English as “(the song) defied the laws of metric accent,” “too short, too long, never an end,” “not one full stop, no coloratura, and not a trace of melody,” “here, the breath’s ill-managed; there, a sudden start,” “completely incomprehensible melody,” “a brew mixed from all tunes,” “faulty verse,” “clipped syllables,” “rhymes in false places,” “a patchwork song between the verses.” The text of Beckmesser’s marking ensures that what Wagner wanted to attack with the composition was in the composition, and could be recognized as the object of the attack. Wagner even went so far as to preserve — in the contour of Beckmesser’s melodic phrases — the peaks that mark the phrases with the linguistic gestures of indignation that might have been used by a critic wielding those phrases.

MARK SULLIVAN 171 15. Musical Gesture and Linguistic Gesture MARK SULLIVAN 172 15. Musical Gesture and Linguistic Gesture Later in the composition, in Beckmesser’s song, Wagner has composed a musical satire of the rules and practices that Beckmesser used to judge Walter’s song. In the song, Wagner composed those linguistic gestures, those musical gestures that would show in music Wagner’s image of the affirmative practices he bitterly opposed: In the song, he composed the musical and linguistic gestures of awkward pomp and elevated clumsiness, he made gestures of the utterly predictable rhyme and the endless melodic sequence, he made a gesture of the inanely repeated ornament, and even, by way of the lute, poked at the gestures of folksy accompaniment. The commentary which would explain the faults in Beckmesser’s song marked by Sach’s tapping with the hammer, he leaves to the listener. Perhaps to make the point unmistakeably clear, that the requirements of the composer’s idea determine what is appro- priate for song, Wagner has a finale follow Beckmesser’s song that takes as its subject something which Beckmesser’s rules would utterly condemn: In the finale, the musical and linguistic gestures preserve the characteristics of a situa- tion in which the dissemination of gossip relentlessly lashes a crowd into an uproar. The accumulation of musical and linguistic gestures contribute to the composed gesture of the whole finale: the gesture of a riot.

MARK SULLIVAN 173 15. Musical Gesture and Linguistic Gesture MARK SULLIVAN 174 15. Musical Gesture and Linguistic Gesture MARK SULLIVAN 175 15. Musical Gesture and Linguistic Gesture MARK SULLIVAN 176 15. Musical Gesture and Linguistic Gesture The Gesture of Calling a Name

In the first of the Chanson Madecasses, Ravel composed musical gestures that mark the passing of time with the repeated calling of a name.

Andante quasi allegretto

Piu animato

Piu Lento

Andante quasi allegretto

= 138

a Tempo (Andante)

Each time the name returns, the musical gesture preserves the characteristics of another linguistic gesture: the first is simply that of saying a word, and then, in succession, the linguistic gesture of an impatient sigh, of something said in affectionate homage, of exasperating expectation, of a tenderly asked question, of a directed address, and of an anticipating reflection.

The Gesture of a Grumbling Pout

In the opening part of L’Enfant et les Sortileges, Ravel creates a musical gesture that preserves characteristics of both a linguistic gesture and another musical gesture, and thereby articulates in music an ironic critique of exoticism. The composition begins with a deliberately simple tune, a fake oriental tune. It is of the sort that any listener of his day would have recognized and understood as a reference to the music of places considered to have an exotic charm. what

MARK SULLIVAN 177 15. Musical Gesture and Linguistic Gesture placid song does this pseudo-exotic music introduce? The pouting grumbling of a boy who does not want to do his lessons, a boy who would rather go for a walk, eat up all the cakes, and pull the cat’s tail. The linguistic gesture of the grumbling pout is preserved in the musical gesture of the fake exotic tune. Through the coupling of the musical gesture with the preserved characteristics of the linguistic gesture, Ravel brings the listener into a confrontation with the associations attached to music considered exotic.

MARK SULLIVAN 178 15. Musical Gesture and Linguistic Gesture Later in the composition, in the Clock’s song, Ravel preserves some characteristics of the linguistic and musical gestures of the pop singer and of the pop song. The clock’s predicament is paralleled to that of the music which clings to its beat, unable to tear itself away for long from the pressing task of pounding out the beat. The Clock complains that since the boy has broken it, it can do nothing but go off again and again — a comment on the gestures of the pop music. Through his choice of musical gesture, Ravel allows the text to become a commentary, not only on the Clock’s own condition, but also on the condition of the music whose gestures house the singing of the text.

MARK SULLIVAN 179 15. Musical Gesture and Linguistic Gesture 16. Movement, Speech and Musical match. Gesture The memory elicited is not only, if necessarily at least to some extent, the memory of an event in movement In discourse, movement gestures and linguistic gestures or in speech triggered by the presence of its preserved interact. They modify one another, jointly establishing characteristics (at some time it became a musical gesture limits on the interpretations available to a respondent. by preserving characteristics of speech or movement). It Theater makes a medium of the interactions of this duo. must also carry some preserved trace of the way some- Opera introducesmusic into the interaction — both in the thing happens in a musical event. form of the singing voice and in the form of instrumen- tal music — and makes a medium of the interacting trio. Thus, there is a difference between a theatrical gesture 18. Musical Gesture, Now and an operatic gesture. They preserve characteristics that come from events in Gesture emerges between source and decay. in music, other media in two distinct media: A theatrical gesture gesture plays its roles before the desire for detail has preserves characteristics of events from other media in arisen and after the desire has been turned into a fulfill- a medium that emphasizes relationships between move- ment: The sources of gesture are to be sought in the time ment and speech; an operatic gesture preserves character- before it can play any role at all; its decay can be found istics of events from other media in a medium that em- in the time in which it no longer seems to play any role phasizes relationships between movement, speech, and whatsoever. music. Both the theatrical gesture and the operatic ges- Between source and decay, a gesture has its history, and ture can loan distinctions to musical gesture. its history is interconnected with the history of response. In some musical contexts, the listener detects a counter- Until it decays, a gesture helps the composer to elicit de- point of gesture in the music that is analog to the coun- sired and prevent undesired responses. terpoint created between speech and movement gestures. In the historical development of the systems of tonality A movement gesture, or a sequence of movement ges- and periodic rhythm, some gestures came to seem like tures that modify one another, sometimes prepares the they belonged to the system, that is, they did not have to field of significance for an utterance that follows — lim- be created by the composer. Not only these systems, but iting it in advance. Sometimes a movement gesture, the gestures that had been created in the systems, reached retroactively, shifts the significance of something that’s their point of decay. just been said — it does not take back meanings but The idea of parameters was introduced to composition in takes away some interpretations of what came before it. an attempt to construct a framework in which the com- Linguistic gesture also has its ways of modifying the poser could take decisions. The framework was set up so significance of movement gestures which preceded the that composers could avoid creating structures that were utterance and of preparing the field of significance for helplessly delivered to tonality and periodicity and the movementgestures, or a sequence of movementgestures, gestures which these two bad made their own. which follow the utterance. The parametric approach separated musical events into Both linguistic and movement gestures can interrupt one parameters for the purpose of taking decisions. The most another, attaching limits to the significance that contin- powerfulattack directed at this deliberately stipulated ap- ues to unfold as the interrupted gesture completes itself. proach to decision-taking was not an attack on the ap- proach but an attack on an argument that had been at- tached to the approach. This attack was based on the 17. Musical Gesture and Musical readily-observable fact that, in a performance, one pa- rameter could never be separated from any of the other Gesture parameters. The parametric approach, an approach de- veloped to organize the context in which the composer A composer may create a new musical gesture by pre- made decisions, was attacked as if it had been developed serving some characteristics of an existing gesture in a to describe the results generated by the decisions taken, new musical configuration. In this case, the listener’s as if it had argued that parameters were perceptual facts interpretations are limited by distinctions on loan from that were separated from one another. another musical event. Two tendencies developed in the works of composers The new musical gesture elicits a memory that it doesn’t who adopted the parametric approach, by composers

MARK SULLIVAN 180 18. Musical Gesture, Now who shared the desire to leave tonality and periodicity: tempts that would rather eliminate gesture than see its one tendency, roughly, became an attempt to escape all power contribute to change. gesture, and the other became an attempt to create new gestures, non- affirmative gestures. Both of these tenden- cies emerged in opposition to the overwhelmingly dom- Selected Bibliography inant tendency then, and ever more so now, namely, that of affirming what has already been created. Those who Movement and Gesture attempted to create new gestures, by using the parametric approach to composition, were accused by composers of Austin, Gilbert. Chironomia or a Treatise on Rhetorical Delivery. the other tendency, of abandoning tonality and periodic- Comprehending Many Precepts, Both Ancient and Modern, For the Proper Regulation of the voice, the Countenance. and Ges- ity, but not its gestures. The only way out, they accus- ture, Together With an Investigation of the Elements of Ges- ingly proposed, was to eliminate gesture. tures and a New Method for the Notation Thereof: Illustrated by May Figures. (1806). Carbondale: Southern Illinois Uni- The attempt to escape a history of response, that is, the versity Press, (Reprinted) 1966. attempt to eliminate gesture, wound up affirming what- Birdwhistell, Ray L. Kinesics and Context: Essays on Body-Motion ever prevented response, and thus, left the making of the Communication. Middlesex, England: Allan Lane, The Pen- history of response, insofar as this was connected with guin Press, 1971. “Kinesics,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. vol. the history of gesture, to those who would eliminate its VIII, Collier-Macmillan, 1972; Macmillan, New York and Free historical aspect through affirmative practices that are Press, Glencoe, 1968, pp. 379–85. limited to reproduction. The impasse reached by com- Bouissac, Paul. La Mesure des gestes Prolgomenes a la semiotigue posers who neither wanted to eliminate gestures, nor re- gestuelle. The Hague, Paris: Mouton, 1973. Dejorio, A. La Mimica Degli Antichi Investigata Nel Gestire Napo- produce them, was concerned with the problem of creat- lentana. Napoli, 1832. ing gestures that would limit the response in an unprece- Eshkol, Noa and Wachman, Abraham. Movement Notation. London: dented way while maintaining the parametric approach Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1958. Gaburo, Kenneth. Privacy Two: . . . My My My What A Wonderful — an approach designed to avoid tonality, periodicity Fall. . . , Ramona: Lingua Press, 1976. and their gestures but not to create intended gestures. Hewes, Gordon A. “World Distribution of Certain Postural Habits,” With regard to gesture, the impasse implies the neces- American Anthropologist. vol. 57, No. 2, Part 1. April 1955, sity of shift from one framework in which decisions are pp. 231–244. Kordick, Elizabeth Ann. “Pointing and the Acquisition of Language,” taken to another: a shift from a concentration on single Ph.D. Thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, parameters to a concentration on configurations. 1975. Kristeva, Julia. “Gesture: Practice or Communication,” In The Body An approach which organizes the context in which the Reader: Social Aspects of the Human Body. Ed. Ted Polhemus composer takes decisions that bear on configurations, (in association with the institute of Contemporary Arts, Lon- takes gesture to be part of the listener’s understanding don),. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. response and not a mere perceptual fact. I am not join- Motyka, Susan. “The Art of the False Move,” Allosh. Ramona: Lin- gua Press, 1980, pp. 365–369. ing the attack on parametric approach. It was not insuf- Quintillian. Institutio Oratio. Trans. H.E. Butler. London: William ficient, but sufficient. It made no provisions for treat- Heinemann, 1961. ing configurations, and thus, was designed to help avoid Wundt, Wilhelm. The Language of Gestures. Trans. by J.S. Thayer, the gestures of tonality and periodicity, but not to help C.M. Greenleaf, and M.D. Silberman (Indiana University). The Hague, Paris: Mouton, 1973. create desired gestures. If an approach would take the parametric approach as one of its points of departure, but would make the dynamics of configuration the point of Linguistic gesture orientation of the decision-taking process, this might be Crystal, David. The English Tone of Voice. London, England: Edward one way out of the impasse in which the parametric ap- Arnold, 1975. proach finds itself, a way that does force a return to the Crystal, David and Davy, Derek. Investigating English Style. Bloom- gestures of tonality and periodicity, gestures that by now ington and London: Indiana University Press, 1969. have only contempt for the composer. The conscious and Crystal, David and Quirk, Randolph. Systems of Prosodic and Paral- inquistic Features in English. London, Paris, The Hague: Mou- deliberate creation of configurations, of a hybrid medium ton and Co., 1964. that preserves distinctions on loan, would become part of Feldman, Sandor S. Mannerisms of Speech and Gestures in Everyday the socially concerned behavior of the composer who re- Life. New York: International Universities Press, Inc., 1959. fuses to affirm things the way they are, such a shift of Jakobson, Roman. Six Lectures on Sound and Meaning. Trans. John Mepham. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: approach would allow the composer to stand in direct The MIT Press, 1978. opposition to all attempts to limit the power of gesture “Language in Relation to Other Communication Systems.” Lec- to the affirmation of things the way they are, and would, ture delivered in Milan at the International Symposium “Lan- at the same time, allow the composer to oppose all at- guages in Society and in Technique,” 1968. (typewritten)

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MARK SULLIVAN 182 Selected Bibliography Schnebel, Dieter. ”Studien zur Dynamik Arnold Schonbergs.” Dis- Musical Realism). Musik-Konzepte 10/Guiseppe Verdi. Octo- sertation, Tubingen, 1955. ber, 1979, pp. 51–111. ”Auf der Suche nach der befreiten Zeit/ Erster Versuch Schonberg, Arnold. Style and Idea. Ed. Leonard Stein. Trans. Leo Uber Schubert.” (On the Lookout for Freed Time). Musik- Black. New York: St. Martins Press, 1975. Konzepte/Sondetband: Franz Schubert. December 1979, pp. Winold, Allen. ”Rhythm in Twentieth-Century Music,” in Aspects of 69–88. Twentieth-Century Music. Ed. Gary E. Wittlich. Englewood ”Klanraume — Zeitklange/Zweiter Versuch ¨uber Schubert.” Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1975. (Soundspace — Sounds of Time). Musik-Konzepte: Sonder- band/Schubert. December, 1979, pp. 89–106. ”Das spate Neue/Versuch uber Janaceks Werke von 1918–1928.” General Musik-Konzepte: Leos Janacek. ”Die schwierige Wahrheit des Lebens — zu Verdis musikalis- Beishon, John. ”Learning About Systems,” Cybernetics and Systems: chem Realismus.” (The Difficult Truth of Life — about Verdi’s An International Journal, Volume 11, 1980, p. 297–316.

MARK SULLIVAN 183 Selected Bibliography