Essays on the Humanities and the Arts

THE TOWNSEND PAPERS IN THE HUMANITIES No. 4 Critical Views: Essays on the Humanities and the Arts Kwame Anthony Appiah J. M. Coetzee Arthur Danto Mike Davis Anthony Grafton Seamus Heaney Michael Ignatieff Ivan Klíma Maya Lin Kenzaburō Ōe Michael Pollan Sebastião Salgado Peter Sellars Maurice Sendak Edited by Teresa Stojkov Critical Views: Essays on the Humanities and the Arts THE TOWNSEND PAPERS IN THE HUMANITIES No. 4 Critical Views: Essays on the Humanities and the Arts Published by The Townsend Center for the Humanities University of California | Berkeley Distributed by University of California Press Berkeley, Los Angeles, London | 2011 Copyright ©2011 The Regents of the University of California ISBN 978-0-9823294-3-6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Critical views : essays on the humanities and the arts / editor, Teresa Stojkov. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (Townsend papers in the humanities ; v. IV) ISBN 978-0-9823294-3-6 1. Arts. 2. Humanities. I. Stojkov, Teresa R. II. Title: Essays on the humanities and the arts. NX60.C75 2012 001.3 — dc23 2011042478 Inquiries concerning proposals for the Townsend Papers in the Humanities from Berkeley faculty and Townsend Center affiliates should be addressed to The Townsend Papers, 220 Stephens Hall, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720- 2340, or by email to [email protected]. Design and typesetting: www.mattinglydesign.com Manufactured in the United States of America Photo credits appear on page 344. Table of Contents Preface Teresa Stojkov 7 Part I: Lectures Identity Against Culture Kwame Anthony Appiah 15 Getting Real: The Arts in Post-NEA America Peter Sellars 53 Golden Ruins / Dark Raptures: The Literary Destruction of Los Angeles Mike Davis 77 The Work of Art and the Historical Future Arthur Danto 99 Living in Fiction and History Ivan Klíma 118 Berlin in Autumn: The Philosopher in Old Age Michael Ignatieff 136 The Novel in Africa J. M. Coetzee 151 From the Beginning to the Present, and Facing the End: The Case of One Japanese Writer Kenzaburō Ōe 172 Traditions of Conversion: Descartes and His Demon Anthony Grafton 193 Cannabis, Forgetting, and the Botany of Desire Michael Pollan 221 Part II: Dialogues Grounds for Remembering Maya Lin with Thomas Laqueur, Andrew Barshay, Stephen Greenblatt, and Stanley Saitowitz 247 They Know Everything: Children and Suffering Maurice Sendak with Herbert Schreier 289 Sounding Lines: The Art of Translating Poetry Seamus Heaney with Robert Hass 302 Migrations Sebastião Salgado with Orville Schell 321 Preface THIS VOLUME of the Townsend Papers in the Humanities commem- orates the twenty-fifth year of the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities at the University of California, Berkeley. As such, the volume is an attempt to capture the breadth and depth of lectures and events presented by the center, many of which were documented in the center’s Occasional Papers series between 1994 and 2002. In all, twenty-seven Occasional Papers were published under the editorship of Christina Gillis (Associate Director, 1988–2004). While this represents just a fraction of the activity in the humanities at Berkeley in the past quarter-century, the chal- lenge of making a limited selection from the previously published material was no less daunting. We present here fourteen offerings. Many are revised versions of lectures and presentations organized in connection with the annual appointment of the Avenali Professor in the Humanities at Berkeley (generously funded by Joan and Peter Avenali), or Berkeley’s Una’s Lecturer (endowed in the memory of Una Smith Ross, Class of 1911); several are based on other events presented by the center over the years, such as the “Humanities Perspectives on Aging” program or the “Futures” lecture series organized to com- memorate the center’s tenth anniversary. All are the reflection of a Preface 7 public event before a live audience. We have chosen to retain refer- ences to the live event where they occur, though space limitations would not permit the inclusion of audience questions. Part 1 reproduces ten cohesive lectures in chronological order of original publication, beginning with “Identity Against Culture,” Kwame Anthony Appiah’s 1994 examination of multiculturalism. Appiah questions the possibilities of maintaining a pluralistic culture of many identities and subcultures while retaining the civil and political practices that sustain national life. Opera and theater director Peter Sellars follows with his thoughts on art and inspiration in a world without government funding; his 1997 vi- sion of an artistic engagement that can proceed with or without the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is once again to the point in 2012, as the NEA is threatened with its biggest cut in sixteen years. Following on the heels of Sellars’s post-NEA America, Mike Davis analyzes apocalyptic Los Angeles as rendered in film and literature. In “Golden Ruins/Dark Raptures: The Literary Destruction of Los Angeles” he explores the underlying politics and recurring tropes of Los Angeles disaster fiction and ultimately identifies race — and racial fear — as that which best explains the genre. Arthur Danto continues with “The Work of Art and the Historical Future,” also presented in 1997. According to Danto, the contem- porary art world, as a model of a pluralistic society, has dissolved all barriers and boundaries and given rise to “unlimited lateral diversity.” One can no longer give art’s progression a narrative direction or form, leading to what Danto describes as the liberation of art beyond history. Czech writer Ivan Klíma, who has lived through many of the events that shaped midcentury Europe, states: “In modern Czech history there has been no shortage of great dramatic events. In such a situation it is difficult to write a novel and pass over these mo- ments.” While in residence in Berkeley in 1998, Klíma delivered the lecture included here, “Living in Fiction and History,” an inquiry 8 Teresa Stojkov into the relationship between these two different areas, especially in times of political turmoil. Taking the life and work of philosopher Isaiah Berlin as his subject, Michael Ignatieff muses on the relationship between philosophy and aging in “Berlin in Autumn: The Philosopher in Old Age,” and in doing so examines how that relationship may have contributed to Berlin’s equanimity at the end of his life. In “The Novel in Africa” J. M. Coetzee cleverly imbeds a lecture in a fiction — the tale of two emblematic characters, an Australian novelist and a Nigerian author, who are engaged by a cruise ship to present contrasting lectures on the novel, “The Future of the Novel” and “The Novel in Africa,” respectively. Kenzaburō Ōe asks a related question: “Will literature, specifi- cally the novel, hold its ground for the next hundred years until writers of the future … have their centennial celebrated?” Ōe’s “From the Beginning to the Present, and Facing the End: The Case of One Japanese Writer” chronicles the diverse influences in his own work and his development as a writer. Anthony Grafton returns to Western philosophy in his 1999 investigation of Descartes’s philosophical conversion from what was portrayed as doubtful belief to certain knowledge. Historian Randolph Starn, then Townsend Center director, noted at the time that Grafton’s investigation of Descartes “encourages us to look with eyebrows raised at the tales we tell about how Western philosophy and science came to be modern.” Michael Pollan first posed the question, “Just what is the knowledge held out by a plant such as cannabis?” in his best-selling book, The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World. His 2002 lecture “Cannabis, Forgetting, and the Botany of Desire” delves deeper into what has been learned about cannabis, the cannabinoid network, and memory since the book’s publication and raises provocative questions about our understanding of consciousness and drugs. Part 2 shifts registers to include several of the many dialogues and conversations organized by the Townsend Center. The first Preface 9 in this section, “Grounds for Remembering,” is the transcribed proceedings of a symposium on monuments and the act of me- morializing, organized in conjunction with the visit of architect Maya Lin in 1995. The symposium brought Lin into conversation with four Berkeley scholars, Thomas Laqueur (History), Andrew Barshay (History of Modern Japan), Stephen Greenblatt (English), and Stanley Saitowitz (Architecture). Collectively they discussed topics that include how a name relates to place and to memory, the artistic and technical issues of building, and the political nature of public spaces dedicated to mourning. Maurice Sendak, the author and illustrator of many beloved children’s books, was in residence at Berkeley in February 1996, an occasion that featured several panel discussions and conversations. In “They Know Everything: Children and Suffering,” Sendak and Dr. Herbert Schreier of Oakland’s Children’s Hospital discuss the durability of early childhood trauma from two different points of view. Both raise questions about the transformation of childhood suffering in art. “Sounding Lines: The Art of Translation” captures the lively exchange between Irish poet Seamus Heaney and Robert Hass, Poet Laureate of the United States (1995–97), both not only eminent poets but also assiduous translators. Heaney and Hass discuss ap- proaches to translation as well the variations of meaning generated in the act of translating a poem. The final piece in this volume reproduces Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado’s commentary on his monumental touring ex- hibit Migrations, which was presented at the Berkeley Art Museum in 2002. Salgado discusses his attempt to document the nearly epic displacement of the world’s people at the close of the twentieth century and engages in conversation with Orville Schell, former dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, on the broader topics of cynicism, hope, and the language of photography.

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