“Dyin’ ain’t much of a livin’ ”: The Ethics of Rebellion in The Outlaw Josey Wales Erika Behrisch Elce Royal Military College of Canada lint eastwood’s role as the sympathetic outlaw Josey Wales (1976) Cpresents students in my first-year literature classes at the Royal Military College of Canada with an ethical conundrum. The film and its epony- mous hero underscore the slippery nature of morality in a time of war as well as the ethics of rebellion. The film dramatizes a scenario that may well become reality for some rmcc cadets, all of whom have dedicated at least a portion of their professional lives to upholding national values in a military context and have committed themselves to being potentially “lawfully ordered into harm’s way under conditions that could lead to the loss of their lives” against people who might be much like Wales himself: disenfranchised, dispossessed, angry, and armed (Duty 26). In the film, Wales fights his nation’s government; in the present day, my students have taken an oath to defend theirs, and yet Wales’s antistatism is understand- able, even admirable. This tension between personal and professional loyalties lies at the centre of student discussions of the film: How can Wales be a sympathetic character while defying the very system rmcc’s officer cadets represent? Many critics have described The Outlaw Josey Wales as exclusively antistatist, particularly in its connection with the novel that inspired it: ESC 42.3–4 (September/December 2016): 65–79 “arch segregationist” Forrest (Asa) Carter’s 1972 Gone to Texas is just one book in a series of fictional works that acted as platforms for Carter’s consistent and “vehement political criticism” (Clayton 20, 21). Carter’s Erika Behrisch Elce true identity as a white supremacist was allegedly unknown “until just is an Associate Professor after the film was released,” but nevertheless the film, like the book, on in the Department of one level “portrays a valorized image of the victimized white American English at the Royal who wreaks havoc on an authoritarian state” (Lowndes 239, 238). Certainly, Military College of Wales spends most of the film evading capture by Union forces, and his Canada. She specializes several escapes from both Union and state-sponsored bounty hunters in nineteenth-century support this antistatist interpretation, implying as they do that happiness literature and culture (and indeed, life) is achievable only beyond state jurisdiction. “Antistatist” but also teaches in the may describe a significant part of the film’s social comment, but not all of common core program it; I would argue instead that, even in its hostility to the imposition of an for all Officer Cadets organized state, the film is still decisively positive about the practice of (the courses in which ethical government. The film’s portrayal of Wales at the centre of a new she includes The Outlaw community—the Crooked River Ranch at Santa Rio—shows that he is not Josey Wales). Her current an anarchist but that he envisions and practises a style of governance that sshrc-funded project is simply (but profoundly) different from the destructive national policy deals with Victorian he experiences at the hands of postwar Unionists. exploration, the British Two philosophical positions enrich our classroom discussion of Wales’s Admiralty, and networks moral standing by offering alternative perspectives on how to view his of influence. profoundly antisocial behaviour, showing it to be, although officially rebel- lious, deeply ethical. The first is the Canadian professional military ethos as articulated in Duty with Honour: The Profession of Arms in Canada (2003), a manual that all members of the Canadian Forces, including my students, are required to read and by which they must abide. Duty with Honour calls attention to the necessary direct correlation between national values and military action; officers and non-commissioned members alike “are dedicated to the national values of the country they are sworn to defend,” values grounded in democracy and the rule of law (Duty 21). The government portrayed in Josey Wales, however, represents the destruction of the family unit, and, in rebelling against a system that destroys both his home and his livelihood, Wales does only what is necessary to ensure his own survival and that of others who eventually find themselves under his care. In this context, The Outlaw Josey Wales belongs to a rich tradition of ethical antistatism from Robin Hood to The Hunger Games, in which lone characters take on a hostile state in order to improve the lives of others. Wales’s experience of government as a dehumanizing force (even after the war it continues to hunt him down) leads to the second philosophical entry point, namely Emmanuel Levinas’s notion of the suprapolitical pri- 66 | Behrisch Elce macy of individual relationships. According to Levinas, responsibility for the other beyond ties of genetic or political affinity—in other words, for a neutral other Levinas terms “the neighbor”—exists prior to and beyond any externally imposed social order: “the neighbor concerns me before all assumption, all commitment consented to or refused. I am bound to him” (87). Wales the guerilla is a profoundly antisocial character, initially rejecting—and indeed actively destroying—moments of human contact. Wales’s irascibility is understandable, given that most of the characters he encounters see him as an enemy or a prize, and he responds to their advances by isolating himself, both with his gun and his temperament. In spite of himself, however, Wales is eventually re-humanized by his reluctant association with and sense of obligation toward others he sees as more vulnerable than himself. As Levinas admits, “nothing is more burdensome than a neighbor” for the obligation he places one under, but it is this burden “to-be-for-another” that brings out one’s humanity (88, 56). Roger Burrgraeve’s assertion that “the epiphany of the face opens humanity” becomes true for Wales, who responds to the vulnerability of others by putting himself at risk to help them even when it is clearly not in his best interest (82). As Wales struggles to disappear into the Texas wilderness and escape detection, the visibility—and vulnerability—of the non-combatants around him compel his return to the social world in their defence. Wales thus subordinates his rebellion against the national political system to his sense of individual responsibility for others, thereby taking essentially a Levinasian approach to social policy. Recognizing the inherent tyranny of a superimposed social order, Wales negotiates on an individual level for the safety of his community, an action which further suggests a Levinasian understanding that the only possibility for a collec- tive future lies in accepting both “[r]esponsibility for the other [and the suprapolitical primacy of] human fraternity itself” (Levinas 116). Laurence Knapp approaches this argument with his statement that the film offers “an argument for diversity and a culture built on human rather than legal principles,” but I would make a distinction from Knapp in his description of the Crooked River Ranch as a “melting pot” (83). For Levinas, to over- look “the uniqueness of the other” is to invite social violence, precisely what Wales and his companions struggle to avoid (Burrgraeve 83). Wales’s rebellion is necessary in order to build a community that is both “human and humane,” one that keeps room for “pity, compassion, pardon and prox- imity”: the political rebel is the social hero (Burrgraeve 96; Levinas 117). “Dyin’ ain’t much of a livin’ ” | 67 A reluctant rebel At first glance, Wales is not an easy hero to champion: his status as an Wales is an armed, angry, white American male fighting on the Confederate side of the Civil War makes him someone a viewer might not consider as particularly insurgent on in need of much sympathy. The film, however, allows for a distinction to be made between what Wales and what the South respectively represent. two levels. Wales homesteads in the Missouri bush, but even in the first moments of the film it is clear he is not a Confederate ideologue: his newness is appar- ent in his accent, and his poverty is in his clothes, the size of his plot, and the effort he puts into shouldering his own plough while his young son picks rocks from the field. He carries no gun. More significant than this, I think, is his utter dislocation from the politics that swirl around him: Wales works his farm in an easy silence, and when the posse of Kansas “Red Leg” guerilla scouts thunders past him on the way to burning his home and killing his family, Wales first looks to the clear blue sky, confused by the sound of what he thinks is a coming storm. Only when he sees the billowing smoke from his house does he understand the danger. In this sense, I would argue that Wales is shown to be apolitical: by coincidence of geography, he happens to be a Southerner, but the evidence suggests he is no Confederate. Moreover, immediately after this tragedy Wales does not become the “cold-blooded killer … on the side of Satan” some believe he is; after burying his wife and child, he arms himself but stays on his burned-out farm, suggesting, in fact, that his priority is defence rather than offence (Outlaw). Only when a group of Missouri guerrillas chance upon him sitting by his family’s grave does he join the battle, and this with a noncommittal shrug: “Guess I’ll be comin’ with you, then” (Outlaw). In the film’s staging of this scene, he is not a rebel with purpose; he simply has nowhere else to go.