AtDDtA(15): The Practice of Boys Informing on other Boys

[Dave Monroe]

   "The practice of boys informing on other boys, regarded with horror
at more traditional institutions, had at the Marching Harmonica Band
Academy come to command a curious respect even from those who were apt
to suffer from it most...." (AtD, Pt. II, pp. 420-1)


"The prcatice of boys informing on other boys"

Vs. (?) ...

"In the trenches of the First World War, English men came to love one
another decently, without shame or make-believe , under the easy
likelihoods of their sudden deaths, and to find in the faces of other
young men evidence of otherworldly visits, some poor hope that may
have helped redeem even mud, shit, the decaying pieces of human meat.
. . . It was the end of the world, it was total revolution (though not
quite in the way Walter Rathenau had announced): every day thousands
of the aristocracy new and old, still haloed in their ideas of right
and wrong, went to the loud guillotine of Flanders, run day in and
out, on and on, by no visible hands, certainly not those of the
people—an English class was being decimated, the ones who'd
volunteered were dying for those who'd known something and hadn't, and
despite it all, despite knowing, some of them, of the betrayal, while
Europe died meanly in its own wastes, men loved.  But the life-cry of
that love has long since hissed away into no more than this idle and
bitchy faggotry. In this latest War, death was no enemy, but a
collaborator. Homosexuality in high places is just a carnal
afterthought now, and the real and only fucking is done on paper. . .
." (GR, Pt. III, p. 616)


"'Squealer'"

Main Entry: squeal
Pronunciation: 'skwEl
Function: verb
Etymology: Middle English squelen, of imitative origin
intransitive verb
1 : to make a shrill cry or noise
2 a : to turn informer <squeal to the police> b : COMPLAIN, PROTEST
transitive verb
1 : to express with or as if with a squeal
2 : to cause to make a loud shrill noise <squealing the tires>
- squeal·er noun

http://m-w.com/dictionary/squealer


"a curious respect," "a considerable popularity," "more energy,"
"exempt as well from the unannounced punishments," "suffering less
anxiety, slept better" ...

G.W.F. Hegel, "Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness:
Lordship and Bondage," The Phenomenology of Mind (1807)

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phba.htm

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/index.htm

The Master-Slave dialectic (Herrschaft und Knechtschaft in German) is
a key element in Hegel's philosophy. It is a story or myth created by
Hegel in order to explain his idea of how self-consciousness
dialectically sublates into what he variously refers to as Absolute
Knowledge, Spirit, and Science. It is presented in his magnum opus,
Phenomenology of Spirit. It is also known as the dialectic of
"Lordship and Bondage", with the name Master-Slave having evolved from
a different translation....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master-slave_dialectic

The Master-Slave dialectic is a process described by G W F Hegel in
the early 19th century, in which the unmediated contact between two
subjects leads to the subordination of one subject by the other. This
concept has been used to theorise forms of oppression such as
colonisation and patriarchy and the struggle against this
subordination, known as the "struggle for recognition."

[...]

Modern society arises through the slave-subject raising itself up and
overcoming the "stoic acceptance" of their enslavement, while the
master-subject is "dissatisfied" by the worthlessness of recognition
by the slave, desiring recognition from a subject like themselves.
Crucial to this process, is that the slave actually produces the
master's needs, whereas the master's culture is reproduced only thanks
to the labour of the slave. This turns the tables on the master, and
ushers in modern society in which all citizens have rights and the
state comes to be an expression of the will of the people as a whole,
not just the aristocracy, who remain, accoridng to Hegel, the ruling
elite.

http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/m/a.htm

Master-slave morality is the theme of some of Friedrich Nietzsche's
works, in particular the first essay of On the Genealogy of Morality.
Nietzsche argued that there were two fundamental types of morality:
'Master morality' and 'slave morality'. Master morality fits actions
into a scale of good or bad whereas slave morality fits actions into a
scale of good or evil. What Nietzsche meant by 'morality' deviates
from common understanding of this term. Fundamental morality, for
Nietzsche, imbibes and delineates a whole world-view; it is formative
of a particular culture at its very root. This means that its
language, codes and practises, its narratives and institutions -
basically the very structures of intelligibility that underpin Western
culture as such - are informed by the struggle between these two types
of evaluation.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master-slave_morality

And see as well, e.g., ...

http://academics.triton.edu/uc/nietzsche.html

http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/IDEOLOGY.html#Nietzsche

http://www.wsu.edu/~tcook/doc/NietzscheMasterVsSlaveMorality.htm

C.L.R. James, "From the Master-Slave Dialectic to Revolt in Capitalist
Production" (1946)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1946/master-slave.htm

Hegel's master-slave trope, and particularly the emphasis laid on
recognition, has been of crucial influence on Frantz Fanon's
description of the colonial relation in Black Skin, White Masks....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master-slave_dialectic#Influence_of_the_master-slave_dialectic

According to Hegel, the "master" is a "consciousness" that defines
itself only in mutual relation to the slave's consciousness-a process
of mediation and mutual interdependence. "The consciousness
for-the-Master is not an independent but a dependent, consciousness,"
Hegel explains in Phenomenology of Spirit. "Thus he is not certain of
existence-for-self as the truth; rather, his truth is the inessential
consciousness and the inessential action of the latter [the slave]".
In other words, according to Hegel, both master and slave "recognize"
their own existence only in relation or "reconciliation" of the other.
Among the many implications of the master-slave dialectic, then, is
the idea of there being a reciprocity or mutual dependence between
master and slave rather than a blanket opposition of dominance to
subordination. The slave ironically shares in the master's power
because the master defines himself only in opposition to the slave;
that is, the master needs the slave in order to legitimate his
comparative privilege.

French philosopher Franz Fanon, on the other hand, takes issue with
the problems Hegel's master-slave dialectic encounters in its
translation into a post-colonial context. In the passage below from
Black Skin White Masks (1967), Fanon revises the dialectic to suggest
that it underestimates the white master's dominance over black slaves
in Africa and Europe:

    I hope I have shown that here the master differs basically from
the master described by Hegel. For Hegel there is reciprocity; here
the master laughs at the consciousness of the slave. What he wants
from the slave is not recognition but work....

http://www.thecore.nus.edu.sg/post/sa/gordimer/july6.html

"A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is
nothing to compare it to now.
    "It is too late." [GR, Pt. I, p. 3]

"The explosion will not happen today. It is too soon... or too late."
The opening sentences of Frantz Fanon's "Black Skin, White Masks",
first published in English in 1968.

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9905&msg=37825

... selected selections from Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon
(Trans. Chris Lam Markham.  New York: Grove Press, 1967 [1952]) ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0008&msg=48748

Thanks again (and again and ...), Thomas ...