W.H Auden's The Unknown Citizen

Phillip Schumacher

W.H Auden’s The Unknown Citizen is representative of what a country would deem to be the “ideal citizen”. In the whole of this poem, the citizen remains nameless and is described through government statistics rather than by any distinctive personality traits. The citizen is , thereby, divorced from any semblance of individuality and his subjectivity is reduced and diminished to that of the domineering power structure. It seems that the individual only exists insofar as his actions are reported and in strict agreement with that of the community; the community , in this case, is not a collection of individuals but a power structure that determines the lives of these individuals in conformity to their standard of what makes “the good life”. 

The citizen acts only as an instrument, an irreplaceable cog to a machine, that is not vital to the system, but allows it to maintain momentum to continue moving; the state apparatus gives the citizen the illusion that they, indeed, have the freedom to choose, but what freedom is that when the choices are not provided, but imposed upon the citizen. The question W.H Auden poses at the end of the poem, “Was he free? Was he happy?” is not as absurd as we may think; we can make the argument that happiness and freedom may be irreconcilable goals to have, that we can only have one and not the other. This citizen may have been “happy” because the standards by which “happiness” is constituted has been pre-imposed unto him; there were no other life styles that can potentially act as a comparison nor is there an objective referent in which his goals can be guided toward. He was happy because the state provided the definition of happiness and the means to which he was to achieve it. However, was this citizen free? The state provided all that is necessary for this citizen to be happy, but left him without an identity, without human dimensions, and therefore, without freedom. Happiness and Freedom are incommensurable goals; to have one, we must inevitably give of that of the other.

The citizen not being identified could mean a number of things. It demonstrates that the lives of the average individuals are interchangeable with one another and are constituted only by their social function and how well they best serve the larger interests of their society. The average citizen remains nameless because they are , in effect, unable to produce real change; this position is much desired by the dominant power structures because it is through these “unknown citizens” that their authority is unquestionably preserved. The sole obligation that is required of this citizen is for him to maintain his actions in alignment with that of his community, whether it be through his work or holding the “proper opinions for the time of year” (line 14) ; this line shows how these proclaimed “proper opinions” are not fixed in meaning, but is an arbitrary variable that changes upon the whim of the state. It then seems that throughout this poem, this individual is able to remain the “model citizen” among the contradictory fluctuations of this state; the values that are used to describe him are not at all “universal” values nor are the claims being made “normative” in nature. What this may denote is that the citizen remains “unknown” because this ideal citizen does not materially exist and is bolstered to be an imaginary ideal by which people can strive toward and project their own fitting fantasies upon. 

 This citizen is a concept constructed for the purpose of artificially uniting individuals to serve for an abstract common goal of “justice” which is by no means of their own resolutions, but is imposed upon them by the state apparatus.  The political system that is portrayed in this poem seems to reflect capitalistic elements; capitalism is an economic state which focuses solely on profits, perpetuating the myth of this grand free market, and atomizing individuals; people are only seen as individuals insofar as they are able to aid in sustaining the current system; those dissenting voices who unable to do this are disenfranchised, or marginalized and  isolated unto the outskirts of the society where they too, will, be left without a voice. Both of these cases, the citizen seems to be left without freedom, whether it be the dissident who fights against these injustices or the citizen in this poem, who remains passive, who lives according to the standards that have been predetermined for him, whose definitions and categories whom he lives by have already been provided upon his entrance into society.

Further Reading: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/unknown-citizen

Maupassant's "The Necklace"

After the French Revolution of 1789, the Aristocracy fell but maintained the position as the authoritative model of emulation; the rising Bourgeoisie, too, inherited the tastes and trends of the Aristocrat and equated their abstract goal of enlightened “progress” with that of concrete social wealth. Although, class divisions continue to widen at an uneasy rate, the lower classes still maintained the hope of social mobility, even if it meant indulging in the illusion of wealth; it was as if appearance, ipso facto, was able to elicit truth-content. The 18th-19th Century was very much consumed by what is called the “Civilizing Process” which was largely contingent with class. Guy de Maupassant illustrates this especially well in his short story “The Necklace”, by portraying how objects initially thought to be under man’s manipulation were , in turn, being used against him; it’s not the objects, themselves, that have the power to subjugate, but it’s the powers that are invested in them which transpires in the realm of fantasy.

It’s by the process of reification that these products come to be disassociated from their producers and “assume an apparently autonomous existence” (Terry Eagleton) ; objects, ideologies, values, in lieu, are attributed to an alien force by which it is de-historicized and universalized insofar as it comes to be seen as “natural” and ultimately, outside the domain of human control.It was around this time, commodities started to become mass produced in factories; objects were no longer customly made by individuals but were created by detached and malnourished workers on an assembly line. People and their desires were, too, produced in the same fashion; in order to fulfill a certain set of bureaucratic needs and quotas, the masses had to be educated on what must be desired and consumed in order to tacitly further the interests of the ruling class.

It appears to me that Mathilde’s conception of freedom is indirectly correlated with her wealth, or lack thereof.The diamond necklace contained a certain sign value that is representative of luxury , status, and strictly exclusive to those who can afford it; the roses represents, from my perspective, a critique of the process of modernization, where nature is only appreciated insofar as it is instrumentally utilized for human gain which the rose cannot provide, because it is beauty in-itself and is free to everyone regardless of their class and wealth.

We find out in the end of the story that the necklace is not worth anything at all and was in “reality”, a cheap copy of a diamond necklace. How could this necklace be fake; did it not in her reality, give Mathilde the happiness she so desired that day, to the point, where she continues to reminisce upon that day as one of her greatest memories; even as she is working in order to pay off the ten year debt after losing the necklace, she reflects, “she sat down by the window and thought of that evening long ago, of the ball at which she had been so beautiful and so much admired” (Maupassant).

We actually don’t know whether this is true or not, but we do know that she projected her own feelings about the necklace unto herself; this necklace became coextensive with her own self-worth. This shows how ordinary objects become extremely powerful by the desires and emotions we attribute to it; it matters less the actual physical quality of the object but what they represent to the human imagination. The fantasies of these objects are shaped by one’s society which includes its means of production, its cultural input, and other environmental factors by which it seems that ordinary individuals don’t seem to have much control and tend to relinquish whatever freedom they may have for this sense of safety and comfort, which these commodities and objects are commercially advertised to provide.

Notes: From my interpretation of this short story: It is by material circumstance, that a person’s desires and goals are shaped accordingly; objects are no longer bought solely for functionality or use-value; this is what Marx calls “commodity fetishism” by which objects are socially endowed with mystical or transformative qualities dependent on its surplus or sign value. This brings us to the question of what properties of an object determine its sign value or market exchange rate or is it not really a matter of its physical makeup and concerns more with what is socially ascribed to the said object.

Stuart Hall & Identity

"Identity is not only a story, a narrative we tell ourselves; it is a set of stories that change with historical circumstances, and identity shifts with the way in which we think, hear and experience them. Far from only coming from the still small point of truth inside us, identities actually come from outside; they are the way in which we are recognized and then come to step into the place of the recognitions others give us. Without others there is no self, there is no self-recognition."

I watched the Stuart Hall Project a couple days ago. It had me thinking about my own identity, how it came to be that I have grown to disassociate myself from my cultural origins, to have disavowed any influence from East Asia. Being multi-racial, being a foreigner in your birth place, this desire to return to your roots, yet there being no specific roots by which you feel you are able to return to. As I grow into adulthood, my various notions of myself are seemingly incommensurable, i attempt to unify them by either erasing one or emphasizing others. Cultural identities aren’t some inherent feature by which your personhood is wholly representative of; identity in this way is an ongoing discourse, between one’s self and the world in which they exist. It is a truism that our perceptions of ourselves are largely shaped by how others perceive us; we don’t know our status in this society until the first time we are “othered”, and somehow after that point, we accommodate and shape our identity according to this system. I always had an unfortunate penchant for defining myself by my failures, by certain uncontrollable circumstances in which I took recourse to actions often regrettable, and the like. Stuart Hall spoke about cultural identities always being in a state of flux, in a state of being while simultaneously becoming  , never a finished product but in a dialogue, at the crossroads between the past, present, and the political.

Camus and Resistance

How is one to live authentically, to be autonomous and free in regards to the fulfillment of their respective goals and desires; Or is life, simply a matter of compromise in which the means and ends must be morally compatible in order for one to take action. During the German occupation of France and following the onslaught of World War II, these questions revived a new form of significance in the realm of moral thought. The other day I watched Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 film The Battle of Algiers , which recounts the Algerian struggle for national independence against the French enterprise of colonization.

The film does not evade the enacted violence on either side nor does its focus rests on a particular hero whom is intended upon being its chief representative; the movement, itself, was shown to have been shaped and executed by individuals and the multifarious ways by which they resisted and fought back. Although, the FLN (National Liberation Front) was orchestrating most of the attacks in the fifties, the film’s scene with one if its last surviving leaders Ali La Pointe and his family being physically blown up demonstrates that their lives or leadership was not the precarious foundation by which the whole movement assumedly rested upon, but there was a certain moral imperative and firm sense of solidarity interwoven into their collective identity that was not to be easily extricated. The Algerian-French writer Albert Camus, both a writer of the time during the French Resistance of Nazi Occupied France and during that of the ongoing Algerian Civil War, became preoccupied as to the moral responsibility each individual holds in these dire situations of choice and the absurd. 

There is a certain shift in the methods by which he confronts this anxiety whereas in his earlier books such as the Stranger or the Myth of Sisyphus, he focuses on solitary revolt but toward the end of this life, his resistance finds expression in human solidarity. Camus’ The Plague depicts the enemy of Totalitarianism in the guise of  a disease, something that does not take physical shape and cannot easily be distinguished; actually, it most-likely cannot be eradicated at all due to its ability to arise and accommodate itself to a wide-ranging systems of power; however, the fact that the plague disappears, does not mean the battle is over nor that all hope is to be suspended because of a potential outbreak or its reappearance. The subject’s freedom can be constituted in his or her conscious choice of resistance and solidarity.

Reification of Objects

The Frankfurt school emphasized the ways in which the superstructure imposes upon the public consciousness, forms of cultural, psychological, and social conditions by which the bureaucratic system is , thus, maintained and the individual’s subjectivity is weakened and confined to a certain set of debased world-values, produced and distributed by what Adorno terms, the Culture Industry. Adorno’s conceptual reification acknowledges the gap between the object and the concept in a similar way as Ferdinand de Saussure’s differential structure of language which states that the semantic value of the signified is mediated by difference rather than the meaning being inherently inscribed in the signified itself. 

This comes to occur when the object is estranged from its particularities and viewed strictly from a framework of universals. The concept is more reminiscent of its Platonic ideal by which the object asymptomatically strives toward but inescapably falls short of. According to Karl Marx, the process of reification takes place when objects begin to transcend their purposive or intentional origins and assume a life of its own in which it renders qualities that seem to manifest themselves as invariant and unchanging. Similarly, in a market economy, an object’s worth is defined by its exchange-value rather than its use-value; therefore, the object is not inherently imbued with properties by which it receives its value, but is socialized to appear as such. The instrumental reason , utilized and fostered by the Enlightenment, assumed the object to be contingent upon that of the concept or that the object contained a set of necessary properties by which it was defined. Adorno’s qualms lies not in the concept or the object tout court, but rather the methods by which the relationship between the two is perceived. 

For example, the entertainment that is produced by the Culture Industry is instilled with a general quality of “sameness”; this sameness must be uniquely packaged relative to each type of consumer such as by class, age, and the like, but altogether, the organized patterns by which the larger bureaucratic interests are fulfilled and not deviated from, is that which makes these commodities indistinguishable from that of another. There is no escape from the filter by which objects are subsequently advertised and framed; the identity of the object is fixed upon it being an extension of work. While entertainment temporarily seeks to liberate the subject from the mundane, the nature of how these leisure activities are unified come to mirror those of the routine-laden work hours.

Modernism & Art

Dollar books at the Strand book store, 23/10

I've gained acceptance into the university of my choice, and as easy as it is for me to mourn this delay of action and retreat into a sort of nostalgic stupor of should haves, should have nots, and the like, I must remind myself the momentous progress that has been made, emotionally and intellectually. My ability to sincerely communicate with other people has increased, and I , primarily, attribute that to my psychic development in analysis and my close friend, K. I was excited to find this book of dialogues with Marcel Duchamp; Duchamp was the quintessential modernist who confronted the passive spectator with the following question, by which standards and definitions are we to hold when judging an object that is attached with the title “art”?

Has art been relegated to be the content of elitist banter or does the value lie in its ability to stimulate aesthetic pleasure in the senses? Duchamp’s “The Fountain” is literally a urinal with a signature on it; he did not build it, as it is a “ready-made”; this means, there are probably many of the same exact urinals that exist in the world; what makes this art, if it was not produced by the artist himself, nor does it , I assume, stimulate any significant emotion in the spectator. What this does, in my opinion, is alters our former assumptions on the purpose of art and for what end, it pursues. One normally associates art with being emotionally engaging or simply, nice to look at; The Fountain , however, is what Harold Rosenberg terms, an "anxious object" by which extricates the spectator from his or her habitual modes of perception, and presents art as a force that cannot easily fulfil the exigencies of mundane life, but requires alternative interpretations and contains values, independent of its exchange rate or market price. 

This does not remove the restrictions of art in any way, as some claims modern art does, but, from my perspective, it allows art to divorce itself from its intended expectations imposed by bourgeois cultural standards and the advancing market economy, and gain a form of autonomy as a non-commodified political statement that is not available for immediate consumption. The false signature, portrays Duchamp's disdain for the "careerism" of the art world; it also, rids art's illusion in its reitified state, as an object containing quasi-mystical properties, by demonstrating how art can be made out of anything; the notion of art is, thus, shaped by how we perceive it and how quickly we identify it as such.

An interesting aspect of art is one can view the historical progression, the underlying conflicts of ideological discourse by which these works of art are built, but although, we can trace back the varying movements that these pieces are products of, we cannot predict the direction its heading or by what motor it’s moving. Art's function has changed dramatically throughout each epoch by which it is visibly symptomatic of antagonistic historical forces at work, striving to gain or regain dominance over that of the other. The avant-garde movements in the early twentieth century presented a means of artistic expression free from the bureaucratic artificiality of rising capitalism and the technological advances often associated. 
 
To return to a more personal note, I’ve rarely found myself emotionally moved by works themselves, but when I am able to attach a historical context correspondent with it; I can then, began to think, respond, and react appropriately. This is obviously not an ideal method of “artistic appreciation”, and you can probably make the argument that I am not really “appreciating” art but only the theoretical framework it is subsequently placed in (basically, i’m appreciating everything but the actual work of art itself).