VERBAL TERRORISM, OR THE THIN LINE BETWEEN LOVE AND HATE

James Lasdun, Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013) (From the bookjacket: "A true story of obsessive love turning to obsessive hate, Give Me Everything You Have chronicles the author's strange and harrowing ordeal at the hands of a former student, a self-styled 'verbal terrorist,' who began trying, in her words, to 'ruin him.' Hate mail, online postings, and public accusations of plagiarism and sexual misconduct were her weapons of choice and, as with more conventional terrorist weapons, proved remarkably difficult to combat. James Lasdun's account, while terrifying, is told with compassion and humor, and brilliantly succeeds in turning a highly personal story into a profound meditation on subjects as varied as madness, race, Middle East politics, and the meaning of honor and reputation in the Internet age.").

FRENCH MEMORY, FRENCH HISTORY, FRENCH THOUGHT

Jean-Vincent Blanchard, Eminence: Cardinal Richelieu and the Rise of France (New York: Walker, 2011).

Aurelian Craiutu, A Virtue of Courageous Minds: Moderation in French Political Thought, 1748-1839 (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2012) ("The question reins: what do moderates stand for? It would seem to me that they affirm three basic attitudes. First, they defend pluralism--of ideas, interests, and social forces--and seek to achieve a balance between them in order to temper political and social conflicts. Second, moderates prefer gradual reforms to revolutionary breakthroughs, and they are temperamentally inclined to making compromises and concessions on both prudential and normative grounds. They acknowledge that the best course of action in politics is often to 'rally around the least bad among your adversaries, even when that party is still remote from your own views.' Third, moderation presupposes a tolerant approach which refuses to see the world in Manichean terms that divide it into forces of good (or light) and agents of evil (or darkness). It consists in a distinct political style that stands in stark contrast to the overconfident modus operandi of those whose world is dominated by black-and-white contrasts. Moderates refuse the posture of prophets, even if sometimes they, too, may be tempted to make grand historical generalizations and predictions. Anti-perfectionists and fearful of anarchy, they endorse fallibilism as a middle way between radical skepticism and epistemological absolutism, and acknowledge the limits of political action and the imperfection of the human condition." Id. at 14-15.).

Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past: Volume I: Conflicts and Divisions, under the direction of Pierre Nora, English-Language Edition edited by Lawrence D. Kritzman, translated from the French by Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Columbia U. Press, 1996) (From Gerard Noiriel, "French and Foreigners": "The numerous Declarations of the Rights of Man since 1789 and the great constitutional principles of the Republic are the true underpinnings of the French tradition." "In order to understand how those great principles affect the collective consciousness, however, we cannot rely on legal texts alone. We must explore the thousand and one material channels that, unconsciously and therefore all that much more effectively, orient our everyday perception of the social world. An excellent example to illustrate this point is the official statistical apparatus of the government. It has often been said, and rightly so, that statistics are the lenses through which modern man observes the society in which he lives. A comparison of U.S. and French immigration statistics is enough to demonstrate, once again, the importance of the French Revolution as a foundational moment. Until the 1960s, American immigration statistics were based on racial and ethnic categories (race, religion, language, parents' place of birth). By contrast, French statistics since the nineteenth century have incorporated the principles of 1789: hence there are no questions about religion or parents' place of birth, and the most important criterion is the legal one of citizenship (French or foreign). A thorough comparative study would reveal the crucial effects of these initial differences in nomenclature in determining how the Americans and the French have perceived immigration over the past century and still perceive it today: on the one hand as an 'ethnic' problem, on the other as a problem of 'foreigners.'" Id. at 145, 149-150.).

Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past: Volume II: Traditions, under the direction of Pierre Nora, English-Language Edition edited by Lawrence D. Kritzman, translated from the French by Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Columbia U. Press, 1997) (From Jean Starobinski, "The Pulpit, The Rostrum, and the Bar": "In classical rhetoric there were three types of eloquence: deliberative (practiced in assemblies making political decisions), judicial (used for settling legal cases), and demonstrative (mostly encomiastic, that is, laudatory, but also deprecatory on occasion). ... Suffice it to say that eloquence, the 'art of persuasion,' has been taught for centuries because it was inseparable from all forms of nonviolent collective behavior. Whether in popular assemblies or (select) courtrooms, in halls of justice, in churches or academies, eloquence was cultivated by the leaders as well as their opponents, as the art of eliciting consent. Persuasive communication has undoubtedly always pervaded all walks of life, though taking many different forms. Nowadays, commercials and advertising have unfortunately taken over some of the functions which had been ascribed to education in the past." Id. at 391,  392. "The pulpit, the bar, and the rostrum are places where this power of language was exercised before it was relayed by books and newspapers. These same places could also be denounced as suspect when those who used them to gain a hearing for themselves were discredited by counterpropaganda that could avail itself of the same sites as well as of instruments such as a books, caricatures, and theatrical or journalistic satire." "...What is different now is that orators are no longer confined to the traditional sites; often they tend to avoid adopting the stance of an orator....  Now that the technical power of those influence--amplifiers, the media, ensures an  inexhaustible, endlessly renewable supply of messages, the orator on the rostrum, at the bar, or in the pulpit is an anachronistic figure, chained to a symbolic site from which the power of his speech to reach and penetrate an audience, even if magnified by currently available technologies, may seem limited. To be sure, there are still 'charismatic voices.' But authority and seduction avail themselves of other instruments." Id. at 393-394.) .

Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past: Volume III: Symbols, under the direction of Pierre Nora, English-Language Edition edited by Lawrence D. Kritzman, translated from the French by Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Columbia U. Press, 1998).

FEAR AND REPRESSION OF THOUGHT

Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, translated from the French by Peter Sedgwick with George Paizis, glossary and notes by Richard Greeman, and with a foreword by Adam Hochschild (New York New York Review Books, 1951, 2012) ("The relationship between error and true understanding are in any case too abstruse for anyone to presume to regulate them with any authority. Men have no choice but to make long detours through hypotheses, mistakes, and imaginative guesses, if they are to succeed in extricating assessments which are more exact, if partly provisional: for there are few cases of complete exactness. This means that freedom of thought seems to me, of all values, one of the most essential." "It is also the most contested. Everywhere and at every time, I have encountered fear of thought, repression of thought, an almost universal desire to escape or else stifle this ferment of restlessness." Id. at 441.).

RITES OF SPRING, KRISHNA LOVES RADHA

Jayadeva, son of Bhojadeva, Love Song of the Dark Lord: Jayadeva's Gitagovinda, edited and translated by Barbara Stoler Miller (New York: Columbia U. Press, 1977) ("Jayadeva's dramatic lyrical poem Gitagovinda is a unique work in Indian literature and a source of religious inspiration in both medieval and contemporary Vaishnavism. The poem is dedicated in devotion to the god Krishna. It concentrates Krishna's love with the cowherdess Radha in a rite of spring. Intense earthly passion is the example Jayadeva uses to express the complexities of divine and human love." Id. at ix.).

EROTIC MYSTICISM

Edward C. Dimock, Jr., The Place of the Hidden Moon: Erotic Mysticism in the Vaisnava-Sahajiya Cult of Bengal (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 1966) (From the bookjacket: "The dichotomy between sensual and ascetic is prominent in Indian as well as Western culture. Attempts have been made to incorporate the sensual and the erotic into Indian religion, especially by certain cults, in a way which has hardly occurred in the West, although there are suggestions of it in the cult of the troubadours." "The Vaisnava-sahajiva cult that arose on Bengal the sixteenth century was an intensely emotional attempt to reconcile the spirit and flesh. Edward C. Dimock, Jr., here partially lifts the veil from an obscure religious phenomenon in a study that will appeal to students of the history of religion as well as of Indian culture." "The Sahajiya, unlike the orthodox Vaisnava, not only exalted 'love in separation,' but even considered marriage as profane, poetically and doctrinally. They held that the union of the human and the divine was literally possible, that 'ultimately one can pass even beyond the pleasure of actual union . . . and know the divine joy entirely within one's self.'"  'The sect was viewed with disfavor by the society at large, an attitude heightened by its contempt for  social opinion and its esoteric emphasis. It was secretive on principle, with the doctrine and ritual transmitted exclusively from guru to disciple. The sources of our knowledge of the sect includes hundreds of poems written by numerous poets using the name 'Candidas.' Mr. Dimock has skilfully sorted out the many bards both in time and in their relationship to the cult.").

THE FEMININE BODY IN BUDDHISM

Liz Wilson, Charming Cadavers: Horrific Figurations of the Feminine in Indian Buddhist Hagiographic Literature, with a foreword by Catherine R. Stimpson (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 1996) (From the backcover: "In this highly original study of sexuality, desire, the body, and women, Liz Wilson investigates first-millennium Buddhist notions of spirituality. She argues that despite the marginal role women played in monastic life, they occupied a very conspicuous place in Buddhist hagiographic literature. In narratives used for the edification of Buddhist monks, women's bodies in decay (diseased, dying, and after death) served as a central object for meditation, inspiring a salutary sense of revulsion and a deepened commitment to chastity." "Taking up a set of universal concerns connected with the representation of women, Wilson displays the pervasiveness of androcentrism in Buddhist literature and practice. She also make persuasive use of recent historical work on the religious lives of women in medieval Christianity, finding a common emphasis on disfiguration in Buddhist and Christian hagiography.").

THE GODDESS DOES NOT LOVE US ANYMORE!

Robert Bly and Marion Woodman, The Maiden King: The Reunion of Masculine and Feminine (New York: Henry Holt, 1998) ("Mankind has begun now to sanctify pop culture. The pop culture pin, especially as transmitted by television, has caused a great sleep, so deep that many college students can no longer deal with Shakespeare's intensity. The Christian Science Monitor reported in January 1997 that fewer and fewer U.S. colleges now ask students to take a Shakespeare course, because their attention span has become too shortened. Interestingly, teachers who are allowed to teach Shakespeare in those colleges that still require such a course sometimes ask to be relieved of the task, because the resistance the students feel to any complicated language produces so much sadness in the teachers." Id. at 26. "If we receive from our mother all the good things that we need, we tend to remain infants all our lives: and it is life, food, comfort, nourishment, courage, support, and praise we want from her. [] But if all we see when we think of the Mother is the Abundant Mother, then we will never grow up. So the image of Kali as an Eater helps people to become adults. Many observers notice that people in the West, by contrast, are becoming more and more childish, not to say infantile. [] The consumer culture we live in promises an abundance almost inconceivable in earlier centuries. The Mall of America in Minneapolis is the largest mall in the world, and it has a statue of Snoopy taller than any statue of Christ in Minneapolis. If we replaced Snoopy with a statue of Kali, with her fangs, her bloody cleaver, her necklace of skulls, her long tongue hanging out, we would see the true face of mall culture. Everyone who saw it would be a tiny bit more adult. They might notice also that our abundance implies insatiable hunger elsewhere in the world." Id. at 68-69. "The secret us out. 'There is a Goddess who doesn't love you anymore.'" Id. at 88. "[T]he subordination of the feminine to the masculine, outwardly enacted as the subordination of women to men, is a horrendous lie. For at least three thousand years women have carried, whether consciously or unconsciously, their culturally determined role in relation to men, an inferior role that has left their masculinity wounded by patriarchal training. As a result of the inferior role assigned to the feminine, men are culturally and personally crippled by a weak feminine every bit as disabling as the weak masculine in women. As complementary energies, masculinity and femininity require each other for natural balance in relationships. A weak feminine in men produces a distorted, one-sided masculine--the militarist, the corporate robot; a weak masculine in women produces a distorted, one-sided feminine--the baby doll, who pretends to be everything any man imagines her to be, or a Gorgon, who reduces others to stone." Id. at 129-130. "The loss of connection to the positive mother is at the core of ... emptiness. [] Without the security of feminine love that trusts life in the body and is, therefore, open to trust life, we learn to fear life itself. [] We are a society famous for our greed. Without a loving connection to the Great Mother, we literalize her. Mother becomes mater. We accumulate mounds of matter in an effort to blind ourselves to our own yearning for the Divine mater. Ironically, we are materialists, essential a matriarchal society worshipping the Golden Cow at the center. In the absence of the natural mother, the greed of the stepmother, including sexual greed, takes over." Id. at 133. ).