Report on Ruskin Day,  Sat 21 November 15

A total of twenty two attended the RWF discussion circles (average of 12 for each of the four sessions)
Feed-back was very positive.   Clearly this was another successful event for RWF (and RWS, with more than fifty attending the lecture).
Below are notes on which the two morning sessions on Keywords were based; then a summary
by Sharon Clancy of these sessions (but not including the poetry) and the key-note lecture
We also have a William Morris Society blog summary of Susan Watkins key-note lecture
 (here http://williammorrisunbound.blogspot.co.uk/ ).    
The lecture is likely to be published probably in New Left Review.
Dan Clark’s (Oxford PiPs) notes on the discussion based on the lecture conclude this report.
Many big issues raised in the lecture and discussion, of course, and some of these will feature in future RWF events.

DT
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This was the programme

Ruskin College

RWF Day linked to the RW Society Annual Lecture.
21st Nov 2015

09.30 on  arrival and registration

10.00       RWF Small seminar discussion circles based on RW Keywords
                     Dramatic;   Revolution;   Violence, and Terrorist;
                     Hope and Aspiration.   

11.00      Tea/Coffee & biscuits, pay as appropriate

11.30.      RWF KW discussions as above.

13.00       Ruskin Café for sandwiches or whatever – pay as appropriate…

14.00       (RWS AGM for members)

15.00       RWS   Annual Lecture
               Social Perspectives in Hard Times:  Re-reading Williams’ Modern Tragedy
                          Susan Watkins    Editor, New Left Review
17.00       Tea/Coffee and Danish Pastries…   pay as appropriate

17.15      RWF small seminar discussions on the themes of the Lecture.

19.00      End of Day...  a meal somewhere... heading home/self organised overnight
                stay in Oxford...

Fee:   Minimal, (no more than £5pp for all the sessions and most maybe free-of-charge)  pay as you go…  

Overnight accommodation may be available at Ruskin College, en suite bedroom, B&B for only £34 (subsidized by RWF for those attending one or more of the above discussion sessions).
 To book B&B e-mail as below, stating requirements and pay at the event

It would be useful to know how many intend to come for any part of the day.  Please e-mail  derektatton@btinternet.com if you plan to come.

REPORT 

These notes, assisted by a written contribution from Malcolm Pittock with help also from several other RWF colleagues were used in the discussions.  The notes aim to stimulate, following the argument wherever it leads…  Hence, no matter if we don’t reach point 10…   But each group will decide its priorities.    

1.    Going round, those who wish - comment concisely on RW's Keywords -  specifically,  engaging with his view that dictionaries, including even the great OED, are limited when seeking to define these key words?     The KW and New KW essays, adding interpretative commentary, are then an advance?    These are, or should be, our words constantly challenged and up-dated…?

2.    Views on RWF's new KW project.  (Visit the RWF web for background and up-date on this).  Again keeping this very brief with no-one talking for more than a minute at a time...

3.    Tragedy does not feature in any of the KW books.   However, Modern Tragedy is very much about the meanings of the word - which has religious origins.   Eagleton in his book (see below) states that RW ‘doubts the value of seeing tragedy’s associations with cult, myth and ritual’.  However,
‘Marxist classicist, George Thompson, endorses the case that tragedy derives from ritual and Eva Figes examines it in terms of tribal patriarchy.’

4.   Williams book, quoting Eagleton again, ‘is devoted to refuting the fallacy (found in)  traditional tragic theory’s mandarin disdain for …the common life’    RW opens Modern Tragedy by remarking that he has witnessed tragedy of several kinds in his own ‘ordinary life’ though it has not been the death of princes’.   He is critical of the academic convention which separates ‘tragedy’ (high drama involving Kings, Princes and the like) from tragedy in everyday life – ‘a mining disaster, a burned-out family, a broken career, a smash on the road’  …    ‘The academic tradition of tragedy is in fact an ideology’.   

5.   We’ll consider the KW essays on Revolution and Violence:   ‘…revolution took on a specialized meaning of violent overthrow, and by the late C19 was being contrasted with evolution
 in its sense of a new social order brought about by peaceful and constitutional means’ . 

6.  ‘RW sees the C20 as under the sway of three essentially tragic ideologies: Marxism, Freudianism and existentialism’.

7.   Violent revolution is inevitably tragic – We’ll discuss Auden’s phrase ‘the necessary murder’ in his poem Spain and Williams’ suggested re-writing ‘necessary killing’…  Easier to justify war and political violence with that word?   Non-violent revolutions are not inevitably tragic?  

8.   In our contemporary situation the words ‘terrorist’;  ‘extremist’;  ‘moderate’;  ‘hard-left’  and ‘centre-right’;   ‘sane’ and ‘insane’  (labelling and psychiatry ‘medicalising’ normal behaviour…); merit a Keywords session each.   We will only have time to discuss a potential outline of approaches.

9.  ‘The tragic rise and fall of Tony Blair’  >  ‘Corbyn offering hope’?   Susan Watkins has said that the Afterword in the 1979 edition of Modern Tragedy is ‘wonderful’.   Is there anything in that
Afterword to offer insights into the Blair and Corbyn trajectories?

10.   The horror of the Paris November ’15 events -  a tragedy, obviously and responses offer not too much hope for the future?   
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For reading and reference:

Keywords      	Raymond Williams                      (1976 and revised edition, 1983)
New Keywords         Edited by Tony Bennett and others     (2005)
Modern Tragedy       Raymond Williams                      (1966 & 1979 Verso edition)
Sweet Violence – The Idea of the Tragic   Terry Eagleton      (2003)     

DT   November 2015

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Notes on morning sessions one and two – Raymond Williams Foundation_on  21/11/15 at Ruskin

Discussion regarding the keyword ‘Tragedy’
Words can become philosophically charged – for instance, the Chambers dictionary has a different
philosophical basis to the Oxford dictionary which Williams used.
‘When I use a word it says what I want it to mean’ (Lewis Carroll – spoken by Humpty Dumpty!)
We must guard against parochialism – Western, localised concepts of words - situated in a small
milieu of discussion
Williams argued against the concept of tragedy which was based on Aristotelian principles – which
focuses on the heroic individual and is ‘fit only for the very highly placed, the kings or the king’
(Miller, 1949). It tends to focus on the individual flaw rather than on the social context and does not
deal with the ‘common man’.
It descends into our modern interpretation of individual tragedy, focusing on the individual and not
the social order/social interactions and their impact. Madness - an important case in point –
becomes a flaw of the individual.
Williams refuted this (as did Arthur Miller in works such as Death of a Salesman) and made the
statement ‘culture is ordinary’.
Discussion regarding keywords ‘radical’ and ‘hard-Left’ – words currently used in context of Jeremy
Corbyn
Radical has the suggestion of offering hope – counter-revolution to other groupings in society but
for mainstream smacks of extremism. The word has been re-positioned by the mainstream, as a
counter to constitution – with all its sense of rightness and justness which requires no examination.
The centre-right has become the ‘norm’ – neo-liberalism the result
The application of keywords is all-important – meanings are contested, both historically and in a
contemporary context. Williams investigated language and its application.
Small-scale conversations may be the way forwards.  A ‘scraping off’ or cleansing process, removing
the detritus of old meanings – getting to the kernel of words and reclaiming them.
The romance of ‘Folk politics’ – cf. Romance of social movements of the 60s and 70s – linked with
colonisation of New Age, folk music etc and some of the darker parallels with Nazism,
environmental movement etc – urban versus ‘natural’ world - bourgeois, and industrial . Dialectical
movement
Corporations/big business have taken over the language of Folk politics - the ‘capitalist economic
order’ (Williams).
Discussion about the role of the state – now – in maintaining this order. Necessary but flawed
Bourgeois sense of entitlement - liberal language - ‘values’, ‘moral compass’ – critique of liberal
position – it is difficult to have elevated values and aspirations if basic inequality prevails – cf.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Economic democracy is vital if we want participatory democracy
Corbyn has offered an alternative - but needs to offer a clear vision or strategy – set of principles
Question – who is running Britain?

Susan Watkins’ lecture – Social Perspectives in Hard Times – Re-reading Williams’ ‘Modern Tragedy’
Turns to Williams more and more as the years go by.
Set of conceptual tools to be put to use and adjusted – a means of communication
Who owns the internet?
Reference to printed works – Bloomsbury set – conceptualising relations of intellectuals and those
who generate ideas – and wider ideologies
Multi-dimensional social relations.
The social order and its justifications:
1/ Ideas of tragedy – selective interpretations of the past – social fate in contradistinctio to private
fate
2/ A survey of ‘liberal tragedy’ – emphasis on private fate – Miller, Ibsen, Brecht
Why were social thinking and tragic thinking separated? Not tragic if ‘lacking in general meaning’
Death as a collective experience
What happens to sufferings caused by work, famine, war – that caused by the existing social order?
Tragedy has been kept out of socialist thought – the protest of the injured and dispossessed
becomes a ‘disturbance’
‘Revolution is the inevitable working through of a deep and tragic disorder’ – resolve the underlying
tragic disorder – become exposed to it
Wave of neo-liberalism – ongoing – from 1979 and culminating in crash of 2008 – has accelerated
since
The capitalist order is defaulting on its social contract
Both familiar and new forms of tragedy – shock and loss – class default
1979 – widespread sense of the loss of a future – the world changed shape utterly for many
communities
The ‘dying class’ turned out to be anything but...
Structures of feeling – we now have a failed economic model based on credit – financialisation – we
have now reached the point where we have forgo..en what we have lost
Increasing integration of capitalist ideas/ideals – political and social disintegration - impasse
How does Williams – in his prescient way – suggest we deal with it?
Requires modes of understanding capable of seeing the whole - now largely an invisible capitalist
economy (in that it is mainstream and accepted as the way for many)
‘Be the change you wish to see’ (Ghandi) – our daily actions
Get involved – Momentum, Corbyn campaign
Contribute to the development of political literacy – focus on democracy and what it means – the
Long Revolution
Neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism are simple ideologies - engendered through a liberal way of
thinking about things – but Liberalism as a whole is critiquable
Small community movements/large scale new Marxism?
How do we go about critiquing the ideologies of our time?
Importance of resilience – do not focus solely on new technology – cartelisation
A dialectical movement

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RWF 21st Nov 2015 – Notes on final discussion session, from 5.15pm on based on the Key-note Lecture.  (Sixteen attended this session)

We talked about the need to create space for dialogue and conversation in the world.
Much of this discussion concerned the role of the internet. There were several criticisms of being able to use the technology:
 
Much of the conversation on the internet is light-touch and not in-depth. People have a tendency to write short messages and responses, which are not fully understood or responded to.   People tend to write in agreement or opposition and can be quite reactive, not allowing dialectic or progressive conversations.  Many of the non-verbal cues and checks which occur in face-to-face conversation are possible in the standard text-mode of online correspondence.
The internet can often be a mode of mobilisation on single-issues and there are many successes which the internet has helped promote.   Whilst this can be affective in individual areas, it does not facilitate discussion and action on more fundamental or subtle things.   People are able to associate themselves with a particular issue, without needing to commit more widely politically or consider the complexity of issues.
There is a lack of synthesis and progression on the internet. Conversation can often seem infantile and bickering. The ‘thread’ response ensures a technically ‘linear’ progression of the conversation, but this might be meandering, tangential etc. and not progressive.           Most forums have little in the way of facilitation beyond attempts at policing seriously offensive viewpoints or activities such as stalking and grooming. There is no authority which can publish definitive summaries, though many attempts are made. From a pluralist point of view, this ‘lack or authority’ may be appreciated, but the nature of the internet means that conversations seem atomised, dispersed and divergent.
The internet is full of crap, as I think most people will tell you. Presumably, though, there is an author of most pieces of content who thinks that it’s worthwhile and legitimate. The amount of misinformation, confusion and duplication online, however, is bewildering.
There’s a significant amount of trolling that occurs online, where people are targeted, insulted and belittled for their views, statements and nature.   That said, there has been a degree to which public figures have commandeered the term ‘trolling’ as a way to dismiss any criticism of their statements as some kind of irrational bullying.
The internet, as seen by the public, is largely anonymous, allowing people to assume new identities or amorphic ones – there is no necessity for people to stand behind their beliefs and assertions. That said, a degree of anonymity might be useful for left-wing causes in authoritarian circumstances – as was the case, for example, with the Chartists.
Though in some ways the internet is an open forum, we may be going through a stage of enclosure of the internet, just as the UK saw the enclosure of land in the early stages of the industrial revolution. Companies and states are set to buy up, control and tax large swathes of the internet and pass legislation allowing them to police and monitor it. An example is a postulated tax on the use of hyperlinks, which would disenfranchise users of limited means.
All this contributes to a lack of sensible conversation online.

There was also discussion on identity politics:   how the internet may be used as an expression of this and how the fractured nature of political discussion will prevent people from forming more mature political identities.  There was some concern about talking in ‘us’ and ‘them’ terms in terms of the left and ‘others’ (even within the Labour party, between Corbynites and Blairites/others on the ‘right’ of the party). This debate around identity and how people fit into ‘political boxes’ led onto some comment on the role of emotion in politics and how there is a tendency to side with the least objectionable option.

The use of language was also discussed: about the perceived need to speak in precise terms (e.g. by use of definitions in RW key terms) and whether this is possible. A degree of appropriation of language was noted and the capacity for politicians to use terms for their own benefit, e.g. the use of the term ‘living wage’ by the Tory party and their claim to be the party of the ‘working people’ which are terms which seem more appropriate on a left-wing manifesto.

Ben.    Oxford PiPs.