Exercise Critique Form Exercise Name Exercise Date: Fill & Download for Free

“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?” a lady supposedly asked Benjamin Franklin, as the Constitutional Convention drew to a close in September 1787.“A Republic,” replied Franklin. “If you can keep it.”The other great answers to this question correctly point out that constitutionally the United States is of course a federal republic, characterised by a clear separation of powers between executive, legislative, and judicial functions, where the independence of the judiciary is guaranteed by life tenure, and the confidence of the citizens in their government is encouraged by recourse to frequent elections of those in the other two branches, including the head of state - the President.The reality, of course, is clearly rather more complicated than a face-value reading of the Constitution, and the Federalist Papers, might suggest.In debating the proposed Constitution, the Founding Fathers quickly decided that there should be a single person as head of state - a President. (Federalist 70, written by Alexander Hamilton, explains why a single person ought to hold that office, rather than two, or three, as some of the founding fathers’ classical models - ancient Greece and Rome - often had). The more difficult question for them was what powers their proposed chief magistrate might have, and what limits and checks on those powers there might be. We can see from those Federalist essays touching on the presidency, that in addition to republican models of Greek city states and the Roman Republic, the framers also looked at how the constitutions of contemporary European powers worked. The kings of Europe, perhaps ironically, were one source from which to derive the powers of the president of the new American republic.Whether or not they knew it, however, the founding fathers misconstrued the powers they claimed were possessed by one of their most frequently cited models: the British monarchy, (at the time, still George III, against whom in the Declaration of Independence they had spilled so much vitriol). In fact, by the later 18th century, the colonists’ enemy was less the king, as his Prime Minister - traditional royal prerogatives had over the hundred or so years since the so-called Glorious Revolution - been increasingly acquired by the British Parliament, and by the government. In essence Britain had become (and continued to develop into, through to the present day), a ‘crowned republic’ - with an hereditary head of state, but one which had decreasing power and influence. The British constitution to this day rests on the principle that the monarch has immense - in fact almost unlimited - power, but that that power cannot ever be exercised except on the advice of the Government of the day, which is in its turn accountable to an elected House of Commons in Parliament, which in essence defines the scope of the exercise of power, through legislation, and in holding the government to account.But then in Article II, the Founding Fathers gave to their new chief magistrate all sorts of powers which King George III in theory possessed (and Elizabeth II possesses still today, in many cases), but which in practice were (and are), entirely exercised by Parliament, and/or the Government. The army might swear oaths of allegiance to the sovereign as their commander-in-chief, but for all practical purposes, the government (in Parliament), controlled (and controls) them. George III undoubtedly possessed the power of veto over legislation - but in practice would never consider using it. Famously, in fact, no British monarch has actually vetoed a bill since 1708 (and even then, Queen Anne withheld royal assent from the Scottish Militia Bill on the advice of her own government, because the situation it was meant to address had changed, making the bill out of date and potentially dangerous; it was quicker to advise the queen to withhold assent, than to pass another bill repealing the first one).Conversely, in theory the President of the United States is constrained by the constitution in many ways: war can only be declared and the military funded by Congress; vetoes can be overridden; appointments require confirmation; there is a limit to the length of a term (and, now, to the number of terms) a person can serve; and if all else fails, a sufficient majority in Congress can remove a treasonous or corrupt president from office - none of these things apply in the British model (though appointments such as to the judiciary are handled in a different nonpartisan manner, away from Parliament).The reality is, however, that the President is in many senses more of a term-limited elected monarch. The use of executive orders to achieve policy aims, for instance, might be characterised as a form of ruling by decree, even if these decrees are in theory check-able by other branches of the government, particularly by the courts (as Donald Trump is currently discovering). Traditionally the president is accorded particularly great latitude in matters of defence by the courts (for, if there were a real crisis, then a president may need to act quickly to deal with a dangerous situation, as Hamilton argued back in 1788). Increasingly, and more problematically, that deference is granted by Congress as well.People who bang on about the conflict in Iraq dating from 2003, rather irritate me for some reason (it was a mess, and there were bad consequences, but refighting an old battle interests me less than winning contemporary ones) - but there is a very salient point in the controversy: in that the last time Congress actually exercised its constitutional powers to declare war, was on June 5th 1942, when it passed joint resolutions stating that ‘a state of war exists’ between the U.S., and Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary (at that time, puppet states under Nazi control). Conflicts in Korea, China, Vietnam, Lebanon, Cuba, Laos, the Dominican Republic, Cambodia, El Salvador, Libya, Grenada, Honduras, Iran, Panama, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, Serbia, Afghanistan, Syria (to name all those I can remember) did not involve declarations of war.To be more caustic, (but hopefully still objective) the sycophantic attitude of politicians of the incumbent president’s party, in the last few decades, in order to curry favour, is entirely the action and attitude one would expect of hangers-on at a monarchical court. And the sycophantic attitude of most politicians across the political spectrum, regarding the executive’s exercise of warfighting powers, is an egregious dereliction of duty.It might be noted, of course, that part of the problem is the complete abrogation of governing responsibility on the part of Congress. It absolutely has the power to check the monarchical tendencies of the presidency: very often, unless the incumbent is of a different political party, it does not.We might also consider the role of the media. The actions, speeches, and policies, of the head of any government are of course of great importance in any country, and it would be insane (to say nothing of a derogation of duty) for presidential activities not to be reported on (and, where judged appropriate, to be challenged by journalists). The fact that the President gives a speech (or a tweet) on X issue, should be reported. But we might argue that the presidency is in the 21st century accorded dignity and coverage all out of importance with the character of the office, or the person occupying it at any given time.I appreciate my criticism comes from over the Atlantic, where we have developed a very different sense of the role of the media in critiquing politics, but to my mind the obsequiousness which even outlets hostile to the president of the day, treat the incumbent, is absurd in the extreme. The president was never meant to be a king (even if the founding fathers invested the office with some ‘kingly’ powers, as already mentioned), and certainly shouldn’t be treated like one. The president isn’t, as is the case with a ‘real’ monarch, like Elizabeth II or Naruhito, some kind of symbolic embodiment of the nation, and therefore deserving (unless they do something really terrible) of respect: the President is no more, and no better, than a politician - but arguably, the most powerful one in the world. If Americans want a symbolic heart of their nation to honour, they cannot do better than the Constitution itself, and not merely one office created by it.Therefore, what the President of the United States needs is not fawning sycophancy from either other politicians or the media, but an auriga:The slave at the far left, holding the crown over the triumphant Roman general, continually whispering in his ear “Memento homo”. (Edit: not to distract from this answer, but see Angelos Tsirimokos’ interesting comment [and my reply!] below on this point)Remember you are only a man.The entire political and journalistic edifice in the United States needs something similar. From their appreciation for and fascination with the classical world, I also can’t help feeling that Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, and the rest, would rather agree.So - he might not be called so in title, but the king-in-effect of the United States of America right now is this man:At the very least, let’s not tell him.

Oh, it's a critique all right. But a more meaningful question is: What sort of critique is it?Does it criticize colonialism because ideological subjugation is morally indefensible; or, is it because imperial exploitation results in moral degradation of the colonizers, effectively eliminating the difference between the civilized ‘explorers’ and the savage ‘natives’?The latter sentiment was echoed by Chinua Achebe when he called Conrad “a thoroughgoing racist” in his celebrated (and controversial) essay An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. It would serve us well to go through Achebe’s objections to Heart of Darkness, for it is not easy to refute them.Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as “the other world,” the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where man’s vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality. The book opens on the River Thames, tranquil, resting peacefully “at the decline of day after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks.” But the actual story will take place on the River Congo, the very antithesis of the Thames. The River Congo is quite decidedly not a River Emeritus. It has rendered no service and enjoys no old-age pension. We are told that “Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world.”Is Conrad saying then that these two rivers are very different, one good, the other bad? Yes, but that is not the real point. It is not the differentness that worries Conrad but the lurking hint of kinship, of common ancestry. For the Thames too “has been one of the dark places of the earth.” It conquered its darkness, of course, and is now in daylight and at peace. But if it were to visit its primordial relative, the Congo, it would run the terrible risk of hearing grotesque echoes of its own forgotten darkness, and falling victim to an avenging recrudescence of the mindless frenzy of the first beginnings.An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of DarknessAchebe assumes that Marlow speaks for Conrad. And it is a fair assumption. He is, after all, the narrator and major point-of-view character in Heart of Darkness.Marlow is a curious figure, to put it mildly. He is critical of colonial brutality, but also partakes in the myth of imperial superiority. He is a visitor from another time and place — better time and place — to a world that has lagged behind. In this forgotten world, visitors are unnatural, and run the risk of reverting to their primordial states — states they have apparently transcended.The prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us—who could tell? We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse. We could not understand because we were too far and could not remember, because we were travelling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign—and no memories.The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there—there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly and the men were . . . . No they were not inhuman. Well, you know that was the worst of it—this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped and spun and made horrid faces, but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours—the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar.Heart of DarknessBut this raises an interesting question: To what extent do the literary characters represent the author's worldviews?I may be wrong, but I don’t think Marlow is the author's voice. Maybe he is a deliberately crafted archetypal nineteenth century Westerner who has come to Africa secure in his belief that he is the member of an invincible empire and a superior race. The fact that he sees the natives as an extension of the land, and not as individuals, further exemplifies his myopia. This proud visitor is destined for ideological fragmentation, and it is here that we see (or at least glimpse) the true extent of Conrad’s ironic self awareness in the novella. Marlow’s lament that he ‘had been robbed of a belief’ after meeting Kurtz is a serious indictment of magnanimous pretensions of the colonial mindset. Kurtz is everything that the empire is, but shouldn't be. Not that the people back home are aware of it; they need to believe that their fellowmen are shouldering the proverbial ‘White Man’s Burden.’ In a darkly humorous exchange between Marlow and Kurtz’s fiancée towards the end of the novella, we are made aware that ignorance is bliss, perhaps because people don’t have the guts to face the truth.‘Forgive me. I—I—have mourned so long in silence—in silence. . . . You were with him to the last? I think of his loneliness. Nobody near to understand him as I would have understood. Perhaps no one to hear . . .’‘To the very end,’ I said shakily. ‘I heard his very last words. . . .’I stopped in a fright.‘Repeat them,’ she murmured in a heart-broken tone. ‘I want—I want—something—something—to—to live with.’I was on the point of crying at her, ‘Don’t you hear them.’The dusk was repeating them in a persistent whisper all around us, in a whisper that seemed to swell menacingly like the first whisper of a rising wind. ‘The horror! The horror!’‘His last word—to live with,’ she insisted. ‘Don’t you understand I loved him—I loved him—I loved him.’I pulled myself together and spoke slowly.‘The last word he pronounced was—your name.’I heard a light sigh and then my heart stood still, stopped dead short by an exulting and terrible cry, by the cry of inconceivable triumph and of unspeakable pain. ‘I knew it—I was sure!’ . . . She knew. She was sure.Heart of DarknessI said before that it is not easy to refute Achebe’s accusations, and I stand by that statement. Achebe may be right when he says that Conrad is unnerved by the “lurking hint of kinship” between Africa and Europe. He may be right when he asserts that Heart of Darkness depicts a stereotypical idea of Africa, not Africa itself. He may even be right that Conrad was a racist. But he is wrong to suggest that the novella portrays the colonizers in a flattering light, even if speaking relatively. The Westerners we do see in Heart of Darkness are either naive and pretentious newbies (Marlow), exploitative officials (the accountant, the manager), or decadent and ruthless businessmen (Kurtz). Indeed, Marlow reminds us that whole of Europe “contributed to the making of Kurtz.” If Kurtz is the best Europe can offer, then it is not — to paraphrase Achebe — much of a land of “vaunted intelligence and refinement.”I began this little essay of mine by musing over the nature of colonial/imperial criticism present in the Heart of Darkness. I hope I have shown that I do not subscribe to Achebe’s assessment of the novella. I do not believe that Conrad was writing from a plane of condescension and a false sense of superiority.But does that mean I believe that Heart of Darkness rejects colonialism because colonialism is intrinsically evil? Honestly, I am not so sure.Maybe Heart of Darkness is merely an exercise in nihilistic exploration. It is just that Conrad takes care to mask the moral and epistemological skepticism of his narrative with his “impressionistic” style. (I borrow the term from Patrick Brantlinger’s excellent essay Imperialism, Impressionism, and the Politics of Style.) In a letter to a publisher dated 24 April 1922, he wrote:Explicitness, my dear fellow, is fatal to the glamour of all artistic work, robbing it of all suggestiveness, destroying all illusion. You seem to believe in literalness and explicitness, in facts and also in expression. Yet nothing is more clear than the utter insignificance of explicit statement and also its power to call attention away from things that matter in the region of art.Maybe he wanted it to remain ambiguous. And as a reader, I am thankful for that.

The short answer is this: Feminist theories about patriarchy in 2016 do not accurately reflect reality because patriarchy is dead; however, what has replaced it, may actually be worse.The longer answer is this: Since the 1960’s, male power in the U.S. has changed dramatically, circumventing the contemporary feminist critique of patriarchy. It’s as if the moment we all learned to use the word “patriarchy” in a sentence, it suddenly vanished as the dominant mode of relation between men and women. What was once a strictly hierarchical system of roles played by women and men (which is still the case in some regions) has become an amalgamation of power plays and gender expressions not easily classifiable as masculine or feminine – or if they are, not unilaterally assigned by men to serve male interests. This is not to say that male power is waning, but rather, maleness, masculinity, and male dominance have taken different forms and this renders feminist criticism of male power largely ineffective.Making this more complicated, our shared cultural awareness of male dominance is reflected in all aspects of popular culture that deliver us just enough feminism and an equal amount of resistance to create a space for action. The problem is that most of the critique takes us in the wrong direction. Even worse, the feminist projects (often housed in academia) seem to perpetuate an injunction to act as opposed to think about who the real culprit is in the perpetuation of male dominance.As an example of this phenomenon applied in a different context, when you see images of starving children that could be fed for just pennies a day, you are compelled to do something. There is an immediate compulsion to join the cause by sending money or signing up to sponsor a child. While there is nothing inherently wrong with the desire to feed starving children, the energy gets channeled into an action that merely sustains the oppressive economic system keeping certain populations starved and malnourished and other populations overfed and diabetic. You never answer the question: why are these children starving in the first place? Or what systematic, state-sanctioned policies and practices keep people from having control over the production of food? This would take the conversation in a different direction.While we all know male power still exists in the U.S., we must re-examine the nature of this power to determine an appropriate response. In other words, where does this power originate and how is it exercised in both productive and oppressive ways? It does not seem useful to reproach power here, but rather find the appropriate channels to express power for political goals.A better way of describing the situation in 2016 would be to call male dominance a fratriarchy. This is the idea that men are a sort of “band of brothers” whose goals are not to become men, but rather avoid the duties and responsibilities that have historically come with being men. As a result, men these days act more like boys — avoiding commitment, playing video games, and just generally lacking in personal responsibility (note: women have issues, too, but I’m focusing on men here). Men idolize young men much more these days than they do their own fathers.Sexual access to a woman or a girl in patriarchy is first denied to men and boys by her father (you can come over and take my daughter on a date, but you should know I’ve got a shotgun and I’m not afraid to use it), and second by her husband (this is why the bride is traditionally and symbolically “given away” by her father — it’s a transfer of power). Women are assumed to have no control over their bodies. This is patriarchy; the rule of the father.In a fratriarchy, sexual access is the triumph of young men over the older generations of men. While young men might not have political or economic power, they’ve got sexual access to young women and there is nothing that their father can say about it. (“Why do you have to be so rude? I’m going to marry her anyway!”)The fratriarchs are young men who don’t necessarily want to become patriarchs, but still want the sexual access that patriarchy affords them. While a patriarch wants to get the girl at the end, set up a home, and secure their dominance through the ownership of their wife and children’s sexuality (namely, but not exclusively their daughters), fratriarchs just want the status and respect that comes from sexual access. Fathers are routinely degraded as dopey and castrated men in popular culture - Everybody Loves Raymond, Family Guy, and Roseanne. The fratriarchs in this context are found in “Two and a Half Men” (the entire show revolves around sexual access – not between the father and the son, but between the brothers! Charlie is always having sex with hot women and Alan is always failing).This is a triumph of youth over age and it is anti-family in the patriarchal sense of the institution. Because of this, some people mistakingly understand it as “feminist.” Under this shift, the state merely replaces the power of the family and this means that socialization for our children comes vis-à-vis the media.While women sometimes benefit from this shift as individuals — I mean, instead of being ruled by your actual father you are only pressured by the vague forces of institutions and while you are over-sexualized in the media, it’s better than being stuck indoors as a domestic slave, right? BUT, it is only a shift in form and not a shift in substance. What persists is the establishment of male control through sexual access and this, I think, is the problem of our time.Ironically enough, we may just need the “opposite” of feminism right now - which would be the encouragement of men to start acting more like men in the ancient sense of the word. You know, the word virtue comes from the Latin word virtus which actually means… Manliness.