Andrew S. Curran on Diderot

Andrew S. Curran, author of the acclaimed Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely (Other Press, 2019), was the guest speaker in a virtual meeting of the Greater Boston Humanists on 22 November 2020 titled 'Enlightenment, Atheism, and Race'. 

From today's perspective Diderot can be seen as more progressive than Voltaire and Rousseau. The concept of the 'Radical Enlightenment' was discussed, as well as the origins and causes of modern racism. This was an excellent presentation with exceptionally intelligent audience participation.

Curran is also the author of The Anatomy of Blackness: Science and Slavery in an Era of Enlightenment (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013).

Richard Wright vs Sun Ra

This is only a hypothetical confrontation to have taken place in the 1950s, or posthumously in the '60s. I recently came across an untitled poem that I wrote the same day I wrote this:

UFO (Haiku for Richard Wright)

In a rootless cosmopolitan way, Wright also belongs to Afrofuturism, maybe not so much Afro-....

"I have no religion in the formal sense of the word .... I have no race except that which is forced upon me. I have no country except that to which I'm obliged to belong. I have no traditions. I'm free. I have only the future."

-- Richard Wright, Pagan Spain

My haiku was prompted by a conversation about flying saucers buried in Wright's novel The Outsider. Both Wright and Sun Ra were hot to escape the confines of the Jim Crow South, taking different routes. Both are admirable for different reasons. Sun Ra was a musical genius and quite a charismatic character, but having listened to his blather in person, I could only take so much. So this is what I must have been thinking when I wrote the following, to which I must now give a title in addition to some slight editing and rearrangement:

Richard Wright to Sun Ra From the Tomb

Shaking hands with the ether,
Knowing Natchez was a pile of shit
Spewn over the globe.

Faith in articulate waves
broadcast into the galaxy . . .
and not your crank etymologies
concocted in the Magic City.

Bluesman in Paris
did not settle down,
Hallucinating into the future
And abruptly cut down.

(4 August 2011)

Philip Roth: 'The Conversion of the Jews'

Philip Roth is a famous name in Jewish American literature, but I never read him or much of any of the Jewish American literature of his era, which would seem to have much to do with the tribulations of assimilation into the American mainstream. I read a story by him, from 1959, for the first time a week ago. And this is the second, for an online class on Jewish culture two days from now:

The Conversion of the Jews by Philip Roth (1959)

This is really brilliant, with multiple ironies. By all means read it, and then read my analysis:

1. Ozzie the child is a child, not having the understanding, perspective, illusions, and inhibitions of the adult.

2. Ozzie doesn't really care whether or not Jesus is God, but he poses the philosophical question about the possibility of virgin birth.

3. Ozzie's reasoning mirrors the absurdity of all religious justification, but freed of understanding or interest in any superstitious tradition, pursues an abstract question.

4. Sticking to his guns, he's willing to suffer and rebel against persecution as a heretic, but flees to the rooftop.

5. On the roof, Ozzie discovers he has a peculiar power, first over the firement, then over the rabbi, then his mother, then the entire crowd.

6. Ozzie's friend Itzie yells for him to jump, and whips up the crowd. They love the spectacle, and they don't particularly care about Ozzie.

7. Ozzie discovers the power of martyrdom.

8. The crowd wants a martyr for its own delectation, not for any principle.

9. The guardians of Jewish religious orthodoxy--the rabbi and mom--don't want a martyr. This is because they don't want Ozzie to die. But this is also a commentary on and condemnation of Christianity.

10. So as not to become a martyr, Ozzie commands the rabbi and mom to bow down and acknowledge that God can do anything, he induces them to kneel and to acknowledge Jesus Christ as the son of God.

11. This is a paradoxical commentary on how Christianity makes converts, by coercion and spectacle. And also, how the Jews can be forced to kowtow to Christianity in order to survive, although in this case, it's because (for the rabbi and mom) they want Ozzie to survive, that is they want the prospective martyr not to be a martyr, and so they humiliate themselves for his sake. So, in this ironic situation, Judaism is subordinated to Christianity, but for the sake of saving a Jew.

12. And nobody should ever be slapped for their thoughts about God.

13. Ergo, Roth condemns both Judaism and Christianity and all religious authority. But paradoxically, while Christianity is posited as a viable theological option, Christianity receives the bulk of the condemnation for the glorification of martyrdom.