The Birth Control Handbook: The Underground Student Publication That Let Women Take Control of Their Bodies (1968)

in Biology, Politics | December 8th, 2016

Cen­tral to Michel Foucault’s the­o­ry of “gov­ern­men­tal­i­ty” is what he calls “biopow­er,” an “explo­sion of numer­ous and diverse tech­niques for achiev­ing the sub­ju­ga­tions of bod­ies and the con­trol of pop­u­la­tions.” Where debates over abor­tion and con­tra­cep­tion gen­er­al­ly coa­lesce around ques­tions of reli­gion and rights, the French the­o­rist of pow­er saw these issues as part of the bio-polit­i­cal strug­gle between “gov­ern­ing the self” and “gov­ern­ing oth­ers.”

Those who resist repres­sive biopow­er seize on the for­mer def­i­n­i­tion of gov­ern­ment. Take a very point­ed exam­ple of both restric­tive gov­ern­ment biopow­er and cre­ative resis­tance to the same: the 1968 Birth Con­trol Hand­book you see here, print­ed ille­gal­ly by under­grad­u­ate stu­dents at Montreal’s McGill Uni­ver­si­ty. At the time of this text’s cre­ation, notes Atlas Obscu­ra, “under Canada’s Crim­i­nal Code, the dis­sem­i­na­tion, sale, and adver­tise­ment of birth con­trol meth­ods were all ille­gal, and abor­tion was pun­ish­able by life impris­on­ment.”

Despite fac­ing the pos­si­ble con­se­quences of up to two years in prison, the McGill Stu­dent Soci­ety “sold mil­lions of copies” of The Birth Con­trol Hand­book, writes Aman­da Edg­ley, “in Cana­da and inter­na­tion­al­ly.” Maya Koropat­nit­sky describes the tremen­dous social impact of the hand­book:

Stu­dents at McGill as well as oth­er Que­bec cam­pus­es snapped up the first run of 17,000 copies. Due to its major suc­cess, the com­mit­tee came out with a sec­ond issue of the hand­book in 1969. This hand­book is seen to be a major play­er in women’s lib­er­a­tion because it gave young women the knowl­edge and the abil­i­ty to con­trol repro­duc­tive func­tions.  

The hand­book fur­ther­more “mobi­lized women into form­ing meet­ings and groups to talk about con­scious­ness-rais­ing issues.” This infor­mal edu­ca­tion was invalu­able for mil­lions of women, who were “des­per­ate for this infor­ma­tion,” writes author Lau­ra Kaplan, “so starved for infor­ma­tion. You want­ed it, in as much detail as you could get it, as graph­ic as it could be made.”

What the Cana­di­an, and U.S., gov­ern­ments saw as sex­u­al­ly explic­it will look to us like stan­dard biol­o­gy text­book illus­tra­tions, mun­dane charts and graphs, ordi­nary pic­tures of the birth expe­ri­ence, and taste­ful, rather tame nude pho­tos. Orig­i­nal authors Allan Fein­gold and Don­na Cher­ni­ak “pored through books in the med­ical library,” Atlas Obscu­ra writes, “and con­sult­ed med­ical advi­sors, com­pil­ing detailed infor­ma­tion on top­ics like sex­u­al inter­course, men­stru­al cycles, sur­gi­cal abor­tion tech­niques (accom­pa­nied by prices and sta­tis­tics), and how, exact­ly, to con­tact abor­tion providers.”

Illus­trat­ing anoth­er Fou­cauldian insight into the rela­tion­ship between knowl­edge and pow­er, not only were birth con­trol meth­ods under the strict con­trol of most­ly male doc­tors (and only avail­able with per­mis­sion from a hus­band), but even basic infor­ma­tion on repro­duc­tion and birth con­trol was dif­fi­cult for most women to access. “To have all the infor­ma­tion on the var­i­ous meth­ods of birth con­trol in one place,” says Kaplan, “with pros and cons and what you need­ed to know about them, was a rev­e­la­tion.” Cher­ni­ak lat­er remem­bered, “We joked that after the Bible, we were prob­a­bly one of the most wide­ly dis­trib­uted pub­li­ca­tions in Cana­da.”

Both edi­tions of the hand­book addressed the con­tro­ver­sial top­ic of abor­tion, cit­ing the Cana­di­an crim­i­nal code along the way. “Con­cerned with the prob­lem of ille­gal abor­tion,” writes Uni­ver­si­ty of Ottowa pro­fes­sor Christa­belle Seth­na, “the coun­cil man­dat­ed the pub­li­ca­tion” of the hand­book, which also “con­tained edi­to­r­i­al com­men­tary that took West­ern pop­u­la­tion-con­trol experts to task for their racism and that sup­port­ed women’s repro­duc­tive rights as a func­tion of women’s lib­er­a­tion.” Seth­na sit­u­ates The Birth Con­trol Hand­book with­in a much larg­er Cana­di­an move­ment, just “one of the ways,” writes Edge­ley, “Cana­di­ans took con­trol over their own bod­ies.” Its cre­ators saw it as a means of chang­ing the world. “Those were the years,” Cher­ni­ak says, “in which you thought you could do any­thing.”

Two years after the first print run of The Birth Con­trol Hand­book, the ur-text of fem­i­nist bio-pol­i­tics, Our Bod­ies, Our­selves, was pub­lished by the Boston Women’s Health Book Col­lec­tive. This book “became its own wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed women’s health text,” Atlas Obscu­ra writes, “trans­lat­ed into 29 lan­guages.” But while Our Bod­ies, Our­selves remains famous for its key role in spread­ing much-need­ed infor­ma­tion about repro­duc­tive health, “its Cana­di­an coun­ter­part has been most­ly for­got­ten.” The Birth Con­trol Hand­book gave mil­lions of women the infor­ma­tion they need­ed to gov­ern their own lives. Redis­cov­er the com­plete text of the first, 1968 edi­tion and sec­ond, 1969 edi­tion at the Inter­net Archive, where you can see a scan, read tran­scribed full text, and down­load PDF, Kin­dle, and oth­er for­mats.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load All 239 Issues of Land­mark UK Fem­i­nist Mag­a­zine Spare Rib Free Online

Simone de Beau­voir Explains “Why I’m a Fem­i­nist” in a Rare TV Inter­view (1975)

The Sto­ry Of Men­stru­a­tion: Watch Walt Disney’s Sex Ed Film from 1946

Watch Fam­i­ly Plan­ning, Walt Disney’s 1967 Sex Ed Pro­duc­tion, Star­ring Don­ald Duck

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Tim Robbins’ Improv Classes Transform Prisoners’ Lives & Lower Recidivism Rates

in Comedy, Life, Politics, Psychology, Theatre | December 5th, 2016

If a 20‑something, Yale-edu­cat­ed New York­er reporter feels ner­vous step­ping in to her first ever improv class, imag­ine the stakes for your aver­age inmate, whose sur­vival depends on a suc­cess­ful­ly mono­lith­ic pro­jec­tion of tough­ness and con­trol.

Con­trol is actu­al­ly some­thing the Actors’ Gang Prison Project seeks to cul­ti­vate in its incar­cer­at­ed par­tic­i­pants. The Actors’ Gang’s Artis­tic Direc­tor, Tim Rob­bins, who found­ed the rad­i­cal­ly exper­i­men­tal ensem­ble fresh out of col­lege, notes a well-doc­u­ment­ed con­nec­tion between an inabil­i­ty to con­trol one’s emo­tions and crim­i­nal activ­i­ty.

Unchecked rage may have put these play­ers behind bars, but explor­ing a wide vari­ety of emo­tions behind the safe­ty of the Actors’ Gang’s mask-like white pan­cake make-up has proven lib­er­at­ing.

The dull prison rou­tine leaves pris­on­ers favor­ably inclined toward any divert­ing activ­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly those that allow for cre­ative expres­sion. Shake­speare has made an impact on this pop­u­la­tion. Why not com­me­dia dell’arte-influenced improv?

It’s a tru­ly ther­a­peu­tic fit, as Actors Gang ensem­ble mem­ber Sabra Williams, the founder of the Prison Project, explains in her TED Talk, below.

Par­tic­i­pants are sub­ject­ed and held to the rig­or­ous phys­i­cal­i­ty and emo­tion­al hon­esty at the core of this group’s aes­thet­ic. Per­son­al con­nec­tion to the vis­i­tors is lim­it­ed to what­ev­er may tran­spire in-the-moment, but with­in the prison pop­u­la­tion, rela­tion­ships blos­som. Both guards and pris­on­ers speak of new­found empa­thy.

The emo­tion­al insights aris­ing from these spon­ta­neous explo­rations teach par­tic­i­pants how to dif­fuse aggres­sive sit­u­a­tions, present a more pos­i­tive face to the world, and inter­act gen­er­ous­ly with oth­ers. In between class­es, par­tic­i­pants write in jour­nals, with a goal of shar­ing aloud.

Gang signs, mimed weapons, and bod­i­ly con­tact are out of bounds. Wild inven­tion often car­ries the day.

Par­tic­i­pants have zero recidi­vism, and a wait­ing list in the hun­dreds attests to the program’s pop­u­lar­i­ty.

You can learn more about the Actors’ Gang ten-year-old Prison Project here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

B.B. King Plays Live at Sing Sing Prison in One of His Great­est Per­for­mances (1972)

Inmates in New York Prison Defeat Harvard’s Debate Team: A Look Inside the Bard Prison Ini­tia­tive

What Pris­on­ers Ate at Alca­traz in 1946: A Vin­tage Prison Menu

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Hear a 20 Hour Playlist Featuring Recordings by Electronic Music Pioneer Pauline Oliveros (RIP)

in Music | November 29th, 2016

We can all sure­ly recite some ver­sion of the dif­fer­ence between lis­ten­ing and hear­ing. It’s usu­al­ly explained by a par­ent or guardian, with the intent of mak­ing us bet­ter at fol­low­ing instruc­tions. On the whole, it’s for our own good as chil­dren that we pay heed to our elders. But gen­uine, crit­i­cal lis­ten­ing is about so much more than per­ceiv­ing ges­tures of author­i­ty. The avant-garde com­pos­er Pauline Oliv­eros, who died this past Thurs­day at 84, would argue that true lis­ten­ing, what she called “deep lis­ten­ing,” opens us up in rad­i­cal ways to the world around us, and frees us from the sociopo­lit­i­cal con­straints that hem in our sens­es. “Take a walk at night,” says one Oliv­eros’ 1974 “Son­ic Med­i­ta­tions,” a set of 25 instruc­tions for deep lis­ten­ing, “Walk so silent­ly that the bot­tom of your feet become ears.”

“Son­ic Med­i­ta­tions” emerged after “a peri­od of intense intro­spec­tion prompt­ed by the Viet­nam War,” writes Steve Smith in a New York Times obit­u­ary, dur­ing which Oliv­eros “changed cre­ative course” to begin favor­ing impro­visato­ry works. “All soci­eties admit the pow­er of music or sound,” she wrote in the pref­ace.

“Son­ic Med­i­ta­tions,” wrote Oliv­eros, “are an attempt to return the con­trol of sound to the indi­vid­ual alone, and with­in groups espe­cial­ly for human­i­tar­i­an pur­pos­es; specif­i­cal­ly heal­ing.” Her approach rep­re­sent­ed the com­pos­er giv­ing up con­trol and the pri­ma­cy of author­ship in order to play oth­er roles: heal­er, guide, and teacher, a role she inhab­it­ed for decades as a col­lege pro­fes­sor and author of sev­er­al books of musi­cal the­o­ry.

As you can see in her TEDx lec­ture at the top of the post, Oliv­eros always returned from her son­ic explorations—such as the 1989 record­ing titled Deep Lis­ten­ing (hear an excerpt below)—with lessons for us in how to become bet­ter, more engaged and empow­ered lis­ten­ers, rather than dis­tract­ed con­sumers, of music and sound. Even before the 70s, and her turn to music as a med­i­ta­tive dis­ci­pline informed by Bud­dhism and Native Amer­i­can rit­u­al, Oliv­eros’ work dis­rupt­ed the usu­al hier­ar­chies of sound. An ear­ly adopter of tech­nol­o­gy, she “was quick­ly at the van­guard of elec­tron­ics,” wrote Tom Ser­vice in a 2012 Guardian pro­file, but her “rela­tion­ship with tech­nol­o­gy is philo­soph­i­cal­ly ambiva­lent” giv­en the role of research and devel­op­ment in cre­at­ing weapons of war.

In ear­ly com­po­si­tions like 1965’s “Bye Bye But­ter­fly,“ the com­pos­er “manip­u­lat­ed a record­ing of Puccini’s opera ‘Madama But­ter­fly’ on a turntable,” Smith writes, “aug­ment­ing its sounds with oscil­la­tors and tape delay.” In the beau­ti­ful­ly mov­ing results, fur­ther up, she aimed for a cri­tique that “bids farewell not only to the music of the 19th cen­tu­ry,” she wrote, “but also to the sys­tem of polite moral­i­ty of that age and its atten­dant insti­tu­tion­al­ized oppres­sion of the female sex.” Music has always been pro­duced and con­sumed with­in the social con­struc­tions of gen­der bina­ries, Oliv­eros main­tained. In a 1970 New York Times essay “And Don’t Call Them ‘Lady’ Com­posers,” she observed that “unless she is super-excel­lent, the woman in music will always be sub­ju­gat­ed, while men of the same or less­er tal­ent will find places for them­selves.”

Through­out her long career, Oliv­eros cre­at­ed a place for her­self, with as much the­o­ret­i­cal rig­or, play­ful­ness, ele­gance, and sophis­ti­ca­tion as her friend and con­tem­po­rary John Cage. That her sub­stan­tial body of work has received a frac­tion of the atten­tion as his may offer an instruc­tive gloss on her con­tentions of per­sis­tent bias. But Oliv­eros’ work was not reac­tive; it was con­struc­tive, such that her con­cepts gave rise to what she called a Deep Lis­ten­ing Insti­tute, an “ever-grow­ing com­mu­ni­ty of musi­cians, artists, sci­en­tists, and cer­ti­fied Deep Lis­ten­ing prac­ti­tion­ers,” who strive “for a height­ened con­scious­ness of the world of sound and the sound of the world.”

But you don’t need spe­cial­ized cer­ti­fi­ca­tion or train­ing to expe­ri­ence the med­i­ta­tive, con­scious­ness-expand­ing tech­niques of Oliv­eros’ music. On the con­trary, she sought to fos­ter “cre­ative inno­va­tion across bound­aries and across abil­i­ties, among artists and audi­ence, musi­cians and non­mu­si­cians, heal­ers and the phys­i­cal­ly or cog­ni­tive­ly chal­lenged, and chil­dren of all ages.” In the Spo­ti­fy playlist above, hear—or rather lis­ten to—20 hours of Oliv­eros com­po­si­tions, many fea­tur­ing her ear­ly exper­i­ments with ana­log elec­tron­ics, her “expand­ed instru­ment sys­tem,” and her sig­na­ture instru­ment, a dig­i­tal­ly-enhanced accor­dion.

As in the orches­tral move­ment of Deep Lis­ten­ing, the album, Oliv­eros fre­quent­ly dia­logues with musi­cal tra­di­tions, but she refused to allow them any par­tic­u­lar­ly ele­vat­ed author­i­ty over her work. “I’m not dis­mis­sive of clas­si­cal music and the West­ern canon,” she said in 2012, “It’s sim­ply that I can’t be bound by it. I’ve been jump­ing out of cat­e­gories all my life.” As lis­ten­ers, and read­ers, of her work, we can all learn to do the same.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Four Women Who Pio­neered Elec­tron­ic Music: Daphne Oram, Lau­rie Spiegel, Éliane Radigue & Pauline Oliv­eros

The Music of Avant-Garde Com­pos­er John Cage Now Avail­able in a Free Online Archive

Hear Steve Reich’s Min­i­mal­ist Com­po­si­tions in a 28-Hour Playlist: A Jour­ney Through His Influ­en­tial Record­ings

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

An Animated Introduction to George Orwell

in History, Literature | November 28th, 2016

When his short and (by his own account) often mis­er­able life came to an end in 1950, could the Eng­lish polit­i­cal writer Eric Arthur Blair have known that he would not just become a house­hold name, but remain one well over half a cen­tu­ry lat­er? Giv­en his adop­tion of the mem­o­rable nom de plume George Orwell, we might say he had an inkling of his lit­er­ary lega­cy’s poten­tial. Still, he claimed to choose it for no grander rea­son than that it sound­ed like “a good round Eng­lish name,” and would have loathed the pre­tense he sensed in the use of the phrase “nom de plume,” or, for that mat­ter, any oth­er of con­spic­u­ous­ly for­eign prove­nance.

The atti­tudes that shaped the author of Ani­mal Farm and 1984 come out in this ani­mat­ed intro­duc­tion to Orwell’s life and work, new­ly pub­lished by Alain de Bot­ton’s School of Life. In explain­ing the moti­va­tions of this “most famous Eng­lish lan­guage writer of the 20th cen­tu­ry,” de Bot­ton quotes from the essay “Why I Write,” where­in Orwell, with char­ac­ter­is­tic clar­i­ty, lays out his mis­sion “to make polit­i­cal writ­ing into an art. My start­ing point is always a feel­ing of par­ti­san­ship, a sense of injus­tice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to pro­duce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw atten­tion, and my ini­tial con­cern is to get a hear­ing.”

Orwell hat­ed his fel­low intel­lec­tu­als, whom he accused of “a range of sins: a lack of patri­o­tism, resent­ment of mon­ey and phys­i­cal vig­or, con­cealed sex­u­al frus­tra­tion, pre­ten­sion, and dis­hon­esty.” He loved “the ordi­nary per­son” and the lives led by those “not espe­cial­ly blessed by mate­r­i­al goods, peo­ple who work in ordi­nary jobs, who don’t have much of an edu­ca­tion, who won’t achieve great­ness, and who nev­er­the­less love, care for oth­ers, work, have fun, raise chil­dren, and have large thoughts about the deep­est ques­tions in ways Orwell thought espe­cial­ly admirable.” Though raised mid­dle-class and edu­cat­ed at Eton, Orwell eschewed uni­ver­si­ty and believed that “the aver­age pub in a coal-min­ing vil­lage con­tained more intel­li­gence and wis­dom than the British Cab­i­net or the high table of an Oxbridge col­lege.”

One might want to call such an intel­lec­tu­al a poseur or even a sort of fetishist, but Orwell backed up his pro­nounce­ments about the supe­ri­or­i­ty of the work­ing class with his years spent liv­ing and work­ing in it, and, with books like Down and Out in Paris and Lon­don and The Road to Wigan Pier, writ­ing about it. He praised news­pa­per comics, coun­try walks, danc­ing, Charles Dick­ens, and straight­for­ward lan­guage, all of which informed the attacks on ide­ol­o­gy and author­i­tar­i­an­ism that would keep his writ­ing mean­ing­ful for future gen­er­a­tions. The hol­i­day sea­son now upon us makes anoth­er work of Orwell’s espe­cial­ly rel­e­vant: his Christ­mas pud­ding recipe, one blow in his less­er-known strug­gle to, as the Lon­don-based de Bot­ton puts it, write “brave­ly in defense of Eng­lish cook­ing” — a project which would, by itself, qual­i­fy him as a cham­pi­on of the under­dog.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Orwell’s Five Great­est Essays (as Select­ed by Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning Colum­nist Michael Hiltzik)

George Orwell Explains in a Reveal­ing 1944 Let­ter Why He’d Write 1984

For 95 Min­utes, the BBC Brings George Orwell to Life

George Orwell’s Final Warn­ing: Don’t Let This Night­mare Sit­u­a­tion Hap­pen. It Depends on You! 

What “Orwellian” Real­ly Means: An Ani­mat­ed Les­son About the Use & Abuse of the Term

Try George Orwell’s Recipe for Christ­mas Pud­ding, from His Essay “British Cook­ery” (1945)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Download Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man as a Free Audiobook (Available for a Limited Time)

in Audio Books, Literature | November 22nd, 2016

When Ralph Elli­son pub­lished his first nov­el, Invis­i­ble Man, in 1952, it took the lit­er­ary world by storm. Orville Prescott, a lit­er­ary crit­ic at The New York Times, wrote in April of ’52:

Ralph Ellison’s first nov­el, “The Invis­i­ble Man,” is the most impres­sive work of fic­tion by an Amer­i­can Negro which I have ever read. Unlike Richard Wright and Willard Mot­ley, who achieve their best effects by over­pow­er­ing their read­ers with doc­u­men­tary detail, Mr. Elli­son is a fin­ished nov­el­ist who uses words with great skill, who writes with poet­ic inten­si­ty and immense nar­ra­tive dri­ve. “Invis­i­ble Man” has many flaws. It is a sen­sa­tion­al and fever­ish­ly emo­tion­al book. It will shock and sick­en some of its read­ers. But, what­ev­er the final ver­dict on “Invis­i­ble Man” may be, it does mark the appear­ance of a rich­ly tal­ent­ed writer.

Invis­i­ble Man won the U.S. Nation­al Book Award for Fic­tion the fol­low­ing year. And the belief that Elli­son wrote some­thing spe­cial has­n’t dimin­ished since. Case in point: When Mod­ern Library cre­at­ed a list of the 100 best Eng­lish-lan­guage nov­els of the 20th cen­tu­ry, they placed Invis­i­ble Man at num­ber 19.

As Don Katz tells us above, the book touched him deeply dur­ing his col­lege years at NYU. Now the founder and CEO of Audible.com, he’s let­ting you down­load Invis­i­ble Man as a free audio­book. The free down­load is avail­able at Audi­ble and at Ama­zon until Decem­ber 31st. (Audi­ble is an Ama­zon sub­sidiary). Please note that you’ll need to cre­ate an account to get the down­load. But appar­ent­ly no payment/credit card info is required.

Sep­a­rate­ly, I should also men­tion that Audi­ble offers a free 30-day tri­al pro­gram, where they let you down­load two pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio­books. At the end of 30 days, you can decide whether to become an Audi­ble sub­scriber or not. Either way, you can keep the two free audio­books. Find more infor­ma­tion on that free tri­al pro­gram here.

Again, the links to down­load Invis­i­ble Man are here: Audi­ble — Ama­zon. And remem­ber, we have more free audio­books in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free. Most­ly clas­sics.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

Ralph Elli­son Reads from His Novel-in-Progress,Juneteenth, in Rare Video Footage (1966)

Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ in Rare 1959 Audio

Philosopher Richard Rorty Chillingly Predicts the Results of the 2016 Election … Back in 1998

in Literature, Philosophy, Politics | November 17th, 2016

Twen­ty years ago a strong aca­d­e­m­ic left in uni­ver­si­ties all over the world spoke to polit­i­cal cul­ture the way that a glob­al­ized nation­al­ist far-right seems to now. Among pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als in the U.S., Richard Rorty’s name held par­tic­u­lar sway. Yet in his con­trar­i­an 1998 book Achiev­ing Our Coun­try, Rorty argued against the par­tic­i­pa­tion of phi­los­o­phy in pol­i­tics. A mem­ber of the so-called “Old Left,” or what he called the “reformist left,” Rorty took on the “Cul­tur­al Left” in ways we now hear in (often bit­ter) debates between sim­i­lar camps. In the course of his attacks, he made the uncan­ny pre­dic­tion above.

The cul­tur­al left, wrote Rorty, had come “to give cul­tur­al pol­i­tics pref­er­ence over real pol­i­tics, and to mock the very idea that demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions might once again be made to serve social jus­tice.” He fore­saw cul­tur­al pol­i­tics on the left as con­tribut­ing to a tidal wave of resent­ment that would one day result in a time when “all the sadism which the aca­d­e­m­ic left has tried to make unac­cept­able to its stu­dents will come flood­ing back.”

As demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions fail, he writes in the quote above:

[M]embers of labor unions, and unor­ga­nized unskilled work­ers, will soon­er or lat­er real­ize that their gov­ern­ment is not even try­ing to pre­vent wages from sink­ing or to pre­vent jobs from being export­ed. Around the same time, they will real­ize that sub­ur­ban white-col­lar workers—themselves des­per­ate­ly afraid of being downsized—are not going to let them­selves be taxed to pro­vide social ben­e­fits for any­one else.

At that point, some­thing will crack. The non­sub­ur­ban elec­torate will decide that the sys­tem has failed and start look­ing around for a strong­man to vote for—someone will­ing to assure them that, once he is elect­ed, the smug bureau­crats, tricky lawyers, over­paid bond sales­men, and post­mod­ernist pro­fes­sors will no longer be call­ing the shots. A sce­nario like that of Sin­clair Lewis’ nov­el It Can’t Hap­pen Here may then be played out. For once a strong­man takes office, nobody can pre­dict what will hap­pen. In 1932, most of the pre­dic­tions made about what would hap­pen if Hin­den­burg named Hitler chan­cel­lor were wild­ly overop­ti­mistic.

One thing that is very like­ly to hap­pen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Amer­i­cans, and by homo­sex­u­als, will be wiped out. Joc­u­lar con­tempt for women will come back into fash­ion. The words [slur for an African-Amer­i­can that begins with “n”] and [slur for a Jew­ish per­son that begins with “k”] will once again be heard in the work­place. All the sadism which the aca­d­e­m­ic Left has tried to make unac­cept­able to its stu­dents will come flood­ing back. All the resent­ment which bad­ly edu­cat­ed Amer­i­cans feel about hav­ing their man­ners dic­tat­ed to them by col­lege grad­u­ates will find an out­let.

He also then argues, how­ev­er, that this sadism will not sole­ly be the result of “eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty and inse­cu­ri­ty,” and that such expla­na­tions would be “too sim­plis­tic.” Nor would the strong­man who comes to pow­er do any­thing but wors­en eco­nom­ic con­di­tions. He writes next, “after my imag­ined strong­man takes charge, he will quick­ly make his peace with the inter­na­tion­al super­rich.”

Rorty blamed the Marx­ist New Left for “retreat­ing from prag­ma­tism into the­o­ry,” wrote The New York Times in its review of Achiev­ing Our Coun­try. He felt the cul­tur­al left had aban­doned the “Amer­i­can exper­i­ment as sec­u­lar, anti-author­i­tar­i­an and infi­nite in pos­si­bil­i­ties,” such as “Whit­man ide­al­ized as lov­ing rela­tion­ships and Dewey as good cit­i­zen­ship.” The Times wrote then that Rorty’s pre­dic­tions above were a form of “intel­lec­tu­al bul­ly­ing.” We can take our dystopi­an futures from sci-fi nov­el­ists and film­mak­ers, but when philoso­phers “harus­pi­cate or scry,” as T.S. Eliot wrote in “The Dry Sal­vages,” we tend to dis­miss it as the “usu­al / Pas­times and drugs, and fea­tures of the press.”

The emi­nent Stan­ford pro­fes­sor exhort­ed his con­tem­po­raries to leave behind “semi­con­scious anti-Amer­i­can­ism” and embrace prag­mat­ic civ­il engage­ment, and did so by offer­ing up exam­ples from Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture and phi­los­o­phy that all had fierce activist strains. Exco­ri­at­ing one kind of life of the mind, Rorty can’t help but offer anoth­er. “What does Rorty offer as a solu­tion?” asked the Times review, “Not real­ly very much.” Per­haps not to politi­cians. But to the post­mod­ern aca­d­e­mics and writ­ers he accused, he offers up as counter exam­ples Walt Whit­man, John Dewey, and—as Rorty not­ed in an inter­view—James Bald­win, whose “use of the phrase… achiev­ing our coun­try” inspired his book’s title, Achiev­ing Our Coun­try.

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Octavia Butler’s 1998 Dystopi­an Nov­el Fea­tures a Fascis­tic Pres­i­den­tial Can­di­date Who Promis­es to “Make Amer­i­ca Great Again”

John Sear­le on Fou­cault and the Obscu­ran­tism in French Phi­los­o­phy

Hux­ley to Orwell: My Hell­ish Vision of the Future is Bet­ter Than Yours (1949)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

Say Goodbye to Leonard Cohen Through Some of His Best-Loved Songs: “Hallelujah,” “Suzanne” and 235 Other Tracks

in Music | November 11th, 2016

Anoth­er epi­taph for anoth­er fall­en star, anoth­er beloved icon, anoth­er bril­liant musi­cian who was also a bril­liant human being. I do not want to tell you what you already know, that Leonard Cohen died last night at age 82. Cohen, it seems, accept­ed it, just as David Bowie accept­ed his death, and both poured their accep­tance into one final record. Will we talk about You Want It Dark­er in the same awed tones as David Bowie’s Black­star—as a know­ing last let­ter of mixed hope and despair, a cryp­tic time cap­sule that opens a lit­tle bit more as the months ahead wear on?

If you are the deal­er, I’m out of the game

If you are the heal­er, it means I’m bro­ken and lame

If thine is the glo­ry then mine must be the shame

You want it dark­er

We kill the flame

.… I’m ready, my lord

No mat­ter what he had in mind, we can­not but see these lines now as a last tes­ta­ment. Cohen not only faced his own mor­tal­i­ty, but this year lost his long­time lover and muse Mar­i­anne Ihlen to can­cer. “I think I will fol­low you soon,” he wrote to her just before her death. “You Want It Dark­er” ties togeth­er the per­son­al, the polit­i­cal, the spir­i­tu­al, and the lit­er­ary in a prophet­ic lament, weav­ing his strug­gle into all of ours. There are no answers, but “There’s a lul­la­by for suf­fer­ing,” Cohen writes, then warns, “And a para­dox to blame.” The com­pres­sion of these lines belies a tremen­dous depth of reli­gious and philo­soph­i­cal sen­ti­ment, the weight—it feels in Cohen’s last album—of the world.

But then this describes the music he made 30 years ago. And 50 years ago. “Cohen’s songs are death-haunt­ed,” writes David Rem­nick, “but then they have been since his ear­li­est vers­es.” He released his first album in 1967, fol­lowed two years lat­er by Songs from a Room, the hal­lowed doc­u­ment of some of his best-loved songs: “Bird on the Wire,” “Sto­ry of Isaac,” “Tonight Will Be Fine,” and “The Par­ti­san.” Cohen did not write that last one, and yet, though he “is often incor­rect­ly cred­it­ed as the com­pos­er of the song,” writes Alex Young at Con­se­quence of Sound, “he is cer­tain­ly respon­si­ble for its sur­vival.”

Cohen uni­ver­sal­izes the orig­i­nal French ver­sion; “the Eng­lish lyrics con­tain no ref­er­ences to France or the Nazi occu­pa­tion.” It spoke direct­ly to the bro­ken par­ti­sans in both France and the U.S. post-1968, a year very much like this one, wracked with vio­lence, upheaval, tragedy, and resis­tance. Few song­writ­ers have been able to con­sis­tent­ly address the irra­tional pas­sion, vio­lence, and almost crush­ing deter­mi­na­tion of so much human expe­ri­ence with as much wis­dom as Cohen, even if he down­played what Rem­nick calls “the mys­ter­ies of cre­ation” in his work, telling the New York­er edi­tor in one of his final inter­views last month, “I have no idea what I am doing.”

Yet, almost no song­writer has inspired so much vol­u­bil­i­ty from Bob Dylan, who spoke to Rem­nick at length about the fine intri­ca­cies of Cohen’s “coun­ter­point lines.” “His gift or genius,” said Dylan, “is in his con­nec­tion to the music of the spheres.” Cohen’s lyri­cal sophis­ti­ca­tion chart­ed his het­ero­dox embrace of Judaism and Zen Bud­dhism, and his fas­ci­na­tion with Chris­tian­i­ty. But before he arrived in New York as a “musi­cal novice” at thir­ty-two and became a mys­ti­cal folk trou­ba­dour, he was a high­ly-regard­ed and con­tro­ver­sial poet and nov­el­ist, a “bohemi­an with a cush­ion” from a Mon­tre­al Jew­ish fam­i­ly “both promi­nent and cul­ti­vat­ed.” He even had a doc­u­men­tary about him made in 1965.

Cohen began pub­lish­ing poet­ry in col­lege and put out his first col­lec­tion at 22, then moved to the Greek island of Hydra, where he met Mar­i­anne and pub­lished sev­er­al more col­lec­tions and two nov­els. Lat­er while liv­ing in Lon­don, he wrote to his pub­lish­er about his desire to write for “inner-direct­ed ado­les­cents, lovers in all degree of anguish, dis­ap­point­ed Pla­ton­ists, pornog­ra­phy-peep­ers, hair-hand­ed monks and Popists.” (His one­time lover Joni Mitchell dis­missed him as a “boudoir poet.”) Cohen more than achieved this aim as a song­writer, doing as much, per­haps, as Nico—whom he once pined for and maybe part­ly imitated—to inspire 80s Goths and New Roman­tics.

The dark eroti­cism in his work did not recede when, “frus­trat­ed by poor book sales,” writes Rolling Stone, “Cohen vis­it­ed New York in 1966 to inves­ti­gate the city’s robust folk-rock scene.” There, under the encour­age­ment of Judy Collins, he “quick­ly became the songwriter’s song­writer of choice for artists like Collins, James Tay­lor, Willie Nel­son and many oth­ers.” His first hit, “Suzanne,” above, vivid­ly imag­ines Renais­sance love scenes and echoes with the refrain “her per­fect body,” while also imbu­ing its fleet­ing moments with the depth of sad­ness Cohen’s spa­cious bari­tone con­tained. Lat­er albums like the Phil Spec­tor-pro­duced (and unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly loud) Death of a Ladies’ Man treat with sneer­ing irony his “unbri­dled sex­u­al­i­ty and bru­tal voyeurism.”

Cohen looked unflinch­ing­ly and with monk­ish inten­si­ty at his own excess­es and weak­ness, and at ours, and saw them, trag­ic and beau­ti­ful, as our only strengths. “There is a crack in every­thing,” he sang in 1992’s “Anthem”—live in Lon­don below—“that’s how the light gets in.” No trib­ute can leave out his most beloved and most cov­ered song—one of the most cov­ered and beloved songs ever writ­ten— “Hal­lelu­jah.” From its best-known Jeff Buck­ley ver­sion in 1994 to Rufus Wain­wright’s and count­less oth­ers, the song instant­ly con­jures grav­i­tas and stirs deep wells of emo­tion in the sec­u­lar and reli­gious alike. First released in 1984 on Cohen’s album Var­i­ous Posi­tions, it attract­ed lit­tle atten­tion at first.

His ver­sion lacks the high gospel dra­ma of many inter­pre­ta­tions, despite the back­ing gospel choir, but his lop­ing bar­room deliv­ery and lounge-pop back­ing music work in hyp­not­ic dis­so­nance. It’s a song that took him five years to write. (Mal­colm Glad­well has a whole pod­cast ded­i­cat­ed to the writ­ing of the song.) “He draft­ed dozens of vers­es,” writes Rem­nick, around 80, “and then it was years before he set­tled on a final ver­sion.” Dylan per­formed the song in the late eight­ies, “as a roughshod blues.” In con­ver­sa­tion with Rem­nick, Dylan paused his very detached eval­u­a­tion of Cohen’s tech­ni­cal genius to remark it’s “the point-blank I‑know-you-bet­ter-than-you-know-your­self aspect of the song [that] has plen­ty of res­o­nance for me.” I think we’ll find that to be true of Leonard Cohen the more we unpack his aus­tere, sen­su­al, pro­found­ly lyri­cal-in-the-most-ancient-of-ways body of work.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mal­colm Glad­well on Why Genius Takes Time: A Look at the Mak­ing of Elvis Costello’s “Depor­tee” & Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah”

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen: The Poet-Musi­cian Fea­tured in a 1965 Doc­u­men­tary

Leonard Cohen Recounts “How I Got My Song,” or When His Love Affair with Music Began

The Poet­ry of Leonard Cohen Illus­trat­ed by Two Short Films

Rufus Wain­wright and 1,500 Singers Sing Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah”

Leonard Cohen Reads The Great World War I Poem, “In Flan­ders Fields”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

An Immersive Audio Tour of the East Village’s Famed Poetry Scene, Narrated by Jim Jarmusch

in History, Life, Podcasts, Poetry | October 21st, 2016

Image by Michiel Hendryckx, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

A peek at the pho­tos on a realtor’s list­ing for a New York City one bed­room apart­ment for­mer­ly occu­pied by Beat poet Allen Gins­berg is a dispir­it­ing reminder of how much the East Vil­lage has changed.

And that list­ing is over six years old!

Daniel Mau­r­er, the edi­tor of Bed­ford + Bow­ery, and a Gins­berg fan whom his­to­ry has com­pelled to take over a por­tion of his hero’s for­mer­ly sprawl­ing digs, wrote amus­ing­ly of shod­dy ren­o­va­tions and his upstairs neigh­bor, punk rock icon Richard Hell:

Orlovsky’s name is still on the mail­box – which is just about the only thing still around from his day. After his death, the place was gut ren­o­vat­ed with lux­u­ri­ous mod­ern ameni­ties like a mini fridge that comes up to mid-thigh and a stove that’s so tiny and inef­fec­tu­al I just use it for cook­book stor­age. Soon after I moved in I took a trip to Ikea and rec­og­nized my kitchen cab­i­nets there.

That’s why I was amused to read a piece in the Wall Street Jour­nal … in which my upstairs neigh­bor, Richard Hell, talked about his rent-sta­bi­lized two-bed­room apart­ment and its “funk­i­ness that you don’t find in Man­hat­tan much any­more.”

Hell describes his “worn unvar­nished wood floors that groan when you walk on them, cracks in the plas­ter walls, sag­ging orig­i­nal mold­ings.” That’s exact­ly what I was look­ing for in an apart­ment two years ago.

Mau­r­er is far from alone in the desire to edge clos­er to a bygone cul­tur­al moment. Radio pro­duc­er Pejk Mali­novski spent three years craft­ing Pass­ing Stranger, a site-spe­cif­ic audio tour of the East Vil­lage poet­ry scene, below.

A Dane who relo­cat­ed to New York in 2003, Mali­novs­ki was intrigued by the scene-relat­ed anec­dotes of his friend, poet Ron Pad­gett, who point­ed out his for­mer haunts on strolls about the neigh­bor­hood. His inter­est piqued, Mali­novs­ki immersed him­self in Daniel Kane’s All Poets Wel­come, The Low­er East Side Poet­ry Scene in the 1960’s, anoth­er his­to­ry that comes for­ti­fied with archival audio clips.

Film­mak­er Jim Jar­musch, a long­time Low­er East Side res­i­dent who stud­ied with poet Ken­neth Koch in his youth, was tapped to pro­vide the audio tour’s nar­ra­tion, with music com­pli­ments of com­pos­er John Zorn, the artis­tic direc­tor of The Stone, an exper­i­men­tal East Vil­lage per­for­mance space. Below, Jar­musch explains what attract­ed him to the project:

No mat­ter if geo­graph­ic con­straints pre­vent you from down­load­ing Malinovski’s tour for a two mile, 90 minute amble around the much-changed East Vil­lage. In some ways, the vir­tu­al tour is bet­ter. Rather than try­ing to take it all in in a sin­gle, pre-plot­ted ses­sion, you’re free to wan­der at will, enjoy­ing such inter­ac­tive fea­tures as maps and pho­tos, in addi­tion to inter­views, read­ings, and rem­i­nis­cences.

The 10th stop on the tour deposits you across the street from 437 East 12th Street, Ginsberg’s afore­men­tioned for­mer res­i­dence, on the steps of a church that no longer exists. Mary Help of Chris­tians Roman Catholic Church was demol­ished short­ly after Pass­ing Stranger hit the streets, but its mem­o­ry lives on thanks to its cel­e­brat­ed appear­ance in Ginsberg’s work:

Fourth Floor, Dawn, Up All Night Writ­ing Let­ters

Pigeons shake their wings on the cop­per church roof 

out my win­dow across the street, a bird perched on the cross 

sur­veys the city’s blue-grey clouds. Lar­ry Rivers 

‘ll come at 10 AM and take my pic­ture. I’m tak­ing 

your pic­ture, pigeons. I’m writ­ing you down, Dawn. 

I’m immor­tal­iz­ing your exhaust, Avenue A bus. 

O Thought, now you’ll have to think the same thing for­ev­er!

- Allen Gins­berg, New York, June 7, 1980

Gins­berg him­self is brought to vivid life by his sec­re­tary and fel­low poet, Bob Rosen­thal, who recalls how vis­i­tors would call up from the street, then wait for Gins­berg to toss down keys, wrapped in a dirty sock. He also name checks Mr. Buon­giorno, the 437 East 12th St neigh­bor who served as Mary Help of Chris­tians’ bell ringer.

You can hear those bells in the back­ground of your Pass­ing Stranger tour, though pro­duc­er Mali­novs­ki uses ambi­ent sound spar­ing­ly, to avoid over­whelm­ing those using the tour on the noisy streets of the actu­al East Vil­lage.

You can down­load the full walk­ing tour of Pass­ing Stranger—named for Walt Whitman’s open­ing salu­ta­tion in “To a Stranger”—here.

Explore Pass­ing Stranger’s triv­ia-filled inter­ac­tive website—featuring audio from Amiri Bara­ka, Het­tie Jones, Eileen Myles, and Jack Ker­ouac, among oth­ers—here.

Poems includ­ed on the Pass­ing Stranger audio tour of the East Vil­lage, in order of appear­ance:

Ken­neth Koch, “To my Audi­ence” (excerpt)

Frank O’Hara, Ode to Joy (To hell with it) (excerpt)

Ted Berrri­g­an “Dear Margie, Hel­lo”

Ron Pad­gett “Poe­ma del City from Tou­jours l’amour”

Walt Whit­man, “To a Stranger”

Tay­lor Mead, “Motor­cy­cles”

Bernadette May­or, “Son­net (You jerk, you did­n’t call me up)”

Diane Di Pri­ma, “Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Let­ters” (excerpt)

Gal­way Kin­nell, “The Avenue Bear­ing the Ini­tial of Christ” (excerpt)

Miquel Piñero, “A Low­er East Side Poem” (excerpt)

Jack Ker­ouac, “Amer­i­can Haiku” (excerpt)

Bill Berk­son / Frank O’Hara, “Song Heard Around St. Bridget’s”

John Ash­bery, “Just Walk­ing Around, from A Wave”

Joe Brainard, “I Remem­ber” (excerpt)

Alice Not­ley, “10 Best Com­ic Books”

WH Auden, “Sep­tem­ber 1, 1939” (excerpt)

Anne Wald­man, “Fast Speak­ing Woman” (excerpt)

Lewis Warsh, “Eye Con­tact” (excerpt)

Dick Gallup / Ted Berri­g­an, “80th Con­gress”

Abra­ham Lin­coln, “My Child­hood-Home I See Again” (excerpt)

Leroi Jones, “Bang, bang, out­ish­ly” (excerpt)

Het­tie Jones, “Ode to My Kitchen Sink”

Bren­da Coul­tas, “A Hand­made Muse­um” (excerpt)

ee cum­mings, ”i was sit­ting in mcsorley’s…”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Footage of Allen Gins­berg, Jack Ker­ouac & Oth­er Beats Hang­ing Out in the East Vil­lage (1959)

Hear Allen Gins­berg Teach “Lit­er­ary His­to­ry of the Beats”: Audio Lec­tures from His 1977 & 1981 Naropa Cours­es

Iggy Pop Con­ducts a Tour of New York’s Low­er East Side, Cir­ca 1993

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

“We Suck” — When Yale Pranked Harvard at the 2004 Big Football Game

in Random, Sports | October 21st, 2016

On a com­plete­ly lighter note.

The blurb to the Youtube video above reads as fol­lows: “In 2004, 24 enter­pris­ing Yale stu­dents cre­at­ed the non-exis­tent “Har­vard Pep Squad” for the big Har­vard-Yale foot­ball game. As the Pep Squad pumped up the Har­vard fans, they dis­trib­uted 1800 pieces of red and white con­struc­tion papers with the under­stand­ing that when all the cards were held up, it would spell “GO HARVARD” See what hap­pens next!”

To get more of the back­sto­ry on what hap­pened that day, read this account by the mas­ter­mind of the prank as well as this account from a 2005 edi­tion of Yale Dai­ly News.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Prince­ton v. Yale, 1903: The Old­est Col­lege Foot­ball Game on Film

The Har­vard Clas­sics: Down­load All 51 Vol­umes as Free eBooks

Yale Launch­es an Archive of 170,000 Pho­tographs Doc­u­ment­ing the Great Depres­sion

Watch Helen Keller & Teacher Annie Sullivan Demonstrate How Helen Learned to Speak (1930)

in Education, History, Life | October 17th, 2016

Know­ing the trans­for­ma­tive effect an inspired teacher can have on an “unreach­able” stu­dent, one can only hope that geog­ra­phy and luck will con­spire to bring the two togeth­er at an ear­ly point in the child’s devel­op­ment.

Helen Keller, author, activist, and poster girl for sur­mount­ing near-impos­si­ble odds, cer­tain­ly lucked out in the teacher depart­ment. Ren­dered deaf and blind by a fever con­tract­ed at 19 months, Keller earned a rep­u­ta­tion as a holy ter­ror in a fam­i­ly ill-equipped to under­stand what her wild rages might sig­ni­fy.

Her well-con­nect­ed par­ents con­sult­ed var­i­ous experts, includ­ing soon-to-be-friend, inven­tor Alexan­der Gra­ham Bell, a trail that ulti­mate­ly led to the Perkins School for the Blind and the 20-year-old Annie Sul­li­van.

With­in a few short months of her arrival at the Keller fam­i­ly home, Sul­li­van led the near­ly-sev­en-year-old Keller to her famous break­through at the water pump.

In a more con­ven­tion­al arrange­ment, the stu­dent would even­tu­al­ly leave her teacher for fur­ther edu­ca­tion­al pur­suits, but Keller depend­ed on Sul­li­van to trans­late oth­er teach­ers’ lec­tures and class­room inter­ac­tions. Sul­li­van accom­pa­nied her to Perkins School for the Blind, the Wright-Huma­son School for the Deaf, the Cam­bridge School for Young Ladies, and final­ly Rad­cliffe Col­lege, where Keller earned her BA.

The unusu­al bound­aries of their teacher-stu­dent bond meant Keller lived with Sul­li­van and her hus­band in their For­est Hills home, a move that has­tened the marriage’s unof­fi­cial but per­ma­nent end, accord­ing to Sullivan’s biog­ra­ph­er, Kim Nielsen. It like­ly thwart­ed Keller’s sin­gle attempt at romance, with her tem­po­rary sec­re­tary, writer Peter Fagan, too.

For bet­ter and worse, their lives were for­ev­er entwined, each made more extra­or­di­nary by the pres­ence of the oth­er.

Their appear­ance in the 1930 Vita­phone news­reel, above, high­lights the manda­to­ry phys­i­cal close­ness they shared, as they demon­strate the process by which Keller learned to speak. Hav­ing learned to com­mu­ni­cate via let­ters Sul­li­van fin­ger spelled into her palm, Keller placed her fin­gers against Sullivan’s lips, throat and nose, to feel­ing the vibra­tions made when these famil­iar let­ters were spo­ken aloud.

Sul­li­van died six years after the news­reel was filmed, at which point, Pol­ly Thom­son, orig­i­nal­ly engaged as the ladies’ house­keep­er, took over, serv­ing as Keller’s inter­preter and trav­el­ing com­pan­ion for the next twen­ty years.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Helen Keller Had Impec­ca­ble Hand­writ­ing: See a Col­lec­tion of Her Child­hood Let­ters

Helen Keller Speaks About Her Great­est Regret — Nev­er Mas­ter­ing Speech

Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Spe­cial Friend­ship: He Treat­ed Me Not as a Freak, But as a Per­son Deal­ing with Great Dif­fi­cul­ties

“A Glo­ri­ous Hour”: Helen Keller Describes The Ecsta­sy of Feel­ing Beethoven’s Ninth Played on the Radio (1924)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.