Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Case for God (2009)

  The former soldier Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556), founder of the Society of Jesus, perfectly embodied the efficiency and effectiveness of the early modern West. His Spiritual Exercises provided a systematic, time-efficient, thirty-day retreat—a sort of crash course in mysticism, designed to make each Jesuit a dynamic force in the world. Like the Iberian explorers, Jesuit missionaries were dispatched all over the world: Francis Xavier (1506–52) to Japan, Robert di Nobili (1577–1656) to India, and Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) to China. The reformed Catholic Church and the new Protestant denominations all succumbed to the iconoclasm of modernity, which would forever feel obliged to destroy what had been personally superseded. The positive achievements of the Catholic reformation were balanced by the horrors of the Inquisition. Protestants used the Old Testament ban on images as a mandate to trash statues and frescoes. Luther raged against the pope, Turks, Jews, women, and rebellious peasants. The Protestant reformers may have demanded that Christians be free to read and interpret the Bible as they chose, but there was no toleration for anybody who opposed their own teachings. Luther believed that all “heretical” books should be burned, and both Calvin and Zwingli were prepared to execute dissidents. Despite its intense religiosity, the divisions effected by the Protestant Reformation also helped to accelerate the process of secularization and the growth of nationalism. In order to maintain order, the princes had to separate themselves from the turmoil engendered by the squabbling churches and denominations, whose political power therefore diminished. As an infant nation struggled for political independence from Rome, it built a distinct identity, opting for Catholic or Protestant affiliation, and nonconformists were often persecuted as political dissidents and traitors. As it entered the modern period, therefore, the West was torn between a frequently strident dogmatism on the one hand, and a more liberal humility that recognized the limits of knowledge on the other. The plays of William Shakespeare (1564–1616) explored the myriad possibilities of the human personality. He shared the Renaissance understanding of the importance of context; ideas, customs, and behavior were inextricably combined with a particular set of circumstances, so it was impossible to judge them from a purely objective, theoretical point of view. Human affairs were not motivated primarily by rational considerations. People were often caught unawares by unconscious or emotional impulses that were neither pragmatic nor efficient but sometimes worked against their own interests. Hamlet depicted the tortured consciousness of a hero with whom everybody somehow identified turning ceaselessly yet fruitlessly upon itself, unable to understand its motivation or achieve any degree of certainty about the most pressing and practical matters. In Othello , the apparently “motiveless malignancy” of Iago militated against simplistic ideas of good and evil. Shakespeare made his audiences aware that human beings were mysterious to themselves and others, and that it was disastrous and counterproductive to either attempt to manipulate them or expect them to act in a certain way.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  28 Like Protestant fundamentalists, Dawkins has a simplistic view of the moral teaching of the Bible, taking it for granted that its chief purpose is to issue clear rules of conduct and provide us with “role models,” which, not surprisingly, he finds lamentably inadequate. 29 He also presumes that since the Bible claims to be inspired by God it must also provide scientific information. Dawkins’s only point of disagreement with the Protestant fundamentalists is that he finds the Bible unreliable about science while they do not. It is not surprising that Dawkins is incensed with American creationists who are campaigning against the teaching of evolution, and the proponents of a new, quasi-scientific philosophy that has tried to revive the theory of intelligent design (ID). These include Philip E. Johnson, professor of law at Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial (1991); the biochemist Michael Behe, author of Darwin’s Black Box (1996); and the philosopher William Dembski, author of The Design Inference (1998). These theists do not all posit God as the Designer, but they do argue that ID is a viable alternative to Darwinism and cite a supernatural agency in creation as if it were scientific evidence. But as Dennett points out, the ID theorists have not devised any experiments or made any empirical observations that challenge modern evolutionary thinking. ID, he concludes, is therefore not science. 30 ID is also theologically incorrect to make scientific statements. Mythos and logos have different fields of competence, and, as we have seen, when they are confused you have bad science and inadequate religion. But while Dawkins’s irritation with creationists and ID theorists is understandable, he is not correct to assume that fundamentalist belief either represents or is even typical of either Christianity or religion as a whole. This type of reductionism is characteristic of the fundamentalist mentality. It is also essential to the critique of Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris to present fundamentalism as the focal core of the three monotheisms. They have an extremely literalist notion of God. For Dawkins, religious faith rests on the idea that “there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence, who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it.” 31 Having set up this definition of God as Supernatural Designer, Dawkins only has to point out that there is in fact no design in nature in order to demolish it. But he is mistaken to assume that this is “the way people have generally understood the term” God. 32 He is also wrong to claim that God is a scientific hypothesis, that is, a conceptual framework for bringing intelligibility to a series of experiments and observations. 33 It was only in the modern period that theologians started to treat God as a scientific explanation and in the process produced an idolatrous God concept.

• From From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity (2004)

  They [meaning the pagans] think that the Christians are the cause of every public disaster, of every affliction with which the people are visited. If the Tiber River rises as high as the city walls, if the Nile River does not send its waters up and over the fields, if the heavens give no rain, if there is an earthquake, if there is famine or pestilence, straightaway the cry is, “Away with the Christians to the lion!’” (Tertullian’s Apology 40.) In other words, whenever there was a disaster that hit— not enough rain, too much rain, flood, drought, pestilence, famine—if there was a disaster that hit, the pagans said, “It’s because of these Christians. The gods are punishing us because of them, and so, away to the lion.” In other words, “Kill the Christians, and that will take care of the problem.” This position makes considerable sense when we recall that the pagans saw the gods as helpers and defenders against disaster; in exchange for their protection, the gods were to be worshiped in the proper ways. That’s why, if you recall, the Governor Pliny of Bythinia had a kind of litmus test in order to see whether somebody was worshiping the gods or not, he would bring out a bust or statue of the emperor, and the person had to offer some incense to this statue of the emperor. If he or she didn’t offer this incense, then he or she was taken off to be executed. Why? Because this would show that the person was not worshiping the state god, and someone who was not worshiping the state god was seen to not only be committing a political act, but a dangerous religious act, because the gods were the ones who had made the state great, which meant that you needed to worship these gods, or else they would harm the state. 189 The problem the Christians had, then, was not that they worshipped the Christian God, or that they worshipped Christ. It was, as we have seen, that they refused to worship the pagan gods. It appears that the Roman governors who were in charge of these persecutions were not all that enthusiastic about persecuting the Christians. We have seen this in the case of Polycarp, where the proconsul was, in fact, trying to get Polycarp to recant, and was doing everything he could, because he didn’t want to kill him, even though that’s what the mob wanted. “Just perform the sacrifice. Just say the word.” Well, these Christians refused to do so, however.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  30 ID is also theologically incorrect to make scientific statements. Mythos and logos have different fields of competence, and, as we have seen, when they are confused you have bad science and inadequate religion. But while Dawkins’s irritation with creationists and ID theorists is understandable, he is not correct to assume that fundamentalist belief either represents or is even typical of either Christianity or religion as a whole. This type of reductionism is characteristic of the fundamentalist mentality. It is also essential to the critique of Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris to present fundamentalism as the focal core of the three monotheisms. They have an extremely literalist notion of God. For Dawkins, religious faith rests on the idea that “there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence, who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it.” 31 Having set up this definition of God as Supernatural Designer, Dawkins only has to point out that there is in fact no design in nature in order to demolish it. But he is mistaken to assume that this is “the way people have generally understood the term” God. 32 He is also wrong to claim that God is a scientific hypothesis, that is, a conceptual framework for bringing intelligibility to a series of experiments and observations. 33 It was only in the modern period that theologians started to treat God as a scientific explanation and in the process produced an idolatrous God concept. The new atheists all equate faith with mindless credulity. Harris wrote The End of Faith immediately after 9/11, insisting that the only way to rid our world of terrorism was to abolish all faith. Like Dawkins and Hitchens, he defines faith as “Belief without Evidence,” 34 an attitude that he regards as morally reprehensible. It is not surprising, perhaps, that he should confuse “faith” with “belief” (meaning the intellectual acceptance of a proposition) because the two have become unfortunately fused in modern consciousness. But like other atheists and agnostics before him, Harris goes on to declare that faith is the root of all evil. A belief might seem innocent enough, but once you have blindly accepted the dogma that Jesus “can be eaten in the form of a cracker,” 35 you have made a space in your mind for other monstrous fictions: that God desires the destruction of Israel, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, or the 9/11 massacres. Everybody must stop believing in anything that cannot be verified by the empirical methods of science. It is not enough to get rid of extremists, fundamentalists, and terrorists. “Moderate” believers are equally guilty of the “inherently dangerous” crime of faith and must share responsibility for the terrorist atrocities. 36 Our civic toleration of faith must therefore be eliminated. “As long as we respect the principle that religious faith must be respected simply because it is real faith,” Dawkins insists, “it is hard to withhold respect for Usama bin Laden and the suicide bombers.”

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  Decisions to cut aid for the terminally ill, for the elderly, for dependent children, for food stamps, even school lunches, are being made by men with full stomachs who live in comfortable houses with two cars and umpteen tax shelters. None of them go hungry to bed at night. Recently, it was suggested that senior citizens be hired to work in atomic plants because they are close to the end of their lives anyway. Can any one of us here still afford to believe that efforts to reclaim the future can be private or individual? Can any one here still afford to believe that the pursuit of liberation can be the sole and particular province of any one particular race, or sex, or age, or religion, or sexuality, or class? Revolution is not a one-time event. It is becoming always vigilant for the smallest opportunity to make a genuine change in established, outgrown responses; for instance, it is learning to address each other’s difference with respect. We share a common interest, survival, and it cannot be pursued in isolation from others simply because their differences make us uncomfortable. We know what it is to be lied to. The 60s should teach us how important it is not to lie to ourselves. Not to believe that revolution is a one-time event, or something that happens around us rather than inside of us. Not to believe that freedom can belong to any one group of us without the others also being free. How important it is not to allow even our leaders to define us to ourselves, or to define our sources of power to us. There is no Black person here who can afford to wait to be led into positive action for survival. Each one of us must look clearly and closely at the genuine particulars (conditions) of his or her life and decide where action and energy is needed and where it can be effective. Change is the immediate responsibility of each of us, wherever and however we are standing, in whatever arena we choose. For while we wait for another Malcolm, another Martin, another charismatic Black leader to validate our struggles, old Black people are freezing to death in tenements, Black children are being brutalized and slaughtered in the streets, or lobotomized by television, and the percentage of Black families living below the poverty line is higher today than in 1963. And if we wait to put our future into the hands of some new messiah, what will happen when those leaders are shot, or discredited, or tried for murder, or called homosexual, or otherwise disempowered? Do we put our future on hold? What is that internalized and self-destructive barrier that keeps us from moving, that keeps us from coming together?

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  I ask, “How do you use your rage?” And then I have to turn away from the blank look in her eyes, before she can invite me to participate in her own annihilation. I do not exist to feel her anger for her. • White women are beginning to examine their relationships to Black women, yet often I hear them wanting only to deal with little colored children across the roads of childhood, the beloved nursemaid, the occasional second-grade classmate — those tender memories of what was once mysterious and intriguing or neutral. You avoid the childhood assumptions formed by the raucous laughter at Rastus and Alfalfa, the acute message of your mommy’s handerkerchief spread upon the park bench because I had just been sitting there, the indelible and dehumanizing portraits of Amos ’n Andy and your daddy’s humorous bedtime stories. • I wheel my two-year-old daughter in a shopping cart through a supermarket in Eastchester in 1967, and a little white girl riding past in her mother’s cart calls out excitedly, “Oh look, Mommy, a baby maid!” And your mother shushes you, but she does not correct you. And so fifteen years later, at a conference on racism, you can still find that story humorous. But I hear your laughter is full of terror and dis-ease. • A white academic welcomes the appearance of a collection by non-Black women of Color. * “It allows me to deal with racism without dealing with the harshness of Black women,” she says to me. • At an international cultural gathering of women, a well-known white american woman poet interrupts the reading of the work of women of Color to read her own poem, and then dashes off to an “important panel.” If women in the academy truly want a dialogue about racism, it will require recognizing the needs and the living contexts of other women. When an academic woman says, “I can’t afford it,” she may mean she is making a choice about how to spend her available money. But when a woman on welfare says, “I can’t afford it,” she means she is surviving on an amount of money that was barely subsistence in 1972, and she often does not have enough to eat. Yet the National Women’s Studies Association here in 1981 holds a conference in which it commits itself to responding to racism, yet refuses to waive the registration fee for poor women and women of Color who wished to present and conduct workshops. This has made it impossible for many women of Color — for instance, Wilmette Brown, of Black Women for Wages for Housework — to participate in this conference.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  The bicentennial, in Washington, D.C. Two ample Black women stand guard over household belonging piled haphazardly onto a sidewalk in front of a house. Furniture, toys, bundles of clothes. One woman absently rocks a toy horse with the toe of her shoe, back and forth. Across the street on the side of a building opposite is a sign painted in story-high black letters, GOD HATES YOU. Addie Mae Collins, Carol Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, Denise McNair. Four little Black girls, none more than ten years of age, singing their last autumn song in a Sunday church school in Birmingham, Alabama. After the explosion clears it is not possible to tell which patent leather Sunday shoe belongs to which found leg. What other human being absorbs so much virulent hostility and still functions? Black women have a history of the use and sharing of power, from the Amazon legions of Dahomey through the Ashanti warrior queen Yaa Asantewaa and the freedom fighter Harriet Tubman, to the economically powerful market-women guilds of present West Africa. We have a tradition of closeness and mutual care and support, from the all-woman courts of the Queen Mothers of Benin to the present-day Sisterhood of the Good Death, a community of old women in Brazil who, as escaped slaves, provided escape and refuge for other enslaved women, and who now care for each other.* We are Black women born into a society of entrenched loathing and contempt for whatever is Black and female. We are strong and enduring. We are also deeply scarred. As African women together, we once made the earth fertile with our fingers. We can make the earth bear as well as mount the first line of fire in defense of the King. And having killed, in his name and in our own (Harriet’s rifle speaks, shouldered in the grim marsh), we still know that the power to kill is less than the power to create, for it produces an ending rather than the beginning of something new. Anger — a passion of displeasure that may be excessive or misplaced but not necessarily harmful. Hatred — an emotional habit or attitude of mind in which aversion is coupled with ill will. Anger, used, does not destroy. Hatred does. Racism and sexism are grown-up words. Black children in america cannot avoid these distortions in their living and, too often, do not have the words for naming them. But both are correctly perceived as hatred. Growing up, metabolizing hatred like a daily bread. Because I am Black, because I am woman, because I am not Black enough, because I am not some particular fantasy of a woman, because I AM. On such a consistent diet, one can eventually come to value the hatred of one’s enemies more than one values the love of friends, for that hatred becomes the source of anger, and anger is a powerful fuel.

• From We Were Here (2011)

  WE WERE HERE CaptionMax Page 32 3/23/2011 2:13:58 PAUL (VO) (CONT’D) From their very opening statement, Silence Equals Death, it’s art, it’s culture, and it was, you know, it transformed the dialogue. [PROTEST CHANTING] 2:14:07 PROTESTORS (on archival video) Sixty thousand dead from AIDS! Where was George?! Fight back! Fight AIDS! Health care is a right! Health care is a right! 2:14:16 ON-SCREEN TEXT (on protest sign) GREED = DEATH STOP AIDS PROFITEERING 2:14:20 EILEEN (VO/ON) That was the first time I crossed a picket line. I wanted to go in to the AIDS conference because there was information I wanted to get inside. And what they were screaming and hollering about I agreed with, so-- But then I- I realized that everybody is doing what they need to do. They need to be out there screaming and hollering and pushing because things don’t happen unless you push, and I needed to go in to get that information so I could take care of them. And so maybe (chuckles) once I figured that out it was a little easier to cross that picket line. 2:14:58 PROTESTORS (on archival video) Act up! Fight back! Fight AIDS! Act up! 2:15:01 EILEEN (VO) I mean, that was when drugs weren’t on the fast track, where it took ten years to get a drug approved, and the activists really worked for that to change. 2:15:11 ON-SCREEN TEXT (on t-shirt) ACT UP 2:15:18 CLEVE JONES (VO) Neil Yeager. James Martin Case. 2:15:25 DANIEL (VO/ON) One of the way I s- came back into the world was through the Names Project, which was the AIDS memorial quilt, which Cleve Jones started. 2:15:35 CLEVE JONES …and my friend Marvin Feldman.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  The liberals were appalled by the apocalyptic fantasies of the conservatives. But instead of criticizing them on biblical and doctrinal grounds, they hit quite unjustifiably below the belt. Their assault reflected the acute anxieties of the postwar period and, at this time of national trauma, was calculated to elicit outrage, fury, and a determination to retaliate. Fundamentalism—be it Jewish, Christian, or Muslim—nearly always begins as a defensive movement; it is usually a response to a campaign of coreligionists or fellow countrymen that is experienced as inimical and invasive. In 1917, during a particularly dark period of the war, liberal theologians in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago launched a media offensive against the Moody Bible Institute on the other side of town. 27 They accused these biblical literalists of being in the pay of the Germans and compared them to atheistic Bolsheviks. Their theology was, according to the Christian Register, “the most astounding mental aberration in the field of religious thinking.” 28 The conservatives responded in kind, retorting that, on the contrary, it was the pacifism of the liberals that had caused America to fall behind in the arms race; 29 it was they who had been in league with the Germans, since the Higher Criticism that the liberals admired had caused the collapse of decent values in Germany. 30 For decades, the Higher Criticism had been surrounded with a nimbus of evil. This type of symbolism, which takes the debate beyond the realm of logic and dispassionate discussion, is a persistent feature of fundamentalist movements. In 1920, Dixon, Reuben A. Torrey, and William B. Riley officially established the World’s Christian Fundamentals Association to fight for the survival of both Christianity and the world. That same year, at a meeting of the Northern Baptist Convention, Curtis Lee Lewis defined the “fundamentalist” as a Christian who fought to regain territory already lost to the Antichrist and “to do battle royal for the fundamentals of the faith.” 31 The movement spread. Three years later, the fundamentalists were riding high, and it seemed as if they would succeed in gaining the upper hand in most of the Protestant denominations. But then a new campaign caught their attention, which brought fundamentalism, at least for a few decades, into disrepute. In 1920 the Democratic politician William Jennings Bryan (1860— 1925) launched a crusade against the teaching of evolution in schools and colleges; almost single-handedly, Bryan was responsible for ousting the Higher Criticism from the top of the fundamentalist agenda and putting Darwinism in its place. 32 He saw the two issues as indissolubly linked but regarded evolution as by far the more dangerous. Two books—Headquarter Nights (1917) by Vernon L.

• From City of Night (1963)

  The man with the camera approaches Chi-Chi, while his wife, looking on incredulously at the sight of her, muttered in amazement: “My God!—look at the shoulders on that fairy!” Quickly, the two close in on Chi-Chi in visible fascination, followed by the others in their group—two men and two women—each face stamped with that contemptuous, incredulous smile. As if she were an animal which may escape, they pin Chi-Chi against the wall—like hunters, the man’s camera a gun. Adjusting the camera, the man said loudly to Chi-Chi: “Okay, sweetheart: Now you. I want to show your picture back home.” “Otherwise theyll never believe it,” laughed his wife, her laughter echoed by the others. “I mean,” said the man—and he grins with all the contempt of his ancestry, “I mean that I wanna show everyone back home what a real big fairy looks like.” Chi-Chi shook her head in bewilderment, as if dazed. The man’s wife rocks with bitter laughter, as if Chi-Chi’s humiliation will vindicate something inside herself, or perhaps erase something lurking uncomfortably. She stretched the rubber-smile to the point where it seemed her mouth would snap. Looking into the camera as he inches closer to her, the man addresses Chi-Chi: “Come on, sweetheart, you go ahead and give us a real big fairy pose!” “And dont forget to say ‘cheethe,’ his wife lisped poisonously. Instantly!—as if a wire had been uncoiled—Chi-Chi sprang away from the supporting wall toward the man with the camera. She didnt even bother to adjust the lace dress; it clung carelessly to one leg, over the knee, revealing the powerful leg. She glared at the man for long seconds, with a hatred greater than she could possibly have felt toward one individual; and she gnashes suddenly at him: “You come on, father-fucker!” And she advanced toward him, toward the encircling group, advanced within that small clearing of grinning, hating faces which is like a symbol of her isolation. “Whats the matter?” says the rubbermouthed woman viciously. “Arent you a real lady?” Unflinchingly, Chi-Chi aimed her gaze very surely at the woman. Her terrifying owleyes rake the woman’s body significantly—the masculine-suited, frigid body. And Chi-Chi smiled as if at a private secret, just discovered, between her and the woman, who looks quickly away. Then the smile disappeared, and Chi-Chi turns again to the man with the camera, still unclicked as if the finger is frozen. “Come on!” Chi-Chi repeats. The cigarette holder fell to the ground, her hands tightened into enormous manfists. The paint on her face seemed suddenly to be disappearing—the calcimine powder stripping itself from the skin as if of some inner volition. The false breasts dangled absurdly.

• From Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  The novel appeared in 1976, only three years after the 1973 Supreme Court case Miller v. California that determined the criteria (in a three-tier test) of what constituted obscenity and was, therefore, either protected under or in direct violation of the First Amendment. The Court delineated that something might be adjudged obscene if and only if it presents conspicuously offensive hard-core sexual acts or conducts; is not imbued with (or is essentially void of) serious artistic, literary, scientific, or political value; and, finally, if it appeals to the prurient or arouses the sexual interest of an individual based on the (then) contemporary sociocommunal/community standards. In one of the advances of the sexual revolution, pornography becomes accessible in industrialized form for both public cinematic and private home consumption, changing the sexual landscape in public/private spheres. Some sexual revolutionaries even enacted public displays of nudity and sex acts to rescue sex and sexuality from a domain of repression in demonstrated efforts to reconstitute sex. Eva's Man should be read within these sociosexual, cultural, and legal contexts, as Jones participates in these while simultaneously subverting a black Victorianism-a "culture of dissemblance" and politics of silence-that compromises black sexuality. To this end, Eva's Man issues indictments, which, even as they are far more nuanced than overt, are nonetheless extensive. The novel, be it deliberately or inadvertently, offers a harsh castigation (one not always immediately transparent) of all who enable and enforce-whether through silent participation, acquiescence, or violent aggression-problematic racialized sexual entanglements and models. These encompass the infliction of sexualized violence; the suppression of discourses on and progressive practices regarding sexuality; the regulation of female sexuality through men; the embrace of male sexual aggression and domination as intrinsic, rather than detrimental, to heterosexual intimacy; and/or the positioning of heterosexuality as normative and hegemonic-which do not go without critique. It becomes an attack not only on the body, a corporeal infliction, but emblematizes a greater symbolic attack on the systematic violence against black women's (and men's) bodies historically. Published in 1976 during the Black Power and Black Aesthetics movements and under the editorship of Toni Morrison at Random House, Eva's Man does not subscribe to the conventional politics governing black literature or that of the black literary establishment of the post-196os (nationalist) era. Yet to reduce or subject Eva's Man to a narrow reading that suggests it excoriates (or dissociates itself from) black politics, such as those of racial uplift and black consciousness advanced by the nationalist agenda, would be simplistic at best and an oversight at worst. The novel critiques black people, but also, more importantly and harshly, the larger systems that methodically buttress or sanction problematic elements. Institutions that are emblematic of the system at large, including law, the authorities, prisons and law enforcement, are scrutinized in the novel for their accountability in creating social problems.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Henceforth, Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem would be the only legitimate national shrine. 38 Not content with this orgy of destruction, the Deuteronomists (D) also rewrote the history of Israel, making major additions to the JE narrative that gave even greater prominence to Moses, who had liberated the people from Egypt at a time when Josiah was trying to become independent of the pharaoh, and extending the saga to include the story of Joshua’s conquest of the northern highlands, to which Josiah (the new Joshua) had just laid claim. In some respects, Deuteronomy reads like a modern document. Had it been implemented, the reformers’ program would have included the establishment of a secular sphere and an independent judiciary separate from the cult; 39 a constitutional monarchy, which made the king subject to the Torah like any other citizen; 40 and a centralized state with a single, national shrine. 41 The reformers also rationalized Israelite theology to rid it of superstitious mythology. 42 You could not manipulate God by sacrifice, and God certainly did not live in his temple, which instead of being a sacred “center,” as of old, was merely a house of prayer. 43 But a rational, secular ideology is not necessarily any more tolerant than a mythical one. The Deuteronomists’ reform revealed the greatest danger of idolatry. In making their national God, now the only symbol of the divine, endorse the national will, they had crafted a god in their own image. In the past, Marduk’s power had always been challenged by Tiamat’s, Baal’s by Mot’s. For J and E, the divine was so ambiguous that it was impossible to imagine that Yahweh was infallibly on your side or to predict what he would do next. But the Deuteronomists had no doubt that they knew exactly what Yahweh desired and felt it a sacred duty to destroy anything that seemed to oppose his/their interests. When something inherently finite—an image, an ideology, or a polity—is invested with ultimate value, its devotees feel obliged to eliminate any rival claimant, because there can be only one absolute. The type of destruction described by the Deuteronomists is an infallible indication that a sacred symbol has become idolatrous. The vision of the Deuteronomists had been affected by the violence of their time. At about the same time as the sages of India had started to make ahimsa , “nonviolence,” essential to the religious quest, the Deuteronomists depicted Joshua slaughtering the inhabitants of Canaan like the Assyrian generals who had terrorized the region for over two hundred years. In the event, the Deuteronomists’ divinely articulated nationalism ended in tears. Their belligerent theology had blinded them to practical realities on the ground. It was only a matter of time before the great powers turned their attention to Judah. In 611 Pharaoh Necho II marched through Canaan in a bid to counter the rising power of Babylon.

• From Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  During the course of their relationship, Jerome rapes Renay, which leads to her pregnancy and, in turn, accounts for their decision to marry. Once wedded, Renay, miserable within the confines of her forced marriage, is expected to submit routinely to Jerome's will and to specific gender roles or, otherwise, suffer Jerome's violent beatings. Renay maintains the household, raising their daughter and working to pay the bills with little assistance from Jerome, who drinks heavily and never secures a steady job. Misdirecting and displacing his resentment (which stems from his inability to support his family and his abandoned dreams of finishing college and becoming a professional athlete) onto Renay, Jerome lambastes her as a salve for his bruised manhood: "You know we black men have a hard enough time as it is making it in the white man's world. [...] I could have been somebody if it wasn't for you. All you castrating black bitches want to keep a man down. Ruin him. [...] And you. What goddam good are you to a man? Not even a good screw!" (29). The myth of the black matriarchy resonates in Jerome's highly castigatory remarks (which fail, ironically, to acknowledge that his condition is the result of his own doing-of his having raped Renay). Promulgated by sociologist and later senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and later appropriated by some black nationalists, the myth assumes that black women, in collusion with the white power structure, emasculated black men, thereby preventing them from maintaining their "rightful" position in the black family and society at large.36 In his evocation of black matriarchy rhetoric, Jerome, as Shockley clearly intends, is equated allegorically with black nationalist discourse, which he epitomizes throughout the novel. Moreover, in his assertion that Renay serves no purpose for men-that she is, as he claims, "not even a good screw"-he not only objectifies her but, like those black nationalists who viewed black women's only position in the movement as "prone," he also reduces her to a marginal sexual role.37 Compensating for his inadequacy and negligence as a husband, father, and provider, Jerome espouses nationalist ideologies regarding "lost manhood" and asserts himself "by any means necessary"-through both physically and verbally abusive manners-as patriarch of his household.

• From Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  Pat Parker, in Movement in Black (1978), critiques the compartmentalization of identities, namely race and sexual orientation, as well as the exclusive politics in black and homosexual communities; and she addresses the ways that black sexual minorities are almost inevitably "othered" and displaced, either because of their race or sexual orientation, in black and gay communities: If I could take all my parts with me when I go somewhere, and not have to say to one of them, "No, you stay home tonight, you won't be welcome," because I'm going to an all-white party where I can be gay, but not Black. Or I'm going to a Black poetry reading, and half the poets are antihomosexual, or thousands of situations where something of what I am cannot come with me. The day all the different parts of me can come along, we would have what I would call a revolution." While Parker critiques structures that demand and perpetuate the compartmentalizing of black sexual minorities' multiple consciousnesses or identities, she, perhaps most significantly, calls critical attention to the revolutionary possibilities of a simultaneous racial and (homo)sexual identity. It is, in fact, precisely this revolutionary notion of foregrounding racial and sexual identities concomitantly-rather than negating or situating them within hierarchical or diametrically oppositional categories-that accounts, in part, for the relatively under-considered discourse on same-gender loving. As a concept, same-gender loving materialized in the early 199os as a conduit for black sexual minorities-black women who love women (sexually and emotionally) and black men who love men (sexually and emotionally)-to express their sexuality in ways that resonate with the distinctiveness of black culture and life. Coined by activist Cleo Manago as a culturally affirming designation for black and "sexual minorities" of color, samegender loving, unlike the black and gay liberation movements and discourses, is dialogic: attentive to both the intersectionality and inseparability of racial and sexual identities. It does not marginalize individuals or demand the prioritization of either racial or sexual identity but provides a space for black sexual minorities to celebrate the totality of their experiences, struggles, multiple identities, and subject positions. While same-gender loving does not eradicate the pervasive homophobia, heterosexism, or racism in American society and culture, it challenges these oppressive forces and thereby serves as a pragmatic and ideological site of resistance. Forcing the black community to acknowledge the multiple and diverse ways of loving and sexuality, it allows for a more complex and inclusive self-definition of black sexuality. Moreover, it also challenges the ethnic invisibility, as well as the inscribed "whiteness," that gay and lesbian discourses and queer theory largely produce." The motivation of the same-gender loving movement, then, is to meet particular exigencies:

• From City of Night (1963)

  And then he—my father—that weak man—would take it out on me—hit me. ” He flayed himself with the thick belt he had removed from the dark pants. “But I showed him I was a Man! I wouldnt run away from him!... And he hit me and hit me and hit me with his belt—until I'd pass out.” Whack! —again the belt against his thigh. He didn’t flinch. “And then I wouldnt even faint any more,” he said. “I’d just—... let him.... And yet,” he whispered as if in a trance, “and yet—do you know?—that weak, dreadful man—my father—he—... He wore boots! Boots! —a symbol of the strength he’d given away so easily, without a fight! That pitiful man — dominated by my mother — had the guts to wear Boots! ... And then I found the Answer—Strength!... And when I found that out, I—... You want to know what my first gesture of—of Freedom!—from him and that woman—was?” He threw back his head and roared with pained laughter. He continued as if hypnotized by the remembrance of that ugly past: “I had gone to the movies—secretly because I wasnt even allowed to do that! It was a period picture.... And the hero—a strong, handsome, masculine man (everything my father wasnt!)—he was wearing Boots too. But on him they were Right: No woman would have dominated him! ... I sat through that movie several times especially for a scene in which that magnificent man was sitting in bed, putting on his Boots! He looped his fingers about the inside straps—and he slipped the boots on! I held my breath.... That night, when my father was asleep, I went into his bedroom. I stood looking at him: Even asleep he looked weak and dominated.... And staring at my—... father!—asleep—I hated him more than ever. I found his boots under the bed. I took them to my room. I got my mother’s scissors. And I snipped the straps off the insides of his boots!” He formed two fingers into a V and closed them with finality. He looked worn out. The studded costume he wore seemed like a ponderous burden on him. His face dropped toward his hands. Dispassionately, lifelessly, he echoed: “I snipped those straps from the insides of his boots. I cut them off, I stamped on them, I spit on them, I—I—...” And then he shouted: “ I pissed on them!” His voice quavered, broke, halted. He turned his face away from me. His shoulders trembled as if in a sudden cold wind. “So you see: power and strength—” he began weakly without finishing. I sat next to him, where he had sunk onto the bed. But is there anything you can say now to Neil? It’s too late.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Fundamentalism—be it Jewish, Christian, or Muslim—nearly always begins as a defensive movement; it is usually a response to a campaign of coreligionists or fellow countrymen that is experienced as inimical and invasive. In 1917, during a particularly dark period of the war, liberal theologians in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago launched a media offensive against the Moody Bible Institute on the other side of town.27 They accused these biblical literalists of being in the pay of the Germans and compared them to atheistic Bolsheviks. Their theology was, according to the Christian Register, “the most astounding mental aberration in the field of religious thinking.”28 The conservatives responded in kind, retorting that, on the contrary, it was the pacifism of the liberals that had caused America to fall behind in the arms race;29 it was they who had been in league with the Germans, since the Higher Criticism that the liberals admired had caused the collapse of decent values in Germany.30 For decades, the Higher Criticism had been surrounded with a nimbus of evil. This type of symbolism, which takes the debate beyond the realm of logic and dispassionate discussion, is a persistent feature of fundamentalist movements. In 1920, Dixon, Reuben A. Torrey, and William B. Riley officially established the World’s Christian Fundamentals Association to fight for the survival of both Christianity and the world. That same year, at a meeting of the Northern Baptist Convention, Curtis Lee Lewis defined the “fundamentalist” as a Christian who fought to regain territory already lost to the Antichrist and “to do battle royal for the fundamentals of the faith.”31 The movement spread. Three years later, the fundamentalists were riding high, and it seemed as if they would succeed in gaining the upper hand in most of the Protestant denominations. But then a new campaign caught their attention, which brought fundamentalism, at least for a few decades, into disrepute. In 1920 the Democratic politician William Jennings Bryan (1860— 1925) launched a crusade against the teaching of evolution in schools and colleges; almost single-handedly, Bryan was responsible for ousting the Higher Criticism from the top of the fundamentalist agenda and putting Darwinism in its place.32 He saw the two issues as indissolubly linked but regarded evolution as by far the more dangerous. Two books—Headquarter Nights (1917) by Vernon L. Kellogg and The Science of Power (1918) by Benjamin Kidd—had made a great impression on him. The authors reported interviews with German soldiers, who had testified to the influence that Darwinian ideas had played in Germany’s determination to declare war. This “research” convinced Bryan that evolutionary theory heralded the collapse of morality and decent civilization. His ideas were naive, simplistic, and incorrect, but people were beginning to be suspicious of science and he found a willing audience. When Bryan toured the United States, his lecture “The Menace of Darwinism” drew large crowds and got extensive media coverage. But an unexpected development in the South threw the campaign into even greater prominence.

• From Memoirs of Fanny Hill (1749)

  As for the wench, she was now spoiled, at least for my servant; and scarce eight and forty hours were gone round, before her insolence, on what had passed betwen Mr. H.... and her, gave me so fair an occasion to turn her away, at a minute’s warning, that, not to have done it would have been the wonder; so that he could neither disapprove it nor find in it the least reason to suspect my original motive. What became of her afterwards, I know not; but generous as Mr. H.... was, he undoubtedly made her amends: though, I dare answer, that he kept up no further commerce with her of that sort; as his stooping to such a coarse morsel, was only a sudden sally of lust, on seeing a wholesome looking, buxom country wench, and no more strange than hunger, or even a whimsical appetite’s making a fling meal of neck-beef, for change of diet. Had I considered this escapade of Mr. H.... in no more than that light and contented myself with turning away the wench, I had thought and acted right; but, flushed as I was with imaginary wrongs, I should have held Mr. H... to have been cheaply off, if I had not pushed my revenge farther, and repaid him, as exactly as could for the soul of me, in the same coin. Nor was this worthy act of justice long delayed: I had it too much at heart. Mr. H... had, about a fortnight before, taken into his service a tenant’s son, just come out the country, a very handsome young lad, scarce turned of nineteen, fresh as a rose, well sharped and clear limbed: in short, a very good excuse for any woman’s liking, even though revenge had been out of the question; any woman, I say, who was disprejudiced, and that wit and spirit enough to prefer a point of pleasure to a point of pride.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  After posting eight thousand dollars in sales in my first year, I was projecting sixteen thousand dollars in my second year, and according to my banker this was a very troubling trend. “A one hundred percent increase in sales is troubling ?” I asked. “Your rate of growth is too fast for your equity,” he said. “How can such a small company grow too fast? If a small company grows fast, it builds up its equity.” “It’s all the same principle, regardless of size,” he said. “Growth off your balance sheet is dangerous.” “Life is growth,” I said. “Business is growth. You grow or you die.” “That’s not how we see it.” “You might as well tell a runner in a race that he’s running too fast.” “Apples and oranges.” Your head is full of apples and oranges, I wanted to say. It was textbook to me. Growing sales, plus profitability, plus unlimited upside, equals quality company. In those days, however, commercial banks were different from investment banks. Their myopic focus was cash balances. They wanted you to never, ever outgrow your cash balance. Again and again I’d gently try to explain the shoe business to my banker. If I don’t keep growing, I’d say, I won’t be able to persuade Onitsuka that I’m the best man to distribute their shoes in the West. If I can’t persuade Onitsuka that I’m the best, they’ll find some other Marlboro Man to take my place. And that doesn’t even take into account the battle with the biggest monster out there, Adidas. My banker was unmoved. Unlike Athena, he did not admire my eyes of persuasion. “Mr. Knight,” he’d say, again and again, “you need to slow down. You don’t have enough equity for this kind of growth.” Equity. How I was beginning to loathe this word. My banker used it over and over, until it became a tune I couldn’t get out of my head. Equity—I heard it while brushing my teeth in the morning. Equity—I heard it while punching my pillow at night. Equity—I reached the point where I refused to even say it aloud, because it wasn’t a real word, it was bureaucratic jargon, a euphemism for cold hard cash , of which I had none. Purposely. Any dollar that wasn’t nailed down I was plowing directly back into the business. Was that so rash? To have cash balances sitting around doing nothing made no sense to me. Sure, it would have been the cautious, conservative, prudent thing. But the roadside was littered with cautious, conservative, prudent entrepreneurs. I wanted to keep my foot pressed hard on the gas pedal. Somehow, in meeting after meeting, I held my tongue. Everything my banker said, I ultimately accepted. Then I’d do exactly as I pleased. I’d place another order with Onitsuka, double the size of the previous order, and show up at the bank all wide-eyed innocence, asking for a letter of credit to cover it. My banker would always be shocked.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  In reality, the relations between science and faith had been more complex and nuanced. But this overblown polemic has remained the stock-in-trade of the atheist critique of religion and is widely accepted as a matter of fact. White’s misrepresentation of Augustine’s view of scripture is just one example of his bias. One of the most persistent of the apocryphal tales that developed at this time is the story of Huxley’s encounter with Samuel Wilberforce, bishop of Oxford (1805–73). In June 1860, shortly after the publication of Origin, they took part in a debate at a meeting of the British Association. Wilberforce is said to have played to the gallery and, having shown that he had absolutely no understanding of evolution, concluded by facetiously asking Huxley whether he claimed descent from a monkey through his grandmother or grandfather. Huxley retorted that he would rather be descended from an ape than a man like Wilberforce, who used his great talents to obscure the truth. It is a story that brilliantly encapsulates the “warfare” myth in its depiction of intrepid science victoriously triumphing over complacent, ignorant religion. But, as scholars have repeatedly demonstrated, there is no record of this exchange until the 1890s. It is not mentioned in contemporary accounts of the meeting. In fact, Wilberforce was entirely conversant with Darwinian theory; his speech at the British Institution summarized the recent review that he had written of Origin, which Darwin himself, acknowledging that Wilberforce had pointed out serious omissions in his argument that he would have to address, had considered “uncommonly clever.”71 Closely allied to the “warfare” myth in atheistic polemic was the view that belief in itself was immoral, which has also become an essential ingredient of atheist ideology. It dates from the publication of Ethics of Belief (1871) by William Kingdon Clifford (1845–79), professor of mathematics at University College, London, who argued that it was not only intellectually but morally perverse to accept any opinion—religious, scientific, or ethical—without sufficient evidence. He illustrated his thesis with the story of a shipowner who knew that his ship needed extensive repairs but decided to spare himself the expense, reflecting that it had survived many voyages and that God would not allow it to sink with so many passengers on board. When the ship went down in midocean, he was able to collect the insurance.

• From City of Night (1963)

  If she didnt see that, I will remember it in her; and the memory of Miss Destiny, planning her impossible Wedding—the memory, too, of Trudi, resigned to The Beads—the thought of Kathy—will fuse with that remembered sight of Chi-Chi—and I will wonder if Miss Destiny’s evil angel had not, that once, relented—was perhaps even smiling graciously, if only for a few moments, over Chi-Chi. Because Chi-Chi still stands menacingly before that man, those other people. And the man doesn’t move, as if the queen-eyes from a strange, forbidden world are not only making it difficult for his finger to click the shutter but are warning him in other, reverberating ways. Chi-Chi is unmistakably a man as he faces that entrapping group and yells: “Father-fuckers! I’ll take you on together or alone! Prove to Me what big men you are! Whos first?—whos first? All of you? Come on!” And the fists wait. Like moths attracted to this blazing inner light emanating from Chi-Chi, the other queens, silent and tense, watched as if seeing a part of themselves, long ago throttled, stunningly revealed in this wide-eyed Cassandra. And still, no one moves toward Chi-Chi to answer his challenge. And as the man makes a sudden nervous motion as if to take the picture, Chi-Chi lunges at him like a grotesque jack-in-the-box. The enormous fist crashes into his face. The camera falls to the ground, the bulb smashes. The man staggered, reeled against another man, and fell, sprawled on the ground, dazed, at his wife’s feet. Chi-Chi’s manfists are still clenched like a champion boxer’s, ready for the others. But no one moved. And was it only the sudden, ramming violence, the sudden smashing fist prepared to crush again and again, the sudden threatening image of this queen? Or was it, instead—or at least partly—Chi-Chi’s shouting for an instant acknowledgment of dignity?