Hey folks,
Perhaps I use the term “weekly” a bit loosly. We’ve been through this though, linear time is just our imagination of space anyway, why not conceive of it in any way we want? This is an expression of our individual liberty; we live in a democracy afterall right? Let’s organize against the concept of “monday,” I say!
All of that is tangential though to the post at hand, much as this post in itself is a digression of other work I should be doing at the moment (ahem, midterms!)
The following paper on authority was written last spring for my Black Political Thoery class. I took some notes as I was re-reading this work tonight (I read over it quite often, it was one of my favorite constructs to explore) and it’s interesting to see what different things I respond to in my own writing and idea progressions as I grow as a student. I noticed this time that a more well defined exploration of freedom in the context of a system of authority would have really strengthened my progression. I wont delve in much more on my meta-critique, I’ll leave the analyses to you folks! I do invite conversations about the concepts I explore! As a matter of fact, I implore you. Dialogue with me!
Happy reading!
Analytic Paper #3
Throughout the history of the western tradition, instances of social upheaval, civil disobedience and revolutionary movements have coursed a colored path of resistance through the linear path of normative social progression. What dynamics in the political and social structures led to these instances of rebellion, as those in positions of power would view it? We can examine man’s violation of the laws and conventions he deems unjust by defining the historical origins of the concept of authority and viewing these occurrences of disobedience within that context.
Authority as Plato conceptualized it grew out of the attempt to establish “tyranny of reason”- to establish a method of governance that operated without coercion or violence.[1] The tyranny of reason was meant to bring value to higher ideals such as the good and welfare of all, as opposed to rule by force and whim of the individual, which characterized the relationship between the tyrant and the ruled in the political structure of Plato’s time. The progression of his political thought led him to formulate that laws, based on the highest held ideals, not the whim of men, are to be the legitimate principles of coercion. Here, authority is posited as legitimate where it is used to maintain peaceful social order and ensure adherence to the law. Hannah Arendt in her examination of authority defines the relationship of the ruler and the ruled:
“The authoritarian relation between the one who commands and the one who obeys rests neither on common reason nor on the power of the one who commands; what they have in common is the hierarchy itself, whose rightness and legitimacy both recognize and where both have their predetermined stable place.” (Arendt p82)[2]
In this definition, authority is not an inherently oppressive system, but a structure where all the players within it legitimately vest power in its mechanisms, allowing for maintenance of order and function. Neither is authority at odds with freedom. The structure seeks to limit freedoms, yet not to abolish it. If freedom were done away with in an authoritarian structure it loses its essential function of maintaining it; where this happens, it is no longer authoritarian, but tyrannical.[3] Authority then can also be viewed as an equation of the ruler and the ruled interacting in balance with the tradition of the social system and its accompanied conventions and laws. This equation can help us examine how a break in that balance or “predetermined stable place” can lead to instances of social upheaval, rebellion, reform or revolution, and social change et al.
Sophocles’ Antigone and Nat Turner represent significant figures in the discussion of disobedience to state sanctioned authority. If we look at the authoritative structure that Antigone and Nat Turner operated within, we can further contextualize their disobedience. If authority is legitimate only where it is promoting the natural law, then it is clear that the political apparatus that Antigone defied had more tyrannical than authoritative features. Creon, the king of Thebes demanded that the dead body of Antigone’s disgraced brother, Polyneices be left to rot without a proper burial, a decree of the highest severity. Antigone readily disobeys and gives her brother a proper burial, contending that “a mortal man, Could’st by a breath annul and override the immutable unwritten laws of Heaven.”[4] Antigone violates the authority by disobeying Creon’s inhumane denial of an honorable burial for Polyneices, but her disobedience to the ‘law,’ as specified by the whim and maintained by the pride of man, signifies her adherence to a true authority in natural law. The set of conventions and laws that Antigone was being subjected to no longer existed within an authoritarian structure once the authoritative power broke the predetermined stable place of the Ruler, denoted by Creon’s illegitimate exertion of power and offense to natural law. In this sense, the structure becomes tyrannical. Antigone’s actions can be interpreted as true obedience to authority- the authority of the gods.
In terms of Nat Turner’s disobedience to the authority, a similar comparison of the corrupted authority structure in Thebes can be made to the prevailing authority structure of 1830s America, where slavery was the political landscape. Already with just the mention of slavery the credibility and legitimacy of the political structure that enslaved blacks lived within is compromised, and the threat that Nat Turner posed to the white community through his disobedience can be seen in their fear of a revolt against this system that was denying black freedom. For systematically impressing those gross injustices the structure cannot be interpreted as a true authority but as tyranny, where freedom is abolished and laws are constructed without reference to what is good and proper for all people. Nat Turner, although using an extreme approach to show resistance to the tyrannical power, still represents obedience to God, his true authority, as Antigone does. Turner’s radical methods were inspired by this prophecy: “Christ had laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and [said] that I should take it on and fight against the Serpent, for the time was fast approaching when the first should be last and the last should be first” (Turner p7)[5]. According to Turner, God had rallied him to incite a violent upheaval in the prevailing system. This establishes him not as a dissident of authority, but as a champion for revolution within that system. The political structures in both Nat Turner and Antigone’s experience represent the decaying system of oppression that authority as a hierarchy can become if the equation of true authority becomes unbalanced by leadership that is not based in legitimacy and rule by natural law. The violence that is incited by the resulting injustice breeds a cycle of violence, manifesting in Antigone and Turner as mass suicide and mass killing, respectively.
The central difference between Antigone and Nat Turner’s objection to the authority and unjust conventions within their respective environments of Western tradition is how they interpreted their traditions. Each is entrenched in a culture and political landscape with their own set of conventions, laws and social systems, which interact with the authority structure. We can analyze this interaction to investigate how each interpreted their tradition. Implied in Arendt’s definition of authority is stability, i.e., complacency and maintenance of the social order: “… where both have their predetermined stable place.” This suggests that social change is not an ideological offshoot of this hierarchical structure, therefore it can be concluded that any social change within this political structure requires an imbalance in the interaction of the ruler and the ruled, and the tradition, social systems, and laws and conventions that they construct. While both Antigone and Turner disobey their tyrannical systems, arguably, to bring about change, Antigone does so in a fashion of reforming tradition and Turner in a revolutionary fashion; where Antigone is supported by those empowered in the social system, Turner is rebuffed.
Antigone, guided by her myth in the gods and attempting to restore honor to her brother, is in contention with Creon, who has outlawed his burial. Through this, we see Antigone as a figure of social upheaval, especially as a woman, for contradicting the King, yet ultimately it is he who is acting in the distaste of the gods, and later suffers the consequences. Her view of her tradition lies in her relentless will to act in the will of the gods by way of respecting natural law, for which she receives popular support in the kingdom, according to Haemon. She represents the restoration of the previous order, wherein the law of the gods were upheld. Antigone’s ideology was so well grounded in her myth that she sacrificed herself in the name of protecting her god given right when it was being threatened by injustice, positioning her as a figure of restorative change in terms of her tradition.
The social system, tradition and authoritarian structure in Nat Turner’s time was dominated entirely by white-supremacism. To discuss the authoritarian structure he existed within would be to find that every facet, tradition, social system, law and convention all exist to uphold a most unnatural law of slavery and inferiority. While his acts were radical, they must be considered within the context of the violence that was being perpetrated unto him and his community. Turner’s disobedience was not supported for several reasons by the white people in power, but he gained a cult following of fellow black slaves during his gruesome task, showing the delineation of revolutionary and normative attitudes along lines of race. Turner’s status as a black slave and his radical showing of disapproval through murder only confounds his negative interpretation of the western tradition. He was compelled by his mythological belief in God to turn the tables of the prevailing social order to ensure that “the first should be last and the last should be first.” His actions symbolize an attempt to revolutionize the tyrannical system of slavery and the tradition of white supremacism that it allowed, making him representative of a new tradition that seeks to dramatically transform the entire structure.
Authority in the context of an individual’s attempt to thwart convention and law in the face of injustice is an interaction of the ruler and the ruled and the social systems, traditions, laws and conventions that are established therein, as stated above. In an authoritarian structure that is not functioning in its true sense- where this interaction is unbalanced by a corrupt authoritative figure, there is the opportunity for that individual to break with the conventions, laws and traditions of the social system in favor of an order that is not tyrannical. The difference between the nature of man and the conventions and laws of man are at the root of this process- the center of the examination of Antigone and Nat Turner’s disobedience. At the foundation of true authority is not the figure that holds the post, but ideals that transcend any individual in the system at all; true authority is an extension of the natural law of man and by extension, the nature of man. This organic process is quite unlike the conventions of man. While conventions are determined by the authoritative structure in which they originate, they are variable to the tradition and social system they exist within as well; they are the normative behaviors of that given social group. In a tyrannical system where natural law is not the basis of authority, the conventions of man can be the tools of oppression, which we see as the basis of the disobedience Antigone and Nat Turner express of the tyrannical systems they lived within. Understanding these differences allows us to further perceive how the actions of both Antigone and Nat Turner fit against the backdrop of injustice and immorality that existed in their respective political structures.
[1] Hannah Arendt (1969) “What Is Authority:” in BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE.
Cleveland and New York: World Publishing pg 88
[2] Hannah Arendt (1969) “What Is Authority:” in BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE.
Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Pg 82
[3] ibid Pg 83
[4] Sophocles. Antigone, translated by E. H. Plumptre. Vol. VIII, Part 6. The Harvard Classics. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909–14; Bartleby.com, 2001. www.bartleby.com/8/6/. [Mar 25, 10].
[5] Gray, TR. (1831). The Confession of nat turner. Virginia: pg 7
