en un récit compréhensible et sacré au cœur du modèle américain. Ce modèle d'expansion du marché et du libre-échange est omniprésent. Il a également envahi la politique intérieure, comme le montre l'analyse rhétorique des prises de position sur un sujet controversé comme la santé, formulées à l'aide d'un récit positif sur le marché. Alors que les effets suscités par les politiques menées ont occasionnellement semblé contredire la foi dans le marché, particulièrement à la suite de la crise économique et financière de 2008, la rhétorique présidentielle est restée la même. Or il s'avère que cette crise a, in fine, pu être un des déclencheurs des premières fissures dans la vision consensuelle du marché et du libre-échange dominant la politique américaine. Cet article démontre que le président Trump a largement perturbé le consensus rhétorique néolibéral en rejetant les accords de libre-échange et en ignorant complètement les vertus d'un marché complètement absent de son discours. Il a ainsi remplacé la doxa néolibérale par une rhétorique centrée sur le déficit commercial et l'accumulation à court terme de richesse et de puissance nationale. Il a fait de la souveraineté nationale la vertu cardinale et rejeté ce qu'il qualifie de « mondialisme ». Il offre une vision antagoniste d'un monde dans lequel le commerce international est conçu comme un jeu à somme nulle. Cette nouvelle vision se reflète dans les métaphores utilisées par un président qui a remis en cause la rhétorique présidentielle à plus d'un titre.

## INDEX

**Mots-clés:** néolibéralisme, États-Unis, marché, libre échange, métaphores conceptuelles, rhétorique, discours présidentiels, État, mercantilisme

**Keywords:** neoliberalism, United States, free market, free trade, conceptual metaphors, presidential rhetoric, discourse, government, mercantilism

## AUTHOR

### JÉRÔME VIALA-GAUDEFROY

Part-time lecturer at Université Paris 3 — Sorbonne Nouvelle. Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy recently published an article on "President Trump and the Virtue of Power" in the e-journal *LISA*, vol. XVI-n°2 (2018). He is also a contributor to the independent, not-for-profit online publication, *The conversation*. He has been the webmaster of the AFEA (Association française d'études américaines) and an active member of the board since 2013. Contact: jerome.viala[at]sorbonne-nouvelle.fr
# Post-2008 Films: The Financial Crisis in Fictions and Documentaries

Juliette Feyel and Clémence Fourton

1. A crisis is a condition of high instability, capable of generating fundamental changes. To quote Jessop, “[in] short, crises are potentially path-shaping moments.” (Jessop 2004: 167). They may appear when the economic and ideological features of a system reach a point of contradiction, eventually causing it to break down (Hall and Massey 2010). As such, the 2008 crunch provides a crucial example, clearly revealing the defining features of neoliberal capitalism.

2. Neoliberalism has been defined by David Harvey as “a political project to re-establish the conditions for capital accumulation and to restore the power of economic elites” (Harvey 2005: 19). Andrew Gamble (2001), for his part, has insisted on the multiplicity of political forms that neoliberalism has taken around the world. Whether they insist on its unity or its multiplicity, Harvey and Gamble identify similar defining features when it comes to describing the workings of neoliberalism. It is indeed a variety of capitalism characterized by the retrenchment of state-provided social services; the key role played by the state in creating possibilities for private capital accumulation; economic and labour market deregulation; the centrality of finance in the world economy and the use of economic crises in developing countries to advance the interests of globalised capital.

3. These core neoliberal traits feature prominently in the cinematic representations of the 2008 global financial crisis. The crash led to the production of a substantial number of films which focus on the elements which triggered the crisis, the critical moment itself, and its political and social consequences.

4. Eight such films — 4 fictions and 4 documentaries — will be the object of this study: the fiction films Wall Street: *Money Never Sleeps* (2010), directed by Oliver Stone; *Margin Call* (2011), by J. C. Chandor; *Too Big to Fail* (2011), by Curtis Hanson; *The Big Short* (2015), by Adam McKay; and the documentary films *Capitalism, A Love Story* (2009), by Michael Moore; *Global Financial Meltdown* (2010), by Terence McKenna; *Inside Job* (2010), by Charles Ferguson; and *Overdose, the Next Financial Crisis* (2010), by Martin Borgs.
that did not concentrate on the moment of the financial crunch were discarded, such as
*Up in the Air* (2009), by Jason Reitman, *The Girlfriend Experience* (2009), by Steven
Soderbergh, and *The Other Guys* (2010), by Adam McKay.

Our corpus brings together popular films, as our aim is to assess the aesthetic and political *parti pris* of the cinematic representations of the crisis that circulated in the aftermath of the crash. Oliver Stone's 2010 rendition of Wall Street and Adam McKay's 2015 financial robbery tale are the two biggest commercial successes in our corpus: both grossed over $130 million worldwide. J. C. Chandor and Michael Moore's takes on the crisis respectively grossed 19 and 17 million dollars worldwide, mostly in the United States, and Charles Ferguson's Oscar-winning documentary grossed around $8 million. Finally, Curtis Hanson, Terence McKenna and Martin Borgs' productions were all created for television. Hanson's film was made for and broadcast on HBO, an American cable channel, and was nominated for several Golden Globes and Emmy Awards; McKenna's fared well on YouTube (2 million views at the time of writing) and Borg's, although admittedly less widely broadcast, appeared on television around the world.

It is therefore fair to assume that these films played a significant part in shaping
popular representations of the crisis. Colin Hay brought to the fore the importance of
discourse in establishing dominant representations of crises and legitimizing certain
forms of strategies when it comes to dealing with such situations (Hay 2001). Building
on similar theoretical bases, which amount to rejecting a sharp divide between the
cultural and the material, Jessop argued for materially-grounded critical semiotic
analysis (Jessop 2004, 2010). In other words, when a crisis occurs, signs — whether in
political speeches or in cultural products — matter and play a prominent part in
defining the nature and significance of the crisis, as well as what might follow in its
wake (Jessop 2004: 167). In the case of the 2008 crisis, Castree (2010) has highlighted the
competition between antagonistic interpretations of the crisis, ranging from blaming
corrupt and greedy bankers to accusing the Anglo-Saxon neoliberal system itself. As a
result, our analysis focuses on the cultural political economy of the 2008 crisis, by
offering a critical semiotic analysis of the representation of the crash in fictions and
documentaries. We will first present a summary of the films, before proposing a
structural comparison of the films, isolating their common features in terms of tropes,
characterization and narrative strategy. Thirdly, we will offer and apply a framework
assessing the extent to which these films give viewers a critical representation of
neoliberalism.

Corpus

Our corpus includes 4 North American fiction films and 4 documentaries. They all delve
into the mechanisms of neoliberal capitalism that played a role in the 2008 financial
crash. However, in fictions, the crisis is granted varying degrees of importance. In *Wall
Street: Money Never Sleeps*, released in 2010 as a sequel to Stone's 1987 *Wall Street*, the
crisis mainly constitutes the background of a family story. The plot of the 2010 movie is
set in 2008-2009, and the protagonist, Jacob Moore (Shia LaBeouf), is a trader for an
investment bank affected by the financial crisis. However, the film mainly focuses on
the relationship between Jacob, his fiancée Winnie (Carey Mulligan), and her father
Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas). Gekko is involved in illegal financial activities, while
his estranged daughter runs an online newspaper specialized in investigative journalism. The two men develop a form of partnership in which Gekko provides Moore with information about Wall Street in exchange for news about Winnie.

8. Conversely, *Margin Call* centers on the last 24 hours before the crash, making the crash the main dramatic element of the film. The plot focuses on the actions of the executives of a fictional investment bank as they realize a financial crisis is about to occur. Within a few hours, all the senior partners of the firm, played by Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons and Demi Moore, meet to decide on whether to use their insight to make a profit at the expense of their usual trading partners. While the upcoming crisis is never named, its mechanisms are that of the 2008 financial crisis.

9. Similarly, *Too Big to Fail*, directed by Curtis Hanson, focuses on a limited timespan around the crisis. It scrutinizes the actions of Henry Paulson (William Hurt), the American Treasury Secretary, and of Ben Bernanke (Paul Giamatti), the chairman of the US Federal Reserve, between August and October 2008. The two men were at the core of the moves made by the American government to try to circumvent the effects of the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

10. The most recent fiction selected for our corpus, *The Big Short* (2015), directed by Adam McKay, pictures not just the days, but the years that preceded the crash. Based on a true story, the plot revolves around a group of traders played by Ryan Gosling and Steve Carell — among others — who, having anticipated the crisis before everyone else, make a huge profit by betting against Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs), the financial products at the heart of the bubble.

11. The 4 documentaries of our corpus were, for their part, produced in the immediate aftermath of the crisis — Michael Moore's film was released in 2009 and the other three in 2010. While they all endeavor to explain the crisis, the scope of their analysis varies in terms of scale, chronology and depth. In *Capitalism: A Love Story*, Moore first focuses on the devastating effects of the explosion of the housing bubble, in particular in the fields of housing and employment, as he goes back to his home city of Flint, Michigan — a city already featured in his 1989 documentary film *Roger & Me*, which propelled Moore to worldwide attention. In the second part of the film, he analyses the responsibility of political and economic players for the crash and offers alternatives to neoliberal capitalism.

12. *Inside Job*, directed by Charles Ferguson, depicts the financial and political mechanisms that led to the crisis. The film offers a genealogy of the crisis, providing a short history of financial deregulation. It then tackles the intricate workings of the financial bubble and the political reactions to the crash. The role of intellectuals in the hegemony of neoliberal ideology is also addressed. Lastly, the film evokes the lack of decisive action on the part of the Obama administration as to regulation.

13. *Overdose: the Next Financial Crisis*, by Swedish director Martin Borgs, focuses on the financial mechanisms of the crash and of the bank bailout, insisting on the role of the American government's decisions.

14. *Global Financial Meltdown*, directed by Canadian director Terence McKenna, comprises four episodes, entitled “After the Fall”, “Paying the Price”, “A Global Tsunami” and “The Men who Crashed the World”. They focus respectively on the various incarnations of the housing bubble around the world, social movements relating to the crisis, the
domino effect triggered by the bankruptcy of Bern Sterns, a major bank, and the attitude of political leaders towards the regulation of financial capitalism.

## Post-2008 films

15 These summaries show that these films belong to the sub-genre labelled “post-2008 films” (Kinkle and Toscano 2011: 42). As such, they share common *partis pris* concerning the representation of the crisis.

## Stereotypical representations of finance

16 First of all, they all resort to stereotypical representations of the world of finance. The news and file footage used in documentaries have their fictional counterparts: both types of films favor a handful of situations when it comes to representing financial activities. With vertiginous speed, directors juxtapose simultaneous phone-calls, graphs, and figures. The editing conveys the feeling that information and money travel fast between interchangeable open spaces located all over the world. Before the crisis, traders are shown going in and out of elegant skyscrapers. In fictions, they are repeatedly placed in casinos, bars, and strip-clubs, *The Big Short* being a case in point. In documentaries, if such images are not featured as such, the dissolute nightlife of multi-millionaire bonus-earning traders is alluded to. When the crisis hits, traders are invariably shown burying their faces in their hands, and, once they have been laid off, walking out of their offices carrying a cardboard box containing their personal belongings. *Capitalism: A Love Story*, when describing the events of September 15, 2008, displays a large collection of such images taken from the news, while the opening sequence of *Margin Call* is a fictional rendition of such a scene.

## The evil banker

17 More specifically, the films in our corpus re-use and develop the stock character of the evil investment banker. In documentaries, it is Dick Fuld, the CEO of Lehman Brothers at the start of the crisis, who is presented as the epitome of ruthless, greedy traders. *Meltdown* even offers a short biography of Fuld, presenting him as no less than a tyrant: "His word was law, his judgment never to be questioned." In fictions, this trope predates the 2008 crisis: it is already embodied by Gordon Gekko in the 1987 instalment of *Wall Street*, and by Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) in *American Psycho* (2000), directed by Mary Harron. This stock character is typically cynical, as is John Tuld (Jeremy Irons) in *Margin Call*, whose name echoes Fuld's. Smug and distant, Tuld embodies the archetype of the ruthless financier, deciding to dump toxic assets before the word spreads that they are worthless, ordering massive layoffs and sacrificing his closest collaborators.

18 However, the fictions of our corpus add a new dimension to the trope. In *The Big Short*, Michael Burry (Christian Bale) is presented as a mathematical genius displaying characteristics of the autistic spectrum, while Mark Baum (Steve Carell) has intimacy and communication difficulties. In *Margin Call*, Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto), the young analyst who crunches the numbers and figures out the extent of the financial quagmire to come, actually has a background in... rocket science. The fictional
representations of traders of the 2000s have thus added new features to the original trope, by picturing some as asocial scientific geniuses.

## "In plain English"

19 Given the subject matter of the films, they all deal with a high level of financial complexity. The technicalities of financial activities and the explanations pertaining to them are at the core of the films, including in film fictions. In documentaries, filmmakers can use visual resources, such as graphs and animations, to illustrate their point without fear of interrupting the development of the plot. *Inside Job* features brightly coloured cartoons to make technical information more accessible. In fictions, directors resort to didactic ploys, which aim at making the explanations blend in with the diegesis. In *The Big Short*, the financial products are symbolized by bricks taken from the game of Jenga and labelled from AAA to B. Explanations may thus arise over the course of a conversation. In *Too Big To Fail* and *Margin Call*, a dumb character, or a character playing dumb, triggers the didactic sequences. In the first case, a member of the staff of the Treasury Secretary needs explanations, allowing the viewer to benefit from clarifications "in plain English." In the second case, CEO John Tuld asks rocket scientist Peter Sullivan to explain to him what is going on and insists on wanting to be talked to as one would to an infant, or even an animal. This dialogue also tends to show that powerful shareholders may be perfectly fine about not understanding the technical aspects of their own financial activities, as long as these are profitable.

20 In addition to these devices which are specific to either fictions or documentaries, both categories of films use analogies in their attempts at rendering financial jargon accessible. The drug metaphor is spun throughout *Overdose*, while *The Big Short* pictures a cooking analogy presented by celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain in his restaurant's kitchen. Such devices contribute to arming the viewer with technical knowledge about the workings of the financial system. These explanations, which are concerned with the specifics of the 2008 crisis, are articulated with a more general point about the historical status of this particular crash.

## One crisis among others

21 Taking a bird's eye view of the history of capitalism, the directors place the 2008 financial crash in perspective. If they all insist on its seriousness, they also tend to depict it as one crisis among others. The crisis appears as the repetition of previous crashes, a perspective best exemplified in *Margin Call* when, in order to convince the disenchanted trader (Kevin Spacey) that they have no responsibility in the present cash, John Tuld (Jeremy Irons) proceeds to naming previous crises. While the sun sets over Manhattan in the background, representing the eternal cycle of death and rebirth, the viewer thus takes in the long list of previous financial crises: 1637, 1797, 1819, 1837, 1857, 1884, 1901, 1907, 1929, 1937, 1974, 1987, 1992, 1997, and 2000. Put in such perspective, the 2008 crisis appears as no more than a periodical occurrence, unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

22 In the list of financial crises, 1929 holds a special position, however. Black Thursday is referenced in most documentaries through archival footage. In *Meltdown*, images of 1929 Wall Street are paralleled with shots of contemporary New York. In *Too Big To Fail*,
1929 is conjured up when the relevance of bailing out collapsing banks is discussed. This recurrent comparison hints at potential dramatic political consequences, as the Great Depression is strongly associated in collective memory with the rise of fascism and World War II. But the 2008 crash is also presented as the dress rehearsal of the next, even more serious crisis which is to come. This is stated explicitly in both *Overdose* and *Meltdown*. While the subtitle of the latter is simply “the next financial crisis,” the former concludes on the following ominous statement: “The world has to start planning for the next crisis even as we realize that this one is not over yet.” Similarly, *The Big Short* closes on the suggestion that speculation has resumed and that the next financial bubble is already growing.

## Thrillers and whodunits

23

The last common feature concerns the generic divide between fictions and documentaries when it comes to narrative strategies, that is to say the point of view which adopted and the order in which events are presented (Genette 1972). Two strategies at play borrow elements from other cinematic genres: while the fictions of our corpus draw on the structure of thrillers, the documentaries use that of whodunits.

24

Fictions appear to favor a chronological order. Keeping up with an anxious tempo, the viewer — already aware of how the story will end — is told of how the last pre-crisis months, days if not hours were spent by bankers before an infernal domino effect spread a disease of their own making. Documentaries, on the other hand, begin with establishing that the crisis was a worldwide cataclysm, before moving on to ask: “how did we get here?” It is the film-maker’s role to disentangle facts and unveil the causes of — and, more importantly, the responsibilities for — the crisis. The device is that of crime stories, since viewers are made to follow an investigator from the crime scene to the *modus operandi*, motives, and final exposure of the criminals.

## Crisis and Critique

25

While it is clear that cinematic representations of the crisis share a number of common features creating a specific sub-genre, the generic divide between fictions and documentaries remains significant when analyzing the critical dimension of these films. We will argue that their critical power depends on two elements: firstly, the amount of information provided in the films matters; more specifically, their ability to picture and explain several of the distinctive features of neoliberalism involved in the 2008 crisis. Secondly, their critical value is also determined by the ability and willingness of the films to entice viewers into anti-capitalist action. While assessing the specifics of the reception of each film is beyond the scope of this article, we can say whether they present alternatives to neoliberalism, and whether they feature critical voices.

26

Taking into consideration both the complexity of the depiction of the 2008 neoliberal crisis and the space granted to anti-capitalist voices, we produced the following classification, with films ranging from least to most critical. When assessed against such criteria, fictions prove less critical than documentaries in our corpus.
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

27 *Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps* is the most apologetic film in the corpus. The plot is tethered to 2008 to provide the context for the sequel of Oliver Stone's 1987 film, *Wall Street*. The sequel opens on Gordon Gekko's release from prison after eight years behind bars. The stock exchange, which was a recurrent image in the 1987 film, has given way to another location, the building of the Federal Reserve. The housing bubble, which led to the crisis, is alluded to through the character of Jacob Moore's mother, who gave up nursing for real estate. Finally, the film exposes the Machiavellian stratagems and fake rumors circulated by firms to bring down their competitors, leading in the final instance to the necessary bailout of a prominent bank. This sequel offers a less glamorous portrait of bankers than the 1987 film, avoiding what could be called a “Gekko effect.” The charismatic and obnoxious Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) in the first *Wall Street* film made such an impression on the audience that, in spite of Stone's professed efforts to portray him as unpleasant, the character inspired numerous young people to work in finance (Corliss 2010). Played by the same actor, an older Michael Douglas, Gekko now appears as an antihero who has lost his luster and tries in vain to warn people against the coming catastrophe, while being desperate to mend his relationship with his daughter.

28 Yet, Stone's endeavor to account for the present-day financial situation centers on the illegal practice of certain corrupted firms, without delving much into the complex causes of the crunch. From a didactic point of view, this film has the narrowest scope of our corpus, given that the plot suggests that Lehman Brothers fell because of rumors started by a rival firm.

29 Moreover, the storyline mainly revolves around a personal vendetta and family melodrama with a happy ending (Figure 1). Gekko ultimately finds redemption by investing the money he had stolen in the project his daughter Winnie wanted to support. He is then able to obtain both his daughter's pardon and the right to see his grandchild. According to Jeff Kinkle and Alberto Toscano, this conclusion testifies “to a world whose imagination is stripped of collectivity and riven to a narrow horizon of finitude, in which the best one can imagine is more family and less greed.” (Kinkle & Toscano 2011: 45) We could add that Gekko is forgiven thanks to his investing Winnie's money in a fusion research project seeking a way of creating clean energy. Does this mean that the end justifies the means?
<figure><img src="image_25.png" /><figcaption>Figure 1: A family crisis with a happy ending (Shia LaBeouf and Carey Mulligan) in *Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps* by Oliver Stone.</figcaption></figure>

Source: *Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps* by Oliver Stone (screen capture).

30 Finally, what status should we attribute to the comments made as a voice-over at the beginning of the film?

You want to know what the mother of all bubbles was? It came out of nowhere. By chance. They called it the Cambrian Explosion. It happened around 530 million years ago. And over the next 70, 80 million years, the rate of evolution accelerated so fast that we came along. The human race.

31 The end of this cosmological metaphor is brought to its full at the end of the film:

> Bubbles are evolutionary. They kill excess. They lean out the herd. But they never die. They just come back in different forms. When they burst, they give birth to a new day. Always creating change.

32 Such a conclusion seems to suggest that crises are a necessary evil because, ultimately, they are part of a natural systole and diastole at the heart of life.

## Margin Call

33 *Margin Call* offers a clear-cut example of greed and financial malpractice within the walls of one bank building. Viewers follow young risk analyst Peter Sullivan as he travels up the hierarchy ladder, meeting successively all the executives of the firm. At the top of the building, CEO John Tuld lands his helicopter and makes an entrance reminiscent of that of a video-game boss. Sitting alone at the table of the building's restaurant (Figure 2), he peacefully sips on fine wine and savors sophisticated food while conferring on the necessary return of crises.
<figure><img src="image_26.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2: CEO John Tuld (Jeremy Irons) in his ivory tower in *Margin Call* by J. C. Chandor.</figcaption></figure>

Source: *Margin Call* by J. C. Chandor (screen capture).

34 The difference with Oliver Stone's film is that a moral counterpoint is brought to the fore with two characters, Sullivan and Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), who repeatedly point at the consequences of the CEO's strategy. Their reservations add dialogism to the film, which testifies to director J. C. Chandor's clear condemnation of financial malfeasance.

35 However, their scruples do not lead them to take any serious action. At the end of the film, Sam Rogers laments the death of his dog like the death of his illusions about the financial world, yet his misgivings did not prevent him from participating in Tuld's scheme and accepting his share of the loot. The formal beauty of the film, with its sleek blueish tones, its processions of elegant suits, and its grandiose shots of the New York skyline, provides the bank building with an Olympian aura from which average people in the street look insignificant.

36 Chandor's decision to concentrate the plot over a 24-hour period in a single location, with the growing time pressure, the vain efforts of human beings threatened with disaster, their resignation in the face of an all-powerful impersonal force, and the perception of their impotence confer to this film the features of a modern tragedy. In sum, the film is compelling in exposing the extent of bankers' greed but it does not really equip the audience with a deeper understanding of what led to the crisis, nor does it seem to believe in any possible solution.

Too Big To Fail

37 Based on real facts, Curtis Hanson's *Too Big To Fail* is a political thriller which conveys a sense of emergency. The plot begins with the sale of the troubled investment bank Bear Sterns to JP Morgan, a sale guaranteed by the federal government. A fast pace is kept as Henry Paulson progressively faces an epic accumulation of situations similar to that of Bear Sterns: Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and AIG all collapse. His attempts at having the banks fix the situation among themselves fail because of greed and petty rivalries of their CEOs, as demonstrated by their private phone calls. The bailout is presented to Paulson in the second half of the film as a solution of last resort, to which
he reluctantly agrees. In a scene, his staff make a swift mental calculation to evaluate
the amount of money needed to save the economy. The figures with which the viewer is
bombarded are so extravagant that when they are magically downgraded to $7 billion,
one cannot but share Paulson's reaction as he says: "It's better than a trillion." He and
Ben Bernanke then proceed to lobbying the Congress to approve the bailout.

38

The two protagonists come out as heroic. Bernanke, who had just confessed to Paulson how deeply panicked he was before walking into the meeting room, impresses the viewer by keeping his composure as he faces outraged representatives and obdurate CEOs. His speech to the major banks appears as a criticism of their greed and selfishness; he presents the bailout as a “bold” action, necessary to protect the people. The soundtrack, featuring strings playing *adagio*, adds weight to his words. Paulson is also portrayed in a sympathetic light: a simple man in a simple home, walking in his pajamas while subject to insomnia. His courage is emphasized by his capacity to control an anxiety that only takes over when he is left alone (Figure 3).

<figure><img src="image_27.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3: A decent man dedicated to his country. Henry Paulson (William Hurt) in *Too Big To Fail*, by Curtis Hanson.</figcaption></figure>

Source: *Too Big To Fail*, by Curtis Hanson (screen capture).

39

The film does not leave much room to reflect on the causes of the crisis. “How is it possible you didn’t see it coming?” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Linda Glick) asks, to which Paulson replies: “If you want to rewind the tape, you can do that, but right now the one thing we don’t have is time.” *Too Big to Fail* turns out as an unmitigated eulogy for two highly controversial decision-makers, but their tight bonds with Wall Street and responsibility in deregulating finance remain unaddressed.

## The Big Short

40

The scope embraced by *The Big Short* (2015) is considerably wider than that of the three previous productions. Tying together three storylines, the narrative manages to examine various professions in the banking business. We follow Mark Baum (Steve Carell) in his discovery of the securitization food-chain, the role of mortgage companies, money lenders, and rating agencies. Director Adam McKay was also successful in using some codes of the documentary, with Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling) breaking the fourth wall and inserted interviews designed to provide technical elucidations. Vennett insists on the ideological importance of such digressions, no matter how clumsily they are incorporated into the plotline:
Mortgage-backed securities, subprime loans, tranches — it's pretty confusing, right? Does it make you feel bored? Or stupid? Well, it's supposed to. Wall Street loves to use confusing terms to make you think only they can do what they do. Or even better, for you to just leave them the fuck alone.

41 The impact of government policies and regulation is left aside but the upbeat montage, simultaneous plots, humorous tone of the narrative voice, derisive exposure of complex financial derivatives as a scam to deceive lay people, all combine to make the financial world both accessible and entertaining. However, this appeal and excitement are probably also what makes this film problematic. The prestigious cast pulls the film toward bank-robbery movies, a genre of which Brad Pitt is a familiar figure (Pitt plays Ben Rickert, a legendary retired securities trader). The recurrent statement that these men had the intelligence of foreseeing the general meltdown before anyone else — which is inaccurate, for there had been clear red flags about the financial situation from 2005 onwards — contributes to presenting them as heroes and contributes to producing yet another Gekko effect (Figure 4).

42 McKay made his critical point clear in the epilogue sequence, concluding on the uselessness of the bailout and ongoing creation of other derivatives under novel obscure terminology. Mark Baum and Ben Rickert, who endorse a moral stance and display disgust at the numerous aberrations of the financial system as a whole, do not undertake any action against it.

<figure><img src="image_28.png" /><figcaption>Figure 4: A passive moral figure (Brad Pitt as Ben Rickert facing two hapless characters) in *The Big Short*, by Adam McKay.</figcaption></figure>

Source: *The Big Short*, by Adam McKay (screen capture).

43 Baum decides to keep quiet, while Rickert is presented as a visionary who has already started to invest in seeds, anticipating their shortage in the very-long term. Overall, McKay's film limits itself to criticizing the status quo and runs the risk of upholding an idealized image of traders.

## Overdose

44 Moving on to documentaries, which are on the whole more critical than the fictions of our corpus, we begin with *Overdose*, whose argument relies largely on two spun metaphors: the punch bowl and the drug injection to a “patient.” Both intend to establish that nationalizations and bailouts offer a quick fix that, in the long run, provides fuel for more bubbles. The documentary also makes extensive use of simple
graphics in black, white and red colors (Figure 5), loud dramatic music, and a script narrated by a deep voice-over reminiscent of that used in action film trailers. Favoring sensationalism and effective visuals, the film is especially designed to scare the audience with its doomsday rhetoric.

<figure><img src="image_29.png" /><figcaption>Figure 5: The upcoming death of the patient in *Overdose, the Next Financial Crisis* by Martin Borgs.</figcaption></figure>

Source: *Overdose, the Next Financial Crisis* by Martin Borgs (screen capture).

45

What matters most is that the film is based on *Financial Fiasco*, a book written by Johan Norberg, who co-authored the screenplay with Martin Borgs. Norberg is a senior member of the Cato Institute, a libertarian thinktank, which also produced the film. The film's argument is clearly an indictment of state interventionism. Borgs and Norberg address at length the role played by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, arguing that state-backed mortgages "allowed lenders to go crazy." According to Norberg, had the private sector been in charge of securing mortgages, toxic assets would never have existed in the first place. The "highest bailout in history" is ultimately the film's main target. Norberg and Borgs denounce the absurdity of offering taxpayer money to banks without any strings attached, adding that "even banks who don't want the money will be forced to take it." Whilst Curtis Hanson tried to minimize the amount of money spent by the federal government, Norberg's calculation brings him to take other expenses into consideration: other bailouts, the lowering of interest rates, and much more, which allows him to say that the total expenses made by the federal government exceeded the combined cost of the two world wars, the Marshall Plan, and other conflicts. One could argue, however, that it is intellectually dishonest to include state funding directed at the car industry and expenses for social care under the Obama administration in the total cost of the bailout. The film condemns any form of state interventionism, grounding its criticism in the belief that the market will naturally regulate itself.
Capitalism: A Love Story

46

At the other end of the political spectrum stands *Capitalism: A Love Story*. Michael Moore's film presents the long-term evolutions of capitalism and argues that it is the quest for profit which is responsible for the crisis. Taking average American families impacted by the financial crunch as a starting point, the filmmaker explores the economic system from the bottom up, and vilifies money lenders, mortgage companies, and the collusion between Wall Street and the government. Moore's originality rests upon his condemnation of capitalism as a whole. He is the only director in the corpus who interviewed Christian priests condemning capitalism as “evil” and against the teachings of Jesus. A montage displays a large crucifix superimposed on a shot of the stock exchange. The end of the film seeks to promote “socialism” with an interview of Bernie Sanders, and celebrates Franklin D. Roosevelt, who intended to include a second Bill of Rights in the Constitution guaranteeing the rights to work, to have a decent home and economic protection, as well as the rights to access medical care and good education.

<figure><img src="image_30.png" /><figcaption>Figure 6: Families broken by the crash in *Capitalism, A Love Story* by Michael Moore.</figcaption></figure>

Source: *Capitalism, A Love Story* by Michael Moore (screen captures).

47

As far as means of action are concerned, Moore gives a list of successful
demonstrations, strikes, and sit-ins, and pays particular attention to the Flint strike
against General Motors in 1936, a significant victory for trade unionism. Yet, Moore
also stages himself haranguing random busy bankers walking out of their offices in
Wall Street. He turns up in front of bank headquarters with a robbery bag, asking them
to give back the “money of the American people”. Finally, he uses a megaphone
pretending to arrest bankers. Such scenes may seem rather trivial and show that,
despite the rich material featured in his documentary, Moore does not really engage in
a rational debate but rather seeks to trigger a visceral response among viewers. His
arguments may at times look vague: for instance, he correlates the rise of bankers’
bonuses with the rise of sales in antidepressants. Similarly, after underlining the
pressure under which Congress adopted the motion to bailout Lehman Brothers, Moore
interviews Representative Marcy Kaptur. He asks her whether she would agree to call
the bailout “a financial *coup d’état*." After some hesitation, the Democratic
representative finally agrees that “Wall Street" really is in charge of political affairs.
The filmmaker also relishes filming devastated families and anxious workers, filming
their distressed faces in close-ups, pressing them with questions until they start crying
(Figure 6). Finally, Moore’s tone is generally sarcastic and, thanks to fast cutting, he
equates the actions of those he calls “the rich” with racketeering and pickpocketing.

***Inside Job***

48

By contrast, the tone of *Inside Job* is serious. Matt Damon’s commentary is uttered in a calm, professorial voice. Like Moore, Ferguson makes extensive use of fast cutting. Yet, while Moore used inserts to ridicule the rich, Ferguson provides rigorous research and fact-checking. Without trying to avoid didacticism, the documentary describes the intricacies of the political and financial spheres with a wealth of detail. It also points at strategic errors made by Paulson in 2008, blames politicians for their suspicious lack of reactions ahead of the crisis since — Ferguson insists on this — there had been numerous red flags as early as 2005.

49

Ferguson gives a better insight than previous films into the global dimension of the
crisis. The case of Iceland is explained in detail and the filmmaker shows the
repercussions of the crisis in China and Singapore. Among the causes of the crisis,
Ferguson also includes the pathological behavior of high-class financiers. Their regular
use of drugs and prostitutes is exposed in order to illustrate how these white-collar
criminals place themselves above the law. Fraud and money-laundering, involvement
in arm dealings are also mentioned. Finally, Ferguson demonstrates his originality
when denouncing the role played by academics and experts in helping to guarantee
toxic products and unreasonable investments (Figure 7).

<figure><img src="image_31.png" /><figcaption>Figure 7: Charles Ferguson challenges an angry academic in *Inside Job*, by Charles Ferguson.</figcaption></figure>

Source: *Inside Job*, by Charles Ferguson (screen capture).
50

Several options are offered by this documentary. The priority is given to fighting the extremely powerful lobbies and the subsequent hold that banks have on governments. Choosing Matt Damon, a celebrity known for supporting Obama's campaign, is also a way of expressing disappointment toward an administration that did not manage to free itself from the influence of Wall Street. With regard to experts, Ferguson suggests that a form of regulation of academic publications should be implemented to avoid conflicts of interests. Finally, he even implies the possibility of punishing perpetrators of fraudulent financial moves by convicting them of other crimes principally related to use of drugs and prostitutes.

## Global Financial Meltdown

51

*Global Financial Meltdown* (2010) is the most thorough film of the corpus. It presents the same causes of the economic crunch as the other documentaries but digs deeper. Terrence McKenna, the director, insists on the international dimension of the whole phenomenon more than other filmmakers. He addresses the role played by European countries, recalling the deregulation measures encouraged by Gordon Brown, then British Chancellor of the Exchequer, in an attempt to turn the City into the foremost financial market. Episode 3, entitled “Paying the price,” provides abundant footage of strikes in France (Figure 8), during which the workers of Continental and Caterpillar kidnapped their bosses to force them to negotiate with strikers. Demonstrations in front of Iceland's Parliament are also displayed.

<figure><img src="image_32.png" /><figcaption>Figure 8: "Les Contis": Local effects of a global crisis in *Global Financial Meltdown* by Terrence McKenna.</figcaption></figure>

Source: *Global Financial Meltdown* by Terrence McKenna (screen capture).

52

The main risk run by the film is to confuse the viewer with its formidable mass of information. The film turns out to perhaps too rich and dense. One may also be skeptical about the excessive optimism of the director when he closes this four-part film with the idea that politicians and IMF leaders have now understood the necessity of urgently legislating to regulate finance. As for the final vision of workers walking
cheerfully in the blazing sunlight, strangely reminiscent of social-realistic propaganda posters, one wonders if this is it to be interpreted as a threat to the neoliberal order.

## Conclusion

53

The 8 films that have been studied share defining elements of the sub-genre formed by post-2008 movies, from visual elements such as the omnipresence of figures, plunging graphs and skyscrapers, to the obligatory need to popularize financial jargon. Given the complexity of present-day financial markets, a certain amount of didactics is needed in cultural productions targeting a wide audience. Surely this informative and explanatory dimension played a key role in attracting viewers. Fictions, with their brilliant casts and alluring dramatization, did well at making a rather dry topic both accessible and visually attractive, with the risk of glamorizing a topic of both ethical and ideological importance. Documentaries, on their part, offered a much more critical view, especially when they addressed the crisis as a worldwide phenomenon revealing the shortcomings of neoliberalism, and when they displayed popular dissent directed at capitalism.

54

It is worth stepping back and look at the context in which these films were created and first seen. Most were released within the two years following the 2008 crisis. The economic crisis as a historical event had been immediately turned into a popular cultural product. Replacing the production of films upholding a strong anti-capitalist narrative in their context of production, Ribstein (2009) published an article with the provocative title: “How movies created the financial crisis.” The author emphasized the fact that filmmakers are embedded in the capitalist system, and that the film industry is unlikely to bite the hand that feeds it. Therefore, bankers appear as the sensible guilty party. Blaming them satisfies the audience’s thirst for explanation and blame, without pointing at other structural dynamics, such as deregulation policy or states bailing out banks with taxpayer money. Such an analysis is quite pessimistic as to the critical role that mass-cultural productions can play within neoliberalism. Nevertheless, our investigation has shown that post-2008 films have contributed to circulating a diversity of views on the crisis, revealing the extent of the social catastrophe it has caused, making its mechanisms accessible to a lay audience, and, occasionally, picturing means of resistance. Whether such a rapid codification of the historical crisis into a product of mass-consumption contributes to higher political awareness or undermines its very possibility remains open.

## BIBLIOGRAPHY
## Books and articles

Castree, Noel. "The 2007-09 financial crisis: narrating and politicising a calamity." *Human Geography: a new radical journal* 3 (1) 2010: 34-48.

Corliss, Richard. "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps: Gekko and Greed Are Back." *Time*: 4 May 2010.

Gamble, Andrew. "Neo-liberalism." *Capital & Class* 25 (3) 2001: 127-34.

Genette, Gérard. *Figures III*. Paris: Seuil, 1972.

Hall, Stuart and Doreen Massey. "Interpreting the crisis." *Soundings* (44) 2010: 57-71.

Harvey, David. *A Brief History of Neoliberalism*. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005.

Hay, Colin. "The 'crisis' of Keynesianism and the rise of neoliberalism in Britain: an ideational institutionalist approach." In John L. Campbell and Ove K. Petersen (ed.). *The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Analysis*. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2001: 193-218.

Jessop, Bob. "Critical semiotic analysis and cultural political economy." *Critical Discourse Studies* 1 (2) 2004: 159-74.

Jessop, Bob. "Cultural political economy and critical policy studies." *Critical Policy Studies* 3 (3-4) 2010: 336-56.

Kinkle, Jeff and Alberto Toscano. "Filming the Crisis: A Survey." *Film Quarterly* 65 (1) 2011: 39-51.

Ribstein, Larry E. "How movies created the financial crisis." *Michigan State Law Review* 2009: 1171-89.

## Filmography

*Capitalism, A Love Story* (2009), by Michael Moore. 127mn. Prod. Dog Eat Dog Films and The Weinstein Company. Distr. Overture Films.

*Global Financial Meltdown* (2010), by Terence McKenna. 60mn x 4 episodes. CBC.

*Inside Job* (2010), by Charles Ferguson. 108mn. Sony Pictures Classics. Narrated by Matt Damon.

*Margin Call* (2011), by J. C. Chandor. 109mn. Lionsgate. Feat. Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons, Zachary Quinto, Simon Baker, Demi Moore, Stanley Tucci, et al.

*Overdose, the Next Financial Crisis* (2010), by Martin Borgs. 46mn. Cato Institute. Narrated by Johan Norberg.

*The Big Short* (2015), by Adam McKay. 130mn. Paramount. Feat. Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, et al.

*The Girlfriend Experience* (2009), by Steven Soderbergh. 77mn. Magnolia Pictures. Feat. Sasha Grey et al.

*The Other Guys* (2010), by Adam McKay. 107mn. Columbia Pictures. Feat. Will Ferrell, Mark Whalberg, Eva Mendes et al.

*Too Big to Fail* (2011), by Curtis Hanson. 98mn. HBO. Feat. William Hurt, Edward Asner, Billy Crudup, Paul Giamatti, Topher Grace, Cynthia Nixon, et al.

*Up in the Air* (2009), by Jason Reitman. 109mn. Paramount. Feat. George Clooney et al.
*Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps* (2010), directed by Oliver Stone. 133mn. 20th Century Fox. Feat. Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf, Josh Brolin, Carey Mulligan, Eli Wallach, Susan Sarandon, Frank Langella, et al.

## ABSTRACTS

The 2008 crisis has been represented in many fiction and documentary films. This paper analyses these representations in order to present the aesthetic and political characteristics of widely circulated narratives of the crisis. This paper analyses 8 films, starting with an overview, then a structural comparison of these films, isolating the common features of this sub-genre in terms of tropes, characterization and narrative strategy. The paper then assesses the films' critical dimension against the complexity of their depiction of the 2008 neoliberal crisis and the space granted to anticapitalist voices. Both fictions and documentaries reveal a didactic dimension, but they differ as to their critical dimension. Fictions, with their brilliant casts and alluring dramatization, did well at making a dry topic both accessible and visually attractive, with the risk of glamorizing a topic of both ethical and ideological importance. Documentaries offer a much more critical view, especially when they address the crisis as a worldwide phenomenon revealing the shortcomings of neoliberalism, and when they display popular dissent directed at capitalism. These films armed their viewers with technical knowledge about finance, but for the most part did not encourage viewers to question capitalism as such.

La crise financière de 2008 a inspiré beaucoup de documentaires et de films de fiction. Cet article étudie les caractéristiques esthétiques et politiques des interprétations de la crise véhiculées par 8 films, et commence par en proposer un résumé avant d'en comparer la structure pour dégager les traits typiques de ce « sous-genre » en termes de figures, de construction des personnages et de stratégie narrative. La dimension critique de ces films est ensuite évaluée à l'aune de la complexité de la représentation qu'ils offrent de la crise du capitalisme néolibéral et de la place accordée aux opinions anticapitalistes. Il apparaît que les fictions, comme les documentaires, ont une importante dimension didactique, mais sans avoir la même portée critique. Les fictions du corpus se distinguent par des distributions prestigieuses et une tendance à l'idéalisation qui font courir le risque de faire oublier l'importance éthique et idéologique du sujet au profit de l'esthétisme ou du divertissement. Les documentaires proposent des lectures bien plus critiques de la crise, notamment lorsqu'ils en soulignent les dimensions mondiales et représentent divers types de contestation anticapitaliste. Dans leur majorité, ces films aident le public à mieux comprendre le fonctionnement de la finance mais rares sont ceux qui remettent en cause l'existence du système néolibéral en tant que tel.

## INDEX

**Keywords:** financial crisis, capitalism, neoliberalism, representation, fiction film, documentary, film

**Mots-clés:** crise financière, capitalisme, néolibéralisme, représentation, film de fiction, documentaire, cinéma
# AUTHORS

## JULIETTE FEYEL

Juliette Feyel holds a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Paris Nanterre. Her research deals with the politics of gender and body representations in erotic literature, cinema and graphic novels. Contact: juliette.feyel [at] gmail.com

## CLÉMENCE FOURTON

Clémence Fourton holds a PhD in British Studies from the University of Poitiers. Her research focuses on the social and political effects of the 2008 crisis in the UK. She is a graduate of the École normale supérieure de Lyon. Contact: clemence.fourton [at] gmail.com
# Reclaiming Our Universities: A Manifesto to Dismantle the UK HE Sector Neoliberal Agenda

Marian Mayer and Sue Eccles

## Background and Context

> There's a need to refresh skills every few years or so, and MK:U will be geared towards ongoing relationships with its learners and opportunities for re-joining the campus community.

<footnote n="1">1. This article began as a response to the introduction of the Higher Education and Research Act (HERA) (2017), which in effect opens the door to privatised, deregulated Higher Education (HE) in the UK. The Act allows private for-profit companies, from their inception, to use the university title (previous legislation required a waiting period of four years), to award degrees, and to charge unregulated fees; they will not be required to establish or fund student unions. Academic freedom, as understood by publicly-funded HE, will not be protected and for-profit private universities will be able to close unprofitable courses with no liabilities to either staff or students. The neoliberal project is writ large (Harvey 2007, Hall 1978, 2011). Morgan (2017b) described the bill as "the most significant sector legislation in 25 years to further a market approach in England". It is also important to note that as Morley (2016) observed, privatised Higher Education is antithetical to critical thinking, a cornerstone of the pursuit and creation of evidenced-based knowledge. The recent announcement of a new 'civic' university in Milton Keynes, MK:U, positioned to focus on digital skills and employability, will have a "business-facing approach" according to Ryals (2018), currently the Pro Vice-Chancellor for Education at Cranfield University, and appointed as Programme Director for MK:U. Ryals (2018) posits the business model for MK:U, referring to 'lifelong learning':</footnote>

<footnote n="2">2. Announcing the new university, Ryals (2018) offers no detail about the ways in which MK:U is to be funded. However, she does make reference to the possibilities for</footnote>
"business partnership" and employs the language of neoliberal ideology, e.g. "the university offering" and "a lead role for a business in design, delivery and support via placements." A new entrant, fast on the heels of the HERA 2017.

3 In a further example of the commodification of HE, a group of Oxford academics have launched a 'university app', which they describe as "the Uber of degree courses; for teachers, it will be the Airbnb of course hosting." In an interview with Roller (2018), the founder and director of Woolf University, Junior Research Fellow Joshua Broggi stated that:

> The university will use blockchains with smart contracts to automate core administrative procedures, which can lower our overhead costs, reduce tuition fees, and secure significantly better salaries for academics.

4 Presciently, Morley (2016) predicted the ‘uberisation’ of higher education. It has been estimated that these ‘blockchain’ degrees will cost approximately £40,000 to complete. Validated by traditional universities, Woolf University was due to be launched at the beginning of the academic year 2018/19. Emeritus professor of educational technology at the Open University, Mike Sharples, questioned Woolf University’s ability to provide a high standard of teaching, contending that whilst it will be possible to “assure that an interaction has taken place between two parties” [academic and student], it “cannot assure quality” (Roller 2018). These new entries into the HE sector purport to offer benefits; MK:U is being positioned as a ‘civic’ university, intended to create graduates with digital skills for the “fourth industrial revolution” (Ryals 2018), whilst Woolf University contends economic benefits for students and academics. Neither University was discussed in terms typically associated with HE, such as the creation of knowledge, academic freedom of thought and speech, or critical reflective analysis and enhanced understandings of society or the wider world.

5 Holmwood (2017) argued that HERA “completes a process of the privatisation of higher education in England”. For academics working in the humanities and social sciences, the removal of funding for these disciplines has been keenly felt. Holmwood cites the complicity of senior university leaders as key to the privatisation of HE; his pessimism echoes that of Collini (2017: 203), who refers to the failure of academia to resist and defend against the Act describing this as a “loss of nerve” in universities; in effect an inability to defend publicly-funded HE.

## Fighting the Neoliberal Agenda

6 However, one event has significantly changed the UK HE landscape and demonstrated a more recent attempt to challenge the neoliberal agenda. The recent University and College Union (UCU) industrial action, in defence of pensions for staff working in pre-92 universities began in February 2018. According to Schwarz (2018: 9)

> [...] for reasons which are still not clear, the employers — the Universities UK (UUK) — settled on what was in effect a frontal assault against the University and College Union (UCU).

7 UCU members voted to strike for 14 days during February and March, and at its height 65 institutions were affected by the action (UCU March 2018). In ways that UCU activists had no reason to envision, students joined academics on picket lines and most surprisingly occupied — at one point — some 20 university buildings, including the
London School of Economics, Liverpool University, Reading University, University College London, Southampton and Sussex University and others (Figures 1 and 2).

<figure><img src="image_33.png" /><figcaption>Figure 1. Occupation at Queen Mary University</figcaption></figure>

Source: Left Foot Forward, 2018.

<figure><img src="image_34.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2. Referencing Marx</figcaption></figure>

Source: Left Foot Forward, 2018.
<figure><img src="image_35.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3. Bristol University ‘Student Staff Solidarity Group’ occupy the Senate room</figcaption></figure>

Source: The Tab, 2018.

<figure><img src="image_36.png" /><figcaption>Figure 4. Bristol University ‘Student Staff Solidarity Group’ occupy the Senate room</figcaption></figure>

Source: The Tab, 2018.
<figure><img src="image_37.png" /><figcaption>Figure 5. Glasgow University Strike. Solidarity Occupation. March 15, 2018</figcaption></figure>

Source: Caitlin Logan, 2018. https://sourcenews.scot/occupied-glasgow-students-show-solidarity-with-striking-lecturers/

<figure><img src="image_38.png" /><figcaption>Figure 6. University of Strathclyde (Glasgow) students support the strike, March 15, 2018</figcaption></figure>

Source: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=609189756084702&set=a.593075004362844

8 In addition to marches through cities across the UK, Bristol University's Vice-Chancellor's Office was occupied (Cork 2018; Figures 3 and 4) and Glasgow University students, organised as 'Glasgow University Strike Solidarity' in support of the industrial action, occupied the Senate Room (Figures 5 and 6) issuing the following statement:

We are here in solidarity with striking members of staff and to remind our university management where their sympathies should lie. This also a show of solidarity with occupying students across the UK. (BBC 2018)
9. Students and striking academics came together to defend HE as never before. According to a recent yougov poll (UCU 2018c), 61% of HE students supported the industrial action, with 66% studying in institutions affected by the strike supporting the action. Interestingly, only 2% of those polled held academics responsible for the action, 20% responded that both staff and employers were at fault, whilst 50% blamed the employer. This response by students was in stark contrast to a widely-held, neoliberal belief that as ‘consumers’ of education they would express anger over the strikes. Interestingly, however, a small number of students demanded compensation from universities for breach of contract. Group claims are being encouraged by Law Firms, such as Asserson’s University Group Claim’s website contending that:

> This is your chance to be paid fair compensation for lost teaching time, and to show that like any consumers, students won't pay something for nothing. (Asserson Law Offices 2018).

10. This is arguably an unintended consequence of the commodification of HE, in particular the Competition and Market Authority's (2015) consumer advice to students regarding UK legal frameworks protecting consumers' rights. It should be noted that this consumerist approach to education is not restricted to the recent industrial action; one Oxford graduate recently failed in an attempt to sue the University for failing to achieve a first-class degree arguing that they had received "negligently inadequate teaching" (Mortimer 2018).

11. Nevertheless, unprecedented numbers of staff and students protested not only on the attack on academic pensions — the marketization and commodification of HE was cited as a primary motivation for supporting the strike. Rebel Architects Faction (RAF), for example, blocked the gates of Cambridge University (Figure 7) stating that:

> Architecture students fully support the strike and will not cross picket lines. Attacks on our staff are attacks on our education. Already many junior staff and students struggle to afford the basic necessities of a dignified life, suffer under an escalating mental health crisis and are exploited at every turn. Enough is enough: our futures are not for sale.
<figure><img src="image_39.png" /><figcaption>Figure 7. RAF action at Cambridge University</figcaption></figure>

Source: https://discoversociety.org/2018/03/01/rethinking-collective-action-the-2018-university-strike/.

12 UCU branches across the sector reported an extraordinary rise in membership applications (UCU February 2018) and staff queued on picket lines to join the union in order to take industrial action. In effect these staff were choosing to take industrial action and lose 14 days' pay, with the prospect of further action in order to defend their pensions and challenge the ideological, neoliberal university. Moreover, it is estimated that membership of UCU increased by almost 10,000:

> In the three months to 28 February 2018, UCU had an additional 9059 members, 7752 HE and 1304 FE... These figures are in HE 349% up on the equivalent period last year and 394% on the equivalent period two years ago. (Personal communication Regional Official UCU).

13 The rise in activism within the UCU led to a remobilisation and democratisation of the union, with new members, particularly younger members, often working on precarious, low-paid contracts, for example postgraduate researchers, taking active roles in organising picket lines and protests in their branches. A key shift in the response to a proposed settlement of the action, brokered by the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS), was a grassroots branch-led rejection culminating in a demonstration outside UCU's head office. Hundreds of strikers protested outside the UCU offices (Figures 8 and 9) to make clear their views to the General Secretary, Sally Hunt, about the perceived capitulation by UCU negotiators. UCU members told Sally Hunt — as she argued in favour of the proposed settlement — that she was “now objectively on the side of the employers”.
<figure><img src="image_40.png" /><figcaption>Figure 8. UCU members protest outside the UCU Head Office in Carlow Street London</figcaption></figure>

Source: Reelnews, 2018.

<figure><img src="image_41.png" /><figcaption>Figure 9. UCU members protest outside the UCU Head Office in Carlow Street London.</figcaption></figure>

Source: Guy Smallman.
<figure><img src="image_42.png" /><figcaption>Figure 10. UCU members protest outside the UCU Head Office in Carlow Street London</figcaption></figure>

Source: Guy Smallman.

14 Both academics and students were using the language of protesters, e.g. “Resist” and “Rise Up” and taking direct action, for instance through occupations, signifying a change in what was previously a service union to that of a campaigning union. The radicalisation of staff and students as a consequence of the USS industrial dispute has set the foundations for future grassroots, joint organising and campaigning (Figures 11 and 12).
<figure><img src="image_43.png" /><figcaption>Figure 11. Staff and students march through Bristol, November 16, 2018</figcaption></figure>

Source: *Bristol Post*, https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/university-bristol-lecturers-in-precarious-2225173.

<figure><img src="image_44.png" /><figcaption>Figure 12. Staff and students march through Liverpool, March 8, 2018</figcaption></figure>

Source: Liverpool Walton Constituency Labour Party Twitter account, https://twitter.com/lpoolwaltonclp/status/971833984153018370.
The rise and impact of the neoliberal agenda on
education

15 As discussed above, the reaction by academics and students to recent proposed changes to the established HE pension scheme, the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), was unexpected and decisive, and demonstrated greater solidarity across academia than had been seen in the UK for many years (Left Foot Forward 2018). As Marsh (2018) noted in his deconstruction of the USS valuation of the scheme, which he described as a scandal, the ‘de-risking’ of the pension fund through the sale of the “growth assets (equities, property etc)” would significantly reduce the amount of benefits paid into future pensions. The estimated costs to universities of £11bn over the next 20 years, as a result of increased employer contributions, would of course be met ultimately by members of the scheme. However, what was interesting about this industrial action is that it was, at the time, the most effective — and some would argue the only — way that academics and students could protest about the impact of the neoliberal agenda on HE.

16 As Deem et al. (2007) argue, the autonomy and judgement of public sector professionals has been eroded through the ever-increasing grip of neoliberal management, empowered by elite politicians and corporations. This is as true of HE as it is of the wider public sector. Successive UK governments have pursued a neoliberal agenda to dismantle public sector education, from primary school through to HE since at least the 1970s. An evaluation of Gillard’s (2018) historical account of more than 145 reports by charities, commissions and government departments, government bills, acts and reviews regarding education in England identifies what we conceptualise as the ‘DNA’ to dismantle publicly funded education, whilst diverting public funds to private education. This is a classic manifestation of the hegemonic neoliberal project, as proposed by Harvey (2007), Hall (1978, 2011), and Hall and Massey (2010). Arguably, the DNA model sits alongside Gillard’s (2018) extensive history of education in the UK, by providing an interactive snapshot of key developments in legislation that have led to the dismantling of public sector education.

17 One of the key highlights of the neoliberal agenda included the Conservative government's Education Act (1979) which repealed Labour's Act (1976) that had included a clause which allowed Local Education Authorities (LEAs) to retain (and fund) selective secondary schools. The same government's Education Act (1980) instituted the Assisted Places scheme, which allowed LEAs to use public money to fund places in private schools.

18 Notably, the Further and Higher Education Act (1992) removed Further Education (FE) and sixth-form colleges from LEA control and established Further Education Funding Councils (FEFCs), bringing all funding of HE under the control of the Higher Education Funding Councils (HEFCs), and for the first time, introduced market-like competition for funding between institutions. It was the 1997 Labour Government led by Tony Blair that opened the door to student-funded HE education, proposing in its manifesto that student maintenance costs should be borne by graduates, albeit on a means-tested basis. The Dearing report (1996) commissioned by the previous Conservative government recommended that students bear 25% of the cost of tuition, although Dearing did argue that government grants should remain in place. It is, of course, a matter of record and history that the cost of tuition was increased for students whilst almost all grants have been abolished.
19 It was again a Labour government, neoliberal in its actions, which introduced £1,000 tuition fees in 1998, abolishing the £1,700 grant, replaced with student loans, which are means tested and increasingly restrictive. The Education (Student Loans) Regulations 1990 paved the way for the privatisation of student funding for HE, transferring the provision, management and collection of student loans to the private sector. Despite calls by almost 80 backbench Labour MPs to abolish tuition fees, Tony Blair's government passed the Higher Education Act (2004) and, in 2006, student fees were raised to £3,000. This eventually led to the introduction of £9,250 (a purported maximum) fees by the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government in 2012. It is against this backdrop of the introduction, then rapid rise in student fees that students began to protest initially against the increase in fees, staging protests in 2011, but more recently, and as previously discussed, against neoliberal policies in HE. Further examples of the neoliberal dismantling of HE in the UK can be seen in initiatives to increase private, for-profit universities. Commenting on the announcement of the privately funded university BPP University College, owned by NASDAQ-listed American Apollo Group, Finlayson (2010) stated:

> Let's be clear about what has happened. The House of Commons has not voted only for a rise in tuition fees in English universities. It has voted for the privatisation of British Higher Education.

20 Special mention must be reserved, however, for the successive Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major which sealed the lid on public funding of universities, applying severe financial pressure. This was achieved through the reduction of student funding by 36% between 1989 and 1997, and linking funding to Research Assessment Exercises, thereby exerting market values on HE (Collini 2010). As Collini notes, reviewing the Browne et al. (2010) report on which these changes in funding were premised, the consequence was:

> A system in which the universities are providers of services, students are the (rational) consumers of those services, and the state plays the role of the regulator. (Collini 2010)

21 It is this long-term drive towards the neoliberalisation of HE by successive UK governments that we identify as a purposeful agenda to redefine publicly funded education as a for-profit provider rather than a universal network (Meek 2015). Finlayson's (2010) question was as close as prescience gets: "Which Liberal Democrat minister will be the first to leave the cabinet in order to take up a position on the board of a private provider of Higher Education?"

22 In any event, it did not long take for ex-Universities Minister David Willets to take advantage of the neoliberal policies he stewarded, taking a job as 'education investment advisor' for a development company with the purpose of recruiting universities to an east London campus. As Holmwood (2017) commented, HERA 2017:

> [...] completes a process of the privatization of higher education in England that began with the Browne Report in 2010 and subsequent Government White Papers and legislative changes to remove direct public funding of undergraduate programmes in humanities and social sciences and to replace it with student fees supported by loans.

23 The dismantling of HE in the UK is an agenda inextricably bound in neoliberal ideology.
# The DNA of the neoliberal agenda in HE

Reflecting on the past 40 years of government Acts and associated legislation relating to education in the UK, and in particular England, a pattern or theme emerges that seemed to us synonymous with the DNA double helix, akin to building blocks of the neoliberal project. It becomes clear that almost every Act between 1979 and 2017 has had a concomitant impact on the funding of education; for example, the Education (Student Loans) Regulations 1990, which led to the removal of student grants, had been preceded by a grants freeze in 1989, which began the indebtedness of students in England studying in HE. This had the effect of removing the cost of student grants from the public deficit, creating a student loan book. It is possible to identify an agenda running through some 40 years of legislation that has led to the dismantling of publicly-funded HE. This ideological agenda has been pursued by Conservative, Liberal Democratic and Labour governments.

In attempting to understand the complexities and challenges facing HE in the UK, a DNA model has been developed as a metaphorical Figure of the underpinning foundations and 'building blocks' of the neoliberal agenda to dismantle publicly-funded education in England. The model is intended to be a signifier of the embeddedness of neoliberal ideology in the British political landscape, in particular the public sector, and especially education. In science, the structure has been developed from its original inception in 1953.

In the arts, the DNA helix has inspired works such as that of the surrealist Salvador Dalí, including Galacidalacidesoxyribonucleicacid_(1963) and Butterfly Landscape, the Great Masturbator in Surrealist Landscape with DNA (1957–1958), the Science Fiction film, *Gattaca* (1997), the title of which comprises the four nucleobases of DNA, and sonic representations of DNA (Dunn and Clark 2004). The arts curator of the Mütter Museum, Trevor Smith proposed that:

> [...] every cultural expression has its own set of DNA. This is roughly what evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins would describe as memes. Memes operate culturally not unlike how genes express in biology. They are creative and mimetic practices that transmit ideas and forms from one mind to another or one culture to another. Like genes, memes are always in the process of being remixed and repurposed.

We “repurpose” the iconic visual representation of DNA as an analogous metaphor for the dismantling of the HE sector. The 3D, interactive model (in development) will allow users to click on text in a visual representation, which would then link the reader to an original source: corresponding links would take the reader to publications, explanations and discussions of the effect of the act on government or policy. It is anticipated that this model would be a useful contribution to research into the neoliberal agenda. Not only does it vividly represent the ways in which publicly-funded education, in particular in England, has been dismantled, it allows researchers ready access to information adding to understandings of the ongoing debate around neoliberalism in HE. The development of the model is represented in 2D form in Figure 13.
<figure><img src="image_45.png" /><figcaption>Figure 13. Development of the model in 2D form</figcaption></figure>

Source: Marian Meyer and Sue Eccles, 2017.

28 In parallel, government Acts over a similar period of time led to conditions whereby many primary and secondary schools were “acadamised”, as were Further Education colleges, resulting in an increasingly privatised education system. For the most part, these academies are run for profit by large corporate entities, some of which have been sponsored by wealthy individuals and religious groups. In some cases, so-called “Free Schools” have been established, whereby LEAs are required to fund schools set up by parents, supported by charities such as the New Schools Network, which to date has had questionable outcomes, according to a recent *Times Higher Education* report (Hazell 2018).

29 Interestingly, the notion that universally accessible education was originally conceived in order to provide a workforce for the capitalist industrial economy, in some sense, supports the link between industry and education, however such notions were superseded by Humanist and later Democratic concepts of education (Rustin 2016). The dismantling of public sector education has returned to the concept of HE as a “trainer” of workforces, rather than democratically-organised places of learning and the creation of knowledge — as seen in the earlier discussion regarding MK:U.

## The current landscape

30 Understanding the DNA of the neoliberal agenda in HE also helps us understand the current and most recent developments across the UK HE sector. HERA 2017 radically changed HE in the UK; its effects could have been the final nail in the coffin of public-sector education, significantly impacting research activities and academic freedom.
Private for-profit companies will be accredited to use university titles, award degrees, charge high fees, operate without student unions and academic freedom, and be able to close “unprofitable” programmes with no liabilities. Academic freedom, once a cornerstone of university endeavours, will now be driven by market demands, and consequently, scholarly independence and the freedom to engage in the critical pursuit of knowledge will be significantly limited. As Woodhouse (2009) presciently noted, academic excellence is incompatible with the requirements of those seeking to commercialise education for private profit, whether it be business partners or the HE sector. Brennan and David (2010: 6) argue that:

> In their focus on skills and employability, policy makers may be underselling the importance of universities to the creation and maintenance of a stable and fair social order.

31 The UK Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) will further commodify HE, leading to a greater consumerist approach to HE. Indeed, the stated premise of the recently-introduced HE regulator, the Office for Students (OfS) which replaced the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the Office for Fair Access (OFFA), is to “increase choice and competition in higher education”, in effect creating a student-consumer model of HE. The OfS, which has limited student representation on its board and significantly no member from the National Union of students (NUS), lost no time in commissioning research into “students’ perceptions of value for money” (OfS 2018). The OfS employs the language of markets and consumers, clearly positioning the regulator as a key component of the neoliberal higher education sector.

32 We are facing the ultimate marketisation of education, including the introduction of 2-year degrees, and reduction in student choice as “unprofitable” programmes are closed (Hall 2016). Whilst there are major challenges — imposed by education policy-makers — impacting negatively on the student experience, these could be addressed by re-thinking the purposes of universities. Collini (2017) contends that the “idea of the university” has been the subject of repetitive, inconclusive debate and discourse for more than 150 years. If we accept that universities should play an important and significant role in society, perhaps we must redefine what that role should be.

33 University staff and student unions have an important role to play in the defence of publicly-funded and publicly-owned HE. It is important to note that the Labour Party manifesto (2017: 47) includes a pledge to establish a Ministry of Labour, committing a Labour government to “repeal the Trade Union Act and [to] roll out sectoral collective bargaining”. The manifesto also promises a radical restructuring of HE financing, including re-establishing student grants and abolishing fees. It is within this context that we believe it is possible to reimagine and reclaim Higher Education.

34 As part of the effort to rethink the purpose of HE, we argue that it is essential that the authoritarian neoliberal agenda pursued by successive UK governments be widely exposed, challenged and resisted (Bowen et al. 2014; Bruff and Tansel 2018). McGettigan (2013, 2015) argues that the rapid expansion and increasing marketisation of the sector is a core function of a neoliberal economic policy, arguing however that it is possible to challenge this ideology. It is possible to build on the work of Morley (2016), Holmwood, Hickey and Wallis (2016), Freedman and Bailey (2011) and others to challenge and resist the neoliberal agenda in education, and expose increasing socio-economic inequalities. Neoliberal HE policies can be challenged through evidence-based research: as extant research argues, the UK HE sector can be re-invigorated and knowledge production
pursued as a site of transformation and radical, emancipatory, transformative education and learning (Mezirow 1978a, b; 2000, Nind 2014).

35

The call to reclaim universities is not new. Wright and Greenwood (2017) posit the threat of the possibility of “external” forces or management buyouts, citing a report commissioned by the employers’ body Universities UK (Stanfield 2009), which provided vice-chancellors with models that would enable the university to maintain its degree-awarding powers and its charitable (beneficial tax) status, whilst transferring the university’s assets to a new company where the managers had an interest, could raise capital on the stock exchange, and as one of the diagrams boldly states, “strip profit”.

36

Wright and Greenwood (2017: 46) argue that there is a danger that senior managers of universities have begun to think of themselves as “stewards of their own enterprise — as de facto owners”. Indeed, post-92 universities are “corporations”, with the benefit of charitable status — the best of both worlds for Chief Executive Officers of these institutions — and Russell Group Vice-Chancellors have taken to styling themselves as Chief Executives and even as Presidents for the American “market” (Shaw 2013).

37

Although the proposition that higher education is a wider societal economic good has been posited by successive governments, such benefits are a contested contention. For example, scholars including Alvesson (2013: 78) have argued that [...] there is no easy way to establish a causal relationship between increased investment in higher education and economic growth [...].

38

Nevertheless, the notion that upward social mobility is a positive outcome of HE education — as espoused through government policy — suggests that through widening access and greater inclusivity, all of society may benefit (Cabinet Office 2010; Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, OFFA and HEFCE 2014; Department for Business, Innovation and Skills 2015).

39

The intensification of neoliberalisation in society goes hand-in-hand with the economics of the HE sector and cannot be ignored as they are so closely aligned with the Higher Education sector (Canaan 2013; Springer et al. 2016 cited by Asher 2017). The claims made by successive governments about the impact of universities on the UK economy include the surprising comment by the then Universities and Science Minister David Willetts “that universities continue to be counter-cyclical, defying the recession”. Willetts’s statement supports the contention that the HE sector is viewed by governments through the neoliberal prism of commodification and marketisation (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and Willetts 2015). Kalfa et al.’s study (2017) identified that, whilst many academics are ideologically opposed to managerialism, in other words to authoritarian neoliberalism, compliance and self-protection pervades the HE sector. In order to rationalise the constraints within which many academics labour, cynicism, disengagement, cognitive dissonance and avoidance are increasingly commonplace. Kalfa et al. (2017) contended that academics ‘game’ the world of academia, using Bourdieu’s metaphor, although they acknowledge that there are pockets of resistance, although these tend to seek to protect the individuals’ own well-being. However, Kalfa et al.’s study (2017) predates the USS pension dispute, with contributed to shifting the mood amongst academics, academic-related staff, postgraduate students and indeed the wider student body.
# Challenging the current landscape

40 The time has come for a collective reimagining of publicly-funded universities engaged principally in public service and civic engagement: we should begin by abjuring the privatisation of higher education (Meek 2015), offering a public debate, a “speaking out” (Collini 2017) which recognises the essential role of autonomous universities in an increasingly neoliberal context (Morley 2016, Holmwood, Hickey and Wallis 2016, Wright and Greenwood 2017). This speaking out requires intellectual leadership, posited by Asher (2017, p. 201) as

> shaping our academic labour [in order to] contribute to a critical dialogue of knowledges, practices and relations that speak to moving beyond “the neoliberal order of things.”

41 Echoing Collini (2017), Asher (2017: 201) urges academics to “develop democratic and co-operative ways of working, of writing and publishing, research and public engagement.” We argue that such research should focus on the pedagogical resituating of scholarship and the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, rather than seek to meet performance measures such as Key Performance Indicators and institution business-intelligence metrics. Interestingly, Fook (2017: 2) posits the notion that HE institutions should become critically reflective and “speak truth to power,”

> ensuring that our universities are inclusive, educate for inclusion, and play a role in creating more just societies.

42 The Campaign for the Public University's Manifesto for the Public University argues against the dominance of neoliberal ideologies in the privatisation of higher education in England, predicting “a period of major reorganisation and turmoil.” Against the background of a £2.2 billion surplus and the attempt to restructure and redefine the USS as identified in Branch Solidarity Network's Red Summer Audit, universities across the HE sector have made large scale redundancies under the guise of “restructuring.” Freedman (2018) has reported that in the previous 2 years

> some 1,400 members of staff have been made redundant or had their jobs put at risk in the last two years, through both compulsory and voluntary schemes.

43 This is thought to be an underestimation of the real figure, as only a small number of institutions were audited. Further wide-scale redundancies are planned at universities across England, a number of which are balloting on industrial action to defend against redundancies. The scandal of these redundancies lies in the replacement of staff on substantive academic contracts by casualised workers, who of course are less likely to reject the onerous working conditions upon which their precarious contracts premised. In addition, where redundancies are made, remaining staff are left to pick up the work redundant colleagues leave behind, often in fear of the security of their own jobs.

44 In no small part, the industrial action taken against the proposed redefining of the USS has emboldened UCU members who are increasingly angry at the attack on their pensions and 19% reduction in pay over the last decade. In autumn 2018, members of education unions were balloting on industrial action over a pay and equality claim to include:

> An increase to all spine points on the 50-point national pay scale of 7.5% or £1,500 whichever is greater;
> 
> £10 per hour minimum wage with all HEIs to become foundation living wage employers ensuring all campus staff are paid at least the foundation living wage rate.
45 Should the ballot be successful in meeting the government threshold for industrial action, that is 50% turnout with the majority voting to take industrial action, the unions would begin sustained strike action until their claim is settled.

46 Our call to action would be that academics form an international, inclusive, emancipatory, democratic collaborative project aimed at exposing and challenging the privatisation of HE in the Anglophone world. This can be achieved through the publication of a manifesto to dismantle the neoliberal HE sector, creating an HE sector that serves the intellectual needs of society, abjuring the demands of business and industry (Boyle 2017). This collaboration should include, although not be limited to, student-led research projects such as the UK Student Movement Research Project, The Convention for Higher Education, social activists and journalists, in order that research be widely disseminated through open, accessible democratic channels. To answer Collini (2012), this is what universities are for.

## The Manifesto

47 We acknowledge the existence of previous manifestoes. However, building on the recent resurgence in student activism in partnership with university staff, this manifesto is intended to encourage and empower collectives and unions including staff and students, to organise and lobby for the purpose of reclaiming our university education sector. We base our manifesto on extant manifestoes published by collectives including Aberdeen University (Reclaiming our University 2017), Democratise Sussex (Staff and Students Collective 2018) and Goldsmith UCU Gold paper (2016) in response to the government Green Paper on Higher Education (Hubble 2015).

48 Teach-ins organised by striking staff and supporting students have also led to movements working to reclaim or create educational spaces, such as “communities of discovery” as proposed by Coffield and Williamson (2012), and cooperative universities (Cook 2013, Melrose 2018). It is this growing movement rejecting the neoliberal agenda that our manifesto seeks to address. As Morley (2016) urges, in reimagining the university we must:

> Resist being co-opted by narrow policy agendas [...] challenge and expose increasing socio-economic inequalities/exclusions [and] re-invigorate knowledge production as a site of transformation/possibility.

49 The manifesto does not speak to philosophical debates around HE. Rather, its aim is to offer a template for collectives seeking to reclaim their University. The establishment of University Community Cooperatives, as democratically-controlled sites for university staff to jointly act and have a voice as part of a wider publicly funded universal network, is an essential feature of democratic society. The aim of the manifesto is to add to calls by collectives seeking to reclaim their universities. It also, in part, speaks to previous discourse on the need to reclaim universities in the UK. Adopting what they argue is a pragmatic approach, Levin and Greenwood (2016) propose Trust, Cooperative and employee-led universities. Hall (2016) calls for revolutionising the way in which academics engage with universities through “affirmative disruption” of the “microentrepreneurs of our own selves and lives [academics] have become” in order to survive in the “current capitalist economic system”. He urges the affirmative disruption of the disruptors, that is to say global corporations, that have disrupted publicly-funded higher education as exampled by
Apollo/Vistria Group's BPP University College Ltd. As previously discussed, Morley (2016), Holmwood, Hickey and Wallis (2016), Freedman and Bailey (2011) have argued for the re-imagining and reclaiming of the UK university.

**The University Community Cooperative: A manifesto and core principles for the operation and governance of Higher Education institutions in England and Wales**

We argue that establishment of University Community Cooperatives, as part of a wider publicly-funded universal network, is an essential feature of democratic, civic society. This manifesto is intended to add to and inform the extant wider debate about the purpose and function of universities. Critique of, and contributions to this debate, are keenly welcome.

1. All universities will cease to function as corporate entities led by Executives, governed by unelected Boards and Councils.

2. An urgent review of university governance will establish a set of agreed core principles and agreements through which the University Community Cooperative will function. This review shall be undertaken by unions representing all university staff and students, together with government departments responsible for education.

3. We call for cessation of market-driven competition in higher education. Education is neither a product nor an offering, it has a civic purpose and is an important human endeavour, adding to the sum of the body of knowledge so as to enhance civic societies and individuals.

4. We call for the repurposing of universities in England and Wales, and the establishment of communities of learning and discovery, which value equally the study of and research into Science Technology and Medicine, The Arts, The Humanities and Social Sciences disciplines.

5. University Community Cooperatives will organise and operate as environmentally and educationally sustainable entities.

6. The University Community Cooperative will comprise all staff and students, who shall be equally valued and respected.

7. The University Community Cooperative will publish and widely disseminate an ethical statement, detailing the ways in which inclusivity and equality will be enshrined in the governance of the university, together with accessible information about their contributions to the collaboration creation of knowledge and understandings of the human experience for the benefit of all.

8. The University Community Cooperative will publish transparent financial information to include the salaries and remuneration of all staff.

9. The University Community Cooperative will end outsourcing, including academic, professional, support and caretaking and catering staff. This is in recognition that all members of the University Community Cooperative are integral to its functioning and success.

10. The University Community Cooperative shall and must be a place of academic and personal freedom to explore and exchange ideas and debates: a space in which academic freedom of speech is enshrined and protected.

11. Wisdom, tolerance, truth and freedom of expression will be privileged in the University Community Cooperative.

12. The University Community Cooperative abjures the managerialist neoliberal language of industry and commerce, and will become communities of practice rather than places of line management, employer and employee. Staff will not be subject to the neoliberal exigencies of the “Human Resource” model of organisational structure and systems.

13. Such policies and procedures that are agreed by the University Cooperative Community will be proposed, composed and negotiated by elected representatives of the community, comprising: academics, students, professional staff, support staff, and where relevant members of the local community.
14. Distinctions between the educator and the student are outdated and antithetical to the notion of co-created knowledge. Members of the University Community Cooperative well function collaboratively in collegiality.

15. Research and education will be undertaken in accordance with the prevailing needs of society rather than external commissioners of research and knowledge exchange seeking to modify and commercialise generated knowledge.

16. University Community Cooperative systems will function for the benefit of the community rather than perform for the benefit of corporatised systems. To this end the classroom, the office, the lecture theatre, the virtual learning environment and the University estate will be designed to meet and fit the purposes defined by the community.

17. The University Community Cooperative Estate will include diligently-maintained, affordable student accommodation. This to be managed by a collective to include 25% of elected student representatives, for the benefit of students, and not for profit.

18. Systems of control will be removed, surveillance of staff and students will be removed, and trust will be extended to all members of the community in order to engender collegiality and cooperation.

19. Research and education will be premised on deep and thoughtful creative and critical thinking and reflection. The lifelong pursuit of learning and nurturing of knowledge will be a fundamental principle of university communities.

20. A truly democratic society cannot function without an educated and empowered citizenry. Research and education will be done so as to educate citizens so that they may take their place in a democratic and civic society.

21. Rejecting colonialist notions of UK university education, university communities will actively seek to recruit, engage and exchange knowledge and understanding with scholars, academics and students from across the world. No cost will be associated with these endeavours as the benefits will outweigh financial considerations.

### Finance

22. We reject the current neoliberal University-funding model, calling for fundamental reform of the funding of universities and study.

23. The University Community Cooperative will be publicly funded through taxation, and absent of vested interests. To that end University Community Cooperatives will function as charities, rather than businesses or corporations.

24. All University Community Cooperative staff will be paid according to sectorial pay negotiations with government; students will receive grants to the equivalent of a living wage.

25. The University Community Cooperative will not employ staff on casualised or zero-hours contracts.

26. The University Community Cooperative will not employ professional or support staff on contracts any less favourable than academic contracts.

### The University Space

27. The University Community Cooperative will be used as a public space for the benefit of all, forming part of a publicly-funded universal network existing for the benefit of citizens.

28. The University Community Cooperative will seek to engage with and serve the needs of the local community, including schools and other universal networks.

29. University Community Cooperative libraries, lecture theatres and other places of learning and knowledge co-creation will be shared spaces, open and accessible to all.

30. Rigorous debate and freedom of speech will be equally protected.

31. General assemblies will be called for the purpose of discursive discussion and debate within the University Community Cooperative, and act as a forum to inform its governance.
32. Crèches will be available on a non-profit basis for members of the University Community Cooperative.

33. The University Community Cooperative Estate will incorporate places to rest, eat, and take time to ponder and reflect.

### Education and Research

34. Collaborative knowledge production through rigorous and evidenced academic endeavours, including research, will be premised on the principles of radical and emancipatory transformative teaching and learning. Students will be encouraged to make mischief and challenge orthodoxies. Students will be encouraged to take risks, to learn from failures as well as successes, and to reflect on that learning.

35. Curricula and modes of assessment will be collectively and collaboratively agreed by scholars and students.

36. The University Community Cooperative will agree to review and revise its academic footprint and pedagogy, embedding in education and research the means to challenge discrimination and exclusion in all its forms. Political and socio-economic orthodoxies will be questioned, challenged and debated, encouraging critical analysis and thinking, and freedom of thought and expression.

37. The University Community Cooperative will not act in compliance with the REF, TEF, OfS, including the NSS, or any other mechanism or regulator which does not align with this manifesto.

38. Teaching materials will not be commodified or marketed for profit, rather they will be available as open access sources for the benefit of all.

39. Intellectual Property of staff and students will be used for the benefit and enrichment of the University Community Cooperative.

40. All formal teaching and research will cease during term recess in order that members of the University Community Cooperative may take time to reflect on term time work, and to pursue extracurricular interests so as to enrich their work/life balance. Term recesses will allow members of the local and wider community to access and use the University Community Cooperative space for individual, group or collective community purposes, including self-determined education, sport, the arts and entertainment.

50

As previously discussed, the UCU pensions dispute has seen an unprecedented rise in activism by both students and staff in the UK Higher Education landscape. The increase in UCU membership with the arrival of some 5,000 University staff, which included early-career academics, casualised staff, and staff on zero-hours contracts, the "precariat," has radically altered the union. The genie is out of the bottle, and whatever the outcome of the dispute, students have occupied university spaces, and staff and students have challenged the hegemony of UUK, regulation of universities, and the governing bodies of pre-92 universities. It is possible, through the efforts of individuals, collectives, unions and all citizens concerned with and in HE, to work together to achieve truly inclusive, democratic, communities of learning. These communities will reclaim universities, organise, and act for the benefit of civic society. We have seen staff and student unions come together in common cause to challenge the neoliberal university model, those same staff and students have the power to dismantle the neoliberal agenda: to disrupt the disruptors. This manifesto seeks to contribute to the struggle to reject neoliberal realism and reclaim our universities. The challenge facing reformers of UK HE is considerable, although less insurmountable than envisioned a few short months ago.
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## ABSTRACTS

This article is a response to the introduction of the Higher Education and Research Act (HERA) 2017, which in effect opens the door to privatised, deregulated Higher Education (HE) across the UK. The Act allows private for-profit companies, from their inception, to use the university title (previous legislation required a waiting period of four years), award degrees, and charge unregulated fees: they will not be required to establish or fund student unions. This is, we argue, the neoliberal project in action. As publicly-funded universities in the UK struggle to meet politically-driven imperatives such as the Research Excellence Framework, the Teaching
Excellence Framework, audits, metrics and other performance indicators, new for-profit funded universities are emerging which position themselves as meeting industry and student expectations, rather than as centres for the creation, dissemination and research of knowledge. The only challenges to the hegemony of Universities UK (UUK), regulation of universities, and the governing bodies of pre-92 universities have come from individual academics and students, via UCU industrial action in defence of academic staff pensions. Strikes in 61 UK universities in 2018 were widely seen as a watershed in HE activism. Against this backdrop, an ideologically-driven, neoliberal agenda has begun to dismantle publicly-funded HE in England and Wales. To demonstrate this, we develop an interactive model predicated on the DNA double helix, where we illustrate links between government Acts and regulations and the concomitant dismantling of public sector education. Based on the review of over 140 government instruments, we argue the model represents the backbone of the neoliberal project which is intended to privatise all areas of education in the UK. To challenge this neoliberal agenda, we propose a manifesto to reclaim HE in England and Wales. Whilst in part the manifesto is based on the premise that a Labour government will be elected within the next 5 years, this is not a prerequisite for reclaiming our universities. The manifesto seeks to establish University Community Cooperatives — collegiate, collaborative spaces of knowledge creation. Our analysis of the current political landscape in England and Wales, in light of recent activism within HE, leads us to be optimistic. We argue that it is possible, through the efforts of individuals, collectives, unions and all citizens concerned with, and in, HE to work together to achieve truly inclusive, democratic, communities of learning. These communities will reclaim universities, organise, and act for the benefit of civic society. Staff and student unions have come together in common cause to challenge the neoliberal university model, rendering them the power to dismantle the neoliberal agenda; our manifesto seeks to contribute to the struggle to reject neoliberal realism and reclaim our universities.

Cet article constitue une réponse au vote par le Parlement britannique du Higher Education and Research Act (HERA) en 2017, qui a pour effet de d'ouvrir la voie à un enseignement supérieur privatisé et dérégulé au Royaume-Uni. Cette loi permet à des entreprises privées à but lucratif, dès leur création, d'utiliser le titre d'université (là où elles devaient jusqu'ici attendre quatre années pour le faire), de délivrer des diplômes et de demander des droits d'inscription en dehors de tout cadre réglementaire. Elles n'ont aucune obligation de créer ou de financer des syndicats étudiants. Selon nous, il s'agit ici d'une mise en œuvre du projet néolibéral. Alors que les universités publiques du Royaume-Uni peinent à atteindre les objectifs qui leur sont fixés par le gouvernement à travers le Research Excellence Framework, le Teaching Excellence Framework ou d'autres indicateurs de performance, de nouvelles universités à but lucratif émergent, qui se positionnent comme apportant des réponses aux attentes des entreprises et des étudiants, et non comme des centres pour la création, la dissémination et la recherche du savoir. Les seules oppositions à l'hégémonie de l'organisation patronale Universities UK (UUK) et aux directions des universités sont venues d'initiatives individuelles d'universitaires et d'étudiants qui se sont engagés dans le mouvement de grève lancé par le syndicat UCU pour défendre les retraites des universitaires. Les grèves qui ont eu lieu dans 61 universités au Royaume-Uni au printemps 2018 ont été généralement perçues comme marquant une inflexion dans le militantisme dans l'enseignement supérieur. C'est sur un tel arrière-plan qu'un programme néolibéral, au contenu idéologiquement marqué, s'emploie à démanteler l'enseignement supérieur public en Angleterre et au Pays de Galles. Pour en apporter la démonstration, nous proposons un modèle interactif reprenant la double hélice de l'ADN, qui permet d'illustrer les liens entre action législative et réglementaire gouvernementale, d'une part, et démantèlement concomitant de l'éducation publique, de l'autre. Ce modèle permet de représenter la structure du projet néolibéral, dont nous pouvons affirmer, après examen de plus de 140 mesures mises en œuvre par les
gouvernements successifs, qu'il vise à privatiser l'ensemble du secteur de l'éducation au Royaume-Uni. Pour résister à ce programme néolibéral, nous proposons un manifeste visant à la réappropriation de l'enseignement supérieur en Angleterre et au Pays de Galles. Même si ce manifeste repose en partie sur l'hypothèse d'un retour au pouvoir des travaillistes dans les 5 prochaines années, ce n'est pas une condition nécessaire à la réappropriation de nos universités. Ce manifeste envisage la création d'universités coopératives — ou coopératives des communautés universitaires — c'est-à-dire des espaces collégiaux et coopératifs de création du savoir. Notre analyse du paysage politique actuel en Angleterre et au Pays de Galles, menée à la lumière du militantisme qui s'est fait jour dans l'enseignement supérieur, nous permet d'être optimistes. Nous affirmons qu'il est possible, en unissant les forces des individus, des collectifs, des syndicats et de l'ensemble des citoyens concernés par l'enseignement supérieur, d'œuvrer à la création de communautés d'enseignement véritablement inclusives et démocratiques. De telles communautés se réapproprieront les universités, s'organiseront collectivement et agiront pour le bien commun. Les syndicats de personnel et d'étudiants ont fait cause commune pour résister au modèle de l'université néolibérale, se donnant ainsi les forces de démanteler le programme néolibéral. Notre manifeste constitue un apport à cette lutte visant à rejeter la raison néolibérale et à se réapproprier nos universités.

## INDEX

**Keywords:** manifesto, neoliberalism, university community cooperatives, university, higher education, United Kingdom

**Mots-clés:** manifeste, néolibéralisme, coopérative de la communauté universitaire, université, enseignement supérieur, Royaume-Uni

## AUTHORS

### MARIAN MAYER

Marian Mayer is a Senior Lecturer in Learning Development at Bournemouth University. She is currently completing a doctoral study, 'Is transformative learning possible in a neoliberal context within higher education in the UK' which, rather than focusing on the 'process' of transformative learning, explores 'what' is transformed, and how that transformative experience occurs. Her study develops transformational learning theory and considers the potential for Bourdieu's concept of Habitus and Illeris's Identity theory to be utilised as a theoretical and methodological tool to study the impact of transformational learning on undergraduate students.
Contact: mmayer[at]bournemouth.ac.uk

### SUE ECCLES

Dr Sue Eccles is Acting Deputy Head of the Centre for Excellence in Learning at Bournemouth University and has worked in HE since 1995. Her research is focused around the experiences of students as they transition into, through and out of Higher Education, the Widening Participation policy agenda and how this impacts on/influences practice, and the experiences of academics particularly in relation to effective leadership practice. She has experience of strategic management and leadership, as well as in-depth knowledge and understanding of education practice within HE. Contact: seccles[at]bournemouth.ac.uk
Varia
# “To mutiny against this servitude”:
The Sophisticated Democracy of As
# You Like It

Ifig Cocoual

> Poetry is a kind of popular oratory [...]. [D]on't
> you think poets are the rhetoricians of the
> theatre?

*(Plato, *Gorgias*: 502c-d)*

<footnote n="1">1. “Form serves as a necessary bridge to new, still unknown content” (Bakhtin 1986: 165), Bakhtin tells us, and *As You Like It*’s dramatic and linguistic forms tell a political-philosophical story that is at odds with the conservative restoration plot in which hierarchy is reaffirmed (5.4.156-9)¹ after the pastoral interval. Although the play may seem to be an innocuously apolitical or ultimately conservative pastoral-romantic comedy, this paper suggests that its rhetoric and poetics, as well as some easily overlooked plot points, may well make it radically democratic.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">2. If literature, no matter how seemingly autotelic, can always be read politically or as political, Elizabethan literature, and drama in particular, “was an especially important form for advancing political debate” (Hadfield 2008: 7) because key issues could not be discussed in the open, and “the theaters [were a] location of Renaissance deliberative [i.e “political”] rhetoric” (Platt 1999: 281). As for Shakespeare, from *The Rape of Lucrece* to *Julius Caesar* and *Antony and Cleopatra*, he “narrate[d] more of the republican story than any other dramatist working in Elizabethan and Jacobean England.” (Hadfield 2008: 57)</footnote>

<footnote n="3">3. As it turns out, the republican icon “Lucretia”, whose tragic fate helped give birth to the Roman republic, crops up in *As You Like It* (3.3.123), though in a list within a poem — which might make its political importance less obvious; this, however, could be how the play as a whole works, and if we agree that ancient and contemporary (not just Elizabethan) contexts can help make sense(s) of the play’s poetics and politics, it is far from politically insignificant.</footnote>
“Tyrant duke” and “tyrant brother” (1.2.240)

[I am] persuaded that the poet devised the eclogue [...] not of purpose to counterfeit or represent the rustical manner of loves and communication, but *under the veil of homely persons and in rude speeches to insinuate and glance at greater matters, and such as perchance had not been safe to have been disclosed in any other sort.*

(Puttenham 2007: 127-8, emphasis added)

4 The conflicts which drive the romantic characters to Arden are often explained away as the kind of artificial plot device which the play also resorts to in its contrived dénouement and elaborate showboat of a finale. There are several hints, however, that the aggression Rosalind and Orlando endure is anything but gratuitous and that the villains' motivations are at least, in part, political — hints, that is, that Duke Frederick and Oliver feel threatened by popular figures and by the people's judgment.

5 Oliver, the contradictions or ambiguities of whose patriarchal-aristocratic discourse appear when Orlando's antanaclasis on *villain* / *villein* (1.1.44-5) enables him to conclude his elder brother has “railed on [him]self” (1.1.49), is an auxiliary to Frederick's tyranny, his tyrannical behaviour mirroring and abetting the duke's in a pyramid that is not unlike what La Boétie describes as tyranny's way of perpetuating itself: “the despot subdues his subjects, some of them by means of others”(La Boétie 164).² In another possible parallel, since his first speech is about his father's “will” (1.1.2), Orlando enters the stage as a La-Boétian heir: “There is [...] no heir so spendthrift or indifferent that he does not sometimes scan the account books of his father in order to see if he is enjoying all the privileges of his legacy or whether, perchance, his rights and those of his predecessor have not been encroached upon.” (La Boétie 145)³ Likewise, Orlando's complaint about his brother “min[ing] [his] gentility with [his] education” (1.1.15-6) has a La-Boétian ring to it: “[nature] has less power over us than custom, for the reason that native endowment, no matter how good, is dissipated unless encouraged” (145).⁴ And when the play diverges from its source in removing one — financial — reason why Oliver may want to get rid of his brother, it may be saying something about sibling rivalry in general or suggesting another reason for Oliver's hatred:

> I hope I shall see an end of him, for my soul — yet I know not why — hates nothing more than he. Yet he's gentle, never schooled and yet learned, full of noble device, of all sorts enchantingly beloved, and indeed so much in the heart of the world, and especially of *my own people* who best know him, that I am altogether misprized.
> 
> (1.1.127-32, emphasis added)

6 This / these may not be exactly the same “people” as the one(s) the Duke has in mind in 1.2 and 1.3, but since Oliver’s is a domestic copy of Frederick’s tyranny, the speech hints at something more than jealousy, at a motive that is not just psychological but political — a political fear of his brother’s desire to “mutiny against [his] servitude” (1.1.17-8) and of his rival’s cross-class appeal.

7 Frederick's reason for banishing his niece is different from his more feudally-motivated dislike of Orlando (1.2.176-8), and while Le Beau may frame the Duke's "displeasure 'gainst his gentle niece" (230) as an example of his "humorous" disposition (218),
something more clearly political seems to be at work, since the ruler's displeasure is
"Grounded upon no other argument / But that the people praise her for her virtues /
And pity her for her good father's sake" (231-3). The Duke elaborates, telling Celia

She is too subtle for thee, and her smoothness,
Her very silence, and her patience
*Speak to the people* and they pity her.
Thou art a fool: she robs thee of thy name
And thou wilt show more bright and seem more virtuous
When she is gone. (1.3.67-72, emphasis added)

8 This Machiavellian “image management” may seem like a poorly plotted excuse to ship the ladies off to Arden, but it takes on additional political significance in the proximate Shakespearean context. In *Hamlet*, Claudius is aware — and afraid — of his political rival of a nephew’s popularity, of “the great love the general gender [i.e the people] bear him” (4.7.19), but then Denmark is an elective monarchy; in *Richard II*, however, the people is used as a weapon against the eponymous king by Bolingbroke (soon to be Henry IV), whose “pursuit of popularity [was] Shakespeare’s invention” (Shapiro 2006: 122). It seems, then, that *As You Like It* is part of those Shakespeare plays that reflect on politicians’ pursuit — or fear — of *popularity*, a word whose semantics were in flux at the time:

> The meaning of the word ‘popularity’, familiar to us today in the sense of ‘being admired by many’, has undergone a sea change since Shakespeare’s day. In the mid-sixteenth-century, it was used to describe a radical form of democracy that was the opposite of tyranny. Then, in the late 1590s, a new sense of the word emerged, having to do with courting popular favor. Shakespeare was one of the first to employ it in this sense. (Shapiro 128)

9 Popularity was also something of a sensitive topical issue, since Elizabeth was concerned about the ambition of the Earl of Essex who, like Shakespeare’s Bolingbroke, wielded popularity as a political weapon. But then, “[i]f uncomfortable parallels could be drawn between Frederick’s court and Elizabeth’s, the French setting would be useful as a stalking-horse under the presentation of which the dramatist might, like the jester [5.4.91-2], shoot his wit with impunity.” (Dusinberre, in Shakespeare 2006a: 48-50)

## “Mistake me not so much / To think my poverty is treacherous” (1.3.54-55): Pastoral-romantic-rhetorical utopia

10 “[V]oluntary exile” (1.2.81) is some characters’ answer to servitude, and no sooner has Corin ushered the ladies and the clown into the pastoral space than he complains about his master’s “churlish disposition” (2.4.73) and tells the migrants: “in my voice most welcome shall you be” (80) — in other words, no sooner have the ladies entered Arden than one of the play’s big issues is raised: “The question of democracy [...] is the question of voice” (Ogien and Laugier 2011: 24).

11 If realistic, anti-pastoral elements were already to be found in classical if not Renaissance pastorals (in Theocritus for example), the touches of gritty topical realism in *As You Like It* appear as critical of Elizabethan social hierarchy. Could it be, though, that for all the subversive allure of the “Robin Hood” (1.1.93) motif, for all the topical *frisson* of the play’s nod at enclosures (2.4.71-5), and for all the forest’s apparent egalitarianism and carnivalesque subversion, social and gender distinctions never
really go away and/or are decisively restored in the end? After all, Shakespeare himself, as a landowner, is often assumed to have had to be on the gentry's pro-enclosure side — and yet, “[e]xternal evidence for [his] attitude is ambiguous but, if anything, suggests opposition to enclosure rather than support of it.” (Parker 1994: 36) Besides, if we pay attention to other associations than those between the fictional action and the immediate historical context, there is another story than that of order restored to be read into the play: a *rhetorical* story — which, in Arden's “relentlessly literary universe” (Bates 2002: 119), is as politically significant: “Beyond laughter, logical forms of disputation permeate *As You Like It* for serious uses which effectively illustrate Shakespeare's characteristic blending of the social and artistic.” (Magnusson 2002: 167)

> I admit that I am a sophist and that I educate people.

(Plato, *Protagoras*: 317b)

12

"I profess curing it by counsel" (3.3.333): what is probably the most commented-upon aspect of the play's rhetorical story is Rosalind's education of Orlando. What is less often noted is that, in presenting herself as an expert (333), and in offering to cure Orlando of his love "madness" (331) while in fact teaching him something else through a game of role-play, Rosalind/Ganymede acts like a sophistic expert resorting to disguise and discursive tricks in order to teach (about) the tricks of discourse: "the craft of the sophist is an ancient one, but [...] its practitioners in ancient times, for fear of giving offence, adopted the subterfuge of disguising it as some other craft, as Homer and Hesiod [...] did with poetry." (Plato, *Protagoras*: 316d) What Rosalind teaches Orlando is how to read and speak differently, how to free himself from the prison-houses of Petrarchan love poetry and feudal discourse — a literary and linguistic education which might well free other minds than the fictional character's, and which was a sophistic priority: "I consider, Socrates, that a most important part of a man's education is being knowledgeable about poetry. By that I mean the ability to grasp the good and bad points of a poem, to distinguish them and to give one's reasons in reply to questions." (*Protagoras* 338e-339a)

13

Rosalind, however, is not Orlando's sole educator in Arden.

14

Although there seems to be a lot of careless time-fleeting (1.1.95) going on in his circle, Duke Senior's reference to "This wide and universal theatre [which] / Presents more woeful pageants than the scene / Wherein we play in" (2.7.137-9), far from being a consoling cliché conducive to apolitical resignation, "explicitly calls attention to the universal perspective from which any particular scene of any particular play is implicitly perceived, and to the alternative forms and paths that people's fates can take" (Ryan 2015: 92); the pastoral retreat is thus not so much an evasion of the political as an occupation of the forest — and a re-foundation.

15

Indeed, the play features a capsule version of the Ciceronian founding myth, whereby the orator-civilizer's reason and eloquence help turn the state of nature into civil society, when Orlando, who has been made a little uncivil by civil society and necessity,⁵ enters with his sword drawn and the Duke gives him a chiastic lesson in Ardenic sociability: "Your gentleness shall force / More than your force move us to gentleness" (2.7.102-3). Jaques's concurring "And you will not be answerèd with reason, I must die" (101) makes it clear that what goes down in Arden is an "implicit experiment with 'the rule of reason' as a principle for social harmony. Behind the logical discourse in Arden
is a conjecture about the plausibility of rational disputation as a basis for social
community.” (Magnusson 2002: 168)

16 Now Duke Senior may be “too disputable” (2.5.27) for even Jaques’s company, and Arden may be a space where disputation is not always as rational as it seems, but as opposed to Frederick’s tyrannical court, where enemies must be destroyed or exiled, the struggles in the forest are between adversaries, not enemies — which makes it an agonistic, not antagonistic, space.⁶

17 It is, of course, also an egalitarian, democratic one — Amiens’s response to the Ciceronian orator’s first speech, though possibly ironic, suggests how rhetorical the duke’s behaviour is: “happy is your grace / That can translate the stubbornness of Fortune / Into so quiet and so sweet a style” (2.1.18-20). The syllepsis on *style* (verbal style / lifestyle) hints at the porosity of the boundary between the linguistic and the extralinguistic, and Duke Senior’s initial words should therefore not be dismissed as wishful thinking. Indeed, for all the contextual irony of the reference to brothers, by addressing his audience as “co-mates and brothers in exile” (1) he is doing nothing less than offering a new social contract: if language is, as Cicero had it, “both a precondition of obligation and itself a source of obligation” (Kahn 2006: 131), and in so far as a duke’s word can be “great” or performative (as his brother’s is in a different context, 1.3.79), the duke in exile is not so much telling himself and his listeners a soothing tale or a story meant to reshape their environment — which would be political (and Machiavellian) enough — as founding an egalitarian community.

18 Now the Ardenic community is nowhere near as radical as, say, Praxagora’s communist-feminist utopia in Aristophanes’ *A Parliament of Women*, whose carnivalesque is close to Shakespeare’s, but its nature as an agonistic egalitarian/ democratic space might go some way toward making sense of two plot points often seen as insufficiently motivated (unless their only rationale is the teleological demand for a happy ending): the apparently irrational “conversion[s]” (4.3.131) of Oliver and of Frederick who, “After some question with [an old religious man], was converted / Both from his enterprise [of putting his brother to the sword] and from the world” (5.4.145-6). “‘Twas I, but ’tis not I” (4.3.130): from tyrant brother to loving brother, Oliver’s transformation, which is all the more striking for being narrated — not dramatised —, suggests Arden is an agonistic space where “[t]o accept the view of the adversary is to undergo a radical change in political identity. It is more a sort of conversion than a process of rational persuasion” (Mouffe 2005: 102). As for the fight-free resolution, which diverges from the source when a battle could just easily have been narrated (as Orlando’s with the lioness in 4.3), it could be read as another philosopheme, one in keeping with La Boétie’s idea that one can be rid of tyranny without an actual fight: “Obviously there is no need of fighting to overcome this single tyrant, for he is automatically defeated if the country refuses consent to its own enslavement [...]. [I]f, without any violence [tyrants] are simply not obeyed, they become naked and undone and as nothing” (La Boétie 136-7).⁷

## “Motley’s the only wear” (2.7.34)

> If my mind was made of gold [...] I’d be delighted to find one of those stones which are used to test gold [...]. I could touch my mind to it to see
whether it confirmed that my mind had been
properly looked after, and then at last I'd know
that I was all right and that any further testing
was superfluous.

(Plato, *Gorgias*: 486d)

19 "Your betters, sir" (2.4.60): Touchstone, a character whose discourse is intensely agonistic, has probably not received Duke Senior's egalitarian memo, but if as a fictional person, a subject within the playworld, he sounds like a class-conscious aristocrat at times, as a part of the playtext, his rhetoric is an essential feature of the play's democratic poetics.

20 There is undeniably a touch of contempt (*contemptus mundi* and class contempt), of Roman *auctoritas*, in Touchstone's discourse, as if the intellectually superior court jester felt like he had to resort to "the vulgar" (5.1.42), had to vulgarize himself when he talked (to the rustics). Like his fellow corrupter of words Feste in *Twelfth Night*, Touchstone might be wary of language itself: "We have already gone beyond whatever we have words for. In all talk there is a grain of contempt. Language, it seems, was invented only for what is average, medium, communicable. By speaking the speaker immediately vulgarizes himself." (Nietzsche 73-4)⁸ The Fool's apparent contempt could also be explained in terms of the play's management of audience response: the sometimes patronised rustics in Arden would thus have a similar function to those in *The Winter's Tale* and be "essential if the audience is not to feel threatened by a revolutionary impulse in the play's demonstration of a better life outside the court" (Gifford 1999: 89). Incidentally, either Touchstone parodies courtiers' discourse or the play itself ironises his assertion of social superiority when the fool addresses Corin as "clown" (2.4.57), which is a synonym for "fool" — either way, the play suggests identity and equality when the character seems to assert superiority, as also happens in another cross-class carnivalesque echo, when Duke Frederick's "Mistress, dispatch you with your safest haste" (1.3.31) echoes Touchstone's own term of address: "Mistress, you must come away to your father" (1.2.46).

21 The sophist is "an athlete in verbal combat, distinguished by his expertise in debating" (Plato, *Sophist*: 231d-e), and the sophisticated Fool uses rhetorical overkill to talk a rival out of his suit:

> TOUCHSTONE [...] learn this of me: to have is to have. For it is a figure in rhetoric that drink, being poured out of a cup into a glass, by filling the one doth empty the other. For all your writers do consent that *ipse* is he. Now you are not *ipse*, for I am he.

> WILLIAM Which he, sir?

> TOUCHSTONE He, sir, that must marry this woman. (5.1.36-41)

22 If Touchstone's rhetorical practice is agonistic, this is the agonism of democracy, not antagonistic mortal combat, and William's parting words are "God rest you merry, sir" (5.1.52).

23 In his *agon* with Corin (3.3.1-62) about "this shepherd's life" (3.3.1), Touchstone may be voicing the play's own in *utramque partem* ambivalence and relativism:

> CORIN And how like you this shepherd's life, Master Touchstone?

> TOUCHSTONE Truly, shepherd, in respect of itself, it is a good life; but in respect that it is a shepherd's life, it is naught. In respect that it is solitary, I like it very well; but in respect that it is private, it is a very vile life. Now in respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth me well; but in respect it is not in the court, it is tedious. As it is a
spare life, look you, it fits my humour well; but as there is no more plenty in it, it goes against my stomach. (3.3.1-8)

24 In Kiernan Ryan's reading of this passage,

Shakespeare compresses into Touchstone's compulsive catchphrase 'in respect of and its variants the restless, multivocal dynamic of the entire play, which seeks to disengage us from unqualified commitment to any particular identity or standpoint we may be inclined to adopt. That structural dynamic is inherently democratic, inasmuch as it disperses authority impartially across the full range of dramatis personae, refusing to grant sovereignty to any of the positions dramatized. This is, perhaps, the most powerful way in which the comedy articulates its utopian commitment to the common interests of humanity, and to the prospect of a form of community that serves those common interests rather than the interests of one class or kind of human being at the expense of others. (Ryan 2009: 231, emphasis added)

25 Touchstone, who turns the dialogue into a Protagorean antimony, makes the somewhat counterintuitive, paradoxical and anti-pastoral point that Corin is “damned” for never having been “in court” (3.3.17-20):

CORIN You have too courtly a wit for me, I'll rest.

TOUCHSTONE Wilt thou rest damned? God help thee, shallow man. [...]

CORIN Sir, I am a true labourer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness, glad of other men's good, content with my harm; and the greatest of my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck.

TOUCHSTONE That is another simple sin in you: to bring the ewes and the rams together and to offer to get your living by the copulation of cattle; to be bawd to a bell-wether and to betray a she-lamb of a twelvemonth to a crooked-pated old cuckoldly ram out of all reasonable match. If thou be'st not damned for this, the devil himself will have no shepherds. (3.3.50-62)

26 The *dissoi logoi* or double discourses offer a counterdiscourse to the play's own pastoral discourse, and as Touchstone uses Corin's arguments and words against him, with an antanaclasis on 'rest' for example (3.3.50-1), he exemplifies Feste's axiom that "A sentence is but a cheverel glove to a good wit: how quickly the wrong side may be turned outward" (Shakespeare, *Twelfth Night* 3.1.11-3) and displays sophistic elegance, namely "the elegance of knowing how to use the other's facts, ideas, and their very words so as to draw an opposite conclusion from them" (de Romilly 1988: 120).⁹

27 "How prove you that in the great heap of your knowledge?" (1.2.54): Celia's question sounds like a Socratic-ironical challenge to a sophist — and Touchstone delivers, proving Gorgias's point that “[a] rhetorician is capable of speaking effectively against all comers, whatever the issue” (*Gorgias* 457a). When the Fool, on what looks like an impossible mission, proves that the “knight that swore, by his honour” (1.2.50) that bad pancakes were good and that good mustard was bad was not forsworn, the play is also suggesting how restrictive our notions of what is possible may be — and showing how empowering and liberating paradox can be.

28 Touchstone, as a versatile sophist, is indeed “as good at anything, and yet a fool” (5.4.89-90). As for his famous “much virtue in ‘if’” (5.4.88), which could be the subtitle of a play that counterfactually explores other spaces, other views and other polities than the Elizabethan ones, his speech runs against the Socratic (antidemocratic) idea that “one can best examine the question by getting rid of any ‘ifs’” (*Protagoras* 331d) and against Richard’s tyrannical equation of if with treason: “Tell’st thou me of ‘if’s? Thou art a traitor.” (Shakespeare, *Richard III* 3.4.80). The play revels in hypotheses and uncertainty — but then, “the domain of politics is not and cannot be the domain of the
unconditional because it requires making decisions in an undecidable terrain. This is
why the type of order which is established through a given hegemonic configuration of
power is always a political, contestable one" (Mouffe 2013: 17).

29

Like the Sophists, *As You Like It* gives its audience a civics lesson in rhetoric, and through Touchstone's sophistic displays turning pastoral values upside down and making doxa paradoxical, it implements the rhetoric of democracy, a regime in which decision is disputed (hence disputable and reversible), and where the conventionalism of names means, according to antidemocratic Platonism, that "insubordination [is called] 'erudition', disorder 'freedom', extravagance 'magnificence', and uninhibitedness 'courage'" (Plato, *Republic* 560e-561a).

30

The Fool's garb, like goodness according to Protagoras, is *motley* — a term that, in Plato's antidemocratic *Republic*, is actually a trademark of democracy with its “motley masses” (493d) and “motley crowd of people” (475d). Since, like its rhetorical jukebox of a clown, *As You Like It* is often described as “motley-minded” (5.4.39) itself — a motley of literary genres, modes and styles —, its only wear may very well be the motley of (ancient) democracy.

“Transformed into a beast” (2.7.1): Jaques, a
melancholy animal

31

Like the Fool's motley, melancholy — the Renaissance disease of princes, artists and
philosophers — can be a cover for satire, but Jaques's sadness may have a "subversive
dimension" in and of itself as "sadness has the power to protest the established
order" (Fœssel 2015: 22, 224).¹⁰

32

The “liberty” (2.7.47) the melancholiac calls for is ambiguous (glossed as “licence” by Michael Hattaway and as “freedom” or “licence” by Juliet Dusinberre in their respective editions of the play), but when he asks for “leave / To speak [his] mind” to “Cleanse the foul body of th’infected world” (58-60), though he may sound like a Puritan preacher or a Jonsonian (unShakespearean) satirist, he may also be asking for *parrhesia*, free speech — a trademark of radical Athenian democracy. A *parrhesiastes* is “someone who takes a risk”, for example the risk of losing their popularity by opposing public opinion (Foucault 2016: 83), and, as it happens, Jaques’s tirades do not exactly endear him to his fellow characters. Although the “old religious man” (5.4.144) has done the converting, Jaques’s exit and desire to talk to the “convertites” (for “There is much matter to be heard and learned” out of them, 5.4.168-9) could therefore signal the melancholiac’s move from political to philosophical *parrhesia*, which has *conversion* for its goal.¹¹

33

Can Jaques seriously be described as a philosopher? It is something of a critical truism, after all, that Jaques's melancholy is no more than a fashionable pose and that his discourse is also discredited by his rhetorical defeats and his past identity as a "libertine" (2.7.65). Jaques is so discredited, indeed, that it is sometimes assumed that he misunderstands Touchstone's clowning and misses the puns on *hour* / *whore* etc. (26-7). And yet, how can we tell what Jaques knows? After all, "in *As You Like It*, Shakespeare bends the rules, creating situations where we can no longer be as confident as we'd like to be about what characters know, even who they really are" (Shapiro 2006: 212). Besides, traces of Shakespeare's philosopher-in-chief, Hamlet, have
without grief see so much as an innocent beast pursued and killed that has no defence,
and from which we have received no offence at all" (Montaigne 454).¹⁶ Sympathy for
animals can turn into a questioning of human (and royal?) superiority:

But when [...] I meet with arguments that endeavor to demonstrate the near
resemblance betwixt us and animals, how large a share they have in our greatest
privileges, and with how much probability they compare us together, truly I abate a
great deal of our presumption, and willingly resign that imaginary sovereignty that
is attributed to us over other creatures. (456, emphasis added)¹⁷

38 "Here comes a pair of very strange beasts which, in all tongues, are called fools" (5.4.36-7): no matter what the character's intentions may be, the references to animals are a great social leveller in the play; in a twofold boundary-blurring gesture, when animals are referred to as "native burghers" (2.1.23) and as "citizens" (2.1.55) by Duke Senior and Jaques respectively, the echo brings the duke and the melancholic closer, and the tropes blur the species boundaries between men and animals. "We owe justice to men, and graciousness and benignity to other creatures that are capable of it" (Montaigne 457):¹⁸ as with Orlando (1.1.5-30) and Adam (64-7), the numerous animal references in Arden can thus be read as an exploration of what politics and sovereignty are, and a call for social justice.

39 Isn't Jaques inconsistent in his anti-speciesism in 4.2, though? Possibly — and yet, it is far from obvious that he is calling for a celebration of hunting when he asks "Which is he that killed the deer?" (4.2.1): the presentation of the hunter as a "Roman conqueror" (3) sounds ridiculously hyperbolic, especially in a play that calls Caesar's "'I came, saw, and overcame.'" a "thrasonical brag" (5.2.25-6); and as for "set[ting] the deer's horns upon [the hunter's] head for a branch of victory" (4.2.4-5), it is by no means obvious that the context deprives the horns of their association with cuckoldry. When Jaques asks for a song and says "'Tis no matter how it be in tune, so it make noise enough" (4.2.7), he might thus in fact be calling for a charivari casting ridicule ons — a reading which, by the way, the song's lyrics do nothing to refute.

40 In a speech where polysyndeton — the spectacular accumulation of coordinating conjunctions — defines his melancholy the better to evade standard definitions, Jaques asserts that his is “neither the scholar’s melancholy [...] nor the musician’s [...]; nor the courtier’s [...] nor the soldier’s [...]; nor the lawyer’s [...]; nor the lady’s [...]; nor the lover’s [...]; but [...] a melancholy of [his] own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects” (4.1.9-14). In his search for his voice among other voices, for his plural discourse among and against other melancholy discourses, and in his very self-contradictions, the libertine-turned-ethicist might thus show that “Searching for your voice, for truth and accuracy, involves [...] a constant rejection of conformity, *including to yourself*. That is the sense of a politics of the ordinary, which lies at the heart of the democratic principle” (Ogien and Laugier 2014: 254).¹⁹

41 And, if Jaques was Shakespeare's first sustained attempt at satire, it is as if both author and character were experimenting and searching for their voices in this play. Likewise, when Jaques describes the world as a stage (2.7.139), he is both acting in typical clownish fashion — by asserting his “right to live a life in [...] the chronotope of theatrical space, the right to act life as a comedy and *to treat others as actors*, the right to rip off masks, the right to rage at others” (Bakhtin 1981: 163, emphasis added) — and speaking for his author. No matter how many *agons* the melancholy Fool-cum-satirist loses, the polyphonic play's afterlife has made Jacques's voice one of the most
memorable of voices, and his much-excerpted speech on the Seven Ages of Man (2.7.139-166) — whose derivation from Epictetus, incidentally, might also suggest we be wary of representations — has taken on authorial authority. Which makes the speech worth reconsidering:

> The fact that ‘All the world’s a stage / And all the men and women merely players’
> [2.7.139-140] has become an arthritic Shakespearean cliché, routinely wheeled out
> to sum up the transience and vanity of human life, shouldn’t blind us to the
> subversive implications that this view of men and women and the world harbours,
> and that Shakespeare’s drama exploits to the full. (Ryan 2015: 92-93)

42 Indeed, since Jaques is not a consistent Stoic himself, the *theatrum mundi* speech is not necessarily about having to accept one’s fate but is susceptible to a demystifying, empowering interpretation, in which identities are not fixed — neither god-given essences, nor naturally hierarchised — but are roles — theatrical, performative selves — in a play whose ending is not foreordained.

## "If truth holds true contents" (5.4.114): Jaxit

> Spectators, if you care to spend an easy life from
> day to day
> Among us Birds, by all means come and live with
> us; make no delay.
> So many things on earth are blamed, or by
> convention vilipended,
> Which in the kingdom of the Birds are quite
> correct or even splendid.
> (Aristophanes, *The Birds*)²⁰

43 Jaques, who may as a textual tool speak “wiser than [he is] aware of” (2.4.48) regardless of whatever we presume to know of the fictional character’s knowledge, is of course not the only character on an extrametaleptic course; Rosalind is the one who is most often seen as the play’s intradramatic co-author, and in the finale and epilogue, far from relinquishing control to the patriarchs by being given, she “give[s] [her]self” (5.4.101-2) — and comes into her own as an authorial actor.

44 Since Hymen’s intervention is unnecessary plot-wise, the theophany’s rationale appears to be to carnalise the god (“Peace, ho”, 5.4.109) and courtly shows: “Bridging the divide between courtly and popular theater, Shakespeare makes available to ordinary playgoers a taste of the expensive and spectacular symbolic drama of the court.” (Shapiro 2006: 226) The numerous occurences of ‘if’ in both the finale (5.4.103-8, 114) and the epilogue (“If it be true…”, l.2; “If I were a woman”, l.13) suggest the play’s closure is only conditional — and indeed, by stepping outside the boundaries of fiction, “Rosalind” could in fact draw the audience toward, or metaleptically bring them into, the fiction, thereby making the play the spectators’ own Forest of Arden. It is thus hard to agree that the action of *As You Like It* amounts to a process of enclosure, for in addition to the play’s toying with, and undermining closure in the epilogue, an equally anti-homeostatic, centrifugal exit occurs: Jaques’s, whose parting words (5.4.170-6) echo Hymen’s (115-20) — a human echo of the divine which both brings the god down to earth and elevates Jaques to quasi-authorial status (again).
45

When the restored ruler asks the melancholiac to stay (5.4.178), it sounds like “the consoler comes across as the protector of a social order that has been weakened by the anarchic expression of pain” (Fœssel 2015: 44),²¹ for Jaques’s exit threatens the play’s closure and the Duke’s new order. “Disobedience lies at the foundation of democracy”(Ogien and Laugier 2011: 165)²² and, no matter what the fictional character’s politics may be, Jaques’s quite civil disobedience, his refusal to stay (5.4.179-80), is the play’s democratic gesture: “What characterizes democratic politics is [...] a confrontation with no possibility of final reconciliation” (Mouffe 2013: 17). The open-ended play which stages difference and dissent instead of dramatically endorsing closure and hegemonic reconciliation (which incidentally is twice associated with *falling*, 5.4.160-1), then, is itself democratic, and when Jaques — who as a “compact of jars” (2.7.5) might be an embodiment of agonistic democracy — leaves, the melancholiac’s Arden seems to be about to morph into a Walden where he can talk with the “convertites” (5.4.168) — and thus join another community: “Against conformity, Emerson and Thoreau [...] ask for [...] a life that is ours, a life we have consented to in our own voice; life as a conversation, in short — democracy.” (Ogien and Laugier 2011: 32)²³

## “This prophecy Merlin shall make, for I live before his time” (*King Lear* 3.2.95-6)

[N]o deconstruction without democracy, no
democracy without deconstruction.

(Derrida 2005: 105)

46

“Hereafter, in a better world than this” (1.2.236)... recent scholarship sometimes echoes Romantic critics and makes Shakespeare and *As You Like It* prophetic: it “was a play not only of its time but also ahead of it” according to James Shapiro (204), and for Juliet Dusinberre, “[a]lthough the play is rooted in Elizabethan culture [...] Shakespeare has placed a prophetic finger on the pulse of the future.” (Dusinberre, in Shakespeare 2006a: 1) In political terms, thinking ahead and thinking outside the box are the nexus of philosophical Shakespeare’s “revolutionary universalism”.²⁴

47

The history of the play’s reception, and the critical story of its meanings, are only 400 years old, and will go on being lived and written: “Oh! democracy! whither, oh! whither are you leading us?”²⁵ — Where we like it.

## BIBLIOGRAPHY

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## NOTES

<footnote n="1">1. *As You Like It*, 1.1.17-18. All references to the play are to Michael Hattaway's New Cambridge edition (Shakespeare 2009).</footnote>

<footnote n="2">2. "[L]e tyran asservit les sujets les uns par le moyen des autres" (English translation by Harry Kurz).</footnote>

<footnote n="3">3. "[I]l n'est point d'héritier si prodigue et nonchalant que quelquefois ne passe les yeux sur les registres de son père, pour voir s'il jouit de tous les droits de sa succession, ou si l'on a rien entrepris sur lui ou son prédécesseur." (Translation by H. Kurz).</footnote>

<footnote n="4">4. "[La nature] a en nous moins de pouvoir que la coutume : pour ce que le naturel, pour bon qu'il soit, se perd s'il n'est entretenu" (translation by H. Kurz).</footnote>

<footnote n="5">5. "Through a kind of paradox that Rousseau too came upon, nature in Hippias's view creates a sociability that is destroyed by none other than society" ("Par une sorte de paradoxe que retrouvera Rousseau, la nature aux yeux d'Hippias crée une sociabilité que précisément la société détruit", Romeyer Dherbey 2012: 88).</footnote>
6. "Antagonism is struggle between enemies, while agonism is struggle between adversaries" (Mouffe 2005: 102-3).

7. "Encore ce seul tyran, il n'est pas besoin de le combattre, il n'est pas besoin de le défaire, il est de soi-même défait, mais que le pays ne consente à sa servitude [...]. [S]i on [n'] obéit point [aux tyrans], sans combattre, sans frapper, ils demeurent nus et défaits et ne sont plus rien" (translation by H. Kurz).

8. "Ce pour quoi nous trouvons des paroles, c'est que nous l'avons dépassé. Dans tout discours, il y a un soupçon de mépris. La langue, semble-t-il, n'a été inventée que pour les choses médiocres, communes, communicables. Par le langage, celui qui parle se vulgarise." (Nietzsche 73-74; English translation by Walter Kaufman and R.J.Hollingdale)

9. "[L]'élégance [...] de savoir reprendre à l'autre ses faits, ses idées et ses mêmes mots pour en tirer une conclusion inverse".

10. "[L]a tristesse constitue une puissance de contestation de l'ordre établi".

11. According to Michel Foucault, the aim of philosophical parrhesia (as against political parrhesia) is “conversion”, “convincing someone that they should take care of themselves and change their lifestyle” (“convaincre quelqu’un qu’il doit prendre soin de lui-même et changer de vie”, 221).

12. "Before Jaques turns into Hamlet he must first go through the school of clowning. [...] Before a philosophical clown [like Touchstone] can become Hamlet, he must find personal reasons for his bitterness" (Kott 1974: 285).

13. "De même que la mélancolie porte la puissance de l'esprit avec lourdeur, l'ironie prend l'impuissance de l'esprit d'un coeur léger. L'unité des deux est le courage de l'esprit ; c'est la philosophie."

14. "On ne comprend un philosophe qu'à bien entendre ce qu'il entend démontrer, et en vérité échoue à démontrer, de la limite entre l'homme et l'animal." (English translation by David Wills)

15. "la double et contradictoire figuration de l'homme politique comme, d'une part, supérieur, dans sa souveraineté même, à la bête qu'il maîtrise, asservit, domine, domestique ou tue, si bien que la souveraineté consiste à s'élever au-dessus de l'animal et à se l'approprier, à disposer de sa vie, mais, d'autre part (contradictoirement), figuration de l'homme politique, et notamment de l'État souverain comme animalité, voire bestialité." (English translation by Geoffrey Bennington)

16. "De moy, je n'ay pas sceu voir seulement sans desplaisir, poursuivre et tuer une beste innocente, qui est sans deffence, et de qui nous ne recevons aucune offence." (English translation by Charles Cotton)

17. "Mais quand je rencontre [...] les discours qui essayent à montrer la prochaine ressemblance de nous aux animaux : et combien ils ont de part à nos plus grands privileges ; et avec combien de vray-semblance on nous les apparie ; certes j'en rabats beaucoup de nostre presomption, et me demets volontiers de cette royauté imaginaire, qu'on nous donne sur les autres creatures." (Translation by Charles Cotton)

18. "Nous devons la justice aux hommes, et la grace et la benignité aux autres creatures, qui en peuvent estre capables" (Translation by Charles Cotton).

19. "La recherche de la voix, de la justesse, est [...] le rejet permanent de la conformité, [...] y compris à soi-même. Tel est le sens d'une politique de l'ordinaire, qui est au coeur du principe démocratie".

20. "Si tel de vous, Messieurs les Spectateurs, veut parmi les oiseaux se tisser pour l'avenir une vie de délices, qu'il vienne donc me trouver ! Car tout ce qui est ici [à Athènes] réprimé par la loi, comme indigne, tout ça, chez nous autres les oiseaux, c'est excellent." (Aristophane 70; English translation by George G.A. Murray)

21. "Le consolateur se présente [...] comme le garant d'un ordre social fragilisé par l'expression anarchique de la douleur".

22. "[L]a désobéissance est au fondement de la démocratie".
23. “Contre la conformité, Emerson et Thoreau [...] demandent [...] une vie qui soit à nous, à laquelle nous ayons consenti, avec notre propre voix : une vie comme conversation, bref la démocratie.”

24. “[The] profound commitment to the *universal human potential* to live otherwise is the secret of the plays’ proven ability to transcend their time. This is what drives their radical dissatisfaction with Shakespeare’s world, divorcing their vision from the assumptions and attitudes that held sway in early modern England, and opening them up to the future and the prospect of the world transfigured. That prospect — the tidal pull of futurity that inflects their language and form at every turn — is what propels Shakespeare’s plays beyond the horizon of his age to speak with more authority and power than ever to ours. The timelessness of the plays springs from their refusal to make complete sense in the terms of their time, which they view from the vantage point of a future we ourselves can only imagine.” (Ryan 2015: 9-10)

25. “Sainte Démocratie, où nous mèneras-tu?” (Aristophane 112; English translation by Eugene O’Neill Jr).

ABSTRACTS

With philosophers from the Sophists and Plato, through La Boétie and Montaigne, to Jacques Derrida and Chantal Mouffe as its main context, this paper examines a number of political-philosophical aspects of Shakespeare’s *As You Like It*: its representation of tyrants; the politics of its pastoral mode; its fool’s sophistic rhetoric; and its political animal of a melancholiac, whose exit in the last scene problematizes the apparently conservative restoration. In light of this attempt to think not just about the play but with the play, and to trace the subtleties of its literary thinking or its thinking as literature, it appears that what As You Like It has in common with sophistic practice and democratic theory enables it to look beyond its immediate historical context to a future that could extend beyond our present, and give us food for democratic thought.

Avec pour contexte principal des philosophes, des Sophistes et Platon à Jacques Derrida et Chantal Mouffe, en passant par La Boétie et Montaigne, cet article étudie certains aspects de la philosophie politique de *Comme il vous plaira* de Shakespeare : sa représentation de la tyrannie, les aspects politiques de son mode pastoral, la rhétorique sophistique de son bouffon, et son mélancolique animal politique Jaques, dont la sortie lors de la dernière scène problématise une restauration en apparence conservatrice. À la lumière de cette réflexion *sur* la pièce, mais aussi avec elle, qui tente de suivre les lignes subtiles de sa pensée littéraire, ou de son penser en tant que littérature, ce que *Comme il vous plaira* semble avoir en commun avec la pratique sophistique et la théorie démocratique lui permet de porter le regard au-delà de son contexte historique immédiat vers un avenir qui pourrait dépasser notre présent, et donner matière à réflexion démocratique.
## INDEX

**Mots-clés:** sophistes, démocratie, rhétorique, littérature, philosophie, Shakespeare William, Comme il vous plaira

**Keywords:** sophists, democracy, rhetoric, literature, philosophy, Shakespeare William, As You Like It

## AUTHOR

### IFIG COCOUAL

Ifig Cocoual teaches *classes préparatoires* (khâgne) at Victor Duruy High School in Paris. He has written several articles on Shakespeare as well as an article on Margaret Atwood's *The Handmaid's Tale* (in *Études canadiennes*). Contact: icocoual[at]aol.com
# Commemorating the Irish Diaspora in the USA: The Role of 19th-century Paintings

Amelie Dochy

<footnote n="1">¹ Between 1845 and 1852, at the time of the Great Famine, the Irish boarded ships for America by the thousands, a record number being reached in 1851, when 250,000 migrants including men, women and children left Ireland for the United States (Gray 100). Some left from the South coast of Ireland, from the port of Cork, and others went to Liverpool to start a long journey of 40 days at sea to reach America, especially during the winter of 1846-1847 and in 1848-9 (Gray 99-100). Transport was sometimes financed by landlords who were anxious to get rid of the famished tenants living on their lands,¹ but more migrants were helped by relatives abroad, who gave them money to pay for the journey: in 1849, £500,000 were sent to Ireland to facilitate the emigration of complete families, or sometimes of entire villages (Gray 100). For them, the cheapest means of transport was offered by Canadian merchants, who shipped wood to Liverpool and who sold tickets to emigrants instead of returning with empty holds.² The surviving passengers received medical assistance in Grosse Isle, where they were quarantined, before being free to head for the United States.³</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² As a result, in 1850, 26% of New York's population was born in Ireland (Chassaigne), a proportion which accounts for the importance of the Irish community in the development of that city, and also of the country as a whole. Once in America, most Irish men and women took menial jobs, worked hard and strove to be assimilated into the general population. As noted by Peter Gray, their efforts were often rewarded, especially after several generations. Towards 1900, only 15% of the members of the Irish community had unskilled jobs. In the 1920s, they were represented in every sphere of American life and, by the 1960s, many Irish families counted among the wealthiest in the USA (Gray 109, 114-5). The best example of integration is probably that of John F. Kennedy, who became president of the United States in 1960 and whose great-grandfather had left County Wexford in 1848.⁴</footnote>
3

Like Kennedy, many Irishmen in the USA were and are still proud of their Irish heritage which is commemorated through various events such as the Saint Patrick's Parade, which takes place in New York City every year. Such commemorations are moments when people remember the past, in order to revive a memory that is important for a group, a family or a nation. Roisín Higgins has showed that there is an official form of commemoration, organised by the State, which can often be equated with "an exercise in control and communication" about the country's history (Higgins 2007: 34). She also mentions "alternatives to the official commemoration" which are less visible but no less important, and which are embodied in cultural performances or family acts to pay tribute to a person or an event (Higgins 2012: 3).

4

Whether official or not, Higgins argues that “the acts of remembrance project a distinctive self-awareness,” highlighting the links between the issues of commemoration and national identity (Higgins 2007: 12). In this context, painting is likely to renew in the mind of the viewer a sense of belonging to a community, especially if the canvas depicts the land of his or her ancestors. This may explain why 19th-century pictures representing Ireland became particularly popular in the United States in the period following the Great Famine to the end of the 20th century, as can be seen through the extravagant prices offered by Americans for such artworks. They comprise paintings from Irish artists working in Ireland, such as James Brenan (1837-1907), Irish artists working for an international audience throughout the United Kingdom or Europe, as was the case of Nathaniel Hone (1831-1917) or Walter Frederick Osborne (1859-1903), and also foreign painters who were not born in Ireland but who depicted the country and its inhabitants in a manner which was deemed “authentic” by viewers.

5

In this article, we will see how these collectors fostered a private form of remembrance complementing official celebrations in the construction of collective memory. This analysis will show why 19th-century paintings regarded as “authentic” are central to the commemoration of Irish immigration in the USA, thus requiring a discussion on the nature and qualities of such artworks, which tend to romanticise the Irish national identity. Finally, this article will explore the reasons why paintings leading to a recreation of the past are adapted to a private, as well as a public commemoration of the Irish diaspora.

# I. Painting as an authentic form of art

6

At the time of the Great Famine, photography was not widespread, as its use only started in 1825 in the UK. As a consequence, the main representations which could be found of immigration were published in newspapers in the form of engravings, or were exhibited in galleries where fine art could be seen. Artists were perceived as reliable witnesses, because some of them had witnessed the famine and emigration themselves.

7

The painters who addressed the painful ordeal of exile from Ireland were however rare. Among them was the Scottish artist Erskine Nicol (1825-1904), who lived in Ireland between 1846 and 1850, and whose depictions of Ireland became popular in America as early as the 1880s-1890s. Nicol's artworks echoed the political and social tensions of the time—such as the poverty of Irish peasants who did not possess the land they cultivated, the lower social status in which Catholics were held by the Protestant oligarchy or the struggle for Home Rule—, but he never openly delved into politics,
thus ensuring he would not lose the admiration of his public. He was also a clever
businessman: at the beginning of his career, he developed an easily marketable artistic
style marked by the main characteristics of genre painting, which was much praised
during his lifetime. For Julia Thomas, genre painting was a multi-faceted school of art:

'Narrative painting' is, after all, an umbrella term for what the Victorians called
'scenes from everyday life', 'literary', 'genre', 'historical genre', 'anecdotal',
'domestic', or 'subject' pictures [...] to describe images that told stories. (Thomas 4)

8 19th-century collectors were fond of paintings endowed with literary qualities. In April 1891, the newspaper *The Scotsman* described the dispute between two art dealers who were both willing to buy Nicol's oil painting, *Waiting at the Crossroads* (1868):

*The Crossroads*, by Erskine Nicol, A. R. A, a fine work, which after a sharp competition was secured by Mr Arthur Tooth for 390 gs., the under bidder being Mr. Carmer, a well-known New York dealer. (13 April 1891: 3).

9 The price of 8,190 shillings (or a little over £409) paid by the London merchant defeated the American competitor, as it was a hefty sum: people could live during a whole year on £150 at the time (Draznin 4).

<figure><img src="image_46.png" /><figcaption>Figure : Erskine Nicol, *Waiting at the Crossroads*, oil painting, 71 x 105 cm, 1868.</figcaption></figure>

Reproduced with the kind permission of the Frick Library, New York⁵

10 That there was a potential market for *Waiting at the Crossroads* on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean was plain to see. The painting is redolent of many Irish grievances against the English that the migrants settled in America were not prepared to forget. The well-heeled man in the centre of the painting stands out from the other characters by his posture and attitude, something which did not escape the attention of the art critics of the time, who identified him as “unmistakably English.” (“Royal Scottish Academy’s Exhibition; First Notice.” *The Scotsman*, 18 February 1869, 6).
11 Such a reception can be explained by the understanding of the Famine as a consequence of colonisation, an interpretation which was deeply-ingrained among the Irish who settled in America in the middle of the 19th century:

> From 1846, particularly, as the escalation of hunger and disease rendered passage on vessels [...] the sole hope of survival, the predominantly Catholic Irish floodtide transported a 'forced exile' motif enshrining perceptions of British administrators and landowners as orchestrators of Irish devastation across the Atlantic. (Kelly 4)

12 The “forced exile” motif involved a sense of British or English domination, oppression, injustice, a category more general as a basis of Irish nationalism than “colonisation.” According to Mary Kelly, authors of that period conveyed a similar message in the USA: “impressions of national calamity exacerbated by inadequate government response and mass evacuation mesmerised mid-nineteenth-century travellers.” (Kelly 3)

13 The bad reputation of the British administration in Ireland accounts for the interpretation given to the haughty customer who is waiting for his coach. He is indeed not Irish: the painter suggests that he has come to Ireland to hunt, as can be guessed from the birds tied by his gamekeeper. The young man is seated at his feet, on the left, and behind him stands an old beggar, extending her hand. To the right is seated an Irish piper, so that the triangular composition expresses the domination of the Englishman over the Irish characters, who all depend on the money of this foreigner. Such a situation echoed the social order of Ireland's predominantly rural economy, where land was owned by a class of often absentee landlords who seldom cared about those who worked and lived on it.

14 It is for these reasons that many emigrants left Ireland for America, facing separation from family and friends, a difficulty also represented by the couple parting on the left-hand side of the painting: the man holds the hand of his beloved as she bows her head in grief. Other paintings by Nicol reflected a similar uneasiness about social injustice in Ireland, such as *A Disputed Boundary* (1865-9?) which evokes problems of land division.
<figure><img src="image_47.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2: Erskine Nicol, *A Disputed Boundary*, oil painting, 137 x 183 cm, 1865/9.</figcaption></figure>

Reproduced with the kind permission of the Frick Library, New York.

15 In the centre of the painting, a lawyer with a pen in his mouth tries to calm down the two opponents, most likely two tenants claiming the same plot. Both are dressed up to the nines, as was customary whenever a visit was paid to any representative of the landowner. Nicol, as a 19th-century artist tended to “dress up” or embellish the figures represented to give a picture of “acceptable” poverty or a non-shocking, sentimental presentation of the motif. He had already adopted a similar perspective in *The Renewal of the Lease Refused* (1868), in which a dignified Irish peasant stands to the left of the picture, before the same screen as that which appears here, covered in tapestry in the left background. Both compositions also include secondary characters coming through the open door on the left-hand side of the picture and the clerk who is here standing on a stool and rummaging through a wardrobe in the right background is exactly the same as that portrayed in *Signing the New Lease* (c. 1868), except that in this other picture, he is depicted in profile and is the one holding a quill in his mouth. All these pictorial indications confirm that the dispute is indeed in an Irish social context.

16 Such quarrels between tenants were frequent in the 19th century as more division of the land could occur whenever a lease was renewed or renegotiated; this was likely to generate conflict (Morehouse 580). In addition, tenants who held an acre or less had troubles feeding a whole family with such small plots, another reason for the emigration of peasants to America. *A Disputed Boundary* struck a chord and it was bought in 1880 by A. T. Stewart, a New York collector and art dealer, who paid $10,000 for it according to *The New York Times* (12 April 1876, 8).

17 19th-century painters like Nicol had directly witnessed rural poverty in Ireland and the causes for emigration, so that their works were deemed “authentic” by art collectors who wanted to commemorate emigration. Authenticity of an artwork, according to
Walter Benjamin, is associated with one place and one time: “The here and now of the original underlies the concept of its authenticity.” (Benjamin 21) Thus, an “authentic artwork” is necessarily associated with a period in time and a geographical location. Benjamin’s theory, expressed in *The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility*, can be usefully applied to genre painting. Going further, it could be said that an authentic painting is an artwork painted at the time of what it depicts, on the spot, so that the picture creates a link between past and present, between viewers and the event that they might wish to commemorate.

18 As noted by Lionel Trilling, in his book on sincerity and authenticity, “now that art is no longer required to please, it is expected to provide the spiritual substance of life.” (Trilling 98) The element of spirituality belongs to an authentic work of art because it is also one which is likely to trigger an emotional response such as sympathy and understanding of one another’s predicaments. And even though Nicol’s painting complies with the artistic conventions of his time, it conveys to the viewer this “sentiment of being” that can only be derived from an artwork giving meaning to life and history. Trilling writes:

> Through the nineteenth century, art has as one of its chief intentions to induce in the audience the sentiment of being, to recruit the primitive strength that a highly developed culture has diminished. To this end it proposes a variety of spiritual exercises, among which are suffering and despair and cosmic defiance; conscious sympathy with the being of others; comprehension of the processes of society; social alienation. (Trilling 99)

19 The scene depicted by Nicol participates in this “comprehension of the processes of society” and of “social alienation” in the rural world of 19th-century Ireland. When the troublesome situation represented in the painting illustrates the past of a first-generation or second-generation Irish-American, it is even more touching for the observer. Whenever an art collector buys an authentic painting, it is an act of self-discovery. The buyer reveals his own emotions towards the representation and as a consequence, he is true to himself and he expresses his sincerity or, as Trilling would put it, his own “authenticity” (Trilling 134). Possessing a painting representing Ireland and produced on the spot is insisting on one’s own authentic identity.

20 For example, Brian P. Burns is a successful American businessman of Irish origin who is the chairman of BF Enterprise, a company based in San Francisco and involved in real estate. According to Adele Dalsimer and Vera Kreilkamp, he has gathered more than 50 Irish paintings (Dalsimer I) and, although most of his artworks are in his home, he regularly sends them to public exhibitions, as we shall see below. Burns claimed that he invested in Irish art to preserve the memory of his Irish heritage and when he started his collection in the 1960s (Dalsimer II), he first wanted to do so by way of 19th-century paintings: “In the early days I was interested in finding pieces that related to the Famine and the hard times in Ireland.” (Dalsimer 5)

## II. Romanticised Representations of Irishness

21 Such paintings seldom depict the physical sufferings of the migrants, however: they were less realistic than their engraved counterparts which foregrounded the skeletal bodies of the peasants deprived of their staple food, the potato (Morehouse 579). One of the most striking and sadly emblematic examples, *Bridget O'Donnell and her two children*, was published in December 1849 in *The Illustrated London News*. Made by the Cork-born
artist James Mahoney (1810-1879), the engraving reveals the decay of the malnourished body, a plight which is even more shocking in the depiction of children.

<figure><img src="image_48.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3: James Mahoney, *Bridget O'Donnell and her two children*, in *The Illustrated London News*, 22 December 1849 (p. 404).</figcaption></figure>

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Irish_potato_famine_Bridget_O%27Donnel.jpg

22 The thinness of their legs, their hollow cheeks and their rags can only move the viewer, especially as such a picture was closer to the reality of Irish emigrants than Nicol's paintings: engravings did not sublimate or romanticise the terrible deprivation of Irish peasants. Their goal was to report the ongoing hardships endured in Ireland, and these upsetting illustrations were not made to be exhibited in galleries. Their context was that of newspapers and Mahoney had received a commission to produce them to accompany the textual accounts that he himself wrote at the request of *The Illustrated London News* which often expressed "sympathy for the plight of the people living in tiny cabins" (Murray 231, 233).

23 Yet, these realistic representations proved less popular in the celebration of the Irish heritage of some Americans, even if these engravings have become, according to Emily Mark-Fitzgerald, "the iconic visual images of the famine" (Mark-Fitzgerald 2010: 184), given that they describe the bodies of famished migrants with greater accuracy and are thus akin to the construction of an "effet du réel" or "reality effect," as defined by Roland Barthes (88). However, such engravings were not considered as "more authentic" by those who wished to commemorate their Irishness. This impression may result from the fact that they trigger feelings of compassion, but do not arouse a pride in Irish ancestry. Instead, they associate Irishness with deprivation and dependence. As such, they do not call attention to an acceptable image or type of Irish poverty and suffering. Contrariwise, oils on canvas are less stark than Mahoney's engraved images.
Given their pictorial idealisation of Irish characters, canvasses tend to enhance how brave peasants made the difficult decision to emigrate in order to escape grinding poverty. The sadness and grief which they elicit is thus compensated by the hope for a better future. This, according to Higgins, is the essential constituent of commemoration, noting the importance given to optimistic representations of Irishness during the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising:

> What was placed on view during the jubilee was not an introspective preoccupation with the past, but rather a keen desire to project outward a more positive view of Ireland and its future. (Higgins 2007: 12)

24

It is true that Mahoney’s engravings are also harder to contemplate because of the distress that they convey, and even Brian P. Burns recognises that some 19th-century artworks dealing with the Famine are rather “dour” (Dalsimer V). It seems that an excess of gloom must be avoided in the commemoration of Irish ancestry: one wants to remember but not to suffer.⁶

25

The paintings which represent Ireland in a so-called “authentic” manner are thus not necessarily those which insist on the awful reality but rather those which are kinder to the feelings of the artist and the viewer. Many American collectors were attracted by representations of the correspondence between those who emigrated and those who stayed in Ireland, as in two paintings by James Brenan, *Letter from America* (1875) and *The Village Scribe* (1881). The latter, which was in the collection of Brian P. Burns, shows a woman and her husband dictating a letter to a scribe who, at that time, was usually a schoolmaster (Dalsimer 88). In this case, the scene clearly sublimates the pain of emigration: the possibility of communication with the relative abroad seems to ease the pain of his or her absence.
<figure><img src="image_49.png" /><figcaption>Figure 4: James Brenan, *The Village Scribe*, oil on canvas, 29 x 24 cm, 1881, Collection of Brian P. Burns.</figcaption></figure>

Public domain image: http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/irish-artists/james-brenan.htm

26 It is interesting to note that Burns selected this canvas to express his Irish heritage. The Irish context is easily recognisable: the way the woman is dressed indicates that she is an Irish peasant, and that she and her husband should come to visit a scribe was not a rare aspect of rural life—most peasants were illiterate in 19th-century Ireland. This corresponded to the common pictorial representations of the poor, the evolution of which has been studied by John Barrell:

> The effort is always to claim that the rural poor are as contented, the rural society as harmonious, as it is possible to claim them to be, in the face of an increasing awareness that all was not as well as it must have been in Arcadia. The jolly imagery of Merry England, which replaced the frankly artificial imagery of classical Pastoral, was in turn replaced when it had to be by the image of a cheerful, sober, domestic peasantry, more industrious than before; this gave way in turn to a picturesque image of the poor [...]. (Barrell 16)

27 This quotation, which discusses English art, suggests that the representations of Ireland or Irish peasantry had to adopt the general conventions of the acceptable pictorial representation of peasantry in general. Indeed, this habit of showing happy peasants in painting accounts for the peaceful atmosphere in Brenan's canvas. Here, the characters express no anger; they seem to accept emigration without too much grief. However, Brenan was "unusually concerned with the plight of the rural poor" (Kinmonth 162): in other pictures, he presented more painful situations, as in *The Finishing Touch* (1876), which shows the heartbreaking departure of a girl bidding good-bye to her family before emigrating. On the contrary, *The Village Scribe* shows a brighter side of emigration and the continuing relationships between family members. This vision
confirms that painters had to find “a consensus between the concerns of an aristocratic
and a bourgeois public” who were fond of such representations of rural life (Barrell 13).

28

Moreover, the setting in a cottage, with its simple furniture and a flagstone floor, also connote Irishness, demonstrating that such narrative representations have become acceptable emblems of Irish national identity.⁷ If such a representation seems traditional, this is precisely because it has been made as a fashionable and suitable reconstruction of the past. As was demonstrated by Stephen Prickett in *Modernity and the Reinvention of Tradition* (2013), Victorians used the concept of “tradition” to give legitimacy to various principles regarding religion, culture or art. Thus, a 19th-century painting becomes a privileged object of commemoration when it reconstructs a traditional picture of Irishness for an American viewer, especially when his ancestors were Catholics who had emigrated during the Famine.⁸

29

This explains why collectors like Burns are fond of pictures of horses, such as *Knight of Tara* (1843), painted by Irish artist George Nairn (1799-1850). The painting attracted Burns because he likes horses himself (especially horse races), but also because the animal stands for the Irishman's fabled love for horses, a fondness regularly associated with Irish national identity. This association results from the fact that there is not one but a host of Irish horse breeds, such as the Connemara pony, the Kerry Bog Pony, the Irish Cob, the Irish Draught Horse or the Irish Sport Horse. The latter was associated with the gentry or aristocracy and therefore with the lifestyle of the landlord class, but other breeds, in particular the Connemara Pony, the resistant Kerry Bog Pony or the versatile Irish Draught Horse, were used to carry heavy loads or to work on small farms. Despite there being a degree of sublimation and sentimentalisation in the process associating Irish culture with horses, the fact remains that Ireland has a long history of horse breeding, riding and racing which is a positive and gratifying aspect of Irishness to be displayed with pride in America by descendants of Irish migrants.⁹ Another American art collector, John Quinn (1870-1924), whose grandparents had left Ireland and County Limerick in 1851 to settle in Tiffin (Ohio), also owned several representations of Irish horses in his gallery, such as *Washing the Circus Horses*, which had been bought directly from Irish artist Jack B. Yeats (1871-1957). The watercolour was described as a “characteristic scene in the west of Ireland, vigorously drawn in crayon, portraying an ostler mounted on a gray horse and leading others through a picturesque village.”¹⁰

30

Rural dwellings, seascapes and landscapes imbued with pastoral charm are thus often found in the galleries of American collectors—paintings which convey a nostalgia for the land of their ancestors. For James P. Byrne, one must acknowledge “the crucial role nostalgia plays in the construction of a viable [...] Irish-American identity” (Byrne 52). He argues that:

> [Irish-Americans] nostalgically reconstructed Ireland as mythological homeland, ‘a
> simple and stable past as a refuge from the turbulent and chaotic present’. (Byrne
> 53-4)

31

Nostalgia means both “return” (from the Greek *nostos*) and “pain” (*algos*). This longing for home can be seen as a feature of the Irish diaspora in America. Byrne claims that “one of the central, recurring characteristics of a diasporic people [...] is the dream of a return to the homeland,” (Byrne 58) a desire which is fuelled by depictions of idyllic landscapes, that will then stimulate an imagined image of Ireland in America, fuelling a