Stanford University Press Blog

Cherry Blossoms & Confederate Flags

On the power of symbols and their contested meanings. 

by EMIKO OHNUKI-TIERNEY

Symbols are important. They are ubiquitous, they are charged, and they are powerful. And yet, in ordinary circumstances rarely do we articulate in our own mind, let alone communicate with other members of our social group, which meaning we derive from a particular symbol in a given context. In ordinary times the cherry blossom in Japan signals positive meanings including the celebration of life, love, and reproductive energy—meanings that would change during the country’s military period. One of the flower’s symbolic meanings—pathos over the brevity of life—was transformed into a military dictum: “Thou shalt fall like beautiful cherry petals after a short life for the emperor-cum-Japan.” It became the Japanese state’s major trope of propaganda during its quest for imperial power, though few of the soldiers who were sent to the front were cognizant of this symbolic reassignment.

The Confederate flag controversy demonstrated in no uncertain terms how dramatic expressions of symbolic power do not happen in a vacuum.

The important dynamics of symbols came to the fore in a most dramatic way when the mass killings at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, triggered an intense public debate over what the Confederate flag stood for. Dylann Roof, the young white man who espoused white supremacist views, went on a rampage, shooting and killing nine people—all African American—during a Bible study meeting this past June. It took place in a historically important black church—the Emanuel A.M.E. Church, which survived antebellum laws barring worship by blacks, an angry white mob that burned down its original edifice, and the execution of its founder and dozens of others condemned for planning a slave revolt.

The Political Consciousness of the Selfie, Pt. II

They’re about more than narcissism; they’re also tools for political self-identification.

a Q&A with REBECCA L. STEIN, ADI KUNTSMAN,
and NEGAR MOTTAHEDEH

What follows is the second installment of a Q&A with authors Rebecca L. Stein, Adi Kunstman, and Negar Mottahedeh on the politicized use of selfies in contemporary political and social solidarity-building campaigns. All three have studied the use of social media in the context of Middle Eastern politics; Stein and Kuntsman, co-authors of Digital Militarism, have studied the use of social media in the Israeli occupation, while Mottahedeh, writing in #iranelection, chronicles how Iran’s post election crisis of 2009 achieved international notoriety as a result of its momentum on social media. You can see Part I of this Q&A here.

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What are some of the most interesting cases of selfie activism that you’ve encountered?

ADI KUNSTMAN & REBECCA STEIN: Over the course of the last five years, we’ve watched the militarized selfie gradually grow and spread—a genre used both by soldiers in the Israeli military and by Israeli civilians as well. When we first encountered the phenomenon in 2010, before the massive global proliferation of the selfie, mobile self-portraits of soldiers in contexts of military violence were considered exceptional and scandalous. Early instances of selfie militarism included Facebook photographs of soldiers posing in Palestinian homes during routine raids, or in front of blindfolded and cuffed detainees at checkpoints. These early cases shocked the Israeli public and were deemed social aberrations, exceptions to Israel’s “moral army” and the national ethos of “purity of arms.” 

The Political Consciousness of the Selfie

They’re about more than narcissism; they’re also tools for political self-identification.

a Q&A with REBECCA L. STEIN, ADI KUNTSMAN,
and NEGAR MOTTAHEDEH

 

In 2013 that silver fox of the lexicographical world, the Oxford English Dictionary, proclaimed that “selfie” was the word of the year and recorded that its use in the English language had increased 17,000% from the year previous. That precipitous rise mirrors its transition from a niche colloquialism to a now international cultural phenomenon—one that has precipitated Kim Kardashian’s entry into publishing as well as a public awareness campaign in Russia regarding the hazards—sometimes fatal—of incautious self-photography.

Trivial though it may seem, the preponderance of the selfie is taking on increasingly inventive, political registers as well. A New York Times front-page story from earlier this month documented (or perhaps, lamented) the pervasiveness of campaign trail selfies in the wind-up to the 2016 presidential bid (which the article’s author christened the “Selfie Election”).

Rebecca Stein, Adi Kunstman, and Negar Mottahedeh, who have all studied politicized social media practices in the Middle East, have documented the use of selfies as a tool for building solidarity—from the Israeli military to Iranian protesters. All three have documented the ways in which selfies can operate in myriad contexts; from validating political violence, to challenging an election result; at times seeking to trivialize something, in other instances seeking to glorify it.

We asked them all a few questions that consider the political function of the selfie, inarguably one of the most ubiquitous forms of self-expression today.

Rediscovering a Great American Poet

Why it’s high time for a Robinson Jeffers renaissance.

A 1932 Time magazine cover, featuring poet Robinson Jeffers.

With contemporaries like T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, it is little wonder that the name of poet Robinson Jeffers rings far fewer bells, even in the ears of avid poetry fans. Jeffers, who was born at the twilight of the 19^th century and wrote most prolifically throughout the first half of the 20^th, joined an audaciously talented chorus of American poets who—then, as now—were regarded as literary celebrities and cultural icons.

Jeffers is essential to understanding ourselves, the twentieth century, and the world.

But, on April 4^th, 1932 the portrait of a reclusive California-based poet named Robinson Jeffers, photographed in contemplative profile, was emblazoned on the cover of Time magazine, nine years after Amy Lowell received a similar honor, and eighteen years before T.S. Eliot would adorn its pages. With the publication of Tamar and Other Poems in 1924, Jeffers’ fame sprung into being virtually overnight. One decade and multiple collections of poetry later, he had become arguably the most famous poet in the United States.

Despite his prominence and critical success—and the numerous literary honors he accrued notwithstanding—one poet and literary critic writing in the pages of the New York Herald Tribune asked, “Why does so much deep silence surround the name of Robinson Jeffers?”

The Enigma Of Thorstein Veblen

On the life and work of the great rogue economist of the 20th century.

by ZEESE PAPANIKOLAS

 

America in the spring of 1909 was, as usual, going to hell in a handbasket, and as usual, it was the professors who were swinging the basket by its strap. A journalist named Harold Bolce, writing for The Cosmopolitan Magazine on American institutions of higher learn­ing pretty much gave the gist of it in a series of articles for the magazine. As he told it, in hundreds of classrooms around the country it was being taught daily that the Decalogue was no more sacred than a syl­labus; that the home as an institution was doomed; that there were no ab­solute evils; that immorality was simply an act in contravention of society’s accepted standards; that democracy was a failure and the Declaration of In­dependence only spectacular rhetoric; that the change from one religion to another was like getting a new hat. The academy was a slough of cultural relativity and the whole thing was really quite terrifying, according to the Cosmopolitan.

Veblen went beyond the warts and bumps on the surface of human behavior; he cut to the very bone.

Bolce had spent two years sitting in classrooms and interviewing pro­fessors and college administrators. The serious, thoughtful men—and one or two women—he listened to were able to espouse the most radi­cal doctrines from the sanctity of the lectern. Yet somehow Bolce missed one of the worst of the worst, at once one of the most famous yet most reclusive of American scholars, who had been since 1907 living among the pines and cedars a mile from the Stanford campus.

This was Professor Thorstein Veblen. But anonymity was exactly what this quiet professor wanted, for his life, his very style of writing at this time, was one long parade of artifice, irony, and circumlocution, an elaborate mys­tification of who he really was and what he really believed. He was the most impossible of professors. His students found him an enigma—that is, the few who remained in his classes, for he usually seemed intent on having no students at all.

#ReadUP: The Death Penalty

An overview of Glossip v. Gross and the university press books behind the case.

Injectable midazolam—a benzodiazepine used in lethal injection. CC-BY-3.0 via Wikipedia.

All manner of execution methods have been challenged before the Supreme Court, from firing squad to the electric chair, and not once in the court’s history has it ever invalidated any state’s chosen execution procedure. This streak continued in last week's Glossip v. Gross decision in which the Supreme Court ruled (in a contentious 5-4 split) that lethal injection and the three-drug cocktail administered in recent executions meets constitutional standards.

While crafting their opinions Justices drew from sources as diverse as Enlightenment-era philosophy, to pharmacology, to Slate articles.

“Welcome to Groundhog Day,” was the colorful opening of Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion—likely a reference to the similarities between Glossip and a 2007 déja vu-inducing case, Baze v. Rees, which similarly challenged the constitutionality of lethal injection (also to no avail). The petitioners in Baze—two death row inmates from Kentucky—lost their suit when the Supreme Court (in a less divisive 7-2 decision) sanctioned the three-drug cocktail commonly used in lethal injection: a sedative to render the condemned insensate to pain, a paralytic agent, and finally a drug that induces cardiac arrest.