Gavin Murphy | Memorial University of Newfoundland (original) (raw)

Drafts by Gavin Murphy

Our Word is Our Weapon: The Selected Writings of Subcomandante Marco articulates the revolutionar... more Our Word is Our Weapon: The Selected Writings of Subcomandante Marco articulates the revolutionary ideals of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), a mostly proletarian army of Indigenous Mexicans co-led to insurrection by a group of Mexican intellectuals against the tyranny of the Mexican government. This work is comprised of communiques, epistles and, intriguingly, a collection of short stories entitled, "Tales for a Sleepless Solitude --The Stories of Don Durito," and, in the final section a collection of tales entitled, "Old Don Antonio." An analysis of his writings with a close analysis of "The Stories of Don Durito" reveals that although the communiques clearly articulate the EZLN's social, economic, and political agenda it is, perhaps, Marcos' literary writings in these final two sections of Our Word is Our Weapon that are his most subversive because they are waging a war against the representation of Latin American "others" within the history of oppression and misrepresentation that has plagued the individuals outside of major canonical literature. Marcos' literary works are the voice of the oppressed fighting within the history of literature; a wider cultural history that extends beyond his and the EZLNs actions in Chiapas and onto the wider battleground of art, culture, history, and representation.

If World War II and the Nazi concentration camps stole the lives of nearly six million Jews, then... more If World War II and the Nazi concentration camps stole the lives of nearly six million Jews, then the Nazis's efforts to confiscate and destroy their vast art collections, coupled with the corrupt ways that the American government and other Allied powers hide behind a labyrinth of conflicting documents and specious claims regarding the fate of the recovered valuables concurrent with their efforts to obfuscate and block restitution of these artworks to their rightful owners, effectively steals their souls. Art expresses something ineffable about a culture, its history, and its values, and in many ways it is the repository of a culture's memory and its ideals-one need only think of the Mona Lisa and it instantly conjures up notions of the Renaissance, the Medicis, Italy, DaVinci and his genius etc. It is for this reason, among others, that the Third Reich put great effort into destroying art, "degenerate art," as they labeled it. The Nazis attack on art was, in effect, another holocaust that attempted to erase all memory of Western culture. Yet, as onerous as the Nazis's efforts were, there is perhaps something more insidious happening today. The fact that many works of art remain unaccounted for, in private collections, "lost," buried in secret locations forgotten to memory, or housed in museums on foreign soil only protracts the holocaust and in doing so preserves its painful memory. If Hitler wanted to steal, destroy and or profit from works of art then those countries, such as America and others who are effectively blocking the return of those objects, are equally as culpable in the theft because they are effectively aiding and abetting in the crime that was perpetrated by the Nazis. Indeed, a concerted effort by all countries to finally return all art objects and art collections to their rightful owners, perhaps, go a long way towards healing the pain and righting some of the wrongs that were perpetrated by the Nazis against art itself and the stalwart guardians who collected it.

The relatively quick succession of the murders and their grizzly nature ensured that the Ripper m... more The relatively quick succession of the murders and their grizzly nature ensured that the Ripper murders were a sensational story in the media outlets of the day. This was, indeed, a watershed moment for crime journalists, who, frustrated by the Criminal Investigation Division's lack of willingness to reveal the details of the murders, arguably invented and embellished many of the details that got published in the London daily newspapers. Why did this happen? In an effort to solve this question, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno's notion of the "culture industry," coupled with an examination of the prevailing Victorian values, and the reports in the newspapers at the time of the murders that subverted those Victorian values, reveals an effort to create hysteria within the population through a sense of disgust, whose end game was to sell more newspapers and to profit off of this sensational case.

an astonishingly informative study about the history of exploitation of Latin American countries,... more an astonishingly informative study about the history of exploitation of Latin American countries, their people and resources by imperialist and colonialist powers. Starting his study five hundred years ago with the arrival of the colonizing Spanish conquistadors and their desire for gold, Galeano's work traverses from this initial invasion up to modern times with the current invasion by neocolonial powers, such as America and other oil hungry nations, and the unscrupulous methods of exploitation perpetrated by these countries' multinational corporations, such as Standard Oil and Shell, and the continuing violence that these entities enact against Latin America, its people, and resources. Galeano's thesis is clear. His goal is to reveal the cycle of violence that has led Latin American countries into a state of dependency and poverty due to the plundering and profiteering of their vast natural resources by a revolving door of colonial and imperial powers. However, as much as Galeano points his finger outwards at these countries, he is also quick to point his finger inwards at the petit bourgeoisie, a cabal of "native overseers" or, that is, local politicians, 1 military leaders, opportunistic intellectuals, and corrupt capitalists who form an oligarchy that Galeano, Eduardo. Open Veins of Latin America, Pg. 2.

Portrayal of the Modern Industrial Factory Worker Charlie Chaplin's satirical film Modern Times (... more Portrayal of the Modern Industrial Factory Worker Charlie Chaplin's satirical film Modern Times (1936) is a classic of the medium that offers a comedic yet cogent critique of workers' conditions in modern industrialized factories, and the impact that these conditions have on the social and mental life of the average assembly line worker in the early twentieth century. Specifically, Chaplin's protagonist everyman, Little Tramp, suffers a mental breakdown due to the pressures placed upon him by his work and the working conditions there, by the machinery that enslaves him daily to a series of absurdly repetitive actions, and by the inhumane treatment that he receives from his section's over-looker and, ultimately, by the bourgeois manufacturer running the factory. Indeed, Modern Times' emphasis on the plight of the proletarian assembly line worker clearly resonates with Karl Marx's critique of capitalism in his masterful work, The Communist Manifesto; in particular, Modern Times highlights the ephemeral nature of Modern life in capitalist society, its attendant issues of speed, and the need for the bourgeoise to constantly revolutionize the means of production. Modern Times highlights the ephemeral nature of Modern life in capitalist society. As society shifted from a mostly agrarian lifestyle with a feudal system of trade and its attendant guild system to an urban industrialized capitalist one, the pace of Modern life accelerated dramatically during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The film establishes this motif during the opening credits with the presence of a clock that is relentlessly keeping time. The use of the clock symbolically gestures towards the capitalist dictum that 'time is money' and furthermore, that the life of the average industrial factory worker is 'on the clock.' This, of course, suggests that the factory worker, when under the employ of the bourgeois manufacturer, is nothing more than an instrument pushed to their physical and mental limits in order to reach the capitalists' goal of exponential growth. This impossible goal of exponential growth demands the greatest

In Redeployment, Phil Klay's award-winning collection of short stories centred around the effects... more In Redeployment, Phil Klay's award-winning collection of short stories centred around the effects of the U.S.-Iraq war on American soldiers, the narrator of "Money as a Weapon System" works with the State Office and finds himself in Istalqual, a ruined, surreal cityscape of bombed buildings and destroyed roadways, a war torn city beset by local corruption and bureaucratic red tape all of which, he reveals, conspire to thwart his attempts to activate a water treatment facility. At one point in his efforts, the narrator is lead to a room in the bowels of a crumbling concrete facility where his Iraqi guide reveals a scale model of the water treatment facility made out of little wooden sticks and toothpicks. This brittle, almost helpless image of the wooden model set within a concrete building whose suspect structural integrity threatens to topple and destroy it at any moment stands as a powerful symbol for many of the juxtapositions, incongruities, and absurdities that comprise the thematic tensions within Klay's work and within the war itself. Indeed, whether it is the architecture of a culture and its war ravaged citizens, or the architecture of a soldier's war torn body and mind, everything and everyone involved in total warfare is, like the wooden model of the water treatment facility, threatened by the savage brutality of the Iraqi war. This brutality is systemic and total, and manifests in three distinct ways: physically, psychologically, and socially.

Wayne Johnston's novel The Colony of Unrequited Dreams presents two contrasting images of Newfoun... more Wayne Johnston's novel The Colony of Unrequited Dreams presents two contrasting images of Newfoundland. On the one hand, there is the "new found land," a place that Joey Smallwood believes can be mapped, understood, and controlled through political maneuvering and the sheer force of his will. Smallwood believes it is his destiny to shape this "new found land" into a political and cultural powerhouse. On the other hand, there is the "old lost land," an atavistic environment incapable of being tamed or ruled, a place defined by an unyielding landscape and a turbulent and deadly ocean. It is Smallwood's arrogant belief that he can conflate the two, uniting the untameable with the tamed, the uncivilized with the civilized; but as Johnston's novel attests, Newfoundland is an environment that is too wild to be tamed and it is an act of hubris to believe otherwise. Upon returning from New York, Smallwood has a vision of the two contrasting images of Newfoundland. For a brief moment Smallwood sees the "new found land had lifted" from the "old lost land" (212) and he perceives a "place separate from [him], not coloured by [his] past or [his] perceptions" (211). As this suggests, there are two distinct Newfoundlands. The old lost land that exists like all land masses as an unmitigated, untouched, wild space and the "new found land," which has Newfoundlanders' hopes and dreams posited upon the old, existing one. Although Smallwood perceives these two disparate versions of Newfoundland and is brought to tears by his observation, he, like so many others politicians before him, believes that hard-nosed politics, progress, and his own inflated sense of destiny can shape the land. Thus, Smallwood believes that Newfoundland is a place that he can impose his will upon and in doing so, create it in his own image. But as Feilding correctly observes, "it doesn't matter to the mountains we joined Confederation, nor the bogs, the barrens, the rivers, or the rocks" (560). It is this dichotomy between mankind's attempts to colonize the uncolonizable that underscores the tension in this novel. The incompatibility of these two Newfoundlands is expressed in Smallwood's attempts to unionize the fisherman on the west coast. Here, Smallwood finds people who lead a "solitary, atomized existence" that is "cut off from the world in both space and time" (355). The people he observes on the west coast are unconcerned with the political wrangling in St. John's and the wider world; instead, their lives are attached to the land and the sea. While out catching cod with a fisherman, Smallwood witnesses the exhausting battle the fisherman faces in rowing his boat against the current, dropping anchor, and hauling fish. Yet Smallwood, representing the ideals of the "new found land," provides no real help to the fisherman, a symbolic figurehead of the "old lost land." Smallwood is, in fact, an added weight in the boat that the fisherman must carry. Indeed, it is the boat and the fisherman who carries Joey and not the other way around. To highlight the gulf between these two individuals, Johnston writes that Smallwood "couldn't see [the fisherman's] face" and the fisherman could not look Smallwood "in the eye" (352). This lack of communication symbolizes the immeasurable gulf between Smallwood and the common man and this serves to underscore the folly of politics in such a natural and wild environment as Newfoundland. Indeed, as noble as Smallwood's efforts are in identifying with the struggling masses, he offers no practical "forms [of] 'help' they are familiar with" and foolishly believes his "mere presence among them would improve their lot" (355). But what the fisherman needs are ropes and twine and gloves and the practical tools to make a living off of the land. This scene emphasizes Smallwood's arrogant belief that he can manifest the promises of the 'new found land' just by being around his fellow Newfoundlanders. But more importantly, it is the image of the immense sea that foregrounds the power of nature in this scene. Here, Johnston reminds his readers that it is the sea that holds up Smallwood, the fisherman, and his boat, and it is the sea-not politics-that connects them and provides them with fish and a way of life. Although not as violent a scene depicted in the tragedy of the sealers lost on the S.S. Newfoundland, Johnston, in his quiet rendering of the sea, creates a reverence for nature and it's potentially volatile ways, which serves to foreground the latent power and presence of the 'old lost land.' This is mirrored by the striking image of the caribou herd with its overnight passage though the community. The caribou's passage attests to the power and prevalence of the natural order over mankind's attempts to colonize and control the land. In juxtaposing Smallwood's arrogant belief in his messianic mission to save the fisherman struggling with the sea and combining it with the image of the instinctual and millennial movement of the caribou herd over the land, Johnston quietly gestures towards the epochal indifference of Newfoundland's sea, its land, and its animals to mankind's whims and desires.

Our Word is Our Weapon: The Selected Writings of Subcomandante Marco articulates the revolutionar... more Our Word is Our Weapon: The Selected Writings of Subcomandante Marco articulates the revolutionary ideals of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), a mostly proletarian army of Indigenous Mexicans co-led to insurrection by a group of Mexican intellectuals against the tyranny of the Mexican government. This work is comprised of communiques, epistles and, intriguingly, a collection of short stories entitled, "Tales for a Sleepless Solitude --The Stories of Don Durito," and, in the final section a collection of tales entitled, "Old Don Antonio." An analysis of his writings with a close analysis of "The Stories of Don Durito" reveals that although the communiques clearly articulate the EZLN's social, economic, and political agenda it is, perhaps, Marcos' literary writings in these final two sections of Our Word is Our Weapon that are his most subversive because they are waging a war against the representation of Latin American "others" within the history of oppression and misrepresentation that has plagued the individuals outside of major canonical literature. Marcos' literary works are the voice of the oppressed fighting within the history of literature; a wider cultural history that extends beyond his and the EZLNs actions in Chiapas and onto the wider battleground of art, culture, history, and representation.

If World War II and the Nazi concentration camps stole the lives of nearly six million Jews, then... more If World War II and the Nazi concentration camps stole the lives of nearly six million Jews, then the Nazis's efforts to confiscate and destroy their vast art collections, coupled with the corrupt ways that the American government and other Allied powers hide behind a labyrinth of conflicting documents and specious claims regarding the fate of the recovered valuables concurrent with their efforts to obfuscate and block restitution of these artworks to their rightful owners, effectively steals their souls. Art expresses something ineffable about a culture, its history, and its values, and in many ways it is the repository of a culture's memory and its ideals-one need only think of the Mona Lisa and it instantly conjures up notions of the Renaissance, the Medicis, Italy, DaVinci and his genius etc. It is for this reason, among others, that the Third Reich put great effort into destroying art, "degenerate art," as they labeled it. The Nazis attack on art was, in effect, another holocaust that attempted to erase all memory of Western culture. Yet, as onerous as the Nazis's efforts were, there is perhaps something more insidious happening today. The fact that many works of art remain unaccounted for, in private collections, "lost," buried in secret locations forgotten to memory, or housed in museums on foreign soil only protracts the holocaust and in doing so preserves its painful memory. If Hitler wanted to steal, destroy and or profit from works of art then those countries, such as America and others who are effectively blocking the return of those objects, are equally as culpable in the theft because they are effectively aiding and abetting in the crime that was perpetrated by the Nazis. Indeed, a concerted effort by all countries to finally return all art objects and art collections to their rightful owners, perhaps, go a long way towards healing the pain and righting some of the wrongs that were perpetrated by the Nazis against art itself and the stalwart guardians who collected it.

The relatively quick succession of the murders and their grizzly nature ensured that the Ripper m... more The relatively quick succession of the murders and their grizzly nature ensured that the Ripper murders were a sensational story in the media outlets of the day. This was, indeed, a watershed moment for crime journalists, who, frustrated by the Criminal Investigation Division's lack of willingness to reveal the details of the murders, arguably invented and embellished many of the details that got published in the London daily newspapers. Why did this happen? In an effort to solve this question, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno's notion of the "culture industry," coupled with an examination of the prevailing Victorian values, and the reports in the newspapers at the time of the murders that subverted those Victorian values, reveals an effort to create hysteria within the population through a sense of disgust, whose end game was to sell more newspapers and to profit off of this sensational case.

an astonishingly informative study about the history of exploitation of Latin American countries,... more an astonishingly informative study about the history of exploitation of Latin American countries, their people and resources by imperialist and colonialist powers. Starting his study five hundred years ago with the arrival of the colonizing Spanish conquistadors and their desire for gold, Galeano's work traverses from this initial invasion up to modern times with the current invasion by neocolonial powers, such as America and other oil hungry nations, and the unscrupulous methods of exploitation perpetrated by these countries' multinational corporations, such as Standard Oil and Shell, and the continuing violence that these entities enact against Latin America, its people, and resources. Galeano's thesis is clear. His goal is to reveal the cycle of violence that has led Latin American countries into a state of dependency and poverty due to the plundering and profiteering of their vast natural resources by a revolving door of colonial and imperial powers. However, as much as Galeano points his finger outwards at these countries, he is also quick to point his finger inwards at the petit bourgeoisie, a cabal of "native overseers" or, that is, local politicians, 1 military leaders, opportunistic intellectuals, and corrupt capitalists who form an oligarchy that Galeano, Eduardo. Open Veins of Latin America, Pg. 2.

Portrayal of the Modern Industrial Factory Worker Charlie Chaplin's satirical film Modern Times (... more Portrayal of the Modern Industrial Factory Worker Charlie Chaplin's satirical film Modern Times (1936) is a classic of the medium that offers a comedic yet cogent critique of workers' conditions in modern industrialized factories, and the impact that these conditions have on the social and mental life of the average assembly line worker in the early twentieth century. Specifically, Chaplin's protagonist everyman, Little Tramp, suffers a mental breakdown due to the pressures placed upon him by his work and the working conditions there, by the machinery that enslaves him daily to a series of absurdly repetitive actions, and by the inhumane treatment that he receives from his section's over-looker and, ultimately, by the bourgeois manufacturer running the factory. Indeed, Modern Times' emphasis on the plight of the proletarian assembly line worker clearly resonates with Karl Marx's critique of capitalism in his masterful work, The Communist Manifesto; in particular, Modern Times highlights the ephemeral nature of Modern life in capitalist society, its attendant issues of speed, and the need for the bourgeoise to constantly revolutionize the means of production. Modern Times highlights the ephemeral nature of Modern life in capitalist society. As society shifted from a mostly agrarian lifestyle with a feudal system of trade and its attendant guild system to an urban industrialized capitalist one, the pace of Modern life accelerated dramatically during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The film establishes this motif during the opening credits with the presence of a clock that is relentlessly keeping time. The use of the clock symbolically gestures towards the capitalist dictum that 'time is money' and furthermore, that the life of the average industrial factory worker is 'on the clock.' This, of course, suggests that the factory worker, when under the employ of the bourgeois manufacturer, is nothing more than an instrument pushed to their physical and mental limits in order to reach the capitalists' goal of exponential growth. This impossible goal of exponential growth demands the greatest

In Redeployment, Phil Klay's award-winning collection of short stories centred around the effects... more In Redeployment, Phil Klay's award-winning collection of short stories centred around the effects of the U.S.-Iraq war on American soldiers, the narrator of "Money as a Weapon System" works with the State Office and finds himself in Istalqual, a ruined, surreal cityscape of bombed buildings and destroyed roadways, a war torn city beset by local corruption and bureaucratic red tape all of which, he reveals, conspire to thwart his attempts to activate a water treatment facility. At one point in his efforts, the narrator is lead to a room in the bowels of a crumbling concrete facility where his Iraqi guide reveals a scale model of the water treatment facility made out of little wooden sticks and toothpicks. This brittle, almost helpless image of the wooden model set within a concrete building whose suspect structural integrity threatens to topple and destroy it at any moment stands as a powerful symbol for many of the juxtapositions, incongruities, and absurdities that comprise the thematic tensions within Klay's work and within the war itself. Indeed, whether it is the architecture of a culture and its war ravaged citizens, or the architecture of a soldier's war torn body and mind, everything and everyone involved in total warfare is, like the wooden model of the water treatment facility, threatened by the savage brutality of the Iraqi war. This brutality is systemic and total, and manifests in three distinct ways: physically, psychologically, and socially.

Wayne Johnston's novel The Colony of Unrequited Dreams presents two contrasting images of Newfoun... more Wayne Johnston's novel The Colony of Unrequited Dreams presents two contrasting images of Newfoundland. On the one hand, there is the "new found land," a place that Joey Smallwood believes can be mapped, understood, and controlled through political maneuvering and the sheer force of his will. Smallwood believes it is his destiny to shape this "new found land" into a political and cultural powerhouse. On the other hand, there is the "old lost land," an atavistic environment incapable of being tamed or ruled, a place defined by an unyielding landscape and a turbulent and deadly ocean. It is Smallwood's arrogant belief that he can conflate the two, uniting the untameable with the tamed, the uncivilized with the civilized; but as Johnston's novel attests, Newfoundland is an environment that is too wild to be tamed and it is an act of hubris to believe otherwise. Upon returning from New York, Smallwood has a vision of the two contrasting images of Newfoundland. For a brief moment Smallwood sees the "new found land had lifted" from the "old lost land" (212) and he perceives a "place separate from [him], not coloured by [his] past or [his] perceptions" (211). As this suggests, there are two distinct Newfoundlands. The old lost land that exists like all land masses as an unmitigated, untouched, wild space and the "new found land," which has Newfoundlanders' hopes and dreams posited upon the old, existing one. Although Smallwood perceives these two disparate versions of Newfoundland and is brought to tears by his observation, he, like so many others politicians before him, believes that hard-nosed politics, progress, and his own inflated sense of destiny can shape the land. Thus, Smallwood believes that Newfoundland is a place that he can impose his will upon and in doing so, create it in his own image. But as Feilding correctly observes, "it doesn't matter to the mountains we joined Confederation, nor the bogs, the barrens, the rivers, or the rocks" (560). It is this dichotomy between mankind's attempts to colonize the uncolonizable that underscores the tension in this novel. The incompatibility of these two Newfoundlands is expressed in Smallwood's attempts to unionize the fisherman on the west coast. Here, Smallwood finds people who lead a "solitary, atomized existence" that is "cut off from the world in both space and time" (355). The people he observes on the west coast are unconcerned with the political wrangling in St. John's and the wider world; instead, their lives are attached to the land and the sea. While out catching cod with a fisherman, Smallwood witnesses the exhausting battle the fisherman faces in rowing his boat against the current, dropping anchor, and hauling fish. Yet Smallwood, representing the ideals of the "new found land," provides no real help to the fisherman, a symbolic figurehead of the "old lost land." Smallwood is, in fact, an added weight in the boat that the fisherman must carry. Indeed, it is the boat and the fisherman who carries Joey and not the other way around. To highlight the gulf between these two individuals, Johnston writes that Smallwood "couldn't see [the fisherman's] face" and the fisherman could not look Smallwood "in the eye" (352). This lack of communication symbolizes the immeasurable gulf between Smallwood and the common man and this serves to underscore the folly of politics in such a natural and wild environment as Newfoundland. Indeed, as noble as Smallwood's efforts are in identifying with the struggling masses, he offers no practical "forms [of] 'help' they are familiar with" and foolishly believes his "mere presence among them would improve their lot" (355). But what the fisherman needs are ropes and twine and gloves and the practical tools to make a living off of the land. This scene emphasizes Smallwood's arrogant belief that he can manifest the promises of the 'new found land' just by being around his fellow Newfoundlanders. But more importantly, it is the image of the immense sea that foregrounds the power of nature in this scene. Here, Johnston reminds his readers that it is the sea that holds up Smallwood, the fisherman, and his boat, and it is the sea-not politics-that connects them and provides them with fish and a way of life. Although not as violent a scene depicted in the tragedy of the sealers lost on the S.S. Newfoundland, Johnston, in his quiet rendering of the sea, creates a reverence for nature and it's potentially volatile ways, which serves to foreground the latent power and presence of the 'old lost land.' This is mirrored by the striking image of the caribou herd with its overnight passage though the community. The caribou's passage attests to the power and prevalence of the natural order over mankind's attempts to colonize and control the land. In juxtaposing Smallwood's arrogant belief in his messianic mission to save the fisherman struggling with the sea and combining it with the image of the instinctual and millennial movement of the caribou herd over the land, Johnston quietly gestures towards the epochal indifference of Newfoundland's sea, its land, and its animals to mankind's whims and desires.