Seventeenth Century Print Culture

"Away ungodly Vulgars, far away, Fly ye profane, that dare not view the day, Nor speak to men but shadows, nor would hear Of any news, but what seditious were, Hateful and harmful and ever to the best, Whispering their scandals … " The advent of the printing press in 16th and 17th century England was the subject of today's BBC Radio 4 programme, In Our Time. Within a length of 40 minutes or so, a lot of ground is covered and no single subject is explored in depth, as can be expected. However, it touches on many interesting aspects of this period, such as the Levellers, the Ranters, and the Diggers, besides others. All in all, an interesting, if not over-enlightening, chat between four people.

The programme can currently be downloaded in MP3 format from http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/downloadtrial/radio4/inourtime/inourtime_20060126-0900_40_st.mp3.

Yesterday's edition of The Guardian newspaper contained an 8-page comic strip, Trauma On Loan, by Joe Sacco, in its Weekend magazine supplement, which looked rather out of place next to advertisements for BMWs, properties, personal hygiene products and articles such as Seven Pointers To A Perfect Smile, fashion – the right coat can add more than a touch of style this Spring – and reviews of expensive London restaurants.

Trauma On Loan is based around Sacco's time spent with Thahe Mohammed Sabbar and Sherzad Kamal Khalid during their visit to the USA to appear as plaintiffs in a lawsuit. The lawsuit charges U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with legal responsibility for the torture and abuse of detainees in U.S. military custody in Afghanistan and Iraq, and was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First. Both Sabbar and Khalid were detained by the United States military in Iraq and were subjected to physical abuse, torture, and other cruel and degrading treatment. They were eventually released without charge.

The filed complaint is available online at http://www.aclu.org/safefree/rumsfeld/23378lgl20060105.html.

Joe Sacco's Trauma On Loan can be downloaded as a PDF from here: http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2006/01/20/fullsacco1.pdf.

Gerrard Winstanley – Fire in The Bush – 19 March 1650
(Collected in Winstanley – The Law of Freedom and Other Writings – Edited and introduced by Christopher Hill – Pelican Classics 1973)

The cover text mentions Winstanley's mastery of colloquial prose and superb use of imagery, although possibly the former is better represented, the latter is well expressed in Fire in the Bush. Out of context, slices of text would lose the force and weight they have when reading the whole piece, but nevertheless…

'If this be true, it will destroy all government and all our ministry and religion?'
I answer, it is very true;
   …
You oppressing powers of the world, who think that God hath blessed you because you sit down in the chair of government out of which former tyrants are gone: do you remember this? Your overturing, overturning, overturning, is come on to you, as well as your fellow break-promises that are gone before. You that pretend to be saviours of the people, and to seek the peace of the whole nation; and yet serve yourselves upon the people's ruins, not regarding the cry of the poor: surely you must have your overturnings too.
   …
'This man will have no government', some will say.
I answer, you run too fast. True government is that I long for to see…
   …
Love your enemies, and do as you would be done by, in actions and not in words only.
   …
… so that covetousness does not reign, imagination doth not frighten you, with 'What shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewith shall be clothed hereafter?'
   …
… you are that power that hedges some into the earth and hedges others out; and takes to yourselves, by the power of the killing sword, a liberty to rule over the labours and persons of your fellow-creatures, who are flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone. And you do the very same things, in a higher degree and nature, for which you hang other men for, punishing others for such actions as you call sin; and yet you live in the daily action yourselves, taking the earth from the weaker brother, and so killing him by poverty or prison all day long.
   …
And here I shall end with this question, What are the greatest sins in the world? I answer, these two: first for a man to lock up the treasuries of the earth in chests and houses, and to suffer it to rust or moulder while others starve for want to whom it belongs – and it belongs to all. …
The second sin is like to this, and is the same in nature with the other; and this is for any man or men first to take the earth by power of the murdering sword from others, and then by the laws of their own making do hang or put to death any who takes the fruits of the earth to supply his necessaries, from places or persons where there is more than can be made use of by that particular family where it is hoarded up.

Break-promises. Nice turn of phrase, and as true now as it was then.

On January 1st 1650 Gerrard Winstanley's A New-year's Gift for the Parliament and Army¹ was published. The English Civil War was over, the Parliamentarians, with the help of the Common People, had overthrown the Royalists and beheaded the King, Winstanley had been arrested again for digging on the Common Land at George's Hill, and the fact that the Common People had been duped into assisting the overthrow, only to have one set of tyrants replaced by another, was all too apparent. Yet Winstanley still appealed to Reason and Rationality to reverse the shocking hyprocrisy of the new state.

England is a prison; the variety of subtleties in the laws preserved by the sword are bolts, bars and doors of the prison; the lawyers are jailors, and poor men are the prisoners; for let a man fall into the hands of any from the bailiff to the judge, and he is either undone or weary of his life.

We are still living out this history, and what has changed?

1 A New-year's Gift for the Parliament and Army: Shewing what the Kingly Power is; And that the Cause of those They call DIGGERS is the life and marrow of the Cause the Parliament hath Declared for, and the Army Fought for; The perfecting of which Work, will prove England to be the first of Nations, or the tenth part of the city of Babylon, that falls off from the Beast first, and that sets the Crown upon Christ's head, to govern the World in Righteousness: By Gerrard Winstanley a lover of England's freedom and Peace.

"The whole world's insane" Re: Null & Void, 'Still…it must go on', 7" single, Not So Brave Records, 1984

Rediscovered the article by Asger Jorn, 'Pataphysics – A Religion In The Making, here. Originally appearing in Internationale Situationniste No.6 (August 1961), the translation at that link is taken from Smile No.11, (1989), the Plagiarism Special, (although reported as being from Smile No.9).

A notable quote:

The great merit of pataphysics is to have confirmed that there is no metaphysical justification for forcing everybody to believe in the same absurdity, possibilities for the absurd and in art are legion. The only logical deduction that can be made from this principle is the anarchist thesis: to each his own absurdities. The negation of this principle is expressed in the legal power of the state, which forces all citizens to submit to an identical set of political absurdities.

The complete text of Internationale Situationniste No.6, including a different translation of Asger Jorn's article, is available at the situationist international archive.

From Smile no.9:

Ever since 'grown up men' started reading Lautreamont there has existed a confusion between art (a way of looking at the world) and politics (a way of making other people look at the world in the same way as you).

I started the arduous task of HTML::Template-ising the Atlas Press code. This is just the first step towards more contrived rewrites and new code, not least an Admin Interface so that I can give up some administration duties.

..and now for some more.

Currently listening to: Gang Starr, "The Ownerz (The Instrumentals)"