master narratives you and I choose need not agree. The only requirement is that they both distinguish freedom from the impunity of the American imperial state. Both must concede that an empire of liberty has not yet arrived—not in Fallujah, not in Kabul, not in White Plains.
As important as the master narrative you choose is the governing scene you give it. The governing scene is the picture you give your narrative in your mind so that you can hold your narrative in consciousness clearly over a sustained duration or summon it immediately for internal review as the occasion requires.
The governing scene I use is a composite made from two moments taken from the Trenton newspaper article:
George Anderson at the age of twelve is standing and watching—everyone on the Danville farm was ordered by the master to appear in the Fair House yard to witness a slave’s correction—from early morning until late in the afternoon, as his brother, older by four years, Robert Anderson, is whipped to death by two men, his master and the overseer. (They whip him continuously, taking turns, for having stolen something after previous punishments and warnings for the same offense had not reformed his character. It is well known by everyone present that Robert is the master’s son.) There is an April light in Virginia in which birds’ wings flash—Edenic it is called, and then American. I have captioned this moment with words from the Trenton newspaper article: “So they began to beat him early in the morning.”
This first scene immediately gives way and merges with the next one: To the accompaniment of the explosive sounds of the flapping walls of a revival’s canvas tent, George Anderson is suddenly standing twelve years after the end of the Civil War explaining to everyone around him that he has found his savior. He is animated and joyful and speaks with great confidence. I have labeled this moment and its duration with the words of the newspaper article, “When I knew I had found my Savior I got right up in that meeting and told everybody so.” (The passage in its entirety reads, “When I knew I had found my Savior I got right up in that meeting and told everybody so and since that time I have never been alone. I did not cast off the chains of slavery at the time of the surrender, they fell off at that camp meeting.”)
Without control the governing scene can produce the following undisciplined sound instead of a musical note: “No other sound beneath his screaming—this sparrow in morning flight—this white post’s new wood—a complicity of presence.”
You proved torture with your body and then signed documents granting immunity and insuring that torture would continue as a virtuous policy of the American state. Writing this, I feel my acquiescence and lend my complicity to your signature.
It never occurred to me to insist that Fred Avery deal in his memoir more conscientiously with the question of his responsibility for authorizing and overseeing the torture with which the agency he directed was tasked by those who appointed you to head the Office of Legal Counsel, the post you always dreamed of holding. Of course, he attended all the meetings of principals in which torture’s necessity was discussed. His high rhetoric (and boyish laughter)—the devotion of his public service—the stern kindness of his unpretentious command—my complicity—the fellowship of our birth and class—all this prevented it. The stillness surrounding the careful silence of authority is not kind. In the event we decided it was best that the text of his memoir emphasize the intensity of the good faith with which he protected the nation in a time of war. We agreed to stress, with the sound of modest words, his devotion to family and country in the exercise of his disciplined will and fallible moral strength.
I did not question his rhetoric or his narrative. What did you think when you read the passage in his memoirs about lawyers (in a crisis “despite what Hollywood might have you believe, you don’t call in the tough guys; you call in the lawyers”)? Are all the rest (the acts themselves as knowable experience) authorless events from a dead star committed by no one who need be held accountable so long as patriotic motives governed the speech that gave the order? Did it make present the perfection of the violence and the silence we bear so lightly and so drunkenly inside ourselves? Avery’s book sold more copies than any other title in bookstores its first week; it continues to sell well, I’m sure. I am your accomplice in our class’s alchemy of national impunity.
Our force of rule, in every moment, extends beyond all law. This is the secret of all totalitarian government.
I’m not blaming you. I have sworn to do the same as you or worse. Neither of us has ever resigned from anything for reasons of principle.
By historical method I mean every means of examination of conscience, of meditation, of contemplation of vocal and mental speech and other acts by which a person prepares and disposes the self to rid its coherence and integrity of all inordinate attachments to empire, and, after their removal, by which he or she creates reciprocity and joins with others in a society of equal historical selves (SOEHS).
To begin is always hardest. The ending, I hope, will come easily and in good time once we have begun. Things happen only once and in only one way. If this were not the case we would not be listening like this to the just reproach of all the anonymous, historical dead.
My father and his father before him fought, painfully, almost famously, in foreign wars. They both killed many men—women and children too. I never came close to doing anything as brave as you. My father was a gentleman and a scholar who said everyone, in principle, owed the state a life. Is this true? In the event, I told him he lied—that he held that doctrine out of self-interest and not to further emancipative, democratic reason. Was I right to make this claim—this buttressed argument? What appropriate action flows from such aggression?
The choice of a new master narrative and a governing scene with which to refuse empire will come easily only for a few. For most it will come with difficulty.
The First Day’s Exercise is to write on a loose sheet of paper (or on the line provided below, if you prefer) the master narrative you have chosen with which to live the present moment as history. Next, immediately below this, describe in as few words as possible the governing scene with which you will hold your master narrative in mind over a sustained period. The governing scene should be designed so that it can bring your master narrative immediately to consciousness whenever the occasion demands its use.
Master Narrative:
Governing Scene:
Second Day’s Exercise: Now that you have chosen your master narrative and its governing scene, identify the sources you will use in making reasoned arguments to justify your actions in the present. This is the art for which we were trained. (Of course you are welcome, instead of creating a master narrative and governing scene of your own, to adopt mine and adapt them as you wish. Again, the documents upon which the present I am living depend (the longer one was written by you) are both included here at the end. How can we rely upon our words to mean themselves when we meet in person unless we know how our rule is explained as just? The bravery of your action to decide the meaning of words, my vision two years ago, and my daily practice of this method give me hope that we can create the present of another history.
The present, a waiting for justice, takes the form of a love song. It sounds like this:
Every moment forfeit/In a history of absolute loss./I am valuable because she came back./If you see Leda before I do,/Sing her this song/So she does not choose another./I will do the same for you, if,/While you are away, I meet/ Your one true love/And you teach me the words./Refuse empire; create reciprocity.
Third Day’s Exercise: If you do not already have them by heart, memorize now the words of the Declaration of Independence. This will assure that the master narrative of our empire will be brought closer to you, giving you a secure place to begin. If you feel the powers of memory waning, memorize as far as the lines “and organizing
