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Pod Academy's Chair, Chris Creegan, reflects on Covid-19 and HIV.

A Scottish Laird becomes Lord of the Bedchamber in the Abyssinian/Ethiopian court and finds the source of the Nile.

Like many of his wealthy contemporaries in the 18th and 19th centuries, Lord James Bruce of Kinnaird made the grand tour of Europe (see the companion blog to this podcast).  Unlike many of them he also ventured further afield. For three years, from 1769 to 1772, the six-foot four Scottish laird with vivid red hair, travelled to Abyssinia, the old Ethiopian Empire comprising the northern half of present-day Ethiopia.  But his reasons for going are shrouded in mystery. Was he trying to find the source of the Nile or like an 18th century Indiana Jones, was he really searching for the Ark of the Covenant?

Our producer Antonia Dalivalle takes up the story….

Bruce arrived in the country at a time when Abyssinians weren’t exactly fans of Europeans.   A century earlier, the Emperor had kicked out the Portuguese Jesuits. They had pushed their luck and tried to convert the already-Christian Ethiopians to Catholicism.

After the last of the Portuguese fled with their tails between their legs, Abyssinia closed itself  off to outside influence – barricading itself against those they called the hyenas of the west.   Abyssinians paid each other to spread ‘fake news’ to foreigners about the journey into the interior– hoping they would turn around and go back the way they came. A common bluff was that a rampant warlord was blocking the road.

With a couple of exceptions, Bruce was pretty much the first European to set foot in the

country since the expulsion of the Jesuits. A notable exception was the seventeenth century  French doctor Jean-Baptiste Poncet, who exclaimed that the Abyssinian highlands, fragrant with flowers, reminded him of “The most beautiful part of Provence!”

Bruce surely achieved his passage to Gondar not only because of the liberal distribution of gifts - from gold to English pistols - but also because he was fluent in Ethiopian languages,  having studied them industriously before leaving Europe.

He arrived in Gondar on the occasion of an outbreak of smallpox. But this unfortunate

event had a silver lining for Bruce. Europeans before him had used medicine to get into the Abyssinian court. Luckily for Bruce, he had studied medicine in Arabia, and was able to lend a hand.

As a Protestant Scot, Bruce was in a position to forge a closer bond with the imperial family, who were anti-Catholic. At one point, Bruce placed his hand on a Bible, and explained to the Abyssinian Queen, the Iteghe,

“I declare to you, by all those truths contained in this book, that my religion is more different from the Catholic than yours is. There has been more blood shed between the Catholics and us, on account of the difference of religion, than ever was between you and the Catholics in this country."

In Abyssinia, royal and religious history are interwoven. If asked ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’, Abyssinian Queens could justifiably say the Queen

of Sheba.  Abyssinian royalty traced their lineage back to the King of Kings, King Solomon.

Bruce was similarly insistent about his royal lineage. He commissioned the Bruce of

Kinnaird tartan to be woven from fourteen colours of yarn – twice the royal seven.  Bruce was the direct descendant of the fierce Scottish warrior-king, Robert the Bruce.

After a grueling interrogation from the teenage Emperor on the subject of England, he

became Lord of the Bedchamber. The Scottish laird was now an official member of the

glorious Gondarian court.  Fluent in Amharic and Ge’ez, with his hair curled and perfumed in the ‘Abyssinian fashion’, he was the most punctilious guest.

And Bruce said about the Emperor:

“Nor did I ever after see, in his countenance,

Take a look at The Tribuna of the Uffizi by Johan Zoffany. What do you see?

A group of Georgian Grand Tourist poseurs.  But one figure, towers above the rest, stands apart, on the far right of the painting. It is James Bruce of Kinneard, the real Indiana Jones.

James Bruce is introduced in this blog, and in the accompanying short podcast  by our producer, Antonia Dalivalle.  Antonia explores the story of Bruce's travels in Abyssinia/Ethiopia in her  longer podcast The Real Indiana Jones - coming soon. 

In the left-hand corner of the painting, a jumble of valuable artefacts - including a distressed looking lion sculpture – are strewn across the floor. The connoisseurs are crowded into a chapel-like space, the Tribuna in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery. This was a ‘Holy of Holies’ – a ‘Hollywood Walk of Fame’ – of treasured European antiquities and artworks.

They were on an eighteenth-century equivalent of the ‘Gap Year’. They weren’t finding

themselves – but rather, the roots of European culture, through art, literature and archaeology.

Between coffee breaks at Rome’s Caffè degli Inglesi, the go-to-place for Brits abroad,

members of the landed gentry would draw classical antiquities and attempt to elevate their minds.Zoffany’s painting was designed to be a ‘conversation piece’. And it achieved its aim. In November 1779, Horace Walpole sent a letter to Sir Horace Mann, sneering that the piece is ‘crowded with a flock of travelling boys, and one does not know or care whom’. Bit awkward, considering Horace Mann himself is in the painting.

The son of Robert Walpole (the first Prime Minister of Britain) Horace himself had sashayed through Europe on a Grand – or rather, Grandiloquent - Tour. Instead of following the pack of milordi around the to-do list of Florentine sights, Horace enjoyed balmy evenings on the Ponte Vecchio bridge in his wide-brimmed straw hat and linen nightie, recounting a list of all the sights he couldn’t be bothered to go and see.

Back to the Tribuna. On the right, a small gathering of Grand Tourists admire the voluptuous posterior of the Venus de’ Medici. One of them goes in for a closer look with his magnifying glass. One figure, towering above the rest, stands apart. In the midst of the swaggering, sniggering gaggle of Grand Tourists, he almost escapes our notice. He’s at the margin of the painting, and seemingly an outsider, but he’s an essential compositional device. He’s one of only three participants in this painting who meet our gaze directly. The ruddy face of Zoffany peeps at us from behind the Niccolini Madonna and Titian’s sassy Venus of Urbino gives us the eye. Is Zoffany trying to tell us something, trying to mark this person out from the others? Who was he? Zoffany thought he was a ‘great man – the wonder of his age’.2 He had

presence. A six-foot four, red-headed Scottish laird, with a loud, booming voice. Despite his raging tempers, he was empathetic and charismatic. His name was James Bruce of Kinnaird.

 

In 1774, he was in Florence, having just been on a diversion in his Grand Tour. It was a very long and unusual diversion. He went to ‘Abyssiniah’ on his Gap Year.

James Bruce of Kinnaird was the real Indiana Jones. On his black horse Mizra, Persian for ‘scholar’, he visited the ancient city believed to be the Queen of Sheba’s hometown and dwelling-place of the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy of Holies. But Bruce was no interloper. He stayed in Abyssinia, today known as Ethiopia, for three years, from 1769 to 1772.  He would become a familiar of the Abyssinian royal court. Appointed Lord of the Bedchamber to the Emperor, he would gain unique insights into the country’s royal and political history.

He became friends with the Machiavellian Governor of Tigray and fell in love with his wife,Ozoro Esther, a beautiful and brutal princess.

What does it mean to be a 'good man'? With so much talk about toxic masculinity,  there is, perhaps. a pre-supposition that there is no good masculinity.

This lecture by Dr Nina Power, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Roehampton University, is based on her forthcoming book, What do Men Want?  It is part of the IF Project's 2019 lecture series, Thinking Between the Lines: truth, lies and fiction in an age of populism.

Nina Power points to the resentment men feel towards women (and women's resentment of men).  Nowhere is that resentment more apparent than in the male only groups that are springing up  such as Fathers for Justice, INCEL men, and Men Going their Own Way (mgtow), whose website says.

Happiness is a man who protects and cares for his family, goes forth and conquers, gives of himself for a greater cause, and ensures his legacy – because that’s what he was made to do.........But today’s men are ... told to “man up” and tough it out through turbulent waters while being called misogynists for expecting sustenance. They’re shamed into putting down roots in infertile hypergamous soil that offers no support, then are financially ruined and separated from their children when they cannot weather the storm.

It is this that Nina Power, as a feminist, is seeking to understand.  Pointing to the popularity of Jordan Peterson - his sell-out book 12 Rules for Life, the fact that he recently filled the O2 Arena in London - she suggests that men are searching for a role. Peterson, says Nina Power, is a patriarchal figure.  Patriarchs in the bible like Abraham are protectors, they take responsibility.  Feminsts talk about 'the patriarchy'but where are the patriarchs now? she asks

This lecture roams over the post Me Too fear of touch, male suicide, trans men ,pick-up artists, sex on campus, men who live without contact with women, and time and again, men's uncertainly about their role.

But we live in a hetero-social society, men and women work together, live together, play together.  Nina Power suggests that we need to talk more, understand each other more, and have more fun together.

Photo:  "Making Men" by Damien Schumann is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 

This lecture on Left populism is part of the IF Project’s lecture series, Thinking between the Lines: Truth, Lies and Fiction in an age of populism.   Dr Marina Prentoulis, Senior Lecturer in the School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies at University of East Anglia and a member of Syriza, explores the differences between Left and Right Wing populism.

She recognises that Left and Right populism are often seen as two sides of the same coin, and points to What is Populism? by Jan-Werner Müller (one of the best known books on populism) as being an analysis which wrongly conflates left wing and right wing populism, in part because it uses a journalistic rather than a rigorous theoretical approach, focusing on form rather than policy.  For example, Werner contends that

“populist claim that they, and only they, represent the people” p. 20

“populists live in a kind of political fantasy world: they imagine an opposition between corrupt elites and a morally pure, homogeneous people” (p. 41)

“Populists create a Homogeneous people in whose name they have been speaking all along” (p.48)

“…populism is thus a moralized form of anti-pluralism…” (p.20)

By contrast, Dr Prentoulis challenges the notion of a 'homogenous people' and argues that it is policy that makes left and right populism very different from one another, with open borders, internationalism and inclusion being fundamental to all forms of left populism, and 'nation' and exclusion being an intrinsic part of all right wing populisms.

 

Picture:  Occupy London 2011 Global Democracy Now Occupy London Tents in front of St Pauls, London Sunday 16th October 2011 by Neil Cummings

"No one has ever doubted that truth and politics are on rather bad terms with each other, and no one, as far as I. know, has ever counted truthfulness among the political virtues.

Lies have always been regarded as necessary and justifiable tools not only of the politician's or the demagogue's but also of the statesman's trade.

Why is that so? And what does it mean for the nature and the dignity of the political realm, on one side, and for the nature and the dignity of  truth and truthfulness, on the other?"

From Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought

So says political philosopher Hannah Arendt, the subject of this lecture which is part of the IF Project's lecture series, Thinking between the Lines: Truth, Lies and Fiction in an age of populism.

Dr Dan Taylor of Goldsmiths, University of London, takes the title Truth and Politics (the title of Arendt's essay quoted above), to explore the testy and troublesome relationship between truth and politics.

Are all politicians just liars?  asks Dr Taylor.  No, but some lie a lot more than others.  Why? he asks.  Is there something about being powerful and wealthy that makes you lie to mystify the conditions of your own power to suggest that your position is well earned, natural?

And why do we place such a premium on the truth, anyway, when we are so cynical about it?

Dr Taylor uses Arendt's work as a tool to consider Donald Trump's 'alternative facts', Ivanka Trump, Extinction Rebellion and climate deniers, the Pentagon Papers, Rudy Giuliani (who said the truth is not the truth), and the 'spin' of Tony Blair.

Facts are just facts, says Dr Taylor, but lies create an alternative reality and undermine our faith in democracy.  Totalitarianism relies on a network of lies, that reinforce each other and create an alternative reality.

Hannah Aarendt is perhaps best known for writing about "the banality of evil" in connection with the trial of Adolf Eichmann 1961-63.

Who is allowed to make things up?   What does fiction writing have to do with life? Is a novel a document? This is the second lecture in the If Project series, Thinking Between the Lines: truth, lies and fiction in an age of populism.  Dr Katie da Cunha Lewin (@kdc_lewin) explores what it means to 'make things up' in literature, especially looking at writing by women.

 

“I don’t have to go anywhere, I don’t have to imagine anything. It’s in the living room with me. – Sheila Heti

The quote above from Sheila Heti, a Canadian writer whose recent work Motherhood (2018), dealt with the many questions that underpin the idea of mothering and child-rearing, helps us think about the central idea of this lecture: what does it mean to ‘make things up’ in literature? Who is allowed to make things up? And what happens if writing avoids doing that all together?

In my argument for this lecture, I want to unpack some of these questions, but I also want to suggest something about the politics of making things up.

This lecture will be split into two sections: in the first, I’ll be talking about writing and its relationship to life; that is, writing and our idea of its relation to truth. In the second section, I want to discuss the relationship between writing, invention and reality in contemporary American writing by women. I want to think about how this relation to truth changes according to who is doing the writing, and importantly how that truth is perceived by the wider reading public. In this, we find lots of issues to do with authority, agency, and labour – but there is also a wider question about why we want our fiction to be ‘made up’ and what it is that our fiction looks like. And also want to look ahead slightly to (perhaps the not so distant future) about the effect on technology and our ‘truth.’ 

This theme has come from my own research on the idea of the genius and who is allowed to ‘be’ a genius. I don’t particularly like the term, but the way it is used, thrown around in reviews, or used as selling points for exhibitions interests me. Much of what comes to define a genius is, I suggest, that we know what the genius looks like: a single, solitary man, brooding somewhere remote: like THIS [SLIDE – Image 1] or THIS [SLIDE – Image 2]. The first image shows us the isolated romantic hero, surveying the land and looking out at the contrasts and beauties of nature, isolated in a wild landscape beyond human reckoning. In the other we have the idealised image of solitude, the man alone in his room, thinking deeply and engaging with the world from within his own domain. This image of the solitary genius is defined the space in which the genius lives: this space, the ‘writing room’ as we may think of it, is quiet, owned by them in some capacity, out of way enough to allow them to work undisturbed, and often full of particular possessions, books, posters, artwork, comfy chairs, writing equipment, and a desk.

I’ll be looking at some extracts from novels, and some short stories, but I’ll also be including some extracts from interviews and also reviews. In this way, we can see not only what women were writing about but also the reception of the work. This is how the lines of culture are drawn: it is not only through readers that authors meet their fate; it is also through the tastemakers, those who help facilitate the production of culture, publishers, editors, cultural critics, magazine editors, radio programmers etc. etc. It’s important to remember that by the time a book is published it has gone through many hands already; once is out there in the world it also has to be sorted, assigned a genre, a place on the bookshelf, the sort of home it goes to – pre/post. In today’s world of publication – which, we mustn’t forget is also a business – there are certain trends and certain styles of writing which are of interest. So, in the book industry,

"We need to get away from the idea that knowledge, expertise and truth are obvious and given."

This first lecture in the IF Project lecture series 2019, Thinking Between the Lines: Truth, lies and fiction in an age of populism is given by Professor Will Davies of Goldsmith's, University of London.

Professor Davies's powerpoint can be found here.

What does it mean to know the world?  Why can't we agree on what is true anymore?  Why do many people no longer trust experts?

Professor Davies sets out to fathom what is driving the conflicts and fragmentations in the infrastructure underpinning our understanding of the world.   Using his most recent book, Nervous States, as a jumping off point he analyses the the disintegration of consensus, identifying the roles played by the ubiquity and speed of technology as well as economics and psychology.

Importantly he asks, what is a fact?  And in answer looks back in history, drawing on the work of Mary Poovey (A History of the Modern Fact ) who traced the origins of 'accepted facts' to the development of accountancy conventions in the 17th century for merchants in Amsterdam who needed to have a commonly understood, accepted, shared and trusted basis for commercial transactions.

He considers why facts that describe the world in this 'neutral' way, independent of political, moral and theological argument (such as where civil servants collect data on births, marriages, deaths, road and rail use, levels of immigration, home ownership etc and on which they then base policy recommendations) seem to be less and less persuasive.  He suggests that this is because establishing these neutral facts takes time - in a world guided by feelings and emotions, where we have to be constantly adaptive and alert, decisions are often gut reactions, taken fast.

He ends with a plea for time - time for research, time for reflection.  But concedes that this is swimming against the current tide.

 

Main picture:"Day 15 #Truth" by mishey_mouse, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Pat Thane, Research Professor at King's College, London and Professor Emerita, University of London, explores the social and political history of Britain over the past 100+ years with Pod Academy's Lee Millam, as they discuss her latest book, Divided Kingdom.

This podcast is a tour de force as Professor Thane takes us from the founding of the Labour Party in 1900 in response to low wages and poor working conditions, through 2 world wars and the arrival of globalisation with its attendant precarity and poverty wages.  Highlighting changing living standards and expectations and inequalities of class, income, wealth, race, gender and sexuality,  she reveals what has (and has not) changed in the UK since 1900, explaining how our contemporary society, including its divisions and inequalities, was formed.

Over the years there are recurring themes such as housing shortages and women's campaigns for equality, and there are some surprises - the much derided 1970s were actually the time of the greatest equality!

Divided Kingdom, a history of Britain 1900 to the present by Professor Pat Thane is published by Cambridge University Press.

What is the real cost of IVF?  As Louise Brown the world’s first “test tube” baby celebrates her 40th birthday – this seminar organised by the Progress Educational Trust  explores not just the economic cost, but also the emotional and psychological costs.  Worldwide there have been 60 million live births as a result of IVF, but it is still the case that over 60% of IVF cycles don't work.

Does receiving fertility treatment confer any benefit to patients, even if there is no baby to take home at the end? Is unsuccessful fertility treatment more devastating than no treatment at all, or is it better to at least have had the chance to try?

The event was held at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG). You may be interested to read the RCOG scientific impact paper on multiple pregnancies following assisted conception, referred to in the seminar

Chaired by Sally Cheshire, Chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority

Speakers

Dr Rebecca Brown Jacky Boivin

Professor of Health Psychology and Chartered Health Psychologist at Cardiff University's School of Psychology

Research Fellow at the University of Oxford's Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics

Jessica Hepburn

Author of the books The Pursuit of Motherhood and 21 Miles: Swimming in Search of the Meaning of Motherhood

Professor Lesley Regan

President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists

Photo:  Test tube baby by Brendan Dolan-Gavitt