Coetzee and Schein

by admin | Jul 30, 2022

Coetzee and Schein Email Exchanges

Here are the supplementary materials concerning the email discussions between J.M. Coetzee and me that are summarized and referenced throughout Cruelty: A Book About Us (Palgrave, 2023) but, to protect all parties, they do not appear there verbatim. Please use the contents of this section only as a reference and within the proper context.

The exchanges and contents below are protected by Maggie Schein © 2022, © 2023, and/or J.M. Coetzee, © 2022, © 2023, and/or Palgrave Macmillan Springer Nature Publishers ,© Winter, 2023. DO NOT copy, excerpt, or quote any of the contents of these pages and/or this website without explicit written permission from the relevant copyright holder(s). Please see the About page for more.

This section of the website is for readers of Cruelty: A Book About Us (Palgrave Macmillan Springer Nature Publishers, © 2023), ONLY. It is not meant to be isolated from the main text and will make little to no sense without that context.
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EMAIL EXCHANGES (and brief commentaries) referenced in Cruelty: A Book About Us

REMINDER (and “On Mistakes Part 1”, © Maggie Schein, August, 2003):

Over the decades, one of the people I’ve had the mysterious fortune to continue having a conversation with about cruelty, inhumanity, humanity, belonging, and their orbital concepts, is the thinker, novelist, essayist, professor, and scholar, J.M. Coetzee (“Coetzee” from here, except for in direct address to him). As mentioned in the book itself, use of private verbatim emails in scholarly works seems unorthodox enough, and to use them as I have done, even more so. I am sincere about our subject being difficult to talk about, think about, and that that requires of us a commitment to genuine conversations. As mentioned previously, going up in conversation with the likes of Coetzee about anything is not something to take easy or for granted. When talking about cruelty with anyone, though, the anxiety about what we are and how we belong reveals itself in glistening, dynamic, unabashedly naked dialogue—if we don’t see it, our interlocutor will likely see it or see themselves reflected in it.

The partial exchanges between Coetzee and me that are referenced here are included because they demonstrate the difficulty of two people who have thought about and studied cruelty for the majority of their lives. Neither of us is shy about it. Nor are we unaware of the potential offenses and complications—and each and both are at every turn.

I would like to add the obvious, which is that including correspondence between scholars who share resonant interests is in no way unusual in hybrid, literary, and scholarly works, though the media change over time. What does make this slightly more unorthodox is the retention of the organic, pre-pubescent, often unclarified, or unfinished (I speak only for myself) nature—which is the way of most conversations about things that can make our formerly familiar perspectives seem suddenly distorted or disconcerting. In writing, as I’m often reminded to my dismay, unlike in some instances of speaking, there are no real take-backs. The mistakes themselves are simply that, but they demonstrate the urgency (or flighty-ness) with which they are made and the forms of trust that are their undercurrents. That’s a glorified way of saying I apologize for my errors in writing and thinking, but I left them intentionally nonetheless, and I think it is interesting to speculate about why and how one responds to that choice, as the author, a reader, friend, foe, stranger, in pubic, and in private. Each is revealing. But of what?

What one is to make of mistakes in writing is its own subject. What to make of mistakes that could be easily corrected?; What to make of mistakes made out of ignorance, sloppiness, carelessness, rashness, presumption?; What to make of mistakes purposely left as a challenge or test?; What to make of mistakes left intentionally for other reasons?; What to make of those never forgiven, forgotten, corrected, acknowledged, or even noticed?; What about the ones that reveal unique patterns of an individual’s communication and thinking? These are questions for another time, but we should make that time some time and ask them. For now, my only inchoate response to “Why leave in your clunkiness, your errors of thought, of typing, of word choices and so on?” is that I think I want to make present the concoction of risk, intimacy, trust, error, disaster, effervescent understandings and slow crawls towards dead ends, that make up communications about rough stuff. In short, because that’s what the conversations looked like.

As with cruelty and its opposite, making trust and breaking trust often follow the same exact rules of engagement.

I am true to my word (ironies in that statement aside) that communication is confounding enough, and communication about communicating about topics such as “What we are in the world?” or “What in the world are we?” are messy. Inelegant, often. Raw. We don’t learn just through the reflection of the polished, even when that, often especially when that, is the convention by circumstance or title (in a corporate office or with a professorship, say)– and we know this. I don’t believe our insatiable attraction to “after parties,” “behind the scenes” reels, “first drafts,” “memoirs,” and “diaries” are compelled only by shallowly voyeurism. Often they are the little child in us, up on tippy toes on a log, fingers grasping at the windowsill to see what the grown folks really do; that is, to learn. For many reasons, we learn not just from where and how we fuck up but also from where and how others fuck up, and where and how we and they mess up when it is supposed to no longer be a practice, trial, or rehearsal run, but does the real deal also come with the threat of no take-backs. With professionalism comes a responsibility to a certain kind of whip-lash permanence as well as spare oil for gaslighting (the polished veneer of no cracks makes those that are found all the more tempting to abuse): people make a sport of holding others accountable for mis-spoken, poorly or incorrectly written communications, or errors dropped and abandoned with a discernable lack of decency.

Each of these kinds of fumbles is an opportunity to learn about what we didn’t know we didn’t know and took for granted that we did or that someone, some expert or supposed expert, did. Such fumbles may even prompt us to ask, for instance, what do our coverups tell us about not just our mistake, but also about what we perceive of those we have tried to deceive about our mistakes, albeit out of some form of convention? What about the reader and the circumstance do we assume or take for granted?

When it comes to the subjects like cruelty or humanity, I don’t believe there are experts, shiny answers or untorn and un-tear-stained maps: only children lying on the moist grass in the evening, creating the reality of a moment or a moment of reality, and then rearranging it, of constellations that stay together only just so long as they are held in the orbits of collective minds.

The below exchanges, along with the rest of those between Coetzee and me, are extended in real-life, of course. So for all the “realness” I intend to preserve, I extract these from the restless totality of their contexts in part to establish that I am sincere about this not being an easy subject to talk about, think about, and one that requires genuine conversations that are often exposing. Again, for copyright restrictions, I was not able to include the verbatim and full exchanges in the text of the book itself. However, with Coetzee’s permissions, verbatim conversations between us referenced in this book can be read below.

Emails and Commentary

From Chapter 1: What The Scholars Owe Us

Dear John,

Back to the “Can only humans be cruel?” debate you and I tussle over: although one might descriptively or poetically say a cat is cruel to the mouse, or that “April is the cruelest month, ” (Eliot, T. S., W.W. Norton, 2001.) is there an occasion you can think of in which it is appropriate to accuse a nonhuman of being cruel to a human? Even a dog that bites the hand that feeds him is only considered a “bad dog,” right? He might be considered legally (at least here in many states) a “dangerous animal,” but I can’t imagine anyone would in seriousness call him “cruel.”

As always,

Maggie

From Chapter 2: Some Anxieties About being Us

Please see note in the body of the text of Cruelty: A Book About Us (Palgrave, 2023) for content about a more recent email exchange with Coetzee concerning a draft of this chapter as I was writing it, http://maggieschein.com/coetzee-and-schein/.

Our conversation shifts here to different categories of beings that can be said to be cruel and about whose acts “cruelty” unproblematically may apply, the qualities of being human that are relevant for belonging in that category, and what we might mean by “in” human.

Before you visit Coetzee’s full responses, I ask that you first turn the questions about this to yourself: in common discourse, how do we (how do you?) distinguish between humane and inhumane slaughter, for instance?…What are we measuring our humanity against? Are cruel slaughters “cruel” because they cause more pain than necessary (and why? And who determines what is “necessary”?); a specific kind of pain; an extended pain; death for our gain; death to which we are indifferent; pain that causes us pleasure, amusement, or satisfaction?

Coetzee responds that it depends on how we define and use “cruel.” To his query, I flirted with what stops me from restricting the attribution of “cruelty” to humans only:

Dear John,

I understand mine was clearly an unfair demand, since I’ve stipulated which use/meaning of the word I’m focused on, and that one, of course, is human-based. My question is not just about my restricted use. We often call non-human behavior among predators and prey in the non-human world cruel—of course we can and do and I believe that use/meaning has legitimate application. My question was can you think of an instance in which it is ordinary or customary to accuse a non-human of being cruel to a human being? That is, in ordinary parlance, does it ever “go both ways?”

Again, even when Roy (of “Siegfried and Roy”) was brutally mauled by one of his personally raised, loved, and trained tigers, without provocation, not only was the tiger not blamed, but there was no talk of betrayal, cruelty or anything of the sort. When a dog bites the hand that feeds him, he is a bad, mean dog, not a cruel dog; when an animal rebuffs the affections of a caretaker (say experiences such as Jane Goodall and Sue Savage Rumbaugh have had), that might hurt the human’s feelings, and the ape or chimp might be called rude, crude, or mean or even disrespectful, but we don’t usually call the animal’s behavior against the human cruel, right? Does that question make more sense, or am I still not articulating it correctly?

Thank you and best,

Maggie

He responds:

Dear Maggie,

If you concede that the word cruel could be used for an animal, then I would say that for a lion to disable a human being and then disembowel that human being while still alive would be cruel.

All the best,

John

The exchange continues as we struggle with the issues. During it, Coetzee brings up indifference as that which may mark cruelty and that also is not particular to human beings.

He responds:

Dear Maggie,

It all depends, of course, on what meaning you give to the word “cruel,” that is, it depends on how the word is used in ordinary discourse. We distinguish between slaughtering animals in a humane way and slaughtering them in an inhumane way. The humane way is to cause death immediately and without pain. The inhumane way, sometimes called causing a cruel death, is to make death painful and protracted. The “cruel” slaughterer is accused of being indifferent to the pain of the beast. This is usually taken to be a moral accusation.

Carnivorous animals often disable their prey and then eviscerate it. The prey is (we presume) conscious for at least part of the time, and suffers severe pain, to which the carnivore is (we infer from its behavior) indifferent. One could use the word “cruel” for such a way of killing its prey, in line with the use of the word “cruel” for the human slaughterer who is indifferent to the pain of the beast. But it is difficult to argue that to call (say) a lion cruel is a moral accusation.

The difficulty you (MS) face is that you can’t claim that the word “cruel” can only be used of human agents (maybe only of human agents who have reached the age of reason) while at the same time challenging me to produce an example of a cruel animal.

All the best,

John

I respond, but I am not happy with my response, and I would change it now if I could—in part, I wish I had addressed the immediate jump in his email (and one I also make and am explicitly hesitant about in the book) from a question about “cruelty” to an example about what is considered “humane” or “inhumane,” the relationship between both, and both with indifference, and attribution of moral accountability.

Dear John,

Okay.

I suspect, in addition to me still working this out, is that I am operating off of my definition of cruelty. Do I read you correctly in saying that for you it is mostly a matter of indifference? As in Kierkegaard: “At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference”? (Kierkegaard, Søren. Fear and Trembling/Repetition. Trans. And Ed., Howard Hong and Edna Hong. (Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1983).) In which case, certainly non-humans are masters of it. I am in awe of their capacity to be completely indifferent to the presence, the plight, and the very existence of others, including both those of their own kind or territory, and us humans. It’s mesmerizing, really, how important and prevalent irrelevance and indifference are to their ethos, their lives, their worlds.

But that is not my bare-bones structure–definition of cruelty. I don’t exclude indifference, of course, but I do include attitudes and actions that count as entanglement and engagement with another.

For instance, I recently went for cocktails with one of the original FBI profilers of serial killers and serial rapists. He was field trained and helped develop the training for what became profilers for all divisions of the FBI: from torture to child sexual assault.

He talked about his cases and he used words like “brutal,” “violent,” “savage,” “horrific,” and so on, but on only one did he use the descriptive “cruel.”
That case was an abduction of a woman in the back of a van equipped with videos, torture devices, weapons, tape, and plastic tarps, in full display. The perp videoed everything, but never physically touched the victim. And then he eventually released her. When I asked my new friend why that one was cruelty and the others barbaric, unspeakable, horrific, and so on, he said that it was because the perp used her fear to become aroused and to torment her, but no physically sexual or just physical assault. That is a perfect example for my definition of cruelty. Fear is an instinct for flight or aggression for survival. The perp didn’t allow either of those useful trajectories for that response in his scenario. Rather, he perverted that necessary and natural instinct, literally, for his own pleasure, without physically harming her at all. He was not indifferent. On the contrary, he was quite engaged.

The bare bones of my definition are that (a human) takes what should make a creature flourish as one of its kind and perverts it for its harm. That may be due to intention, that may be indifferent, that may be out of ignorance, that may be out of misguided benevolence (“Save the man, but kill the Indian”), it may be for sadistic pleasure, and so on.

As I’ve said, I acknowledge there are artificial constraints I’ve built into this formula. My reason is that I think looking at what we mean by “humanity”—if we mean anything coherent at all—through that lens is revealing.

That may help not at all, but if there’s any of it that helps clarify, or if you can address the indifference question, I would be very happy.

As always,

The difference in his position and mine is not easy: he doesn’t appear to believe that cruelty has to be reserved as a moral or specifically human accusation or term. I, however, would like to see what happens if we commit to going with my insistence that it is.

I am still not convinced that indifference is the key…for more on that think about the relationships between indifference, anxieties about being us, about what it means to belong to humanity and about our need for reassured primal and social connectedness. “Indifference” I think may be a helpful term in understanding a deficit in what counts as “humanity,” in certain instances in which our attentiveness would’ve been relevant, but it is not sufficient, I don’t think, to be a defining feature of us, of those beings who can be cruel, of being guilty of acts of cruelty. In fact, I would venture to say that it is possible to provide more instances of cruelty in which a lack of indifference was more of a driver than not—in some instances a “beware of the helping hand” scenario. Our question then would be: is the next question Indifference to what? It appears we may be damned if we care and damned if we don’t, which may mean we are a little confused, and in such a situation of impossible or wicked balance, it is often advisable to consider that we may be pursing the wrong route.

I email John:

Dear John,

I am sorry to abuse your “office hours” again but not so sorry that I won’t continue to try to do so. Thank you for your indulgence.

Here’re two things that are interesting to me about operating with a definition of cruelty based on a concept of indifference (which, as said, is not only not central to my definition but also would only be included in its description in select instances—for instance, those in which a certain kind of responsiveness was expected based on our understanding of the nature of the creature causing the harm): first, so much of the natural world survives because most of the time, most creatures are completely indifferent to the goings on of the lives of most other creatures. That is, that very indifference describes the well-fed wild cat’s complete disinterest in the presence of an injured, screaming, (and therefore easy to eat or simply extinguish) rabbit nearby. Are they also indifferent to suffering, sometimes. But I do question when we ask that question what we are expecting of them and how much projection (usually with the sufferer) is occurring. The first point really is that if indifference is the key concept, it is as responsible for peace as it is for cruelty AND all the world is cruel, which certainly takes the oomph out of the concept of cruelty, I think.

Second, you are using indifference to establish that nonhumans can be cruel as well as can humans. The odd thing is that those like Jeffery Masson (Masson, Jeffery. Beasts: What Animals Can Teach Us About Human Nature. Bloomsbury USA; Reprint edition (February 10, 2015).) trie to make the opposite case. Granted, he does a strange twisty-turn, folding in some kind of undefined reason as well (or something. Masson’s understanding of “unnecessary” and “violent” is unclear to me. Those are relative terms that must be unpacked to be useful). But at the end of the twisty-turns of his observations, it seems clear that the thinks the indifference of humans is morally different than the indifference of non-humans.

If I am honest, at the heart of all of this is something of a justification, I think, of the sense that we, humans, don’t belong. We must earn our place—and of course, that in general, we suck terribly at doing that and should be kicked out of the property, so to speak. At least that’s true in a crude way for me. Perhaps that is where you and I differ fundamentally? You are either more of an optimist about our nature and our place in nature than I, or more of a pessimist about nature itself (meaning we belong in the brutality and cruelty of existence just fine).

The retort, of course, is that I am some kind of romantic about “nature.” I expect to get that back at me. I am not, I don’t think. But I do concede it’s a fine and complicated attempt at a balancing act between being honestly humble about our place in this place and NOT over valuing the owners and natives, so to speak.

So, do you have further thoughts on indifference?

Best,

In that same email, I say, or rather inquire about Jefferey Masson: “J. Masson thinks the indifference of humans is morally different than the indifference of non-human.” Coetzee’s response here needs to be seen in his own words. It is layered and fascinating. Again, first ask yourself, what you think of the predicaments I proposed and partially forced? Do you want to call on a certain sort of faith to weigh in here? Would you, do you, believe in something divine that might make a difference between the mother throwing her newborn in the trash bin and the tiger who kills his caregiver, or the Orca who leaves her newborn to drown? One might go there…but to what degree, what cost, and what benefit? Do you, reading this now, think the indifference of humans is morally different than the indifference of non-humans?

In our conversations, Coetzee says:

“Only a human being could believe so. If you want Masson’s observation to have any force, you have to believe there is a morality outside the human realm, a morality which is not a human construct. I would not be averse to going down that route, but to do so is a major step.”

Yours,

John

His last statement is not to be overlooked, nor is how understatedly cautious it feels. I have been dogmatically agnostic in offering a framework for thinking through cruelty. That has its very serious risks—for instance, if we remain secular and only secular, we come into problems we may not be able to resolve. Stepping outside the secular or at least agnostic is, indeed, a major step.

I’m grateful that Coetzee does have more to say about indifference.

As a contextual reminder for these exchanges, below and interspersed, I have included sections as they appear in the book or with minor modifications. The genuine exchange is expectedly complex and not all of it could be replicated here or in the text of the book at the time of this writing, so I have made use of summaries as well as I could.

He starts his response by addressing “indifference” as a limning or absence of empathy, either by will or inability.

He responds:

Dear Maggie.

1. Indifference. One translation of indifference is unwillingness or inability to empathize. Inability to empathize has been taken, and is perhaps still taken, as the mark of the psychopath. One could say of psychopaths that because of this fundamental lack, they cannot be said to behave cruelly, though to my mind their behavior remains cruel. Perhaps one could develop this distinction.

2. Morality. You write: “ Masson thinks the indifference of humans is morally different than the indifference of non-human. “it is; but only a human being could believe so. If you want Masson’s observation to have any force, you have to believe there is a morality outside the human realm, a morality which is not a human construct. I would not be averse to going down that route, but to do so is a major step.

3. Pessimism. “ You are either more of an optimist about our nature and place in nature than I, or more of a pessimist about nature itself (meaning we belong in the brutality and cruelty just fine).” I am not more of an optimist than you. I fear that humankind’s overdeveloped faculty of reason is going to make this planet a poorer and more miserable place than it has been in millions of years.

All the best,

John

Pause here.

To be upfront, I have been and still am extremely apprehensive about how strongly my treatments of reason or rationality have been in this discourse are and how they will be taken. Coetzee’s shared sense of bleakness of using the wrong tool for the wrong job is comforting. Reason may be an aggravator for our moral condition and not an alexin.

In the end, I think I can say that he and I agree that developments of capacities of perception over those, or undergirding those (as Plutarch, too would have it, I think), of reason are crucial if we are to think of ourselves less miserably and behave less destructively.

I respond:

Dear John.

Thank you very much for your response and keeping me company (as well as challenged, of course).

I understand. I also completely agree about the potential leap into faith.

I spend a long time on studying psychopaths. I sat with profilers who created the FBI profiling system they still use. I worked with adolescent ones, as well as sociopaths (and yes, I make a distinction between the two). And also certain kinds of Autism. That’s an offensive and awkward pairing to bring up, but it is an honest one. I don’t believe those traditionally diagnosed with either psychopathology or with autism lack the capacity for empathy.

Sociopaths, on the other hand do. I make a distinction between sociopaths and psychopaths precisely because I think there’s an important difference between those who literally can’t (aren’t equipped to) perceive—by our major perceptual faculties, including the cognitive ones—the being-ness of another (or whatever kind of language one wants to use there to capture the fullness of another), those who can but whose perceptions of the fullness of the another’s being are a source of perversion, and third, those who can, but who are unable to process what they perceive in the normal or expected way and who also can’t output behavior that demonstrates their perception (so, in order, that would be sociopath, psychopath, and certain varieties of what is usually diagnosed as autism).

I do believe that all 3 kinds of creatures force us to buckle down or buckle in and think long and hard about what work we want “empathy” to do. I am aiming, personally, to get through the entire book on cruelty without using the word “empathy” at all.

That word, “Empathy,” has gotten so contaminated and unstable, I’d just prefer to let it combust on its own and not get scorched by it. I probably won’t succeed in that, but I am aiming for it.

For item #2 (morality), I understand. And I am struggling with that. It is a leap.

For item #3 (pessimism), yeah. completely agree. Unfortunately. however, that is why I am trying to write this book come hell or high water or both.

As always,

In our peregrinations around these topics, the invasive and touchy subjects of psychopathologies, psychopaths and sociopaths, developmental deficits, and other differences in human Being emerges, as we have seen. One could say that if since those so “diagnosed” might lack capacities for empathy (I disagree with Coetzee and others on this) or humanity as a capacity for moral agency, then “cruelty” cannot be a description of their behavior, nor can “humanity,” nor, therefore “inhumanity.” What moral, natural, or unnatural zone do they occupy? I see his point, and I might have thought myself into a straightjacket on this. But. There is a “but”: think of Steinbeck’s Lenny’s, from Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men. (Penguin Classics, 2000.). Could his acts be described as violations of humanity or as “cruelty”? Did Lenny lack empathy? (no.) Reason? (no.) Was he indifferent? (no.) Could we say this developmentally-disabled man was cruel, if so, what work does that do for our understanding of the moral valence of “humanity”? And could we say the same of a whale who abandoned her pod of babies because the sea was simply too much, and who we could then call an un-whale? Could we say of a dolphin, a species celebrated for coming to the aid of humans about to drown, who simply swam away at a fainted and drowning swimmer that it was a cruel or an in-dolphin?

The morning of July 14th, 2022, while editing these emails for this chapter, I stumbled across a tragic case in New Mexico on the day’s news. Dumpster divers heard whining in the dumpster and assumed it was an animal. In the trash bag was an infant boy with his umbilical cord still attached. What do we say about his eighteen year old mother who threw him in there? It took less than 1 minute for her to dispose of the being, the existence, of that life. If a lioness abandons her cub to die, do we call her cruel? What if the cub were ill and would slow down the entire pride, putting them all in danger? Now we’ve gotten ourselves into a “Trolly Problem” with a lioness as the agent (See Philippa Foot and Judith Jarvis Thompson.).
When discussing the next part of the book’s trajectory with Coetzee, I realized, if it hasn’t become clear, that I think acknowledging our helplessness is important. There is something about acknowledging an emotional or affective Pedal Tone to both “anxiety” and “uncertainty.” Here is an abbreviated version of more from our exchanges:

From Chapter 4: What do we say about cruelty? Patterns of Responses to the Questions “What is cruelty?” or “What causes cruelty?”

Though this chapter is framed as one around kinds of reactions-sets or patterns of thinking that are most common when the subject of what cruelty is comes up, this book itself has been through a so many iterations (not just revisions) that I am somewhere beyond either humiliation or pride (that is, the sheer volume is humiliating, but also I suppose I could take some consolation in the endurance?), so that I am not certain about offering up any inflexible, without-objections, incomplete, set of categories myself. That is, I am essentially adding on a category of responses, which is The Category of Common Responses. In this case, on a final revision of the book, I stepped on my own shadow, as one does, and it was wagging its finger in admonishment for not thinking far enough. Or close enough, as the case may be.

I have long been in agreement with those who insist that when we speak of wrongs, we drift to and settle in discussions about who can be so accused, held responsible, or punished; that is, we focus on the attributes and characteristics of the creature responsible for the misdeed. Who counts as a victim and why is of equal light and importance only on the occasions in which it reflects on the perpetrator as fully human. Part of that is status of some kind, and or based on assumed capacities and traits.

Below is more from the exchange. Again, for the full context, please refer to the book itself.

I email John:

Dear John,

I am ending up restructuring the book around a rather psychological sequence (implicitly, not explicitly). It turns out helplessness needs to influence a chapter. Embarrassingly, I am at a bit of a loss as to where to turn quickly. And I am impatient to get this chunk of chapters drafted before my surgery. I’m sure I have resources on it, but having not specifically looked for it before, I need help. So, asking if you might have quick thoughts to help guide me to a favorite text or thoughts on helplessness. I’m know it appears in you work—to quote would be great to use. But again, having never read for that concept explicitly, I’d have to go through and re-read everything for what I’m after. So, I’m wondering if you can offer me a short cut?
Many thanks, as always, and forgive me my impatience (could be worse, it could be laziness—but that’s not a vice of mine, usually),

Maggie

PS: I should make it clear: I’m not looking for positive psychology bits on how to overcome it (helplessness) or anything. I wouldn’t be asking you if I were. I’m asking for insights and thoughts about the despair, the confusion, the staunching and stunning of it…how to describe what it does to us and how it does whatever it is that it does.

He responds:

Dear Maggie,

Sorry—I have never thought about the condition of helplessness before, nor have I read anything on it.

Recently I heard of an island in the southern seas which is used as a nesting ground by sea-birds (albatrosses?). The island is uninhabited but has (by mistake) had mice introduced. The mice swarm over the newborn chicks, which are bigger than the mice but are entirely helpless, and bite them to death before eating them…

All the best,

John

A read of Coetzee’s works will fill in his ellipses…and what happens when one (me, in this case) is sloppy or haphazard in formulating one’s question.

From Chapter 6: “Thin Skin and Faith”

In the next exchange, towards the middle of this iteration of the book, I found myself needing to revisit examples and instances of extreme cruelties. It felt different this time around, in some of the instances, 25 years later. I felt different. Watching a movie such as Lars Von Trier’s film “Breaking the Waves,” (Breaking The Waves.” Director, Lars Von Trier, 1996.) or reading Amnesty International reports on torture and war crimes, or even watching the daily news became aggressively oppressive. That, I thought, is not fit for a “professor of cruelty.” We shouldn’t flinch anymore, right? One gets tired, though, of finding the right reaction to the right wrongs no matter what. Again, I check in with Coetzee.

I email John:

Dear John,

Do you feel as though your skin has grown thicker or thinner over the years of thinking about cruelty?
That’s probably the wrong question. If it is, please respond to whatever is the right one.

I used to be able to sit and read torture reports and science manuals (usually torture of animals and abnormal humans, really) and Dear parse and think so I could see if I could articulate the “what”” of the cruelty. That task seemed protective enough. I rehabbed fighting dogs and confronted their fighters. And on and on. And the purpose seemed protective enough.

And yet I find that I just spent an entire day yesterday completely screwing up a chapter because I was avoiding having to talk about Seligman (“Learned Helplessness” is what he researched. If you don’t know of the studies, they are humanity at its most pathetic attempt to justify horror and prove what any actual human being already knows).

I was surprised at myself, at my thin skin.

I used to be either more callous or more brave. I am no longer sure what the difference is.

I couldn’t even read the abstracts of Dr. Seligman’s work out loud to my husband, which is something I usually could have done, a process of translation and filtering from the specifically academic to general. Well, I did read them, but I choked up. Repeatedly. I couldn’t get through the descriptions of such kind of torture and cruelty with the depth of attention I used to have.

I wonder if I’ve just run out of adrenaline.

Have you stayed the same about it all or have you found your endurance of responsiveness to go in cycles?

Best,

He responds:

Dear Maggie,

My skin has grown thinner. I can no longer endure the spectacle of cruelty, can no longer listen to apologists for cruelty. And I have seen the same evolution in lots of people.

Yours,

John

His response both comforts and aggravates me. I do think that one doesn’t normally embark on a lifetime of studying inhumanity and cruelty without a certain naivete, offensive bravado, defensive bravado, false-confidence, fragile stoicism, or an inflated sense of goodness or a solid film of straight up ignorance. We don’t go in believing it will be too horrible for us at a certain point. We desperately continue to try to understand, but maybe understanding isn’t the salve we are after. This can cause insecurity and instability. We arm ourselves by combining cruelty with other large topics such as politics, sex, law, theater and humor (for a relatively recent, extensive, and extremely informative and well-done work on humor and cruelty, see Humor and Cruelty https://www.degruyter.com/serial/bahc-b/html?lang=en). His response both comforts and aggravates me. I do think that one doesn’t normally embark on a lifetime of studying inhumanity and cruelty without a certain naivete, offensive bravado, defensive bravado, false-confidence, fragile stoicism, or an inflated sense of goodness or a solid film of straight up ignorance.

We don’t go in believing it will be too horrible for us at a certain point. We desperately continue to try to understand, but maybe understanding isn’t the salve we are after. This can cause insecurity and instability. We arm ourselves by combining cruelty with other large topics such as politics, sex, law, theater and humor (for a relatively recent, extensive, and extremely informative and well-done work on humor and cruelty, see Humor and Cruelty https://www.degruyter.com/serial/bahc-b/html?lang=en). We don’t go into this kind of project with a pill of reckless abandonment in our cheek pouch just in case we have to bail, with the idea that we won’t be able to bear it. On the one hand, this hesitant tenderness is Good, is it not? Empathy? Compassion? Humanity? Committing to pathological sociopathy, psychopathologies, or generalized perversion of humanity—empathy, on the other, is arrogant and cowardly. How dare we give up? And so we don’t. I continue in the same chapter with another email.

I respond:

Dear John,

All right, again, my nearly sincere apologies for continuing to bother you.

In what I’m doing with this work, what we seem to not know, and why we don’t know what we don’t know, is reason for writing it. That is, I’m offering a few definitions for what they’re worth, my thoughts of pre-digested work, and so on but I am not offering an answer. That would be stupid and silly—that is, I have the job of uncovering holes, mysteries and so on that have been covered up. This is not unusual work. But my former agent and the potential publishers want answers, solutions. Of course, I don’t have those.

For whatever reason—whether it’s the subject matter itself, me, how I’m approaching it—people are so desperate for the “money shot.” And they say so (quite explicitly and with that phrase—it is fun being female in this line of work). They want the answer. Where is the answer? I’m burying the lede, and so forth.

The point, to me, is that we haven’t got one yet and we don’t even know that.

I find that fact actually hopeful…it means there are spaces to discover and move in that we haven’t yet. That is, there might be hope of some kind.Have you any advice for me on how to seduce people into the idea that the unknown is the point—is a useful point? When teaching in a class, I have the authority and power to force students into accepting that fact. As an author, I am at the mercy of people who want the money shot.

The above, without question, is an idiotic question without more specificity. I do sincerely apologize for that. I wish I had it better articulated, but I don’t, yet.

If what I’ve said at least makes sense, that would be good. If it doesn’t, then I’ve got more work to do to even begin to ask what I’m trying to ask. So, does my concern register, or are you tucking your chin to the right, clenching jaws slightly, and going, “I have no idea what she’s asking?” And if it’s that, may I try again?

As ever,

He responds:

Dear Maggie,

I do understand your situation but am not able to rescue you from it.

I don’t see that you have to provide a/the money shot in the form of a prescription to cure us of cruelty. But if you are going to end on a note of hopelessness or helplessness, it would be good if you could show that such a state of mind follows inevitably from full consideration of the facts.

All the best,

John

I am comforted both by his acknowledgement of the “situation,” as well as what I read as a push for us to examine, to take a few paces back, to ask not how to grab hold of the answer, the golden prize of certainty, but rather, the question: What drives the need for an obviously ever elusive “money shot” in the first place? That is, it is easy to fling this hackneyed stressor in the trash with a raised brow against “marketing strategies,” “snake oil,” “propaganda,” and such. And there is no doubt about the importance of the promise of satisfaction for the sell, but what can be difficult to remember is that we are only in the preliminary, gangly, throes of even understanding a bare scaffolding of our questions, how to sort them, prioritize them and discover what we want from an answer, what we need and can use from an answer. As of now, I am not confident we would even know what a money shot answer might look like or if this is the sort of investigation in which there are many possible answers, many possible false answers that push us to look away, outside, but not in.

And you?

Our purpose is to get and keep these conversations going.