ls 292

Jan 9th, Class 2

  • Newgate Prison: Operated under the Bloody Code, where prisoners were hanged (Ordinary of Newgate’s Account). 1676-1772.

  • Newgate Calendar: Chronicled detailed biographies and crimes of criminals. 1774-1860s.

  • Literary Shift in the Mid-1700s:

    • Emergence of satire and critique.

    • Stern's Choice: Focused on the 1670s due to the debut of the novel with "The Pilgrim's Progress."

  • Newgate's Report: Functioned as a societal warning, instilling fear to maintain control.

  • The Black Act (1723): Enacted against poor poachers who disguised themselves with soot to avoid recognition.

  • Stare Decisis: Legal doctrine mandating adherence to precedent.

  • Justice System's Limitations: Often addresses only superficial elements of crimes, especially those involving power dynamics.

  • Fagin's Execution: Resulted from both his character portrayal and anti-Semitic bias.


Jan 21: 


  1. Principle v. Practice: inequality under canadian law 

  • Principle of equality: our law posits equality and universality of rights as it is the basic principle which determines how law is created and seen. 

  • Our law now values itself to still stand on this and law tells itself this all time

  • We are all equal to the point where its just the principal 


  1. Principle v. Practice: Inequality under Canadian Law

Practice: Inequality through the law, from colonization to today:

  • Black and indigenous people enslaved under “black codes” 

  • People thought canada was just a place where they was no slaves but oh boy oh boy they was practicing ball like crazy, since day one, the french were enslaving black people

  • Even after the french lost and the uk took over they continued to move that way in canada

  • Indian act, 1876, systematic oppression of indigenous people: this law which was specifically designed to wipe out the indigenous people, such as resident schools where it was literally made for fully REMOVING indigenous culture

  • Law today is “deeply shaped by liberal universalism… that rejects racist distinctions in law and policy”  which results in racist econmic inequality ingored by governments since day one.

  • So why do we still have racially inequality, despite of the existence of these rules being put, it doesn't matter to those who still believe blacks are less (jaawad) (racism)


2. Du Bois, “Of the Coming of John 

  1.  JIM CROW: CULTURE, LAW 1870 S–1903 

Pervasiveness of inequality/oppression:

  • Dr.David Pilgrim: Basically bro said fuck them black people, we better and shi. And that was reflected all around through society in many institutions as it was a societal belief at the time that whites were superior to blacks in every aspect

  • Beliefs “undergirding: jims crow laws: Bro was willing to beat the bricks of black people to keep em down

  • These men set up a manmade style of life where all they can do is keep it pushing into the culture so blacks never forget where they belong (slums)

  • The jim crow laws and system of etiquette were undergirded by violence: all the police were white, black people had no aura basically in the law system

  • The most insane form of jim crow violence were lynchings (they were gonna fucking destory john jones) literally just to scare other black people. 

  • In summary, the system was built for whites to rule over blacks, no justice was given towards them as it was controlled by these same supremacists 


2. Du Bois, “Of the Coming of John”

  1. Imaginary world of the story 

  • Stern: law in literature, scholarship focuses on content we basically focus on the plot, characters and themes, and that's how we really are able to read and understand books 

  • Discourse frames: if we change the way of the language, then that culture and those frames also shift such, and is the law really fair and what came before that one, so we all basically eat the same plates depending on the day. 

  • ISER: Literature is the way of being able to connect with the author's message by being able to feel the tragedies of injustice being described, by making us feel these descriptions, it makes it accurate to use/apply for something such as law to circulate justice/something fair 


Setting

  • Carlisle Street runs westward from the centre of Johnstown, across a great black bridge, down a hill and up again, by little shops and meat-markets, past single-storied homes, until suddenly it stops against a wide green lawn. It is a broad, restful place, with two large buildings” (234)

  • This is so freaky: our memory is not a physical copy of something but the meaning of what we assign that event or situation to us.  (creaming fr)

  • :3 opening lines: not just a scene, setting, but the entire world pipes down in our head and we are able to imagine the picture that is automatically happening in our head. 

  • Fluck: “Telling stories...is part of the human make-up” (“Fiction and Justice” 22). + Constant exposure to story, “game of imagination,” suspending disbelief.



Character: “A long, straggling fellow he is, brown and hard-haired, who seems to be growing straight out of his clothes, and walks with a half-apologetic roll”—“So perfectly awkward.”—“bubbling good-nature and genuine satisfaction with the world” (235)

  • We can see the world and the way he is moving n shi, characters are written and imagined to be normal people just like ME AND YOU, as well as the other people around it so the world in the story is given life 

  • So how do we connect to characters? We are able to connect through characters because of the narrative focus and based on what happens to them, you are able to connect with the conflict they are facing and building an emotional connection with the character, able to understand their pain/inequalities they face (read below for a more clarified description) 


PLOT: Tall and black, [the students] move slowly by, and seem in the sinister light to flit before the city like dim warning ghosts. Perhaps they are; for this is Wells Institute, and these black students have few dealings with the white city below” (235). Opening lines introduce CONFLICT that will drive the plot = INEQUALITY

  • Already we see the conflict is going to be driven by racial inequality 

  • The conflict between races, shown between both johns and how both are somehow connect to inequality 

  • The law is literally the judge and how it is shown and what he does because he is basically an upholder of law 


PLOT: “And they that stood behind, that morning in Altamaha, and watched the train as it noisily bore playmate and brother and son away to the world, had thereafter one ever-recurring word—‘When John comes.’ Then what parties were to be, and what speakings in the churches; what new furniture in the front room— perhaps even a new front room; and there would be a new schoolhouse, with John as teacher; and then perhaps a big wedding; all this and more—when John comes. But the white people shook their heads” (236).

  • Bro he's so real gosh 

  • Conflict: sets out from hope, he leaves to hope for opportunity, equality, which conflicts with fear of change( THEY DO NOT WANT THAT AT ALL DAWGGGG)

PLOT / CHARACTER: “Thus he grew in body and soul, and with him his clothes

seemed to grow and arrange themselves; coat sleeves got longer, cuffs appeared,

and collars got [end p. 239] less soiled. Now and then his boots shone, and a new

dignity crept into his walk” (239–240).

  • The double consciousness, that many black people have and how whites see them and how they see themselves

  • Being able to now recognize equality and really take it in, will he be able to do something about it? Will he actually do something? 



PLOT / CHARACTER: “He grew slowly to feel almost for the first time the VEIL that

lay between him and the white world; he first noticed now the oppression that had

not seemed oppression before, differences that [before] seemed natural, restraints

and slights that in his boyhood days had gone unnoticed or been greeted with a

laugh. He felt angry now when men did not call him ‘Mister,’ he clenched his hands

at the ‘Jim Crow’ cars, and chafed at the color-line that hemmed in him and his. A

tinge of sarcasm crept into his speech, and a vague bitterness into his life; and he sat

long hours wondering and planning a way around these crooked things” (240)

  • Literally being able to see an opera and having the hope of finally a change, to where he can be seen as a normal person, and even then getting kicked out cuz he is sitting beside a dumb white bitch. 

  • CONFLICT: Desire to believe in the possibility of equality, recognition. Realization equality exists nowhere in this world. Becomes the source of TRAGEDY.



  1. RECOGNITION AND SYMBOLIC TRANSFER


RECOGNIZING ourselves creates stronger IDENTIFICATION, INVESTMENT in the

imaginary world of the story. We feel (an approximation of) what characters feel.

  • Basis of LITERATURE AS CRITIQUE OF LAW: uniquely able to create sense of justice / injustice rooted in this “play” of (reciprocal) recognition, including recognition of the injustice of a profoundly brutal and racist law.

  • We are able to recognize the need for justice and all we can do is jus hope fr 

  • E.G., “Of Coming of John”: FEEL hope, self-doubt, rage, release, pity. We RECOGNIZE and are moved by the cruel tragedy of racial inequality under law.

  • We see the need for Jon Jones to feel free and actually be able to enjoy, and everytime he listens to opera and is able to feel like someone else for once. 


HOPE: We “experience” transformation of John Jones and hold out hope for all the

good that might happen when John returns home = undo inequality, oppression by

spreading enlightenment principles and “ideas of human brotherhood,” realized

through equal access to education, access to work, fairer distribution of wealth

  • It's not about just hope but how when jon comes back and is pushing this idea and is receiving this horrible resistance against him and his idea of them seeing him as a person. Its that hope we have when we hear Jon story and hope that one day he will be able to stare at the sea and listen to opera and feel truly like himself. 


SELF-DOUBT: “Every step he made offended some one. He had come to save his

people, and before he left the depot he had hurt them. He sought to teach them at

the church, and had outraged their deepest feelings. He had schooled himself to be

respectful to the Judge, and then blundered into his front door” (248)