In most circumstances, it would seem a pessimistic truism to say that no matter what the situation, abusers will find a way to abuse. However, William T. Vollmann, in his book, Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom, and Urgent Means, provides strong evidence that this may be the case. With deep doubt in all expressions of utopianism, and a keen eye for political and historical artifice, Vollmann points toward the idea that violence is, in most cases, only acceptable when it is used to stop imminent violence against oneself or another. Again and again Vollmann shows how the threat of “imminent violence” has been stretched by various groups around the world and across time to justify violence against others; workers against peasants in Communist Russia, Slaveholders against slaves in ancient Rome, Serbs and Croats against one another in Bosnia/Herzegovina, and cyclical gang and police violence in Jamaica, among others. The largest justification heard again and again throughout the book runs along the lines, “he threatened me, so I hit him back first.”
Vollmann’s book is an abridgement of seven volumes that make up the original edition. A key feature of the book is his moral calculus. Many philosophers have constructed a moral calculus to boil down to a simple set of phrases the moral meaning of the totality of actions and statements by a given person or culture. Almost all cultures and people never attune their lives to their ideals, or they have conflicting ideals, or they lie about their statements to make their behaviors look better, or they just don’t care. This is where Vollmann gets to have a particular form of horrific philosophical fun. Millions have died under the moral constructs of French revolutionaries, Stalinists, and the like, but at the same time, when the justifications for such behavior are boiled down into a calculus, they seem like the statements of a preschool child who wants to make a game and change the rules until he or she wins.
His theme is a powerful one, but there are some statements that may make the reader cringe. Vollmann tends to take on the role, not only of journalist, but also moral adjudicator in the book.
Early on, Vollman tackles the sensitive issue of rape. He describes hearing about a particular incident from both sides. “To the woman, at least, it was rape,” he writes, “He had grabbed her breasts. He had started to do other things, but her entreaties finally stopped him.” (37) Describing the perpetrator, Vollman writes, ‘A rough fellow from a rough town, he was accustomed to casually aggressive methods of courtship.” (37) The man, he says, would have been taken aback at the accusation. Vollmann then decides that, “given the norms of the area this was not attempted rape – merely insensitivity carried almost to brutality.” (38) To contrast this scenario, he juxtaposes it with a situation in a Muslim country where in a newspaper he read police were looking for a man who groped a woman’s breasts and kissed her mouth. “Call it rape,” he writes. (38) In the second scenario he understands, based again on “the norms of the area,” that the woman is justified in feeling violated. He points out that the second woman, because of the tradition of wearing a veil over her face, would have felt extremely violated from the kiss, much less the grope.
In the former he discredits the feeling of violation and in the second, he projects the feeling of violation onto the victim. What he misses is that rape is a legal definition. What he means when he says rape is, “this woman is legitimate in feeling violated.”
The behavior of both men is identical. The former man, the one readers may assume lives in the United States (since the author is from the US, and no location is specified), depending on what jurisdiction he is in, can be charged with assault, just as the man in the Muslim country can. Both are perpetrators of illegal activity. Vollmann is willing to justify the former act, performed by a man he calls a friend, and vilify the Muslim. Why not vilify both? If the woman feels violated, and the activity is illegal, the time is not right for moral jockeying. Mistreatment of this legal term tells us a lot about the author and casts doubt on his ability to asses difficult material.
A question he might want to pursue is, “why will Americans write off behavior that leaves American women violated, when some cultures that many Americans feel oppress women won’t?” I don’t say this facetiously. I believe that Vollmann would be interested in this line of questioning. There are moments in the book where the author shows great concern for women and their losses in war.
It seems that in certain instances, though, Vollman doesn’t trust us to make our own decision based on the information at hand. I would have trusted him more had he said, “here’s the information, here are some of the ways other’s have thought about these issues, now you decide.” Readers will make our own decision based on the information whether the author invites us to or not. By imposing his moral judgment in this and other instances, he runs the risk that we the readers will disagree, and in disagreeing find fault, not in his research or his writing, but, more importantly, in his judgment. Unfortunately, it is unclear when the author intends for us to perceive his mistake for our own benefit, as a whacko author like Denis Johnson might, and when his own position gets in his way.
This being said, the book is invaluable in teaching, discussing, or thinking about social and cultural power structures. The assessment of historical applications of power based on definitions of self-preservation is powerful. The analysis of radical positions on violence, from Ghandhian nonviolence, to Anarchist random violence, to Stalanist distortion of class as justification for his own oppressive acts, are clear and give the reader a lot to chew on.
The information serves to support many disciplines. For example, art has struggled with its relationship to power for centuries. Artists have struggled as to whether their work should be purely aesthetic, or whether it should serve to promote an identity, a politic, or one of many conceptions of reality. Even when art seems to be free and representing only itself, it simultaneously fights vehemently for itself. Artists have been locked up, deported and killed for their artistic expressions from many totalitarian countries. Each artist has taken a position to defense similar to those explored in this book. All of the arguments in this book have been expressed through verbal, literary, and pictorial means.
Rising Up and Rising Down has similar application within all of the humanities. It gets at fundamental questions like, “are there foundational concepts underlying [this] position?” and, “what are the implications of holding a particular position – are the outcomes always the same?” It asks us to consider carefully before staking a claim or taking action, especially violent action, based upon a philosophical position.