Professor Daniel Borzutzky
Honored Members of the Academy!
You have done me the honor of inviting me to give a report on the individual and the community, and to do so, I would like to tell the story of an ape. Not a normal ape, to be sure. He wears trousers, and gives poignant speeches, and though he has managed through intense training and education to eliminate the majority of his ape behaviors, he still likes to have sex with chimpanzees, which terrifies him, so scared he is of those ape instincts he has not been able to repress.
His name is Red Peter, and he comes from Africa, where he lived a free and normal ape-life, until he is shot and captured by a group of brutish European explorers, who put him on a ship and stick him in a cage that is far too small for his body. With no room to move, Red Peter is forced to squat with his knees bent while the bars of the cage cut into his behind. Torture, dear members of the Academy, comes from the Latin word torquere, which means to twist. His body is twisted in the cage in such a way that he cannot continue to be himself. This, honored Academicians, is one of the goals of imprisonment in general, and torture in particular. Subjected to such treatment, individuals, be they humans or animals, can no longer continue to live as they had lived before. The tortured being is not only physically altered, but mentally altered. One need only visit the lifeless lions at the Lincoln Park Zoo to see what I am talking about.
Red Peter, however, is no dummy. He clearly analyzes and understands his situation. He has been stripped from his community, where he lived freely, and where there were no limitations on his movements. And now that he is caged on the ship, he can either decide to remain a complete outsider, and live his life in confinement, or he can become a member of the community of humans who keep him captive. That is, he can make the best out of this bad situation by joining the ranks of his enemies. In his words, he needs a way out, which he distinguishes from freedom, which he does not desire, and which he does not think human beings are capable of attaining. Thus for the first time in his life he has to consciously make a decision with, as he puts it, his brain, and not his belly.
Let me suggest, Honored Members of the Academy, that part of why Red Peter thinks that men are disillusioned by the word freedom is because the limitations of life oblige us to make difficult decisions, decisions which force us to feel as if we are somehow betraying our innermost desires. Some of you in this room may have personally experienced what I am talking about: do I take an unsatisfying job to pay rent or feed my family when I would rather be a full-time student?; do I study something practical when I would rather study something like art or literature? In this sense, people who have money are more free than those who do not. For money grants the power to not always have to make these difficult decisions. This by the way.
So how does Red Peter find his way out? The first important step he takes is to give up the desire to remain who he was as an ape. Somewhere along the way, members of the Academy, you may have been told, perhaps in a classroom, or in a self-help book, or even in a television advertisement, that you must discover your one unique voice and your true individuality. What these sloganeers are suggesting, members of the Academy, is that you have just one true self, and one true voice. We need only examine our own lives to know that this assumption is wrong. By which I mean that the person who you are with your family is different from the person who you are with your friends, who is different from the person who you are at work or in school. And while perhaps you may feel more like yourself in one role than in another, you may also feel that in each different role you feel equally like yourself, even though these roles require you to behave in very different ways. This performing of different personas is natural, and helpful to articulate, because for the most part there are not stated rules that guide our interactions with our different communities. And there are certainly times when these boundaries become confused, and when we find ourselves behaving at school or at work, the way we behave at home, or with our friends. If any of you have ever been, for example, in a classroom where a teacher or student has divulged too much information about their personal life, then you have observed these rules and boundaries being violated. These moments are awkward to witness, but often quite interesting.
Allow me to suggest, honored academicians, the following paradox: To be a member of a community it is necessary to sacrifice your individuality, but it is only through membership in a community that your individuality can be noticed. As an ape, the concept of individuality was neither important nor applicable to Red Peter, but once he ceases to be an ape, and enters the community of humans, he becomes an individual precisely because he is so unique and extraordinary. Moreover, his continued involvement in the community of humans comes at a huge sacrifice: he must repress his urges to satisfy his ape desires, the chimpanzee excluded. That is to say that what allows Red Peter to survive in his new community is precisely his ability to take on a new identity at the expense of losing his old one.
Members of the Academy, the most well adjusted amongst us are those who most clearly understand how to alter their personas in order to adapt to the different situations that they may purposefully or accidentally find themselves in. The most well adjusted amongst us are those who have the least attachment to the concepts of individuality and originality. Fully aware of this, Red Peter swiftly decides that if he wants to be a member of the community of humans, then he must no longer act like an ape.
He begins to imitate humans. That is, he begins to ape humans. He says, “It was easy to imitate these people. I learned to spit in the very first days. We used to spit in each other’s faces; the only difference was that I licked my face clean afterwards and they did not.” I have two comments to make. First, and perhaps less important, is that the humans on the ship are more animalistic than Red Peter. They sit around spitting and grunting, and they get drunk, which literally alters their brains to make them behave in a less civilized manner. Second, it is worth emphasizing that imitation is Red Peter’s entryway into this new community. Again, there is real-life rationality in this. For no matter what community we want to become a part of—be it a new country, a classroom, a job, a sports team, or even a street gang—our own success will be linked to how well we imitate the successful members of that community (however that community defines success).
The members of the human community surrounding Red Peter spend all their free time drinking. Red Peter, however, is repulsed by alcohol. But since he understands that alcohol is something the men value, he realizes that if he wants to be accepted by them then he is going to have to learn to drink. He trains himself for this, and on a particularly jubilant night, Red Peter “took hold of a schnapps bottle . . . set it to his lips without hesitation, and truly drank it empty . . . not in despair, but as an artistic performer.” Intoxicated, Red Peter breaks into speech, which sets in motion his rapid evolution out of ape-life and into the community of humans.
What I want to emphasize here is the word performance, which Red Peter modifies with the adjective artistic, a word that comes from the same root as artifice, or artificial. In getting drunk and speaking, Red Peter is performing the role that his audience wants him to perform. This role does not come naturally to him—it is artificial, or, artistic—and he is of course aware of this. Moreover, he is aware of just how important it is to understand what he needs to do in order to please his audience. I want to suggest, members of the Academy, that as participants in a community, we make these audience-pleasing adjustments all the time. That is, if we want to stay in our jobs, and maintain good relations with our friends and families, then we must understand, either consciously or subconsciously, what our communities wants from us, and we must understand how to adapt and alter our own personas in order to fulfill their needs. This, to be sure, may require that we sacrifice certain ideals we may value. In many of these roles, for example, it might be advisable to not be completely honest all the time. This in itself is not troublesome. It is simply part of the performance that life requires.
There is another lesson we can glean from Red Peter’s remarkable adaptation, which has to do with having the courage to not be afraid when you find yourself in unfamiliar communities, be they new classes, new jobs, or new cultural or social environments. First of all, allow me to suggest that we derive strength through our involvement in these unfamiliar situations. By which I mean that it is often useful to attempt to become a participant in a community to which you might not naturally belong. And in this sense, Red Peter’s behavior serves as a model: 1) he calmly analyzes his situation and is fully aware of his limitations; 2) he sets clear goals, and does not have high expectations; 3) he understands the needs of his audience; 4) he learns to adapt by imitation; and 5) he puts on a performance.
Performance, in our encounters with a community we hope to enter, has two important purposes: the first is to convince pre-existing members of this community that we are indeed able to participate; the second, and more important purpose, is to convince ourselves that we are able to participate. Members of the Academy, I do not think I am being insincere when I say that upon initially entering a new community, or upon approaching a new field or area of study, you may feel like a fraud, as if you somehow don’t deserve to belong. In my own experience, this feeling of fraudulence consistently reappears even once you have established yourself in a certain field. This is not a bad thing. On the contrary. It is positive. For it is our own feelings of inadequacy that drive us to come up with innovative approaches to our various roles. And it is only by re-approaching our various roles that we are able to re-convince ourselves that we deserve to be performers in our own community. When I was a student, I found this to be true. And now, as a teacher, I continue to find truth in this. By which I mean that as a teacher, I find it useful, every once in awhile, to feel as if I do not know what I am doing. For this forces me to be inventive, to come up with new ideas, to study new texts, and to question assumptions I had previously taken for granted. That is, it is precisely my own feelings of professional inadequacy that inspire my professional growth. In this sense, failure is intimately connected to success.