Emily Dickinson, "We like a Hairbreadth 'scape"

Hi all --

I very much appreciated Slobodian and Tarnoff's "Muskism as Fordism." The authors have a book which I must read, but the blog entry to which I've linked offers a lot to think about. To wit: people with power don't want their power to be diminished. They act so as to shape the system to their liking. These are simple premises, but what they mean in practice is far more complicated. We've got to think of Musk, who rages on X about everything while promoting extremism, as someone not just behaving rationally but with a specific vision for how capitalism accumulates wealth and what its regulatory regime must be. In other words, Musk's power grabs have a deep element of calculation within them, even if he isn't fully cognizant of it. Slobodian and Tarnoff take on various myths about Musk–e.g. Tesla is a car company, or that he is primarily concerned with concrete, material products–and end up arguing that Musk's fandom is far more important for the future of capitalism than it first appears.

I read "Muskism as Fordism" with two different ideas in mind. First, I'm exploring whether the extreme right really does have a vision for the future. They seem awfully random to me, looking to punch at whatever targets they can get. I don't know if having a vision makes them more dangerous or less, but if they have one, it is useful to know where they can be opposed. Second, I want to understand what moves one must make as an academic. How do I construct the scholarly dialogue needed, a dialogue which advances a field? Slobodian and Tarnoff engage the Regulationist school and comment with precision on how to interpret Musk's behavior. I think, for my own work, it will help to say that much more to introduce the problems I'm engaging, even though I feel like I say a lot. And it won't hurt to be as exact as possible about what my conclusions mean, especially when considering the relentlessness of unexamined assumptions.

Emily Dickinson, "We like a Hairbreadth 'scape"

What is risk? Dickinson, in this lyric, treats it playfully. All could have come crashing down in an instant–"We like a Hairbreadth 'scape"–but it did not. Instead, we have this curious tingle in the mind, one unobtainable "[i]f we had ventured less."

Dickinson's risk depends on "We." "We like a Hairbreadth 'scape;" "[i]f we had ventured less." The "we" in question both have a "tingle," have felt a "Breeze" specific to them. Impossible not to think about a couple, perhaps a forbidden love. But before exploring that, one might want to ask: What is risk for us in this day and age, for us the chronically online?

Initially, it may seem irrelevant. Why should we bother to ask about our modern media practices? But look at the last two lines of the first stanza. The tingle, the joy and fear caused by a narrow escape, stays "[f]ar after Act or Accident / Like paragraphs of Wind."

Why "paragraphs?" What was the need to call attention to writing? Not unrelated: what is our need for dopamine through posting? I think this poem can be used to hint at a specific problem. How do we juggle love, our need to create, and our desire for attention?

We like a Hairbreadth 'scape (1175) (from Complete Poems)
Emily Dickinson
  
We like a Hairbreadth 'scape
It tingles in the Mind
Far after Act or Accident
Like paragraphs of Wind

If we had ventured less
The Breeze were not so fine
That reaches to our utmost Hair
Its Tentacles divine.

Dickinson's "We" might be interpreted as royal. Anyone who ventures forth will win a tingle in their mind and experience a "Breeze... so fine" which extends into their "utmost hair / Its Tentacles divine." I believe, for reasons you probably are seeing with your own eyes, that her poem is erotic. "We" is limited to whoever participated. I am going to assume two people, but who knows.

There are two principal complications regarding the sheer joy of the moment. First, "paragraphs of Wind." On the one hand, this sounds like a declaration that nothing ever has to be written down, nothing has to be made or accomplished. There are "tingles," sensations, and these generate the only product ever needed. "[P]aragraphs of Wind" are the finest possible. On the other, here's this poem, itself a celebration of sexual love, and it is not composed only of "Wind."

Second, the use of "Tentacles." They hint at grasping, losing control, being pulled away. The risk that animates the poem is not gone; the act is celebrated but something is amiss. Perhaps the participants are in danger of being discovered, or love is not yet certain. This little poem may be used to breakup with someone, as it's a subtle warning that what happened was dangerous.

The two complications revolve around themes of control and creation. Love isn't all there is, not in this poem. And an amazing time can be very costly. The outstanding question is whether the risk shaping it all can be harnessed and transcended. Writing promises an answer–the lyric itself is a promise that an ecstatic moment won't be forgotten–and yet. At this point it is almost natural to insert our world, as we know of influencers who brag about their "involuntary celibacy" because of dedication to their craft. Their craft, of course, consists in doing anything for views on YouTube or blogging "takes" in order to stir controversy.

You might say doing anything for attention has nothing to do with writing, but I will remind you of famous lines also written by Dickinson: "Publication – is the Auction / Of the Mind of Man." Can creating replace erotic joy? That's not quite Dickinson's concern, but it is ours. We build slop factories with the express intent of flooding our fellow humans with content. If they pay any sort of attention, the feeling is that we have built nothing less than an empire. This seems so far away from the complicated sexual drama of this poem, and it is. I'm tempted to say that the deepest difference concerns certainty. Whatever happened that was ecstatic involved the risk of another person. Our ecstasy in shaping an empire of attention involves no such risk and perhaps no real people.

At this point, I'm wondering whether it is possible to actually create anything without uncertainty. A part of me wants to say that a lot of what we make nowadays is preordained. Some people have power, privilege, or a "hack" and what results is inevitable. Genuine creation involves a risk not unlike a tryst. Those "paragraphs of Wind," as the poem amply demonstrates, are the precondition for the paragraphs which last.