ODD FELLOW 2

This Tuesday evening, I attended my class titled; H.D Thoreau : On the Duty of Civil Disobedience et autres textes. 

It’s stated aims are to offer a continuous reading of the text by H.D Thoreau: On the Duty of Civil Disobedience. Each session will be devoted to consideration of a passage to be read, translated and commented upon in French. To this end, students must acquire the English text in the edition mentioned in the bibliography. The objective of the course is to understand the legitimacy of resistance and disobedience in the democratic framework defined by the Declaration of Independence. From the historical-political anchor of the text, the course will seek to identify the relevance of the original American philosophy: transcendentalism.

Part of the system of teaching at Université Paris 1, is the student ‘exposé ’ – a close reading of a text – to the rest of the class. There have been a number of ‘exposé’ during the course. Apart from the translation and discussion of paragraphs from Civil Disobedience, we have had Herman Melville’s Bartleby dealing in the main with the phrase “I would prefer not to”; “On Walden Pond” another Thoreau; Emerson’s “On Self Reliance”, and, for this Tuesday evening, Thoreau’s 4^th July 1854 address on “Slavery in Massachusetts”

During the course of this evenings session, on the other side of the Atlantic, the United States of America was in the process of electing its next President.  I do not know the name of the young man who presented and talked of “Slavery in Massachusetts”, but his efforts, although accompanied by the usual round of applause at the end, was not a great success. He spoke well and gave a good performance. Indeed, his voice was clear and carried. However, there were in my view a few misinterpretation of the meaning of the text. This did not matter as, from my vantage point, he was barely being listened to. A number of students had their laptops open in front of them, giving the appearance of note taking and following the text, at least from the front of the room. From my vantage point, on the back row, I could see a number of screens had nothing whatsoever to do with Thoreau. One student was watching a skiing film, another was doing a bit of on line shopping. I cannot say that I saw much of what others were doing as I was trying to understand what the young man was on about. At least his English pronunciation was a bit better than most. It could easily have been a scene from a Truffaut movie.

So we worked our way through Thoreau’s 4^th of July address followed by a translation and discussion, presented jointly by two young women, of the paragraph concerning Thoreau’s view on the 1850’s American electorate, All the while the current American electorate was making its way to and from the polling booths across the nation, I was confident that Hilary would win the day. I rather looked forward to it. My disappointment in the morning is reflected by the previous blog entry. Unlike the graciousness of President Obama, I cannot congratulate a Trump. It would feel rather like congratulating one of my ex clients for getting away with whatever they were up for in court.  Celia pointed out to me Stevie Wonder’s comment “Electing Trump is like asking me to drive”. How is it that this blind American can see with such clarity what his fellow countrymen cannot? The American is indeed an Odd Fellow.