Grace Lapointe’s Collection on Solipsism in Literature

Grace Lapointe’s Collection on Solipsism in Literature In this collection of my Book Riot articles, Twitter threads, and blog posts, I attempt to expose the intellectual ableism underlying the philosophies of solipsism and René Descartes’ first principle “cogito, ergo sum” (Latin for “I think, therefore I am.”) The novels Atonement by Ian McEwan and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro also help to expose solipsism as a fallacy. Thinking, art, and writing are not “what make us human.” We simply are inherently human, with no exceptions or conditions. This is a disability justice perspective. https://bookriot.com/what-an-unlikeable-character-taught-me-about-ethics-and-writing/ What an Unlikeable Character Taught Me About Ethics and Writing Grace Lapointe Jul 30, 2019 We often learn the most from books that we find challenging or even uncomfortable. Some characters aren’t relatable in a pleasant way, but instead expose or exaggerate our own flaws. Briony Tallis, the protagonist of Ian McEwan’s Atonement, had this effect on me. In the first chapter, set in 1935 England, 13-year-old Briony’s cousins come to stay with her while their parents are getting divorced. Briony tries to force her cousins to act out a play she’s written. They’re exhausted and seem traumatized by the divorce. Even when they tell her that they have no interest in acting, she completely disregards their feelings. Reading this book in high school, I found Briony callous but also felt a shiver of recognition. Like Briony, I always wanted to be a writer. Unlike her, I’m an only child. Years earlier, I’d often “played” by trying to persuade other kids to act out scripts I’d written. Friends have told me stories of acting similarly when they were little, particularly if they grew up to be writers, filmmakers, or directors. Eventually, we outgrew the impulse to control others. We found creative outlets with collaborators who shared our interests. As my mom said: “If everyone isn’t having fun, you have to stop!” Briony’s egocentrism, however, only deepens. She wonders: “Was everyone else really as alive as she was? For example, did her sister really matter to herself, was she just as valuable to herself as Briony was? Was being Cecilia just as vivid an affair as being Briony? …If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone’s thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone’s claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was. One could drown in irrelevance” (34). This quote encapsulates solipsism, or the philosophy that one’s own mind is all that can be known to exist. Briony’s self-centered worldview means that she doesn’t really see other people as her equals or as autonomous. They’re just potential actors in her plays or characters in her stories. I wasn’t familiar with the concept of intellectual ableism at the time. In retrospect, solipsism seems to suggest that some people—so-called “deep thinkers”—are more alive or human than others. It is skepticism directed only against others. Paradoxically, Briony concludes that each person’s uniqueness makes the world less interesting, not more. This is the opposite of what most people believe in real life. In fiction, though, there’s always a degree of solipsism. Some characters have more developed perspectives and seem more real than others. Briony is a fascinating, frustrating child, but she’s also an archetype of authors, playing God. Briony sees writing as a way to control or change reality. Her mind imposes a narrative on events she witnesses, even when her interpretation is incorrect. She falsely accuses a family friend, Robbie, of raping her cousin Lola. False sexual accusations and convictions are rare in real life. The false accusation is plausible in the context of the story but seems controversial, especially rereading it today. Briony represents some of my biggest fears as a writer: invading other people’s privacy or portraying them in a false light. She’s also jealous, vindictive, and curious to the point of being voyeuristic, embodying some of the most harmful motives for writing. She showed me the danger in viewing events in my and others’ lives as fodder for fiction. In high school, I viewed my entire life as a fascinating story, but afterward, I started picking my topics much more carefully. Atonement is metafiction that asks difficult questions about the ethics of writing, particularly about others’ private lives. If you’ve ruined someone’s real life, does it matter if you give them a fictional happy ending? Are false accusations forgivable if they stem from childish assumptions? It’s up to each reader to decide whether Briony ever truly atones or redeems herself. Atonement is a warning to authors to proceed with caution. It also showed me egotistical tendencies to avoid in myself and others. Even now, when I meet a manipulative or domineering person, I think of Briony in that first scene, trying to make her cousins into her characters. Further Reading: Books With Unreliable Narrators Books About Secrets The below is excerpted from my Medium post: Grace Lapointe Jan 20, 2020\ “Philosophy . . .is a talk on a cereal box . . .” https://gracelapointe.medium.com/philosophy-is-a-talk-on-a-cereal-box-a8407a3e750d I’ve said many times that much of the Western literary, philosophical, and theological canon is ableist. I have countless examples, and I know that many of my friends and readers aren’t on Twitter, so I wanted to organize some old thoughts here. I always use books like Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury as examples of harmful, canonical ableism. I don’t necessarily think we must remove books like these from the canon. However, professors who teach these books but teach no disabled authors, or who don’t know how to discuss the ableism or at least let students discuss it, are perpetuating ableism. Furthermore, academia has a double standard for whom they allow to write unclearly and still give the benefit of the doubt and consider “genius.” Consider Faulkner’s Benjy, the “idiot” implied in the Shakespeare quote that Faulkner references in his title. Benjy is still called experimental, but do academics try equally to understand the thoughts of real disabled people, especially those with IDD? This is a rhetorical question. Brilliant, disabled artist Karrie Higgins asks all the time: Who is allowed to experiment and have their experimental art recognized? For Book Riot in July 2019, I mentioned solipsism, which I defined as “the philosophy that one’s own mind is all that can be known to exist.” I said: “I wasn’t familiar with the concept of intellectual ableism at the time. In retrospect, solipsism seems to suggest that some people — so-called ‘deep thinkers’ — are more alive or human than others. It is skepticism directed only against others.” This passage I quoted in Ian McEwan’s Atonement continues with a textbook example of solipsism: “But if the answer was no, then Briony was surrounded by machines, intelligent and pleasant enough on the outside, but lacking the bright and private inside feeling she had” (McEwan 34). Briony concludes this is probably untrue but has doubts. Regardless, her childish belief is that others lack inner lives as rich as hers, and her intelligence and talent equal superiority. I’ve always found many ideas in philosophy inherently ableist. Descartes was not a solipsist, but ever since freshman college philosophy, I’ve always had an issue with “I think, therefore I am!” This is one of many philosophical credos that seem to follow logically but are actually fallacies. It sounds empowering, but it’s ableist. Let’s think through its implications. So, only articulating certain abstract thoughts makes us human? This is the summit of humanity? Nonverbal or IDD people are lesser? NO! Thinking in a certain way is not what makes us human or real. I used Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go to refute the false idea that art, intelligence, ability, or any other quality or achievement is philosophically “what makes us human.” The metrics by which we try to “prove humanity” are elitist, ableist, and racist and always exclude some humans, so let’s not. https://bookriot.com/no-one-should-be-asked-to-prove-their-humanity/ No One Should Be Asked to Prove Their Humanity Grace Lapointe Oct 29, 2019 This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Spoilers for Never Let Me Go follow.   One of the central questions of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 novel Never Let Me Go is: What makes us human? This might seem like an abstract, philosophical issue. However, for the novel’s protagonists, it’s literally a matter of life and death. They’re students at Hailsham, an elite boarding school. They gradually realize they’re clones, destined to be killed for their organs. By having characters try to prove clones’ humanity, the novel provides a nuanced metaphor for oppressive, dehumanizing systems and how they function. As the three main characters (Tommy, Kathy, and Ruth) reach their teens, they hear a rumor about “deferrals.” Couples might get their organ donations delayed if they can sufficiently prove they’re in love. They remember one woman they called Madame, who selected their art for inclusion in “the Gallery.” Teachers said their art revealed their souls. When they finally meet with Madame, they learn the devastating truth: deferrals don’t exist. The true purpose of the Gallery wasn’t to showcase talented students or demonstrate romantic compatibility. The Gallery—like Hailsham itself, now closed—was an attempt to prove that the clones were fully human. Instead of raising them in an organ farm, like livestock for slaughter, Hailsham was the more humane alternative. Miss Emily, their former head guardian, explains that she’d appeal to other non-clone adults: “Look at this art! How dare you claim these children are anything less than fully human?” (262) Although the alternate world of this novel might seem unthinkable, as a metaphor for atrocity and dehumanization in general, it’s chilling. Mimi Wong’s excellent 2018 Electric Literature essay argues that Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy can be read both literally as people of color and as an incisive metaphor for people of color assimilating into racist systems. Set in an alternate version of the 1990s, the novel says that people forgot the value of human life after World War II. So, possible parallels to colonialism, human trafficking, and genocide had occurred to me. However, in an example of white bias, I hadn’t remembered that the characters’ races are not specified. I love the movie, in which the main characters are white, but that doesn’t mean they must be white in the novel. Ishiguro’s writing style is brilliantly subtle. The novel never tells us how to feel about the evil it depicts. It often uses euphemisms to obscure the horror. Teachers like Miss Emily are still agents of an evil system, although they try to fight it from within. To me, this feels beside the point: a little like observing that some slaveowners or Nazis weren’t as evil as others. Implicitly, the novel asks if being a good person in such an evil system is possible or relevant. Like many well-intentioned advocates, teachers like Miss Emily make a fatal mistake: playing by a rigged system’s rules. Intersecting systems of oppression, including racism and ableism, put the onus on marginalized people to prove our worth and humanity. Simply by asking us to do this, though, these systems show that they’ll always consider us inferior. White, non-disabled, cishet men are often considered capable and relatable by default, in school, workplaces, and in art. Everyone else must be exceptional to get similar consideration. Miss Emily’s words unintentionally suggest that children can overcome their identities. She explains: “We demonstrated to the world that if students were reared in humane, cultivated environments, it was possible for them to grow to be as sensitive and intelligent as any ordinary human being” (261). Ironically, she doesn’t seem conscious that she still considers the clones inferior. For Miss Emily, clones’ equality is conditional, not guaranteed. She wants them to have a chance to prove or earn their humanity. This is the language of assimilation, where children who are different can only aspire to become average or “ordinary.” She echoes the most harmful teachers, therapies, and schools, whose goal is getting disabled students of all races and all students of color to seem more like their white, non-disabled peers. Oppressive systems ask marginalized people to transcend their identities. Without stating it directly, the novel refutes the idea that art, ability, or attraction makes us human. That the teachers think so shows how indoctrinated they really are. Tommy’s art is a source of anxiety and contention in the story. When he’s a child, classmates tease him for his supposed lack of talent, and teachers comfort him. Later, he tries to use his art as evidence of his love for Kathy. When we learn the purpose of the Gallery, we finally understand why the teachers considered students’ art so important. The teachers are grasping at a fallacy in their desire to help the children. Tommy’s art doesn’t prove that he’s human. Neither does falling in love or wanting romance or sex. The problem is that his society created him to use as an object. Never Let Me Go shows that if oppressors want to ignore people’s humanity, playing by their rules to prove otherwise is futile. I listed books on human cloning here. Miss Lucy in Never Let Me Go bluntly tells the children who they are and what they're for. As a teen reading this, I thought she was trying to traumatize them. But Miss Lucy wants to burn it down. She wants the kids to rebel or escape. Miss Emily says: "You said it was because your art would reveal what you were like. What you were like inside...Well, you weren't far wrong about that. We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all." (Ishiguoro 238) I object to the "see the person, not the disability!" and "emphasize that we're people" rationale. Some exploitative telethons and exhibits of disabled kids' art seem to have similar agendas to Miss Emily: proving or reminding non-disabled people that we disabled people are human, "just like you on the inside." Some advocacy has what I'll term the Miss Emily problem: "Look, I can prove these children are just as human as we are!" It would be difficult to interpret this novel so that, if only Tommy had tried harder or been more talented, he would have lived. The system was designed to kill him very young. Nothing he could do, short of burning the system to the ground, could change that. This novel exposes the fallacy that more talent or intelligence = more humanity for the lie it is. Also, the idea that only certain types of "culture" make us more "civilized or human” is white supremacy and colonialism. Some people take the opposite interpretation of this book that I do. They say, Their art and thoughts just prove how human they really are! I’m disabled and try to be careful with this. Not everyone can make art or wants to, or has certain types of thoughts, such as abstract, philosophical, or sexual. The book keeps repeating that this is a school for special children. At first, it's so vague that Hailsham might be a school for disabled and/or gifted children. But maybe the teachers are pitying or overcompensating--treatment that many of us disabled people will recognize. There's a lot to say about ableism and Never Let Me Go that didn't fit my thesis. The clones are literally able bodies and to a lesser extent, able minds. That's their function. They're warned not to smoke, not out of genuine concern for them, but to preserve their organs. They’re valued only for their utility, which is dehumanizing in every way. Lapointe 5