Sunday, March 2, 2008

Good Old Negative Capability

John Keats invented the term "Negative Capability," in a letter. The capability is that which allows one to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at once--and let them stay there, each with equal weight. Keats described the capability as "negative," I infer, not because it was bad but because it required restraint, pulling back from that instinctual, rationalistic desire to declare one idea the winner. Life is either hopeless or it isn't, for example.

American writer James Baldwin echoed Keats without naming him as he concluded his famous essay, "Notes of a Native Son." The essay details one of the worst moments in Baldwin's life. His father has died. Baldwin is still in is teens but is essentially the head of the family, which is desperately poor in Harlem. He never understood his father, nor his father him. He doesn't have proper clothes to wear to the funeral, and Harlem has just exploded in a race riot because a white policeman has shot a Black man for suspicious reasons. He may be at the period in life when he most needs a father--and his father has died. Baldwin reports summoning the will from some unknown reservoir of determination to decide that, to survive and thrive, he must hold two opposing ideas in his had at once and forever. Idea one: Life is unjust--and especially unjust for African Americans, and demonstrably unjust for him--and will remain so. Idea two: One must never stop struggling against the injustice. That is, there is no resolution to the injustice, but you have to struggle--not just seem to struggle--as if there resolution might be possible. No crying in baseball (a tip of the cap to Tom Hanks), no seeming in the struggle.

I was reminded of Keats and Baldwin today after I attended what I'll call an activists' meeting on campus. For the immediate moment, the topic of the meeting isn't important (although it will be tomorrow morning), and this isn't the place to reveal particulars of processes under way. After about three hours, we broke for a late lunch, and I ended up dining with two impressive students: smart, informed, activist in their own ways, but by no means starry-eyed or naive.

One of them asked me how long I'd been at the college, and I told him 25 years. He then opined that it must be depressing or at least wearing to revisit the same old issues year after year with little progress. I agreed with him, but I added that, over a 25-year span, one at least has the chance to perceive some change, whereas over the usual 4-year span of an undergraduate's time on campus, nothing seems to change. I also pointed to one rather significant, concrete example of a fine academic program that had arisen from similar activism some 15 years earlier. The other student said something like "and while we're working on this problem, there's a war on." --His point being, I think, this: so many issues, so little time. One throws oneself at a local issue, only to look up and realize how many national and global issues persist.

That's where Keats and Baldwin come in. Nothing much is going to change, even over the course of a lifetime, or lifetimes (ouch), but one must live one's lifetime as if much change is possible. It's not pretending--because you don't make believe that injustice has suddenly disappeared, and you don't over-estimate your powers. It's not denial--because you are well aware of such lovely circumstances as futility and such phenomena as constituents who are natural allies becoming "enemies" strictly out of pride. It's Negative Capability. A mental, perhaps even spiritual, juggling act. Two ideas, two opposing conclusions, up in the air of the mind at the same time, each given equal weight. A more colloquial version of N.C. might be "keep on keeping on."

Keats was headed for death from tuberculosis when he wrote his letter, and Baldwin was, arguably, at the lowest point of his life with no evidence that there was an "up" from that lowest point. In their own ways, both prevailed. Yes, I know they were the exceptional of the exceptional, but it's not as if one has to compete with Keats and Baldwin. One merely has to keep on keeping on. Breaks, naps, and good night's sleeps are not only allowed but vital, so there's that.

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