DIVERGENT and Deconstructing Touching

Last Dinner at Abnegation

This dinner and its setting is very like a present day Amish meal in the home. People eat quietly, saying just what they must. It is stifling for anyone who starves for intelligent conversation while eating with family and/or friends. Tris's anxiety about choosing is controlled. Caleb's secret is contained. And nothing really much is said. Just the allusion to Marcus's beating his son to cause his defection. Not true of course.

This is reality that conceals the REAL. The false contentment that replaces joy and spontaneity. Beatrice thinks there is something missing in her because she can't be selfless enough. 

One can see how feelings fester in this environment.

Perhaps some Ritalin!

This is what peace looks like. And it is monotonous and boring eh.

This is also the Happy Ending readers and movie goers want for Tris and Four. The happy family. No faction problems. Just quiet contentment. Children, a dog perhaps, etc. 

The Happy Ending. And all this is conveyed in a short dinner scene. This is a director and a screen writer who are seriously intelligent.

Awkward Embraces

The Lack of touch is so acute in this scene. The awkward embracing of people who are not used to showing affection to each other. And certainly not passion or desire.

The movie moves on to focus on every time Four touches Tris. She feels each one intensely. He is touching indifferently. Factually you might say until this scene.

Four Advising Tris on Fighting Peter

This time he grabs her arm roughly to make sure she remembers what he told her about fighting. That she must attack first and not go on the defensive. Of course her short lived initial success with Peter surprises him and infuriates him so that he hurts her even more. And Eric signals for him to put her away with a  kick at the end of it.

Lamb to the Slaughter Compliments of Eric

They all know he has arranged for this match to eliminate Tris for talking back to him at the knife throwing. This is the way it goes for truth-tellers, for parrhesiastes. 

Desire/Lack in Touching

Step back: the pattern in the tapestry

won’t tell itself till more of it is made.

Although it’s eighty-seven in the shade,

we have to work this hard making the hist-

ory we need till, trusting it, we’re free

to kiss each other better than when we

imagined kissing when we hadn’t kissed.

Marilyn Hacker in Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons 

I would say the same is true on waiting to experience sex.

DIVERGENT REVIEW:Eric and PC Feminism

Jai Courtney as Eric

Reading Eric through Zizek

We see Eric first on the roof asking for a first jumper into Dauntless. Beatrice says, "Me." As she walks up to the wall Eric's face is not pleased but neither is he showing his displeasure that an Abnegation girl is going to go first. He is displeased though. Very much so.

Beatrice hesitates and Eric says, "Today initiate." And she gathers her courage and jumps.

The first fight between the transferred initiates is when Eric pairs The First Jumper (Tris) with The Last Jumper (Molly). Now we see how smart he really is. I said smart, not wise.

Without getting into a psychological swamp here - too deep anyway - reading through Jung we now know by this sentence that Molly is afraid of allowing herself to fall. She is then going to over-compensate by being physically strong and intimidating and in this instance cruel and sadistic. Right at the end of her beating up Tris we see Eric give her a subtle nod and she pounds the side of Tris's head and knocks her out. 

Jung's psychological theory can be used against someone as well as to help them. This is the continental philosophical position on the uselessness and danger of theory. Any theory can be turned against you.

She is then ranked next to last for losing.

We see a young woman being treated as "equal" with no allowances made for her being a woman and paired against another woman. All very PC Feminist according to the books. Eric is observing the rules while he stacks the fight against Tris. 

This is how it is done ladies. All the laws and rules will never help you while this goes on. We have surface compliance acting as a mask for a deeper deception. And Eric is planning this. He cannot be faulted in terms of Feminist political correctness.

Tris uses parrhesia to call Eric on his punishment of Al. 

"Anyone can stand in front of a target. It doesn't prove anything," says Tris

Dauntless ideology: 

• We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, 
• And in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.

Eric tells her to take Al's place, same rules. Flinch and you're out. So Tris is challenged into an act of Parrhesia. This was the risk she took, among others.

Tris stares into Four's eyes without flinching even when nicked.

Eric: "Points for bravery Stiff but not as many as you lost for what you said. We make soldiers here, not rebels. Watch yourself."

And then Eric will treat Tris as more equal than equal.

Four is angry, telling her to be smart. Tris goes to the dorms where her friends cheer her for her bravery in standing up to Eric and being the only one brave enough to do so. This is how people become scapegoats. They say what everyone else is feeling and thinking but are afraid to say. Eric knows this and has her fight with Peter next to pay her back. She has little chance, starting strong but gets brutalized. As she is down on the floor bloody, she watches Four walking away and Eric signals for Peter to knock her out which he does with a kick. It appears that this has been his strategy since she volunteered to be First Jumper and he looked at her with hate in his eyes. She had 3 strikes at that moment: A girl; A Stiff; First Jumper

It seems that losing a fight wipes out all the points accumulated so Molly wipes out First Jumper points and Peter wipes out the rest she has earned from accomplishment. They were just skills in learning to fight. The fight itself is the real deal and Eric will gt rid of her.

But Eric has also taught her to be Dauntless and Dauntless never gives up. It is Eric who has put the finishing touches on Tris's expertise. Never Give Up. She goes into the Control Room to stop the simulation and she cannot expect herself to come out alive from THAT! So Eric's training has boomeranged on him and we can expect the same from some returning Middle East vets. 

She misses a day in a hospital bed and Chris and Will come in to say good-bye before going to war games, telling her she can't go, that she is "out" now. Eric has dropped her as she fell below the line. 

This was clever and subtle plotting by Eric and quite in line with the "equality" feminists scream about. This is what happens when your demands are turned against you. You demand equality and you get it in spades. So be ready. 

Tris runs and makes the train for the war games. Eric confronts her and asks, "Who let you out?"

Tris replies, "I did." Softly, non-aggressively, assertively as she looks him in the eye non provocatively. Eric is nonplussed for a minute then says, "OK." He can't look stupid in front of everyone here. Four picks Tris for his team to be able to watch her - ? - keep her safe from Eric? - because he values her deadly intelligence?

 Tris shines, winning the game for her team. She is initiated with the zip ride.

Tris will be the one Eric personally injects the tracker chip into. This is a man who cannot tolerate an assertive woman who does not flirt. Chris flirts a little with him and then he hangs her over the chasm. To frighten her. But Tris he is out to destroy. These men are everywhere. Learn to recognize them and watch them. Avoid if you can. Deal with them if you have to. But learn to recognize them even when they paste smiles on their faces.

Zizek would say Tris over-identifies with Dauntless ideology. She is more Dauntless than Dauntless as Nietzsche might phrase it. And by pushing the ideology to the breaking point she destroys the faction system as it works at this point. Zizek tells us this is the way to force the system to be what it says it is or crumble. Tris is exposing the mask of Dauntless that presents the "floating sign" of "lite," all nourishment and value gone. 

An empty sign exposed by Tris leading to its collapse. This is her revolutionary act. This is how anyone becomes revolutionary. Push it to the edge of the abyss then push it over. 

DIVERGENT: Tris as a PARRHESIASTES in Divergent

Tris Standing as Target in Place of Al

"Anyone can stand in front of a target.

It doesn't prove anything." Tris Prior

The context: Al has been told to stand in front of the target and he is trembling with fear.

Dauntless Ideology: 

• We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, 
• And in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.
• Dauntless never gives up.

tt

Tris stands watching as Four gets knives ready for throwing at Al. She wants to say something and is afraid to say it. 

But she believes in Dauntless Ideology.

 Ordinary acts of bravery and the courage that drives one person to stand up for another. 

Have you ever been in this situation?

This is the challenge to a PARRHESIASTES.

Compared to Snowden it is a small personal thing. But beginnings start somewhere.

The Meaning of the Word Parrhesia

• Frankness
• Truth
• Danger
• Criticism
• Duty

...the commitment involved in parrhesia is linked to a certain social situation, to a difference of status between the speaker and his audience, to the fact that the parrhesiastes says something which is dangerous to himself and thus involves a risk, and so on.

By inverting the paradigm, the searchlight is thrown on the Other, the more powerful entity, and we see that the parrhesiastes using parrhesia discloses the character and “truth” of the “sovereign” to the people. In that respect parrhesia lifts the mask of the “sovereign.”

If there is a kind of “proof” of the sincerity of the parrhesiastes, it is his courage. The fact that a speaker says something dangerous — different from what the majority believes — is a strong indication that he is a parrhesiastes.

Danger: Someone is said to use parrhesia and merits consideration as a parrhesiastes only if there is a risk or danger for him in telling the truth.

So you see, the parrhesiastes is someone who takes a risk….Parrhesia, then, is linked to courage in the face of danger; it demands the courage to speak the truth in spite of some danger. And in its extreme form, telling the truth takes place in the “game” of life or death.

When you accept the parrhesiastic game in which your own life is exposed, you are taking up a specific relationship to yourself; you risk death to tell the truth instead of reposing in the security of a life where the truth goes unspoken. Of course, the threat of death comes from the Other, and thereby requires a relationship to the Other. But the parrhesiastes primarily chooses a specific relationship to himself: he prefers himself as a truth-teller rather than as a living being who is false to himself.

so, you see, the function of parrhesia is not to demonstrate the truth to someone else, but has the function of criticism: criticism of the interlocutor….Parrhesia is a form of criticism either toward another or towards oneself, but always in a situation where the speaker or confessor is in a position of inferiority with respect to the interlocutor. The parrhesiastes is always less powerful than the one with whom he speaks. The parrhesia comes from “below,” as it were, and is directed towards “above.”…But when a philosopher criticizes a tyrant, when a citizen criticizes the majority, when a pupil criticizes his teacher, then such speakers may be using parrhesia.

Duty: The last characteristic of parrhesia is this: in parrhesia, telling the truth is regarded as a duty. The orator who speaks the truth to those who cannot accept his truth, for instance, and who may be exiled, or punished in some way, is free to keep silent. No one forces him to speak, but he feels that it is his duty to do so. …Parrhesia is thus related to freedom and duty.

in parrhesia the speaker uses his freedom and chooses frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of falsehood or silence, the risk of death instead of life and security, criticism instead of flattery and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy. (FS pp.11-20)

Foucault - Fearless Speech

This is the context that Tris finds herself in Dauntless training. Four would prefer that she keep quiet. She cannot. Her position is dangerous with Eric and she risks it all in doing this. Eric will pair her in a fight with Peter who can beat her and hurt her badly, which Eric gives the OK for by nodding his head at the end of the fight, and Peter kicks her into unconsciousness. 

_________________________________________

The part Foucault does not discuss is the assignation of scapegoat that falls on the Parrhesiastes. When Tris returns to her friends they cheer her for daring to speak out to Eric. The Parrhesiastes often says what the others are thinking and feeling but dare not say themselves. 

This was Snowden's dilemma. Who was going to tell the truth? Then he realized that he was going to have to be the one. And the fires of hell from the empire came down on him to kill him.

Tris