Lingis’s best Latour Litany

This comes from page 4 in the first chapter of Abuses, and has the complicated structure of litanies within a litany:

“In Honduras they are filling cargo ships with pineapples, coffee, and tobacco for us; at the port of Balikpapan in Kalimantan they are filling the oil tankers that will fuel the cargo ships; in the dunes of Morocco they are shoveling phosphates; on the beaches of Malaysia they are scooping up tin; in Zimbabwe they are digging in pits for the diamonds; in Zaire they are mining uranium.”

It’s a fine piece of writing. Here are some of the things I like about it.

*It has the usual sense of rich plenitude found in any Latour litany, but with more of a hint of darkness than usual: the litany is actually a litany of activities, with the objects included only as the targets of those activities. And the activities seem darkly exploitative, just as their locations seem exotic.

*It starts with pineapples, coffee, and tobacco, all things that put us in the mood to consume, thereby sucking us into the passage by investing our desires in it. The fact that Honduras is a well-known location furthers that effect.

*Then, “the port of Balikpapan in Kalimantan,” a place I have deliberately never looked up after reading this passage, because I’d almost rather believe it’s the fictional product of a parallel universe in which Dr. Seuss writes evil tales.

*Then back to another familiar place, Morocco, where they are “shovelling phosphates.” Most of us normally don’t think of phosphates as a desirable good, though we’re willing enough to believe it. However, it’s the shovelling of those phosphates that sounds eerie.

*An echo/aftertaste of the same effect in the next item, with “scooping up” tin in Malaysia. Both weird (is scooping up all that you need to do?) but also inviting (we’ve all “scooped things up” in sandboxes and elsewhere, thereby feeling as though the acquisition of tin is also within the range of our childhood competencies).

*Similar in the next unit: digging in pits for the diamonds. Again we don’t doubt that it’s done, but it gives an air of evil to those otherwise sparkling, beautiful diamonds that enchant us all into daydreams at the mere mention of them.

*And finally, close off with something familiar yet also vaguely sinister: mining for uranium in Zimbabwe. Uranium and Zimbabwe are both known quantities, but nothing about uranium mines ever seems matter-of-fact, and we have the vague sense that the same holds true for Zimbabwe.

Now, let’s try to ruin this passage in a few ways, a technique that isn’t used enough in literary analysis.

Ruination #1: removal of the exotic

“In San Diego they are filling cargo ships with pineapples, coffee, and tobacco for us; at the port of Galveston in Texas they are filling the oil tankers that will fuel the cargo ships; in the hills of Tennessee they are shoveling phosphates; in the mountains of the Czech Republic they are scooping up tin; in Arkansas they are digging in pits for the diamonds; in Canada they are mining uranium.”

It’s still a litany, but of course the exoticism is gone. This gives it more of a “What Do People Do All Day?”, in-praise-of-capitalism sort of air. Oh, what an energetic race we humans are!

Ruination #2: banalization of the verbs

“In Honduras they are filling cargo ships with pineapples, coffee, and tobacco for us; at the port of Balikpapan in Kalimantan they are filling the oil tankers that will fuel the cargo ships; in the dunes of Morocco they are gathering phosphates; on the beaches of Malaysia they are finding tin; in Zimbabwe they are digging for the diamonds; in Zaire they are mining uranium.”

Here I simply got rid of “shovelling,” “scooping up,” and “in pits.”

ruination #3: banalization of the nouns

“In Honduras they are filling cargo ships with wire, plastic, and paper for us; at the port of Balikpapan in Kalimantan they are filling the oil tankers that will fuel the cargo ships; in the dunes of Morocco they are shoveling sand; on the beaches of Malaysia they are scooping up dirt; in Zimbabwe they are digging in pits for the bedrock; in Zaire they are mining lead.”

(minor) ruination #4: elimination of the Seussian “Balikpapan in Kalimantan”

“In Honduras they are filling cargo ships with pineapples, coffee, and tobacco for us; at the port of Balikpapan they are filling the oil tankers that will fuel the cargo ships; in the dunes of Morocco they are shoveling phosphates; on the beaches of Malaysia they are scooping up tin; in Zimbabwe they are digging in pits for the diamonds; in Zaire they are mining uranium.”

Grand ruination #1 (all ruinations combined):

“In San Diego they are filling cargo ships with wire, plastic, and paper for us; at the port of Galveston in Texas they are filling the oil tankers that will fuel the cargo ships; in the dunes of New Mexico they are gathering sand; in the mountains of the Czech Republic they are finding dirt; in Arkansas they are digging for the bedrock; in Canada they are mining lead.”

It’s still not an uninteresting paragraph, and so one would have to do even more to ruin it. My first proposal is to take away the vaguely eerie third person “they” (Lingis more generally loves the second person “you”), and replace it with a series of first-person boasts.

Grand ruination #2: the cocky tall tale

“In San Diego I filled cargo ships with wire, plastic, and paper; at the port of Galveston in Texas I filled the oil tankers that fuel the cargo ships; in the dunes of New Mexico I gathered sand; in the mountains of the Czech Republic I found dirt; in Arkansas I dug to the bedrock; in Canada I mined lead.”

A real self-made American here, boasting like Achilles or Hercules over a wide range of do-it-yourself industrial projects. But how to ruin the litany even more? I propose that we eliminate the interesting compartmentalization enacted by the semicolons, thereby ruining the split of the various activities into discrete units.

Grand ruination #3: the breezy curriculum vita

“In a career that has taken me to such locales as San Diego, Galveston, Arkansas, and abroad to Canada and the Czech Republic, I have performed such activities as filling cargo ships with goods, gathering sand, finding dirt, digging to hit bedrock, and mining lead.”

Which can perhaps be finished off as follows…

Grand ruination #4: the boring self-description

“I have worked at several locations in the USA and abroad, mostly doing dockyard and mining work.”

A far cry from the gorgeous original:

“In Honduras they are filling cargo ships with pineapples, coffee, and tobacco for us; at the port of Balikpapan in Kalimantan they are filling the oil tankers that will fuel the cargo ships; in the dunes of Morocco they are shoveling phosphates; on the beaches of Malaysia they are scooping up tin; in Zimbabwe they are digging in pits for the diamonds; in Zaire they are mining uranium.”

The best thing for me about being a Lingis student briefly is that you would never dare to hand him a piece of bad writing. The thought of boring him with a piece of prose was mortifying.

One of the things he told us in class:

“Here’s how you write a paper for me. Take the 20-page paper you usually write for Professor X [Penn State colleague]. And cut out the 12 pages of quotes, because I’ve already read those books. Just give me the 8 pages that have your own ideas in them.”

It’s not the only way to teach, of course. We also need plenty of Professor X’s in the world to ensure that a new generation of competent scholars will emerge. But it was refreshing that Lingis always insisted on a different way of doing things, and of course he is vastly outnumbered by the Professor X’s.