on gratitude

Music: Neko Case: Middle Cyclone (2008)

Today I baked a turkey, and I ate some of it not too long ago. This morning, I had the luxury of time to grade and do laundry. I read the paper and sale advertisements. I enjoyed the parade on television while I read the paper, followed by a dog show (I did not listen to the dog show, but rather ambient music while the dog show flickered). I graded a few papers. I worked on editing a manuscript. I spoke on the phone with my mother. I read a part of a chapter of a book titled, The Monstrosity of Christ. I spent the day alone, by choice, and this was a welcome solitude.

Most of my non-blood family here is dispersed across the country with their own blood-families. Most of my blood-family is in Georgia, and in these harsh financial times, one must choose between the brief visit for Thanksgiving, or a more extended stay over the December holidays. I made my choice. Today it's just me, the dog, some cats, and a turkey. Oh, and a computer. And, I guess, some books. I could go on . . . .

I turned the television off by noon because the sentimental programming had finally summoned my inner cynic-demon. The cynic demon comes handy from time to time, but I try to keep him chained below on days like this. I confess to smiling more than once at the Neelys on the Food Channel (they have really grown on me; I think their upbeat mood is sincere, which both charms and frightens me). I did actually enjoy the tidings of comfort and family and joy until the commercials crowded them out with "buy." I even enjoy stuff, buying it, thinking about the stuff I could have, the stuff I could use. But this year the underlying desperation of "Black Friday" is too much; the subtext of many of the televisual messages today was that buying stuff was my moral duty. My mum said on the phone today that she was thinking about shopping tomorrow to support the economy.

I recall more than three people told me they enjoyed Thanksgiving because it was "not commercialized like Christmas," and I appreciate that. At the same time, it seems Christmas has crept into Thanksgiving, such that the two are now one big massive paean to consumption: one is about buying food, the other is about buying shit. Both are yoked to the conception of "the gift."

You know, it's not necessary to make everything an academic enterprise, but as someone who is supposed to be a critic for a living, I couldn't help thinking about Marcel Mauss' work on "the gift" today. I was rereading Mauss a few days ago in preparation for a course I'm teaching next semester titled, "The Object." I first became familiar with Mauss when I studied the occult; I was taken, in particular, by his arguments about class and its relationship to the occult: magic is particularly appealing to the poor because it promises effortless ascent, it promises to cut through class. If you want to understand the appeal of Oprah Winfrey or The Secret, you don't need psychoanalysis. Just read Marcel Mauss. He had it nailed.

Mauss' work on "the gift" is deeply insightful. We are taught since youth that it is "better to give than to receive." I have that teaching innermost, believe me. I take much pleasure in giving gifts---and often when I really cannot afford to give them (this is why I make many of them; the mix CD comes to mind). Mauss' insight, however, was that the gift is a relational gesture of power that always entails an element of reciprocity. To gift is to say to another not simply that you love them, but that you expect some form of love in return---usually recognition, just the appreciation that you gave the gift. And to receive the gift is also to accept a form of recognition. The truth of this complicated power dynamic is perhaps no better demonstrated than with the economy of humor that orbits "regifting," the jokes about the politics of gifting. Take the "Chia head," for instance: it's a gift that has the joke built-into it. All "gag" gifts are designed to call our attention to the politics of reciprocity inherent in the gift.

Thanksgiving differs from Christmas, and the holidays that have been sucked into its vortex, because it remains a harvest/fertility festival. The gift of food is at its center. Symbolically, that gift is most satisfying because it is a celebration of health. I remember the prayers my now mute grandmother used to give at Thanksgiving dinner: she always thanked God for the food about to "nourish our bodies." That's a gratitude marked by the Great Depression, unquestionably, but I suspect that sentiment is till widely voiced. It reenacts a very primal gratitude, in way: when we were all babes, we depended on our parents to feed us. We were helpless. Without our mother or father or whomever providing nourishment, we would die. Thanksgiving in many ways is the holiday of the gift of living.

82 miles from my home is an Army base that has deployed thousands of young men and women to the Middle East to fight wars instigated in response to a wound our country suffered on September 11, 2001. Just weeks ago an Army psychiatrist, himself deeply mentally wounded, killed twelve of them in a psychotic rage. Today, stories on the television and in the paper concerned "Thanksgiving at Fort Hood," banking on the irony of the gift. The subtext of these stories---although at times explicit---was that here are men and women that gifted their lives "for their country," and yet, that gift was not recognized by some "terrorist" who failed to comprehend the value of that gift. He violated the protocol. He was not thankful enough.

Cynicism aside, I have to agree with the underlying logic of these stories, even if I cringe at the consumerist ends to which it is put. Most of us, at this point, are very tired at the trauma-consumerism that has fueled the American economy since Nine-eleven. I think that's one of the many reasons we elected Obama. At the same time, and at the risk of sentimentality, I want to cut through the consumerist shit to acknowledge the men and women who are gifting their lives to fight for my country---an idea of my country, an ideal. It's an ideal that I don't even agree with, one, which, in fact, I think is a force of inhumanity in many ways. But I am thankful for the soldier nonetheless, and I don't say this because of blind patriotism or because it's fashionable. I say this because the gift of one's life demands recognition, even if the cause or reason or rationale is unjust.

It's terribly complicated, in the abstract, to be thankful for thousands upon thousands of men and women who gift life. I recently saw a PBS documentary that was about a tattoo parlor on the outskirts of Fort Hood. It filmed soldier after soldier getting a tattoo and talking about his or her impending deployment. It was a moving documentary because it humanized the soldiers. Most of them were from poor families. Many of them had poor educations. Many of them talked frankly about not returning. These are not stupid people; they understood, very deeply, the risk---and that's why the tattoo is homology on a stick. The tattoos were clearly marks of sacrifice, and inscriptions of hope (of survival; there is power in the signifier). I can only understand this gift with an encounter with the individual giving it.

The injustices of our government are increasingly coming to light, and it's nauseating. Say what you will about the Obama administration, but the recent decision of the president to be photographed with returning dead soldiers is more than a photo opportunity; I want to believe its more than politics, or perhaps more precisely, it's what politics should be: a recognition of the gift. Today I am thankful for the men and women who give their lives for my country, whatever that is, and I am thankful for a president who understands why it is important to publically recognize that gift.