Born in Portsmouth in 1951, Sir Christopher Le Brun is a painter, printmaker, and sculptor. As President of the Royal Academy 2011-19, he oversaw the most significant redevelopment in its history, and is widely acknowledged as having revitalised its reputation. He served as a trustee of many major British art institutions, including Tate and the National Gallery. He was knighted in 2021 for services to art.   CJLPA : What do you think about the current state of the world, and art’s part in it? Sir Christopher Le Brun : The topic is so vast I’m sure you’ll understand if I keep my remarks specific to art. Apart from the very many of those bravely working to keep us safe, or overwhelmed by misfortune or circumstances, our enforced isolation this year has allowed for those moments of quiet observation or exercise of imagination that have always characterised art. Many of us have become uncoupled in this period from outside work or social obligations as the circle shrank to family and home and we have come to rely more on ourselves. By contrast, the cultural world in its public aspect has been busy, seeming to queue up to embrace what might be thought of as the opposite—art as an adjunct of social or political activism.   CJLPA : Arts funding: a public or private affair?   CLB : One of the reasons I have been so committed to the Royal Academy as a private institution follows my experience of the practical difficulties faced by our publicly funded institutions. Their funding comes with considerable and, to some extent necessary, bureaucracy. The tension between these two is becoming increasingly acute. I want to stress that my remarks concern the visual arts specifically, without comment on the merit of any causes. It is primarily about their effect on the training of young artists and the practice and display of art. Those who have not sat around the table when these funding and policy conversations take place would be surprised to find that there is an almost universal consensus amongst key decision makers for what deserves support. That it renders silent a group normally so disposed to awkward individualism and freedom of thought is a further puzzle.   But current issues are bringing rapid changes, to question which few are brave or reckless enough to even try, so much so that there is now a diminishing relation between what is said or thought privately and in public. While this continues, the general understanding of what art is and how people spend their own money, remains consistently (stubbornly some might say) attached to the same few forms—primarily of painting and sculpture—and they continue, and this is the important point, to be loved not for the issues they raise, but for their own sake.   There are surely sound reasons for the special regard in which they are held and which the events we are living through have clarified. Perhaps these reasons now deserve renewed respect. The so-called ‘plastic’ arts are all characterised by touch and presence—they are personal—all qualities that people are naturally attracted to and instinctively trust. Almost everyone feels what it is like to draw, to write, to make something by hand. Isn’t it remarkable (and literally ‘touching’) that in every infant’s drawing we find the least technological and most innocent of beginnings sharing the very same media that in other hands are miracles of sensibility?   It is perfectly reasonable for the income derived from popular exhibitions to cross-subsidise the introduction to the public of new things of real quality. However, it is unsettling, and unsustainable in the long term, for the intellectual basis of public funding to be tolerated in a passive sense, rather than welcomed.   CJLPA : In a revolution, statues tumble. Are we witnessing a revolution?   CLB : No, this is more like a permanent tendency that is no longer being resisted or at the least challenged properly. Art and its history are a delicately balanced system that has suffered from the continual chopping away at and clearing the ground of the larger trees, as it were. What is needed is integration rather than substitution. As the American poet Archie Ammons put it: ‘How many shocks of enlightenment burn out a tradition!’.   Groups and their leaders seek causes that unite them. It might be seen to be a waste of time discussing and disagreeing over aesthetic merit rather than demonstrating art’s subservience to meaning and message. I’m distressed to see art’s essentially spiritual nature thus dismissed.   CJLPA : Institutions such as the Royal Academy are the shapers of taste. How did you view this responsibility during your time as President?   CLB : I’m impressed that you think that is still the case! I would like to think it’s true in the context of our exhibition and education programmes. I certainly had an ambitious vision for what the Academy could once more become, and I am proud to say we did drive through and transform the Academy’s reputation utterly. My aim was to consolidate the RA’s prestige and influence, so that artists and architects would have their own strong platform and their independent voices could contribute more fully to public policy. In relation to contemporary art, I was absolutely focussed on getting the very best artists and architects to become Academicians, not to represent our time, which would turn us into mere delegates, but to raise the quality of art—which in fact is our founding mission. We were certainly getting there by the time of the 250th anniversary celebrations in 2019, when we opened the new united campus on Piccadilly at the heart of London… I wanted the Royal Academy to be central again, both here and internationally.   But you ask an important question about the shaping of taste. If ever you wanted instant controversy, then debating ‘taste’ is an ideal way of getting it. If you are even able to agree broadly on terms (whose taste?), then that nicely undisturbed green field would get instantly trampled to mud, with all the participants and spectators too. It would draw attention to division because we are living through a time that is experiencing an accelerating form of ‘context collapse’. Like all controversial things, taste is somehow central. In my mind I associate it with what in German is called Bildung , the individual soul’s journey of self-improvement. What could be more important?   CJLPA : In 1863, the Paris Salon rejected the works of Courbet, Manet, Pissarro, Jongkind, and Whistler. Today’s great art contests, such as the RA Summer Show, are sometimes viewed not as competitions but as lotteries. Do you think there is a risk of great works falling through the cracks? And might there be scope, as there was in 1863, for a Salon des Refusés?   CLB : Of course, things are missed. To deal with the RA Summer Exhibition first, we received over 18,000 submissions this year in all categories, and we hang about 1,000 pieces in our very large galleries, so apart from the purgatory it might inflict on spectators, the statistics alone show how overwhelmed a Salon des Refusés would be. The question I would put is rather different. What is the equivalent, what has the authority of the Salon now? It is far more likely to be state organisations and museums tasked with the collecting and promotion of art on behalf of the public. Unquestionably over the last ten or 20 years a majority of significant works will have been uncollected. To be fair, without foresight and unlimited funds, this is almost impossible to get right. But it is not helped by the increasing tendency to make decisions based on the artists themselves, rather than the quality of their works, on whether they do or do not fit the officially acceptable progressive criteria. Another difficulty may be because the already limited budget and time spent fundraising must now, as a matter of policy, accommodate collecting representative samples of art from across the entire world.   CJLPA : How do you view your place in the discourse of contemporary art?   CLB : In the musing around words and phrases that can occasionally come into the mind while painting, an imaginary essay title in the form of a rhetorical question presented itself. Most of the time, the sententious nature of these things doesn’t last five minutes, but in this case, it stayed. ‘What is the responsibility of English painting?’ Surprisingly, the beginning of an answer came too: ‘Nature is the simple responsibility of English painting...’   I feel this is a way of answering your question—which is the most difficult and that you have saved until last. The first surprise is that I even mention responsibilities, since I strongly resist the idea of burdening art with anything. The next is that the question specified ‘English’ painting. Why should I put it that way? We are definitely more reluctant to identify our art like this than many other countries. We have grown used to art being removed from any but the broadest of contexts, but there are few things that touch us as much as a sense of belonging. Indisputably the word carries a charge. Remove it and the question moves from major to minor, it no longer seems to matter. It is the particularity in the phrase that is striking and in fact forms the essential content. It is the lack of particularity that increasingly characterises art now.   Expanding on this topic would take me further than this interview allows. In the twentieth century, the presence of an avant-garde was the sharpest indication of an active discourse. The last time this was broadly recognised or even possible was in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the canon was essentially Western European, and the cities of its sway in the contemporary art world could be numbered on one’s fingers. Exhibitions such as ‘A New Spirit in Painting’ in London and ‘Zeitgeist’ in Berlin, in which I participated, are amongst the last examples of how a close argument based on an uninterrupted history is shared from hand to hand. I have a place in that continuing discourse. It could be said it has its limitations (although that seems unduly negative for such a vast and rich field) but that is the point—that is precisely what enables depth. Depth, with its nuance and difficulty, preserves the imagination and the rare individual accent within history. It forms an effective resistance by pushing back at coercive (and frequently commercial or political) visions of reality. The many positive virtues of an ever-widening canon have to be balanced, sadly, against how much we can truly understand or experience in person. As for Nature as an answer, surely its importance is self-evident (hence the reinforcing ‘simple’ in the answer) and ‘a sense of nature’ ever more essential.  Alexander (Sami) Kardos-Nyheim, the interviewer, is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of CJLPA .

The months since my investiture have been remarkable in a number of ways. First and foremost, the continuing pandemic has changed the way my office engages with the public, replacing the in-person contact of what is traditionally a highly social role with virtual gatherings. At the same time, I find myself in a unique position to see and celebrate the innovation and strength with which individuals and organizations are responding to the challenges of the day. My goal, as we move through the pandemic and beyond, is to bring all of my fellow citizens along with me on the journey. I hope to shine a light on the heroes and community leaders who are finding meaningful ways to make life better for others, while honouring the traditions of service and the protection of democratic principles that stand at the heart of the viceregal role in Canada.   *   Premier Kenney; Chief Justice Fraser; Mr Speaker; Honourable Ministerial Colleagues; Honourable Daniel Vandal, Minister of Northern Affairs; Members of the Legislative Assembly; British Consul General Carolyn Saunders; Elder Cecil Crier and Indigenous Leaders; Members of the Judiciary; Mr Alain Laurencelle, Chancellor of the Order of St John; distinguished guests; my fellow Albertans; friends and my dear family:   I regret that most of my close family members are unable to be here today, but hopefully they are able to watch online.   I wish to begin by respectfully acknowledging that we are meeting on Treaty 6 territory and a traditional meeting ground and home for many Indigenous people. We pay our respect to the First nation and Metis ancestors of this place and reaffirm our relationship with them. I thank Elder Cecil Crier for Blessings as I begin this extraordinary journey and I also thank Rocky Morin for the Honour Song he will be so generously offering later today.

Since the detection of massive Russian interference in the 2016 American presidential election, there has been a morass of studies analysing the manipulation, fakes, and distortions, particularly on the Internet, which seem to assault the very notion of truth.   In the US, we have been horrified and perplexed by the huge numbers of people who believed, without much evidence, that there had been massive fraud in the 2020 presidential election, of whom hundreds attacked the building housing Congress in Washington.   Still others are convinced by conspiracy theories about the nation’s elite being satanic paedophiles and cannibals swigging babies’ blood.   The world’s ability to achieve ‘herd immunity’ against the coronavirus pandemic is threatened, because millions of people across the planet believe vaccinations are a cunning cover to, among other nefarious goals, inject microchips into humans, or cause heterosexuals to become gay.   Numerous articles in publications ranging from the popular to the academic have discussed information manipulation, fake news, hybrid war—both classic black techniques used throughout history, and modern variants adapted for the new technologies which yielded ‘social media’.   That a significant proportion of the new range of technologies and media has been exploited to transmit downright lies—in the way every previous form of communication has also been subject to abuse—should not have been a surprise.   Most of us—some sooner than others—became aware of the previously secret techniques, such as sophisticated algorithms, working like Avatar predators, luring or prodding us into informational zones filled with traps.   These mechanisms were designed to influence our perceptions and shape our ideas, about everything from the shoes and cars we want to buy to the belief systems or political leaders we like to think we have chosen for ourselves.

Funding for the arts is quite frequently commended by political philosophers and political pundits—whom I shall call ‘edificatory perfectionists’—as a policy that can incline people to improve their ways of life by taking advantage of cultural opportunities.[1] By contrast, this article advocates such funding because it can promote the occurrence of outstanding achievements and thereby help to bring about the conditions under which every citizen can be warranted in feeling a strong sense of self-respect. Such a rationale will be designated here as ‘aspirational perfectionism’. Naturally, the tenor of aspirational perfectionism would be especially plain in policies that establish competitions and prizes for excellence in the arts. However, for the purpose of sharpening the contrast between aspirational perfectionism and edificatory perfectionism, let us continue to focus on subventions disbursed by a system of governance to enable the producers or organizers of artistic events to price their tickets at affordable levels. Subsidies so aimed can indeed sensibly figure among the techniques plied by a system of governance in pursuit of the objectives of aspirational perfectionism.   Whereas edificatory perfectionists favour such subsidies as means Whereas edificatory perfectionists favour such subsidies as means of steering members of the public toward more sophisticated pastimes and lifestyles, aspirational perfectionists favour them principally as means of sustaining the sundry aesthetic ventures through which great accomplishments can emerge. In the absence of those subventions and in the absence of any private-sector subventions that would be of approximately the same scale and efficacy, the number of people in attendance at high-art events (with staggeringly expensive tickets) would dwindle to the point where most such events might lose their viability altogether. As a result, there would be a sharp diminution in the abundance of the fora wherein painters and composers and playwrights and authors and musicians and other practitioners of the high arts are able to present their endeavours to the public. Those endeavours would consequently be set back, as practitioners of the high arts would struggle to come up with their livelihoods and with the audiences on whom they could try out their ideas. If public subsidies for events in the arts can avert such setbacks by keeping the events affordable and by thus providing the practitioners of the high arts with ample opportunities to gain attention for their offerings, the subsidies can encourage the aesthetic striving that is necessary for the attainment of excellence in the high arts. They can also promote a rich cultural tapestry that is itself a mode of societal excellence.   Of course, the scenario sketched in the preceding paragraph adverts to a number of empirical contingencies that might or might not obtain in any given society. For one thing, as has already been suggested, the likelihood or unlikelihood of adequate private-sector subventions for the arts in the absence of public subventions is obviously a matter that can vary from one society to another. That matter and the other contingencies recounted in the aforementioned scenario would have to be explored by the relevant officials in any system of governance before they could legitimately go ahead with disbursals of funding for the arts. Still, although the legitimacy of such disbursals will hinge partly on those contingencies, a situation in which the facts do militate in favour of public funding is not at all implausible. On the contrary, the facts can align in favour of some public subventions in many credibly possible societies.   Under the aspirational-perfectionist rationale for public financial support of the arts, any enhancement of the aesthetic sensibilities of the citizenry is a byproduct rather than a justificatory factor. Welcome though such a byproduct undoubtedly is, it does not contribute to the justificatory basis for the policy of public subventions. To invoke it as an element of that justificatory basis would be to evince the meddlesome mentality of edificatory perfectionism. That is, if a system of governance adopts a policy of funding the arts, and if one of its aims in doing so is to increase the urbanity of its citizens, its policy is tainted by the officiousness of a busybody. Its policy is a product of edificatory perfectionism rather than solely of aspirational perfectionism.   Nonetheless, although an aspirational-perfectionist system of governance that provides subsidies for the arts is not thereby endeavouring to refine the sentiments and outlooks of citizens, it is endeavouring to improve their lives in quite a different fashion. Its immediate aim in supplying the subsidies is to nurture excellence in the arts by helping to ensure that audiences and livelihoods will be available to the practitioners thereof, but its underlying objective through the promotion of excellence is to enable every citizen to be warranted in harbouring a robust sense of self-respect. Given the centrality of warranted self-respect to a good life (not only by the reckoning of aspirational perfectionists, but also by the reckoning of Rawlsians), aspirational perfectionism does indeed aim to make each person’s life better. However, instead of trying in the manner of a busybody to elevate the lifestyle or sensibilities of each person, it tries to endow a society with estimableness on which the warranted self-respect of every member of the society can be partly based.   Thus, the aspirational-perfectionist rationale for the subventions envisioned here is considerably more complex than the edificatory-perfectionist rationale. Under either of those justifications, the immediate effect sought through the subventions is on the members of the public whose inclinations to attend high-art events will be triggered by the affordability of the tickets for the events. However, edificatory perfectionists seek that effect in the hope that the members of the public will be uplifted through their engagement with aesthetically sophisticated performances or exhibitions. By contrast, although an aspirational perfectionist can of course applaud the edification of members of the public and can perceive that it is a likely consequence of the policies which she commends, her prescriptions are not oriented toward it. Rather, aspirational perfectionists seek the attendance of members of the public at high-art events to sustain the flourishing cultural conditions in which the occurrence of outstanding feats of creativity is encouraged. In other words, the effect on the members of the public is sought for the sake of the resultant effect on the practitioners of the arts—composers, authors, playwrights, painters, sculptors, musicians, actors, and so forth—whose creative striving will be vitalized. In turn, that effect on the practitioners of the arts is pursued by aspirational perfectionists for the sake of the resultant effect on the warrantedness of everyone’s sense of self-respect. Insofar as the vitalization of the creative striving undertaken by the practitioners of the arts does fruitfully lead to top-notch achievements, it will have imbued their society with a mode of excellence. If the society is likewise excellent in some other ways and is governed as a liberal democracy, it comprises the conditions under which every citizen can be warranted in feeling a high level of self-respect. (Of course, as this chapter will remark, the excellence of a society is only a necessary condition rather than a sufficient condition for the warrantedness of a strong sense of self-respect on the part of each citizen. Numerous specificities of the conduct of any particular individual will bear on whether she is warranted in harbouring a strong sense of self-respect, and those specificities along with numerous specificities of her temperament will bear on whether she actually feels such a sense of self-respect.)   Naturally, some aspirational-perfectionist policies—for example, some prizes or fellowships or other such awards—will be more straightforwardly aimed at promoting the occurrence of outstanding achievements than are the subventions for the arts that have been pondered here. Public support for the arts and for other endeavours can be channelled by sundry routes. However, subsidies of the type contemplated here are important not only because they are familiar and because their immediate beneficiaries are quite numerous, but also because they can help to shape a rich medley of cultural offerings that will cumulatively constitute a form of excellence with which a society can be endued. Thus, my outline of the aspirational-perfectionist rationale for such subsidies is an apt point of departure for my elabouration of aspirational perfectionism as an alternative both to edificatory perfectionism and to any position that opposes subsidies for the arts.   1. Societal excellence and warranted self-respect   Perhaps the aspect of aspirational perfectionism most in need of clarification and defense is the connection which it postulates between the excellence of a society and the warranted self-respect of the individuals who belong to that society. Why would the warrantedness of anyone’s sense of self-respect depend partly on the occurrence of great accomplishments by other people in his society? If somebody has not been at least tenuously involved in any of those accomplishments, why would the occurrence of them make any difference to the warrantedness or unwarrantedness of his feeling a high level of self-respect? Are aspirational perfectionists preposterously suggesting that individuals should take credit for the feats of others in whose exploits they have not participated at all? Are aspirational perfectionists suggesting that warranted self-respect is partly a vicarious property?   These and related questions may seem to pose serious difficulties for aspirational perfectionism. They manifestly have to be addressed. One thing to be noted straightaway is that these questions are ethical rather than psychological. They are about the warrantedness of certain attitudes rather than about the likelihood that such attitudes will be held. Aspirational perfectionism is premised on ethical claims about warranted self-respect rather than on empirical claims about self-respect. (John Rawls did not sufficiently differentiate the former claims from the latter in his famous discussions of self-respect in Part Three of A Theory of Justice .)[2] Nonetheless, despite the crucial differences between ethical assertions about warranted self-respect and empirical assertions about self-respect, we can fruitfully approach the ethical matters by briefly mulling over some empirical matters. My empirical observations will be at an elementary level and are meant to be suggestive as a transition to my ethical argumentation; they are decidedly not presented as the premises of an argument from which some ethical conclusions would be derived in defiance of the ‘is’/‘ought’ divide.   1.1. Pride in the accomplishments of others   Although the notion of taking pride in the accomplishments of other people can initially seem outlandish, it is in fact instantiated in many commonplace settings. Some of the most resounding instances arise from the fervor felt and exhibited by the followers of teams in various sports. Across many societies, people tend to identify themselves with teams on the basis of numerous different factors: current residence, past residence, institutional affiliation (often determinative in relation to collegiate sports, for example), national affiliation (often determinative in relation to Olympic sports and other international tournaments), and so forth. Myriads of people take great pride in their cherished teams, and they tend to feel better about themselves and their lives when their teams are faring especially well. Of course, such pride is not always entirely vicarious. Spectators who attend some sporting event can contribute quite significantly to the flow of play by cheering vociferously for their favoured team and by showing disfavour for the rival team. Still, the principal responsibility for victories by a successful team belongs to the athletes who make up the team, and no direct responsibility at all for those victories is attributable to followers of the team who have not attended any of the games or matches. All the same, countless devotees of teams who do fall into the not-having-attended category take pride in their teams’ triumphs. Their doing so is an everyday feature of life in most countries.   As has been noted, one of the factors that can lead people to associate themselves enthusiastically with a team is national affiliation. That factor, like each of the other factors mentioned above, extends far beyond the confines of sports. Patriotic sentiments, whether in perniciously chauvinistic forms or in more salutary forms, typically involve the taking of pride in others’ achievements as well as in one’s own achievements. Many people in Finland take pride in the musical accomplishments of Jean Sibelius, who was himself ardently patriotic; many people in England take pride in the magnificent plays and poetry of their countryman William Shakespeare; many people in the United States take pride in the ethical and oratorical greatness of their compatriot Abraham Lincoln; many people in South Africa take pride in the towering stature of Nelson Mandela as a statesman; many people in the Netherlands take pride in the formidable roster of superb painters among their countrymen, ranging from Rembrandt to Vincent van Gogh; and so forth. Patriotism is a pervasively felt attitude or set of attitudes whereby people feel better about their lives because they perceive themselves as belonging to a country that is admirable. Patriotism does not always involve hearty support for the currently reigning government in one’s country; indeed, one’s resistance to a government’s policies or demands can be impelled by one’s sense that the ruling officials have deviated from some commendable values or traditions of one’s country. Still, although patriotism does not always translate into support for the system of governance that currently prevails in one’s country, it leads people to feel lifted above their solitary lives by dint of their being linked to a nation whose institutions or traditions or fellow citizens are perceived by them as laudable.   Numerous people who enter major universities—whether to study or to teach—quite rapidly come to feel proud about the intellectual feats of their predecessors or contemporaries. Universities and many of their members brag about Nobel Prizes and other high-profile awards and achievements attained by those predecessors or contemporaries. They do so partly because the institutions gain prestige from the amassing of such awards and achievements, and because the members materially benefit from belonging to prestigious institutions. However, more generally, a lot of the people who study or teach at a major university derive pride and gratification from their connections to such a centre of learning with its illustrious exploits. Their awareness of those exploits can invigorate them in their own striving for academic excellence. (Of course, as has already been observed, some of the non-academic accomplishments attributable to universities—most notably their sporting triumphs—can also engender great pride in many of the members thereof.)   Like national allegiances and institutional affiliations, regional and local ties are often operative in inclining people to experience greater esteem for themselves by reference to the achievements of others. A host of examples could be adduced here, but three literary instances from England will suffice to illustrate the point. The county of Dorset promotes itself as ‘Hardy country’; the county of Hampshire and the city of Bath compete to promote themselves as ‘Austen country’; and the county of Warwickshire around the town of Stratford-upon-Avon promotes itself as ‘Shakespeare country’. Doubtless, the promotional ventures of these regions and municipalities are undertaken principally in order to encourage potential tourists to visit. However, anyone who visits these places can quickly discern that many of the people who have been brought up in them—not just the tour guides—genuinely harbour feelings of pride from residing where such eminent writers worked.   Heretofore my examples of vicarious pride have pertained chiefly to some outstanding accomplishments attained by individuals or by small sets of individuals. However, people also take pride in great collective accomplishments of others and in glorious features of the natural environment. For instance, many inhabitants of the English city of York (or Ely or Canterbury) experience a somewhat heightened sense of self-esteem as a result of living in the proximity of one of the grandest cathedrals in the world. People who are not religious at all and who do not participate in the maintenance of the York Minster (or Ely Cathedral or Canterbury Cathedral) can nonetheless feel better about themselves as they daily savour its magnificent architecture in their midst.   Similarly, numerous residents of the states in the upper Midwestern portion of the USA have long taken pride in the flagship public universities which their legislatures have established. When describing this phenomenon, the sociologists Christopher Jencks and David Riesman directly analogized the outlooks of citizens in the Midwestern states to those of people who dwell in European cathedral cities: ‘Like medieval cathedrals, public universities in these states seem to have become symbols of communal solidarity, a focus of civic pride, and a tribute to faith in ideas that transcend the here and now’ (1977, 173). Even citizens who have not studied or taught at the flagship university in their state can look upon its excellence as a source of gratification accruing to everyone who abides there.   Elements of the natural environment can elicit cognate attitudes. For many people who live in places with spectacular natural scenery, the breathtakingness of the environment serves to reinforce their self-esteem. This role of the natural topography was poignantly captured in June 2014 by Nashreem Ghori, who hails from Pakistan. Speaking to a Washington Post  reporter one year after a massacre perpetrated by Taliban terrorists against foreigners who were climbing in the northern mountains of Pakistan, Ghori lamented the precipitous decline in the flow of tourists and climbers to his country. Inhabitants of northern Pakistan were of course suffering financially from that decline, but they were more profoundly undergoing a collapse in their morale. As Ghori explained: ‘We have so little to be proud of, so if there is something as impressive as this [namely, the mountainous terrain of northern Pakistan], and foreigners come praise it, it’s a psychological lift’.[3] Because people so often identify themselves with the locations in which their lives unfold, the prepossessing features of those locations combine with individuals’ own doings as determinants of their levels of self-esteem.   In short, although the idea of vicarious pride might at first seem queer when it is broached in abstracto , a bit of reflection indicates that vicarious pride is manifested ubiquitously in everyday life. Of course, the pervasiveness of the practice of taking pride in the accomplishments of other people (and in the grandeur of natural environments) is consistent with the proposition that every instantiation of that practice is unwarranted. My empirical observations in this subsection are consistent with that proposition. Even more obviously, those observations are consistent with the proposition that some instances of the aforementioned practice are unwarranted; indeed, that latter proposition is plainly true. Nevertheless, what the observations in this subsection help to underscore is that the bolstering of people’s self-esteem through the achievements of others is not something opaque to us as if it were occurrent only in possible worlds that are highly remote from actuality. It is such a widespread phenomenon that we largely take it for granted.   1.2. Is vicarious pride ever warranted?   As has already been remarked, the discussion in the preceding subsection is not a set of premises from which some ethical conclusions can validly be derived. The ‘is’/’ought’ gap precludes such a derivation from empirical claims. Still, although no ethical conclusions directly follow from those claims, the role of the preceding subsection in drawing attention to the familiarity of vicarious pride is of relevance here. Notwithstanding that some instances of vicarious pride are unwarranted—sometimes egregiously unwarranted—the pervasiveness of such pride and the benignity of many of its manifestations should incline us to be surprised if no solid arguments could be advanced to support the warrantedness of some of its instances.   Unlike the instinct for revenge, which is probably as widespread as the tendency to take pride in the achievements of one’s fellows, the latter tendency is not inherently oriented toward the harming of others. Indeed, it is frequently not so oriented. As the comment by Nashreem Ghori makes clear, the experience of feeling good about oneself by reference to the accomplishments of one’s fellows or to the beauty of nature does not have to involve any denigration of other people. It does not have to involve any nasty gloating or sneering—types of conduct that are indicative of insecurity rather than of warranted self-respect. When an individual has reinforced his sense of self-respect by associating himself with some modes of excellence achieved by others, he can become more appreciative of excellence in its diverse forms. Such an effect is not inevitable in each particular case, but it is always possible and is not at all fanciful. As Rawls contended: ‘When men are secure in the enjoyment of the exercise of their own powers, they are disposed to appreciate the perfections of others’.[4] Rawls characteristically presented his readers with an excessively sweeping empirical assertion, but his thesis becomes much stronger if the disposition to which he referred is understood as a credible possibility rather than as something that always obtains.   Vicarious pride, then, is separable (though not always separate) from any malign attitudes toward others. Important though that point is, however, it does not per se suffice to establish that some instances of such pride are warranted. We still need to address the further ethical question whether the strengthening of one’s self-esteem through one’s association of oneself with the outstanding achievements of others is ever tenable. That question can be sharpened into two concerns. First, would the enhancement of one’s self-respect amount to taking credit for the exploits of others? Second, would it amount to a display of a person’s inadequacy, where the person relies on those exploits to compensate for the insufficiency of her own doings as a basis for her sense of her own worth? Let us designate the first of these queries as the ‘Credit Concern’ and the second as the ‘Inadequacy Concern’.   1.2.1. A first concern addressed   A response to the Credit Concern is quite straightforward. Although some instances of vicarious pride are doubtless impelled by delusions on the part of people who have hoodwinked themselves into thinking that they deserve credit for achievements to which they have not contributed, there are no grounds for thinking that all or even most instances are of that kind. In countless credibly possible situations in which the self-esteem of individuals is reinforced through the splendid exploits of other people or through the captivatingness of natural beauty, the individuals in question are not under any illusions that they are personally responsible for the greatness with which they associate themselves. Worth noting also is that not all instances of vicarious pride are purely vicarious. As has already been mentioned, some of the devotees of teams in various sports do contribute in certain ways to their teams’ victories by attending games or matches with clamorous ebullience. When the devotees feel better about themselves with reference to those victories, they are taking pride in triumphs for which they can accurately claim some small shares of the credit. Much the same is true of quite a few of the stonemasons who make repairs in the magnificent edifices of Cambridge and Oxford colleges.[5] They take pride not only in the results of their own labours, but also in the overall exquisiteness of the architecture which they have helped to preserve.   1.2.2. A second concern addressed   Somewhat more complicated is the second of the two queries broached above, the Inadequacy Concern. Like the Credit Concern, the Inadequacy Concern is accurate in relation to certain instances of vicarious pride. Some individuals who experience such pride are undoubtedly seeking to offset and obscure their own failures by absorbing themselves with the successes of other people. However, such self-deception is scarcely the only possible factor that can prompt a person P to feel a heightened sense of self-esteem through the accomplishments of other people. Instead of unworthily trying to play down any of his own shortcomings, P can simply be recognizing that the trajectory of his life comprises far more than solely his own doings. It also comprehends many of the doings of people who stand in sundry relationships to P. Any satisfactory assessment of the estimableness of P’s life will need to advert to the fortunes of those people, even though such an assessment will of course be focused primarily on P’s own endeavours.   Because P is positioned in the relationships just mentioned, P himself and other people aptly identify his fortunes partly with the fortunes of his contemporaries and predecessors and successors who are linked to him through those relationships. Gauging the goodness of P’s life partly by reference to the activities of some of his contemporaries and predecessors and successors is apt inasmuch as his relationships with them augment the lustre of his life through their successes and detract from the lustre of his life through their failures. Perhaps the most obvious examples of relationships that produce such effects by intertwining people’s lives are those of typical families. If P as a member of a typical family generally fares well in his undertakings, and if the other members of his family fare badly, the goodness of his life will have been lessened by the dismalness of their lives. Of course, the quality of P’s life is primarily determined by his own accomplishments and setbacks; but its estimableness is diminished by the lacklustre fortunes of people with whom P is significantly associated. Conversely, if P generally fares well and if the members of his family also fare well, the goodness of his life will have been augmented by their flourishing. As Rawls affirmed, ‘[w]e need one another as partners in ways of life that are engaged in for their own sake, and the successes and enjoyments of others are necessary for and complementary to our own good.[6] To be sure, the term ‘partners’ in this statement by Rawls should be construed loosely. Even in some families—and a fortiori  in larger and more diffuse groups—the members might seldom come into contact with one another and might not collaborate with one another in any structured fashion. Still, in a typical family and in any of the sundry other groups that Rawls designated as ‘social unions’,[7] the members are partners at least in the sense that their diverse activities cumulatively determine the character of their group to which they all are linked.   In a typical family, the members interact frequently and intimately. In any typical larger group, the members interact less frequently; in a group on the scale of a nation, most of the members will not encounter one another directly at all. Still, despite the limitedness of any direct or intimate interaction among most of the citizens of a sizeable nation, they are partners in the expansive sense that has just been specified. Their conduct cumulatively shapes the ethical character of their society, and that ethical character is a determinant—usually an ancillary determinant, though sometimes a central determinant—of the overall ethical quality of each citizen’s life. Even when somebody fiercely dissociates himself from the society to which he belongs, the trajectory of his life (including his dissociation of himself from his society and his perception of the need to dissociate himself therefrom) will have been inflected in its ethical bearings by the collectivity which he now ferociously excoriates. His very denunciation of that collectivity is expressive of the stake which he has had in its fortunes.   Given the importance of a society in affecting the overall course of the life of each individual who belongs thereto, its members have good reasons to feel better about themselves when other members enhance the society’s stature through their accomplishments. On suitable occasions, they have good reasons to partake in the practice of experiencing vicarious pride. So widespread throughout the world, that practice is often solidly justifiable. This point is particularly pertinent at the level of ideal theory, as Rawls recognized: ‘In a fully just society persons seek their good in ways peculiar to themselves, and they rely upon their associates to do things they could not have done, as well as things they might have done but did not […] It is a feature of human sociability that we are by ourselves but parts of what we might be. We must look to others to attain the excellences that we must leave aside, or lack altogether […] Yet the good attained from the common culture far exceeds our work in the sense that we cease to be mere fragments’.[8] As Rawls’s meditations on social unions serve to accentuate, the fundamental misconception underlying the Inadequacy Concern is the notion that all limitations on a person’s abilities and achievements are a cause for consternation. Some such limitations are indeed a cause for dismay, but the sheer finitude of each person is not. Instead of compensating for ignominious inadequacies, the outstanding feats that warrantedly elicit vicarious pride are such as to complement and enrich the contributions made by other citizens to the overall lustre of their society from which every citizen can benefit.   1.2.3. An apparent objection   By pointing to facts that markedly contrast with those which I have highlighted in §1.1, a wary reader might impugn my effort to ground aspirational perfectionism on the warrantedness of some instances of vicarious pride. Such a reader would submit that, although the attainment of excellence by certain people can heighten the self-esteem of many of their fellow citizens, it can also produce much more deleterious effects. In response to the great achievements of illustrious predecessors or contemporaries, some people can feel daunted and demoralized because their own talents seem to them paltry in comparison. Alternatively, or additionally, some people can feel envious and embittered as they sense that their own exploits have been overshadowed by the remarkable accomplishments of certain predecessors or contemporaries or successors. Far from enhancing the self-esteem of the people who develop these negative attitudes, the remarkable accomplishments in question have substantially impaired their self-esteem. Whether or not such reactions are as common as the practice of taking pride in the great achievements of others, they certainly are familiar.   Any objection to aspirational perfectionism along these lines would be misconceived. As has been emphasized, the empirical observations advanced in §1.1 are not premises from which this chapter has sought to derive ethical conclusions. Rather, in arriving at ethical conclusions, this chapter has inquired whether any of the patterns of behaviour recounted in those empirical observations are warranted or not. My ethical conclusions, reached through ethical reasoning, are an answer (an affirmative answer) to that ethical inquiry.   Now, the empirical observations in the penultimate paragraph above—which of course are consistent with the observations in §1.1, even though their tenor is markedly different—are likewise not premises from which any ethical conclusions can validly be derived. If they are to be parlayed into a challenge to aspirational perfectionism, they will have to be subjected to ethical scrutiny like the scrutiny to which the observations in §1.1 have been subjected. That is, we have to ask whether people are ever warranted in responding to the outstanding achievements of others by feeling daunted and demoralized or envious and embittered. Such attitudes do indeed detract from people’s self-esteem, but are the reductions in self-esteem ever warranted?   On the one hand, if the self-esteem of some person Q is currently at an inordinately high level, his exposure to some sterling accomplishments by other people might salutarily decrease his self-esteem to an appropriate level. He might come to be accurately attuned to his own limitations and merits. If so, the diminution in his self-esteem is warranted. Of course, any such diminution could easily go too far. If Q does become demoralized because of his shedding of his illusions about his abilities, he will unwarrantedly have gone from one excess to another. Nonetheless, if his exaggerated estimation of his own talents is lowered to an apt level without plummeting further to a level of despondency—and without leading to a sour-grapes sense of resignation or sullenness—the reduction in his self-respect will have been warranted.   On the other hand, if the self-respect of Q is currently at an apt level (or even if it is not), and if he becomes dispirited or seethingly envious in response to somebody else’s towering achievements, his reaction is unwarranted. A reaction of either type may be humanly understandable, but it is ethically unworthy. If Q does indeed fall prey to dejected torpor or to envy, he is exhibiting his own ethical weakness by focusing his appraisal of himself largely on the fact that he is not someone else.   Somebody with a warranted sense of self-respect focuses her appraisal of herself on what she is and does: on her abilities, on her accomplishments, and on her relationships with other people and her surroundings. (Of course, if her accomplishments fall well short of what could reasonably be expected on the basis of her abilities, she is warranted in lowering her sense of self-esteem commensurately.) Given that her level of self-respect is pegged accurately to her own abilities and accomplishments and relationships, that level is not degradingly centred on the fact that she lacks someone else’s abilities or on the fact that she has not performed someone else’s deeds. Unlike Q in the preceding paragraph, a person with a warranted sense of self-respect will have attained that sense positively by reference to what she does and is—including her relationships with other people—rather than negatively by reference to her not having done what somebody else has done.   In sum, although the empirical observations at the outset of this subsection are true, they cannot be parlayed into any conclusions that are problematic for aspirational perfectionism. It is quite likely that some people will become demoralized or bitterly envious in response to the outstanding achievements of others, but such self-abasing reactions are always unwarranted as an ethical matter (even if they are psychologically understandable). Any curtailment of someone’s self-esteem that is attributable to such reactions is unwarranted. When a person harbours a proper level of self-respect, that level will have been bolstered rather than sapped by the sterling exploits of others in her society.   1.2.4. Another apparent objection   Wary readers might thus press forth with a different objection to my grounding of aspirational perfectionism on the warrantedness of some instances of vicarious pride. Such readers might point out that, when somebody has grown up in disadvantaged circumstances and has risen above those circumstances to achieve success in some field(s) of endeavour, he will be warranted in harbouring an especially high sense of self-esteem. He can rightly pride himself on his fortitude and talents that have enabled him to overcome the obstacles which he would not have encountered if he had grown up in more auspicious circumstances. Wary readers might also point out that somebody who campaigns effectively against injustices can aptly take satisfaction in what he has done to rectify wrongs. An ancient Hebrew prophet such as Amos or Jeremiah, or a modern-day prophet such as Martin Luther King or Václav Havel or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, could quite properly take pride in his forthright condemnation of iniquity under conditions of grievous peril and persecution. Had such a prophet lived in a better society with much less severe injustice, there would probably have been fewer occasions for him to display his courage and eloquence.   Unlike the riposte to my theorizing that has been plumbed in §1.2.3, this new riposte—which I will henceforth designate as the ‘Struggling Against Adversities Objection’—presents some empirical claims that are already subsumed into ethical propositions about the warrantedness of enhanced levels of self-respect under certain kinds of circumstances. Still, the purport of the Struggling Against Adversities Objection is not entirely clear. It appears to be directed against my thesis that the warrantedness of a high level of self-respect for each person in any society depends partly on the occurrence of outstanding achievements within the society. That thesis does stand in need of further defense, which it will receive in §1.3 of this chapter. By contrast, the arguments in §1.2 have been marshalled not in support of that thesis but in support of an anterior proposition: namely, the proposition that people can sometimes warrantedly take pride in the great accomplishments of others who belong to their society. At any rate, although the Struggling Against Adversities Objection is somewhat premature, three rejoinders to it are pertinent even at this stage.   1.2.4.1. Illegitimate measures   First, this article is primarily a work of political philosophy. Its argument about the warrantedness of some instances of vicarious pride is ultimately in the service of conclusions about the proper role of any system of governance. More specifically, those conclusions pertain to the ways in which any system of governance is both morally obligated and morally permitted to bring about the conditions under which every citizen can be warranted in harbouring a strong sense of self-respect. Even if the Struggling Against Adversities Objection were correct in suggesting that every citizen could be so warranted as a result of coming to grips with obstacles posed by injustices or by natural hardships such as disabilities, no system of governance would ever be morally permitted to inflict injustices on citizens for the sake of providing them with opportunities to meet the ensuing challenges. No system of governance can ever legitimately perpetrate injustices for any purpose—not even the purpose of promoting the incidence of warranted self-respect.   The dialectical situation here is somewhat akin to that which confronted the apostle Paul in his Letter to the Romans. Quite early in that letter, Paul noted that some of his opponents had accused him of propagating the message that sinful behaviour is permissible and even commendable because it gives rise to occasions for the working of God’s redemptive grace: ‘And why not do evil that good [in the form of God’s forgiveness and salvation] may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying’ (3:8). When Paul returned to this matter subsequently in the letter, he emphatically affirmed that sinful behaviour is never permissible even when it is undertaken in pursuit of benign ends (6:1–2): ‘What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?’   In short, even if the Struggling Against Adversities Objection were unproblematic in all other ways, it would not be broaching a prospect on the basis of which any system of governance could ever legitimately act. Aspirational perfectionism is located within an array of deontological constraints. Each such constraint is absolute in that it is always and everywhere morally binding. Contraventions of a deontological constraint are never morally permissible even if they are somehow promotive of good consequences such as the strengthening of a person’s warranted self-respect. Yet a system of governance would blatantly violate deontological constraints if it were deliberately to afflict people with poverty or disabilities or other serious hardships in order to furnish them with opportunities to surmount those hardships. Hence, the Struggling Against Adversities Objection does not cast any doubt on the proposition that every system of governance is morally obligated and morally permitted to avert or remedy injustices rather than to generate them.   1.2.4.2. Warranted self-respect impaired   In any event, the Struggling Against Adversities Objection errs in suggesting that a country where prophets need to rail against iniquities is a land in which a system of governance has secured the conditions under which every citizen can be fully warranted in harbouring a strong sense of self-respect. Specifically, what is missing is the mode of excellence that consists in the realization of the requirements of justice. Of course, a society can attain that mode of excellence without being perfectly just; however, a society debased by injustices on a scale that elicits well-founded prophetic remonstrations is not a community whose members can warrantedly take pride in their status as members. It is not surprising that what suffuses the declamations of the Hebrew prophets, in addition to a sense of truculent indignation, is a sense of shame. Although the prophets were not personally responsible for the depravity against which they inveighed, they were warranted in feeling ashamed of belonging to a community that had succumbed to such depravity.[9] A prophet could recognize that the trajectory of his life included his membership in a deeply unjust society, and he could warrantedly conclude that that trajectory was tarnished pro tanto . Notwithstanding that he could warrantedly derive satisfaction from his own indefatigability in condemning and countering the heinous   wrongs committed by his fellow citizens, the conditions for the full warrantedness of a robust sense of self-respect on his part (or on the part of any of his fellow citizens) were not in place.   1.2.4.3. Insusceptibility to generalisation   Even if the other shortcomings in the Struggling Against Adversities Objection were to be pretermitted, the objection would fail because the conditions which it recounts as potentially underpinning the warrantedness of a strong sense of self-respect are not susceptible to being universalized. A society S in which every member acts as a prophet who aptly fulminates against injustices is not possible—partly because the basic life-sustaining functions of a society would not be adequately fulfilled in S if every member were devoting his time and energy to prophetic denunciations,[10] but even more importantly because S would no longer be properly subject to such denunciations if everyone within it were firmly and appositely opposed to injustice. In a situation where every member of S is endowed with the moral uprightness of Amos or Havel or King or Bonhoeffer, there would not be any suitable targets for prophetic reproaches. (Throughout this discussion I have been assuming that prophetic rebukes are grounded on correct principles of morality. Such an assumption is safe in application to the rebukes uttered by the four men just named, but it fails in application to some other prophets. For example, the Hebrew reformer Nehemiah trained his ire on his countrymen partly because of their inter-ethnic marriages. Insofar as his tirades were benightedly rooted in a xenophobic moral outlook, he could not warrantedly feel a heightened sense of self-esteem by dint of his having engaged in them.)   Likewise insusceptible to being universalized are the conditions under which a person can warrantedly feel a strong sense of self-esteem as a result of having overcome special hardships on the way to a successful life. If everyone were subject to some limitation or adversity, then no one could correctly claim to have transcended any special disadvantage by virtue of succeeding in the presence of that   limitation or adversity. A disadvantage is not special or distinctive if everyone shares it; to assign oneself special kudos for flourishing in spite of it would be akin to assigning oneself special kudos for flourishing in spite of one’s inability to fly by flapping one’s arms.   In sum, although the Struggling Against Adversities Objection purports to highlight certain conditions under which everyone could be warranted in harbouring a high level of self-esteem, those conditions cannot be extended to everyone—either because they cannot be extended to everyone tout court  or because they cannot be extended to everyone while still performing the role ascribed to them by the Struggling Against Adversities Objection. By contrast, feeling proud about the great achievements that occur in a society is something that everybody within the society can warrantedly do. In other words, when aspirational perfectionism specifies certain conditions that are necessary for the warrantedness of a strong sense of self-esteem on the part of everyone in a society, it is adverting to conditions that can be applicable to everyone simultaneously. Thus, far from undermining the tenets of aspirational perfectionism, the Struggling Against Adversities Objection helps to reveal one of the strengths of those tenets.   2. Why is societal excellence necessary?   In the preceding paragraph, I have again referred to the aspirational-perfectionist proposition that the warrantedness of a high level of self-respect for each person in a society depends partly on the occurrence of outstanding accomplishments which endow the society with excellence. Let us designate that proposition as the ‘Societal Warrant Thesis’. In §1.2, I have argued in favour of one of the presuppositions of the Societal Warrant Thesis: that is, I have argued that each person in a society can warrantedly take pride in any splendid feats of human endeavour by others who belong to the society. Let us designate that presupposition as the ‘Taking Pride Premise’. However, although the vindication of that premise is necessary for the vindication of the Societal Warrant Thesis, it is not sufficient. Some further argumentation is needed, since the warrantedness of each person’s taking pride in any sterling achievements by members of her society does not per se establish that the occurrence of such achievements by members of her society is necessary for the full warrantedness of her harbouring a strong sense of self-respect.   To see why the occurrence of great exploits by oneself or by other members of one’s society is necessary for the warrantedness of one’s maintaining a high level of self-respect, we should note that the considerations in favour of the Taking Pride Premise also militate in favour of a converse proposition. If some person P would be warranted in feeling better about herself by virtue of belonging to a society that is endued with excellence, then conversely she would be warranted in feeling worse about herself by virtue of belonging to a society that is devoid of excellence. Suppose that the country to which P belongs is drably mediocre, or suppose that it is worse than mediocre (perhaps because it has long been convulsed by a civil war with atrocities on all sides). In that event, given that the connection between P and her country is an important constituent of the overall trajectory of her life—even if, or perhaps especially if, she views her country with disdain—she will be warranted in lowering her sense of how well her life has gone.   Of course, if P has managed to attain success in many of her endeavours, any warranted lowering of her self-esteem in response to the mediocrity or depravity of her country will most likely leave her warranted self-esteem at quite a high level. Nevertheless, the level would have been even higher and more solid if it had not been held down by the failings of the society to which P belongs. Had her country been a place of excellence in which she could warrantedly have taken pride instead of warrantedly feeling abashed or dismayed about her connection to it, her warrantedness in feeling good about herself and in pursuing her projects with gusto would have been strengthened. Thus, even for a successful person like P, the full warrantedness of her experiencing a strong sense of self-respect depends partly on the flourishing of her society.   Naturally, if P had been a towering genius such as Shakespeare or Beethoven or Albert Einstein, the warrantedness of her harbouring an extremely high level of self-esteem would not have been perceptibly impaired by her belonging to an otherwise unaccomplished society. Had P been of that calibre in her achievements, those achievements alone would have endowed her society with excellence. However, the vast majority of people are not even close to the rank of towering geniuses (or toweringly great athletes). For them as for P, more modest degrees of success are their personal bases for the warrantedness of their self-respect. For them, then, the excellence of their society is necessary for the full warrantedness of their feeling robustly good about their lives.[11] Here we can see that, although aspirational perfectionism might initially seem to be an elitist doctrine, its concern with enabling everyone to be warranted in feeling a solid sense of self-respect is quite strongly egalitarian.   2.1. A focus on warrantedness   As in §1.2, the focus throughout the present discussion has been on the warrantedness of individuals’ feelings of self-respect rather than on those feelings themselves or on individuals’ judgments about the quality of their society. That is, in two principal ways the focus of the present discussion has been objective rather than subjective. First, I have not been addressing any array of empirical questions about the conditions under which people will tend to experience high levels of self-respect. Such questions, which fall within the domain of social psychology, are of some interest here—as can be inferred from my observations in §1.1—but they do not have any determinative bearing on the ethical matters into which I am enquiring. As this article has sought to make clear, the property under investigation here is not the psychological property of self-respect; rather, it is the ethical-cum-psychological property of warranted self-respect. Hence, the present discussion has not been seeking to support the proposition that the endowment of a society with excellence through the occurrence of outstanding accomplishments is necessary for the experiencing of a high level of self-respect on the part of each person who belongs to the society. Instead, the present discussion has been seeking to support the proposition that the endowment of a society with excellence through the occurrence of outstanding accomplishments is necessary for the warrantedness of a high level of self-respect on the part of each person who belongs to the society. Whereas the former proposition is an empirical claim, the latter is an ethical thesis.   Second, the nexus between a society’s excellence and the warrantedness of a strong sense of self-respect for each member of the society is objective in that the decisive property on the former side of that nexus is actual excellence rather than perceived excellence. What matters for the warrantedness of a strong sense of self-respect on the part of any particular person in a society S is not whether the person perceives S as endowed with excellence, but whether S actually is endowed with excellence. Of course, as my reflections in §1.1 suggest, actual excellence and perceived excellence frequently coincide. There are no grounds for thinking that there is always or usually a discrepancy between the two. Nonetheless, some sterling feats might long be ignored or contemned, even while some mediocre achievements or evil deeds are erroneously regarded as wonderful. More broadly, a country might be lauded by many of its citizens as estimable notwithstanding that it is in fact bleakly mediocre or viciously corrupt, and a country might be despised by many of its citizens as paltry even though it in fact comprises an array of outstanding accomplishments and instances of natural beauty. Such incongruities between actuality and perception might not arise very often, but they are always possible. When discrepancies do arise, actuality takes priority over perception in determining whether a heightened degree of self-respect on the basis of societal excellence is warranted for each person in S or not—and in determining whether a lowered degree of self-respect on the basis of societal shabbiness is warranted for each person in S or not.   2.2. A first role of justice   As has been underscored in §1.2.4.1 above, the prescriptions issued by aspirational perfectionists are located within a matrix of deontological constraints. Hence, one way in which the value of justice bears on the promotion of excellence for aspirational-perfectionist purposes is that it imposes a set of restrictions on the routes by which those purposes can legitimately be pursued. Injustices can never permissibly be perpetrated for the sake of endowing a society with excellence that will help to constitute the conditions under which every member of the society can warrantedly feel a robust sense of self-respect. Indeed, were injustices to be perpetrated in furtherance of such an aim, they would be counterproductive; the warrantedness of any heightening of everyone’s self-respect is an ethical property that cannot be realized through unethical means. Such an upshot is a corollary of the general resistance of deontological principles to any end-justifies-the-means rationale.   2.3. A second role of justice: Rawls on social unions   To discern another way in which the value of justice bears on the promotion of excellence for aspirational-perfectionist purposes, we can turn to A Theory of Justice . Although Rawls of course did not have in mind aspirational perfectionism as such, and although he naturally centred his discussion of justice and excellence on his own principles of justice (whereas I am prescinding here from questions about the specific contents of the correct principles of justice), his ruminations on the implementation of justice as a mode of excellence are valuable for aspirational perfectionism conjoined with any credible liberal-democratic account of justice. His ruminations are set within the contractualism of his theorizing, but—suitably construed—they can be incorporated into a resolutely non-contractualist approach to matters of justice and political legitimacy.   The final chapter of A Theory of Justice  is entitled ‘The Good of Justice’, and it contains numerous piquant and perceptive lines of thought that could fruitfully be explored at this juncture. However, the only line of thought that will be highlighted here is from Rawls’s account of social unions. Rawls applied the designation ‘social union’ to any group in which the members share some fundamental end(s) and in which the activities of the group are valued for their own sake. He made clear that the sharing of a fundamental end is consistent with a high degree of competitiveness among the members of a social union. For example, although the teams in a sporting league such as the National Basketball Association all strive to outperform one another, they are united by the aim of engaging in strenuously contested games wherein their sport is played with commendable proficiency.   Having expounded the nature of social unions in general, Rawls proceeded to characterize a well-ordered society as a social union of social unions: ‘The main idea is simply that a well-ordered society (corresponding to justice as fairness) is itself a form of social union. Indeed, it is a social union of social unions. Both characteristic features are present: the successful carrying out of just institutions is the shared final end of all the members of society, and these institutional forms are prized as good in themselves’. Because every person in a well-ordered society is possessed of a motivationally efficacious sense of justice, ‘the members of a well-ordered society have the common aim of cooperating together to realize their own and another’s nature in ways allowed by the principles of justice […] Each citizen wants everyone (including himself) to act from principles to which all would agree in an initial situation of equality’.[12]   The first aspect of a well-ordered society as a social union—the fact that its members share the end of sustaining the operations of just institutions—is a corollary of Rawls’s general conception of a well-ordered society. Slightly more complicated is the second aspect, the fact that the operations of just institutions in such a society are inherently good. Rawls set out to explain why ‘the fundamental institutions of society, the just constitution and the main parts of the legal order, can be found good in themselves once the idea of social union is applied to the basic structure as a whole’.[13] He began his explanation by adverting to the propensity of citizens in a well-ordered society ‘to express their nature as free and equal moral persons, and this they do most adequately by acting from the principles that they would acknowledge in the original position’. Because citizens in a well-ordered society act in accordance with the basic status attributed to them by any liberal-democratic reckoning—namely, their status as free and equal persons—they endow their society with the mode of excellence that consists in instantiating the ideals of liberal democracy. ‘When all strive to comply with [correct principles of justice] and each succeeds, then individually and collectively their nature as moral persons is most fully realized, and with it their individual and collective good’.[14]   Continuing his explanation of the inherent goodness of the just institutions that prevail in a well-ordered society, Rawls submitted that ‘a just constitutional order, when adjoined to the smaller social unions of everyday life, provides a framework for these many [smaller] associations and sets up the most complex and diverse activity of all’. Subsumed within such a framework, the projects of private individuals and associations are harmonized in relation to one another through their common subjection to principles of justice that are administered by the officials of the constitutional order: ‘Thus the plan of each person is given a more ample and rich structure than it would otherwise have; it is adjusted to the plans of others by mutually acceptable principles. Everyone’s more private life is so to speak a plan within a plan, this superordinate plan being realized in the public institutions of society’. Rawls emphasized that the overarching institutional framework of a well-ordered society, with its coordination of the activities of individuals and associations, does not impose any comprehensive doctrine such as Roman Catholicism. Instead, it is guided only by the end of giving effect to the requirements of justice. Its superordinate plan consists in that very end: ‘The regulative public intention is […] that the constitutional order should realize the principles of justice’.[15] In much the same way that the diverse individuals who belong to a well-ordered society share only the end of sustaining the operations of the society’s just institutions, the workings of those institutions are all oriented toward the end of implementing the correct principles of justice.   As Rawls reached the culmination of his reflections on the inherent goodness of the realization of justice in a well-ordered society, he drew connections between the moral virtues of the governing institutions in such a society and the moral virtues of the citizens who support those institutions:   We have seen that the moral virtues are excellences, attributes of the person that it is rational for persons to want in themselves and in one another as things appreciated for their own sake, or else as exhibited in activities so enjoyed […] Now it is clear that these excellences are displayed in the public life of a well-ordered society […] [M]en appreciate and enjoy these attributes in one another as they are manifested in cooperating to affirm just institutions. It follows that the collective activity of justice is the preeminent form of human flourishing. For given favourable conditions, it is by maintaining these public arrangements that persons best express their nature and achieve the widest regulative excellences of which each is capable. At the same time just institutions allow for and encourage the diverse internal life of associations in which individuals realize their more particular aims. Thus the public realization of justice is a value of community.[16]   2.4. A second role of justice: Summing up   As has already been remarked, several aspects of Rawls’s meditations on the goodness of justice—such as his contractualist appeals to the selection of principles of justice in the Original Position—should be set aside. One problematic aspect not mentioned in the opening paragraph of §2.3 above is that his pronouncements on the nature and goodness of any well-ordered society are pitched entirely at the level of ideal theory. Still, the insights to be gathered from his pronouncements can be extended beyond the confines of well-ordered societies where every citizen is unfailingly supportive of just institutions and their requirements.   Most prominent among those insights is that the operations of the institutions which implement the requirements of justice in a liberal democracy are an outstanding collective accomplishment. Both on the part of legal-governmental officials and on the part of ordinary citizens, the patterns of self-restraint involved in the workings of just institutions are prodigious. Every generally law-abiding person who belongs to a society governed by a liberal-democratic regime can warrantedly take pride in those workings. Of course, in any actual liberal democracy—as opposed to a well-ordered Rawlsian society—the operations of the prevailing institutions are imperfectly just, and the compliance of citizens with the just requirements of those institutions is likewise imperfect. Nevertheless, in any society whose system of governance is liberal-democratic to a high degree and whose citizens are largely faithful to the values of liberal democracy, the realization of those values through the system of governance is a mode of excellence in which every generally law-abiding citizen can warrantedly take pride. It is a mode of excellence that pro tanto  enhances the life of every generally law-abiding person who belongs to the society. In any actual liberal democracy, where citizens naturally tend to concentrate on the shortcomings of the regnant institutions, many of them sometimes lose sight of the magnitude and preciousness of the achievement that consists in the sustainment of those institutions. All the same, they can warrantedly derive satisfaction from that achievement—as the overall trajectory of the life of each generally law-abiding person P is made better by it. Because the course of P’s life is inevitably affected (for better or for worse) by the tenor of the system of governance that presides over the society with which P is associated, the adherence of such a system to the values of liberal democracy is something that bolsters the level of self-respect which P can warrantedly feel.   As should be evident from earlier portions of this article, my claim here about the bolstering of each person’s warranted self-respect is not an empirical conjecture about the likelihood that each person will be materially better off as a result of the sway of a liberal-democratic system of governance in his or her society. On the one hand, there are quite strong and familiar correlations between liberal-democratic systems of governance and material prosperity. On the other hand, such correlations—important though they are—are not directly to the point here. My claim about the bolstering of each person’s warranted self-respect is focused on the inherent moral quality of liberal-democratic governance rather than on the beneficial consequences that are likely to ensue causally therefrom.   Rawls well captured two of the ways in which the inherent moral quality of liberal-democratic governance raises the level of self-respect which each generally law-abiding person in a society can warrantedly feel. In the passages quoted in §2.3 above, he frequently declared that a liberal-democratic system of governance enables its citizens to realize their nature as free and equal persons. His contentions to that effect should be construed as making two main points. First, each person under a liberal-democratic system of governance is treated with the respect due to somebody who is a rationally deliberative agent possessed of the two Rawlsian moral powers. Second, each person under such a system of governance is morally and legally required to exercise the self-restraint that is due to other rationally deliberative agents. Being required to exercise such self-restraint is a hallmark of one’s status as a free and equal person, as is being treated with commensurate forbearance by everybody else. Patterns of reciprocal forbearance among citizens, and patterns of forbearance in a government’s interaction with citizens, give expression to the status of every sane adult as a free and equal person. Rawls grasped and indeed emphasized that those patterns of forbearance increase the level of self-respect which every generally law-abiding person is warranted in experiencing. Having reminded his readers that his ‘account of self-respect as perhaps the main primary good has stressed the great significance of how we think others value us’, he proclaimed that a key ‘basis for [warranted] self-esteem in a just society is […] the publicly affirmed distribution of fundamental rights and liberties’.[17] He elabourated: ‘In a well-ordered society then self-respect is secured [partly] by the public affirmation of the status of equal citizenship for all’.[18] Of course, in addition to referring to the fundamental rights and liberties of citizenship, Rawls should have referred here to the fundamental responsibilities thereof. Each citizen’s status as a free and equal person—along with the quantum of warranted self-respect that is appurtenant to that status—is upheld not only through her being endowed with the fundamental rights and liberties, but also through her being expected and required to accept that each of her fellow citizens is endowed with those rights and liberties.   For a further regard in which the sway of a liberal-democratic system of governance elevates the level of self-respect which everyone in a society can warrantedly harbour, we need to go somewhat beyond Rawls in the direction of aspirational perfectionism. As has already been remarked, the sway of such a system—notwithstanding its imperfections—is a sterling collective achievement that should elicit feelings of pride in every generally law-abiding member of the society over which the system presides. Because the trajectory of the life of each such member includes her association with a country in which that great achievement has occurred and been sustained, each such member can warrantedly conclude that her life has gone better by dint of the association (quite apart from any material benefits that have causally accrued to her as a result of it). Pro tanto , she can warrantedly feel better about herself and her projects than she otherwise could.   Conversely, of course, somebody who belongs to a society governed by a repressively illiberal regime can warrantedly conclude that her life has gone worse by dint of her links to that society (quite apart from any material hardships that have beset her as a result of the regime’s grim oppression). Because the overall course of her life includes her connection to the country ruled by that regime, it is marred by the collective failure of the citizens of that country—among them, most notably, the regime’s officials—to uphold the values of a liberal democracy. As has been underscored in §1.2.4.2, this point about the ethical worsening of a person’s life is independent of her supportiveness or unsupportiveness of the tyrannical regime. On the one hand, the trajectory of her life will be substantially worse ethically if she has been complicit in maintaining the regime’s grip on power. On the other hand, my point here has not been about her personal responsibility for the regime’s persistence or any of its iniquities; rather, this paragraph is about the collective responsibility of her fellow citizens with whom she is associated as a member of their community. Even if she has been like one of the prophets discussed earlier (King or Havel or Bonhoeffer) in struggling gamely against the despotism of the system of governance in her country, her life that has been elevated by her struggling is worsened ethically by the need for her struggling—because the need for her struggling is a product of a collective failure on the part of a community to which she belongs.   2.5. Concluding remarks on multiplicity   As can be gathered from the foregoing reflections on any just system of governance as a mode of excellence, the outstanding achievements and features that can imbue a society with estimableness are multifarious. Perfectionists of all stripes have mostly concentrated on aesthetic and intellectual modes of excellence, but, hugely important though those modes of excellence are, they are only some of the possibilities that are serviceable for the purposes of aspirational perfectionism. The realization of the values of liberal democracy through a system of governance that treats its citizens as free and equal persons is another mode of excellence. It is a precious collective accomplishment. Athletic feats and ventures of exploration can be still further modes of excellence, and sundry other areas of human endeavour—such as mountaineering or chess or restaurateurship or tailoring—might likewise produce great achievements in which all the members of a society can warrantedly take pride. Moreover, the diversity of ethnic/ religious communities and practices sought by multiculturalists can constitute an entrancing medley that is itself a mode of societal excellence. Much the same can be said about a rich tapestry of cultural offerings in a society whose citizens can warrantedly look upon that tapestry as a source of pride (on top of its lucrativeness as a cynosure for tourists). Furthermore, mountains or mighty rivers or other magnificent topographical features can warrantedly bolster the self-esteem of the people who live in countries that are graced by such features. People can similarly feel proud about wonderful gardens and other places of great beauty in their society. All these modes of excellence can serve the ends of aspirational perfectionism.   Though Rawls never quite invoked the notion of vicarious pride that is central to aspirational perfectionism, he highlighted the multiplicity of modes of excellence and the synergetic interaction among them when they occur alongside one another in any society. As he wrote in the final paragraph of his ruminations on social unions, which I have partly quoted earlier:   [W]e cannot overcome, nor should we wish to, our dependence on others. In a fully just society persons seek their good in ways peculiar to themselves, and they rely upon their associates to do things they could not have done, as well as things they might have done but did not […] It is a feature of human sociability that we are by ourselves but parts of what we might be. We must look to others to attain the excellences that we must leave aside, or lack altogether. The collective activity of society, the many associations and the public life of the largest community that regulates them, sustains our efforts and elicits our contribution. Yet the good attained from the common culture far exceeds our work in the sense that we cease to be mere fragments.[19] Professor Matthew Kramer   Professor Matthew H Kramer is a legal philosopher and a leading proponent of legal positivism. He is Professor of Legal and Political Philosophy at Churchill College, Cambridge, and heads the Cambridge Forum for Legal and Political Philosophy. [1] This article is a modified version of a portion of Chapter 8 from my book Liberalism with Excellence  (Oxford University Press 2017). I am grateful   to Oxford University Press for permission to republish this version of several sections from that chapter, which have been considerably modified and abridged. [2] John Rawls, A Theory of Justice  (Harvard University Press 1971). [3] Tim Craig, ‘One Year after Shocking Terrorist Attack, Pakistan’s Peaks Bereft of Foreign Climbers’ Washington Post  (Washington DC, 29 June 2014) < https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/one-year-after-shocking-terrorist-attack-pakistans-peaks-bereft-of-foreign-climbers/2014/06/29/b72beaa8-f7b6-11e3-a606-946fd632f9f1_story.html > accessed 20 February 2021. [4] Rawls (n 2) 523. [5] This empirical claim is based on my conversations with several such masons in Cambridge. [6] Rawls (n 2) 522–23. [7] ibid §79. [8] ibid 529. [9] Having encountered Dietrich Bonhoeffer in 1942, Bishop George KA Bell wrote that Bonhoeffer was ‘completely candid, completely regardless of personal safety, while deeply moved by the shame of the country [Germany] he loved’. George KA Bell, ‘Foreword’ in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship  (SCM Press 1959) 7. [10] Note that, when Amos took up his calling to be a prophet, he had to leave behind his occupation as a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees (Amos 7:14–15). [11] A somewhat similar observation has been made by Robert Yanal: ‘Spinoza, exiled and excommunicated, could  have had good self-esteem. Yet such instances strike us as heroic (or perhaps a little mad), but in any event beyond the pale of how normal people operate’. (emphasis in original) (Robert Yanal, ‘Self-Esteem’ (1987) 21(3) Noûs 363, 368). [12] Rawls (n 2) 527. [13] ibid 527–28. [14] ibid 528. [15] ibid. [16] ibid 528–29. [17] ibid 544. [18] ibid 545. [19] ibid 529.

This paper examines contemporary Singaporean artist Marvin Tang’s project The Colony – Archive  (2019), a part of his ongoing research The Colony  (2018–). The Colony – Archive  takes as its point of departure the homogeneity of botanical landscapes across various colonies as observed from old postcards, which evidences a deep-rooted colonial legacy in Singapore’s national narrative. This essay investigates these artificial landscapes and the power relations captured by three archival modes: botanical gardens, photography, and postcards. Applying Michel Foucault’s (1926-84) concept of ‘heterotopias’ to these archival modes, this paper posits that they foreground the tension between human intervention and natural history, instating the artist-archivist as an authorial figure who produces new archival images rewriting the social memory surrounding botanical gardens. Tang’s production, (re)presentation, and dissemination of archival images is understood as a subversion of the persistent structures of power and control enacted by botanical gardens. Situating these ideas in relation to Singapore’s nature-centric national identity, The Colony – Archive engages with discussions charting the future of the independent nation and reclaiming its agency through its natural landscape. Figs 1-9. Postcards, in order of display in The Colony – Archive. Courtesy of Marvin Tang. *   The botanical gardens which proliferated in multiple British colonies during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries brought together specimens deemed profitable from all over the world, moving an immense amount of plants across the former British Empire while radically transforming ecological and geographical landscapes. Native species were replaced and landscapes homogenised across colonies, with imported specimens cultivated to fulfil the metropole’s agendas. As colonial institutions of research, established for scientific and economic gain, and subsequently represented as utopic, timeless spaces in colonial-era postcards, botanical gardens are crucial archives of the agendas of the former British Empire. They have also left an indelible mark on the historical narratives of the former colonies in which they were established. They are therefore sites which not only enable the production of knowledge, but also reveal the power relations inherent in this process. In botanical gardens, specimens extracted from their native environments congregate with others with they have little or nothing in common with. They therefore demonstrate how colonial efforts co-opt temporal and geographical boundaries to expand colonial power. The French philosopher Michel Foucault identified gardens as ‘heterotopias’ in his essay ‘Of Other Spaces’, as they juxtapose ‘several sites that are in themselves incompatible’ and enclose a ‘perceptual and indefinite accumulation of time in an immobile place’.[1] Contemporary Singaporean artist Marvin Tang’s ongoing project The Colony  (2018-) explores the power relations that underlie the production and circulation of, and access to, knowledge of these botanical institutions. This essay will focus on a constituent project: The Colony – Archive (2019, fig 10). By investigating three modes of archival practice which inform the work—botanical gardens, photography, and postcards—this paper posits that The Colony – Archive  comes to embody the function and workings of an archive while rewriting the social memory of colonialism. By setting off its own circulation of postcards and taking an active part in knowledge production, this new archive of the present recoups an agency lost under colonialism. Fig 10. The Colony – Archive (2019–, Installation View). Courtesy of Marvin Tang and Mizuma Gallery, Singapore. The Colony – Archive  takes as its point of departure the homogeneity of natural landscapes in botanical gardens across former British colonies, as observed from old postcards sold at London postcard fairs.[2] When collecting colonial-era postcards of botanical gardens, Tang observed similarities regardless of their locations, be they Singapore or Kandy, Sri Lanka. Specimens such as hevea brasiliensis  (para rubber tree) native to Brazil were found throughout former colonies such as Indonesia and Singapore.[3] The work consists of nine sets of postcards displayed on a large canvas. Some are nineteenth-century postcards, and others are created by Tang from photographs of the Singapore Botanical Gardens and London’s Kew Gardens. The postcards are placed in an arbitrary order, each of them numbered at the top corner (figs 1-9), with the exception of figs 3 and 5 which belong to the artist’s personal collection.[4] The canvas which forms the backdrop for the postcards depicts a hilly tropical landscape—half plantation and half forest—capturing the transition from dense, natural forests on the right to neatly terraced plantations on the left, likely cash crops. Beside this display of postcards are two frames (fig 11), comprising an image of a botanical garden and a list of gardens established by Kew, as evident from its title, ‘Established at Home, and in India and in the Colonies’. This amalgamation of images, and the list of gardens, form an archive of colonial agenda enacted through the establishment of botanical gardens and environmental manipulation. Fig 11. Framed image of botanical garden and framed list of ‘Establishments at Home, and in India, and in the Colonies, in Correspondence with Kew’.Courtesy of Marvin Tang and Mizuma Gallery, Singapore. Botanical gardens as heterotopias   Botanical gardens are transnational archives of colonial ecological, scientific, and economic efforts in agriculture and trade, charting the global migration of plant specimens. These curated landscapes were established to support the former British Empire’s scientific research, and its commodification and exploitation of valuable plants for crop cultivation. They were born out of a worldview which regarded ‘the world as its plantation’ and amid efforts to secure resources, profits, and trade monopolies.[5] Singapore, for example, was the optimal testing ground for cultivating nutmeg from Indonesia’s Spice Islands, the Brazilian para rubber tree, and Senegal mahogany trees from Africa, which today are the largest evergreens lining Singapore’s parks and roads.[6] As repositories for a variety of plant specimens from around the world, botanical gardens are, as Foucault called heterotopias, ‘contradictory sites’ which are simultaneously ‘the smallest parcel of the world and … the totality of the world’.[7] However, Tang uses the heterotopic potential of botanical gardens as counter-sites, where real space is ‘simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted’ to expose and counter established power relations inherent to colonial ideology and institutions.[8] At all times, viewers of The Colony – Archive  are confronted with the artificiality of these heavily curated   landscapes. The framed list of correspondences between Kew and establishments in the colonies stands in stark contrast to the utopic scene promised by the botanical gardens, foregrounding the deliberate, economic motivations underlying the colonial enterprise. The illusion of a timeless utopia, as perpetuated by the curated compositions and images of the gardens, is shattered against the backdrop of the plantation, alluding to the exploitative nature of the colonial enterprise. Through such a display, a direct relationship is drawn between the two colonial establishments, highlighting their shared commercial purposes. Indeed, these colonial institutions are what Tang calls ‘impossible landscapes: [sites] that would not occur in the wild, in first-hand nature’.[9] Thus, botanical gardens are productions and re-productions of colonial ideology which transcend geographical boundaries. They are archives of the newfound research value attributed to specimens upon entering the exploitative institution of colonialism.   Photographic perspectives   Having discussed the colonial motivations underlying the establishment of botanical gardens and their archival function, we can consider how Tang uses photography to counter the hegemonic colonial narrative represented by botanical gardens. Tang ironically employs the archival value of photography as pictorial testimony to problematise the supposed timelessness promised by botanical gardens and their utopian reproduction in images. As William Henry Fox Talbot speculated in his 1846 book The Pencil of Nature , a photograph can be produced against a thief in court, underscoring its unique potential as a visual document that relays legalistic truth.[10] Tang’s postcards are compositions entirely dominated by an amalgamation of plant specimens, depicted with a deliberate yellowing, ‘vintage’ effect and the addition of noise to the image texture. They thus foreground the manipulative interventions in the creation of the images and gardens, a quality made more blatant by the lack of distinction between the colonial-era postcards. The large canvas captures the liminal landscape in a moment of transition and depletion, from a forested area to the bare, structured terraces of a plantation, showing the symptoms of human intrusion into nature. The staged naturality of botanical gardens presented by the postcards stands in stark contrast to the violent reality of colonialism through which these species came to coexist. Displayed alongside colonial-era postcards, Tang’s postcards reject their status as archives of socio-geographical memory, and instead form a new archive which confronts the artificiality of this constructed landscape. Unlike the ordered list of botanical gardens, which presents a systematised, geographical categorisation, the arbitrary ordering of the photographs, their unidentifiable locations, and their mocking imitation of colonial-era postcards criticise the use of gardens by colonial powers in order to implement systematic homogenisation and exploitation. Hence, through an examination of the use of photography in The Colony – Archive , Tang produces a counter-narrative which exposes and highlights the artificiality of botanical gardens. Fig 12. Archival postcard from Marvin Tang’s personal collection (fig 3 enlarged). Postcards on the move   Moving beyond the subject matter depicted on the postcards, we turn to the modes of dissemination which give postcards their extensive mobility and ambiguous provenance, and how Tang uses these to challenge the hegemonic colonial discourse built into botanical gardens. In Tang’s words, ‘postcards became an easy and accessible way for people to collect the world’ during the Victorian age of exploration.[11] This act of ‘[collecting] the world’ as supported and represented by postcards reinforces a colonial worldview which sought to subsume and assimilate others. This worldview is mirrored in the heterotopias that are botanical gardens. Far from being a democratic medium, then, postcards became a symbol of the exotic. They perpetuated romanticised stereotypes of far-flung lands in Southeast Asia and operated as oppressive symbols affirming the extensive reach of the former British Empire. Indeed, Tang sees the postcard as symptomatic of Ernst van Alphen’s notion that photography and imperialism would meet and collaborate.[12] However, Tang also draws on the ease of transmission of postcards—and hence, their potential as democratised modes of dissemination—to counter the colonial narrative of Southeast Asia.   This resonates with the notion of effective democratisation posed by Jacques Derrida in ‘Archive Fever’, which states that ‘there is no political power without control of the archive … Effective democratization can always be measured by this essential criterion: the participation in and the access to the archive, its constitution, and its interpretation’.[13] Tang uses his own postcards (participation in the archive), provides free access to them in the gallery (access to the archive), operates from the Southeast Asian perspective (constitution), and problematises the colonial worldview which created ‘impossible landscapes’ in the colonies (interpretation). He also uses the ambiguity of postcards which ‘blur the line of where the image was taken [and] the provenance’ to foreground the still-powerful colonial ideology underlying the botanical gardens.[14] Tang’s act of reproducing and numerically classifying the postcards therefore reclaims the referential significance of botanical landscapes as pictures in archival photographs. For Tang as artist-archivist, the act of reproduction not only inserts his postcards into the physical circulation of goods in the economy, but also (re)introduces colonial postcards into the realm of collective social memory. By engaging with social memory, The Colony – Archive  effects a ground-up movement that disrupts the still-pervasive effects of colonialism. Fig 13. Archival postcard from Marvin Tang’s personal collection (fig 5 enlarged). From ‘Garden City’ to ‘City in Nature’   Through the three archival modes of the botanical garden, photography, and postcards, The Colony – Archive reveals and subverts the structures of power and control as enacted by the colonial institutions of botanical gardens in former British colonies. Tang draws on the archive of the past to create a new archive of the present. He replaces the former colonial power with the artist-archivist as the authorial figure and producer of archival images, overturning the hierarchy embedded in the creation of these botanical gardens. Elevating this analysis to a consideration of Singapore’s national identity, the work questions Singapore’s ‘garden city’ narrative so famously espoused by founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, and its implications for collective identity. The Singapore Botanical Gardens, nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2015, have always played a key role in Singapore’s national narrative and identity, especially in view of Singapore’s founding motto ‘Garden City’, established in 1967.[15] This motto evolved into ‘City in a Garden’ in 2014 and ‘City in Nature’ in 2020, corresponding to more intensive greening and conservation efforts in the city-state.[16] ‘City in a Garden’ evokes an image of Singapore encapsulated by carefully curated nature, which is amplified by its colonial links. The subsequent transition to ‘City in Nature’ not only indicates a shift in Singapore’s greening objectives, but also charts its growing independence from the colonial narrative so deeply embedded in its natural master plan. Viewed collectively, this evolving discourse surrounding Singapore’s greening journey illustrates how nature can be, and historically has been, controlled to serve different agendas. This essay has demonstrated the complex and amorphous quality of ‘nature’, and its susceptibility to manipulation. How might we best define ‘nature’ today? And since the Singapore story is so closely intertwined with nature, how should we define Singapore’s national identity? By raising questions which link collective identity to the definition of ‘nature’, The Colony – Archive  engages with discussions charting the future of the independent nation, reclaiming its agency through its natural landscape. Constance Koh   Constance Koh (Cui Shan) is a second-year undergraduate in History of Art (Asia, Africa, Europe) at SOAS. Interested in contemporary Asian art and arts education, she is looking forward to working in the library and heritage sector in Singapore.   [1] Michel Foucault, ‘Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias’ (Jay Miskowiec tr, 1984) 5 Architecture/Movement/Continuité 6. [2] Adeline Chia, ‘Online Artist Talk: The Seeds We Sow’ (2020) < http://www.mizuma.sg/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/MG-Conversations-The-Seeds-We-Sow-2020.pdf > accessed 5 December 2020. [3] ibid. [4] ‘[Image Copyright] The Colony – Archive’, email from Marvin Tang to Constance Koh (10 March 2021). [5] Ee Ming Toh, ‘How Geopolitics and History Shaped Singapore’s Natural Landscape Over The Centuries’ A Magazine Singapore  (2020) < https://read-a.com/heres-how-geopolitics-and-history-shaped-singapores-natural-landscape/ > accessed 6 December 2020. [6] ibid. [7] Foucault (n 1) 6. [8] ibid 3. [9] Chia (n 2). [10] William Henry Fox Talbot, The Pencil of Nature  (Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans 1844) 19-20 < http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33447/33447-pdf.pdf > accessed 7 December 2020. [11] Chia (n 2). [12] ibid. [13] Jacques Derrida, ‘Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression’ (Eric Prenowitz tr, 1995) 25(2) Diacritics 11. [14] Chia (n 2). [15] Lim Tin Seng, ‘Singapore Botanic Gardens’ (Singapore Infopedia, 27 August 2015) < https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_545_2005-01-24.html#:~:text=Although%20the%20Singapore%20Botanic%20Gardens,Hill)%2C%20where%20he%20resided > accessed 15 December 2020. [16] Audrey Tan, David Fogarty, and Ernest Luis, ‘Desmond Lee on transforming Singapore into a City in Nature’ The Straits Times  (Singapore, 22 Sep 2020) < https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/environment/green-pulse-podcast-desmond-lee-on-transforming-singapore-into-a-city-in > accessed 31 Jan 2021.

Russia annexed the Crimea and started a war in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, but that wasn’t enough; now the Kremlin intends to steal borscht from Ukraine.   I didn’t intend to start an Eastern European culinary clash. My mission was to get borscht recognised as an aspect of Ukrainian national culture by UNESCO, the United Nations cultural heritage agency. Why? I was just fed up with restaurants around the world calling borscht a Russian soup. The last straw was when the Russian Foreign Ministry described borscht in a four-line tweet as one of the ‘most famous and popular dishes in Russia’.                                                        Borscht is one of the most popular dishes of Ukrainian cuisine, but it is more than just a dish. It’s not just about food, it’s about the nation’s cultural identity. The world-famous Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko ate borscht with dried carp. Also, there were Cossacks in a special Cossack register with the second name Borscht and it is rude not to refer to the villages Borschi, Borschiv, Borschivka that are situated in Ukraine. What is more interesting, some people believe in God and some don’t, but I’ve never seen a person that regrets tasting Borscht. Most likely every Ukrainian had Borscht this week. Almost 500 million litres of borscht are eaten in Ukraine every year.   During my ‘borscht expedition’, I’ve made a genuinely notable discovery. There is no canonical recipe of borscht, nor is there regional borscht. However, there are as many recipes for this dish as many families are living here. When two people meet each other and start a family, they give birth to a new Borscht recipe. These recipes vary from region to region, from family to family, from house to house, from apartment to apartment. As I told you before, there are literally as many recipes as families. No doubt, borscht is in our DNA.   Perhaps that is the reason why borscht is an essential element of Ukrainian identity. That is why it has become a key object of Russian propaganda. The pro-Kremlin media uses terms such as ‘borscht war’ and ‘battle of borscht’, while most Russians consider borscht Ukrainian. Once I talked to a German journalist based in Moscow who didn’t understand the fuss around borscht. He asked people on the streets which country borscht is from, and they answered that it is Ukrainian. ‘Then I went to a cafe’, he told me. ‘I asked cooks there: whose is borscht? I was also told that I was Ukrainian. And what is the problem?’ And here is the problem: people understand that borscht is Ukrainian while propaganda claims it is not.   Borscht is Ukrainian, and this historical fact is indisputable. Awkward fact: if you open an article about borscht on Ukrainian Wikipedia and then on the Russian site, you will decide that these are two different dishes. Russian propaganda tries to get its hands on borscht, claiming that this dish comes from the name of the plant borschivnik  (Heracleum), which is supposed to be the main ingredient in their variant. This version is absurdly awkward and doesn’t withstand any criticism because borschivnik is a poisonous plant, which is unacceptable for cooking.   Most likely, the name ‘borscht’ came from the Old Slavic ‘ brsch ’—beet or beet kvass. The first mention of the dish ‘borscht’ dates back to 1584. German trader Martin Gruneweg, who was traveling from Lviv to Moscow via Kyiv, wrote that he had stopped for the night over the Borshchavka river—now the Borshchahivka, which gave its name to Kyiv’s modern western outskirts. When Martin Gruneweg inquired about the history of the river’s name, Kyiv citizens explained that there was once a borscht bazaar in that area. But he didn’t believe it, because according to him, it didn’t make sense for Kyiv people to get so far from the city center for the sake of borscht. ‘Besides, Ruthenians rarely or never buy borscht, because everyone cooks it at home, it is their daily food and drink’, he wrote in his diary.   There are other mentions of borscht. In 1598, the famous Orthodox polemicist Ivan Vyshensky wrote about the peasants who ‘sipwater or borschik ’ from one bowl. There are seven Borshchivs and Borshchenkos in the register of the Zaporozhian Army of 1649 among the Cossacks. Moreover, in the history of the Razumovsky family, researcher Kazimir Valishevsky mentions that the Russian Tsarina Elizabeth fell in love with Alexei Razumovsky, ‘and after she fell in love with Ukrainian borscht.’   Besides, we want to single out one more fact—the researcher of USSR cuisines and the ‘father’ of Soviet cuisines William Pokhlobkin wrote in his book National Cuisines of our Peoples  that borscht is a Ukrainian dish that has gained wide popularity in the world.   There are not only historical arguments when it comes to questions of the origin and affiliation of borscht—there are also the depth of its roots in folk culture, regional distribution, and variety of recipes. In particular, proverbs and sayings are of great importance. For example, a children’s saying: ‘Go, go to the rain, I’ll cook you a borscht.’ In the dictionary of the Ukrainian language of Borys Hrinchenko from 1907, we find more than a dozen words derived from the word ‘borscht’. There are various names of borscht among them— borschik , borschichok , borschishche , borshchisko —and borschuvati  (to eat borscht) and borschivnitsa  (trade in borscht).   So there are no facts that would deny the nationality of borscht to Ukraine. But then how to explain the intensification of the Russian propaganda machine?   Russia seeks to take away our values so that we don’t form a nation. National identity consists of language, food, religion, and life. If you take away all elements, the nation will be vulnerable to aggressive manipulation. The Soviet Union ‘took’ the food from other nations. When it collapsed, as an offspring of the Soviet Union, Russia attributed all the food to themselves. They used the statement, ‘if it was in the Soviet Union, then the borscht is ours.’ As Taras Shevchenko wrote, Russians with their imperialistic thinking are sincerely convinced that ‘you are ours, and your things are ours.’   This propaganda was a crucial thing that forced me to legally consolidate borscht’s status as a Ukrainian national dish. As it turned out, borscht was never officially considered Ukrainian. The first mention of borscht is recorded in Ukraine. It is prepared and eaten by every Ukrainian, but borscht is not Ukrainian at the legislative level. We just didn’t think it had to be documented.   Our team worked hard for a year. I created a public organization—the Institute of Culture of Ukraine—with the support of the Сhumak Company and sent my team on a ‘borscht expedition’ throughout Ukraine. At the same time, we conducted a 12-stage preparation task to collect and approve all documents. It was a complicated process, but we managed to cope with it. Borscht is now on the National List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Ukraine. In March, we are applying for the inclusion of the Ukrainian national dish in the UNESCO list of intangible heritage, and I believe that we will be successful.   For Ukrainians, borscht is more than just a dish. Borscht is a part of Ukrainian identity and our national value. An influential cultural phenomenon and the answer to the question: ‘What unites Ukrainians?’ If it is not worth fighting for, then what is? Yevhen Klopotenko Yevhen Klopotenko is a Ukrainian chef, television presenter, and culinary expert. He has been recognized as one of the most promising leaders in the world of gastronomy and entered 50 Next, a global list of 50 people under 35 who are shaping the future of gastronomy. He also founded a non-profit organization to advance borscht as the national food of Ukraine worldwide. He is working on recognition of borscht as part of Ukraine’s cultural heritage by UNESCO.

What is it that makes you tremble?’[1] Jacques Derrida poses this question to discuss the vulnerability that we fear. We see vulnerability as a form of powerlessness, but this fear itself shows our desire to be alive. As Laurence Simmons writes, ‘life entails an openness to alterity and event, which is also an openness to the possibility of an instant death and destruction’.[2] The answer to Derrida’s question seems to be on the tip of every person’s tongue today. It is in the look of the person sat opposite you on the tube line. It is in the barista’s eye when they hand you your coffee. It is in the flicker of your own eyes on yet another Zoom call. The human body, contact, and touch all seem so far away from our present, a present that keeps continuing. The year 2020 played out as a much less comical version of Murray’s Groundhog Day . I have found myself ‘Walking round Tavistock Square’, as Woolf did, with only the changing of leaves to tell me the time. But Derrida writes that trembling itself is an example of catachresis, or using language against itself. ‘Death too, is an image of catachresis, a term embodying what is unnameable because we cannot experience it as such, and fiction, in turn is a way of figuring that void’.[3] Therefore, I have turned to literature as the future appears to be on standby whereas the past seems wider and deeper than ever. Through literature I have found that the theme of contagion exists not only in much of our reality today, but also in the reality of centuries ago. The similarity that connects experiences over time is how we use language to describe it or evade it.   Language has always been a means of contact but now it is our only means. Although I cannot touch you, through words I can feel you. As Roland Barthes said, ‘Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire’.[4] Language holds meaning that make us tremble: the verbs ‘to isolate’, ‘to distance’, ‘to quarantine’, ‘to live’, and ‘to die’ now each hold a different meaning, perhaps one of more personal significance. Our language describes our experience, it describes our distance from one another. Barthes suggests that we touch the world through language. We desire to touch each other and therefore literature is a way to summon the body from the untouchable. To read a text is to read a body. It is a body of words but, nonetheless, it is a body. It has a spine, a front and a back. Both a text and a body are inscribed with memories of a past, a past that is desired to be touched and to be returned to. Nostalgia is the greatest contagion of them all.   If language structures our existence, it poses an obstacle for where we desire to travel to, both in memory and in reality. The word remains a mark on the page, both literally and metaphorically a mark we cannot get past. Language is, then, both a barrier and a stepping stone in the boundaries of time, between past and present, present and future. The history of literature proves that the century we inhabit is not the first to experience this kind of distancing. The sixteenth century, for example, experienced a plague; in 1593, 15,000 people died in the city of London, which was one tenth of the English population at the time. As a result, Renaissance literature dwells on the themes of the body, touch and contact. Christopher Marlowe’s poem Hero and Leander  is a clear representation of this. The poem relays the Greek myth of two lovers living in cities divided by the Hellespont river. Leander swims across the river each night to catch a glimpse of the one he desires most. But the journey brings up obstacles which interrupt the meeting. The poem attempts to reach a climax, a climax both plot-driven and sexual, between the two lovers, but it does not and cannot succeed.   The tension between the fear of and need for touch was therefore topical then as it is now. The poem revolves around the transition of desire to touch. The narrative strives towards the meeting of two bodies, at a time when touch made the general public tremble with fear. But in any poetic narrative, there must be a struggle, an obstacle, or a wall in between the two lovers in order to create tension. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream , Pyramus and Thisbe erotically speak   through a ‘kink’ in the wall, and in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet , the lovers speak through the glass of a fish tank. In Hero and Leander , the lovers are separated by the depths of water, in an extended instance of the Greek motif paraclausithyron . Paraclausithyron  is usually translated as ‘lament beside a door’, meaning that it places a lover outside the door of his mistress. The lover remains trapped outside, unable to reach what he desires. Hero and Leander , then, narrates the hopeless aspiration to immediacy, the desire to bring oneself into close contact.   Marlowe narrates that Leander is pushing through the water, through the paraclausithyron , to reach what he yearns for: ‘Wide open stood the door … / And she herself … had spread the board with roses …’[5] Hero is there and waiting, but he cannot reach her. He can see that which he desires, but the act of describing it fails to bring it any closer towards him. The poetry itself is pushing through the boundary. Marlowe therefore displays language as the paraclausithyron . The words ‘herself’, ‘almost’, and ‘but’ are mere   reminders of what Leander cannot achieve because of his own failings and, ultimately, his own condition of isolation. There are dreams of ‘he’ and ‘she’ ‘touch(ing)’, but ultimately the poem leads us back to self-referential pronouns, such as ‘she herself’. Back to self-enclosure, to self-isolation. Leander even asserts, ‘My words shall be as spotless as my youth, / Full of simplicity and naked truth’.[6] But they are anything but. We desire a language that is not artificial, but we cannot escape its boundaries. The ‘roses’, symbolic of the female genitalia, offer a glimpse of Leander’s own desires. The door is wide open, but he cannot move. Language paralyses him.   Marlowe implies not only that we use language to gain closer contact with one another, but also that language comes directly from our inward desires—our thoughts become manifest in our speech. The lines ‘Therefore even as an index to a book, / So to his mind was young Leander’s look’, allegorise the idea that what Leander thinks becomes what he sees.[7] The two are inseparable, like an index and a book. Thus, what he thinks becomes the language that he speaks. Likewise, Hero becomes an object of his language. She becomes the object of his very thoughts, as of the reader’s. In a sense, then, language precedes their real consummation. Leander’s language and gaze has penetrated Hero’s body. Additionally, in the lines ‘immortal fingers did imprint / That heavenly path’, the reader is provided with the image of Leander’s fingers ‘imprint[ing]’ the ‘path’ he desires to take—both literally across the wide expanse of water, and more metaphorically to Hero’s genitalia.[8] It is interesting to note the verb ‘imprint’, and in particular the prefix ‘ im- ’, which calls us back to other verbs, such as ‘impress’, synonymous with ‘to influence’. It is also possible that language not only describes Hero but inscribes itself onto her. Language comes to define her identity. In this sense, the poem becomes a tragedy on her behalf, where touch was fatal to a woman’s status and value.   Today, language can be fatal to anyone’s status. Language internalises external government regulation and engenders a collective governmentality. We come to internalise this language and it thus becomes the very thing we fear. It is the matter which stands in between the subject and object, between the signified and signifier. Language, then, not only describes our social distance but also distances us from one another. It seeps into culture, society, and politics. For example, our current Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, constantly evades the ongoing pandemic in his words. Through language, we attempt to find the truth, but there is no centre, there is no truth to uncover. Johnson says of lockdown that ‘it is like a nuclear deterrent’. Hero and Leander surrender to their own lustful desires and thus destroy themselves. Johnson’s simile seems to suggest that we assure our own destruction if we too surrender. But, according to Johnson, it is also ‘the narrow path (that) we have to tread’. This metaphor suggests how we are teetering on a boundary, for very few mistakes can be made. Language itself verges on the boundary, as our very words tremble with our fear. Johnson told us ‘that we can turn the tide’—that like Leander, we can attempt to push through this stasis, through this stagnant time, and create some dynamism and move toward contact. But language lies in the way, the double entendre displaying language’s duality. It is both an aid and an impediment. The conjunction ‘like’ itself suggests that we cannot know, that we cannot describe or ascribe meaning to our current state. Instead, we are stuck in a limbo state of mere wandering.   Even Marlowe deploys these literary obstacles for the reader. Jones asserts that, although Marlowe does not use the word in Hero and Leander , ‘plague hovers menacingly in its margins’.[9] The structure   of the poem prevents the very meeting Leander desires. Marlowe repeatedly refers to classical and Greek mythology, as in ‘The way to new Elysium’,[10] ‘Than for the fire filched by Prometheus’,[11] and ‘Yet there with Sisyphus he toiled in vain’.[12] Literary allusions throughout obstruct the relation between the reader and text. They become objects rather than words. ‘Elysium’ is a place of ideal happiness inhabited by the blessed dead in Greek mythology.[13] It is therefore interesting that Marlowe chooses to create a ‘new’ one. Leander is striving for a place of perfect happiness, a place he believes is with, or perhaps even inside, Hero. Our utopia is intertwined with the body. However, the allusion to ‘Sisyphus’ is significant as he ‘was condemned to Hades and made to roll a stone uphill forever’.[14] We are Sisyphus, unable to reach the climax of the poem, and unable to reach the end of this pandemic. Uncertainty is like a disease bleeding into our language. Marlowe prevents progress of chronological time through this back-and-forth motion, mirroring the very waves Leander fights against. Our reading experience then becomes that of our reality. Language makes us tremble, because it reminds us of our present. Marlowe evades the topic of the plague and yet, in doing so, he discusses it. In using language, one cannot escape its plague. Its transmission is just as deadly, for its speechlessness is given a voice.   Adam Islip, the printer of the original published poem, stated that Marlowe’s version is an ‘unfinished tragedy’. It may seem ‘unfinished’, or at least to cut off abruptly, if one agrees with the interpretation that Leander prematurely ejaculates. The finishing point that both Leander and the reader crave is not permitted by the poet. Dreams of intimacy and touch are cut short both literally and metaphorically. The last line inscribed in Latin, ‘Desunt Nonnulla’, translates to ‘something is missing’ or ‘something is lacking’, summarising this incapability of touching what one desires the most.[15] The poem then informs us how time is a continuum. Like the ‘tide’, we cannot control it. It rushes on, moving forward and backward, creating some kind of whirlpool around us. Meanwhile, we find ourselves stuck in stasis. The year 2020 was left unfinished. Relationships lacked touch, intimacy was missed, maybe life was abruptly stopped.   Language, then, defines our experience. It is how we interact with the world and reality and how we describe change. But, since there is no change, no future proposing itself, are we forced to go back to the past? Not only does our language describe social distancing, its very words also distance us from each other. The government imposes guilt, responsibility, and conformity on the individual, urging us to ‘Act like you have it’ and proposing that if we ‘Stay home’ we can ‘Save lives’. But the pronoun ‘it’ again separates us by its very meaning. The sibilance between ‘stay’ and ‘save’ propels us further into a condition of stasis. It places emphasis on our own moral responsibility. The words follow one each other, leaving us behind in the past. The phrases exemplify how language communicates and perhaps even structures our social distance. Therefore, beneath this simple affirmation is a realm of complexity and questionability. It holds as much ambiguity as Descartes’ phrase ‘cogito ergo sum’ (‘I think, therefore I am’). It asks us to seal off from the external and move to the internal. But where do we go? Where do we go when we cannot move forward? The answer is literature.   Literature provides momentum, it provides perspective. It is no ‘narrow path’ but a broad spectrum of experiences. The present is a mere echo of the past. The present is born out of the past. Like Marlowe’s allusions, echo is like a stark figure on the page. It is a shadow across the lines. But the next page is blank—unwritten and uncertain. So, we look to literature, to language, to our past for answers. We desire to move back to a time where things were more certain, back to a time when language made us tremble not with fear but with feeling, with desire, and with love. Because language—the word on the page, the whisper between two bodies—is all we have left. Madeleine Nina King   Madeleine Nina King is a first-year undergraduate in English at University College London. She is interested in literature focussing on the human condition, cultural movements, and theatre. She has been involved in a plethora of amateur productions and is hoping to pursue a career in the dramatic arts, in both writing and acting. [1] Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death and Literature in Secret  (second edn, David Willis tr, University of Chicago Press) 54. [2] Laurence Simmons, ‘“Comment Ne Pas Trembler?” Derrida’s Earthquake’. (2013) 42(3) SubStance 28, 32. [3] ibid 35. [4] Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments  (first published 1977, Richard Howard tr, Vintage 2002) 73. [5] Christopher Marlowe, ‘Hero and Leander’ (first published 1598) in Margaret Ferguson, Tim Kendall, and Mary Jo Slater (eds), The Norton Anthology of Poetry  (sixth edn, 2018) First Sestiad 207-8. [6] ibid Second Sestiad 129-30. [7] ibid First Sestiad 67-8. [8] ibid First Sestiad 54. [9] ibid First Sestiad 411; Katherine Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare: Scenes from His Life  (The Arden Shakespeare 2001). [10] Marlowe (n 5) First Sestiad 439. [11] ibid Second Sestiad 277. [12] ibid Second Sestiad 259. [13] ibid Second Sestiad 266. [14] Christopher Marlowe, The Complete Poems and Translations  (Stephen Orgel ed, Penguin Classics 2007). [15] ibid.

SCENE. Manhattan. Street with jazz club and apartment building on a muggy late summer evening.   The tired leaves on the trees are damp with rain. Yellow cabs whoosh by, nearly drowned out by a thrum of cicadas. A door swings open from the jazz club, releasing a bubble of music into the street and ALAN, CLAUDE, and JOHNNY, three young men engaged in animated conversation.   ALAN : [ To CLAUDE. ] Brilliant. Thanks for bringing us. We couldn’t have heard this in London.   CLAUDE : You’re welcome. Should we walk over to my place for a drink? It’s only a block away. [ To JOHNNY. ] OK, Johnny?   JOHNNY : Sure!   They saunter down the street and enter CLAUDE’s apartment building. It is a mess, with papers, books, magazines, empty beer bottles, sheet music, and electronic gear strewn everywhere. CLAUDE sweeps the papers off two chairs and onto the floor and gestures to ALAN and JOHNNY to sit.   CLAUDE : Don’t mind the mess. I’ll get to it one of these days.   JOHNNY : So, what did you mean when you said in the jazz club that ‘It’s all the same thing’? What’s all the same thing?   CLAUDE : Well, let’s see. Did you like the jazz performance?   [ JOHNNY nods. ] OK, so what you heard was a series of notes, right?   JOHNNY : Yes.   CLAUDE : So if I had a way to write every note down, then the concert could be replayed just as you heard it?   JOHNNY : Yes, of course. That’s like cutting an LP record.

The forging of a life in culture, economics, and security   My formative years were marked by my parents’ hopes and dreams that I would channel my vocal talents into a future where I would perform as a lyrical tenor on an operatic stage.[1]   Musical talent and voice training had inspired these aspirations, which were cruelly shattered when I joined a rock band to accompany my academic studies. Gradually, my father’s disappointment subsided as my career as an economist developed, gaining me recognition and influence.   Eventually, he came to acknowledge that my lifelong commitment to music, economics, and security had provided a fine platform for success. Combining a career in economic analysis in the twentieth century with economic security assessments for NATO in the twenty-first created a richly varied, cultural, and rewarding life.   ‘Are you a professor of economics or a rock ’n’ roll performer?’: The antecedents from wintry Illinois   The antecedents to this lifelong passion emerged one cold winter’s morning in January 1979. The Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the Illinois university I was visiting asked me this question in a withering voice.[2] Memories of my father’s disappointment came flooding back. The Dean had obviously been made aware of the events of the previous night, and the reckoning had arrived. I had made my debut as a singer/guitarist at a popular pizza house/bar in town. While singing a well-known contemporary ballad, a young woman emerged from the shadows to stand behind the stool on which I was precariously perched.   Swaying and holding me tight, her embrace threatened to dislodge me and the guitar, and terminate the song. Somehow, the song was finished and after a warm hug and a farewell flourish, she returned to the shadows, never to be seen again. With compelling urgency, the pizza house manager rushed up and insisted that I repeat the song. Sales of pizza and beer had suddenly soared during the ballad and gently erotic spectacle.   Confronted by the curious but faintly amused Dean the following morning, there was no choice but to accede to her request that I write a paper for the First International Conference of Cultural Economics in Edinburgh later in the year (it transpired that the Dean was one of the Editors of The Journal of Cultural Economics ).[3] My agreement drew inspiration from John Maynard Keynes’ dying dictum that ‘economists are the trustees not of civilisation but of the possibility of civilisation’.   From Edinburgh and culture to Bristol and defence   Following Edinburgh, I returned to my home city, Bristol, and increasingly undertook research into the understanding and analytical foundations of defence economics, inspired by Bristol’s regional, national, and international importance as a major centre of the European aerospace and defence industry. This distinctive field of enquiry led to many conference presentations and papers. These achievements stimulated a unique invitation from the United States Naval Academy to accept an endowed Chair in the Economics of the Defense Industrial Base at Annapolis, Maryland (combined with a semester at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California).   This new transatlantic odyssey permitted once more a life combining business with culture and the nurturing of my musical soul when singing Monteverdi, Mozart, Motown, and the blues in Annapolis. A fulfilling chapter of life ended when I crossed the Atlantic once more to occupy a senior post at NATO in Brussels, heralding new opportunities and contributions to security, economics, and culture.   The nexus of economic security and cultural diplomacy   I arrived in Brussels in late August 2001. Within three weeks the US was convulsed with anger, sorrow, and disbelief following the devastating, extraordinary Al Qaeda attacks on the New York World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001.   In the frenzied aftermath of 9/11, and as the fear of a similar attack on NATO Headquarters receded, I was employed in an international role as NATO’s principal Defence Economic Analyst, cooperating with Allies and Partners in developing sustainable security. During the 12 years of my NATO job, missions to numerous NATO member and Partner countries and regions meant frequent presentations at events and conferences, and a permanently packed suitcase.   The unstable unfolding of the twenty-first century   These missions took place in the complicated aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. A decade of retribution and conflict embodied in the so-called ‘War on Terror’ followed, enacted in the October 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan and the calamitous and misconceived US-led coalition invasion of Iraq in March 2003.   These actions inflamed antagonisms and discord among NATO Allies—notably France and the US—and also with some Partner countries. The antagonised states were notably from the Middle East and the Gulf, including the seven members of the Mediterranean Dialogue and the four members of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative.   Such tensions built on the festering and continuing insecurities in Southeast Europe, notably among Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. These insecurities resulted from the fragile Dayton Peace Agreement of 1995, at the end of the Yugoslav War, and NATO’s bombing of targets in Serbia during the 1999 Kosovo crisis.   NATO membership granted to Slovenia in 2004, Croatia in 2010, and the Republic of North Macedonia in 2020 has left a legacy of smouldering ethnic, linguistic, religious, and economic instability in other Southeastern European states, such as Serbia, Kosovo, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.   A sacred mission to the Russian Far East   Brighter news and a cautious sense of optimism appeared with the historic NATO–Russia Summit in Rome in May 2002. The hope that a constructive and mutually beneficial partnership between Russia and NATO could be forged was represented by the formation of the NATO–Russia Council. A few months later, the Office of the Secretary General requested that I travel to Moscow and then to Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East. A speaking engagement at an international conference organised by the Khabarovsk State Academy of Economics and Law, on the integration of the Russian Far East into the Pacific Rim, provided an opportunity to stimulate comparisons and contrasts with NATO’s origins and Euro-Atlantic identity.   The ten-hour journey from Brussels across nine time zones and the seemingly endless Russian taiga provided an unforgettable prelude to my visit to this remote region beyond Siberia. A note of sharp realism emerged during a subsequent speech to the Khabarovsk regional parliament. The Speaker was forced to take decisive action to protect me from visceral and angry Deputies who insisted that I be arrested as a NATO spy.   Escaping from Khabarovsk was accomplished by means of a dramatic overnight train journey on the last leg of the Trans-Siberian Express. I arrived in the early morning at the menacing but beautiful Vladivostok railway station. Vibrant, welcoming students from the celebrated Far Eastern State University escorted me to the campus. There followed a series of presentations on international relations and security to a variety of enthusiastic students and classes. Later, I held some conversations in—other than English and Russian—French and German, and to my Scandinavian surprise,[4] there was even a hybrid Swedish–Old Icelandic dialogue! Such a linguistic mélange offered the perfect prelude to an impromptu concert with caretaker Nikolai in the Vladivostok Children’s Home. The spacious meeting room echoed to anthems from Santana and the Beatles including, inevitably, ‘Back in the USSR’.   An eventful return journey from Vladivostok to Brussels was followed by congratulations from Secretary General Robertson on a successful diplomatic and musical mission. This affirmation emboldened me to engage in further musical diplomacy at other NATO conferences and events.   The return of the Cold War   Unfortunately, the positive vibrations from the NATO–Russia partnership faded, and were fatally damaged in 2008. Georgia had become increasingly vociferous and articulate in expressing its desire to join NATO as a full member. This provoked the surprise Russian invasion of Georgia’s South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions in August 2008.   This disruption to the framework and programme of mutual NATO–Russia cooperation was never fully restored. The death knell was sounded as Russia became increasingly alarmed by Ukraine’s own ambitions to join NATO. Unrest in Kiev preceded the Russian occupation of Crimea in 2013, and the subsequent insurgency in Russian-speaking Eastern Ukraine erupted when separatists were backed by Russian militia.   The origins of this particular (ongoing) ‘Frozen Conflict’ were precipitated by the 2005–06 natural gas crisis between Russia and Ukraine, which was manifested in unresolved financial and transit disputes between Naftogaz Ukraine and Russia’s Gazprom. This ‘gas war’ greatly unnerved NATO member states, especially those with a significant dependency on Russian natural gas and its transit through Ukraine.   Russia’s continuing need for the security of hydrocarbon energy demand and critical state revenues combines with Western Europe’s dependency on Russian gas. This pas de deux continues to be played out against the economic dislocations of COVID-19, and against the alarming escalation in climate insecurity and international pressure for radical reductions in hydrocarbons and energy substitution through renewable energy sources.   Singing before the Orange Revolution   At the conclusion of a NATO–Ukraine Joint Working Group on Economic Security in Kiev in 2004, the year of the Orange Revolution, a reception took place in a stylish contemporary art gallery in the Old Town of Kiev. A distinguished string quartet from the Kiev National Symphony Orchestra had been asked to provide music, but neither they nor I could have anticipated a request from the Reception Host, the Deputy Minister for Economic Security, that they should accompany me in some songs. With neither rehearsal nor music, the quartet brilliantly improvised accompaniments to Lennon–McCartney songs, which culminated in ecstatic dancing at the reception. This experience imparted an indelible impact on the folklore of NATO–Ukraine meetings that resonated throughout my tenure at NATO.   Music has charms to soothe troubled breasts in the South Caucasus   The most compelling example of the power of musical diplomacy to transform an acrimonious and tense Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) event took place in Tbilisi in the early summer of 2004.   The EAPC conference on economic security in the Black Sea had promised to be a difficult, uncooperative, and hostile event, with the genial Georgians hosting Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Russia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.   In autumn 2020, violent and tragic confrontations erupted between the Azeris and Armenians in and around the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in the South Caucasus. The Azeris, supported by Turkish and Syrian militias, sought to wrestle back control of this volatile territory, which had been seized by Armenian forces during the internecine conflict of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The secession of predominantly Christian Armenia and predominantly Muslim Azerbaijan from the Soviet Union reawakened deep historical ethnic and religious wounds.   On the first day of the EAPC conference, the hostility and the tensions between many of the participants were palpable, and the NATO chairman of the conference called on me to sustain fragmented and difficult discussions.   The Georgians hosted a large dinner that evening at a restaurant just outside downtown Tbilisi. At the circular table, the Georgian Minister of Economy, members of his ministry, NATO participants, and the new British Ambassador drank an initial toast. My NATO boss then commented jokingly that my talents as an economist were outweighed by my singing abilities. Shortly after, the aide-de-camp to the Minister came over and whispered that the Minister requested that I sing. Observing my incredulity, she pointed to the band on the stage in the large imposing hall and returned to her seat. While pondering what to do next, the personal assistant returned to restate the Minister’s request more insistently.   This prompted the newly appointed British Ambassador to announce that he liked to sing in the bath every day. As though in a dream (or nightmare), I went with the Ambassador to the stage, discovering en route that he had never previously sung in public. Short conversations in Georgian, Russian, and English set the scene. The band began to play, and to the astonishment of the hall we began to sing ‘Johnny B. Goode’ followed by ‘Let It Be’.   The audience, electrified by this spectacle, flocked toward the stage with chants of enthusiasm and encouragement. The evening continued with a Georgian contingent performing animated national dancing, followed by the rendition of beautiful national folk songs, firstly and artistically by the Armenians and then by the Azeris. Long after most guests had departed the dinner hall, the restaurant manager begged me to persuade the vodka-inspired Ambassador to stop singing and go home to the Embassy.   The consequence of this extraordinary evening was a reinvigorated conference the next day, with frequent constructive exchanges between Azeris, Armenians, and other participants. The conference report that I submitted to the Office of the Secretary General was applauded for the substantive discussions and proposals. Music had won the day, and would do so many more times in many more places before I retired from NATO in early 2014.   My retirement from NATO did not end regular participation or contributions to NATO’s Building Integrity Programme,[5] or to NATO’s Strategic Foresight Analysis programme (including virtual conversations through the pandemic). Retirement has not diminished my enduring love for the benefits to soft cultural power and security from music, economics, and security. Professor Adrian Kendry   Professor Adrian Kendry was appointed NATO’s Senior Defence Economist in August 2001. Until 2014 he coordinated all NATO economic intelligence, and he reported directly to the Office of the Secretary General on strategic economic challenges and risks confronting NATO and international security (including Afghanistan). Subsequently he has moderated and spoken at many NATO Strategic Foresight Analysis events, including SFA2021 Webinars on Economics and Resources (most recently 2020, and 2021 forthcoming). From 1996–2001 he held the Admiral William Crowe Chair in Defense Industrial Economics at the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, including a Visiting Professorship of Economics at the US Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, in 1999. He is now Visiting Professor of Economics, Security and Peacebuilding at the University of Winchester.   Article not to be quoted or reproduced without the author’s permission. [1] Such hopes and dreams had been nurtured by my singing Bach to win a major music festival. [2] Precipitated by a headline in the local newspaper announcing that a British rock and roll singer would be performing at a well-known pizza house/bar. [3] Published by Springer in Switzerland. [4] Swedish mother and biological father. [5] Including the composition and performance of ‘Building Integrity Blues’.

Every year a flower painting finds its way into my art. The Sunflowers  started with a creature I drew in charcoal straight onto the unprimed linen surface of a large painting. The rabbit-skin glue then fixed it into the fabric of the canvas and the sunflowers evolved around this creature, but before I finished the flowers in the vase were completely wilted. I took some of the petals and pushed them into the paint and moved the painting from the wall to the floor and then painted around the painting in a circular fashion. During the process I took trips to the National Gallery to examine Van Gogh’s sunflowers and carefully observed his brushstrokes, which later found their way into my own movement of the paint. I left areas of the canvas unpainted. I noticed that every time I do that the painting retains something of its original feeling. Its incompletion makes it breathe. A few years later, during the Australian bushfires, the enigmatic charcoal creature in the centre of the painting startled me. All of a sudden I saw a shrivelled, burned animal hanging onto a branch, not unlike the images from the media of little koala bears clasped onto trees in a landscape of devastation. Fig 1. The Sunflowers (Gabriella Kardos 2017, oil and sunflower petals on linen, 170 x 170cm). In March this year I picked up a bouquet of spring flowers, blue, yellow, violet, and white. I wanted to paint an explosion of joy, something akin to another painting I created the year before and which I titled ‘ Watteau ’. But that didn’t happen. As soon as I started painting the flowers a face found its way underneath them. When I showed it to an old friend over a FaceTime call he said, ‘It’s you.’ I did not look in the mirror. The face was something I knew from long time ago, or rather it knew me. Now, every time I happen to catch a glimpse of the painting, its gaze pulls me in. There is something bare and honest about it, as if I’m starring into my own soul. This is one thing I thank the lockdown for: paving the way for a slower pace, less noise, more time to think and be alone. And as I’m thinking this a song by Leonard Cohen goes through my head: ‘I’m slowing down the tune / I’ve never liked it fast / You wanna get there soon / I wanna get there last. / It’s not because I’m old / It’s not the life I led / I always liked it slow / That’s what my Mamma said.’ Time stretched during lockdown. It unleashed an internal valve to long-forgotten ways of being human. I remember something Marcel Duchamp said in a late interview with Calvin Tomkins when asked about artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns who went on to work with ideas he developed. His response was that he was pleased, but could not understand the fast pace at which they were producing and showing their work. His time was much slower, he said, 50 years before theirs, and it was important to take time to think. It is that period of ‘not doing’ which regenerates the work of an artist. I can say this forms part of my process too, even though I agonise about it. Cy Twombly would sometimes spend three months not painting at all, only to go into his studio at the end of a summer and fill it up with paintings. I know that verve of accumulated energy, it feels so liberating and you can see it straight away in the work when it happens. Fig 2. Red Studio with Money Plant (Gabriella Kardos 2014, oil on linen, 170 x 170cm). I can’t just look at the flowers and paint them. I lose interest looking at where the shadow or the light falls. Rather, I need to embody the flowers, dance them onto the surface of the canvas where they start creating something else. This is how I painted Watteau , the large burst of flowers I mentioned earlier. And taking the conversation back from the inference that I am unable to recapture something from a painting I’ve done before into a new one by mimicking a similar ethos, I totally mean that. I don’t know how others do it—repeating something over and over from one painting to another, what some call ‘branding’. My only branding is the truth. I don’t hold a monopoly on truth, but my creative process is steeped in the experience of openness in the moment. It relies on a state of receptivity within a condition of uncertainty, not knowing where the painting is going to take me. I try to abandon my assumptions and rely solely on my intuition, yet of course as I say this I’m also aware that, in a Bergsonian fashion, this intuition is nothing but ‘instinct educated by the intellect’. Fig 3. The Bouquet (Gabriella Kardos 2021, oil on linen, 60 x 60cm). In the studio I leave the world behind—no radio station chatter, no news. Here I can descend, or ‘ascend’, into vulnerability and let myself feel my own mortality. The key word here is ‘feel’. I can’t proclaim that I can do away with thought, but what I do has to be felt. EE Cummings understood a poet’s absolute need to feel, which I extend to being an artist:   A lot of people think or believe or know they feel - but that’s thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling - not knowing or believing or thinking. Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or  you believe or you know, you’re a lot of  other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.[1]   This process is valid not only in making art but also in looking at it. So often we go to exhibitions and read the labels near the paintings before we give them a chance to be experienced. It is as if we are incapable of looking and experiencing something for ourselves, we need to be informed, like everything else around us in this networked age of distraction where our experiences consist of little snippets. Do we need to know the recipe before enjoying a meal? I think it is important to situate a work of art in its context, yet often what the viewer leaves with is only that information, having looked at the work only in passing.   And what is the purpose of an artist’s statement? We have to say something which encapsulates us, in half a page. I find this quite restrictive and dumbing-down, for both artist and audience. Yet we all go along with it because it is expected of us. It is a form of advertising. In a nutshell: if you identify yourself with your work, who are you? What are you after? We don’t ask this of any other profession. We somehow seem to know. But I don’t want to be disgruntled. I want to concentrate not on what is lacking in life but on the richness of life. I used to be down each time I got up in the morning and spent the day trying to lift myself up. Over the past couple of years I have started a gratefulness journal where I look for things in my life I’m grateful for, simple things—the coffee on the table, memories, books, the work I’m still planning on doing, the people in my life. I place one foot in front of the other, and in the space of an hour I traverse a bridge from pessimism to looking forward to the things I’m going to accomplish in the day. A long time ago I used to dump my feelings of hopelessness into my paintings. But I also decided, a long time ago, that I didn’t wish to stare those experiences in the face. A painting has to be the truth. If it is a lie it remains on the surface like an ornament. So I work with myself to get to a state of receptivity. This basically involves making space within my head, creating an opening for things to emerge. Because of this, I don’t produce a huge number of works. But when a painting succeeds in showing me something about myself I didn’t know, when it shines with an inner life of its own, I know I’ve got somewhere. I’m asking that the painting transcend me, that it connect me to the past and to a deep humanity. Fig 4. Free (Gabriella Kardos 2018, oil on linen, 30 x 30 cm). I took up etching only recently, after my father’s death. My etchings are more planned, yet each plate has become a treasured moment from my past. Drawing on a small scale, with delicate markings while I sit at a table and try to recall my father, is not so different from writing in a journal—something the flâneur in me has been doing all my life, wandering into cafes in various cities I’ve lived in. As I fish thorough disjointed memories—the emigration with my parents and sister in 1976 (the  séjour  in Vienna, the arrival in Montreal)—I rediscover a lost world I completely ignored for so many years. Like small pieces of a puzzle these memories become embodied in the images of my etchings, they become alive, they give substance to so much of my life I’ve forgotten or unwillingly shut away by moving from country to country.    I would like to end with a quote from TS Eliot which made an impression in my student days and which still resonates with me:   In order to arrive at what you are not You must go through the way in which you are not. And what you do not know is the only thing you know And what you own is what you do not own And where you are is where you are not.[2] Fig 5. My Father in his Bedroom as I Remember Him (Gabriella Kardos 2021, etching, 45 x 35cm). Gabriella Kardos   Gabriella Kardos is an artist and art historian. Her 35-year career spans painting, photography, and printmaking. Her works feature in national collections across Europe and North America. ‘Her concerns are not at all matters of the tired conceptualizing and ironic simulacra that characterize much of current culture and polity, but rather a fervent attempt to find a space again—even an imaginary one—for beautiful things and genuine human responses’ (Michael Joyce). [1] EE Cummings, A Miscellany Revised (as cited in Maria Popova, ‘The Courage to Be Yourself: E.E. Cummings on Art, Life, and Being Unafraid to Feel’ ( brainpickings ) < https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/09/25/e-e-cummings-advice/ > accessed 1 March 2021). [2] TS Eliot, ‘East Coker’ in Four Quartets (first published 1943, Faber and Faber 1995) 18.

For far too long, Ashutosh Gowariker’s Swades  (2004) has maintained its status as an Indian cinema cult classic. It is a film about a non-resident Indian (NRI) from the USA who visits India to reconnect with his foster nanny. Through his visit, he becomes deeply involved in the socioeconomic issues of the village of Charanpur and ultimately decides to return and settle there. It owes its high status to several features but primarily to its frank depiction and criticism of certain ills of Indian society.   Those ills persist to this day, and in light of this, it is pertinent that Swades ’ status and reputation be re-examined. Whilst Gowariker’s   film was certainly ahead of its time, not recognising its limitations would be both a disservice to the aim of progressing Hindi cinema as well as to the very real issues that the film delves into. Inevitably, such a conversation will expose Swades  as deeply hesitant and trifling in its subversion and critical analysis.   To expose Swades ’ criticality as hesitant and trifling, this article will begin by presenting two crucial ways in which the film does engage in both filmic and cultural subversion. Firstly, Gowariker successfully presents a uniquely nuanced depiction of the NRI, forgoing the typical depictions. This novel conceptualisation lets the narrative critique the caste system—an endogamous system of social stratification unique to India[1]—and conceives of an Indianness that can perhaps be detached from adherence to such oppressive traditions. Unfortunately, because of the large focus on the NRI experience, Gowariker falls woefully short of providing an enduringly meaningful critique of the caste system. It stereotypes the characters of marginalised identities, something that can be seen in current Indian cinema, arguably because no lessons are learnt from Swades . This article concludes that there is an important message within that resonates to this day, but realising it is conditional on taking Swades  off the pedestal on which it has been placed.   Scholarship on Swades  and its relevant themes must be recognised for its contributions to the ongoing conversation about Hindi cinema and the various social issues which are framed within it. Kae Reynolds has recognised Swades for its use of servant leadership in the characterisation of the protagonist, Mohan Bhargava.[2] Relatedly, Amy Bhatt, Madhavi Murty, and Priti Ramamurthy critique the film for operating within a neoliberal framework in which caste (and other social justice issues) are treated merely as barriers to the final aim of economic development,[3] rather than issues in and of themselves.[4] Examination of late-1990s and early-2000s Hindi cinema suggests that Swades  was distinct in its portrayal of NRIs and the West and lacked a cultural superiority complex. Nonetheless, the more simplistic portrayals have persisted.[5] Furthermore, Swades  is recognised for depicting oppressed-caste people as passive and in need of rescuing and recent Hindi cinema films have continued to reinforce the stereotypes of Brahminical saviour complex).[6] Most scholarship critical of Swades relates to caste and neoliberalism, and tends to highlight similar films, rather than critiquing it in isolation.   At the outset, it is essential to outline the Indian caste system as well as the current realities of caste-based oppression. This is crucial to evaluating Swades ’ message. Caste is an endogamous system of social stratification. It has a long and complex history, but throughout various historical periods on the Indian subcontinent, caste-based stratification has endured as part of the dominant religious culture of Hinduism.[7] Through the processes of bonded labour and or strict segregation, those labelled ‘Brahmins’ and other privileged castes have attained great generational wealth and power,[8] and those labelled ‘Dalits’[9] have been made to experience untouchability, violence and exclusion.[10] One’s caste identity is virtually inescapable and shapes every aspect of existence.[11]   According to Rajesh Sampath, caste oppression is comparable to racial oppression to a certain extent. Police brutality, workplace discrimination, and privilege blindness are but a few violations to which oppressed-caste people are constantly subject.[12] Caste has endured perhaps because of its religious roots. Hindu epics and the Manusmriti  feature stark lessons against caste transgression.[13] Eradication has been more difficult since the Modi administration professed a desire to shape India into a Hindu- rashtra (state), with caste politics being redefined as acceptable and defensible to suit this agenda.[14]   Having outlined Swades  and the caste system, the article can begin to examine Swades  for its subversiveness that facilitated its frank social commentary.   To convey the depth of Gowariker’s subversion in the depiction of the NRI protagonist, it is important to be aware of the socioeconomic conditions in which Swades  enters the Indian consciousness. At the turn of the twenty-first century, the Indian economy had been liberalised for over a decade, with it bringing rapid change. Huge shopping centres materialised alongside the bazaars in major cities, bringing foreign retailers into India. Migration opportunities increased tenfold post-liberalisation because of the emergence of an upwardly mobile middle class whose members took up work placements and educational opportunities abroad, particularly to the UK and USA. Whether one emigrated or not, for the middle-class, this was a time of improving living standards and a sense that all social issues have been, or will be imminently, resolved.   As Western media—from the Disney Channel to Comedy Central— began to permeate the televised landscape, Indians became keenly aware of the stark differences in lifestyle. Regardless of social class and region, they were being exposed to the superior quality of life in foreign countries, even as things were improving at home.   The yearning for a Western lifestyle of ease and prosperity began to clash horribly with a sense of patriotic pride. After all, adulation of the Occident is difficult to reconcile with a colonial past and the contemporary realities of racism that the Indian diaspora faced. The NRIs—with their theoretically split loyalties—became prime real estate for Indian cinema to play out these clashing values in vivid Technicolor.[15] It would not be far-fetched to argue that an ‘Indian identity’ was strengthened by Bollywood in careful opposition to Western culture. At this time, many films featured overly patriotic themes. The plots follow the model of ‘Indians in the Occident realised India is just so much better’. NRIs were presented in binary terms—those who ‘lost touch’ with their roots were villainised,[16] and ‘good’ ones always felt alienated and yearned to be in their true home.[17] Indian authenticity was measured by checking how much an NRI resisted the ‘Western mindset’ and maintained their sanskaar aur parampara  (cultural norms and tradition), even though ‘there is   no single opinion about what these values are’.[18]   In these vacuously patriotic times, Gowariker released Swades , which had all the markers of a film that would deliver on contemporary audiences’ nationalistic expectations.   Except, Swades  ignored various Bollywood cinematic tropes,[19] and more importantly had a protagonist who turned a critical eye on India, rather the West. The sheer beauty of Mohan’s character lies in his genuine critique of the Indian government (the intertemporal entity) and Indian society at large, whilst being attached to and invested in it. The film begins with Mohan deciding to visit his foster nanny—a personification of India—because he believes he has a duty to not be so detached from her. His undeniable attachment does not render him blind to the ills of Indian society, which he credibly exposes in private, and when the village elders question him.   This realistic NRI character naturally allows for more meaningful critique, and the most notable issue that Mohan condemns is the Indian caste system. Mohan repeatedly mentions caste—not just caste-based discrimination—in the list of issues that plague the country, at a time when middle-class Indians hardly interrogated their caste-based privileges at all. This would have been the first time this generation of the audience was made to confront sociopolitical issues, since themes ‘concerning class/caste oppression, workers’ rights … [had] been tucked away’ in the post-liberalisation Indian cinematic landscape.[20]   In Swades , degrees of casteism are depicted through the characters. First, there is Mela Ram, an entrepreneurial chef, who is not allowed to sit in on the village elders’ meetings. Then, there is Birsa, who is deeply afraid that the village school will not admit his children. Finally, there is Haridas, a severely impoverished farmer, kept poor by the refusal of the community to do business with him because he is viewed as a caste traitor for abandoning the ‘prescribed’ occupation.   The lack of any obvious display of physical violence or verbal abuse against these oppressed-caste characters stresses the extent to which the caste system has been normalised under the guises of peace and social harmony. Casual acceptance of caste-based segregation marks some of the film’s most powerful sequences. In a scene of an outdoor cinema, all the oppressed-caste people are made to sit on the other side of the makeshift screen. After spending a day helping with the task of enrolling children to the local school alongside Mohan, Mela Ram pauses at the cinema divide, shakes Mohan’s hand, and gestures to the fact that he cannot sit with the privileged-caste protagonist.   Mela Ram and the rest of his peers are forced to watch the entire film, including the title, inverted . The cruelty of this is emphasised by how one of Swades ’ major themes is the way in which oppressed-caste people are excluded from their right to education, embodied by Birsa’s struggles. One can easily envision a village elder character remarking: ‘They can’t read, so how does it make a difference whether they view the film from this side or the other side?’   In depicting the normalisation of caste, Gowariker acknowledged casteism as essential to Indian society. After all, the fact that societal structures are a central feature of Indianness forces the audience to wonder what exactly they should be feeling any attachment or loyalty to. Essentially, Swades  asks, can one conceive of an Indianness without social subjugation under the guise of sanskaar aur parampara ?   Gowariker’s answer is revealed when Mohan leaves Charanpur for the USA. It is held in the parting-gift token. It is a wooden box with compartments filled with spices essential to Indian cuisine. When back in the USA, Mohan’s nostalgia for India is shown through a montage. It features the people he met, rich farmland, traditional architecture, and finally the very spices that come from the soil. Thus, Gowariker fashioned a pathway towards an altered sense of Indian identity at a time when cinema blindly mimicked the Indian tendency to claim superiority based on adherence to centuries of religious culture. This critique is not limited to Hindu religious culture. One could question the merits of linking national identity to a specific geographical region, but the attempt to shift the focus away from vague and uncritically accepted social norms such as caste is noteworthy.   The pathway from a critical protagonist—with whom the audience must identify—to a vision of an inclusive Indian identity that has divested itself from oppressive tradition bears further examination. In fact, this examination of Swades ’ messaging will reveal that the pathway is broken, because it relies on an incomplete analysis of the Indian caste system.   Gowariker’s method for creating a new Indian identity is to employ caste-blindness. An entire song—‘Yeh Tara Woh Tara’ (‘Star Here, Star There’)—is dedicated to this message, although it never uses the word ‘caste’.[21] When Mohan was asked by the village elders about his own caste identifier, he simply says, ‘What difference does it make?’ Although this response is meant to challenge caste adherence, when viewed in conjunction with the message of caste blindness, it suggests a wilful apathy towards an issue that has lasted for centuries. Much like race blindness, caste blindness does not rectify centuries of trauma and injustice. In the aforementioned scene where Mohan displays an initiative to discard his caste identity, he is sat in front of the village elders and Mela Ram—one of the few oppressed-caste characters—is pointedly excluded from the conversation. Mohan had made no effort to have him included, which would have been far more meaningful than claiming his own indifference to caste identity.   Furthermore, merely two seconds afterwards, Mohan volunteers his caste identity and—to no surprise—he is a Brahmin. If it takes a Brahmin man to convince the other privileged caste people to not commit caste-based atrocities, has caste identity truly been challenged? For Gowariker and other filmmakers like Anubhav Sinha,[22] to present an outcome where caste oppression ends on the oppressor’s terms cheapens the message.   The film might convince the audience that its project to display the humanity of oppressed caste people is well executed. When Mohan visits Haridas (Bachan Pachehra), Haridas narrates his story of injustice with tears in his eyes. The camera pans slowly forward as Pachehra’s voice and malnourished appearance become the focal point, and the audience forgets all else. It is a deeply moving scene, undoubtedly the emotional apex of the film.   However, Haridas—like the other oppressed-caste characters—never displays any anger at his oppressors. It is Mohan who exclaims, ‘This is an injustice!’. Haridas, the man subjected to the injustice, is only afforded some poetic dialogue intended to invoke the audience’s pity. There is a privileged-caste saviour; the lower-caste people talk about their plight politely and eloquently with a sense of resignation, never outrage; and the story itself ‘does not answer questions like who created caste’.[23]   The characterisation of Dalit people—especially as lacking in anger—reveals the oppressor’s desire never to be harshly critiqued. A Dalit (and oppressed-caste) identity has been fashioned by the dominant caste to create boundaries and put conditions on Dalit liberation. In doing so, any hint of anger is classed as a digression, a reason to discredit the voice (and therefore the message) without feeling guilty. This is evident in Indian media’s treatment of Mayawati, a Dalit politician and leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Her rise to mainstream politics has been praised by prominent journalists for avoiding the ‘abuse of the upper castes’, and she was later characterised as ‘raging again, on the warpath’.[24] It is saddening, though unsurprising, that privileged-caste people have their blindspots. This underscores the need to question and dismantle each misguided fictional representation of oppressed caste people. Lack of such examination has impoverished Swades ’ legacy. Storytellers and film-watchers continue to place it on a pedestal, and they remain nostalgic about themes that did not shake them out of their comfort zones.   To give an idea of the current state of Hindi cinema, one can consider Anubhav Sinha’s Article 15 . The latest major film to depict caste-based violence, it features all the aforementioned tropes. The glaring difference is that the director does not shy away from the darker themes of sexual violence. Whilst there was more criticism of the Brahmin saviour complex, in a panel discussion on NDTV, Sinha can be seen as deflecting from the criticism. He says: ‘If it’s wrong to show a Brahmin, then we can re-cast with a Dalit hero, but in today’s times this story is a humble beginning’.[25] Rahul Sonpimple, a Dalit student activist, could be seen looking unsatisfied with the director’s response. It is evident that a lack of critical engagement with Swades  has resulted in repeating patterns of casteist storytelling, employing all the tropes that damage the cause of caste eradication, and openly profiteering from uninspired narratives of caste-based oppression.   Is there hope for more grounded social commentary, which centres the voices of the oppressed? The current political climate does not provide any reassurance. The Modi administration cannot tolerate an iota of criticism) and routinely acts to subdue and threaten it.[26] Its primary aim (besides maintaining power) is to continue to act on a Hindu nationalist agenda. Any criticism that can be even vaguely considered an attack on Hinduism—which anti-caste storytelling would certainly be—is likely to receive strong pressure to be rescinded, if it gets published at all.   The most recent behaviour of the Modi administration—attacking public figures such as Rihanna and Greta Thunberg for their opinions on the farmer protests—has already revealed its wild and unhinged character to the world. Less known is the tendency of Bollywood personalities to act as governmental mouthpieces. This is widely interpreted as a sign of the devastating reach and influence that the Indian government wields.[27]   That said, creative resistance is free to take root in any space it can. In a thread on Twitter, Raghu Karnad, an Indian journalist, pointed out the historical precedent of raising awareness and forming resistance against previous Indian regimes through important institutions such as The New York Times and Western governments.[28] Promisingly, the most recent iteration of resistance is the ‘younger generations of Indian expats and diaspora’, which uses safer spaces such as social media to profess support for issues back home.[29]   However, the diasporic community is also dominated by privileged-caste people. It therefore remains important that lending a critical voice does not overshadow the ongoing efforts of oppressed-caste people to create their art and provide their critique.[30] Therefore, questioning Swades ’ elevated status is a small step towards making space for better narratives, especially given that I am a part of the community that largely holds Swades  in very high esteem.   Ultimately, after re-evaluating the film, only one message from it still resonates with me, as an NRI in 2021 looking at a fictional NRI in 2004. Just like Mohan, voices like mine need to recognise their own privilege and hold Indian institutions accountable. Richa Kapoor   Richa Kapoor is the Impact Officer at Social Market Foundation. Prior to this role, she graduated from the University of Warwick with a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. She contributed an article to the first issue of CJLPA , before becoming an editor for the second. [1] For detailed understanding of the caste system in India, it is crucial to learn from oppressed-caste voices. Some of the most notable works on the subject and experience are: BR Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste  (seventh edn, Verso Books 2014); Meenakshi Moon and Urmila Pawar, We Also Made History: Women in the Ambedkarite Movement  (sixth edn, Zubaan Books 2016); and Om Prakash Valmiki, Joothan  (third edn, Columbia University Press 2008). [2] Kae Reynolds, ‘The Hindi language film Swades: We, the People: A different kind of journey to the east’ (2013) 7(1) The International Journal of Servant Leadership 279. [3] Near the end of the film, Mohan leads a bottom-up electricity generation project, since the village was plagued with unreliable electricity. Making the climax an economic development project has been criticised. [4] Amy Bhatt, Madhavi Murty, and Priti Ramamurthy, ‘Hegemonic Developments: The New Indian Middle Class, Gendered Subalterns, and Diasporic Returnees in the Event of Neoliberalism’ (2010) 36(1) Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 127 < https://doi.org/10.1086/652916 > accessed 14 February 2021; Prem Singh, ‘The Representation of the Dalit Body in Popular Hindi Cinema’ (2011) < https://www.academia.edu/25943972/The_Representation_of_the_Dalit_Body_in_Popular_Hindi_Cinema > accessed 27 March 2021. [5] Ravinder Kaur, ‘Viewing the West through Bollywood: a celluloid Occident in the making’ (2002) 11(2) Contemporary South Asia 199 < https://doi.org/10.1080/0958493022000030168 > accessed 14 February 2021; Laya Maheshwari, ‘How Bollywood stereotypes the West’ ( BBC Culture , 2017) < https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170922-how-bollywood-stereotypes-the-west > accessed 12 February 2021. [6] Vidushi, ‘Cinematic Narrative: The Construction of Dalit Identity in Bollywood’ in Einar Thorsen, Heather Savigny, Jenny Alexander, and Daniel Jackson (eds), Media, Margins and Popular Culture (Palgrave Macmillan 2015) 123; Khushi Gupta, ‘Stereotypes in Bollywood Cinema: Does Article 15 Reinforce the Dalit Narrative?’ (2021) 13(1) Inquiries Journal 1 < http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/a?id=1868 > accessed 12 March 2021. [7] Romila Thapar, The History of India , vol 1 (second edn, Penguin 1990) 28. [8] Rajorshi Das, ‘My Casteism & Privileges: A Test For Upper Caste People In Academia’ ( Feminism In India , 2020) < https://feminisminindia.com/2020/06/10/casteism-privileges-test-upper-caste-people-academia/ > accessed 14 February 2021. [9] Caste is hierarchical. Several groups are between Brahmins and Dalits on the caste ladder. [10] Das (n 8); Adam Withnall, ‘Caste in India: What are Dalits and how prevalent is casteism in modern-day society?’ The Independent (London, 30 September 2020) < https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/india-caste-dalits-brahmins-hindu-society-b718984.html > accessed 14 February 2021. [11] Kaur (n 5); Varghese K George, ‘Caste is the constant’ The Hindu  (2016) < https://www.thehindu.com/sunday-anchor/conversion-confusion-caste-is-the-constant/article6711442.ece > accessed 27 March 2021 [12] Rajesh Sampath, ‘Racial and caste oppression have many similarities’ ( The Conversation , 19 June 2015) < https://theconversation.com/racial-and-caste-oppression-have-many-similarities-37710 > accessed 12 February 2021. [13] Tejas Harad, ‘Why Manusmriti is the symbol of the caste system for anti-caste reformers’ ( The News Minute , 3 November 2020) < https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/why-manusmriti-symbol-caste-system-anti-caste-reformers-136809 > accessed 14 February 2021. [14] Avishek Jha, ‘BJP’s 2019 victory: How caste-based politics has been redefined and reinvented’ ( South Asia @LSE , 26 June 2019) < https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/southasia/2019/06/26/bjps-2019-victory-how-caste-based-politics-has-been-redefined-and-reinvented/ > accessed 14 February 2021. [15] Laya Maheshwari, ‘How Bollywood stereotypes the West’ ( BBC Culture , 25 September 2017) < https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170922-how-bollywood-stereotypes-the-west > accessed 12 February 2021. [16] As in Pardes  (1997). [17] As in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995). [18] Kaur (n 5) 207. [19] Song lyrics featured the messages of the story and weren’t mere eye or ear candy. The romance was not the focus of the narrative, and it lasted three hours without much epic drama. [20] Kaur (n 5) 206. [21] Although the song does not mention caste, the film alludes to caste by playing it during the segregated outdoor cinema event scene. During the song, the makeshift screen that divided the villagers is brought down and all  the children sing together about ignoring differences and truly unifying. [22] The director of Article 15  (2019), a crime drama film about a police investigation about the disappearance of three Dalit girls. The film is inspired by several real-life incidents. [23] Khushi Gupta, ‘Stereotypes in Bollywood Cinema: Does Article 15 Reinforce the Dalit Narrative?’ (2021) 13(1) Inquiries Journal 1 < http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/a?id=1868 >. [24] Bhatt, Murty, and Ramamurthy (n 4) 139-40. [25] NDTV, ‘Does “Article 15” Have An Upper-Caste Gaze? Filmmaker Anubhav Sinha Responds’ ( YouTube , 19 July 2019) < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIdZs7DbBfA > accessed 14 January 2021. [26] Meenakshi Ganguly, ‘Dissent is “anti-national” in Modi’s India - no matter where it comes from’ ( Scroll.in , 13 December 2019) < https://scroll.in/article/946488/dissent-is-anti-national-in-modis-india-no-matter-where-it-comes-from > accessed 14 February 2021. [27] Geeta Pandey, ‘Farmers’ protest: Why did a Rihanna tweet prompt Indian backlash?’ ( BBC News , 4 February 2021) < https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-55931894 > accessed 14 February 2021. [28] Ironically, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the group that rallied foreign bodies and lobbied them to put pressure on Indira Gandhi in the mid-1970s, is closely associated with the Modi administration and supports curbing dissent. [29] Raghu Karnad ( Twitter , 3 February 2021) < https://mobile.twitter.com/rkarnad/status/1356917930194202627 > accessed 14 February 2021. [30] Satyajit Amin, ‘Dear Indian Diaspora, We Need to Talk About Caste’ ( Varsity , 24 July 2020) < https://www.varsity.co.uk/opinion/19634 > accessed 27 March 2021.

Abstract   In the wake of successive disappointing election performances by the UK Labour Party, commentators on the party’s centre-right have argued that it can only be electorally successful if it is perceived as closer to the political centre than it was under leaders such as Jeremy Corbyn and Ed Miliband. These comments reiterate the received wisdom that, for a political party to be successful, it must be perceived as occupying an ideological centre ground. This political wisdom is derived from Anthony Downs’ ‘median voter theorem’,[1] which states that ‘a majority rule voting system will result in the outcome most preferred by the median voter’.[2] The following study tests this argument empirically by comparing voter estimations of the ideological positions of the Labour, Conservative, Green, and Liberal Democrat parties on the left-right ideological scale before the 2017 and 2019 General Elections and during polling carried out in June 2020.   Introduction   Discourse within the political commentariat, and the general public, often involves discussion of whether parties have moved towards the left or right because of leaders, political philosophies, or significant events such as Brexit or the 2008 financial crisis. Failure at the polls—such as the Labour Party’s failure to win a majority in 2015 and 2019—is often attributed to a party shifting its position on this scale so that it is out of sync with the electorate. The UK Labour Party was accused of moving ‘too far to the left’ under Corbyn,[3] while Joe Biden was attacked on the campaign trail in the US as being not left-wing enough.[4] However, studies have suggested that it is actually quite rare for parties to shift significantly on the left-right ideological spectrum.[5] This raises the question: is there actually a correlation between a party’s position on the left-right axis, as perceived by the mean voter, and electoral success? Do voters ignore ideological shifts when making electoral decisions—and is electoral perception of such shifts even accurate enough to allow informed decision making? The following study seeks to answer these questions by using a number of simple statistical tests and linear models to investigate the link between voter estimation of British parties’ ideological positions on the Anthony Downs’ scale,[6] and the electoral success of these parties. As a precursor to this analysis, the study also considers the conclusions of two previous studies on voter estimation of ideological position in Europe and Britain, and the influence these have on this study’s results. Ultimately this study finds that—based on the results of two previous general elections, pre-election surveys from these polls, and survey results after one year of Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership of the Labour Party—the proximity of a party’s perceived ideological position to that of the median, centrist voter, is a poor indicator of electoral success. The study also highlights that, in order to better understand the relationship between voter estimation of the ideological position of a party and electoral success, more data from smaller-scale electoral contests is required.   Theoretical background and previous studies   Before testing the hypothesis that, in the UK, the party which is perceived as being closest to the ideological centre ground does the best, it is necessary to consider some of the assumptions within this hypothesis.   The first of these is the assumption of a level of ‘political knowledge’ or ‘political sophistication’ within the electorate. Parties in Britain and many other Western democracies tend to be characterised as ‘left’, ‘right’, or ‘centrist’ on the two-dimensional scale described by Downs.[7] In Down’s model, these labels describe, with broad strokes, the ideological positions held by parties which determine their stance on a range of policy issues. They let members of the electorate identify the party they are most closely aligned with without having to analyse the party’s stance on individual issues.[8] Busch[9] points out that this model assumes voters can understand the ideological content of a party’s positions and compare it with their own, rather than comparing the label itself, which may disguise significant differences between party and voter priorities. The same assumption is present within the argument made by centrist politicians such as Tony Blair[10] and Peter Mandelson[11] that the Labour Party can only win elections if it is perceived by the median voter as being closest to the median (centre) ideological position. This argument, like Downs’ model of electoral decision making, relies on voters being able to understand the congruence between their own ideological stances, and their political parties’. However, research on voter perceptions of European parties and electoral decision making has suggested that the average voter does not notice when a party changes the ideological content of its manifesto.[12]   Similarly, several studies[13] have found that if individuals have strong positive or negative emotional predispositions to specific parties they tend to exaggerate the ideological similarity or difference between themselves and said party.[14] This undermines the core assumption of informed electoral decision-making of Downs’ model and the arguments of Mandelson and Blair. Busch tests the hypothesis that voters are able to accurately perceive and compare the ideological position of a party with their own using multi-level linear modelling, identifying the individual-, party-, and system-level factors that influence the accuracy of voter estimations of ideological position.[15] Busch finds that voter estimation of a party’s ideological position, and shifts in this position, is generally accurate. Changes in a party’s political ideology around economic policy actually appear to improve accuracy. The greatest source of confusion to voter estimation was multiple parties significantly shifting ideological position simultaneously, which caused a decrease in estimation accuracy. Dahlberg suggests that if parties want to avoid voter confusion about their ideological position they should take distinctive positions, since the further from other parties they are, the clearer voter estimation is.[16] However, successful parties tend to try to have ‘broad appeal’ amongst the electorate by operating under as wide an ideological umbrella as possible,[17] which makes them harder to locate accurately on the left-right scale as ideological positions will inevitably overlap.   The second assumption made by commentators such as Blair and Mandelson is that the distance between the perceived ideological position of the Labour Party and the electoral median position, is greater than the distance between the same median position and the perceived ideological positions of other parties. Ed Fieldhouse considers this claim in a widely republished blog post for the British Electoral Survey.[18] Fieldhouse argues that the overall mean ideological position of the British Labour Party is less important than the difference between its position and that of the electoral median, or whether competing parties position themselves closer to this median. Fieldhouse uses data from the British Electoral Survey—the source from which this study’s data is also drawn—to interrogate the claim made by Tony Blair that the Labour Party moved too far left under Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn,[19] in the wake of the 2015 General Election, where Labour won 232 seats to the Conservatives’ 330. His study is therefore a useful precursor to this paper. Fieldhouse’s comparison of mean voter position on the ideological scale and mean voter estimation of Labour’s position on the same scale showed that in 2015 Labour moved further away from the median voter than any time during the more electorally successful Blair years. This suggests that the received wisdom of Downs’ model—and the arguments of Blair, Mandelson, and other centrists—may be correct. As Labour has moved further from the median, its electoral success has declined. However, Labour’s perceived ideological position was actually 0.6 points to the right of its own voters’.[20] This is a good position for a party attempting to have a ‘broad appeal’ across the electorate.[21] Additionally, Fieldhouse’s study showed that despite the Liberal Democrats being perceived as the party ideologically closest to the median voter’s position,[22] they still suffered an electoral collapse, losing 49 of their 57 seats in 2015. Additionally, while the Labour party was considered left-of-centre, they were still perceived as closer to the centre than the Conservative Party. The modal score of the Conservative Party was 8, compared to Labour’s 3.[23] The Conservative Party’s ideological position was also further to the right of Conservative supporters (0.9 points) than the Labour Party was from Labour supporters.[24] Fieldhouse concludes that there are more important factors in electoral success in Britain than perceived ideological position. This suggests that Labour’s main challenge will be increasing its support by implementing new policies associated with conservative fiscal responsibility, whilst also keeping its established electoral base.   A brief overview of previous studies on voter estimation of ideological positions in the UK and Europe upholds the core assumption of the Downs model—that the average voter can accurately estimate the ideological position of a political party. However, it appears that, in the UK, the ability of voters to accurately estimate party positions does not necessarily mean they set great store by them when making electoral decisions. As Fieldhouse concludes, the proximity of a party’s perceived ideological position to the median is a poor indicator of electoral success.   Method   The following section will lay out the steps taken in the treatment and analysis of data during this study. While the techniques used are simple, they can still reveal significant phenomena concerning voter estimation and electoral success.   Data   This study focuses exclusively on voter estimation in the United Kingdom. While restricting the applicability of the study’s results, this also brings several benefits. The presence of multiple parties within the UK electoral system has been proven to make voter estimations of ideological position more accurate.[25] So has the presence of several established parties which have traditionally been associated with a specific area on the left-right axis.[26] The time frame studied (2017-20) was selected because, within it, multiple parties changed either their ideological position or party leader, and because it largely predates the confounding effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on electoral decision making. The raw data from the study was obtained from three waves of the British Electoral Study 2014-23: Wave 11 (April-May 2017), Wave 17 (November 2019), and Wave 20 (June 2020). The results of each survey were compared to the percentage vote share and number of seats won by four major parties (Labour, Conservative, Green, and Liberal Democrat) in the General Elections they preceded. Data from the Wave 20 survey was compared to YouGov polling on voter preferences carried out between 11 and 12 June 2020. Vote share was taken directly from polling, and the seat count this vote share would translate into was calculated using the online calculation tool at . By comparing mean estimated ideological position to both vote share and seat count, this study can resolve the effects of the first-past-the-post electoral system in the UK, whereby a party with a lower national vote than another may win more seats if its votes are concentrated in a smaller number of constituencies. The raw data was aggregated into a dataframe showing each respondent’s answer to the question, ‘In politics people sometimes talk of left and right. Where would you place the following parties on this scale?’, for each of the political parties listed above, as well as the respondent’s response when asked to give an estimation of their personal ideological position. Scores were given on a scale of 1-10, with 0 being the most left-wing and 10 the most right-wing position.[27]   Statistical test selection   The analysis of the resultant dataset was structured around three questions. Did voter perceptions of the ideological position of each party change significantly over time? Is there a correlation between a particular voter estimation score and electoral success? And finally: If such a relationship exists, could it be adequately modelled using a simple linear model? Having established a set of guiding research questions, the first step in the analysis was to check the distribution of the data using a Shapiro-Wilk test. This found that the data was not normally distributed (see Appendix I in PDF below), and so non-parametric tests were used throughout this study. A Kruskal-Wallis test was used to test whether voter estimations of party ideological positions varied significantly over time, followed by a post hoc Wilcox rank sum test to identify where these specific differences lay. The Benjamini and Hochberg method[28] was used as the adjustment. It controls the false discovery rate rather than the more stringent family-wise error rate, which makes it a more powerful method than alternatives.[29] Following the Kruskal-Wallis test a Kendall’s Tau correlation test was used to identify any cases of significant correlation between ideological position and electoral success amongst each party. Significance level was set at 0.05. Kendall’s Tau was selected as the test, rather than Spearman’s Rho, because it is less sensitive to error and the p-values it produces are more accurate at smaller sample sizes. A power analysis was carried out for each correlation test. Finally, a simple linear model with a fitted regression line was used to model the relationship between vote share or seat count, and voter estimation of a party’s ideological position. A post hoc goodness of fit test was run to check the residuals of this model, with the effect size and test power also calculated.[30]   Results   Results in the first set were from the Kruskal-Wallis test for significant difference between voter estimations of ideological position in 2017, 2019, and 2020. The results are summarised in fig 1. We can see that, in the majority of cases, the perceived ideological position of each party has shifted in between each round of polling. The exception to this is voter estimation of the Liberal Democrats’ position between 2017 and 2019. Respondents’ self-estimations also appear to have shifted significantly, but only between 2017 and 2020. These results allow us to make several statements about shifting ideological positions within different parties between 2017 and 2020. The Labour Party was perceived by the electorate as moving significantly to the left after the 2017 elections, at which it prevented the Conservative Party from winning a majority. However, it was perceived as having shifted further to the right than it was in 2017 after one year of Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership. The replacement of Teresa May with Boris Johnson as Conservative leader and Prime Minister appears to have resulted in a small but significant shift to the right, followed by a sudden shift to the left by around 2.6 points between November 2019 and June 2020. This dramatic shift is probably the result of increased public spending and of the expansion of government regulation and policy into more sectors of public life as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Other notable shifts include the leftward shift of the Liberal Democrats between 2017-20 (4.19-3.88), and the leftward shift of respondents over the same period (4.93-4.57). In summary, voters perceived a significant ideological shift in all four parties between 2017 and 2019, while shifting to the left by almost half a point themselves over the same period. These shifts are visualised in figs 3-6. Fig 1. Summary table showing p-value for changes between estimated ideological position of parties in 2017, 2019, and 2020. Fig 2. Summary table of estimated ideological scores for political parties in 2017, 2019, and 2020. Fig 3. Boxplot of perceived position on the ideological spectrum for the Labour Party, 2017–20. Fig 4. Boxplot of perceived position on the ideological spectrum for the Conservative Party, 2017–20. Fig 5. Boxplot of perceived position on the ideological spectrum for the Green Party, 2017–20. Fig 6. Boxplot of perceived position on the ideological spectrum for the Liberal Democrats, 2017–20. Having established that there were significant shifts in perceived ideological positions between 2017 and 2020, we can look to the results of our correlation tests to see if this change was significantly correlated to electoral outcomes.   The overall correlation tests between mean perceived ideological position and vote share or seat/MP count returned p-values of 0.2496 for Mean Score vs Vote Share and 0.1116 for seats won. This indicates that there is no significant correlation between the average perceived ideological position of a party and electoral success. However, a significant caveat to this result is that a power analysis of both sets of Kendall’s Tau tests showed them to be very underpowered (fig 7), with scores well below 0.8, probably being a result of the small sample size (n=12) for the overall tests. The chance of these results being a false negative is therefore relatively high. The p-values returned by Kendall’s Tau correlation tests for specific parties were all non-significant (see Appendix II in PDF below). While their sample sizes (n=3) prevented power tests from being run, it can be assumed that small sample sizes will also have influenced these results. Despite the lack of a significant relationship, plotting our variables by political party still produces an interesting graphic (fig 8). Fig 7. Summary statistics for the Kendall's Tau correlation test of the overall dataset. Fig 8. Scatter plot of mean estimated ideological position of political parties (L0–R10) vs percentage vote share in the 2017 and 2019 UK general elections, and projected vote share in June 2020. Even if we cannot confirm a significant relationship between perceived ideological position and electoral success, the coefficients from a linear model are informative. Fig 9 shows the coefficients and p-values for each linear relationship modelled.   Fig 9. Summary table of coefficients and p-values for linear models of mean estimated ideological score vs seats won and mean estimated ideological score vs vote share for individual political parties and for the overall dataset. While the p-values for our linear models show only four significant relationships, the coefficients indicate several interesting trends. For the overall linear model, the coefficients for both seats and vote share were positive, with every point shift towards the right gaining a party 3.8% of the national vote share, or 38 seats within the UK-wide electoral system. For the Labour Party this trend was more pronounced, with a single point shift towards the right modelled to net the party an extra 52 seats, or 13% of the vote. The Conservative Party, however, was not modelled to profit from any shifts to the right, with a one point shift costing them 4.7 seats and 0.7% of the vote. A heavy caveat to these figures, however, is that neither the Labour, Conservative, nor overall model had a p-value indicating a significant relationship. The coefficients for the Green Party Seats~MeanIDScore model suggest a flat regression line, but the Green Party would only ever win 1 seat, no matter what its mean estimated ideological position was. While this model produced significant p-values, common sense tells us it is implausible. The model for Green Party Vote Share~MeanIDScore appears to be better, indicating that Green Party vote share decreases by 5.9% for each perceived point further to the right. The linear model for Seats~MeanIDScore for the Liberal Democrats was the only model with a non-flat regression line to produce two significant p-values. It suggests the Liberal Democrats would gain 25.8 seats for every perceived point shift to the right, while the model for vote share (p-value:0.585) suggests such a shift would increase the party’s share of the vote by 10.29%.   While the trends outlined above all suggested plausible relationships, even if most were statistically insignificant, there were some coefficient and p-value outputs which indicated that a linear modelling method was not always appropriate for modelling the relationship between estimated ideological position and electoral success. For example, the intercept coefficient for a linear model of Seats~MeanIDScore for the Conservative Party indicates that, if the Conservative Party had a mean estimated ideological score of 0 (as left-wing as possible), they would win 380 seats. This is clearly incorrect. Furthermore, post hoc goodness of fit testing suggests that the relationships suggested by the linear models do not encompass enough explanatory factors. Figs 12 and 13 show the residuals for the overall model plotted against fitted values. The value of the residuals for each model can clearly be predicted based on the fitted values, indicating that the model is missing explanatory information. However, power analysis of the overall models returned values of 0.94 for the Seats~MeanIDScore model and 0.95 for the VoteShare~MeanIDScore model (fig 14), indicating the tests had sufficient explanatory power. This may be because, despite the small sample size and the absence of other explanatory variables, the effect size, calculated as Hedge’s G (see fig 14), was large for both models. Goodness of fit tests, power analyses, and effect size calculation present a contradictory picture of how well linear models can describe the relationship between electoral outcomes and voter estimation of ideological position. Nonetheless, the R-squared and F-statistics (fig 14) indicate more clearly that linear regression modelling with only the mean voter estimated ideological score and an electoral outcome does not sufficiently explain our data. The R-squared statistic for the Seats~MeanIDScore model was 0.286 and 0.192 for the VoteShare~MeanIDScore model. This indicates that the linear models explain only 29 and 19 percent of the variability in electoral outcomes. The F-test p-value was greater than 0.05 for both overall models (fig 14), indicating that neither linear regression modelled a significant relationship. The only party-specific model with a significant F-test p-values was the Liberal Democrat Seats~MeanIDScore model. Therefore, although examining the coefficients of linear models provides us with a number of hypothetical relationships, linear regression modelling suggests these relationships are significant in only a small number of cases. The clearest result from linear modelling is that, in order to improve the effectiveness of this method, more data is needed. It could be gathered either by increasing the longitude of the study, or the granularity of the data—potentially looking at results at a constituency level. Fig 10. Linear model of vote share vs mean estimated ideological score for overall dataset. Vote share attained by political parties in 2017, 2019, and 2020 plotted as individual points. Fig 11. Linear model of total MPs elected (seats won) vs mean estimated ideological score for overall dataset. Seats attained by political parties in 2017, 2019, and 2020 plotted as individual points. Fig 12. Plot of residuals vs fitted values for a linear model of seats won vs mean estimated ideological score derived from the overall dataset. Fig 13. Plot of residuals vs fitted values for a linear model of vote share vs mean estimated ideological score derived from the overall dataset. Fig 14. Summary table of post hoc test outputs for linear models. * Model was a perfect fit because of flat regression line. Discussion and conclusion   Following the above analysis of data from the British Election Study 2014-23, we can draw several conclusions about the relationship between a party’s perceived ideological position and its electoral success. The first key finding was that voter estimations of the ideological positioning of the four major political parties of the UK have shifted significantly between 2017 and 2020, and in most cases (Liberal Democrats excluded) shifted significantly between each set of surveys. This finding runs contrary to Adams[31] and Budge and Klingemann,[32] who suggest that significant shifts are rare. While the applicability of this trend outside the UK is not proven, it does confirm that the electorate perceives ideological repositioning amongst political parties as something that occurs relatively often in the UK.   The following findings, the most important, concern the relationship between these shifts and the electoral fortunes of the parties in question. Correlation testing on the level of both the electoral system and the individual parties found no significant correlation between a party’s perceived ideological position and electoral outcomes. This suggests that, while commentators such as Blair and Mandelson might link the decline of Labour’s electoral fortunes to a perceived leftward shift, there is no evidence in the data to support this. The same was true for the linear modelling approach, which found no statistically significant relationship between mean voter estimation of ideological position and electoral outcomes, except in one case (see fig 9). This study’s most statistically robust results were associated with modelling of the Liberal Democrat party (figs 9 and 14), which suggested that shifting a point to the right could increase the party’s seat count by 25.8 seats. This directly contradicts the centrist mantra that parties should strive to be perceived as closest to the median voter. The Liberal Democrats scored 4.43 on average between 2017 and 2020, by far the closest average score to the average self-estimation by respondents across the same period (4.82) (see fig 2). This trend may illustrate Dahlberg’s argument that parties which adopt more distinctive ideological positions are easier for voters to recognise ideologically, and hence easier to identify with.[33] Further evidence can be found in the modelled results for the Green Party, which lost 5.9% of its national vote share for every point it moved away from its clear left-wing position (2.82 across all three years) towards the centre, where its position would overlap with Labour and potentially the Liberal Democrats.   A methodological issue which prevented more conclusions being drawn from the correlation analysis and linear modelling was the lack of statistical power when testing and modelling at the level of individual parties. This was probably down to two factors: the simplicity of the models, which used only one independent variable, and the small sample size of the data. These factors led to some results being clearly inappropriate, such as the linear model suggesting a far-left Conservative Party would win 380 seats. Similarly, the linear model describing the relationship between the Green Party’s seat count and ideological position was clearly impacted by the Greens’ consistent score of 1 seat regardless of vote share, leading to a flat regression line and a meaningless model. However, as always with hypothesis testing, the failure of our models also points us towards useful conclusions. There are two notable failure-driven conclusions. 1) Perceived ideological position alone is not a sufficient predictor variable of electoral success. 2) Research in this area would benefit from using data on the relative electoral success of parties, either a greater number of administrative levels (council, mayoralty etc) or from a greater breadth of electoral contests (local council elections, mayoral races, devolved-administration elections).   The key finding of this study is as follows: there is no evidence to support the centrist mantra that the party perceived as being ideologically closest to the median voter will have the best electoral outcomes. There is no significant correlation or relationship between how the electorate perceives a party’s ideological position and how well it does at the polls. This confirms what Fieldhouse[34] suggested when investigating the issues facing the Labour party after the loss of the 2015 general election. Instead, it appears that other explanatory factors are of greater importance in determining which parties individuals vote for. These factors account for the 70-80% of variability in electoral outcomes that is not explained by the impact of perceived ideological positions within the linear models (fig 14). These other ‘explanatory factors’ may be valence issues, such as which party has the best leader or is the most charismatic, which are often primed as being significant by the media during election campaigns.[35] While focus by the media on leadership and personality issues does not detract from voters’ abilities to accurately estimate the ideological position of parties,[36] it could very well alter their priorities when it comes to the issues which bear heavily on electoral decision making. In summary, this study’s conclusions suggest that politicians who advocate recreating a party’s ideological position in line with the mythical ‘median voter’ are sacrificing the useful asset of ideological recognisability for little to no electoral gain. Colin Kaljee   Colin Kaljee is an MPhil student in Archaeological Research at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he completed his undergraduate degree. After the MPhil he will start on the Civil Service Fast Stream as a Generalist streamer. He has excavated at archaeological sites in Belize, Massachusetts, and the UK, and his work on the chronology of Scottish brochs will be published in a volume later this year. [1] Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy. (Harper and Row 1957). [2] Ed Fieldhouse, ‘Is Labour really too left-wing to win an election?’ ( British Election Study , 2015) < https://www.britishelectionstudy.com/bes-findings/blog-update-is-labour-really-too-left-wing-to-win-an-election/#.YKz_Q42Sk2x > accessed 28 May 2021. [3] Tony Blair, ‘If your heart is with Corbyn, get a transplant’ The Telegraph  (London, 22 March 2016); Rajeev Syal, ‘Ditch Corbyn’s “misguided ideology” Tony Blair urges Labour’ Guardian  (London, 18 December 2019). [4] ‘Why Progressives Think Joe Biden Is Not ‘Electable’ ( NPR,  17 July 2019). [5] James Adams, ‘A theory of spatial competition with biased voters: party policies viewed temporally and comparatively’ (2001) 31(1) British Journal of Political Science 121; Ian Budge and Hans-Dieter Klingemann, ‘Finally! Comparative over-time mapping of a party policy movement’ in Ian Budge, Hans-Dieter Klingemann, and Andrea Volkens (eds), Mapping Policy Preferences: Estimates for Parties, Electors and Governments 1945-1988 (Oxford University Press 2001). [6] Downs (n 1). [7] ibid. [8] Kathrin Barbara Busch, ‘Estimating parties’ left-right positions: Determinants of voters’ perceptions’ proximity to party ideology’ (2016) 41 Electoral Studies 159. [9] ibid. [10] Blair (n 3). [11] Peter Mandelson, ‘It’s simply a myth that Labour can win from the left’ The Independent  (London, 3 April 2021). [12] James Adams, Lawrence Ezrow, and Zeynep Somer-Topcu, ‘Is anybody listening? Evidence that voters do not respond to European parties’ policy statements during elections’ (2011) 55(2) American Journal of Political Science 370; James Adams, Lawrence Ezrow, and Zeynep Somer-Topcu, ‘Do voters respond to party manifestos or to a wider information environment? An analysis of mass-elite linkages on European integration’ (2014) 58(4) American Journal of Political Science 967. [13] Andrew Drummond, ‘Assimilation, contrast and voter projections of parties in the left-right space: does the electoral system matter?’ (2010) 17(6) Party Politics 711; Donald Granberg and Soren Holmberg, T he Political System Matters: Social Psychology and Voting Behaviour in Sweden and the United States  (Cambridge University Press 1988); Samuel Merrill,   Bernard Groffman, and James Adams, ‘Assimilation and contrast effects in voter projections of party locations: evidence from Norway, France and the USA’ (2001) 40(9) European Journal of Political Research 1999. [14] Busch (n 8). [15] ibid. [16] Stefan Dahlberg, ‘Does context matter - the impact of electoral systems, political parties and the individual characteristics on voters’ perceptions of party positions’ (2013) 32(4) Electoral Studies 670. [17] Zeynep Somer-Topcu, ‘Everything to Everyone: The Electoral Consequences of the Broad-Appeal Strategy in Europe’ (2014) 59(4) American Journal of Political Science 841. [18] Fieldhouse (n 2). [19] Blair (n 3). [20] ibid fig 4. [21] Fieldhouse (n 2); Somer-Topcu (n 17). [22] Fieldhouse (n 2) fig 2. [23] ibid. [24] ibid. [25] Busch (n 8); Stacy B Gordon and Gary M Segura, ‘Cross-national variation in the political sophistication of individuals: capability or choice?’ (1997) 59(1) Journal of Politics 126; Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis  (Cambridge University Press   1976). [26] Busch (n 8). [27]  British Election Study 2014-2023: Waves 1-20 Internet Panel Codebook  s l (2020) 303. [28] Yoav Benjamini and Yosef Hochberg, ‘Controlling the False Discovery Rate: A Practical and Powerful Approach to Multiple Testing’ (1995) 57(1) Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B (Methodological) 289. 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