Dr Anna Marmodoro, Fellow in Philosophy at Corpus Christi College, organised this event to start her international conference on the philosopher Empedocles. The artist/filmmaker Dennis Dracup and I introduced the work, suitably accompanied by excellent Italian wine.
The audience was enthusiastic. Not for them the fatuous focus on contemporary style wars, the current equivalents of the French versus Italian opera ‘wars’, Brahms against Wagner, Schoenberg against Stravinsky. The further back you look through your temporal telescope, the more laughable these conflicts become. However, these ‘wars’ do provide a living for professional critics, who foster such labels to encourage simplistic oppositions and battles for supremacy.
Recently I’ve noticed a general increase in labels, also attached to people, often on the backs of fluorescent jackets. For example in our local supermarket I’ve noticed the appearance of a CUSTOMER CARE CAPTAIN. And on rail station platforms there are assortments of CUSTOMER SUPERVISORS (oddly plural, on the back of one person), and an ENGINEERING TEAM LEADER. These labels fit perfectly against posters that, like advertisements in magazines and in newspapers, increasingly feature no backgrounds at all. In some of these posters everything is so foregrounded that the advertisement becomes just a label. Even the tour guides in Oxford don’t escape the label-mania: on their backs I could read GUIDE 90 MINUTES, or GUIDE TWO HOURS, and other variants.
Could this increasing foregrounding and labelling be expressing a generalised anxiety in this society, about whether someone is really doing what they are supposed to be doing – or is really what they appear to be? What is the next step here? There could be labels on the back of other fluorescent jackets (the text is always on the back), like ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, or PRO-VICE-CHANCELLOR, or PROFESSOR OF THEORETICAL PHYSICS. Or even COMPOSER/FILMMAKER FIVE TO TEN MINUTES, the latter part of the label referring to providing introductions to works.
Corpus Christi College is delightfully small. I prefer it to the grand colleges, which can make you feel that really you should be wearing your Commoner’s Gown and Bonnet. Here, in the small quadrangles of Corpus Christi, and its other intimate spaces like the cloisters, the golden honey colour of the sandstone contrasts beautifully with the plants and scented flowers, which are bursting out everywhere at the moment, softening the angles and straight lines of the 17th century architecture.
Apparently students at Corpus Christie label themselves ‘corpuscles’.
In the 17th century Dining Hall, I noticed a very good portrait of a man who appeared to be meditating, his gaze directed downwards, his face a little wan. I was told that he was the founder of the College, who had died unexpectedly. Apparently his contemporaries realised that there was no portrait of him, so they commissioned a painter to depict, as best he could, the Master who had already departed this life. Fortunately the subsequent Masters of the College appear to be more lively in their portraits, which hang nearby.
I was told by a medical student (possibly a corpuscle) that the house where I was staying had been the home of Thomas Willis. On the house there is a plaque which states that he was the Sedleian Professor of Natural Science, and
had coined the term ‘neurology’ in his writings.
I had never heard of him – he was a 17th century doctor who pioneered the dissection of the human brain, had explored its functions, as well as identifying diseases relating to the nervous system. One of the founders of the Royal Society, Willis knew many of the leading thinkers of his time: Robert Boyle, Christopher Wren, Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke, John Locke. Locke attended Willis’ lectures as a student, and he was influenced by his ideas, including on perception.
A key source for the explorations of Willis were the cadavers of criminals. On one occasion he was opening a coffin with an assistant, when the corpse inside it (of Anne Green, who had been hanged for killing her newly-born baby) emitted a gagging sound. Willis, with the help of his assistant, succeeded in bringing her back to life. It seems that this success resulted in his being appointed a Professor at Corpus Christi. This unusual path to promotion naturally aroused considerable jealousy in his colleagues.
Here was an echo of another doctor from a much more distant past: Empedocles, who had brought a woman in a coma back to everyday consciousness.
The stairs in the 17th century house which was occupied by Willis are very cramped spirals. People were smaller then, and everywhere there are labels, in big black letters on bright yellow plastic, with the modern words MIND YOUR HEAD, to prevent you being knocked out if you’re in a hurry – appropriate for the house of a doctor who pioneered the study of the human brain.
(To find watch/listen to scenes from the music/film Empedocles, click on Empedocles, in the column, above on the right).