"Heh, great stuff, Althouse. Cf. Derrida on Nietzsche's umbrella."

Says Yashu, in the comments on "The word 'umbrella' appears exactly once in Obama's 'Dreams From My Father.'" And that was after I'd read rhhardin, commenting on "Sigmund Freud on the meaning of the umbrella": "Derrida in Spurs on the umbrella that Nietzsche wrote he had forgotten."

I'm spurred to read "Spurs," but "Spurs" is not an ebook, so I'm off the hook. Still, here's some text visible in Google books. Derrida is playing with the the possible meaning(s) of "I have forgotten my umbrella," found (in quotation marks) in Nietzche's unpublished manuscripts. Excerpt:

The umbrella's symbolic figure is well-known, or supposedly so. Take, for example, the hermaphroditic spur of a phallus which is modestly enfolded in its veils, an organ which is at once aggressive and apotropaic, threatening and/or threatened. One doesn't just happen onto an unwonted object of this sort in a sewing-machine on a castration table. 

"Unwonted" is not a typo. Unlike "unwanted," it's not commonly heard/seen. It means: "not commonly heard, seen, practised." So says the OED, which tells us that Charlotte Brontë used "unwonted" in "Jane Eyre": "Difficulties in habituating myself to new rules and unwonted tasks." Are there umbrellas in "Jane Eyre"?

I jumped up, took my muff and umbrella, and hastened into the inn-passage: a man was standing by the open door, and in the lamp-lit street I dimly saw a one-horse conveyance....

The Freudian symbolism is too blatant to need pointing out. The umbrella, the man, and the horse. And the muff, the inn-passage, and the open door. That's more than dimly seen.

"Apotropaic" is also unusual. The OED says it's "Having or reputed to have the power of averting evil influence or ill luck" and gives this earliest example from the 1883 Encyclopedia Brittanica:

The sacrifice of the ‘October horse’ in the Campus Martius..had also a naturalistic and apotropaic character.

Wikipedia says the "October horse was an animal sacrifice to Mars carried out on October 15, coinciding with the end of the agricultural and military campaigning season." There were chariot races and "the right-hand horse of the winning team was transfixed by a spear, then sacrificed." So did the ancient Romans have umbrellas? Yes. They were used by women and "effeminate men." Used against the sun, of course. How much Latin do you need to see the "umbra" in "umbrella" and to know we're talking about shade.

We law folk know "umbra" from the "penumbras" in "specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights [that] have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance," a very glaring phrase written by Justice William O. Douglas, trying to explain how in the lamp-lit street he dimly saw the right of privacy.

But it was really Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. who got that word started in its U.S. law usage, the OED tells us: "The use of the penumbra metaphor in American jurisprudence appears to date from the late 19th cent. and is associated with Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841–1935), legal scholar and Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court."

1873   O. W. Holmes in Amer. Law. Rev. 7 654   It is better to have a line drawn somewhere in the penumbra between darkness and light, than to remain in uncertainty.

I suspect no one will ever Heh-great-stuff-Althouse-Cf. me again. Here I am, writing expectantly, hoping for the circle to finally close, as it did for young Obama, crying over his father's grave, when he realized that the masculine needed to be leavened with femininity and that who he was, what he cared about, was no longer just a matter of intellect or obligation, no longer a construct of words, and then it started to rain and suddenly his brother Bernard was squatting beside him, sheltering him with a bent-up old umbrella. 

"Are you ready for me to read it?" Meade asks, and I say, "It needs one more thing, and I don't know what it is."

Sigmund Freud on the meaning of the umbrella.

We've been talking about Obama and umbrellas this morning — here, here, and here — and, as noted, I bought the Kindle version of Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams" so I could search for "umbrella," which I remembered as a famous Freudian symbol.

All elongated objects, sticks, tree-trunks, umbrellas (on account of the opening, which might be likened to an erection), all sharp and elongated weapons, knives, daggers, and pikes, represent the male member...

Small boxes, chests, cupboards, and ovens correspond to the female organ; also cavities, ships, and all kinds of vessels.

What then would Freud say about Obama's writing a book called "Dreams From My Father" in which he depicts a scene (perhaps concocted for dramatic effect) in which he is crying in the rain between the small boxes that are the graves of his father and grandfather and his brother is suddenly there holding an opened umbrella? To ask that question is already to see the answer.

And what would Freud say about the scene that has seized the public imagination — #1 on The Washington Post's most popular list — "Obama puts Marines on umbrella duty, irking conservatives"?



To ask the question is to see the answer! Indeed, to ask the question is to see innumerable phallic symbols in the photograph. Here, inspect this huge enlargement. Oh, my! It's a world of wonder. The shape of those windowed doors! Obama's 2-thumbs-up gesture. The lectern stands. The microphones. The medals. The arrows in the claws of the eagles on the seals. The umbrellas, one more erect than the other.

According to the WaPo article, the U.S. military might believe that umbrellas are effeminate. Dr. Freud says no, no absolutely not. They are quite masculine, especially when erect. Getting a rigidly erect male to hold erect umbrella over you and another rigidly erect male to hold another albeit slightly less erect umbrella over a world leader? It's the most masculine image ever seen!

It's no wonder the President's detractors are irked. In the Freudian analysis, we know the source of the anxiety that motivates them to drag him down with assertions that umbrellas are not manly.

The word "umbrella" appears exactly once in Obama's "Dreams From My Father."

I'm searching the text, because I've been thinking, this morning, about the fascination with Obama's interaction with the Marine and the umbrella, and that set me looking into umbrellas as a famously Freudian symbol, and I was struck by the meaningfulness — in that Freudian context — of Obama's book title "Dreams From My Father."

Now, I'm astounded to see that the umbrella figures importantly in the book — and it is even an umbrella held over him by another man (his younger brother Bernard). This happens at the end of what is the most dramatic scene in the book, on the last page of the final chapter. Obama, in Africa, falls to the ground between the graves of his father and his grandfather and cries.  He's crying about a lack of "a faith that wasn’t new, that wasn’t black or white or Christian or Muslim but that pulsed in the heart of the first African village and the first Kansas homestead—a faith in other people."

And for lack of faith you clung to both too much and too little of your past. Too much of its rigidness, its suspicions, its male cruelties. 

He expresses the idea that their "male cruelties" should have been moderated by more of "the laughter in Granny’s voice, the pleasures of company while herding the goats, the murmur of the market, the stories around the fire... Words of encouragement. An embrace. A strong, true love." That is, the over-masculinity should have been mixed with more feminine things, things that "could make up for a lack of airplanes or rifles." There's a theory of gender here: "you could never forge yourself into a whole man by leaving those things behind."

For a long time I sat between the two graves and wept. When my tears were finally spent, I felt a calmness wash over me. I felt the circle finally close. I realized that who I was, what I cared about, was no longer just a matter of intellect or obligation, no longer a construct of words. I saw that my life in America—the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I’d felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I’d witnessed in Chicago.... all of it was connected with this small plot of earth an ocean away, connected by more than the accident of a name or the color of my skin. The pain I felt was my father’s pain. My questions were my brothers’ questions. Their struggle, my birthright.

A light rain began to fall, the drops tapping on the leaves above. I was about to light a cigarette when I felt a hand on my arm. I turned to find Bernard squatting beside me, trying to fit the two of us under a bent-up old umbrella. 

“They wanted me to see if you were okay,” he said.

I smiled. “Yeah. I’m okay.” 

So — as he dramatizes it —it is at the moment when he finds out who he really is that another man suddenly appears and is sheltering him with an umbrella. He's been crying, but now it all makes sense, and — with the prompting of the younger man — he sees that he is okay.

Flash forward, and he's President. He is in the Rose Garden. It starts to rain. No man suddenly appears with an umbrella. He is getting wet and he is President — with plenty of airplanes and rifles and all of the world's greatest military at hand — but he is still getting wet. He has to order the Marine to shelter him. It isn't Bernard squatting with a bent-up old umbrella. It's a Marine in full-dress uniform, with a fine unbent umbrella, which is nevertheless not correct under the official — male, rigid — Marine Corps regulations. Where are the words of encouragement, the embraces, the strong, true love? You could never forge yourself into a whole man by leaving those things behind!

Now, here is the whole world gathered around him. Was there ever anything more unlike the time when he was alone between 2 graves? And yet, back then, the moment a light rain began to fall, his brother was there, sent by others who loved to see if he was okay. And here he is, the center of the whole world's attention, and he had to call for the umbrella.  He is not okay.

"I think he's crude, I think he's medieval, and I don't want an elderly gentleman from Vienna with an umbrella inflicting his dreams upon me."

"I don't have the dreams that he discusses in his books. I don't see umbrellas in my dreams. Or balloons."

So said Vladimir Nabokov, in 1966, answering the question "Mr. Nabokov, would you tell us why it is that you detest Dr. Freud?" I'm reading this now after writing the last post, about the symbolism of Obama and the Marine-held umbrella. The post ends:

If umbrella-holding conveys a message of unmanliness, it is a vivid image of impotence. It's a symbol.

Umbrellas are a famously Freudian symbol, and I was going to embellish that last post with some stray erudition. But the post was already too long. (Too long!!) And here was Nabokov, taking a swipe at the elderly gentleman from Vienna way back in 1966.

Interestingly, Nabokov is also talking about something else that was a topic in the Obama-and-the-umbrella post:

I'm not a good speaker, you see. When I start to speak, I have immediately four or five lines of thought — sort of roads, you know, trails going various ways. And I have to decide which trail I'm going to follow, and while I decide this, hawing and hemming begins, and it may be very upsetting because I hear it myself. I can never understand those limpid, fluid speakers, as my father was, who just deliver perfect phrases, beautifully built, with an aphorism here, you know, and a metaphor there. I can't do it. I have to think it out; I have to take a pencil; I have to write it down laboriously; have it before me. I do things like that. It's probably psychological. I can imagine what old Freud would have said, whom I heartily detest, as my readers know by now.

Ah! What would Freud have said about Obama's endless uh-ing?

Nevertheless, I am downloading Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams." I want it in my Kindle, alongside, among other things, Obama's — ahem — "Dreams From My Father."

"It was a lighthearted moment in the midst of a grim few days for the White House..."

But Obama's comical stylings didn't play as well this week as they have in the past. I'm reading "Obama puts Marines on umbrella duty, irking conservatives" only because I'm interested in figuring out why it's #1 on the "most popular" list in the sidebar at The Washington Post. Something cute about the headline, I thought. But reading it — and looking at that photograph of Obama intentionally clowning with the white-gloved Marine — I'm seeing something tragic. The old ways — that made us love him — don't work anymore. The gentle, slow-talking, stalling with "uhs" for Woody Allen-like timing:

"Uh I am going to go ahead and ask, folks, why don’t we get a couple of Marines — they’re going to look good next to us — just 'cause uh uh — I wanna — I’ve got a change of suits but I don’t know about uh uh uh our prime uh our prime minister. Uh there we go. That’s good. [To the reporters:] You guys, I’m sorry about but but let let let uh uh mmm uh let me uh uh uuuuhhh make sure that I answer a specific question...."

We see the rain failing on his dark suit, and maybe we think about how, yes, that's the White House in back of him and he does have his closets in there, full of suits... empty suits... skeletons in the uh uh uh... But he cares about Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who came all the way from Turkey, probably not to hear Obama grilled with uh uh uh specific questions. He's probably got another suit or 2 in his uh uh suitcase. Heh ha... suitcase... suits in suitcases... it's like gloves in the glove compartment... do you put gloves in the glove compartment... heh heh... Who puts gloves in the glove compartment? I mean... really... Gloves in the glove compartment! What an idea, am I right? Come on! That's funny,  people, come on, but but let let let uh uh mmm uh let me uh uh uuuuhhh make sure that I answer a specific question....

There's something so sad about that picture. The gloved Marine answering the call of duty from the Commander in Chief, performing the duty with crisp precision, even as Obama's outstretched hand adjusted his elbow position, even as he knows it violates Marine Corps uniform regulation for a male Marine to carry an umbrella. I know that regulation from reading the WaPo's #1 most popular article. The same rule applies in all branches of the military, and always only for males, not for females:

An attempt to change the policy in the 1990s failed, with some suggesting that there was something effeminate about umbrellas.

“They seem to be very nervous what constitutes unmanly behavior,” said Cynthia Enloe, a professor at Clark University who researched military uniform codes in the book “Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives.” 

Isn't it unmanly to be very nervous, especially about being unmanly? But who were these "some" who suggested carrying an umbrella is "effeminate"? And who were these "irked conservatives"? WaPo only cites an email from the conservative Move America Forward PAC, but that's not so much expressing irritation at misuse of the Marines for umbrella duty as it is using that umbrella-holding duty as a symbol of the failure to act during the Benghazi attack. The email read — we're told — "Rain: 'Hold My Umbrella.' Benghazi: 'Stand Down.'"

If umbrella-holding conveys a message of unmanliness, it is a vivid image of impotence. It's a symbol.