Wednesday, May 21, 2025
Blog Page 901

What to watch in the time of Trump

Tilly Nevin
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What to watch in the time of Trump

At a time when it seems as if the world has taken a step back, the opposite seems to be occurring in the world of TV comedy. American sitcoms have finally realised that audiences are interested in watching a show like Black-ish, which dares to address the experiences of a black family living in a predominately white, suburban environment. Or One Day at A Time, which documents the life of an American family who just “happen to be Latino”, in which the unrivalled Justina Machado plays Elena, a nurse and army veteran struggling to cope as a single mother.

Or in watching a Taiwanese-American family in Fresh Off the Boat struggle to adapt to a new life in Florida as they open a Western-style restaurant and try both to preserve their own cultural heritage and acclimatise to a new, often hostile one. Or even in watching Jane the Virgin, which plays cleverly with telenovela tropes yet also breaks down stereotypes—exploring what it is to be an undocumented immigrant.

It’s impossible to forget when watching these programmes that America is a nation of immigrants. It always has been, as Lazarus’ ‘The New Colossus’ declares. Black-ish sees Dre and Rainbow struggle to teach their children about police brutality, about the use of the N-word, about what it means to have hope in an increasingly hopeless world. One Day at A Time tackles PTSD, depression, mansplaining, and the wage gap.

The content of such shows might seem too dark for ‘normal’ comedy—but comedy is often subversive. These shows are alert to what’s happening in reality. They’re radical and they refuse to be silenced. They’re brave shows, brilliant shows, laugh-out-loud-funny, but are irrefutably, deadly serious.

My favourite episode of Black-ish, ‘Lemons’ deals with the repercussions of the results of the Presidential Election. Trump has won and each member of the family responds differently; Bow throws herself into activism while her daughter, Zoe, decides to make lemonade for school, not because she’s making “lemonade out of lemons” or in reference to Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade’ but because she wants to do something that unites.

And the simple taste of the bitter sweet does that. Dre goes to work, where his colleagues are divided amongst themselves and listening to their arguments, he laughs. His co-worker, enraged, “don’t you care about this country?” Dre replies: “I love this country, even though, at times, it doesn’t love me back…I’m used to things not going my way. I’m sorry that you’re not and it’s blowing your mind.” As he speaks ‘Strange Fruit’ plays in the background and at the end of the episode his son reads Martin Luther King’s speech aloud as his family watches, Zoe serving lemonade.

For comedy, it’s undeniably, atypically hard hitting. Dre’s laughter, our laughter, opens up a space for dialogue, a space in which you question yourself as a spectator.

Why are we laughing at something this important? Because it’s the human thing to do. Laughter, like lemonade, can be used to unite in a very divided world. Comedy opens up a moment in which an audience can feel an affinity, a closeness to the ‘other’. The laughter might sometimes be uncomfortable and it might sometimes come as a relief from heated argument, but it’s necessary, provocative. It prompts conversation. Watch these if you think that art can’t ever make a difference or be political.

Two lonely people, one heartrending production

Bessie Yuill
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Two lonely people, one heartrending production

You won’t have to be an expert on Beckett to be enraptured by this combination of plays directed by Beatrix Grant, Krapp’s Last Tape and Rockaby (performed at the Burton Taylor Studio 21st-25th February). These compelling portraits of human seclusion and the power of voice are sure to be heartrending for all.

In the more famous play of the two, the old man Krapp records himself and re-listens to tapes about his life endlessly: his recorded voice serves as another actor on stage, and his reactions demonstrate the distortive power of retrospect. Krapp shifts from violent anger to benevolent amusement, from regret to outbursts of song, searching for the ever-elusive question of whether he was ever happy. His moods and outlooks quickly range over great distances throughout Beckett’s lyrical monologues, even as the character never strays beyond his small room.

Rockaby is far less well-known, but its conceit captures that same sense of range in speech and limited physical movement. The voice here accompanies a constant rocking of the central old woman’s chair, as she maintains mechanical back-and-forth and looks at her neighbours’ closed blinds. Just as trapped in the past as Krapp, the woman listens to a sing-song voice that moves from comforting nursery rhymes to taunting reminders of her past.

Both of these characters are supposed to be far older than the performers, Christopher Page and Natalie Woodward. The themes of isolation, and of language shaping our outlook on the past, however, should resonate just as strongly with a younger generation; the strength of the actors will pull an audience into the reality of a regretful older perspective as well. Page in particular creates an incredibly vivid character through a gravelly Irish accent, and a shade of bitterness that’s implicit even in his joyful moments. Neither he, nor Woodward shy away from uncomfortable silence or the difficulty of acting opposite only a recording, and the effects of both in the Burton Taylor Studio are sure to be compelling. Woodward’s wide-eyed gaze is especially hard to look away from, as the misery of her situation becomes clearer and clearer.

These plays have never appeared in this combination before, but as Grant explained to me, they are both character studies of severe isolation. By pairing the two, their loneliness appears starker, as they share the same experience but can never interact. Everything down to the sound design is intended to immerse the audience in the characters’ minds: the voice recordings in Rockaby surround the audience as though they are hearing the taunting voice inside their own minds.

In a small space like the Burton-Taylor, these one-character plays may seem claustrophobically intense to some audience members but it will be an incredibly thought-provoking evening, if not always a comfortable one. The poetry of the language, the affecting talent of the two actors and the sheer force of pairing minimalist staging with painting whole lives in retrospect; all of these together ensure a powerful night of Beckett if you think you can handle it. The anticipatory buzz around this production is well-earned.

Magdalen and Somerville vote to defund Oxford Radical Forum

Felix Pope
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Magdalen and Somerville vote to defund Oxford Radical Forum

Magdalen and Somerville JCRs voted last night to to rescind their donations to the Oxford Radical Forum (ORF), and to condemn the organisers of ORF for inviting “speakers with a history of anti-Semitic hate speech”, in the words of the Somerville motion.

In Magdalen the motion passed overwhelmingly in a secret ballot, with 43 in support and just 14 against. One ballot was spoiled.

Grace Linden, who argued against the motion, told Cherwell: “It is disappointing that Magdalen JCR has decided to withdraw funding for ORF, on the basis of false allegations of anti-Semitism.

“This sets a dangerous precedent for student organised conferences – we will seek other sources of funding for ORF, and are determined that it should go ahead as an open and honest forum for debate.

“Anyone who wishes to assess the strength of the claims made against the speakers, should research the context of the comments quoted, and also Malia Bouattia’s full apology for her lack of clarity in use of language last year.”

At both colleges debate was heated. Members of Magdalen JCR allegedly defended Hamas as a diverse organisation and argued that Muslims could not be anti-Semitic as they themselves were members of an oppressed group. Members also clashed over definitions of anti-Semitism and racism.

At Somerville a member of the ORF organising committee allegedly argued that the speakers invited were not anti-Semitic, clashing with the predominantly Jewish proposers of the motion. 22 voted in favour, with 6 against, and 6 abstentions.

Somerville JCR President Alex Crichton-Miller, who supported the motion, told Cherwell: “from my discussion with members afterwards it seemed that concern for the welfare of Somerville’s Jewish population was a primary concern.

“Several Jewish students attended the meeting and expressed their support of the motion, and opposition to the speakers, with passion and vehemence. Our JCR stands for the interests of the entire Somerville community, and voting as we did was the best way to ensure the welfare of that community as a whole.”

Both JCRs have already given their donations to the Forum, but Crichton-Miller is “fairly confident” that ORF will return their £150. He said: “we expect the ORF will understand our expressed view and return the money as it was originally a donation”

The votes follow a Cherwell investigation that revealed the Forum to have invited a number of figures with allegedly anti-Semitic ties and other provocative viewpoints to speak. This led to condemnation of the Forum’s organisers by Jsoc and a move to cancel funding of the event by JCRs and OUSU.

Magdalen’s motion declared: “Oxford Radical Forum has invited a number of speakers who have a history of making anti-Semitic comments”.

The motion carried on to name particular speakers: “Miriyam Aouragh, who stated that “Holocaust discourse has become part of a propaganda industry”, and who organised a memorial service in 2004 for the founder of Hamas, a terrorist organisation whose charter (1998) is overtly anti-Semitic, stating the need to kill Jews and referring to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

In a statement made to Cherwell, Aouragh said that the blog post from which the holocaust quote was taken in fact expressed her opposition to holocaust denial. She said of the latter accusation: “Like many I was very angry about Israel’s murderous targeted killings campaign between 2000-2004, which saw hundreds of political activists and leaders assassinated when the popular uprising in 2000 broke out.

“These war crimes were condemned across the political spectrum, especially the ‘collateral damage’ caused by extrajudicial killings using F16s, such as collapsing buildings with families in them and the killing of bystanders when cars were blown up.

“One case was that of Ahmed Yassin of Hamas, an elderly man in a wheelchair living in a refugee camp in Gaza. I was part of a protest against the incredible violence of that period, many were making this argument, including the UN, the EU, as well as a large numbers of MPs in this country.”

However Jewish News—Britain’s largest Jewish newspaper—and JTA—a global Jewish news agency—have claimed that in 2004 Aouragh indeed did organise a memorial service in Amsterdam for Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas founder and ‘spiritual leader’ killed by Israel that year.

Magdalen’s motion further criticised  “Malia Bouattia, whose anti-Semitic comments were condemned as “outright racism” by the Home Affairs Select Committee, and whose NUS presidency 84% of Oxford Jewish Society members felt they were unable to align with their Jewish identity.

“Last year, Malia was called upon by OUSU to issue a full and formal apology, or otherwise to stand down from her NUS presidency. We are still waiting for either.”

An NUS spokesperson released the following statement in relation to allegations made against President Bouattia: “Malia has addressed the accusations of antisemitism numerous times since her election last year, including in the Sunday Times in April, the Huffington Post in October, and in writing to the 560 NUS-affiliated further and higher education students’ unions in December.”

The final speaker mentioned in Magdalen’s motion was George Cicciarello-Maher: “ [He] suggested in a tweet that Israel harvests organs, and explicitly refers to the blood libel trope, the idea that Jews steal the blood and organs of non-Jews for religious rituals. This is both entirely false and grossly offensive.”

Ciccariello-Maher rejected the allegations, telling Cherwell: “The desperation of OUJS’s campaign against the ORF is truly absurd. In particular, I am accused of fostering a ‘blood libel’ narrative, when the totality of my comments on the matter have been limited to: one, defending my courageous colleague Jasbir Puar from a similar smear campaign, two, posting a 2009 article published in The Guardian on the subject, and three, responding to Israeli military comments regarding admitted past practices.

“The ludicrous nature of OSJS’s claims is most apparent when they suggest that I “explicitly refer to the blood libel trope,” without mentioning that I only “refer” to the trope in order to reject its use in smear campaigns like this one.

“The saddest part of such witch hunts is that we live in a moment of resurgent white supremacy – anti-Semitism very much included. We should be spending our energy fighting real racists and anti-Semites, not invented fantasies.”

OUSU is set to debate their funding of ORF at the next OUSU council meeting on the first of March, two days before the Forum is due to start.

In statement released on Friday they said: “The OUSU Executive Committee has considered the matter, and believes that the Cherwell’s [sic] investigation constitutes new information, and which may have affected the outcome of the motion had it come to light in the original discussion.”

They encourage all involved, including the original proposers of the motion and Jsoc, to “attend and debate the issues.”

Oxford Radical Forum have been contacted for comment.

Society divided: Dickens and revolution

Ethan Croft
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Society divided: Dickens and revolution

Though he is known in public consciousness for illuminating life in the nineteenth century, Charles Dickens wrote firmly in the shadow of the eighteenth. A Tale of Two Cities, his reflection on the French Revolution, is told not in grand political abstractions, but with a focus on the lives of French emigrants living in London, and their relationship with the old country. Originally published in 1859, A Tale of Two Cities constitutes Dickens’ first main attempt at ‘historical fiction.’

Dickens’ writing, constrained by serialisation, is perhaps uncharacteristically punchy. He takes us quickly through the historical timeline on which the plot is based, from the dusk of ancien régime Paris to the height of Robespierre’s terror.

The novel is half-remembered now for its famous opening line: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” These words are the key to unlocking A Tale of Two Cities’ underlying theme of duality. They epitomise the struggle of holding to opposing things side by side. Dickens knows it is far easier to hop off the fence and pick a side, as the people of France did in 1789. The ‘two cities’ are not merely geographical (Paris and London), but ideological—aristocratic excess versus revolutionary zeal.

In A Tale of Two Cities, both systems of thought result in acts of evil. Whether it be the Monsieur de Marquis running over a child with his carriage and proceeding to pay for the infant’s life with a single coin, or the Jacquerie’s reign of mob rule and guillotine justice.

Dickens quite deliberately shies away from individual presentations of what it is to be ‘bad’. Characters such as Madame Defarge emphasise the point, but the prevailing theme is one of collective mentality. The revolutionary crowds who storm the Bastille prison fortress are referred to as ‘the sea’, a metaphor that plainly suggests these individuals, put together as one, are an unstoppable natural force. Later in the novel, Dickens uses the same technique by personifying the entire St. Antoine district of Paris. The arsonist revolutionaries, the Jacques, who burn down the Evrémonde country chateau are known only as points of the compass, and their Parisian counterparts are numbered rather than named.

This has a whiff of privileged ignorance, or even arrogance, about it. Dickens seems reluctant to venture even the tiniest investigation of their character or motivation, because they are proletarian delinquents. But his detachment from the French partisans is consistent throughout the novel, regardless of class.

In his preliminary sketches of the rancid ancien régime, Dickens uses the term ‘Monseigneur’ quite ambiguously. The descriptions are abstract, targeting no one person in favour of lambasting the entire pre-revolutionary social order.

This technique, a focus on the collective, is integral to Dickens wider tale of two cities, his depiction of fundamental division in society between two extremes. In the novel’s closing chapters, this is shown quite movingly in the face-off between Miss Pross and Madame Defarge. The two cities are in this instance two women, who somehow know they are determined enemies. Yet the language barrier renders them incapable of communication, and they resort to primal violence.

It is hard to identify one single protagonist in A Tale of Two Cities, but the antagonist is in plain sight—division itself. The tragic sacrifice at the novel’s climax is the price we pay for being zealous and uncompromising. Rather than identifying ourselves by ideology, or how we voted in a referendum, Dickens asks that, every once in a while, we adhere to that quaint tradition of keeping our ears open and our mouths shut.

The Coen brothers: a dynamic directing duo

Jack Allsopp
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The Coen brothers: a dynamic directing duo

Hollywood refuses to allow the name of more than one director to be placed in film credits unless the directors are an ‘established duo’. It is believed that, if directing was considered a collaborative process, it would undermine the role of the director by reducing his or her importance.

Therefore, in all of their pre-2003 works, Joel Coen is credited as director and Ethan Coen as writer. Indeed, in some instances they adopted an alias: Roderick Jaynes. Even now when both are credited as co-directors, there is a tendency amongst the public to think of the director in the singular sense. Collaboration is a concept which undermines the celebrity culture of the modern era, so cannot figure in public consciousness.

Perhaps this is why, when I told friends that I was writing this piece on the Coen brothers, I was met with near universal confusion: very few know who they are. This is despite the fact that they are one of only six directors to win three Oscars for the same film, and only the third directing duo to win an Academy award.

Joel Coen completed a degree programme at film school in New York, whilst Ethan studied philosophy, and this is manifested in a combination of quality cinematography with a sort of quasi-intellectualism that characterises their films. Fargo, with its bleak, snow-blown depiction of Minnesota inspires an existential terror as one is shown greed’s true and hideous face. No Country For Old Men, with its incredible panoramas of the modern American West, depicts humanity’s capacity for avarice in a chillingly empty and unfulfilling reality.

Indeed, the covetous, self-serving tendencies of the modern age is perhaps, more than anything else, the overarching theme of the Coen brothers’ films. This should not be seen merely as a product of their liberal upbringing, with Joel and Ethan the children of an academic and artist raised in 1960s America. Rather, they are quintessentially products of the 1990s and 2000s: the age of the billionaire banker, the unsympathetic boss and above all the white-collar worker, transfixed on breaking out of his deathly dull shell into a world of irresistibly dangerous wealth.

Music, or the lack thereof, is a key component of Coen brothers films. At one extreme one would look at No Country For Old Men as an example of the Coen brothers at their most innovative. The film has almost no soundtrack whatsoever, yet its deathly silence awakens much deeper responses that one might think possible. This idea was presented by Ethan to a sceptical Joel, but the two agreed to go ahead with it, and reaped the rewards. The lack of music means the audience cannot rely on sounds to guide their responses, and this creates simultaneously a sense of unease but also engrossment.

Conversely, Inside Llewyn Davis uses sound to convey the deep-seated antipathy towards life that grows within the titular character as the film progresses. Perhaps the most resonant moment is when Llewyn is made to sing ‘Fare Thee Well’ by his hosts despite the fact that this song was traditionally sung by Llewyn’s now deceased partner. Mrs Gorfein then chimes in with a harmony, and Llewyn promptly loses his temper spectacularly, and the dissonance between his beautifully composed song on the one hand and the uncontrolled rage on the other shows how masterfully the Coen brothers can deploy auditory effects.

Yet theirs is not merely a two-way collaboration. One must also pay homage to regulars like George Clooney, Frances McDormand (Joel’s wife) and Steve Buscemi. Their ability to attract actors of this calibre illustrates the Coen brothers’ consummate skills as a directing duo: who can forget McDormand’s performance in Fargo as Marge, a pregnant police officer who becomes more and more aware and disgusted by the horrors that afflict her seemingly innocuously sleepy locality? Whilst the frequency of the McDormand-Coen collaboration may seem like the epitome of nepotism (and, indeed, it probably is), it is a successful, fruitful marital partnership on the big screen.

Joel and Ethan Coen are perhaps most famous for their inversion of genres, and their tendency to add a noir element to each of their films. For instance, one can see No Country For Old Men as a subversion of the classic Western and Miller’s Crossing as depicting twists on many of the tropes of Prohibition-era crime stories.

Their ability to tell wonderful stories by reworking classic film genres mirrors how we should rework our perception of the film director: they do not have to be an autonomous creator, but a coalescence of two great artists is equally valid: Joel and Ethan Coen most definitely constitute a dynamic duo.

SeXX-based cancer

Elena Zanchini di Castiglionchio
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SeXX-based cancer

The recent discovery of the biological basis for sex-based differences in health has acted as a catalyst for an explosion of understanding in the field of sex medicine.

The incidence of many different types of cancer varies between men and women. Meningioma, a form of usually benign brain tumour, is twice as likely to occur in adult females (30 to 70 years old) than adult males. A study in Japan also found that women are 2.14 times more likely to develop non-urothelial carcinoma than males, a rare form of aggressive bladder cancer. Yet it’s not all doom and gloom for females: gliomas, a normally malignant cancer of the brain’s glial cells, is much more common in males.

This sex-based difference in health has been attributed to the gonadal hormones, produced by the sex organs in males and females. These seem to be linked to differences in tumour rates. The incidence of bladder cancer was shown to be higher in post-menopausal women than in pre-menopausal, probably due to a decrease in the concentration of hormones such as oestrogen after menopause. Many cancers even have receptors that recognise female hormones on their surface, making them responsive to progesterone and oestrogen levels. What’s more, women undertaking hormone replacement therapy have increased risk of developing a meningioma. The same can be said of male prostate cancer patients who’ve had their hormones therapeutically decreased.

However, sex hormones alone are not sufficient to explain all variation between males and females. Scientists have observed differences in brain structure between mice of both sex which have been genetically engineered to prevent the development of sex organs and so are unable to produce sex hormones. This divergence has been attributed to basic genetic differences between the male and female cells.

While male cells contain XY chromosomes, female cells contain XX. Due to its physical size, the X chromosome carries more genes than the Y chromosome. Indeed, female cells must inactivate one of their X chromosomes to prevent over-expression of these genes. When the X chromosome is incompletely inactivated genes found on it are over-expressed, with potentially severe consequences. This is associated with many diseases prevalent in women, including autoimmune diseases such as lupus. Interestingly, men with Klinefelter’s syndrome whose cells contain XXY chromosomes due to a failure of cellular machinery during meiosis (cell division to form sperm or eggs) are more at risk of developing diseases normally prevalent in women. This is most likely due to their increased levels of X chromosome expression.

Scientists are channeling their knowledge of sex-based diseases to combat them. For example, the protective effect of male hormones in inhibiting meningiomas could potentially be used to treat the tumour itself. The field’s innovative perspective on health is primed to revolutionise the way we prescribe medication and treat disease in the near future.

University denies reports of overseas campus

Daniel Curtis
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University denies reports of overseas campus

Oxford University has denied reports that it is to open a foreign campus in France.

The Telegraph reported that French officials met with the University last week to discuss the proposed site, which would have been Oxford’s first ever foreign campus.

However, the University has denied that any such plan exists.

In a statement given to Cherwell, Stephen Rouse, Head of News and Information, said: “The University has received several constructive and helpful proposals from European colleagues since the Brexit vote. We are not, however, pursuing the model of a campus overseas.”

The Telegraph claimed that construction of any such site would begin in 2018, with courses being restructured to accommodate the prospective partnership.

This is a developing news story and will be updated with more information as we receive it.

The Winning Shots

Cherwell Visuals
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The Winning Shots

“The local trains in Mumbai are hectic, sweaty, and dangerous. This woman, with the city scape racing beside her, sits with tranquility, etched into her disposition like the lines on her face.”

Ava Scott

“I’ve been taking family portraits during meals and Christmas time. This is what Italian meals look like.”

Eleonora Narbone

 

“This is a film photograph trying to capture pre-finals fun times at the Rickety Press.”

Pauline Chatelan

“Maria Teresa Maurichi, an Italian lady, is portraited in her old home together with her beloved little dog. All our objects and belongings are the mirrors of our character and personality. This picture is part of a bigger project of analogic black and white photographs where people are portraited in the enviroment and surrounded by the things that represent them in order to show their most intimate and private aspects.”

Michelangelo Cao

Old&New: The potential of oranges

Sydney Gagliano
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Old&New: The potential of oranges

During the exam period, in an attempt to escape revision, I scoured the art section of my sixth form library and decided to spend my free period reading about Abstract Expressionism.

Whilst I admired Rothko’s bold use of colour, and the movement and energy of De Kooning, my friends proceeded to mock the paintings. Their most common criticism was “even I could have done that,” as if art requires skill which exceeds that of the everyday, average person in order for it to have value.

I witnessed similar skepticism whilst scrolling down my Facebook feed. I came across a Tate post advertising the new Conceptual Art exhibition, and the comment section was rife with cynicism and criticisms. One person described Roelof Louw’s ‘Pyramid of oranges’ as a “greengrocer’s display”, dismissing the interesting concepts of decay and passing of time behind the work, as well as the exciting audience participation involved. Likewise, a friend recently posted a picture of Duchamp’s controversial ‘Fountain’ from their trip to the Tate Modern, a piece which challenged our ideas of what art could be. Yet again, I was struck by the number of complaints about modern art and how “it has gone too far.”

Yet isn’t that what art is all about? Throughout time, art has developed by pushing the boundaries and limits of what is acceptable. Whilst it is important to appreciate the impressiveness of art and music from the past, this doesn’t mean closing our minds to the exploration of new ideas that comes with modern art. Surely it is the fact that art and music are constantly changing which makes it so exciting?

It appears to me that many people have an expectation of what art should be in order for it to be ‘good’ or ‘real’ art. They expect the artist to have taken a long time creating it; they want art to be detailed and realistic and representational. Perhaps this is the result of school curricula which tend to focus on a student’s ability to reproduce what they see in a realistic and detailed style, since it would be diffi cult to compare work and award grades if some chose to pursue abstraction. Or perhaps it’s because the Oxford Dictionary’s definition of art places an emphasis on the beauty or emotional power of an artwork, and human creative skill involved in creating art.

In many ways, I find this definition of art to be limiting, both for the artist and for the spectator. Firstly, does art really have to be beautiful to be good? What about artists like Francis Bacon, with his contorted and grotesque figures, or Jenny Saville’s unsettling and frank portraits? Is there not something shallow in only appreciating art if it is aesthetically pleasing? Art has the potential to do so much more than just look pretty. It can express philosophical or mathematical ideas, an example being conceptual art, which places more importance on the ideas behind the artwork than on the way it looks or the finished art product.

Read more next week.

Can we measure free will?

Johanne Nedergaard
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Can we measure free will?

The question of whether humans have free will, or whether everything we do is predetermined, is one of the most debated and recurring issues in philosophy. There is little professional agreement on what defines free will and the distinction between voluntary and stimulus-generated action must also be taken into account. Despite these uncertainties, researchers in experimental psychology have attempted to test the concept using brain imaging technologies.

Some philosophers argue that we could predict every act and decision if we knew everything about all laws and probabilities, a concept known as determinism. The question that then remains is whether this is compatible with the notion of free will. An idea known as compatibilism states that it is and argues that the fact that all acts are, in theory, predictable takes nothing from the notion of volition.

Before we can perform experiments examining the existence of free will, we must first define it. Most people will intuitively think of free will as the independent agency of an individual to do as he or she wants at any given time. Some say it is the freedom to form any intention to act, others that it is the freedom to make a conscious decision resulting in an action, or at least an attempt at an action. It is also about how we feel: the undeniable phenomenological feeling that we are free to decide what to do and when to do it, and to change our minds in the process.

The American neuroscientist Benjamin Libet famously tried to show experimentally that free will does not exist in the traditional sense. In the 1980s, he and his team used EEG—a brain imaging technique which measures electrical activity on the scalp—to assess what they called ‘readiness potential’, a spike in neuron activity occurring before the conscious decision to act. Libet showed it was even possible to predict a simple action, flexing the wrist, before the participant was aware of any intention to do so.

The participants were instructed to pick a random point in time to flick their wrist while the experimenters recorded an EEG signal from the participants’ scalps. During the experiment, the participants were asked to note the position of a dot on an oscillating timer when “he/she was first aware of the wish or urge to act”. In a similar experiment, participants were asked to note the position of the dot when the urge occurred to them and subsequently ‘veto’ the decision to act and refrain from flexing their wrist.

It turned out that the EEG signal, readiness potential, started 550 milliseconds before the actual action and 350 milliseconds before the participants became aware of the urge to act. It is important to note that self-report measures of awareness can be highly problematic, telling us when certain brain processes come together based on the feelings of the individual, rather than when it actually occurs.

The results of Libet’s experiments have been widely claimed to be evidence against free will, seeming to suggest that voluntary action springs from subconscious brain areas, but Libet himself was not so quick to agree. The fact that participants could veto the urge to act suggested to Libet that there might be a ‘free won’t’ rather than a ‘free will’, that decisions are initiated unconsciously and free will is the veto-power.

Later neuroscientific experiments have confirmed Libet’s results, to the degree that we can now predict simple actions up to seven seconds before the participant was aware of their decision, but the interpretations are still widely disputed. Primarily, the neuroscientific experiments have questioned how aware we are of decisions being made, but notions of agency and volition still stand. The question then becomes one of consciousness, on which we still have little neurological traction.

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