Levitating the Pentagon
Exorcism as Politics, Politics as Exorcism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.v14i3.295Keywords:
Pentagon, new left, magic, 1960s, protest, GinsbergAbstract
On 21 October 1967 Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, and Ed Sanders of the band The Fugs, and others, organized an “exorcism” of the Pentagon in which several thousand demonstrators participated. Most historians have regarded this event as “a put on” or at best as “performance art.” This article takes seriously the nominal status of the ritual as a “sacred” or “magical” event. It argues that the organizers were utilizing innovative strategies of social action to alter the terms of debate regarding the Vietnam War. Inasmuch as these strategies drew on “secret” insights into the nature of social reality, they were seen as “magical” and in continuity with pre-modern esoteric traditions. Finally, it is argued that the new left turned to such tactics out of a deep frustration with traditional forms of democratic political engagement.References
Artaud, A. 1958. The Theater and Its Double. New York: Grove Press.
Bailey, E. 1997. Implicit Religion in Contemporary Society. Kampen: Kok Pharos Publishing House.
Betz, H.D. 1996. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, including the Demotic Spells. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bey, H. 2003. “Media Hex: The Occult Assault on Institutions.” In Book of Lies: The Disinformation Guide to Magick and the Occult, edited by R. Metzger, 334–340. New York: Disinformation.
Biles, Jeremy. 21 May, 2010. “Lady Gaga’s Secret Religion: Hidden in Plain Sight.” Religion Dispatches. Available online at http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/culture/2637/lady_gaga’s_secret_religion_/, (Accessed 20 November, 2010).
Bivins, J. C. 2008. Religion of Fear: The Politics of Horror in Conservative Evangelicalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bodroghkozy, A. 2001. Groove Tube: Sixties Television and the Youth Rebellion. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Casanova, J. 1994. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Durkheim, E. 1995. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Translated by Karen E. Fields. New York: Free Press.
Ellis, B. 2000. Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
Ferguson, K.E. 1993. The Man Question: Visions of Subjectivity in Feminist Theory. Berkeley: University of California Press.
France, B. 1999. From Guerrilla Theater to Media Warfare, Abbie Hoffman’s Riotous Revolution in America: A Myth. Masters Thesis, Louisiana State University.
Gay, J. 9 December , 1999. “Seattle was a Riot: What Really Happened in the Streets at Last Week’s Wild WTO protests.” In The Boston Phoenix. Available online at http://www.bostonphoenix.com/archive/features/99/12/09/WTO.html, (Accessed on 17 November, 2010).
Geertz, C. 1989. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books.
Ginsberg, A. 1987. Collected Poems. London: Penguin.
Goodrick-Clarke, N. 1992. The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology : the Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890–1935. New York: New York University Press.
Gosse, V. 2005. Rethinking the New Left: An Interpretative History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Greeley, A. 1970. “Implications for the Sociology of Religion of Occult Behavior in the Youth Culture.” Youth and Society 2(2): 131–140. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0044118X7000200201
Hanegraaff, W. 2003. “How Magic Survived the Disenchantment of the World.” Religion 33: 357–380. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0048-721-X(03)00053-8
Hapsis, E. 5 December, 2009. “Music Review: Lady Gaga: The Fame Monster.” KQED Arts. Available online at, http://www.kqed.org/arts/music/article.jsp?essid=26700, (Accessed 20, Novemer 2010).
Houen, A. November, 2008. “Back! Back! Back! Central Mind-Machine Pentagon…,” Allen Ginsberg and the Vietnam War” Cultural Politics: An International Journal 4(3): 351–373. http://dx.doi.org/10.2752/175174308X339207
Hoffman, A. 1980. Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture. New York: Putnam.
———. 2005. Revolution For the Hell of It. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press.
Issitt, M. L. 2009. Hippies: A Guide to an American Subculture. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press/ABC-CLIO.
Jezer, M. 1992. Abbie Hoffman, American Rebel. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Lachman, G. 2001. Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius. New York: Disinformation.
Lasch, C. 1971. The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Mailer, N. 1971. The Armies of the Night. History as a Novel. The Novel as History. Harmondsworth: Penguin books.
Marty, M. 1970. “The Occult Establishment.” Social Research 37: 212–230.
Metres, P. 2007. Behind the Lines: War Resistance Poetry on the American Homefront Since 1941. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.
Miller, J. 14 October 1967. “Hippie Magic Readied to Destroy Pentagon.” Kentucky New Era 7.
Mumford, L. 1997. The City in History: Its Origins, its Transformations, and its Prospects. New York: MJF Books
Paglia, C. 2003. “Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s.” Arion 10(3): 57–111.
Parsons, T. 1993. “Introduction.” In The Sociology of Religion, by M. Weber, i-xxix. Boston: Beacon Press.
Porterfield, A. 2001. The Transformation of American Religion: The Story of a Late-Twentieth-Century Awakening. New York: Oxford University Press.
Raskin, J. 1996. For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Reed, T.V. 1992. Fifteen jugglers, Five believers: Literary Politics and the Poetics of American Social Movements. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Rorabaugh, W. J. 1989. Berkeley at War, the 1960s. New York: Oxford University Press.
Roszak, T. 1969. The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and its Youthful Opposition. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Sanders, E. 1993. The Family: The Manson Group and its Aftermath. London: Nemesis Books.
———. 2010. “History of The Fugs” Available online at, http://www.thefugs.com/history2.html (Accessed 21 November, 2010).
Shingon Buddhist Service Book. 1975. Koyasan: Koyasan Shingonshu
Sloman, L., S. Michael and J. Babcock. November 2004. “Out Demons Out.” In Arthur, 13: 22–62.
Snellgrove, D.L. 1964. The Hevajra Tantra: A Critical Study, Part I: Introduction and Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 1959. The Hevajra Tantra. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Snyder, G. 1967. “A Curse on the Men in Washington, Pentagon.” Available online at, http://www.diggers.org/digpaps68/images/d68_02_l.jpg, (Accessed 17 November 2010).
———. 1974. Turtle Island. New York: New Directions.
——— and W.S. McLean. 1980. The Real Work: Interviews and Talks, 1964–1979. New York: New Directions Pub.
Starhawk. December, 1999. “An Open Letter to the Pagan Community.” Available online at http://www.starhawk.org/activism/activism-writings/openletter.html, (Accessed 17 November, 2010).
Stark, R. 1999. “Secularization, R.I.P.” Sociology of Religion 60(3): 249–273. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3711936
Stone, G.R. 2004. Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Stephens, J. 1998. Anti-disciplinary Protest: Sixties Radicalism and Postmodernism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sullivan, J.D. 1997. On the Walls and in the Streets. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Swatos, W.H. 1988. “Picketing Satan Enfleshed at 7-Eleven: A Research Note.” Review of Religious Research 30(1): 73–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3511842
——— and K.J. Christiano. 2000. “Secularization: The Course of a Concept.” In The Secularization Debate,.edited by H.S William, D. Olson and V.A. Olson, 1–20. Lanham: Rowland and Littlefield.
Taylor, D. 1987. It Was Twenty Years Ago Today. New York: Bantam.
Tiryakian, E.A. 1972. “Toward the Sociology of Esoteric Culture.” American Journal of Sociology, 78.3, 491-512. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/225361
Vogel, S. 2008. The Pentagon: A History: the Untold Story of the Wartime Race to Build the Pentagon—and to Restore it Sixty Years Later. New York: Random House.
Waldman, A. 1996. Fast Speaking Woman: Chants & Essays. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books.
Wilson, B. 1979. “The Return of the Sacred.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 18(3): 268–280. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1385653
Wink, W. 1998. The Powers that Be: Theology for a New Millennium. New York: Doubleday.
