"My [barber]shop was a democracy if ever anyplace was. Whoever came I served and let stay as long as they wanted to. Whatever they said or did while they were there I had either to deal with or put up with. ... The problem of governing the place was right there in front of me when I started in. I knew that if it got rough I couldn't call the police; we didn't have any police in Port William. And so from the beginning I held to pretty correct behavior in my shop." --Jayber Crow, in Jayber Crow
Jayber Crow then proceeds to recount an incident in which one of his customers, who was drunk, made a racist comment. A friend of Jayber's, a man who had "seniority and authority. Prompt, regardless courage too. He was a man of standing" objected to and shamed the speaker.
Berry tells us several things about his politics here: First, politics is an activity of the community; it is not something that is separate from and set up against the community (he objects, similarly, to the institution of the church, but not to the church as an expression of the community). Second, even a democracy requires leaders who have authority and who form and restrict the sensibilities of its members. Third, the activity of governing itself affects Jayber--Jayber is not the most virtuous man in the world, but his position in his store required that he hold to correct behavior in his shop (this connects back to the first point--if politics were something separate from the community, then Jayber might rely on the institution of the police rather than on his own good behavior and ability to govern).
3 comments:
Am I wrong in thinking the first and second of your observations are in tension? If the community is just us, and therefore not anything separate, how is it that leadership may "restrict the sensibilities of its members"? Wouldn't that imply a division between the leaders and the mass of people in which authority exists as something over and against the unreflective position of the people?
Maybe a tension. But the thing is--the drunk guy didn't have to listen to the man with seniority. The latter wasn't a leader in any formal capacity. He was a leader only as a result of the respect of the people (including, in fact, the drunk guy). The division between a man who leads and a man who doesn't isn't a formal division.
On reading the passage in question, I am actually convinced there's no politics at all going on here: there are no police. And if no police, then there might be social, moral, or ethical dimensions to the encounters of these characters, but not yet any political dimension to them.
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