An idea or concept that has stuck with me since it was mentioned was the way T. E. Lawrence describes his own self-punishment and self-erasure in Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The idea that Lawrence took it upon himself to punish himself for his account of assault in Dera. I keep thinking about it because it makes me think about our other spies and how despite how difficult times got, they pushed themselves to be this figure, to become someone that sheds their past life similar to how a snake sheds its skin. Other spies embrace the danger and adventure as a second skin. Lawrence’s, in specific, self-discipline and self-destruction as more than just responses to trauma but attempts to overwrite who he is with a part of himself that he can’t (or won’t) reconcile with. He frames his suffering not just as something done to him, but as something he must continually enact on himself to maintain the persona he has constructed. I also think about his somberness and how that one scene in Lawrence in Arabia where King Feisal was holding his hands and the tension that was occurring, but it for a split second looked like he was going to draw back perhaps as a form of self infliction? This further sparks my interests of how espionage narratives often revolve around not just an external conflict but an internal fracture of self, no longer self preservation but searching for familiarity. The spies or intelligence official’s work becomes a punishment once you get attached to where you are, perhaps even a opportunity to discipline or reinvent the self. I think it’s really compelling to think about how much of identity is based off building what they are trying to escape. When I also think about narratives I think about how Lawrence constantly positions himself as an outsider also as a way of punishment. In Seven Pillars of Wisdom, he is suspended between identities, British but doubts the British, fights with the Arabs but cannot truly be one of them. He becomes a legendary figure, but internally he feels deeply fractured. Pain as punishment both to rectify his wrongs and to be purified. An interesting concept to think about that I have been pondering. The myth Lawrence creates of self-inflicted punishment demands sacrifice, and the pain he embraces becomes the proof of that myth. In trying to control his story and elevate himself into a heroic figure, he also destroys parts of himself to maintain that image. When I pivot to modern day as we see the duality between present-day current events, especially in university. I actually see this same kind of duality in a lot of college students. We’re constantly juggling who we really are with who we think we’re supposed to be, academically, socially, professionally. It reminds me of Lawrence because so many students end up shaping themselves around an image or expectation, sometimes to the point of burning out or feeling disconnected from their own interests. While it’s not self-punishment, it can feel suffocating to be in a pressure cooker that ultimately can get over burdened with all the different aspects of college life there is.
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I really love the way you tie Lawrence’s self-punishment to the broader idea of how identities in espionage get shaped by pressure, expectation, and fracture. Your point about suffering reshaping persona connects well with Lawrence’s need to avoid a stable identity. It makes me wonder: at what point does self-reinvention become self-erasure?
Very interesting take, Nabiha. I’ve been thinking of college a lot (obvs…) because I’m in a class called From Oz to Wicked (my junior seminar, go English). We’ve been studying all the Wizard of Oz variations, including the latest movie, Wicked: For Good. A really funny and terrifying tweet I saw about the movie said “this movie is a great commentary because it shows that your progressive friend group at your liberal arts college is going to end up being the exact people who perpetuate the power structures that are destroying the world” (or something along those lines). I guess it just brings the first question of class back up again: are we all spies? Is our education simply going to lead us to the positions of power that perpetuate the (to be liberal artsy) heterosexit white supremacist capitalist patriarchy? How far can our own personal justification excuse us in this before we are just Lawrence of Arabia, an outsider donning drag of the underrepresented? I know we sort of poked fun at him in class for his kinks, but to some extent, the idea of punishment is tied to all of society: Hell is punishment for evil, incarceration is punishment for crime, and the whole “pick yourself up by the bootstraps” idea is punishment for not being wealthy. And we play into it by believing we are good model minorites, when places like Princeton will never truly be inclusive. Should we want them to? Aren’t we all Lawrence of Arabia in some way?
This is a very interesting post. It goes even further when you consider the fact that the legitimacy of Lawrence’s experience in Dera is so highly contested. In the case where this experience is fabricated or highly embellished, how does this idea of self-punishment change? Does the ridicule that follows from creating such an emasculating counts as a form of punishment? Furthermore what would he even be punishing himself for?
I really like how you frame Lawrence’s self-punishment as part of the persona he’s trying to build. That connects a lot to what stood out to me in Seven Pillars, how he constantly centers his own psychological turmoil and uses it to shape the entire narrative. His “fractured self” isn’t just something that happens to him; it becomes part of the myth he’s constructing. And your comparison to college students makes sense too. That pressure to inhabit a version of yourself that doesn’t always match who you are feels very similar, less dramatic of course, but still exhausting. Lawrence’s identity crisis just makes the mechanics of that performance more obvious.
What a wonderful set of responses Nabiha–to a post that really does justice to your statement: ” how espionage narratives often revolve around not just an external conflict but an internal fracture of self.”