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The Fall of Literary Theory. Liana Vrajitoru Andreasen
Читать онлайн.Название The Fall of Literary Theory
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isbn 9781627346900
Автор произведения Liana Vrajitoru Andreasen
Жанр Критика
Издательство Ingram
To go back to the turn-of-the-millennium example of 9/11, 2001, George W. Bush wanted to force freedom upon Iraq, and that project of hijacking an entire culture to save, as he claimed, American freedom, created a new brand of anti-American hatred. Right after September 11th, then-President Bush announced that “our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist attacks …. A great people has been moved to defend a great nation.”9 In this identification of territory, nation, and the abstract concept of identity, the purpose of retrieving what came under attack and defending a territory that is an identity was set forth in one stroke. This is a clear demonstration of the fact that the stakes in language become stakes in the interactions between identities: in this case, the identity of America as the territory of freedom that has to be defended. The way identity is defined can be justification for violence.
It is not surprising, therefore, that these foundational patterns of thought trigger the same response on the other side—or rather, that there are factions elsewhere in the world that seek in the political discourse of the West precisely what is foundational, to counter it with their own centered thought, very assertive of identity and very destructive to the Other. “Death to America!” is not even revolutionary anymore, but has become an abstract concept that identifies the Other as fallen, corrupted, and a justification for an assertion of a certain kind of violent self (the “terrorist”). In the decade and a half following the two declarations of war, it has become clear that the vast majority of Iraqis and Afghanis did not desire the conflict to begin with, but there were elements in the Middle East (glorified gangs, if you will) that wanted the wars to continue. After the Iraq war ended, the purging of the Other (which was a moral purging, more than a physical one) also ended, so there was a need to revamp the enemy’s identity and make it more inclusive.
When US troops started retreating, “America” as an entity became too far away and, as I said, was becoming too abstract. ISIS (or ISIL) initiated, in more recent history, a new stratagem by which anyone, including their own people, could be seen as Other. Not unlike the effort of the Nazis, ISIS has turned into Other anyone who can be seen as fallen from true identity (“true Islam”) in some way: not only did Westerners become targets, but also anyone corrupted by the West, converted to a Western religion, or with Western affiliations or sympathies. The idea that the Other has to be purged became very soon a practice: filmed decapitations flooded the Internet and other media, kidnappings either brought more financial resources or more adherents (in the Middle East or even in Western countries) through the gruesome killings that gave these terrorist gangs celebrity status.
Many things are disturbing in these scenarios, and everyone recognizes the danger of fundamentalist thought. We recognize how heavily it relies on othering the enemy, making straw men of whoever is convenient to eliminate at the time. But this is obvious, and everyone hopes that ISIS, despite its seemingly endless resources (amassed from oil, ivory, ransom money), will never expand enough to allow events of a bigger magnitude, such as nation conquest, or large-scale ethnic and religious cleansing. What I find even more problematic than accepting that these glorified gangs are violent, and that the violence comes from asserting an identity even against their own people (who are seen, perhaps, as not radical enough), is that even in the face of unthinkable violence, there are many who are not willing to admit that the idea behind the violence is problematic. There are many who believe that these gangs are just corrupted versions of idealism, because it can’t possibly be the idea itself that is the cause of violence. Just as people are willing to call a historic phenomenon such as the Christian Inquisition a corruption of good, true Christianity, or as many try to rescue Marxist theory from the misguided practices in communist countries, there is a denial that the problem in fact lies with idealist identification itself. In Heart of Darkness, Marlow was willing to redeem British imperialism when comparing it to the barbaric Roman practices, because he claimed that the British were backed up by an idea, which made the horrors of colonialism bearable since it was at least for a noble cause.
I find it equally disturbing that many reactions to ISIS’ violence only focus on the localized, corrupted, “mad” versions of fundamentalist thought, instead of acknowledging that any manifestation of certainty, especially the religious type of certainty in assuming an identity, is what has always caused tremendous violence throughout history and is still causing it today. When the French cartoonists were killed in 2015, the people who reacted to it (especially on the Internet) hurried, for a while, to claim, “I am Charlie”—to express their horror at the pointless violence directed toward famous (and infamous) Charlie Hebdo and his team of cartoonists. Yet the wave of sympathy quickly dwindled, and another reaction became popular: Charlie Hebdo went too far in his satire. And why? Racist cartoons and cartoons meant to shock and appall were not the main charge against him: what was worse was that he challenged the idea of religion. Critiquing fundamentalist religious gangs (in short, terrorists) is problematic, apparently, because people’s religious beliefs are untouchable. Even in a democratic state, such as France, ideas behind actions are expected to be off the table, while people should feel free to criticize violent actions. But how is it not obvious that ideas, too, should come under scrutiny? What makes idealist thinking superior to the more complex thought that comes from a questioning mind?
In 2013, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires became Pope Francis, and he has been challenging Catholic idealism ever since. Not to say that he is not a “good Catholic,” but he redefines what that actually means, and he ties it less to coherent (Catholic) identity and more to how one relates to others in the world. It is an impressive transformation of approach for the Catholic Church, and some people are even retracting their support in protest, as if the Pope were a politician. The practice, again, threatens the idea.
In one of his most famous speeches on the Vatican Radio at the conclusion of the Synod, the Pope explains in eerily deconstructive fashion that doctrine is what threatens Christian practice, and some of the moments of desolation and tension he has encountered in his Synod journey had to do with “a temptation to hostile inflexibility, that is, wanting to close oneself within the written word (the letter) and not allowing oneself to be surprised by God, by the God of surprises (the spirit) …. The temptation to a destructive tendency to goodness, that in the name of a deceptive mercy binds the wounds without first curing them and treating them.”10 This Pope is an inheritor of the deconstructive age, and with his new focus on society as a living thing, where relationality matters more than identity, he has been able to embrace people of other faiths, and even people without religious faith. He has come closest to the Other and farthest from the self-identical than any Pope in history. But there’s a long way to go before his flock follows in his path.
This brings me to my main purpose in writing this book: to seek to understand why the self-identical thought pattern is still so persistent and prevalent in our world—however globalized the world may have become—that it is still so tempting to perceive identity as perfectible and unique; this is a deeply engrained choice that places identity above relationality, creating tensions between potential identities. For the sake of what one believes in (be it one’s religious faith—Islamic, Judeo-Christian, Buddhist or a derivative, let’s say, of the major religions—or be it one’s national identity—American or Iraqi, Greek or German, Iranian or Kurdish, Hungarian or Romanian), other identities are disputed, fought, and even entirely suppressed.
It should not be, therefore, so bewildering that there is always something left to defend even after history has been shattered by dictators and after we appeared to have learned from these moments enough to make us wish to leave behind imperialism and totalitarianism. Even though Nazism or Eastern European communism are now seen as extremes of social violence,