I’ve just spent a week in northern Italy on a long-planned
vacation trip with Bill the spouse. Because I’d been so busy, he
ended up doing most of the planning for it– which is just fine by me
as we enjoy doing just about the same things when we’re on
vacation. Right now, I’m writing this while hurtling on a train
from Mantova to Milano. I love trains, and think that living in a
place with a robust train network is a really civilized way to live.
When we’re in Milano, Bill has reservations for us to see Leonardo’s
‘Last Supper’ (recently restored, and needs advance booking.) We have
seen so much incredible late Medieval and Renaissance art in the past
week that my head is almost spinning. We’ve been in Venice,
Padua, Verona, Vicenza, and Mantua, and in each place we’ve hiked
“religiously” from church to church to church to museum to palazzo to
duomo to church, to see and experience as many great works of art and
as many wonders of Romanesque and Renaissance architecture as we
could. A big part of the charm of all this for me is also seeing
how human and livable the traditional European concept of urban living
still is…. To the extent that in all these cities, having a car
becomes almost a burden. Certainly, the cities have all created
extensive pedestrian-only zones, which makes walking around them a
whole lot easier and more attractive a proposition than it wold
otherwise be. Venice, of course, is almost entirely pedestrian-
(and boat-) only, which is the nec
plus ultra of car-free living…
While we’ve been on the trip I’ve been deliberately trying to take a
vacation from political and conflict-related news. I
have, however, been trying to gain an appreciation of the roots of the
European Ascendancy in world affairs. Northern Italy and the
Netherlands– which we’re going to later– are two good places to do
this. There was a whole long period, after all, in which Venice
was the dominant power in the whole East Mediterranean and controlled
most of the trade routes between Europe and Asia. It did that
after amassing huge naval power, which it was able to pay for from a
combination of the surplus of northern Italiy’s hefty agricultural and
early manufacturing production and creative financing– since the
northen Italians virtually created the modern kind of banking system.
I have long held the view that throughout most of human history– until modern times– navigable
bodies of water united peoples much more than they divided them.
(It was overland transport– and particularly if there were mountains
involved!– that was much more of a barrier between peoples.) So
from that point of view, the Mediterranean, north and south, has always
had more cultural, social, and commercial unity than, say, “Africa” or
“Europe”. The Venetians and the other peoples of present-day
Italy had always had a lot more to do with the Muslim peoples of the
east Mediterranean and north Africa than they did with, say, the
Scandinavians… Frequently, those interactions were conflictual; but
quite often they were not.
In 1295. Marco Polo returned to Venice after his lengthy stay in
China… So I guess that gives you an idea of the reach (and also the
commercial smarts) of the Venetian traders in those days… Then in
1571, the Venetian navy recorded a famous victory against the Ottoman
navy at Lepanto. With that battle, the growth of Ottoman power
towards the west was checked; but then the Austro-Hungarian empire grew
to replace it as a main check on the growth of Venetian power…
Anyway, throughout all those years, the Venetians were sustaining this
huge trading empire, from which they were able to skim massive profits,
which they used (in many cases) to build unbelievable churches,
townhouses (palazzos), and civic buildings, to hire and sustain vast
armies of great painters and stone-masons to decorate them, and to
undertake large-scale public works and public investment.
In Padua, we went to a small chapel build by a single merchant family
where the family had commissioned the major painter of the day–
Giotto– to decorate the whole interior of the church. It was
amazing. We also, both there and in Venice, saw “public
governance” buildings that were marvels of architectural engineering–
vast open spaces in which the enfranchised (equals male plus monied)
citizens of the city would gather to make the major decisions.
I hadn’t been to Venice since 1970 (and had many more memories of
trying to escape the predatory habits of Italian males in those days
than of gaining any significant artistic or historical uinderstanding
of the place.) Anyway, this time, as expected, I found
considerable evidence of the general “presence” of Arab and Islamic
figures within the northern Italian art of the late Medieval period and
the early Renaissance. What I hadn’t really expected, and was
interested to see, was the presence of black African figures in the
art, from a very early date… and also, in a pervasively demeaning
way. We went to one very beautiful church in Venice, Santa Maria
della Frari, where on one wall there was a huge scupltured relief
presentation crafted high up and supported by the bowed and groaning
figures of four gigantic black African figures… And many of the
(secular) court paintings from the Renaissance era show the figure of
one or more black people– always as servants or minstrels…
The tradition continues. We went to a performance of Verdi’s
“Aida” in Verona, directed by Franco Zeffirelli, and it contained a
pastiche of some “tribal” African dancing in the most demaning
traditions of minstrelsy; and in Venice I saw several buildings where
the bronze knobs for the front doors were cast in the shape of small
black heads. (Stanley Kurtz lives!)
Meanwhile, in nearly all the cities we’ve been in, there are also a
significant number of real, very dark-skinned African males who seem to
haunt the downtowns, often selling handbags on the sidewalks and
piazzas. I suppose they are the survivors of the waves of
misery-driven African migrants who slowly make their way north through
Morocco, Libya, and other countries, and then risk their all on rickety
boats across the Mediterranean. If I were here for longer, I
would certainly want to find out more about their stories..
Well, I don’t have time to write any more now, though I’m storing up many great thoughts for the future. Meanwhile, I’m really happy to see the excellent, thought-provoking posts Scott has been putting up here. Thanks, Scott!
(I might get something up here about the intra-Palestinian agreement here within the next couple of days… and related developments. On the other hand, I might not.)
Boccacio’s Decameron is also a fascinating window into the worldview of medieval Italians. Interesting portrayal of peoples who were later demonized or dehumanized, e.g. here and here.
It’s an interesting thing, that the Arab Rennaissance preceded the European one.
I know that the re-awakening of European interest in medical science – and the founding of the first medical school in Padua – was prompted by the translation of Arab and Persian scientific texts such as the works of Avicenna. He, in turn, had derived much of his method from Aristotle.
The Islamic world was the repository (and cultivator) of Greek philosophy before Europe rediscovered it.
The Islamic world was the repository (and cultivator) of Greek philosophy before Europe rediscovered it.
Regrettably this statement said to downgraded the contributions of Islamic words which brighter than the sun light from some one.
Islamic world didn’t only “repository (and cultivator)” in fact they added to it a lot unknowns things and facts then they transferred to Europe through the schools, books through from Andulus (Spain) time when the European came to study and take the knowledge from Islamic world.
BTW, for many decades the European medical schools teach the Islamic books to their students those books translated to be studies
You need to consider the Babylonians sciences and knowledge in mathematics, astrology and also the Egyptians before the of Greek philosophy born
salah, I believe Italians, Greeks, Egyptians shouldn’t feel proud of their ancestors. Goethe said: Was Du ererbt von Deinen Vätern, erwirb es, um es zu besitzen.
Martin Bernal wrote Black Athena “to lessen European cultural arrogance” when it comes to taking credit for everything before and since sliced bread (e.g. in ‘The Greek Way’, Edith Hamilton delivers herself of her fervently held belief that the world has to thank denizens of that peninsula from 2500 years ago for little matters like Rational Thought, Humanistic Philosophy, Mathematics, Science, Drama, Democracy, Medicine, Atom, etc.; it’s also laced with the usual denigrating (no pun intended) contrast between ‘East and West’). To counter such earnest polemicists, people from other cultures have rolled out many a shibboleth of their own. A couple of weeks ago I had an interesting conversation with two Indian coworkers in which they gallantly (i.e. in the absence of much evidence) clung to their opinion about the primacy of Sanskrit over Latin and other Indo-European languages. One wonders when folks (or should that be ‘the worse off for testosterone half of humanity’? 😉 will get over the “My forefather had a bigger dick than your forefather” syndrome…
Yes, my apologies – I didn’t state my point very well. But what I was trying to say is in agreement with Salah, that Islamic culture developed, refined and enhanced Greek medical science. The Europeans learned it from the Arab and Persian world – a fact seldom acknowledged when Europeans or Americans talk about the history of science.
With such a rich heritage, how does one account for the succeeding centuries of darkness?
Iam just trying to createcommunicaion
This may assist (footnotes omitted)
Article 28 May 2002, in “spiked!” (an on-line publication)
All cultures are not equal
by Kenan Malik
‘I denounce European colonialism’, wrote CLR James. ‘But I respect the learning and profound discoveries of Western civilisation.’ (1)
James was one of the great radicals of the twentieth century, an anti-imperialist, a superb historian of black struggles, a Marxist who remained one even when it was no longer fashionable to be so. But today, James’ defence of ‘Western civilisation’ would probably be dismissed as Eurocentric, even racist.
To be radical today is to display disenchantment with all that is ‘Western’ – by which most mean modernism and the ideas of the Enlightenment – in the name of ‘diversity’ and ‘difference’. The modernist project of pursuing a rational, scientific understanding of the natural and social world – a project that James unashamedly championed – is now widely regarded as a dangerous fantasy, even as oppressive.
‘Subjugation’, according to the philosopher David Goldberg, ‘defines the order of the Enlightenment: subjugation of nature by human intellect, colonial control through physical and cultural domination, and economic superiority through mastery of the laws of the market’ (2). The mastery of nature and the rational organisation of society, which were once seen as the basis of human emancipation, have now become the sources of human enslavement.
Enlightenment universalism, such critics argue, is racist because it seeks to impose Euro-American ideas of rationality and objectivity on other peoples. ‘The universalising discourses of modern Europe and the United States’, argues Edward Said, ‘assume the silence, willing or otherwise, of the non-European world.’ (3)
Not just for radicals, but for many mainstream liberals too, the road that began in the Enlightenment ends in savagery, even genocide. As the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman argues: ‘Every ingredient of the Holocaust… was normal… in the sense of being fully in keeping with everything we know about our civilisation, its guiding spirits, its priorities, its immanent vision of the world – and of the proper ways to pursue human happiness together with a perfect society.’ (4)
This belief that modernism lies at the root of all evil is so pervasive that only right-wing reactionaries, like Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher or the late Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, it sometimes seems, are willing unreservedly to defend James’ belief in the superiority of ‘the learning and profound discoveries of Western civilisation’.
So the real question to ask in the wake of 11 September 11 is not, as many have suggested, ‘Why do they hate us?’, but rather ‘Why do we seem to hate ourselves?’. Why is it that Western liberals and radicals have become so disenchanted with modern civilisation that some even welcomed the attack on the Twin Towers as an anti-imperialist act?
CLR James, like most anti-imperialists in the past, recognised that all progressive politics were rooted in the ‘Western tradition’, and in particular in the ideas of reason, progress, humanism and universalism that emerged out of the Enlightenment. The scientific method, democratic politics, the concept of universal values – these are palpably better concepts than those that existed previously, or those that exist now in other political and cultural traditions. Not because Europeans are a superior people, but because out of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution flowed superior ideas.
The Western tradition is not Western in any essential sense, but only through an accident of geography and history. Indeed, Islamic learning provided an important resource for both the Renaissance and the development of science. The ideas we call ‘Western’ are in fact universal, laying the basis for greater human flourishing. That is why for much of the past century radicals, especially third world radicals, recognised that the problem of imperialism was not that it was a Western ideology, but that it was an obstacle to the pursuit of the progressive ideals that arose out of the Enlightenment.
As Frantz Fanon, the Martinique-born Algerian nationalist, put it: ‘All the elements of a solution to the great problems of humanity have, at different times, existed in European thought. But Europeans have not carried out in practice the mission that fell to them.’ (5) For thinkers like Fanon and James, the aim of anti-imperialism was not to reject Western ideas but to reclaim them for all of humanity.
Indeed, Western liberals were often shocked by the extent to which anti-colonial movements adopted what they considered to be tainted notions. The Enlightenment concepts of universalism and social progress, the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss observed, found ‘unexpected support from peoples who desire nothing more than to share in the benefits of industrialisation; peoples who prefer to look upon themselves as temporarily backward rather than permanently different’. Elsewhere he noted that the doctrine of cultural relativism ‘was challenged by the very people for whose moral benefit the anthropologists had established it in the first place’ (6).
How things have changed. ‘Permanently different’ is exactly how we tend to see different, groups, societies and cultures today. Why? Largely because contemporary society has lost faith in social transformation, in the possibility of progress, in the beliefs that animated anti-imperialists like James and Fanon.
To regard people as ‘temporarily backward’ rather than ‘permanently different’ is to accept that while people are potentially equal, cultures definitely are not; it is to accept the idea of social and moral progress; that it would be far better if everybody had the chance to live in the type of society or culture that best promoted human advancement.
But it’s just these ideas – and the very act of making judgements about beliefs, values, lifestyles, and cultures – that are now viewed as politically uncouth. In place of the progressive universalism of James and Fanon, contemporary Western societies have embraced a form of nihilistic multiculturalism. We’ve come to see the world as divided into cultures and groups defined largely by their difference with each other. And every group has come to see itself as composed not of active agents attempting to overcome disadvantages by striving for equality and progress, but of passive victims with irresolvable grievances. For if differences are permanent, how can grievances ever be resolved?
The corollary of turning the whole world into a network of victims is to transform the West, and in particular the USA, into an all-powerful malign force – the Great Satan – against which all must rage. In Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, one of the central characters, Saladin, finds himself incarcerated in a detention centre for illegal immigrants. Saladin discovers that his fellow inmates have been transformed into beasts – water buffaloes, snakes, manticores. He himself has become a hairy goat.
How do they do it, Saladin asks a fellow prisoner? ‘They describe us’, comes the reply, ‘that’s all. They have the power of description and we succumb to the pictures they construct’. There is a similar sense of fatalism in the way that many contemporary radicals view the USA. The Great Satan describes the world, and the world succumbs to those descriptions.
In this fatalism lies a common thread that binds contemporary Western radicalism and fundamentalist Islam. On the surface the two seem poles apart: fundamentalists loathe Western decadence, Western radicals fear Islamic presumptions of certainty. But what unites the two is that both are rooted in contemporary nihilistic multiculturalism; both express, at best, ambivalence about, at worst outright rejection of, the ideas of modernity, universality, and progress. And both see no real alternative to Western power.
Most importantly, both conflate the gains of modernism and the iniquities of capitalism. In this way the positive aspects of capitalist society – its invocation of reason, its technological advancements, its ideological commitment to equality and universalism – are denigrated, while its negative aspects – the inability to overcome social divisions, the contrast between technological advance and moral turpitude, the tendencies towards barbarism – are seen as inevitable or natural.
According to this worldview, all one can hope for, in the words of Edward Said, is ‘the possibility of a more generous and pluralistic vision of the world, in which imperialism courses on, as it were, belatedly, in different forms (the North-South polarity of our time is one), and the relationship of domination continues, but the opportunities for liberation are open.’ (7) But what can liberation mean if nothing is to change and ‘imperialism courses on’? Is it not more likely that such a view will give rise, not to a ‘generous and pluralistic vision of the world’, but to a darkly dystopian and misanthropic one, where all that is left is nihilistic rage – the kind of rage that led to the events of 11 September?
The fury that drove the planes into Twin Towers was nurtured as much by the nihilism and fatalism that now grips much of Western society as by the struggle in Palestine or anywhere else in the third world. There was nothing remotely anti-imperialist or progressive about the attack; nor is there about the visceral anti-Americanism that today animates Islamic fundamentalists and Western radicals alike. There is much to deplore about American society and American foreign policy. But little of it is embodied in the anti-Americanism either of Islamic fundamentalism or of contemporary Western radicalism. Rather, they are both the products of the failure of anti-imperialism, and of a disaffection with the modern world. The irony of such estrangement from modernism is that it is as rooted in the ‘Western tradition’ as modernism itself – but only in its more reactionary and backward-looking strands.
‘Today, we are present at the stasis of Europe’, Frantz Fanon wrote. Europe ‘has shaken off all guidance and all reason, and she is running headlong into the abyss; we would do well to avoid it with all speed.’ (8) Forty years ago, Fanon was issuing a clarion call against imperialism. Today he could be equally well warning us about the consequences of what passes for anti-imperialism.
Dominic, that’s a very interesting article. Thank you for posting it.
FYI, an interesting audio lecture by George Mosse on the Enlightenment and it’s legacy…
I’m very familiar with that little church you visited in Padova. I lived in Vicenza or five years and I visited it often because viewing Giotto’s frescos is like watching a major breakthrough in Western history and culture.
It’s actually called the Capella delgli Scrovegni (Scrovegni being the family that built it) or the Arena Chapel because it stands near the ruins of an old Roman arena. According to some of the legends I heard, the man who built it, Enrico Scrovegni, was trying to salvage his family’s name. His father had developed a reputation as a very unsavory man, wealthy but unwelcome in Padovan society.
It’s important to understand that the building is a Romanesque structure. By the late middle ages, Roman engineering and construction skills were a lost art in the West. The essential architectural problem in any construction is to evenly distribute weight from the roof to the foundations. The Romans accomplished this with a system of internal arches and columns, external buttresses, and sometime domed roofs. Having lost this skill, medieval architects simply built exterior walls that were thick at the base and gradually tapered as they rose. They constructed roof of light material, like wood, or they built simple brick-and-mortar barrel vaulted roofs. They couldn’t pierce the walls with large windows, especially at lower levels, or the walls would be weakened. As a result, windows were generally small and located much higher on the walls. That left a lot of barren interior wall space to be decorated.
Giotto wasn’t just an artist; he was also a businessman and that’s how his clients viewed him. He had an entire crew of laborers who worked for him. Some mixed plaster and prepared pigments, others built scaffolds, some – more talented than others – painted the frescoes Giotto designed. Giotto trained them all and taught them his skills.
Medieval Western art was rigid, two-dimensional and lacked proportion, much like Byzantine art. When Giotto began work on the Arena, this was how Giotto and his assistants painted and you can see it in the earliest frescoes. But as they proceeded, they began to experiment. They introduced perspective and foreshadowing to give the frescoes a sense of three-dimensional depth. They discovered modeling, the use of light and shadow to give roundness to the human figures, and introduce a perception of graceful movement. Sometimes they succeeded and sometimes they didn’t, but they continued to experiment and improve their skills.
It took them two years to complete about 100 fresco panels in the Arena Chapel and by the time they finished they had changed Western art, history and culture forever. I can remember sitting in that chapel, looking at those frescoes, and telling myself, “This is the guy who started the Renaissance and he did it right here.”
YD