We’re staying in Al-Baicin, the old “Arab” city here, on the steep hillside opposite the Al-Hambra. As we walked to the downtown this morning, we saw two pomegranate trees growing in a garden high above the small, cobbled small street we were on. They were heavy with red fruit, which brought the boughs down over the high retaining wall, and many of the fruits had split open. Some had even fallen to the cobbles. I guess it was for this fruit– the eponym of the hand grenade, and itself bloody red inside– that the city was named. The steep hillside all around show many traces of long-abandoned terracing. Maybe it was once like Lebanon.
But nothing is like the Al-Hambra.
We haven’t visited it yet. Last night, its several parts hung like vast, pregnant pearls in the night sky on the ridge opposite us. We arrived yesterday, and today is a national holiday, the “Fiesta of la Hispanidad”, so we couldn’t get tickets to get into the Al-Hambra.
I’m still trying to figure out what this fiesta is all about. It has apparently been timed to coincide with Columbus’s (imputed?) birthday.
So many countries seem to want to claim the old conquistador as their own! In the US, “Columbus Day” is a national holiday– celebrated last Monday, I believe; and always strongly supported by Italian-Americans. I think the Italians and Catalans also try to claim him as “theirs.”
There seems to be intense significance to the fact that Granada– the last city on this peninsula to be held in Arab hands– fell to Ferdinand and Isabel’s Reconquista in the very same year that Columbus made contact with what he thought was “the Indies.” The inaugural year of the emergence of European powers into world hegemony?
I’ve been looking at “historical memory” issues here as if through a many-layered palimpset. There is the continuing/ returning/ re-emerging question of Muslim-Christian relations and the memories associated with that. There’s the much more recent issue of the Civil War and the whole Francoist era, and the many very live issues around the memorializing of that. And now, Spanish army units are in Iraq, Lebanon, and Afghanistan, so there are emerging-memory issues connected with that.
Also, I haven’t seen much indication anywhere– though maybe I’ve missed what there is?– that the Spanish people have been coming to any kind of serious reflection on the harms that their rulers and their corporations did in their names during their extremely brutal period of conquest and rule in, especially, South America.
… Yesterday, the English-language edition of El Pais led with the story that on Wednesday, the Zapatero government reached an agreement “to ensure that all Franco-era plaques, street names and statues that still adorn Spanish cities and towns are removed once the controversial Law of Historical Memory goes into effect.”
Inside the paper, General Jose Enrique de Ayala, who had previously commanded some “coalition” units in Iraq, writes an intriguing analysis of the situation in Afghanistan, in which he urges that the NATO/ISAF forces serving there should shift towards seeking a deal with “moderates” among the Taliban, with the aim of winning a stronger internal peace inside the country that will allow for a faster and less chaos-inducing withdrawal of western forces than would be possible without such a deal.
Interestng.
Then on the facing page, there’s a thoughtful piece of reporting on the fact that many of the Spanish forces who have been killed in action in Lebanon or Afghanistan have been younger in age. Someone called Mariano Casado, associated with the Unified Association of Spanish Soldiers (AUME) is quoted as saying of the soldiers who get killed, “Sometimes they’re almost children. They are 18, 19, 20 years old, and they’re not prepared psychologically or militarily to face real risks and situations in which there is no way out… ”
The reporter there, Natalia Junquera, quotes several paratroopers who have served in Lebanon or Afghanistan who said they had felt well prepared before deployment. But they were also in their 30s.
I found it interesting that two of those she quoted– men serving in Spain’s paratroop forces– were described in passing as being of Mexican and Ecuadorian nationality.
So it is not only the US army that these days is scooping up men from distressed areas of central America and putting them into an army in which not enough of its own citizens are ready to serve?
… Lorna and I did get caught up in a smallish procession this morning, organized presumably in connection with the fiesta of La Hispanidad. There were some very embarrassed-looking young men in extraordinary “medieval” getouts– white tights, silky jerkins, funny hats with large feathers; quite a lot more medieval-looking participants including maybe the City Council?; an army band; an army unit with semi-automatic weapons and white gloves; and a civilian-looking band.
The rightwing party, the PP, had called on citizens to make the fiesta a great festival of patriotism with flags and national colors, etc. In the not-large crowd in downtown Granada we saw two people with flags, and the general response to the procession could best be described as desultory.
It made me think of some of the community-oriented Independence Day parades I’ve witnessed and even on occasion participated in, back in the US. The very best was the Palisades Parade in Washington DC, which back in the early 1990s had some fantastic gay percussionists (the “Different Drummers”), who didn’t just drum but also twirled batons and flags and generally camped it up in high spirits along MacArthur Boulevard there; a group of African-American equestrians in snazzy getouts; all the local pols coming and throwing candy to the kids; squads of kids on decorated bikes; the owner of a local porta-potty business who contributed a flatbed truck with porta-potty tied on top and his son and other kids doing tableaux vivants around it; and various other wonderful and wacky participants… Ending up with free lemonade and hot-dogs down there at Palisades Park.
Or the Lewis Mountain Neighborhood Parade in Charlottesville, with Chip Tucker reading the preamble to the Declaration of Independence before a rag-tag bunch of residents would process down to the dell with kids on bikes and pets well decorated in red-white-and-blue– some years even the neighbor bringng her prize chickens on a little cart… and again, it would all end up there with hot dogs and half-melted ice-cream.
This one didn’t look nearly as much fun. But Viva La Hispanidad anyway, provided content of the idea is no longer Francoist.
32 thoughts on “Notes from Granada”
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And now, Spanish army units are in Iraq…
huh? I thought that all the Spanish troops were pulled out of Iraq after Zapatero was elected.
H,
A wonderful post. As I am toiling away with my dissertation, indeed relying heavily on your work, particularly the Making of Modern Lebanon, I indeed wonder how you learned to write (and edit) so well. CRISP and VIVID is how I would describe your posts and your books-One could say upon reading your work, I have “Pencil Envy” ;0)
H, and JWN readers, regarding sectarian/religious tensions in Spain, and the broader Mediterranean region, here is an important post from the Daily Star-HOPE!
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=1&article_id=85940
Professor Luce Lopez Baralt of our university has undertaken serious research on manifestations of the Arab legacy in Hispanic societies. You might find this work of her’s on Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote interesting (unfortunately, you will need a site pass or be affiliated with an academic institution to access the article in it’s entirety):
Taking Cervantes at his word, Francisco Márquez Villanueva, who has solved so many of the hidden mysteries of the Quixote, insists that the author “ansía ser entendido y guarda sus tesoros para el lector culto y avisado” [yearns to be understood and keeps his treasures for the educated and sagacious reader]. 3 The scene of the pen suspended in the air and born exclusively for the “enterprise” (empresa) of writing the anachronistic knight-errant’s story constitutes one of those hidden treasures replete with secret codes.
If we read the scene from the cultural coordinates of Islam–those with which Cervantes could have familiarized himself in his years of captivity in Algiers as well as in Spain–the prodigious pen that prepared the Quixote bears a close relationship to the “Supreme Pen” or al-qalam al-a’la of the Koran (68:1). Cide’s pen, necessarily Arabic given the lineage of its owner, extols the fact that the novel was born “para mí sola” [for me alone] and that the enterprise of its writing was “para mí estaba guardada” [reserved for me alone] (2:592-93; 940). 4 In this way, Cervantes gives homage to the work’s Islamic context, for this primordial Arabic pen, associated with the sacred writing of God the creator and his Supreme Intellect, inscribes the inexorable destiny of human beings on the “Well-Preserved Tablet” (al-lawh al-mahfuz), also of Koranic origin (85:21-22). Looked at from this angle, the final scene of the Quixote no longer seems absurd but begins to yield up its secret ironies.
As regards to this:
I haven’t seen much indication anywhere (…) that the Spanish people have been coming to any kind of serious reflection on the harms that their rulers and their corporations did in their names during their extremely brutal period of conquest and rule in, especially, South America.
…You might (if you pass through Seville) inquire about the existence of any memorial to the city’s famed (or infamous) Friar Bartolome de las Casas. His Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies depicts a gruesome horror but is nevertheless requisite to understanding the tortured history of our Caribbean region (warning: the following is not for the weak at heart):
And the Christians attacked them with buffets and beatings, until finally they laid hands on the nobles of the villages. Then they behaved with such temerity and shamelessness that the most powerful ruler of the islands had to see his own wife raped by a Christian officer.
From that time onward the Indians began to seek ways to throw the Christians out of their lands. They took up arms, but their weapons were very weak and of little service in offense and still less in defense. (Because of this, the wars of the Indians against each other are little more than games played by children.) And the Christians, with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them. They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house. They laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike. They took infants from their mothers’ breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them headfirst against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, “Boil there, you offspring of the devil!” Other infants they put to the sword along with their mothers and anyone else who happened to be nearby. They made some low wide gallows on which the hanged victim’s feet almost touched the ground, stringing up their victims in lots of thirteen, in memory of Our Redeemer and His twelve Apostles, then set burning wood at their feet and thus burned them alive. To others they attached straw or wrapped their whole bodies in straw and set them afire. With still others, all those they wanted to capture alive, they cut off their hands and hung them round the victim’s neck, saying, “Go now, carry the message,” meaning, Take the news to the Indians who have fled to the mountains. They usually dealt with the chieftains and nobles in the following way: they made a grid of rods which they placed on forked sticks, then lashed the victims to the grid and lighted a smoldering fire underneath, so that little by little, as those captives screamed in despair and torment, their souls would leave them….
But nothing is like the Al-Hambra.
Yes Helena, Early Muslims conquistador built Al-Hambra “Hamra’a castel” “الحمراء “ in that castle “ The Court of the Lions, a unique remain of Islamic animal statues.”
From my history collection we learned in depth of the Islamic history and the creation of Al-Andalusia one of the brightest and bravest projects was ever created and how Muslim commander passed Gibraltar to open the new land.
Talking about The Court of the Lions those twelve lions in white marble in fact its was designed as a Water Clock, where the water comes at each hour from one lion’s mouth, but after the fallen of Al-Andalus with The Al-Hambra castle was then largely ignored until the eleventh century some played with those twelve lions to see how Muslims artistic designed this magnificent peace of art and science and how the water coming from one Lions’ mouth at each hour caused damage to the water clock were the water came from all lions mouths continually from that time.
There is the continuing/ returning/ re-emerging question of Muslim-Christian relations and the memories associated with that.
Helena, I think you miss very important ethnic part here, the Jewish who lived there during that time. Arab rule brought a time of flowering for Spanish Jewry, Andalusian culture and power was represented by the caliph Abd ar-Rahman III, who made Cordova the cultural capital of the West. It was a Golden Age for the Jews; they learned Arabic and built prosperous communities in Seville, Granada and Cordova, the capital.
Civil War and the whole Francoist era, and the many very live issues around the memorializing of that. And now, Spanish army units are in Iraq,
Oh Iraq again Helena…….
Islamic conquistador did not bring with them the distractions to the land of Spain.
One last very interesting thing to say, that today WINE in fact was came from Al-Andalus when one of those Europeans who converted to Islam during that time learned from Muslims how to process the drink, he went back to Europe converted back to Christianity and from that time Europeans exposed to the new drink which today WINE
I hope you get to the AlHambra – and, as Salah mentions, don’t miss the Court of the Lions. My “media naranja”, as the Spanish charmingly refer to one’s “other half”, liberated some seeds from the palace’s garden, the Generalife, and they still flower every year in our shady English garden.
I lived in Spain during the final months of the Franco regime, a salutary lesson in what it’s like to live under a dictatorship, although the atmosphere wasn’t totally repressive, since everyone knew Franco was on his deathbed, and they were busy preparing for what they hoped would be a better future. I think largely Spain has succeeded in this, due in no small part to (a) a shrewd king, a man who gives constitutional monarchy a good name; and (b) membership of the European Union.
The Alhambra in Granada is clearly one of the seven wonders of the world. From what I learned (basically from Henri Stierlin’s architectural analysis of the palace), it happens to shelter an icon of synthesis between Judaism and Islam. The fountain with the 12 lions seems to be a symbol of the 12 tribes of Israel : interesting enough for a Moslim palace. Moreover, this sculpture represents living beings in volume. As such, this ronde-bosse casts a shadow on God and is anathema to both Judaism and Islam. I am not ascertained of all the details, but it gives food for thought in the present times.
Have a good time in Granada.
Jean Granoux,
The fountain with the 12 lions seems to be a symbol of the 12 tribes of Israel : interesting enough for a Moslim palace.
With all due respect of your view, there is diffrent discussion about the subject you raised above, “The 12 tribes of Israel” some references, Holey books tells they are TEN tribes of Israel? with those Ten Commitment that Prophets Moses (ص) carried them with his believer to the Promise Land, I don’t go more than that as this is a long discussion and talk.
However I do not in any way discredits as a time when Jews lived an embedded existence in Islamic society along the history of Islam all most till things took shape after WWI and the Zionists Project surfaced and things start take different path. But Muslims in Al-Andalusia was very special for the Jewish there as the Muslims freed the Jews from Visigothic oppression and in certain cases they collaborated in guarding castles and cities.
But The Time and the Year calculations built on number “12”, the year have 12 Months and so on and so forth. With a very advanced Babylonian’s ( 4000-5000 BC) works in Astronomy was some think imaginable which is proved in 1969 when the Astronauts landed on the moon they measured the distance between the Moon and the Earth the results came very surprisingly very similar to what Babylonian achieved before (few meter differences, Source VOA Reported in 1969 ).
So Muslims did the design on the common basis and rules of time/years measurement that were know before.
In the end, hopefully as Mark R. Cohen is Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University (USA) said/:
Efforts throughout the world, whether in the Middle East, Europe, or America, to promote a more balanced understanding of Jewish-Muslim relations in the Middle Ages by bringing Muslims and Jews (including Israelis) together to explore the shared culture of the past, are to be welcomed.
Hopefully, once the conflict between Jews and Arabs has truly ended, it will be possible to visualize the past once again, not, of course, as an interfaith utopia, but as a time when Jews lived an embedded existence in Islamic society, largely free of the anti-Semitic excesses that afflicted their brethren in Christian lands, sharing a creative coexistence with Muslims in so many realms. .
I have something completely touristic I want to share.
There is a little bar / flamenco cave down on the main street by the river that has intense flamenco shows occasionally at night. The room is literally a dark cave, so only about 20-30 people can cram in to watch the show. It’s intimate, and depending on who is singing or dancing it can be amazing.
I wish I had a picture or something, but if you follow the river, on the side opposite of Alhambra, and walk down until you would be about parallel with the Turkish baths, you should be in the right area. It’s situated so that if you come out for the bar for some air you can sit by that super tall bank down to the river.
Come to think of it, I don’t remember the sound of rushing water, maybe the river was dried up? Sorry it’s been a while!
Enjoy Granada! It’s my favorite destination in Spain!
Tourism is colonialism. Tourism is the parcelling and commodification of life and its sale into an amorphous market. Tourism bleeds.
Tourism is frivolous. Learning is ipso facto by tourism excluded. Only the souvenir is retained. The souvenir is a memory of the self, nothing more.
This thread demonstrates the flight from learning to the ephemeral, to affection, and to the expropriated – to all of what is called “exotic”, which is a way of naming things so that they can be possessed and alienated at will.
The simultaneous possession and alienation is what you call freedom, but is really nothing of the sort. It is not freedom, neither for the expropriated, nor for the expropriators.
What is principally excluded in this particular case is the common history of the struggle against fascism. I am distressed that this opportunity has passed.
The history of the 1930s and the history of the present are in their major components identical. The inability to see the 1930s is clear proof of the inability to see the present.
Such is “memorialisation”.
“Tourism is colonialism.”
In that case, I’ve just colonialised England’s Lake District.
🙂
“Tourism is colonialism.”
In that case, I’ve just colonialised England’s Lake District.
🙂
Sure. I’ve been through the Lake District, too. Of course tourism is the commodification of the reified rural or reified wild or reified foreign. How can you be in doubt about it when you have just come from there? Nowadays the equivalent treatment has spread over the entire globe. Like the equivalent “green” things, the more it stresses its genuineness, the more phoney you can be sure it is.
But even with all this you are still missing it, O’D. Helena Cobban’s reason for introducing her Spanish holiday to her blog was to consult about “memorialisation” and “transition”, which are among her main preoccupations (the “Just” in JWN does not necessarily mean formal justice as it is commonly understood).
Imperialism still dithers back and forth across on the boundaries of fascism as it did at the time of the Civil War in Spain. The hypocrisies that are by now old standbys semmed more fresh at that time (“neutrality”). Then there was the re-admission of the Spanish fascists to polite society after WW2, organised by the USA. Then there was the attempt to palm the Spanish people off with a royal king, himself a paid-up member of the same fascist party. Then there was the vile Aznar, only recently replaced at last by an anti-fascist. There is no fuller case study.
Yet to the people here on JWN all of the above is simply an embarrassment. They just want to scurry back as quick as they can to their “National Geographic” collections or equivalent, and to the private “geographics” of their own accumulated souvenirs and photos.
Nowhere can the reproduction of the obliterating ideology of Imperialism be seen more clearly at the level of the individual, than in tourism.
Hello Dominic,
I grew up in Hawaii and am familiar with all the issues you raise and from a practical perspective. Tourism is, indeed, the reification of the authentic. And, in that process, destroying the authentic. Tourism is something which is marketed and what is marketed is, by definition, inauthentic and, usually, prurient. It’s curious that sex-tourism has its own name when it’s really just tourism, tout court. Even in Apuleius’ Golden Ass Lucius goes to Thessaly primarily in order to get laid. And Hawaii is a place where ‘mainlanders’ go in order to forget their stultifying Christianity for a while. If you don’t believe that just look at any of the emanations from the Hawaiian tourist bureau. And the worst thing about tourism is that its effects simply get worse over time. It destroys both the thing being commoditized and replaces it with the inauthentic and stereotypical. I’m pretty sure that that parallels your thought also.
However, the purpose of travel is really up to the individual traveller, isn’t it?
As you’ve noticed, Helena asked for ideas about memorialization in a Spanish context. In my posts here I was going to mention the most obvious place for such memorialization, the Valle de los Caidos but then, I thought, why bother? Helena must already know about it and I wouldn’t visit it myself because I have no interest in memorializing Fascism. The only other two meaningful destinations of that type, which I could remember, are the Freemason museum in Salamanca and the Cathedral in Cordoba with the aforementioned plaque that memorializes (celebrates) Franco’s victory over the ‘non-Christians’. There’s also the church in downtown Madrid, not far from La Latina, which was the home church of the founder of Opus Dei. I’ve been there and the only thing worth seeing (Can’t remember the name of the church, sorry) is the statue of Josemaria Escriva Balaguer with a pair of ridiculous stone glasses perched on the end of his nose. ‘… then as farce’, isn’t that the way it goes? From the standpoint of ‘memorialization’ there really isn’t much there. But of course there are many other ‘memorializations’ of the Fascist period in Spain. It exists in everything from family memories, to graveyards, and to patterns of land-holding. If Helena knows what to look for then she won’t be able to escape it.
Of all the contributors here I respect you the most. We rarely agree but it wouldn’t be for the reasons you think. Since that’s true I have the following questions (and I actually care about finding out what your ideas are and not attacking them):
1. Is the only legitimate purpose for going to Spain to denounce Fascism? Is it legitimate, for example, to admire a fully-ripe pomegranate on a sun-lit wall in the Albaicin? Is it legitimate to admire the Partales or the Generalife or is that an example of cheap and inauthentic commoditization no matter who does it? Does travelling to Spain and admiring the Alhambra constitute a reduction in the genuineness of Spanish culture itself. Are the Spaniards themselves worse off if I go there? If your answer is ‘yes’ then how does that work?
2. Is the most significant thing (or the ONLY significant thing) ever to happen to the Spaniards their experience with Franco? (If you travel to Spain now, as I have, I think you’ll find that they’re a lot more exercised about the bombings at Atocha station. In being so concerned are they simply fools?)
3. Isaiah Berlin suggests that between different world-views there is no mediation. (If you’re truly interested I can find the exact place where Sir Isaiah lays out his ideas.) He uses the example of Machiavelli comparing the ancient Roman virtues and the Christian virtues and recognizing that they simply cannot be reconciled (M. chose the Roman virtues because he rejected Christian humility.) Was Machiavelli wrong? Is ‘romanitas’ an inauthentic world view? MUST they be reconciled? Or is Christianity the inauthentic world view? When Jesus tells us (basically) to cooperate with the oppressor is that a delusion? inauthenticity? I ask these questions because what I really want to know is this: What was the experience of those who fought for Fascism? Was it a genuine or legitimate world view for them? (You know it was.) Were they mistaken? Happy exploiters? It’s all well and good to condemn Fascism but where does it come from in the first place? What I say (presuming to answer before you do) is that Fascism and Liberalism are two different sorts of realities. One may be enmeshed in one or the other; each is equally real. I’ve always thought myself that the real problems with the study of society are not economic at all but simply questions of veridicity. What is real?
I’m interested in your answers. Be careful. It’s easy to give cheap answers to these sorts of questions.
(P.S.: Our current socio-political climate is more like the 1920’s than the 1930’s.)
Respect and Best Wishes
Bob Consoli
Hello again, Dominic,
I forgot the most important question.
Is it better to remember the past or to forget it?
Santayana said that if we forget the past then we’re going to repeat it.
I’ve never agreed with this point of view (Santayana was a professor of aesthetics) since experience teaches us that the opposite is true. It’s those who do remember the past who repeat it. The more we resurrect the past the more slavishly we replicate it. Any other idea would make nonsense of our ideas of enculturation.
There are many examples of obsessive resurrection of the past with dire effects on us today. I won’t bother to mention the most obvious example. I’m sure you know what it is.
So I understand your desire to obsessively reduce all Spanish historical experience to the Fascist period (at least it sounded that way – your writing is not always as clear as it could be).
And so I recapitulate my question like this: Is that healthy?
What, in your view, must we do in order to avoid a recurrence of Fascism? (I assume that’s your goal.)
Again, best,
Bob Consoli
Thank you, Bob Consoli, for your flattering attention. Last point first. My feeling is that the Spanish Civil War is not past, but present. That is not simply in the sense of Hegelian continuity, but in the very specific nature of the period since the October Revolution (90 years ago in a few days time) and the practically simultaneous invention of fascism (1919) – aimed at the artificial extension of capitalism’s life using arbitrary, coercive means. The world is still stuck in this same bind, although it affects different parts differently. For some, Spain today may even be the image of their future. Years of fascism followed by silence.
I have already mentioned the International Brigade. Spain also represents the anti-fascist worm turning, a deep debate about pacifism and violence, and the nature of an intellectual’s duty.
You have asked me too many questions. The answers will have to be brief. You can judge for yourself how cheap thay may be.
Jesus said render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, meaning pay your taxes. That is not support for fascism. Machiavelli in The Prince (another piece of flattery) at least, sketched out many different things, in a somewhat eclectic way, but with an implied synthesis, in my opinion.
I don’t have any enthusiasm for trailing the post-war Oxford anti-communist Isiah Berlin, thank you. I think he was no more than a reactionary. To say that between different world-views there is no mediation is simply to confront Hegel with a direct negative. I don’t think direct negatives should ever be admissable. Plus it is beyond anybody’s power to reel the world back to before Hegel. Many have tried but all have failed.
The bombing of the station caused the repudiation of Aznar. It was a significant moment and I mentioned it above. Only at this point has Spain, as far as I can see from here, begun to embrace itself again.
Legitimate reasons for going to Spain might be many. I don’t think tourism is one of them. Helena’s other reason was to visit family. Nothing wrong. The point is, here is a powerful intellect with enormous comparative knowledge, wanting to spend some of her time on this question. She has not said a lot, yet. That’s also fine. My beef was with the commenters, who I thought had done poorly and shown a preference for the comforting and the trivial.
I suspect that the bleakness of the Republican memorialisation, that seems to be implied in the fact that you can only describe Fascist memorials and other Fascist traces, is the direct result of the killing and the exile and the expunging of that record. Then the silence itself becomes a tangible record. Does Helena feel this, being there?
“Second time as farce” was a literary flourish of Karl Marx’s and a reference to Hegel, in the intro paragraph to (I think) the first episode of the “18th Brumaire”, which was written as a series of articles for a magazine published in New York City. My question, again, is: What second time? The Opus Dei is still with us. The hounding of the liberation theologists by our holy mother the church still continues. All of this is present, not past.
the two other key events of 1492, which mark it as the turning point in the history of the european nation-state:
1) the expulsion of the jewish population of the kingdom of castille and aragon, the largest and most culturally and economically well-developed jewish community in europe. this was followed in 1495 by the expulsion from portugal, which completed the exclusion of jews from western europe (with the small, if significant, exceptions of the netherlands and venice).
2) the publication of the first grammar of a modern european language – castillian. this was an attempt to set the royal family’s language on the level of latin, arabic, greek and hebrew as a sacred tongue for the nation-state, and to create the fiction of a ‘unifying’ single language for a newly invented single nation. ferdinand and isabella’s language policy is the direct ancestor of franco’s, and the founding moment of the linguistic part of the modern nationalist project. (ivan illich has a great essay on this event)
these two, along with the completion of the conquest of al-andalus and the beginning of the conquest of the western hemisphere, make visible in the single year 1492 most of the key traits of modern european state-and-capital-oriented nationalism. in them we can see the ‘cleansing’ of internal ‘others’ in the interest of national ethnic and religious ‘purity’; the erasure of the heterogenous histories of the european peninsula; the attacks on ‘minority’ cultures and cultural diversity within nation-states; the will to imperialist expansion; the primacy of the profit motive and its imperatives to seek greater control over local markets and conquer or create new ones; etc. sounds oddly familiar, nu?
the two other key events of 1492, which mark it as the turning point in the history of the european nation-state:
1) the expulsion of the jewish population of the kingdom of castille and aragon, the largest and most culturally and economically well-developed jewish community in europe. this was followed in 1495 by the expulsion from portugal, which completed the exclusion of jews from western europe (with the small, if significant, exceptions of the netherlands and venice).
2) the publication of the first grammar of a modern european language – castillian. this was an attempt to set the royal family’s language on the level of latin, arabic, greek and hebrew as a sacred tongue for the nation-state, and to create the fiction of a ‘unifying’ single language for a newly invented single nation. ferdinand and isabella’s language policy is the direct ancestor of franco’s, and the founding moment of the linguistic part of the modern nationalist project. (ivan illich has a great essay on this event)
these two, along with the completion of the conquest of al-andalus and the beginning of the conquest of the western hemisphere, make visible in the single year 1492 most of the key traits of modern european state-and-capital-oriented nationalism. in them we can see the ‘cleansing’ of internal ‘others’ in the interest of national ethnic and religious ‘purity’; the erasure of the heterogenous histories of the european peninsula; the attacks on ‘minority’ cultures and cultural diversity within nation-states; the will to imperialist expansion; the primacy of the profit motive and its imperatives to seek greater control over local markets and conquer or create new ones; etc. sounds oddly familiar, nu?
When I lived in Spain, in 1975, in Valladolid, one of my vivid memories is of an oldish man stopping me one day to ask me the time. I told him, and he noticed my English accent. Immediately, he started to tell me about the civil war and his admiration for the International Brigades, as he dragged me off to the nearest bar to buy me a glass of wine. Of course, he could have been a secret policeman, trying to entrap me. That’s waht it is to live in a police state. And, of course, I wasn’t a tourist then.
And just what the hell is “reification” anyway? 🙂
Reification
Is the name of the game
And each generation
Plays the same
Reification is turning life into “things” (Latin: res) that can be sold as commodities with a money price and therefore fungible and in that sense qualitatively indistinct from any other commodities.
Actually, each generation does not play the same. Reification is what the bourgeois does to everybody else. All other relations are rendered down into the commodity relation, which is itself a narrow, disguised and very sick form of human relation.
Bourgeois society does this all the time but most conspicuously when it is “on holiday”.
I like your story of the man who talked to you about the Republic, in 1975, in a pub, in Valladolid. This is the only witness we have so far had in this entire thread, of “memorialisation” of the Republic within Spain itself.
Bob Consoli: concerning the avoidance of fascism. Perhaps I should spell out an answer in more direct terms. Fascism is the abdication of liberal bourgeois democracy in favour of the maintenance of capitalism by undisguised and unrestrained coercion.
The circumstances of this abdication are created by the threat of proletarian revolution against the prevailing dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. In other words if the bourgeoisie thinks it can no longer get its way by “fair” means, then it resorts to foul means.
The way to avoid fascism is to win the revolutionary battle decisively in the first round. The Soviet Union avoided fascism, was a bulwark against fascism, and defeated the Nazi fascists, because of the 1917 “October” (actually 7 November) revolution. Even up to today, Russia has avoided fascism, in spite of the fact that fascism’s specific purpose is to destroy the very possibility of communism.
In South Africa today, the African National Congress is hesitating to exercise the logic of its own revolution. But since there is hardly any support among the masses for capitalism here, we have a bit of a crisis brewing up. One faction of the ANC is proposing a corporatist solution. This is referred to as a National Democratic State (NDS), which will be “developmental”, and will explicitly represent and accommodate all classes including the monopoly bourgeoisie. The role of the working class in this beehive is described as being to raise nationalistic feeling in the country. You can read this document on the ANC web site. It is the draft Strategy and Tactics prepared for the June 2007 National Policy Conference.
There is no element of the draft ANC S&T that is distinct from Mussolini’s “corporatism” as far as I can see. Especially conspicuous is the expropriation and vulgarisation of class analysis, so typical of fascism (e.g. the NSDAP, the National Social Democratic Workers’ Party – the Nazi Party).
The inability of the bourgeois state to cope without violating its own democratic precepts is well seen in the USA. The people can vote et cetera, but the people’s will is no longer done. The Iraq War carries on unabated, and even more wars are planned.
In the USA, the way forward is to build vigorous mass democratic institutions in parallel with the exhausted democracy of the bourgeois state, and then to move towards something like a dual power situation.
If you are unable to stomach my Marxism, then another way of imagining this, I suggest, is to read the history of the Roman Republic, but backwards, starting with Octavian (self-named Augustus). In the USA today you already have the complete ossification of the institions of the former democracy, similar to what Rome had after Octavian’s coup d’etat. Now you must move to democracy again. You won’t do it by going through the motions as before.
I’m having trouble posting. I haven’t forgotten you.
Bob
Hello Dominic,
(I’m one letter behind. But I have nothing useful to say about current politics.)
Thank you for your several courteous answers. Let’s see if I understood what they are –
1. ME – Is it better to remember the past or forget it? YOU – Better to forget the past. Constantly rehearsing it (Opus Dei or Francoism) continues to do damage in the present.
2. ME – Is the only legitimate purpose for going to Spain to denounce Fascism? Are other purposes possible? YOU – Yes.
3 ME – Is the most significant thing to happen to Spaniards their experience with Franco? YOU – (I am reconstructing this) – There’s an important sense in which it is. Fascism has morphed into various forms since the 1930 but the present stage gives us hope that a life beyond Fascism is possible for Spain.
4. ME – Isaiah Berlin suggests that there’s no mediation between world views. Is it possible that those who fought for Fascism did so in legitimate and total acceptance of its aims? YOU – I don’t like I.B. and, besides, this contradicts Hegel who thought that there is a dialectical relationship between the stages of History. (Looking back on this I think that this question went unanswered. It may have seemed particularly stupid to you. But to me this is crucial. Can one be a Fascist in good faith?)
I didn’t say I wouldn’t reply. I just said that I wouldn’t attack your answers. So here goes. Last question first –
4. “I don’t have any enthusiasm for trailing the post-war Oxford anti-communist Isaiah Berlin, thank you.” In the school I went to (it was a very undistinguished one) I once evinced distaste for the arguments of the very reactionary Hippolyte Taine (those were innocent times). I was told in no very uncertain terms by a crusty old (and extremely Progressive) French history professor that I’d better master Taine whether I liked it or not. Perhaps in a more distinguished or more modern school one is allowed to ignore the writings of tiresome old white men. So I have to assume that you suppose that there’s a dialectical continuum between Christian humility and ‘Romanitas’. Par extenso, a dialectic between Fascism and Liberalism (or Socialism or Progressivism or whatever else you choose to call it) is possible. I don’t want to put words in your mouth. Do you think so? I’m going to continue as though you do think so. So, according to you, Fascism is really a kind of defective argument about the organization of society. Fascists can be reasoned out of their delusions because, in principle, Liberals (whatever) are capable of making arguments that Fascists would understand and be persuaded by. The real problems of societal organization are caused by disinformation and faulty reasoning and Fascism, really, is a cheap dialectics fueled by greed and cruelty. Any half-way neutral observer can see their disgusting chicanery and point out their obvious falsehoods and then reason them back to the one truth.
I know you won’t accept the following at all. I think it’s much more useful to see Fascism as a rewarding and self-contained set of propositions about society, the military, the aristocracy (and other actors) to which there is no dialectical bridge. The terms in which Fascism is expressed systematically falsify any statements made by liberals to such an extent that no agreement is possible in principle. (Or don’t you listen to Rush Limbaugh?) Far from being a systematic and information-theoretical description of reality, Fascism begins in deeply felt needs (often relating to religion and nationalism – but not always) to which no dialectical bridge exists or can exist in principle. In order for Fascism to change the people who hold Fascist ideas (or who harbor needs expressed in Fascist symbols and ideas) have to die out. Because there is no dialectical bridge to Fascism (or development from Fascism to liberalism in the same population) I guess this is a negation of Hegel. Nonetheless it’s a lot more useful to look at it from this perspective.
I don’t want to get the Jesus freaks started but I really meant a different aspect of Jesus’ thought than just ‘Render unto Caesar.’ Jesus exhorts us directly to cooperate with our oppressor. That’s the opposite of ‘Romanitas’. It’s so different that they can’t be encompassed within the same thought sphere. My question to you was (rephrasing) ‘Is there a dialectical relationship between these two? Machiavelli supposed that there wasn’t. I only brought this up as an example of extremely polarized world views which cannot be reconciled in principle.
3. The problem with dialectics is that they don’t account for the unexpected, i.e., they don’t account for the human. You list the stages of political development in Spain from Franco to post-Aznar. But you don’t mention that Spain’s current democracy was midwifed by a King whom everyone expected would come down on the side of reaction. From the dialectical point of view there would be no way to predict that stage in post-Franco developments. Everyone expected the opposite. I know that you are familiar with the events of the early 1980’s.
2. Your answer is perfectly correct, I think. There might be many legitimate reasons for going to Spain.
1. I’m glad that you agree with me on this question. In continually rehearsing the past (by Opus Dei, for example, or in memorializing the Franco years (e.g., Valle de los Caidos)) we force the past and its wrongs into the present, as you say. You would probably also agree that when the Irish Protestants memorialize the Battle of the Boyne (1684?) every year that that’s an activity that forces past grievances into the present in a way that elicits a modern recapitulation of past wrongs You might say that the Battle of the Boyne ‘isn’t really past; it’s still with us’. But, you seem to agree, that it’s only with us because we choose for it to be.
There seems an important inconsistency in your thought. You suppose that Hegel is correct in asserting a dialectical continuity between past and present but you also recognize that that continuity continues to ensure that the wrongs themselves continue. I can say that memorialization should stop. That’s impractical but it gives me a way out. If the Past is making us sick then let’s dump the past and get well. But, even though you recognize the importance of jettisoning the Past, you feel that it’s unfortunate that the Liberal record in Spain is poor (it isn’t, it’s just my personal ignorance that gives it a poor representation.) So that leads back to my question. If you recognize that the Past makes us sick why do you suppose that memorialization is the answer?
Best as always,
Robert Consoli
I didn’t say it is better to forget the past, even if it is in fact past. The struggle with fascism and reaction in general is not past.
From Hegel’s time on, in my opinion, it has not proved possible to regard human history as anything other than one single process. Not only is this true as between the past and the present, because the past is subsumed in the present, but also as between what you call world-views. So your past is my past and my past is your past, in one world, and one indivisible humanity.
These Hegelian views are hegemonic, which is not to say they should not be examined and even criticised. What is no use at all is a “direct negative”, where the Hegelian ideas are simply re-presented, but in the reverse, or as a mirror image.
In a meeting, a “direct negative” is when somebody tries to move an amendment which is the reverse of the motion. It is ruled out of order because there is already a remedy, which is just to oppose the original motion. Berlin does not take on Hegel. He ignores him, just as Jevons and subsequent proponents of the marginal theory of value simply ignore Karl Marx. Now that’s what I call cheap.
Not to ignore what you say about Roman and Christian values, the matter is encapsulated in the single word “virtue”, isn’t it? In the Latin it refers to the “vir”, the manly man, while in the modern language “virtue” is strongly associated with a woman’s chastity. You can hardly get more dialectical than that, can you?
I don’t accept your account of the King’s “midwifing” role in Spain. I think that story is, with respect, tendentious PR. The working class had a much more decisive say in the events than that old fascist ever did.
Dialectics is human (all too human according to some critics of Hegel). It explains change as intrinsic, and not surprising, because change results from the unity and the struggle of the opposites that constitute any given phenomenon or system.
I never said that the past makes us sick or that we should forget the past. My views are not identical to Helena Cobban’s, either. Santayana was close to the truth but he didn’t know why. Hegel knew why, and Marx followed Hegel. Marx did not overturn or “explode” Hegel. Marx was a Hegelian all his life and this is one of the reasons why we all live in a Hegelian world, even if Hegel is a prophet hardly otherwise honoured, in or out of his own country. Lenin saw all this very clearly. He said that it was impossible to understand “Capital” without a prior understanding of Hegel, hence for the previous fifty years or so, all the Marxists had been failing to understand Marx!
Hello Dominic,
I’ve been guilty of an intellectual faux pas and I want to apologize for it. I truly didn’t take into account that there could be anyone left on the planet that subscribed to Hegel’s paradigm of historical change. As a result I treated the Dialectic with rhetorical language which was inappropriate. This must have read to you like craziness. So let me pose the following thoughts and questions:
a. Are you comfortable with the idea that 99% of scientific research relating to society, societal change, group and individual motivations, etc., etc. has occurred post-Hegel (and post-Marx)? Both ego and group psychologies are entirely post Hegel (and post-Marx). The sciences of anthropology, sociology, history itself, don’t begin to yield real results until after 1900. If that’s so then why is it better to subscribe to an explanatory paradigm that was described in the late eighteenth century? Perhaps you will reply that those sciences that I named are hopelessly tainted by the largely capitalist environment in which they were formed and, so, nothing more than the pseudo-scientific face with which greed clothes its true motives. If that’s truly your answer then it seems to me that you have a nice closed belief system going. It’s of a piece with your refusal to come to grips with the ideas of those thinkers whom you dislike for personal reasons.
b. Since the whole business of the Dialectic is to ‘explain’ it must, of necessity, break down in the face of ambiguity. I state the following without proof and only for your consideration:
History begins in the psyche.
Historical events require a lot of energy but that energy is always canalized by the psyche(s) of the individuals involved. As such these events are heavily modified by all the pathologies of the psyche. Events can be influenced or initiated by wishes and dreams, by fears and hopes, by venery and by venality, by addiction, by panic, by insanity, by criminality, and by manifestations of the affect in several varieties. It is precisely this that gives to great and minor historical events their uncanny nature. This has been often noticed. For example, the Great Fear of the summer of 1789 which began with an irrational fear of brigands and only subsided with the expulsion of the aristocrats from France. Sometimes insanity is the key. There are the historical events surrounding the destruction of the Xhosa people in 1857 which was triggered by a messenger to Nonaquwesa, a young girl of that tribe. She was told to spread the message that the Xhosa must kill all their cattle in order to make way for new people who would bring new strong and healthy cattle to the Xhosa from regions under the earth. The Xhosa did this. Problem: only Nonaquwesa could see and hear the messenger. The expulsion of the British from France during the 100 Years War was initiated by a young girl, a schizophrenic. Sometimes superstitious fear is the key. Nicias, the general of the Athenian army camped before Syracuse was so frightened by an eclipse of the moon (in 417 B.C., I think) that he refused to move his army for some days. It was enough to ensure their destruction and the eventual subjugation of Athens by Sparta. Xenophon, on the other hand, was enabled to save his army because he had a dream (in the Anabasis). Alexander the Great was able to conquer Tyre because he had a dream. Sometimes criminality is the motivating force. The United States of America has brought a great army to the edge of destruction in the sands of Iraq through a criminal: namely that of Ahmed Chalabi whose nefarious role in the Jordan is too well attested to admit of any doubt. I could multiply these examples forever.
None of the actual messiness of History can even be approached by Hegel’s Dialectic. It’s been well likened to the bed of Procrustes.
c. The idea that the Thesis, Antithesis, and the Synthesis are living realities and that they are the visible manifestations of the Geist as it manifests itself in History presupposes that there is some sense in which they actually exist and exert their force within the fabric of society. It is this that needs to be explained. Hegel would have used eighteenth-century ideas for this and his thinking would have been shaped by those ideas. I’m going to guess that you think that simple enculturation techniques (teaching, preaching, the written word in several forms, etc.) are not enough for the Thesis and Antithesis to do their work; that they have an existence that is ‘above’, in some sense, those simple techniques. The only real candidate available for that role is the idea that these ‘Forces’ exert a pressure on the ‘germ’ of the individuals who make up society such that these individuals ‘pass down’ these acquired characteristics to succeeding generations. This is a powerful idea and would give real substance to the Dialectic.
Unfortunately, it’s impossible.
This is Lamarckism (which Hegel would have been familiar with. See: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/help/houlgate1.htm).
T.D. Lysenko was a Lamarckist, wasn’t he?
And, since there are no other candidates for explaining the work of the Dialectic in the world we are forced to fall back on the ways that one generation has always influenced another: teaching, preaching, (propaganda, if you prefer), and written works in several kinds. And that returns us squarely to where we started. Past generations can influence present ones through (and only through) the means which we already well understand. This influence(s) can be malign or beneficial. Remembering the past in a way that results in beneficial outcomes requires care. In my personal view most of the past should be forgotten because I definitely believe that it’s usually the Past that makes us ill (I think you really believe it too). This is the only thing which might stop the wheel of History – I reject Santayana outright as I do Hegel. So let me ask my question in a more refined way. Do you suppose that it is our task to manage the way that the Past acts on the present? Is this what you mean by memorialization? Should we amplify the good messages and diminish the bad ones? If that’s so then who decides what the good messages are? You? Rupert Murdoch? Helena? This leads to my personal concern of whether one can be a sincere, good, and committed Fascist. Why isn’t it true that Franco’s basic self-imposed task was to get out the ‘good news’ of Spanish Fascism? Wasn’t it true? Is it our job to fight until only the good messages survive? Sounds like a lot of fighting.
I’m troubled by the information-theoretic view of history that this implies. Do you really suppose that human life can be satisfactorily encompassed by information-theoretics? Do you?
From my perspective the Dialectic of Hegel is to political science what creationism is to biology and for precisely the same reasons. It’s pre-Scientific; it cannot be falsified (as you unwittingly demonstrated with your talk about ‘Negation’). It explains everything and so explains nothing. It can be bent to mean anything (as, no doubt, you will try to do with my several examples). I won’t try to argue you out of your closed belief system but I will encourage you to come out and try the waters; embrace the ambiguity, dare to say that you don’t know. Dare to doubt the Geist. It’s refreshing. You have nothing to lose but your chains.
I won’t be able to contribute much in the next few weeks (I hear you sigh with relief). I’ll be in Italy. I think of myself a traveller but you’d probably just consider me a tourist. But, while I’m there, can I pick you up a nice tchochke? A shot glass with a picture of Vesuvius on it? A silk tie w/ Michelangelo’s David?
Let me know,
As always, my best,
Robert Consoli
99% of scientific research would have been impossible without Hegel and Marx. A good person to read on the subject of the philosophy of science (e.g “Studies in a Dying Culture” and “The Crisis in Physics”, or the collection called “The Concept of Freedom”) is Christopher Caudwell, a great communist writer who died at Jarama, 70 years ago. This is also the centenary year of his birth. His currently most active champion is Professor Helena Sheehan, who also writes on that subject, as well as about Caudwell. What makes you think you can wave bourgeois science at a communist and get away with it? Well, I suppose you can, at that. But I think you ought to realise that fortress USA is not the world, and can’t ever be the world.
Helena Sheehan’s site is here:
http://www.comms.dcu.ie/sheehanh/sheehan.htm
Andy Blunden’s great “Hegel by Hypertext” is here:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/index.htm
You are way off the mark when it comes to Hegel, Bob.
Hello Dominic,
I admire your ability to parrot your catechism but why won’t you just treat me like a human being and answer my questions? Why not try?
‘…off the mark when it comes to Hegel.’
Sure.
Best,
Bob
I do my best, Bob. I do have some other responsibilities. I had to go and fetch somebody. So now that I’ve got another moment, let me tell you what I was thinking in the car.
You see, I never said “negation”. I said “direct negative”. A “direct negative” is precisely not a negation. That’s why, in the rules of debate the direct negative is out of order. If you propose a motion to burn all the books of Lamarck and Lysenko, it would be idle for me to propose an amendment to say, preserve these books, wrong as they may be. Because we would still have to have the substantive argument. The real negation, if any, would have to come in the argument.
It’s a bit sneaky of me, and only half deliberate. But as soon as I wrote it down I thought: here’s a test. I wonder what Bob will do with this?
There are a few other points where you have picked up on things in a way that I didn’t actually write, Bob. But it’s o.k.. I do hope that you, or anybody else who may be looking in, will look at those two web sites, and also try to get a look at some Caudwell. There’s a lttle bit here:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/caudwell/index.htm
Peace and Love to you.
Hey, for a souvenir, what about a wooden triad?
Bourgeois scientism arises from infection by the general bourgeois ideology. As much as the bourgeois class keeps busting everything up (“All that is solid melts into air”), so at the same time it is compelled to insist on its own eternity. It is conservative. It is unable to entertain the scientific truth that qualitative change is propelled by intrinsic contradiction within phenomena (for example its own gravedigger class of proletarians that it must constantly nurture, because it can’t do without them), and is therefore compelled to cast around for external causes for all kinds of change.
A commonplace example is the old “extinction of the dinosaurs” chestnut. It was a meteorite from outer space! It was a volcanic eruption! It was GLOBAL WARMING! Only occasionally do we here a real scientist come forward to say: Maybe the dinosaurs didn’t die – maybe they are the birds, and other creatures.
A biggie nowadays is: the USA is in bad shape. Somebody is to blame (and it couldn’t possibly be anything to do with rotten capitalism). Let’s look for the external cause: Aha! It must be the Muslims! Let’s war them, quick!
Another one, and closely related, is Darfur (and candidate darfurs). The natives are fighting!! It must be the evil regime in Khartoum! External cause, ergo, external remedy! A “hybrid” armed force, courtesy of the Uniteds Nations, of course! Korea, Congo, here we go again.
Rubbish for brains. Capitalism. A parasite on the face of the earth.
I nearly missed this due to the big anti-terrorist operation across New Zealand over the last week. You guys will have seen this on CNN. Our Secret Intelligence Service, after seeing the doco about Airforce One “Snakes on a plane” felt they had found a terorist training camp and national revolutionary army organised around bicycle repair shops in major cities. Several of those arrested are accused of playing with a gun they didn’t have a license for, and may have had a go at making Molotov cocktails or some sort of napalm. They may just have had jelly and petrol on the same property, its not yet clear.
So adroit of Helena to leave us a little holiday note that has fuelled itself into such a grand topic while she in on holiday in Spain, ironicly BECAUSE of the epistemological, historical and political significance of her being on holiday in Spain. I’d love to think it was intentional.
So lets forget for a moment about saving the world as we parade our intellects down the fairly dimly lit catwalk of this blog. That, after all, is in hand. The grandeur of these ideas surely justifies it. Christianity, dialecticism, history, memorialism, The State, Science, reification, capitalism, fascism, communism, liberalism, indoor furniture, its all here.
What follows is not an argument, its just contradiction, (to quote Graham Chapman).
Words turn real things into simple formulae. Economic and political theory turns society into simple formulae. Groups or “classes” of people develop ideas about places and the past which are simple formulae. Capitalism and Communism for example agree it’s all about the control of the means of production. Human existence is all about that. From this, ‘adherents’ of these systems give us elections where there is no choice and production which makes life unsustainable. Not that the theories are ever actually literally applied of course, just enough to give some
control to some group of people after which competition/ the perpetual revolution will be postponed at Mr Hegel’s request. That’s people for you. Mr Bush is an odd sort of Hegelian, (though he otherwise fits the bill) with his lack of evolution, and I am sure MS. Hillary will be a much more orthodox one.
Should fascists be reasoned with, converted or liquidated? Yes, sure what caused this calamity? But also, in the context of what to do with fascism, how many Germans under Hitler, or Spaniards under Franco were fascist, did this change over time, why, and in what fundamental sense do these areas have (or are they part of) improved political systems now? And does this mean fascism has been defeated? I ask that, not with anything but contempt for these childish “isms” but rather in the context of our children’s
generation quite possibly being the last.
More bourgeois scientism: James Watson was the only US member of the team that got the Nobel Prize for describing DNA. He said the following, and a lot more:
Watson said in an article for the Sunday Times Magazine published on October 14, 2007, that he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really.” He claims to hope that everyone is equal, but he counters that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.” He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because “there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don’t promote them when they haven’t succeeded at the lower level.”
“There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically,” he writes. “Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.”
Watson has been saying things like this for years in the USA without being called out. The mistake he made this time was to do it in London. Now he is trying to apologise and to deny he meant what he said. He is despicable, but also a very good illustration of the degeneration of science in bourgeois society, especially in reality-free “late capitalism”, or in other words under capitalist Imperialism.
It’s a big world and just about any conversation can be steered back to topicality. Learn more about Bourgeois scientism as explained in the essay “Our Expectations of the Muslim Woman” by Dr. Ali Shariati of the Iran chamber society.
Right, gang, what about this one then:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/katine/2007/oct/20/about
First off, what is it exactly that “starts with a village”? Why is this Ugandan village referred to as “14th century”?
Easy-peezy. Henry the Navigator (prince of Portugal, grandson of John of Gaunt) sent caravelles beyond Cape Bojador in 1434, marking the recognised beginning of the European seaborn colonial expansion. Almost immediately after that, the first slaves were taken. Cape Bojador is in Western Sahara, still a colony, the last in Africa.
“14th century” takes you back before all that. It has no other technological or social significance. With that you can better get the sense of “it starts from a village”. It clearly means a new start for Europe with Africa. Going back to before colonialism and making a new start, like a violent man announcing a unilateral new start with a beaten wife. How pathetic! How horrible!
I wonder if they will install webcams in the village. How gross will it get?