Serenity Science

Everywhere Freud

2012-02-19T22:58:00.000Z

We stand on the beach, and we watch the waves come in. Watching them, our eyes follow them, asthey jump and crawl, sliding ever closer, until they fall back, slitheringslowly away. We concentrate sohard, willing the waves to stop; there are moments we think they even do so;but the tide rolls on, and the waves return; the last one the closest yet;swirling, bubbling, suddenly a foaming lake has engulfed our ankles; and we arerunning and screaming; shouting up the beach.

As a child we have so little influence.

Just about everything is decided for us.

We are done too, rather than doing.

It is no surprise that we strive so earnestly for freedom inour late teens. Change everythingnow! Our one chance, or so itseems, to smash down the walls of the family home, and create a rich palace ingardens of our own choosing. Itlasts for about 10 years (for a few it is a lifetime) before we return to thecomfort of our childhoods. For byour mid twenties we are kids again. The senior managers our surrogate parents, with those distant relatives,the board of directors, who we hardly see, and think are friendly, ourindulgent great aunts and uncles.

Once more we accept our lot; done to, rather than doing, andwe know this now; and we let others make the decisions in a world we do notwant to understand. Our curiosityleft behind the day we walk into our first proper job.

Ana enters the bedroom while the housekeeper leaves it,with a bedpan and towels full of blood. She sees her mother writhing in agony. She is giving birth, but to astrange and awful child. How bigwill this baby be, we at first wonder, but really we already know the answer:it will be a monstrous giant; a long incubated pain that will kill her soon;leaving a young woman to wander around Ana’s childhood; walking into herdreams and daytime fantasies; a comfort during her moments of confusion.

How much does Ana know? Does she know her mother is back from hospital not becauseshe is better, but to die, in her own bed, slowly in excruciating agony?

How much does she understand? That you can givebirth to death? Does she believethis too? We think so. We know that later she blames herfather for her mother’s impregnation.

She hardly speaks throughout the film. Her mother, actually herself, an exactreplica, thirty odd years later, sometimes talks directly to the camera; theadult making sense of her childhood memories. But these are fragments, a director uneasy inside a child’smind: he wants some order to the world, he wants us, if only on occasion, tounderstand it; to see the road signs so we can navigate around this strangecountry; eventually to leave it behind. He doesn’t trust us to find our own way out…

After the early confusion, and our complete disorientation,we begin to distinguish between the mundane world of the senses and theimaginary fantasies that are invading it. By her bedside Ana looks at death infiltrating her mother’s face. When it rests for a moment her mother’seyes open and she tells her daughter there is nothing: nada. It is all lies. Nothing exists. We think we know what she means. Does her daughter? She doesn’t want to die, she says, sheis scared. Ana stands like amannequin; there is nothing she can say or do; she is lost in a world beyondher experience. Then death goesback to work; and words are replaced by grimaces and screams; and Rosa returns,ushering Ana away.

Her mother’s favourite, it seems. There are times when her mother treats Ana like a lover;there is something sensual about the caresses she gives; her whole behaviour isprovocatively flirtatious. I biteyou on this side of neck, I kiss you on the neck; I bite you on this neck, I kiss you on the ear; kissing her on the lipswhen she says good night. There isalso a touch of cruelty the child does not perceive. On a country estate Ana is sent back to find her father;who she sees embracing another woman, a friend of the family. Intended? We believe so. Later, Rosa, cruder in almost everyway – her talk with the child mostlysexual gossip, and there is the inevitable fantasy of daddy’s hands on Rosa’sbreasts, Ana asks if she can see them – sends her into a room to exposeanother affair, the aunt’s who now lives with the children.

Of course, as children, we see the signs of our parent’spain and misdemeanours. When theaunt is out they raid her bedroom. Dressing up in her clothes, using her make up and wearing her luxuriouswig, they become actors in a marital drama, where the woman waits at home whilethe husband wears himself out in the bedrooms of Madrid. They copy what they have seen,but they have so little understanding, picking up the words without the fullmeaning behind them, and so they become comic and very odd; the aunt finds themso when she returns unexpectedly.

A child walks down the stairs at night; to the sound ofsex. The house is decorated in anantique style; heavily prosperous and oppressive. There is no sense of a personal style, just the weight ofstatus and authority. Everythingseems just a little oversized…

The children’s room is ramshackle; and it is where they playgames, listen to music, are bored, and sometimes mimic the adult world. Here they copy a world of sexuality,although free of its emotional and physical consciousness; their bodiesinnocently replicating the gestures, of dancing and fingertip caresses. There is a strangeness to these scenes,which have an ambiguity that we cannot resolve.

Ana believes her father is the cause of her mother’s earlydeath; and a childhood she can only remember with dislike: it was a longjourney out of unhappiness, she later says. He killed her mother. It is so obvious to a child who canread the signs. The rows andunhappiness, her mother’s tears - the seeds of that fatal birth…

Always at the mercy of others; mostly your parents; theirmotives hidden and unfathomable. What do they mean! Theydon’t tell you much, if anything at all. Most of what you know you have to work out for yourself. Such a world can become overwhelming. Mother dies, father dies; the aunt andthe senile grandmother move in. Your aunt is nice, but she is strict. Before the funeral she demands Ana kiss her dead father inhis coffin, to observe the proprieties. You must eat properly! Andit is the youngest child who is the favourite now. These changes are vertiginous. Ana in the garden looking up she sees herself standing onthe roof of their large house - her father was high up Franco’s military. She imagines herself looking down; sheis feeling dizzy. Shifting,circling, the scene subtlety shifts and tumbles, suffers vertigo too, untilAna is once again alone. A childin the garden; and the noise of the traffic outside.

You often get it wrong. Ana’s mother tells her a story from her own childhood. About a tin she was asked to throwaway. Of course she wanted to knowwhy. We can imagine the curiosity;the rich mysteries placed inside that container when her mother at firstrefuses to tell her. Underpressure the mother admits it is poison; just a spoonful can kill anelephant. Far too fascinating tothrow away, she keeps the tin, hidden somewhere; out of reach of theadults. Later she tells the storyto her daughter. A magic box! Its potions strong enough to change theworld! Now she can do, rather than be done to!

The film begins. A child is walking down the stairs at night, and we hear a man and womantogether in bed. As the childcomes down the voices become more intimate. But something goes wrong, it is like the spluttering of acar after it picks up speed: the man is finding it hard to breathe, he strains,he is in pain… there is a scream;we hear a woman panic. She opensthe door, her blouse open, her skirt undone; she stares at Ana and leaves thehouse. Ana walks in to find herfather dead. She tries to wakehim. Is he asleep? We assume she thinks so. She takes a glass of milk to thekitchen; empties it and washes it in the sink. Odd we think. Odder still she shuffles the glasses round, hiding it amongst theothers. A peculiar child. Is there any sense to what shedoes?

Carlos Saurahas, for a few moments, returned us to the world of our childhood, where theworld is tilted at an odd angle; so that most of it is hidden or strangelyobscured. There is so little we now understand!

Her mother appears. She takes her to bed. Thisis the first of many visits. In aworld populated by uncertainty, with so much experienced, but so little undercontrol, or properly understood, better to fill it with one’s ownimagination. Her dead motherdominates that world, now a mythic matriarch; a musician thwarted by the carnaldesigns of a husband; though later, when older and more reflective, she wondersif her mother, lacking confidence in her own talent, wanted an excuse to giveup her profession. Those simplesigns have become complicated with age.

Other visions are cruder: Rosa words turned into herfather’s furtive fondling; her Aunt killed, because she hit her once, becauseshe terrified her. Children actwithout knowing what they do. Often they cannot understand the consequences of their actions; areunable to perceive the effects on the emotions of their victims. She points a pistol at her aunt and herfriend, and is imperviousness to their reaction. She has no sense of why the adults would be scared; shedoesn’t know the gun is full of live bullets: the idea of the pistol, what itstands for, a gift she says from her father, more important than its tangiblereality; the real threat it poses.

Sound analysis is replaced by dreams and made up stories;often confused with the world outside her head. What really does exist outside Ana’s mind? There are times when we are notsure. Although the film resolvesitself, it aches after truth, and refuses to succumb to the subjectiveimaginings of a young child. Sothe city keeps breaking in, the noise of traffic from a major thoroughfare thatconstantly invades the overgrown garden of the family home.

No fantasy is as powerful as reality. The grandmother refuses to die, shewill not drink the poison; and the aunt will survive a wish to kill her: thetin contains no magic. The milk inthe glass is just milk, and has no deadly substances. The child has begun to grow up. The holiday is over, and the children return to school; thelast scene in the film. You beginto understand what really happened; and you accept the inevitable. You are a child. Things happen to you. You cannot change them; however hardyou wish.

Strange Fantasies

2012-02-17T23:32:00.000Z

Everyone loves the Gnostics. Reading Gibbon the other day I came across this:

The Gnostics were distinguished as the most polite, themost learned, and the most wealthy of the Christian name… (TheDecline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume One)

Years ago I had a discussion with a friend who argued thatno mean or self-centred purpose lay behind Gnostic beliefs. Their ideas, he said, were a sign ofintellectual purity; for what material reason could cause people to believesomething so obviously otherworldly and good?

Ummmm! Let usthink….. What if…

The Gnostics were ugly. Their bodies dominated by terrible sores, scabs, bruises anddefective body parts. Wealthy? Yes. Learned? Yes. But ultimately a social eyesore, best locked away inthe libraries of distant villas, on the borders of the empire.[i]

Wouldn’t it be natural for them to believe that goodnessis within, that it is materially invisible, and that only they, in their secretcults of ugliness, can fathom and explore it? And so begins their ideological war, removing the beauty from life; pulling out teeth and hair; scratching the rich fine cheeks of youngwomen, mutilating the men and tattooing them with obscenities… Not that they recommend theseactions. Oh no. They are far too good, too pure andnice, too cultured and civilised, for that. Rather, it is their influence, the atmosphere theirteachings create, that leads the beautiful people to deface themselves; to riptheir clothes and smear their faces with muck and dirt; those once fashionablesigns of mystic grace.

Gnosticism: the repulsive’s sect.[ii]

Or here’s another theory: the Gnostics were the refined intellectualsof their day. Gibbon, influencedby the ideas of his time, particularly Montesquieu, ascribes their beliefs tothe climate:

… their principal founders seem to have been natives of Syriaor Egypt, where the warmth of the climate disposes the mind and the body toindolent and contemplative devotion. The Gnostics blended with the faith of Christ many sublime but obscuretenets, which they derived from oriental philosophy, and even from the religionof Zoroaster, concerning the eternity of matter, the existence of twoprinciples, and the mysterious hierarchy of the invisible world. As soon as they launched out into thatvast abyss, they delivered themselves to the guidance of a disorderedimagination; and as the paths of error are various and infinite, the Gnosticswere imperceptibly divided into more than fifty particular sects…

What we have here is a description of a specific kind ofintellectual, who loses himself in metaphysical speculation; and which theEnlightenment, of which Gibbon was a major part, was opposed – everything mustsuccumb to the experimental method; all will be science or it will benonsense. David Hume, in his moregenerous mood, as we have seen,[iii] was more circumspect, recognising the need for metaphysics, but wary of itsdangers; its vast emptiness; suggesting instead that we pay attention only to whatwe can know of reality; those tough and often impenetrable facts.

But Gibbon may give us a clue to a certain kindintellectual, of which we see more and more, particularly in the humanities departments of our universities, that other warm climate, whose entire thoughtis pure metaphysics; though dressed in the latest fashionable materialism –Post-modernism.

In the Eastern part of the Roman Empire the wealthy andcultured would have a vested interest in distancing themselves from the realityaround them: don’t look too closely at the source of your wealth, the means bywhich your leisure is secured, their newly minted Christian conscience would have said. Whatever you do, do not stare facts in the face! And how easy it all becomes, to loseoneself within one’s own labyrinths of thought, of which only other culturedminds can enter…

In our universities over the last generation the radicalacademics talk of the power of the text, and of how language ensnares us: theybecome, or so they believe,[iv] just like everyone else, victims of the capitalist system, just like thecleaners and bar attendants earning less than the minimum wage. How easy it is not to see! Even when they clean your computer andoffice floor… Better to explainlife away, with invisible gods and forces that are beyond our control; the marketand globalization…

The complexity of the metaphysics inevitably attracts and compelstheir attention – only the initiated can understand their ugly jargon anddisabled sentences.[v] And the excitement! A mind racingaround its abstractions can reach speeds that a field worker or laboratoryassistant will never master: facts, such boring things, act as necessary breakson our imaginings; they are a check on our reason; but they are mundane, andoften boring; and their accumulation can be time consuming and slow. Tooslow for the busy academic; racing around town on his Vespa.

How extraordinary, when you think of the naturalproclivities of intellectuals, is the rise of the modern world; of Descartes,Locke and Hume. They had a certainmodesty about the world, a scepticism about their own ideas. They are intellectuals that ultimatelycast a doubt on reason; that most mystic of all faiths. How was that possible? Where did they come from? How is it they could see the beauty of the world, and want to questionit…

[i] The Samuel Johnsons of their day:

"[Whowas] scarred by scrofula, partially blind and deaf, afflicted by obsessivethoughts as well as a constitutional melancholy which he claimed made him ‘madall his life, at least not sober’, prone to compulsive movements, rituals andvocalisations (some have recently diagnosed him with Tourette’s syndrome)…" (Helen Deutsch, Pay Me For It)

[ii] Memoirsof a Gnostic Dwarf capturessomething of this idea. Be warned,though, it is a poor novel.

[iii] See my BrodskyII and BrodskyIII for a modern “Gnostic”, withcommentary by David Hume.

[iv] For the 1960s origins of this mentality see AdamCurtis’ brilliant Dream On.

[v] See the Graham Clarke quote in my IsThere Beauty in Hegel?, and surroundingdiscussion. Contemporary ArtHistory is a rich field if you want to find a lot of this stuff.

Wells-next-the-Sea

2012-02-12T23:10:00.000Z

The Black Swan

2012-02-12T22:58:00.000Z

A black swan
On a white pond
And you
On the other side…

A white face
In a black dress
And me
On this side…

Hands lost
In long black hair
It's you
On the other side…

A black swan
Breaks the white ice
Shattering
On all sides…

A silent laugh
In a broken face
It's you
On the other side…

White tights
In black shoes
And me
On this side…

A black swan
On a white pond
And you
On the other side.

A Sea-Grape Tree

2012-02-10T23:31:00.000Z

The Swan in the Evening is a curiouslydivided book. Its first half is ahighly sensitive account of childhood; which captures it evocatively. Rosamond Lehmann’s acute sensibilityrecreating the texture of a child’s egocentric life; its absorption in theirimmediate surroundings, capturing her intense sensitivity; her almost supernaturalawareness; it is a time of ripe vividness where everything has significance;and when particular things, pieces of furniture and the odd plant, are full ofportent. It is a world where somuch is seen for the first time; new things creating explosions of newexcitement; and there is much we misunderstand – our ignorance is ourmystery. It is a time when everyday is a new day (and is made just for us!); and yet always there is the fearof getting lost – in strange woods or amongst the incomprehensible sentences ofour parents.[i]

Lehmann’s description of that world closes with oneincident, which at first seems out of place, but later proves to be prophetic:she has a vision. It is an oddexperience for the reader, and initially very confusing, for it appears in anexcellent, but nevertheless conventional, autobiographical fragment. It is as if we came across George Eliotin the parlour suddenly speaking like William Blake…

Once upon a time, but when, in actual time, I have noidea, a sudden searching convulsion of my whole ground of being overtakes me inthe garden. I am mooching alonealong the gravel path that runs between the lawn and Lover’s Walk. It is autumn, and the sun has dropped. I am not Amaranth Aurora or BerylDiamond, or that obsessive spell-maker, murmuring as I stroll or crawl aroundOM MANI PADME HUM. I am almost noone, kicking up amber drifts of chestnut leaves, aware of the dark greenthickets of laurel on my left, and on my right of the hoary expanse of lawn,ringed by blue deodars and cedars and already crisping with frost and sparklingin the opalescent haze of dusk. Ilook up and see the moon quite high in the sky, a moon nearly at the full,singular in its lucence. I stop tostare at it. Then somethingextraordinary happens…. A flash…as if an invisible finger had pressed a master switch and floodlit my wholefield of vision. At the same timethe world starts spinning, and I am caught up in the spin, lifted,whirled. A voice splits the sky,splits my head…. And yet there isabsolutely not a sound in the garden, not a barking dog, not a shunting train,not even a late robin; and although the detonation is within me it is alsoimmeasurably distant, as far beyond the moon as I in the spinning garden amimmeasurably below it. It is theVoice of God, of this I am certain. He has addressed me, he has pierced me with a word, an arrow with myname on it, imperative…

All over in a second. I am put down again; dropped out. I hurry back into the house, hoping notto be seen because I must look different. I dash upstairs and seek the mirror in my bedroom; scrutinize my poorlylit reflection…. Not changed.

God has pointed at me. He has not touched me.

The second half of the book is dominated by the sudden lostof the author’s daughter; and her own absorption in spiritualism, as she seeksto commune with her. She believesabsolutely, as we later read in the afterword to ASea-Grape Tree, where she writes as iftelepathy is as natural as the telephone – they are simply different linesconnecting to different realms. This is what confuses the reader: the extraordinary is placed amongstthe ordinary, and treated as if there are no differences between them. So talking with her dead daughter inthe bedroom is as natural as conversing with the lollypop man on a zebracrossing. Both occupy the naturalworld, she believes, although a slight oddity sets her views apart from theirsurroundings; a source of ridicule, blamed on others’ ignorance. The scepticthus finds herself sitting in the first row of a fundamentalist sermon; andlistens to what she assumes is either nonsense or symbol spoken as if theywere matters of plain fact. Nor isit just the eccentric content of the belief that puzzles us; even moredisorientating is the believer’s reactions to that belief. There is nothing fragile or doubtfulabout it. So certain are they!behaving as if there is nothing unusual about what they think; the ideas simpleand tangible as a cup of tea. They do not recognise how bizarre they appear, to us, the liberal andsophisticated, who read their views as a sign of mental decline; and whichfrustrates us, and which we find hard to accept, as for years they have seemedjust like you and me; though better and more profound - Rosamond Lehmann thegreat novelist, with unusual insight into our emotions… Yet now we know she converses with deadbodies. It is the moment when anillusion is punctured; and we lose that homely faith that we can fullyunderstand another person; even our friends or colleagues who we believediffer little from ourselves, even when dyeing their hair in a melange of pink,orange and purple.[ii]

AsI have written before, it seems the very sensitivity of this writer leavesher open to a faith like spiritualism; the crisis of her daughter’s death shiftingher focus away from the natural world to her own inner space. So although we are confused, andsometimes angry,[iii] frustratedat a person who refuses to recognise what we regard as something obvious –there are no fairies at the bottom of the garden, dear -, we receive an insightinto the peculiar workings of a mind whose mental universe predominates overempirical fact: a place where mental images compete on equal terms with mundanereality. It is a sort of art, butwhose source material is within the mind itself; although Rosamond Lehmannwould not accept this: for her the spirit world is a real place; jostlingsomewhere in the interstices of the material universe.

To understand A Sea-Grape Tree properly the earlier autobiography has to be read. Only then do we pick up its resonances;and properly appreciate a reality we could so easily mistake for metaphor andsymbol. This novel, her last, issoaked in the themes that dominate the latter half of her autobiography;fashioning them into an art that is not altogether successful. For Lehmann is too much the believer,too enclosed within her own mental space, her mysticism, to adequately evoke anew world for us to see.[iv] She doesn’t give us enough material; isnot prepared to compromise with our own doubts and scepticism, is incapable ofclearly seeing her world from outside of herself; and thus we must eitheraccept or reject her vision wholesale. Inevitably there is a touch of unreality about it; for unless we sharethe faith we will not believe in all the pictures she creates.[v] There are moments of her usualbrilliance, but too often she appears unable to remove herself from her ownlife; her own stultifying consciousness. This book is thus not a success, but it does help us to see hergreatness; it helps us clarify why critics have tended to misrepresent, andperhaps diminish, her: she is much much more than a writer who writes aboutlove.

Although in a narrow sense there is much truth to thisview. Rosamond Lehmann does writeabout love; and nearly all the time! In this book Rebecca says she is consumed by it – this West Indian islandis a brief retreat from the cataclysmic end of an affair. And this emotion, in all its variety,is a thick seam that runs through the other main characters; particularly EllieCunningham, Johnny, and Sibyl Jardine. It also appears the animating source for the actions of otherpersonalities we hardly see: Johnny’s wife Jackie, Mr de Pas… Love then iseverywhere, although it vibrates at different intensities.

When we first see Rebecca she is in a mental crisis. Her mind fractured, she lives an innerlife that is separated from the island’s population by an almost reflexivesurface – so unstable and so unfixed is her sense of self she is reluctant togive out her identity; and keeps her responses to questions and group reparteeto a minimum. Her hosts call herAnonyma when she refuses to give her name. Already we feel echoes of Lehmann’s own loss, and her ownmental crisis over the sudden death of her daughter. Already the book feels too close to life, and we areuncomfortable with it; uneasy with the confessional elements, which alsodistract us, directing us to the real life of the author, as we scan thesentences for signs of her own personality, instead of exploring a createdworld through her characters’ consciousness. When Mrs Jardine appears it feels as if life has invadedart, and conquered it; Sibyl really Sally, speaking once more from thedead… It feels too forced, toocontrived; too self-conscious; the author lacking the energy to properly turnall this material into art; and so it feels more like a book than a work oflife – a strange paradox. This maybe the reason she recapitulates old themes: they are like old, obsessional,memories we try constantly to resolve to one’s present satisfaction; althoughthe only satisfactory solution is forget them; letting them fade out throughlack of thought. One consequenceis that love overwhelms this book; whereas the previous ones both evoked andanalysed the complex shifts of emotions that underlie it. Before, when in her prime, RosamondLehmann had the detachment to get below the governing ego, to evoke the forces(the Will?)[vi] that gives it texture and often shapes and controls it. Love, on the other hand, is tooentangled with our conscious selves, it includes too much me, and thus is adanger to the most profound art; which requires a touch of impersonality.[vii] Love is much too much, it is the mostselfish of the emotions because the most personal. With a falling off her talent she cannot get beyond theseparticular feelings and so conforms to conventional opinion; losing herbrilliance she seems to justify what others have written…[viii]

…there is “emotion evident in the situation”, an emotion which attachesitself naturally to the events there described. But it is not this emotion,common to all human begins confronted with like situations, that turns Dante’saccount to poetry. The quality which is peculiarly “poetic” issomething arriving automatically, independent of the poet’s will, and finding itsplace in the poem’s “complexity of detail”, in particular “phrases” and“images”. This “detail” is thrust up from below the levels of consciousness.(C.K. Stead discussing and quoting T.S. Eliot. TheNew Poetic. My emphasis)[ix]

The levels of personality that Eliot is discussing appearbelow not only our consciousness, but below our emotions too; that is why thegreat artists can evoke them so clearly and (dare I say) objectively. Their origin a sense of an inner,pulsating, calm that can push out images and ideas when the mind is properlytuned in to receiving them. Thisrequires switching off both our self-consciousness and our emotions – at themoment of creation. Lehmann in this book can only momentarilyreceive these signals; for the storms of her life had still not settled whenshe came to write this book.

Her encounters with Mrs Jardine, which occur in dreams,highlight this book’s weakness when compared to the excellent TheBallad and the Source. In that book Mrs Jardine is anextraordinarily powerful and attractive presence.[x] Here that forceful character remains inthe memories of the inhabitants; and through the life of Johnny, an airmanparalysed in a plane crash, who, in her usual way, she idolised and tried tocreate in her own image: thus the books he reads and the decorated beach hut inwhich he lives.

… a sort of cottage orné, set upon stilts, with a high-pitched roof of rosy shingles, its walls stuccoed a deepshade of tawny pink; ornamented with shell encrustations: silvered bronzeshells, pearl, honey-coloured, milky flushed with rose and violet; shells ofall shapes and sizes in convoluted patterns…

Johnny lives inside yet another myth Sibyl Jardine hascreated; seeing the hut we remember her house on the hill, and her distincttastes, highly feminine, and redolent of the aestheticism of the 1890s. The hut exists under a sea-grape tree… The symbolism seems obvious, but isnevertheless obscure… is the treeSibyl’s shadow?

The island is a sort of exotic hospital for Rebecca; a shortstay that heals her devastated love. Emotionally febrile Rebecca is susceptible to the attractions of anotherman, and she falls for Johnny’s beauty. The novel becomes an exemplary study of how a woman partially recoversfrom an affair by starting a new one: the wilful emotions demand it. However, the symbolism suggestssomething else, and gives an odd feel to the book: the affair is also anexpurgation; but not of her faithless lover (whose name we are never given) butof Mrs Jardine. Sex, which alwaystake place in the hut, is not only a moment of ecstatic bliss but a victoryover Sibyl’s memory; by clamping the older woman’s protégé between her thighs Rebecca vanquishes her dominatingpresence. By competing with Sibylon her own territory, and winning, she escapes at last from her influence… Later, we find that Sibyl died shortlyafter seeing Johnny canoodling with her granddaughter Maisie; her jealousyovercame her – for no matter what the age gap there was always a sexual elementto her worship of younger men: she idolised and created them, and desired themtoo.

But it is never properly explained why Sibyl should commandsuch a lasting influence; and why this need to conquer it – this is theartistic failing of the book; and stems, I surmise, from the author’s own needto expunge a painful presence; Sybil an analogue for her own daughter. She thus becomes an alien object in thebook; spoiling its artistic integrity.

Perhaps we would have accepted her presence if the novel could haverecaptured the power of the original character. However, we are given only the voice of Mrs Jardine, and thesentimental memories of those who knew her. She returns to Rebecca in a dream, and because it is a dreamthe encounter between them is much more equal than before. We hear her voice, but she has lostmost of her charisma; and the tensions she was able to create are now easilyresolved: living now only inside Rebecca’s mind she has been domesticated. True to life, no doubt; but suchmatter-of-factness weakens even a realist novel; while this one aspires to themythic.[xi] The tensions inherent in this work thataspires to be both real and poetic, empirical fact and metaphysical presence,are compressed to breaking point with the entry of such a weak Sibyl. She is too mundane for the spiritworld. She needs to be more alivein this one!

The day ended with a gift toAnonyma, the first, from Johnny. Without warning, Johnny turned, as if – as if acknowledging, orsurrendering, and possibly with a touch of irony beneath the look he bent onher: Johnny turned suddenly and gave her the taste of joy. Pure, piercing, unmistakable,astounding taste of joy.

What happened? A late swim from Johnny’s boat bystarlight and the light of Louis’ lantern, leaving Ellie to prepare supper inthe hut. He swam far out, awayfrom where she circled quietly just beyond the lantern’s soft corona. Then back he came, she watched him,thrusting through the water with powerful strokes, his great shoulders loomingas he came abreast of her and passed her without a word or glance. Then suddenly he turned, swam back,swept her into his arms, gave her a kiss. Not smiling. Sayingnothing. A cold, salt kiss. Cheek pressed to cheek they remained;then broke apart. The boat camegliding up on silent oars, she swam away to shore, crossed the white sands,dressed again as usual behind the hut, joined Ellie who, mixing avocado salad,exclaimed with dismay at sight of her wet hair so recently fortified with eggand brandy.

So much happening in such a tiny time capsule. The sudden recognition of love, and itsfall into actuality; captured beautifully with the play of colours and themovement of the boat; with that sudden shift to land. We see it all as one continuous movement, though each bit issplit up into its own bright particularity. Each moment a distinct atoll that will later appear in all its richvividness; and on which the obsessive mind will recall again and again andanalyse continuously… as here: Rebecca is looking back over what happenedearlier in the day; which is reflected in the language; initially analytic andabstract, while vivid and very concrete descriptions then dominate the secondparagraph. The latter is herexperienced memory; the former is how she thinks about it; giving theexperience a heightened value in words that are overwrought and prophetic.

Is her affair with Johnny a brief interlude? A tropical island in an otherwiseconventional life… in herafterword the author suggests it is: there was to have been a sequel, in whichthe affair would not be resumed. This seems right; the atmosphere of the island, and the strange,intense, nature of the relationship suggests it is too attached to a particulartime and place to be repeated in a different context. Lehmann’s failure to write a sequel and the long gap betweenthis book and her masterpiece, TheEchoing Grove, also suggests somethingelse: this island, and the brief ecstasy of the affair, which removed the agonyof her abandonment, is a symbol of her own creative life. After the death of her daughter, shecould not return to the mainland; and was left scanning the horizons for aworld she could see but not properly describe; for only the initiated couldgrasp what she envisioned.[xii]

[i] Vladimir Nabokov’s SpeakMemory accomplishes simple featsof imaginative reconstruction.

[ii] Gilbert Ryle, who I discuss in another Lehmannpiece, also makes this mistake. Except he doesn’t realise what he is doing – he believes all humans arethe same! It is an error thatarises out of his behavourism; the belief that because we are made of matter wemust somehow be almost inert: our minds are a substance to be acted upon (byvarious stimuli) rather than something that acts under its own motivation; andone that creates and thinks independently of the immediate stimulus. (See the discussion in Bryan Magee’s ModernBritish Philosophy.)

Acontrary position is Chomsky’s, who argues that language clearly demonstratesthe falsity of such a view: its fundamental structure is independent of theimmediate environment. (See inparticular his CartesianLinguistics and OnLanguage.) KonradLorenz, writing just over a decade later than Ryle, wrote that the internalworking of the body have their own stimulus, and do not need unconditioned orunconditioned responses. (See his OnAggression). A discovery that preceded Ryle’s book,but which he would not have been interested in – because, he would have argued,he was not a specialist in these areas! Philosophy was all he knew. It is the credo of the specialist takento absurdity. A popular view of the time.

[iii] This is reflected in the reviews of The Swan in theEvening, where some reviewers simplycould not accept why so an intelligent and respectable a writer should believesuch evident nonsense:

“One critic wrote (privately)with distaste of ‘descriptions of mediumistic séances which you have obviouslycome deeply to doubt.’”

Lehmann’sresponse is characteristic:

“Icannot spot anything in my text that might give that impression…”

Otherreviewers tended to tip-toe around the book’s paragraphs, uncomfortable withtheir content, but unwilling to openly criticise; afraid of hurting the author.

[iv] In the earlier book, we read:

“Nowthat I know that death considered as extinction is an illusory concept based onthe ignorance, or prejudice, or the intellectual arrogance or snobbery, or thenatural dread or not unnatural despair, or the built-in death-wish – the goûtde cendre – of blind humanity; andthat life goes on – relentlessly you might say, whether or no we fancy theidea, and certainly in accordance with cosmic laws which human reason isill-equipped to understand… nowthat I know this for certain…” (my emphasis).

Atthe very least these are highly controversial statements. And yet the author has no doubts… atall! This is naturally verythreatening; for it suggests something impenetrable about her; something rigid andalien; that will not be moved or changed; and thus opposed to the naturalcondition for most humans, who are relatively plastic in their interactionswith other people. No doubts! Butgiven the perplexities and confusions of life it is natural to have doubtsabout it; and we would expect intelligent, cultivated and liberal intellectualsto be particularly acute to the inconsistencies and puzzles the worldconstantly displays for our bewilderment. However, for Lehmann the spirit world is more certain than most of whatgoes on in our mundane world, outside, that is, of direct experience; or at least that is how shemust be read.

Andthis is perhaps the key to this strange puzzle: outside our direct perceptualexperience all our knowledge of the world is a mental construct; which by itsvery nature is uncertain and contains elements of doubt (the external world andour knowledge about it and two different things, and they overlap imperfectly – see the footnotes in my DropoutBoogie for more comment). With Lehmann the spirit world hasceased to be a faith or a mental construct – it is direct experience; but of aparticular kind. For the author itis direct contact with that world beyond appearances, what Christians call God,Kant the thing-in-itself, and Schopenhauer the Will. For the more sceptical it is perhaps some direct experienceof the workings of the mind itself; whatever that experience may actuallybe… The certainty clearly suggestsso.

[v] And this comes out in strange ways:

“…Asif galvanised by an electric battery her face started to twitch throughout thelayers of rouge and powder caking it. Next, one eye fell open, winked. Presently she exhaled a long tremolo of beatitude; murmured:

“‘Ah,what a treat to drop off after the long day’s toil. A mor-or-ortal treat. Hark now!’

“Violentlyshe flung her head up; assumed the look of one intently listening.

“Intruth the throbs, brays, moans of a recorded dance band had began to float fromfar across the bay.”

Notethat archaic “Hark now!” Miss Stayhere comes across as a piece of high Victoriana; a sort of music hall (orDickensian) automata – the facial features appear as something that happens toher, of which she is scarcely aware. The comedy of the scene softens the impact of our first encounter withMiss Stay’s mediumistic power; out scepticism is assuaged when she mistakes aphonograph for the voices of the spirit world.

Onecan justify the sort of place that attracts this kind of character: an imperialisland where life is cheap and the social conventions more elastic, and whereremnants from previous generations and the eccentric collect to soak up thelast years of their lives; pickled inside their oddity. But here there is something just alittle too archaic, something too stagy, about such a character as Miss Stay(note the name! and all its implications): not enough life has been put intoher, so she remains too mechanical, falling off the edge of caricature. Too much thought about she is notenough felt; and thus is not a fully created being (or at least not createdenough to come properly alive).

Weaccept such a minor character; and in all their eccentricity. But to alsoaccept as quite normal her powers as a medium she needs to be more fullyrealised; we must grasp a sense of the reality inside her; and it must collidein some way with the scepticism of the other characters (those substitutes forourselves). That is, RosamondLehmann must see Miss Stay both from the inside and the outside, the latterrequiring a double distance: from her own belief and our agnosticism.

Inthis scene the strains on the book are beginning to tell… This is reflected in the author’safterword, where she describes the novel’s location as a sort of Prospero’sisle; “part poetic, out of time, part realistic…” This is a hard combination to get right; and odd momentslike these expose the novel’s weaknesses; we see the rust on the chain linksbinding these different elements together.

[vi] See Found You! for more discussion.

[vii] Lyric poetry may be an exception. But even this is debateable. Perhaps the greatest lyric poet of lastcentury, Marina Tsvetaeva, who at first glance seems an exception, writes quitedifferently about the source of her poetry. Like Rimbaud (I is another) Tsvetaeva writes of the artisticimpulse as something other; impersonal and outside her daytime self:

“Shynessof the artist before the object. He forgets that it is not himself writing. Vyacheslav Ivanovsaid to me… ‘Just make a start! Bythe third page you’ll be convinced there is no freedom’ – meaning I shall findmyself in the power of things, in the power of the demon, merely a humbleservant….

“Notwithout reason does each of us say at the end: ‘How marvellously my work hascome out!’ and never: ‘How marvellously I’ve done it!’ And not: It’s come out marvellously’,but it’s come out by a marvel, always by a miracle; it’s always a blessing,even if sent not by God.

- “And the amount of willin all this?

- “Oh, enormous. If only not to despair when you wait bythe sea for good weather…

“Andlistening is what my will is, notto tire of listening until something is heard, and not to put down anythingthat wasn’t heard. To be afraidnot of the rough-work page (criss-crossed in vain searches), nor of the blankpage, but of one’s own page:self-willed.

“CreativeWill is patience.” (Eponymousessay in Artin the Light of Conscience)

Lovehelps to generate the emotions, which provide the energy for creativework. But art requires more thanemotion. Thus in an earlier essay Tsvetaeva writes about the importance ofjudgement of the artist (weaker in the lyric poet, she believes): that sense oftaste, a feeling of just-rightness which indicates when a work is good. Emotion doesn’t have this particularkind of subtlety; this artistic tact; and to equate art with it is to mistakethe locomotive for the train driver, and both for the hidden engine that powersthem. It is one of the reasons whypeople in love write such bad poetry: the page is just one of the outlets, justone station stop, for all the emotional energy they need to release; but theirtalent, which is linked to but separate from those emotions, does not exist forthem to give it proper shape. Touse the poet’s terminology: the willed self overcomes the listener; and thesubterranean currents, that include both the content and form of the artobject, are lost in the surface noise, the purely physical expression of aparticular emotion.

[viii] Conventional opinion being simply an opinion is merelya simplification of the much richer source material; it is an abstraction fromlife. This book is so close to thestereotype because the artist here is less evident than the person, and so thelatter’s ideas, their conscious mind, which is often merely reflexive, is toomuch in the ascendancy.

[ix] See my TheUncertainty of the Poet and Flowersare Lovely When You Laugh at Themfor more comment.

[x] Was the author influenced by the impact of Hitler whenshe was writing it? The book waspublished in 1944.

[xi] See the author’s comments in the afterword.

[xii] As, perhaps, she herself, acknowledges:

“ASea-Grape Tree is generallyconsidered an unsatisfactory work. It would ill become me to argue for it; but perhaps I might just ventureto say that Anonyma’s conversation with Sibyl Jardine was intended to be atelepathic one. Telepathy betweenthe incarnate and the discarnate is much less uncommon than is generallysupposed. Sibyl is made to speakas she spoke on earth, as in The Ballad and the Source, in a somewhat didactic or mandarin style; but I seethe experiment was rash and courted irritation, head-shaking, even mockery froma few critics ever willing and never afraid to wound.”

Twins

2012-02-05T22:29:00.001Z

In deciding whether to leavemy comfortable corporate VP job at Pillsbury to start over at Burger King, Iasked myself one question: Will this put me in a better position to becomepresident of a business? I did notask myself the wrong questions: How hard will my new job be? What will my friends think if they seeme making hamburgers in a quick service restaurant? What will I do if this new position does not work outas planned? As a CEO of Self, Iknew that those questions were not the right ones to be asking. (The‘CEO of Self’, by MichaelTomasky)

The CEO of Self? This is business management speak forthe ambitious bureaucrat. And likemost of its ilk it sounds clunky and stupid, overwhelming simple minded andkitsch, to those outside the HR department and the senior management team. Inside, in the rarefied air pockets ofthe company’s HQ, it is a different matter: always they have to acquire theirown language, to protect them from the world outside; and their own staff. Like most theology it contains anenormous amount of nonsense; and some little sense; the sense the bait thatcatches them. But thenonsense? Oh, a sign of priestlydepth and profundity – essential materials for the management consultant, itadvertises their quality. HermanCain, Burger King and republican candidate, is an adept at both the bureaucracyand the language game and proclaims loudly that he is a true believer; a signfor most of us that he is unreflective and pathological; like a conman tellingus he is expert at fooling people.

And this is the reason some people want to vote for him...Of course, most worship his power and wealth. Weak people who jump on a strong man’s cavalcade to acquiretheir charisma; in order to bully people, if only vicariously. It is the ancient story of thedemagogue who promises to overcome the eternal conflicts of the politicians, byoffering a strong man who will satisfy the people’s needs (corporations, itseems, the source now of these new messiahs, by offering the magic of theircommercial success). This is thekind of thing the weak love:

… I was not afraid to take charge, make decisions, andfocus on the critical things I needed to do in order to get the projectmoving. Again, seeing myself asCEO of Self, I was determined not to fall into a comfort zone of letting otherpeople, no matter how competent and well-meaning, make the decisions for me.(Translate this into political terms and we have a Supreme Leader decidingeverything – odd that some Americans look to North Korean for their model ofdemocracy.)

Herman Cain appears to be a self-centred, and hard-hearted,though not unintelligent, fool - perfect CEO material. He is the twin of Steve Jobs, as arecent biography shows us only too clearly.

… he told talented peoplethat their work was shit until they came up with something good enough for himto take credit for… Isaacsonrecords countless instances of Jobs’s ‘binary’ thinking: people were ‘gods’ or‘bozos’ and their ideas were ‘amazing’ or ‘shit’.[i] These weren’t just things he said to tohis employees: he said them to waitresses, hotel clerks and shopassistants. Despite hissophisticated deal-making and relentless focus on the quality of his products,Isaacson’s biography suggests that he spent most of his life behaving like athree-year old. (Amazingor Shit, by Mattathias Schwartz)

A selfish, arrogant and narcissistic personality, whobullied a whole corporation of people into making his billions. There is only one difference betweenthem. Cain was a bureaucrat, andtherefore mildly useful. Jobs, amere salesman, was able to camouflage his lowly status by making himself into aproduct, a consumer object d’art, andselling it better than anyone else. He had more style, and was clever enough to pick up Zen rather FeelThe Fear and Do It Anyway. He was also lucky in the industry… And so he became an internet icon, asymbol of the new creative economy, made on the back, it has to be said, of thePentagon – both of his main products were developed by US government defencespending; it was only later they became commercial propositions; for entrepreneurslike him to sell. [ii] Never having made anything, unlike Cainwho at least learnt how to prepare burgers, Jobs is the ultimate Americandream; perhaps the reason he is so popular. You don’t have to make or create anything to be a success, is his message: other people do that. Youjust sell. That is talk… Copy Steve Jobs and you too canconvince the world that you are the most important person in it.

[i] It’s difficult to know what to make of this. Do I detect some irony from thebiographer? Probably not. More likely he has succumbed to themanagement speak; where the obvious is magically transformed into themarvellous by a simple tweak of language.

Creativity,or at least as I understand it, involves going beyond simple dualisms. But then Jobs is here acting like a consumer:I like this, I don’t like that; like a teenager going through the racks atPrimark… The reason for hissuccess? Precisely because hewasn’t creative? Steve Jobs justanother regular guy, who knew what the people wanted because he was one himself.

[ii] “In fact, financiers long been shy about funding riskyventures. Henry Ford couldn’t get a dime out of them when he wasrevolutionizing auto production. Financiers weren’t at all interested incomputers from the late 1940s through the mid-1960s—the Pentagon and CensusBureau funded the industry in its early stages. Ditto the Internet, which wasinitially a project of the military.” (NPRhack apologises for Wall Street,Doug Henwood)

Daytime TV

2012-02-04T14:25:00.000Z

A red coffin on a white truck, and I the only mourner. Gone! To be squeezed and squashed, stamped, into an ironpizza. Cars! Suddenly so big, so enormous, when yougive them away, to be broken up and buried in some suburban knackers yard. Giving it away! Something so large! So expensive! And all the money you have spent on it. Valueless now… too young to be anantique it is too old to be wanted. Though suddenly I want it, as it is carried away; wobbling on the backof a flat bed truck; disappearing down the industrial estate. I am sad for a while; for a few lonelymoments. Cars. They dominate our lives. But then they are gone, and veryquickly they are nothing; and we are free once more.

My first car. Then I really was sad…

No longer allowed to daydream on the open road. Or read on the railway track. And how peremptory was itsdemands. Look after me! Those tires need air. Check the oil! I am getting dirty today, I need adrink; feed me feed me… Like ayoung child needing constant attention… How boring they are. And so jealous, throwing all yourdreams (and books) away. Youcan’t do that. Protect me! Demanding you look straight ahead, with 100% concentration: day-dreamingagain you stupid moron! So vain abouttheir appearance… They’d have youout there every Sunday with the rollers and hairdryer; jealous of the old Fordwith the quiet husband.

Cars. They area novel with the same plot, and where all the details are the same; even thecovers resemble each other. Lifein the front seat: a sofa on the crowded road before a TV with just onechannel.

Howboring! Living only to stayalive. There is no time foranything else. Cars. They turn us into beasts, machines,instruments of work, the holidays, that weekly shop at the localsupermarket… The dreams are gone.The books are in the attic. Theydomesticate us. Practical men weare grown up at last… Our motherswill be pleased.

Amsterdam

2012-02-03T00:13:00.000Z

Leaving the World Behind

2012-02-03T00:07:00.000Z

Softly, so carefully,

Quietly, he loses himself

As slowly he sinks away.

A crowd of pines

Watch at the water’s edge.

As he drifts gently down

The lake quite leisurely,

So quietly, closes up behind him.

Raucously gulls

Gossipover the grey clouds.

We Passed It (Long Ago)

2012-01-29T23:20:00.001Z

It is a border you cross. Its location is unknown. Even when you pass over it you are unaware of its existence;for you can hardly see it; certainly not clearly, maybe not even at all.

You have crossed the border and the country changes; moreexotic in all sorts of ways, it is a desert and a jungle combined; although doyou do not recognise it – so many features have remained the same. Your emotions so wild, so dense, soentangled; a slight pain a sandstorm of excruciating happiness. You have arrived in a new land, but ittakes years for you to see it. One day when you are miles away from that crossing, and you look backfrom a high mountain range, you watch it shimmering on the horizon; figuresmoving slowly around it, inhabiting what for you is now an old nation. There is the sky, the grey waves, therusset sand, and between them black silhouettes, like crochets on a stave. The border, that beach, that one day,so long ago; that moment when everything changed for good; your life transportedinto a new country.

Through the hills and over the dunes they ran. Young and happy, and extra ordinarilyinnocent, they ran onto the beach, their faces in wild mobility; happinessdarting all around their cheeks and eyes, their mouths and free flowinghair. So excited in themselvesnothing can keep them still. Thewaves are an ecstatic chorus beside them. Love is in their veins; it is a centrifugal force, wanting to burst outfrom every orifice. So free dothey feel! Love’s imprisonmenttheir perpetual release…

Jia-Li has escaped the family home. Her father, an old-fashioned patriarch,has arranged her marriage to the son of an old friend. Already he has an incarcerated herolder brother inside an unhappy union, and he doesn’t even think about settinghis daughter free. She is a womanand therefore a piece of property, a pretty table or an antique chair he canarrange at will to decorate his beautiful and immaculate house. But she is in love with Ch’engDe-wei. Must she give him up? Must she be like her brother whorejected his first and only love – Ch’ing-Ch’ing? After the announcement of her marriage she visits Chia-senin his study. She asks him theonly question that matters: are you happy? He cannot answer! He refuses to accept there is such an emotion – it all depends on themeaning, he says. He lackshonesty; a sign of his weakness, and the ease with which he submitted to hisfather: a smashed vase the extent of his rebellion. Too weak to answer directly, to accept the consequences ofhis own behaviour, he evades Jia-Li’s direct question with an intellectualgame. Of course he is not happy,but we sense there is more to this reticence: the overwhelming feeling ofknowing he is not free. He has notonly accepted his father’s choice of wife, but also career and we assume manyother things to: his morality, his conversational habits, his social codes; theopinions he must believe in. Hehas become a creation of his father; a subject of tradition; a captive ofprovincial society. He has becomejust another painting to hang on someone else’s wall. That last train trip back to his parents, leavingCh’ing-Ch’ing behind, was the border hecrossed; leaving behind the big city, the university life, a future of endlesspossibility, for the narrow confines of the small village, an unhappy marriage,and a family business too old-fashioned and soon to be out of date. He has given up his freedom. He has lost his individuality. And he has accepted a way of lifethat is doomed. He is a failure,conforming to a society that needs him to transform itself. Towards the end of the film Chia-sentells his sister that he should not have believed in his father. He was not a source of wisdom orforesight or (as Jia-Li knows) morality (she saw him seducing a nurse). Jia-Li runs away to marry the man sheloves.

The railway station in Jia-Li’s hometown is an obviousborder crossing. But it is not soin fact: this is the subtlety of Edward Yang.

Ch’eng De-wei is innocent and shy, sensitive and also weak;his one act of rebellion marrying Jia-Li. Though in truth it is no rebellion at all. There are no family conflicts or tragedies, he simplyaccepts Jia-Li’s proposal, and does not have to fight her family, for they knownothing about it. Jia-Li is littlebetter; her escape from the family home is her only act of resistance; made outof desperation and against the grain of her character. Weak and naïve they are at the mercy offate and tradition. Fate broughtthem together, and it will be tradition that will destroy them.

Jia-Li’s friend Hsin-Hsin is a pretty and lasciviousschoolgirl. She is vital andcanny, and is always chasing after boys (and school teachers). She is attracted to the playboy A-Ts’aiwho has a friend Ch’eng De-wei. Asthey flirt and fancy each other up they leave their two friends sitting shylyside-by-side. Their sensitivity abarrier too strong to break down, even during the prelude to their friends’sexual congress, as they listen to Hsin-Hsin and A-Ts’ai unwrapping eachother’s clothes, their eyes ever hardly meet as they sit close to each other,silent in a room. They embarrasseach other with their own presence. But slowly their relationship grows, the words pulled out like a dentisthis patient’s teeth. It is onlyafter the marriage that the sentences will begin to flow… They run onto the beach, the waves achorus to their song…

Tradition soon takes over. A-Ts’ai is a powerful personality and marries the heiress ofa very rich businessman; and is promoted to president in one of hiscompanies. To secure his positionhe invites his oldest friends to become senior managers. Immediately they are successful, andtheir success is cemented by intense group loyalty and interaction. They work and play together, with longdays followed by long nights, of drinking, eating and, we assume, fucking:A-Ts’ai will always be attractive to the girls. Ch’eng De-wei was not made for such a life. But he is not strong enough toresist. In the business his stressgrows. At home his wife resentsher own loneliness. Cracks areappearing on the walls of their prosperous lives. There is a crisis when shediscovers her husband is having an affair: he has put the wrong letters in thewrong envelopes, and Hsaio-Hui visits to tell her - she doesn’t want Jia-Li tosee what he has written; which may be something embarrassing about thecompany. It is all verycivilised. His mistress, moreexperienced and sharper, has more insight than his spouse: too weak to make adecision he ran away, and purposely got the letters mixed up; so that the angerand unpleasantness would be we dissipated when he returned to Taiwan, shesays. Too weak! The cracks spread, get bigger and thewalls collapse: Jia-Li asks Hsaio-Hui if she loves him. Love! That is for children, she replies. She has not been so fortunate. She has had to create her own life, and make her own way;she could not afford such sentimental luxuries. For her life is simply a series of tasks to complete, andpeople are useful tools, to enable her to succeed. Highly rational and very practical Hsaio-Hui rises to thetop. The country is a new, modern,capitalist world, and provides opportunities to those who are clever enough totake them. She is clever and she does take them.

Ch’eng De-wei is too emotional, too attached to his wife andthe idea of the family. He is toosmall a man to be placed in the position he occupies. This new world is too big for him and he cannot hold itup. Atlas’ knees creak; elbowswobble, the palms sweat, the globe slides and falls… ThatDay, at the Beach is the day he disappears. Has he drowned? Has he flown away… to Japan… to America? It is a mystery. He is a weak man, but is he strong enough for suicide? Does he have the strength to live thelife of a fugitive? He has run offwith 50 million yen.

It is a devastating moment. It is the border I have been talking about. But borderlines are never simple; theyare rarely a single line you cross. For there are the gates and fences, the passport controls; sometimeseven the sea and the Pacific Ocean… Just before he disappeared Jia-Li had an epiphany; and she felt theworld’s fullness inside her. Atlast she understood and accepted her life; realised that she had been unfair toCh’eng De-wei, not understanding his job, the pressures he was under, his ownunhappiness. Now, suddenly, shehas wonderful insight… But soonshe is called to the beach. Acountry bumpkin and a stupid policeman are the border guards, the instrumentsof her discovery; of her husband’s disappearance and her ownenlightenment. We hear conflictingstories and it is unclear if the man on the beach was indeed her husband; thoughit is clear that she will never see him again. A-Ts’ai comes to meet her, and fills in the businessdetails: Ch’eng De-wei manipulated by his mistress, who used him to rise up thecompany, where she is now an independent power, has ran away with a largeamount of its money. More rationaland calculating than the men around her Hsaio-Hui has outmanoeuvred A-Ts’ai,who is too influenced by the emotional bonds to his friends, and who kept hisoldest, closest friend in the company when he should have let him go. He made threats of course, but ultimatelyhe was too weak to remove Ch’eng De-wei – old ties are just too strong tobreak.

The day on the beach is a dislocating moment. The scene with Jia Li walkingalong the wet sands, a watery mirror reflecting the blue sky, the clouds andherself, is touched with artificiality; it is reminiscent of some greatAmerican Technicolor classic of the 1950s; while the witnesses could be fromKurosawa; and the frogmen searching for Ch’eng De-wei bring back the marvellousscene of Reinhard’s disappearance in Die Zweite Heimat. Arethey both from Antonioni? Or this is a curious reflection of my own personalcinematic history? Having seen theearlier film later; was it actually Edgar Reitz who was influenced by Yang? On the border there are strangeperspectives, dislocations, memories come and go; and cinema history enters andleaves again soon after…

Jia-Li walks away from the beach, and like a swimmerreturning to the sea’s surface, we have successfully navigated theextraordinary layers of memory that Yang has overlapped in this film.

We have returned to the beginning of the movie; thirteenyears since the two friends last met, in Taipei’s train station. So much has changed, althoughmelancholy still seems ever present; and yet Jia-Li, like Ch’ing-Ch’ing, isfree. She is a strong, maturewoman, created by that day on the beach. A little too pat, perhaps, that final summing up by Ch’ing-Ch’ing at thefilm’s end, as Jia-Li is walking confidently down the road. Too easy an endingfor such a rich and complex film; but it contains a truth none the less. To escape the habits society createsfor us is a hard and emotionally wrenching task; and for those not strong enoughit will destroy them. But escapeis possible. To do so one mustlive with the loneliness and the unhappiness; which can be life-enhancing too;creating new possibilities and providing a richer country to live in; althoughit can take many years to realise it; many years to see that border crossingJia-Li has long since recognised.

No film is easy when it looks to find the simple truths.

No Man's Land

2012-01-27T23:16:00.000Z

Remember the good old days? When you were young and still a child. Do you recall the hostility, thecruelty; the violence just below the surface, ready always to pop up and showits impish face and flash its lightweight fists? You do? OK. Good. Now wecan talk properly. What were you: the bully or the miserable victim? Come on now. You can tell me. No hiding behind fancy games or intellectual fantasy. I want it straight: did you make otherpeople’s lives a misery or were you floored by the verbal abuse and cruelteasing; was it you at the bottom of a pack of brutal kicks and ineptpunches?

Good, good, I am listening. However, you will need more than some old memories tounderstand this film.

You are older now. Are you wise and self-reflective? You realise, then, how often you blame others for your ownpredicament? Confident in yourself-righteousness; you act like a man without sin; attacking others withoutcompunction; for their success is their moral failing – you, of course, are pure in your ownpoverty. You recognise that too,do you? Good. Then you know whatit’s like to accuse your parents, the school, the present government, andRebecca the class beauty, the pages of your exercise book her ever white andblossoming thighs, for your defeats and ultimate failure. You know very well the fantasies youcan create and live inside quite comfortably. Once upon a time you were told you were outstanding, andeveryone predicted you would rule the world; or at least appear on ourtelevision screens. But now youare just another anonymous clerk; and the country and your own generation hasdefeated you. So you needsomeone to blame; for it cannot be yourself. But you are old now, and you are wise. You are also an artist. You know it cannot be so easy; that itcannot really be everyone else’s fault; that it was you who threw your father’sinheritance away; the best champagne poured into the local river...

Blame no one and you will set yourself free. How big an artist you must be tobelieve that! Rejecting all thatself-pity and moral condemnation because others succeeded while you failed. Oh! How tough that is. Toaccept we live in not some zero sum game where your failure depends onanother’s success. If only it wasso easy![i] But, if we are serious, we must put away such childish notions. Think like a man and youwill be one. And you are artist,are you not… Therefore you willknow the reasons for your failure; and will have the imaginative sympathy toportray it in your work, through general ideas represented in individualcharacters. For as an artist youwill think about society, and all its victims, and not just about yourself; howelse can you communicate your pain? If you are a great artist you might go even further. Trying not to represent this defeat assome tragedy, some extraordinary event, fit only for heroes and theunfortunate, but rather as something banal; just another everyday occurrence;like an old woman tripping over a paving slab. The dividing line between mundane respectability and quietfailure and terrible defeat and moral ignominy just a few seconds of madness ina lifetime of prosaic activity.

You follow me? Good. You will understandthis film. And you may, if you arelucky, enjoy it.

Schools live inside their communities; and they cannot beseparated from them.[ii] Edward Yangknows this. He understands thenature of school, he wants to capture its atmosphere, and he would like us toshare its pain. So he makes a filmthree minutes under four hours long.

It is large family, but the story is centred on XiaoSi’r. It is a extremely long filmand yet his fate is decided in the first few seconds, by his failure to getinto an elite school because of his failure in one exam: Chineseliterature. This is neverexplained; though it has a high symbolic value; happening in the year theKuomintang retreated to Taiwan. Eleven years later we see him as teenager in a night school; a placewhere academic excellence is unusual. However, he stands out because he is bright and is considered as themodel student; although the latter isn’t quite true. Early on we see him inside a back lot watching the makingsof a film; a gentle parody of Yang’s own trade. Caught he later steals a torch… He is a good, moral, normal student; but like all such –like you and me – he has his weaknesses. This is what a society or a community can play on and corrupt; and whythat first failure is so important – he is not strong enough to resist thepressures of his impoverished peers.

The image of the clever, rule-abiding student stays withhim, almost to the end, even as his resolve gradually, but imperceptibly (oneof the miracles of the film), deteriorates. Thus his first demerit is unjustly given because against hiswill the gang leader copies his paper (both caught out by the mistakes hepurposely included to embarrass him). His final demerit is justified and means he will not go to university –a minor disaster for his parents. This fall is reflected in the family’s responses to it. The father angrily protests the firstdemerit, insisting on the injustice of the case. The last one, which occurs after he has been arrested by thesecret police, possibly under an anti-communism purge, and is a broken man,shows his moral decline. Then heargued aggressively for justice but now he pleads expediency – you cannot letmy bright son fail. Before even tolie to oneself about the injustice of the case, even if that meant success, wouldbe too big an evil: if you can lie about something so small and trivial how easyto lie about the important things in life; he says to his son at thattime. Now nothing matters but tosurvive. It is an enormousfall. It is the loss of humandignity. Principles are sacrificedto survival; a man reduced to a cowed official. Of course there is an agency: the authoritarian governmentof Chiang Kai-shek in the father’s case, and the local environment in the son’s– the gang violence that surrounds him, and infects the school yard andclassroom. And yet Xiao Si’r’sfinal fall is all his own work: he didn’t have to commit murder. The film knows this, the clever student’sdemise is not determined by his circumstances, but it creates an atmosphere anda cluster of social factors that push him in a direction where his crimebecomes possible. However, thatfinal act is his own, of which only he can take responsibility. The artist is more insightful, as weknow, than the political activist.

Xiao Si’r lives within two communities; that of the adultsand the children. The latter’sworld is overwhelmingly shaped by the former; the school structuring theirdaily routines; the parents setting the values and attitudes that fix a childinside the existing society. Against this world of engrained habits and enforced moral codes theenergy of childhood fights back. The gangs are its most obvious symbol. An early fight and chase, the result of a territorialintrusion by one gang member into another’s area, is a metaphor for thesedemographic battles, as Xiao Si’r transverses both the adult and childhoodrealms, and tries to keep safe from the gangs regular invasions into his ownlife. Somehow one must keep one’sindependence from both the mob and the adults; but how easy it is to succumb toeither one. And all this is sonatural. We have all done it. It is the never-ending fight forfreedom and human dignity; the thug and the subservient disciple equallyrepugnant to what is best in the human animal.

It’s over twenty years ago now, but my abiding impression ofTruffaut’s Shoot the Pianistwas that the cops and robbers episodes wereactually incidental to the film; just one other event within the central charactersrelatively mundane lives; the main focus of the story. Whether such an impression is correctof that film it is certainly true here. The gangs are a big presence in the schools (and in the movie) but notall the characters belong to them. And while the most shocking scene is the massacre (mostly executed inthe dark – a wonderful touch); the violence does not dominate the film; at mostit exists as a potential threat; and is thus a realistic depiction of schoollife. They are a backgroundpresence, like sea below the promenade; mostly ignored until it a very largewave crashes over the barrier wall…

He is hassled by Deuce, standing in for his brother asleader of the Little Park Gang, because he saw him with a girl one lateevening in an empty classroom. Three hours later we learn the full import of this encounter, and whyDeuce has been picking on him. Nevertheless, Xiao Si’r joins no gang, and continues what appears arelatively uneventful life. His brother is not so lucky, getting into debt he becomes too close to arival gang; and resorts to pawning his mother’s prized watch to keep himselfalive.

He meets Honey. The leader of the Little Park Gang. Honey is on the run for killing another gang leader butreturns to Taipei, in what appears to be a bid to secure this authority – hisbrother is on the verge of negotiating a truce with one of the gang’srivals. Honey is charismatic. A hard and violent thug he is also softand intelligent. He talks aboutthe books he has read whilst in hiding; he talks of Pierre in War and Peace who at the time of the French occupation of Moscow believed he was destined to meet and kill Napoleon. Later Honey initiates an almost suicidalconfrontation with the leader of the 217 Gang… he is acting out Tolstoy’s novel…

Later Xiao Si’r looks to protect Honey’s girlfriend,Ming. An attractive and equallycharismatic character; whose mother is a domestic servant – a poor andprecarious post. He is in lovewith her. However, it is thislove, set against the background of gang warfare, that leads to his gradualdecline and his final tragedy. Hedoesn’t understand Ming, and projects, we think, something of his idealisationof Honey onto her. Honey hasbecome a myth, and for Xiao Si’r his girlfriend must conform to the behaviourhe associates with such greatness. Yet Ming is attracted to boys, and is easy with her emotions and herkisses; she is not going to be faithful to Honey or his memory. This begins what appears a quickdescent for Xiao Si’r and a change in the tone of the film – we sense a slightatmosphere of misogyny. With a few exceptions the gangs are all male, yet thewomen seem able to navigate between and around them without any harm. HoweverXiao Si’r cannot accept female sexuality and Ming’s emotional freedom. She must conform to his idea! She cannot and in a moment of rage hekills her. The whole film has beenthe backdrop to this event, and yet the murder has a contingent feel – if thatlast meeting had been just a little different they would have separatedsafely. This is the success of thefilm: we can understand why Xiao Si’r thrust the knife into Ming’s guts; but wecan also see that it was not determined; it was in itself a chance event; amoment of bad luck…

The film ends with a broken radio coming to life and thereading of the names of the university graduates to an elite university. It is a brilliant ending with XiaoSi’r’s eldest sister by the washing line listening to hear her own. Was it there? I don’t know!! But I think so. My guessinfluenced by the resurrected radio and Yang’s own That Day, on the Beach; a film that for all its melancholy has an upliftingfinal scene – women, it seems, can succeed. Are they the symbol for democracy and modernisation inTaiwan?

[i] Joseph’s Roth’s Confessionsof a Murderer is structuredaround a character who believes just this.

[ii] Diane Ravitch in a NYRBessay notes that US schools have always been in “crisis”; a term whichalways reflects current political preoccupations such as the influx of EastEuropean immigrants at the beginning of the 20^th century, the civilrights movement of the 1960s and the corporate attacks of today. Her point is a simple but effectiveone: the schools have always been in “crisis” because they reflect thecontemporary society; in this case a highly unequal one with a large populationof the very poor. The one timethat saw large improvements in educational performance of black children was duringthe time of desegregation in the 1960s and 70s, which was also a period ofrising equality.

Little Humans

2012-01-22T22:36:00.000Z

One day shortly after herreturn Deborah decided that the time had come to take down Menuchim’s basketfrom the ceiling. Not withoutsolemnity she turned the little one over to the older children. ‘You must take him walking!’ saidDeborah. ‘When he gets tired youmust carry him. In God’s name,don’t let him fall! The holy manhas said that he will get strong. Do him no harm! From now onthe children’s troubles began.

They dragged Menuchim like amisfortune through the town. Theylet him lie, they let him fall. They ill endured the scorn of their comrades who tagged after them whenthey took Menuchim walking. Thelittle one had to be carried between his two brothers. He could not put one foot before theother like a human being. His legsshook like two broken hoops, he stopped in his tracks, he collapsed. Finally Jonas and Shemariah let himlie. They stuck him in a corner,half-covered by a sack. There heplayed with pebbles and with the dung of dogs and horses. He ate everything. He scratched the lime from the wallsand stuffed his mouth full of it, then coughed until he was blue in theface. He lay in the corner like ascrap of rubbish.

Sometimes he would start tocry. Then the boys would sendMiriam to him to comfort him. Dainty, coquettish, with thin hopping legs, ugly hate and disgust in herheart, she would approach her ridiculous brother. The delicacy with which she stroked his distorted ash-greycountenance had something murderous in it. She would look about carefully, right and left, and thenpinch her brother in the thigh. Hewould yell and neighbours would look out of the windows. She pulled down her mouth in anexpression of grief. Everybody hadpity on her and asked her what was the matter.

One rainy summer day thechildren dragged Menuchim out of the house and stuck him in a vat, in whichrainwater had collected for half a year. Maggots swam about in it, decayed fruit and mouldy bread crusts. They held him by his crooked legs andpushed his broad grey head a dozen times into the water. Then, with pounding hearts and glowingcheeks, they pulled him out in the joyful and gruesome expectation that theywere holding a corpse. But Menuchimlived… (from Joseph Roth’s Job)

The cruelty of children. How quickly we forget… Thus we have the moral panic over a child killer, and all the oldmoralising about societal decline that accompanies the investigation and trial,like petty gossip in a funeral cortege. The surprise is that more children are not locked up for murder. Is it the strength of life, so vitalwhen young, that protects the victim, enabling Menuchim to bounce back up againand again like a rubber ball? Despite all the horror stories is it actually very hard to kill achild? That is, after the firstfew vulnerable months (a time when mothers have relatively little maternalfeeling for the baby; to allow for the possibility of infant mortality; an historically commonoccurrence).[i]

We see children as innocent and fragile. But are they really? Might they not be tough and cruel, andit is the adults who are actually the sentimentalists, projecting all theirinnocence onto what are little more than domesticated beasts. Is that why somemen and women do not like children: they are afraid of the wild animal…[ii]

Later in the novel the brothers and sisters come to acceptthe disabled Menuchim, and even to love him; for by now he is incorporated intothe habit of their lives, part of a family to which they are bound by affection. Shemariah,Jonas and Miriam are not amoral murderers, but simply vibrant childrenconstrained by the familial chains of caring for their feeble brother. He holds them back. He denies their freedom; and makes thema subject of ridicule for their closest friends. He is a dam holding back an overflowing reservoir; and he istoo weak to protect himself. Solife must have its say. The watermust run. And Menuchim must betormented by his loved ones.

[i] See the review of TheEvolution of Childhood by MichelePridmore-Brown in the TLS, 01/10/2010.

[ii] “I found it very helpful that I had at that time somuch animal behaviour going on all around me, upstairs, in the garden and onthe hearthrug. Small children areso literally and unmistakably both animals and human beings that they show upthe absurdity of refusing to bring these two notions together.” (Mary Midgley, TheOwl of Minerva):

However,Midgley argues against the popular conception of animals as aggressive andirrational, instead she writes of their generally civilised behaviour; althoughthere are significant differences across the species. Man, she suggests, tends towards the more violent end of thespectrum:

“Therestraint apparent in wolves seems to be found in most other social carnivores,and well armed vegetarian creatures too. Where murder is so easy, a species must have an adequate inhibitionagainst it… Solitary animals and those less strongly armed do not need thisdefense. Lorenz gives chillingexamples form roe deer and doves, in both of which species stronger memberswill slowly murder weaker ones if kept in captivity with them, because in a freestate these creatures save themselves by running away, not by relying on thevictor’s inhibition. And it isclear that man is in some ways nearer to this group than the wolf. (Beastand Man)”

Later,man acquired weapons and thus became more dangerous. Although a counter-trend is increasing number, and itsassociated urbanisation, creating inhibitions that reduce potential violence.That is, the more organised human life becomes the closer it gets to thecooperative societies of the more social animals, and where inter speciesviolence is reduced by finding ways of displacing it through gesture andsymbolic action.

Soif these children’s actions are not beastly what exactly are they? Humanity in its purest form? Do they represent our distantancestors; those hunter gathers some people appear to like so much?

Theabove passage suggests something much more complicated. Mendel Singer’schildren acted because of a conflict within their natures – between thevitality of their being, a desire to just be and act, and the adult commandthat they restrain themselves to look after a weak brother. Trapped within the cage of such adultresponsibility they rebelled… Their actions arose out of the situation. Moreover, one could argue that it isthe parents who are to blame, that their judgement was at fault, by expectingtoo much from their children; by giving them too much authority and believingthem more sympathetic than they could possibly be. That is, Mendel and Deborah wanted Miriam and her brothersto be human when they were still overwhelming animal.

Love

2012-01-22T10:57:00.000Z

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,

Guiltie of dust and sinne.

But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,

If I lack’d any thing.

A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here:

Love said, You shall be he.

I the unkinde, ungratefulle? Ah my deare,

I cannot look on thee.

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame

Go where it doth deserve.

And know you not, sayes Love, who bore the blame?

My deare, then I will serve.

You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my heart:

So I did sit and eat.

George Herbert

The Same Old Thing

2012-01-21T11:42:00.000Z

Religion. Do weknow what it is? A belief inGod: is that it? For many peoplethis is so. Yet can God really bethe cause of faith? It does notseem possible, for something so strong and long lasting, and yet so nebulous:for ultimately he is our creation, an idea that exists at our behest. Can something so individual and soabstract be so powerful? Did Godreally build the castle that defends the faithful against all attacks; and is hestill the handyman, repairing the walls and the creaking gates… Such a lot of work for him to do; andnever suffering from arthritis or a bad back…

It is not facts and arguments, those favourite friends ofthe philosophers and theologians, that account for God’s vitality, for mostpeople are unaware of them. Theyare the weakest part of any religion, though the process of reasoning almostcertainly solidifies the faith for those who engage in it; a kind of mentalritual for the priestly caste. Forreason is easily adapted to the needs of any belief; moulded to whatever theoccasion demands: a factual statement to commit someone to an act of worshipcan easily become a symbol to repulse a too insistent truth and threateningdoubt; the calling cards of the geologist and historian; those unwelcome guests to the deity's house.

Why love this God and not that one? Why not worship in the football stadiumrather than the synagogue…

Is belief, perhaps, just a strong and passionate attachmentto an idea, which a particular kind of God objectifies? Can it all be reduced to some words ona page and a few sentences inside the head we are educated into believing bythe culture into which we are born? Do we learn Christianity like mathematics and English Literature; StPaul passed down like Euclid’s geometry? The source of the teacher’s script some seer in the forgotten past, astrong and inventive character who indoctrinated a band of disciples; hisvigorous personality overcoming their doubts and common sense. Was Jesus Christ the original LudwigWittgenstein? The Gospels a precursor toPhilosophical Investigations?Joseph Roth suggests otherwise. Hehas an answer for us to consider.

‘When will it be Sunday?’thought Mendel. Once he had livedfrom one Saturday to the next; now he lived from one Sunday to the next. On Sunday visitors came – Miriam, Vega,the grandchild. They broughtletters from Sam, or at least news of a general nature. They knew everything. They read the newspapers. They were running the businesstogether, now. It was still goingwell; they were all industrious…

Mendel Singer is in New York, having left the Pale ofSettlement to remove his daughter Miriam from between the legs of the Cossacksshe loves so much; and to live with his son Shemariah, who emigrated to theUnited States years ago.

His life has been hard. A poor religious teacher, Mendel has always struggled formoney; and made his own life more difficult by keeping to his religiousprinciples. And like many Jews thefamily has had to make large sacrifices to keep their sons out of the Russianarmy; a death sentence for many at that time. Because they were poor they could only save one son –Shemariah. Luckily his brotherJonas was keen to join the army: he wants to be a simple peasant and soldier;for he desires horses, strong drink and lots of women; the Russian girls richfields for his ripe seed. Mendelthus loses both sons: Jonas is no longer a Jew and Shemariah lives in adifferent country. And Mendel’swife no longer loves him, and he has lost his desire for her a long time ago. Mendel is poor, and his life is hard,but in Zuchnow he keeps his faith, teaching the Bible every workday andobserving the Sabbath once a week.

He instructed twelvesix-year-old scholars in the reading and memorizing of the Bible. Each of the twelve brought him twentykopecks every Friday… On Friday[Deborah, Mendel’s wife] scrubbed the floor until it was yellow assaffron… Outside, before the door,she aired the furniture, the brown wooden bed, the sacks of straw, the scrubbeddeal table, two long, narrow benches… As soon as the first twilight misted the windows, Deborah lighted thecandles in the plated candlesticks, threw her hands over her face, and prayed…

Her husband came home, insilky black; the floor shone up at him, yellow as melted sunshine; hiscountenance shimmered whiter than usual, and blacker than on weekdays gleamedhis beard. He sat down, sang alittle song, and then parents and children sipped their soup, smiled at theplates, and spoke no word. Warmthrose in the room. It exuded fromthe pots, from the platters, and from their bodies. The cheap candles in the plated candlesticks could not standit, they began to bend. Tallowdropped upon the red-and-blue checked tablecloth, and became encrustedimmediately. The window was thrownopen; the candles manfully took hold of themselves and burned peacefully to theend. The children laidthemselves upon the straw sacks, near the stove, but the parents sat awhile andgazed with troubled solemnity into the last blue flames which rose up out ofthe sockets of the candlesticks and wavered back, a fountain-play of fire. The tallow smouldered, thin bluethreads of smoke drew upward towards the ceiling from the embers of wick. ‘Ah!’ sighed the woman. ‘Do not sigh,’ warned MendelSinger. They were silent. ‘Let us sleep, Deborah,’ hecommanded. And they began tomurmur the nightly prayer.

At the end of each week theSabbath dawned thus, with silence, candles, and song. Twenty-four hours later the Sabbath sank into night; thegrey procession of weekdays began, a weary cycle.

In New York, under the burden of family tragedy, and theguilt of leaving their disabled son in Russia, Mendel loses his faith. Would he have lost it in Zuchnow? If he had followed the same routines,his life sustained by the age-old colours and smells, the voices of his pupils,if he had remained laced up in the corset of his home village, would he havegiven up on God? We cannot know,of course, for sure. But theending is suggestive: after a miraculous incident he regains his faith andreturns to Europe; the source of all his beliefs. The peculiar quality of America, its centrifugal forcespulling people’s lives apart, separating faith from mundane activity, have helpedweaken the walls that secured his ancestor’s religion; which he imbibed withthe soup and the songs and the candles of his parents and the daily regime –religion never left the house and workplace; it was ingrained into itsroutines. At Zuchnow the ritualsof work and prayer would have protected his faith. They would have continued tobuttress his Judaism, supporting it through even the hardest, the mostdespairing, of times. Of course hemay still have lost it. But suchapostasy would have been much more difficult – the rest of the community wouldmake it almost impossibly so. Therituals would have been too strong, absorbed into the body, into Mendel’s verybeing, they would have overcome the weaknesses of his mind; like hoops around abarrel they would have held his doubts in place. In America he has nothing to do, and there are otherdistractions: the constant change of unexpected things, the newspapers, thebusiness successes of his son and the increasing fissiparousness of his ownfamily (they left Russia so that Miriam would not go with a Cossack; in Americathey accept she will marry one – an American Catholic). All the bonds are weakening. Each day religion takes up a fewminutes less; becomes smaller and smaller, until it disappears like the lasthairs on an old man’s head.

Is it ritual that keeps the faith alive; embedding religiondeep inside one’s habits, imprinting them onto our mind and very body. Think of the scene above and how theSabbath is intimately linked with the Friday washing, the warm soup, the songs,the silence and the day of rest; that time of joyous melancholy. Religion is a strong-bodied wine thatis absorbed through the skin like water into fertile earth. The words are mere decoration: the rotelearning itself a ritual, turning the word into flesh and blood.

Religion is part of life and cannot be separated fromit. It is not ideas or words oreven a sermon, but our arms and legs and our stomachs. No wonder it can so easily resist thecharms of Bertrand Russell and Charles Darwin; and accommodate itself to otherfaiths – all religions are themselves a mixture of different ideas and culturalpractices, which they have absorbed to create their own synthesis. Only when the process is reversed, whenthe intellectuals seek to return the religion to the purity of its originalconception, and the body is asked to submit to doctrine, does the religionbecome metaphysical – fundamentalism is the attempt to reduce our abundant lifeto a few simple myths.

There are many religions even within Mendel Singer’s ownfamily. In a marvellous sceneMiriam gives herself to the sun; while at the same time listening to the songsof the nearby barracks; imagining all the soldiers are singing to her! Her beliefs are her own beauty and herfinely tuned senses. Even Mendelhimself is touched by the pagan gods: on the first week of Ab all the men goout into the fields to greet the new moon. Deborah believes in a more mystical Jewish faith, of magicmen and prophecy; not the mundane acceptance of one’s fate and a simple trustin God’s work, that is her husband’s. So many religions held in place by the daily routines, anchored by thatweary cycle; of weeks that do not change, reinforcing all that has gone before. The past has created the present anddetermines the future. It is therefore quite natural for Deborah, hearing thenews that both Jonas and Shemariah have been called to the army, to run to thecemetery and to pray to the dead… The force that controls their lives, the ritual that shapes theirexperiences, and holds them in place, was created long ago. The barrel is an ancient one; and wasmade to last for millennia.

Break that cycle and faith is no longer supported by thedaily round; so that the hoops rust, loosening the staves until they eventually shift andfall. Not protected by the body’shabits belief becomes a separate part of life; an activity apart; so that itgradually fades, becoming vestigial. Like cheap tallow candles it bends and bends… is almost out…

[Then t]he window was thrownopen; the candles manfully took hold of themselves and burned peacefully to theend.

Shemariah moves to America, and acquires a new faith. It is the beginning of the end of hisold one. Now called Sam, he nolonger thinks of following his father and becoming a simple teacher of theBible. Business will be hisreligion. America is a new godwith its own august words and rituals: of speed and efficiency; of making moneyand reading the daily newspapers. Mendel can see its problems, and refuses to be acculturated; he will notbe an apostate to his faith. Nevertheless, the daily impact of this new world slowly weakens anddestroys those old rituals, and his Judaism becomes a rickety house easilyblown over by a heavy storm…

It would take a miracle for his faith to beresurrected. Can it happen here inNew York City? Other novels ofRoth offers the possibility of hope: the miraculous interventions of supermenwho change the game entirely: Brandeis,Lenz,Zwonimir… Everywhere there is a messiah who cansave you. In the 19th century they were called geniuses, in the 20th century they arespies, entrepreneurs, revolutionaries and officials of various kinds. In Job it is a doctor that cures Menuchim, allowing him tofind and master his outstanding talent – for music. It brings fame and prosperity, and gives him the opportunityto find his father. A miracle! Mendelbelieves. The old religion returns.

He looked at thephotograph. Although the picturewas worn, the paper dirty, and the portrait seemed about to dissolve into ahundred thousand tiny molecules, it looked up from the programme withvitality. He wanted to return itimmediately, but he held it and stared. Under the black hair the forehead was broad and white as a smooth, sunnystone. The eyes were large andclear. They looked directly atMendel Singer. He could not freehimself from them. They made himhappy and light-hearted, Mendel believed. He saw the light of their intelligence. They were old, and at the same time young. They knew everything; the whole worldreflected itself in them. It seemedto Mendel Singer, looking at these eyes, that he himself was younger; he was ayouth who knew nothing. He mustlearn everything from these eyes.

Years ago, when he had begunthe study of the Bible, these had been the eyes of the prophets. They knew all, they betrayed nothing;they were full of light.

Norwich

2012-01-15T20:59:00.001Z

The Biggest Bully in Town

2012-01-15T20:52:00.000Z

After reading a David Bromwichreview what struck me is that civilisation simply means whatever powerhappens to be dominant at any particular time. The powerful republic or empire sets the standard, andmeasures all other cultures against itself. Thus the Roman Empire dismisses its German barbarians, theOttoman rulers their European ones, as they march forward into history. Today it is “The West” that carries thebanners and flags, and it rules because of its particular DNA, or so a popularhistorian argues: competition, science, property rights, medicine, the consumersociety and the work ethic.

Buthow does it set this standard in the first place? By conquest. Yet strangely of the six factors that Niall Ferguson says makes the Westgreat war is not one of them. Howodd. How instructive!

Tantrum

2012-01-14T23:50:00.000Z

Vanity is a terrible thing. You submit a poem, it is published, and a few monthslater you read it in the magazine. How wonderful! The words anelegant mosaic, the sentiment captured so clearly; although, on reflection,maybe you caught it just a little too well; but still… You meander down the page, wistfulabout the sixth line in the fourth stanza, when your eyes are attracted to acrowd of words massed heavily to its left. How annoying! Do I have to share this space with others? Why can’t I have thehouse to myself? You laugh at thisconceit, thinking of a large sequence decorating each and every room. You imagine the bathroom, wondering howto squeeze a Ramayana reference into it; it should be appropriately elephantine,for a bathtub needs its irony; soapsuds amongst the classical gods; in darkblue on light green walls. What! Those words are againattracting your attention. Really,they are a noxious crowd; chanting abuse at a close friend. The phrases are harsh, but the sloganssound just a little too justly…. This you cannot accept. Ina rage you light up a few paragraphs, and throw them at the editor.

In his review of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s new book Tim Winter makesa number of very salient points about some aspects of European politics.

The increase in anti-Muslim political groups
The wide spread use of a caricature of Islam
The wide spread use of a caricature of the West
An increase in simplistic attacks on Islamic faith and life.

He then goes on to describe Hirsi Ali’s latest work, which reflectsboth these sentiments and practices:

Nomad is a morality play about the evils of Islam, portrayedas a dark Other in the author’s struggle for happiness and enlightenment… In general this autobiography ringstrue; still, there remains something formulaic about her pilgrimage from Muslimto atheist certainty, in a book in which everything seems crafted by a steadyteleology, to show “why I chose America”… One sign of the probable genuineness of her story is the tone of herpolemic, in which she effectively exchanges one fundamentalism for another.

Islam is reduced to a single extremist cult. The European Enlightenment has become aDisney remake, financed and produced by the institutes and columnists of theAmerican Right. It is reasonagainst faith, and where all the good guys on our side; even if some of themare fundamentalist Christians - Hirsi Ali tried to get the old Pope to supporther holy war.

All very curious. And shows how little any of this has to do with the actualEnlightenment; many of its defenders apparently ignorant of the very thing theyworship and would have us believe. For in the 18th century it was the Catholic Church, certainlynot Christianity or religion per se (Voltaire himself was a Deist), that wasthe great enemy for most of the French intellectuals. So imagine if someone hadtold Voltaire that the Pope was a friend of reason and progress! Yet in the strange and imaginary worldof the Neo-conservatives and fundamentalist liberals it is, bizarrely, not thehead of the Catholic Church that is the great Christian villain but theArchbishop of Canterbury who, because he is rational and reasonable, and wantsa peaceful accommodation between the major monotheistic faiths, is condemned as“a cultural and moral relativist”; the worst kind of abuse for the upholders ofthis (very) peculiar Enlightenment faith.[i] Better it seems to exterminate thebrutes than to talk to them as men and women;[ii] just the opposite of purportedly civilised behaviour;[iii] and the culture of the Philosophes themselves,where rational conversation and sociability were extolled over extremism andenthusiasm.[iv]

Winter then describes a number of solutions that Hirsi Aliproposes to deal with her (Islamic) enemies.

Religious specific immigration tests
New immigrants on arrival must articulate Enlightenment values
European triumphalism to replace Multi-culturalism: we must show “the evident inferiority of Muslim beliefs and social practices.”[v]

She has faith that a person’s views can be changed by verbalbullying, rather than by reasoning; and that this approach will integrateMuslims into the host society. Itis a view of humanity that suggests individuals are merely passive receivers ofmessages from outside authorities; a strand of thought that does indeed comeout of the Enlightenment, and which reached its peak in the middle of the lastcentury, when it seemed to dominate the social sciences; behaviourism takingthe empiricism of the 18th century to its logical extreme.[vi] For the Enlightenment had itself simplifiedthe views of John Locke and David Hume, who both emphasized the role of thesenses and experience in acquiring knowledge but who did not deny the internalworkings of the mind; they put it the background because it was too complex tounderstand; preferring to concentrate on what they believed they couldinvestigate. However, it wasa view that accorded well with anti-democratic and elitist though progressiveviews of the time;[vii] and whichin later centuries became the inspiration for both social reform andauthoritarian control – the plasticity of people could create opportunities forimprovements in their living conditions andbe a means of securing their obedience.[viii]

Hirsi Ali’s geo-political analysis is equally enlightening:

Israel-Palestine is not about territory but about “a holy war in the name of Allah”.[ix]

Winter ends his piece by saying, surely correctly, that theWest is not best served by this kind of simple-minded rhetoric.

The West’s faltering effort to win in Afghanistan requiresthe winning of hearts and minds, and gestures such as the Swiss minaret ban(which Hirsi Ali supports) are likely to intensify Muslim disdain for Westernhypocrisy and Islamophobia… [genocidal remarks by Ernest Renan are then quoted]… Such rhetoric inthe end strengthened the backlash that ended the imperial dream. America should take note, and chooseits friends according to its better instincts.

The review seems reasonable, and highlights that curiousphenomena, the secular fundamentalists, and their ignorance of what theypropound – the Enlightenment.[x] They take one aspect of 18th French century thought, its attacks on the Catholic Church, and which arose outof its influence, its repression and its political reaction, and make itrepresent the whole.[xi] The result? We end up with a terrible caricature;that even if substantially true would have to be modified to take into accountlater historical events; which ultimately would transform them.[xii] The most obvious example is therise of nationalism and the state during the last three centuries; and whichhave replaced Catholicism and the Catholic Church as the focus of reaction andblind faith.

The review seems to have captured the Neo-conservativeessence of Hirsan Ali’s views; while Winter’s concluding remarks areinstructive in a different way, revealing some of his own assumptions about theWest: a more liberal approach is justified on instrumental grounds; with wordsreplacing actions as the determiner of political change (how often do we seethis!) and America is treated as somewhat benign – if only it would act on its“better instincts”. Yet it seems likely that anti-Westernism would greatlyreduce, possibly to zero if we discount the lunatic fringe, if we stoppedinvading the countries of the Middle and Near East, and removed our support forthe region’s dictators. Thus inAfghanistan the best way to win “hearts and minds” is not to change therhetoric but to simply stop killing people, and leave the country; providingreparations and the support so it can be rebuilt[xiii] (although the longer NATO stays, building up its client regime, the harsherthe potential conflict when they finally do pull out. How to achieve a withdrawal while controlling the violencethat it in turn will generate is surely the most important issue in the Afghanwar, at least for its inhabitants.)[xiv] Thus the problem not is some culturalmisunderstanding based on intellectual arrogance, but an urge to conquest,which has remained remarkably consistent over the last three hundred years;with only the material interests changing – fossil fuels replacing theprotection of the British empire at the main imperial concern in the region.[xv]

Two weeks later the TLS receives a letter:

Sir, - In the issue for January 21 I was glad to find thatby an accident of layout a poem of mine had been printed next to a photographof Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but the shine of juxtaposition was rather dulled by TimWinter’s review of her new book. Personally I can’t see why she thinks that all the religious Islamic menwho behave murderously towards women would behave less murderously if theybecame atheists, but surely it isn’t hard to see why she would hope so. If “there remains something formulaicabout her pilgrimage from Muslim to atheist certainty”, wouldn’t that bebecause there was something even more formulaic about the determination of menin her religion – or in her local branch of that religion, if you wish – tomutilate their female children? Just such a dreadful thing happened to her, yet she wishes for herassailants nothing worse than a change of mind, while they, for her, wishdeath.

And why shouldn’t Ayaan HirsiAli, no matter how enslaved to the American Enterprise Unit [sic], find theArchbishop of Canterbury one of the “accomplices of jihad” and “a culturalrelativist” (her phrase each time,and each time quoted scornfully by her reviewer), if the Archbishop is so keento open a window, be it ever so small, for sharia to make its way into Britishlaw? You don’t have to be anatheist to decide that the Archbishop, one of the most learned men of hiscalling, is, on this issue, as dense as plutonium. When Ayaan Hirsi Ali hears about sharia getting within ahundred miles of any democratic legal system, she feels it like a knife, or arazor. Is that so hard tounderstand?

Apparently it is. At a time when British police havetruly distinguished themselves by at last asking potential victims of honourcrimes to report death threats, we have a piquant state of affairs in which TimWinter, a lecturer in Islamic studies at Cambridge, thinks that the first thingwe have to understand is the “twentieth-century Muslim debate on Islamic lawand modernity”. But surely, whilewe wait for the results of that debate to come in, the first thing tounderstand is that the men of the Islamic minorities in the democraticcountries should be prevailed upon to honour the law of the land before theyconcern themselves with the supposed honour of their families. They simply must be induced, if not bypersuasion then by punishment, to stop cutting up and killing their women. Otherwise there will little hope forIslam within democratic borders.

Nominally concerned with howIslam is being provoked by “this mobilization for a… kulturkampf”, Winter seems reluctant to face just how provokingIslam itself can be. He wasexplicit enough when he condemned terrorism. “”Targeting civilians,” he said, “is a negation of everypossible school of Sunni Islam.” That left in the air the question about all the schools of Islam that weren’tSunni, but at least he seemed aware that the matter could be decided onprinciple, in conformity with the law of any free country, and was not up for aprotracted learned discussion within the religion. With regard to genital mutilation and honour crimes, heseems harder to pin down. The“debate on Islamic law and modernity” is all very well, but we want issomething better than the silence of the majority on the subject: we want aclear condemnation, and especially from the intellectuals. Notoriously, Tariq Ramadan, whenpressed, was unable to give this. It’s Tim Winter’s turn, and I hope he won’t complain that he has beenput on the spot. He was on the spotfrom the moment he picked up Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s book. She outranks him. She might know less than he does, but what she does know, she has felton her skin.

CLIVEJAMES

Tim Winter’s response: there was no reference to femalegenital mutilation in the book.

The illiberal liberal. There are so many around these days; they fill up our newspapersand the heavyweight glossies…[xvi] All those guys and gals we thought were our mates in the early days of the1970s – remember how we felt about Amis, Hitchins, Melanie Phillips, and evenClive James back then – we now discover are old bigots. Have they changed, become scleroticwith age; or where they always like that, just that we didn’t notice? Their illiberalism camouflaged by otherthings, and our own innocence; for we were young then, and they were not thatmuch older, with all the glamour of literary success; stars that brightened ourown dull universe; in Telford or Merthyr Tydfil. The local librarian the nearest we ever got to literaryfame.

Right from its origins there has been a tension withinliberalism. We see it with JohnLocke who, whilst he supported freedom of worship for the individual – hedidn’t think people should be coerced into changing their faith, an attemptthat he thought was anyway doomed to fail: it could only achieve an appearanceof obedience, though the performance of the outwards forms but with no internalbelief -, was wary about it on political grounds. Here he made exceptions to Catholicism, Islam andatheism. The former two becausethe religion was tied to an external political power; the latter because it waslinked to no supernatural authority; and was thus free from societalcontrol: contracts could not beenforced because oaths were meaningless.

Locke, to his credit, was writing just after a time ofreligious fanaticism, which saw the rise of the protestant sects in the CivilWar, and during an extended political crisis where the Crown was looking toimpose Catholicism on the country; with its attendant threat of absolutistrule. His knowledge of Islam wouldhave been poor; a justifiable ignorance then. Within the sectarian narrowness of the time his ideas wereradical, and remarkably tolerant. Far more so than the liberals of today; which says something of theideology’s decline over the last two centuries. It would need a history to investigate this properly but mysuspicion is that this decline is linked to the Western conquests of the globe,and particularly the reaction to those conquests, especially since the SecondWorld War, where the tension between a liberalism at home and anauthoritarianism overseas has become evermore acute.[xvii] Since the fall of the Berlin Wall thistension has intensified, as the violent reaction to Western imperialism hasbeen transformed, hitting the home shores for the first time. Islamic terrorism is a threat in a wayCommunism never was (the Soviet Union was an essentially conservative state),and this is reflected in the attitudes of many of our most prominent liberals;who in many cases offer simply reflexive opinion, based on fear and prejudice –we hate them because they might hurt us. The letter is a good example, and why I quoted it full: it is thetone more than its content that gives it away.

James seems to be writing about a different book,although it is one, unlike Tim Winter, he has not read. According to James we should be easy onthe author because of what she has gone through. He thus reduces her work to a sort of self-help therapy;which strangely confirms Winter’s views: its lack of intellectual content. On this reckoning we shouldn’tcriticise anybody that has gone through terrible ordeals, even when they writebooks and propound views with which we disagree or find obnoxious. One wonders what the right approach toreviewing Mein Kampf would be, if itwere written today. Would we makeallowances because the writer served valiantly in a bloody war, and was clearlymentally affected by its cruel barbarism? Would its anti-Semitism and historical distortions be dismissed becauseHitler had felt the war on his skin...[xviii] It is an odd critique, unable to separate the work from the person, and which,if applied consistently, would insist on the complete subjectivity of allpolitical and cultural commentary[xix] – because this woman has suffered her opinions must have validity; and we musttreat them with a revered respect; or even ignore them completely and emote insympathetic unison (surely a valid human response, but the correct one for acritic?). It is part of amuch wider trend,[xx] but onethat is ultimately anti-intellectual; as well as self-contradictory. It is also, curiously, given HirsanAli’s and James’s own dislike of it, an extreme form of relativism; for ineffect it means anybody who has suffered is entitled to their point of view,which we must not criticise. ThusJames’ vociferous attack on a professor who disagrees with her views; and whichis more like a character assassination than reasoned argument. He’s got to shut Winter up. He is so angry he doesn’t know what heis doing.[xxi] Or perhaps he does: for it is awonderful device to stop criticism.

The first paragraph already contains many errors – hecouldn’t see his sentences for the flames raging around them. Female genital mutilation appears lessa religious practice than a cultural one. In North East Africa it is common amongst Muslims and Christians, andother religious groups. Whilethere are other regions of the world where Islam is the dominant religion butMuslims do not perform this rite. The WHO, whichis opposed to the practice, believes the best way to eradicate it is towork with the individual societies, rather than just attacking them, which theybelieve counter-productive. Theyare surely right.[xxii] However, this is hard work, whichinvolves difficult choices as one works through the complexities on the ground;one constantly having to make allowances, because of the pressure of tradition,patriarchal power and superstition; and the normal defensive reactions ofcommunities to external interference. Such work, which if the WHO is right is preparatory to the finaleradication of this practice, usually takes a long time. Much easier to ignore all this andspill out invective from the pulpit. Does James really think such harsh words will transform themselves intobenign actions… It suggests hebelieves in magic and abracadabra.

James, so angry he didn’t read Winter properly, didn’tnotice that Hirsi Ali wants to do more than change people’s minds: she wants totorture them too. You think Iexaggerate? Imagine arriving inHolland, and your application to stay is to be determined by your religiousviews and your espousal of “enlightenment” values, though your grasp of Dutch is limited, and yourknowledge of European history restricted to its invasions and its mass killingsin your own country. All yourchances of a new life dependent on a series of questions you are almostcertain to get wrong; unless you are very bright and cynical. What kind of tension would thatcause… Your kids next to youcrying and screaming…

Then there is Israel-Palestine, a conflict where theWest is complicit; America providing most of the resources for Israel’soccupation of the West Bank and its imprisonment of Gaza. To reduce the conflict to anideological one is to ignore the actual occupation and repression; and connivein the torture, violence and killings that are a daily occurrence there.[xxiii] Not a word about this from James,instead he wants us to accept her views without comment. Perhaps he doesn’t think they areimportant enough to write about. You should not criticise a person who has suffered; even if their viewsare outrageous, is, after all, the assumption of this letter. But let us take a plane toLebanon. What if he was to meet awoman living in South Beirut who has written a polemic which attacks the“fascist” Israelis, and exhibits the worst anti-Semitism; quoting the Protocolsof the Elders of Zion as her source for aworld conspiracy. Would Jamessupport her right to say these things, because her two sons were shredded bythe IDF’s cluster bombs, when they were two and four years old? One wonders, but I find it hard tobelieve he would be so generous. Sympathy only extends so far – to the tip of our own prejudices.

He hates Islam so much! Not a smidgen must exist in this our beloved country. James’s reference to the Archbishopshows this clearly. It refers tothe manufacturedcontroversy over a speech where the Archbishoptalked a little about sharia law. These remarks were mundane, and reflected practices that have beencurrent in Britain for over thirty years; and are an attempt to help peoplein real life situations, by recognising some provisions in a community’s ownreligious law.[xxiv] But no, for James sharia law is adangerous disease, and it must quarantined at our borders. Although, along with his ignorance hesuffers from amnesia: he has forgotten that Rowan Williams in that speech alsodiscussed Jewish religious law. Isthis too to be repressed, as it contains much that is ugly and intolerant;indeed misogynist and authoritarian?[xxv]

Clive James prides himself on his culture, he wrote awhole bookabout it. Unfortunately, whilehis memory might be first class his reasoning powers are weak. So in the third paragraph he brings inthe police and their response to honour killings to make a general attack onIslam. This is nonsensical. Although we can see where he is comingfrom: he doesn’t like Winter’s assertion that there are many different strandsin Islamic faith; and as you would expect in any major religion.[xxvi] This truth is just a little toodifficult to accept, it seems.[xxvii] To do so one must at least at someunderstanding and sympathy for the culture you criticise; clearly James hasnone. Instead: all Muslims hatetheir women, and will kill them if the patriarchal honour is besmirched. It is a wonder he doesn’t see howracist and prejudiced he has become: all Muslims are violently misogynistic, ifwe are to believe this view. Ofcourse he is right that women should not be killed or mutilated. Easier in this country: murder is againstthe law, while this culture may facilitate the eradication of female genialmutilation. In Egypt and the Sudanit will not be so easy.[xxviii]

For actual enlightenment compare these fundamentalistviews with Peter Brown’s recent review of Islamic art. For him it is clearly evident thatIslam is a mosaic of different cultural nuances, held together by a few centralideas; those differences between regions and centuries often determined by thepre-Islamic history:

…what we call “Islamicart” marks the culmination of a process and not the abrupt beginning of a newage… To look at the glassware, the carved wooden panels, the exquisite stuccowork and the silver dishes associated with Syria, Iraq, and Iran… is to look atan artistic landscape still bathed in the late afternoon sun of antiquity,whether this is the antiquity of the Eastern Roman Empire or the ever-present,proud memory of the Sasanian Empire of Iran. (Onthe Magic Carpet of the Met)[xxix]

It is a view he expounds at length and with muchinsight in his great TheRise of Western Christendom; showinghow religions change, adapting themselves to different cultures and politicalregimes. Only the fundamentalists,believers and critics, ever think that a religion remains eternally the same; arock that no amount of water can erode.

James’ confusion carries over to the lastparagraph. As we have seen TimWinter didn’t deal with genital mutilation because it wasn’t in the book. However, let’s assume it was. Why does James think an outrightcondemnation is the most effective approach? If an Egyptian or Ethiopian intellectual was to present ahard line attitude on this practice he may lose all influence within hiscountry, which may delay its end; if he is campaigning against it. Think about our society. When some foreign dictator or partyhack criticises our bad practices - teenage pregnancies, binge drinking etc -do we welcome it? Isn’t it morelikely that we react violently against such criticism? Changing culturalattitudes, in part through economic development, which may give women moreindependence, might in the long run be a more effective strategy; especiallyif it comes from within the society, and is part of a sustained and reasonabletransformation of the culture. James seems to think that issuing jeremiads from the cathedral floor isenough to change the world. It isthe armchair politics of an angry old man. All that self-righteousness! What a buzz it must give him. It gives me a headache.

[i] It shows not only their ignorance about theEnlightenment, but also their lack of feel for it. One of the prime motors for this movement was its absorptionof the implications arising from out of the extra-European voyages of discoveryover the previous centuries, which were to radically alter the intellectualsunderstanding of Europe’s place in the globe, by showing the relative nature ofmany (all?) of European customs and systems of thought. How such changes takeplace is a complex process, but as JH Elliott argues it can take a long timefor new discoveries to transform the intellectual culture.

“Yeteven by the mid-seventeenth century the explosive potentialities alreadyglimpsed in the early sixteenth had scarcely begun to be realized. In spite of the problems raised by thegrowing knowledge of America, no sustained attack had yet been mounted on thehistorical and chronological accuracy of the Biblical story of the creation ofman and his dispersion following the flood. European political and social philosophy was still almostuntouched by the results of ethnographical observation and inquiry. The possibilities of relativism as aweapon for challenging long established religious, political and socialassumptions had as yet barely been grasped” (TheOld World and the New, 1492-1650)

RobertGoldwater in another classic book suggests a similar process: the ethnographicmaterial that was to excite Picasso and the artists of Die Brücke and Der BlaueReiter had been available for study in European museums for at least a century,yet it wasn’t until a new sensibility had been created that they could beincorporated in what amounted to a total transformation of Western art. A metamorphosis that was dependent on aprevious intellectual reassessment of the material:

“…a complete revaluation of primitive art, gradual in its stages, yet completedin the span of fifty years. It isa change in taste – from an initial neglect through an interest thatpre-supposed little worth in the objects with which it dealt, to the admirationof the last several decades – which is all the more interesting because it isfound in the work of men who are supposed to have the unbiased, objectiveattitude of the scientist, but who in the course of a century have completelyrevised their aesthetic opinions.”(Primitivismin Modern Art)

ForPaul Hazard, in his classic, TheEuropean Mind 1680-1715 (JonathanIsrael in his important RadicalEnlightenment says that itsthesis, of a profound intellectual break in the 17th century iscorrect, providing the dates are pushed back to around 1650), it was thisgrowing knowledge of the external world, particularly that of China, that wasthe prime reason for the swift destruction of Christianity’s foundations – theage of its civilisation clearly undermining biblical chronology. During these centuries one of the majorinterests of European writers was the intellectual discovery of differenttraditions, which in turn fuelled a dissatisfaction or a curiosity about theirown; and which was to lead to the great flowering of Western Orientalism, laterto be somewhat crudely caricatured by Edward Said.

Montesquieuin his PersianLetters used two Persiantravellers to comment and satirize European customs; of course they aredepicted as rational Enlightenment intellectuals, but the point is to try tosee (essentially) French life and customs through an outsider’s eyes. Implicit in such an approach is respectfor a different culture and an uneasiness with one’s own. It was part of the wider scientificrevolution which was to look at the world afresh, and which was,

“…permeatedthrough and through by the experimental method, that is to say, by attention to‘irreducible and stubborn facts,’ and by the inductive method of elicitinggeneral laws.” (A.N. Whitehead, Scienceand the Modern World)

Atsome point the discoveries cast severe doubt on Europe’s intellectualsystem. The foundations wereweakened; the bricks began to fall – would the building collapse? First they tried to fix it; and thenthey had to replace it completely…

Itwas this doubt that led to the concentration on facts: get the facts right, andalign our (new) ideas with them, and European man would once again acquire asecure worldview. With doubtembedded in the culture, facts became both the guarantor of a new certainty(facts would prove our theories right) and the origin of new doubt: new onescould constantly be found to undermine even the newest systems of thought(Jonathan Israel is very good on this, showing the uneasy balance of the time,as three overlapping intellectual systems completed for supremacy: theCartesian, the Locke-Newtonian and the Leibnizian). And with each passing year new discoveries where made aboutthe facts themselves. Thus even afact became an object of uncertainty, a potential field of vast inquiry.

Intellectually,it was, as J.H. Elliott implies in the quotation above, the discovery ofrelativism, the realisation that Europe was simply one of a number of differentcultures, that stimulated the scientific outlook, the core of the FrenchEnlightenment; a movement which transformed a method into an ideology, tocreate a worldview of its very own. That is, the Enlightenment is both the apotheosis of this new way oflooking at the world, of doubt and careful investigation, and the beginning ofits end: the start of a Modern (often European) triumphalism that sanctifiesthe scientific process, and turns it into a new religion. A brilliant exampleof the results of this transformation was seen during the French Revolution:

“…a festival was held in Notre Dame, débaptisée, the Temple of Reason. In the interior a gimcrack Greco-Roman structure had beenerected beneath the Gothic vaulting. A mountain made of painted linen and papier-mâché was built at the endof the nave where Liberty (played by a singer from the Opéra), dressed inwhite, wearing the Phrygian bonnet and holding a pike, bowed to the flame ofReason and seated herself on a bank of flowers and plants…

“[another]fête de Raison was held in theCathedral of Saint-Jean, at which republican officials bowed before a statue ofLiberty and sang an antihymn to words by Fouché celebrating “Reason as theSupreme Being.” (Simon Schama, Citizens)

ErnestGellner, hardly someone on the Left, and who called himself an EnlightenmentPuritan, wrote that while be believes that intellectual inquiry need not beessentially relative (science in particular shows it is not) the same cannot besaid of morality: there will always be competing moral systems (Postmodernism,Reason and Religion). For Gellner science, growing out of aninitial cultural (and epistemological) relativism, has become a universalmethod for understanding the world; its universalism underwritten by itssuccess – all cultures want to become modern and scientific; it is the only wayto prevent their disappearance. The problem is that this method of acquiringsuch high quality knowledge may be limited to a quite narrow field ofintellectual inquiry: the hard sciences. Other subject areas, like history or the anthropology, can approachthese levels of universalism, but they cannot equal them. One of the reasons for the rapidlychanging fashions in disciplines like philosophy and literature, he argued, isthat their knowledge is even more superficial and contingent; and is thus evenmore exposed to the prevailing winds of fashionable ideas. (See his essay in Crisisin the Humanities.) Once outside these fields, when we cometo morals and to aesthetic taste, scientific method may no longer beappropriate at all. It will bealmost impossible to find universal norms in these subject areas, or in manyaspects of our lives - relativism will often be the correct and inevitableresponse.

Althoughsuch a view needs a strong qualification: we must make a distinction betweenobjects and activities within a culture, where value judgements can be applied,and between different cultures, where they cannot. With artistic taste, for example, it may be impossible todifferentiate between two cultures, between the Greek and the Indian, butwithin Greek and Indian art people can judge between the good and the bad;although this often requires a particular kind of experience – of the craftsmanand connoisseur. It is just thisexperience that the post-modernist academic will deny, although crucially they are usually neither connoisseurs nor craftsmen, reducing taste to some rationalstandard; which doesn’t apply to the object at hand (or tell us every muchabout it). An extraordinarilyinteresting discussion about these two ways of looking at the world, throughstandardised tests and professional experience, can be found in RichardSennett’s marvellous TheCulture of the New Capitalism. He is writing about work, not art;although his analysis can apply to both.

Onecan’t help thinking that of the two meanings of the Enlightenment, asscientific investigation and religious certainty, is it the latter thatattracts today’s liberal and Neo-conservative intellectuals. Moreover, onewonders if it is not the Enlightenment but the French Revolution that theyreally admire, that moment when the rarefied ideas of a relatively small bandof intellectuals were turned into popular demagogy.

[ii] A trustee of CUNY, who objected to Tony Kushner’shonorary degree because he was critical of Israel, said to the NewYork Times that the Palestinianswere sub-human, unlike anything in human history – because they worship thecult of death. The racism isextraordinary. Even moreextraordinary is that this is not some illiterate fanatic of a Southern Baptistchurch, but a member of the New York liberal establishment, giving a supposedlysensible rationale for his decision to the leading liberal newspaper in thecountry.

[iii] Bertrand Russell, probably the 20th century’s greatest heir to the European Enlightenment, made this point over andover again in his campaigns against the Atomic and Hydrogen bombs. It was one of reasons so manyestablishment liberals hated him. Better to kill our enemies than to talk to them tended to be their view(in an interview with Russell Eleanor Roosevelt said that it would bebetter if the European population was all dead than communist). As he wrote in his Autobiography,during a time in his life when he feared he had become respectable (he has justbeen awarded the Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for Literature), he oftenequated respectability with wickedness.

[iv] “The age might more accurately described as one ofreasonableness than of reason. Itvalued good-natured sociability rather than the rigorous pursuit of logic toextreme conclusions”. Earlier the author had described how one of the major changes of the agewas the tolerance of religious differences, “which appeared particularlyoffensive to many Christians…” (Norman Hampson, TheEnlightenment.)

Althoughvery different in tone and scope, it concentrates on Britain, Roy Porter’s Enlightenment:Britain and the Creation of the Modern World comes to a similar view: “I find enlightened mindscongenial: I savour their pithy prose, and feel more in tune with those warm,witty, clubbable men than with, say, the aggrieved Puritans…”

[v] Of course this is all nonsense, once you think aboutit:

· How would you compare aPakistani liberal intellectual who calls himself a Moslem, the religioneffectively the residue of his culture, with a German Jesus Freak; newlyconvinced that salvation is due in 2025? And how would a customs officer decide between this intellectual’s deepunderstanding of John Locke and his sincere protestation of his faith…

· What exactly areEnlightenment Values? Rousseau’sThe General Will? Or Hume’s beliefthat reason is at base irrational, and that we acquire new knowledge from the passions?

· Should footballhooliganism and Friday night binge drinking be exported to Abu Dhabi andAfghanistan…

Theproblem with simple formulas is that they can be easily caricatured, in largepart because they already exist as cartoons.

[vi] The French Enlightenment was a reaction to Cartesian,and tended to sanctify the work of John Locke and Isaac Newton, friends in thebattle against the old enemy Descartes. (See footnote XX in DropoutBoogie for more discussion).

[vii] Jonathan Israel qualifies this traditionalpicture. For him there was themainstream, or moderate, Enlightenment, and the radical fringe, centred aroundthe writings of Spinoza. Theformer intent on domesticating the revolutionary potential of these newdoctrines; accommodating them to the ideologies, practices, and culture of thecourt, church and state. RoyPorter’s book offers a very different perspective, but his conclusion on thispoint is very similar: the British Enlightenment was used to legitimate the newWhig regime that came to power in the decades after the Glorious Revolution.

[viii] This was one of the reasons that the work of peoplelike Ivan Pavlov and B.F.Skinner were both attacked and lauded in the widerintellectual culture: depending upon one’s temperament would could see theirwork as progressive or totalitarian.

Thepower of behaviourism was its ability to acquire a lot of information about ourreflexes and perceptions; a close study of minute aspects of our behaviourelucidating both how animals react to stimuli and how they adapt to them. Its mistake, and we see the same thingtoday with evolutionary biology and neuroscience, was to expand thatunderstanding from the simple reflexes into an explanatory framework to accountfor the workings of the human mind. In behaviourism’s case it was to reduce the mind to its behaviour;turning an essentially descriptive exercise into an explanatory model. It is as this point that it begun toape the methods of the hard sciences, or what are taken to be the methods, butlost their content - experiments and acute observation are only part, althoughan extremely important part, of science’s success; for the great (and small)creative breakthroughs often require insight, informed guesses, the forcing ofmaterial, and the creation of theories massively undetermined by evidence.Intuition seems to play a large role too:

“Havingreached Coutances, we entered an omnibus to go some place or other. At themoment I put my foot on the step the idea came to me, without anything in myformer thoughts seeming to have paved the way for it, that the transformationsI had used to define the Fuchsian functions were identical with those ofnon-Euclidean geometry. I did not verify the idea; I should not have had time,as, upon taking my seat in the omnibus, I went on with a conversation alreadycommenced, but I felt a perfect certainty. On my return to Caen, forconscience’s sake, I verified the result at my leisure.”(Henri Poincaré quotedin Jim Holt’s Smarter,Happier, More Productive).

In a lengthy review of B.F. Skinner’s BeyondFreedom and Dignity Noam Chomskyargues that many of the assertions in that book are essentially trivial; andare really little more than attempts to replace a richer more profound language(of everyday use) with an attenuated (and a supposedly hard and scientific)one; and that says more or less the same thing, but in an impoverished andoften banal way. (TheChomsky Reader)

Themoment it leaves its own field and tries to investigate the wider issues is themoment a theory or intellectual movement is transformed into something else;the pressures of the social, political and industrial worlds which may haveimpinged on the laboratory work (framing some of the background assumptions,directing some of the working methods; paying for particular kinds of experiments)now floods it. Reading back onbehaviourism, and its attempts to reduce learning to a model of stimulus andresponse, one can’t help but think that what is being described isn’t learningbut training; the turning of humans (and animals) into machines; measuring (andencouraging) our ability to respond quickly and accurately to the regulatedproduction line of an American or German corporation. The origins were already there in Pavlov’s time, for in orderto get a conditioned reflex from his dogs he had to remove all extraneousphenomena:

“[for]every sound, be it ever so small, appearing in the midst of habitual sounds andnoises which surround the dog, each weakening or reinforcement of theseconstant sounds, each change in the intensity of the room illumination… theappearance of a new odour in the room, a warm or cold current of air… a fallingspeck of plaster from the ceiling…” disturbed the dogs. (Pavlov,by Jeffrey A. Gray)

Interestingly,by the 1950s the limitations of the behaviourist theories were already becomingapparent: even a simple response to an electric shock showed that there morewas going on than simple reflex – other mental functions also influenced thereaction (George A. Miller Psychology;The Science of Life). Noam Chomsky’s review of Skinner’s bookon Verbal Behaviour is often seenas the end of behaviourism; although he himself argues that itfell apart later, and from within: a number of Skinner’s students went on tobecome animal trainers, and they discovered that these theories only worked upto a point, after which the animal reverted to their natural instincts. It appeared that the scientists hadstopped their experiments once they had confirmed their theories. Jeffrey Gray’s book seems to supportthis view, although the author committed to the behaviourist approach (note hisreference to “mentalism”):

“Wemust clearly allow for a rather complex analysis in an animal taking part in aconditioning experiment. Thisprocess apparently enables the animal to compute the probability that the UCS[Unconditioned stimulus – food] will follow the CS [Conditioned Stimulus -bell] and compare this with the probability that the UCS will occur anyway;only if the former probability is higher than the latter does the animal botherto take account of the CS. Tothose familiar with the complexity of the brain, this is not an undue amount ofcomputational ability with which to endow animals; and to those familiar withthe achievements of modern computers, it does not necessarily smack ofmentalism to do so. But to anearlier generation of behaviourists, these conclusions would have beenunwelcome; for they indicate that what was once regarded as a very simple kindof learning, one which could serve as the unit of analysis for complex kinds,is itself very complex indeed. (Pavlov. Myemphasis)

Laterin the book Gray notes that experiments show that when pain is associated witha stimulus there are two distinct responses in the animal: it reacts quicker whenthe Conditioned Stimulus is with the Unconditioned Stimulus (eg a red lightwith an electric shock), but freezes when it only receives the CS (the redlight). His response, like in thepassage above, is curiously blasé – this happens “for some reason.” The fact that the same CS can producediametrically different responses suggests that there are different processesin the animal’s mind/body that are operating upon it; as does the passage above– it appears the animal’s mind can differentiate between the same CS dependingupon whether it is linked to a UCS or not. It suggests that behaviour is only a partial guide to howthat mind/brain operates. (For more on how our even simple perceptions are notpure reflexes, but require the operation of the mind see M.D. Vernon’s ThePsychology of Perception.)

Gray’sbook is fascinating because it accepts all the tenets of behaviourism: thatscience is a method (although he notes that great scientists like Pavlov haveto go beyond them – to revisit the fundamentals), that everything has to bebroken down into the smallest unit of analysis, that there must be laws andprinciples, that everything must be observed; and the mind must be reduced tomatter as currently understood – as a physico-chemical process. Nosubjectivism! No mentalism! There are scientists in the house! It is British empiricism updated to the20th century and made more vigorous, but in the process thecomplexity of the original theories are lost: concepts and thought itself arereduced to sensations and reflexes; while the mind is replaced by behaviour,because only that can be analysed in any great depth. As the vocabularychanges, and gets more rigorous, and as the experiments become more ingeniousand accurate, so much of the mind and its activity is filtered out. Of course, problems then occur (asnoted by Pavlov in the passage above), but they are dealt with by not offeringa new explanatory theory, but by developing an even better filteringtechniques. Interestingly, Gray shows how behaviourism as it later developed,particularly in America, changed from originally investigating the connectionbetween the Conditioned Stimulus (a bell) the Unconditioned Stimulus (food) andthe Response (saliva production) to one of looking solely at the links betweena stimulus (to get food) and the actions needed to acquire it (a cat to escapea box). Here nature was filteredout altogether.

Evenmore tellingly Gray continually refers to all of this work as investigationsinto learning; but yet it is really training; an important but neverthelesssecondary element to how both animals and humans learn. A chapter on ethology on Miller’s bookgives some indication of the complexities involved in animal learning; showingin particular the unconscious ways animals learn from a wide variety ofstimuli.

[ix] One should turn this formulation around. For Neo-conservatives this is a holywar, but for Palestinians it is a battle of the crudest materialism – the dailyloss of their land and resources. What Hirsi Ali doesn’t seem to realise is that these ideas are symbolsof another fundamentalist religion – Neo-Conservatism is her new faith.

InterestinglyRichard Dawkins made the same mistake in his TV programme on religion;downplaying the political causes of the conflict and concentrating on itsreligious nature. To explain thehistorical dispute he interviewed someone who seemed like a lunatic: brought upas an orthodox Jew he later converted to Islam and became an Islamicfundamentalist. Both the selectionof the interviewer, his belief that this would be the best way of gettinginsight into the conflict, and his disregard of the real world highlightedDawkins’ astonishing ignorance; a mirror image of the people he attacks, fortheir lack of interest in evolutionary biology.

[x] Dan Hind has given it a new name: the FolkEnlightenment. (TheThreat to Reason)

[xi] The roots of this intellectual battle also seemparticularly French, going back at least a century to the rise and thendestruction of Jansenism and the revival of Gallicanism, two movements that intheir (very) different ways sought a measure of national independence from theRoman Catholic Church. Theintellectual, political and social causes that created and drove thesemovements were at some point transformed into secular ones; the battle of theCrown against the Parlement of Paris; the Jesuits against the Jansenists andGallicans (whose interests were increasingly secularised); and the Philosophesagainst the increasingly outmoded cosmology of the Catholic religion.

“Itwas a feature of the eighteenth century that it steadily secularized movementswhich had originally been inspired by genuinely religious motives.” (G.R. CraggTheChurch and the Age of Reason 1648-1789).

Thisboth suggests the plastic nature of much religious thought (and life) andhighlights the fallaciousness of the now fashionable view of the Enlightenmentas atheism against religion: the origins of much of this movement wereChristian. Cragg’s analysis alsosupports the view that intellectual systems tend to collapse from within;external evidence used critically (and perhaps terminally) only when the systemis too weak to defend itself:

“Differentgenerations of observers will see, or not see, in accordance with the nature oftheir mental systems and… it is the discovery of the internal incoherence of asystem, rather than the impact upon it of some external ‘reality’, which leadsto the discarding of a fixed idea.” (J.H. Ellliott, The Old World and the New, 1492-1650)

Jansenismwas an initial attempt at reform from within; its collapse weakening theintellectual foundations even more, leading to a more radical, secular attackin the 18th century; and thus following the pattern of Protestantism previously… ifIslamic fundamentalism were to follow the same trajectory, we should see thisattempt at a renewal from within replaced, if it is not successful, by someother modernizing tendency, which could be more radical and destructive of theoriginal doctrines. (Although asRW Southern shows in his classic, WesternSociety and the Church in the Middle Ages, prior to the Reformation there are had been a series of Protestanttype movements; mostly transitory and unsuccessful. The scientific revolution in the 17th century was odd, and possibly fortuitous.)

[xii] That people believe you can extract Enlightenmentvalues wholesale from the 18th century also suggests the religiousnature of the whole enterprise: it is the faith in the pure idea, eternal andinfinite. In this they are verymodern, just like the monotheistic literalists they so despise.

HelenArmstrong’s TheBattle for God shows howreligious fundamentalism has grown out of modernity; with religious texts andideas turned into empirical facts, rather than used, as previously, asmetaphors and myths. It is animportant book for it underlines the essentially rationalist nature of modernfundamentalism, and thus why Dawkins and an America evangelist preacher canseem so intellectually close to the outside observer. (For more comment on the link between reason and faith seethe discussion across the footnotes of my DropoutBoogie. Ernest Gellner’s MuslimSociety has an excellentdiscussion of the modern nature of fundamentalist Islam – it is an attempt topurify the religion of its superstitions and folk elements, to return to itsfundamental doctrines in order to renew itself to compete in the scientific andindustrial worlds.).

[xiii] Although even this may be going too far:

“Accordingto the Pew Global Attitudes Project… only 8 percent [of Pakistanis] would liketo see US troops ‘stay in Afghanistan until the situation has stabilised.’”(Mohsin Hamid, WhyThey Get Pakistan Wrong)

[xiv] Although one assumes the actual lives of the residentpopulation is the last thing the NATO planners care about. When the SovietUnion decided to pull out of Afghanistan Reagan’s government completelydisregarded the resident population, keen only to kill as many Russians aspossible. The idea of trying toreduce the violence to reconstruct the country as peacefully as possible wasn’ton their mental radar. (See the quotations in my Silly Billy.)

[xv] I suspect Winter knows this, but as always it is theemphasis that is important; the nuances and tones of discourse giving us cluesto a person’s values and background assumptions. In this case, the idea of the essential benignancy ofAmerica that is led astray by mistakes and cultural blindness; and theoccasional loose cannon – Dick Cheney over the last decade? However, compare Michele Dunn’s morerealistic view of American action in the area: when the US government normalisesrelations with an authoritarian country it tends to strengthen the repressiveregime. Clearly this is an institutional factor, and it determines policy; andconsistently over time. When wetalk about the British or American interventions in other countries it is theworking practices of these particular state and corporate institutions that wemust consider; not the cultural outlook or personal qualities of its leadersand CEOs; some of whom Winter may have taught. They may well have all the best intentions, but they workfor organisations that follow their own rules, and expect obedience to theirown modes of operation (For more comment, and for the Michele Dunn quote, seemy Lookingin the Mirror, Parts I and II).

Avery suggestive example of the “schizophrenic” nature organisations can induceis FrankCostigliola’s review of a recent biography of George Kennan, an immenselyimportant policy figure in the immediate post-war period. The review shows the differentattitudes of Kennan between when he was in and out of power; a hard aggressivestance when he was a policy advisor but later, as a public intellectual,advocating a rapprochement with the USSR, when he had a more critical distancefrom the American government. Itsuggests the strong influence of the bureaucracy upon him (as well as changeswithin both countries). Kennan isa complex figure for he was slowly squeezed out of the administration from1949, when there was a change in policy, and the American government shiftedfrom containment of the Soviet Union to rollback, at which point he was seen astoo closely connected with the previous strategy. See Bruce Cuming’s magisterial TheOrigins of the Korean War (twovolumes) for the background. Hisdescription of Kennan as an “engineer” is suggestive, for it implies thetechnician, a person destined to put themselves at the service of a company orgovernment department:

“IfAcheson was the architect of containment, Kennan was the engineer. He articulated ideas and developedplans that gathered under and filled Acheson’s architectonic vision. Kennan could never look after thewhole, he could never substitute for Acheson, for he lacked the latter’s skillsat statecraft, his Wall Street experience, and at bottom, a hegemonicconception of the political economy of America’s world position. But he was a master of placing theparts, at engineering the blocks in Acheson’s world city.” (VolII. For a discussion of the technician see my RussianClimate.)

[xvi] Although it is useful to read older autobiographieslike Russell’s, or the correspondenceof outsiders like Flaubert: in mainstream public life there has always beena limit to the tolerance of dissent and the expression of unfashionableviews. Russell believesintolerance increased after 1914; the logic of war and big business, with itspressures of gigantism and conformity, reducing the civility of mainstreamopinion; that ability to disagree with someone without shouting them down. A good recent example is the attempt bythe reputedly über-liberal Guardianto eradicate dissenting opinion on Srebrenica and Rwanda. (See my CarelessGeorge for analysis.) For the reasons why it does this seeJonathan Cook’s excellent TheDangerous Cult of the Guardian;although he overplays the ideological reasons for the paper’s censorship andcharacter assassinations. TheGuardian is increasinglyimportant in the United States, and one would expect, as a naturalconsequence, the content of the newspaper to gradually conform to the politicalconsensus in the dominant country. The inevitable result of market forces which leads to the conformity ofglobalization, and where the most powerful country will have the greatesteffects; copied by most everyone else.

[xvii] In Britain it is also related to the collapse of theold ruling order, essentially Whig in outlook, that lasted from around 1720 toabout the 1960s. Since the 1960swe have seen the formation of a new establishment with a new ideology; thereason for its febrile and aggressive stance – it is a “hot” religion, and hasall the arrogance, extremism and fanaticism of any newly empowered faith.

Itwould be interesting to do a comparative study of the decades between theGlorious Revolution of 1688 and the Whig Supremacy in the 1720s and the lastfifty years; both times of ideological stress as one ruling system and its valuesis defeated and replaced by another.

[xviii] See Richard J.Evans review of a recent book on the First World War, where Hitler’s laterviews are associated with his experiences in the trenches; and his sense of theworthlessness of the sacrifice in the final defeat; which seemed to come fromnowhere; and was inexplicable – and thus someone had to be blamed. The review is excellent in showing justhow complex an historical event is, and how limited is each individual’sunderstanding of it; and which leads to judgements that are erroneous, thoughstrongly held.

[xix] Or not quite all: those that have not suffered couldbe criticised. This, of course, iswhere the fun would start: how exactly would you define suffering? Inevitably the definition would beexpanded to include everyone; though valiant efforts would be made to excludeour enemies: because their suffering is self-induced it is right to criticiseit, for by doing so we correct their mistakes, and thus will heal them, couldbe one line of argument. Justlisten to us! We would say. Get yourself a representative assemblythat supports our governments and you too will suffer only ordinary pain; withwhich we can empathise.

Andin the recent past we have come very close to this: with the rise of feminist,queer and ethnocentric theory in the academy it was suddenly de rigueur in some literature departments to criticise whitemale authors, while leaving everyone else critically untouched. (Robert Hughes’ TheCulture of Complaint is anentertaining overview.)

[xx] For a wider discussion see my criticisms of Robert F.Barsky in footnote xlv in DropoutBoogie – particularly the ErnestGellner quote and the comments around it.

[xxi] The letter is certainly incoherent: its main thrustequates Islam with violence towards women. Yet it begins by saying that violent religious men areunlikely to change their behaviour if they become atheists. Either these men are violent bynature, and their actions are independent of religious practice, which contradictsthe rest of the letter, or the behaviour is inextricably linked to a specificreligion; that is, the essence of Islam is misogynistic violence. If the latter position is true thenIslam is the same as violent misogyny and there can be no hope; it must beerased if we want a tolerant society.

Surely,the reasonable position is abhor honour killings and female genital mutilation;arresting the murderers and their instigators if they live in Britain, whiletrying to change the culture so that the latter practice disappears. We must make a distinction betweenthem. Murder is murder, no matter what the justification (even though, asMohsin Hamid argues in a footnote below, honour killing is more a culturalpractice in Pakistan than a religious one). Genital mutilation is nasty but is a significant part ofsome cultures. The response willhave to be less draconian, although the intention should be the same – toeventually remove it.

Smokingkills, but I know of no one that has ever suggested that all those who sell,manufacture, and advertise cigarettes should be sent to prison. Why criminalise a culturalpractice? It suggests prejudice. For you are not targeting badindividuals but a community; who accept the practice as a natural given (once smokingstopped being an almost universal cultural practice in the West, and became oneof individual decision, the law did step in; criminalising certain smokingbehaviours – a distinction could now be made between a culture and theindividuals in it). I doubt thatJames, Winter or myself, disagree about the moral ugliness of female genitalmutilation; and that we would all prefer that it stopped. However, only James, I think, believesthat there is a simple fix to end it. That he believes so, indicates his ignorance and lack of sympathy withthe cultures he so blithely attacks.

Inthe New York Review ofBooks there is an exchange ofletters between Daniel Mendelssohn and Galen Strawson, the latter unhappy withwhat he believes is an anti-Semitic slur on the novelist AlanHollinghurst. Mendelssohn’scomments reminds me of Anthony Julius, who also seems to conflate anti-Semitismwith social mores and snobbery; and, as Strawson himself notes, the livedactuality: to depict a Welsh character who is a miner, who likes rugby, drinksa lot and talks about socialism, is not necessarily false or unjust, given aparticular context (see my Prejudicefor more comment). However, more interesting than who isright or wrong is the discussion itself: if there is some prejudice on show itis extraordinary small – you need a magnifying glass to find it. Compare with Clive James here. He is not blackballed from the liberalclub, even though he makes the most outlandish generalizations; nearly all ofwhich are against the poor and oppressed, and who cannot respond in the pagesof the TLS. That is, he can display the mostvitriolic prejudice, and yet he remains unscathed; still arespectable member of the liberal establishment.

Iremember an interview in the 1980s, which I think was with Martin Amis, aboutwhat would happen if ant-Semitism returned to Europe. Would the liberal classes resist more strongly now thanthen? Of course, the whole debate waswrongly framed – the anti-Semitism of the 1930s grew of out a particularhistorical situation, and was linked to both the instability of the Germanstate, and the increased mobility of both capital and people; and wheresuccessful Jews became both facts and symbols of modern industrial capitalism(There is a good discussion in Norman Cohn’s Warrantfor Genocide, and in HannahArendt’s TheJewish Writings, the latterclearly identifying a new type of anti-Semitism, created by modern industry andcommerce. J.P. Stern’s Hitler:the Führer and the People has aninsightful analysis of the German cultural background). And because it was wrongly articulatedthe causes and nature of the anti-Semitism were conflated with the history of aparticular ethnic group; rather with the nature and causes of prejudice moregenerally; and which can lead to the murder of any minority race or tribe, ifthe circumstances are propitious. The discussion thus becomes sentimental, as we pride ourselves on ourtolerance and enlightenment, patronising the historical actors from themountain peak of contemporary life (Michael Burleigh is a classic example ofsuch a technique – read his TheThird Reich: A New History). Rather than condescending posterity,masturbating over our moral courage, if we actually tried to understand thepast we may discover the same causes and prejudices occurring today; but in adifferent guise; the context and actors changed by the changing times. Thus nowthe new anti-Semitism is Islamophobia, which people like James and Amis, andMichelle Phillips, advocate in the popular press. These liberals, at least, seem never to have changed.

[xxii] “Research shows that, if practising communitiesthemselves decide to abandon FGM, the practice can be eliminated very rapidly.” (From the WHO’s website.)

[xxiii] See the reporting of Amira Haas andthe excellent Lordsof the Land, by Edith Zertal andAkiva Elder. An older book, Noam Chomsky’s TheFateful Triangle, gives adetailed account of the violence and intimidation in the occupied territories;mostly in the period up to the 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

[xxiv] The main purpose of the speech, which seemed a defencefor the Anglican faith as a minority religion in the country, was missedentirely. The philosophicarguments within which this defence was couched, making communitiesindividuals, and thus overcoming the modern tension between gemeinschaft and gesellschaft, was interesting and provocative,but ultimately unconvincing. Ofcourse, the press were not interested in this. Fully armoured with their own prejudices, and sensing anopportunity both to raise controversy (a necessity in the newspaper trade –their need readers) and to exert power, for about a month they went after Dr.Williams. What the episode showedwas not only the irresponsible power of the press, but its limits; a stronginstitution behind him the Archbishop was able to withstand the mediacampaign.

Theremay have also been some background reasons for this attack. According to David Marquand since the1980s the only British institution that has not succumbed to the neo-liberalagenda is the Church of England; one of the reasons Margaret Thatcher so hatedit. (TheStrange Career of British Democracy). Such resentment may be part of theclimate of opinion that influences and drives our corporate press, at veryleast they feel the resistance of a competing power; which they then seek todestroy. That such power is soopenly displayed, and little criticised is shocking. It suggests Dan Hind is right: the corporate press is ourmodern day l’infâme.

[xxv]See Israel Shahak’s JewishHistory, Jewish Religion for along list of intolerant pronouncements and harsh religious laws of orthodoxJudaism; as one would expect given the similar character of all threemonotheistic religions, arising from the same region and source. But few would condemn all practisingreligious Jews because of the intolerance of some of its canonical texts, andthe extremism of the faith’s fanatics. But this is precisely what James does here – our enemies are alwaysdifferent, unique, incomparable in their evil.

Fora wonderful fictional statement about the oppressively patriarchal nature ofOrthodox Judaism read the scene when the hero first encounters his mother inGeorge Eliot’s DanielDeronda.

[xxvi] And we should say life. All cultures, except during their puritan phases, see arelaxation of their strict religious and cultural rules. Eventually they submit to the power offamilial sympathy; as well as the comforts of sex and alcohol. It is worth noting that Edward Said’s Orientalism, written in the 1970s, and before the rise of faithbased terrorism, covers in some detail the older European views of the MiddleEast: sensual, morally lax, and a playground for the Western libertine.

[xxvii] It clearly illustrates both his anger and hisprejudice. Anger because thecriticism is as an obvious non sequitur. They are writing about different things: Winter about the Islamic lifeand faith as a whole; James about a particular practice and specificindividuals. Prejudice, because hehas reduced all of Islam to a single idea – violence against women. If is as if a Pashtun tribesman, afterwitnessing the destruction of his village by an American bomber, was to definethe whole of Western civilisation by that one act (and others like them acrossthe Afghanistan-Pakistan border). Although surely there we would make allowances, like Robert Fisk in abrilliant passage in his TheGreat War for Civilisation, wherehe refuses to condemn the people who are beating him up; because he understandstheir motivation, and has sympathy for their own suffering; caused mostly bythe West, of which he appears a representative. Clive James simply does not have that humanity. Like many intellectuals and academicshe turns life into very simple abstractions, which he then gets very passionateabout.

[xxviii] Because they are deeply embedded within a culturethese practices, because they are tangled up with both social mores andpolitics, can be difficult (and dangerous) to remove. Also, and as a new book makes clear, these practices oftenhave little to do with religion.

“Atthe heart of Lieven’s account of Pakistan is kinship, pervasive networks ofclans and biradiris (groups of extended kin) that heidentifies as “the most important force in society,” usually far stronger thanany competing religious, ethnic, or political cause. Several millennia ofinvasions, occupations, colonizations, and rule by self-interested statesresulted in a “collective solidarity for interest and defense” based on kinshipbecoming paramount in the area that is Pakistan. It now, as Lieven points out,“is a cultural system so strong that it can persuade a father to kill amuch-loved daughter, not even for having an affair or becoming pregnant, butfor marrying outside her kinship group without permission.”” (Mohsin Hamid, Why They Get Pakistan Wrong)

[xxix] And of course there can be wide differences, evenwithin a single country:

“AsLieven points out: “the Islam of the Pakistani masses contains very differenttraditions.” Moreover, unlike in Saudi Arabia or Iran, where an oil-bankrolledstate has tried to impose one monolithic version of Islam, “the Pakistani stateis too weak to achieve this even if it wanted to.” Lieven describes thetheological divisions among Sunnis sustained by Pakistan’s clan and kinshipdiversity. The Ahl-e-Hadith, heavily influenced by Wahabism, loathe saintlytraditions. The Deobandis may praise saints but object to worshiping them. TheBarelvis, Pakistan’s most numerous (and “fissiparous”) school, tend to embracethe intercession of saints with God. Veneration of saints is also central toPakistan’s Shias. Because saintliness can be inherited, the heads of Pakistan’spowerful landowning “pir familiesremain of immense political importance.” They can actively create bridges amongreligious groups and they serve as major bosses in several mainstream politicalparties, especially the “secular” PPP.” (Mohsin Hamid, Why They Get Pakistan Wrong)

A Window in Iran

2011-12-21T17:31:00.000Z

After spending a few months in the 1960s I rented out H.G.Wells’ Time Machine and popped back to the present, to have a look around. How old fashioned it all seemed! I had left the space age andreturned to the kitchen sink dramas of the previous decade – had I set thecontrols right… No, no, the datesare correct; and the costumes look contemporary; and the mobile phones are anew idea; are the humans themselves wired to the ground...

So I sit and watch as the camera follows the charactersaround, like dog on its lead, her owner walking down the High Street on aSaturday afternoon; everywhere so crowded, so busy, there is scarcely time tostop; so much to look at. Shop!Shop! Shop! Hardly a moment to seewhat you are buying…

Everything in this film is subordinated to thestoryline. There are no Godardslogans. No mucking around withthe narrative. The dialogue is notcomplex; there is little irony... And for long patches of the movie there appears no structure at all;with no main theme, just one mundane thing after another. This is not art we are watching butlife; it all its contingent messiness. And so it reads like fictionalised biography, with its attendant problems of formlessness and lack ofinsight; pages overwhelmed by detail and superfluous facts. As I sat watching this film I thoughtwe had climbed down from the great peaks of cinema where I had recently stayed;for here was a retreat from art, and the particular kinds of knowledge that itcan impart,[i] to the realism of the 1930s (and their progeny of the 1950s; thosedepoliticised sons and daughters), where the aim is to record life, not shapeit.

In the 1960s and 70s directors and their collaborators wereinterested in turning movies into a pure art form, and influenced bydevelopments elsewhere became obsessed with the texture of film itself. For around two decades we saw animmense body of concentrated work, and which covered the globe, that led veryrapidly to the creation of new techniques and new imagery; and new narrativedevices. These years werecinema’s equivalent of the first decades of the 20th century, whenall the art forms were revolutionised. To watch the films of this period is to walk out of a staid provincialmuseum, full of academic and weak impressionist paintings, and into a privategallery showing Der Brucke and DieBlaue Reiter; seen for the first time withall their dislocating exuberance. Our images of film had changed.

All art movements come to end, and when they do there isoften a return to the conventions of a previous period. Slowly in the generations that followwhat looked like the natural, and inevitable, though revolutionary, culminationof forces within in a tradition seems like something odd and unique, almost anartistic cul-de-sac; like a bohemian living in Chelmsford. And suddenly how strange and out ofplace all it appears; his silk caftan and velvet top hat amongst the tinned foodin Morrisons.

As I watched this film I didn’t think I would write aboutit. It would be like retailing afamily holiday: we went to Cardiff; and we watched the match; and then we satin the garden, where we had an argument about Neil Kinnock; Rosie picked wildprimroses; the bread pudding was lovely, although she refused to eat very much… You can’t do a lot with that; althoughsome people try: the reason why most biographies and autobiographies are sodisappointing – little more than a collection of anecdotes and facts; with noform and poor imagery. We wantmore than this! We want facts andevents to mean something!

As the film develops something odd happens. A structure starts to appear out ofthis jumble of activity, and meanings do slowly emerge; like sandwich boardsthrough the weekend crowds. Suddenly we are reading their words…

Nader’s father lives with the family and has Alzheimer’sdisease. Nader knows this but atthe same time seems to deny it, or at least he pretends to be more aware thanhe actually is: living amongst the wreckage of a human being he needs to keep afew illusions alive. His wifeleaves him, and he has no one to look after his father during the day. He hires a poor woman. She seems a good person, but one dayshe leaves his father alone, tied to the bed, and goes out; and for a longtime. He almost dies, only savedby Nader when he returns to the flat with his young daughter. He is almost insane with anger,especially when he finds some money missing. When Razieh returns he shouts at her, eventually pushing herout of the flat, where she falls. We later learn that she has lost her baby. The film shifts from a family drama, the separation betweenwife and husband, Simin and Nader, to a legal one, now between Nader andRazieh. For causing a miscarriageis murder under Iranian law. Suddenly there is a strong narrative, which pulls in many differentmeanings; and causes us to rethink the opening scene.

They are in a courtroom and the judge says that Simin’sreason for wanting a divorce is trivial: it is not enough that Nader will notleave the country; even though they have now obtained a visa; after many monthsof struggling to get one. Nader does not want to leave his father. There is an argument about his father’s condition: Siminsays that he doesn’t know who Nader is (later scenes confirm this – the onlyword he utters is Simin’s); and this reason is an excuse. Nader will not agree, and to obtain adivorce without good reason she needs her husband’s consent. He won’t give it, so they separateinstead. Simin going to hermother’s; her daughter, Termeh, staying with her father. Because they get on really well? It looks that way, though later welearn that the reason she stays is that she believes it will force her motherto return home.

This opening scene is never revisited. We accept the reason for the separation– he won’t leave the country; loyal to an old man that does not recognise him,and to an illusion that keeps himself sane.

Nader’s reaction to the murder charge slowly changes thisview. The divorce, we begin tosurmise, was really for other reasons, the refusal to leave the country asymbol of them. There is hisanger, this aggression towards a vulnerable woman. Then there is his obstinacy. He is so stubborn! Thus even when he has a chance of settling the case – by paying bloodmoney – he won’t because he must prove his innocence. Which sounds commendable, a martyr for truth and honour,until we realise that he is telling lies; revealed by the simple questioning ofhis clever daughter; primed by his wife: clearly she is manipulating thingsbehind the scenes. Thus he denieshe knew Razieh was pregnant. Buthe did know, only he forgot in the headrush of emotion in which he pushed herout of the door. For in court youcannot tell the whole story, for the law doesn’t recognise the complexity oftruth; and the other side is out to catch any weakness. Not only obstinate he isobsessed, this is not surprising, given that he could go to jail, but hegoes too far and tries to discredit Razieh’s story by contacting herdoctor. It gives him away. It shows he must have known she waspregnant. Although this seems aminor point, for we have just witnessed a major revelation: he would destroyanother person, no matter how vulnerable, in order to win his case. Even though Razieh is ill he will showno mercy, and will do almost anything to save himself – he makes a countercharge against her. He isboth a bully and a weak man.

Although the film is now a murder trial it is actually aboutthe reasons why Simin has separated from Nader: it echoes that initial court case;though in this one we see, or at least we believe we see, the kinds ofarguments and scenarios that led up to it. We also witness his real character. Each attempt to prove himself innocenthighlights his shortcomings; on one occasion we see his pathetic nature. We watch as Termeh’s ideas abouthim change. Her friends areturning against her – they believe the accusations – and she is embarrassed whenhe picks her up from school; not listening to her requests that he park the caraway from the gates so that people won’t see him. Inevitably she herself becomes involved in the murder trialand has to steer that complex path between family ties and honesty.

This is a modern society. Their large, and obviously prosperous, apartment could be inLondon or New York. I believe itis in Tehran. There is only onedifference to show it is not set in the West, and it pervades the film: it isthe centrality of religion, its most obvious symbol the headscarves the womenwear. Razieh wears the burqa, andthat suggests something else... Her husband alludes to it later in court; when he scoffs at the idea ofNader swearing an oath on the Koran – people like him! Wethink he means the middle classes. Religion, it seems, is closely attached to class; Iran little different from Europe and America. Razieh is very devout, which eventuallyis her undoing. Reading betweenthe lines we believe she only went to court because her husband (a hothead)wanted to revenge his unborn baby’s death; and because Nader refused toapologise to her for calling her a thief. Although once started the legal process follows its own logic, whichshapes people’s thoughts and actions; and determines, to a significant extent,their behaviours. However,as the court’s decision approaches Razieh cannot live with the tension’s herfaith produces: she doubts Nader caused the miscarriage. The child may already have beendead. For during the previous dayhis father had escaped from the flat. She had gone after him and had been hit by a car. This was the reason she had gone to thedoctor. Now, because she has theseuncertainties she doesn’t want to take the blood money, because she thinks itwill be a sin; although her husband desperately needs it for his creditors (andhe doesn’t care about her religious scruples). Unable to deal with this tension she tells Simin but asksher not speak about it to anyone; pleads with her not to do so.

The climatic scene is in Razieh’s home. Nader and Simin are there, togetherwith Razieh’s husband, and his creditors. Nader is going to write a cheque for the blood money. Before he does he asks Razieh to swearon the Koran that she is certain that he caused her miscarriage.

She can’t.

It is a devastating scene. Razieh screaming at Simin, asking why she came to this flatwhen she knew what Nader was going to do. For now her life is ruined. She cannot live here. It isa moment where we see the exercise of supreme power, and reflects the divide between thedifferent classes, a theme that we can now realise has dominated the film. The poor and inarticulate husband andwife are unable to compete with the well-educated and prosperous Naderand Simin. Nader talks himself outof tight corners with fine phrases and tricksy sentences; Hodjat tries to punchis way out with his fists and invective. Polite society naturally prefers the less threatening behaviour. The prejudices are reflexive: Simin’s friends and colleaguesautomatically siding with Nader against his accusers. Although later her teacher friend reverses her testimony. The will to truth, especially whenaccused directly by the victim’s husband of class prejudice, is too strong tobe overcome. Religion sides withclass, and the rich use it against the poor. How often have we seen this! Although, as with the teacher, its effects can be complex;creating sensitive moral antennae, which in turn complicates and sometimesoverturns these disparities in wealth and power.

The teacher yields, like her friend Simin in that openingscene. Nader does not. This is the difference betweenthem. How hard it must be to livewith such stubbornness. They haveplenty of money; their life is full of meaningful activity, Nader seemssensitive and generous, he is clearly intelligent, but Simin must yield, andkeep yielding... How hard thatmust become as the old man loses his humanity in that bedroom… Simin, if she were to stay, would loseher freedom; it is a sacrifice Nader expects; and perhaps cannot see; there issomething of the unconscious patriarch about him.

The film is about a man and a woman, and their differentcharacters, silk against stone, soft breasts against a hard chest. But it is also about class: the powerof the rich against the poor. Itis the power of education, and the institutional sympathy that the middleclasses can expect from the authorities – someone who talks nice, isreasonable, who never seems to lose control, must be ok; mustn’t they? After all, look at his clothes; the wayhis wife dresses… One of us, clearly.

It is Simin who exercises this sort of authority most ofall. She works in the background,analysing Nader’s words and telling her daughter of her views; and whichgradually change Termeh’s image of her father. The proud and honest man is slowly reduced to a lyingschemer, a man who would destroy another person to save himself. Nevertheless, it is Simin who actuallydestroys Razieh. Did she tellNader the truth about the accident? I guess she did not. Instead she probably told Nader to ask Razieh to do one thing, to swearon the Koran that he didn’t cause the miscarriage; knowing that because of herreligion she wouldn’t tell a lie. She destroys her life – for money. Yet she knows Razieh lost her baby because she ran after Nader’s father,to protect him from an accident. This is the injustice. Hereis a family without honour.

The last scene is a good one. Simin and Nader are sitting on opposite sides of a corridorwaiting for Termeh to tell the judge her decision. Who will she choose… The film ends, and we will never know. Both are as bad as one another.[ii]

[i] Years ago someone I knew told me off for talking aboutart as knowledge. (It was during a job I once had where a stream of highlyintelligent temps would work as admin assistants for a few months. Mostly women they turned that littlecorner in which I “worked” into an ever-changing seminar; mostly about art andpolitics). Art is not knowledge,she insisted; disgusted with my words.

Toreduce art to knowledge, she believed, was to falsify it. I disagree. Art is a different kind of knowledge from that which youread in a textbook. It is nothistory or sociology dressed up in period costume. It is the kind that exists in our emotions and senses, thesource of all insight. Of courseit has its own special rules, using its own techniques to acquire thatunderstanding – reproducing the often hidden reality through images anddialogue; and through the structure of its whole design. The artwork is an analogue to thatsense of an atmosphere the artist has inside his mind; and which they attemptto capture and put on the screen; on the page, on keys of a grand piano. When I spoke of knowledge, I was, Ithink, being misunderstood (how often this happens!); the phrase interpreted inthe all too conventional sense of imparting information; which is to theaesthetic understanding what captions are to the paintings they describe. Sometimes useful, but hopeless forexperiencing, thus knowing, the artwork itself (see my Uncertaintyof the Poet for more comment).

Althoughthis misunderstanding may relate to an all too common aspect of filmappreciation: the train spotter mentality it seems to engender; where aconsideration of the art is ditched for the acquisition of facts about it - thenames of all the employees, the technical details; a catalogue of influencesand cinematic quotations…. Alluseful, but relatively minor, details – did the great directors produce filmsin order for us to classify them?

[ii] Politics is probably in there somewhere: the senilerule of a clerical orthodoxy, that protects the prosperous, but which thepopulation finds constrictive, especially the middle classes; although theyfind it useful for subjugating the poor. However, I know too little about Iran to say more than this; and suchmetaphorical reading can be a little too easy. It is something to leave for the professors to think aboutwhen they do their film crit.

Looking in the Mirror (Part Two)

2011-12-11T16:59:00.001Z

My intention is not to condemn an individual when it is theinstitutional culture that is the problem. Would we expect BP not work in Libya, because of its humanrights record?[i] Why expect the LSE to behavedifferently…[ii] To dissect David Held’s apologia is notput him in the stocks but to better understand our liberal establishment; theirideas and motivations; their blind spots and their naiveties.

Whatimmediately strikes the reader is the concentration on a singlepersonality, and the confusions this can cause. Is it really a paradox that a tyrant’s son can both reformand repress his own people? Was ita paradox when Khrushchev started the Russian thaw at the XXth Congress, butcrushed the Hungarian uprising six months later? These are the expected tensions inherent in authoritarianregimes when, as they grow older, they try to liberalise; although not toomuch, in case things fall apart. It seems likely that Saif Gaddafi’s strategy was similar to that ofKhrushchev’s: limited reform to strength the regime, in order to keep itsessential character; while removing some of its more irrational and paranoiacelements.[iii] He talked the same language asprofessor Held, and used the same concepts, while sharing some of theobjectives; but, ultimately, he had an entirely different purpose in mind; asdid the British government. Buthow easy it is, when we like a person, to project our own values onto him. And be shocked when you discover he hasdifferent ones. The naturalreaction is to believe he must have changed.[iv]

The academic who leaves his university for the outside worldhas a special problem; for he is carrying his culture, or perhaps we should sayhis language game,[v] into onethat is significantly different; and where words take on a new meaning. This may not be adequatelyrecognised. The problem isparticularly acute when outsiders enter our community: we expect all itsparticipants to share its norms and (general) worldview. But this is not the case! Professor Held talks of Rousseau andLocke while Saif Gaddafi thinks of commercial contracts[vi] and a securecivil service.[vii]

It is hard to step outside an institutional culture.[viii] Not only because its norms and ritualsare self-reinforcing, but that culture is intimately linked to a wider societythat shares its values and ideology; and thus confirms them. In the case of our prestigiousuniversities that society is made up mostly of the British establishment;[ix] whose members you’d expect to have a natural bias towards figures from otherruling elites, however awful the state, providing they themselves are civilisedand intelligent. It is arelatively easy task to then convince oneself that they are detached from theregime - thus we have the argument about Saif Gaddafi holding no officialposition, a view not only believed by Held.[x] Intelligent and civilised he must be different from hisfather, because people like us don’t do that kind of thing; so the argumentgoes. For how easy it is toproject one’s self onto the people we like; easier, perhaps, in the relativelyclosed and comfortable world of a British university; where few people arekilled and tortured. In his biographyof Ernest Gellner John A. Hall writes of how he consciously maintained adifficult relationship with the LSE; purposely to keep his independence. This attitude may be reflected in myearlier quotation: he is rightly sceptical of authority, and the subservienceof much of its officialdom. However,this is the exception, not the rule; and is hard to do – for you must be awarethat such a problem exists.

Professor Held himself confirms this in his article. He cites Britain’s former LibyanAmbassador to support his claim that human rights were improving under theGDF’s work. But isn’t this asuspect source?

“Nobody doubted that Libya wanted BP and BP wasconfident its commitment would go through,” said Sir Richard Dalton, a formerBritish ambassador to Libya and a director of the Libyan British BusinessCouncil. “But the timing of the final authority to spend real money on the groundwas dependent on politics.” (TheTimes)

The reference is to the al-Megrahi case. The politics here is the narrowlyinstrumental one of creating a legal framework between the two countries, whichwould facilitate his release. Forthe ambassador politics is simply a technical problem: how to ensure a positivebusiness climate in Libya while managing the controversy back home.

Sir Richard himself is a symbol of our new state. After leaving government service hebecame a patron of the LibyanBritish Business Council whose aims, as you would expect, are concernedsolely with commerce. Here is howit describes the country:

Since 1999, when the UN Security Council suspended morethan a decade of sanctions, Libya’s imagehas changed dramatically. And as it pursues a policy of diversifying its incomeaway from oil and gas, it is attracting more foreign interest than ever before…(my emphasis)

There is a problem though:

Of course, doingbusiness in Libya presents significant challenges to foreign investors:decision-making is often slow and the lack of transparency and frequent changesin legislation can be frustrating. But with the advice and support of the LBBC,these difficulties can be anticipated and overcome. (WhyLibya?)

A good business climate requires a number of conditions: astable regime, a commercial environment where legal norms and social trust canbe established, and the confidence that the Western powers will underwriteit. Human rights abuses are aproblem only if they threaten these conditions, by causing publicembarrassment. Thus that opening sentence:the country’s image has improved dramatically. For in the glossy brochures of the PR industry Libya’s imagehad changedbeyond recognition; a change encouraged by the Labour government; keen todo business in an opening market. Although according to Amnesty International the main areas of concern onhuman rights had not changed since 1998. There had been some improvements, albeit limited and uncertain; helping,perhaps, to push the other abuses into the background. But this doesn’t concern BP or theLBBC; for them what matters is that the Western public’s perception of Libyaaccords with their needs.

David Held writes about politics, and talks of participatorydemocracy. But isn’t this a verydifferent politics from that practised by Sir Richard? They may speak the same language; butactually it is two different dialects; where the same words mean differentthings. The evidence suggests thatSaif Gaddafi is an excellent speaker of both. Outside the academy,

Saif… was also courtinginfluential figures and financiers in Russia, America and the UK to improve hiscountry’s image and forge new business links…

It is perhaps inevitable thatthe high-powered and wealthy figures who mix with Saif Gadaffi also passthrough Mandelson’s orbit. Mutual associates include Lord Rothschild, his sonNat, and the Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, whose company Rusal hasinterests in Libya.

To Deripaska and Nat Rothschild,Saif Gadaffi is an invaluable business contact. They were invited to his 37thbirthday party in Montenegro, where they are both investors in a new marinadevelopment. (TheTimes)

Inside the academy life is more abstract:

In this section, I show how cosmopolitanism is fully consistent with the first two pillars of liberal individualism and global justice, and how it provides additional philosophical support for the concept of Collective Management. Held’s first three principles are fully consistent with the moral world-view of liberal individualism and liberal democratic values. He writes: ‘in the first instance, cosmopolitanism refers to those basic values that set down standards or boundaries which no agent, whether a representative of a global body, state or civil association, should be able to violate’. Held’s principle ‘affirms that all human beings must be able to enjoy the pursuit of activity without the risk of arbitrary or unjust interference while recognising that this liberty applies to everyone’. This embodies the concept of human rights that each person can enjoy and must respect in each other person: ‘each person has an equal interest in active agency or self-determination’. Thus cosmopolitanism, according to Held, can be taken as the moral and political outlook which builds on the strength of the liberal multilateral order, particularly its commitment to universal standards, human rights and democratic values. (fromSaifGaddafi’s PHD thesis)

An invaluable study would have determined the exact natureof “arbitrary or unjust interference” using the experience of Saif Gaddafihimself: surely his many insights into a society undergoing a majortransformation, of which he himself is part, would have been revelatory. Why arrange for the Monitor Groupto interview NGOs in Britain and America when a careful and honest descriptionof his own state, and his role within it, would have given us an extraordinaryinsight into the nature of power and its influence; especially at a time when aclosed society is opening up to the global economy. Did Held and his colleagues ever suggest this as a possibility? Stop a moment and think about that. Now search the thesis. Can you do better than me, and find asingle reference to Libya?[xi] (This is the real scandal: intellectualvacuity.)

When he returns to the political world we again hear thelanguage of reform. But,remembering the LBBC’s concerns, which dialect is he using now?

"Saifal-Islam al-Gaddafi most recently repeated his public calls on the need for aconstitution in May 2010, arguing that “it is impossible to govern a countrywithout a constitution and without essential laws"”. (AmnestyInternational)

In the same report Amnesty International comments on how theEU “turns a blind eye” to human rights abuses; supporting Libya to turn backAfrican immigrants, with no concern for the treatment they receive. They mention different opinions aboutGDF, for some it represents a genuine struggle between hardliners and reformers;while for others it is simply a mechanism to legitimise the regime.[xii] Vested interests are everywhere, there is some idealism, andthere is much uncertainty; while the country’s recent history is not pleasantor particularly encouraging, with cycles of harsh repression followed by somerelaxation. In light of all thesefactors shouldn’t we be wary of working with the supreme leader’s son? Ernest Gellner would only join thestruggle

when decency and oppressionhave joined in battle under reasonably well-defined banners.

Gellner was writing about the universities; and so left outthe trickier question of dealing with the ruling tyrant, and his servants. It is clear from the recent historythat politics, business, human rights and academia have become all mixed up;and with few “well-defined banners” it has been easy for people to goastray. Professor Heldconcentrates on his academic work and his involvement with the GDF, which helinks to improvements in human rights in the country. This may be true, although these changes may have other causes;previously mentioned. But would adifferent person, more sceptical of the British establishment, and the powerfulgenerally, have been more cautious both about their own impact and theircontact with the regime? Heldquotes the Carnegie Endowment for Peaceto support his activities.[xiii] Yet in a 2008report one of its analysts stressed the need to develop organisations thatwere truly independent.[xiv] Anotherreport by the same organisation agrees that the GDF was "the country’s only address forcomplaints about torture, arbitrary detention, and disappearances”, butbelieves it achieved little; either on human rights, or on political or mediareform.

That December the organisation publicly stated that it wouldno longer promote human rights and political reform in Libya; probably becauseof resistance from Colonel Gaddafi and other hardliners, the analystbelieves. The GDF may have beenthe only organisation that could fulfil such a role, but it was too closelytied to the ruling family; and thus very vulnerable to personal realignmentswithin it. Its dissolution seemsbe bear our Michele Dunn’s recommendation for the need to create independentcivil institutions. This is surelythe weakness of professor Held and the LSE – too much reliance on Saif Gaddafi and the GDF. It would have been extremely hard, nodoubt, to achieve such independence, especially given Saif Gaddafi’s reformistreputation.[xv] But one wonders: could the LSE havedone its work by being a little more aggressive about human rights and moredistant from the Gaddafi family? Could not this have been the basis on which any contracts were agreed?[xvi] After all, Colonel Gaddafi wasdetermined to enter the world economy, and secure its rich benefits. This is the central question; whichDavid Held ignores. Instead hesets up a straw man: you are either for or against engaging with authoritarianregimes; a position that few hold[xvii]

He likes Saif so much! He is intelligent, and talks about democracy. So different from the other Libyan leaders;[xviii] thus his unwillingness to take an official position. Yet earlier in his articlehe writes:

The regime was a peculiar andfrightening combination of the rigidly hierarchical and a highly-personalised,informal system of power relationships.

All the evidence suggests that Saif Gaddafi was an activeplayer in this regime;[xix] but Held wants to downplay his involvement. This is not naivety or complicity, which the professor seesas the two main charges against him, but confusion and poor judgement. He is creating Saif Gaddafi in his own image; while ignoringthe complexities of power politics: because the leader’s son speaks like aWestern intellectual he must be one, he assumes. May be he is. He is also a cruel and manipulative politician, who shares the“preferences and prejudices” of his harsh and erratic father.[xx]

The regime is described as decaying and violent, and Heldregrets his involvement and would, with hindsight, not have “countenanced thisfunding option.”[xxi] But as the US ambassador and AmnestyInternational describe so well, this was always a “thuggish” regime; thoughoffering some possibilities of change; albeit limited and weak ones. This highlights Held’s confusion: hecannot separate out his feelings for Saif Gaddafi from his own politics. If Colonel Gaddafi had successfullyrepressed the popular uprising, and his son had been silent (a possible sign ofdisapproval), would he have still changed his mind about accepting Libyan funds? Mightn’t the space he gave to reformershave helped, albeit in a small way, to bring about this people’s revolt? If it did, why regret the “fundingoption”? His reaction suggeststhat his ideas are too closely tied to a vision of the establishment; the success of reform predicated on its liberalization.It is not about fostering a reforming spirit, which could be the catalyst forserious opposition, and civil disobedience. Thus when the establishment fails, in this case the familydynasty, the whole enterprise is seen to have failed. It is an insider’s view, of reform from within.

History has shown there are different paths tooverthrowing regimes, which build up from pressures within as well as from theoutside. It is usually the interaction of national and international conditionsand processes which create revolutionary situations… In Libya, the fighting hasbeen intensive. Tribe, faction, and fragmentation intersect with the oldGaddafi regime in complex webs of stakeholders, competition and opposition. Onecan only hope that the Gaddafi regime comes to a swift end, but one fears itmay not.

It is difficult todisagree; but why does he want the regime to end swiftly now? Why not two years ago? What Held appears to have done is tomistake his hopes for the reality, and which he illustrates quite nicelyelsewhere:

…we both hoped that the autocratic rulers of the MiddleEast would rapidly be replaced by popular and democratic alternatives.

Few would disagree. But surely our task is to find out why this is not likely to happensometime soon, by looking at the history of our own governments, which hasconsistently tried to prevent “popular and democratic alternatives” fromarising in the Middle East. Michele Dunn, with her experience of the American executive, has a muchmore realistic assessment of Libya’s trajectory following its rapprochementwith Britain and the United States: the latter strengthens repressive regimeswhen it normalises relationships with them.[xxii] Oneexpectation, if we were more critically aware, would be that America and the EUwould make the regime stronger and more stable; and that it would use a numberof approaches to do so: military aid, improved business links, greateropportunities for corruption; while fostering a new ideological legitimacy(both inside and outside the country); using our intellectual class and itsinstitutions. These issues are notmentioned in David Held’s letter at all. They are the most difficult ones both to see and to accept – that we aremerely tools of government, and the corporate community it supports. Changing our angle of vision, beingmore sceptical about our institutions, would alter our judgements; and ourtactics and strategy may change accordingly.[xxiii] But how easy to believe that our hopeswill come true! Especially when wehave illusions about our own countries and the institutions in which we work.[xiv]

An establishment academic is also likely to exaggerate therole of ideas, which may in turn lead to him to overrate the prospects ofimprovement – concepts can be changed more easily than the facts on theground. There may also be atendency to concentrate on ideas for their own sake; while missing how others,such as prime ministers or CEOs, use them for quite instrumental purposes. A recent example is the use of the ideaof democracy promotion to justify the invasion of Iraq; carried out, of course,for quite different reasons. Heldfollows the usual pattern:

The aimultimately was to create a Virtual Democracy Centre for North Africa, whichwould have brought together academic and policy resources on the building ofdemocracies, in English and Arabic. We also planned to run a series of civilsociety training workshops in Libya as well as host a major internationalconference on political reform in North Africa.[xxv]

Would this really have the desired effect? Do people talking about democracy andfreedom actually create free and democratic institutions? It could be a way of preventing them –action is replaced by dialogue, which becomes a means to itself; an industryall of its own.[xxvi] Held writes of the increased numbers ofstudents that would come to the LSE, as a result of these and similaractivities.[xxvii] Is this education or business? How many return to Libya as committeddemocrats? Isn’t this to overvaluethe content of these courses: do most students study for knowledge alone?[xviii] It certainly overvalues theirlasting effects – few would retain their academic enthusiasm once secure intheir ministries.[xxix] Professor Held believes the ideas heteaches are very important, but Blair and Bush would surely have a moresophisticated view of their purpose: to embed the Libyan elite within theinstitutions and culture of Western state capitalism. A few would escape this conditioning; but most would not; ontheir return sorting out the technical details which prevent Libya from fullyintegrating into the international economy.

A certain optimism, together with a naivety about how ideasoperate in the real world, produces a natural tendency to give our allies thebenefit of the doubt.[xxx] We believe they can bechanged from within, by the diffusion of democratic ideas amongst theeducated. This reinforces thetendency to gravitate to the establishment, especially when encouraged by ourown government. With fewerillusions about our society, and some distance from it, those hard tacticaljudgements would change. Therewould be more wariness of leading individuals, harder attempts to isolate one’swork from their influence, and stricter conditions on what we expect from ourhosts. Permeation can work bothways: we can soften them, but they can weaken us; especially when we convinceourselves that they share our ideals. But this is not to criticise David Held, only theculture to which he belongs. As tohis actual involvement only he can know if he got the balance right, for asGellner wrote:

There is no simple orreliable answer, perhaps no answer at all. I cannot feel at home either with the holier-than-thoupuritans (who never compromise at all) or the blasé practitioners of realpolitik(always willing to go). Yet one mustalso try not to be complacent… There really is no clear answer, and I leave the question with you.

[i] When I checked their websitethere was not a single mention of the current crisis. In the aforementioned puff piece, called Libya Rising, the company writes out the ugly history:

“In actual fact,it’s probably one of the safest places I’ve been to with BP,” says BP Libya’sbusiness support manager, Ian McGregor.”

Safe for westernbusinessmen, but not, we know, for its more dissenting population. The writer is a novelist,which may give a surprising insight into the requirements of the modern daycorporation.

[ii] Its current head is a former director of the CBI; theChairman a former CEO of BP. Arethese not symbols of what George Monbiot has called the corporate takeover ofthe British state? And which hascreated its own particular culture with its own quite specific interests. PeterSutherland was the Chairman of BP at the time Blair was negotiating withGaddafi. How much was the businessmodel of the LSE designed to further those and similar interests? It is not so much about individualcontracts, I believe the chairman declared a interest over the Libyan funding,but about a culture that creates a natural bias towards commercial expansion;downplaying other values and considerations. (AnthonyBarnett for more comment on this).

RecentlyMonbiot has even gone so far as to call it a corporate coup d’etat,referring to changes in the tax policy that allows our large corporations topay even lower taxes; the City of London effectively becoming a large offshoreisland; our very own tax haven. This at a time when the government is cutting public sector jobs toreduce the deficit. It is the same strategy as governor ScottWalker’s in Wisconsin, for almost certainly for the same reasons: selfinterest and ideology. RobertSkidelsky comes to a similar conclusion:

“Inmy view, the fear of becoming “another Greece” was used as an excuse for aprogramme of cuts that had been decided on other grounds.”

Althoughhe gives wider, more diffuse reasons for these actions – instinct, bureaucraticinertia, conventional wisdom, and a climate of opinion.

Havinga rest from the London March (in March) I watched BBC News for about ten minutes. The coverage was shocking. However, there was one interesting moment: Francis Maudejustified the public sectors cuts by saying that they were only returning thedeficit to its 2007 levels. He wasnot questioned about this. Andgiven the rest of the comments one would have thought that it was the marcherswho were responsible for the public debt, with their wages and pensions – therewas an extended commentary from the director of the Tax Payers Alliance whoconcentrated just on these. However, what the former chairman of the Conservative Party was tellingus is that this government is massively redistributing wealth to theirsupporters in the City and in the multi-national board rooms: all themoney paid to bailout out the banks during the financial crash is come fromthe man in the street.

Whatsurprised me was that there was no opposition to any of these claims. At any moment I was expecting someother politician or “independent” advocate to argue the other side of thecase. There was no one. This is a cultural hegemony (aswell as political manoeuvring behind the scenes – did the BBC cut a deal toensure its own funding?); and it is affecting all of our publicinstitutions. See Adam Curtis’ TheTrap for a brilliant overview of these ideological developments; going back to at least the fifties.

[iii] See Dwight Macdonald’s perceptive comments about theSoviet Union, quoted in my The Original. InLibya’s case isn’t there a similar problem: emasculate an erratic dictator inorder to create a more predictable and safe regime – for the establishment?

[iv] Eamon McCann has the same view of Gaddafi and hisregime: at some point it was OK, and then it decayed; and Gaddafi himselfbecame a delusional tyrant. Thefacts seem to be somewhat different: there are periods of harsh repression,particularly at the beginning, followed by shorter periods of slight reform;with the last decade perhaps the most “liberal” of all.

[v] Or “forms of life”. Ernest Gellner’s Words andThings whilst an attack on the Oxford Linguistic Philosophy is also an excellent description of an ideology, and ananalysis of how it works. While this school was wrongphilosophically its cult of ordinary usage is a good description of howsub-cultures operate in practice.

[vi] See footnote lxvii below.

[vii] ColinTalbott notes the ambiguous nature of some of these courses:

“Mastersin Public Administration (MPA) programs have become increasingly popular inrecent years… Students from manycountries flock to the US and other democratic countries to study it. But it's not entirely clear to me thatwe teach them democratic public administration.”

[viii] It can be done. Gellner’s Words and Thingsis a wonderful example

[ix] Look at Howard Davies’ CV: CBI, Bank of England, theFCO, The Royal Academy of Music…

[x] Halliday exposes this argument in his memo. Not that you would need someone withexpert knowledge to tell you so. In a Wikileakscable of 2009 Saif Gaddafi is described as “presumed heir apparent”; whichdemolishes the contention completely; unless you believe a formal position ismore important than informal power (if so it illustrates a curious, but notuncommon, mindset). (See also lvibelow for more information, which further discredits the claim, repeated by NabilaRamdani in her profile).

[xi] The commentators are concentrating on the plagiarismcharges, which to me seem not that important; given the wider context. It is the potentially vacuous nature ofthe thesis that is far more interesting - it tells us so much about ourintellectual culture.

[xii]“Some political commentators on Libya have identified astruggle between reformist elements, exemplified by Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi,and reactionary forces resisting change. Others, more cynical, believe that thestruggle has been fabricated to gain popularity for Saif al-Islam al- Gaddafiat home and legitimacy abroad.” (Amnesty International)

Thisdiscussion is too widely framed: “reform” can mean improved human rights, withmore freedom and democracy; or it could mean a more modern, ”globalized”economy, open to international capital, but less responsive to popularneeds. The two can be quitedifferent; though no doubt there will be some overlap between them.

[xiii] But one wonders how strong this supporting evidenceis; mightn’t the CEfP be speaking a different dialect too? On their website there is an assessmentof Libya, dated 2010. It is by the then US ambassador Gene A.Cretz; and it is taken at face value. In private he had described the regime as “thuggish” when dealing with“domestic equities”. In public heis much more polite.

“…[There will be]an open and frank human rights dialogue… Cretz acknowledged that democracy promotion is a delicate issue thatmust be approached carefully. He expressed approval of the work of Saifel-Islam Qaddhafi, the son of the Libyan president, who is, according to Cretz,engaged in promoting human rights issues.”

Thediscussion is framed around how Libya is changing, now that it is an ally ofthe United States. The assumptionseems to be that this new relationship will lead to improvements in humanrights – just let our guys talk to their guys and I’m sure we’ll make itbetter, seems the approach. However, there is a correlation between US aid and human rights: thehigher the former the worse the latter (Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, ThePolitical Economy of Human Rights; and much work since). Thus the diplomat’s response isactually rather worrying. Especially as we know morality plays an insignificant role when it comesto Cretz’s decision-making; thanks to Wikileaks (see footnote xxviiabove). How then should weinterpret his “[there will be] an open and frank human rights dialogue”? If we were in the room when theambassador and colonel met mightn’t we hear something like this: “don’t worrytoo much about Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and all the restof them; but just don’t do anything too outrageous. Let it look like you’re reforming.” Could this be the reason the ambassadorpraises Saif Gaddafi – he is a safer pair of hands?

Because Cretz’s answer is soabstract, and with hardly any detail, it allows everyone to interpret it intheir own way. His listeners canfill this vacuum of facts with their own meanings. In this case, human rights are going to improve in Libya(even though we must be very careful about democracy – the ambassador is muchmore cautious than Held).
Inan earlier policydocument for the CEfP Michele Dunn, a former official in the StateDepartment, writes of “Thedanger… that Washington will think about U.S.–Libyan relations too much alongtraditional normalization-of-relations lines, and end up strengthening andperpetuating the status quo in Libya.” The report notes theregime’s repression and suggests some options:

“The United Statesshould be persistent in raising human rights cases, particularly when it comesto detention, abuse, and harassment of peaceful dissidents. But it also needsto think about investing in woefully underdeveloped areas such as the abilityto form truly independent civil society organizations and media, in order tohelp Libyans increase their ability to raise such concerns on their own.” (The United States and Libya; WhereDo We Go From Here?)

Isn’t the danger thereality, and the hopes the illusion? What force is there to resolve the tension between the normal operatingpractices of the United States (and Britain, for that matter) and the desire toimprove human rights in this single country? Is it inside the governments themselves? Cretz’s reply surely confirms that itisn’t.

[xiv] See the above footnote for quote and comment.

[xv] This article actually contradicts Held on Saif’sGaddafi’s position within the regime. According to it he was elected the coordinator of the organizingcommittee of the Libyan Socialist Popular Leadership; making him the secondmost powerful man in Libya.

[xvi] But if the LSE was operating like the Britishgovernment or the LBBC the key concern would be promoting business; and thus aneagerness to make money would come before a principled stance on humanrights. I would imagine there wastremendous pressure, from both within the organisation (its institutionaldemands to expand and get private finance together with its new commercialculture), and from the British government, for the administration to agree toget into Libya. Once the managementhad set the terms how easy for a single academic to justify his involvement.

[xvii] Thus he follows the conventional pattern of listingthe Soviet Union, Communist China and apartheid South Africa. Others, closer to home, spring to mind:Saudi Arabia, present day China, Suharto’s Indonesia… Thatcher was a keen admirer of General Pinochet, as weknow. Whether or not we work withauthoritarian regimes depends on their political alignment, not on theirinternal nature.

[xviii] Though thisoverlooks his other side:

“Yet, despite his radicalism,Saif al-Islam always deferred to his father’s prejudices and preferences,moderating his tone in tune with the prevailing political wind, which itselfbent to the colonel’s wishes.” (GeorgeJoffe)

Compare with is NabilaRamdani’s description in theGuardian. Like Giddens this is apuff piece; this time of Gaddafi’s son. In this case notice the attraction of his sophisticated demeanor: hereally is one of us. Though note,not a liberal academic, but a corporate executive. Shouldn’t that have given the game away?

Joffe notes the good work SaifGaddafi has done. But commentingon the award of an official position writes:

“Yet it is also a mechanism bywhich Saif al-Islam has been domesticated within the current Libyan politicalsystem, despite all his ambitions to reform it profoundly. It remains tobe seen how compromised his reform agenda might be in consequence.”

Alaaal-Meri, like David Held, believed he was a genuine reformer; no doubtquite sincerely. But otheranalysts, a little more independent, and perhaps less influenced by idealistichopes of future liberalization, could see the problems more clearly; and theirjudgements were in consequence somewhat more reserved. Isn’t this the lessen for us all: wecannot depend on the goodwill and democratic talk of our politicians andbusinessmen? Those who do,believing it will lead to a liberal future, risk be manipulated nearly all thetime.

[xix] Why else was he in London, meeting with its commercialelite? Unless you believe politicsis separate from economics; something clearly Blair and Mandelson didnot believe. In hismemo Fred Halliday makes this very point about the country:

“InArab states many of the most important positions have no official title, andkinship, and informal links, are more important than state function – and this,above all, in Libya.”

[xx] See lix above. The main attraction of SaifGaddafi to Western governments and businesses was that he appeared to offer amore stable and predictable future than his unstable father; who is too taintedwith past atrocities.

[xxi] Anthony Barnett gives more details in his lengthycriticism of Held, published in OpenDemocracy. He also quiterightly concentrates on the question of judgement, and raises the wider role ofthe British government; and the new business culture within which theuniversities exist.

[xxii] See footnote liv. Apart from being a former State Department and White Houseofficial she has also been a US government negotiator with Libya. Her report reflects this experience.

AnthonyBarnett quotes from a leaked agreement between Blair and Gaddafi in 2007:

“Itclaimed that it was designed ‘to contribute to the strengthening of securityand stability in their two countries and the enhancement of peace and securityin the Mediterranean region’.”

Britain,as one would expect, has both the same worldview and operating practices as theUnited States: a strong, stable regime is the first priority.

[xxiii]One example: trying to create a popular democracywithin an authoritarian regime backed by the West may not be the best way ofhelping the populace. America andthe EU want to open up Libya, enabling it to follow the neo-liberal policiesthat they espouse; even though the consequences may be painfulfor the ordinary Libyan. Butwhy not suggest another model? Like East Asian capitalism? This may be more in tune with the nature of the state, may improve theeconomic circumstances of the majority of the population; and may in the longrun bring about democracy (eg. in South Korea and Taiwan).

EmanWhaby’s article suggests what professor Held might regard as another paradox:the economic reforms, which are in part designed to buttress these repressivestates, by creating tensions inside the country, as the elite becomes morekleptocratic, can actually produce democratic rebellions. It is the unintended consequences ofthis brand of Western fanaticism and self-interest, and which we see elsewhere– for example, across South America. If Held’s ideas are part of the mix of “Globalization”, as preached byGiddens, and enacted by Blair, we can see the popular uprisings in Libya andelsewhere as local opposition to the consequences of his theories…

Alexde Waal has an excellent analysis of these issues. See footnote xxix above.

[xxiv] What is the main concern of British universityadministrators today – business or knowledge?

Afew years ago I had a conversation with a student from Austria who said thatour universities were only interested in the money she paid for her fees. In the UK education=business, she said.This needn’t affect individual academics, of course. However, it does change the culture in which they operate,and which over time will exert its pressures.

[xxv] Do conferences, workshops, and all that talk, talk,talk, actually generate reform? How much can ideas do by themselves? Very little is probably the answer. This was one of Gellner’s criticisms ofthe intellectual class – a tendency towards solipsism.

“Oneunusual feature of Mr Gaddafi’s thesis is that he commissioned Monitor Group,the strategy consultancy, to conduct surveys of the views of heads ofnon-governmental and inter-governmental organisations on his behalf.” (FinancialTimes)

Thediscussion of this is framed around the plagiarism charges of Saif Gaddafi’sPHD thesis, as you would expect. But shouldn’t we look at this a little more widely: perhaps the realpurpose of employing the Monitor Group wasn’t to help with his academic work atall, rather is was an opportunity to advertise Libya: to both non-governmentalorganisations and the Fortune 500, where this group gets most of its revenue. In a separate report the FinancialTimes notes how Saif Gaddafi wasa regular on the business circuit; clearly a priority for the regime andBritain’s own commercial interests:

“The second attraction was theoperation of LibyanInvestment Authority, a sovereign wealth fund worth $60bn-$80bn,according to analysts. The fund, which opened a London office in 2009, hasinvested in Britain to a lesser degree than rivals in Qatar and Dubai. But ithas recently disclosed a 3.01 per centstake in Pearson,the educational publisher and owner of the Financial Times. It also ownsconsiderable London commercial property assets. Mohamed Layas, LIA’s head, toldUS diplomats last year that he preferred operating in the British capital tothe US because of the “ease of doing business” and the “relativelyuncomplicated tax system”.

[xxvi] How much of academia itself is just an industry? How many of those conferences andacademic seminars are only ends in themselves, with no wider purpose?

[xxvii] The CEfP mentions similar initiatives on behalf of the United States.

[xxviii] The assumption behind the BrowneReview is students go touniversities to in order to improve their earning potential. One assumes it was the Labourgovernment’s view too.

[xxix] Held writes of the benefits of educating Libya’sstudents. But on the whole theywould have been trained to become futurecivil servants. Is our historyresplendent with democratic reforms that have originated from our civilservice? Isn’t this the Webb andShaw approach, institutionalised now deep within the LSE; and part of itscultural unconscious?

[xxx] The LSE hasn’t changed that much of the years, onesuspects. John A. Hall, writing ofan earlier time in the late 40s and early 50s, paraphrases Gellner’s view:

“Uncriticalevolutionary optimism of this sort could only deal with the horrors of thetwentieth century by ignoring them; it reified its own values rather thaninvestigating the world.” (Ernest Gellner)

Thelast phrase is so true – many intellectuals simply do not pay attention to theworld outside their study windows; preferring to live comfortably ensconced intheir conceptual armchairs. Formore discussion see my RussianClimate. For a particular case, treated atlength, see DropoutBoogie.