posted under
Brown
,
capitalism
,
Healey
,
Marx
,
religion
,
SCT
by Unit for Criticism
Written by Kevin Healey, Institute of Communications Research
“Political democracy is Christian in the sense that man, not merely one man but every man, is there considered a sovereign being, a supreme being.” - Marx, “On the Jewish Question”
For her SCT lecture, Wendy Brown aimed to address the apparent resurgence of religion today, especially as it occurs against the backdrop of neoliberal capitalism. As she pointed out in her subsequent mini-seminar, other authors such as Saba Mahmood and William Connelly have addressed the contemporary interplay between religion and capitalism from distinct perspectives (Mahmood with a concern for Western imperialism against Islamic cultures, and Connelly through a more abstract Deleuzian lens). For her part, Brown sought to defend a unique reading of Marx that could shed light on current events.
Brown insists that Marx understood capitalism to “require and entail” its own religious ethos. For Marx, Brown argues, the collapse of the sacred/profane distinction does not “overcome” but rather “rearranges” the religious. Secularism is therefore a kind of rearranged form of the religious. The more common reading of Marx is that capitalism strips away the religious, revealing an underlying reality where political economy is the ultimate determining factor. But Brown claims that there is a “second Marx” waiting to be read, in his more noted works like the Manifesto and Capital but perhaps more clearly in less-known work like “On the Jewish Question.” Brown’s Marx claims that what capitalism reveals is its own violence toward mankind and the sacred. Capitalism does not reveal humanity; rather, it reveals its own inhumanity. Rather than overcoming religion, capitalism depends on religion for its proper functioning; and at the same time, it comes to operate as religion. In this sense, Brown argues, Marx offers a political theology of the capitalist state.
Brown’s reading of Marx is certainly helpful in understanding the collusion between religion (specifically, Christianity) and capitalism from a critical perspective. What I find interesting is that these types of discussion seem to presuppose a widespread surprise that such collusion would exist in the first place. Adam Smith himself was very clear that free market principles applied equally to both economic and religious spheres. Smith devoted substantial portions of The Wealth of Nations to a defense of religious disestablishment, arguing (against Hume, specifically) that competition between religious sects would lead not to increased strife but to moderation. In this light, historians like Frank Lambert are not at all guilty of anachronism in talking about the pre- and post-Revolutionary periods in terms of “religious regulation” and “religious deregulation.” Lambert notes that the highly popular preacher George Whitefield (an itinerant evangelical in the 1740s) spoke of his own evangelism in terms that borrowed self-consciously from the discourse of free market economics.
The symbiosis between religion and free market capitalism, therefore, is nothing new: in fact it was arguably part of the logic that informed the First Amendment. (There is certainly a resonance between Smith’s discussions of religion and Madison’s arguments in the Federalist Papers, although I do not know whether Madison read Smith.) What might be new, though, are the particular brands of contemporary evangelicalism that “resonate” with neoliberal capitalism. But these new strains can only be understood properly when placed in historical perspective. This is what I found lacking from Brown’s lecture and her follow-up seminar.
Brown’s discussion raised a number of good questions, but my main concern is this: How can we address questions of religion and economics in a way that doesn’t reduce Christianity to contemporary American evangelicalism, or reduce evangelicals to a monolithic group?
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posted under
Ellul
,
Healey
,
SCT
,
Technology
by Unit for Criticism
Written by Kevin Healey, Institute for Communications Research
Editor's Note: This post is part of a summer-long series that includes the writing of Kevin Healey (Communications) and Martha Webber (English) as they attend Cornell's SCT (School of Criticism and Theory) during the summer of 2008. As always, feel free to join the conversation.
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One of the guest lecturers for SCT is Gerald Early, a noted cultural critic from Washington University. Early spoke about Miles Davis and John Coltrane for his public lecture, but in his follow-up mini-seminar with the SCT students, he began the discussion with a question about Woody Guthrie. Guthrie was known for wielding an acoustic guitar adorned with the slogan “This Machine Kills Fascists.” “What does Guthrie mean,” Early asked, “by calling his guitar a machine?” So began a nearly 20-minute discussion about the difference between a machine and an instrument.
Early mentioned that Guthrie was writing and singing during the 1930s, and it occurred to me that this was the same period when John Steinbeck wrote about the great Dust Bowl migration in The Grapes of Wrath. In that book, Steinbeck uses images of farm machinery to symbolize the plight of working migrants as banks foreclosed on their land. I wondered silently whether there was any connection, but I wasn’t sure. After doing some research online, it became clear that the connection between Guthrie and Steinbeck was stronger than I had thought: each wrote specifically about the Dust Bowl, and in fact Guthrie wrote a few songs directly inspired by Steinbeck’s work (e.g., “Tom Joad” Parts 1 and 2).
So what is the connection between Guthrie’s “machine” and Steinbeck’s farm tractors? Consider the following passage from Grapes of Wrath:
“The tractors came over the roads and into the fields, great crawlers moving like insects, having the incredible strength of insects… The man sitting in the iron seat did not look like a man; gloved, goggled, rubber dust mask over nose and mouth, he was part of the monster, a robot in the seat…” (37-38)
“The land company—that’s the bank when it has land—wants tractors, not families on the land. Is a tractor bad? Is the power that turns the long furrows wrong? If this tractor were ours it would be good—not mine, but ours. If our tractor turned the long furrows of our land, it would be good. Not my land, but ours. We could love that tractor then as we loved this land when it was ours. But this tractor does two things—it turns the land and turns us off the land. There is little difference between this tractor and a tank. The people are driven, intimidated, hurt by both. We must think about this.” (151)
The tractors symbolize the power of bureaucracies beyond the control of the migrant workers with whom the author clearly sympathizes. But Steinbeck retains the hope that those same instruments of power might come into the possession of the workers themselves, thereby transforming them from “bad” to “good.”
Guthrie’s work evokes a similar kind of hope. A guitar is not a machine in the strict sense, for sure. But Guthrie’s slogan, “This Machine Kills Fascists” is a symbolic appropriation of the power inherent in the machine-powered, bureaucratically-driven society that he so passionately derides. Guthrie and Steinbeck share a brand of Marxist utopianism that allows for the possibility of redeeming our technological culture.
But how is the work of these two cultural critics related to the broader SCT theme of the Holocaust? By way of synchronicity, I’ve found a connection in the research I’ve been doing recently for an article about Jacques Ellul. Ellul, a French sociologist and theologian, critiqued modernity for the pervasiveness of what he calls technique. Consider the following comments from Ellul:
“The term technique, as I use it, does not mean machines, technology, or this or that procedure for attaining an end. In our technological society, technique is the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency… in every field of human activity.” (The Technological Society, p. xxv)
“No social, human, or spiritual fact is so important as the fact of technique in the modern world. And yet no subject is so little understood.” (Ibid., p. 3)
Ellul would have much to say in answer to Gerald Early’s question about Woody Guthrie’s guitar slogan. Machines are symbolic of the problem of modernity, but they do not exhaust it. I imagine that Guthrie and Steinbeck might agree. But Ellul would not share Steinbeck’s faith in the redemptive potential of technology (“we could love that tractor… when it was ours”).
Ellul’s apparent pessimism may have been inspired by his time spent in World War II as a leader in the French Resistance. Much of his writing on “technique” is inspired by his perspective on the rise of Nazism. But he argued that modern democracies are thoroughly permeated by propaganda and “technique” in a way that is perhaps less visible but just as threatening to human freedom. He found little reason for hope in technology or mere political reform, but called instead for a radical re-orientation toward the world on the part of individuals.
I am left with these questions: Does a broad concept like Ellul’s “technique” help us to put the Dust Bowl migration on the same page as the Nazi regime? Are both symptomatic—to different degrees—of the predicament of modernity where efficiency and technical progress have steam-rolled other basic human values like dignity, equality, and democracy? Other factors were surely at play in the rise of Nazism, but doesn’t Hannah Arendt’s discussion of Eichmann touch on themes similar to Ellul’s “technique”? Without the prevalence of technique, would the Nazi regime have been possible? And what about the possible redemptive power of machines (technology, more broadly) that Guthrie and Steinbeck seemed to espouse?
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posted under
animals
,
antisemitism
,
Dean
,
fear
,
Gross
,
Healey
,
SCT
by Unit for Criticism
Written by Kevin Healey, Institute for Communications Research
Editor's Note: This post is part of a summer-long series that includes the writing of Kevin Healey (Communications) and Martha Webber (English) as they attend Cornell's SCT (School of Criticism and Theory) during the summer of 2008. As always, feel free to join the conversation.
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This week in SCT we discussed Jan Gross’s Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz (2007). Gross’s previous book, Neighbors, caused serious debate across the political spectrum in Poland, and Fear provoked a similar reaction. Poles are highly sensitive about their nation’s history of anti-Semitism, for reasons that Fear brings clearly into focus. While anti-Semitism existed prior to World War II in Poland (and indeed throughout Europe, a fact well-documented by Saul Friedlander), its persistence after the war is especially troubling. As Gross explains in often excruciating detail, the Polish city of Kielce was the site of the worst post-WWII pogrom in Europe. The author’s main task in Fear is to address the simple question: How could such events have taken place after the war had ended?
In our seminar, Carolyn Dean reminded us repeatedly that Gross’s attempt to answer this question makes Fear an extremely unusual historical work (if it remains within the disciplinary bounds of history at all). Rather than trying to establish causal explanations through the weight of evidence, Gross proceeds instead through a process of elimination. The usual explanations—the myth of blood libel, the idea that the Jews supported communism—simply do not stand up to the weight of evidence. So we are left with what Gross considers the best explanation we have: to paraphrase Tacitus (as Gross does), we hate those whom we have hurt. Poles benefitted materially from the persecution of their Jewish neighbors by appropriating possessions ranging from blankets to houses. The fear that Gross refers to is the fear that Poles have of themselves and their neighbors, in light of the guilty knowledge of their own past actions. This fear led to the need to eliminate its source, in the form of violent massacres that spread like wildfire through Kielce.
But Gross goes a step further in his proposed explanation...
and here is where Dean is most suspicious: in his conclusion, Gross cites the chimpanzee research of Jane Goodall, who described the capacity of chimps to treat members of their own community not merely as outsiders but as an enemy species. In an extended footnote, Gross cites an account of a community of chimps who split apart and subsequently engaged in violent, murderous aggression toward one another. Goodall describes the process as “pseudospeciation,” and Gross appropriates this evolutionary insight in his own explanation of the pogrom of Kielce. In our seminar, Dean bracketed this explanation as something that seems out of place in a work of history—an explanation undeserving of serious consideration. Most of my fellow seminarians appeared to agree.
I’ll pose 2 questions for consideration, only the first of which follows directly from the above summary.
1. Why not take Gross’s psycho-analytical approach—including his reference to Jane Goodall’s chimpanzee research—more seriously?
Clearly Gross takes it very seriously. He structures his entire argument to lead up to it. And while he acknowledges that he cannot provide concrete evidence for such an analysis, he suggests that this is the best explanation we have at the moment. Dean’s concerns seem to revolve around the disciplinary bounds of history. But Gross clearly intends his work to reach a wide audience—especially those Poles whose conscience he wishes to shake. Since he begins with a simple question—“Why Kielce?”—his work proceeds in whatever manner can address this question. Should we reject this kind of explanation simply because it is difficult—if not impossible—to prove by the usual historical methods?
2. How should we think about representations of victimhood that involve animals?
I pose this question after visiting the Farm Sanctuary, which is located near Ithaca, NY, where our seminar is held. The Farm Sanctuary rescues abused and neglected animals—mostly from factory farms—and nurses them back to health. I thought I was taking a detour from my studies when we visited the Sanctuary, but I was struck by the resemblance of their introductory video to the Holocaust documentaries we’ve been discussing in class. The video portrays the terrible conditions of factory farm animals, focusing on several animals in particular who are presented as friends of the Sanctuary family. Gross’s reference to Jane Goodall’s chimpanzee research made the “dots” beg for a connection, since his footnote includes a similarly personalized narrative of one chimp, Goliath, who was viciously beaten by members of his own community.
What connections should we make, if any, between these issues? That is, between Jan Gross, Jane Goodall, and the Farm Sanctuary? How do we make such connections without belittling the memory of the Holocaust? Political theorists like Martha Nussbaum have written extensively on the moral imperative to recognize the dignity of animals (see especially Frontiers of Justice). But how do we differentiate between these issues in a way that is morally responsible?
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posted under
Dean
,
Healey
,
pornography
,
violence
by Unit for Criticism
Written by Kevin Healey, Institute for Communications Research
Editor's Note: This post is part of a summer-long series that includes the writing of Kevin Healey (Communications) and Martha Webber (English) as they attend Cornell's SCT (School of Criticism and Theory) during the summer of 2008. As always, feel free to join the conversation.
In The Fragility of Empathy After the Holocaust (2004), Carolyn Dean begins by setting aside the question of whether, in fact, contemporary society suffers from a decline in empathy. Instead, her focus is how intellectuals (namely her fellow historians) have constructed the discourse of such a decline. They have done so by invoking certain tropes such as the “pornography of violence” in Holocaust literature and the “indifference” of German bystanders. Ironically, Dean argues, in deploying such tropes historians have not succeeded in clarifying the nature of empathy, the causes of its putative decline, or the possibility of its restoration. Rather, they have provided a means of avoiding serious engagement with the problem. Though she initially brackets the question of whether contemporary society suffers from a decline in empathy, though, it is clear that her unique approach to historiography is driven by this very concern.
Dean claims that references to the “pornography of violence” in Holocaust literature (as well as film and other media) are ultimately devoid of substance. The phrase carries intense moral weight, but because of its ability to escape definition, it “turns out not to explain anything at all.” It suggests a relationship between sexual and political pathology, and implicates the commercializing effects of mass media in the alleged increase in “numbness” toward injustice. But Dean insists that the invocation of pornography “make[s] it easier not to think” and diverts our attention from the question of how we might “forge a critical usage of empathy.” In the end, this pervasive trope does not move the conversation forward but merely expresses a vague and persistent post-Holocaust anxiety that there may be continuity between a normal person and a violent monster. In a broader sense, this anxiety troubles the liberal Enlightenment commitment that we share a common humanity which provides the foundation for a rational, democratic society.
What should we make of Dean’s emphatic rejection of pornography as a metaphor for describing explicit materials that recall the horrors of the Holocaust? Is her call to abandon this trope well-founded? Should we reserve some special place for the metaphor while seeking better approaches, such as Dean finds in the work of Omer Bartov? And should we be concerned, as Dean appears to be, about the alleged decline of empathy?
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posted under
disciplinarity
,
Healey
,
memory
,
SCT
by Unit for Criticism
Written by Kevin Healey, Institute for Communications Research
Editor's Note: This post is part of a summer-long series that includes the writing of Kevin Healey (Communications) and Martha Webber (English) as they attend Cornell's SCT (School of Criticism and Theory) during the summer of 2008. As always, feel free to join the conversation.
Carolyn Dean began our 6-week seminar on the notion of “victimhood” by assigning Andreas Huyssen’s Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. Dean is a historian, and Huyssen is a literary theorist, so most of her analysis and critique of Huyssen stems from that difference. In his discussion of “memory culture,” Huyssen does tend to draw parallels between geographically and culturally disparate phenomena: a memorial park to the victims of state terror in Buenos Aires; the Jewish Museum in Berlin; a sculpture by Doris Salcedo. Most interesting (or perhaps problematic) is his juxtaposition of the twin towers in New York City and the two Buddhist statues destroyed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. He offers some speculation about why such sites have come to take on increased importance in recent years: namely that the processes of globalization have caused an increase in uncertainty about the future, resulting in a need to “slow down” which people (apparently all people around the world) address through a “hypertrophy” of memory. Dean’s main critique of Huyssen is that in his discussion of these sites, the parallels he draws between them, and his explanation for their increased salience, he does not provide adequate historical context. But perhaps we should forgive him for this deficiency since he is not, after all, a historian.
Nevertheless, from the standpoint of textual analysis, Huyssen does provide some interesting tools. His driving metaphor of the palimpsest—a text which has been partially erased to create room for new text—is compelling. He offers the idea of the palimpsest as a methodological tool for evaluating sites of memory culture (the aforementioned sites, among others). His goal is to distinguish mere monuments (which can easily be overlooked and forgotten) from sites which catalyze ongoing engagement, interaction, and recognition of the multiple layers of memory. He cites the memorial park to state terror in Buenos Aires as a good example since it combines architecture, landscaping, and urban planning to invite continued attention from the public.
The strength of his argument, then, rests on whether the metaphor of the palimpsest is helpful in discriminating among different sites of memory. April Marshall, a professor of Hispanic studies at Pepperdine, remarked that his adulation of the memorial park in Buenos Aires is misplaced, since the inhabitants would not agree with his analysis, preferring other sites instead. So we might distinguish his methodology (the palimpsest metaphor) from his peculiar application of it. But, bearing this distinction in mind, does the metaphor of the palimpsest offer a valuable means of evaluating contemporary sites of memory construction? In constructing monuments to contemporary and past traumas, should the overarching goal be to create a space where visitors are confronted with multiple layers of memory—some clear, some partially erased, some still being written? Is this the success of the Jewish Museum of Berlin? Will it be the success of the memorial constructed at the site of the World Trade Center towers?
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