Hegel versus Heidegger | e-flux
[Fredric Jameson: Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fiction]
:: In an age of globalization characterized by the dizzying technologies of the First World, and the social disintegration of the Third, is the concept of utopia still meaningful? Archaeologies of the Future, Jameson’s most substantial work since Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, investigates the development of this form since Thomas More, and interrogates the functions of utopian thinking in a post-Communist age. The relationship between utopia and science fiction is explored through the representations of otherness…alien life and alien worlds…and a study of the works of Philip K. Dick, Ursula LeGuin, William Gibson, Brian Aldiss, Kim Stanley Robinson and more. Jameson’s essential essays, including “The Desire Called Utopia,” conclude with an examination of the opposing positions on utopia and an assessment of its political value today. Archaeologies of the Future is the third volume, after Postmodernism and A Singular Modernity, of Jameson’s project on the Poetics of Social Forms. ::
Fredric Jameson { Archaeologies of the Future. The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fiction }pdf
CONTENTS
PART ONE [THE DESIRE CALLED UTOPIA]
CHAPTERS
Introduction: Utopia Now
1 Varieties of the Utopian
2 The Utopian Enclave
3 Morus: The Generic Window
4 Utopian Science versus Utopian Ideology
5 The Great Schism
6 How to Fulfill a Wish
7 The Barrier of Time
8 The Unknowability Thesis
9 The Alien Body
10 Utopia and its Antinomies
11 Synthesis, Irony, Neutralization and the Moment of Truth
12 Journey into Fear
13 The Future as Disruption
PART TWO [AS FAR AS THOUGHT CAN REACH]
ESSAYS
1 Fourier; or; Ontology and Utopia
2 Generic Discontinuities in SF: Brian Aldiss’ Starship
3 World Reduction in Le Guin
4 Progress versus Utopia, or; Can We Imagine the Future?
5 Science Fiction as a Spatial Genre: Vonda Mcintyre’s
The Exile Waiting
6 The Space of Science Fiction: Narrative in Van Vogt
7 Longevity as Class Struggle
8 Philip K. Dick, in Memoriam
9 After Armageddon: Character Systems in Dr Bloodmoney
10 History and Salvation in Philip K. Dick
11 Fear and Loathing in Globalization
12 “If I Can Find One Good City, I Will Spare the Man”: Realism and
Utopia in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy.
Acknowledgments
Index
Marxism as Science Fiction {by Gerry Canavan}
Mark Bould and China Miéville, eds. Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction. Wesleyan UP, 2009.
In 1972, Darko Suvin published “On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre”, where he announced science fiction’s importance as “the literature of cognitive estrangement” (372). “SF,” Suvin writes, “is then a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author’s empirical environment” (375). Suvin’s definition of SF, a genre of fiction which is “wiser than the world it speaks to,” is famously exclusionist; not only are fantasy and the fairy tale anathematic to the high cognitive ambitions of SF, but—by his own estimate—95% of what is published as SF does not deserve the name either (381). Suvin foregrounds his indebtedness to both Viktor Shklovsky’s ostranie and the famous Verfremdungseffekt of Bertolt Brecht, and notes in passing that SF (as a “fundamentally subversive genre” [379]) has a great deal in common with the classic pastoral, whose “imaginary framework of a world without money economy, state apparatus, and depersonalizing urbanization” stands in relationship to SF “as alchemy does to chemistry and nuclear physics: an early try in the right direction with insufficient sophistication” (376). Though the words “Marx” and “Marxism” appear nowhere in Suvin’s essay, the necessary political orientation of both SF and its audience is unmistakable.
In his introduction to Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction, Mark Bould describes “the Suvin event”—his publication of “Poetics” combined with his founding of the journal Science Fiction Studies with R.D. Mullen in 1973—as the foundation for all subsequent SF theory (18). (The SF-flavored image Bould chooses to characterize Suvin’s influence is a black hole, whose event horizon one might choose either to inhabit or attempt to escape, but around which one will always be in orbit.) Bould and his co-editor, writer and critic China Miéville, had earlier considered “the Suvin event” in a special issue of Historical Materialism they co-edited in 2002 devoted to the question of “Marxism and Fantasy,” where each argued that the Suvinian prohibition on fantasy should finally be lifted on the grounds that (for Miéville) “‘real’ life under capitalism is a fantasy” of commodity fetishism (41-42) and (for Bould) that “the very fantasy of fantasy as a mode … gives it space for a hard-headed critical consciousness of capitalist subjectivity” (83-84). Red Planets continues this critical trajectory with important interrogations of other aspects of the Marxist approach to SF articulated by Suvin and by the well-known theorist of Marxism and SF most often associated with Suvin’s approach, Fredric Jameson. For decades, Jameson has focused Suvin’s “cognitive estrangement” around what he calls “the desire called Utopia”: our attempts to imagine and shape big-H History by recasting the present as the fixed historical past of some projective future.
Perhaps the most pointed of Red Planets’ critiques of Suvin and Jameson comes from Miéville’s own essay (the last in the book), which continues the argumentative trajectory of the Historical Materialism issue with a smart deconstruction of the very notion of “cognition”:
To the extent that SF claims to be based on “science,” and indeed on what is deemed “rationality,” it is based on capitalist modernity’s ideologically projected self-justification: not some abstract/ideal “science,” but capitalist science’s bullshit about itself. (240)
Where Suvin and Jameson privilege the supposed rationalism of SF over other modes of fantasy, then, Miéville argues they are often doing so purely on the grounds of the genre’s ideologically infused “scientific pretensions” (241). What is most needed in SF theory, then, is for Miéville not further elaboration upon so-called cognition (i.e., pseudoscience), but rather a theory of alterity as such that can account not only for the differences between SF and fantasy but also for possible unrealities beyond the utopic (243-244).
Other essays make similar theoretical moves. Darren Jorgensen imagines a kind of alternate history for SF theory in which it was dominated not by Jamesonian Marxism but by Althusser; in this approach, “SF is not so much a Suvinian cognitive estrangement as an identification with revolutionary possibility, producing the consciousness of the absolute difference that creates it” (208). This, he suggests, would be a good corrective for the Western Marxist tradition as a whole, for which (shackled by the failures of 1968) “the revolution might just as well be SF, belonging as it does to the imagination of some speculative future” (207-208). For Andrew Milner, it is a return to Raymond Williams that is needed, particularly his insistence on the specificity of SF as a genre distinct from utopian writing rather than one that is coextensive with it. For his part, John Rieder notes that in SF cinema at least, the operative mode of SF spectacle is not Brechtian estrangement but rather absorption, and shows, through a reading of the three “cuts” of Wim Wenders’ Until the End of the World (1991), that SF often bears less the imprimatur of cognition than the scars of a particularly fraught relationship with market forces.
Not all the essays in the book define themselves in opposition to either Suvin or Jameson; in fact, a number locate themselves to one extent or another within that theoretical tradition. Phillip Wegner’s reading of Ken MacLeod’s Fall Revolutionquartet, for instance, draws heavily on Jameson for its theoretical grounding, particularly on the affinities Jameson draws between the emergence of SF and the emergence of high modernism (141-142) in order to read MacLeod in the context of the failure of the 1990s Pax Americana. Likewise, Steven Shaviro’s reading of Ray Kurzweil and Singularity fictions locates itself squarely within Jameson’s theorization of our fundamental incapacity to imagine a Utopia beyond the limits of the present (106), while Matthew Beaumont’s essay on anamorphosis draws an analogy between Suvinian estrangement and painting, most notably Hans Holbein’s 1533 painting The Ambassadors (29-33). Still other essays sidestep the question of Suvin altogether, as Sherryl Vint does in an intriguing essay on animals that argues “there are multiple species-beings, and that animals can be alienated from their species-being as much as humans can be from ours” (130), and as Rob Latham does in his multivalent reading of Thomas Ditsch’s 334 in the context of neoliberalism and so-called urban “renewal.”
In his introduction to the book, Marc Bould begins with Jameson, specifically with Jameson’s characterization of cyberpunk as a manifestation of globalization’s “geopolitical imaginary.” Bould argues that SF has mapped the flows of capital as far back as Verne’s stories about Captain Nemo and the fantasy of unrestricted circulation of international capital that is his Nautilus: “SF world-building,” Bould says, “is typically distinguished from other fictional world-building, whether fantastic or not, by the manner it which it offers, however unintentionally, a snapshot of the structures of capital” (4). But despite this very Jamesonian view of the genre’s potential for cognitive mapping, Bould nonetheless claims that there is no necessary relationship between Marxism and SF, only a contingent one; the Suvin event just happened to happen, in our timeline, but things might easily have been otherwise.
It falls to Carl Freedman (a former student of Jameson’s, and the writer who in his 2000 book Critical Theory and Science Fiction is arguably Suvin’s St. Paul: at once his most full-throated disciple and his most ambitious reviser) to make the case for a necessary relationship between Marxism and SF. In his contribution to the collection, Freedman begins by identifying a dialectical disjuncture in Marxist thought between deflationary and inflationary modes of critique. “The deflationary dimension,” he writes, “is represented by the attempt to destroy all illusions necessary or useful to the preservation of class society in general and of capitalism in particular” (Red Planets 72). This can be seen fairly clearly in ideology critique, but also in the more structural discussion of the “secret” of surplus-value in Capital, Vol. 1. Deflation, Freedman suggests, has a certain figurative relationship with noir in prose and film (73-74); while noir does not necessarily produce usable knowledge about the workings of capital, the genre’s preoccupation with individual greed “allegorically gestures towards… the kind of knowledge discoverable through application of Marx’s principle of the ultimately determining role of the economy” (74). It produces a kind of affective intuition that points us in the right direction, so to speak, if not getting us much of the way there.
Inflation, by its nature, is much more fragmentary and affective than deflation; inflation is effusive and intangible, a mode of prophecy and dreams. Marx, after all, had famously little to say about what the world would be like after communism, but the utopian impulse towards a liberatory fulfillment of history—Marx called it history’s true beginning, Engels called it “humanity’s leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom”—is nonetheless always the beating heart at the center of the Marxist project. For Freedman, the genre most closely associated with this utopian impulse is SF, and he goes on to argue that, unlike the case of noir, SF narrative sometimes provides better pictures of the inflationary future than straight expository prose can; because it is impossible to produce concrete knowledge of the future in the same way we can produce it of the present and the past, it is SF (itself a dialectic between deflationary scientific extrapolation and unbound inflationary speculation) that produces our best cognitive maps of potential futures (74).
In this way, Freedman seems happy to take Jorgensen’s dare that “the revolution might just as well be SF,” writing that the “visionary, material transcendence” of SF “has, at least since the final lines of The Communist Manifesto, been the ultimate point of Marxism itself” (82). As Freedman puts it, “For Marxism, visionary transcendence is the necessary completion of astringent demystification” (73)—which is to say not only that the dream of liberation arises out of the demystification of the actual, but also that it is only through an accurate, scientific understanding of capitalist reality as it exists that we can begin to imagine plausible alternatives to the actual in the first place (75). (This sort of cognition is, after all, precisely the line that separates communists from Marx’s scorned “utopian socialists,” those mere wishful thinkers…). And this turns out to be exactly where Suvin began: visionary transcendence (estrangement) as the necessary completion of astringent demystification (cognition). Not Marxism and SF, then, but Marxism as SF, and for that matter, SF as Marxism.
Of course in making this provocative equivalence we should not overlook the science fictional imagination’s often cozy relationship with capital, colonial violence, racism, and oppression, nor allow ourselves to believe that leftist political commitment might begin or end with reading the novels of Kim Stanley Robinson. But we can, I think, buy Freedman’s basic line: the specificity of SF as the literature of quasi-scientific futurological projection—the literature of cognitive estrangement—gives it a particular and (yes) even necessary relationship with Marxism that cannot be put to one side, nor matched by any other genre. In this way Suvin’s forty-year-old definition of the genre remains in some basic sense both vital and inescapable in mapping SF’s limits and its possibilities.
Near the end of his recent Valences of the Dialectic (2009), Fredric Jameson writes along these lines when he claims that “the worldwide triumph of capitalism … secures the priority of Marxism as the ultimate horizon of thought in our time” (605). Marxism here describes the boundaries for our extrapolations and speculations, the theoretical constellation in which we might start to grasp History in its totality and through which the imagination of alternatives to capitalist hegemony is still possible. Such a proposition again suggests Marxism as a science fiction, in that best Suvinian sense. No wonder, then, that the images that close Jameson’s book shortly thereafter turn to the language of speculative physics—one might say science fictional physics—to describe our fleeting ability to catch glimpses of Utopia: “It would be best, perhaps, to think of an alternate world—better to say the alternate world, our alternate world—as one contiguous with ours but without any connection or access to it. Then, from time to time, like a diseased eyeball in which disturbing flashes of light are perceived or like those baroque sunbursts in which rays from another world suddenly break into this one, we are reminded that Utopia exists and that other systems, other spaces, are still possible” (612). For Jameson, there turns out to be nothing beyond the utopic, as Utopia is just another name for alterity; Utopia, like Suvin himself, has a kind of event horizon, and in the end our speculations always pull us back there, like gravity, like home.
Works Cited
Bould, Mark, and China Miéville (ed.). “Symposium: Marxism and Fantasy.”Historical Materialism 10.4 (2002). Print.
—. Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2009. Print.
Engels, Friedrich. Anti-Dühring. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1947. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch24.htm. 28 April 2010. Web.
Bould, Mark, and China Miéville (ed.). “Symposium: Marxism and Fantasy.” Historical Materialism 10.4 (2002). Print.
—. Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2009. Print.
Engels, Friedrich. Anti-Dühring. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1947. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch24.htm. 28 April 2010. Web.
Freedman, Carl. Critical Theory and Science Fiction. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2000. Print.
Jameson, Fredric. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. New York: Verso, 2007. Print.
—. Valences of the Dialectic. Brooklyn, NY: Verso Press, 2009. Print.
Marx, Karl. Capital, Vol. 1. New York: Penguin Books, 1990. Print.
Suvin, Darko. “On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre.” College English 34.3 (Dec. 1972): 372-382. Print.
Gerry Canavan is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Program in Literature at Duke University, writing a dissertation that explores the categories of futurity, totality, and alterity in American and British science fiction of the twentieth century. With Priscilla Wald he is the co-editor of an upcoming issue of American Literaturefocusing on SF, fantasy, and myth, and is also the co-editor of an upcoming issue ofPolygraph titled “Ecology and Ideology.”
Poetics of Relation {Édouard Glissant}
<< Extract from “The Open Boat” >>
[Poetics of Relation | Édouard Glissant {pdf}] Translated by Betsy Wing.
… For though this experience made you, original victim floating toward the sea’s abysses, an exception, it became something shared and made us, the descendants, one people among others. Peoples do not live on exception. Relation is not made up of things that are foreign but of shared knowledge. This experience of the abyss can no be said to be the best element of exchange.
For us, and without exception, and no matter how much distance we may keep, the abyss is also a projection of and perspective into the unknown. Beyond its chasm we gamble on the unknown. We take sides in this game of the world. We hail a renewed Indies; we are for it. And for this Relation made of storms and profound moments of peace in which we may honor our boats.
This is why we stay with poetry. And despite our consenting to all the indisputable technologies; despite seeing the political leap that must be managed, the horror of hunger and ignorance, torture and massacre to be conquered, the full load of knowledge to be tamed, the weight of every piece of machinery that we shall finally control, and the exhausting flashes as we pass from one era to another –at the bow there is still something we now share: this murmur, cloud or rain or peaceful smoke. We know ourselves as part and as crowd, in an unknown that does not terrify. We cry our cry of poetry. Our boats are open, and we sail them from everyone.”
Description [via: http://www.press.umich.edu/]
Édouard Glissant, long recognized in the French and francophone world as one of the greatest writers and thinkers of our times, is increasingly attracting attention from English-speaking readers. Born in Martinique in 1928, Glissant earned a doctorate from the Sorbonne. When he returned to his native land in the mid-sixties, his writing began to focus on the idea of a “relational poetics,” which laid the groundwork for the “créolité” movement, fueled by the understanding that Caribbean culture and identity are the positive products of a complex and multiple set of local historical circumstances. Some of the metaphors of local identity Glissant favored—the hinterland (or lack of it), the maroon (or runaway slave), the creole language—proved lasting and influential.
In Poetics of Relation, Glissant turns the concrete particulars of Caribbean reality into a complex, energetic vision of a world in transformation. He sees the Antilles as enduring suffering imposed by history, yet as a place whose unique interactions will one day produce an emerging global consensus. Arguing that the writer alone can tap the unconscious of a people and apprehend its multiform culture to provide forms of memory capable of transcending “nonhistory,” Glissant defines his “poetics of relation”—both aesthetic and political—as a transformative mode of history, capable of enunciating and making concrete a French-Caribbean reality with a self-defined past and future. Glissant’s notions of identity as constructed in relation and not in isolation are germane not only to discussions of Caribbean creolization but also to our understanding of U.S. multiculturalism. In Glissant’s view, we come to see that relation in all its senses—telling, listening, connecting, and the parallel consciousness of self and surroundings—is the key to transforming mentalities and reshaping societies.
This translation of Glissant’s work preserves the resonating quality of his prose and makes the richness and ambiguities of his voice accessible to readers in English.
Édouard Glissant is Distinguished Professor of French at City University of New York, Graduate Center.
Betsy Wing’s recent translations include Lucie Aubrac’s Outwitting the Gestapo (with Konrad Bieber), Didier Eribon’s Michel Foucault and Hélêne Cixous’s The Book of Promethea.
Alejo Carpentier | El Reino De Este Mundo (1949)
Mackandal se había disfrazado de animal, durante años, para servir a los hombres, no para desertar del terreno de los hombres. En aquel momento, vuelto a la condición humana, el anciano tuvo un supremo instante de lucidez. Vivió, en el espacio de un palpito, los momentos capitales de su vida; volvió a ver a los héroes que le habían revelado la fuerza y la abundancia de sus lejanos antepasados del África, haciéndole creer en las posibles germinaciones del porvenir. Se sintió viejo de siglos incontables. Un cansancio cósmico, de planeta cargado de piedras, caía sobre sus hombros descarnados por tantos golpes, sudores y rebeldías…
-Alejo Carpentier-
(La Habana, 1904 – París, 1980) Novelista, narrador y ensayista cubano con el que culmina la madurez de la narrativa insular del siglo XX, además de ser una de las figuras más destacadas de las letras hispanoamericanas por sus obras barrocas como El siglo de las luces.
Sobre su biografía existen varias lagunas y contradicciones dada la desigual información de la que se dispone. Según el propio autor, nació en La Habana, fruto del matrimonio de un arquitecto francés y una pianista rusa, y se formó en escuelas de Francia, Austria, Bélgica y Rusia. Tras su muerte, sin embargo, se empezó a documentar una muy distinta biografía que situó el nacimiento del autor en Suiza, procedente de una familia humilde que emigró a Cuba instalándose en el pueblo de Alquízar, donde el futuro escritor trabajó como repartidor de leche.
En su totalidad, la narrativa de Carpentier no se caracterizó por los análisis psicológicos, dada la vastedad de una propuesta que planteaba más bien la diversidad de lo real. No mostró por tanto con excesivo detalle los aspectos de la vida individual, más allá de arquetipos como el Libertador, el Opresor o la Víctima. Su propósito central fue acaso cambiar la perspectiva del lector, trasladarlo hasta un universo más amplio, un cosmos donde la tragedia personal queda adormecida dentro de un conjunto que, aun siendo sencillo, es mucho más vasto y profundo.
[El Siglo de las Luces Fragmento]
The Revolt of the Salaried Bourgeoisie | Slavoj Žižek
How did Bill Gates become the richest man in America? His wealth has nothing to do with Microsoft producing good software at lower prices than its competitors, or ‘exploiting’ its workers more successfully (Microsoft pays its intellectual workers a relatively high salary). Millions of people still buy Microsoft software because Microsoft has imposed itself as an almost universal standard, practically monopolising the field, as one embodiment of what Marx called the ‘general intellect’, by which he meant collective knowledge in all its forms, from science to practical knowhow. Gates effectively privatised part of the general intellect and became rich by appropriating the rent that followed.
The possibility of the privatisation of the general intellect was something Marx never envisaged in his writings about capitalism (largely because he overlooked its social dimension). Yet this is at the core of today’s struggles over intellectual property: as the role of the general intellect – based on collective knowledge and social co-operation – increases in post-industrial capitalism, so wealth accumulates out of all proportion to the labour expended in its production. The result is not, as Marx seems to have expected, the self-dissolution of capitalism, but the gradual transformation of the profit generated by the exploitation of labour into rent appropriated through the privatisation of knowledge.
The same is true of natural resources, the exploitation of which is one of the world’s main sources of rent. There is a permanent struggle over who gets this rent: citizens of the Third World or Western corporations. It’s ironic that in explaining the difference between labour (which in its use produces surplus value) and other commodities (which consume all their value in their use), Marx gives oil as an example of an ‘ordinary’ commodity. Any attempt now to link the rise and fall in the price of oil to the rise or fall in production costs or the price of exploited labour would be meaningless: production costs are negligible as a proportion of the price we pay for oil, a price which is really the rent the resource’s owners can command thanks to its limited supply.
A consequence of the rise in productivity brought about by the exponentially growing impact of collective knowledge is a change in the role of unemployment. It is the very success of capitalism (greater efficiency, raised productivity etc) which produces unemployment, rendering more and more workers useless: what should be a blessing – less hard labour needed – becomes a curse. Or, to put it differently, the chance to be exploited in a long-term job is now experienced as a privilege. The world market, as Fredric Jameson has put it, is ‘a space in which everyone has once been a productive labourer, and in which labour has everywhere begun to price itself out of the system.’ In the ongoing process of capitalist globalisation, the category of the unemployed is no longer confined to Marx’s ‘reserve army of labour’; it also includes, as Jameson notes, ‘those massive populations around the world who have, as it were, “dropped out of history”, who have been deliberately excluded from the modernising projects of First World capitalism and written off as hopeless or terminal cases’: so-called failed states (Congo, Somalia), victims of famine or ecological disaster, those trapped by pseudo-archaic ‘ethnic hatreds’, objects of philanthropy and NGOs or targets of the war on terror. The category of the unemployed has thus expanded to encompass vast ranges of people, from the temporarily unemployed, the no longer employable and permanently unemployed, to the inhabitants of ghettos and slums (all those often dismissed by Marx himself as ‘lumpen-proletarians’), and finally to the whole populations and states excluded from the global capitalist process, like the blank spaces on ancient maps.
Some say that this new form of capitalism provides new possibilities for emancipation. This at any rate is the thesis of Hardt and Negri’s Multitude, which tries to radicalise Marx, who held that if we just cut the head off capitalism we’d get socialism. Marx, as they see it, was historically constrained: he thought in terms of centralised, automated and hierarchically organised industrial labour, with the result that he understood ‘general intellect’ as something rather like a central planning agency; it is only today, with the rise of ‘immaterial labour’, that a revolutionary reversal has become ‘objectively possible’. This immaterial labour extends between two poles: from intellectual labour (the production of ideas, texts, computer programs etc) to affective labour (carried out by doctors, babysitters and flight attendants). Today, immaterial labour is hegemonic in the sense in which Marx proclaimed that, in 19th-century capitalism, large industrial production was hegemonic: it imposes itself not through force of numbers but by playing the key, emblematic structural role. What emerges is a vast new domain called the ‘common’: shared knowledge and new forms of communication and co-operation. The products of immaterial production aren’t objects but new social or interpersonal relations; immaterial production is bio-political, the production of social life.
Hardt and Negri are here describing the process that the ideologists of today’s ‘postmodern’ capitalism celebrate as the passage from material to symbolic production, from centralist-hierarchical logic to the logic of self-organisation and multi-centred co-operation. The difference is that Hardt and Negri are faithful to Marx: they are trying to prove that he was right, that the rise of the general intellect is in the long term incompatible with capitalism. The ideologists of postmodern capitalism are making exactly the opposite claim: Marxist theory (and practice), they argue, remains within the constraints of the hierarchical logic of centralised state control and so can’t cope with the social effects of the information revolution. There are good empirical reasons for this claim: what effectively ruined the Communist regimes was their inability to accommodate to the new social logic sustained by the information revolution. They tried to steer the revolution, to make it yet another large-scale centralised state-planning project. The paradox is that what Hardt and Negri celebrate as the unique chance to overcome capitalism is celebrated by the ideologists of the information revolution as the rise of a new, ‘frictionless’ capitalism.
Hardt and Negri’s analysis has some weak points, which help us understand how capitalism has been able to survive what should have been (in classic Marxist terms) a new organisation of production that rendered it obsolete. They underestimate the extent to which today’s capitalism has successfully (in the short term at least) privatised the general intellect itself, as well as the extent to which, more than the bourgeoisie, workers themselves are becoming superfluous (with greater and greater numbers becoming not just temporarily unemployed but structurally unemployable).
If the old capitalism ideally involved an entrepreneur who invested (his own or borrowed) money into production that he organised and ran, and then reaped the profit from it, a new ideal type is emerging today: no longer the entrepreneur who owns his company, but the expert manager (or a managerial board presided over by a CEO) who runs a company owned by banks (also run by managers who don’t own the bank) or dispersed investors. In this new ideal type of capitalism, the old bourgeoisie, rendered non-functional, is refunctionalised as salaried management: the members of the new bourgeoisie get wages, and even if they own part of their company, earn stocks as part of their remuneration (‘bonuses’ for their ‘success’).
This new bourgeoisie still appropriates surplus value, but in the (mystified) form of what has been called ‘surplus wage’: they are paid rather more than the proletarian ‘minimum wage’ (an often mythic point of reference whose only real example in today’s global economy is the wage of a sweatshop worker in China or Indonesia), and it is this distinction from common proletarians which determines their status. The bourgeoisie in the classic sense thus tends to disappear: capitalists reappear as a subset of salaried workers, as managers who are qualified to earn more by virtue of their competence (which is why pseudo-scientific ‘evaluation’ is crucial: it legitimises disparities). Far from being limited to managers, the category of workers earning a surplus wage extends to all sorts of experts, administrators, public servants, doctors, lawyers, journalists, intellectuals and artists. The surplus takes two forms: more money (for managers etc), but also less work and more free time (for – some – intellectuals, but also for state administrators etc).
The evaluative procedure used to decide which workers receive a surplus wage is an arbitrary mechanism of power and ideology, with no serious link to actual competence; the surplus wage exists not for economic but for political reasons: to maintain a ‘middle class’ for the purpose of social stability. The arbitrariness of social hierarchy is not a mistake, but the whole point, with the arbitrariness of evaluation playing an analogous role to the arbitrariness of market success. Violence threatens to explode not when there is too much contingency in the social space, but when one tries to eliminate contingency. In La Marque du sacré, Jean-Pierre Dupuy conceives hierarchy as one of four procedures (‘dispositifs symboliques’) whose function is to make the relationship of superiority non-humiliating: hierarchy itself (an externally imposed order that allows me to experience my lower social status as independent of my inherent value);demystification (the ideological procedure which demonstrates that society is not a meritocracy but the product of objective social struggles, enabling me to avoid the painful conclusion that someone else’s superiority is the result of his merit and achievements); contingency (a similar mechanism, by which we come to understand that our position on the social scale depends on a natural and social lottery; the lucky ones are those born with the right genes in rich families); and complexity(uncontrollable forces have unpredictable consequences; for instance, the invisible hand of the market may lead to my failure and my neighbour’s success, even if I work much harder and am much more intelligent). Contrary to appearances, these mechanisms don’t contest or threaten hierarchy, but make it palatable, since ‘what triggers the turmoil of envy is the idea that the other deserves his good luck and not the opposite idea – which is the only one that can be openly expressed.’ Dupuy draws from this premise the conclusion that it is a great mistake to think that a reasonably just society which also perceives itself as just will be free of resentment: on the contrary, it is in such societies that those who occupy inferior positions will find an outlet for their hurt pride in violent outbursts of resentment.
The notion of surplus wage also throws new light on the continuing ‘anti-capitalist’ protests. In times of crisis, the obvious candidates for ‘belt-tightening’ are the lower levels of the salaried bourgeoisie: political protest is their only recourse if they are to avoid joining the proletariat. Although their protests are nominally directed against the brutal logic of the market, they are in effect protesting about the gradual erosion of their (politically) privileged economic place. Ayn Rand has a fantasy in Atlas Shruggedof striking ‘creative’ capitalists, a fantasy that finds its perverted realisation in today’s strikes, most of which are held by a ‘salaried bourgeoisie’ driven by fear of losing their surplus wage. These are not proletarian protests, but protests against the threat of being reduced to proletarians. Who dares strike today, when having a permanent job is itself a privilege? Not low-paid workers in (what remains of) the textile industry etc, but those privileged workers who have guaranteed jobs (teachers, public transport workers, police). This also accounts for the wave of student protests: their main motivation is arguably the fear that higher education will no longer guarantee them a surplus wage in later life.
At the same time it is clear that the huge revival of protest over the past year, from the Arab Spring to Western Europe, from Occupy Wall Street to China, from Spain to Greece, should not be dismissed merely as a revolt of the salaried bourgeoisie. Each case should be taken on its own merits. The student protests against university reform in the UK were clearly different from August’s riots, which were a consumerist carnival of destruction, a true outburst of the excluded. One could argue that the uprisings in Egypt began in part as a revolt of the salaried bourgeoisie (with educated young people protesting about their lack of prospects), but this was only one aspect of a larger protest against an oppressive regime. On the other hand, the protest didn’t really mobilise poor workers and peasants and the Islamists’ electoral victory makes clear the narrow social base of the original secular protest. Greece is a special case: in the last decades, a new salaried bourgeoisie (especially in the over-extended state administration) was created thanks to EU financial help, and the protests were motivated in large part by the threat of an end to this.
The proletarianisation of the lower salaried bourgeoisie is matched at the opposite extreme by the irrationally high remuneration of top managers and bankers (irrational since, as investigations have demonstrated in the US, it tends to be inversely proportional to a company’s success). Rather than submit these trends to moralising criticism, we should read them as signs that the capitalist system is no longer capable of self-regulated stability – it threatens, in other words, to run out of control.
La inocencia robada | Juventud, Multinacionales y Política Cultural | Por: Henry A. Giroux
La inocencia de la infancia y la política de la cultura empresarial
Los niños son el futuro de cualquier sociedad. Si quieres conocer el futuro de una sociedad, mira a los ojos de los niños. Si quieres mutilar el futuro de una sociedad, simplemente, mutila a los niños. La lucha por la supervivencia de nuestros hijos es la lucha por la supervivencia de nuestro futuro. La cantidad y la calidad de esa supervivencia es la medida del desarrollo de nuestra sociedad.
(Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms.)
Introducción
Este libro examina la naturaleza, aparentemente independiente, aunque interrelacionada, de tres mitos que operan para limitar la democracia esencial, el bienestar de los niños y la escuela socialmente comprometida. El primer mito, “el final de la historia”, asume que la democracia liberal ha alcanzado su victoria definitiva y que, ahora, las ideologías gemelas del mercado y de la democracia representativa constituyen, con pocas excepciones, los valores universales de la nueva aldea global(1). Dentro de este mito, la cultura liberal se convierte en sinónima de la cultura del mercado y las celebradas libertades del consumidor se compran a expensas de las libertades de los ciudadanos. Poca atención pública se presta a los límites que las democracias deben imponer al poder del mercado o a la posible amenaza al bienestar de los niños y de la misma democracia que represente la cultura empresarial y su restringida definición de la libertad como bien privado. En pocas palabras, la combinación de la democracia con el mercado elimina la tensión entre las moralidades del mercado y los valores de la sociedad civil que no pueden medirse en términos estrictamente comerciales, pero son críticos para la vida democrática pública. Me refiero, en concreto, a valores tales como la justicia, el respeto hacia los niños y los derechos de los ciudadanos.
El segundo mito, “la inocencia de la infancia”, se estructura en torno a la idea de que tanto la infancia como la inocencia reflejan aspectos de un estado natural, que trasciende los dictados de la historia, la sociedad y la política. Como señala la teórica cultural Marina Warner en esta concepción de sentido común se interpreta que los niños son “inocentes porque son criaturas ajenas a la sociedad, pre-históricas, pre-sociales, instintivas, sin razón, primitivas, afines a una naturaleza que sigue conservando su belleza natural”(2). Marcados como puros y pasivos por esencia, se otorga a los niños el derecho a la protección, pero, al mismo tiempo, se les niega la capacidad de actuar y la autonomía. Incapaces de entender la infancia como una interpretación histórica, social y política, entremezclada con las relaciones de poder, muchos adultos envuelven a los niños en un aura de inocencia y proteccionismo que elimina toda idea viable de responsabilidad adulta, aunque la evoque(3). De hecho, la atribución de inocencia permite en gran medida que los adultos eviten asumir la responsabilidad de su papel de preparar a los niños para el fracaso, para abandonarlos a los dictados de las mentalidades mercantiles que acaban con las redes de apoyo y de sostén que proporcionan a los pequeños unos medios suficientes de salud, alimentación, alojamiento y educación.
El tercer mito, la “escolarización desinteresada”, recoge la herencia de una cultura comercial en expansión continua, que aprovecha la capacidad de diálogo público y de discrepancia en beneficio de los valores del mercado. Esta omnipresente cultura comercial se aprecia también en la obsesión moderna por la carrera profesional y la especialización y en el aislamiento de los educadores con respecto a la política y las urgentes demandas de la vida cívica. Este tercer mito indica que la enseñanza y el aprendizaje se desvinculan de la mejora del mundo; los imperativos de la justicia social se rinden al fatalismo que renuncia a la política práctica con el fin de acomodar la cultura académica de la profesionalidad y la ideología de la investigación científica desinteresada. El teórico poscolonial Edward Said comenta con gran agudeza la doble dinámica de la acomodación y la privatización. Ambas dinámicas informan el estudio desinteresado y la cultura de la profesionalidad en todos los niveles de la educación:
“Entiendo por profesionalidad considerar el propio trabajo en cuanto intelectual como algo que uno hace para vivir, entre las nueve y las cinco, con un ojo puesto en el reloj, y el otro pendiente de lo que se considera una conducta adecuada, profesional: mantener el equilibrio, no desviarse de los paradigmas o límites aceptados, vender la propia imagen y, sobre todo, mostrarse presentable y en consecuencia, no polémico, políticamente correcto y “objetivo” (4).”
El creciente aislamiento de académicos e intelectuales del mundo que los rodea refleja el poder que tiene la cultura empresarial para definir la enseñanza como una práctica técnica e instrumental, en vez de como un acto moral y político. Muchos educadores, alejados del mundo de la práctica política y de la vida cotidiana, están demasiado dispuestos a interpretar la cultura como un campo distante de la política y de la lucha. Con el apoyo de las presiones a favor del estudio desinteresado y sus llamadas concomitantes a la neutralidad, la objetividad y la racionalidad, este enfoque deja poco espacio para considerar cómo las ideologías, los valores y el poder configuran todos los aspectos del proceso educativo. El teórico cultural británico Richard Johnson lo plantea así:
“La enseñanza y el aprendizaje son prácticas profundamente políticas. Son políticas en todos los momentos del circuito: en las condiciones de producción (¿quién produce el saber?, ¿para quién?), en los saberes y en las formas mismas del saber (¿saber de acuerdo con qué plan?, ¿útil para qué?),en su publicación, circulación y accesibilidad, en sus usos profesionales y populares y en sus impactos en la vida cotidiana.(5)”
Sin embargo, el discurso al uso sobre la educación no sólo prescinde de la naturaleza ideológica de la enseñanza y el aprendizaje, sino que excluye también del ámbito político la cultura, educiéndola a un discurso puramente estético o a una llamada cuasi religiosa para celebrar los “grandes libros” y las “grandes tradiciones” de la llamada “civilización occidental”(6). En ambos casos, se rechaza, por irrelevante o poco profesional, cualquier tentativa de transformar las aulas de la nación en unos lugares en donde los futuros ciudadanos aprendan a afrontar con sentido crítico la política y el saber recibido, tanto dentro como fuera de la clase.
A lo largo de este libro sostengo que la política de la cultura proporciona el espacio conceptual en el que se estructura la infancia, se vive y se lucha por ella. La cultura es el terreno primordial en el que los adultos ejercen el poder sobre los niños, tanto en el plano ideológico como en el institucional. Sólo si cuestionan las formaciones y contextos culturales específicos en los que se organiza, aprende y vive la infancia, los educadores pueden comprender y cuestionar las formas en que las prácticas culturales establecen las relaciones específicas de poder que configuran las experiencias de los niños. Aunque el sentimiento popular sostiene que la cultura, sobre todo la cultura popular, carece de importancia política o educativa o no supone una amenaza directa para los niños, en la segunda parte del libro presento una serie de enfoques teóricos, basados en las obras del teórico de la política Antonio Gramsci, del teórico de la educación Paulo Freire y del teórico de la cultura Stuart Hall. Estos enfoques consideran que la cultura es fundamental para cualesquiera formas serias de política y de pedagogía que traten de participar en el acercamiento actual a la juventud. Al final de esta introducción, comento algunas de estas cuestiones.
A primera vista, parece que estas tres poderosas mitologías tienen poco en común; sin embargo, a lo largo de este libro intento demostrar que es imposible invocar una, en cualquier sentido significativo, sin invocar las otras. ¿Qué vincula estas tres mitologías aparentemente dispares? Me parece que muchas cosas: en su desarrollo, 1) excusan al mundo adulto de cualquier responsabilidad con respecto a la juventud, apelando a una economía próspera y al orden natural, y negando los papeles políticos y culturales que los educadores y la educación desempeñan en la vida de los niños; 2) reproducen las jerarquías de raza, clase social y cultura, y 3) limitan la ciudadanía a una tarea estrictamente privatizada. Los tres mitos pasan por alto las condiciones cada vez más depauperadas a las que tendrán que hacer frente las futuras generaciones de jóvenes. La infancia no es un estado natural de inocencia; es una construcción histórica. Es también una categoría cultural y política que tiene unas consecuencias muy prácticas con respecto a la forma de “pensar en los niños” de los adultos, y tiene consecuencias en cuanto a la forma de verse los niños a sí mismos”(7).
La política de la inocencia
En nuestra cultura, la imagen más persistente del niño inocente es la de un chico blanco, de cabello rubio, de ojos azules… y los indicadores de clase media, raza blanca y masculinidad se interpretan como representativos de todos los niños.
(Henry Jenkins: “Introduction: Childhood Innocence and Other Myths”, en el Children’s Culture Reader)
Por una parte, al decir que la inocencia infantil es un estado natural, en cuanto opuesto a “construido”, los adultos pueden ignorar sin riesgo el desequilibrio de poder entre ellos y los niños; después de todo, si los niños se sitúan fuera del alcance de la influencia adulta, carecen de medios y de derechos, excepto a que se les limite o proteja de unas fuerzas exteriores
aberrantes(8). Por otra parte, el mito de la inocencia de la infancia es una forma de negar los efectos de los problemas sociales reales en los niños y también una manera de desviar la atención de los adultos de los apremiantes problemas del racismo, el sexismo, los malos tratos en la familia, la pobreza, el desempleo, la reducción de la industria y otros factores sociales que hacen del final del siglo xx una época tan atroz para muchos adultos y, en especial, para los niños, que, a menudo, están indefensos ante tales fuerzas(9).
Cuando los adultos se aterran a la idea de que una economía floreciente de mercado libre, con su insidiosa apropiación de la libertad y el cambio, centrada en el consumidor, proporciona el mayor bien para el mayor número de personas, reducen “el papel de la política en la vida pública en beneficio de la atención exclusiva a la experiencia individual: una política de responsabilidades personales y de interés individual, en vez de una política del bien colectivo” (10). Esta forma de ver las cosas facilita a los adultos la proclamación de que los problemas sociales son problemas individuales. Esta afirmación, a su vez, les permite reducir la esfera pública, eliminar las redes de seguridad, financiadas por el gobierno, para los niños y reemplazar la legislación de carácter social por políticas punitivas. En este enfoque, la lógica del mercado culpa a los niños —sobre todo a los pobres, los latinos o los negros— por una presunta falta de personalidad, mientras desmantela los servicios sociales que contribuían a satisfacer sus necesidades más básicas. Sin comprender las experiencias de los niños reales, la sociedad contemporánea se enfrenta a las consecuencias, a veces peligrosas, aunque difícilmente desenfrenadas, del uso de droga y de la conducta violenta, dictando sentencias de cárcel para adolescentes, tratándolos como a adultos y construyendo cada vez más prisiones nuevas para encarcelarlos en cantidades récord(11).
Lo que complica la intersección de estos mitos —el final de la historia, la inocencia infantil y el estudio desinteresado— es su forma de borrar las relaciones explotadoras de las diferencias de clase, raza y género, incluso cuando las reproducen. Por ejemplo, la apelación a la inocencia, que hacen al uní-sono conservadores y liberales, ofrece protección y seguridad a los niños blancos y de clase media al definir la condición de su inocencia en el contexto de las “ideas tradicionales de hogar, familia y comunidad”(12), codificadas según la raza, la clase social y el género.
Las reacciones públicas a los asesinatos de 1999 en la Columbine High School* muestran que la inocencia se expresa de acuerdo con parámetros de raza y de clase. Los comentarios de los residentes en Littleton (Colorado, EE.UU.) fueron muy divulgados por la prensa. Los residentes pusieron de manifiesto la herencia de la inocencia, codificada en clave de raza, cuando decían: “No ha podido ocurrir aquí” o “Esto no es el centro de la ciudad”(13).
La columnista Patricia Williams, de The Nation, dice que esos comentarios reflejan el “perfilado de la inocencia”, una práctica que se relaciona a menudo con los chicos privilegiados de raza blanca, a quienes, a pesar de sus comportamientos, se les supone demasiado inocentes para que se tomen en serio sus conductas delictivas. Según Williams, los dos adolescentes homicidas, Dylan Klebold y Eric Harris,
“parecen haber estado tan envueltos en presunciones de inocencia —tras profesar su amor por Hitler, declarar su odio hacia los negros, los asiáticos y los latinos en un sitio público de la internet nada menos, bajar instrucciones para hacer bombas, acumular los ingredientes, combinarlos ante la mirada protectoramente indiferente (o quizá con la ayuda) de padres y vecinos, almacenar armas y municiones, procurarse granadas de mano y chalecos antibalas, amenazar la vida de compañeros, matar a trece personas y a ellos mismos, herir a otras muchas y destruir el edificio de su escuela— que la comunidad no puede creer aún que haya ocurrido realmente “aquí”. Todavía, sus profesores y compañeros siguen diciendo que eran buenos chicos, buenos estudiantes, ciudadanos de pro(14).”
La afirmación de Williams de que el mito de la inocencia protege a los chicos privilegiados blancos parece justificada: la prensa nacional estaba atónita ante el hecho de que dos pistoleros adolescentes, de familias ricas, pudieran haber asesinado a doce compañeros y a un profesor antes de quitarse la vida. Un periodista de televisión que informaba desde la Columbine se refería a uno de los asesinos como a “un caballero que conducía un BMW”(15). Otras informaciones de los medios de comunicación insistían en lo prometedor que era el futuro de estos chicos, atribuyendo en gran parte su conducta criminal a problemas psicológicos pasajeros. Se dijo de ellos que estaban alienados, sometidos a presiones y estresados, términos que no suelen utilizarse para describir los comportamientos criminales de los no blancos.
A diferencia de los delitos cometidos por jóvenes en zonas urbanas, la matanza de la Columbine estimuló una reflexión nacional sobre la pérdida de la inocencia infantil y las amenazas a las que se enfrentaban los niños blancos de zonas ricas. El líder de la mayoría en el Senado, Trent Lott (republicano por Misuri), pidió un debate nacional sobre la juventud y la cultura. El sociólogo Orlando Patterson cuestionó la respuesta de los medios de comunicación dominantes a los sucesos de Littleton y la idea de inocencia, codificada en sentido racial, que la informaba. En una columna de la página contigua al editorial de The New York Times, se preguntaba cuál hubiese sido la respuesta pública si “estos dos homicidas no hubieran sido blancos privilegiados, sino afronorteamericanos o latinos pobres”. Respondía que “casi con toda seguridad, los expertos hubieran creído necesario llamar la atención sobre su carácter étnico y su clase social” (16). En realidad, los comentarios de Orlando se quedan cortos. Si estos chicos hubiesen sido negros o morenos, no se habría dicho que tenían problemas psicológicos, sino que eran portadores de una patología social. Es más, si unos chicos negros o morenos hubieran presentado los antecedentes de conducta delincuente de Eric Harris y Dylan Klebold, incluyendo el robo de una furgoneta y el envío de amenazas de muerte por internet a compañeros de estudios, no se les habría remitido tan sólo a un reducido número de sesiones de orientación escolar. Por el contrario, habrían sido rotundamente condenados y enviados a prisión con toda rapidez. Sin embargo, como las comunidades blancas de clase media no pueden afrontar las consecuencias de su decreciente compromiso económico y social con la juventud, por regla general conceden a sus hijos el beneficio de la duda, aunque su comportamiento problemático tienda ai extremo. Con frecuencia, los niños blancos de clase media están protegidos por el mito de la inocencia y se les considera incapaces de manifestar conductas de riesgo. Si muestran comportamientos desviados, a menudo se cha la culpa a la influencia “extraña” de la cultura popular (con frecuencia, sinónima en la actualidad de hip-hop) o de otras fuerzas “ajenas”, alejadas de los espacios propios de la raza blanca y la riqueza.
En esta retórica excluyente, la inocencia es muy discriminatoria y, por regla general, no generaliza sus privilegios a todos los niños. En una era que se extiende desde Ronald Reagan hasta George W. Bush, la idea de inocencia no se aplica a determinados niños y se está reconsiderando con respecto a otros (17). Desde el punto de vista histórico, se ha considerado que los chicos pobres y los niños de color se sitúan más allá de los límites de la infancia y de la inocencia; se los asocia con las culturas del delito, la sexualidad desenfrenada y el uso de drogas. De hecho, se perciben muy a menudo como una amenaza a la inocencia de los chicos blancos de clase media que viven en barrios residenciales a las afueras de las ciudades, cada vez más parecidos a fortalezas, protegidos de la inmoralidad, la violencia y otros “peligros” que acechan en las ciudades multiétnicas en continua expansión (18). Al tratar con chicos cuyas vidas no se ajustan al perfil familiar de Ozzie and Harriet*, los adultos de clase media invocan la antítesis de la inocencia. En pocas palabras, la retórica de la inocencia y su garantía de apoyo y protección no se aplican a chicos pobres, negros y morenos. Hay pruebas de que estas ideas cambiaron en la década de 1990: mientras que a los jóvenes de las minorías se los considera completamente prescindibles, ahora los chicos blancos de los barrios residenciales periféricos tienen que afrontar, cada vez con mayor frecuencia, la cólera de las autoridades adultas, los medios de comunicación y el Estado (19). La teórica de la antropología Sharon Stephens afirma de forma convincente:
“Hay una conciencia creciente sobre los niños en situación de riesgo. Sin embargo, lo que quiero dejar claro aquí es que también existe una sensación creciente de que los mismos niños son el riesgo y, en consecuencia, hay que eliminar a algunos niños, como personas fuera de lugar y exceso de población, mientras que a otros hay que controlarlos, reconfigurarlos y aprovecharlos para los cambiantes fines sociales. De ahí el carácter central de los niños en la política contemporánea de la cultura, tanto en calidad de figuras simbólicas como en la de objetos de formas discutidas de socialización (20).”
Aunque se considere que algunos niños están en “situación de riesgo”, cada vez hay más chicos a los que se considera una amenaza importante para la sociedad adulta, aunque distintos grupos —dependiendo de su clase social, su raza, género y carácter étnico— producen respuestas diferentes. La inocencia no sólo es específica de la raza, sino que también está marcada por el género. En la ¡dea romántica de la inocencia infantil ocupa un lugar central la mamá que permanece en casa, reforzada en fechas más recientes por la insistencia conservadora en los valores familiares. Cuando la vida pública se separa, una vez más, de la esfera doméstica, y cuando el papel de las mujeres se limita al concepto idealizado de la maternidad, los requisitos del ejercicio maternal se convierten en el principio definitorio que mantiene la idea de la inocencia infantil. El mito de la inocencia infantil infantiliza tanto a las mujeres como a los niños, mientras que reproduce, al mismo tiempo, un desequilibrio extremo de poder entre adultos y niños, por una parte, y entre hombres y mujeres, por otra.
Los crecientes ataques contra los jóvenes no sólo son evidentes en la eliminación de los servicios apoyados por el gobierno, que se crearon teniendo presentes sus intereses, sino también en las vejaciones que a diario sufren los jóvenes. Por ejemplo, en las escuelas los niños están cada vez más sometidos a registros aleatorios que les exigen desnudarse, sujetos a vigilancia electrónica constante y obligados a someterse aleatoriamente a pruebas de consumo de drogas. A los jóvenes se les niega la dignidad y la capacidad de actuar, y no sólo en las escuelas urbanas. El renacimiento de la vigilancia, el control y la regulación ante los tiroteos escolares se ha traducido en crecientes peticiones de establecer personal de seguridad armado y colocar detectores de metales en las escuelas ricas del extrarradio. En medio de lo que en otra época se hubiera considerado como una reacción extrema, en el clima post-LittIeton, el National Center for Policy Analysis de Dallas hizo público un informe en el que se solicitaba que se dotara de armas a los maestros de las escuelas públicas; los medios de comunicación lo caracterizaron como una intervención legítima(21)’.
La erosión de los derechos civiles de los estudiantes va acompañada, a menudo, por políticas que eliminan recreos y programas de deportes, sobre todo en las escuelas cuyos recursos financieros y medios son reducidos, escuelas integradas en gran medida por chicos pobres y de clase trabajadora. Al mismo tiempo, cada vez se excluye más a los jóvenes de los espacios públicos extraescolares que en otros tiempos les daban oportunidad de pasar el rato con relativa seguridad, trabajar con mentores y desarrollar sus propias capacidades y su sentido de valía personal. Como el mismo concepto de ciudadanía, ahora, el espacio recreativo está privatizado, en cuanto operación comercial que ha de rendir beneficios. Se acabaron los centros juveniles, los parques públicos de las ciudades, las canchas de baloncesto al aire libre o los solares vacíos en donde los chicos podían jugar a una especie de béisbol improvisado. Ahora, las áreas de juego se alquilan al mejor postor, “cerradas con vallas de acero, cancelas de hierro forjado, candados y alambre de espino” (22).
A medida que se pierden los espacios públicos, surgen nuevos servicios en el sector privado para “cuidar” a los niños. El sociólogo Mike Males afirma con perspicacia en su libro Framing Youth que estos nuevos servicios de “reparación de niños” tienen unas consecuencias nada recomendables para muchos jóvenes:
“A partir de mediados de los setenta, los servicios de reparación de niños irrumpieron para satisfacer el mercado. Los había de dos tipos. Las puertas de las cárceles se abrieron de par en par en la década de 1980 para recibir a decenas de miles de los adolescentes más pobres, cuyas tres cuartas partes eran de razas distintas de la blanca. El confinamiento de los jóvenes de minorías en las prisiones aumentó en un 80% en la última década… Al mismo tiempo, los centros de salud mental y de otros tratamientos consiguieron unos beneficios enormes con la terapia de cientos de miles de los niños con mejores seguros de salud… En la actualidad, el tratamiento de jóvenes es un negocio que mueve unos 25 mil millones de dólares al año, con un “récord de aumento rápido de beneficios” (23).”
Con frecuencia, los jóvenes soportan la carga de unas responsabilidades y presiones nuevas e inmerecidas para “hacerse mayores”. Al mismo tiempo, sus libertades se recortan y sus garantías constitucionales y derechos ciudadanos se restringen. ¿Dónde pueden hallar los niños unas narraciones de esperanza, unas esferas culturales semiautónomas, unos diálogos sobre diferencias significativas y unas identidades democráticas no fundadas en los mercados(24)?
Aunque los cuidadores adultos y una serie de escritores sobre temas sociales reconozcan las nuevas cargas que pesan sobre los hombros de los jóvenes, y manifiesten en voz alta su preocupación por cómo se está modificando la infancia, es frecuente que se definan sus temores por medio de unos discursos muy selectivos que están íntimamente relacionados con la clase social y la raza de los chicos en cuestión. Por ejemplo, autores liberales que se han ocupado de la cultura infantil, como Neil Postman y David EIkind, afirman que la línea que separa la infancia de la adultez está desapareciendo a causa de la influencia generalizada de la cultura popular y la naturaleza cambiante de la familia(25). Postman cree que la cultura popular, en especial la televisión y las tecnologías al alcance de los niños, como los vídeos y los juegos de ordenador, han restado terreno a la inocencia infantil, si no la han corrompido. En realidad, el gran melodrama de la vida adolescente, tal como lo recoge la serie de televisión Dawson’s Creek* y el cinismo muy en la onda de South Park, en la que un infortunado chico de 8 años, llamado Kenny, muere de forma violenta en cada episodio, parece muy distinto del drama familiar de La tribu de los Brady (Brady Bunch)** o la inocencia de la serie de dibujos animados Carlitas y Snoopy, que educaron a una generación anterior blanca y de clase media. El acceso de los jóvenes a toda clase de pornografía en internet y a la violencia avanzada, hiperreal, de los sistemas de videojuegos de “entretenimiento hogareño” despierta unos tipos similares de alarmas entre los adultos, educados sobre la base de algún número, ocasionalmente estimulante, de National Geographic y entre los destellos de las máquinas electromecánicas de bolas. Sin embargo, da la sensación de que Postman no sólo lamenta la pérdida de la inocencia infantil, sino también la pérdida de los principios Victorianos de severidad, trabajo duro de las familias blancas y de clase media no corrompidas por las tecnologías postmodernas de la era visual. Es curioso que el ataque de Postman contra la influencia corruptora de la cultura popular diga poco acerca del papel que desempeñan los medios de comunicación al mostrar esa cadena interminable de representaciones erróneas de los jóvenes negros y pobres. Tampoco analiza Postman la explotación que hace la cultura empresarial de la inocencia infantil y su potencial sexual. Postman pasa también por alto de qué modo presenta la cultura empresarial a los jóvenes, como sujetos y, a la vez, objetos de su transformación en bienes mercantiles, como objetos que pueden comprarse y venderse en el mercado.
La añoranza de la cultura elevada o de élite de Postman constituye un sueño modernista que enfrenta la cultura de la imprenta (con su propia herencia de una imaginería racista y sexista) con la era visual, que presuntamente promueve la autocompasión y el enervante analfabetismo que mancha a los jóvenes y, al mismo tiempo, los condena a un papel pasivo y degradante en la vida. Dentro de la visión binaria de Postman, la pérdida de la inocencia infantil se atribuye directamente al ascenso de las nuevas tecnologías electrónicas y al atractivo de masas de la cultura popular.
Ese enfoque dispensa convenientemente a Postman de la necesidad de cuestionar la codificación de clase social, género y raza que estructura su visión del pasado norteamericano, y de la de examinar cómo se traduce la dinámica política de un clima económico cambiante —en vez de la cultura popular— en el recorte de la financiación de los servicios públicos para los jóvenes, al mismo tiempo que se recortan sus libertades y su futuro. Lo que pasa por alto Postman es el hecho de que la cultura popular no es sólo un ámbito de enormes contradicciones, sino también un ámbito de negociación para los chicos, uno de los pocos lugares en los que pueden hablar en primera persona, producir esferas públicas alternativas y representar sus propios intereses. Es también uno de los ámbitos más importantes en donde los adultos descubren cómo se producen las identidades infantiles, cómo se aseguran las inversiones eficaces, cómo se movilizan los deseos y cómo puede relacionarse el aprendizaje con el cambio social progresista. En muchos sentidos, la postura de Postman es sintomática de la petición de muchos adultos y educadores, después de los asesinatos de la Columbine, para que se censure internet, se eliminen los videojuegos violentos y se restrinjan los servicios en conexión para los jóvenes. En vez de reconocer que las nuevas tecnologías electrónicas permiten a los chicos sumergirse en unas formas de comunicación social profundamente importantes, producen un conjunto de expresiones creativas y muestran unas formas de acción que son placenteras y potenciadoras al mismo tiempo, los adultos desconfían profundamente de las nuevas tecnologías, en nombre de la protección de la inocencia infantil (26). Son raros los intentos serios de descubrir qué tipo de significados aportan los niños a estas nuevas culturas electrónicas, cómo refuerzan estas culturas la acción de los niños o lo que ellos hacen en realidad con las nuevas tecnologías de medios de comunicación (27).
En su obra sobre la adolescencia, el psicólogo infantil David EIkind culpa de la pérdida de la inocencia infantil a la naturaleza cambiante de la familia norteamericana y a las menguantes oportunidades que ésta ofrece a la mayoría de los niños. Menciona la mayor responsabilidad que recae ahora sobre los niños con el aumento de las familias en las que trabajan ambos progenitores, los padres divorciados y el enorme incremento de familias con un solo progenitor. También EIkind se muestra nostálgico con respecto a una época pasada que daba a los chicos más oportunidades de desarrollar sus propios juegos, culturas y actividades adolescentes. Según EIkind, el ascenso del “superchico” de clase media es un ejemplo clásico de los niños a quienes se les pide que realicen las mismas tareas que desarrollan sus padres en el mundo exterior, un mundo marcado por unos recursos menguantes, una competición en aumento y una exagerada idea del logro de Horatio Algores(28).
Ambas críticas de la cultura juvenil contemporánea interpretan la inocencia juvenil en clave nostálgica, blanca, de clase media, estática y pasiva. En estos comentarios, se niega a los niños la capacidad de actuar, y éstos viven con una funesta necesidad de protección del mundo adulto. Da la sensación de que, en cuanto tales, los jóvenes viven fuera de la esfera política, con todas las consecuencias que ese terreno distante conlleva para contemplar a los niños en el seno de las diversas fuerzas sociales, culturales y económicas que constituyen la sociedad adulta, en vez de apartados de las mismas. Aún más importante es el hecho de que esta idea selectiva de inocencia no tiene casi nada que decir acerca de una generación de jóvenes pobres y negros, que no ostentan el privilegio de definir sus problemas en esos términos tan estrictos y para quienes los reducidos límites entre la infancia y la edad adulta amenazan peligrosamente su vida y su bienestar. Por ejemplo, a medida que aumenta la guerra contra los jóvenes, los políticos como Jim Pitts, un legislador republicano por Texas, han tratado de aprobar leyes que apliquen la pena de muerte a niños de hasta 11 años. Esas leyes están dirigidas contra los chicos pobres, que viven en un mundo en el que su problema más grave no es, desde luego, tener que hacer una cantidad excesiva de tareas para casa. Por el contrario, estos chicos viven con el temor cotidiano de que los encarcelen y con los problemas continuos de no tener suficiente comida, un alojamiento adecuado o asistencia médica. Excluidos de la mayor parte de los apoyos sociales patrocinados por el Estado y de los espacios públicos, los jóvenes latinos y negros soportan el peso de una sociedad adulta que los considera desechables y una amenaza para la vida de la clase media, o bien los cosifica mediante una lógica comercial en busca de un nuevo nicho de mercado.
Cuando la idea romántica de la inocencia del siglo xviii pierde su relevancia, la infancia se reinventa, en parte a través de los intereses del capital empresarial. El mito del niño inocente como “objeto de adoración se ha convertido con excesiva facilidad en el concepto del niño como objeto y, después, en la comercialización del niño como un bien de consumo”(29). Se ha demostrado que el capital es lo bastante fuerte para renegociar lo que significa ser niño y para hacer de la inocencia una categoría comercial y sexual. De este modo, la fuerza del capital debilita o contrarresta las leyes sobre el trabajo infantil y los derechos educativos de los niños.
Notas:
1. El tema del final de la historia se hizo famoso en Francis Fukuyama: The End of History and the Last l\/lan. Nueva York: Free Press, 1992. (Trad, cast.: El fin de la historia y el último hombre. Barcelona. Planeta, 1992
2. Marina Warner: Six Myths of Our Time. Nueva York: Vintage, 1995, pág. 56.
3. Una serie de trabajos históricos sobre la infancia desmontan la idea universalizada de la infancia y la inocencia. Véanse: Philippe Aries: Centuries of Cfíiidliood. Londres: Cate Press, 1973, c. 1962. (Trad, cast.: Ei niño y la vida familiar en el Antiguo Régimen. Madrid. Taurus, 1987.) Chris Jenks: Ctiildhaod. Nueva York: Routledge, 1996; Anne Higonnet: Pictures of Innocence: The History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood. Nueva York: Thames and Hudson, 1998. Con respecto a la histoha de las culturas juveniles contemporáneas, véase: Joe Austin y Michael Nevin Willard (eds.): Generations of Youth. Nueva York: New York University Press, 1998. Véase también: Paul Goodman: Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized System. Nueva York: Random House, 1960. (Trad, cast.: Problemas de la juventud en la sociedad organizada.
4. Edward W. Said: Representations of the Intellectual. Nueva York: Pantheon, 1994, página 74. (Trad, cast.: Representaciones del intelectual. Barcelona. Paidós, 1996.)
5. Richard Johnson: “Reinventing Cultural Studies: Remembering for the Best Version”, en: Elizabeth Long (ed.): From Sociology to Cultural Studies. Maiden, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1997, página 461.
6. Véase, por ejemplo: Harold Bloom: The Western Canon. Nueva York: Riverhead Books, 1994. (Trad, cast.: El cannon occidental. La escuela y los libros de todas las épocas. Barcelona. Anagrama, 1997, 3.^ ed.). Véanse críticas de esta postura e n: Stanley Aronowitz y Henry A. Giroux: Postmodern Education. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1 9 9 1, y Lawrence Levine: The Opening of the American Mind. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996; Stanley Aronowitz: The Knowledge Factory. Boston: Beacon Press, 2000. Barcelona. Ediclons 62, 1975, 2.” ed.)
7. Ibid., pág. 122.
8. Quiero hacer hincapié en que, al utilizar el término general “adultos”, no trato de decir que la relación entre niños y adultos esté definida generacionalmente. Por el contrario, aunque todos los adultos sean capaces de abusar de los jóvenes, la cuestión fundamental del poder adulto no puede abstraerse de las formaciones más generales de clase social, raza y género, ni pueden separarse de la dinámica del capitalismo norteamericano, que, en mi opinión, hay que colocarlo en el primer plano de cualquier análisis de lo que muchos jóvenes tienen que aguantar en esta época en los Estados Unidos.
9. Una comisión nacional sobre la juventud recoge esta t ragedia nacional cuando reconoce que “nunca antes una generación de niños estadounidenses ha sido menos sana, menos asistida o menos preparada para la vida de lo que estaban sus padres cuando tenían la misma edad “. Véase: “National Commission on the Role of the Schools and the Community in Improving Adolescent Heal th”; Code Blue: uniting for Healthier Youth. Wa s h i n g t o n, D.C.: National Associat ion of State Boards of Educat ion/Amer ican Medical Associat ion, 1990, página 3.
10. Lauren Berlant, citado en Jenkins: “Introduction: Childhood Innocence and Other Myths”, página 11.
11. ” Como ha señalado Mike Males, el uso de drogas y las detenciones por delitos violentos entre los jóvenes han disminuido significativamente desde 1995. Véase: Mike Males: “Five
Myths and Why Adults Believe They Are True”, New York Times, 29 de abril de 1998, pág. 9. David Cole: No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System. Nueva York, The New Press, 1999. Véase un comentario apasionado y conmovedor sobre la difícil situación en la que se encuentran los niños cuando son encarcelados con adultos e n: Anthony Lewis: “Suffer the Children”, New York Times, 7 de julio de 1997, pág. A23.
12. Lauren Berlant: The Queen of America Goes to Washington City. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997, pág. 5. El 20 de abril de 1999, a las 11:20 de la mañana, aproximadamente, dos alumnos de la Columbine High School atacaron con pistolas semiautomáticas, escopetas y explosivos a las personas que estaban en el interior del centro escolar Murieron 12 alumnos, 1 profesor y los 2 sospechosos. Hubo que llevar a 24 estudiantes a diversos hospitales y 160 fueron asistidos en la misma escuela. (N. del T.)
13. Citado e n: Patricia J. Williams: “The Auguries of Innocence”, The Nation, 24 de mayo de 1999, pág. 9.
** Es conocida la tendencia que se registra en las grandes ciudades de muchos países de que las personas económicamente pudientes abandonen el centro de las poblaciones para ir a vivir a ciudades dormitorio, de manera que el centro se puebla de personas de clase social inferior y pocos ingresos. (N. del T.)
14. Ibid.
15. Citado en: Courtland Milloy: “A Lool< at Tragedy in Black, Wl i i te”, Washington Post, 2 de mayo de 1999, pág. C 0 1 .
16. Orlando Patterson: “When T h e y’ Are Us”, New York Times, 30 de abril de 1999, pág. A 31.
17. Véase un brillante y conmovedor comentario sobre la política y la experiencia cambiantes de la juventud en la década de 1980 en: Lawrence Grossberg: We Gotta Get Outta Here.
Nueva York: Routledge, 1992; véanse también: William Finnegan: Cold New World: Growing Up in a Harder Country. Nueva York: Random House, 1998; Angela McRobbie: Postmodernism and Popular Culture. Nueva York: Routledge, 1994.
18. He tratado esta cuestión en: Henry A. Giroux: Fugitive Cultures: Race, Violence, and Youth. Nueva York: Routledge, 1996; Henry A. Giroux: Channel Surfing: Racism, the Media and the Destruction of Today’s Youth. Nueva York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998.
* Ozzie and Harhet\ue una serie de televisión de 435 episodios, que se desarrolló desde el 3 de octubre de 1952 hasta el 3 de septiembre de 1966. En la serie, Ozzie y Harriet Nelson
se representaban a sí mismos, igual que sus padres. La serie mostraba en televisión la vida de la familia, como prototipo de la familia norteamericana de clase media, rodeada por los tabúes y usos “políticamente correctos” del momento, con respecto a las relaciones de raza y clase social. (N. del T.)
19. Este argumento se trata en: Mike Males: Framing Youth: 10 l^yths About the Next Generation. Monroe, Me.: Common Courage Press, 1999.
20. Sharon Stephens: “Children and the Politics of Culture in ‘Late Capitalism’”, en: Sharon Stephens (ed.): Ciiildren and the Politics of Culture. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995, pág. 13.
21. Cynthia Tucker: “In Littleton’s Wake, We All Turn to Movies”, The Atlanta Constitution, 25 de abril de 1999, pág. 5C.
22. Citado e n: Robin D. G. Kelley: Yo’ Mama’s DisfunktionaH: Fighting ttie Culture Wars in Urban America. Boston: Beacon Press, 1997, pág. 44.
23. Males: Framing Youth, pág. 12.
24. Sharon Stephens plantea una cuestión similar: “¿Cuáles son las consecuencias para la sociedad en su conjunto, si ya no hay espacios sociales concebidos, al menos, como parcialmente autónomos con respecto al mercado y a la política dirigida por el mercado? ¿Dónde vamos a encontrar los ámbitos de la diferencia, el terreno del testimonio social, la influencia crítica y la visión utópica, en la medida en que el dominio de la infancia —o de la vida cotidiana o de un ámbito semiautónomo de la cultura— está cada vez más plagado de valores mercantiles y de la política discursiva de la cultura postmodema global? ¿Y qué ocurre con los cuerpos y las mentes de los niños en el proceso? “Children and the Politics of Culture in l a t e Capitalism’”, pág. 24.
25. Neil Postman: The Disappearance of Childhood. Nueva York: Vintage Books, 1994. (Trad, cast.: La desaparación de la niñez. Madrid. Círculo de Lectores, 1988.) David EIkind: The
Hurried Child: Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1 9 8 1; David EIkind: Reinventing Childhood. Rosemont: Modern Learning Press, 1998; David EIkind; “The Social Determination of Childhood and Adolescence”, Education Week, 24 de febrero de 1998, páginas 48-50.
* Dawson’s Creek: Serie de televisión de finales de los noventa, producida en Estados Unidos de Norteamérica y traducida en castellano como “Dawson crece” (Canal +). A lo largo
de sus capítulos trata de mostrar, apoyándose en el humor, los temores e ilusiones de los adolescentes norteamericanos. El personaje principal se llama Dawson y tiene 15 años. Los otros tres personajes centrales son sus dos amigas y un amigo.
South Park: Señe de dibujos animados para TV para adultos, también conocida de los televidentes españoles y, debido a su éxito, película de dibujos animados, en 1999. Creada a finales de los noventa, en 1997, en Estados Unidos de Norteamérica y adquirida por numerosas cadenas de TV de todo el mundo. Es deudora de otra serie muy conocida, “Los Simpsons”, en la que utilizando un lenguaje un tanto procaz y escatológico trata toda clase de temas siempre con la intención de tratar de sacar a la luz la enorme hipocresía con la que las personas adultas se enfrentan a las problemáticas de estos colectivos sociales. (N. del T.)
** La tribu de ios Brady: Comedia para televisión producida en Estados Unidos de Norteamérica a finales de los sesenta y principios de los setenta, sobre la vida de una familia compuesta por un viudo con tres hijos varones de corta edad y su nueva esposa que aporta tres hijas de distinta edad. Aunque la convivencia no es fácil, los Brady constituyen una sólida y empalagosa familia donde cada problema y obstáculo se vencen con cariño y buen humor.
Serie de gran éxito que fue adquirida por numerosas cadenas de televisión de todo el mundo. En el año 1995 se hizo también una versión cinematográfica. (N. del T.)
26. Una invectiva casi histérica contra el uso que hacen los estudiantes de internet y los videojuegos puede verse en: John Leland: “The Secret Life of Teens”, Newsweek, 10 de mayo
de1999,págs. 45-50.
27. Véase un importante comentario sobre los recientes ataques públicos contra los nuevos medios electrónicos de comunicación y su influencia sobre los jóvenes, en especial a la luz de la tragedia de Littleton, en: Henry Jenkins: “Testimony Before the U.S. Senate Committee”, 4 de mayo de 1999.
28. David EIkind: “The Social Determination of Childhood and Adolescence”, pegs. 48-50.
* Horatio Alger (1834-1899) fue, en su época, un famoso escritor estadounidense de novelas para jóvenes, cuya filosofía, muy acorde con los proclamados ideales norteamericanos, Podría resumirse en: “lucha y vence” o “lucha y alcanza el éxito”. (N. del T.)
29. Higonnet: Pictures of Innocence, pág. 19
Descarga el Libro: Giroux, Henry A. { La inocencia robada } [2000] [pdf]
El Desierto de la Desertización de la Tierra | Cuento por Miguel Pruné
Máquinas, Laberintos y Circuitos.
Bienvenido al mundo
Los niños que viven en la fábrica realizaban labores a través de todo el magno edificio. Vertían metales derretidos en inmensos moldes, soldaban los ángulos y las coyunturas necesarias para la edificación. Eran diestros y siniestros en la elaboración de circuitos integrados en la minuciosa instalación y regulación de redes. Cámaras vigilaban cada movimiento, cada respiro, cada función neuronal. A los chiquitines que no siguieran las instrucciones ilustradas claramente por colores en el manual del buen vivir, se los llevaban en la noche de los aposentos. El protocolo de extracción era bien conocido por todos en la comunidad de metal. Unas entidades robóticas de cuatro patas se materializaban en nuestro nivel y tragaban el cuerpo del blanco, de un sólo bocado si era posible y luego desaparecían, según se rumora, hacia los niveles superiores, pues estaban fuera del alcance por razones de autorización y de distancia. En el recreo todos suspendían sus labores y corrían gritando y riendo al patio interno del complejo. Era un gran cuadrado repleto de arena, las paredes que enmarcaban el arenal eran al menos de una milla de altura y no poseía techo, así que se podía divisar una luminiscencia a la lejanía.
“Por qué un cordero que había sido salvado de la muerte acabó muriendo oveja, cuestión tan estúpida como cualquiera puede ver, pero que se comprende mejor si la traducimos así, ninguna salvación es suficiente, cualquier condena es definitiva.”
{Jose Saramago}
Dunas entre dunas se extendían por el corral, donde todos corrían y hacían núcleos de charla y vacilón. Discutían, gruñían, se empujaban, se tocaban. Aunque existían muchos sistemas centinelas, monitoreando el bienestar de la facilidad, éste era el único momento del día cuando no era posible cuantificar la totalidad de las funciones anatómicas de los monstruitos. De repente una ensordecedora y furiosa sirena se escuchó por todo el rectángulo, instantáneamente los chicos se descontrolaron; su conducta trastocada por el estímulo sonoro. Unos aullaban y se arrancaban el pelo, otros brincaban vomitando, algunos se laceraban con las tuberías y la maquinaria que brotaba de las paredes, otros golpeaban a puñetazo limpio la arena. La sirena debió haber durado unos 30 segundos, desatando todo un ordenamiento de caos. En la secuela de los hechos sólo se podían discernir gemidos y suspiros en el silencio, así como cientos de cuerpos jadeantes. Según leyendas virtuales distribuidas por l@s xuan-xue, aquel clan de nómadas que subsiste comprometiendo y descifrando dispositivos, engranes y circuitos desde una etérea periferia. Ese protocolo de la exaltación colectiva tenía un propósito específico. El trauma y la angustia post-estimulo era de tal magnitud que la conducta de los monstruitos aún buscaba reproducir ese éxtasis. En sincronía, todos se movilizaron; unos buscaban en sus bolsillos objetos cortantes, otros corrían a las esquinas y comenzaban a desenterrar envases, otros arrancaban trozos de la fábrica en sí para usarlos como artefactos de supervivencia. Velozmente los llenaban de arena y los lanzaban con toda su fuerza hacia algún pobre diablo en esa colosal caja de arena. De vez en cuando se formaban cortas alianzas para exhumar objetos enormes entre las partículas. Lámparas, baldes, cráneos, botas, todas muy útiles para verter arena en su interior y hacerlos volar por los aires, dejando rastros entre rastros de polvo que se entremezclaban en nubes. La arena se pegaba a sus cuerpos húmedos gracias al sudor, la sangre, las lágrimas, el excremento y la orina que emergía de sus orificios en acción y crisis, todo era parte del juego. En estos momentos se activaban protocolos de seguridad en el cuadrilátero de la Maquina. Entre la confusión de la conmoción, brazos mecánicos de silicón emergían de los niveles superiores y extraían a varias de las criaturas; se dice que para estudios adicionales sobre su anatomía o porque estaban en la lista de posible escapistas/insurgentes. Pero no se sabía a ciencia cierta donde los llevaban pues nadie regresaba. En cada ciclo de juego y desencadenamiento moría al menos un 10% de la población, ya fuese por contusiones, por sofocación o hemorragias. Más de una vez observé a varios de los internados caer y ser pisoteado o enterrado vivo bajo toneladas de esa arena compuesta de trocitos minúsculos con metales triturados, caracoles, rocas, hueso y plástico. Luego de una hora de juego sonaba nuevamente la sirena, inmovilizándolos para anunciar la clausura del tiempo de recreo.
Sobre la bestialidad programada
“La cuota diaria de ocio, de las subjetividades de los internados, es necesariamente objetivizada para hacer funcionar el sistema. La población expresa sus impulsos, sus apetitos y sus deseos a través de los símbolos que consumen diariamente. Como una válvula de escape que externaliza y cosifica a los sujetos en su totalidad; la máquina externa, experimenta a través de los sujetos. Con el tiempo, se solidifica la domesticación simbólica, y la sirena es experimentada por los sujetos como un reflejo natural. En fin, los más íntimos sentimientos sapientes pueden ser radicalmente externalizados.”
{Comunicación de l@s Xuan-xue}
Cada 15 días una nueva cosecha era suministrada a la fábrica como por arte del ingenio de diseño. Vagones reventando de monstruitos descendían a facilitarlos a través del espacio luminoso superior de la arca de arena. Muchas veces no se atrevían o no querían salir de los transportes, debido a un primitivo pánico de guapería; por lo tanto unas esferas flotantes entraban a las celdas móviles, y electrocutaban sus extremidades de plata. Prontamente las criaturas comprendían y corrían a sus nuevos espacios de dormitar, laborar y recrearse en este complejo de hierro. El dolor y el placer configuran el lenguaje universal.
“Nunca he dicho una verdad y a la misma vez nunca he dicho una mentira,
no creo en la falsedad y no debes creer todo lo que diga.
Soy un cuento de ficción, nunca habrá nada real en mi vida,
una puta alucinación… Yo soy el engaño, Yo soy la mentira”
{Un Final Fatal, El Engaño y La Mentira}
Varios de l@s chic@s habían teorizado, gracias a una conspiración previsoramente codificada, la triangulación de los brazos de silicón que advendrían a cobrar la cuota diaria. Un buen día, en plena hora de recreo cuando la locura de arena estaba en todo su apogeo, la brigada se puso prontamente en acción; aferrándose de las coyunturas de defensa, consiguiendo mantenerse enganchados lo suficiente como para ascender a niveles superiores luego de la extracción. Quienes estaban cautivos gritaban e imploraban a los vanguardistas del arenal por ser liberados de las siniestras manos mecánicas. Estos intentaron separar los miembros de las palancas sin ningún efecto. Finalmente los mecanismos de seguridad se detuvieron en un nivel con múltiples vías de jaulas autómatas, allí fueron arrojados y velozmente movilizados. Para nunca más ser vistos. Minutos de ascensión transcurrieron, las manos se detuvieron y los escapistas, al fin pisando suelo firme, exploraban el territorio donde acaecían, un nuevo nivel de la supra-estructura. Este nivel poseía paredes distintas a las acostumbradas en el sótano, de metales mohosos y cemento fracturado por donde quiera. Aquí los paneles, el techo y el piso tenían luces en su interior, emanaban una dulce y pasiva luminosidad. Entre más se internaban en las tripas de este nivel, los pasillos se tornaban en cilindros que de vez en cuando conectaban con almacenes repletos de puertas y portales. Los monstruitos, ya aptos y eficientes en las artes espaciales de la simulación y la di-simulación espacial, analizaban y ponían en marcha métodos de deducción e inducción psico-matemáticos, co-relacionando cautelosamente el territorio, aquellos fenómenos físicos chocarreros, con el mapa codificado, la multitud de pasillos, cuartos, almacenes, túneles, escaleras, abismos y trampas. Toda una cosmovisión de saberes fluidos, producciones/tecnologías simbológicas, (con)ciencia-poética del orden establecido en los dispositivos que necesariamente inscribieron en sus neuronas para navegar la Máquina. Así es como el eficiente escuadrón de sobrevivientes se vertía en cada espacio, hábiles agentes foráneos, indagando, calcando y chupando esas inmensas venas del Leviatán a través de un portal de escape.
El Espectro de lo Real
“Survivor! He knows no prison. They are all over the prison floor, but you never saw them looking melancholy. They kept Cruising. No imprisonment for the cockroach. Life impending drastic survivor through the millenias, through the eruptions of time, past the dinosaurs, witnessing the flight of birds for the first time. Clouds dying, asteroids hitting the earth. No prison for the cockroach. I have such respect for those bastards.”
{Timothy Speed Levitch}
[26 horas de caminata post-éxodo] Después de haber burlado las defensas del primer circuito de control, la cuadrilla ya sentía la hostilidad de la falta de H2O y de nutrientes. Los mismos se aproximaban a una compuerta de hierro reforzado de aproximadamente unos 15 metros de altura y 20 metros de ancho, una puerta lógica; dieron cuenta de lo que yacía frente a ésta, un surtido de esqueletos empolvados por el camino, seguramente pertenecieron a elegidos de otros tiempos ya olvidados. Pasaron los minutos en lo que encontraban algún panel por dónde filtrar sus herramientas por el circuito del portal, y accesar a su orden/programación simbolic@. Ese juego de binarios, esa señal de [1] – lógico que es afirmar, activar o verdadera, y su gemelo aquel [0] – lógico, es la otra señal de no afirmación, negativa o falsa. Al representar las señales mediante variables lógicas. Como cada compuerta es un diagrama en un diagrama, meros circuitos fractales, pues se representa mediante un símbolo que incluye las entradas y salidas, por donde los monstruitos escapistas calculan su lógica operacional, la gnosis de la bomba heurística. Finalmente logran su propósito de hackear aquel terminal improvisado, y la compuerta comienza a abrirse. Cuando de repente una voz se hace escuchar por todo el complejo y les dijo lo siguiente “¿No quieren jugar más? ¿Buscan alejarse de esta machina de experiencia? ¿Con cuál fin? Allá afuera no hay nada. Si continúan esta hazaña, penosamente morirán. Aquí se les alimenta, se les mantiene vivos bajo estrictas normas de espacio, tiempo y biometría. El juego siempre debe continuar.”
La negación no es suficiente
Outburst of Fear by Paul Klee
[58 horas post-éxodo] El terror, la incertidumbre, la frustración, jugaban con su reserva anímica y su determinación para perpetrar la gran huida de aquella estructura. Pasaban las horas y disminuía la energía de sus organismos, con la misma se desvanecía su eficiencia cognitiva. La voz, ese protocolo invisible de seguridad del cual no habían prevenido, los seguía con temible omnipresencia. “¿Dónde está el mundo que buscan? ya no queda lugar alguno al cuál huir, los peligros y los miedos también tienen consistencia, y claro la seguridad, el fantasma de la vulnerabilidad habita en ustedes, planeando como un furioso virus sobre todos los planetas. Todos estamos en peligro y todos somos un peligro para los demás, sólo hay tres roles posibles que representar: el de perpetradores, el de víctimas y el de daño colateral. Las víctimas claman venganza y cambiar de rol y los que no son víctimas tiemblan en la noche, en la soledad que sólo la mortalidad les ofrece de que en cualquier momento pueda llegarles su turno, como sin duda llegara”. El escuadrón de bestias sapientes, de aquellas criaturas atrevidas continuó transitando cuarto tras cansado cuarto, de diferentes tamaños, unos bien alumbrados, otros en total oscuridad con numerosas puertas y portones en cada uno; pero todos repletos de desperdicios orgánicos, libros, maniquíes, muebles e inmensas machinas muertas. Transcurrían cada espacio y tiempo del monumental Torrente, comprendiendo que si desean ocupar espacio en el universo como seres multicelulares, tendrían que ser más veloces. Su tiempo se agota.
“Hoy atraparon a otro, hoy, aparece en todos los periódicos: ‘Joven arrestado por delito informático’, ‘Hacker arrestado por irrumpir en un sistema bancario, ‘Malditos críos, son todos iguales’… O nos gobiernan los sádicos o nos ignoran los apáticos. Los pocos que tienen algo que enseñarnos encontraron en nosotros alumnos dispuestos, pero esos pocos son como gotas de agua en el desierto. Este mundo es nuestro, el mundo de los electrones y los interruptores; la belleza del baudio. Podrán eliminar a algunos de nosotros, pero no a todos… después de todo, somos todos iguales.”
{Ultima transmisión del Mentor | La Conciencia de un Hacker}
[93 horas post-éxodo] Así los monstruitos (supuestos vanguardistas) fueron cayendo uno a uno, deshidratados y enloquecidos; inútiles cuerpos aquellos que no se movían ya. Y la voz acompañaba a los 3 residuos monstruosos sapientitos en su travesía. “Ya veo que perdieron otro recurso, que penoso. Pero prueba mi punto, la perversión no es una burda y anticuada psicopatología, sino todo lo contrario, posibilita y produce, designa una actitud subjetiva muy precisa que es una actitud de auto-instrumentalización. Considerando que el miedo histérico típico es volverse una herramienta del otro, por mera solidaridad o elaboración material. Así el componente cardinal de la subjetividad es histeria, ustedes piensan… ‘yo no sé lo que yo soy para el otro.’”
Venas, tripas y cartílagos de la Máquina.
“Siento una voz que me dice agúzate que te están velando. Siento una voz que me dice agáchate que te están tirando. y yo pasaría de tonto si no supiera que uno debe estar mosca por donde quiera y es por eso que yo digo de esta manera, que ese individuo no sabe en que se metió”
{Ricardo Ray & Bobby Cruz | Agúzate}
[-¿?-] Con el agotamiento crítico de cada extremidad y facultad hábil de su organismo, perdieron la capacidad de navegar. Reposaban mudos y aturdidos observando las sombras grises de este cuarto, sintiendo la pesadez de su cuerpo y la fuerza invisible que ejerce contra la todo poderosa gravedad. Cuando de repente, uno de los chicos siente un curioso y sutil movimiento en su rodilla, que se traslada al muslo y velozmente hasta su estomago. Casi sin energía para inspeccionar su corporeidad, el chico alza la cabeza del piso y da cuenta de un fenómeno que hace años no veía, un par de antenas miniatura ondulando. Una imprevista cucaracha, siempre rastreando y caminando por su reinado. La misma continúa su ruta a través del cuarto, y los monstruitos velozmente se incorporan y siguen la ruta de la bendita aparición callejera. La cucaracha se detenía y transitaba el laberinto (y sus dispositivos), siguiendo trayectos que parecían un terrible azar, como todo eficiente y adaptado agregado de proteínas, hasta arribar a una habitación con una bañera, un lavamanos y un toilettes. Justo en el techo de la misma había una escotilla desde donde irradiaba luminiscencia. Afanosamente los monstruitos reían entre gemidos secos y abrazos cansados; abriendo el portal hacia la perenne libertad siempre incógnita. “¡Jajajajajajajaja!” vociferaba la voz.
“El elemento del pensar mismo, el elemento de la exteriorización vital del pensamiento, el lenguaje, es naturaleza sensible. La realidad social de la naturaleza y la Ciencia natural humana… son expresiones idénticas… No sólo el material de mi actividad me es dado como producto social (como lo es inclusive el lenguaje por el cual el pensador está activo), sino que mi propia existencia es actividad social, por eso lo que yo hago, lo hago de mi mismo para la sociedad y con conciencia de ser un ente social.”
{Karl Marx}
Del libro Cosmos Burlesco {Sobre el Apocalipsis & los Protocolos del Caos}
Slavoj Zizek: Is There a Proper Way To Remake a Hitckcock Film?
& Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock) [ebook]
In any large American bookstore, it is possible to purchase some volumes of the unique series SHAKESPEARE MADE EASY, edited by John Durband and published by Barron’s: a “bilingual” edition of Shakespeare’s plays, with the original archaic English on the left page and the translation into common contemporary English on the right page. The obscene satisfaction provided by reading these volumes resides in how what purports to be a mere translation into contemporary English turns out to be much more: as a rule, Durband tries to formulate directly, in everyday locution, (what he considers to be) the thought expressed in Shakespeare’s metaphoric idiom – say, “To be or not to be, that is the question” becomes something like: “What’s bothering me now is: Shall I kill myself or not?” And my idea is, of course, that the standard remakes of Hitchcock’s films are precisely something like HITCHCOCK MADE EASY: although the narrative is the same, the “substance,” the flair that accounts for Hitchcock’s uniqueness evaporates. Here, however, one should avoid the jargon-laden talk on Hitchcock’s unique touch, etc., and approach the difficult task of specifying what gives Hitchcock’s films their unique flair.
Or – what if this uniqueness is a myth, the result of our (spectators) transference, elevation of Hitchcock into the Subject Supposed to Know. What I have in mind is the attitude of overinterpretation: everything in a Hitchcock film has to have a meaning, there are no contingencies, so that when something doesn’t fit, it’s not his fault, but ours – we didn’t really get it. While watching Psycho for the 20th time, I noticed a strange detail during the final psychiatrist’s explanation: Lilah (Vera Miles) listens to him enraptured and nods two times with a deep satisfaction, instead of being shaken by the final confirmation of her sister’s meaningless death – was this a pure contingency, or did Hitchcock want to suggest a strange libidinal ambiguity and rivalry between the two sisters? Or the scene of Marion driving in the night on her escape from Phoenix: just before reaching the Bates motel, when she listens to the imagined voices of her boss and the millionaire who bought the house, furious at her deception, her expression is no longer angiushed – what we perceive is a strange manic smile of a deeply perverse satisfaction, an expression which uncannily resembles the very last shot of Norman-mother, just before it dissolves into the skull and then the car appearing out of the swamp. So, in a way, even before actually meeting him, Marion already becomes Norman: a further feature that confirms this point is that her expression emerges when she is listening to the voices in her head, exactly like Norman in his last shot… Or – the supreme example – the scene when Marion checks in at the Bates motel: while Norman has his back turned against her, inspecting the row of keys to the rooms, she furtively looks around to get an idea which city to put down as her residence, sees the words “Los Angeles” as part of a newspaper headline and writes them down. We have here two hesitations coinciding: while Marion hesitates as to which town to write (which lie to tell), Norman hesitates as to in which unit to put her (if it’s 1, this means that he will be able to observe her secretly through the peephole). When, after some hesitation, she tells him “Los Angeles,” Norman picks up and gives her the key of the number 1 unit. Is his hesitation a simple sign that he was considering her sexual attraction and then finally opted to pursue her, or is it that, at a more refined level, he detected in her hesitation that she is about to tell him a lie, and then countered her lie with an illegal act of his own, finding in her small crime the justification for his own? (Or is it rather that, upon hearing that she is from LA, he thinks that the girl from such a decadent town can be an easy pick?) Although Joseph Stefano, who wrote the scenario, claims1 the creators had in mind only the growing sexual attraction that Norman felt for Marion, there remains the shadow of a doubt that the coincidence of two hesitations cannot be purely contingent… This is called true love in theory. So, out of this true love, I claim that there IS a unique Hitchcockian dimension.
The Hitchcockian sinthom
My first thesis is that this unique dimension is not to be sought primarily at the level of the narrative content – its original locus is elsewhere – where? Let me begin with contrasting two scenes from two non-Hitchcockian films. There is one memorable scene in the otherwise dull and pretentious Robert Redford’s A River Runs Through It. Of the two preacher’s sons, we are all the time aware that the younger one (Brad Pitt) is on a path to self-destruction, approaching catastrophe because of his compulsive gambling, drinking and womanizing. The thing that keeps the two sons together with their father is fly-fishing in the wild Montana rivers – this Sunday fishing expeditions are a kind of sacred family ritual, a time when the threats of the life outside family is temporarily suspended. So when they go fishing for the last time, Pitt achieves perfection: he adroitly catches the biggest fish ever; however, the way he proceeds is presented with a shadow of constant threat (Will the dark river bend where he spots the great trout swallow him? Will he reappear after he slips into the fast water?) – again, it is as if this potential threat announces the final tragedy, which occurs shortly afterwards (Pitt is found dead, with his fingers broken, on account of his gambling debts).
What renders this scene from A River Runs Through It rather ordinary is that the underlying threatening dimension is directly reinscribed into the main narrative line, as an index pointing towards the final catastrophe. In contrast to it, Peter Yates’ outstanding Breaking Away (1979), a gentle comedy/drama about the coming of age of four high school kids in Bloomington, Indiana, in the final summer before they face the inexorable choices of jobs or college or the Army, resisted this temptation. In one of the memorable small sequences, Dave, one of the kids, on a racing bicycle engages in a high-speed highway duel with a semitrailer truck. The uneasy effect is here the same as in a couple of scenes involving swimming in an abandoned quarry, in which kids jump into deep dark water with bits of sharp stones hidden beneath the surface: Yates suggests the constant possibility of sudden catastrophe. We wait for the terrible accident to happen (for Dave to be hid and crushed by the truck; for one of the kids to drown in the dark water or to hit some sharp stone when jumping into it) – none does, but the hints of one (its threatening shadow evoked just by the general atmosphere of the way the scene is shot, not by any direct psychological references, like the uneasiness felt by kids) make the characters seem strangely vulnerable. It is as if these hints lay the ground for the very end of the film, when we learn, from the legend on the screen, that, afterwards, one of them died in Vietnam, another had a different accident… This tension between the two levels is what I want to focus on: the gap that separates the explicit narrative line from the diffused threatening message delivered between the lines of this narrative.
Let me introduce here a parallel with Richard Wagner (is not the ring from Wagner’s Nibelungen the greatest MacGuffin of all times?). In his last two operas, the same gesture is performed: towards the end of Goetterdaemmerung, the dead Siegfried, when Hagen approaches him in order to snatch the ring from his hand, threateningly rises his hand; towards the end of Parsifal, in the midst of Amfortas’s lament and refusal to perform the ritualistic unveiling of the Grail, his dead father Titurel also miraculously lifts his hand. Features like this attest to the fact that Wagner was a Hitchcockian avant la lettre: in Hitchcock’s films, we also find the same visual or other motif that insists, imposing itself through an uncanny compulsion and repeating itself from one film to another, in totally different narrative contexts. Best-known is the motif of what Freud called Niederkommenlassen, “letting /oneself/ fall down,” with all the undertones of melancholic suicidal fall2 - a person desperately clinging by his hand onto another person’s hand: the Nazi saboteur clinging from the good American hero’s hand from the torch of the Statue of Liberty in Saboteur; in the final confrontation of The Rear Window, the crippled James Stewart hanging from the window, trying to grab the hand of his pursuer who, instead of helping him, tries to make him fall; in The Man Who Knew Too Much (remake, 1955), on the sunny Casablanca market, the dying Western agent, dressed as an Arab, stretches his hand towards the innocent American tourist (James Stewart) and pulling him down towards himself; the finally unmasked thief clinging from Cary Grant’s hand in To Catch a Thief; James Stewart clinging from the roof funnel and desperately trying to grasp the policeman’s hand stretching towards him at the very beginning of Vertigo; Eva Marie-Saint clinging from Cary Grant’s hand at the edge of the precipice (with the immediate jump to her clinging to his hand in the sleeping car’s berth at the end of North by Northwest). Upon a closer look, we become aware that Hitchcock’s films are full of such motifs. There is the motif of a car on the border of a precipice in Suspicion and in North by Northwest - in each of the two films, there is a scene with the same actor (Cary Grant) driving a car and dangerously approaching a precipice; although the films are separated by almost 20 years, the scene is shot in the same way, including a subjective shot of the actor casting a glance into the precipice. (In Hitchcock’s last film, The Family Plot, this motif explodes in a long sequence of the car that rushes down the hill, since its breaks were meddled with by the villains.) There is the motif of the “woman who knows too much,” intelligent and perceptive, but sexually unattractive, with spectacles, and – significantly – resembling or even directly played by Hitchcock’s own daughter Patricia: Ruth Roman’s sister in Strangers On a Train, Barbara del Geddes in Vertigo, Patricia Hitchcock in Psycho, and even Ingrid Bergman herself prior to her sexual awakening in Spellbound. There is the motif of the mummified skull which first appears in Under Capricorn and finally in Psycho - both times, it terrifies the young woman (Ingrid Bergman, Vera Miles) in the final confrontation. There is the motif of a Gothic house with big stairs, with the hero walking up the stairs where, in the room, there is nothing, although he previously saw a feminine silhouette on the first-floor window: in Vertigo, it is the enigmatic episode of Madeleine seen by Scottie as a shade in the window and then inexplicably disappearing from the house; in Psycho, it is the appearance of the mother’s shadow in the window – again, bodies which appear out of nowhere and disappear back into the void. Furthermore, the fact that in Vertigo this episode remains unexplained opens up the temptation to read it in a kind of futur anterieur, as already pointing towardsPsycho: is the old lady who is the hotel-clerk of the house not a kind of strange condensation of Norman Bates and his mother, i.e. the clerk (Norman) who is at the same time the old lady (mother), thus giving in advance the clue on their identity, which is the big mystery of Psycho? Vertigo is of a special interest, insofar as, in it, the same sinthom of the spiral that draws us into its abyssal depth repeats itself and resonates at a multitude of levels: first as a purely formal motif of the abstract form emerging out of the close-up of the eye in the credits sequence; then as the curl of Carlotta Valdes’ hair in her portrait, repeated in Madeleine’s haircut; then as the abyssal circle of the staircase of the church tower; and, finally, in the famous 360 degrees shot around Scottie and Judy-Madeleine who are passionately embracing in the decrepit hotel room, and during which the background changes to the stable of the Juan Batista Mission and then back to the hotel room; perhaps, this last shot offers the key to the temporal dimension of “vertigo”- the self-enclosed temporal loop in which past and present are condensed into the two aspects of the same endlessly repeated circular movement. It is this multiple resonance of surfaces that generates the specific density, the “depth” of the film’s texture.
Here we have a set of (visual, formal, material) motives which “remain the same” across different contexts of meaning. How are we to read such persisting gestures or motifs? One should resist the temptation to treat them as Jungian archetypes with a deep meaning – the raising hand in Wagner expressing threat of the dead person to the living; or the person clinging by another’s hand expressing the tension between spiritual fall and salvation… We are dealing here with the level of material signs which resists meaning and establishes connections which are not grounded in narrative symbolic structures: they just relate in a kind of pre-symbolic cross-resonance. They are not signifiers, neither the famous Hitchcockian stains, but elements of what, a decade or two ago, one would have called cinematic writing, ecriture. In the last years of his teaching, Jacques Lacan established the difference between symptom and sinthom: in contrast to symptom which is a cipher of some repressed meaning, sinthom has no determinate meaning – it just gives body, in its repetitive pattern, to some elementary matrix of jouissance, of excessive enjoyment – although sinthoms do not have sense, they do radiate jouis-sense /enjoy-meant/.3 According to Svetlana, Stalin’s daughter, the last gesture of the dying Stalin, significantly preceded by the cast of the evil gaze, was the same gesture as in Wagner’s last operas, the gesture of threateningly raising the left hand:
“At what seemed like the very last moment /Stalin/ suddenly opened his eyes and cast a glance over everyone in the room. It was a terrible glance, insane or perhaps angry and full of fear of death and the unfamiliar faces of the doctors bent over him. The glance swept over everyone in a second. Then something incomprehensible and terrible happened that to this day I can’t forget and don’t understand. He suddenly lifted his left hand as though he were pointing to something up above and bringing down a curse on us all. The gesture was incomprehensible and full of menace, and no one could say to whom or what it might be directed. The next moment, after a final effort, the spirit wrenched itself free of the flesh.” 4
What, then, did this gesture mean? The Hitcocockian answer is: nothing – yet this nothing was not an empty nothing, but the fullness of libidinal investment, a tick which gave body to a cipher of enjoyment. Perhaps, their closest equivalent in painting are the protracted stains which “are” the yellow sky in the late van Gogh or the water or grass in Munch: this uncanny “massiveness” pertains neither to the direct materiality of the color stains nor to the materiality of the depicted objects – it dwells in a kind of intermediate spectral domain of what Schelling called geistige Koerperlichkeit, the spiritual corporeality. From the Lacanian perspective, it is easy to identify this “spiritual corporeality” as materialized jouissance, “jouissance which turned into flesh.” Hitchcock’s sinthoms are thus not mere formal patterns: they already condense a certain libidinal investment. As such, they determined his creative process: Hitchcock did not proceed from the plot to its translation in cinematic audio-visual-terms. He rather started with a set of (usually visual) motifs that haunted his imagination that imposed themselves as his sinthoms; then, he constructed a narrative that served as the pretext for their use… These sinthoms provide the specific flair, the substantial density of the cinematic texture of Hitchcock’s films: without them, we would have a lifeless formal narrative. So all the talk about Hitchcock as the “master of suspense,” about his unique twisted plots, etc., misses the key dimension. Fredric Jameson said of Hemingway that he selected his narratives in order to be able to write a certain kind of (tense, masculine) phrases. The same goes for Hitchcock: he invented stories in order to be able to shoot a certain kind of scenes. And, while the narratives of his films provide a funny and often perceptive comment of our times, it is in his sinthoms that Hitchcock lives forever. They are the true cause of why his films continue to function as objects of our desire.
The Case of the Missing Gaze
The next feature concerns the status of the gaze. The so-called Post-Theorists (cognitivist critics of the psychoanalytic cinema theory) like to vary the motif of how writers of the “Theory” refer to mythical entities like the (capitalized) Gaze, entities to which no empirical, observable facts (like the actual cinema viewers and their behavior) correspond – the title of one of the essays in the Post-Theory volume5 is “The Case of the Missing Spectator.” Post-Theory relies here on the commonsense notion of the spectator (the subject who perceives cinematic reality on the screen, equipped with his emotional and cognitive predisposition, etc.) – and, within this simple opposition between subject and object of cinematic perception, there is, of course, no place for the gaze as the point from which the viewed object itself “returns the gaze” and regard us, the spectators. That is to say, crucial for the Lacanian notion of gaze is that it involves the reversal of the relationship between subject and object: as Lacan puts it in his Seminar XI, there is an antinomy between the eye and the gaze, i.e. the gaze is on the side of the object, it stands for the blind spot in the field of the visible from which the picture itself photo-graphs the spectator – or, as Lacan puts it in his Seminar I, whose uncanny evocation of the central scene of The Rear Window is sustained by the fact that it was held in the same year that Hitchcock’s film was shot (1954):
“I can feel myself under the gaze of someone whose eyes I do not see, not even discern. All that is necessary is for something to signify to me that there may be others there. This window, if it gets a bit dark, and if I have reasons for thinking that there is someone behind it, is straight-away a gaze.” 6
Is this notion of the gaze not perfectly rendered by the exemplary Hitchcockian scene in which the subject is approaching some uncanny threatening object, usually a house? There we encounter the antinomy between the eye and the gaze at its purest: the subject’s eye sees the house, but the house – the object – seems somehow to return the gaze… No wonder, than, that the post-theorists speak of the “missing gaze,” complaining that the Freudo-Lacanian Gaze is a mythical entity nowhere found in the actuality of the spectator’s experience: this gaze effectively is missing, its status is purely fantasmatic. At a more fundamental level, what we are dealing with here is the positivization of an impossibility which gives rise to the fetish-object. For example, how does the object-gaze become a fetish? Through the Hegelian reversal from the impossibility to see the object, into an object which gives body to this very impossibility: since the subject cannot directly see that, the true object of fascination, he accomplishes a kind of reflection-into-self by means of which the object that fascinates him becomes the gaze itself. In this sense (although not in an entirely symmetrical way), gaze and voice are “reflective” objects, i.e. objects which give body to an impossibility (in Lacanian “mathems”: a under minus small phi).
In this precise sense, fantasy proper is not the scene itself that attracts our fascination, but the imagined/inexistent gaze observing it, like the impossible gaze from above for which old Aztecs draw gigantic figures of birds and animals onto the ground, or the impossible gaze for which details of the sculptures on the old aqueduct to Rome were formed, although they were unobservable from the ground. In short, the most elementary fantasmatic scene is not that of a fascinating scene to be looked at, but the notion of “there is someone out there looking at us”; it is not a dream but the notion that “we are the objects in someone else’s dream”… Milan Kundera, in La lenteur, presents as the ultimate sign of today’s false aseptic pseudo-voluptuous sex the couple feigning to make love anally close to a hotel pool, in view of the guests in the rooms above, faking pleasurable cries but effectively not even accomplishing the penetration – to this he opposes the slow gallant intimate erotic games of the 18th century France… Did not something similar to the scene from La lenteur effectively take place in Khmer Rouge Cambodia where, after too many people died from purges and starvation, the regime, eager to multiply the population, ordered each 1st, 10th and 20th day in a months the day for copulation: in the evening, the married coupled (who otherwise had to sleep in separate barracks) were allowed to sleep together and compelled to make love. Their private space was a small cubicle isolated by a half-transparent bamboo curtain; in front of the row of such cubicles, Khmer Rouge guards were walking, verifying that couples are effectively copulating. Since the couples knew that not making love was considered an act of sabotage to be severely punished, and since, on the other hand, after a 14 hours working day, they were as a rule too tired to effectively have sex, they pretended to make love in order to dupe the guardian’s attention: they made false movements and faked sounds… Is this not the exact inverse of the experience from the pre-permissive youth of some of us, when one had to sneak into the bedroom with the partner and do it as silently as possible, so that parents, if they were still awake, would not suspect that sex is going on? What if, then, such a spectacle for Other’s gaze is part of the sexual act – what if, since there is no sexual relationship, it can only be staged for the Other’s gaze?
Does not the recent trend of “-cam” web-sites which realize the logic of “The Truman Show” (in these sites, we are able to follow continuously some event or place: the life of a person in his/her apartment, the view on a street, etc.) display this same urgent need for the fantasmatic Other’s Gaze serving as the guarantee of the subject’s being? “I exist only insofar as I am looked at all the time…” (Similar to this is the phenomenon, noted by Claude Lefort, of the TV set which is all the time turned on, even when no one effectively watches it – it serves as the minimum guarantee of the existence of social link.) The situation is here thus the tragi-comic reversal of the Bentham-Orwellian notion of panopticon-society in which we are (potentially) “observed all the time” and have no place to hide from the omnipresent gaze of the Power: here, anxiety arises from the prospect of NOT being exposed to the Other’s gaze all the time, so that the subject needs the camera’s gaze as a kind of ontological guarantee of his being…
As to this paradox of the omnipresent gaze, a funny thing happened not long ago to a friend of mine in Slovenia: he returned to his office late in the night to finish some work; before he put the light on, he observed in the office across the courtyard a couple of a senior (married) manager and his secretary copulating passionately on his table – in the midst of their passion, they forgot that there is a building across the courtyard, from where they can be clearly seen, since their office was brightly lighted and there were no curtains on the large windows… What my friend did is that he called the phone of this office, and, when the manager, interrupting his sexual activity for a brief intermission, picked up the phone, he whispered ominously into the receiver: “God is observing you!” The poor manager collapsed and almost had a heart attack… The intervention of such traumatic voice which cannot be directly located in reality is perhaps the closest we can come to the experience of the Sublime.
And Hitchcock is at its most uncanny and disturbing when he engages us directly with the point-of-view of this external fantasmatic gaze. One of the standard horror movie procedures is the “resignification” of the objective into the subjective shot (what the spectator first perceives as an objective shot – say, of a house with a family at diner – is all of a sudden, by means of codified markers like the slight trembling of the camera, the “subjectivized” soundtrack, etc., revealed as the subjective shot of a murderer stalking his potential victims). However, this procedure is to be supplemented with its opposite, the unexpected reversal of subjective into objective shot: in the midst of a long shot unambiguously marked as subjective, the spectator is all of a sudden compelled to acknowledge that there is no possible subject within the space of diegetic reality who can occupy the point-of-view of this shot. So we are not dealing here with the simple reversal of objective into subjective shot, but in constructing a place of impossible subjectivity, a subjectivity which taints the very objectivity with a flavor of unspeakable, monstrous evil. An entire heretic theology is discernible here, secretly identifying Creator Himself as the Devil (which was already the thesis of the cathar heresy in the 12th century France). The exemplary cases of this impossible subjectivity are the “subjective” shot from the standpoint of the murderous Thing itself upon the transfixed face of the dying detective Arbogast in Psycho, or, in The Birds, the famous God’s view shot of the burning Bodega Bay, which is then, with the entry into the frame of the birds, resignified, subjectivized into the point-of-view of the evil aggressors themselves.
Multiple Endings
There is yet another, third, aspect that adds a specific density to Hitchcock’s films: the implicit resonance of multiple endings. The most obvious and well-documented case is, of course, that of Topaz: before deciding on the ending of Topaz that we all know, Hitchcock shot two alternative endings, and my point is that it is not sufficient to say that he simply chose the most appropriate ending – the ending we have now rather in a way presupposes the two other, with the three endings forming a kind of syllogism, i.e. Granville, the Russian spy, (Michel Piccoli) telling himself “They cannot prove anything to me, I can simply leave for Russia” (the first discarded ending); “But the Russians themselves now do not want me, I am now even dangerous to them, so they will probably kill me” (the second discarded meaning); “What can I do then if in France I am outcaste as a Russian spy and Russia itself no longer wants me? I can only kill myself…” – the ending that was effectively adopted. – There are, however, much more refined versions of this implicit presence of alternative endings. Already the denouement of Hitchcock’s early melodrama The Manxman (1929) is preceded by two scenes which could be read as possible alternative endings (the woman kills herself; the lover never returns). Hitchcock’s masterpiece Notorious owes at least a part of its powerful impact to the fact that its denouement should be perceived against the background of at least two other possible outcomes that resonate in it as a kind of alternative history. 7 In the first outline of the story, Alicia wins redemption by the film’s end, but loses Devlin, who is killed rescuing her from the Nazis. The idea was that this sacrificial act should solve the tension between Devlin, who is unable to admit to Alicia his love for her, and Alicia, who is unable to perceive herself as worthy of love: Devlin admits his love for her without words, by dying in order to save her life. In the final scene, we find Alicia back in Miami with her group of drinking friends: although she is more “notorious” than ever, she has in her heart the memory of a man who loved her and died for her, and, as Hitchcock put it in a memo to Selznick, “to her this is the same as if she had achieved a life of marriage and happiness.” – In the second main version, the outcome is the opposite; here, we already have the idea of a slow poisoning of Alicia by Sebastian and his mother. Devlin confronts the Nazis and flees with Alicia, but Alicia dies in the process. In the epilogue, Devlin sits alone in a Rio cafe, where he used to meet Alicia, and overhears people discussing the death of Sebastian’s wanton and treacherous wife. However, the letter in his hands is a commendation from President Truman citing Alicia’s bravery. Devlin pockets the letter and finishes his drink… Finally, the version we know was arrived at, with a finale that implies that Devlin and Alicia are now married. Hitchcock then left this finale out, to end on a more tragic note, with Sebastian, who truly loved Alicia, left to face the Nazi’s deadly wrath. The point is that both alternative endings (Devlin’s and Alicia’s death) are incorporated into the film, as a kind of fantasmatic background of the action we see on the screen: if they are to constitute a couple, both Devlin and Alicia have to undergo the “symbolic death,” so that the happy ending emerges from the combination of two unhappy endings, i.e. these two alternative fantasmatic scenarios sustain the denouement we actually see.
This feature allows us to insert Hitchcock in the series of artists whose work forecast today’s digital universe. That is to say, art historians often noted the phenomenon of the old artistic forms pushing against their own boundaries and using procedures which, at least from our retroactive view, seem to point towards a new technology that will be able to serve as a more “natural” and appropriate “objective correlative” to the life-experience the old forms endeavored to render by means of their “excessive” experimentation. A whole series of narrative procedures in the l9th century novels announce not only the standard narrative cinema (the intricate use of “flashback” in Emily Bronte or of “cross-cutting” and “close-ups” in Dickens), but sometimes even the modernist cinema (the use of “off-space” in Madame Bovary) – as if a new perception of life was already here, but was still struggling to find its proper means of articulation, until it finally found it in cinema. What we have here is thus the historicity of a kind of futur anterieur: it is only when cinema was here and developed its standard procedures that we can really grasp the narrative logic of Dickens’s great novels or of Madame Bovary.
And is it not that today, we are approaching a homologous threshold: a new “life experience” is in the air, a perception of life that explodes the form of the linear centered narrative and renders life as a multiform flow – even and up to the domain of “hard” sciences (quantum physics and its Multiple Reality interpretation, or the utter contingency that provided the spin to the actual evolution of the life on Earth – as Stephen Jay Gould demonstrated in his Wonderful Life8, the fossils of Burgess Shale bear witness to how evolution may have taken a wholly different turn) we seem to be haunted by the chanciness of life and the alternate versions of reality. Either life is experienced as a series of multiple parallel destinies that interact and are crucially affected by meaningless contingent encounters, the points at which one series intersects with and intervenes into another (see Altman’s Shortcuts), or different versions/outcomes of the same plot are repeatedly enacted (the “parallel universes” or “alternative possible worlds” scenarios – see Kieslowski’s Chance, Veronique and Red; even “serious” historians themselves recently produced a volume Virtual History, the reading of the crucial Modern Age century events, from Cromwell’s victory over Stuarts and American independence war to the disintegration of Communism, as hinging on unpredictable and sometimes even improbable chances9). This perception of our reality as one of the possible – often even not the most probable – outcomes of an “open” situation, this notion that other possible outcomes are not simply cancelled out but continue to haunt our “true” reality as a spectra of what might have happened, conferring on our reality the status of extreme fragility and contingency, implicitly clashes with the predominant “linear” narrative forms of our literature and cinema – they seem to call for a new artistic medium in which they would not be an eccentric excess, but its “proper” mode of functioning. The notion of creation also changes with this new experience of the world: it no longer designates the positive act of imposing a new order, but rather the negative gesture of choice, of limiting the possibilities, of privileging one option at the expense of all the others. One can argue that the cyberspace hypertext is this new medium in which this life experience will find its “natural,” more appropriate objective correlative, so that, again, it is only with the advent of cyberspace hypertext that we can effectively grasp what Altman and Kieslowski – and, implicitly, also Hitchcock – were effectively aiming at.
The Ideal Remake
This, perhaps, also points towards what a proper remake of a Hitchcock film would be. To try and imitate Hitchcockian sinthoms is an exercise in advance condemned to failure; to remake the same narrative results in a SHAKESPEARE MADE EASY output. So there are only two ways left. One is indicated by Gus van Sant’s Psycho which, paradoxically, I am inclined to consider a failed masterpiece, rather than a simple failure. The idea of the exact frame by frame remake is an ingenious idea, and, in my view, the problem was rather that the film did not go far enough in this direction. Ideally, what the film should strive for is to achieve the uncanny effect of the double: in shooting formally the same film, the difference would have became all the more palpable – everything would have been the same, same shots, angles, dialogue, and, nonetheless, on account of this very sameness, we would all the more powerfully experience that we are dealing with a totally different film. This gap should have been signaled by barely perceptible nuances in the way of acting, in the choice of actors, in the use of color, etc. Some elements in van Sant’s film already point in this direction: the roles of Norman, Lilah (portrayed as a lesbian) and Marion (a non-maternal, withdrawn, cold bitch in contrast to the big-breasted maternal Janet Leigh), even Arbogast and Sam, nicely indicate the shift from late 50s to today’s universe. While some added shots (like the enigmatic subjective shots of cloudy sky during the two murders) are also acceptable, problems resurface with the more brutal changes (like Norman’s masturbation while he peeps on Marion before slaughtering her – one is tempted to make the rather obvious point that, in this case, i.e. if he were to be able to arrive at this kind of sexual satisfaction, there would have been no need for him to accomplish the violent passage a l’acte and slaughter Marion!); on the top it, some scenes are completely ruined, their impact is completely lost, by changing Hitchcock’s precise framing (say, the key scene in which, after leaving her office with the money, Marion at home prepares to escape). Hitchcock’s own remakes (the two versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much, as well as Saboteur and North-by-Northwest) point in this direction: although the narrative is very similar, the underlying libidinal economy is wholly different in each of the subsequent remakes, as if the sameness serves the purpose of marking the Difference.10
The second way would be to stage, in a well-calculated strategic move, one of the alternative scenarios that underlie the actualized by Hitchcock, like the remake ofNotorious with Ingrid Bergman surviving alone. This would be a proper way to honor Hitchcock as the artist that belongs to our era. Perhaps, more than de Palma’s and others’ direct “homage” to Hitchcock, the scenes that announce such a proper remake are to be found in unexpected places, like the scene in the hotel room, the place of crime, in Conversation of Francis Ford Coppola, who certainly is not a Hitchcockian. The investigator inspects the room with a Hitchcockian gaze, like Lila and Sam do with Marion’s motel room, moving from the main bedroom to the bathroom and focusing there on the toilet and the shower. This shift from the shower (where there are no traces of the crime, where everything is clean) to the toilet sink, elevated it into the Hitchcockian object that attracts our gaze, fascinating us with its premonition of some unspeakable horror, is crucial here (recall Hitchcock’s battle with censorship to allow the inside view of the toilet, from where Sam picks up a torn piece of paper with Marion’s writing of the amounts of spent money, the proof that she was there). After a series of obvious references to Psycho apropos of the shower (quickly pulling open the curtain, inspecting the hole in the sink), the investigator focuses on the (allegedly cleansed) toilet seat, flushes it, and then the stain appears as if out of nowhere, blood and other traces of the crime overflowing the edge of the sink. This scene, a kind of Psycho reread through Marnie (with its red stain blurring the screen) contains the main elements of the Hitchcockian universe: it has the Hitchcockian object which materializes some unspecified threat, functioning as the hole into another abyssal dimension (is flushing the toilet in this scene not like pushing the wrong button that dissolves the entire universe in the science-fiction novels?); this object which simultaneously attracts and repels the subject can be said to be the point from which the inspected setting returns the gaze (is it not that the hero is somehow regarded by the toilet sink?); and, finally, Coppola realizes the alternative scenario of the toilet itself as the ultimate locus of mystery. What makes this mini-remake of a scene so effective is that Coppola suspends the prohibition operative in Psycho: the threat DOES explode, the camera DOES show the danger hanging in the air in Psycho, the chaotic bloody mess erupting from the toilet. 11 (And is not the swamp behind the house in which Norman drowns the cars with the bodies of his victims a kind of gigantic pool of excremental mud, so that one can say that he in a way flushes the cars down the toiled – the famous moment of the worried expression of his face when Marion’s car stops to immerse into the swamp for a couple of seconds effectively signals the worry that the toiled did not swallow the traces of our crime? The very last shot of Psycho, in which we see Marion’s car being pulled out of the swamp, is thus a kind of Hitchcockian equivalent to the blood reemerging out of the toilet sink – in short, this swamp is another in the series of the entrance-points to the pre-ontological Netherworld.)
And is not the same reference to the pre-ontological Underworld operative also in the final scene of Vertigo? In the pre-digital times, when I was in my teens, I remember seeing a bad copy of Vertigo – its last seconds were simply missing, so that the movie appeared to have a happy ending, Scottie reconciled with Judy, forgiving her and accepting her as a partner, the two of them passionately embracing… My point is that such an ending is not as artificial as it may seem: it is rather in the actual ending that the sudden appearance of the Mother Superior from the staircase below functions as a kind of negative deux ex machina, a sudden intrusion in no way properly grounded in the narrative logic, which prevents the happy ending. 12 Where does the nun appear from? From the same pre-ontological realm of shadows from which Scottie himself secretly observes Madeleine in the florist’s. 13 It is the reference to this pre-ontological realm that allows us to approach the quintessential Hitchcockian scene which was never shot – precisely because it renders the basic matrix of his work directly, its actual filming undoubtedly would have produced a vulgar, tasteless effect. Here is this scene that Hitchcock wanted to insert in North by Northwest, as reported in Truffaut’s conversations with the Master:
“I wanted to have a long dialogue between Cary Grant and one of the factory workers /at a Ford automobile plant/ as they walk along the assembly line. Behind them a car is being assembled, piece by piece. Finally, the car they’ve seen being put together from a simple nut and bolt is complete, with gas and oil, and all ready to drive off the line. The two men look at each other and say, ‘Isn’t it wonderful!’ Then they open the door of the car and out drops a corpse.” 14
Where did this corpse emerge, fall, from? Again, from the very void from which Scottie observes Madeleine in the florist’s – or, from the void from which blood emerges in Conversation. (One should also bear in mind that what we would have seen in this long shot is the elementary unity of the production process – is then the corpse that mysteriously drops out from nowhere not the perfect stand- -in for the surplus-value that is generated “our of nowhere” through the production process?) This shocking elevation of the ridiculously lowest (the Beyond where shit disappears) into the metaphysical Sublime is perhaps one of the mysteries of Hitchcock’s art. Is not the Sublime sometimes part of our most common everyday experience? When, in the midst of accomplishing a simple task (say, climbing the long line of stairs), we are overwhelmed by an unexpected fatigue, it all of a sudden appears as if the simple goal we want to reach (the top of the stairs) is separated from us by an unfathomable barrier and thus changed into a metaphysical Object forever out of our reach, as if there is something which forever prevents us from accomplishing it… And the domain where excrements vanish after we flush the toilet is effectively one of the metaphors for the horrifyingly-sublime Beyond of the primordial, pre-ontological Chaos into which things disappear. Although we rationally know what goes on with the excrements, the imaginary mystery nonetheless persists – shit remains an excess with does not fit our daily reality, and Lacan was right in claiming that we pass from animals to humans the moment an animal has problems with what to do with its excrements, the moment they turn into an excess that annoys it. 15 The Real in the scene from Conversation is thus not primarily the horrifyingly-disgusting stuff reemerging from the toilet sink, but rather the hole itself, the gap which serves as the passage to a different ontological order. The similarity between the empty toilet sink before the remainders of the murder reemerge from it and Malevitch’s “Black Square on White Surface” is significant here: does the look from above into the toilet sink not reproduce almost the same “minimalist” visual scheme, a black (or, at least, darker) square of water enframed by the white surface of the sink itself? Again, we, of course, know that the excrements which disappear are somewhere in the sewage network – what is here “real” is the topological hole or torsion which “curves” the space of our reality so that we perceive/imagine excrements as disappearing into an alternative dimension which is not part of our everyday reality.
Hitchcock’s obsession with cleansing the bathroom or the toilet after its use is well-known, 16 and it is significant that, when, after Marion’s murder, he want to shift our point of identification to Norman, he does this with a long rendering of the careful process of cleansing the bathroom – this is perhaps the key scene of the film, a scene that provides an uncanny profound satisfaction of the job properly done, of things returning back to normal, of situation being again after control, of the traces of the horrifying netherworld being erased. One is tempted to read this scene against the background of the well-known proposition of Saint Thomas of Acquinas according to which a virtue (defined as a proper way to accomplish an act) can also serve evil purposes: one can also be a perfect thief, murderer, extortioner, i.e. accomplish an evil act in a “virtuous” way. What this scene of cleansing the bathroom in Psycho demonstrates is how the “lower” perfection can imperceptibly affect the “higher” goal: Norman’s virtuous perfection in cleansing the bathroom, of course, serves the evil purpose of erasing the traces of the crime; however, this very perfection, the dedication and the thoroughness of his act, seduces us, the spectators, into assuming that, if someone acts in such a “perfect” way, he should be in his entirety a good and sympathetic person. In short, someone who cleansed the bathroom so thoroughly as Norman cannot be really bad, in spite of his other minor peculiarities… (Or, to put it even more pointedly, in a country governed by Norman, trains would certainly run on time!) While watching this scene recently, I caught myself nervously noticing that the bathroom was not properly cleansed – two small stains on the side of the bathtub remained! I almost wanted to shout: hey, it’s not yet over, finish the job properly! Is it not that Psycho points here towards today’s ideological perception in which work itself (manual labor as opposed to “symbolic” activity), and not sex, becomes the site of obscene indecency to be concealed from the public eye? The tradition which goes back to Wagner’s Rheingold and Lang’s Metropolis, the tradition in which the working process takes place underground, in dark caves, today culminates in the millions of anonymous workers sweating in the Third World factories, from Chinese gulags to Indonesian or Brasilian assembly lines – in their invisibility, the West can afford itself to babble about the “disappearing working class.” But what is crucial in this tradition is the equation of labor with crime, the idea that labor, hard work, is originally an indecent criminal activity to be hidden from the public eye. The only place in Hollywood films where we see the production process in all its intensity are when the action hero penetrates the master-criminal’s secret domain and locates there the site of intense labor (distilling and packaging the drugs, constructing a rocket that will destroy New York…). When, in a James Bond movie, the master-criminal, after capturing Bond, usually takes him on a tour of his illegal factory, is this not the closest Hollywood comes to the socialist-realist proud presentation of the production in a factory? 17 And the function of Bond’s intervention, of course, is to explode in firecraks this site of production, allowing us to return to the daily semblance of our existence in a world with the “disappearing working class”…
And, incidentally, is the same attitude of forceful identification against one’s will not clearly discernible in those Leftist cinema theorists who are in a similar way forced to love Hitchcock, to libidinally identify with him, although they are well aware that, measured by the standards of Political Correctness, his work reads as a catalogue of sins (obsession with cleansiness and control, women created upon the male image…). I never found convincing the standard explanation of the Leftist theorists who cannot help but to love Hitchcock: yes, his universe is male chauvinist, but at the same time he renders visible its cracks and as it were subverts it from within. I think the social-political dimension of Hitchcock’s films is to be sought elsewhere. Let us take the two closures at the end of Psycho - first the psychiatrist wraps up the story, then Norman-mother herself delivers the final monologue of “I wouldn’t even hurt a fly!”. This split between the two closures tells more about the deadlock of contemporary subjectivity than a dozen of essays in cultural criticism. That is to say, it may appear that we are dealing with the well-known split between expert knowledge and our private solipsistic universes, deplored by many social critics today: the common sense, a shared set of ethically engaged presuppositions, is slowly disintegrating, and what we get is, on the one hand, the objectivized language of experts and scientists which can no longer be translated into the common language accessible to everyone, but is present in it in the mode of fetishized formulas that no one really understands, but which shape our artistic and popular imaginary (Black Hole, Big Bang, Superstrings, Quantum Oscillation…); and, on the other hand, the multitude of life-styles which one cannot translate into each other: all we can do is secure the conditions for their tolerant coexistence in a multicultural society. The icon of today’s subject is perhaps the proverbial Indian computer programmer who, during the day, excels in his expertise, while in the evening, upon returning home, he lits the candle to the local Hindu divinity and respects the sacredness of the cow.
However, on a closer look, it soon becomes apparent how this opposition is displaced at the end of Psycho: it is the psychiatrist, the representative of cold objective knowledge, who speaks in an engaged, almost warmly human way – his explanation is full of personal tics, sympathetic gestures -, while Norman, withdrawn into his private world, is precisely no longer himself, but totally possessed by another psychic entity, the mother’s ghost. This final image of Norman reminds me of the way they are shooting soap operas in Mexico: because of the extremely tight schedule (the studio has to produce each day a half hour installment of the series), actors do not have time to learn their lines in advance, so they simply have hidden in their ears a tiny voice receiver, and a man in the cabin behind the set simply reads to them the instructions on what they are to do (what words they are to say, what acts they are to accomplish) – actors are trained to enact immediately, with no delay, these instructions… This is Norman at the end of Psycho, and this is also a good lesson to those New Agers who claim that we should drop the social masks and set free our innermost true selves – well, we see the final result in Norman who, at the end of Psycho, effectively realizes his true Self and follows the old Rimbaud’s motto from his letter to Demeny (“Car je est un autre. Si le cuivre s’eveille clairon, il n’y a rien de sa faute”): If Norman starts to talk with the strange voice of his mother, it’s none of his guilt. The price I have to pay in order to become “really myself,” undivided subject, is total alienation, my becoming an Other with regard to myself: the obstacle to my full self-identity is the very condition of my Selfhood.
Another aspect of this same antagonism concerns architecture: one can also consider Norman as the subject split between the two houses, the modern horizontal motel and the vertical Gothic mother’s house, forever running between the two, never finding a proper place of his own. In this sense, the unheimlich character of the film’s end means that, in his full identification with the mother, he finally found his heim, his home. In modernist works like Psycho, this split still visible, while the main goal of today’s postmodern architecture is to obfuscate it. Suffice it to recall the “New Urbanism” with its return to small family houses in small towns, with front porches, recreating the cozy atmosphere of the local community – clearly, this is the case of architecture as ideology at its purest, providing an imaginary (although “real,” materialized in the actual disposition of houses) solution to a real social deadlock which has nothing to do with architecture and all with late capitalist dynamics. A more ambiguous case of the same antagonism is the work of Frank Gehry – why is he so popular, a true cult figure? He takes as the basis one of the two poles of the antagonism, either the old-fashioned family house or a modernist concrete-and-glass building, and then either submits it to a kind of cubist anamorphic distortion (curved angles of walls and windows, etc.) or combines the old family home with a modernist supplement, in which case, as Fredric Jameson pointed out, the focal point is the place (the room) at the intersection of the two spaces. In short, is Gehry not doing in architecture what the Caduveo Indians (in Levi-Strauss’ magnificent description from his Les tristes tropiques) were trying to achieve with their tattooed faces: to resolve through a symbolic act the real of a social antagonism by constructing a utopian solution, a mediation between the opposites? So here is my final hypothesis: if the Bates Motel were to be built by Gehry, directly combining the old mother’s house and the flat modern motel into a new hybrid entity, there would have been no need for Norman to kill his victims, since he would have been relieved of the unbearable tension that compels him to run between the two places – he would have a third place of mediation between the two extremes.
[…]
1. During the public discussion at the Hitchcock Centennary Conference organized by NYU, October 12-17 1999. 2. See Sigmund Freud, "The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality In a Woman," The Pelican Freud Library, Volime 9: Case Histories II, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 1979, p. 389. 3. For a more detailed account of this Hitchcockian sinthom, see Slavoj Zizek, ed., Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock), London: Verso Books 1993. 4. Svetlana Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters To a Friend, New York: Simon and Schuster 1967, p. 183. 5. Post-Theory, David Bordwell and Noel Carroll, eds., Madison: University of Wisconsin Press 1996. 6. Jacques Lacan, The Seminar, Book I: Freud's Papers o Technique, New York: Norton 1988, p. 215. I rely here on Miran Bozovic, "The Man Behind His Own Retina," in Slavoj Zizek, ed., Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock). 7. See the fascinating report in Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System, New York: Hold and Co. 1996, p. 393-403. 8. See Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life, New York: Norton 1989. 9. See Virtual History, edited by Niall Ferguson, London: MacMillan 1997. 10. Perhaps the greatest achievement of van Sant's remake is the scene of final credits, which follows the shot that ends Hitchcock's film and goes on for long minutes - a continuous crane shot showing what goes on around the car being dragged out of the swamp, the bored policemen around the towing truck, all this accompanied with a soft guitar repeating in an improvised way the main motif of Herrmann's score - this feature supplements the film with the unique touch of the 90's. 11. Hitchcock's obsession with cleanness is well-known: in an interview, he boasted that he always leaves the restroom so clean that no one would have guessed, upon inspecting it, that he was there before… This obsession also accounts for the obvious pleasure-in-disgust Hitchcock finds in the small filthy details that characterize the Cuban mission in Harlem in Topaz, like the official diplomatic document stained by the grease from a sandwich. 12. Is this sudden appearance not similar to Wagner's Tristan? Towards the very end of the opera, after Triton's death, Solder's arrival and plunging into the death trance, the break occurs with the arrival of another, second, ship, when the slow progress all of a sudden accelerates in an almost comic way - in 5 minutes more events happen than in all the previous opera (fight, Melt and Kurwenal die…) - similar to Verdi's Il Trovatore, where in the last 2 minutes a whole package of things happen. Such unexpected intrusions just before the ending are crucial for the reading of the underlying tensions of a narrative. 13. When Lesley Brill claims that in Under Capricorn is a kind of underworld creature trying to drag Ingrid Bergman back into hell, one is tempted to say that the nun which appears at the very end of Vertigo belongs to the same evil netherworld - the paradox being, of course, that is a NUN, a woman of God, who embodies the force of Evil that drags the subject down and prevents her salvation. 14. Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock, New York: Simon and Schuster 1985, p. 257. 15. It's similar with the saliva: as we all know, although we can without problem swallow our own saliva, we find it extremely repulsive to swallow again a saliva which was spit out of our body - again a case of violating the Inside/Outside frontier. 16. He liked to boast that after he leaves the toilet, no one could, upon inspecting it, guess that someone was there using it. 17. I owe this observation to Boris Groys, Koeln.
ZIZEK, Slavoj. Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lacan But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock [pdf]
-CONTENTS-
[INTRODUCTION] Alfred Hitchcock, or, The Form and its Historical Mediation Slavoj Žižek
[PART 1] The Universal: Themes
1. Hitchcockian Suspense – Pascal Bonitzer
2. Hitchcock’s Objects – Mladen Dolar
3. Spatial Systems in NORTH BY NORTHWEST – Fredric Jameson
4. A Perfect Place to Die: Theatre in Hitchcock’s Films – Alenka Zupaničič
5. PUNCTUM CAECUM, or, Of Insight and Blindness – Stojan Pelko
[PART 2 ] The Particular: Films
1. Hitchcockian SINTHOMS – Slavoj Žižek
2. The Spectator Who Knew Too Much – Mladen Dolar
3. The Cipher of Destiny – Michel Chion
4. A Father Who Is Not Quite Dead – Mladen Dolar
5. NOTORIOUS – Pascal Bonitzer
6. The Fourth Side – Michel Chion
7. The Man Behind His Own Retina – Miran Božovič
8. The Skin and the Straw – Pascal Bonitzer
9. The Right Man and the Wrong Woman – Renata Salecl
10. The Impossible Embodiment – Michel Chion
[PART 3] The Individual – Hitchcock’s Universe
‘In His Bold Gaze My Ruin Is Writ Large’ – Slavoj Žižek
What’s wrong with THE WRONG MAN? – The Hitchcockian Allegory – From I to A – PSYCHO’S Moebius band – Aristophanes reversed – ‘A triumph of the gaze over the eye’ – The narrative closure and its vortex – The gaze of the Thing – ‘Subjective destitution – The collapse of intersubjectivity.
Writing, Identity, and Copyright in the Net Age [Kathy Acker]
Writing, Identity, and Copyright in the Net Age
Kathy Acker
In my confusion, I look to older writing, as I have often done when I am confused. I look to find a clue about my own writing.
Unfortunately, the school systems in this country are being allotted less and less government funding. I will regret if the culture of our society, through the loss of education, loses its sense of history. I shall regret if those who are involved in culture no longer think historically, if they no longer turn to their, to our histories for models, for examples.
Looking, I turned to the writings of Hannah Arendt, a philosopher whose thinking is deeply embedded in the historical. “Even those among us,” Arendt writes, “who by speaking and writing have ventured into public life have not done so out of any original pleasure in the public scene, and have hardly expected or aspired to receive the stamp of public approval.” And she continues, and now she is truly beginning to help me,“…even in public they [those among us] tended to address only their friends and to speak to those unknown, scattered readers and listeners with whom everyone who speaks and writes at all cannot help feeling joined in some rather obscure brotherhood.” As I continue to read, her words clarify more and more of what I, and perhaps many of you, are feeling right now. And perhaps this is how literature works: “I am afraid that in their efforts, they felt very little responsibility toward the world; these efforts were, rather, guided by their hope of preserving some minimum of humanity in a world grown inhuman while at the same time as far as possible resisting the weird irreality of this worldlessness—each after his own fashion and some few by seeking to the limits of their ability to understand even inhumanity and the intellectual and political monstrosities of a time out of joint.”
The Task of a Writer
This is what I want to talk about: a time out of joint. The name of the collection of essays from which I’ve borrowed, which I’ve used, these bits of Arendt’s writing are from Men in Dark Times.
For many of us, these are dark times. Are they harder or easier than the times in which and about which Hannah Arendt wrote? A useless question. Certainly these times are hard, if not for us, then for our friends. If not for our friends, then look at the streets, the homeless, the ghettoes, incurable diseases, the persistent if not increasing presence of racism, homophobia, of prejudice heaped upon prejudice and hatred upon hatred, worse, fear upon fear. We are aware that we know both and, perhaps, are both victim and victimizer. For historically we have and still do participate in some many ownerships in this world.
We can throw away history, our history, as we seem to be trying to throw away education for all but the rich. But if we do throw history away, if we do not accept historical thinking, what kind of civilization are we negotiating? What kind of culture? If we throw history away, we are depriving ourselves of potentialities, potentialities for actions. Models and paradigms for actions. Potentiality is kin, and I am talking politically, kin to the imagination. If we don’t throw history away, if we think historically, what do we do about the hardships, the sufferings that we both experience and cause? Hannah Arendt suggests that the meaning of a “committed act,” that is her phrase, is revealed only when the action itself has come to an end and become a story susceptible to narration. That is, “insofar as any mastery of the past is possible,” thus, insofar as any mastery of suffering is possible, “it consists in relating what has happened.”
When Arendt talks about a story, about narration and narrative, she is not talking about a master narrative. She is talking about language as it moves from one point to another point. She is talking about meaning as it reveals itself and so is co-equivalent to language.
Arendt knows that writing, narration, does not end suffering: writing masters nothing. Narration, writing does something else. It restores meaning to a world which hardship and suffering have revealed as chaotic and senseless.
Hard Times
But what if times are really hard? So hard that the very existence of writing, which bestows humanity, is in danger? The loss, not of art, but of community, the loss of history and of writing as the ground of history—that loss in this world is a kind of death.
If we look at the literary industry today, writing is in trouble. Very few writers who spend most of their time writing and those who want to spend most of their time writing, can make a living by doing what they do most the time and by what they love to do most. Those who can and do support themselves writing do so, on the whole, by virtue of something called copyright. Copyright’s existence, I believe, is based on the following assumptions or sentences: An author is the only person who has written her or his own work; an author owns her or his own work.
Now in the first sentence—an author is the only person who has written his or her own work—the assumed definition of identity is questionable. For instance, I do not write out of nothing, or from nothing, for I must write with the help of other texts, be these texts written ones, oral ones, those of memory, those of dream, etc. In the second sentence, an author owns her or his own work, the verb to own must be questioned.
In other words, as writers we depend economically on copyright, its existence, because we are living and working, whether we like it or not, in a bourgeois-industrialist, in a capitalist society, a society based on ownership. One needs to own in order to survive, in fact, in order to be.
Our society, however, is in the process of, or has already changed into, a postindustrial ex-national economic beast. I hope that I am saying this correctly. As economic grounds change, so do all others. Both language and communications and the place of language and of communications in our society are rapidly changing.
For instance: I teach writing courses at the San Francisco Art Institute. Each year, fewer and fewer of my students read books. I don’t mean that they don’t read. They do, though they might not admit it. They read magazines, ‘zines, they go to art performances, to spoken word events; they eagerly participate in such events; they buy CDs in which rock starts and poets perform. More and more students and, I might add, my friends, and myself are using the Internet as a location where we can place our work. For the moment, the Net is a free zone…for those who can afford or access the necessary equipment. Whether it will remain free or whether our government will be able to enact strict controls, or whether various multinational corporations will be able to turn the Net into a cross between TV media land and a shopping mall, an elephantine version of America Online, this no one knows. Certainly, there are those who think that the Net cannot be controlled. Now, I have no ideas whether or not it will be, that is, whether or not it can be. But either way, there is one thing I suspect. I suspect that copyright as we now define it will become a thing of the past.
I have taken a long-winded route to make one simple point, something that I think most writers now know: if it is at this historical moment difficult for a writer to make a living by depending on copyright, in the future it may prove impossible for all but the very, very few.
It is not the case that the Net is providing an alternative method of book publishing and distribution. Not at the moment, as the technology stands. No one is going to download a whole book, for it’s far easier to run to the nearest bookstore. The existence of the Net is threatening the literary industry in another way: my students, people who work, which probably means that they work more than eight hours a day and have little time to read, many, many of the people in this society are preferring to engage in writing and in writerly activities outside the realm of books. And so to a large extent, outside the realm of copyright as copyright now exists.
These are indeed hard times.
Without Copyright
If we get rid of copyright as it now exists, do we have to throw writing away? In order to answer this question, I think that it’s necessary to try to see clearly, to see the society in which we’re living. I should say societies, for sometimes the only entities that make our societies single seem to be McDonald’s hamburgers and Madonna. We need to see how we as writers fit into our societies as and while these societies are changing. How can we, as Hannah Arendt says, even in worlds that seem to have become inhuman, remain obligated to these worlds? Obligated, for being writers, our job is to hear and put together narrations and so to give meaning even to what seems to be or is inhuman. How can I, as a writer, be of use to and in my societies? That is the question that underlies the one of copyright.
I think that it is hard to understand what writing is in our society because writing has become so entangled with the literary industry. Entangled to the point that there no longer seems to be any difference between the two. For instance, if a writer is not big business, she or he is not a good, that is, finally, not a publishable writer.
Let me paraphrase and so repeat Hannah Arendt’s question: To what extent do we remain obligated to a world even when our presence is no longer desired in that world? Are we, writers, obligated to the literary industry and to the society behind that industry? Here is Hannah Arendt’s answer: “Flight from the world in dark times of impotence can always be justified as long as reality is not ignored.” Flight does not mean abandonment.
As it now stands, the literary industry depends upon copyright. But not literature. Euripedes, for instance, wrote his version of Electra while Sophocles’s “copyright” was still active. Not to mention Shakespeare’s, Marlowe’s, and Ford’s use of each other’s texts. My worries with copyright, however, are not so academic. My worries concern the increasing marginalization of writers and of their writings in this society. Whenever writers are considered marginal to a society, something is deeply wrong, wrong in that society and wrong with the relations between writing and the society. For to write should be to write the world and, simultaneously, to engage in the world. But the literary industry as it now exists seems to be obfuscating relations between this society’s writers and this society.
Once more we need to see what writing is. We need to step away from all the business. We need to step to the personal. This is that I mean by flight. Business has become too heavy, too dominant. We need to remember friends, that we write deeply out of friendship, that we write to friends. We need to regain some of the energy, as writers and as readers, that people have on the Internet when for the first time they e-mail, when they discover that they can write anything, even to a stranger, even the most personal of matters. When they discover that strangers can communicate to each other.
The bestowing of meaning and, thus, the making of the world, the word as world: this is what writing is about.
Friendship
In our society, the excitement, the energy, and the power is no longer located in writing, that is, in the writing world. The excitement is found in film, as in Pulp Fiction, or in the TV of David Lynch. Perhaps we should ask why the writing industry, in terms of the overall culture, is emasculated. (I should say, e-femin-ated.)
Back to Hannah Arendt’s words. You see, my lazy mind never goes anywhere: it only returns. Writing, as defined by the literary industry, is all about individuals. I own my writing; that is copyright. “Power arises,” Arendt writes, “only where people act together, not where people grow stronger as individuals.”
To write is to do other than announce oneself as an enclosed individual. Even the most narcissist of texts, say Nabokov’s Lolita, reaches out to, in Lolita’s case grabs at, its reader. To write is to write to another. Not for another, as if one could take away that other’s otherness, but to another. To write, as Gertrude Stein and Maurice Blanchot both have said, is to write to a stranger, to a friend. As we go forward, say on the Net, perhaps we are also going back, and I am not a great believer in linear models of time, to times when literature and economics met each other in the region of friendship. “The ancients,” comments Arendt, “thought friends indispensable to human life, indeed that a life without friends wasnot really worth living.”
Friendship is always a political act, for it unites citizens into a polis, a (political) community. And it is this friendship that the existence of copyright (as it is now defined) has obfuscated.
The loss of friendship, the giving over of friendship to business based on individualism, has caused loss of energy in the literary world. Think, for a moment, with how much more energy one does something for a lover or for a close friend than when one acts only in the service of oneself.
In his remarkable essay about the writings of his friend Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot opposes two kinds of relationships, that of friendship and that of totalitarianism. Both Blanchot and Bataille lived through Nazism and Stalinism. A totalitarian relationship, Blanchot states, is one in which the subject denies the otherness, therefore the very existence of the other person, the person to whom he or she is talking. Thus, the totalitarian relationship is built upon individualism as closure. Individualism as the closing down of energy, of meaning. Whereas, when I talk to my friend, when I write to her, I am writing to someone whose otherness I accept. It is the difference between me and my friend that allows meaning; meaning begins in this difference. And it is meaning, the meaningfulness of the world, that is consciousness. You see, I am finally talking about my writing.
[This essay originally appeared in MMLA, vol. 28, no. 1, Spring 1995 and is collected in Acker's Bodies of Work: Essays (1997, Serpent's Tail Press)]
