Thursday 11/4/2010, discussion on the future of the Humanities in public universities, organized by the UCHRI (the University of California’s Humanities Research Institute) and UCSC’s Institute of Humanities Research. Capitalized names everywhere, one could begin with this need to be visible like others and claim a well-deserved dignity. Capital is the stuff of headlines. I read it as a symptom of weakness, as I do the building of our Humanities I block, no matter the transparency aimed at with the large windows of the groundfloor room where we had this discussion. I digress. Here is my understanding of the proceedings:

1. positive point in introduction by Nathaniel Deutsch: to remember that to an outsider, what is striking is the quality and intensity of intellectual life on this campus, the great inventivity and contributions of scholars in the humanities, and how seriously they take their public service to students, families, and society at large.

2. three points by David Theo Goldberg: the classic mission of the university, namely to prepare and enable an increasing middle class, is threatened by the latter’s massive weakening and fragility since the 70’s (that is when one could feel this weakening, I would think). The middle class is rapidly transforming and eroding or at least a beat away from losing its security. Diversity is increasingly connected to work specialization hoped for by students. A general goal remains for the Humanities, which could be reformulated as an interpretation or translation project. I think he meant by this the massive on-going work of understanding other cultures not only in relation to our own (and our “own” needs to be defined), gather their work, ensure universal access to it and permanence… And a more precise goal: recreate a discourse of public reason. [my thought: ratio? judgment? good luck. What could the role of the humanities as I know it be in this? Ratio requires something like measure, a peg or canon by which to measure and ration. But in a situation where all mediations are gone—church, state, parties, ideologies of yore—what would the new mediation be? Human rights?? which is up for grabs by all ideologues…]

3. Gail Hershatter was going to show this video on what it takes to become a Ph.D. in the Humanities, but there was a technical failure. Gail Hershatter addressed a number of aspects of budgets, which are statements of values, and how diverse the reactions are. How can one reach across departmental lines? Existing structures make it very difficult for many scholars who think of their work in fluid fashion to reach across the disciplines.

4. Eric Porter: the humanities are under siege but necessary to the institution. One major effect of dwindling budgets is the destruction of idea and practice of diversity, not noticed or addressed by almost anyone. [my thoughts: the humanities are not necessary to the institution, qua institution. And budgets are not going to get better, and if they do, the parcimonious extra sums are going elsewhere. We are not in a “moment of budget retrenchment” but in a major reconfiguration exercise]. Claim also that the humanities provide critical thinking to students. [Yes, but what do we mean by this? Surely not that others don’t? and speaking of critical abilities, is this really the core of the humanities? However critical we become, can’t it immediately be turned into the next tool of conformity? Examples: the diasporic, diversity, the green, etc., can’t Exxon or GE immediately recycle this stuff in next day’s full page ads?].

5. Jim Clifford starts from the no-kvetch position, permission to see wider and long term. Not even a short couplet therefore on the progressive and structural belittlement of the humanities! He spoke of the old-style Arts and Sciences type universities (fifty fifty!) to our being one of five divisions: 20% of the pie! So let’s dream up the bigger humanities rather than a poor mirror image of STEM programs. What are the greater humanities? all kinds of people across the university ultimately doing work involving some or all of the following four dimensions: 1) interpretive, not positivist, provisional; 2) realist though not crudely objective, empirical, even statistical; 3) historical though not teleological [but evolutional], and aware that explanations are all too often partial; 4) ethical and political. In the end, Jim said, we need to get rid of this word, the “greater humanities,” and open the space to all those who are working along the lines mentioned above.

An image comes: the humanities were once part of this class cargo ship which sailed on and on towards famed ports of call, delivering a classical education, sciences, beaux-arts, and their satellites. The humanities are wondering where they are: still on the ship, though perhaps in the engine room or galleys and grumbling? or dropped at sea on a raft tethered to the aft, and shouting?

From Bruno Schultz in The Cinnamon Shops (Polish Sklepy cynamonowe):

The core of reality is meaning. What has no meaning is not real for us. Each bit of reality lives inasmuch as it participates in a universal meaning. Old cosmogonies expressed this idea with the phrase: “In the beginning was the Word.” What is not named doesn’t exist for us. To name a thing is tantamount to encompassing it in a universal meaning. An isolated word, a mosaic piece, is a recent product, result —already—of technique. The primitive word was a meandering spun around the meaning of light, it was a great universal whole. In its common acception today, a word is only a fragment, a leftover from an ancient and complete mythology. Hence this tendency in it to regenerate, to grow back, to complete itself in order to return to its whole meaning. The life of the word. The life of the word consists in its tension towards thousands of combinations, like the pieces of the quartered body of the legendary serpent which groped for each other in darkness. This complex organism has been torn up into separate words, into syllables, into everyday discourses. Used in this new form, it has become a tool of communication. Life, the development of language, have been pushed unto the utilitarian path, subjected to foreign rules. As soon as the practical requirements are relaxed, however, as soon as the word freed from constraint is abandoned to itself and re-established in its own laws, a regression happens in it. It tends then to complete itself, to find its ancient bonds, its meaning, its primordial state in the words’ original land-—then poetry is born.

Poetry is the short-circuiting of meaning that occurs among words, it is a sudden burst of primitive myths.

When we use common words, we forget they are fragments of old and eternal stories, that we are building our house — like barbarians— with the debris of statues of the gods. Our concepts and our most concrete terms are distant derivations from them. Not an atom of our ideas that doesn’t come from them, that is not a transformed, mangled, changed mythology. The most primitive function of the mind is the creation of tales, of “stories.” [….]

Tirelessly, the human mind adds its glosses to life—myths—tirelessly it tries to “give meaning” to reality.

Meaning is what pulls humanity into the process of reality. It is an absolute given which cannot be deduced from other data. Impossible to explain why a thing seems “sensible” to us. To confer meaning to the world is a function which is inseparable from the word. Language is a person’s metaphysical organ. With time, the word coagulates, it stops carrying new meanings. The poet gives back to words their ability to conduct, by creating accumulations in which new tensions appear. Mathematical symbols are a broadening of the word to new domaines. Painting also derives from speech when it was not yet sign but myth, story, meaning.

Words are usually considered to be shadows of reality, a reflection. It would be more correct to say the opposite! Reality is a shadow of the word. Philosophy is fundamentally philology, a deep and creative study of speech.

Today, anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin’s death according to the traditional Hebrew calendar: י״ב בְּחֶשְׁוָן תשע״א . One may read a short account of the official commemoration ceremony at Mount Herzl.
Below, I post some notes taken about the event as it occurred, and dated according to the common calendar…

Sunday 5 novembre 1995 Last night, as a migraine kept me awake, I turned on the local radio and heard that Prime Minister Rabin had just been shot (2 bullets reported at the time) after yesterday’s large demonstration, around 9h30, and that he was in a very serious condition at the nearby hospital. I kept listening, and soon it was announced that Rabin had died on the operating table (at about 11h15). It would be learned later (this morning) that the assassin had used exploding bullets (9mm caliber).

Yesterday indeed, there had been a large demonstration of support for Y. Rabin and the government’s work towards peace. Perhaps 200,000 people from all areas in the country went to show their support . Some young friends of R. who are in the youth movement left kibbutz Farod early. This support brought great satisfaction to Rabin who has been under all sorts of attacks of the vilest sort in the past few months. He has been compared to Hitler, associated with Arafat as a murderer (רוצח), and called a traitor (בוגד), all things that hurt him deeply, as his face, I thought, made plain to see.

After his death, there was an extraordinary outpouring of emotion. People, especially young people, began bringing candles and flowers to the spot where he had been shot. Many politicians were interviewed and gave dignified and emotional answers, avoiding political debates though journalists often prodded them to take sides. Some Labor speakers, however, could not help but accuse the right (without naming anyone) of having created the climate leading to the assassination. After an hour or so, we heard Clinton’s declaration in the White House (the strange to my ears, “Shalom, haver…”). We also saw Arafat giving a message of condoleance. It began in a political vein, speaking of “those opposed to peace”, but after some hesitation, Arafat came back to the microphone and offered his condoleances to Mrs Rabin, the government, the people of Israel, on his behalf, that of the PA, and of the Palestinian people. This second part of the message looked very important to me. Apparently, there were expressions of joy in the territories as well as in certain very conservative Israeli circles. There was an emergency meeting of the government in which Shimon Peres was named interim Prime Minister. He spoke of his friendship with Rabin. Peres too apparently was a possible target of the murderer, although the secondary one.

This morning, we learned that Clinton, Bush and Carter (and Jim Baker) are coming to morrow for the burial ceremony, together with King Hussein, Hassan II, Mubarak, Chirac, etc…. We also heard a number of Israeli political leaders, among whom B. Netanyahu, who was very civil and decent, compromising. Rafael Eytan appeared defensive.
Rabin’s body lies in a coffin in front of the Knesset since noon today, and many thousands of people are coming from all over the country to pay their respects. It will stay there until about 2pm tomorrow, when it will be buried in a special ceremony. Perhaps over a million people will pass by the coffin. Some people are bringing flowers or candles, even pictures or drawings, and they are placed before the coffin by soldiers controlling the flow of people.
The murderer, 27, is from Herzliyah and was in his third year of law school (criminology) and computer studies at Bar-Ilan University. A show today gathered a few authorities in the legal and psychologigal fields, including people like Israel Lau. It was astonishing to see the latter immediately frame the event in biblical and traditional legal terms, everything flesh and human just grist apparently for the theological commentary mill.

November 6, 1995 The wake in honor of Rabin continued the whole night and will last until two o’clock this afternoon. Many heads of state and personalities will attend the ceremony at Mount Herzl. According to the Jerusalem Post, Arafat wished to come, but the Israel government decided that it was better if he didn’t come, for security reasons.

This morning, the television showed Leah Rabin and her daughter thanking people for coming. We looked at TV images of the ceremony for several hours. The speeches by King Hussein, Rabin’s advisers (Haber, etc.), his grand-daughter, were moving. Clinton, Mubarak and the Russian foreign minister appeared to be more prepared, more political.

November 7, 1995 Throngs of people keep visiting Rabin’s tomb in Jerusalem and the place where he was murdered, in the Tel Aviv square now renamed Kikar Y. Rabin. This morning program on the radio introduces various personalities, among whom Elie Wiesel. Elsewhere, politics has returned. Last night already, Shulamit Aloni severely criticized the Israeli and US religious authorities who, according to her, created a favorable climate for the murder, and have not yet recanted, or have done so too late. Today, Aryeh Sharon insisted on the unity of the Jewish people as being the most important thing to guard at the moment, but he did not forget to mention that Menahem Begin and he had been branded “murderers” during the war in Lebanon. Is one to conclude that a violent act did not necessarily flow from this kind of accusation, or that they too had been subject to the same type of violence as Rabin?

Another thing I have noticed: the confessions of guilt by many people, who feel guilty for not having done enough to defend and support Rabin. How could this have influenced the murderer? But perhaps do they feel guilty for not being stronger supporters of peace and shown to Rabin alive that he truly represented their aspirations?

Lightning and intermittent rain this afternoon. Is it rain, the recent blooming of cyclamens and crocuses among the rocks and under the olive or pine trees, the sight of Arab families harvesting olives, and above all the powerful feeling of national mourning? but I suddenly realize I love this country more for itself, and not only as a mythical object of study from which sprang the Bible, the basis for my judgment and my moral conscience, such as it was shaped through Latin, celtic, and the French brand of christianity.

The name of Yitzhak Rabin will continue to live in the person of a 27 year-old Russian immigrant who yesterday, at the time of qiddush after his circumcision, declared that this would be his name.

November 19, 1995 Visit to Jerusalem, to a friend on Nissim Behar street, a street opening onto Bezalel, not far from the Supreme court and the Knesset. From Nes Ziona, we came this morning to the Old City where I parked the car in the courtyard of the College des Freres, near New Gate. Frere X, the Brother Director, had already left, first for a ceremony at the Greek Orthodox Church in the neighborhood, and then for Bethlehem where he was to try to get temporary permits to allow several teachers to come from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. When we see him around 3h30, he is disappointed, because he failed to obtain them. He was made to wait several hours for nothing. The teachers will probably wake up very early the next day, take back roads, and travel for several hours before reaching the college (a ride which could take minutes if one came straight from Bethlehem).

After our visit to the Kotel haMa’aravi, we go towards the Dung Gate to see if we can walk on the walls, but we discover it’s not possible. A kind of crazy-looking and apparently well-known red-haired Celt, with cheap glittering clothes and a paper crown is playing (scratching) a harp on the path leading up to the police checkpoint before the Western Wall. As we are walking back towards the Wall, we hear him shouting at a couple of small orthodox kids, in a heavy American accent: “Zeh lo yehudi, zeh lo tov!” King David is vehemently pointing his finger and cradling his useless harp under his left arm. He is angry at two little kids, especially one who apparently hit a little Arab girl with his stick. We noticed that another one was playing with a pocket knife. They both may be acting fantasies out of the book of Joshuah. The police check things out eventually.

About Rabin’s assassination. One often heard comment is: “How could this happen, coming from a Jew?” Or: “How could this happen to us? It is not supposed to happen to us!” Our reaction on the contrary was to say: “What if the killer had been an Arab?” (outside of Israel, in any event of the kind, our reaction is rather: “Hope it’s not a Jew”). The possibility of peace would have vanished for a long time, and the relationships between Israeli Arabs and Jews would have been much more difficult in Galilee and elsewhere.

Everywhere, on many cars and doors, the sticker Shalom Haver, which doesn’t prevent drivers from taking excessive risks. Old, more aggressive slogans have disappeared, for the most part, except some strong statements regarding the Golan (“The people with the Golan;” or “We shall not move from the Golan”).

Religious Jews (especially Zionist religious Jews) feel threatened in their identity: one of “them” committed the murder, he came from the leading religious university, studied Torah everyday. They presently fight for unity above all, because dispersion under the negative impression of more than half of the country would mean political dilution and loss of power.

Many people have been invoking the necessity of a חשבון נפש or accounting (confession): couldn’t all kinds of individuals have done more to show their support for Rabin, and perhaps thus prevented the “right” from going too far? To my mind, it seems naive to think that such good intentions, even realized, could have made any impact on the will of Y. Amir, Rabin’s killer. His reasoning is of a different nature entirely. He has heard a voice or a teaching (rabbi’s authority, coming from other authorities, etc…. more on this listening vs seeing business at another time), telling him that relinquishing any part of Israel’s territory (i.e. what was conquered in 1967) is going against the divinity’s promise, the highest crime against Judaism, and is therefore tantamount to high treason and punishable by death. The land itself is sacred, perhaps the Jewish people too, but as a collective first, and in that order. He also has lived the frustration of a religious youth of traditional Yemenite background, upset by the threatening secularization of the country, especially where he lives (Herzliyah). I am struck by the near total absence of discussion about the real feelings of Palestinian Arabs, either when talking about Rabin’s death or about the so-called peace process. Peace as a one-way street.

Tuesday, November 28, 1995 By a beautiful autumn afternoon, I listen to B. doing scales (doing time?) and repeating a few melodies: Mélancolie de Chopin, Étude de Bréval, a gavotte, an air by Offenbach. This morning, we went to a garage in Carmiel to have the car checked. On the way out of the kibbutz, on the entry road lined with olive trees and rock slabs emerging from the heavy ocre earth, we picked up two old ladies from the kibbutz. One came from Hungary (ממש הונגרית, said she, from Budapesht, and, with a touch of pride, “I only speak Magyar!”), the other one from Transylvania, from a region first belonging to Hungary, then to Rumania. As a little girl, she lived in a Hungarian village, but had to go to school to a Rumanian school. She spoke Magyar, Rumanian, and Yiddish. Without explaining her circumstances in any detail, but in a kind of comment on the small difficulties at the beginning of our stay which we were mentioning to her, she told us that it is difficult to change. She herself had found exceedingly hard, she said, to change husband, children, country, language, and culture. The list was so short, compact, striking. We didn’t ask about the first two items. Having lost everything, and in spite of all difficulties, she had embraced Israel as her country, a home where she feels at ease and free.

It is by the strength or measuring-rod of this feeling coming from a modest person that one must judge the value and even the grandeur of the zionist movement, and it is at this level that one must place oneself when speaking of the “Palestinian question”. One must have in mind the life of people on both sides of the divide — a life including the willfully preserved memory of previous generations as well as the desire or hope that their children may have a future to look forward to.

In the evening, we went to see a bike store on Jaffa street in Haifa. We stopped in one of the malls of Lev haMifratz to eat Mexican food. The excellent food is prepared fresh by an Arab Israeli (or is that an Israeli Arab?) who lived for 17 years in California. Everywhere around us, sounds and sights invite Israelis to consume without any restraint and indulge their passion for objects, cars, electronic items, gadgets… Along the highway, high degree of pollution, impression of a mess in the transition from old industrial areas to the new kind of malls, the squeaky cleanliness of Toys R Us or Office Depot, and so on…. huge tiled and carpeted stores which in truth invite a real mess, moral that one, but appear to be so clean, vast, efficient, organized, complete. A spotless conscience.

Friday, December first, 1995 Rabin’s murder goes to the heart of the Israeli political question (and the impossibility of agreeing on a constitution). Two forms of zionism, one starting with the Biblical text and obeying the command to love Israel (ahavat Israel), the other one starting from a modern situation (but not without antecedents), the necessity to found a national home for the Jews of the world who need it, two forms of zionism are locked in permanent struggle. Both are necessary to each other. The organization of a modern state utilizing individual energies on as wide a basis as possible can be done only on a secular basis (but one might disagree on what is meant by secular, the old immanence/ transcendence debate). This is the springwell of the strength of citizens who organize their defense, conquer a land, develop an industry, etc…. But the heart of this state is the return to Zion, so the religiously grounded concept is also at the center of the state, though its visible representatives are in relatively small numbers.

Tuesday, December 5th, 1995 Last night, a fine rain fell for a few hours. It was a great joy to receive Lieberman’s Tosefta kifshuta, the thirteen tomes of it, a work which I have wanted to have for a while now. Other works by Lieberman are being reedited or reprinted. Tosefta kifshuta is a rich and exact commentary setting the reader on the path to talmudic, Greek or Latin texts which throw light on the text at hand.

Rabin’s death, thirty days ago, is being commemorated in TV and radio programs. Unfortunately, the cameras focus on the political actors of the moment: friends of Rabin, the present government, and also the opposition tenors, especially Netanyahu. Very thin presence of the religious element: not invited or tolerated? or excusing itself?

The mystic mill is damned in Celan’s Spät und tief:

….
Sie rufen: Ihr lästert!

Wir wissen es längst.
Wir wissen es längst, doch was tuts?
Ihr mahlt in den Mühlen des Todes der weiße Mehl der Verheißung,
ihr setzet es vor unsern Brüdern und Schwestern—

Wir schwenken das Weißhaar der Zeit.

Ihr mahnt uns: Ihr lästert!
Wir wissen es wohl,
es komme die Schuld über uns.
….
Es komme ein Mensch aus dem Grabe.

Translation from Felstiner’s Selected poems and prose of Paul Celan (New York: Norton, 2001), page 27:

They cry: Blasphemy!

We’ve known it long since.
Known it long since, but who cares?
You grind in the mills of death the white meal of the Promise,
you set it before our brothers and sisters—

We flourish the white hair of time.

You warn us: Blasphemy!
We know it full well,
let the guilt come on us.
….
Let a man come forth from the grave.

It seems to me that similarly the hyphenated Meermühle in Celan’s Le menhir, found in a record under the title Le menhir de St-Renan (last version from 4 August 1961, acc. to JP Lefebvre in his Paul Celan. Choix de poèmes réunis par l’auteur [Paris: Gallimard, 1998], page 352), are not simply about moulins de la mer/mère and moulins de la mort, but also about the mystic mill which grinds the torah, its letters, its bearers, and makes this white dust, both flour and Abel-like smoke or ashes.

Le menhir

Wachsendes
Steingrau

Graugestalt, augen-
loser du, Steinblick, mit dem uns
die Erde hervortrat, menschlich,
auf Dunkel-, auf Weißheidewegen,
abends, vor
dir, Himmelsschlucht.

Verkebstes, hierhergekarrt, sank
über den Herzrücken weg. Meer-
mühle mahlte.

Hellflüglig hingst du, früh,
zwischen Ginster und Stein,
kleine Phaläne.

Schwarz, phylakterien-
farben, so wart ihr,
ihr mit-
betenden Schoten.

The Phaläne, great night butterfly (Nachfalter), in French sounds like the tefillin, the prayer boxes, pods (Schoten) or boxes whose Greek name (phylactères in French) evokes classes of butterflies.

Above, the mystic mill at the root of the milling images: Moses and Paul sweating at the mill. Two people working together, Moses feeding the torah into the grinding christic mill, and Paul (in the light projected by the Vézelay windows, rather than the permanent shadow the Moses figure inhabits, not to forget) collecting the flour, and both one could think naïvely interchangeable in history, as anyone who has participated in a harvest knows. Same image in Suger’s St Denis window apparently. In passing: I don’t understand the commentaries equating mill and Christ without further ado. The wheel is cruciform, fine. But isn’t the heart of it, as Faulkner said, the grinding, the minute clicking of time’s little wheels? Jesus here was not the mill but the grain submitting to the spinning stones of history, with no bitterness but sweet flour flowing out, packed and taken to the baker.

Reading Celan has broken the mill.

Kierkegaard about “what the times demand”:

What the times need most urgently, however, can be put neatly into one word: eternity. The misfortune of our time is precisely that it has become only “time”, temporality [Zeitlichkeit], which, impatient as it is, refuses to hear of eternity. Then, well-meaning or frenzied, it even tries to make the eternal superfluous by false emulation, which will fail in all eternity. For the more one thinks it possible to dispense with the eternal, or hardens one’s heart against it, the more fundamentally one needs it.

From Either or, as quoted in Taubes, Occidental eschatology, 173–74.

A while back, I received a reminder from an ethereal UC machine to go online, mouse over squared ABCD answers to various questions and show my willingness to enter the fictional world of management. A world with conflicts of interest, apparently, self-serving, back-biting, and so forth. Somewhat depressing but not new. It came from something called the UCLearningCenter and in its best passive voice suggested that I,

As an employee of the University of California, […] have automatically been registered for the mandatory Compliance Briefing: UC Ethical Values and Conduct (20-30 minutes to complete). This briefing is designed to raise continued awareness of the University of California Statement of Ethical Values and Standards of Ethical Conduct, and to convey University employment obligations with respect to ethical and compliant behavior. The purpose is not to teach University policy or ethics but to familiarize UC employees with important ethics and compliance information, issues and resources. You are required to complete this course by December 31, 2010.

So it’s not about dusting off the old Aristotle. But how about the “familiarizing” with “important ethics … issues and resources?” Wouldn’t reading the official statement be enough? I read it. But no, you have to give proof, not that you read it, but a devalued digest of it. Proof to whom? To be used how? So that my “continued awareness” be “raised?” But if it is already an “awareness”, and “continued”, how can it be raised? Raising the ethics flag would be enough to modify behavior? It all looks very muddled.

According to UCOP where I found a presentation giving a very good idea of the thing, 192,000 UC employees are to spend an average of 20-30 minutes doing that every year. I.e., 60,000-92,000 hours at say an average $20.00/hr, an investment in “raised continued awareness of … Statement… Ethical… Value” of $1,200,000–1,920,000. I’m sure the public will be convinced and happy to see public dollars properly spent.

Back in 2007, I wrote sundry emails with questions like: what company did you hire (Workplace Answers still?), why a private company, what is the cost (above that of the employees’ time)? Why this decision was taken by the regents in November to May 2005 (when a few scandals happened among the top brass of UCOP), etc… Please get back to me, before I contemplate raising my continued awareness of the thingy. What of the example set by a top teaching institution automating the “conveying of obligations”? Has the down cost of that been factored in?

I shouldn’t be bothering about this matter. . And that’s what’s counted on I suppose: fatigue. “Yes, it’s silly, but come on, just do it. Submit.”

The message ends with this call:

For anonymous reporting of non-compliant behavior, please call [number] or visit [site address]

Please do.

In occasional conversations with men or women who were in WWII’s concentration camps, I have been surprised to discover a certain way they had of referring to that world didn’t fit the vocabulary I learned. They spoke of “there,” “sham,” “là-bas,” and the context was enough to understand, if you meant to. The surprise came because I naïvely expected more precision. I expected words I had learned in books and newspapers to originate from people who were there and would speak of it as event. And perhaps also, in the back of my mind, incongruously I think, there was the last word in the book of Ezekiel. We speak of “the camps,” “extermination camps,” “l’univers concentrationnaire”, “holocaust”, “shoah”, “ḥurban”…. Each with a peculiar history, each leading in a certain direction where one is in danger of losing the little chance one has of thinking straight. These words carry allusions to other things one can and would have to explain. They are dangerously long, classificatory, conceptual, specular, and products of a historical reflection looking for causes, even when the speakers admit their inability or reluctance to categorize. Why not use “then” instead of “there”, however? Because between “then” and “now” the chasm is too great, and “then” or “in those times” would be the beginning of an impossible story? While with “there,” “sham,” or “là-bas,” I imagine that something like both the distance and proximity to “here” allow the possibility of a secret mourning within an all-present life. “There” still exists, it is the same earth and land beyond oceans and rivers. Near.

A few days ago, I read the interview given to Le Monde by Raffaele Simone whose book Le monstre doux. L’Occident vire-t-il à droite? (= The gentle monster. Is the West taking a turn to the right?) just came out in France. He starts from the realization that the European left has collapsed ideologically, psychologically, and electorally. For three main reasons: the evolution of a society given to consumption, pleasure, and selfishness; the blindness of the left regarding this evolution and the forgetting of its ideals and achievements; and the ability of the right to occupy the ground, a right that goes along both with business, especially banking and media, and the desires and fears of a consuming, self-centered population. In his interview, he refers to de Tocqueville’s prophecy about a new form of domination, which I cite here at greater length:

Je pense donc que l’espèce d’oppression dont les peuples démocratiques sont menacés ne ressemblera à rien de ce qui l’a précédée dans le monde; nos contemporains ne sauraient en trouver l’image dans leurs souvenirs. [….] La chose est nouvelle, il faut donc tacher de la définir, puisque je ne peux la nommer.

Je veux imaginer sous quels traits nouveaux le despotisme pourrait se produire dans le monde: je vois une foule innombrable d’hommes semblables et égaux qui tournent sans repos sur eux-mêmes pour se procurer de petits et vulgaires plaisirs, dont ils emplissent leur âme. Chacun d’eux, retiré à l’écart, est comme étranger à la destinée de tous les autres: ses enfants et ses amis particuliers forment pour lui toute l’espèce humaine; quant au demeurant de ses concitoyens, il est à côté d’eux, mais il ne les voit pas; il les touche et ne les sent point; il n’existe qu’en lui-même et pour lui seul, et s’il lui reste encore une famille, on peut dire du moins qu’il n’a plus de patrie.

Au-dessus de ceux-la s’élève un pouvoir immense et tutélaire, qui se charge seul d’assurer leur jouissance et de veiller sur leur sort. Il est absolu, détaillé, régulier, prévoyant et doux. Il ressemblerait à la puissance paternelle si, comme elle, il avait pour objet de préparer les hommes à l’âge viril; mais il ne cherche, au contraire, qu’à les fixer irrévocablement dans l’enfance; il aime que les citoyens se réjouissent, pourvu qu’ils ne songent qu’à se réjouir. Il travaille volontiers à leur bonheur; mais il veut en être l’unique agent et le seul arbitre; il pourvoit à leur sécurité, prévoit et assure leurs besoins, facilite leurs plaisirs, conduit leurs principales affaires, dirige leur industrie, règle leurs successions, divise leurs héritages; que ne peut-il leur ôter entièrement le trouble de penser et la peine de vivre? (De la démocratie en Amérique, vol. 2, 4.6)

And especially these lines, even though the context is of an aristocratic elevation (how not to lose what constituted virtue, courage, abnegation):

Il est, en effet, difficile de concevoir comment des hommes qui ont entièrement renoncé à l’habitude de se diriger eux-mêmes pourraient réussir à bien choisir ceux qui doivent les conduire; et l’on ne fera point croire qu’un gouvernement libéral, énergique et sage, puisse jamais sortir des suffrages d’un peuple de serviteurs.

De Tocqueville and Hannah Arendt perhaps share the same notion of democracy. It doesn’t depend on notions of human rights or humanitas that look so vague and little defined in the face of the triumphant “self”. Undefined except by number and therefore in danger of being milled down to the smallest common denominator, which is the particular desires framed in infinitely repeated images.

No time to say much about this now, with classes beginning. But two surprises: the moralizing regarding over-consumption is open to suspicion. It’s not all about Berlusconi bronzing himself and ha-ha-ing with young women. And: the theme above is approached from different angles by Zygmunt Bauman and others. I especially think of Pierre Manent whose Les métamorphoses de la cité. Essai sur la dynamique de l’Occident just came out (Paris : Flammarion, 2010). He follows the four great “versions of the universal”, i.e. Jewish law, Greek philosophy, the Church, and humanity according to the modern version. For the first three, the idea of the divine is key, whereas the modern concept is suspending the notion of depth to embrace the broadest possible number, though here too the mediation of the divine still flickers, though inverted or en attente. As Manent says, a “religion de l’humanité”. More on his book later.

An ad from Whitman’s campaign says that her plan as governor of California is to decrease government’s expenditures on health, pension, welfare system, workforce (= fire 40,000], and waste, the proverbial election-time, magical pot of gold. She would transfer some of that money to UC and State University system to continue to provide a cheaper and better education to many. I.e.—worthy goal—stop the tuition fee increases and make sure research can continue as before. Sounds good, but what of the tit in the tit for tat? Make life even more difficult for tens of thousands of people, empoverish and threaten them in their daily life, in order to … help many who can help themselves already? As for government, what of our fabled prison system and its extraordinary cost? She would reduce health expenses there too… I see she could squeeze 3 to 5 billion dollars a year, spend them immediately (transfer), but 15 billion dollars? And tax cuts on top of that? With 12.4% unemployment, official number as of today, and a number unlikely to change.