open Democracy News Analysis - arts & cultures - Comments

Thom on "The dark (k)night of a postmodern world"

Thom — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:17:52 +0100

Steve, thanks for your comments.

Re: "the "corrupt Middle Eastern regimes" opposed by al Qaeda are those that have brought peace and prosperity to their people by joining the modern world rather than lashing out at it."

I assume that you, like me, live in a capitalist democracy where, for the most part, we can say what we want. I think many people in Egypt for instance where Hosni Mubarak has ruled uncontested for almost 27 years may feel a bit differently. How long can "emergency rule" last? Torture, one party elections and arbitrary arrests are commonplace. Ditto Saudi Arabia, Syria, Algeria and the list goes on. People are naturally pissed off so they'll get behind the only groups that stand up for them: the Islamists.

Not that Al-Qaida would be any different if they were in charge, necessarily, but they are feeding off this desire for some kind of justice. So for an Arab there might just be "some form of dire and unacceptable provocation" since the "modern world" imposed these states on them.

The fact that the West props up men like Mubarak (and calls them democrats!) benefits states in North America and Europe exclusively apart from the local elite. People in the Middle East are not stupid and can see hypocrisy for what it is. Colonialism and injustice live on and therefore so do groups like Al-Qaida (even though I share your skepticism of their commitment to a truly just society).

Not everyone benefits from the modern world or to use another word civilization. Many people, myself included, recognize that civilization is on a destructive course because humans are now altering the face of the earth and changing the climate with our industrial emissions.

The mighty towers of industrial civilization are not worth it if we ruin our ecological foundation by building them. But alas that's another issue but the problem of civilization is the real issue that we should all be wrestling with, not terrorism.

Steven Rogers on "The dark (k)night of a postmodern world"

Steven Rogers — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 05:47:09 +0100

Thom, re this:

I encourage you to study the communiques of Al-Qaida (I have little
familiarity with other Islamist groups). An interesting book is
Messages to the World: The Speeches of Osama bin Laden. Islamists like
bin Laden are not irrational and use violence merely for its own sake;
this is George W. Bush's analysis and has no place here. Islamists have
clear political goals such as liberating Palestine and removing foreign
forces from Saudi Arabia and overthrowing corrupt Middle Eastern
regimes. Violence is a tool to achieve these goals.

If you've studied the communiques of al Qaeda, you surely know that until very recently the liberation of Palestine has been notably absent from that organization's list of priorities, and it's generally accepted that this issue has never been a major factor in al Qaeda's development.

You may also be aware that the foreign forces in question were removed from Saudi Arabia years ago, and that the "corrupt Middle Eastern regimes" opposed by al Qaeda are those that have brought peace and prosperity to their people by joining the modern world rather than lashing out at it.

The notion that terrorists ""want to watch the world burn" may be simplistic and flawed, but the notion that they are responding to some form of dire and unacceptable provocation is completely insupportable.

jpcruz on "The dark (k)night of a postmodern world"

jpcruz — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 01:03:52 +0100

«The Dark Knight unmasks the crisis of values in which America, and the west more widely, finds itself at the beginning of the 21st century. Cultural theorists portrayed the late 20th century in terms of "the postmodern condition": an era in which traditional values, identities and social institutions were disintegrating and being replaced by proliferating narratives, conflicting truth claims and multiple identities»

I keep reading this bizarre concept (the western "crisis of values") over and over again, on the web, on books, on media, and i still don't get it. I suppose I live in a different planet... As mr. Steven rogers puts it, I also «can't personally imagine a philosophical strain more thoroughly removed from the day to day experience of the average individual...»

Traditional values? What traditional values? Are we talking religious morality here? Judaic-Christian values, as opposed to a more secular frame of values? Is that it?

Sure, the western world faces a whole lot of challenges, problems and crisis, some of them from within, that's true and we need to solve them, as we are, democracy is a work in progress and, as I see it in my live experience and in our colective historical experience, it's actually getting better. Not as fast as we might wish, but for someone who studies History, it's plain obvious that It's not getting worse...

This narrative of doom and decadence is, in my opinion, rooted in a distorted analysis of reality. As to violence, I could point out to a interesting conference from mr. Stephen Pinker on Ted Talks, for instance. It might shed some light in some gloomy heads.

Sure, technology development gave us the potencial for total destruction, and the world is still full of dictatorships, real corruption and bad governance (from Africa to Russia, passing through China, Venezuela or Iran) but the fact is that humanity, mostly in the western world, never experienced such levels of cooperation, solidarity, health, confort and prosperity. The peace we experience in Europe for over 50 years, due in my opinion mainly to the retrieval of religion and ideologies from the front stage of public live, is an unprecendent and extraordinary event in our thousands year history!

In our western streets, for example, crime isn't a rule, it's an exception, overly dramatized by the media or the film industry, just so eager to satisfy the people's morbid atraction for things such as violence, maniqueist narratives, the bizarre, jokers, darknights...

Maybe I'm beeing over simplistic, but I simply don't buy that "crisis of values" theory...

Thom on "The dark (k)night of a postmodern world"

Thom — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 00:20:00 +0100

[...edited...] I enjoyed the film so I can appreciate the analysis.

However I'm disappointed that the author associates the Joker with radical Islamists. Both just "want to watch the world burn" as the author quotes the film.
Hardly. I encourage you to study the communiques of Al-Qaida (I have little familiarity with other Islamist groups). An interesting book is Messages to the World: The Speeches of Osama bin Laden. Islamists like bin Laden are not irrational and use violence merely for its own sake; this is George W. Bush's analysis and has no place here. Islamists have clear political goals such as liberating Palestine and removing foreign forces from Saudi Arabia and overthrowing corrupt Middle Eastern regimes. Violence is a tool to achieve these goals.
Similarly, the US and other western governments have goals and they to use violence, in more extreme ways than any Islamist could dream, to achieve them. Just think of the sanctions and invasion of Iraq or the 21st century re-colonization of Haiti.
Despite what we think of our own innocence, we in the west are indeed terribly violent. We should get away from the television and take a good long look. Much like the Joker's scarred face, we might not like what we see there.

Cathy Fitzpatrick on "The dark (k)night of a postmodern world"

Cathy Fitzpatrick — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:30:55 +0100

This is all pretty overwrought stuff. The institutions didn't quite disintegrate as much as you think, and may reform more than you are prepared to admit.

Zizek is a known Marxist-Leninist, and while his critiques are always interesting, they always fall back on the same stale ideological principles that have already been massively repudiated in his part of the world and elsewhere, which usually involved an enlightened committee planning everything for everyone else -- only now with a fictional "social media participation" overlay on to the essentially Bolshevik plan.

Here's a stark question you have to ask. Who does most of the killing in Iraq? If it were the U.S., or if we had more atrocities from the U.S. than we've already had -- and we've certainly had some -- then, it would be easier to rally "the masses" to dislodge these evil imperialists. But...they aren't the terrorists firing on police recruit lines, planting teenage suicide bombers, mining roads to kill passers-by, massacring the professional class. Those are other factions, some hooking up to Al-Qaeda. So as always, while you rant and fume about the creeping authoritarianism of those who are trying to fight terrorism, and we get it, what *is* your plan for fighting terrorism, in the end? Why *do* those terrorists get a pass?

Study the clash of civilizations carefully, and see which side is doing most of the clashing.

Cathy Fitzpatrick

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/un_tethered

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/ngo_accountability

Not logged in Lawrence Efana on "The dark (k)night of a postmodern world"

Not logged in Lawrence Efana — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 09:56:45 +0100

Tina Beattie takes readers into a political arts gallery where the "fictive" characters are "Batman and Joker" in a poker [chess] game. A social construction, not at all ruined by analogies somewhat well fitting and yet interrelates with what could be the options from the overall insanity. Isn't nihilism neither being a batman nor joker? Where should value-relativism be fitted, thinking of existentialism and the reality of experiment, particularly with change amidst human imperfections?

Much is being said about the moral bankruptcy of our democratic practices, in spite of the cumulative resources of enlightenment. This is where the "irony" of politics in modern time is troubling. Beattie' s paper is "talking movies" with it, and so no surprise, it is 'theatrical', 'satirical', 'cryptic', and 'aphoristic' - a painting act of humans on the "horns of a dilemma", well spelled out in, as she puts it "the prisoners' dilemma". It is more or less "fictive", see: Steven Rogers "An interesting flight of fancy", simultaneously as there is a good flesh of political reality captured; see, Tony: "Batman and Joker share not only nihilism, but also a personal individual potency...."; and again Steven Rogers: "but isn't it a bit stretch to assume that the mutterings of postmodern theorists are actually an accurate reflection of modern life". Don't these reflect the battle between nihilism and value-relativism even in the fictive form?

As we face the forth-coming US presidential election, a poker or chess politics too abstract for readers and evaluators - call some of them commentators], could frustrate democracy, especially if change must be appreciated! How do Batman and Joker relate to reinvention of democracy? What would dynamism mean to them? How challenging is value-relativism to nihilism and what about the reality of having to make choices paramount for existentialism? Reinvention arose when realism, idealism and utopia merged as values, which then changed the faces of party politics: clustering them at the center.

The extent that arts and paintings give insights to human dynamism could be subject to where the paint is thick and where it is thin and why in each case. The emergence of interests for modern politics keen to oversee the singular align with the plural, careful of rational choice for lessons of neo-liberalism, I guess everyone agrees is worthy of experiment with the types of credentials we see! Batman and Joker are fictive characters to reconstruct modern democratic politics in the face of the continuous deconstruction and reconstruction efforts of observers and writers - why the world we live in is active!

Lawrence Efana [Finland]

Lita Davidson on "The dark (k)night of a postmodern world"

Lita Davidson — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 08:29:25 +0100

Tina,

I am sorry, the film was horrible, I did not enjoy it at all, and would have left 20 minutes into it if not for my friends. I wish it did portray extreme fundamentalism,I am fully aware of the defects of the modern world, it's contradictions and indifference to human suffering, all I have to do is turn on the T.V., I have travelled the world and seen the 'other.'

I dont need a film to tell me that. As far as I am concerned, the threat of extremism is not only found in Islam, but in American Evangelists. Your article is more interesting than the movie, the movie being way too political and trite. The way the world is today is because people over react, especially the Americans, and now here come the French to take their place! god help us. Their knee jerk reactions has put us all in danger, they lack communicative skills in working with other cultures, and always blow everything out of proportion, like this batman movie. For the Americans, everything is extreme, they are so caught up in themselves and refuse to look at things more objectively, that is the problem! This and that threat, enough!

Steven Rogers on "The dark (k)night of a postmodern world"

Steven Rogers — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 00:16:14 +0100

The belief in "self-sacrifice as a silver bullet" is very deeply implanted in our culture and perhaps our species - the core drama of the Christian religions provides an excellent example - and it is true that it makes for better drama than policy. It's also worth considering that the belief in a silver bullet, with or without sacrifice, is often an obstacle to effective action. The notion that a single set of policies or a single change in direction will address all problems simultaneously is an attractive pipe dream, but a very destructive one.

Take, for example, the cited need to address climate change and poverty. One of the great obstacles to this is the reality that these struggles carry different and sometimes opposite imperatives. To fight poverty we must create jobs, which means more production of goods and services, which means that those goods and services must be consumed. As poor people become less poor, they consume more. To fight poverty we need an escalating spiral of production and consumption, which provides even greater challenges for the struggle against climate change. Conversely, if we propose to combat climate change by reducing consumption, will this not impose constraints on production, and thus on employment?

To manage these contradictions we need to abandon black/white thinking, understand tradeoffs and compromise, and think creatively. The ideological rigidity we see at both ends of the political spectrum, rooted in belief in a "silver bullet", is nothing but an obstacle. We see the same sentiments on both sides, from the environmental movement ("part of the solution or part of the problem") and the Bush administration ("with us or against us"). It is this sort of thinking, rooted as much in blind idealism as in nihilism, that paralyzes us.

opendemocracy on "The dark (k)night of a postmodern world"

opendemocracy — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 09:46:46 +0100

Batman and Joker share not only a nihilism, but also a personal, individual potency. This is a sharp contrast to many of our deepest political problems. Take climate change - there is neither a batman nor a joker in that story; just me and you and everyone together. No one person can imagine a self-sacrifice that will solve that problem.

The belief in self-sacrifice as a silver bullet seems to me to be shared between the suicide terrorist -- as thoroughly explored, for example, in Camus' Les Justes, where the anarchist bomber takes on the nom-de-guerre Raskalnikov, after Dostoyevski's similarly confused murderer of Crime and Punishment -- and the batman hero.

What we need to address climate change and poverty is a notion that what we all together do is important, even where there is no individual potency. The problem of the "legitimation of authority" does not, I think, go through all of us becoming just a bit batman-like. It goes through the rediscovery of the category of what we all together do.

But that, of course, does not easily make for a great box-office.

tony

sue caldwell on "Alexander Solzhenitsyn: the line within "

sue caldwell — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 04:58:16 +0100

I would take Roger much more seriously if he wasnt so closely associated with all those on the "right" who loudly support the never-ending "war on terror" and who are also fully paid up boosters of the military-industrial-"entertainment" complex.

Steven Rogers on "The dark (k)night of a postmodern world"

Steven Rogers — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 05:14:46 +0100

An interesting flight of fancy, but isn't it a bit of a stretch to assume that the dark mutterings of postmodern theorists are actually an accurate rflection of modern life. I can't personally imagine a philosophical strain more thoroughly removed from the day to day experience of the average individual...

willow28 on "Alexander Solzhenitsyn: the line within "

willow28 — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 11:00:13 +0100

Quote:

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart - and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains . . . an uprooted small corner of evil.

Wow! Now, let me get this straight! All humans are imperfect. Some more so than others. Most of us don't have to endure decades in Siberian death camps to come to that realisation. While I perfectly understand why, for someone who suffered so much for much of their adult life, their remaining years of freedom should be made as pleasant as possible; part of the deal for Solzhenitsyn was conferring upon him the accolades of literary genius/insightful philosopher. All bolstered by the old myth that true art is always born out of suffering (many great artists, of course, lead quite cushy lives). In reality he was far from a genius and hardly given to profound and original insights (see above!) Although I'm sure he sincerely believed the claims. I'll accuse him of vanity,but not of fraudulence. Also, contrary to Mr Scruton's claims, Solzhenitsyn did not 'alert' the western world to the presence of the gulags. These were known about long before his writings were translated into English. To place Solzhenitsyn more fairly in literary history, I think it should be as a chronicler of life under oppression. Somewhere alongside the (much younger) Anne Frank.

George Ross on "Alexander Solzhenitsyn: the line within "

George Ross — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 18:51:49 +0100

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a complex character and his output was, alas, not entirely positive: fervent, fanatical Leninist in his youth, he became the famous and admired implacable and indomitable foe of communism, whose horrors he revealed in his devastating works of maturity. But his formidable attack was not launched from a position of firm belief in liberal values and intense hatred not only for communism, but for all isms, for all over-arching systems of ideas, blueprints or grand meta-narratives: this is why he was to embrace, and, alas, forcefully propound, in his senectitude, an ideology consisting of a messianic belief in Orthodoxy, the idealisation of the Russian peasant, condemnation of the Enlightenment, xenophobia and anti-Semitism, and entailing a virulent condemnation of Western liberalism. It's a pity, but history will be kind to him and - in spite of his negative aspects - he deserves the gratitude of humanity for the fatal wounds he inflicted on the communist system

opendemocracy on "Alexander Solzhenitsyn: the line within "

opendemocracy — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:33:27 +0100

Anthony,

Are you and Roger simply using 2 meanings of "political", or is there a more substantive disagreement between the 2 of you?

Roger argues that "systems of government" have a limited role in solving the problem of evil. That needs "a change of life." So that is one sense of "political" - what "systems of government" do.

The "change of life" has all sorts of causes and consequences, which I imagine you want to include in the realm of the political. But I imagine that Roger would agree with the point about causes and consequences -- this is exactly why this is important.

So is there substance in the disagreement?

Tony

Anthony Barnett on "Alexander Solzhenitsyn: the line within "

Anthony Barnett — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:26:35 +0100

This is a masterly and very helpful account. But two modest points:

Roger, you write, "But we should not deceive ourselves into believing that the solution to the problem of evil is a political solution, that it can be arrived at without spiritual discipline and without a change of life." But a 'change of life' is in part political - not merely or only private.

You say that S saw religion as a compatriot in understanding that evil is "drawn through the human heart". But many religions also see themselves as 'system' solutions for dealing with this, while a politics that recognised this, which I agree we need, would in its own way be quite a change.

To put it another way, the conservative implication that there is an almost pre-political solution lost by both communism and consumer or corporate capitalism seems unconvincing.