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REMAKING HISTORY
Dia Art Foundation
Discussions
in
Contemporary Culture
Number 4
REMAKING HISTORY
Edited by Barbara Kruger and Phil Mariani
B
AY PRESS
SE
ATT L E
19 8 9
—
©
1989 Dia Art Foundation
All rights reserved.
No
part of this
form without permission
book may be reproduced
in
any
from the publisher and author.
in writing
Printed in the United States of America
94
95
92
93
91
4
5
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2
1
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Design by Bethany Johns
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Typesetting by
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Printing by Edwards Brothers, Lillington, North Carolina Set in Perpetua
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
(Revised for no. 4) Discussions in Contemporary Culture.
Nos. 1-2 edited by Hal Foster. No.
3
edited by Gary Garrels. No. 4
edited by Barbara Kruger and Phil Mariani.
Contents: no. no. 1.
I.
3.
[without special
1
History and culture.
Kruger, Barbara.
2.
II.
Carol Squiers's
Historiography.
700'.
article,
November
III.
1
Dia Art Foundation.
87-71579
'03
(no. 4: pbk.)
"At Their Mercy,"
version of articles published in
1988,
2.
4.
Mariani, Phil.
N72.S6D57 1987 ISBN 0-941920-12-0
— no. Vision and visuality. — no. Remaking history.
title].
The work of Andy Warhol.
1988, and
is
a compilation
and edited
Ar forum, Summer 1988, September
March
1989.
© Artforum
and the author
1988, 1989; reprinted here by permission of the author and Artforum.
Homi
K. Bhabha's article,
"Remembering Fanon,"
originally
appeared
as the preface to the British edition of Frantz Fanon's Black Skin,
Masks (London: Pluto Press Limited, 1986), and permission of the author.
iv
is
reprinted by
White
CONTENTS Barbara Kruger and
Phil
Mariani
INTRODUCTION
Edward W. Said
YEATS AND DECOLONIZATION
Paula A. Treichler
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
WORLD:
A
IN
THE THIRD
FIRST WORLD CHRONICLE
Cornel West
BLACK CULTURE AND POSTMODERNISM
Michele Wallace
READING 1968 AND THE GREAT AMERICAN WH
I
TE
WAS H
Janet Abu-Lughod
ON THE REMAKING OF HISTORY: HOW TO
REINVENT THE PAST
Homi
K.
Bhabha
REMEMBERING FANON:
SELF, PSYCHE,
THE COLONIAL CONDITION
AND
Alice Yaeger Kaplan
THEWELEIT AND SPIEGELMAN: OF MEN AND MICE
J.
Hoberman
VIETNAM: THE REMAKE
Carol Squiers
AT THEIR MERCY: A READING OF PICTURES
FROM 1988
Victoria
de Grazia
THE ARTS OF PURCHASE: HOW AMERICAN PUBLICITY SUBVERTED THE EUROPEAN
POSTER, 1920-1940
Bernard Tschumi
DE-, DIS-, E X
-
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
WHO CLAIMS ALTERITY?
A
NOTE ON THE SERIES
In 1987, the Dia Art Foundation initiated a ical
discussion and debate through a
commitment
program of
to crit-
and
lectures
symposia, with related publications in some cases, called "Discussions in
Contemporary Culture." Events
ganized usually by
and
artists, scholars,
in the series are or-
critics
from outside the
Dia Foundation. More ambitious lectures or symposia are transcribed and edited, sometimes with related contributed essays,
furthering the "Discussions in Contemporary Culture" publication series.
We
look forward to the continuation of this series as
a chronicle for topics of
downtown Manhattan
concern to cultural communities
in
and, through our publications, to broader
national communities.
This
is
the fourth volume
we
have published.
lectures that took place over several
cludes several commissioned essays,
months all
It
documents and
in 1987-88,
ous perspectives alternatives to the received, standard, or
We
histories of different cultures, eras, ideas.
the lecturers
who
in-
of which treat from variofficial
are very grateful to
who
participated in the series and the writers
contributed to this publication for their research and thought on the question of "remaking" history.
The
entire project
was con-
ceived and organized by Barbara Kruger and Phil Mariani. Phil
Mariani also acted as coordinator of
this publication,
particularly grateful to her for her careful
The Dia
staff
lecture series
worked under pressure both and
and we are
and thoughtful work. in the planning of the
in the production of the publication.
We
also
thank Bethany Johns, our designer, and Thatcher Bailey, our publisher at Bay Press.
As always, the continued support of our programming by the Board of Directors of the Dia Foundation has
made
this
project possible.
Charles Wright
Executive Director
Dia Art Foundation vii
Barbara Kruger and
Phil
Mariani
INTRODUCTION
The Questions: What administers the euphoria of the panorama?
What
the souls of the dead?
What
is
is
the neatly voluptuous
plenitude which, arranging sequences and ordering events, locks in the world?
What
revels in the site of the so-called objective
with the abandon usually reserved for the body, but has no body? The Answer: History. There
is
only one answer because
there has purportedly been only one history: a bulky encapsulation of singularity, a univocal voice-over, an instructor of origin,
power, and mastery. History has been the text of the dead dictated to the living, through a voice
The
which cannot speak
ventriloquist that balances corpses
on
its
for
itself.
knee, that gives
speech to silence, and transforms bones and blood into reminiscences,
The
is
none other than the
teller of the story.
But what happens is
historian.
if
is
"history," but a chorus of
What might
commentaries, a crowd of reckonings. is
this: a display
the text.
the answer to the preceding questions
not a singular response which
tell
The keeper of
The worker of mute mouths.
of expository
be attempted
moments and happenings which
not only of events and proper names, but of their places
within a broader construct of forces and relations.
pens
when
hap-
the formalities and franchises of "history" are dis-
placed into a dispersal of stories? are their methodologies?
What
What
How
Who
has stories to
do they speak to
tell?
What
their readers?
are the tones of their voices? If
traditional history writing has
of collecting, ting. Still,
it
it
been
in a sense a process
has also been a process of marginalizing, omit-
speaks at us,
if
not
to us,
with the authority of
all
ix
The
discourses that seek to demonstrate cause-and-effect. several years have seen the
development of alternate
past
histories,
recoveries of neglected and "forgotten" cultures and the re-
cuperation of names and faces. Simultaneous with the elaboration of critical theories problematizing the construction of the subject
and the relationship between knowledge and power,
this
process of recovery has been essential to challenging masculinist
and Eurocentric visions
mote
that rely
on
linear narrative
The foundation of
totalizing concepts.
riography, the document, has
now become one
among many, and which ones
such questions
to
tell,
as race, gender, class,
itself,
and
is
trying to develop
which one works "to specify the conceive of
discontinuity. "
The new
institutional affiliation.
own
its
.
.
.
it,
a
"new form
theory" and one in
concepts that enable us to
is
not necessarily a History of the Vic-
notion of the "major" event.
It is
anti-
and questions the narratives of chronology.
cross-disciplinary:
its
of
And, one might add, difference.
historicism
tors. It disrupts the
hierarchical
bringing into focus
the voices of "others," the plurality of stories
has produced, as Foucault describes
history [that]
discursive text
the historian chooses for his or
her analysis becomes a crucial issue in
The awareness of
and pro-
traditional histo-
most productive
It is
tools of analysis are ori-
ginating in feminist literary-critical studies and in their rereadings of psychoanalytic texts; in poststructural, sociolinguistic
examinations of ideology construction and
its
operation through
the political, cultural, and social; out of cultural studies
from
the perspective of race and experiences of exclusion; and out of
power of the image,
a recognition of the
ological formations
and
its
its
centrality in ide-
usefulness in analyzing change
and
re-
formation. Official History, increasingly
putable fact through
One ies
x
site
its
repetitions
made
for
TV, becomes
indis-
and powerful alignments.
of struggle against this imperialism that colonizes bod-
and minds centers on the
text. Texts
empower; they grant
authority, tives has
and
their deconstruction
become
from race-gender perspec-
a kind of anti-imperialist strategy that has re-
verberations for political action.
This
work
is
ongoing and urgent. The confusion of
dis-
courses generated by the publication of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses is is
paradigmatic: a "fiction" that includes a critique of Islam
published in the West where racist attitudes toward Iranians
have been promoted and utilized with great profit over the past decade. This text provokes violent threats to the author from a religious counterrevolution that cannot bear to be criticized.
This text generates a spectrum of corroborations and dissenting opinions from Muslims worldwide. This text
is
presumably re-
sponsible for generating bloodshed that threatens the stability of
the regime of a female president of a incidentally,
Muslim country (who, co-
was the subject of one of the author's previous
books), that simultaneously, then, raises issues about Islamic
tudes toward
women and
atti-
the complicated conflation of Western
feminism and education with imperialism. This text becomes the focus of nightly
news accounts
as a struggle
between liberalism
and fundamentalism and their respective stands on "personal freedom," "individualism,"
etc.,
which
leaves little
room
for dis-
cussion of other possible social orders. Conventional methods of historical analysis
— which create polarities or tend to choose the
most "dramatic" moment or end
in the typical trajectory of
linearity — cannot excavate and disentangle
complicated
Which
much
of the
the voices in this
has been and continues to be the motivation behind
new
to speak, to focus
historical writing: to allow the
on the process and not
the scene and not just the individual, the figure.
all
text.
The new
history
is
chorus of voices
just the
moment, on
on the body and not
just
not only about the pain of the
past, or the struggles of the present, but implicitly
and
proposes inclusive definitions for democratic futures.
explicitly
REMAKING HISTORY
Edward W. Said
YEATS AND DECOLONIZATION
Yeats has
now been
almost completely assimilated to the canon
as well as the discourses of
modern
English literature, in addi-
tion to those of European high modernism. Both of these institutions of course reckon with
him
as a great
modern
Irish poet,
deeply affiliated and interacting with his native traditions, the
and
historical
dinarily
political context of his times,
complex
English. Nevertheless,
in
and despite
Yeats's
obvious and,
who
articu-
the experiences, the aspirations, and the vision of a people
suffering
under the dominion of an offshore power. From
perspective, Yeats ally
would
European modernism, he does present another fascinating
aspect: that of the indisputably great national poet lates
I
presence in Ireland, in British culture and literature,
say, settled
and
and the extraor-
situation of being a poet in Ireland writing in
considered
imperialism
a poet
is
his, that
now — that
twentieth centuries
who
this
belongs in a tradition not usu-
of the colonial world ruled by European is,
during the
late
nineteenth and early
— bringing to a climactic
insurrectionary
stage the massive upheaval of anti-imperialist resistance in the
colonies,
and of metropolitan anti-imperialist opposition
been called the age of decolonization.
way of
interpreting Yeats for those
not a customary
If this is
who know
that has
a great deal
more
about him as an Irish European modernist poet of immense ure than
am
I
sure to
do, then
many
I
I
others in the Third World, to belong naturally
to the other cultural domain, ize. If this also
stat-
can only say that he appears to me, and
sheds
more
which
light
I
shall
now
on the present
try to characterstatus of Yeats's
3
Edward W. Said
role in post-independence Ireland, then so
The age
of imperialism
in the late 1870s,
me
is
to be perfectly clear that there are
if
we
the better.
with the scramble for Africa. Yet
well as political indications that
Even
much
conventionally said to have begun
seems to
sorts of cultural as
all
began
it
it
a
good
deal earlier.
speak only about the eighteenth and nineteenth cen-
turies, Britain
and France, which dominate the history of Euro-
pean imperialism
until
World War
II
(Britain especially), are to
be found already present in those very territories that will
become formally
central during the heyday of imperialist ideol-
North
ogy. India,
later
and South
Africa, the Caribbean, Central
America, many parts of Africa, China and Japan, the Pacific chipelago, Malaysia, Australia,
ar-
North America, and of course
Ireland: all these are sites of contention well before 1870, either
between various
local resistance
pean powers themselves; stance, the
two
in
groups or between the Euro-
some
cases, India
struggles are going
and Africa for
1857, and long before the various European congresses Africa at the end of the century.
in-
on simultaneously long before
The point here
is
on
of course that
no matter how one wishes terminologically to demarcate high imperialism
— that period when everyone in Europe and Amer-
ica believed
him or
tional
herself in fact to be serving a high civiliza-
and commercial cause by having an empire
— from earlier
periods of overseas conquest, rapacity, and scientific exploration,
imperialism
and
itself
was
a continuous process for at least a century
a half before the scramble for Africa.
I
don't think
matters to an Indian or an Algerian that in the
first
it
much
half of the
nineteenth century he or she did not belong to the age of imperialism
whereas
their land
whom
after
1850 both of them
did.
For both of them,
was and had been dominated by an alien power
distant
hegemony over nonwhite peoples seemed
for
in-
scribed by right in the very fabric of European and Western
Christian society, whether that society was liberal, monarchical,
or revolutionary.
4
YEATS AND DECOLONIZATION
I
ism
would
itself
is
also
want to
domination from
seas
say that
and
a constitutively
modern European
earlier forms.
all
imperial-
radically different type of over-
Sheer scale and scope are
only part of the difference. Certainly neither Byzantium, nor
Rome, nor Athens, nor Baghdad, nor Spain and Portugal during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries controlled anything like the territories controlled
teenth century.
by Britain and France during the nine-
The more important
differences are
first
power
traordinary and sustained longevity of the disparity in
between Europe and
its
the ex-
and second, the massively
possessions,
organized rule, which affected the detail and not just the large outlines of
life,
of that power. By the beginning of the nine-
teenth century, Europe
begun the
— and in this Britain leads the way — had
industrial transformation of
its
economies; the feudal
and traditional landholding structures were changing; the new mercantilist pattern of overseas trade, naval power, and colonialist
settlement was firmly established; the bourgeois revolution
had
finally
entered
its
triumphant
stage. All these things gave the
ascendancy of metropolitan Europe over
its
far-flung
and distant
possessions a profile of imposing, and even daunting power. the beginning of
World War
some
cent of the earth's surface in This,
I
as the result of a distracted
came about
for a
whole
brary of systematic
work
that
It
sort of colonial subjugation.
hasten to add, did not happen in a
whimsy or
By
Europe and America held 85 per-
I,
fit
of absentminded
shopping spree.
series of reasons,
now
exists
which the
li-
on imperialism, begin-
ning with Hobson, Luxemburg, Schumpeter, and Lenin, has ascribed to largely economic and terized political processes.
the
somewhat ambiguously charac-
My own
theory,
book from which these comments
which
I
put forth in
are an extract,
is
that cul-
ture played a very important, indeed indispensable role. At the
heart of European culture during the
expansion
lay
what could be
called
many decades
of imperial
an undeterred and unrelent-
ing Eurocentrism. This accumulated experiences, territories,
5
Edward W. Said
peoples, histories,
them; but above
it
studied them,
all, it
it
them,
classified
it
verified
subordinated them to the culture and in-
deed the very idea of white Christian Europe. This cultural process has to be seen if not as the origin
the
vital,
and
cause, then at least as
informing, and invigorating counterpoint to the eco-
nomic and
political
machinery that we
center of imperialism.
And
it
must
centric culture relentlessly codified
concur stands
all
noted that
also be
at
this
the
Euro-
and observed everything
about the non-European or presumably peripheral world, in so
thorough and detailed a manner
as to leave
no item untouched,
no culture unstudied, no people and land unclaimed. subjugated peoples had
it
in
common
All of the
were considered
that they
to be naturally subservient to a superior, advanced, developed,
and morally mature Europe, whose world was to
role in the
rule, instruct, legislate, develop,
times, to discipline,
war
against,
non-European
and
at
the proper
and occasionally exterminate
non-Europeans.
From
these views that were held in Europe and America
there was no significant divergence from the Renaissance on,
and
a society as
embarrassing for us to remark that those elements of
if it is
empire
we
have long considered to be progressive were, so far
concerned, uniformly retrograde,
is
afraid to say
it.
When
vanced writers and
I
say "retrograde"
artists,
of the working
we
still
mustn't be
speak here of ad-
I
class,
and of women,
groups whose imperialist fervor increased in intensity and perfervid enthusiasm for the acquisition of
dominance over innumerable wogs,
as the
and sheer bloodthirsty
niggers, bog-dwellers, babus,
and
competition between various European and Ameri-
can powers also increased in brutality and senseless, even profitless,
control.
What is
enables us to say
theoreticians, militants, like Frantz
6
all
of those things retrospectively
the perspective provided for us in the twentieth century by
and insurgent analysts of imperialism
Fanon, Amilcar Cabral, C.
L. R.
James,
Aime
Cesaire,
YEATS AND DECOLONIZATION
Walter Rodney, plus many others
and on the other, by the great tion
think, belongs in this group, for
enough he commonly
card-carrying
him
sketch in
I
.
and
Senghor, Yeats. Yeats,
thought of
I
return to Yeats and the case the general
have been attempting hitherto. As imperialism increased
mounted. Indeed
I
would go so
Europe the accumulation on
colonial
a
world
far as saying that just as
scale that gathered the
domains systematically into the world market economy
was supported and enabled by
a culture giving
empire an
ide-
imperium there was
ological license, so too in the overseas
a
massive political, economic, and military resistance that was self carried
challenging culture of resistance. all
tive
in its
their historical, interpretive,
efforts to have identified the culture of resistance as
a cultural enterprise possessing a
power
has been the substantial
It
of the intellectuals, and of course of the
movements they worked with, by and analytic
it-
forward and informed by an actively provocative and
achievement of
own
right,
long tradition of integrity and
one not simply grasped
as a belated reac-
response to Western imperialism.
A rialism a
or
as a natural,
now complete
can
I
.
sorts of reasons, although
all
isn't
me
let
.
scope and in depth, so too, in the colonies themselves, the re-
sistance in
member. But
a little later, so that
the one hand,
like Tagore,
Darwish
Vallejo, Cesaire, Faiz,
strangely
them on
nationalist artists of decoloniza-
and revolutionary imperialism,
Neruda,
for
like
word
great deal, but by no
means
was conducted
name of
that has
ated ways, but
in the
been used
it still
in
all
all
of the resistance to impe-
nationalism. Nationalism
sorts of sloppy
and undifferenti-
serves quite adequately to identify the
bilizing force that coalesced into resistance against
many
and language. Yet
for
all its
mo-
an alien and
occupying empire on the part of peoples possessing history, religion,
is
a
common
success in ridding
countries and territories of colonial overlords, nationalism
has remained, in
my
opinion, a deeply problematic ideological, as
well as sociopolitical, enterprise. At
some
stage in the anti-
7
Edward W. Said
resistance phase of nationalism there
tween the two
were led by bourgeoisies
nationalist struggles
formed and
to
a sort of
is
dependence be-
sides of the contest, since after all
that
some degree produced by the
these are the national bourgeoisies of
many
of the
were partly
colonial power;
which Fanon spoke so
ominously. These bourgeoisies in effect have often replaced the
new
colonial force with a
class-based and ultimately exploitative
force; instead of liberation after decolonization
the old colonial structures replicated in
That
is
new
one problem with nationalism:
one simply gets
national terms.
its
results are writ-
ten across the formerly colonized world, usually in the fabrics of
newly independent
Ahmad
whose pathologies of power,
states
has called them, bedevil political
The other problem
is
common
ticipate in
a cooperative venture. it,
and both grow up
the salient traits of set
as
Eqbal
as
we
speak.
history of colonizer and colo-
movement
nized assumed by the nationalist all is
even
that the cultural horizons of nationalism
are fatally limited by the
after
life
itself.
Imperialism
Both the master and
in
it,
slave par-
One
albeit unequally.
modern imperialism
is
that in
of
most places
it
out quite consciously to modernize, develop, instruct, and
civilize the natives.
An
across five continents
entire massive chapter in cultural history
grows up out of
it.
The
annals of schools,
missions, universities, scholarly societies, hospitals in Asia, Africa, Latin
America, Europe, and North America
and have had the
effect over
fill its
pages,
time of establishing the so-called
modernizing trends in the colonial regions,
as well as
muting or
humanizing the harsher aspects of imperialist domination
them bridging
—
all
territories. In paying respect to
combined experiences same time note how
that
at its
it,
acknowledging the shared and
produced many of
center
it
us,
we must
at
the
nevertheless preserved the
nineteenth-century imperial divide between native and Westerner.
The
great colonial schools, for example, taught genera-
tions of the native bourgeoisie important truths about history,
8
of
the gap between imperial center and peripheral
YEATS AND DECOLONIZATION
science, culture.
And
out of that learning process millions
grasped the fundamentals of modern
life,
yet remained subordi-
nate dependents of an authority based elsewhere than in their
Since one of the purposes of colonial education was to pro-
lives.
mote the
history of France or Britain, that
demoted the
same education
also
There were always the Englands,
native history.
Word,
Frances, Germanys, Hollands as distant repositories of the for
all
the contradictions developed during the years of produc-
tive collaboration.
one
who
Stephen Dedalus
a
is
famous example of some-
discovers these facts with unusual force.
The culmination of
moment
this
dynamic of dependence
is, I
said a
ago, the resurgent nationalism of the various indepen-
dence movements. Right across the Third World (including land) in the period
1940s and 1950s,
from World War
new
I
and concluding
national states appear,
ing their independence
of
all
Ire-
in the
them
declar-
from the various European powers whose
rule of direct domination
had for various reasons come to an
end. Nationalism in India, Ireland, and Egypt, for example, was
rooted in the long-standing struggle for native rights and inde-
pendence by
nationalist parties like the Congress, Sinn Fein,
and
the Wafd. Similar processes occurred in other parts of Africa
and
Asia.
Bandung
Nehru, Nasser, Sukarno, Nkrumah: the pantheon of flourished, in
all its
suffering
and greatness, because of
the nationalist dynamic. Crucial works like K.
M.
Panikkar's Asia
and Western Dominance (1953), George Antonius's The Arab Awakening (1938), and the various works of the
were produced out of political
own
Irish Revival
Nevertheless, there were
it.
moments during
two
distinct
the nationalist revival, each with
its
imaginative culture, the second unthinkable both in politics
and history without the
first.
One was
the period of nationalist
anti-imperialism; the other, an era of liberationist antiimperialist resistance that often followed
it.
The
first
nounced awareness of European and Western culture alism, as a reflexive
moment
was
a pro-
as imperi-
of consciousness that enabled the
9
Edward W. Said
African, Caribbean, Irish, Latin American, or Asian citizen inch-
ing toward independence through decolonization to require a theoretical assertion of the
end of Europe's
cultural claim to
guide and/or instruct the non-European or nonmainland individual.
Often
was
this
first
done
as
Thomas Hodgkin
has argued,
"by prophets and priests," among them poets and visionaries, versions perhaps of Eric dissent.
Hobsbawm's
The second more openly
and
precapitalist protest
liberationist
during a dramatic prolongation after World
moment occurred
War
of the West-
II
ern imperial mission in various colonial regions, principal among
them
Algeria, Vietnam, Palestine, Ireland, Guinea, Cuba.
Whether tion, or
in
its
general statements such as the Indian constitu-
Pan-Arabism and Pan- Africanism, or in
forms such
its
particularist
as Cusack's Gaelic or Senghor's negritude, the na-
tionalism that formed the initial basis of the second
moment
stood revealed both as insufficient and yet as an absolutely crucial first step.
strong
new
Out of
paradox comes the idea of liberation, a
this
post-nationalist
theme which
is
already implicit in
the works of Connolly, Garvey, Marti, Mariategui, DuBois, for instance, but
sometimes requiring the propulsive infusion of
theory and sometimes armed, insurrectionary militancy to bring it
forward clearly and unmistakably. Let us look closely at the literature of the
ments, that of anti-imperialist resistance.
Its
first
of these
mo-
literature develops
quite consciously out of a desire to distance the native African, Indian, or Irish individual
American master. Before
from the this
British, French, or (later)
can be done, however, there
is
a
pressing need for the recovery of the land that because of the
presence of the colonizing outsider,
through the imagination.
Now
if
is
there
recoverable at is
distinguishes the imagination of anti-imperialism,
macy of
the geographical in
it.
first
only
anything that radically
Imperialism after
it is
all is
the pri-
an act of
geographical violence through which virtually every space in the
world
10
is
explored, charted, and finally brought under control.
YEATS AND DECOLONIZATION
For the native, the history of his/her colonial servitude rated by the loss to an outsider of the local place, crete geographical identity
somehow from
also
restored. a
is
whose con-
must thereafter be searched
From what? Not
just
from
inaugu-
and
for
foreigners, but
whole other agenda whose purpose and processes
are controlled elsewhere.
Let izing
is
me
important,
how ple
to
give three examples of
how complex and how
the geographical morte main of imperialism, and,
how
radical,
how
win back control of
heroic
one's
is
own
the effort needed some-
W.
Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe,
Crosby
says that
900-1900
away from Europe
America and Australia into images of what they process was never-ending, as a huge
and farming
diseases,
tions for the
matter.
system
A
it
into a
as
left
South
behind. This
plants, animals,
methods invaded the
new
place,
complete with
environmental imbalances, and traumatic disloca-
overpowered natives who had
changed ecology
that, in the eyes of the nationalist
seemed retrospectively
little
also introduced a
choice in the
changed
mythmaking went
life,
political
poet or visionary,
to have alienated the people
authentic traditions, ways of deal of
number of
as well as building
colony and gradually turned
new
(1986).
aim was to trans-
local habitat; their conscious
territories in places as far
crops,
exam-
first
Crosby, Ecological
wherever they went, Europeans immediately be-
gan to change the
form
The
territory.
offered in a recent study by Alfred
is
total-
more
from
political organizations.
their
A
great
into these retrospective decoloniza-
by which the land was seen again, revised so to speak,
tions,
state that
antedated
its
alienation by imperialism. But
in a
we must
not doubt the extent of the actual changes wrought by imperialism,
however much we
his or
fault
the nationalist poet and writer for
her excessive romanticism.
A
second example
by the Indian
is
to be
political theorist
found
in
an extraordinary book
and historian, Ranajit Guha,
Rule of Property for Bengal (1963). Guha's study
is
A
an account of
11
Edward W. Said
how
the Act of Permanent Settlement for Bengal was enacted in
1826
at
the instigation of Philip Francis, a functionary of the
Company.
East India
In a painstaking archeological investigation
of the legal decree that
made
all
the rents in Bengal permanent
and uniform, Guha describes the rope of so important a physiocrat;
ideas
were
in
Eu-
was
intellectual
he was also an Enlightenment rationalist whose
entirely Western, although they acquired the enforce-
able status in India of an unbreakable law. literal
worth of
toms of
to Indians the
— abstract, rationalistic,
— preempted and then displaced the traditional cus-
a
My
Thus
and produce was deter-
their land in currency
mined by Englishmen whose thought inflexible
background
a piece of legislation for India. Francis
complex native last
example
society.
also derives
from recent
research. In his
book Uneven Development (1984), the geographer Neil Smith provides a brilliant formulation of lar
how
the production of a particu-
kind of nature and space under historical capitalism
essential to the
unequal development of
is
a landscape that inte-
grates poverty with wealth, industrial urbanization with agricul-
The culmination of
tural diminishment.
this
process
is
imperialism, which achieves the domination, classification, and universal commodification of
metropolitan center.
Its
all
space,
under the
cultural analogue
is
phy, whose perspectives (for example in the
Mackinder and George Chisolm) sult of
aegis of the
commercial geogra-
work of Halford
J.
justified imperialism as the re-
"natural" fertility or infertility, of available sea lanes, of
permanently differentiated zones, ples (p. 102).
ism," which
Thus is
is
territories, climates,
"the differentiation of national space according to
the territorial division of labor"
(p.
146).
Following Hegel, Marx, and Lukacs, Smith duction of
and peo-
accomplished "the universality of capital-
this scientifically "natural"
calls
the pro-
world, a second nature. To
the imagination of anti-imperialism, our space at
home
in the pe-
ripheries has been usurped and put to use by outsiders for their
12
YEATS AND DECOLONIZATION
purpose.
therefore necessary to seek out, to map, to invent,
It is
or to discover a third nature, which historical
("Romantic
one which derives
Ireland's
not pristine and pre-
is
dead and gone"
poems
and among
collected in
its
most
on the
me
Antilles, Faiz
the color of face
And
the
The
light of heart
The
salt
warmth
of body,
and
eye,
of bread and earth
the
new
.
.
.
ally
grounded on
the Motherland.
and
a
whole
more congenial
vided by colonial history, for a
23)
(p.
set of further
them
identifications, all of
quite liter-
The
this poetically projected base.
authenticity, for a
and
comes
territoriality there
assertions, recoveries,
on
Palestine:
— "A Lover from Palestine" With
call car-
"The Rose," Neruda's various poems chart-
and Darwish on
Restore to
what we might
is
striking examples are Yeats's early
ing the Chilean landscape, Cesaire Pakistan,
but
and abductively from the depriva-
historically
tions of the present. This impulse then tographic,
says Yeats)
search for
national origin than that pro-
new pantheon
religions, these too are enabled
of heroes, myths,
by the land.
And
along with
these nationalistic adumbrations of the decolonized identity,
there always goes an almost magically inspired, quasi-alchemical
redevelopment of the native language. Yeats ing here.
He
shares with Caribbean and
the predicament of a lord,
common
and of course he belongs
Protestant Ascendancy
were confused. There
from
whose is,
I
is
especially interest-
some African writers
language with the colonial overin
many important ways
Irish loyalties, to
put
with
its
Celtic preoccupations
themes, to his later systematic mythologies as set
Vision.
like
to the
mildly,
think, a fairly logical progression then
Yeats's early Gaelicism,
grammatic poems
it
"Ego Dominus Tuus" and
down
and
in pro-
in the treatise
A
For Yeats the overlappings he knew existed between his
Irish nationalism
and the English cultural heritage
that both
13
Edward W. Said
dominated and empowered him an overheated tension, and
and secular tension
litical
try to resolve
it
on
it is
that
as a writer
was bound to cause
the pressure of this urgently po-
one may speculate caused him to
a "higher," that
nonpolitical level.
is,
Thus
the deeply eccentric and aestheticized histories he produced in
and the
Vision
tension to an extra-worldly
what must stand
In
count of vivals
poems
later quasi-religious
A
are elevations of the
level.
as the
most interesting and Seamus Deane
Yeats's idea of revolution,
brilliant ac-
in Celtic Re-
(1985) has suggested that Yeats's early and invented Ireland
was "amenable to
his imagination
finding an Ireland recalcitrant to
.
.
.
it."
[whereas] he ended by
Whenever
Yeats tried to
— as in "The — the results, Deane says correctly, are strained. Because
reconcile his occultist views with an actual Ireland Statues"
Yeats's Ireland
Ireland's
was
a revolutionary country, Yeats
backwardness
was
able to use
as the source of its radically disturbing,
disruptive return to spiritual ideals that had been lost to an
overdeveloped modern Europe. Moreover, in such dramatic realities as
the Easter 1916 uprising, Yeats also saw the breaking of a
cycle of endless, perhaps finally meaningless recurrence, as
sym-
bolized by the apparently limitless travails of Cuchulain. Deane's
theory therefore
is
that the birth of an Irish national identity co-
incides for Yeats with the breaking of the cycle, although
it
also
underscores and reinforces the colonialist British attitude of a specific Irish national character.
and
his recourse to fascism,
linings of the colonial
Thus
Deane
Yeats's
return to mysticism
says perceptively, are
under-
predicament to be found, for example, in
V. S. Naipaul's representations of India, that of a culture indebted
to the
mother country
for
its
own
and
self
for a sense of
"En-
glishness" and yet turning towards the colony: "such a search for a national signature
becomes
ferent histories of the a search has
been
two
colonial,
islands.
Yeats's poetry."
on account of the
The
dif-
greatest flowering of such
And Deane
goes on to con-
clude that far from representing an outdated nationalism, Yeats's
14
YEATS AND DECOLONIZATION
willful
mysticism and incoherence do embody a revolutionary
potential in the poet's insistence "that Ireland should retain
culture by keeping awake tions." In a
its
world from which the harsh strains of capitalism has
removed thought and
poet
reflection, a
who can
stimulate a
sense of the eternal and of death into consciousness
whose
rebel, a figure tive
colonial diminishments spur
is
the true
him
to a nega-
apprehension of his society and of "civilized" modernity. This
final
Adornian formulation of
appears to the contemporary critic is
its
consciousness of metaphysical ques-
attractive. Yet
Yeats's
quandary
as
it
of course powerful and
is
might we not suspect
it
a little of
it
wanting to
excuse Yeats's unacceptable and indigestible reactionary politics
— his outright fascism, his fantasies of old homes and — by seeking to
families, his incoherently occult divagations
translate
them
into an instance of Adorno's "negative dialectic,"
thereby rendering Yeats more heroic than a crudely political reading would have suggested? As a small corrective to Deane's conclusion, could larly
we
not more accurately see in Yeats a particu-
exacerbated example of the
nativist (e.g., nigritude)
phenom-
enon, which has flourished elsewhere as a result of the colonial encounter?
Now
it is
true that the connections are closer between
England and Ireland than between England and India, or France
and Senegal. But the imperial relationship
The colonized may have
a sense of
is
there in
all
cases.
England and France, speak and
write in the dominant language even as he or she tries simultaneously to recover a native original,
may even
ways that
act in
directly conflict with the overall interests of his/her people, still
the divide remains. This,
it
seems to me, has always been
the case in every colonial relationship, because principle of imperialism that there erarchical distinction
is
And
it
it is
a clear-cut
between ruler and
the
first
and absolute
hi-
ruled. Nativism, alas,
reinforces the distinction by revaluating the
vient partner.
and
weaker or subser-
has often led to compelling but often
dem-
15
Edward W. Said
agogic assertions about a native past, history, or actuality that
seems to stand free not only of the colonizer but of worldly time itself.
One
sees the drive backwards in such enterprises as
Senghor's nigritude, or in Soyinka's explorations of the African
movement, or
past, or in the Rastafarian
tion, or
in the Garveyite solu-
through the Islamic world, the rediscoveries of
all
vari-
ous unsullied, precolonial Muslim essences.
Even
if
we
tremendous
leave aside the
be found in nativism (for example, in tosis,
1984), there are
two reasons
for rejecting, or at least re-
conceiving, the nativist enterprise.
incoherent and yet, by
its
its
says that
it is
seems to me, if
is
to
into the
fall
nativism were the only alter-
and decolonizing nationalism. The main
reason therefore to refuse
dence of
it
too willingly, as
native for a resisting
Deane
negation of politics and history, also
heroically revolutionary. That, nativist position
Jalal
ressentiment often to
Al Ahmad's Occiden-
it is
rather that
ravages elsewhere to regard
charity: to accept nativism
it
we
have enough evi-
today with very
much
to accept the consequences of im-
is
perialism too willingly, to accept the very racial, religious, and political divisions
imposed on places
like Ireland, India,
Lebanon, and Palestine by imperialism ical
itself.
world for the metaphysics of essences
ness, Islam,
and Catholicism
Most often
this
often led to
is,
abandonment
some
in a
it
leave the histor-
word, to abandon history.
in the post-imperial setting has
sort of millenarianism,
any sort of mass base, or
To
like negritude, Irish-
if
the
movement
has
has degenerated into small-scale pri-
vate craziness, or into an unthinking acceptance of stereotypes,
myths, animosities, and traditions encouraged by imperialism.
No
one needs to be reminded that such programs are hardly
what great resistance movements had imagined
The other reason now Yeats's case as
for
tempering the
as their goals.
nativist and, in
formulated by Deane, the specifically Irish colonial
attitude with a decent admixture of secular skepticism,
course that nativism
16
is
not the only alternative. Here
I
is
of
return to
YEATS AND DECOLONIZATION
what
I
said at the outset, that the first
imperialism brought forth
pendence movements
the various nationalist and inde-
all
still
bulence in
continues with us, and
many
instances
perialism courses on, as
it
still
disman-
and the birth of many new
throughout the world. The second
however,
of resistance to
that culminated in the large-scale
tling of the great classical empires, states
moment
its
moment
(liberation),
complexities and tur-
defy resolution. In this phase, im-
were, belatedly and in different forms
perhaps, but the relationship of domination continues. Even
though there was an in fact partially
for
it is
Irish
Free State by the end of his
belonged to
his sustained anti-British sentiment.
the experiences of
nam, Cuba,
numerous
Palestine,
life,
And we know from
colonial regions
— Algeria, Viet— that the strug-
South Africa, and others
gle for release continued.
in this
It is
phase that
I
would
suggest that liberation, and not nationalist independence,
new
Yeats
second moment; the evidence
this
alternative, liberation that
by
its
like to is
the
very nature involves, in
Fanon's words, a transformation of social consciousness beyond national consciousness.
From
the perspective of liberation then, Yeats's slide into
incoherence and mysticism, his rejection of
politics,
rogant but often charming espousal of fascism (or
if
and
his ar-
not fascism
then authoritarianism, perhaps even of the South American kind) appear as something not to be excused, something that
should not too quickly and alchemically be dialecticized into the negative Utopian easily situate
and
mode. Later
I
want to argue
criticize those
that
one can quite
unacceptable attitudes of Yeats
without throwing out the baby with the bath water, without changing one's view of Yeats the
moment,
nativism
is
I
should like to
as a
poet of decolonization. But for
make
the case that the
way beyond
figured in the great turn at the climax of Cesaire's
Cahier d'un retour au pays natal,
when
the poet realizes that, after
the rediscovery and reexperiencing of his past, after reentering the passions, horrors, and circumstances of his history as a black,
17
— Edward W. Said
and then emptying himself of
after feeling
his anger, after
accepting J'accepte
ma
.
.
j'accepte
.
.
.
.
entierement, sans reserve
race qu'aucune ablution d'hypsope et de lys meles
ne pourrait purifier
ma ma I
race rongee de macules
mur pour
race raisin
accept ...
my
I
accept
.
.
.
pieds ivres (p. 72) totally,
without reservation
race that no ablution of hyssop mixed with
lilies
could purify
my my
— after
race pitted with blemishes
race a ripe grape for drunken feet
all this
"comme un il
he
is
suddenly assailed by strength and
life
taureau," and begins to understand that
n'est point vrai
que l'oeuvre de l'homme
que nous n'avons rien
a faire au
que nous parasitons
monde
qu'il suffit
le
est finie
monde
que nous nous mettions au pas du monde
mais l'oeuvre de l'homme vient seulement de
commencer et
il
reste a
l'homme
a
conquerir toute interdiction im-
mobilisee aux coins de sa ferveur et aucune race ne possede
le
monopole de
la
beaute, de l'intelligence, de
la
force
est place
pour tous au rendez-vous de
et
il
et
nous nous savons maintenant que
tour de notre terre eclairant
la
la
le soleil
conquete tourne au-
parcelle qu'a fixee notre
volonte seule et que toute etoile chute de ciel en terre a
commandement for
it is
that
we
sans limite. (p. 76)
not true that the work of
man
is
have no business being on earth
done
YEATS AND DECOLONIZATION
that
we
that
it is
parasite the
enough
world
for us to heel to the
world
whereas the work has only begun
and man
wedged
still
must overcome
the interdictions
all
in the recesses of his fervor
monopoly on and there
beauty,
room
is
conquest and
on
and no race has
intelligence,
a
on strength
for everyone at the convocation of
we know now
that the sun turns
around
our earth lighting the parcel designated by our will alone
and
that every star
nipotent
The
falls
from sky
to earth at our
om-
command.
striking part of this are phrases like "a conquerir toute in-
terdiction immobilisee aux coins de sa ferveur" and "le soleil eclairant la parcelle qu'a fixee notre volonte seule."
give in to the rigidity
move through them rendez-vous de
la
race,
moment, or
to an animated
milieu; instead,
don't
mean
sistance,
passe.
more
fully to associate a
etc.
Seamus major strand
poetry both with the poetry of decolonization and re-
and with the
historical alternatives to the nativist im-
For in so many other ways, Yeats
is
very
much
the same as
other poets resisting imperialism in his insistence on a rative for his people, his
enthusiasm for
its felt
the celebration and
about a
you
and expanded sense of "au
to use Cesaire against Yeats (or
Deane's Yeats), but rather in Yeats's
.
conquete," which necessarily involves more
than your Ireland, your Martinique, your Pakistan, I
.
and interdictions of those self-imposed
come with
limitations that
.
You don't
new
anger
at
new
nar-
the scheme for partition (and
opposite, the requirement of wholeness),
commemoration of violence
in bringing
order, and the sinuous interweaving of loyalty
and
betrayal in the nationalist setting. Yeats's direct association with
Parnell
and O'Leary, with the Abbey Theatre, with the Easter
Uprising, bring to his poetry what R.
from Jung,
calls
P.
Blackmur, borrowing
"the terrible ambiguity of an immediate experi-
19
Edward W. Said
ence." As one reads Yeats's
work
into the early twenties, there
is
an uncanny resemblance to the engagement and ambiguities of Darwish's Palestinian poetry half a century ings of violence, of the
later, in its
render-
overwhelming suddenness and surprises
of historical events, of the role of politics and poetry, as opposed
and guns
to violence
(see
"Roses and Dictionaries"), of the
search for respites after the
sky flown
in.
last
border has been crossed, the
"The holy centaurs of the
hills
last
are vanished," says
Yeats sixty years earlier, "I have nothing but the embittered sun.
One
feels in
reading poems like "Nineteen Hundred and
Nineteen" or "Easter 1916," and "September 1913," not the disappointments of
life
commanded by
"the greasy
just
or
till"
the violence of roads and horses, of "weasels fighting in a hole,"
but also of a terrible
community,
also of its fine it,
beauty that changes utterly the old po-
and moral landscape. Like
litical
Yeats struggles to ideal
new
all
the poets of decolonization,
announce the contours of an "imagined" or crystallized not only
by
its
sense of itself but
enemy. Imagined community, Benedict Anderson's
phrase for emergent nationalism,
so long as
we
is
apt here as
I
have used
are not obliged to accept his mistakenly linear
periodization of unofficial and official nationalism. In the cultural discourses of decolonization, a great ries,
forms
circulate.
many
languages, histo-
As Barbara Harlow has shown
in Resistance
Literature (1987), there are spiritual autobiographies,
protest, prison
them
all is
a sense of the instability of time,
made and remade by Yeats's
the people and
its
which has to be
leaders.
accounts of his great cycles invoke this
the easy
commerce
speech, folk
tale,
Eliot called the
poems of
memoirs, didactic dramas of deliverance, but in
in his poetry
The
shifts in
instability, as
does
between popular and formal
and learned writing. The disquiet of what
T. S.
"cunning history, [and] contrived corridors" of
— the wrong turns, the overlap, the senseless repetition, the occasionally glorious moment — furnish Yeats, as they do history
all
20
YEATS AND DECOLONIZATION
the poets of decolonization, with stern martial accents, heroism,
and the grinding persistence of "the uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor."
II
In the
volume of
first
his
memoirs, Neruda speaks of a writer's
congress in Madrid held in 1937 in defense of the Republic. "Priceless replies" to the invitations
One was from
"poured
from
in
Yeats, Ireland's national poet; another,
all
over.
from
Selma Lagerlof, the notable Swedish writer. They were both too
which was
old to travel to a beleaguered city like Madrid, ily
stead-
being pounded by bombs, but they rallied to the defense of
comes
the Spanish Republic" (Memoirs, p. 130). This passage
someone who,
surprise to
like myself,
by Conor Cruise O'Brien's famous account of essay
when
whose claims
are,
it
as a
had once been influenced an
Yeats's politics,
seems to me, hopelessly inadequate
contrasted with the information and analysis put forward
by Elizabeth Cullingford's also refers to the
saw no
Neruda
Yeats, Ireland
and Fascism (1981) (which
difficulty in thinking of himself as a
with internal colonialism
in Chile
we
throughout Latin America,
an Irish poet with more than plications.
Neruda takes him
the Irish nation in
its
war
Neruda himself
recollection). Just as
poet
who
dealt both
and with external imperialism
should think of Yeats,
strictly local Irish as a national
poet
I
believe, as
meaning and ap-
who
represents
against tyranny and, according to
Neruda, Yeats responded positively to that unmistakably fascist call, despite his
anti-
frequently cited dispositions towards Eu-
ropean fascism.
There
is
a justly
famous poem, "El pueblo," by Neruda in
the 1962 collection Plenos Poderes (a collection translated by Alastair Reid,
whose version
I
have used, as Fully Empowered, 1975).
The resemblance between Neruda's poem and erman"
is
striking, because in
an anonymous
man
Yeats's
"The
Fish-
both poems the central figure
of the people,
who
in his strength
is
and lone-
21
Edward W. Said
liness
is
mute expression of the
also a
began/ To day for
I'd
up
call
race/
And
What
I
that
man, and when
still
had eyes
when
I
still
had
I
sought him
pressing his
in
a voice
among
arm
I
could
the tombs and
that
still
was not
let
said to him,
still
be
living.
is
yours."
no one be perturbed when
I
seem
I
am
and am not alone;
to be alone
not without company and
Someone
is
But those
I
hearing
me
I
speak for
without knowing
sing of, those
go on being born and
The poetic
I
dust:
set fire to life.
You made what So
I
All
my head, in my throat,
"Everything will pass, you will
You
this qual-
had hoped 'twould be/ To write
I
knew
it is
long since
the reality." Neruda:
when
I
is
and simple man./
to the eyes/ This wise
look in the face/
my own
people; and
the poet in his work. Yeats: "It
ity that inspires
all.
it,
who know,
will overflow the world, (p. 131)
calling develops out of a pact
made between people
and poet; hence the power of such invocations to an actual
poem as those provided by the popular but silent figures men seem to require. But the chain does not stop there, Neruda goes on
(in
"Deber
me, freedom and the sea/ heart," and Yeats in
del Poeta") to claim that
will call in
both since
"through
answer to the shrouded
"The Tower" speaks of sending imagination
forth "and call images and
memories/ From ruins or from an-
cient trees." Yet because such protocols of exhortation
and ex-
pansiveness are announced from under the shadow of
domination,
we would
not be
wrong
to connect
them with
the
new, and perhaps even underground narrative of liberation depicted so
memorably
in Fanon's Wretched of the Earth (1963).
whereas the divisions and separations of the colonial order
22
For
YEATS AND DECOLONIZATION
freeze the population's captivity into a sullen torpor, lets
.
.
.
ples" (p. 59).
Fanon
out-
specifies such things as declarations of the
man, clamors
rights of
for free speech, trade
union demands;
the violent confrontation escalates, there
later, as
new
"new
engender new aims for the violence of colonized peo-
is
an entirely
history that unfolds subterraneously, as a revolutionary class
of militants,
drawn from the ranks of the urban poor, the out-
casts, criminals,
and
declasses,
slowly to form cells of
armed
takes to the countryside, there activists,
who
return to the city
for the final stages of the insurgency.
The extraordinary power of Fanon's writing presented
as a surreptitious
ground force of the colonial regime, which Fanon's narrative
is
is, I
it is
in the teleology of
The
certain to be defeated.
tween Fanon and Yeats
that
is
counternarrative to the above-
difference be-
and
think, that Fanon's theoretical
perhaps even metaphysical narrative of anti-imperialist decolonization
is
cadenced and stressed from beginning to end with
the accents and inflections of liberation. Fanon's that anticipated triumph, liberation,
moment whose at
a discourse of
which marks the second
of decolonization. Yeats, on the other hand,
early
work sounds the
the very threshold
wrong
is
it
nationalist note
a
is
and stands
cannot actually ever cross. Yet
poet finally
it is
not
to interpret Yeats as in his poetry setting a trajectory in
common
with other poets of decolonization,
like
Neruda and
Darwish, which he could not complete, even though perhaps they could go further than he did. This
at least gives
him
credit,
for
adumbrating the liberationist and Utopian revolutionalism in
his
poetry that had been belied, and to some extent canceled
out,
by
his late reactionary politics.
It is
years as
He
is
interesting that Yeats has often
been cited
someone whose poetry warned of
in recent
nationalist excesses.
quoted without attribution, for example, in Gary
book, All
Fall
Down
(1985),
on the Carter
ling of the Iranian hostage crisis, 1979-81;
Sick's
administration's hand-
and
I
can distinctly
23
Edward W. Said
New
recall that the
York Times
correspondent in Beirut in
1975-76, James Markham, quotes the same passages from "The
Second Coming" Lebanese hold"
"Things
in 1977.
one phrase. The other
is
while the worst/ Are
ham both tide
he did about the onset of the
in a piece
war
civil
full
is
apart; the centre cannot
fall
"The
best lack
all
conviction,
of passionate intensity." Sick and Mark-
write as Americans frightened of the revolutionary
sweeping through a Third World once contained by West-
ern power. Their use of Yeats you're
doomed
to a frenzy
is
minatory: remain orderly, or
you cannot control. As to how,
an
in
inflamed colonial situation, the colonized are supposed to remain orderly and civilized
— given that the colonial order has long and has long since been discredited
since profited the oppressor
— neither Sick nor Markham
in the eyes of the colonized
They simply assume
that Yeats, in any event,
against the revolution.
It's
as if
both
men
is
on our
tells us.
side,
could never have
thought to take the current disorder back to the colonial intervention
itself,
which
is
what Chinua Achebe does
in 1958, in his
great novel, Things Fall Apart.
The
point,
I
believe,
precisely as he imagines
greatest decolonizing
is
that Yeats
and renders
works quite
at his
is
that very
literally
most powerful
moment
His
itself.
conceive of the birth
of violence, or the violent birth of change, as in "Leda and the
Swan," instants
at
which there
presented to his colonial eyes that, the
is
a blinding flash of simultaneity
— the
question "did she put on
girl's
his
power/Before the indifferent beak could uates himself at that juncture
rape,
and alongside
knowledge with let
his
her drop?" Yeats
where the violence of change
sit-
is
unarguable, but where the results of the violence beseech necessary, if
not always sufficient, reason.
greatest
theme
in the
far as decolonization
More
precisely, Yeats's
poetry that culminates in The Tower is
concerned,
ble violence of the colonial conflict
how
is,
so
to reconcile the inevita-
with the everyday
politics of
an ongoing national struggle, and also with the power of each of
24
YEATS AND DECOLONIZATION
the various parties in the colonial conflict, with the discourse of reason, of persuasion, of organization, with the requirements of
some point violence
poetry. Yeats's prophetic perception that at
cannot be enough and that the strategies of politics and reason
must come into play
nouncement
is,
my
to
knowledge, the
first
important an-
in the context of decolonization of the
need to
bal-
ance violent force with an exigent political and organizational process. Fanon's assertion, almost half a century later than Yeats, that liberation cannot be accomplished simply
(though he
says,
"Even the wisest
man grows
sort of violence"), underlines the importance
by seizing power tense with
some
of Yeats's insight.
That neither Yeats nor Fanon offers a prescription for undertaking the transition tion
when
a
new
from
direct force to a period after decoloniza-
political
part of the difficulty
we
order achieves moral hegemony,
live
with today
is
in Ireland, Asia, Africa,
the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Middle East.
How
one can assure the marriage of knowledge to power,
or of understanding with violence, are themes in Antonio sci's
work, undertaken and
elaborated in a
text. In the Irish colonial setting, Yeats
Gram-
wholly different con-
can only pose and re-
pose the question provocatively, using his poetry, Blackmur as a
technique of trouble. Yeats goes somewhat further than ask-
ing questions, however, in great like
says,
"Among
poems of summation and
vision
School Children," "The Tower," "A Prayer For
My
Daughter," "Under Ben Bulben," and "The Circus Animals' Desertion." These are
poems most eminently
of genealogy and
recapitulation of course. In the colonial context their significance is
that they reverse the slenderizing, the reductiveness,
and the
slanderous encapsulation of Irish actualities that, according to a
very learned book by Joseph Leerssen (Mere 1986),
had been the
fate of the Irish at the
Irish
and Fior-Ghael,
hands of English
writers for eight centuries. Displacing ahistorical rubrics such as "potato-eaters," or "bog-dwellers," or "shanty people," Yeats's
poetry joins his people to
its
history, the
more
imperatively in
25
Edward W. Said
man," or
that as father, or as "sixty year old smiling public
as
son and husband, the poet assumes that the narrative and density of personal experience are equivalent to the experience of his people.
The range of
"Among
references in the closing strophes of
School Children" suggests that Yeats was reminding his
audience that history and the nation were not separable, any
more than
a dancer
was separate from the dance.
The power of Yeats's accomplishment
in restoring a sup-
pressed history, and rejoining the nation to
when we
matic
Colonialism
the native's brain
perverted logic, torts, disfigures,
What
Fanon:
not satisfied merely with holding a people in
is
and emptying
recall
it
its
and
turns to the past of the oppressed people,
and
destroys
it.
grip
of aliform and content. By a kind of
(p.
dis-
210)
the efforts of Mangan, Ferguson, and Dinneen did in the
of cultural nationalism, Yeats does after
field
rendered dra-
it, is
more
challenging way.
He
rises
from the
them
in another,
personal expe-
level of
rience to that of national archetype, without losing the
diacy of the former or the stature of the
imme-
Moreover
latter.
Yeats's
unerring choice of genealogical fables and figures speaks to another aspect of colonialism, as described by Fanon: for separating the individual
from
his or
her
own
its
capacity
instinctual
life,
thereby breaking the generative lineaments of the national identity:
On
the unconscious plane, colonialism therefore did not seek to be con-
sidered by the native as a gentle loving mother
from
who
a hostile environment, but rather as a mother
strains her fundamentally perverse offspring from
suicide
and from giving free
its
biology,
and
its
managing
rein to its evil instincts.
mother protects her child from ogy,
protects her child
who unceasingly
itself
from
its ego,
own unhappiness which
commit
The colonial
and from
is its
to
its
physiol-
very essence.
In such a situation the claims of the native intellectual [and
26
re-
YEATS AND DECOLONIZATION
poet] are not a luxury but a necessity in any coherent program. The
who
native intellectual .
.
.
who
body,
is
takes
up arms
willing to strip himself
to defend his nation's legitimacy,
naked
to study the history
of
his
obliged to dissect the heart of his people, (p. 211)
is
No wonder
that Yeats instructed Irish poets to
Scorn the sort
now growing up
All out of shape
from toe to
top,
Their unremembering hearts and heads
Base-born products of base beds.
That
in the process, again
according to Blackmur, Yeats ended
up creating not individuals but types
come
the abstractions
that "cannot quite over-
from which they sprang"
(p.
to the extent that the decolonizing program and
its
118)
is
true
background
in the history of Ireland's subjugation are ignored, as
Blackmur
was wont to do
and yet so
ahistorically.
we
in interpreting poetry so masterfully
When
the colonial realities are taken into account,
get "insight and experience," and not merely "the allegorical
simulacrum churned with action" ever, that Yeats's full
lay
And when
it
in the
from what he would is
how-
symbolizes his understandable
from the colonial turbulence before
at-
his
Byzantium poems he asks to be gathered
into the artifice of eternity, the
malade"
will confess,
hold of an extremely distant and extremely orderly
reality felt as a refuge eyes.
I
system of cycles, pernes, and gyres in any
case seems important only as
tempts to
(p. 119).
later call
even more starkly
need for respite from age and
"the struggle of the at
work. Otherwise
fly it is
in
mar-
difficult to
read most of Yeats and not feel that the devastating anger and genius of Swift were harnessed by
him
Ireland's colonial afflictions. True, Yeats
to lifting the burdens of
stopped short of imag-
ining the full political liberation he might have aspired toward,
but
we
are left with a considerable achievement in decoloniza-
tion nonetheless.
27
Edward W. Said
Selected Bibliography of Works Cited
Achebe, Chinua. Things
Ahmad,
Berkeley:
Mizan
London: Heinemann, 1958.
Fall Apart.
Jalal Ali. Occidentosis:
A
Robert Campbell.
Plague from the West. Trans.
Press, 1984.
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities:
Reflections on the Origin
and Spread of
London: Verso, 1983.
Nationalism.
Antonius, George. The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National Movement.
London: H. Hamilton, 1938. Blackmur, R.
P. Selected Essays
of R.
P.
Blackmur. Ed. Denis
New
Donoghue.
York:
Ecco Press, 1985. Cabral, Amilcar. Return
to the Source: Selected Speeches.
New
York: Monthly Review
Press, 1973.
Eshleman and
Cesaire, Aime. The Collected Poetry, 1939-1976. Trans. Clayton
Annette Smith. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Crosby, Alfred
W.
Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe,
900-1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Cullingford, Elizabeth.
Yeats, Ireland
and
Fascism.
New
New
York:
York University
Press, 1981.
Darwish, Mahmud.
Victims of a
Map. Trans. Abdullah al-Udhari. London: Al Saqi
Books, 1984.
Deane, Seamus.
Celtic Revivals: Essays in
Modern
Irish Literature,
880- 1980. Lon-
1
don: Faber and Faber, 1985.
DuBois,
W.
and Democracy: Colonies and
E. B. Color
New
Peace.
York: Harcourt,
Brace and Company. 1945. Faiz, Faiz
Ahmad. Poems
by Faiz. Trans. V. G. Kiernan. London: Allen
& Unwin,
1971. Faiz, Faiz
Ahmad. The
True Subject: Selected Poems of Faiz
Ahmed
Faiz.
Trans.
Naomi
Lazard. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the
Earth.
New
York: Grove Press, 1963.
Garvey, Marcus. Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey. 2
vols.
New
York:
Arno
Press, 1968-1969.
Gramsci, Antonio. thews.
New
Guha, Ranajit.
A
ment. Paris:
Harlow, Barbara.
Selections from Political Writings,
Rule of Property for Bengal:
Hill,
An
Essay on the Idea of Permanent Settle-
Mouton, 1963. Resistance Literature.
James, C. L. R. The Future
rence
1910-1920. Trans. John Mat-
York: International Publishers, 1977.
New
York and London: Methuen, 1987.
in the Present: Selected Writings.
Westport, Conn.: Law-
1977.
Mariategui, Jose. Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality. Trans. Marjory Urquidi. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971.
28
YEATS AND DECOLONIZATION
New
Marti, Jose. Major Poems. Trans. Elinor Randall.
York:
Holmes Meier Pub-
lishers, 1982.
Marti, Jose. Marti on
Southern Neruda, Pablo.
the U.S.A.
Illinois
Selected and trans. Luis A. Baralt. Carbondale:
University Press, 1966.
Fully Empowered. Trans. Alastair
Reed.
New
York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 1975. O'Brien, Conor Cruise. Writers and Panikkar, K.
M.
Politics.
Asia and Western Dominance:
Asian History, 1498-1945.
New
ed.
New A
York: Pantheon Books, 1965.
Survey of the Vasco da
London: Allen
Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped
Africa.
& Unwin,
Gama Epoch of 1965.
Washington, D.C.: Howard
University Press, 1972.
Senghor,
L. S. Liberte, Vol.
1:
Nigritude
et
humanisme. Paris: Editions
du
Seuil,
1964.
Smith, Neil. Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984.
29
Paula A. Treichler
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
WORLD:
IN
THE THIRD
WORLD CHRONICLE
A FIRST
my
struggle to read
and interpret widely
contradictory reports about
AIDS and HIV
infection in the
This essay grows out of
Third World. At firsthand
more
I
first
attributed this struggle to
I
knowledge of the regions
read, the less this
clear that understanding
volves understanding
it
seemed
AIDS
I
to be the issue.
as a
my
lack of
was reading about. But the
While
it is
medical phenomenon in-
as a culturally specific
phenomenon,
it is
also clear that excessively positivist notions of cultural specificity limit
our
ability to
AIDS
recognize
as a
complex, contradictory,
and multilayered discursive construction. Even Western commentators
who
struction of
readily acknowledge the multiply-complex con-
AIDS
single materially
in the First
World
habitually imagine that a
grounded truth about AIDS can be established
for the
Third World. This essay accordingly explores the ques-
tion of
how we
are to
make
the Third World, focusing
AIDS and HIV
sense of
on
epidemic.
I
first
recent analyses of
and conceptualize the
discuss the general question of
course, then use an essay about cursive construction of Third
AIDS
World
selected First and Third
publications that attempt to chronicle
AIDS
infection in
AIDS
AIDS
dis-
in Haiti to explore the dis-
World AIDS.
I
review several
internationally, contrasting the statistical
chronicle of the epidemic with alternative constructions; these
examples show
how
differing conceptualizations can
promote
differing material consequences. Further, however, the produc-
tion of knowledge
and
a given
is
a key feature of this international chronicle,
Third World country's
inability to
produce
a tech-
31
Paula A. Treichler
nically sophisticated
account may simultaneously establish
need for external aid and reproduce perialism. In the final section,
I
its
a legacy of intellectual im-
discuss the question of narrative
coherence and contradiction in the context of two published reports
on
the politics of
AIDS
in Kenya.
I
suggest in conclusion
AIDS
that understanding the discursive dimensions of the is
a necessary if
tual
not sufficient prelude to addressing
its
crisis
concep-
and material complexity.
The Problem of Discourse: The Voice
We
Hear May Be Our
Own
to infect: to taint with contaminated matter; communicate a pathogen or a disease; invade, usually by penetration; impregnate with deleteri-
ous qualities; communicate or affect as if by some subtle contact; deprave. Also to stain or dye.
All accounts of the
1
AIDS epidemic
in the
Third World, whether
they are medical reports, patient testimony, media observations, investigative journalism,
World Health Organization news
bul-
or government reports, are at some level linguistic con-
letins,
structions.
These diverse representations of AIDS
World draw credentials
their authority
in the
Third
from many sources, including the
and persuasive powers of individual authors, consis-
tency with accepted beliefs and knowledge about
AIDS and
about the Third World, compatibility with social and political perspectives, and resonance with established discursive traditions.
The
influence of discourse
is
powerful and pervasive, yet
least likely of all these sources of authority to
is
be explicitly rec-
ognized by readers, or by writers for that matter. The Third
World
typically enters First
World discourse more or
less
un-
consciously as a stereotypically reliable explanatory figure for the exotic and alien. Reviewing
And
the
Band Flayed On,
book about the AIDS epidemic
Randy
Shilts's
States,
Frank Browning
for example,
in the
in Tikkun especially praises
United
its
dissection
of the major interest groups and subcultures involved in the cri-
32
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
sis:
tific
"To
rely
on The
Post
or The Times, to plow through the scien-
journals, or to listen to
version of the
AIDS
THE THIRD WORLD
IN
story
is
government
officials tell their
to read about a people as strange as
Bantu twig gatherers." 2
Browning
chastises
Western AIDS
analysts for constructing
the subjects of their discourse (primarily the gay
members
community)
as
of an alien culture. As trained anthropologists can ex-
plain the strange world of the "Bantu," so Shilts
is
cast as the
expert qualified to decode exotic subcultural practices. Thus stripped of
Browning
its
AIDS
discursive camouflage,
as a fully
is
laid bare for
comprehensible medical phenomenon. This
dismissal of language as camouflage reflects the widespread
among AIDS
experts that science can
view
somehow be combined
with "accurate information" and "clear communication" to
AIDS
of
its
short
its
entire connotative
politics, its
infectious disease
from
a
metaphors,
its
and
life,
strip
terrifying murkiness, in
at last reveal it as it
is,
an
and nothing more. The following statement,
book on AIDS,
ethics,
and public policy,
is
representative
of this view:
It is
time
.
.
.
to speak plainly.
There
rhetorical Jlourish to drive our pens
encouraged
to carry a
.
is
.
.
much
too
AIDS
at stake to permit
has been permitted and
moral meaning, but that morality
minds, not in the disease.
.
.
.
[I]t
is
in our
time for us to confront the inner
meanings our language betrays and then
to rid
not only our speaking
and writing but
also our thinking of these metaphors.
For Browning,
it is
AIDS and HIV
is
3
precisely such misguided rhetoric that
transmission confusing.
makes
Though he concedes
that
"innumerable mysteries about AIDS" remain, the arcane circumlocutions of scientists and journalists obfuscate even well-known facts.
One
lessly
perplexed about heterosexual transmission
there
is
of Browning's female colleagues, he
a "rather simple explanation" of
women and men
why
are differentially at risk of
tells us, is
when
need-
in fact
heterosexual
becoming
infected:
33
Paula A. Treichler
Gay men
get
it
because during anal intercourse infected semen can mix
with blood once the penis has caused abrasions on the rectal wall.
women
more subject
ally
And
are at greater risk because their reproductive systems are generto infection
than are men's. Men, who generally do
not have bleeding sex organs, are not usually exposed during intercourse because the virus, which
seem
may
be present in vaginal fluids, does not
do other venereal
to survive the urinary tract as
diseases.
4
This passage perfectly illustrates the apodictic reflex characteristic
of
much Western AIDS
aspect of the
AIDS
story
reporting; and especially
when one
declared impenetrably mysterious,
is
reason and control must be elsewhere recuperated. Here, the
numerous uncertainties
that
HIV
remain concerning
transmis-
sion are discursively suppressed by a series of seemingly simple declarative sentences that admit
no
possibility of
the same time unequivocally assert yet one
explanation of
why
differential risk
is
doubt and
at
more gerrymandered
related to gender. This
is
presumably the kind of "plain speaking" called for by the author quoted above: yet these simple words can be unpacked to reveal a formidable jumble.
may
Those familiar with the discourse of AIDS
wonder how the "rugged vaginas" of 1985 have
well
in 1988
evolved into "bleeding sex organs." 5 Browning's claim that
"women
are at greater risk" than
linguistic
men and
men
rests
on
his
marking of gay (and presumably bisexual)
straight
men
asymmetrical
men
as
gay
as simply men. This language obscures
by
needlessly gendering the correct underlying generalization: that
having (unprotected) sexual contact with an infected person puts
you
at
tact
with an uninfected person. Indeed, the epidemiology of
AIDS
greater risk of becoming infected than having sexual con-
in
many Third World
countries,
are infected in equal numbers, that general patterns of cal:
HIV
so long as gay/bisexual
is
where women and men
widely interpreted to confirm
transmission are mainly mathemati-
men
in the U.S.
were the group most
widely infected, the virus was most likely to infect their sexual partners 34
— primarily gay/bisexual men but also some women;
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
mathematically, the group least that increasing infection
is
THE THIRD WORLD
was straight men.
at risk
occurring
IN
among
straight
users and their partners and their partners, straight
Now
IV drug
men
are at
greater risk of infection whether they develop "bleeding sex
organs" or not.
By no means do such
assertions exhaust the narrative re-
AIDS commentary.
pertoire of
We may
be thankful that Brown-
ing does not return to the "Bantu twig gatherers" and attempt to account for the equal prevalence of
women and men
in
HIV
many Third World
infection in both
countries. But a 1988 ed-
the Journal of the American Medical Association, reviewing
itorial in
several co-factors thought to facilitate
HIV
transmission (such as
presence of prior sexually transmitted disease), offers this explanation: "central African heterosexual populations similar to
men
homosexual
than to most heterosexuals in the
United States." 6 The sweeping nature of ranted,
if
typical of First
The "populations"
may be more
this
statement
World writing about AIDS
unwar-
is
in Africa.
implicated involve people of different coun-
tries, regions, social
and
political units, ages, religions, classes,
and genders, whose diverse occupations, behaviors, biological and genetic
characteristics, linguistic practices, sexual practices,
and health histories are only beginning to be spect to
HIV
most
involve small
all
infection and AIDS.
Many
identified
with re-
studies are flawed; al-
numbers of people. The only
"similarity"
between "African heterosexual populations" and "homosexual
men"
that
disputed
—
can be claimed is
prevalence of hardly news.
at this
point
— and even this would be
that, in the aggregate, these
HIV
infection than
What we
see
is
groups share a higher
some other groups. This
is
American medicine's perennial
quest for the magic bullet, this time in the form of that missing piece of information that will
make
the
AIDS
puzzle manageable:
the magic bulletin.
Discourse about of past epidemics.
An
AIDS draws on widely accepted underlying premise
is
that
AIDS
narratives is
a
35
Paula A. Treichler
knowable biological phenomenon whose strange and seemingly contradictory aspects will ultimately prove to be illusory: de-
coded by experts,
its
mysteries will one by one be revealed as
controllable material realities. Discourse about
Third World shares but exaggerates the Third
World
AIDS
in the
this premise, first
equating
(especially Africa, "the dark continent")
with
the savage, the alien, or the incomprehensible, then asserting the
importance and achievability of reason and control. Though these
two
may
features
initially
seem
to be in conflict, they exist
in fact in a relationship of discursive symbiosis: the
metaphors of
mystery and otherness produce the desire for control, which in
turn
fulfilled
and
justified
is
by the metaphors of otherness and
mystery. 7
The performative work
that such narrative structures
can be identified, challenged, recuperated, reassigned; be eradicated. Language about AIDS,
illness,
ready informed with metaphor (influenza got illnesses
ject
were believed to be under the
it
cannot
and epidemics its
web even
is
al-
name because
influence of the stars; in-
means "to contaminate," "to communicate," and "to
or dye," a connotative
do
stain
the most vigilant housekeeping
cannot sweep away). To believe that information and communication about
AIDS
from metaphor day is
life.
is
will separate fact
Further, to inform
also to construct
exist, it issues
from
fiction
and
reality
to suppress the linguistic complexity of every-
and
from and
is
also to
perform; to communicate
interpret. Information does not simply in turn sustains a
behaving toward the world;
it
way of looking
at
and
shapes programmatic agendas and
determines capital investments.
The Third World for the process of
therefore creates
making sense of AIDS.
some
specific challenges
Efforts to
meet these
challenges are not always best served by the positivist "plain
speaking" voice of reason that holds that accurate information
and
clear messages will bring about desired behavioral change.
As others have noted, the seemingly simple message to "use
36
a
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
condom" probably truth
that the
is
moving chorus
The
more questions than
raises
AIDS epidemic
that takes
chestrations wherever
it
THE THIRD WORLD
it
answers. 8
The
unprecedented^ complex,
is
on new
voices
Nor
goes.
World experience
First
IN
leaves
a
and produces new or-
are these always harmonious.
no doubt about
this.
To sup-
pose that the discursive dimensions of the epidemic are some-
how
less
complex
in the
Third World
indeed. Although any crisis
may
ticulation for multiple voices
the Third
World
is
and
specificity
become
interests, the
a point of ar-
AIDS
crisis in
of pressing concern for three reasons: (1) di-
culturally localized is
cultural imperialism
inevitably
and
verse interests are articulated around cially
is
a necessary
if
and
AIDS
in
specific; (2)
ways that are sounderstanding
this
not sufficient condition for effectively
mobilizing resources and programs to address the epidemic in a given country or region; and (3) institutional forces and cultural
precedents in the First World prevent us from hearing the story of
AIDS
in the
Third World
as a
complex
To analyze the discourse of AIDS ful
material consequences. Far
is
narrative.
not to evade
from being
a
power-
its
detached activity re-
stricted to an idealized realm, analyzing discursive constructions
of
AIDS
in the
Third World
is
a pressing practical task
pressing as basic laboratory research,
I
would argue,
— as
for inter-
preting and influencing the everyday course of the epidemic. Especially in developing countries
where AIDS/HIV education,
prevention, and treatment will inevitably be labor-intensive efforts,
questions of language are central to such tasks as pro-
ducing effective public service announcements, employing print
and electronic media, communicating to people read,
communicating
in countries
who do
ferent languages are spoken, mediating
by the church leaders central to many prevention
human
resources
healers) for face-to-face education
dif-
between the forthright
language of "safer sex" and the spiritual formulations
marshalling various
not
where seventy or eighty
(e.g.,
demanded
efforts,
and
traditional herbal
and counseling
in rural areas.
37
Paula A. Treichler
The
cultural choice in African countries
between the slogans
"love carefully" and "love faithfully," the effectiveness of rock
music
promoting AIDS awareness, the distinction between
in
prostitutes shift
and "free women"
from "promiscuity"
as epidemiological categories, the
to "sexual partner change" in
education, the implications of thinking of socks," the distinction between
presuppose some
infection and
level of linguistic analysis.
the overt subject of debate in politics in the
HIV
condoms
many
9
as
AIDS
"American
AIDS — all
Further, language
discussions of
AIDS and
is
its
Third World. For example, the editors of AIDS
in
Africa, a
1988 collection of essays on policy, write that the "lan-
guage of
crisis
AIDS
and catastrophe has permeated the discussion of
in Africa. In this
book the
editors
and contributors have
tried to curb the language while not side-stepping the real prob-
lems that HIV/AIDS poses for Africa." 10
The within
and
close analysis of such examples
AIDS
their positioning
discourse enables us to identify the key issues of
that discourse
— what Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe
call
nodal points, or privileged discursive points that serve in part to fix
meaning and center
a field of discourse
— and, without auto-
World account
matically privileging every Third
as
somehow
more authentic than accounts explicitly mediated through the West, begin to assemble and articulate a different course about
There
AIDS
is
in the
a certain degree of
in believing the privilege
Western
of dis-
cultural imperialism
and task of conceptualizing
ours, the question of representation ours, the ours. For our benefit, African countries are
holding facts about AIDS.
field
Third World. 11
Once
again,
this crisis
is
need to know
rebuked for with-
Western discourse
re-
produces the perspective of "a development doctrine that treats Africa as a problem to be solved rather than a voice to be
heard." 12
If
centralized
we can
find ways to circumvent the increasingly
and professionalized handling of the epidemic, per-
haps the voices of the Third World
38
may
lead us to scrutinize the
— AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
THE THIRD WORLD
IN
linguistic imperialism that has constructed the very
AIDS and
question:
U.S.
Doctor Unmasks Truth
We had come
.
.
in Haiti": Third
for almost
.
.
.
Coming
in First
World Media
at the
end gave us certain advan-
six
The IKung had been observing anthropologists
years and had learned quite a bit about them. Precedents
set that the
IKung expected
— Marjorie Shostak, Woman, The very
World AIDS
But as time passed we became aware that we had also inher-
.
ited serious problems.
had been
hear
near the end of a long line of anthropologists working in
these remote villages tages.
we
and inevitably have been only our own.
will not always
"A
terms of the
Third World. In that case, the voices
activity
textualization
1981
Nisa:
us to follow.
The
Life
and Words of
IKung
a
11
of ethnographic writing
seen as inscription or
— enacts a redemptive Western
structure needs to be perceived
allegory. This pervasive
and weighed against other
possible
em-
plotmentsfor the performance of ethnography.
—James
Clifford,
"On Ethnographic Allegory," 1986 14
Almost any account of AIDS
Third World
in the
demonstrate problematic aspects of struction.
A
linguistic
and
visual con-
highly visible story was written for Life magazine by
physician-author Richard Selzer,
mid-1980s
its
will serve to
in
who
visited Haiti in the
an effort to learn the truth about
government's apparent attempts to downplay
The metaphor of
the article's
title,
its
AIDS behind
the
prevalence. 15
"A Mask on the Face of
Death," invokes the government's denials in the language of exotic tropical rituals like carnival
AIDS Ravages
Haiti, a U.S.
and voodoo. The
Doctor Finds
a
subtitle
is
"As
Taboo Against
Truth"; while very likely not Selzer's words, they suggest to the reader not only that
demic but
official denials
mask the
brutality of the epi-
also that Selzer, the expert medical observer, can per-
ceive the reality beneath the mask. Selzer's article
is
in the
39
Paula A. Treichler
tradition of the privileged First
ethnography and
travel literature, the stranger in a strange land
whose representation of AIDS by
World informant of conventional
in the
Third World
legitimated
is
phenomena
claim to be an objective (scientific) account of
its
observed or experienced firsthand. As Mary Louise Pratt argues, travel writing has
provided ethnographic description with a dis-
cursive legacy, despite the ethnographer's desire to repudiate
both, in turn, permeate representations in other genres.
opens with the conventional
Selzer's article
dual legacy: "It
Copacabana,
is
10 o'clock at night as
a dilapidated brothel
we
16
it;
Thus
arrival scene of this
up
drive
to the
on the rue Dessalines
in the
red-light district of Port-au-Prince" (p. 59). Outside the bar,
Selzer
importuned by
is
men and women
offering a variety of sex-
ual pleasures; inside, he interviews three female prostitutes
the Dominican Republic
problem
who
describe
for them, not a health problem.
tion of the native informant server accounts; in
AIDS
is
Life story,
The
as
direct interroga-
it is
seem
often prostitutes
full skirt
is
glamorously
of her red dress fanned out across a
bed; an April 1988 news account of the fear of basa, Kenya, reports
AIDS
an exchange between a U.S.
prostitute, a "23-year-old
Ugandan woman
Newsweek photograph of a
woman
sailor
in red leggings
and
men
examines
The following a large
illnesses for
Selzer
little
carefully
and indeed speculates
and
skirt
a
is
in
day, Selzer talks with physicians
number of
whom is
Mom-
in
in red shorts"; a
captioned: " 'Avoid promiscuity': Prostitute with Zaire." 17 )
who
to be wearing red. (For
one of the Dominican prostitutes
photographed, the
from
an economic
another staple of privileged ob-
narratives,
are interviewed, and they always
the
AIDS
and
patients with apparent HIV-related
in the
way of treatment
is
available.
nonjudgmental with respect to street
that the virus
may
life
have entered Haiti as
an accidental feature of First World exploitation: Could ists,
40
it
have comejrom the American and Canadian homosexual tour-
and, yes, even some U.S. diplomats
who have
traveled to the island
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
to
have sex with impoverished Haitian
men
IN
THE THIRD WORLD
all too willing to sell
them-
to feed their families? Throughout the international gay commu-
selves
nity Haiti was
known
as a
good place
to
go for
sex.
64)
(p.
Selzer pursues this characterization of Haiti as sexual victim rav-
aged by Western ficial at
capitalists.
Acting on "a private tip from an of-
the Ministry of Tourism," Selzer and guide drive to a
once luxurious hotel
fifty
miles from Port-au-Prince that was a
prime vacation spot for gay men. Because the two French
who own are
men
the hotel are out of the country, Selzer and his guide
shown around by
a staff
member,
a
man
of about thirty
who
clearly
is
desperately
empty
hotel.
ill.
Tottering, short
of breath, he shows us about the
The furnishings are opulent and extreme
the wall, a live leopard in the garden, a
bathtub with gold faucets.
Is it
—
on
tiger skins
bedroom containing a giant
the heat of the day or the heat of
imagination that makes these walls echo with the painful
cries
my
of
pederasty? (p. 64)
This passage reveals both the white American male,
among
travel writer at
AIDS
mately, for Selzer, tale
at ease
the tiger skins of a hotel in Haiti, and the traditional
Western
men
ill
about the
evils
work on Third World AIDS. in Haiti
is
of sexual excess: as northern homosexual
ravaged Haitian boys, so does
AIDS
ravage Haiti. Nostalgia
for the observed culture's original innocence gives at its exploitation
Ulti-
an unambiguous mor(t)ality
way
to regret
by decadent foreigners and speculation about
the deadly effects of exotic customs and sexual practices. Selzer's
account therefore tivities, his
tells
us something about his concrete daily ac-
heated imagination, and his strategies for transform-
ing selected experiences into prose, but his desire to bring the country's plight to world attention
AIDS
about
The served
is
as
much
about language as
in Haiti.
status of Selzer's article as a firsthand report of ob-
phenomena does not
rest
on our
firsthand
knowledge
Paula A. Treichler
about AIDS, the Third World, or Haiti. In certain concrete ways, just as cinematic convention represents scenes viewed
through binoculars
as
two
intersecting circles,
discourse transforms a culture so that
it
Western AIDS
ceases to recognize itself
What
but paradoxically becomes recognizable in the West.
needed the
AIDS epidemic — which
Grover puts
it,
We may tory in First
opening
has in part evolved, as Jan Zita
as a "creature of language." 18
begin this process by reviewing the elements of
account of
Selzer's
AIDS
in Haiti that are
now
virtually obliga-
World chronicles of Third World AIDS.
arrival scene, as
AIDS
I
— a culture that,
note below, the term
Third World presupposes an analysis founded
on such concepts
capitalism, colonialism, industrialization, modernity,
velopment. Second, the
statistics
AIDS
sonal observations about the prevalence of
the next section). Third, statistics
the First
structural
specialized
more perreturn to
(I
sta-
more broadly show
World chronicle incorporates within
demands the
as
and de-
provided by Haitian physicians
function in part to anchor in objective fact Selzer's
how
the
chronicles, almost always belongs to the fallen world of
postcolonial development. Indeed, as
tistics in
First,
have noted, situates the First World
I
observer in relation to the Third World culture in
is
and subtexts of
to sort out the multiple voices, texts,
is
its
own
knowledge of expert native
informants whose on-the-scene experience equips them to reveal the truth behind the official mask. (In Selzer's story, the inside
informants assert that admit; but in other
AIDS
AIDS
is
more widespread than
stories, insiders
officials
may function
cuse the government and the media of exaggerating the crisis for political gains.)
A
fourth element
is
informant
is
condemnation of voodoo, whose facilitate
monic
42
demonstrated by
religion, a cancer
whose unrehis moralistic
rituals are believed
the spread of HIV: voodoo, he
on Haiti"
that
by some to
tells Selzer, is is
AIDS
provided by "the
reigning American pastor," a nonnative informant liability as a cultural
to ac-
"a de-
"worse than AIDS"
(p.
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
62).
Though such
THE THIRD WORLD
IN
AIDS
cultural subtexts can function in
narra-
prepare the ground for epidemiological hypotheses, the
tives to
purpose here seems different. In positioning himself against his fellow American, "a
handsome Midwesterner with an
tall,
siastical smile," Selzer
own
secures his
nographers quote descriptions of
much
reliability,
a given culture
by
eccle-
as eth-
earlier travel
writers to repudiate the bias of such unscientific observations.
element;
Selzer's visits to health care settings constitute a fifth
with Haitian physicians, they demonstrate
like his discussions
the inadequacies of a devastated health care system, an economic fallen
world that
parallels his
image elsewhere of Haiti
victim of First World sexual exploitation.
ment by
in
AIDS
Selzer's talk
stories
is
A
as the
sixth familiar ele-
"the view from the street," represented
with the three healthy Dominican prostitutes.
Their remarks seem designed to underscore the ignorance and
dangerous silence.
false security
One
engendered by the government's
of them, Carmen, scoffs
at Selzer's
prostitutes as a population are sick with
"AIDS!" Her is
lips curl
about the
AIDS:
"There
is
no such
thing. It
a false disease invented by the American government to take advan-
tage of the poor countries. The so
syllable.
official
suggestion that
now he makes up AIDS
nod vehemently,
The notion
(p.
that
American President hates poor people,
to take
away
the little
we have." The others
60)
AIDS
is
an American invention
element of the international
AIDS
story, yet
a recurrent
is
one not
easily in-
corporated within a Western positivist frame, in part, perhaps, because
it is
political,
colonialism; the
with discursive roots in the resistance to
Western response, accordingly,
attributes
it
to
ignorance, state propaganda, or psychological denial. 19
Carmen's theory of AIDS invokes two other ratives.
The
first,
a tale of
difficulty of finding
good
significant nar-
postmodern scholarship,
is
native informants these days.
Shostak's introduction to her ethnographic study Nisa
about the
As
makes
43
Paula A. Treichler
clear, native
informants are quite likely to be already wise in the
ways of Western
inquisitors. Discussing Nisa, Pratt convincingly
argues that Shostak
nevertheless able ultimately to transcend
is
the "degraded" ethnographic culture of too-knowing informants
and achieve ing of
a
redemptive resolution for her story.
Carmen accomplishes something
second narrative, to which
I
Selzer's
similar, together
fram-
with
a
have already alluded, concerning the
construction of the subject in a fallen world. Pratt suggests that
ethnographic characterizations of the !Kung changed in the course of foreign colonization. Precolonial ethnographers ren-
dered them
as sly, bloodthirsty,
untrustworthy, appetitive, ma-
nipulative; after colonization, they
helpful, friendly, innocent, good,
may be occurring
came
to be represented as
and vulnerable.
in the course of the
A
parallel shift
AIDS epidemic
in the
U.S. in mainstream representations of gay men, as illness and
death are perceived to transform a threatening and alien com-
munity
and sympathetic one
into a vulnerable
challenged by
many AIDS
activists). In
Carmen's speech takes place narrative
moment, and
denial of
AIDS
as a
hear Violetta in the Selzer finally
this
at
what
transformation
(a
the global
AIDS drama,
presented as a pivotal
is
encourages us to hear her emphatic
prelude to tragedy
— perhaps as we would
act of La Traviata. 20
first
sums up:
This evening I leave Haiti. For two weeks I have fastened myself to this lovely fragile
land
like
an ear pressed
break a traveler's heart.
.
.
.
to the
ground.
It is
a country to
Perhaps one day the plague will be ren-
dered in poetry, music, painting. But not now, not now. (p. 64)
Here the stance of physician sician's ear
as
ethnographer
is
the body of a patient. But though the diagnosis
guage
is
Utopian: the First
repelled the threat of
World AIDS
human
is
it
phyto
grim, the lan-
narrative has successfully
postmodern disruption
sage of transcendent, universal
44
clearer, the
pressed to the body of Haiti as he might press
to deliver a
tragedy.
mes-
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
Visual representations are
The
ones.
no
Selzer article's facticity
less
is
IN
THE THIRD WORLD
problematic than verbal
buttressed by color photo-
graphs that reproduce familiar representations of the Third
World and reinforce what we think we already know about
AIDS
in those regions: frail, wasting bodies in
gloomy
clinics;
small children in rickety cribs; the prostitutes in red. Photo-
graphs in a 1986 Newsweek story on
"Third Worldness" of with AIDS
lies
its
AIDS
in Africa depict the
health care system: in Tanzania, a
on
hospitalized
a plain cot
man
with none of the
high-tech paraphernalia of U.S. representations; a widely reprinted photograph shows six "emaciated patients in a
AIDS ward," two
in cots, four
physicians shown.
A
on mats on the
on AIDS
story
Uganda
floor; rarely are
in Brazil carries similar
non-
technological images. In contrast, African publications often run
photos of African scientists and physicians, and tographs in a 1987 story on
Newsweek
is
one of
AIDS
among
the pho-
in the Brazilian equivalent of
equipped operating theater complete
a fully
with masked and gowned physicians and nurses. 21
A
problem occurs
different
story called "Uganda: trait
in a
1988 National Geographic
Land Beyond Sorrow." The
of unrelieved despair
is
oddly challenged by the magazine's
characteristically stunning photographs.
AIDS
A young woman
in a long flowing dress, for example, stands
her mother,
who
is
story's por-
wearing vivid pink; the caption
woman, Jane Namirimu,
is
with
supported by tells
us the
pregnant and already too weak to
stand alone. Yet the beauty of the composition, even the adjacent
photograph of her grave taken when the photographer returned three months
later,
transforms the
text's
bleak assertions into an
almost Utopian narrative of elegiac fatefulness in which aesthetic universality
A
final
redeems individual
problem
is
suffering. 22
the literal appropriation of images.
J.
B.
Diederich's photographs for the Selzer story were at least original for Life; but
some AIDS photographs
are familiar not simply
because they invoke a familiar tradition but because precisely the
45
Paulo A. Treichler
same images
circulate
among
diverse publications. In one of
Diederich's photographs, a large striking study in brown and
woman
white, an emaciated Haitian fully
on
a
wooden bench and
caption reads, "Tuberculosis
in a
white dress
sits
looks out at the camera.
is
grace-
The
but one of the wasting infections
of what Haitians call maladi-a." Selzer's text does not define maladi-a; nor does
it tell
us whether tuberculosis
Haiti as a disease that signals
of
many wasting
diseases;
AIDS
nor
is it
or
like
is,
is
counted in
AIDS, simply one
woman
clear that the
photograph has actually been diagnosed with AIDS. But
produced months
later in the
re-
Canadian news magazine Maclean
the identical photo, no longer ambiguous,
AIDS
in the
is
's,
captioned: "Haitian
victim: a former playground for holidayers." 23
What
constitutes the
AIDS
narrative
sentational elements, narrative voices,
is
a layering of repre-
and replicating images.
Moreover, one cannot find the truth about AIDS simply by
dis-
pensing with First World mediation in favor of voices that originate in the Third World. For these voices are often in conflict as well:
even the observations of trained journalists or health care
professionals within a country
the West's scenarios but
may
differ radically
from each
not only from
an
other's. In central Africa,
area widely characterized in the Western media as being "devastated" by
AIDS, some people
disease
largely imaginary, the latest
is
believe, as
the Third World's population in the
Carmen
Western
wake of
does, that the
trick to reduce
failed birth control
strategies in the past; others believe the disease exists, but
"white man's disease";
rimuuta and Rosalind research on
AIDS
still
J.
is
a
others, such as Richard C. Chi-
Chirimuuta, argue that most Western
in Africa
is
based on racist preconceptions
rather than scientific evidence, and hence the true extent of the illness is
unknown. 24 Discrepancies between doomsday predic-
tions by the
Western media and
official denials
governments introduce another complicating cial
46
imaginary"
— what
it
dreams
itself to be.
by Third World
factor: a state's "so-
As Ann Anagnost
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
IN
THE THIRD WORLD
observes, a country's explicit declarations and official statistics are likely to be pervaded by the language of this implicit social
dream. 25 The dream of controlling
blood supply,
ling the
statistical
dia coverage, biotechnology, or
well declare itself in a
AIDS — whether
of control-
and epidemiological
me-
studies,
moral and sexual behavior
— may
Western tongue. The Brazilian photo-
graph of a surgical operating theater, that famed invention of
Western high technology, accurately documents the existence Brazil of sophisticated
tion of "the
AIDS
in
medical capabilities. But as a representa-
AIDS epidemic,"
victim." Symbiosis
is
it
may be
as
bogus
as the
"Haitian
self-perpetuating: while Third
World
representations function as icons that can be seamlessly decontextualized and appropriated by the First
the Third
World media, dependent
World
narrative voice,
in varying degrees
on
First
World sources and technology, may recontextualize these images as their
own. As Edward Said argues, modern representation
on
the decolonized world depends increasingly
of media
power
in
a concentration
in metropolitan centers; this contributes to the
monolithic nature of Third World representations, which are in turn a major source of information about Third World populations not only for the "outside world" but also for those popula-
tions themselves. 26
dominance but
it
Dependency, of course, may perpetuate
also fosters resistance.
To
believe otherwise
dream
to adopt the social imaginary of the neocolonial, a
which shrewdly invested
is
in
— in the form of infor— earns a predictably
linguistic capital
mation, communication, or consultation satisfactory return.
Many make enable
people throughout the world are
now
pressed to
sense of AIDS, to develop a working conception that will
them
to proceed with
AIDS and HIV. seen for what effort, to
It is
it is
life,
including for
some
life
with
increasingly clear that this goal needs to be
— a working conception — and that any global
work, needs to involve voices that ultimately may be
neither harmonious nor reconcilable. Politically appealing as
it
47
Paula A. Treichler
may be as false,
Western representations of Third World AIDS
to dismiss
we should not
simply privilege as true our most trusted
alternative sources in their place. is
Why?
ultimately as paternalistic as the
challenge the assumption that what
mined. But
if
we
resentations of
Because such a strategy
and because
first, is
it fails
to
true can actually be deter-
relinquish the compulsion to separate true rep-
AIDS from
false
ones and concentrate instead on
the process and consequences of representation and discursive
production,
we can
begin to sort out
how
particular versions of
work they
truth are produced and sustained, and what cultural
do in given contexts. Such an approach illuminates the construction of
much
AIDS
complex narrative and
as a
about truth
stand the ways
AIDS comes
rules
is
is
not determining whether
true or false but identifying the underlying
and conventions
ceived as true or
false,
that determine
whether that account
is
re-
by whom, and with what material conse-
quences. Richard Selzer's essay on
AIDS
in Haiti provides useful
AIDS
information: not necessarily about the true nature of the Third World, but about the
Western mass print media representations of
not so
to be articulated within particular
major problem
cultural contexts, the a given account
raises questions
about power and representation. To under-
as
to
power of
in
individual authors and
produce and transmit particular
AIDS according
to certain conventions
and
in
doing so sustain their acceptance as true. 27 Other forms of representation, drawing
may make
on
different conventions, different rules,
claims to truth in different ways. Diverse voices then
represent not diverse accounts of reality
we must choose among
but significant points of articulation for ongoing social and cultural struggles.
mediated,
Once we adopt
we become
process; such voices
the view that reality
is
inevitably
ourselves participants in the mediation
may then provide important models
challenging existing regimes of truth and disrupting their effects
m
— in the Third World, as in the First.
28
for
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
The Country and the
It is
City:
Dreams
THE THIRD WORLD
IN
World AIDS
of Third
not impossible that in the future, as in the past, effective steps in
the prevention of disease will be motivated by an emotional revolt
against some of the inadequacies of the
and power may
—Rene
A
arise from
modern
is
induces
—John
.
.
Knowledge logic.
that circular relation which truth has to the sys-
tems of power that produce and sustain it
.
Dubos, Mirage of Health, 1959 29
regime of truth
which
world.
dreams as well as from facts and
and which
Tagg,
redirect
it,
and
to the effects
of power
it.
The Burden of Representation, 1988 i0
You'd be surprised. They're all individual countries.
— Ronald Reagan,
statement to the press after visiting Latin
America* 1
"The
statistical
mode
of analysis," argued
Raymond Williams
in
The Country and the City, was "devised in response to the impossibility
of understanding contemporary society from experi-
ence." Characterizing preindustrial English society as knowable
through experience this
(if
only partially
so),
Williams contrasted
"knowable community" with the "new sense of the darkly
unknowable" produced by urbanization and
The metaphor of darkness was of the rise of est
London."
cities:
industrialization.
routinely invoked in discussions
the East End, for instance, was called "Dark-
Statistical analysis
was one of the new forms of
knowledge "devised to penetrate what was rightly perceived to be to a large extent obscure." 32
Given pectedly,
is
its
historical mission, statistical analysis, not
unex-
widely seen as the most powerful way to understand
the latest incarnation of the "darkly unknowable":
Third World.
Statistical data, at the least, are
AIDS
in the
seen as the neces-
sary foundation for other knowledge. Further, the ability to pro-
49
Paula A. Treichler
duce
statistical
information
of development, predict
and determine if a
its
is
used to measure
ability to
its eligibility
country cannot produce
for its
some forms of external
own numbers
cope can be demonstrated
ity to
with external studies.
AIDS and HIV
33
as a willingness to
World
is
But even
why AIDS
when
is
estimates
specific
nounced, the use of numbers reality
cooperate
shaped on a day-
to-day basis by statistical findings and projections.
sisted.
Even
its abil-
Certainly the international discourse on
infection in the Third
reason
crisis,
aid.
internally,
bers are generated and publicized, they take on a
own — one
degree
a nation's
cope with the AIDS
Once numlife
of their
may sometimes be
re-
numbers are questioned or de-
as a
fundamental measure of AIDS'
not.
Data with regard to AIDS/HIV in Third World countries are regularly generated by several sources: the ganization's
(WHO)
Global
World Health Or-
Programme on AIDS (GPA), which
includes a Surveillance, Forecasting, and Impact Assessment
Unit; the U.S. Public Health Service Centers for Disease Control
(CDC); the Center
for International Research
Bureau of the Census, whose AIDS/HIV
(CIR) of the U.S.
Statistics
Data Base
is
supported in part by the U.S. Agency for International Develop-
ment (USAID); and the London School of Hygiene. other agencies gather
more
A number
localized data, including the
of
World
Bank, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the
Kenya Medical Re-
search Institute (KMRI), the International Medical Research
Center (Gabon), and individual hospitals and laboratories. 34 Let us briefly examine
some of the numbers produced by
this statis-
tical enterprise.
Of
these sources,
WHO headquarters in Geneva
is
widely
recognized and accepted as a legitimate and "politically neutral" producer, synthesizer, and interpreter of international numbers.
By January
GPA was 50
31, 1989, the
number of countries reporting
177, of which 144 had reported one or
more
to the
cases of
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
AIDS cases
(up from 175 and 138 in three months): a total of 139,886
worldwide had been reported to
close to 7,000 over the previous realistic total
of actual
and estimates
worldwide totals
THE THIRD WORLD
IN
(a
mean
somewhere
AIDS
that 5 million
million or
that at least in the
WHO,
an increase of
WHO considers a more
month;
cases to be 250,000 to 350,000,
more
more
are infected (with
HIV)
infected in Africa alone). These
one new case of AIDS
is
being reported
world every minute, or 60 new cases every
hour and 1,440 each day. Projections about the worldwide
dis-
tribution and future prospects of AIDS and HIV infection led
Jonathan Mann, director of the GPA, to conclude in mid- 1988 that "the global situation will get
brought under control."
This assessment did not
before
it
can be
come
readily to the
World Health
WHO ofacknowledged AIDS as a global health problem — in many
Organization: indeed, ficially
much worse
35
countries,
some
it
was not
five years into
until late
1986 that
the epidemic.
the existence of AIDS, however,
WHO's
Once committed
surveillance reports
to
and
seroprevalence data were sufficient, by the end of 1987, to suggest three broad global patterns of
WHO,
Pattern
I is
AIDS. 36 As constructed by
typical of industrialized countries with large
numbers of reported
cases (the First World, roughly, including
the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, and Zealand): late
HIV
infection in these countries
first
appeared in the
1970s and began spreading rapidly, primarily
bisexual
men, and IV drug users
cipients of blood products.
New
among
gay,
urban coastal centers and re-
in
Though
infection
and
illness are at
present slowly increasing in the heterosexual population, the
male to female
ratio
is still
between
transmission (from mother to infant) fection in the overall population
is
10:1 or 15:1, perinatal is
not yet
common, and
estimated to be
less
in-
than one
percent (though greater than 50 percent in "some groups practicing high-risk behavior"). In Pattern
World countries (primarily
central
II,
characteristic of Third
and eastern Africa, the Ca-
51
Paula A. Treichler
some
ribbean, and
peared in the
AIDS
American
Latin
countries),
HIV
infection ap-
1970s, though was not widely identified with
late
until 1983. Heterosexual transmission
is
the norm, with
the male to female ratio about one to one and prenatal transmis-
common;
sion therefore
transmission via gay sexual contact or
IV drug use appears to be low or absent. In tributed to the Second well as cific
North
Pattern
World countries of the
Africa, the
Middle
(excluding Australia and
East, Asia,
New
Zealand),
III,
at-
Soviet bloc as
and most of the Pa-
HIV
is
judged to
have appeared in the early to mid-1980s; only small numbers of cases have so far been reported, usually in people
Pattern
I
who
have
and had sexual intercourse with infected persons
traveled to
or
II
areas,
in
with only recent documentation of "indige-
nous homosexual, heterosexual and IV-drug-use transmission." 37
What Again,
will
we can
be the material effects of the global epidemic?
identify a widely-accepted set of predictions. In
developed countries national product
like the U.S.,
where
spent on health care,
is
13 percent of the gross
AIDS and HIV-related
illnesses are already straining the health care system; in
many
Third World countries, where annual expenditures on health care are often less than $5 per person and totally inadequate
even for current needs, future prospects are grim. Further, despite the
widespread stereotype of people with AIDS
as the dis-
advantaged of society, the twenty- to forty-year-old age group,
most vulnerable worldwide,
is
central to the labor force, to
childbearing, to caring for the dependent ironically, to marshalling
dressing the thesizing a
Rockwell
AIDS epidemic and
number of
spell
old, and,
studies
for ad-
other health problems. 38 Syn-
on AIDS
in Africa, Miller
and
out more specific consequences: (1) the highest
risk in age
group
25-29, for
men
health of
young and
and managing the resources
is
for those
between 20 and 40
(for
women
30-34); (2) prenatal infection threatens the
newborn
children; (3) at highest risk are city dwellers
and the geographically mobile (commercial and government
52
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
military
elites,
and paramilitary personnel,
prostitutes); (4)
become
(current thinking
ill
tween 50 percent and 90 percent
who
police, truckers,
under current treatment regimens, the majority
of those infected will
ten years and
THE THIRD WORLD
IN
many
will die); (5)
that be-
is
show symptoms within
will
many people
become
will
ill
won't understand their symptoms or their infectiousness
and role in spreading infection;
"medical care systems
(6) the
will
be inadequate to the task of caring for the
and
their
kinsman
will
ill;
(7) victims
embark on desperate searches
for cures,
with large expenditures of savings and an aggressive search for health care and ways to finance
peatedly
is
that education
it."
39
A
further point
and prevention, the major
made
re-
strategies at
present for controlling the spread of the virus, have proved cult
enough
in
diffi-
media-rich Western countries; the task of com-
municating complex health messages to the diverse populations
and geographical
A and
its
global
sites
of Third
World countries
AIDS/HIV epidemic
formidable.
existence widely authorized as true. 40 Despite the reluc-
tance of
some nations
to
acknowledge
taken formal steps to address the global
is
now been documented
has
AIDS
it,
crisis
many
others have
by endorsing
now
WHO's
statement and policy and the United Nations state-
ment, distributing information for travelers, and attending national
and international conferences and summits. International
assessments by the World Bank and others have reinforced a sense of global urgency by identifying the multiple adverse eco-
nomic
effects of
AIDS on Third World — and
countries; in Africa, such effects are avoidable.
The 1988
International
holm closed with the
WHO.
—
considered to be un-
AIDS Conference
in Stock-
AIDS and
that international support be
Halfdan Mahler, the director-general of
rebuked rich countries for "self congratulation" drives based
World
plea that the rich developed countries help
developing nations fight given to
now
First
in
WHO,
anti-AIDS
on blood screening, technology, and expensive edu-
cational campaigns far
beyond the reach of the African coun-
53
Paula A. Treichler
tries,
emphasizing that national self-sufficiency in an infectious
pandemic try, until
is
an
illusion:
The power and tions of
AIDS
all
numbers
centrality of
are obvious.
AIDS may appear
to these construc-
as a global issue
could not have
World chronicle of
to be unfolding smoothly as our
this
any coun-
Without the power and authority of
articulated. Yet while the First
grows, in fact
in
countries." 41
methods, the epidemic
statistical
been
"AIDS cannot be stopped
stopped in
it is
knowledge
is
global
knowledge
problematic in several ways. In-
deed, even the most fundamental meaning of the narrative re-
mains contested. Consider the following judgments about the epidemic in Africa, (1)
Africa
where
(2)
all
published in 1988:
"The continent hardest all
hit
by the AIDS pandemic
three infection patterns can be found."
is
(WHO)
"Medical experts consider the epidemic an accelerating
catastrophe that, in the words of one, 'will
famine look (3) In
like a picnic' "
many
make
the Ethiopian
(Congressional Research Service)
of the urban centers of central Africa, "from 5
to 20 percent of the sexually active age-group has already
infected with HIV. Rates of infection
among some
been
prostitute
groups range from 27 percent in Kinshasa, Zaire, to 66 percent in Nairobi, Kenya,
half of
all
and 88 percent
patients in the medical
in Butare,
Rwanda. Close to
wards of hospitals in those
currently infected with HIV. So are from 10 to 25
cities are
percent of the
women
of childbearing age, and that will
mean an
increase in child mortality by at least 25 percent; the gains
achieved with difficulty by child-survival programs over the past
two decades may be
nullified.
By the
early 1990s the total adult
mortality rate in these urban areas will have been doubled or tripled by (4)
AIDS."
(WHO)
"A Newsweek cover
story claimed one Rakai village [in
Uganda] had seven discos and
mud
Guardian )
54
'sex orgies.' In reality
huts, a handful of fishing boats,
and no
it
has 20
electricity." (The
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
(5)
"The
of
tale
AIDS
in Africa
is
devastation and the collapse of nations. in Africa
and AIDS
IN
THE THIRD WORLD
not one of widespread
There are 53 countries few of them."
exists substantially in only a
(Washington Post) (6)
"Like the tenacious theories put forward as explana-
tions for the heterosexual spread of
AIDS pandemic is
no
is
shrouded
reliable information
has percolated
of date and a Africa)
its
is
HIV
in Africa, the
whole
mystery and uncertainty. There
on AIDS and by the time one message
way down
new one
in
to the general population,
already
on
its
way
out
it is
to replace it." (West
42
Some
sources of confusion and contradiction are recog-
nized and articulated by epidemiologists and social scientists. Estimates of infection and actual cases of tions
may be
AIDS
for entire popula-
derived from inadequate data: too few studies,
studies of too small a sample size, nonrepresentative samples,
and so on. In Africa, "underreporting"
is
taken for granted and
estimates corrected upwards; at the same time, the positive cases actually diagnosed
may be too high
number of
or too low, de-
pending on the procedure used. Many studies presented ferences never
become
at
con-
available for scrutiny in published form;
and many published papers do not report important data about
how
the study was conducted. Finally, observations by experi-
enced medical experts in Africa, which tend to make lower mates of cases than
WHO,
are discounted as clinical
experiential rather than scientific and technical. 43
Though
creased international scientific dialogue about the global
and HIV situation has answered some questions, firmed the difficulty of answering others.
A
it
esti-
and in-
AIDS
has con-
1988 book edited by
the virologist Jay A. Levy, for example, includes detailed review
chapters on
AIDS
strate the diverse
HIV
in Haiti
and AIDS
and very different
infection in those settings
vised diagnostic
in Africa.
Both demon-
clinical manifestations of
and emphasize the need
and reporting systems. Treated
at
for re-
length in the
55
Paula A. Treichler
Haiti chapter are the
complex interaction of HIV infection with
tuberculosis (alluded to by Selzer), while the Africa chapter re-
views the controversial origin questions and challenges the various dubious explanations for the high rate of heterosexual transmission; both chapters emphasize remaining questions and
the need for continuing investigation. 44
The
provisional nature of science
funding agencies to
with. Rather, there
live
tive in
which
with; indeed,
live
is
is
difficult for policy
it is
and
hard for science to
pressure to produce a coherent narra-
qualifications
and ambiguities,
if
they must be
mentioned, become simply routinized features of the story, to be quickly forgotten; problems of data are perceived to be mere
temporary impediments to
AIDS
Yet
positivist
medical science, and
with the virus cial, its
a refined
and comprehensive
continually escapes the boundaries placed
Added
itself.
its
on
meanings mutate on
AIDS
inevitably political subtext.
resource;
it is
is
crisis is
not a precious national
something nobody wants. Wherever
it
appears,
quickly becomes political, and in the discourses of each
Third World country where the question of AIDS (even yet find
AIDS
has
itself)
AIDS
become an
living a dual
into the
life.
demands of
if
not
we
increasingly pressing problem,
While the dominant international
up pieces of the
narrative picks
them
by
a parallel
to the medical, epidemiological, so-
economic, and educational challenges of the AIDS
AIDS
analysis.
it
its
local setting
and incorporates
format, that narrative
is
itself
being
disassembled and grafted onto discursive structures and issues already at
however,
work
in those cultures.
when AIDS
epidemiological
is
These processes are disguised,
treated as an unmediated biological and
phenomenon
in
which
cultural differences (dif-
ferences in sexual practices, for example) can simply be factored into a universal transcultural equation.
Thus
it
may be
useful to
draw back from the power of numbers and explore other forms of knowledge produced about and by the
A 56
different kind of
AIDS
epidemic.
knowledge involves the interaction of
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
AIDS
THE THIRD WORLD
IN
AIDS
discourse with local concerns. In Africa, analysis of
must inevitably confront questions of decolonization, urbanizaendemic
tion, modernization, poverty,
AIDS
ignored in assessments of the
and
disease, development,
war
racism: in Uganda, for example, the legacy of civil
is
rarely
situation nor the influence of
the church in discussions of health education; in Kenya, for the
independent press
at
any
rate,
AIDS
used as an ongoing test of
is
the central government's ability to acknowledge and resolve conflict;
in
AIDS
many
crisis
failure of
countries the lack of resources to address the
simply confirms for a global audience the widespread
development policies and the deepening poverty they
are believed to have produced. 45 In France, as Jamie
found
in interviews
narrative forms a kind of bridge
the Third: pitals
on the one hand, the
of African patients with
tion as a "gay disease";
who met
his
like
between the
in
World and
First
early appearance in
AIDS prevented
its
French hos-
characteriza-
on the other hand, one French physician
American counterpart
AIDS Conference
Feldman
with French AIDS researchers, the AIDS
the Third International
at
Washington reported
an African." Feldman writes that
that
"He
treated
constructs Americans as condescending, perceiving the French
Europeans as backward "Third Worlders."
On
a deeper
attitudes towards Africans emerge out of this story
treated the
Frenchman
as the
Frenchman might
—
treat
level,
the
In his ethnographic study of
and other French
American
an African. The
narrative also reveals the impact that France's colonial past
African immigration have on French
me
this story
and
present
46 life.
AIDS
in
urban
Brazil,
Richard Par-
ker suggests that the epidemic needs to be linked to "the social
and cultural construction of sexual ideology," or what he the "cultural
grammar"
both the United States and Great Britain,
on health care systems already heid reproduces
itself in
calls
of the Brazilian sexual universe. 47 In
AIDS
in crisis. In
intensifies stress
South Africa, apart-
the government's public health cam-
57
Paula A. Treichler
community, the slogan
paign: in billboards targeted at the white
"AIDS
Now
is
South Africa" appears
in
banner over a picture of
a black family
writes David Seftel, "it were a
if,"
ket." 48
on
a wall; in
community, the slogan appears
billboards for the black
"as
as graffiti
huddled around
new brand
bold
as a
a grave
of burial cas-
Such conceptualizations have consequences, of course:
a
survey of black attitudes in the Johannesburg area revealed total
Many
confusion.
believed that there were
The one
kinds of AIDS.
through sexual and
ritual contact
The other was acquired by
sexuals
— white AIDS"
is
totally different
(p. 22).
was acquired
with baboons in central
Africa.
notes,
"two
that only affected blacks
sexual contact with
Such
homo-
a conception, as Seftel
reinforced by the material realities of apartheid: in
1986, black patients were treated
at
the state hospital in Johan-
nesburg for $19 per day while care for white patients cost $88 per day
the private hospital
at
(p.
18). In
Cuba, mandatory
testing of the general population has identified a small
infected people
who
have been placed, for the good of the
under permanent quarantine. For incarceration
in
HIV
number of state,
an AIDS sani-
torium, they are compensated with air conditioning and color television, capitalist amenities not available to the rest of the
population. 49
The reproduction
in
AIDS
discourse of existing social divi-
sions appears to be virtually universal,
whether
it is
white or
black AIDS, gay or straight AIDS, European or African AIDS,
wet or hot AIDS, central African or West African AIDS, or innocent AIDS. 50 manifests
itself in
A
First
diverse ways. In Africa,
some people simply
invert the figure of the Bantu twig gatherers
African people with as those of
gay white
fusion-related
HIV
guilty
World/Third World dichotomy
and characterize
AIDS
as
having sexual practices as strange
men
in
San Francisco. 51 In Japan, trans-
infection
among Japanese
is
nonexistent
thanks to the longstanding practice of sequestering the national
blood supply from foreign influences; the Japanese/foreign divi-
58
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
sion
is
IN
THE THIRD WORLD
an animating feature of AIDS discourse and policy mea-
sures in Japan, with suggestions that visas will be denied to
HIV-positive foreigners judged "likely to spread the virus to
many people
in Japan." 52
Great Britain's announcement that
HIV-positive applicants for visas from high-risk countries would
be denied entry provoked accusations of racial imperialism
were
central African countries
United States was not. 53 In to treat
AIDS
like
classified as "high-risk"
when
but the sought
Brazil, officials until recently
other blood-born endemic diseases, but this
position was challenged
when prominent
sociologist
Herbert de
Souza announced in September 1987 that he and his two brothers
were HIV
positive,
infected through the blood product
all
used to treat hemophilia; Souza went public to urge matter what the cause of
AIDS
in a given case, the
that,
no
powerful
stigma associated with homosexuality and drug addiction makes it
must "be viewed
a special condition that
as a social issue
and
not an individual [medical] problem." 54 Parker identifies a related
dichotomy involving the Brazilian medical community's
transition
from conceptualizing AIDS
accepting
it
(from 1985 on)
as a "foreign
as a disease that has
Does our knowledge of such
divisions in discourse
our understanding of AIDS? These divisions are,
produced by what Dubos the
modern world
cial
arrangements.
infect,
we can
— that If
is,
by
we keep
human
human body with
to illuminate the social
AIDS
at
it.
body
at
disease of development,"
it is
pography of recent history
produced
so-
the multiple meanings of
crisis, like
once
whole.
as a
When AIDS
tours of development
mind
and functions
moreover, compels us to look
keep looking
a set of historically
in
history, at
disease
add to
at least in part,
(cited above) calls the inadequacies of
see that the
tious diseases in
import" to
"taken root." 55
certain other infec-
infects the individual like a
A
dye or tissue stain
sustained
crisis,
the image thus produced and to in Africa or Brazil
is
termed "a
precisely the intractable social to-
that
is
invoked, the problematic con-
— environmental devastation, malnutrition, m
Paula A. Treichler
war, social upheaval, poverty, debt, endemic disease
— now un-
avoidably illuminated and scrutinized in the international light of
the
AIDS
As Rudolph Virchow wrote
crisis.
in 1948,
"Epidemics
correspond to large signs of warning which
tell
man
development of
that a disturbance has occurred in the
the true stateshis
people which even a policy of unconcern can no longer overlook." 56
Dubos
grow out
of
measures can
also suggested that preventive disease revolt.
The production of
phenomenon among human
differences
is
a persistent
beings, no doubt as pervasive as the
production of metaphors
— and
production of
similarities or the
as resistant to
termination by decree. Indeed, the identification
and articulation of differences and divisions may be resistance
and revolution
as the desire to erase
may
fact that specific divisions resist dissolution
nificant role in the social formation site for
and thus
as crucial to
them. Hence the signal their sig-
their potential as a
conceptual transformation, cultural resistance, or social
change. If
we
focus
on
I
we can
see examples of this
said earlier that the seemingly simple
dom" than
is
it
in fact very complicated
answers. Already the
and may
USAID,
that are too small
World
desires
the larger point
is
involves
57
con-
more questions
has returned to the
Ugly American who,
distributes in central Africa
inelastic.
(i.e.,
While we may
condoms
legitimately see
having the Third World by the
that, as
colleagues in Project
doms
as the
a
enactment of the dependency relationship the
this as a literal
First
and
raise
dis-
phenomenon.
message to "use
condom drama
world stage such familiar characters in the guise of
AIDS
a single issue in international
course, like condoms,
balls),
Brooke Grundfest Schoepf and her
CONAISSIDA
"much more than
argue, the adoption of con-
a simple transfer of material
culture." 58 Describing the project's experience in Zaire, Schoepf
demonstrates in detail the myriad ways the puts stress
60
on the
condom
question
entire fabric of social relations. She points
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
IN
THE THIRD WORLD
out, for example, that multiple partner relationships appear to be
economic
increasing in response to a continuing fects
men and women somewhat means of
prostitution as a
differently:
crisis that af-
women may
up
take
survival because their husbands,
under
current economic conditions, can no longer support traditional plural households.
Women's groups with
whom CONAISSIDA
has contact express interest in information about
AIDS, and
about condoms; but they also articulate resistance to the view that information
and condoms
sizing the role of
offer a total solution,
empha-
deepening poverty and the need for income-
generating activities for
women
to provide alternatives to
multiple-partner sex.
The important
(NGOs) and
tions
role in Africa of
private voluntary organizations
another dimension of the ferences.
include
condom
Many NGOs, though
AIDS
nongovernmental organiza-
(and thus
issue
(PVOs) shows
and the question of
already fragile causes with a
ally
dif-
reluctant to shift their agendas to
more
stigmatized one), are well organized with excellent international
and community networks. One organization
AIDS
the
tion,
issue
is
that has taken
up
the International Planned Parenthood Associa-
which has prepared and distributed
Preventing a
Crisis,
a
well-received manual on
AIDS
such efforts are
bring about increased U.S. aid for fam-
ily
likely to
for local as well as national use;
planning. 59 But as Schoepf and her colleagues point out,
Ideological issues also need to be addressed. In Zaire nationalist senti-
ment currently
links contraception
and condom
use to western popula-
tion control strategies, which are viewed as a form
Some husbands
also view contraception as
extra-marital sexual relations.
may
be preferable to separate
efforts,
.
.
.
of imperialism.
an encouragement for wives'
These considerations suggest that
AIDS
it
prevention from birth control
rather than to place responsibility for
AIDS
interventions
within family planning programs, (p. 219)
One
alternative
is
to emphasize division, to distinguish explicitly
61
Paula A. Treichler
between
conception," and what
contraception, "a barrier against
might be called
contrasepsis,
"a barrier against disease," carefully
articulating the specific purposes of the latter.
(A similar distinc-
tion was created between birth control and birth spacing, the latter
A
emphasizing voluntariness and degree.)
second strategy, being
widely pursued by women's groups and family planning organizations in a
number of
pressing nature of the
Latin
American countries,
AIDS epidemic
to
is
and the Catholic Church's policy toward controlled
A
third strategy
is
attitudes
Re-
fertility.
depends on reinforcing rather than
sistance to unprotected sex
collapsing the division
to use the
modify men's
between contraception and
to explore alternatives to
contrasepsis.
condoms
methods
as
of contrasepsis. Spermicides, for example, could potentially be
developed that would provide protection against be put in place by
women
social tensions created
HIV and
could
themselves, thus avoiding the multiple
by the condom drama. Here disease pre-
vention depends on resisting male attitudes toward condoms, the
equation of male and female sexuality the plies,
and the penis
fixation
on which
it
But acknowledgment of difference
condom
solution im-
seems to depend. 60 is
not accomplished by
formula. To take one final example with implications for use, the
of
condom
system of sexual classification that dominates discussions
AIDS
internationally
— heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual —
is
neither stable nor universal. Criticisms of this system applied to
AIDS
discourse in Western industrialized countries are
more
valid in other cultures; for not only
is
all
the
sexuality compli-
cated for individuals, with no fixed relationship between official definition, sexual desire, actual practice, tity,
but
it is
and self-perceived iden-
culturally complicated as well.
gues that the hetero/homo/bi classification tually, at
odds with "the
rary Brazil. 61
and are increasingly
media dissemination, they remain
62
seriously,
fluidity of sexual desire" in
While the medical model's
in Brazilian society
is
Richard Parker
ar-
concep-
contempo-
distinctions clearly exist familiar as a result of
largely part of an elite dis-
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
THE THIRD WORLD
IN
An
course introduced to Brazil in the mid-twentieth century. older,
more
tices to
pervasive classification system relates sexual prac-
gender
with both gender and sex constructed by a
roles,
fundamental division between a masculine atividade a
feminine passividade (passivity).
Two
tercourse would be distinguished by culine penetrator,
who
would necessarily perceive
do
so.
males engaged in anal in-
who was
the active mas-
their activity as
readily furnish
"homosexual," nor
them with
the lexicon
As Parker suggests, the potential implications of
for standard "risk
and
the passive feminine penetrated. Neither
would everyday language to
(activity)
group"
identification
this
and "safer sex" educa-
and dismaying. 62
tion are obvious
Parker's work, like other projects noted here, demonstrates
the contributions by observers
members
whose goal
is
nificant feature of such
knowledge
that these
is
be produced by or in cooperation with those tically ests.
what the
to analyze
of a culture find meaningful in relation to AIDS.
is
sig-
meanings must
who
have authen-
experienced that culture and are committed to
This knowledge
A
inter-
its
neither better nor less mediated than
knowledge or other kinds of "objective" ways of know-
statistical
ing a culture, but
from those
different
it is
available
and produces
through the
statistical
insights different
procedures and epi-
demiological categories developed and formalized by Western
And
medical science.
it is
a difference that
ulate alternative narratives. in international
model of
AIDS
reality;
can be used to artic-
Western medical science
is
conceived
discourse as a transhistorical, transcultural
when
cultural differences
among human com-
munities are taken into account, they tend to be enlisted in the service of this reality utilization
may
and
effectively
their status remains utilitarian. This
accomplish specific goals:
ported that some native practitioners cessfully
overcome men's
(e.g.,
it is
re-
of voodoo) have suc-
traditional resistance to the use of
condoms by describing AIDS
as the
work of an
evil spirit
uses sexual desire and the virus as secret weapons;
who
condoms
63
Paulo A. Treichler
provide a means to trick the signs. 63
One can
spirit
and escape
his lethal de-
certainly support a global anti-AIDS strategy
that mobilizes the scientific
model of AIDS
in culturally-specific
ways, yet acknowledge imperialist aspects of a strategy that val-
As the
orizes itself as universal rather than culturally produced.
foregoing examples suggest, experience within a cultural unit
produces a unique kind of knowledge. Indeed, the term ence
is
experi-
linked to the term expert, an etymological connection that
encourages a dissolution of the conventional division between expert knowledge
and
testify to its activities;
mean
it,
representing
it
or being able to
experience entails observation, awareness,
analysis: the self-conscious
Turner puts
Experience of a particular culture,
experience.
however, does not merely
development of expertise. As Victor
experience entails both "living through" and
"looking back." 64 Experiential expertise
is
thus not in the least
incompatible with theoretical sophistication.
But experiential expertise of
World
of the First World/Third professionals, often
culture
is
this
kind
is
not the currency
transaction. Experts are trained
American and European (but being born
no guarantee of experiential
do
expertise), trained to
expert advising of the Third World. Expert advising
is
now
major Third World industry: more than half of the $7 to 8
in a
a bil-
European and North
lion spent yearly
on
American expert
advisers. 65 Gathering information, reporting
facts, advising
aid to Africa goes to
the Third
World
are also mediated activities, per-
meated by history and convention. In Blaming Institute's its
Others, the
immensely useful 1988 sequel to and
indispensable 1986 dossier
Sabatier observes
how
ironic
AIDS and it is
Panos
self-critique of
the Third World,
Renee
that in the information age, in-
formation should be such an elusive resource, particularly with respect to a disease where explains the
first.
What
is
it is
so crucial. 66 But a second irony
elusive
is
not, precisely, the obtaining
and disseminating of "information" but rather the acknowledging of what information entails: that language
64
is
embedded
in cul-
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
THE THIRD WORLD
IN
I
perform
ture, that stories contradict each other, that narratives
information constructs
as well as inform, that
analysts in
many
fields are
acknowledging the
reality. Cultural
and
inevitability
indeed the necessity of such multiple and contradictory stories. Yet having recognized the theoretical complexity of
we
tion,
communication
are pressing
role that subordinates complication
communica-
into a purely pragmatic
and contradiction
to un-
equivocal assertion and scientific harmony — precisely the kind
of circular relation Michel Foucault called a regime of truth. 67
Tracing the historical relationship between the "country"
and the "city" and their evolution cial
thought,
Raymond Williams
in English literature
and
so-
argues that in the course of
nineteenth-century imperialism, these two ideas became a model for the world, dividing not only the rural a single state
model
one. Underlying this ization,
be striving to is
is
the notion of universal industrial-
underdeveloped countries always on their way toward
becoming developed,
that
from the urban within
but the undeveloped world from the developed
become
the logic of
gression
is
just as the
its
poor man
is
always assumed to
rich. "All the 'country' will
development." 68 Though
World. For the
its
new
deployment
ing to a reference
as
an agenda item for the Third
possibilities arising
demic, the "country"
is
work
out of the
a very fertile field.
called Emerging
but
in Africa
only 20 to 30 of at least
AIDS
nostic products
make
AIDS-related
World coun-
in research
on AIDS Third
development of diag-
and vaccines. 69 Recent reports about vaccine
explicit the
need for
test
populations that are "phar-
macologically virgin" and, further, are
high rates. Gay
in
likely to entail the use of
as trial subjects in the
epi-
Markets, 1,119
are based in Third
200 of them are engaged
and other projects
World populations
trials
them
AIDS
As of 1986, accord-
companies and other organizations are involved
tries
'city':
pro-
largely the social imaginary of late capitalism, that
does not impede
activities:
become
this linear
men and IV drug
still
becoming infected
users in the First
at
World do not
65
Paula A. Treichler
fulfill
the
these criteria, not only because infection
first
group and pharmacological
virginity
of the second, but also because any First
is
leveling off in
not characteristic
is
World population
is
too
educated, too exposed to the media, and too likely to take steps (including alternative treatments) to avoid infection or reduce clinical illness.
70 In the
mind of
the city, only the country can
furnish the unspoiled virgin material that the market needs, the naive informant
But there the
is
always another story, and a continuing one in
AIDS epidemic
stories
too ignorant to contradict instructions.
still
involves the untrustworthiness of other
— their sources, motives, data, presuppositions, meth-
odologies, and conclusions.
If statistical
analysis arose as a
form
of inquiry precisely as the instrument of the developed world,
followed that experience was
left as
the developing world itself was capable logic.
it
the only form of knowledge
But
of.
we can
reject this
Williams concluded that "we can overcome division only
by refusing to be divided." 71 One strategy for challenging the
dominant
statistical narrative
narratives.
come
is
to amplify destabilizing counter-
To paraphrase Williams
for the nineties,
contradiction only by demanding
First
History
is
—
V. Y.
and Third World Chronicles
Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa 72 trials in
reader's trials in
— Mary Louise
working
to
know another people now
making sense of the
Pratt,
"Fieldwork in
Resisting the temptation to conclude that Williams offers,
tradiction
AIDS
is,
archive
I
is
hence
this
Common
Places"
73
on the epigrammatic note
demand con-
acknowledge that the international
neither complete nor fully accessible.
is
be-
text.
will instead suggest that to
in practice, to
ent invents the past but the present ted:
can over-
a legend, an invention of the present.
The ethnographer's
come the
we
to be contradicted.
itself
The
pres-
has not yet been inven-
a narrative necessarily in fieri.
I
suggested
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
initially that a crisis serves as a
voices is
no
and
World,
First
and
interests,
My
different.
IN
THE THIRD WORLD
point of articulation for multiple
that the
AIDS
the Third
crisis in
(1) diverse interests are articulated
around AIDS
ways that are socially and culturally localized and understanding
this specificity
is
and cultural precedents
prevent us from hearing the story of
complex
AIDS
and
(3)
in the First
in the
World
Third World
narrative.
To guarantee that
specific; (2)
and programs to ad-
dress the epidemic in a given country or region;
as a
in
a necessary if not sufficient con-
dition for effectively mobilizing resources
institutional forces
World
goal has been to demonstrate that, as in the
one
that
will hear contradictions requires,
one forsake the coherent AIDS narrative of the professional
and technological agencies and obtain access to multiple sources about and within the Third World
— which means, at the very
multiple sources about and within a single country. Pub-
least,
lications
about
AIDS
in
Kenya exemplify
this
argument. In Janu-
ary 1985, the Nairobi Standard publicly reported the presence of
AIDS
in
Kenya for the
ease in Kenya" and
first
time in stories headlined "Killer dis-
"Horror sex disease
in
Kakamenga." 74 Subse-
quent accounts in state-owned newspapers repudiated the report, claiming the deaths
were from skin cancer rather than
AIDS, but Western press accounts speculated increasingly on the frightening implications of the presence of rica.
Then
series
in
November
on AIDS
in Africa in the
that the epidemic
AIDS
in central Af-
1985, Lawrence K. Altman's multi-part
New
York Times reported not only
was spreading rapidly
in Africa but also that
prominent U.S. researchers were convinced the disease started there. Altman's thesis that
opening sentence dramatically presented the
was to become most controversial: "Tantalizing but
sketchy clues pointing to Africa as the origin of
AIDS
have un-
leashed one of the bitterest disputes in the recent annals of icine." 75
Altman went on
med-
to say that these "sketchy clues,"
including blood samples,
67
Paula A. Treichler
have led
to
what has now emerged as the prevailing
and European medical
mune
circles that the
thesis in
American
worldwide spread of acquired im-
deficiency syndrome began in Central Africa, the
home of several
other recently recognized diseases.
But not everyone accepts The Africans vigorously lidity
this designation of the virus'
disagree,
and
there
is
some
criticism
homeland: of the va-
of the studies on which the theories are predicated. Indeed, con-
troversial
new
results point both to
Africa, a fact that
Much
is fueling
and against AIDS originating
the international Juror.
in
76
of the "furor" was caused by criticisms of the studies,
some of which
I
have noted above. Rates estimated for
Afri-
all
cans were often based on small studies in urban areas; rates esti-
mated
for prostitutes
were often derived from problematic
assumptions (for example, some studies identify tive single
women
as prostitutes); serious
raised by claims not based
on
studies at
all
sexually ac-
problems were also
all
but simply on rumor,
armchair speculation, anthropological reports taken out of context, ideological conviction,
and morality
tales.
These included
claims that Africans had sexual contact with African green
monkeys, or
ate
them, or kept dead monkeys
that Africans practiced strange sexual
women's bodies were
women; and
as children's toys;
customs and that African
radically different
from those of Western
that various other cultural practices or medical
conditions or environmental factors were responsible for the
spread of
HIV and AIDS.
In each case, cultural practices
were
taken out of context, exaggerated, and presented as the magic bulletin that
would explain AIDS. Further, the challenging voices
coming from Africa were ignored. These myths did nothing to dispel controversies over
A
major
AIDS about and within
effect of the Times series
to place Africa firmly
Africa. 77
on the Western press was
on the national agenda
for
AIDS media
coverage, culminating in the journalistic frenzy of late 1986 that
represented Africa as "devastated" by 68
AIDS and AIDS-related
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
illnesses.
78
was
In Africa, the effect
THE THIRD WORLD
IN
different.
When
Altman's se-
began to run in the International Herald Tribune in November
ries
1985, for example, outraged Kenyan officials confiscated the entire
shipment. The African offensive against the "African origin"
theory was launched with an editorial in Medicus, the
official
publication of the Kenya Medical Association, which hypothesized that tourists
from around the world had introduced AIDS
79 into Africa.
At
this
point the Kenyan news magazine, the Weekly Review,
published and edited in Nairobi by Hilary Ng'weno and widely
considered one of the best news magazines in Africa, took on the responsibility of keeping the public informed about
AIDS
re-
ports in the African and international press. In the face of increasingly vocal controversy
and government
silence, the
magazine's general position was that developing adequate public
more important than countering Western
health measures was
propaganda. The Weekly Review continues to summarize material printed in the West, cite the numbers of in Zaire,
analysis of scientific ical
mode
epidemic, the Weekly Review
porting.
patients reported
and press reports. Although
of the Kenyan government's
AIDS
AIDS
Rwanda, Uganda, and Kenya, and provide
What
Africa needs,
is
itself
often crit-
of responding to the
also critical of
Ng'weno
fairly detailed
Western
re-
told the Panos Institute,
is
concrete assistance, not "a never ending siren recounting a litany of disasters about to engulf the continent." 80
An
insightful analysis of the
the Weekly Review's contributions entist Alfred
he
is
Fortin in
J.
though Fortin
"The
AIDS is
situation in
Kenya and
provided by the political
Politics of
criticizes the actions of the
AIDS
sci-
in Kenya." Al-
Kenyan government,
primarily critical of the "development establishment," a
position he has
made
repeatedly clear in other papers. In
and the Third World: The
"AIDS
Politics of International Discourse,"
for example, he writes that the "current discursive framing of
AIDS
in the
Third World
is
a highly depoliticized
gues that while this way of seeing
AIDS may be
one" and
ar-
technically nec69
"
Paula A. Treichler
essary to get the job done,
power
relations.
politics," the fire
or
Given
its
it fails
to
"development establishment" must remain under
forces will reproduce the
its
acknowledge important
"aggressive bureaucratic and careerist
power
relations of
domi-
nance and dependency already in place. 81 In the Kenya paper, Fortin argues that the dominance-dependency relationship guarantees English as the international language of
language that ing."
is
AIDS
discourse, a
necessarily "blind to the African world of
He concludes
mean-
that despite Kenya's "comparatively well-
developed medical infrastructure and working coterie of West-
ern
scientists, its efforts
have fallen short of even the
requirements suggested by
its statistics."
minimum
82
However much the Weekly Review may
itself
be skeptical of
the "development establishment" as well as Kenya's response to
the
AIDS
epidemic,
it
does not buy Fortin's position either.
Calling his paper "a hard-hitting and indictive,
if
lopsided, crit-
icism of the Kenyan government, the ministry of health and the local press," the editor goes
Fortin's analysis. ters
83
An
on
to contest a
interesting
number of
points of
and complex discussion cen-
around language:
[Fortin's]
AIDS
paper questions the language of discourse at discussions on
in Africa. It argues that Africans
have chosen to use the Western
language when talking about the disease and since the language transplanted, Africa
is
dependent on the Westjor
continued development. Since the language Fortin says, hence
it is
is
its
is
meaning and
its
not indigenous to Africa,
"blind to the African world of meaning.
Students of African history have long argued that most of the diseases prevalent in Africa today were first witnessed with the advent
of the foreigners on the continent and most of the terminology used by the medical practitioners in Africa are also borrowed from the devel-
oped world. African governments and researchers have also been emphatic that the
AIDS
therefore,
it
virus
was first diagnosed in the United States and,
would follow automatically that the language used
in ref-
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
IN
THE THIRD WORLD
who diagnosed
erence to the disease should be that developed by those first,
(pp. 12-13)
intended to challenge — as — the entire discursive formation
Fortin's
argument about discourse
Parker's
is
with regard to Brazil
AIDS
of international in
some sense
is
discussions applied unthinkingly
imperialistically to diverse cultures;
most discourse
analysts
would
it is
"foreign" to Kenya and Kenyan leaders. a colonial legacy,
it
plays
many
Though
roles in
Mudimbe
today. (Zairean philosopher V. Y.
and hence a position
Ng'weno, however,
share.
the corollary implication of this view: that English
deed
it
is
somehow
English
Kenyan
rejects
is
in-
activities
argues that Western
discourse has contributed to but not monopolized what he calls
"the invention of Africa"; rather, the objects of that discourse
who
are also subjects
have produced an intricate interweaving of
European and African commentary, rendering the notion of "purely African discourse" an time,
Ng'weno makes
tionality
sustain
and
its
identity as a
is
At the same
with regard to AIDS helps
origin: to use English
— a home,
a
the political point that language marks na-
Western
adopting AIDS, to giving story
impossible dream." 84 )
it
disease. This resistance to
— in the words of the Altman
reflected elsewhere in the Weekly Review,
where supposedly indigenous African terms related terms (like "slim disease"
and "AIDS
for
AIDS and AIDS-
belt") are placed in
quotation marks and often explicitly rejected; the term magada, cited by Fortin as the
the Review. (This
not translate
is
name
AIDS terms
one acronym,
for
AIDS
not to say that
UKIMWI,
in Swahili,
many African
into their
own
is
never used in
publications do
language; for example,
appears in a number of Kenyan and
Tanzanian newspapers.)
The analyses
juxtaposition of these
makes
two complex and
clear that the chronicle of
AIDS
interlocking
in the
Third
World cannot be understood monolithically. Not only must understood
in
terms of the "rich history and complex
it
be
political
chemistry" of each affected country, but also as a heteroglossic 71
Paula A. Treichler
series of conflicted, shifting, ist
and contradictory positions
that ex-
within systems of cultural stereotypes and hegemonic power
relations. 85
And we may
ask, at last,
whether the
chronicle should not be interrogated as well.
What
is
the Third World?
more than
ease with
We
of this
title
What
is
AIDS?
are talking about an epidemic dis-
forty distinct clinical manifestations,
of which consist of the absence of manifestation,
some of which
and some of which
are unique to particular regions in the world,
immune
apparently have nothing to do with a deficiency of the
When we
system. 86
talk
about the Third World,
about more than 100 countries of the world. about Africa, large as the
we
we
are talking
When we
talk
are talking about a continent four times as
United
States,
which has more than 50 countries,
900 ethnic groups, and 300 language
families
74 languages). As Miller and Rockwell argue,
AIDS problem
about "the
some
(Zambia alone has it is
absurd to talk
in Africa" except for specific
well-defined purposes. As for "the Third World,"
and
we may
turn
to Carl E. Pletsch's discussion of the evolution of the concept of
the Third World,
which opens with
this
quotation from Alexis
de Tocqueville: The Deity does not regard the human race one glance and severally
and he
discerns in each
and
his fellows,
Pletsch's
own
totally bogus.
all the beings
man
collectively [hut] surveys at
of whom mankind
analysis suggests that the
is
him
to all
him from them. 81
term "Third World"
is
possible exception of the political cate-
gories of left and right," Pletsch writes, "the
worlds
composed;
the resemblances that assimilate
the differences that distinguish
"With the
is
scheme of three
perhaps the most primitive system of classification in
our social
scientific discourse" (p. 566).
This highly authoritative
conceptual framework has had a major influence on the organization of social scientific labor for the last three decades; yet as a
framework
which the
72
for genuine scientific investigation, societies outside of
Western
it
yields studies in
civilization (societies,
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
that
is,
IN
THE THIRD WORLD
belonging to the Second and Third Worlds) become, in
pure fantasies"
Pletsch's words, "almost that in the
mundane scheme
Bad enough
(p. 566).
of things, the three-worlds concept
perpetuates a self-serving innovation by postwar social scientists to
revamp modernization theory
large
scheme of
what we regard
things,
it
— in contrast to the
human
for the
Cold War
era. In the
enables us to continue to avoid doing
Deity
— seem to find so
difficult: to
beings simultaneously both "collectively" and
"severally," in multiple
ways both same and
To hear the story "AIDS
Third World" requires us
in the
to confront familiar problems in the
we know what we know? What
different.
human
cultural
sciences:
work
will
knowledge to perform? What are our own stakes
we
How
in the success
or failure of that performance? In the course of this essay, identified several analytic strategies
do
ask our
through which
have
I
we may
ex-
plore these questions and tried to suggest areas of discourse
where better understandings may be
particularly valuable: the
conventions of mass media stories, the discursive traditions and
modes of representation
that figure in the
AIDS
narrative told
by the sciences and social sciences (including tropes, stereotypes, linguistic structures,
and pervasive metaphors); the emer-
gence of a dominant international AIDS narrative and the linguistic and professional
management
its
role in
of the epidemic; the
exclusion or silencing of alternative narratives, including those originating in the "Third World," in part because they do not tell
the story in a "First
which AIDS
is
World" way; the processes through
conceptualized within given institutions for
everyday use; and the very terms through which
what chronicle
it is
we
think
we
are telling.
ances provided by the warring voices discursive points helps render
tion
— impossible, that
account of
AIDS
in the First. If
I
is,
it
at
we
identify
The checks and
bal-
each of these multiple
impossible to refuse contradic-
to argue that any single unchallenged
exists in the
Third World, anymore than
have succeeded in discrediting the phrase
it
does
"AIDS
73
Paula A. Treichler
Third World,"
in the
I
my
begun to achieve
will have
aim, one
World chronicle about
directed toward dismantling the First
Third World AIDS: a chronicle designed in part to strengthen or disrupt (as the case
may
World
be) specific First
discursive
chains and in doing so rearrange without redistributing the terial benefits that
must be allowed and
depend on them.
ma-
also a chronicle that
It is
to exist precisely so that
it
can be discredited
resisted.
Notes
Research for
this essay
was supported in part by grants from the National
Council of Teachers of English and the University of
Illinois at
Champaign Graduate College Research Board and by
a fellowship at the Society
for the Humanities, Cornell University.
ments and continuing
assistance.
am
I
I
thank Cary Nelson for
tance,
I
University of
at the
Illinois in
members
critical
com-
Kruger and Phil
also indebted to Barbara
Mariani, to Gayatri Spivak, to Simon Watney, and to
theory seminar
Urbana-
of the feminist
spring 1988. For research assis-
thank Anne Balsamo and University of
John
Illinois librarians
Lit-
tlewood (Documents) and Yvette Scheven (Africana).
The term AIDS and cultural broad
crisis;
clinical
in this essay refers to the
the
compound
AIDS epidemic
phrase AIDS and
broad social
as a
HIV infection
refers to the
spectrum of HIV-related conditions from asymptomatic infection
to the specific diseases presently used to define
medical condition only
if this
more
"AIDS"
restricted sense
is
(I
use
AIDS
to
mean
clear in context).
I
the
have
elsewhere discussed the status of these signifiers as "real" and "true" and will not do so here; see "AIDS, Homophobia, and Biomedical Discourse:
demic of
An
Epi-
Signification," in AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism, ed. Douglas
Crimp (Cambridge,
Mass.:
MIT
Press, 1988), pp. 31-70.
See Philip Babcock Gove, ed., Webster's Third New International Dictionary of
1.
English Language (Springfield, Mass.:
Merriam, 1971), and James A. Murray,
Oxford English Dictionary, 1874-1928,
compact
ed. (Oxford:
the
ed.,
Oxford University
Press, 1971).
Frank Browning, "AIDS: The Mythology of Plague," Tikkun
2.
April 1988): 70.
and 3.
the
AIDS
Review of Randy
Epidemic
(New
York:
St.
And
the
3,
Band Played On:
no. 2 (March-
Politics,
People,
Martin's Press, 1987).
Judith Wilson Ross, "Ethics and the Language of AIDS," in
Public Policy, ed. Christine Pierce
n
Shilts,
A IDS,
and Donald VandeVeer (Belmont,
Ethics,
Calif.:
and
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
Wadsworth, 1988),
p. 47.
York: Farrar Straus
&
lan
See also Susan Sontag, AIDS and
that disease
Meaning of Epidemic Disease,"
is
(New
Metaphors
Its
Giroux, 1989). This positivist position
M. Brandt with the position
the Social
THE THIRD WORLD
IN
contrasted by Al-
is
"Toward
socially constructed in
Social Research 55, no. 3
(Autumn
1988): 413-432; Brandt also specifically addresses Sontag's position as articula-
ted in
Illness as
Metaphor
(New
York: Vintage Books, 1975).
4.
Browning, "Mythology of Plague,"
5.
For discussion of the "rugged vagina'V'vulnerable rectum" dichotomy and
related permutations, see
An Epidemic
my
p. 70.
"AIDS, Homophobia, and Biomedical Discourse:
of Signification," in AIDS: Cultural Analysis /Cultural Activism, ed.
Douglas Crimp (Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT
Press, 1988), pp. 31-70,
and "AIDS,
Gender, and Biomedical Discourse: Current Contests for Meaning," in AIDS: The Burdens of History, ed. Elizabeth Fee
and Daniel M. Fox (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1988), pp. 190-266.
H. Hunter Handsfield, "Heterosexual Transmission of
6.
ciency Virus," Journal of
the
Human Immunodefi-
American Medical Association 260, no. 13 (October
1988): 1943. Cf.
7.
Homi Bhabha, "The Other Question — The
Stereotype and Colonial Dis-
course," Screen 24 (November- December 1983), and Chandra Talpade Mohanty,
"Under Western
Eyes: Feminist Scholarship
2 12, no. 3 (Spring 1984), and 13, no.
Advice to "use a condom,"
8.
like
and Colonial Discourses," Boundary
(Fall 1984).
1
many other seemingly unproblematic educa-
tional programs, can create unforeseen
and very complex problems. For discus-
sion of the nature and use of culturally-specific specific
AIDS
AIDS and
the Third
Worldwide
AIDS (Washington: Panos
Germs: The
Politics
10.
Norman
Policy Impact 1 1
.
and Cindy Patton,
Sex and
Press, 1985).
and other examples are readily
weekly News and
stitute studies,
End
and
Others: Prejudice, Race,
Institute, 1988),
of AIDS (Boston: South
Details of these
as the
Institute,
World (London: Panos Institute, in association with Nor-
wegian Red Cross, 1989), Renee Sabatier, Blaming
9.
information as well as
examples of problems in Third World contexts, see Panos
available in
such publications
Features Bulletin of the All Africa Press Service, the
Panos In-
and U.S. government reports.
Miller and Richard C. Rockwell, eds.,
(Lewiston, N.Y.:
Edwin Mellen,
AIDS
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and
Radical Democratic
Politics,
trans.
in Africa:
The Social and
1988), p. xxxi.
Winston Moore and
Socialist Strategy: Towards a
Paul
Cammack
(London:
Verso, 1985). 12.
Kenneth Prewitt, "AIDS
ed. Miller 13.
and Rockwell, pp.
Marjorie Shostak,
in Africa:
The
Triple Disaster," in
AIDS
in Africa,
xi-xii.
Nisa: The Life
and Words of a !Kung Woman
(New
York: Vin-
tage Books, 1983), p. 26. 14.
James Clifford,
"On
Ethnographic Allegory," in Writing
Culture, ed.
James
75
Paula A. Treichler
Clifford
and George
Marcus (Berkeley: University of California
E.
Press, 1986),
p. 99.
Richard Selzer, "A Mask on the Face of Death: As AIDS Ravages
15.
Doctor Finds
U.S.
documented
after 16.
Mary Louise
Clifford
The
17.
internally
by page number.
"Fieldwork in
Pratt,
Common
and Marcus collection
offers
Tom
on Mombasa by
J.
Places," in Writing Culture, ed.
for discussion of arrival scenes.
an extended reflection on relation-
between anthropology, ethnography, and
Photograph of "Mercedes" by
story
Haiti, a
10 (August 1987): 58-64. Here-
Life
and Marcus, pp. 27-50; see pp. 33-45
Clifford
ships
Taboo Against Truth,"
a
travel writing.
B. Diederich for Life 10 (August 1987): 60;
Masland, "AIDS Threat Turns Shore Leave into
Naval Exercise in Caution," Chicago Tribune, April 1988; Newsweek photo of prostitute in
Rod Nordland, with Ray Wilkinson and Ruth
Plague Years," Newsweek, 18.
19.
"A Matter of
Jan Zita Grover,
no. 6
(March 1988):
November
Is
and Death," Women's Review of Books
Life
the
AIDS
are reviewed by Robert Lederer, "Origin
West Responsible?"
CovertAction, no.
and no. 29 (1988): 52-67, and are reported regularly 20.
The ubiquitous
the person with like
in
ACT UP;
interpretation of the
AIDS
as
dying victim
see Douglas Crimp,
AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural
is
"How
in the
AIDS drama
New
to
With AIDS
Have Promiscuity
Native.
and
groups
activist
in
an Epidemic,"
Crimp, pp. 237-271, and Michael
Coalition, 1987-1988). Pratt, "Fieldwork in
pp. 44-50, discusses redemptive endings,
York
as inevitably tragic
one challenged by gay
Activism, ed.
and
28 (1987): 43-54,
Callan, Surviving and Thriving with AIDS: Collected Wisdom, 2 vols. ple
5,
3.
Conspiracy theories of
Spread of AIDS:
Marshall, "Africa in the
24, 1986, p. 46.
made
all
the
(New
York: Peo-
Common
Places,"
more imperative by
the
ethnographic commonplace that the innocent Other often becomes worldlywise through contact with "modern civilization" in the guise of ethnographers themselves. In Selzer's encounter, a further irony
that he pays the prostitutes
is
to talk to him, again paralleling ethnographic research
vestigator enters into a
change which,
commodity exchange with the
as Pratt puts
it,
where the privileged native informant
in-
— an ex-
turns the "anthropologist preserver-of-the-
culture" into the "interventionist corrupter-of-the-culture." 21.
See photographs in Nordland et
al.,
"Africa in the Plague Years," and Ken-
neth M. Pierce, "Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide," Time, September Brazilian magazines' high-tech medical images
were described to
abeth Santos, M.D., personal communication.
Odd
captions, story
and text do not only occur
on AIDS
in the
in
Canadian journal
76
by
1,
Maclean's, for
1986.
Elis-
among photographs,
Third World contexts, of course.
graph of pedestrians on a crowded Toronto the pedestrians are
linkages
me
A
example, includes a photo-
city street; shot
from behind so
moving away from the camera, the photo appears
that
to illus-
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
trate the caption:
"Toronto sidewalk
August 24, 1987,
to general public," 22.
no.
growing
traffic:
IN
THE THIRD WORLD
fear as
AIDS
virus spreads
p. 31.
Robert Caputo, "Uganda: Land Beyond Sorrow," National Geographic 173,
4 (April 1988): 468-474; the Caputo photo of Jane Namirimu and her
mother
is
on
p.
Common
470. Pratt, "Fieldwork in
40 and 45,
Places," pp.
cusses respectively the fallen postcolonial world of ethnographic writing
dis-
and
the trope of Utopian universality. 23.
Selzer,
"Mask on the Face of Death,"
p. 63.
The Diederich photograph
is
reprinted in Maclean's, August 31, 1987, p. 37. To take another example, the
Newsweek photographs accompanying Nordland, "Africa in the Plague Years," have been widely reprinted. a
doorway, holding
(p.
The Newsweek
lap.
on the cover of the May
Search. Appearing
weekly journal Health
slightly different angle;
is
a
village of Kinyiga, Florence
both tested positive for the
now
virus."
Myths about AIDS the story.
The
(November-December
in Africa"; the
1988, p. 18, reprinted the
2 -month-old
credit line
shot at a
"Out of
daughter have
accompanying the
and the photographs were
(Al or Ed) also
1;
accompanied Catharine Watto Fight Epidemic," The
and the Weekly Review (Nairobi) of June
mother and
24,
child photograph with the caption
"Ugandan AIDS victims" and no picture
credit.
For a general discussion of the
documentary use of photographs and how "original meanings" may be Eric Margolis,
re-
1988): 26-31, as "Dispelling
AIDS Time Bomb: Region Scrambles
Guardian, June 17, 1987, pp. 10-1
woman
featured story,
photos were captioned only with text from
The Hooper photographs
son's "Africa's
"Two
— Picture
captioned as follows: "In the Ugan-
story reads "Photos by Al Hooper." Hilts's article
printed in Africa Report
identical
Hilts's J.
Masaka, 22, and her
AIDS
framed in
captioned
is
24, 1988 issue of the Washington
accompanying Philip is
woman
print
Ed Hooper
to
photograph of the
Africa," pp. 12-17, the photograph
dan
44) shows an emaciated
Uganda barmaid and son," and credited
victims:
Post's
One
baby in her
a thin
lost,
see
"Mining Photographs: Unearthing the Meanings of Historical
Photos," Radical History Review 40 (1988): 33-48. 24.
Sabatier, Blaming Others, p. 96, quotes a Nigerian prostitute
"Although white
follows: parts, as
I
I
am
will never
go to bed with
concerned,
Rosalind
J.
clients generally
AIDS
is
a
Chirimuuta, AIDS,
a
white
named
Juliet as
pay better than their African counter-
man
unless he wears a
condom. As
far
white man's disease." Richard C. Chirimuuta and Africa,
and Racism (Bretby, Darbyshire: R. C. Chi-
rimuuta, 1987; London: Free Association Books, 1987). 25.
Ann
S.
Anagnost, "Magical Practice, Birth Policy, and Women's Health in
Post-Mao China," Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory Colloquium, University of Illinois at Urbana, 26.
Edward
1985):
Said, "In the
December
7, 1988.
Shadow of the West,"
wedge, no. 7-8
(Winter- Spring
5.
27. Jean
William Pape,
a leading
AIDS
researcher in Haiti and one of the phy-
77
Paula A. Treichler
sicians Selzer consulted, expresses
disenchantment with the Western press for
consistently ignoring "the efforts of the Haitian people to fight, with almost
most devastating disease of
resources, the
He
century."
no
told the Panos Insti-
have given over 60 interviews to American and other reporters about
tute: "I
AIDS
in Haiti.
would
like to
two
this
my
what
that recorded
The others
very time-consuming and exhausting, and takes energy
It is
put into
I
work.
Of all
and the context
said,
AIDS
often painted a picture of
me." Quoted
I
those interviews there are only one or in
which
said
I
it,
accurately.
was unrecognisable to
in Haiti that
in Sabatier, Blaming Others, p. 90. (Selzer consulted
Pape too, but
I
have no evidence that Pape found his report objectionable.) But negative reactions to
Western media reports do not necessarily disrupt the cycle of represen-
Some African governments,
tation.
be inflations of their
statistics
problem, prohibited
AIDS
"One
the Western press. the
New
York Times
Institute in
heavily
November
result of such attempts at control," said
is
in
James Brooke,
an interview with the Panos
in those countries,
making
it
more
more
Chirimuuta and Chirimuuta, AIDS,
in providing instances
Africa,
and Ra-
where the "authentically African point of
equally powerless to challenge prevailing conceptions. (Anecdotes
the U.S. gay
diffi-
convey an authentically African point of view." Quoted in
Sabatier, Blaming Others, p. 95.
view"
AIDS
1987, "has been to force foreign reporters to rely
on foreign researchers working
go further
what they believed to
researchers and physicians from giving interviews to
West Africa correspondent
cult than before to
cism,
for example, angry at
or simply wishing to deflect focus on the
community describe numerous
from
instances of journalists refusing to
photograph particular people with AIDS because they "don't look sick enough.") 28.
"Regime of truth"
is
Michel Foucault's term. See "The
Function of
Political
the Intellectual," Radical Philosophy, no. 17 (1977): 13-14. See also Treichler,
"AIDS, Homophobia, and Biomedical Discourse."
Rene Dubos, Mirage of Health:
29.
New 30.
Brunswick,
N.J.:
Utopias, Progress,
and
Biological
Change (1959;
Rutgers University Press, 1987), pp. 218, 219.
John Tagg, using Foucault to analyze the function of photographs in repre-
senting "the true" in The Burden of Representation (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), p. 94. 3
1
.
Ronald Reagan,
December
can
trip,
32.
Raymond
don:
New
Left
at a press
conference after returning from a Latin Ameri-
15, 1987.
Williams,
Politics
and
Letters: Interviews with
New
Left Review
Review Editions, 1981), pp. 164-165; Williams here
earlier analysis in The Country and the City of experience
different ways of producing
and
(Lon-
refers to his
statistical analysis as
knowledge (London: Chatto and Windus, 1973),
es-
pecially pp. 215-232. 33.
See, for example, the testimony of
and Technology, USAID, on funding
78
Bradshaw Langmaid, Bureau of Science
criteria for
AIDS
aid to African countries,
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
in
AIDS and
THE THIRD WORLD
IN
The Impact on Development, Hearing before the Select
the Third World:
Committee on Hunger, U.S. House of Representatives, 100th Congress, 2nd Session held in Washington D.C., June 30, 1988, Serial no. 100-29 (Washington,
Government Printing
D.C.: U.S. 34.
Office, 1988), pp. 33-34.
Most studies depend on some degree of cooperation between the
and
First
the Third World, and are thus influenced by the scientific and political commit-
ments of given agencies and
common grounds
their ability to find
of inquiry as
well as resources. In Africa, for example, scarce resources have created variation in scientific research, yet
Some
types about Africa suggest. stitute,
much more
facilities, like
wide
research goes on than stereothe Kenya Medical Research In-
have sustained fairly continuous research programs throughout the
period of decolonization and independence. Although the respected biomedical research programs of Makarere University and of the East African Virus Institute in
Uganda were
seriously disrupted
under
Amin,
Idi
Amin's para-
ironically
noia about viruses saved the physical facilities from destruction; these programs are
now
being rebuilt. Research contributions of the International Medical Re-
search Center in Franceville, Gabon, in central Africa, are described by James
Brooke, "Virus Discoveries Help an African Outpost of
AIDS Research Gain
Notice," New York Times, February 28, 1988. Needless to say, African attitudes
toward cooperation with Western
some respects the
Panos Institute study, Blaming
many long-term mentators collect
call
scientists are also highly variable, reflecting in
commitments of the
ideological
Others, pp.
state as a
whole. Sabatier's
108-109, distinguishes between the
collaborative projects that predate
AIDS and what
African com-
"parachute research," in which foreign researchers drop in "to
blood samples, data or
again, to write
up
and Chirimuuta, AIDS,
and critique of
clinical observations,
and
just as quickly [take] off
their findings for a (Western) scientific journal."
First
Africa,
Chirimuuta
and Racism, provide a well-documented analysis
World versus Third World research on Third World AIDS;
they also note, p. 85, the contradictory tendency of American and European
"Third Worldists" (including the Panos cite the findings of
35.
Jonathan M. Mann, James Chin, Peter Piot, and
ternational Epidemiology of also Peter Piot, F. A.
AIDS,"
Plummer,
An
Jonathan M. Mann, "AIDS: 573-579. Monthly
statistical
Mann
"AIDS: 37.
An
Mann
et
al.,
Scientific
F. S.
Mhalu,
Thomas Quinn, "The
American, J.-L.
October 1988,
In-
p. 82.
See
Lamboray, James Chin, and
International Perspective," Science 239 (1988):
updates are available from the PanAmerican Health
Organization in Washington, 36.
and
Institute) to simultaneously criticize
such "hit-and-run" research.
WHO's
regional health office for the Americas.
"International Epidemiology of AIDS," p. 84, and Piot et
al.,
International Perspective," p. 576. et
al.,
"International Epidemiology of
Union did not report tember 1988
its first official
— a pregnant
AIDS,"
p. 84.
"indigenous" death from
The
Soviet
AIDS
until Sep-
Leningrad prostitute named Olga Gaeevskaya; "Epi-
19
Paula A. Treichler
AIDS
demiologists were incensed that the woman's doctors failed to diagnose before she died," Edmonton Journal, October
cent "outbreak" of seven babies and
HIV
tion
anywhere
Some
and suggest
38.
see
John
else).
New
York Times,
Prevention
authorities blame unsterilized needles for the
F.
Burns, "Outbreak of
AIDS
Pergamon
son, R.
AIDS
M. May, and A.
in
Triples Testing in a So-
1989.
5,
Invited Presentations
AIDS
of Ministers of Health on Programmes for
World include AIDS and
was contracted while
have not seen the baby-to-mother explana-
(I
February
and Control:
ganization; Oxford:
a re-
is
"AIDS") among twenty-
that the mothers' infection
For a multinational assessment of the impact of
AIDS
More mysterious
1988.
infection (the headline says
breast-feeding the infected babies
viet City,"
1,
of their mothers in a hospital in Elista, capital of a region
five
along the Caspian Sea. babies' infection
1
AIDS on
the Third World,
and Papers from
World Summit
the
World Health Or-
Prevention (Geneva:
Press, 1988). Assessments centered in the First
the Third World: The Impact on Development; R.
R.
M. Ander-
McLean, "Possible Demographic Consequences of
Developing Countries," Nature 332 (1988): 228-234; Institute of
Medicine/National Academy of Sciences, Confronting AIDS: Update 1988 (Washington, D.C.: National
Robert
Academy
Press, 1988). Discussions of Africa include
AIDS, and Epidemiology,"
Biggar, "Overview: Africa,
J.
Africa, ed.
Miller and Rockwell, pp. 1-8;
in
Congress, 1987); Christine Hawkins, "AIDS Expected to Slow
Population Growth," New Africa 251 (August 1988): 25; Charles
W. Hunt,
"Africa and AIDS," Monthly Review 39, no. 9 (February 1988): 10-22; Krieger,
"The Epidemiology of AIDS
S.
Bertozzi, James Chin, B. N'Galy,
and Indirect Costs of HIV Infection
Nancy
in Africa," Science for the People 19, no.
(January-February 1987): 18-21; Miller and Rockwell, eds., AIDS
Over,
in
in Africa:
Research Ser-
Background/Issues for U.S. Policy (Washington, D.C.: Congressional vice, Library of
AIDS
Raymond W. Copson, AIDS
in
in Africa;
1
M.
and K. Nyamuryekung'e, "The Direct
Developing Countries: The Cases of
Zaire and Tanzania," paper presented at the International Conference
on the
Global Impact of AIDS, London, March 8-10, 1988; Panos Institute, AIDS and the Third World; in Africa, ed.
"Africans
Kenneth Prewitt, "AIDS
in Africa:
The
Triple Disaster," in
AIDS
Miller and Rockwell, pp. ix-xv; Sabatier, Blaming Others; Jane Perlez,
Weigh Threat of AIDS
1988, p. 16; Al
J.
Venter, "AIDS:
Economies," New
to Its
Strategic
International Defense Review 21 (April 1988):
York Times,
Consequences
September 22,
in Black Africa,"
357-359; Watson, "Africa's
AIDS
Time Bomb." 39.
Miller and Rockwell, "Introduction," in
40.
The
AIDS
progressive visibility and reality of the
Lawrence K. Altman, "New Support from Africa
AIDS," New
York Times,
Disease Before 1981, 16, 1987;
80
Thomas W.
December
Grows
22, 1985; Erik
into a
Netter,
in Africa,
pp. xiv-xxiv.
AIDS epidemic as
WHO
are illustrated in
Plans Effort
Eckholm, "AIDS, an
Worldwide Scourge," New
"AIDS Spurs Countries
on
Unknown
York Times,
March
to Act as Cases Rise
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
Around World," New
Awaken
A
Is
THE THIRD WORLD
22, 1987; Steven V. Roberts, "Politicians
to the Threat of a Global Epidemic,"
Now
"AIDS
March
York Times,
IN
New
June
York Times,
Global Public Health Crisis, Harvard
MD
7,
1987;
Stresses," American
Medical News, June 12, 1987, p. 19. 41.
Quoted
Marilyn Chase, "Rich Nations Urged to Help Poor Lands Fight
in
WHO
AIDS by Backing
Program," Wall
national cooperation, see
(March 1988): 32-34;
Times
Point: Dr. Gottlieb
Sabatier, Blaming Others;
WHO
Monekosso,
A
cerning a
R
AIDS Program,
achieve global cooperation; in an
New
global summit,
Traore, "Meeting
outlined in the document Con-
is
Committee of Ministers Recommendation
(87) 25, adopted at the 81st session,
director of the Global
Amadou
Public Health Policy to Fight the Acquired Immunodeficiency
Syndrome (AIDS), Council of Europe
No.
inter-
Regional Director for Africa," The Courier
cooperative international policy
Common European
On
Community) 105 (September-October
(Africa-Caribbean-Pacific-European 1987): 2-5.
17, 1988.
June
Street Journal,
Simon Watney, "Our Rights and Our Dignity," Gay
26, 1987. Jonathan
"AIDS Monitor" column on
February
Scientist,
November
Mann,
advocates aggressive, activist strategies to
4, 1988, p. 32,
Mann
the January 1988
states that the inter-
summit represents "an extraordinary
national declaration reached at the
consensus." 42.
(1)
AIDS
Mann
et
al.,
p. 84; (4)
Africa,
Mann
et
al.,
"International Epidemiology of AIDS,"
Watson, "Africa's AIDS Time Bomb,"
Mary Harper, "AIDS
Africa," p. 12; (6)
43.
"International Epidemiology of AIDS," p. 84; (2) Copson,
in Africa, p. 9; (3)
November
is
no more
"Data on AIDS
10; (5) Hilts,
"Out
of
— Plague or Propaganda?" West
7-13, 1988, p. 2072.
Chirimuuta and Chirimuuta, AIDS,
reporting"
p.
in Africa
a
Africa,
and Racism, suggest that "under-
problem than "overdiagnosing." See
An
in Africa:
Assessment,"
in
AIDS
also Cynthia
in Africa, ed.
Haq,
Miller and
Rockwell, pp. 9-29; Barbara Boyle Torrey, Peter O. Way, and Patricia Rowe,
"Epidemiology of tions," in
of African
AIDS
AIDS
monds, "AIDS
HIV and AIDS
in Africa, ed.
studies
in Africa:
is
in Africa:
Emerging
A
general critique
provided by Margaret Cerullo and Evelynn
The Western Imagination and
Radical America 21, no. 2-3 (March-April 1987): 17-23;
demiology of AIDS in Africa."
An
attempt to place
broader political and economic perspective
Meredeth Turshen,
and Social Implica-
Issues
Miller and Rockwell, pp. 31-54.
"Briefings:
AIDS
27 (January-March 1986): 51-54.
An
is
the
Ham-
Dark Continent,"
and Krieger, "The Epi-
AIDS
statistics
within
a
presented in Carol Barker and
in Africa," Review of African Political
Economy
unexpectedly skeptical assessment of the
value of current theoretical analysis and statistical projections for the purposes
of strategic decision
making
in the private sector
and Frederick
I.
Products Review
(May 1987): 26-29;
of the
Scott, Jr.,
"AIDS market"
"AIDS:
for the
A
Glimpse of
is
Its
provided by
Manny
Impact," American
this article also suggests the size
development of
Ratafia
Clinical
and
diversity
clinical products.
81
.
Paulo A. Treichler
44.
Nathan Clumeck, "AIDS
Jay A.
AIDS:
in Africa" in
Pathogenesis
of Africa," and Torrey et
al.,
"Epidemiology of
HIV and AIDS
marize existing studies.
On
Warren D. Johnson,
and Jean W. Pape, "AIDS
Jr.,
pp. 65-78; interactions of 45.
and Treatment, ed.
Levy (New York: Marcel Dekker, 1989), pp. 37-63. Clumeck,
the clinical manifestations of
AIDS with
AIDS
"Out
Hilts,
in Africa"
sum-
in Haiti, see
in Haiti," in AIDS, ed. Levy,
tuberculosis are discussed
on pp. 11-11
Caputo, "Uganda: Land Beyond Sorrow"; Hilary Ng'weno, Weekly Review
(Nairobi); Lloyd Timberlake, Africa in Bankruptcy, ed. Jon
The Causes, the Cures of Environmental
Crisis:
Tinker (Philadelphia:
New
Society/Earthscan, 1986).
and the Process of Giving Meaning:
46. Jamie Feldman, "Identity, Illness,
French Medical Discourse on AIDS," unpublished manuscript, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, July 1988. See
47.
David
Seftel,
"AIDS and Apartheid: Double Trouble,"
"AIDS 50.
Arrest:
Though
types of
"AIDS
Africa Report
1988): 21.
Nicholas Wade, "Cuba's Quarantine for AIDS:
periment," New
in Brazil," Medical
no. 2 (1987): 158, 159.
1,
(November-December 49.
Michael Pollack, AIDS and Cul-
Richard Parker, "Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
Anthropology Quarterly 48.
also
(forthcoming).
ture in France
February
York Times, editorial,
The Cuban
Solution,"
6,
Village Voice,
A
Police State's Health Ex-
1989; Richard Goldstein,
February
14, 1989, p. 18.
among
these dichotomies are primarily social, the differentiation
AIDS
is
also a scientific
and
in Africa," p. 43, states that
clinical question.
For example, Clumeck,
American, European, and African
isolates of
the virus are quite similar; the greater polymorphism of the African strains
may
suggest (according to Clumeck) a longer period of evolution and the problem of
developing a vaccine. acterizes the
The wet/hot dichotomy reported by Clumeck,
breakdown of
cases in Zaire,
study were diagnosed with "wet
with "hot AIDS" (weight
Clumeck argues needed for AIDS
now been
loss
AIDS"
with
where 80 percent of
At
two
least
and 6 percent with Kaposi's Sarcoma;
rently believed to produce the
immune more
addition, there are distinct strains of
make
a
new
case definition badly
related but different types of virus have
isolated in African patients; labeled
sidered to produce AIDS-like
one
(weight loss with diarrhea), 14 percent
fever),
that these clinical expressions in Africa.
char-
p. 52,
patients in
HIV-1 and HIV- 2, both are con-
deficiencies,
serious
HIV-1
though only HIV-1
syndrome that, to
that leads to
some
is
cur-
AIDS. In
extent, can be used to
trace different geographical routes of transmission, not only through the countries
but also the virology laboratories the virus has inhabited. Viral relation-
ships are evaluated according to the degree to
which the genetic structures
perfectly match. 51.
Hilts,
ance of
82
"Out of
AIDS
Africa," p. 12, notes the incredulity that greeted the appear-
in Africa.
He
quotes a pulmonary specialist in Uganda
who
first
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
saw AIDS there in 1983: us could believe
looked
"It
Many
it."
scientists
like the
IN
THE THIRD WORLD
new American
and reporters
the "African connection" theory so readily adopted in the
and Chirimuuta, AIDS,
Africa,
worked
to counter
West (Chirimuuta
and Racism, pp. 121-126, document this response);
but others in Africa began to place the blame for African people
But none of
disease.
in Africa
— always those
in
AIDS on
the loose morals of
other countries, classes, or ethnic groups. Thus
an editorial in the Kenya Times (Nairobi),
May
sexual behavior, noting that "nature has
its
26, 1987,
own
blamed Uganda
for lax
law of retribution." See discus-
sion in Sabatier, Blaming Others, p. 105. 52.
Clyde Haberman, "Japan Plans to Deny Visas Over AIDS," New
York Times,
1987. According to a report in the Independent (London), February 14,
April
1,
1987,
when
the death of a Japanese prostitute in
Kobe was attributed
to
AIDS,
the immediate conclusion was that she had been infected by sexual contact with a foreigner; as
one Japanese newspaper put
it,
"Her death was the
an
result of
infatuation with Europe." Sabatier, Blaming Others, p. 114, notes that "in the red light district of
Tokyo warning
signs suddenly appeared: 'Gaijin [foreigners] off
limits.'"
53.
Chirimuuta and Chirimuuta, A IDS,
Africa,
and Racism, pp. 124-125; Sabatier,
Blaming Others, pp. 106-107. See also Robert Pear, "U.S. Seeks to Bar Aliens
with AIDS," New 'Hi Sailor' 54.
York Times,
March
27, 1988,
Get the Heave-Ho," New
Alan Riding, "AIDS in
ber 28, 1987. Blood
is
Brazil:
a pressing
York Times,
and Serge Schmemann, "Calls of
May
14, 1988.
Taboo of Silence Ends," New
problem
in Brazil.
cases represent 2 to 3 percent of the total
AIDS
Octo-
York Times,
Whereas blood transfusion
cases in the U.S., France,
and
the U.K., they account for 14 percent of the cases in Brazil (18 percent in Rio
de Janeiro).
"Some
senior health officials have fed the controversy by arguing
that
AIDS
here
— say, malaria, leprosy, and Chagas's disease, a chronic wasting disease
is
less
of a priority than other diseases that affect millions of people
caused by a parasite carried by insects." 55.
Parker, "Acquired Immunodeficiency
56.
Dubos, Mirage of Health,
"disease of development," torical Roots," in
AIDS
cited in Paul Epstein
for the People 19, no.
1
p. 218;
many
Syndrome
in Brazil," p. 157.
researchers characterize
among them Marc H. Dawson, "AIDS
in Africa, ed.
AIDS
Miller and Rockwell, pp. 58-69.
Virchow
and Randall Packard, "Ecology and Immunology," (January-February 1987): 10-17,
who
as a
in Africa: His-
also discuss
is
Science
AIDS
and development. 57.
Brooke Grundfest Schoepf, Rukarangira wa Nkara, Claude Schoepf, Walu
Engundu, and Payanzo Ntsomo, "AIDS and Society
from Zaire,"
in
58.
228; the authors
Ibid., p.
USAID)
that
AIDS
in Africa, ed.
in Central Africa:
A View
Miller and Rockwell, p. 218.
make
condoms "which hurt
the observation (not obvious, apparently, to their
wearer or break during normal use
83
Paula A. Treichler
may
limit the effectiveness of
59.
Gill
viewed by Harper, "AIDS 60.
am
I
most
AIDS prevention
Gordon and Tony Klouda, in Africa
efforts."
(London: IPPF, 1988). Re-
Preventing a Crisis
— Plague or Propaganda?"
indebted to Emily Martin for pointing out the mysterious failure of
women
campaigns for
safer sex education
to advocate or even explore the
use of spermicides, except in conjunction with condoms, despite their proven effectiveness against HIV. 61.
Parker, "Acquired Immunodeficiency
62.
Ibid.,
pp. 160-163.
Syndrome
in Brazil," p. 161.
have greatly oversimplified Parker's intricate represen-
I
tation of Brazilian sexuality that, as he emphasizes,
Western ethnographer but permeates language, ongoing open debate about sexuality
as
not the mere overlay of a
is
slang, informal discussion,
an essential aspect of cultural
and
identity:
"Brazilianness." But the penetrator/recipient and other distinctions that con-
between same-sex partners occur elsewhere,
struct masculinity/femininity
cluding the U.S. See Charles
Moses, tional
F.
AIDS: Sexual Behavior and Intravenous Drug Use (Washington, D.C.: Na-
eds.,
Academy
Press, 1989), pp. 73-185, for an illuminating review of recent
research on "same-gender sexual behaviors" in several cultural settings. ysis
in-
Turner, Heather G. Miller, and Lincoln E.
An
anal-
of sexuality from a very different perspective, but one potentially helpful in
articulating
women's concerns,
are the conclusions
"adopted by the group of experts" 12-21, 1986:
"UNESCO: On
at a
UNESCO
and recommendations
conference in Madrid, March
Prostitution and Strategies Against Promiscuity
and Sexual Exploitation of Women," Echo (Newsletter of the Association of African
Women
63.
Sabatier, Blaming Others, p. 134.
Development)
for Research
no. 2-3 (1986): 16-17.
1,
Human
64. Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theater: The
PAJ Publications, 1982),
Seriousness of Play
65. Timberlake, Africa in
Crisis,
Sabatier, Blaming Others, p. 4.
67.
Foucault, "Political Function of the Intellectual."
68.
Williams, The Country and
69.
Emerging
Markets:
A
the City, p. 284.
Worldwide Study of Drugs, Vaccines, and Diagnostics
(New Haven: Technology Management Group, August Glaser,
"AIDS
York:
p. 8.
66.
AIDS
(New
p. 18.
Crisis Spurs
Hunt
for
New
1986). See also Vicki
Tests," High Technology Business, Janu-
ary 1988. 70.
See Gina Kolata, "Africa
ruary 19, 1988, the
is
Favored for
AIDS
"AIDS Monitor" column
Testing,"
in the
New
New
Scientist,
York Times,
1988, p. 36, and Jane Perlez, "Scientists
from Western Countries Pressing
AIDS
September
Studies in Africa,"
New
York Times,
18, 1988. Perlez,
various vaccine discussions at a conference in Tanzania writes:
84
Feb-
February 18,
on AIDS and
for
reporting Africa,
.
AIDS AND HIV INFECTION
In Africa, unlike the
United
States, the virus
is
through heterosexual contact. Officials believe use
condoms and
inevitable.
.
THE THIRD WORLD
IN
most commonly spread that, despite
warnings to
avoid multiple partners, further spread of the virus
is
.
Because of behavioral changes brought about by extensive education about AIDS, the spread of the infection
group, whether or not
The
among
Thus, there would be few
States has slowed.
its
scientists said they
members took
gay
new
men
in the
United
infections in a study
the vaccine, the scientists said.
regarded intravenous drug users, a group that
AIDS
continues to have a high incidence of able for the necessary follow-up that
is
in the
United
States, as unreli-
needed for
a study
group.
A
WHO committee developing guidelines for vaccine testing said the decision
to
go ahead should be made by three groups:
scientists developing the vaccine,
knowledgable about vaccine development but with no academic or
scientists
commercial stakes
in
and "government
it,
from the population where the vaccine
is
officials
and
to be tried."
their scientific advisers
No
representatives of the
population to be tested are mentioned. 71. Williams, The Country and the City, p. 306. 72.
Mudimbe, The
V. Y.
Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy,
and
the Order of
Knowledge (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), p. 195.
"Fieldwork in
Common
Places," p. 42.
73.
Pratt,
74.
Nairobi Standard, January 15 and 18, 1985. For the development of research
on AIDS
in Africa, see
Ruth Kulstad,
ed.,
AIDS: Papers from
Science,
1982-1985
(Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1986). Chirimuuta
history
and Chirimuuta, AIDS,
Africa,
and Racism, describe this same
from an African perspective, noting how African challenges and coun-
terevidence were repeatedly brushed aside. 75.
Lawrence K. Altman, "Linking AIDS to Africa Provokes
New
York Times,
76.
On
AIDS,
November
Bitter Debate,"
21, 1985.
the "international furor" see especially Chirimuuta and Chirimuuta,
Africa,
and Racism:
at
the end of a
symposium
in Brussels in
November
1985, for example, the African representatives issued a statement repudiating virtually
all
government rison,
the assumptions
made by European and American
officials (p. 122).
and Davis Gazi, "AIDS: The Spread of Racism," West
1987, pp. 261-262; and Gloria Waite,
and Africa," 77.
in
The most
Francis A.
AIDS
in Africa, ed.
"The
et
al.,
Africa,
Politics of Disease:
and
February
9,
The AIDS Virus
Miller and Rockwell, pp. 145-164.
publicized study of prostitutes
Plummer
scientists
See also Richard C. Chirimuuta, Rosalind Har-
"AIDS Virus
is
Joan K. Kreiss, Davy Koech,
Infection in Nairobi Prostitutes: Spread
of the Epidemic to East Africa," New England Journal of Medicine 314, no. 7 (Feb-
ruary 13, 1986): 414-418.
On
myths and
their refutation, see Sabatier, Blaming
85
Paulo A. Treichler
Others, Africa,
78.
Clumeck, "AIDS
in Africa,"
and Chirimuuta and Chirimuuta, AIDS,
and Racism.
In the
Western media, AIDS
sions about the West.
Thus
in the
Selzer's
Third World
view that Haiti
is
is
used to draw conclu-
"devastated"
is
to serve as a cautionary lesson about gay excess. Stories about Africa
proclaimed the cover of Newsweek in December 1986, citing
"AFRICA:
AIDS
like-
"FUTURE SHOCK,"
wise serve to warn Western readers abcut themselves.
projections of
intended
may
new worrisome
increases in the U.S.; a related cover headline was titled
THE FUTURE
IS
NOW." On AIDS
and the media
in general, see
James Dearing and Everett M. Rogers, "The Agenda-Setting Process for the sue of AIDS," paper presented at the International
May 28-June 79.
Alfred
J.
2,
Communication
Is-
Association,
1988.
"The
Fortin,
Politics of
AIDS
in Kenya," Third World Quarterly 9,
no. 3 (July 1987): 907. 80.
Quoted by
81.
Alfred
J.
Sabatier, Blaming Others, p. 97.
"AIDS and
Fortin,
Discourse," paper presented
at
Political Science Association,
"The
Politics of
82.
Fortin,
83.
Hilary Ng'weno,
4,
"The
the Third World:
the 14th
The
August 28-September
AIDS
Kenya,"
in
Politics of
Politics of International
World Congress of the
AIDS
p.
1,
907.
in Kenya," Weekly Review,
1987, pp. 11-13. Another perspective on this debate
"The
International
1988, Washington, D.C.
is
September
provided by Waite,
Politics of Disease."
84.
Mudimbe,
85.
Miller and Rockwell, eds.,
86.
See Levy, ed., AIDS: Pathogenesis and Treatment.
87.
Carl E. Pletsch,
The Invention of Africa.
AIDS
in Africa, p. xxiii.
"The Three Worlds, or the Division of
Social Scientific La-
bor, circa 1950 to 1975," Comparative Studies in Society and History 23, no. 4 (Oc-
tober 1981): 565.
Cornel West
BLACK CULTURE AND POSTMODERNISM
We
live
now
— that
forty-four years after the age of Europe
is,
an
unprecedented world-transforming historical period (1492-1945) in
which those countries
tains
that reside
between the Ural Moun-
and Atlantic Ocean discovered new
lands, subjugated those
peoples on these lands, degraded the identities and cultures of
non-European peoples (Africans, Asians, Latin Americans, and indigenous peoples), and exploited laborers of both European
and non-European descent. the heyday of
We
live
now
American world hegemony
seventeen years after
— namely,
a brief yet
pacesetting historical interlude (1945-72) in which the U.S.A.
emerged
as the
supreme military and economic power
world upon the eclipse of European domination and
in the
in the
wake
of European devastation and decline. Lastly and most importantly,
we
live
now
in the midst of the
colonization of the Third
moment
World
second stage of the de-
— specifically, a rather paralytic
in that world-historical process in
which those subju-
gated and oppressed, degraded and exploited peoples bring
power and pressure World neocolonial societies.
to bear against the status
nations,
quos in Third
North Atlantic and Eastern European
These three fundamental
historical coordinates
— the
aftermath and legacy of the age of Europe, the precarious yet still
prominent power of the United
States,
and the protracted
opposition of Third World peoples (here and abroad) scribe the discursive space
wherein "postmodernism"
— circumis
consti-
tuted as an object of investigation.
The current "postmodernism" debate a
is first
and foremost
product of significant First World reflections upon the decen-
87
Cornel West
tering of Europe that take such forms as the demystification of
European cultural predominance and the deconstruction of European philosophical States as the
edifices.
With
the emergence of the United
world center for military arms,
political direction,
and cultural production and the advent of Third World cally
independent nations, the making of a
seemed quite
most
likely. Ironically,
First
new world World
politi-
order
reflections
on
"postmodernism" remain rather parochial and provincial — that is,
narrowly Eurocentric. For example, Jean-Francois Lyotard's
well-known characterization of the postmodern condition, with its
increasing incredulity toward master (or meta) narratives, a
rejection of representation, and a
perimentation,
is
demand
for radical artistic ex-
an interesting but insulated Eurocentric view: a
kind of European navel-gazing in which postmodernism becomes a recurring
moment
within the modern that
character and aesthetic in content.
is
performative in
The major sources from
— Kant's notion of the sublime and Wittgenstein's idea of language games — are deployed to promote and which Lyotard borrows
encourage certain kinds of modernist practices: namely, nonrep-
and outlooks
resentational, experimental techniques
and shatter quests for and modernist
loyalties
that
shun
Eurocentric frameworks
totality. Similar
can be detected in Jacques Derrida's de-
constructive version of poststructuralism, and even in Michel Foucault's archeological
and genealogical
modern and modern modes
own
marginal status as Algerian
nial subject)
and
a
investigations into pre-
of constituting subjects. Derrida's (a special
kind of French colo-
Jew may indeed lead him
to highlight the
transgressive and disruptive aspects of Nietzsche and Heidegger,
Mallarme and Artaud. Yet
his project
rocentric and modernist one.
It
remains a thoroughly Eu-
could signify the absence and
si-
— Third World — as well as their relative political
lence of those viewed as other, alien, marginal peoples,
women,
impotence
gays, lesbians
in creatively transforming the legacy of the age of Eu-
rope. Foucault provides
more concrete
social
and
historical ana-
a
BLACK CULTURE AND POSTMODERNISM
lytical
substance to a discourse of otherness and marginality in
his focus
on the fundamental
role
and function of the insane and
the incarcerated. But even the "others" Foucault investigates re-
main within European boundaries, and remain transgressive modernists such Needless to
Bataille.
as
Nietzsche and Georges
two prominent opponents of post-
say, the
modernism, Hilton Kramer from the
Habermas from the not-too-far highbrow achievements and
his heroes, like Derrida's
left,
and
far right
do so
in the
the
intellectual "seriousness" of a
European/Anglo-American modernism and the cal
Jiirgen
name of
social
and
politi-
accomplishments and potentialities of a European Enlighten-
ment
project. Significant attempts to focus the
War
post- World
II
American
postmodernism debate on
cultural practices
and
artifacts (for
example, in architecture and painting) can be seen in the early
work of William Spanos and
Paul Bove. In their illuminating
neo-Heideggerian readings of American poets
like
Robert
Creeley and Charles Olson, postmodern notions of temporality, difference, at
and heterogeneity loomed
large, yet
remained
still it
the level of philosophic outlook and artistic enactment. This
observation also holds for the pioneering
Krauss and Susan Sontag,
complex
work of Rosalind
who view postmodernism
set of sensibilities
and
styles,
as either a
or as ideological beliefs.
Fredric Jameson, Hal Foster, and to a certain extent, Andreas Huyssen have brought a particular debate (as
it
were) by situating
society
and
it
in relation to larger
history. In short,
"down
to earth"
developments
Jameson and Huyssen try to
in
lay
bare the contours of the forest that goes beyond the useful
though limited squirrel work done by other postmodern
They do
this
by positing postmodernism
dominant yet diverse wherein certain as reactions ical
set of structural
sensibilities, styles,
and responses
to
new
critics.
as a social category
and
—
institutional processes
and outlooks are understood
societal conditions
and
histor-
circumstances.
89
Cornel West
The important point here with Jameson's laundry
lists
is
neither whether one agrees
of postmodern features
(e.g.,
depthlessness, persuasiveness of the image and simulacrum,
weakening of
historicity,
emotional intensities, and schizo-
phrenic subjects), nor whether one approves of his treatments of
what
individual cultural artifacts. Rather
World
reflections
is
crucial
is
that First
on postmodernism have become more con-
sciously historical, social, political,
and
ideological.
For too long,
the postmodernism debate has remained inscribed within nar-
row
disciplinary boundaries, insulated artistic practices,
vague formulations of
come
men and women moved more
for this debate to be
theory and historiography. To do so
is
and
The time
of letters.
has
forthrightly into social
to raise methodological
questions about historical periodization, demarcation of cultural practices
and
archives,
and
issues of politics
and ideology.
For instance, every conception of postmodernism presupposes some idea of the
when
it
declined,
modern — when
when
it
it
began,
And any such
ended.
ern bears directly and indirectly upon
when
it
peaked,
idea of the
how one
mod-
conceives of
change in the present. Secondly, different cultural practices have generally agreed
upon
uses of the term
"modern"
that require a
recognition of the diverse logics within specific disciplinary practices. For example, philosophers
modern
as a
"modernist" egies,
seventeenth-century
view the advent of the
affair
and shun the term
as a description of philosophical rhetorical strat-
whereas
literary critics
view nineteenth-century works
major examples of "the modern" and make
between modern and modernist
much
as
of the break
literary texts. Architects
under-
stand modernist works as those that valorize reason, technique, instrumentality, and functionality in thoroughgoing Utopian
terms.
On
the other hand, literary critics view modernist texts
as those that dismiss rationality, instrumentality,
tionality in favor of
and func-
myth, montage, simultaneity, and play
in
deeply anti-utopian terms. Adequate conceptions of historical
90
BLACK CULTURE AND POSTMODERNISM
periodization must keep track of these complex convergences
and divergences of different cultural
traditions, yet
of the larger social and historical forces ticular
moment. This means
at
not lose
any par-
that the very historical periodiza-
and cultural demarcations we make
tions
still
work
at
are, in part, ideological
constructs shot through with political presuppositions, prejudg-
ments, prejudices. Intellectual honesty requires that one
them
crystal clear
and give reasons
From my own
viewpoint,
term "postmodernism"
why one
make
holds them.
remain quite suspicious of the
two
basic reasons. First, because the
itself
has not simply been used to de-
for
precursor term "modern"
I
as to
value the cultures of oppressed and exploited peoples, but also
has failed to deeply illumine the internal complexities of these
Under
cultures.
out hope for the
the circumstances, there
is little
new term "postmodernism"
reason to hold
as applied to the
practices of oppressed peoples. Second, the sheer facticity of
black people in the United States historically embodies and enacts the
"postmodern" themes of degraded otherness and sub-
altern marginality. Black resistances have attacked notions of
exclusionary identity, dominating heterogeneity, and universality
— or, in more blunt language, white supremacy. Yet the
historical experience of black people in as Latinos,
that
women, workers,
gays,
and
North America,
as well
lesbians, always requires
one examine the relation of any Eurocentric (patriarchal,
homophobic) discourse to black
resistance.
The
issue here
is
not
simply some sophomoric, moralistic test that surveys the racial biases of the interlocutors in a debate. Rather the point
is
to en-
gage in a structural and institutional analysis to see where the debate
is
taking place, why at this historical
moment, and how
this
debate enables or disenables oppressed peoples to exercise their
opposition to the hierarchies of power. For example, does the
postmodernism debate seriously acknowledge the tural
and
political practices of
Americans? Or does
oppressed peoples,
this debate highlight
distinctive cule.g.,
African-
notions of difference,
91
Cornel West
marginality,
and otherness
Americans, Latinos, women, instrumental one, that
is,
way
in such a
ginalizes actual people of difference
am
I
My
etc.?
that
it
further mar-
and otherness, point here
e.g.,
African-
not a crude
is
not calling for some "vulgar"
populist discourse for mobilizing oppressed peoples. Rather,
am
some
asking whether postmodernism debates can cast
on
cant light
I
signifi-
cultural practices of oppressed peoples.
My own
hunch
is
that oppositional black intellectuals
must
be conversant with and, to a degree, participants in the debate. Yet until the complex relations between race, class, and gender are
more adequately
theorized,
historiographical studies, and ideological
though plight
at
and
tom
fully delineated in specific
political practices, the
in our concrete
postmodernism debate,
times illuminating, will remain rather blind to the
and predicament of black America. Therefore
displace myself
keep
more
more fused
my
from the postmodernism
distance
from
its
of our present cultural
When
debate,
parochialism and view
I
do not
simply try to it
as a
symp-
crisis.
one turns to African-American cultural practices and
products during the historical
ernism debate begins,
it is
moment
in
which the postmod-
undeniable that U.S. mass culture
disproportionately influenced by black people. This cially in
Owing
I
popular music, linguistic innovation, and
to both a particular African heritage
and
is
is
so espe-
athletics.
specific
forms
of Euro-American oppression, black American cultural production has focused primarily
and spectacle
in music, sermons,
and sermons are rooted in black
on performance and pageantry, and certain
sports.
style
The music
in black religious practices; the sports,
male-bonding networks that
flaunt machismo,
promote
camaraderie, and, in some cases, lead to financial success. Black
— the indigenous cradle of African- American — principally attempt to provide hope and sustain sanity
religious practices
culture
in light of the difficult position of black
Americans and the ab-
— BLACK CULTURE AND POSTMODERNISM
surdity of transplanted European
the role of the promised land.
moderns
The
casting
America
in
black religious ideological re-
sponse was often to recast America as Egypt; and the concrete, everyday response to institutionalized terrorism
Crowism
— slavery or Jim-
— was to deploy weapons of kinetic orality, passionate
physicality,
and combative
spirituality to survive
and dream of
freedom.
By
kinetic orality,
rhetorical styles that
and
I
mean dynamic
repetitive
form communities,
e.g.,
and energetic
antiphonal styles
linguistic innovations that accent fluid, improvisational iden-
tities
and
that
physicality,
I
promote
mean
and polyrhythms
which
one's
survival at almost any cost.
By passionate
bodily stylizations of the world, syncopations
that assert one's
somebodiness
in a society in
body has no public worth, only economic value
laboring metabolism.
And
by combative
spirituality,
I
mean
as a
a
sense of historical patience, subversive joy, and daily per-
severance in an apparently hopeless and meaningless historical situation. Black cultural practices
ment of
a reality they cannot not
emerge out of an acknowledgknow
— the ragged edges of the
of necessity; a reality historically constructed by white su-
real,
premacist practices in North America during the age of Europe.
These ragged edges
— of not being able to eat, not to have shel— this infused into the strategies
ter,
not to have health care
and
styles of black cultural practices.
undergone some form of
all
is
Of
course,
all
peoples have
social misery, yet peoples of African
descent in the United States have done so in the midst of the
most prosperous and wealthy country
A
in the world.
distinctive feature of these black styles
jection of the self
is
pro-
a certain
— more a persona — in performance.
This
is
not
simply a self-investment and self-involvement in musical, rhetorical,
and
athletic
enactments;
tingency and even spectacular
be
it
solicits
it
also
acknowledges radical con-
challenge and danger. In short,
form of risk-ridden execution
a Charlie
that
is
it is
a
self-imposed
Parker solo, a Sarah Vaughan rendition,
Muham-
93
Cornel West
mad
tle
Martin Luther King,
Ali footwork, a
Brown dancing
act, a Julius
sermon, a James
interpretation of Handel. This feature not only results
what some anthropologists have accident it
Jr.,
Erving dunk shot, or a Kathleen Bat-
also
from
called the African deification of
— the sense of perennially being on a slippery tightrope;
comes from the highly precarious
historical situations in
which black people have found themselves. And with and economic avenues usually blocked,
become the space wherein black Ironically, black
and potency
in
reasons. First,
world power,
our
resistance
is
channeled.
American culture has surfaced with power
own
time principally owing to three basic
upon the emergence it
political
specific cultural arenas
of the United States as a
that black music — spirituals, gos— was the most unique cultural product
was quite clear
pels, blues, jazz, soul
created by Americans of any hue. So as the globalization of
American culture
escalated, black
tional exposure. Second, as the
music was given vast interna-
consumption cycle of advanced
multinational corporate capitalism was sped up in order to sustain the production of luxury goods, cultural production
more and more mass-commodity production. The
became
stress here
is
not simply on the new and fashionable but
also
and primitive. Black cultural products have
historically served as
a
on the exotic
major source for European and Euro-American exotic
interests
— interests that issue from a healthy critique of the
mechanistic, puritanical, utilitarian, and productivist aspects of
modern
life.
Yet as black cultural products
become
the commodified
possession of Euro-Americans, they play a very different role in U.S. society. For example, they speak less of the black sense of
absurdity in America and
Needless to
say, the
more of
the "universal" values of love.
sheer size of the white consumer market
provides material incentives to black artists to be "crossover artists," i.e.,
94
more attuned
to white tastes
and
sensibilities.
There
BLACK CULTURE AND POSTMODERNISM
indeed are some cases where preserved by crossover
artistic
and
cultural integrity
Stone in the
artists (Sly
sixties,
is
Luther
Vandross and Anita Baker in the eighties). Yet the temptation to de-Africanize one's style and dilute one's black cultural content for
commercial reasons
The
is
often irresistible.
third reason black culture has recently
that
became
identified
with the
become
mass youth cul-
lient
is
ture,
an ever-growing world consumer market since the
it
first
so sa-
fifties.
This culture responded to the eclipse of First World Utopian energies
and waning
alternative political options by associating
modes of transcendence with music and
sexual liberation. Given
the European and Euro-American identification of Africans and
African-Americans with sexual licentiousness, libertinism, and liberation, black
music became both
white sexual freedom. vertising industry, sic hits
And
which now
symbol and
(as
rebellious white
of old), but also the cultural mainstream.
What
then
is
the oppositional potential of black cultural
practices in our time? ignate
mu-
of black popular music has
become thoroughly accepted by not simply youth
facilitator of
specializes in recycling black
much
of the recent past,
a
with the vast sexualization of the ad-
And
what extent
to
is it
legitimate to des-
some of them "postmodern"? Of the three major forms of
black cultural products practices
— musical,
— certainly the latter
is
sermonic, and athletic
the most incorporated and co-
opted of the three. Sermonic practices,
still
far
removed from
most white observation and consumption, are limited owing ecclesiastical ficult for
and denominational constituencies that make
ecumenical figures to emerge
in black institutional
own
life,
constituencies. Yet
Luther King,
Jr.,
who
yet attract peoples
when such
Malcolm X,
figures
Jesse Jackson
it
to dif-
can remain rooted
from outside
do emerge
their
— Martin
— they can generate
tremendous oppositional energy due to the paucity of and charismatic spokespersons on the American
left
articulate
and the po-
95
Cornel West
tentially positive role charismatic leaders
can play in empower-
ing people to believe in themselves and act in unity against the
powers that
be.
Black musical practices ords or
weak
live
performances
— packaged via radio or video, rec-
— are oppositional principally in the some sense of the agency and
sense that they keep alive
creativity of oppressed peoples. Yet this sense
removed from organized
so vague
is
and
far
one must con-
political resistance that
clude that most of black music here and abroad has simply be-
come
major means by which U.S. record companies have
a
colonized the leisure time of eager consumers (including myself). Yet since black music difficult to
is
so integral to black
imagine a black resistance
music does not play an important But what of
movement
Have
I
in
which
it is
black
role.
literary artists, visual artists,
intellectuals in general?
America,
in
life
and other black
not unduly neglected them? Are
they not the possible candidates for producers of postmodern
products black
— which thereby makes the term partly relevant to
life?
Granted,
culture. This
form of
is
social
tion and
I
have spent most of
so because
movements
momentum
my
time on black mass
interest in black resistance in the
leads
me
to look for the possible
of black people
for social freedom. But
done
my
much more
who
suffer,
work, and long
serious reflection
in regards to this crucial matter. This essay
mo-
is
must be
but a mere
gesture toward constructing possible critical positions for blacks
both in and around popular culture, the ways in which these positions can be viewed as sites of a potentially enabling yet resisting
96
postmodernism.
READING 1968 AND HE GREAT AMERICAN WHITEWASH
After 1968, none of the "other" groups in struggle neither
women
nor
racial "minorities"
—
nor sexual "mi-
norities" nor the handicapped nor the "ecologists" (those
who
refused the acceptance, unquestioningly, of the im-
peratives of increased global production)
— would ever
again accept the legitimacy of "waiting"
upon some other
revolution.
— Immanuel Wallerstein,
"1968, Revolution in the World
System: Theses and Queries," 1988
We
must become more
radically historical than
sioned by the Marxist tradition. By becoming ically historical"
myriad of
effects
I
mean confronting more
is
envi-
more "rad-
candidly the
and consequences (intended and unin-
tended, conscious and unconscious) of power-laden and conflict-ridden social practice
fluence of
human
—
e.g.,
the complex con-
bodies, traditions and institutions.
— Cornel West, "Race and Social Theory: Toward a Genealogical Materialist Analysis," 1987
You who understand the dehumanization of forced removal-relocation-reeducation-redefinition, the humiliation of having to falsify your
own
you know. And often cannot say trying to unsay in the blanks
— Trinh T.
it,
for
on your
if
reality,
it.
You
you don't they
behalf,
and you
Minh-ha, "Difference:
A
your voice
try
—
and keep on
will not fail to
will
be
Special Third
Women
fill
said.
World
Issue," 1988
9?
Michele Wallace
I
recently participated in a conference called "1968 in Global
Retrospective," which was built around a twenty-seven page
paper by Immanuel Wallerstein about 1968
we
kind
call
My
watershed events."
"one of the great
as
modern world-system,
formative events in the history of our
the
job was to talk about "The
Key Role of 'Minority' Revolutions," and to chair
a panel
on
"Representations of 1968: Invention and Use of Symbols," which included 1968 historians
Todd
man, and James
was eager to do
Miller.
people had criticized
Superwoman
I
my book
as inaccurate
David Caute, Jim Hober-
Gitlin,
this
because so
Macho and
Black
and overly harsh
the
my
in
many
Myth of
the
judgments of
the failures of black leadership and black female complicity in that failure in the 1960s.
Minority Revolutions
As
I
in
a Major Key
observe the emerging patterns of codification and inter-
pretation of U.S. and global 1960s history,
derstand
how Afro-American
fail
Crisis
arship and commentary. Therefore,
"minority revolutions." Yet
beginning to un-
of the Negro
to exist at the level of
marginal interest for those
American
am
intellectual history, despite the
publication of Harold Cruse's The
1967, continues to
I
it
who would
Intellectual in
most white schol-
continues to hold only reflect
upon
the fate of
precisely the caliber of Afro-
it is
intellectual reflection about itself, the
New
Left,
and
other "minority" revolutions that needs to be considered here.
Without doing at
so, first theory,
the level of collective
then history helps to consolidate
memory
the very segregation 1960s
youth were once so determined to undo.
Such Afro-Americanists Hortense
Spillers,
as
Cornel West, Manning Marable,
Henry Louis Gates, Houston Baker, Hazel
Carby, Paula Giddings, and Bell Hooks have become instrumental in
revealing an underlying coherence in Afro-American intel-
lectual
98
and
cultural development. Collectively, such efforts begin
READING 1968 AND THE GREAT AMERICAN WHITEWASH
to reveal the degree to
which people of African descent have
demonstrated in writing and speaking a historical consciousness that connects Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass,
Harper to Ida
W.
B. Wells,
Hurston, to C.
L. R.
E. B.
and Frances
DuBois, and Zora Neale
James, James Baldwin, and Lorraine Hans-
berry, to Stuart Hall, Amiri Baraka, and Toni Morrison. Historical consciousness lectual grasp of 1968.
is
no
less
true of the black intel-
At the time, such figures
as
Angela Davis,
Stokely Carmichael, Nikki Giovanni, Martin Luther King, Sonia
Ron Karenga, and Harold Cruse were
Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, crucial to
how
the period imagined
its
goals.
the impact and significance of such figures indeed, unless, of course, the project history of 1968, but then that
nority" history.
My
for "history" in the
centric
would
intention here
is
Now,
in retrospect,
made
to
seem
becomes to write still
slight
a black
be "minor" and "mi-
to point out the tendency
major sense to corroborate
hegemony by always
a racist, phallo-
marginalizing, trivializing, and de-
centering the black subject, even as
may
is
involve an apparent focus
upon
its
specific historical object
issues of ethnicity, or ra-
cism, or, as in this case, "minority revolutions."
To put
it
an-
other way, somehow, ultimately, black subjectivity always seems irrelevant to any serious academic or political discussion of a
"black," "ethnic," or "minority" object. For instance, Daniel Patrick
Moynihan once used the scholarship of
to verify the distinction
between margin
center (the white family).
I
want
E.
Franklin Frazier
(the black family)
and
to decenter our present discus-
sion of "minority" revolutions in favor of a discussion of "black subjectivity." This habit of leaving the black subject out always
seems to coincide with
a preference for global or synthetic
views, and should continue no longer.
Therefore,
"world system" male
my
role here
as yet
is
to contest the notion of a
another attempt to universalize white
intellectual authority over the voiceless masses.
don't for a
moment
believe that
However,
I
high-minded collections of oral
99
Michele Wallace
history,
I
which allow "the people
autonomous
that
to speak for themselves," or
insular black intellectual debate will
fill
the gap.
have no objection to the notion of "world systems," in and of
themselves, especially since ries the
more
I
understand that in
this case
practical purpose of addressing the
increasingly global
economic arrangement
change and resistance
at the local
level of a specific issue
such
it
car-
problem of an
that stifles substantive
or the national
level,
or
the
at
as ethnicity, class, or sexuality.
I
un-
derstand that most of the people of color in the world are getting screwed as a function of a world system, so that amelioration
would propose
it
approach
a global
makes sense at
some
point.
Moreover, regarding the idea that there may be repetitions
and
parallels in events
patterns, conscious
around the globe,
and unconscious,
on the
tural
and
male
political leadership "style," in
intellectual reflections
in
I
have noticed certain
contemporary black
cul-
limits of 1960s black
terms of
its
failure to recog-
nize or
accommodate the question of
larly in
black film and literature from the U.S. and England,
sexual difference. Particu-
there has developed not only a conventional feminist critique of inequality within the Black Liberation
Movement, but
also a
trend toward subverting the male/female gender duality in favor of multiple sexualities, including homosexuality and lesbianism, as well as
inflexible
an increasing focus on the inadequacies of a rigid and concept of masculinity. Besides the considerable
litera-
ture that explores such approaches (novels and poetry by black feminist writers Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison,
Toni Cade Bambara, Lucille Clifton, Audre Lorde, and black
male writers Ishmael Reed, Charles Johnson, John Edgar Wide-
man, Ralph Julien
Ellison),
I
see Spike Lee's School Daze (1988), Isaac
and Maureen Blackwood's The
(1986),
Passion of
Remembrance
and Sarah Maldoror's Sambizanga (about the struggle
liberation in
Angola [1972])
all
as films in
which there
is
for
a re-
READING 1968 AND THE GREAT AMERICAN WHITEWASH
concern about the
lated
concept of "the black
loss of a unitary
(male) leader."
For instance, in School Daze
(at a level that is
perhaps un-
conscious to director Spike Lee), Dap's leadership (and his role as protagonist)
constantly questioned and challenged, not only
is
by the college administration, but
and sexual spectacle
more important
by
also
"women" and by
by the continuous flow of dance, song,
friends, as well as
seems to be saying that
that
his
style,
this film has
business to attend to than the telling of a linear
(phallic) narrative.
which more candidly embraces
In Passion of Remembrance, critique of sixties
male leadership, and
its
knee-jerk heterosex-
ism, the combination of carnivalesque spectacle, political
mentary, and archival footage than the English film that tributes, films of
Sammy and
is
is,
much more
finally,
most often lauded
it
com-
satisfying
for these at-
While
Rosie Get Laid (1987).
Stephen Frears and Hanif Kureishi,
lematic that Third
a
I
admire the
seems more prob-
Worldism becomes an excuse
for excessive
cynicism about the possibility for fundamental world change
coupled with an implicit hierarchizing of a
perous "Third World" (Indian) and an
literate
illiterate
and pros-
and im-
poverished "Third World" (poor blacks) in England. first
Sammy and
scene in
Rosie,
it is
most desperate and precarious
blacks
From
who occupy
social, sexual,
the
the film's
and economic
positions.
In Sambizanga, while the critique sious
on the
ratively
and
director's part, the black literally slain
the crying of the
men who
from the beginning of the
women and
can relate to them,
In real
Show
life
real life
the form of
seems thoroughly uncon-
male "leader"
is
who if
figu-
film. It
their context in culture,
in the U.S. —
both
is
and the
will carry on.
you can
call
The Morton Downey
— this critique of past black male leadership takes
Roy
Innis
and Al Sharpton's
fistfight at
Harlem's
Apollo Theater ostensibly over the case of Tawana Brawley.
101
Michele Wallace
Meanwhile, Brawley rape
is
somehow unimaginable and unspeakable
is
political discourse, as the debate rages over
fathom the black teenager's psychological,
now
than in 1968.
is
social,
economic, and
And no
better prepared to
we
should not dismiss
At the same time,
cast out the Sharptons.
to present black
whether Sharpton
no better prepared to
a "fake." Black male leadership seems
educational plight
whose
a fifteen-year-old black teenager
too quickly the inherent dangers that even progressive "world
systems" present. This
is
the danger of neocolonialism or neo-
imperialism in intellectual form and what makes
it
so
is
that
mostly only white males are empowered to engage in that course.
The problem then becomes,
out, "they
work toward your erasure while urging you
your way of
dis-
Trinh Minh-ha points
as
to keep
and ethnic values within the border of your
life
homelands. This
called the policy of 'separate development' in
is
apartheid language."
Somewhere Over
the Rainbow
no desirable transformation of the
Thirdly,
possible in the absence
capitalist
world-economy
is
of trans-zonal political cooperation by anti-
systemic movements. This trans-zonal cooperation would have to be
both strategic and tactical. establish the bases
of
It
might be easier
tactical cooperation.
(albeit still not easy) to
But strategic?
It is
probable
that strategic collaboration can only be on the basis of a profound radical ization
of the
— Immanuel I
am
objectives.
Wallerstein,
1988
not concerned to question here the nature of
Rather, tives,"
my
focus
which
is
is
upon "a profound
perhaps
this proposal.
radicalization of objec-
least accessible
through the theorizing
of "world systems." This theorizing, after
all,
in
no way subverts
or transforms white male academic authority and, therefore,
confirms our present unsatisfactory arrangements of cultural
hegemony. The only door through which "change" level 102
can enter
is
by altering the composition of
at a critical
that
community
READING 1968 AND THE GREAT AMERICAN WHITEWASH
that considers the
problems of "objectives." White
stop thinking that
it is
of our
their place alone to
So
am
I
not proposing that fine.
am
I
if
political goal
ing that
if
(though
I
my
have
Wallerstein were black, ev-
not a nationalist nor a postnational-
nor does "racial pride" make
uality
have to
lives.
erything would be ist,
men
determine the course
a lot of sense to
fair share).
me
Rather,
as a
am
I
propos-
the experiences of race, ethnicity, gender, and sex-
were made central
to future considerations of "world
systems" the process would be a
more convincing
lot
in
terms of
locating a "profound radicalization of objectives." Moreover, this
blindspot to ethnicity and sexuality transcends the problem of
"women and
"minorities" as
global minorities, but
who
who
blacks,"
are simply
knowledge production. Not only
is
are not, after
minor
there a failure to consider
the question of world systems or global perspectives
view of the
racial or sexual "other."
consider the other that
may
so-called majority white
There
is
from the
also a failure to
ultimately be at the center of even a
male existence, the other of ethnicity,
religion, sexuality, rationality, the other of homelessness,
geographical and existential, which
hind ity
this
all,
in the sphere of
may be
both
the driving force be-
compulsive white male Western insistence upon major-
and dominance. So the question for
stein
is
right or
dressed until perspective first
me
wrong. Such
we
itself,
is
a
not even whether or not Wallerquestion cannot even be ad-
have contended with the discrepancy in that the view
from which the history of 1968
is
recollected that obliterates the possibility of black
subjectivity.
Perhaps the clearest occasion upon which this occurs Wallerstein's Thesis 4: "Counterculture
tionary euphoria, but was not politically central to 1968."
subsequent explanation of
this thesis
in
The
goes on to define the
"counterculture" in a way that not only precludes relationship to
is
was part of the revolu-
Afro-American culture, but
its
historical
also renders 1960s
Hichele Wallace
A fro- American
Movement
culture, including the Civil Rights
and Black Power, entirely
invisible.
Afro-American cultural pro-
duction then becomes an incidental and minor aspect of U.S.
and European counterculture historical relationship
reversed; counterculture
is first
comes out of Afro- American culture out of rhythm
formance
'n'
and
style
— as in rock
belief structures of
bebop and black
street culture
jazz a
Norman
mukind
Mailer
in The White Negro.
Then,
in the
most preemptive move,
makes history irrecoverable by turning terculture to
coming a per-
coming out of
of Afro-American existentialism of the streets, as
proposed
no longer
'n' roll
coming out of
blues, the beat aesthetic
and American youth
sicians,
The
or, in this case, a nonentity.
is
defined as that which
no one, which
is
not culture
"We
against culture.
generally
is
it
gratuitous,
at all,
move
in the
that
into myth, the coun-
which belongs
but counter-to-culture or
mean by
counterculture," Wal-
lerstein writes, "behavior in daily life (sexuality, drugs, dress)
and
in the arts that
onysiac." a
more
There
useful,
is
unconventional, non-'bourgeois,' and Di-
is
never any doubt in this statement that there
mainstream, conventional, bourgeois, and Apollo-
The coun-
nian culture that will counteract the countercultural. tercultural
change.
is
Still,
then perceived I
would
like to
as entirely peripheral to
profound
claim this degraded form of culture
as the true location for a revolutionary potential in
American
is
Afro-
culture.
Afro-American culture has long been the starting point
for
white self-criticism in the U.S. Mid-twentieth-century white
youth and black youth observed the resilience and Afro- American culture
—
mestics with husbands
who
black
men who had
its
versatility of
working mothers employed could not find work;
labored for a pittance
invent songs of indescribable beauty in
all
its
its
do-
their lives yet could
which they accurately
weighed the material and psychological complexity of world;
as
poor elderly
tradition of black religious music,
their
which seemed
to
turn the hypocrisy of conventional white Protestantism inside 104
READING 1968 AND THE GREAT AMERICAN WHITEWASH
out;
churchgoing blacks
its
who would
lay their
down
bodies
be-
fore waterhoses, dogs, and white Southern racism and then get
up and
Freedom Party and
fight for the Mississippi
The recognition of ture, or the price that
against U.S.
Vietnam War.
military involvement in the
that culture, or the weight of that cul-
had been paid for
that culture,
was
a
prime motivating factor in the 1968 sense that U.S. dominance
and world hegemony were unconscionable and that the
"Old Left" lacked the
parasitic,
sensitivity to grapple
and
with real
people in a real world of cultural diversity. Afro-American cul-
New
ture has been crucial in forming the aspirations of the
minority revolutions
as well as
political activism this
— not so much by
— but precisely by
was always
it
formed
clearly
majority culture that tried to choke its
of
sex, drugs, dance, dress, music, its
ture
Left,
considerable
While
counterculture.
its
"minor" culture may sometimes be
protest,
its
difficult to explicate as
in the spirit of subverting a it
at
and
the root. Precisely by
style,
it
kept the record
discontents accurately and well. Perhaps this counterculis
the level at which mainstream culture
forcefully challenged, even as "revolutions"
Maybe there
are
many
life,
often by
by drug use and the
life
most go.
"countercultures," not just one. For
instance, today black youth resist total white
over everyday
is still
come and
hegemonic control
means considered counter
to culture,
of the streets, by their unwillingness to
go to school and their inclination to have babies. Clearly, such developments are socially constructed and economically predestined.
I
am
not claiming this culture of demoralization for
political radicalism.
I
am
saying that what they are doing
is
con-
nected, by influence and osmosis, to countercultural develop-
ments, white and black, in the 1950s and 1960s.
As for those decades,
I
am
certain of a deliberate and self-
conscious black counterculture because
who was
a jazz musician,
stepfather
who was
the 1960s came,
my
my
my
parents
mother who was an
their close friend
— my father
artist,
— were part of
father, Earl Wallace,
who was
it.
and my When
divorced from
Michele Wallace
my mother
and who was not a successful musician, was dead of
a heroin overdose. In 1965, the
Faith Ringgold,
my
sister,
and
summer he
newly inaugurated School of Black Arts. teacher then, Faith
became
A
my
died,
took classes
I
at
mother,
Amiri Baraka's
public high school
an active role
a 1960s radical, taking
United Federation of Teachers
in the black struggle against the
over "decentralization" of the public schools. In those years, the hardest thing to figure out
how
our everyday
commitment.
would bear the mark of our
lives
In 1963, Faith
had
also
begun
to
was
culture,
political
produce
a series
of paintings called "American People," in which she tried to
capture the drama and historical significance of the Civil Rights
Movement,
as
we then viewed
it
on our
affected race relations in the North, as
James Baldwin in The
Fire Next
television screens, as
it
was written about by
Time (1963) and Amiri Baraka
(LeRoi Jones) in Dutchman (1964). In 1970, student
at
in
New
when
I
became
a
I
was already struck by
politically active black students
were getting involved
the City College of
how many
it
York,
heavy drug use, and dying.
1968 Revisited
"Where take
is
tomorrow's avant-garde
on the
in art
and entertainment to
racial bias of the snowblind, the sexual politics of
the frigid, and the class anxieties of the perennially upper crust?"
ing to
When
make
ridiculous as
I
asked this question a few months ago,
light of it
something that
may seem,
a
abroad, has always believed art
not light
at all.
was
try-
As
white cultural avant-garde, here and it
possible to
make an
oppositional
without fundamentally challenging hegemonic notions of
race, sexuality,
and even
Of course, when tural
hegemony."
wash." artists
106
is
I
I
We
I
class.
was
called
a kid, it
we
didn't call
"white cul-
the "Great American White-
had the great good fortune to be raised
(my
it
stepfather Burdette Ringgold
in a family of
was not an
artist,
but
READING 1968 AND THE GREAT AMERICAN WHITEWASH
worked
at
GM
our creativity) in which resistance to
to finance
the old truism, "If you're white, you're alright; stick around;
and
if
I
find
still
it
art,
but basic to one's psychologi-
astonishing
when white people
tently conceptualize resistance in ways that
importance of race, or the tellectuals have
But
lem
in
I
was
1970
made first
when
vital
minimize the
contribution black artists and in-
struck by the true dimension of this prob-
Faith and
I
attended a guerrilla art action
which was,
"racism, sexism, war, and repression."
itself,
A
a protest against
group of famous white
by Robert Morris decided to withdraw their
artists led
work from
consis-
to the discussion of that issue.
protest against Art Strike,
male
you're brown,
you're black, stay back," was viewed not
only as paramount to making cal survival.
if
the Venice Biennale, a prestigious international ex-
hibition, in order to protest U.S. military involvement in Viet-
nam. Although the protest was supposed to be against "racism, sexism, and repression," Art Strike then expected to
counter-Biennale in
New
mount
a
York without altering the all-white
male composition of the show. This seems to be the key to understanding the intrinsic limits of Western cultural avantgardism: while
it
can no longer deny
premacist presuppositions, In the
first
ganization that
opening
own
white male sueither.
years of our feminism, working through an or-
we founded
for Black Art Liberation in
its
cannot be rid of them
it
called
Women
(WSABAL),
this exhibition to
Students and Artists
Faith and others succeeded
women and
people of color.
WSABAL was also influential in the subsequent development of Ad Hoc Women Artists, led by Lucy Lippard. This group repeated
WSABAL's 50
against the
Whitney
percent
Biennial,
women demand which was
in their protest
in the habit of includ-
ing white male artists almost exclusively. Specifically because of Faith's research
and support of Ad Hoc, black
women
artists
Barbara Chase and Betye Saar were included in the next
Whitney
Biennial.
107
Michele Wallace
Of course, begun
in 1970.
Faith's activism against the
really
It
began
Luther King's assassination,
worker
in the
museums had not Martin
in 1968, the year of
when
every black artist and cultural
country was galvanized into action. Only sixteen
years old at the time,
accompanied Faith to the
I
stration of black artists against the
demon-
first
Whitney Museum and then
to a series of free-for-all (Art Workers' Coalition) demonstra-
Museum
tions against the still
of
Modern
The museums were
Art.
reluctant to call in the police at that point. Yet, since the
Civil Rights
Movement, Black Power, and the
riots,
was no
it
longer tolerable to just "picket" in an orderly fashion, and these
demonstrations were very exciting and unpredictable, street theater
In
one
and
case,
creative I
mayhem, very
can remember
full
of
countercultural.
museum
administrators and
security guards standing helplessly by as Faith led a walking tour
through MoMA's
first-floor galleries
on the influence of African
modern
aspora on the so-called in
which academic and
torial staff
during which she lectured
and the
art
art of the African Di-
art displayed there.
critical expertise
The manner
and the museum's cura-
conspired to render the importance of that influence
either invisible, trivial, or instrumental shaped the force of her
remarks.
When we
finally
came
of a black artist were displayed
to a
—
room
in
which the works
perhaps two or three gouaches
from Jacob Lawrence's 1930s "Black Migration Series" designated
it
the location for the Martin Luther King
— Faith
Wing,
which was then the principal demand of the Art Workers' Coalition demonstrations at as
MoMA.
This wing was supposed to serve
an exhibition space that would revolve around
cation center, tive
which would
Americans
a cultural
train blacks, Puerto Ricans,
in art history
and museum administration. This
would not only lead to the canonization of some black and the hiring of nonwhite curators, but
mote an
increase in the
would be drawn
edu-
and Na-
it
number of young people of
to careers in art
and
artists
was intended to procolor
who
art education, to foster a
READING 1968 AND THE GREAT AMERICAN WHITEWASH
museums and "high
different relationship to
visit
the
museums every
culture" for the
who were
throngs of nonwhite public school children
For many, the Civil Rights Movement was their posure to the power of Rainbow Coalitions.
came during those
obliged to
year.
My
ex-
first
exposure
first
years of involvement with the Art Workers'
Coalition. But the lesson
was
a
hard one: there would be no
wing, no cultural center, only retrospectives for black
artists
Ro-
mare Bearden and Richard Hunt, which made them (no doubt because they were men) even
and Betye
The
more famous than Barbara Chase
Saar.
resulting tokenism of a few
black artists, or sic elitism
women
artists,
of the art world. Visual art
as the exclusive
thing seemed to be that
an
artist
few
for a
is still
perceived by
many
entertainment of the rich, as though the rest of
us didn't need something to look
as
museum shows
did not really change the intrin-
at.
my mother
was consistent with her
At the time, the important
was an
activist
politics,
whose work
although
pointedly
I
my own recollection of the 1960s in Black Macho. This was perhaps my greatest and most unfortunate oversight, since her politics were my politics in the
failed to
mention any such thing
1960s and even for
much
in
of the 1970s.
Now, however,
the im-
portant thing has become that as recollections of the 1960s
mount up — Todd James
Gitlin's The Sixties: Years of Hope,
Miller's "Democracy
Siege of Chicago,
Is in
the Streets":
David Caute's The
forthcoming Daring
to
Politics:
Movement and
Be Bad:
A
Days of Rage,
Port
Huron
Year of the Barricades:
Through 1968, Sara Evans' Personal Liberation in the Civil Rights
From
to the
A Journey
The Roots of Women's
the
New
Left,
and the
History of the Radical Feminist
Movement, 1967-1975 by Alice Echols
— again we are facing the
Great American Whitewash in which the true breadth of the
Afro-American cultural presence and contribution either ceases to exist, or
becomes
so small
and
trivial,
we can
hardly see
it.
World map
in
equal area representation (Peters Projection). Copyright
Verlagsanstalt; English version by
Oxford Cartographers
Ltd.,
©
by Akademische
Oxford, U.K.
Janet Abu-Lughod
ON THE REMAKING OF HISTORY:
HOW TO REINVENT THE PAST
It
seems ironic that
book
1987
as recently as
entitled The European Miracle
in the face of stock
a
second edition of a
was published. Ironic because,
market "corrections"
were
that
still
seeking
bottom and of growing protectionism against what has been called the "Asian miracle" of Japan
countries of the Pacific rim,
we
and the newly industrializing
sense that the great
self-
congratulatory literature of the Rise of the West, which for so
may
long shaped our view of the past, should be reevaluated,
need to be "remade." Depending on one's point of view, process of revision
may prove
to be a blessing:
if
this
indeed the
power accumulated by Europe from the sixteenth century onward and then inherited by the United
States did not
from
of the West" need not
a
unique genius, perhaps the
"fall
emanate
be attributed to a decline in Western "virtue." Indeed, factors
may account
other than inherent capacity and intelligence the rise and
fall
to construct a
than
its
of nations in the world system. Perhaps
new
storia (the Italian
term
is
much more
for
we need honest
English counterpart).
To anyone concerned with creation of alternative histories
necessary and vital
issues of race
is
and gender, the
nothing new, and in
component of many
disciplines.
fact, a
But to the
traditional historian, the suggestion that historical writing
is
a
construction, perhaps as imaginative as any literary creation,
is
heresy.
(Do we
really
can certainly remake is
make up it.)
history? For
if
we
do, then
a
we
But what may be heresy to a historian
an ordinary working assumption to a sociologist. Scholarly in-
111
Janet Abu-Lughod |
many
terpretations of historical events are subject to
and distortions
biases
sociologists
of the same
must guard against when they
research contemporary events, whether through participant observation, the collection of narratives
surveys of knowledge and attitudes. difficulties are at least First,
what
from
participants, or via
The meta-methodological
of three kinds.
sociologists take as a truism
— namely, that ac-
counts of social events are "constructions" rather than descriptions isomorphic with
some
"objective reality"
when
studying ongoing social
there
is
life,
no archimedean point
same one used
as
is
the case
in historical reconstruction
system from which to
outside the
view historic "reality." The only antidote to
We
— has yet to be
methodology. Just
fully assimilated into historical
this
dilemma
the
is
in sociological research, namely, triangulation.
assume that somewhere between the accounts given, duly
dis-
counted for "distortions" due to partial perspectives and vested interests,
one can "find" an approximation of
social reality that
might have been constructed by an unbiased and virtually omniscient narrator, had such an observer for historical investigation
clear.
is
been
Any
history of "the other" or
actor or society can be only a partial telling of the
of
its
erudition. (This
Orientalism [1978]
is
lesson
from the perspective of only one
of a "world system" written
less
The
possible.
the point behind
storia,
Edward
regard-
Said's
and the work of the Indian historians who
call
themselves the "subalterns.")
Second,
we know from
are not only constructed but, backwards.
That
is, it is
sociological
what
tries to explain
work
that
all
accounts
worse, are constructed
only "after the fact" that narratives are
built, especially narratives that
One
is
seek to explain.
A
divorce occurs.
"why." One does not then construct the
equally plausible (and equally selective) account of
how happy
the marriage was. Freud perceptively acknowledged that diagnosis always precedes the etiological account. In history also,
only after events have run their course that
te
we
it is
build the narra-
ON THE REMAKING OF HISTORY
tive that
appears to
self-fulfilling
make them
How
inevitable.
to avoid these
hypotheses? Counterfactuals are one way to guard
against this, but they have an inauthentic ring.
It is
far better,
I
think, to stop along the way, assessing relative conditions at suc-
and then trying to analyze how these
cessive points in time
ous states could have
come
about.
If,
indeed, the end point
we need
inescapably determines the account, then ries of
end
among
accounts.
This
the
more important because
Think of an argument
ticipants,
ceived; their
tion they
own
may
at
the
is
our third
moment when
start at very different
a
acts are all "retaliatory."
have given
which
that escalates. Interviewing the par-
one notices that their narratives
Each begins
points.
determine
interests
where any narrator will begin his/her account, point.
to take a se-
same way we need to triangulate
points, in the
is all
vari-
is left
wrong Any
to
them
per-
is
prior provoca-
out of the account since
it
"predates" the narrative. Similarly, in accounting for a successful
outcome, the
false starts
and early defeats
will usually be ig-
nored, unless they have a twist. Consider the
champion of the world, asked to what he
An answer
that begins
bizarre — unless
came
"I
was
a very sickly
introduces a statement about
this. Similarly, a
fering
response such as
it
clearly detracts
baby" would be
how
he over-
"my opponent was
from indigestion and an abscessed tooth"
unlikely, since is
it
with
new heavyweight
attributes his success.
is
suf-
highly
from the accomplishment
that
enhanced not by the weakness of the defeated but only by the
strength of the victor.
What Here,
I
occupied
book
does
want to
my
all
of this have to do with remaking history?
relate
some of
attention for the past few years,
entitled Before Europe's Hegemony. In
plexly reticulated system of ized
the findings of a project that has
on
capitalist
and
it, I
now
published as a
analyze the
com-
world production and trade (organ-
state capitalist lines) that, in the
between ad 1250 to ad 1350
(e.g.,
century
the late thirteenth and early
Janet Abu-Lughod
fourteenth centuries, a period identified by Western historians as
"the commercial revolution"), integrated the economies of an
"archipelago of towns" located along several long-distance land
and sea routes that stretched western Europe. In
and farther Asia participant.
merely
when
time
a
way from China
a
to north-
— whose core lay in near still
marginal
time of general revolution;
it
into the preexistent world system.
certainly an anomalous finding since, as every
is
was
it
Europe underwent enormous changes as
became more integrated This
the
— Europe was but a recent and
was not, then,
It
all
world system
this
one
conversant with the Miracle of the West knows, Europe was
unique in forging capitalism out of feudalism. Furthermore, the
modern world system came tury
when Europe
into being in the long sixteenth cen-
achieved hegemony. According to this ortho-
doxy, Europe's leap into modernity was achieved solely by
own
strengths and virtues.
My
book seeks
accepted dogmas. But before offering a
how
such
a history got
One can earlier as
of
soon
as
West
"diagnosis"
is is
one examines
assumed, that complete.
is,
The
hegemony?"
selectively to
"
critically the chief
the
its
of these
we must
ask
mechanisms described problematic
The present hegemony
historical sociologists.
outcome
is
determined, the
task remains to account for why
outcome occurred. In short, the question rise to
"re-storicz,
all
first place.
see the operation of the
many Western
of the
written in the
to refute
is,
"Why
did the
this
West
Past historical events are then interrogated
answer
this question.
Two
biases immediately
follow. First, the narrative
outcome ble.
is
begun
just at the point
when
the
— not foreordained earlier — becomes relatively inevita-
Consider the time periods taken
such histories. The year 1400
marker we
find.
is
as the starting points for
almost always the earliest
The voluminous and
dazzling multi-volumes of
the corpus of Fernand Braudel's works begin with that year.
Even Eric Wolf's otherwise nonethnocentric work, Europe and
114
ON THE REMAKING OF HISTORY
the People
Most
Without History (1982), takes this as the starting point.
writers, however, begin even later with the sixteenth cen-
Max Weber, whose
tury.
Thus,
dealt
with business practices
first
in
dissertation had, in fact,
medieval Europe, then shifted
his focus to the later period. In the
introduction to his essays on
the Protestant ethic (1904-1905), for example, he
my
lengths (using an often involuted and, to to distinguish
between
(Oriental) capitalism, a
"true"
(i.e.,
went to great
mind, suspect
logic)
a preexisting but "spurious" spirit of
which he dismisses
European)
spirit
of
as
modern
mere
"avarice,"
capitalism
and
whose
source he traces to the religious reformation of the sixteenth century.
Immanuel
Wallerstein's account, The
System, shares this ambivalence.
1450,
it is
While the
Modern World-
narrative starts about
not until the sixteenth century that the process of Eu-
ropean domination
is
shown
to be established.
vered, originally seeing the origins of
Even Marx wa-
Western capitalism
thirteenth century but later revising his view by insisting
in the
on the
sixteenth century.
As earliest
I
argue on the basis of
moment
at
which
my own
a "rise of the
research, 1400
West"
to
hegemony could have been predicted with any
is
the
world
probability,
and
the early decades of the sixteenth century (the 1500s) constitute the
first
moment when European hegemony had become
tually inevitable.
the
Yuan dynasty
The in
late
fourteenth century saw the collapse of
China and
the mid-fifteenth century
vir-
a subsequent
Ming retrenchment,
marked the Ottoman spread
to
Con-
stantinople, the late fifteenth century witnessed the "discoveries"
of
Columbus and Vasco da Gama, while
circa 1510
marked the
decisive defeat in the Arabian Sea of the Egyptian-Indian fleet
Muslim
by Portuguese men-of-war. Everything followed from these
events. If
instead of starting the narrative at these points, however,
one looked
at
the impressive world system as
it
had evolved by
the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, one would,
I
115
argue, have been
more
likely to predict the continuation
and
in-
creased reticulation of an Asian-based world system, focused on the Indian
Ocean and China, than
Eurocentered one. to
know
not
why
My
the
to have foreseen a shift to the
problematic, then, was different.
West rose but why the East
fell,
wanted
I
for
fall it
did at the time when, and perhaps even before, the Portuguese
men-of-war entered tacked his
bill
Wittenberg
their waters,
and certainly before Luther
of particulars to the door of All Saints Church in
in 1517.
Western scholars not only begin the narrative "too
late"
but they take only partial testimony, thereby biasing the reconstructed account. In making this judgment one ought not to be harsh.
Given the challenge of making up
a credible story about
the past, there has been a natural and necessary division of labor
among
historians.
quires at least vists
At the minimum, "making up" history re-
two types of persons working
and the synthesizers,
The producers of the laborious task of
together, the archi-
at various levels.
the primary raw materials are engaged in
"new"
historical research;
it is
they
must spend years learning arcane languages and then
m
sift
who
through dusty archives in search of
a hitherto
undiscovered doc-
ument, meticulously piecing together the accidental sample of surviving fragments to
make modest
narrow parameters of time and
statements, qualified within
space. In the last analysis, these
workers become the informants, respondents synthesizers
who
happened" and why
it
was
you
will, for the
significant.
Synthesis takes place at
those
if
write the larger "fictive" accounts of "what
who compose
two
different levels. First, there are
the socio-economic or intellectual histories
of given societies or regions, and then there are the rarer synthesizers
who
attempt to construct global accounts covering
wider regions over longer
(whose
cycles.
Perhaps William McNeill
Rise of the West, published in 1963, gave us the
for our problematic)
and the
late
"name"
Fernand Braudel are today's
masters of this genre, as Arnold Toynbee was for the
last
generation.
Comparative
historical sociologists, including
and Wallerstein, work are thus chivists
at
an even higher
Max Weber
level of generality.
They
dependent upon both the raw materials harvested by
ar-
and the semi-processed goods prepared by regionally
117
Janet Abu-Lughod
and temporally specialized glossers whose "prejudices" go unrecognized, at least for a while. Furthermore, they cannot help
but be deeply influenced by the grand syntheses produced by the
was by Braudel). With each
globalists (as Wallerstein certainly
higher level of generality, there are reduced options for reconceptualization. That
we
are to get away
is
why
believe
I
it is
absolutely essential,
from Eurocentric views of the universe,
if
to
"pick our respondents" carefully and broadly.
This political
is
not as easy as
and economic;
sounds.
it
Scholars
works
work
in cognate languages
is
adopt the term used by
(to
this defect in Southeast
best in their
not merely
must, almost by definition, "de-
it
form" the history of the others van Leur to describe
is
intellectual as well. If history
it is
written by the victor, then
Hegemony
own
J.
C.
Asian studies).
languages and are able to access
more
easily
than those in very "for-
eign" tongues. Available in translation are accidental arrays of
documents
that someone thought
worthy of dissemination. Fur-
thermore, in seeking explanations from the plethora of data about the past,
we
naturally select out "relevant" facts
— their
relevance having been determined by our working hypotheses
drawn from
partial
and global
These are dangerous
glossers.
methods. If
someone presented us with what purported
count of
a football
team's supporters, clusions.
And
ing does.
It is
we can
to be an ac-
game, based on interviews with only one
we would
yet this
is
be justifiably skeptical of the con-
what much
historical sociological writ-
only by following the rules of triangulation that
escape the tautological process of confirming basic as-
sumptions. Non- Western histories and sources must be included
among
the "respondents"
Finally,
human
we must
behavior.
if
bias
is
not to reconfirm
take seriously what
Change
is
a
complex process
organism with potential for evolution,
vironment and the opportunities
118
we know
it
a
itself.
to be true of
that involves an
perception of an en-
offers,
an "objective" en-
ON THE REMAKING OF HISTORY
vironment that hinders or helps such development, action,
and
who may
a set of interacting others
block one's growth.
If
we
grant
this,
a capacity for
facilitate
or
then the "rise of the West"
cannot have been due exclusively or even predominantly to forces
"immanent"
in
Western
culture.
am amused by the contrast between Western "fall of Rome" and parallel accounts of the "rise I
the
accounts of of the
West." In the former, the prior existence of internal decadence is
always, albeit reluctantly, acknowledged, but the actual "fall"
is
always overwhelmingly attributed to Rome's inability to defend
itself against
barbarian incursions.
How
different,
however, are
the variables used to explain the "rise of the West." critically,
most
literature
congratulatory ring.
It
on
smug,
this subject has a
Examined self-
answers the question, crudely put:
won
"What
And even
was so special about the West
that
when
— to ask "what were the weak-
that question
is
inverted
nesses of the East that allowed
it
it
to be
the world?"
overcome and subordi-
nated so readily in the opening decades of the sixteenth century?"
— the variables turn out to be mirror images of those
used to prove Western superiority. The West was technologically advanced; the East
was "backward." The West was
institutionally developed in business techniques; the East
"irrational"
and "particularistic"
trial practices.
The West had
was monopolistic and In fact, had
all
statist.
in its
And
so on.
these things been true, there
underdeveloped
for the
would have
West
to attach
it-
and thirteenth centuries, nor would the
conquest of Asia have yielded so rich as
commercial and indus-
laissez-faire capitalism; the East
been no Asian-centered world system self to in the twelfth
was
as these
would not have been worth
a prize.
Had
the East been
accounts would lead us to believe, despoiling.
it
To the contrary, every
shred of historical evidence points to the exact opposite conclusion.
Take technology, for example. By the eleventh and twelfth
119
Janet Abu-Lughod
were already producing complex iron and
centuries, the Chinese
even
by highly advanced coal-powered techniques of metal-
steel
lurgy;
Europe would not reach
competence
cal
many
until
a
comparable
centuries
level of technologi-
By the eleventh
later.
century Chinese ships were navigated by the compass, a piece of
equipment that would not
second
diffuse to the Italians until the
half of the thirteenth century. Chinese
war
ships as early as the
twelfth or early thirteenth century were equipped with cannons
gunpowder
that used
fenses
trade,
were of
Europe
was
available
on European
vessels.
Middle Eastern tex-
the real "bread and butter" of medieval long-distance
tiles,
in
were
to propel missiles, long before such de-
a quality so
that, at least
a net exporter of
finished goods.
much
higher than what was produced
through the thirteenth century, Europe
primary products and a net importer of
European
silver
and gold continued to flow into
India throughout the fourteenth century,
and possibly
later, to
counterbalance the imports of Indian textiles and other items of trade.
In the areas of investment tions,
acumen and
business institu-
Westerners also had many lessons to learn from their
Eastern trading partners. Checks, investment partnerships and
commenda agreements,
credit, double-entry
exchange, and even paper state
were
all
money
bookkeeping,
of
bills
issued as legal tender by the
widely used in the East long before they were "in-
vented" in twelfth- to fourteenth-century
Italy (as
claimed by
Tawney, 1926). Checks were used in Sassanid Persia by the
and sixth centuries.
fifth
Commenda agreements were the usual way of
conducting the Arabian caravan trade even before the seventh century,
when
Islam codified and regularized these practices
with respect to credit and the apportioning of Bills
profits
and
risks.
of exchange and credit transfers were routine ways of con-
ducting long-distance trade in the advanced economies of the Orient. Merchant bankers formed investment partnerships with industrial producers
120
and wholesale
traders, served as
money
as-
ON THE REMAKING OF HISTORY
and changers, and kept careful records of debits and
sayers
backed by the govern-
credits for their customers. Paper script,
ment, was
legal
turies before
And
tender in twelfth-century Sung China
Europe would
finally,
Max Weber and Marx
many
cen-
system.
finally devise this
notwithstanding,
it is
very hard to find evidence in most cities of medieval Europe for
model of the emergence of an independent bourgeoisie en-
their
gaged in
laissez-faire capitalism,
with rural bases of power. At
unencumbered by
least in the
feudal lords
important towns of
France and Flanders, which provide two of the twelve "cases" in
my
book, one finds clear evidence of "statism," alliances (marital
and otherwise) between feudal and urban lies,
and even
elites, state
state capitalism. (In Venice, for
monopo-
example, the
state
even owned the basic means of production used by the marine mercantilist city
— namely, the galleys.) These systems were
really not very different
from those found
more
in the larger,
centralized imperial centers of, for example, Egypt and China.
The major
Weber Marx
difference was scale, not the sui generis difference
posited between the "true city" and the Oriental city or
posited between the Asiatic and Occidental capitalist
modes of production. If
we must
these allegations are indeed correct, then clearly
reformulate our questions.
The
rise
and
fall
of empires and even
of hegemonic powers within world systems have occurred before in history, just as the process
can
now
be observed in the
Japan and the Newly Industrializing Countries It is
rise of
— NICs — of Asia.
not legitimate "science" to seek explanations exclusively in
variables internal to the societies that rise
and
fall.
Nor
is
the
opposite approach, which takes historic cycles as "natural" events governed by their a
more
own
logic,
any more illuminating. Only
fine-grained contextual analysis of historic change that
pays attention to both extrinsic world-system transformations
and developments of more internal origin can
mum
satisfy the
mini-
requirements of credibility.
121
f Applying
this
kind of contextual analysis in
of global economic systems,
I
my own
have found that at least
study
two
"world systems" predated the one whose sixteenth-century evolutionary beginnings have been so cogently described by Wallerstein (1974)
and whose end now seems imminent:
Hellenic- Roman-Middle Eastern-Indian
around the beginning of the Christian
Ocean
era,
and
(1) the
partial system, (2) the
wider-
ranging eastern Mediterranean to China system from the ninth
century onward. While the ing, the at
second was
still
first
had aborted before
full
the end of the eleventh century, Western Europe attached
self to
through the
it
cial,
and
lated to
industrial
its
materials.
growth
radically
While
in
and
slaves
expanded access to new raw and processed
at first this
drained the European economy of
— chiefly
first
salt,
tim-
— eventually the imbalance of trade stimulated in-
dustrial production, largely of textiles in Flanders,
the
commer-
northwestern Europe, clearly re-
precious metals and some primary products ber,
it-
First Crusade.
This initiated a period of efflorescence of urban,
122
flower-
operating over extensive regions when,
which became
part of Europe to undergo an industrial revolution
—
all
I this
by the
late thirteenth
The heightened city-states in Italy to
and
early fourteenth centuries.
trade encouraged the inhabitants of a few
assume the banking and transport func-
tions for the continent during this Italian intermediaries,
lines of supplies that
ern Mediterranean:
Europe was firmly connected to Oriental
terminated
at
Sea and Central Asia;
same period. Through the
at
three points along the east-
Constantinople, which led to the Black at
ports on the Palestinian coast, which
connected through Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf and then by sea to India
and even China; and
at
Alexandria, which led to
Cairo and then the Red Sea and Indian Ocean beyond.
Thus, during the second half of the thirteenth century,
which
consider to be a critical turning point, there was rapid
I
articulation
and reticulation of
height — around
and intermediate points into far
more
known. that
all
a true
"world system"
that, at its
1290-1300 — had drawn Western Europe, a
China,
production and exchange system
elaborate and extensive than the world had ever before
It
seemed probable
parts of the system
that this process
would
either
anced (which they appear to have been
would continue and
remain roughly
at
bal-
the time, each of the
123
Janet Abu-Lughod
major contenders dominant
in its
own
region) or that the
"heavyweights" would continue to be found mostly south and east of the Mediterranean.
This situation, however, proved unstable. Shortly after
had been effort. 1
set up,
As early
it
began to unravel.
as the 1330s, there
340s contractions were evident
1350s only remnants
— albeit
were
signs of strain,
many
points,
healthy
— were
at
still
by the
and by the
more complex and interwoven during the second
The
left.
of communication and trade that had broadened and
thirteenth century
it
was to prove an aborted
It
lines
grown
half of the
were fraying and snapping. By the second
half
of the fourteenth century, the trifold heartland system had been stripped
Egypt ter
down
to a single strand that connected Venice with
— the former dominating the European subsystem, the
lat-
monopolizing access to the Indian Ocean trade.
The
chief question
is
why. Any explanation that depends
upon long-term and deep-seated for so rapid a cycle of rise
"cultural" traits cannot account
and devolution; nor was the devolu-
where
tion greatest in the Orient, the region
it
would have been
predicted by Eurocentric theory. Indeed, the long cycles of In-
dian Ocean trade seem to have neither mirrored nor paralleled those identified for Europe. In
fact, it
withdrawal of the powerful Chinese 1435 (and dian
its
Ocean
from
until the final
that zone after
subsequent attrition through port rot) that the In-
cycle entered
Of one
was not
fleet
thing
I
am
its
downswing.
certain:
monocausal explanations are
completely inadequate. There was no single overriding fact like
some
that,
deus ex machina, accounted generally for the breakup.
Rather, there was a concatenation of trends that,
when
they
combined, shifted the vector of change.
Some
of these trends were major
— like the dissolution of
the Pax Mongolica that eventually split apart the circuit of trade that
had connected the land route across Central Asia with the
sea trade through southern Chinese ports, or like the
124
end of the
ON THE REMAKING OF HISTORY
Crusader
state at Acre,
which thus blocked Europe's land
between the Mediterranean and the Persian
minor
Gulf.
link
Some were
— like the conversion to Islam of the Ghazanids of Iraq,
which reduced
their tensions
with the Mamluks of Egypt, thus
permitting the reopening of the land route between Meso-
potamia and Egypt.
Some as the
of these trends were dramatically precipitant
— such
Black Death, which decimated populations from Central
The
Asia to the Mediterranean shores.
resultant labor shortage
caused transformations in business practices in Europe (the introduction of resident overseas "factors") and shook the bases of class structure in
ease
many
regions. In China, the devastations of dis-
weakened the power of the Mongol Yuan
state,
soon
after-
wards overthrown by the Ming.
Some changes were slower but such
as decisions to
in
ways more insidious,
export raw materials that had previously fed
local industries or to retain for local
production raw materials
formerly exported to others. This appeared in two
critical parts
of the world system in the early fourteenth century. First, the
Flemish textile industry was put into a permanent tailspin by English embargos on the export of high quality wool, needed to
produce the expensive cloth for which Flanders was famous. In reverse development, Italian merchants began to buy
a
up the raw
cotton and sugar that had formerly been processed in Syria and Egypt, thus undermining the industrial base of these societies. In Before Europe's Hegemony,
I
have studied the alterations
within and between the eight interlocking and overlapping subsystems that
I
believe cumulated synergistically to create the
near-global world system of the early fourteenth century, in or-
der to understand
Through usually
a
more
why
that system did not continue to
fine-grained historical inquiry than sociologists
employ and through
geopolitical context within
curred,
I
grow.
a
much
closer attention to the
which these
historical events oc-
have attempted to unpack the complex events that pre-
125
Janet Abu-Lughod
cipitated the abortion of this developed system
and
that allowed
the West, in the early sixteenth century, to gain hegemonic con-
next "world system" through a drastic reshaping of
trol over the
among them.
the subsystems and the connections
What
am
I
proposing
is
a rethinking of
The
able to "rise" in the sixteenth century. that the Eastern system
was already
power already
that Portuguese
the
is
by the
enormous vacuum
Ocean arena by
existed in the Indian
men-of-war entered
West was
argument
in severe decline
mid-fifteenth century and that, therefore, an
of
why
basic
that zone.
It
the time
was the unpre-
paredness of the East, even more than the strength of the West, that
was responsible for the ultimate outcome, the
West."
Of perhaps even
"rise of the
greater significance was the shift
the Mediterranean to the Atlantic,
from
which changed the location
of the center of gravity of the world system, hence to the greater
power of the countries of the was
shift
a
Atlantic rim.
To some extent,
this
temporary deviation from the usual focus of trade
from time immemorial, namely between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean.
We may now this
time to the
be seeing a third
Pacific,
with a
of flanking countries and a
Ocean. Associated with
shift in
world geopolitics,
new enhancement
new backward
this shift
is
of the position
linkage to the Indian
the increased
hegemony of
Asian powers and, inevitably, of the west coast American ports that flank that ocean.
now undergoing
that led to almost five
The
first
ruled by
partial
We
might ask whether the world system
a crucial restructuring as significant as the
is
one
hundred years of "Western" hegemony.
world system focused on the Mediterranean,
Rome. The second world system moved
to the Indian
Ocean. The third, beginning roughly in the 1500s, centered on the Atlantic.
The new one appears
This brings us to our
"make up"
history,
make
as
126
it
up
we
we do
please.
to be shifting to the Pacific.
final point.
not have
The
line
While
full
it is
true that
and arbitrary
by Marx, to the
we
latitude to
effect that
ON THE REMAKING OF HISTORY
people
make
their history but not as they choose,
most relevant note on which to end. Something out there, and a knowledge of the past
our efforts to "read"
with
it,
interpret
may be
may be
real
is
the
going on
helpful to us in
and possibly even to deal
it,
it.
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129
Homi
Bhabha
K.
REMEMBERING FANON:
SELF, PSYCHE,
AND THE COLONIAL CONDITION
O my
body,
make of me
always a
man who
questions!
— Frantz Fanon The mention of Frantz Fanon
in left circles stirs a dim, deceiving
echo. Black Skin, White Masks, The Wretched of the Earth, Toward the African Revolution
— these memorable
self-righteous rhetoric of "resistance"
titles
reverberate in the
whenever the
left
gathers
to deplore the immiseration of the colonized world. Repeatedly
used tily
as the
echo
idioms of simple moral outrage, Fanon's
a political spirit that
is
far
from
his
titles
emp-
own; they sound
the troubled conscience of a socialist vision that extends, in the
main, from an ethnocentric provincialism to large trade union internationalism.
When
that laborist line of vision
by the "autonomous" struggles of the der, or threatened
representation,
it
politics of race
challenged
and gen-
by problems of human psychology or cultural
can only make an empty gesture of solidarity.
Whenever questions of
race and sexuality
ganizational and theoretical "state,"
is
make
their
own
demands on the primacy of
or-
"class,"
and "party," the language of traditional socialism
is
quick to describe those urgent, "other" questions as symptoms of petty-bourgeois deviation, signs of the bad faith of socialist intellectuals.
The
ritual respect
the currency of his are part of the
titles in
ceremony of
accorded to the name of Fanon,
the
common
language of liberation,
a polite refusal.
Memories of Fanon tend
to the mythical.
He
is
either rev-
131
Homi
K.
ered as
Bhabha
as the
prophetic
spirit
of Third World Liberation or reviled
an exterminating angel, the inspiration to violence in the
Black Power movement. Despite his historic participation in the
Algerian revolution and the influence of his ideas on the race
and 1970s, Fanon's work
politics of the 1960s
sessed by one political
moment
will not be pos-
or movement, nor can
it
be
easily placed in a seamless narrative of liberationist history.
Fanon refuses tualities. It
is
commitment
to be so completely claimed by events or even-
the sustaining irony of his to the political task in
restless, inquiring It is
movement
work
that his severe
hand never restricted the
of his thought.
not for the finitude of philosophical thinking nor for
the finality of a political direction that to the ingenuity
and
we turn
artistry of Toussaint
to Fanon. Heir
and Senghor,
the iconoclasm of Nietzsche, Freud, and Sartre,
Fanon
purveyor of the transgressive and transitional truth. yearn for the total transformation of
Man and
as well as is
the
He may
Society, but he
speaks most effectively from the uncertain interstices of historical
change: from the area of ambivalence between race and sex-
uality; class;
and
out of an unresolved contradiction between culture and
from deep within the
struggle of psychic representation
social reality.
To read Fanon prefigures
to experience the sense of division that
is
— and fissures — the emergence of a truly radical
thought that never dawns without casting an uncertain dark. His voice
most
is
clearly
heard in the subversive turn of a familiar
term, in the silence of a sudden rupture: "The Negro
is
not.
Any
more than the white man." The awkward division that breaks his line of
thought keeps
alive the
dramatic and enigmatic sense of
the process of change. That familiar alignment of colonial subjects
— black/white,
Self/Other
—
is
disturbed with one brief
pause and the traditional grounds of racial identity are dispersed, whenever they are found to rest in the narcissistic myths cf nigritude or white cultural supremacy.
132
It is
this palpable pres-
REMEMBERING FANON
sure of division and displacement that pushes Fanon's writing to
the edge of things; the cutting edge that reveals no ultimate radi-
ance but, in his words, "exposes an utterly naked declivity
where an authentic upheaval can be born."
The
psychiatric hospital at Blida-Joinville
one such place
is
where, in the divided world of French Algeria, Fanon discovered the impossibility of his mission as a colonial psychiatrist: If psychiatry
is
the medical technique that aims to enable
owe
longer to be a stranger to his environment,
I
that the Arab, permanently an alien in his
own
of absolute depersonalization
.
.
it
to
man no
myself to affirm
country, lives in a state
The social structure existing
.
in
Al-
geria was hostile to any attempt to put the individual back where he 1
belonged.
The extremity of
person — this end — produces a restless urgency in
this colonial alienation of the
of the "idea" of the individual
Fanon's search for a conceptual form appropriate to the social
antagonism of the colonial relation. The body of
between
a Hegelian-Marxist dialectic, a
work
splits
phenomenological
affir-
his
mation of Self and Other, and the psychoanalytic ambivalence of the Unconscious,
its
turning from love to hate, mastery to servi-
tude. In his desperate,
erance,
doomed
search for a dialectic of deliv-
Fanon explores the edge of these modes
for thought: his
Hegelianism restores hope to history; his existentialist evocation of the "I" restores the presence of the marginalized; and his psychoanalytic framework illuminates the "madness" of racism, the pleasure of pain, the agonistic fantasy of political power.
As Fanon attempts such audacious, often impossible, transformations of truth and value, the jagged testimony of colonial dislocation,
its
displacement of time and person,
its
defilement of
culture and territory, refuses the ambition of any "total" theory
of colonial oppression.
The
Antillean evolue cut to the quick by
the glancing look of a frightened, confused white child; the ste-
reotype of the native fixed
at
the shifting boundaries between
133
Homi
Bhabha
K.
barbarism and
civility;
women
Negro: "Our
the insatiable fear and desire for the
mercy of Negroes
are at the
knows how they make
love"; the
symptoms of the
in the intrepid
God
Western
sexuality
—
it is
colonial condition that drive
Fanon from one conceptual scheme nial relation takes
.
deep cultural fear of the black
figured in the psychic trembling of
these signs and
.
.
to another, while the colo-
shape in the gaps between them, articulated
engagements of
the "scientific" fact
comes
his style.
As Fanon's text unfolds,
to be aggressed by the experience of
the street; sociological observations are intercut with literary ar-
and the poetry of liberation
tifacts,
is
brought up short against
the leaden, deadening prose of the colonized world.
What
this distinctive force of
is
forming even
as
I
Fanon's vision that has been
write about the division, the displacement, the
cutting edge of his thought?
It
comes,
I
believe,
from the
tion of the oppressed, as Walter Benjamin suggests;
guage of a revolutionary awareness that "the in
which we
live is
state of
not the exception but the
tain to a concept of history that
is
it is
in keeping
tradi-
the lan-
emergency
rule.
We
with
this insight."
must
at-
And
the state of emergency
The
struggle against colonial oppression changes not only the di-
is
also always a state of emergence.
rection of Western history, but challenges
of time as a progressive, ordered whole.
its
The
historicist "idea"
analysis of colonial
depersonalization alienates not only the Enlightenment idea of
"Man," but challenges the transparency of pregiven image of historicism
is
human knowledge.
human
the order of Western
disturbed in the colonial state of emergency, even
more deeply disturbed of the
If
social reality, as a
subject.
is
the social and psychic representation
For the very nature of humanity becomes
estranged in the colonial condition and from that "naked declivity"
it
emerges, not as an assertion of will nor as an evoca-
tion of freedom, but as an enigmatic questioning.
With
a
question that echoes Freud's what does woman want?, Fanon turns to confront the colonized world.
134
"What does
a
man want?"
he
REMEMBERING FANON
asks, in the introduction to Black Skin,
the black
To
man
this
down on
"What does
White Masks,
want?"
loaded question where cultural alienation bears
the ambivalence of psychic identification, Fanon re-
sponds with an agonizing performance of self-images: /
had
meet the white man's
to
An
eyes.
man of color
In the white world the
velopment of his bodily schema
.
.
.
unfamiliar weight burdened me.
encounters difficulties in the de-
I
was battered down by tom-toms,
cannibalism, intellectual deficiency, racial defects
my own
offfrom
presence
.
.
.
What
else
could
.
it
.
.
I took
be for
amputation, an excision, a hemorrhage that spattered
myselfJar
me but an
my
whole body
with black blood?
From within
the metaphor of vision complicit with a Western
metaphysic of lation.
The
Man emerges
the displacement of the colonial re-
black presence ruins the representative narrative of
Western personhood:
its
past tethered to treacherous stereo-
types of primitivism and degeneracy will not produce a history of
civil
progress, a space for the Socius;
and dislocated,
its
present,
dismembered
image of identity that
will not contain the
is
questioned in the dialectic of mind/body and resolved in the
epistemology of "appearance and reality." The white man's eyes
break up the black man's body and in that act of epistemic violence
its
own frame
of reference
is
transgressed,
its field
of vi-
sion disturbed.
"What does
the black
man
want?" Fanon insists and in
privileging the psychic dimension, he changes not only
understand by a
by which
we
political
demand but transforms
recognize and identify
its
human
what we
the very
agency.
means
Fanon
is
not principally posing the question of political oppression as the violation of a
human
"essence," although he lapses into such a
lament in his more existential moments. question of colonial
man
He
in the universalist
is
not raising the
terms of the
liberal-
humanist ("How does colonialism deny the Rights of Man?");
135
Homi
nor
K.
Bhabha
he posing an ontological question about Man's being
is
("Who
is
the alienated colonial man?"). Fanon's question
is
not
addressed to such a unified notion of history nor such a unitary
concept of Man.
It is
one of the original and disturbing
of Black Skin, White Masks that
experience. There that provide a
is
it
no master narrative or
background of
qualities
rarely historicizes the colonial
social
and
realist
perspective
historical facts against
which emerge the problems of the individual or
collective
psyche. Such a traditional sociological alignment of Self and Society or History
and Psyche
is
rendered questionable in Fanon's
who
identification of the colonial subject,
comes
is
historicized as
it
to be heterogeneously inscribed in the texts of history,
literature, science,
myth. The colonial subject
determined from without," Fanon writes.
and fantasy
It is
is
always "over-
through image
— those orders that figure transgressively on the — that Fanon most pro-
borders of history and the unconscious foundly evokes the colonial condition. In articulating the
problem of colonial cultural alienation
in the psychoanalytic language of ically
demand and
desire,
Fanon rad-
questions the formation of both individual and social au-
thority as they
Sovereignty.
come
The
to be developed in the discourse of Social
social virtues of historical rationality, cultural
cohesion, the autonomy of individual consciousness assume an
immediate, Utopian identity with the subjects upon confer a
civil status.
The
civil state is
the innate ethical and rational bent of the cial instinct is
the progressive destiny of
human mind;
human
from Nature to Culture. The
essary transition
individual interests to social authority sentative structure of a General Will
whom
they
the ultimate expression of
is
the so-
nature, the nec-
direct access
from
objectified in the repre-
— Law or Culture — where
Psyche and Society mirror each other, transparently translating their difference, social
without
loss, into a historical totality.
and psychic alienation and aggression
treason, violence
Forms of
— madness,
self- hate,
— can never be acknowledged as determinate
REMEMBERING FANON
and constitutive conditions of
civil authority,
bivalent effects of the social instinct
itself.
or as the am-
They
are always ex-
plained away as alien presences, occlusions of historical progress, the ultimate misrecognition of Man.
Man and
For Fanon such a myth of tally
undermined
Society
in the colonial situation,
fundamen-
is
where everyday
exhibits a "constellation of delirium" that mediates the social relations of feriority, the
its
white
subjects:
man
"The Negro enslaved by
life
normal his in-
enslaved by his superiority alike behave
accordance with a neurotic orientation." Fanon's demand for
in
a psychoanalytic explanation
emerges from the perverse
reflec-
tions of "civil virtue" in the alienating acts of colonial gover-
nance: the visibility of cultural "mummification" in the colonizer's
which
avowed ambition to
civilize
or modernize the native,
results in "archaic inert institutions [that function]
under
the oppressor's supervision like a caricature of formerly fertile institutions"; or the validity of violence in the very definition of
the colonial social space; or the viability of the febrile, phantas-
matic images of racial hatred that out in the
wisdom
come
to be absorbed
laborations of political
and psychic violence within
alienation within identity, drive
Fanon
civic virtue,
to describe the splitting
of the colonial space of consciousness and society as a
and acted
of the West. These interpositions, indeed col-
marked by
"Manichean delirium."
The suggest,
is
representative figure of such a perversion,
the image of post-Enlightenment
man
I
want to
tethered to, not
confronted by, his dark reflection, the shadow of colonized man, that splits his presence, distorts his outline, breaches his aries, repeats his action at a distance, disturbs
bound-
and divides the
very time of his being. This ambivalent identification of the racist
world
— moving on two planes without being in the least
embarrassed by ness
it,
as Sartre says of the anti-Semitic conscious-
— turns on the idea of Man as
his alienated image,
and Other but the "Otherness" of the
not Self
Self inscribed in the per-
137
Homi
Bhabha
K.
And
verse palimpsest of colonial identity.
it is
that bizarre figure
of desire, which splits along the axis on which
turns, that
it
compels Fanon to put the psychoanalytic question of the desire of the subject to the historic condition of colonial man.
"What Fanon
fact,"
wise.
is
often called the black soul
reveals the
It
relation
and
arti-
representations stage the division of
— black and white — of indi-
What emerges from
social authority.
the figurative
make such an argument,
have used to
I
white man's
that enacts the artifice of "identity"; a divi-
sion that cuts across the fragile skin
language
a
deep psychic uncertainty of the colonial
itself; its split
"body" and "soul"
vidual
is
writes. This transference, I've argued, speaks other-
are three condi-
tions that underlie an understanding of the process of identification in the analytic of desire. First: to exist is to
Otherness,
its
be called into being in relation to an
look or locus.
It is
a
demand
that reaches
to an external object and, as Jacqueline Rose writes, "it relation of this
becomes the that
demand
to the place of the object
it
basis for identification." This process
exchange of looks between native and
outward is
the
claims that
is
visible in
settler that structures
their psychic relation in the paranoid fantasy of boundless pos-
and
session
meet he
its
familiar language of reversal:
'They want to take our
who
does not dream
the settler's place."
Other
"when
[the settler] ascertains bitterly, always place.'
true for there
is
defensive,
no native
once a day of setting himself up in
at least
It is
It is
their glances
on the
always in relation to the place of the
that colonial desire
is
articulated: that
is,
in part, the
phantasmatic space of "possession" that no one subject can singly
occupy
that permits the
dream of the inversion of
roles.
Second: the very place of identification, caught in the tension of
demand and
the native
is
desire,
is
a space of splitting.
his place in the slave's avenging anger. is
138
The
fantasy of
precisely to occupy the master's place while keeping
not, for example, a neat division;
"Black skins, white masks"
it is
a doubling, dissembling
REMEMBERING FANON
image of being
two
in at least
places at once that
possible for the devalued, insatiable evolue (an rotic,
Fanon claims)
makes
it
im-
abandonment neu-
to accept the colonizer's invitation to
identity: "You're a doctor, a writer, a student, you're different,
you're one of us."
precisely in that ambivalent use of
It is
— to be different from those that are different makes you the same — that the Unconscious speaks of the form of Oth"different"
shadow of
erness, the tethered
deferral
and displacement.
It is
not the Colonialist Self or the Colonized Other, but the disturb-
between
ing distance in
Otherness
that constitutes the figure of colonial
— the white man's artifice inscribed on the black
man's body.
It is
in relation to this impossible object that
emerges the liminal problem of colonial identity and
its
vicissitudes. Finally, as has already
ures of
my
never the affirmation of a pregiven identity,
is
self-fulfilling
prophecy
—
it is
always the production of an
"image" of identity and the transformation of the subject in
suming that image. The demand of for an Other
identification
— that
illustrations above,
identity that bears the
from which
mark
we
Look a Negro
all
.
.
.
Mama, I
body
.
.
It
see the
already
historicity
poral schema crumbled, .
of splitting in that "Other" place like
mo-
Lacan, the primary
of certain uncer-
certifies its existence
and
dismemberment.
longer laugh, because
and above
inferred
always the return of an image of
The "atmosphere
limits of language.
its
as-
to be
a repetition of the self lie in the desire of the look
tainty" that surrounds the
threatens
is
comes. For Fanon,
it
ments of such and the
is,
— entails the representation of the subject in the
differentiating order of Otherness. Identification, as
from the
fig-
account of desire and Otherness, the question of
identification
never a
been disclosed by the rhetorical
.
its
.
.
Negro! I'm frightened
know
Then
.
.
.
I
could no
there were legends, stories, history
assailed at various points, the cor-
place taken by a racial epidermal schema
was no longer a question of being aware of my body in the 139
Homi
K.
Bhabha
third person but in a triple person
for
my
race,
for
my
.
.
In reading Black Skin, White Masks,
difference ity,
I
.
was responsible for
my
body,
ancestors.
crucial to respect the
it is
between "personal identity"
as
an intimation of
real-
or an intuition of being, and the psychoanalytic problem of
identification that, in a sense, always begs the question of the
subject
man
— "What does a man want?" The emergence of the hu-
subject as socially and psychically authenticated depends
upon the
negation of an originary narrative of fulfillment or an
imaginary coincidence between individual interest or instinct
and the General Will. Such binary, two-part
identities function
One
in a kind of narcissistic reflection of the
in the
Other
that
is
confronted in the language of desire by the psychoanalytic process of identification. For identification, identity
a priori, nor a finished product;
it is
is
never an
only ever the problematic
process of access to an "image" of totality.
The
discursive condi-
tions of this psychic image of identification will be clarified
we
if
think of the perilous perspective of the concept of the image
it-
— as point of identification — marks the of an ambivalence. representation always spatially — makes present something that absent — and temporarily deferred — the representation of a time that always elseself.
For the image
site
Its
split
is
it
is
it is
is
where, a repetition. The image authority and identity;
it
is
only ever an appurtenance to
must never be read mimetically
as the
"appearance" of a "reality." The access to the image of identity is
only ever possible in the negation of any sense of originality or
plenitude, through the principle of displacement and differentia-
tion (absence/presence; representation/repetition) that always
renders
it
a liminal reality.
The image
substitution, an illusion of presence
metonym,
a sign of
its
absence and
edge of meaning and being, from
is
140
once a metaphoric that
loss. It is
same token
precisely
this shifting
erness within identity, that Fanon asks:
want?"
at
and by
from
a this
boundary of oth-
"What does
a black
man
REMEMBERING FANON
When
encounters resistance from the other, self-consciousness under-
it
goes the experience of desire ered. I
am
.
.
.
As soon
not merely here and now, sealed into thingness.
somewhere
else
and for something
.
occupied space.
I
.
I
I
else.
of my negating activity in so far as .
as 1 desire I ask to he consid-
demand
I
am for
that notice be taken
pursue something other than
I
moved towards
the other
.
.
.
and
life
the evanescent
other, hostile but not opaque, transparent, not there, disappeared.
Nausea.
From
that
overwhelming emptiness of nausea, Fanon makes
answer: the black
man
wants the objectifying confrontation with
otherness; in the colonial psyche there
avowal of the negating, splitting the Other
must not be imaged
fixed phenomenological point,
is
moment
as
an unconscious of desire.
The
dis-
place of
Fanon sometimes suggests
opposed to the
sents a culturally alien consciousness.
self,
as a
that repre-
The Other must be seen
the necessary negation of a primordial identity
psychic
his
as
— cultural or
— that introduces the system of differentiation that en-
ables the "cultural" to be signified as a linguistic, symbolic, historic reality.
If,
as
I
have suggested, the subject of desire
simply a Myself, then the Other
is
never simply an
is
It-self a
never font
of identity, truth, or misrecognition.
As
a principle of identification, the
of objectivity but
its
representation
— be
Other bestows
the social process of
it
the law or the psychic process of the Oedipus bivalent, disclosing a lack.
tional distinction
tween "Justice" and flict
For instance, the
between "the
displays the otherness of
Law
judicial
letter
itself;
and
a degree
—
is
always
common,
am-
conversa-
spirit" of the
Law
the ambiguous grey area be-
procedure
is,
quite literally, a con-
of judgment. In the language of psychoanalysis, the
Law
of
the Father or the paternal metaphor, again, cannot be taken at its
word.
It is
a process of substitution
and exchange
that in-
scribes a normative, normalizing place for the subject; but that
metaphoric access to identity
and repression, precisely
is
exactly the place of prohibition
a conflict of authority. Identification, as
141
Homi
K.
it is
Bhabha
spoken
in the desire of the Other,
terpretation, for
it is
one-self, the elision of If
is
always a question of in-
the elusive assignation of myself with a
person and place.
the differentiating force of the Other
is
the process of
the subject's signification in language and society's objectification in
how
Law, then
can the Other disappear? Can desire, the mov-
ing spirit of the subject, ever evanesce? In his
more
analytic
mode, Fanon can impede the explora-
tion of these ambivalent, uncertain questions of colonial desire.
The
state of
emergency from which he writes demands more
surgent answers,
more immediate
identifications.
in-
At times Fanon
attempts too close a correspondence between the mise-en-scene of
unconscious fantasy and the phantoms of racist fear and hate that stalk the colonial scene; he turns too hastily
from the am-
bivalences of identification to the antagonistic identities of political alienation
name
and
cultural discrimination; he
the Other, to personalize
colonial racism
its
is
too quick to
presence in the language of
— "the real Other for the white man
continue to be the black man.
And
dream
in Fanon's words, to restore the
time and cultural space can, brilliant illustrations of the
is
and
will
conversely." These attempts,
at times,
to
its
proper
political
blunt the edge of Fanon's
complexity of psychic projections in
the pathological colonial relation. Jean Veneuse, the Antillean evolue, desires
not merely to be in the place of the white
down on
but compulsively seeks to look back and that position. fears
man
himself from
The white man does not merely deny what he
and desires by projecting
it
on "them": Fanon sometimes
forgets that paranoia never preserves
its
position of power, for
the compulsive identification with a persecutory "They"
ways an evacuation and emptying of the
is al-
"I."
Fanon's sociodiagnostic psychiatry tends to explain away the ambivalent turns and returns of the subject of colonial desire, its
masquerade of Western
perspective.
It is
sights: that the 142
as if
Fanon
is
Man and
the "long" historical
fearful of his
space of the body and
its
most
radical in-
identification
is
a repre-
REMEMBERING FANON
sentational reality; that the politics of race will not be entirely
contained within the humanist myth of sity
or historical progress, for
its
Man
or economic neces-
psychic effects question such
human
forms of determinism; that social sovereignty and
only realizable in the order of Otherness.
tivity are
subjec-
as if the
It is
question of desire that emerged from the traumatic tradition of the oppressed has to be denied, at the end of Black Skin, White
make way
Masks, to nal as
Why
it is
for an existentialist
humanism
that
is
as ba-
beatific:
not the quite simple attempt to touch the other, to feel the other,
to explain the other to myself?
want the world
to recognize,
.
.
.
At
the conclusion of this study, I
with me, the open door of every
consciousness.
Such
a
deep hunger for humanism, despite Fanon's insight into
the dark side of
Man, must be an overcompensation
closed consciousness or "dual narcissism" to
the depersonalization of colonial man: "There one
body, with one's blackness or one's whiteness in cry,
own
each sealed into his
and then
a flash or so."
Hegelian sense with
its
It is
particularity
this flash of
indifference: it
.
.
ity." In the
.
"And
yet the
The former
— with,
body to
lies
where there
is is
now
true,
it is
— in — that
"recognition"
Negro knows there
slave
attributes
full narcissistic
transcendental, sublative spirit
to ignite in the colonial relation
wants
for the
which he
its
fails
only narcissistic a difference.
He
needs a challenge to his human-
absence of such a challenge, Fanon argues, the colo-
nized can only imitate, never identify, a distinction nicely
by the psychoanalyst Annie Reich: child holds the
newspaper
"It
is
imitation
like his father. It is
.
.
.
made
when
identification
the
when
the child learns to read." In disavowing the culturally differentiated condition of the colonial world or disappear" — the colonizer
is
— in demanding
"Turn white
himself caught in the ambivalence
of paranoic identification, alternating between fantasies of mega-
lomania and persecution.
However, Fanon's Hegelian dream for
a
human
reality in-
Homi
Bhabho
K.
ironized, even
itself-for-itself is
mocked, by
view of the Man-
his
ichean structure of colonial consciousness and
What he
division.
its
nondialectical
says in The Wretched of the Earth of the
demog-
raphy of the colonial city reflects his view of the psychic structure of the colonial relation.
The
and
native
settler zones, like
the juxtaposition of black and white bodies, are opposed, but
No
not in the service of "a higher unity." ble,
conciliation
he concludes, for of the two terms, one
is
possi-
superfluous.
is
No, there can be no reconciliation, no Hegelian "recognition,"
no simple, sentimental promise of
the You."
Can
there be
life
a humanistic
without transcendence?
without the dream of perfectibility? Unlike Fanon, nondialectical
moment
"world of
Politics
think the
I
of Manicheanism suggests an answer. By
— in the company of becomes that bizarre colonial figure, the tethered shadow —
following the trajectory of colonial desire
it
possible to cross, even to shift the
Where but
there
is
no human
nature,
Manichean boundaries. hope can hardly spring
emerges surely and surreptitiously
it
eternal;
in the strategic return
of that difference that informs and deforms the image of identity, in the
margin of Otherness that displays
identification.
There
may be no Hegelian negation but Fanon must sometimes be minded
that the disavowal of the
re-
Other always exacerbates the
"edge" of identification, reveals that dangerous place where identity
and aggressivity are twinned. For denial
tive process; a left its
is
always a retroac-
/id^-acknowledgment of that Otherness that has
traumatic mark. In that uncertainty lurks the white
masked black man; and from such ambivalent black skin, white masks
—
it is
possible,
I
identification
believe, to
—
redeem the
pathos of cultural confusion into a strategy of political subversion.
We
cannot agree with Fanon that "since the racial drama
played out in the open the black
conscious," but that places at once
is
man
has no time to
a provocative thought. In
make
it
occupying two
— or three in Fanon's case — the depersonalized,
dislocated colonial subject can
become an
incalculable object,
is
un-
REMEMBERING FANON
quite literally, difficult to place.
unify
its
message nor simply identify
egy of colonial desire
to stage the
is
mask
point at which the black
a tension of
and desire
slips
authority cannot
subjects.
its
drama of
For the
strat-
identity at the
to reveal the white skin. At
between the black body and the white body, there
that edge, in is
The demand of
meaning and being
— that
— or some would say, demand
the psychic counterpart to that "muscular
is
tension" that inhabits the native body:
The symbols of social order racks, military
—
the police, the bugle calls in the bar-
— are at one and
parades and the waving flags
same
the
time inhibitory and stimulating: for they do not convey the message
"Don't dare to budge"; rather, they cry out "Get ready to attack."
It is
from
that tension
— both psychic and political — that a
egy of subversion emerges.
It is
a
not to unveil the fullness of
Man
form of power
that
tation.
It is
identity it is
a
and authority,
in the
mode
strat-
of negation that seeks
but to manipulate his represenis
exercised at the very limits of
mocking
spirit
the lesson taught by the veiled Algerian
of mask and image;
woman
in the
course of the Revolution as she crossed the Manichean lines to claim her liberty. In Fanon's essay, "Algeria Unveiled," the colonizer's
attempt to unveil the Algerian
turn the
woman
symbol of resistance;
veil into a
of camouflage, a means of struggle — the
The
veil that
limits of
it
does not simply
becomes
veil
a technique
conceals bombs.
once secured the boundary of the home
woman — now masks
activity, linking the
Arab
city
the
woman
in
— the
her revolutionary
and the French quarter, trans-
gressing the familial and colonial boundary. As the "veil"
is
lib-
erated in the public sphere, circulating between and beyond cultural
and
social
norms and
spaces,
it
becomes the object of
paranoid surveillance and interrogation. Every veiled writes Fanon, became suspect.
And when
the veil
is
woman, shed in or-
der to penetrate deeper into the European quarter, the colonial police see everything and nothing.
An
Algerian
woman
is
only,
145
Homi
K.
after
Bhabha
a
all,
handbag
woman. But
the Algerian Jic/cn'
an arsenal and in her
is
she carries her hand-grenades.
Remembering Fanon disorientation.
a process of intense discovery
is
Remembering
tion or retrospection.
a painful
It is
gether of the dismembered past to the present.
It is
such
a
and
never a quiet act of introspec-
is
memory
re-membering, a putting to-
make
sense of the trauma of
of the history of race and ra-
cism, colonialism and the question of cultural identity, that
Fanon
reveals
with greater profundity and poetry than any other
What he
writer.
achieves,
nized, deeply fers the
woven
master and
"It
nize the
is
for a
something
far greater: for
native, the colo-
deeper reflection of their inter-
hope of
a difficult, even dangerous, free-
through the effort to recapture the
self, it is
men
that
is
into the psychic pattern of the West, he ofslave a
positions, as well as the
dom:
believe,
I
image of the Negro, the
in seeing the phobic
self
and to
scruti-
through the lasting tension of their freedom
will be able to create the ideal conditions of existence
human
world."
Nobody
writes with
more honesty and
freedom
which the
sight of this lasting tension of
peremptory
in
self
— disavows an image of
in-
— the
itself as
an
originary past or an ideal future and confronts the paradox of
its
own
self of the
present
making. For Fanon, in Black
Skin,
White Masks, there
is
the intricate
irony of turning the European existentialist and psychoanalytic traditions to face the history of the
Negro
that they
had never
contemplated, to face the reality of Fanon himself. This leads to a meditation
tion
—
on the experience of dispossession and
psychic and social
disloca-
— that speaks to the condition of the
marginalized, the alienated, those surveillance of a sign of identity
who
have to live under the
and fantasy
that denies their dif-
ference. In shifting the focus of cultural racism
from the
politics
of nationalism to the politics of narcissism, Fanon opens up a
margin of interrogation that causes tity
m
and authority. Nowhere
is
a subversive slippage of iden-
this slippage
more
visible
than in
REMEMBERING FANON
work
his
itself,
where
a range of texts
and traditions
— from the of
classical repertoire to the quotidien, conversational culture
racism
where
— vie to utter that is
last
word
No-
that remains unspoken.
this slippage more significantly experienced than in the
impossibility of inferring
from the
texts of
Fanon
a pacific
image
of "society" or the "state" as a homogeneous philosophical or
The
representational unity.
"social"
is
always an unresolved en-
semble of antagonistic interlocutions between positions of power
and poverty, knowledge and oppression, history and veillance
that
we
and subversion.
for this reason — above
It is
fantasy, surelse
all
—
should turn to Fanon.
Today, as a range of culturally and racially marginalized
groups readily assume the mask of the black, not to deny their
announce the important
diversity but to audaciously
cultural identity
and
its
difference, the
urgent. As political groups
from
artifice
of
need for Fanon becomes
different directions gather un-
der the banner of the black, not to homogenize their oppression
but to
make
of
it
a
common
cause, a public image of the identity
of otherness, the need for Fanon
becomes urgent. Urgent,
in or-
der to remind us of that crucial engagement between mask and
image and
identity,
identification,
from which comes the
lasting
tension of our freedom and the lasting impression of ourselves as others.
The time
has
with
a question.
How
can
a
come
How
human
to return to Fanon, as always,
can the
being
live
human world
I
believe,
live its difference?
Other-wise?
Notes
1.
Fanon's use of the
word "man"
of humanness, inclusive of
the question of gender difference. site
usually connotes a phenomenological quality
man and woman
and, for that very reason, ignores
The problem stems from Fanon's
desire to
the question of sexual difference within the problematic of cultural
difference
— to give them a shared origin — which
is
suggestive, but often sim-
147
Homi
Bhabha
K.
plifies
the question of sexuality. His portrayals of white
women
often collude
with their cultural stereotypes and reduce the "desire" of sexuality to the desire for sex, leaving
unexplored the elusive function of the "object" of
chapter 6 of Black
Skin,
White Masks, he attempts a somewhat
desire. In
more complex
reading of masochism, but in making the Negro the "predestined depository of this
aggression" (my emphasis) he again preempts a fuller psychoanalytic discus-
sion of the production of psychic aggressivity in identification and
its
relation to
cultural difference, by citing the cultural stereotype as the predestined
the sexual drive.
Of the woman
of color he has very
little
to say. "I
aim of
know noth-
ing about her," he writes in Black Skin, White Masks. This crucial issue requires
an order of psychoanalytic argument that goes well beyond the scope of ticle.
I
to elide
148
this ar-
have therefore chosen to note the importance of the problem rather than it
in a facile charge of "sexism."
Above and page 159 from Breakdowns, by Art Spiegelman. Copyright
©
1972 by Art Spiegelman;
reproduced by permission of Roter Stern, Frankfurt.
Pages 155, 156, 170 and 172 from Maus: Tale,
by Art Spiegelman. Copyright
©
A
Survivor's
1986 by Art
Spiegelman; reproduced by permission of Pantheon
Books, a division of
Random House,
Inc.,
New
York.
Alice Yaeger Kaplan
THEWELEIT AND SPIEGELMAN: OF MEN AND MICE
Too young
we
to
to have
make
known World War
but born of
II,
What can we
of our parents' history?
the great testimonies of survival in the death Levi, Bettelheim?
What
what are
it,
possibly add to
camps
— to Wiesel,
psychoanalytic insight, one generation
removed, could possibly equal those gleaned from the actual subjects of history,
countless interviews, vivid confessions,
The
Inside the Third Reich.
from
are retired
active
war
is
Speer
a
Among
on
chance
last
trial,
our
born.
It
can't
its
approach
object, a its
new kind
subject directly.
much
It
speaks sometimes not about the war but in spite of
know
how now.
it
about what
it
doesn't as about what
not what happened in that war, but
was prepared
Its critical
in language,
idiom,
its
mass culture forms of the
War
II itself is
enormous necessity in
what use
analytical tools fifties
and
how
it is
thinks of
World War
II
work on
It
worries
it
it.
say.
wants
It
was desired;
to speak of
it
were sharpened on the
sixties. It
not just a memory, but a
of
does have to
it
knows
memory
that
World
industry, with
political value. Bitburg, Gaza, Faurisson,
it
last
lie.
as
to
who was
they've borne their children.
As memory retreats from the
from
subjects of these books, this history,
life,
them, Klaus Barbie was perhaps our to catch the
— The — from
from the great diagnostic monuments
Mass Psychology of Fascism, The Authoritarian Personality
not in terms of
Le Pen: by
memory
but
terms of forgetting. All this could be said to apply
most acutely to two
seemingly disparate books that have appeared in an American
151
Alice Yaeger Kaplan
context in the past two years. Klaus Theweleit's Male Fantasies
about the Freikorps and the
is
Maus by Art Spiegelman about
S.S.,
the victims of Auschwitz. Male Fantasies
is
a psychoanalytic read-
ing extended over hundreds of pages and illustrated with art-
work, advertisements, and a hundred other visual documents.
Maus by
is
a
cartoon where Jews are represented by mice, Germans
by
cats, Poles
balloons.
an animal
It's
come out
Maus, the animals' words
pigs. In
fable,
an allegory adapted to the Ameri-
can comic strip genre. In Male
Fantasies,
German
Freikorps of-
speak their most revolting fantasies about murder and
ficers
rape, conquest and rock hard resistance to a slimy female
communist menace,
a
For one, both
common?
books under the sign of paternal
start their
violence, maternal pain. For Theweleit
was a good man,
tally lavished as
first lessons I
too,
and a
pretty
it's
would one day come in
my own
mother
— were
setting out to write about the violent
his preface
tory that ject
is
as
from
as
his defeating family
world of
is
child,
his father.
romance to
comes with the completion of
152
be-
kind of vic-
a
But
his thesis.
his pro-
What
follows
as the Freikorps,
warriors
became top-ranking
who
War
I.
War
I
soldiers
fought to put
Two
of
them
down com-
(Hoss,
So while their legacy
Goeb-
Nazis; one, Ernst Jiinger, a respected
modernist writer; one of them even became an anti-Nazi ter.
He
the thesis he has completed, a thesis based on a
munist insurgents after World bels)
an abused
not in any obvious sense an autobiography.
the preface
the beat-
1
an autobiography, taking us in the few pages of
very specific topic: the group of post- World
known
good, were the
— she considered
the second.
Theweleit announces himself in his preface
book
fascist father:
to recognize as lessons in fascism.
my
ings necessary but tempered them
bad
a
good fascist. The blows he bru-
a matter of course, andjor
The instances of ambivalence
gins his
and
red flood. What, beyond their age, could
Theweleit and Spiegelman have in
He
in
is
resis-
mixed, even inconsistent, their writ-
THEWELEIT AND SPIEGELMAN
ings as a
whole sent an enabling message and
set
an emotional
tone for the rise of National Socialism. Theweleit works from a
broad corpus of novels, biographies, and journals written by Freikorps veterans. like
The books he quotes have
sensational titles
The Red Flood and Blood-Brass-Coal, and he organizes their
themes into
titles
and
The White Nurse; Exploding
subtitles:
Earth/Lava; Defense Against Slime, the Morass, Pulp.
He
does,
furthermore, what we're usually taught in graduate school not to
do
academic writing: mentions everything that comes into
in
head. Lets
it
flow. Theweleit's
document
is
powerful in
"Nuremberg
length; there's a kind of willful
his
its
trials effect"
where
the banality of the examples and their constant repetition force the reader into acknowledging the ubiquity of psychic horror.
Spiegelman's animal tale
toon form and of the dialogue
is
while telling
father's life
Maus
is
mony,
simplicity of the car-
you over the head with the
strength of allegory. Art Spiegelman
Queens and the narrator of
The
brief.
hits
is
an American from
his cartoon.
He
tells
both an autobiography, a biography, and
for
it is
the story of his
and showing how he gets the
Spiegelman's father Vladek
who
story:
a novel of testi-
supplies the nar-
ration, the survivor's tale, while
Spiegelman himself elaborates
the frame. Vladek Spiegelman
a survivor of Auschwitz. His
is
wife also survived, but she has committed suicide before the story begins
— or rather the memory of her suicide intrudes into
Spiegelman's attempt to get his father to strips
down
father to the
tell
their story.
Maus
the conversations between Art Spiegelman and his
minimum, and
yet the small
book speaks volumes
about the death camps, the postwar struggle for Jewish redefinition
and
survival,
Maus
is
about war, memory, and forgetting.
structured around a series of "simple conversa-
tions." Spiegelman's father doesn't fault, repressive,
the kind of guy
want to
who
tells his
he
is
stingy to a
grabs paper towels from
restrooms so he won't have to buy napkins. ing the story he
talk;
He
keeps interrupt-
son about the camps while he takes his
153
"
Alice
Yaeger Kaplan
up old telephone wire, throws
picks
pills,
garbage and gives him his old one. he's inculcated the mistrust in his
But
his son's coat in the
doesn't trust anyone and
son from a very young age.
some of
the story takes over. Art Spiegelman shows
finally
his first
He
drawings for Maus to his father, who's really happy
—
thinks Art will be successful and famous like Walt Disney. But
while the father
may be
comic, he
more ambivalent when
far
is
The
of the war.
enthusiastic about the creation of a
story of Vladek's
it
comes
proceeds
life
memory
to the
at regular inter-
toward the gates of Auschwitz, but the narrative frame of
vals
Maus
builds
ther against
up
to a single act of violence
memory: he has destroyed
committed by the
his wife's diary
fa-
from the
camp. Father: After Anja died I
These papers had too
had
to
Son: You burned them? Christ!
you
.
.
Father:
you
I
.
.
.
burned them.
save tons of worthless shit,
and
.
Yes, it's
even looked
Son:
make an order with everything
many memories. So
a shame! For years they were laying there and nobody
in.
Did you
ever read
any of them?
.
.
.
Can you remember what
she
wrote? Father: No. I looked said,
Son:
"1 wish
God
my
in,
son,
but
I don't
remember
when he grows
.
.
.
only I
know
that she
up, he will be interested by this.
DAMN you! You—you MURDERER! How
the hell could
you do such a thing!! Father: Ach.
2
The Maus published by Pantheon eventual two-part book. ent, at
It
the gates of Auschwitz saying he flash
is
double
the
first
part of an
register: the pres-
knew he would be
forward to Queens and to
confession about the diaries. little
1986 a
our present, and the flashback to 1944. Spiegelman's father
then an abrupt
154
in
ends on
The
last
gassed and
his survival, his
frame of Maus
is
a
narrow
frame of Art Spiegelman, mouse-cartoonist, walking out of
house with portfolio in hand and
his father's
coming out of reads
".
.
his
head
as
he thinks about
Murderer." The reader
.
is
left
a single balloon
his father.
The balloon
with the impossible
double register: the certainty of Vladek's extermination and the
misery his survival has inflicted upon his family.
One
man
of
many
extraordinary features of Maus
is
gets the voices right, he gets the order of the
that Spiegel-
words
right,
he manages to capture the intonations of Eastern Europe spoken
by Queens.
He
puts us in the cultural space of those impossible
father-son dialogues without ever being obvious about
why
very hard to describe
Maus works
so well.
It
it.
It's
the anthropomorphic universe of
begins
on
a
white page with a single
quotation from Adolf Hitler: "The Jews are undoubtedly a race,
but they are not human."
As
if
From then
presenting Jews as Hitler saw
on, we're in a nightmare.
them
— as animals — were
Spiegelman's way of forcing us to experience
word did become law
resistance to Hitler's law
having
made
animals,
all
the Jews
is
then
all
in the
that Hitler's
anthropomorphism,
— and the Germans and the
Poles
in
— human
too human, each of them dressed with minute atten-
tion to cultural detail, ercycle in
anew
— that "what he said, went." Spiegelman's
from the naugahyde windbreaker and ex-
Rego Park to the
hats of Sosnowiec.
The
suit jackets
and spectacles and the
possibilities of black ink
on white,
scratched shading, solids, dots to convey documentary
memory,
everydayness, and danger are a stunning surprise: there
is
much
of the beauty of nineteenth-century children's engravings here.
Spiegelman and Theweleit are genealogical opposites.
One
155
is
the child of Nazi ideology, one the child of an Auschwitz sur-
vivor.
The parents of one attended
the rallies at Nuremberg, the
other's parents escaped the ovens at Auschwitz. as distant as
Why,
oppressor and oppressed.
overwhelming
sense, reading
one book
They ought
then,
do
I
to be
have the
after the other, that
Klaus Theweleit and Art Spiegelman are brothers? There
is,
of
course, the shared anger at their fathers. Theweleit at his for doling out the politics of the fascist state to his children in the
of domestic violence. Spiegelman of the camps and projecting is
it
at his for internalizing
onto
his
form
the hell
wife and his son. There
the loss of history, and the loss of parents: Spiegelman's
mother,
who
survived Auschwitz but committed suicide in 1968;
who "succumbed
Theweleit's father,
to alcohol
and German
his-
tory" and died "a disappointed public servant." Klaus Theweleit
tells us, in
passing,
face to his study of the Freikorps,
dren was,
in the
The older
siblings
how
the act of
naming
were named with operatic
never came." 3
The author and
pride, Reinhold,
coming Reich
his sister
that
some-
were the
"latecomers" inasmuch as they came after the defeat
156
chil-
Theweleit family, politically overdetermined.
Siegfried, Brunhilde, Giinter: "for the
how
once again in the pre-
at Sta-
THEWELEIT AND SPIEGELMAN
They were given names
lingrad.
cultural associations,
names
that lacked specific historic or
by their very ordinariness,
that,
hence their blamelessness, came into vogue for postwar children: Klaus and Helga. This preface, of course,
is
only a small auto-
biographical aside in comparison with the rest of Male Fantasies,
but
enables what
it
Theweleit's
and
life
is
to come.
his
work;
It
makes
takes as
it
a
connection between step an auto-
its first
biographical risk.
The parents children to
of both Theweleit and Spiegelman bring their
name them,
life,
defeat. All children
on them by anecdotes. their at
must
after their
their parents: a first
What happens when
name and
place?
I
own
name,
history cuts people off
am reminded
from
mon amour. 4 The two and broken with
War
through separate tragedies of Second World
They
"Your name
series of
of that haunting exchange
characters, lovers, have respectively lost
their families history.
name, a
a place
the end of Duras and Resnais's Hiroshima
main
survival, after their
with the historical signs imposed
live
give themselves place
is
names
Hiroshima." "Your name
is
after those tragedies.
Nevers. Nevers in
France." Hiroshima mon amour I
try to
is
memory and
the German-occupied
soldier.
He
dies
shaved for her
from
about a French
remember, and
man, to
a
German
her town square as part of the
her hair
she
It
as a
end of the war. She
is
decently long, she
"Hiroshiman" with
whom
a
when
Fantasies.
woman who,
tells
is
sent
Paris. Years later,
an actress, she goes to Hiroshima to make
peace. She meets a
think of
town of Nevers, loved
a sniper's bullet at the
When
I
Maus and Male
by her family to forget and be forgotten in
now to
in fact the film that
sins, tondue in
Liberation festivities. off
is
the connection between
a story about
girl in
is
make
a film
whom
about she
is
her war story. As she
able tells
of her love for the German soldier for the very first time, the man from Hiroshima becomes, in her mind and in his, the Ger-
man
soldier.
The two
events
— love in France, love in 157
Alice Yaeger Kaplan
Hiroshima
— collapse, and with a remorse that drives her nearly
to the point of madness, the for telling her story
mon amour
is
woman
realizes that the condition
become
that she's
able to forget. Hiroshima
one of the most famous enactments of an impossi-
is
ble truth that
Male
Fantasies
and Maus renew: the necessity of
pressing in order to survive, the necessity of
remembering
condition of the survivor's dignity, the inevitability that is
forgotten, or perhaps even if
And
when
the sense that
it
it is
does,
it
remembered,
it
re-
as a
history
if
will repeat.
does so in the least expected
ways.
But there
an important difference in the texts of
is
Theweleit and Spiegelman,
who
are not the historic agents, but
rather the sons of Hiroshima and Nevers. This generation was
named by World War postwar schools. tory, ties
own
its
It's
survivors, learned to read
II
old enough
signs: television,
now
to have
its
and write
own
commodity and drug
in
family his-
cultures, six-
militancy and rejection of middle-class parents, therapy, and
more. There
is
a
whole new generational perspective
available to
bring to bear on the world events portrayed in Hiroshima mon amour, a
new
perspective and radically
Theweleit's project tion: he's
read
all
is
new
descriptive forms.
essentially archival, a Ph.D. disserta-
the diaries, the papers of the Freikorps,
all
the
secondary psychoanalytic and theoretical materials on fascism.
But he gives himself permission to take on the project by writing in the autobiographical genre.
of Nazism
is
selfhood, of what
ory of Nazism style of his
is
own
we
its
begins by saying, the story
own
man, characters
within. Spiegelman's project
generation, in comix. its
language. at a
marked by trauma
German
have inherited from our parents.
to listen to the story of
story in
He
also a story of families, of marriages, of
parents but
A
is
construed in the
generation ready
who
insists
on
Young Theweleit and young
generation's
in a different
The mem-
at last
telling that
Spiegel-
remove from war trauma,
way than the
lovers in
Hiroshima. But even in their generational remove from the
158
are
Alice Yaeger Kaplan
events, there
no emotional
is still
safety. Hitler has carried his
one generation beyond. Your name
effects
name
burg, Kiel, your
A new
Queens.
What happens
is
generation
marked,
is
memory
to the
Hinden-
Stalingrad,
is
Czestochowa, Sosnowiec, Auschwitz, it is
of history
making
when
it
its
mark.
ceases to be
testimony?
One
Germany
generation removed, Nazi
experience that can be narrated directly; the children
who
heard about
Hence the prominence
in
it
it
is
no longer an
has been absorbed by
and grew up with
worn.
it; it is
both Spiegelman and Theweleit's pro-
ject of the narrative frame.
Theweleit's intuition of "Nazism within" gives to his writing an anger, and an impatience with academic method, the-
with
oretical language,
all
the intellectual tools for under-
standing Nazism that he has also inherited along with the Nazi
He
past.
tries to
come
at history
already absorbed by the body,
expressive only in lived experience. for the fascist
make
one
Anyone who
this point.
length with actual
Once
again
am
female: "I
is
is
The
authority he substitutes
not about to use literature to
interested can discuss
it
at
women." 5
we
can look to the preface for an auto-
biographical clue. Theweleit
is
indebted to his wife, the analyst,
to her clinical experience with schizophrenics, so-called de-
whom
viants,
women
with
fascism
is
Theweleit
whom
calls
"the true non-fascists." Unlike the
Theweleit would have us discuss whether
indeed the
norm
for males
who
under
live
capitalist
patriarchy, schizophrenics can't be effective sources of informa-
tion about fascism
Theweleit claims a
— they lack conceptual authority. Yet lot for
them, in passing.
freedom from categories and
He
a language that
is
claims for
them
neither distant
nor repressed. He wants something of the same freedom in
own
identification
know
160
his
writing process, though he acknowledges that the risk of is
boundaryless disfunctionality.
that the radical
And
his readers
forms of therapy proposed for schizo-
a
"
THEWELEIT AND SPIEGELMAN
phrenics by Laing and others twenty years ago have given way to
drug therapies: Theweleit's empathy
is
a nostalgic one, his claim
order to
but a
fragile claim for position. In
tions
between body, writing, and thought
fascist struggle,
make
the connec-
a part of the anti-
Theweleit posits schizophrenia
as fascism's polar
opposite.
His personal and bodily engagement with his archival maself-knowledge, allow Klaus Theweleit to do what
terial, his
tempted to
call (still in
work" with
He
to do.
I
am
the parlance of therapy) "emotional
not likely
his material that traditional historians are
gets close to the material, he establishes an emotional
intimacy with his readers in a style I've rarely seen outside feminist criticism.
Sometimes you
a reader.
in
His closeness can produce elation or discomfort in feel as
though he
an impossible therapy group. Theweleit
— and you, too — are
he has gathered together from outside time ists,
group
is
a
few
and
leader,
fascist terror-
uptight left-wing intellectuals, and boundaryless psychotics:
Pankow has outlined one
Gisela
chotic" patients who, unlike the
possible
avenue of treatment for "psy-
men under
scrutiny here, are not
equipped with any totality ego and have no awareness whatever of their
body boundaries. For
.
her, the
.
.
goal of therapy
riences a single part
that the patient,
of the body only as the
whole body as dismembered boundaries.
is
who
whole — and
often expe-
perceives the
— develops a recognition of her or
"Every new area of the body perceived
is
his
body
a firm piece of
ground extracted from the process of psychosis. For the soldier male, by contrast, locked as he
is
in his totality-
armor, analysis might perhaps involve guiding him towards an acknowl-
edgement of his bodily openings and of the interior of his body, der to protect
himjrom immediate inundation by
in or-
the jear of dissolution
6 if his bodily periphery becomes pleasurably invested.
When
I
first
was writing
read volume one of Male Fantasies in manuscript, a
book of
my own
on French
fascism,
and
I
came
I
to
161
Alice Yaeger Kaplan
who
think of Klaus Theweleit as a friend
allowed
me
to write
—
I
got incredible writing energy from the book, analytic energy,
my
permission to use
intuitions. 7
was swimming and writing
I
and reading Theweleit; the book was having both an invigorating and
a
hypnotic
effect. Effects
such as these take Male Fantasies
way outside the boundaries of conventional terms of reception and
Theweleit
social theory, in
terms of consequences. How, and why?
in
not afraid of being "vulgar."
is
of the ordinariness of the language he
Nor
about literature but about language that
is
"bad." There
would be
is
no temptation,
as there
is
quoting. His
is
he afraid
book
is
not
repetitive, "obvious,"
in reading a
canonized novel, to lose one's grip on sadistic dynamics because the form itself
is
such a bribe
Jiinger, the "real writer" his
.
.
except perhaps with Ernst
.
among
commonplaces are mixed
in
the warriors, but his words and
by Theweleit with those of
all
the rest of the warriors.
Some Theweleit's
of the American critics have complained in reviewing
book
that he wasn't
much good
as
an historian. The
of the historian, they argue, would be to show why some men became Freikorps sadists, others left-wing intellectuals. What in their background, their socialization, what in their spe-
work
cific historic
moment made them
specificity important,
so?
wonder? Or
I
torical project: the pinpointing of trickier, less disciplined
present?
I
in
is
is
and Sartre
totally uninterested in
didn't, but the question
an important way, beside the point of the book;
to insist
come
on shared
fascists,
themes,
how
but it is
is
interested in making.
terrain.
how
the true his-
attempt to make links between past and
a fascist
move Theweleit himself
Not why
comparison: enough female
much
occupy
makes
murk
it is
is,
not the
He wants
rather
Sartre and Brecht didn't be-
that they share so
it is
that they
universe. Sartreian language
162
which
an empirical cause, or the
don't think that Theweleit
why Hoss became
preoccupation with
Is this
rather,
many
misogynist
the same psychosexual
for an especially tempting
inhabits his writings to
com-
French postcard, from Klaus Theweleit, Male
Fantasies,
permission of the University of Minnesota Press.
1987.
Reproduced by
Alice Yaeger Kaplan
pete with the slimiest texts in Theweleit's corpus of slime. 8
Theweleit would celebrate such a comparison, for he attempting to
from the
slide
is
always
arguing espe-
fascist to nonfascist,
— his — shares with the fascists he's examining in the way of
about what the respectable, left-wing intellectual
cially
reader
rhetorical rigidity, primitive fear,
and hatred of the female body.
His most characteristic moves are juxtaposition and boundary crashing. In image alone,
on
we
and Brecht,
see Lenin
a
Frenchman
a horse, an English comic strip, a panel of nine male psycho-
analysts in 1977, mingling
with
intellectual heroes, in
how
Theweleit's
pecially
propaganda posters. Look
fascist
for fascist structures in your daily
life,
Theweleit
your schoolbooks.
book worked, how
And
this
precisely
told by their parents
and teachers to remember the Holocaust but
.
.
to forget about
.
looking not for the truth about the
is
not for the specificity of their socialization, he to uncover new,
is
unknown
He
fascists.
your
inflamed in Germany, es-
it
among young people who had been
fascism. Theweleit
says, in
is
fascists,
not even trying
is
interested in their
emo-
tional legacy.
Male it's
Fantasies
is
constantly metamorphosing.
about the 1920s; then
becomes
a
book about
one page
intellectual
about now:
style,
To this day, level
it
On
it is
required that the level of reflection be a high one, the
of theory higher
cretizations
is
still;
the drop to lower levels offeeling
considered precipitous. But
is
and con-
there any such thing as the
"height of theory," except as an element in masculine mystique? 9
You
can't help thinking that
ergy of the
sixties
something has been
when what used
lost of the en-
to be called "getting
down"
gets articulated as "concretization" ("concretization" was, in fact, a
key word in
well).
But Theweleit
neither
left activists
leftist
isn't
student circles
it
doesn't translate
nor male feminists on the
recurring theme of his analyses
164
—
nostalgic for the student
is
the attack
left;
he spares
style question.
on
A
a national style
"Tommy's dream," British World War
I
poster,
from Klaus Theweleit, Male
Fantasies,
1987. Reproduced
by permission of the University of Minnesota Press.
165
Alice Yoeger Kaplan
common body
to both right and left that betrays
in a
from the
its flight
penchant for abstraction:
If a male author chooses to write eulogies to the feminist movement,
then he should at least accept that the language of penetration which
he has, perhaps, used in the past
no longer be used
to seduce long-suffering virgins,
to take possession
can
of virgin-white paper.
The language of the Left excludes the mysteries of the body
.
.
.
Over and over again, the Left blunders into engagements with the lan-
guage of dominant groups without realizing Such language cannot be "refuted" on the ing":
its
primary territory of effectivity
"Primary territory of effectivity" language dominates not because it
gets to us, because
it
feels
it
has mistaken
terrain.
its
of "political mean-
elsewhere. 10
a difficult
means X,
way of
saying that
Y, or Z, but because
good, body and
some
includes intellectuals, not
is
is
it
level
soul.
And
the "us"
abstractly nondiscriminating
"people" susceptible to manipulation. The mind/body problem isn't
new, but Theweleit brings the body to
rial in
an acutely
political
manner
that
his intellectual
mate-
may be new. What's
missing for Theweleit in the Theory he looks to in understanding fascist violence
is
any sustained sensitivity to the power and
mystery of our body's relationship to our minds. The theorists Theweleit start "at
is
finally
most interested
in are the ones
who
home," with the body, rather than with the
especially indebted to
and most of
all
Wilhelm Reich,
to Deleuze
try to
idea. He's
and Guattari,
to the entire field of radical psychotherapists, be-
ginning in the preface with Monika Kubale and Margret Berger, for
whom
bodily functions are the starting point of
analytic work. Theweleit lic)
is
promoting neither
all
psycho-
a "distant" (phal-
nor simply identificatory type of criticism. His method
perhaps best described
as a
new way
is
of "knowing" politics
through the body.
How plores,
166
if
can
we hope
to understand fascist defenses, he im-
our intellectual methods for understanding are rigid
THEWELEIT AND SPIEGELMAN
and defensive, too? Here's the crux of Theweleit's argument and here
is
where
me
defensive:
ing
between
officers
I
begin to lose him, or, perhaps, where he makes
mak-
don't want to believe that the analogy he's
I
his original object of study
— the
Freikorps
— and the various political and psychoanalytic theories
he dismisses
so complete, nor even so useful.
is
erarchies, or
maybe
I
want some
more boundaries. Between
just
rorists, phallic psychoanalysts,
hi-
fascist ter-
between 1870 and 1977.
want
I
context.
So
me
let
attribute the author's
and
aries to his context. This slipping
to rigid intellectual
methods has
German
the postwar
sliding
from
bound-
rigid fascists
several important functions in
It
was
working out of desires
a
sion, for mastery, for control that
The
rejection of
context. Theweleit believes that the Holo-
caust was not an accident.
daily basis.
own
all
for fu-
people experience on a
project of analyzing the Nazi past
is
itself
imbued
with, informed by the same psychic needs for mastery, distance,
What
control.
is
the message then?
Not
what "they" and "we"
not
just, as
that "they"
I
surmised
about
and respon-
guilt,
were perverts, and we are innocent, but
sibility.
look
at
It's
earlier,
The
share.
length of the book
is
an insistence on the psychic hor-
rors of the Nazi past, but a smashing of boundaries
time and reading time that Theweleit wants to
visit
between
upon
real
his
reader as a part of the anti-fascist cure. It's
German that
important in understanding Theweleit's work in the context to
project
the message of Fassbinder's films:
Germany
ents." 11
social
where reconstruction and forgetting were intertwined.
Theweleit's context in
remember
postwar German society was caught up in a massive
My
is,
as
he
states
it,
"the injunction prevailing
against learning about fascism
friend Margret, a
member
and
its
anteced-
of Theweleit's generation,
learned about the camps not from her parents but from her
grandmother, on the
man
sly.
When
she
secondary school, she devoted
became
much
a teacher in a
Ger-
of her energy to that
167
Alice Yaeger Kaplan
could learn about recent
Her
self-hating way. I
learn as
an atmosphere where students
task: fostering
near impossible
I
German
was published by Pantheon it
German
was Roter
German
States. 12
I
it
learn
German
a luxury? In
volume
an interview with Spiegelman and a history of the Roter Stern
strip.
gressive, anti-fascist.
a left-wing publisher, pro-
is
The segments from Maus
context of 1980.
Is
raise questions in
demystifying the
camp
survivors
an intellectual climate where so-called revisionists
write literal-minded texts to persuade people that
we've learned about the camps
is
mean
whose
for people to read Maus,
like cousins of is
And
public, in a brochure packaged with the
American comic
or
who
version, even before
United
in the
it
Fantasies,
was Klaus Theweleit who introduced Spiegelman's work
that contains
the
not unusual.
is
finish writing this article that
published segments of Maus in a
to the
me,
same publisher who published Male
Stern, the
that
history in a critical but not
story, she tells
a
Mickey and Minnie?
Disney
Is
tale,
much
of what
what does
it
allegorical characters look this aesthetic insensitivity
— the rendering of a — incomprehensible in a so-
Spiegelman's brilliant formal invention
high tragic story in comic strip form ciety so troubled
by
its
Related, perhaps,
racist past?
is
the trouble at the University of Min-
nesota Press over the advertisements used to publicize the
American
translation of Male Fantasies.
number of complaints
The
that the illustrations
editor received a
from Male
Fantasies
published in the Minnesota Press catalogue were violently antifeminist: a face,
woman bound and
came from
that
unholy
a
gun aimed
alliance: the conservative right
anti-pornography feminists. people
me
gagged with
at
her
an ink drawing of multiple female nudes. The complaints
who
don't
A
cover, a catalogue,
read a book, not for those
that Theweleit, reader of
symptoms and
who
is
and the
meant
do.
It
for
occurs to
distant effects,
would probably be pleased and amused by these
critics
something of what he did without the benefit of
his
who saw
words.
THEWELEIT AND SPIEGELMAN
For us in the U.S., the necessity of learning about Nazism does not exist in the same form as equations that Theweleit insists
it
does in Germany. The
upon between
meth-
intellectual
ods and political crime do seem excessive; the connections are too numerous, too messy. Not that
What
away from Theweleit? seminal
officer, the
book
to read the
we would, we'd American
fascist
in
we
What can
tional repressive structures.
don't have our
an American context the way he might hope
have to start asking a lot of questions about an
easy
it is
to forget our
own
nationalist genocides,
— Indians,
Vietnam seemed almost to have ruptured the pattern, sionism came
memory
We now
way.
its
to write about
My
Lai
The
name
tivized in the
We
serious debate. for our
want to
ries,
from
is
met with
outcries
and
do not bear a personal burden of guilt or crimes, and scarcely the
though
their effect
on
I
his father tells
his person: "I
but such private things,
mouse hand
Germany
disdain. In
an issue inseparable from na-
I
can
We
memory.
our history bleed. But Spiegelman
"Okay, okay, his
until revi-
suggestion that the Holocaust should be rela-
father bleeds history,"
events
is
our
Filipinos.
a Theweleit, a Spiegelman,
of national pride
own war let
need
and Rambo without
of the Holocaust
tional identity.
don't
we were
fantasies? If
fascism.
How
shame
na-
our equivalent of the Freikorps
is
male with male
manifest destiny that wiped out those others
the
own
the American reader take
him
insists:
"My
to separate the
tell
you
other sto-
don't want you should mention." 13
promise," Art Spiegelman answers, raising
in a defensive gesture that looks
oddly
like a
"sieg heil."
Someone who or
two
month
the
man
knew
it
picks
up
will not automatically
American as a
literary
this essay
know
when
that
it
it
appears in a year
was written the
world learned that Paul de Man,
a
teacher and literary theorist until his death in
1984, wrote articles for a collaborationist Belgian newspaper at the age of twenty-one and twenty-two.
It's
the year, too, of the
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Heidegger revelations in France.
hope
We
that revelations like these will
new
search, with desire for a ever, have
shown not
intellectual debt,
We
live in
so
look.
much
are busy with surprise. fill
The
initial reactions,
We
about history, instead of thinking about
how
Theweleit
who
thought they knew what fascism was:
The "symbol seekers" are fundamentally misguided to be easily
who
instead of thinking
we, too, bleed his-
angry and polemical on the subject of those
tory.
"anti-fascists"
ties.
denounce, clean
and simple, the past of one or two individuals
language
open
to interpretation
—
in
assuming fascist
as misguided as are the
characterize fascist language as "stupid" or "politi-
cally senseless. " Since neither
group takes account of the structure from
which fascist language emanates, they inevitably underestimate plosive political power, ignore its
in
what
it
says,
how-
a curiosity as a defense against
an estrangement, a cutting of
an era of denouncement.
is
I
us with energy for re-
not in
their questions in terms
how
it
functions.
of "what
its
ex-
dynamic force; they are interested only
it
And
once they have framed
says," they are able to pose fascist
language in opposition to signifers of their own preferred meanings, which they immediately claim
170
to be "superior.
" "Fascism can never
tri-
THEWELEIT AND SPIEGELMAN
umph
since
we are more clever"
—
this
was the dictum on which almost
all
14 "assessments" by the I920's Left were founded.
To
find an analogy
against in our
my
and
context,
I
would need
to produce in myself
readers that uncomfortable, compromised feeling of re-
cognition:
"my God, we
believe Theweleit in Theweleit,
me
with the kind of error Theweleit warns
own
on
haven't learned a thing."
The
this score.
wandering, tedious, irresponsible.
again to Spiegelman and to Maus.
way Spiegelman shows
to us,
it
is
The
Which
the fascism visited
come
to
We
"My
tells us.
don't like to think about
much
it
brings
this
father
way:
upon
we
his fa-
embody and
"My
project even as he has triumphed in his survival.
derer."
don't want to
fascism within, the
ther in the camps, a fascism his father has
bleeds history," Art Spiegelman
I
belief seems, like so
is
father
mur-
a
like
our vic-
tims pure, and our intellectual heroes untouched by history. In Male Fantasies
and Maus,
there's a horrible echo, a haunt-
ing of personal history by the political. Theweleit seems to to greet the echoes with anger
and resignation, despite
liance with the therapeutic option; Spiegelman greets
overwhelming sadness, survived, he their
a
determination that just
must survive
his father. If
becomes
a
it
is
stand history.
And
the
is still
was undoubtedly
share with them. Therapy
dominant method and metaphor
cause therapy
Theweleit,
I
for Theweleit be-
way our generation has learned
to resist
it,
around to be
at
with an
as his father
were tempted to put
books together before knowing why,
out of the sense of generation that
form
I
it
me
his al-
to under-
the bodily level. Fascism, for
resisted. In Spiegelman, the
— the radical comic strip — brings into the cultural main-
stream of the eighties a
sixties militancy,
with
its
hallucinogenic
imperative to transform our parents' dusty reality. By using that radical
with
form to
his
own
tell his father's story,
vision
and
voice.
Both
Spiegelman consecrates
men
it
have claimed their
parentage in the fullest sense in order to free themselves from its
bonds.
171
Alice Yaeger Kaplan
Notes
1.
Klaus Theweleit, Male
Fantasies, Vol.
1:
Women,
Floods, Bodies, History, trans. Ste-
phen Conway (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
A
(New
Press, 1987), p. xx.
York: Pantheon Books, 1986),
2.
Art Spiegelman, Maus:
p.
159.
3.
Theweleit, Male
4.
See Marguerite Duras, Hiroshima mon amour, scenario for a film by Alain
Resnais
(New
Survivor's Tale
Fantasies, vol. 1, p. xx.
York: Grove Press, 1987).
5.
Theweleit, Male
6.
Klaus Theweleit, manuscript of volume 2 of Male Fantasies (forthcoming);
Fantasies, vol.
1,
p.
444, note
1.
manuscript pp. 328-329. 7.
Alice Yaeger Kaplan, Reproductions of Banality: Fascism, Literature, and French In-
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986).
tellectual Life 8.
Margery
L. Collins
and Christine Pierce, "Holes and Slime: Sexism
Sartre's Psychoanalysis," Philosophical
Forum
5, no. 1-2
in
(Fall-Winter 1973-1974);
reprinted in Women and Philosophy: Toward a Theory of Liberation, ed. Carol C.
Gould and Marx W. Wartofsky (New York: G.
Putnam's Sons, 1976), pp.
P.
112-127. 9.
Theweleit, Male
Fantasies, vol. 2,
manuscript
manuscript
p. 67.
p. 132.
10.
Ibid.,
11.
Theweleit, Male
12.
Art Spiegelman, Breakdowns. Gesammelte Comic
Fantasies, vol. 1, p. 57. Strips,
with an interview by
Martin Langbrin and Klaus Theweleit; adapted by Dieter Karl; Heinz (Frankfurt: Roter Stern Verlag, 1980). This
work,
much
able in any ful to
Miriam Hansen
Spiegelman, Maus,
14.
Theweleit, Male
library or inter-library system that
The book I
know
for the reference. p. 23.
Fantasies, vol. 2,
manuscript
trans.
Emigholz
a collection of Spiegelman's
of which was to be incorporated into Maus.
American
13.
172
is
p. 328.
x
not
is
of.
I
am
avail-
grate-
John Wayne
in The Green Berets, 1968.
Courtesy Photofest.
J.
Hoberman
VIETNAM: THE REMAKE
While movie-going has long
since ceased to be a national habit
for just about everyone but teenagers, the
main
a privileged instrument in the
American
— indeed, international — mass culture.
aside, they sibilities,
movies themselves re-
symphony orchestra of Entertainment
function as social metaphor, showcase Utopian pos-
present
new
personality types, provide socially cohe-
While
sive cocktail party conversation.
television
is
a
continuum, a transmission, a guilty pleasure, a consumer appliance;
and pop music
by the age of
a
thirty-five,
way of each
life
that generally exhausts itself
new movie
is
an aspiring Event
conflagration, a potlatch, a public burning of celluloid
money, whose success
is
tasy that this
ple's lives
life.
— to take the central event of many peo-
— was something
else. It
Gabriel Kolko, an epic event.
It
was, to paraphrase historian
was both the longest
and the most sustained revolutionary tury, as well as the
history
single
war
effort of the twentieth cen-
most challenging military experience
in U.S.
— "a synthesis of politics, technology, the residues of past
wars, convoluted logic, and symbolism," greatest in
fas-
mass need-to-know, the secret fan-
might change your
The Vietnam War
and
dependent on inspiring the public's
cination, instigating a kind of
—a
1
delivered with the
volume of firepower the world has ever seen. The cost
human
suffering
was monumental and
difficult to calculate. In
South Vietnam, the war produced seven million displaced persons
— one-third of the population, over half the peasantry;
precipitated a forced urbanization, the
most "brutal and
it
disori-
enting that a large Third World nation has ever experienced." 2
Here
in the
United
States,
we experienced another
sort of
disorientation. 175
J.
Hoberman
American Bicenten-
In a brilliant essay occasioned by the nial,
Hannah Arendt wrote
clusively
Vietnam War "was ex-
that the
guided by the needs of a superpower to create for
an image which would convince the world that the mightiest
power on
earth." Such "image-making as global
policy," Arendt observed, was "something nal of
human
follies
itself
was, indeed,
it
recorded in history
.
.
new .
in the
permitted to proliferate throughout the ranks of
mental services, military and civilian
huge
arse-
[Image-making] was all
govern-
— the phony body-counts of
the search and destroy missions, the doctored after-damage re-
ports of the air force, the constant progress reports to
Washington." 3 So the Vietnam
Waged
in the
War was
name of
spectacular
"credibility,"
it
— in the
literal sense.
was intended to project
a
superpower's image as the mightiest on earth. But image-making has
its
own
less rational
and imperatives. The war was
logic
and more
also
delirious, harder to control
something
and easier to
get high on, than just a ten-year public relations campaign. Viet-
nam was
also a movie.
Our movie. Our
greatest hit.
Our
biggest
bomb. As orchestrated by two administrations,
this
movie became
the greatest episode in American show business — the longest, costliest,
Or
most ambitious, best-attended catastrophe ever
staged.
rather filmed, videotaped, and televised. Cleopatra and
Heaven's Gate have nothing cast of millions,
some
sixty
the death of forty times as
ninety times as don't have to
many
tell
if
on
this debacle
— a cost of billions, a
thousand American casualties (plus
many
foreign "extras," eighty or
you include the Cambodian sideshow).
you what the
ratings
were
like
of mouth. Indeed, we've never stopped talking about It's
it.
not simply that Vietnam was perceived as a living-room
war by those of us who used vision.
to watch the instant replay
The experience of those who
bound up with our
national fantasy
on
tele-
participated was intimately
life.
Out
in the field, dan-
gerous areas were called "Indian country," Vietnamese scouts 176
I
— or the word
VIETNAM: THE REMAKE
were known
as
good Indian
is
"Kit Carsons," the infamous one-liner "The only a
only good gook
dead Indian" was updated is
When chael Herr I'll
It's
Wayne was
base to which John
named Dodge
dead one."
a
as the slogan
"The
not a coincidence that the
assigned in The Green Berets
is
City.
an American captain invites war correspondant Mi-
on
Cowboys and
take you out to play
patches.) Later,
he
a search-and-destroy mission,
says,
"Come
Indians." (This
on,
in Dis-
is
Herr muses over the combat performance given
by nineteen-year-old kids when they realized a television crew
was
"They were
in the vicinity:
actually
their heads, doing little guts-and-glory
under
were
fire,
making war movies
They
getting their pimples shot off for the networks.
insane, but the
war hadn't done
election of Ronald Reagan, the
in
Leatherneck tap dances
that to them." 4 Like the
war was the
fulfillment of
something. In his analysis of the role
American
cultural attitudes
played in our Vietnamese involvement, Loren Baritz observes that "It
is
astonishing
how
often
American GIs
in
provingly referred to John Wayne, not as a movie
model and
a standard
up on World War jungle,
knew
armed
II
.
.
.
Vietnam apstar,
but as a
Nineteen-year-old Americans, brought
movies and westerns, walking through the
to the teeth, searching for an invisible
enemy who
the wilderness better than they did, could hardly miss
these connections.
One
thing like 'Hey, this
is
after another said, at
just like a
some
point,
some-
movie.'" You probably remem-
ber the famous scene in Dispatches where a
wounded marine
turns to Herr and says, "I hate this movie!" 5
The men
that served in
Vietnam used to
call
America "the
— short for the Real World. Vietnam by inference, was somewhere else — somewhere imaginary. But this exactly what I'm going to talk about — was never in Vietnam, only World"
isn't
I
know
it
second-hand, so for
under which these
and
me
I
it's
doubly imaginary. The rubric
talks are being given
— as literal-minded as
I
am — this
is
is
"Remaking History,"
"Vietnam: The Remake." 177
— J.
Hoberman
Now,
for
much
fertile
Hollywood
Among
confusion.
had been characterized by lars that
1960s was a period of
as elsewhere, the
other things, the previous decade
Roman
a cycle of Biblical or
spectacu-
not only demonstrated Hollywood's wealth and power
but were also suggestive of an imperial Pax Americana. With the
twin disasters of Cleopatra (1963) and Vietnam (1964-75),
came
cycle
— or rather,
end
to an
The movie industry was it
groped
this
apotheosis.
midst of an identity
in the
crisis
—
formulae. By 1969, around the time that the war
was wisely conceived to be unwinnable, in the red.
its
dark for the huge youth market, attempting to
in the
new
develop
reached
it
At
its
encouraged consid-
and directorial nonconformity. The old
erable genre criticism verites
had crumbled, anything was
sixties
mode
is
major studios were
five
best, this disorganized state
Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider, Wild in the Breckinridge, Night of the Living Dead.
ticular significance, having
The
possible.
the apocalyptic genre film
Streets,
(The
quintessential
The Wild Bunch,
2001 Myra ,
latter
is
a film of par-
been made outside Hollywood, using
the techniques of underground movies to offer the most literal possible image of
remained quite
Of
America devouring
course, the whole idea of a
particularly if
itself.)
The war
film alone
traditional.
you suspect,
as
I
war
film
is
bizarre
do, that entertainment
— is
by
its
nature somewhat Utopian and compensatory, concerned with pleasure and wish fulfillment. Samuel Fuller,
twice in World
War
II
and made
movies, maintained that really
is
a
number of powerful combat
was impossible to "show war
on the screen," adding
"fire real shots alties in
it
who was wounded
that
it
as
it
might be preferable to
over the audience's head" and "have actual casu-
the theater."
The analogy between dreams and movies
has been endlessly rehearsed and so
it's
suggestive that, after
studying the dreams of traumatized World
War
I
veterans, Freud
considered their nocturnal flashbacks as a distinct category of
dream
m
that arose less
from wish
fulfillment or anxiety than a
VIETNAM: THE REMAKE
compulsion to repeat the traumatic experience.
The megabuck World War
II
epic was
still
a viable
form of
entertainment during the period of U.S. escalation. Each year,
from 1965 through 1970, brought
at least
of Big Two: Battle of the Bulge (1965),
Is
one large-scale replay
Paris
Burning? (1966),
Beach Red (1967), Anzio (1968), The Battle of Britain (1969), Toral Toral Toral (1970). Yet,
with the exception of The Green
(which, although produced in 1968, took
War
II
combat
films), the
American movie
diers, but the
"Don't
Sit
a
was
few songs dealing with unhappy
War
sol-
Green Berets notwithstanding,
— that
is,
forces
War became
American
widely perceived as
—
all
war vanished from the movie
Hollywood released nine war
since the big-budget
1958), the genre
history in
once Nixon and Kissinger began to with-
draw American ground screen. Although
odd
has always had an
Indeed, once the Vietnam
unwinnable
set
mu-
Under the Apple Tree."
the Vietnam
most
virtually true of popular
Vietnam War produced no "Over There" or
Now, John Wayne and The
films.
cues from World
its
current war was entirely absent from
screens. This
There were
sic as well.
Berets
World War
II
epic
films in
1970 (the
was launched
in
was abruptly terminated once Richard Nixon
about withdrawing American combat troops. Only two war
were released
films
in 1971,
and none
at all for
the next four
years (which, significantly, coincides with the heyday of disaster films).
Not
until the
Too Far (1977), first
wave of Vietnam combat So, right
war
war was over did Midway (1976),
in
from the
start,
Hollywood seemed to want the
Vietnam over and done with
set
Bridge
films.
regime of wish fulfillment. The
were
A
and MacArthur (1977) appear— along with the
mainly on the
home
— thus operating within the
initial cycle
front,
of Vietnam movies
where the
battle
was being
fought for the hearts and minds of the American viewing public.
These movies were considerably
less
interested in
combat he-
roics than in the often nightmarish situation of the returning
179
J.
Hoberman
vets
or
— alternately shown as a guilty society's violent redeemers victimized scapegoats and often an ambiguous combination
its
of the two.
The 1967 Born half-Indian,
Losers
not only introduced the messianic
ex-Green Beret,
wing precursor
to
Rambo
Billy Jack (a
now-forgotten
left-
in his agonized vigilantism), but
spawned an entire subgenre
which alienated Viet
in
vets either
joined up with or battled marauding motorcycle gangs (the most
malevolent manifestation of the youth culture). With the
rise of
ex-Green Berets played by
blaxploitation, the turf shifted so that
Jim Brown or Paul Winfield came back to war against ghetto
dope dealers and exploitive gangsters. While only flicks
— the
Deathdream literal
1971 Fiend with the Electronic Brain, Bob Clark's 1972
monsters, movies like Welcome
mention scores of
prone Viet vet
TV
shows,
mass culture
a
But the purpose of war, injure
— "to alter (to burn, to
and
Home
Soldier Boys (1972),
Rolling Thunder (1977), not
made
the psychotic, violence-
cliche. as Elaine Scarry
the objects that
And
human
so,
more
reminds
blast, to shell, to cut)
tissue, as well as to alter the surface, shape,
selves." 6
few horror
— were crude enough to use returning Viet vets as
Tracks (1976), Taxi Driver (1976),
to
a
to
beings recognize as extensions of them-
visibly or invisibly scarred
amok were
those
Some Kind of Hero (1982)
who came
who back
— the wounded vets of Coming Home
(1978), Who'll Stop the Rain? (1978), Cutter's
Way
(1981), and
— who appeared to suffer some partic-
ular sexual malaise, if not an out-and-out mutilation. is
is
and deep entirety of
disturbing perhaps than those vets
returned to the World to run
of theirs
us,
human
missing. Vietnam,
it
would seem,
hit
Something
America below
the belt.
The
first
recuperation of the sixties can be found in the cycle of
disaster films inaugurated in
1
970 by Airport
— and peaking four
years later with Earthquake, The Towering Inferno, The Hindenburg,
VIETNAM: THE REMAKE
Juggernaut, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, the resignation of
Richard Nixon, and Airport 1975. These featured the guise of ordinary, middle-class people
who
all-star casts in
have to cope with
the total breakdown of institutions thought to be safe. Such in-
microcosms of America but, although the
stitutions are clearly
disaster
is
worsened by mendacious, greedy, corrupt, and incom-
petent leaders,
it
does not reflect a fundamental flaw in the sys-
tem. Actually, the system works. Disaster films demonstrate the
fundamental decency of ordinary people, their allegiance to ditional
moral virtues.
tra-
All the middle-class values reign vic-
torious at the end.
By asserting
that America's
enemies remained nature and/
or technology, disaster films denied that Americans had become
decadent or that consensus had shattered. Indeed, they suggested that the sixties never
happened
— traditional virtues are intact
and, unlike in Night of the Living Dead, enable people to help
each other survive the
crisis.
So disaster films were fundamen-
reassuring and they also reassured the alienated audience
tally
with the old-time entertainment religion of conspicuous consumption, happy endings, and filled
all-star casts.
They were
with familiar faces from the forties and
fifties
typically
— had he not
decided on another career, Ronald Reagan would have
fit
right
in as a secondary character in The Towering Inferno. In recuperating the apocalyptic disaster films
were the
be others. With the public was
left
first
fall
breakdowns of the
sixties,
wave of reillusionment. There would
of Saigon in June 1975, the American
to contemplate the futility of
its
great disaster
film
— the wasted lives and squandered wealth. This was depress-
ing.
Small wonder that, from 1976 on, Americans indulged in an
orgy of born-again genres and exercises in feel-good regression, a
prolonged fascination with the fabulous
like Freud's
notion of the fetish
tration anxiety fixating
on
— that
is,
fifties
that functioned
a defense against cas-
a substitute phallus, often the last
thing experienced before a traumatic discovery or
loss.
For the
181
J.
Hoberman
we
past fifteen years, the era
the
call
fifties (really
the 1955-62
period between the Korean and Vietnam wars) has been a kind of lost paradise within American popular culture. George Lucas's
1973 American because
it
but because
was the harbinger of
Graffiti
was the
first
this
deliberately used the disaster of
it
trend
— not just
film to periodicize the 1955-62 period,
Vietnam
as a
structuring absence. Since then and up until very recently,
TV, and
politics have
American movies,
continued to privilege the
fifties,
even to
the point of superimposing that happy era over the eighties.
Only
in Blue Velvet (1986) does this contradiction begin to
"1955"
is
more seamless Back
the
ifest itself; in
a place for the
to the
hero to play
man-
Future (1985),
— a theme park or Disney-
land (which, perhaps not coincidentally, opened that very year).
Back
to the
Future
is
a kind of historical
Moebius
strip that
negates the idea of history, by suggesting that the troublesome past can be rescripted to improve the present.
war movies,
In terms of after the in the
war
is
over.
Hollywood began
mid- twenties and World War
War movies were years after the
war
the
this usually
as a
II
to
occurs several years
ponder World War
after 1949, while
a staple of the late fifties.
fall
Not
I
Korean
until several
of Saigon did Hollywood attempt to reenact
period spectacle.
A
cluster of films released in 1978
and 1979 established and/or epitomized the basic thematics in various combinations, have
that,
gone in and out of favor through
to the present day: the returning vet
melodrama (Hal Ashby's
Coming Home, 1978), the grunt ensemble film (Sidney Furie's The Boys in Company
C,
1978),
and the macho back-to-Nam fantasy
(Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter, 1978).
These were preceded by the publication of Michael Herr's Dispatches, a vivid
work of gonzo journalism
tain basic koans about its
triply elusive antagonist, the
was
his,
above
it
that established cer-
Vietnam and the American relationship
was ours
.
.
.
Vietcong
We
— "Under the ground
to
had the days and [Charlie] had
VIETNAM: THE REMAKE
the nights." 7 Dispatches further paved the spectacle of Francis Coppola's Apocalypse
way
Now
for the psychedelic
(1979) that, in
its
brazen megalomania and dazzling concern for the power of spe-
may be
cial effects,
War
truer to the sense of the original Vietnam
than any remake yet produced
climactic ending, not to
— up to
its
confused, anti-
mention the destructive
effect
it
had on
Coppola's subsequent career (which most recently included a hack, maudlin tribute to Viet era heroism).
For as a
all this,
however, the war remained
murder witnessed by
in the villages, the lar culture
TV
it
crews couldn't film
got really interesting
at night."
hadn't evolved language to describe
grandiose failure of Apocalypse Now's
final
dark and primal
For Herr, "Night was
a two-year-old.
medium; night was when
the war's truest
as
8
Our popu-
beyond the
it,
movement. As mad
Dennis Hopper said of crazy Marlon Brando when he met
dogged Martin Sheen
at
the heart of darkness: "I wish
I
a
had
words." Despite the success of The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now, their unresolved ambiguities proved far
less attractive
than
the clearcut fantasies generated by something like Good Guys
Wear Black (1979), an early Chuck Norris vehicle ex-karate
Valor,
champ
him and
trayed
two
in
which the
searches for the Washington politicos
his
commando
unit, or First Blood
early eighties sleepers both directed
who
be-
and Uncommon
by Ted Kotcheff.
Released almost simultaneously with the dedication of the
Vietnam Veteran's Monument the surprise hit of late
commercial
hit outside the
decade on Warner's
in
Washington,
1982 — as well as
Rocky
shelf, First
cycle.
First
Blood proved
Sylvester Stallone's
A
first
property that spent a
Blood turned the assumptions of
the returning vet films inside out. This incendiary plea for tolerance, designed to appeal to both
John Rambo — a
hawks and doves, introduced
taciturn, hippified
acts of insane violence
ex-Green Beret driven to
by the relentless persecution of
a
redneck
sheriff.
In effect,
Rambo brought
the
war home and
cast himself as
Sylvester Stallone as
Rambo
in First Blood, Part
II,
1985. Courtesy Photofest.
a victimized, victorious guerrilla fighter. In the novel
which the ster.
He
film
kills
is
mixture of
anticipates
left-
who
and
is
finally
trained him.
is
into the
terminated by
in his
ambiguous
more
like a reverse lives.
never succeeds in wrestling the Phallus from he's
mon-
hills,
The movie
property rather than
hauled off to prison,
it's
Although
the possesclearly for
sins.
Rambo's equally haunted masculine equivalent was
184
him up
Bruce Springsteen
when
from
clearly a Frankenstein
and right-wing symbols,
sion of the sheriff,
our
is
Street,
officer
bomb — destroying
neutron
Rambo
down Main
Green Beret
Rambo, who
Rambo
the entire posse that chases
returns to burn the very
adapted,
if less
neurotic and
Tom Magnum,
more
securely
the hero of CBS's long-
VIETNAM: THE REMAKE
running Magnum,
P.I.
The show
continually manifest in
its
Hawaii but Vietnam
set in
is
characters and situations, not to
tion the hero's frequent flashbacks to his
ences
commando
is
men-
experi-
— often accompanied by soulful sixties pop songs or
moody
riffs
for electric guitar. (Clearly,
Magnum was
man who
a
An
had once smoked pot and brooded over Eric Clapton.) tion of orange and green, the
war
is
mad
represented as a
cession of meaningless missions or chaotic combat. But for
incomprehensibility,
it is
stituted
Magnum Man
Vietnam
for
all its
male testing ground. Son and
clearly a
grandson of American war heroes chon), the
erupsuc-
was
(his father
killed at In-
exudes a tough melancholy that sub-
some
unhappy
prehistoric
private-eye mystique. (Simon and Simon
is
love affair in his
another hit detective
show, born during the 1982-83 season, that proposed to bind America's wounds by splitting are a brother team,
one
Rambo
in two.
The
protagonists
a Viet vet, the other a college-educated
peacenik.)
By the
who
early eighties, the idea that
fought in Vietnam
Rambo — if
— had been betrayed
upon" when they returned, became an
at
not
those
home, then "spat
article of faith.
gratitude lent piquance to the fantasy of an
all
This in-
American victory
in
Vietnam and an aspect of implied revenge to the imaginative appropriation of the Vietcong's guerrilla tactics. In 1983, this scenario was canonized with the unexpected success of Valor,
co-produced by John Milius,
trains guerrillas to spring his son a Laotian prison
Uncommon Losers (1970), in
in
which
and other
Uncommon
a retired officer
MI As
held captive in
camp. Valor basically appropriated the
which
a
premise of The
group of bikers returned to
Nam
their motorcycles to rescue a captured presidential adviser a
on
from
Chinese prison camp. (Anticipating the self-pity endemic to
early eighties
Nam
films, the surviving
gang members have to
hear themselves denounced as "trash" for their troubles.) But,
with
its
emphasis on patriarchal authority, mutilated genealogy,
185
J.
Hoberman
and male
rites
of passage, Uncommon Valor took the lead in visu-
alizing Indochina as the site of America's symbolic castration.
Unlike Apocalypse
Now
Niro's possession of the Phallus seems tentative it
offered itself as a clear-cut exorcism of the
honor of American
and depressed),
shame and
a guilt-free version of
Blood that managed to refight the war in Colorado
identifying his youthful protagonists with the ting America's vaders. In the
dis-
defeat.
1984 Red Dawn provided
Milius's First
De
or even The Deer Hunter (in which
wartime
activities
wake of Uncommon
VC
—
while projec-
onto the Soviet and Cuban inValor (and the
euphoria
produced by Grenada, surely the most successful American war
movie since Bridge on
the River Kwai),
subsequent Vietnam exor-
cisms grew increasingly fantastic and compensatory. Films like Missing in Action (1984),
Rambo
(1985), and the futuristic Top
Gun (1986) changed the emphasis from teamwork
to the
glorification of a supermasculine principle.
In recuperating the war, these movies finally (after twenty years) recapitulated
something of
can policy makers of the early issue of
its initial
sixties
The Ameri-
American military potency. The nuclear stalemate be-
tween the United their frustration
States
and the Soviet Union only
— you can see this again in
like a celebration of ejaculatio retardata.
in the bold, Kennedy-inflected sixties,
manliness
Now,
appeal.
were obsessed with the
.
.
intensified
Top Gun,
Once upon war was an
which
is
a time, back
invitation to
.
given the shame inherent in missing a war and thus fore-
going the opportunity to demonstrate one's manhood,
it
seems
appropriate that the movies most expressive of America's humiliation
would have been produced by John Milius and
Stallone,
both of
whom
(Top Gun's co-producer,
Sylvester
avoided service during the Vietnam War.
Don
Simpson, actually bragged to one
interviewer that he deliberately wrecked his motorcycle to beat
186
VIETNAM: THE REMAKE
the draft.)
No
than the war
less
and Rambo reflected
Rumor
what Philip Caputo,
of War, yearns for as "that savage, heroic time
America became
a land of salesmen
scarcely
it's
essay, "Injury
uncommon
for an
envisioned as a single gigantic individual, often
commanding rear that
.
A
before
.
and the
army
named
to be
for the
with an Achilles heel or an underbelly or a
officer,
may be
.
in
and shopping centers." 9
As Elaine Scarry has noted in her Structure of War,"
Dawn
the fantasies of Red
itself,
a nostalgia for
penetrated. For the American ground forces in
Vietnam, that individual only appeared some years after the war
was
over. This colossus
is
Rambo — a
thing built to absorb
punishment, whose illusion of mastery complements Ronald Reagan's mastery of illusion.
Rambo keep
is
superb icon:
a
in the
he-man (he manages
to
long hair even in prison), a patriotic loner.
his talismanic
Once
a hippie
Nam, he
strips
down
to his
trademark tank top and
sweatband — he's a high-tech primitive incinerating battalions of gooks with
TNT-tipped arrows. You might reasonably
his special
assume that
Rambo
is
the
American descendant of
a nineteenth-
century French poet, back for another Season in Hell. As
it
turns out, he's of "Indian-German" descent, a sort of Apache
Ubermensch or a Prussian noble savage, the ultimate Karl
But mainly,
fantasy.
Rambo
is
a torso: absurdly muscular, per-
petually taut, a sort of Nautilus-built hard-on. that "Stallone is
is
so
May
pumped up
One
critic
his veins have erections."
wrote
Rambo
so phallic, he really should be called Dildo. If
you've seen the movie, you
killed in
Rambo's arms seconds
know
after
that the love object
he clasps her to
thus the
VC
as Klaus
Theweleit wrote of the Freikorps,
him from even
saves
a
moment's is
is
his pecs,
relaxation.
Rambo,
one of those "men
[who] look for ecstasy not in embraces, but in explosions," 10 the great balls of about.
fire
that the guys in Top
Rambo can
never be
presents himself as the
satisfied,
Gun
are always singing
he can never detumesce, he
embodiment of unrequited
patriotic love:
187
J.
Hoberman
with him, that unwinnable war had
at last
(and
at least)
been
successfully repackaged.
Magnum and Rambo (we deemed the American
With
call
him Cro Magnum)
man, thus making the world
fighting
for their lesser buddies.
might
re-
safe
Platoon (1986), Gardens of Stone
(1987), Full Metal Jacket (1987), Hamburger Hill (1987), Good
Morning Vietnam (1987), the documentary Dear America (1987),
and the television
series Tour of
Duty
(shot, like
Magnum,
P. I.,
in
Hawaii), the Vietnam exorcism has taken a turn for the "naturalistic,"
Not
focusing on the actual experience of ordinary combatants.
surprisingly, a
Viet vets
who
number of
their experience of the
war on the
The emphasis having elite
POWs,
mainly
ploits of their
these movies are statements by
have been trying, in some cases for years, to get
air force
bomber
pilots,
and the fantasy ex-
supermasculine rescuers, to the
suffering of the teenage recruits
combat, the
screen.
from the humiliation of the
shifted
new Vietnam
less
who were most
glamorous
often sent into
films are less virulently right-wing
than their immediate predecessors and more attuned to the specific
gle
nature of the war. (As Herr observed, "Flying over the jun-
was almost pure pleasure, doing
pain.")
Now
on the American
side,
on foot was nearly
Vietnam was
mainly by working-class teenagers panic. Their average age in
it
all
11
World War
II).
a
war fought
— half of them black or His-
was nineteen
(as
opposed to twenty-six
These kids knew that most of
their peers
were
beating the draft, that the better educated enlistees were enjoying American-style amenities. In short, they understood that
they were suckers, and they were resentful. Consequently, they
developed their
own
anti-authoritarian subculture:
more than
any previous American army, they were prone to go native, take scalps,
wear earrings, shoot drugs, scrawl weird slogans on
their
helmets.
The grunt ensemble
films
acknowledge that the war's hu-
VIETNAM: THE REMAKE
man
was born
cost
largely
by the disadvantaged.
Still,
they do so
only obliquely: poor blacks are prominent, but the protagonists of these movies are middle-class whites. There has been as yet
no Vietnam
film
made from
a black point of
view although,
overrepresented as they were in the worst assignments, black grunts were far
more
politically radical
were whites. Hamburger
and disaffected than
Hill allows a taste of black rage, albeit
focusing on micro-incidents of racial tension rather than addressing the essential racist Instead,
war
is
shown
component of the war. as terrifyingly existential: a sense of
abandonment amid meaningless ensemble
films as
it is
to the
conflict
MIA
is
as central to the
rescue films, but here
grunt
it is
less
tragic than pathetic or, in the case of Full Metal Jacket, ironic.
Gardens of Stone
is
the lone current example to even bother with
traditional forms of patriotic sentiment. Like,
who
it
wasn't
started "that crazy Asian war." Bereft of even the
them most
minimal ideological support, the teenage warriors nevertheless
perform Duty I
is
their "patriotic chore."
the most didactic
saw had
when
a peacenik learn to
As it
kill,
befits a
comes a
TV
show, Tour of
to this: the last episode
Puerto Rican win the re-
spect of his black comrades, a middle-class lieutenant appreciate his tough sergeant. But the pointless heroism
is
Hamburger
Hill,
acme of
where the
come
to
excruciatingly central battle for
control of a slope in the Ashau valley has no intrinsic meaning, strategic or otherwise.
With
the collapse of the greater values,
the minor ones are drafted into service. bleakest sort of absurdism only by
cannon fodder
— a tragic and noble when
Platoon
its
film escapes the
seem
a virtue to
be
Rambo and Ronbo, one
swept the 1987 Oscars,
after the Iran-contragate revelations, the
receding from
it
fate.
Given the close identification between suspected that
The
making
six
months
Reagan revolution was
high water mark. But even as Platoon provided
a gutsy correlative to the fantasies of bellicose
noncombatants
189
J.
Hoberman
another round of mythologizing.
Milius and Stallone,
it
Drenched
rock and a perverse Viet nostalgia (one's
youth
in sixties
is still
initiated
one's youth,
whether spent
in
Kansas or Khe Sanh),
grunt ensemble films shy away from any sense of the war's moral basis or its political significance. In this, they
conflict of
may
reflect the
Vietnam veterans who want to forget the horrors of
war but recognize
that the experience
was the high point of
their lives.
Historical context
period
secondary to the re-creation of the
is
— and, by extension, American innocence.
Hence the
stunning popularity of Good Morning, Vietnam in which Robin
Williams appears
as
an irreverent Saigon-based disc jockey.
Aside from playing the
Vietnam
man who
brought rock
major accomplishment
is
his attitude.
items or rags on LBJ's family on the
and teaches Vietnamese students to hipness distances Platoon
'n' roll
to
— thus making possible Vietnam movies — Williams's
and
Full
him from
He
reads classified news
air, insults
uptight officers
talk street jive. Williams's
the war. Like the protagonists of
Metal Jacket, his cynicism
is
a
form of
militant
naivete, if not denial. Moreover, despite his insolence, he's pro-
tected by a friendly general
who
recognizes his value for morale.
Thus, Good Morning, Vietnam doesn't as celebrate the illusion
satirize the
war so much
— and the impotence — of "telling
it
like
it is."
The
home and
first
Vietnam
movement back and The more
films
forth in
naturalistic
vet's
return
is still
engorged:
some
fruitless search for closure.
grunt ensembles plunge headlong into the
ward
war's center, an attempt to
chine
had two themes: the
the vet's return to Vietnam, embodying a restless
it's
off inevitable defeat.
Good Morning, Vietnam
The ma-
rather than
Good Night World. This
is
why
virtually
all
Vietnam combat
ing the present tense of Johnson's
war
— that
films are set dur-
is,
at
the peak of
American involvement, before Nixon's troop withdrawals de-
190
IN VIETNAM
THE WIND DOESN'T BLOW IT
SUCKS
Stanley Kubrick's
FULL
METAL JACKET Poster for Full Metal Jacket, 1987. Courtesy Photofest.
J.
Hoberman
stroyed what was
My
army morale, the exposure of the
of
left
Lai massacre eroded America's moral position, before the inva-
sion of
Cambodia made
widen the war, before
movement and The
mockery of Nixon's promise not
a
new
to
had experienced the antiwar
recruits
the counterculture, black power, and urban riots.
were
post- 1969 recruits
less docile
and, as the troop with-
drawals signaled the retreat from military victory, the
army was
plagued by escalating disorders that raised questions as to the ability of the U.S.
armed
forces to continue to function at
The grunt ensemble
all.
dreams
films strongly suggest the
that
Freud attributed to traumatic neuroses, "repeatedly bringing the patient back into the situation of his accident." (In fact, there
was an
article in
This repetition, according to Freud,
overpowered by the
initial
as children
might
peats
it,
a repetition terial as a it
as
compulsion
is
an attempt
Defusing blame is
is
a
"obliged to repeat the repressed ma-
this
.
.
remembering
new Vietnam
for a foreign country, It
.
13
key aspect of the
named
be shown as an American struggle.
waging
mastery:
as play. But, a neurotic in the grip of
is
contemporary experience instead of
Although the war
at
experience, the subject actively re-
something belonging to the past."
that in
as therapy.) 12
Newsday about the value of Platoon
it
film.
must always
can never be acknowledged
war, the U.S. orchestrated the most massive
display of firepower in
human
history.
As
in the original movie,
the stars of every Vietnam film are entirely American. Hamburger Hill
and Good Morning, Vietnam might be considered mildly
sionist for the
cameos they award
to-hand combat and aside, the indigenous
a
few
the locals but, a bit of
flashes of
population
thus designed for subjugation.
is
North Vietnamese
revi-
hand-
artillery
almost entirely female and
The enemy
is
the VC: Platoon refights the American Civil
only perfunctorily
War with
blacks and
northern white dopers pitted against Southern juiceheads; in Metal Jacket, media.
192
women
are the
enemy;
in
Hamburger
Hill, it's
the
Full
VIETNAM: THE REMAKE
Bill is
Coutrie's Dear America, produced for
Home Box
the documentary corollary to Platoon and Hamburger
timental and horrific,
Office,
Sen-
Hill.
juxtaposes actual GI letters to parents,
it
wives, and girlfriends read by a small galaxy of Hollywood stars
with candid footage,
as well as the obligatory sixties
to create a sort of transpersonal
home movie. These
rock track, letters are
often expressions of pure terror and disorientation. But this
powerful raw material makes the result doubly disturbing. The
paradox
is
that Coutrie's
documentary
mythologizing grunt ensemble film
is
yet.
the most heavily
Not only
are the musical
juxtapositions stupefyingly literal-minded ("I'm 18" for boot
camp,
Gonna
"Gimme
Shelter" during an air assault,
Fall" used to
accompany
conveniently forget that war tell
Mom
is
a
"A Hard
Rain's
A
monsoon), but the filmmakers
war and one doesn't
necessarily
all.
Although
nam without
insistent
on
its
authenticity, Dear America
is
Viet-
racism, drugs, fraggings, atrocities, sex weirdness,
or any of the perks of an occupying army. Historical context dissolves in subjectivity, the
whose victims are
war emerging
as a no-fault collision
entirely American. The Deer Hunter has
been
replaced by Dear Hunter.
In their retreat
Vietnam
from the realm of the
sociohistorical, recent
films stress the subjective experience of the individual
combatant
— thus, the importance of voice-over letters in Platoon,
Gardens of Stone, and Dear America, the frenzied flashbacks of
Magnum,
comes
P. I.,
the immersion in sixties
pop music. The war be-
a personal affair or a generational
coming of
ensemble films honor the Viet vet by extolling loyalty to his buddies.
Although
age.
Grunt
his situational
in this, they are true to the ex-
perience of a war where the continual rotation of ground troops discouraged cohesion and a soldier's overriding concern was to survive his twelve-month tour of duty and get out, these movies
can never address the ideological conditioning that suckered
193
Hoberman
J.
Americans into Vietnam to begin with. Imperial America
TV
run. As the
not too
The World War
Why We
located the
war
Fight?
in
It
II
to be an
it's
a perpetual re"It's
film
who
had addressed the our adversaries were,
our national history, and directed us towards It
provided instruction in what
American while reassuring us
provocations of the
enemy and horrors
who
guys and square-shooters films could
combat
explained
our individual responsibilities.
meant
in syndication:
do something about Vietnam. See Platoon and un-
late to
derstand."
question
now
is
ads for the video release of Platoon told us:
do none of
this.
that,
of war,
it
whatever the
we were
nice
still
played by the rules. 14 Vietnam
Nor can
they. The Green Berets aside,
there were no such movies produced during the course of the
Vietnam War. I
Won
the
cynical
Instead, The Dirty Dozen (from the right)
War (from the
war
stories that
mocracy, or
fair play. If
left),
both 1967, initiated
and How
a cycle of
had nothing to do with patriotism, deanything, these issues were displaced
onto the dying form of the western. The Wild Bunch (1969), dier Blue (1970), Little Big
(1973) had
more
Man
to do with
(1970),
and High
Sol-
Plains Drifter
Vietnam than any war
film.
This quintessential American genre was typically the way that,
however honestly or meretriciously, America used to ex-
plain itself to
American
itself.
Who
soldiers played
makes the law? What "cowboys"
is
in Vietnam,
the order? As it is
significant
that the antiwar counterculture identified itself
with the Indians,
adopting beads and headbands, tribal
peyote, eco-
politics, a
made
return to the land. This
the western obsolete.
The
lifestyles,
split in historical
genre, which enjoyed
Age during the quarter-century Pax Americana
World War
II,
grew
consensus its
Golden
that followed
increasingly apocalyptic throughout the
Vietnam War, with the ultimate desecration of Blazing
Saddles
(1974) capping the assorted anti-, post, spaghetti, revisionist, psychedelic, and burlesque westerns of the early seventies.
The
m
decline and eclipse of the western effectively redefined
VIETNAM: THE REMAKE
the screen image of the masculine hero. finally
made
When
Dustin Hoffman
a western, he played an Indian; the seventies saw a
whole generation of
stars
who
never donned stetsons (Robert
Niro, Sylvester Stallone, Al Pacino, Richard Dreyfuss).
thology had been discredited.
No wonder
was emblazoned with a quote to the
Top Gun's press
or President of the United States."
constructing a winner out of a loser
is
The
He
difficulty inherent in
Vietnam
really should have spent less
Vietnam offered no great casualties included
Its
first
vet-
time
Martin Peretz and more time watching Magnum,
listening to
enemy.
star, jet fighter pi-
at least a partial factor in
the abject failure of Senator Albert Gore, the
eran to run for president.
book
effect that "there are only
four occupations worthy of a man: actor, rock lot
De
The my-
battles
and no
P.I.
clearly defined
our longstanding sense of national
innocence and masculine identity, not to mention the broad national consensus that
World War
II.
had defined American foreign policy since
This has
made
the
war
particularly difficult to
represent: inherently polarizing and depressing, with a built-in
unhappy ending, fare last
and the
it
both broke the conventions of civilized war-
basic rules of
Hollywood entertainment.
It
was the
picture show.
The
impossible longing for a satisfactory conclusion tempts
each Viet film to
sell itself as definitive. It is
precisely that
bum-
— more the film just running out of the projector, than the roof caving in — that has us with a compulsion to
mer of a
finale
left
remake,
if
not history, then
at least
the movie.
Notes
1
.
Gabriel Kolko, Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the United
torical Experience
(New
States,
and
the
Modern His-
York: Pantheon Books, 1985), p. 176.
201.
2.
Ibid., p.
3.
Hannah Arendt, "Home
to Roost:
A
Bicentennial Address,"
New
York Review
of Books, June 26, 1975, p. 4.
195
J.
Hoberman
4.
Michael Herr, Dispatches (New York: Avon Books, 1978), pp. 61 and 209. pp. 188-189.
5.
Ibid.,
6.
Elaine Scarry, "Injury and the Structure of War," Representations, no. 10
(Spring 1985): 1-51. 7.
Herr, Dispatches, p. 14.
8.
Ibid., p. 41.
9.
Philip Caputo,
1977), p. 10.
A Rumor
of
War (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
5.
Klaus Theweleit, Male
Fantasies, Vol.
1:
Women,
Floods, Bodies, History, trans.
Stephen Conway (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 11.
Herr, Dispatches,
12.
New
13.
Sigmund Freud, Beyond
York Newsday,
p. 41.
p. 10.
May
10, 1988. the Pleasure Principle
(New
York:
W. W. Norton,
1961), p. 12. 14.
See Jeanine Basinger's comprehensive The World War
of a Genre
m
(New
11
Combat
York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 79.
Film:
Anatomy
Carol Squiers
AT THEIR MERCY:
READING OF PICTURES
A
FROM 1988
An
instantly
tory dia.
consumable and hyperbolically
Writ
in mass-culture platitudes,
and bureaucratic jargon, journalists
which
complex and
is
power without ever and
tions,
inflated type of his-
produced each and every day by the American news me-
is
strive to
make simple
that
to provide a behind-the-scenes look at
revealing the true underpinnings, supposi-
beneficiaries of the system that they labor to explain
and maintain: who wins and who never going to win;
who
a kind of love;
many
loses
controls what;
system are and what that means;
will in
shorthand redundancies,
and why the
who
how money
losers are
the owners of the
can indeed buy you
and how honest labor and the sweat of your brow
cases earn
you
a progressively
lower standard of
and an uncertain future for whatever children you are op-
living
timistic
enough to bring into
a
democracy
in
which most people
are created unequal.
An image.
important part of the newsmaking process
is
takes a variety of ever-more pervasive forms,
It
the visual
from the
video footage of the world's killing fields unreeled nightly on the national
news
to the
still
images reproduced in newspapers and
magazines to Hollywood's factoid-based dramas, which are predicated
on
and uses
"real life" events. in the greater
Each
visual
mode
has
its
own
rules
scheme of the maintenance of American
democratic capitalism and the concurrent achievement of max-
imum
corporate profit, with a middling consideration given to
199
Carol Squiers
actually providing information or insight to the general public.
Within
this system, the
news photograph has an almost
wholly symbolic function. Most often a single picture will be
used to "tell" an entire story, both illustrating and supplementing a journalist's words. Take a situation in itary
blows up
a Palestinian's
for an alleged act of violence.
house explodes that
which the
It is
moment
a picture of the
printed in the newspaper
is
mil-
Israeli
house on the West Bank in revenge the
— not the mo-
ment
the soldiers arrive at the house and begin laying the explo-
sives,
or the look on a woman's face
when
minutes or one hour to clear out of her
she
home
is
given twenty
before
it is
totally
destroyed. Such a profound injustice will almost always be inadequately portrayed in a single photograph. stead
is
What
is
recorded
the instant of greatest action and high drama.
instant collapses any notion of injustice, brute force,
And
in-
that
and human
violation into an image that replays repeatedly the idea that the
Middle East
is
somehow
mysteriously and willfully violent, that
nothing can be done about the violence, that the Palestinians bring
it
on themselves.
In addition to the political complexities
and human tragedy that are effaced
is
the fact that violence
is
constituted as so essentially exciting: the violence makes a better picture
than any other visual aspect of the situation.
Whether they
are shooting politicians in
poverty in Bangladesh, their wire service or
job
is
all
Washington or
good news photographers know what
news magazine or newspaper wants. Their
to deliver "fresh" images of subjects within a range of ac-
ceptable stereotypes. Anything less than this
uninformed and even
unintelligent.
is
to risk seeming
Anything more
is
to be la-
beled too "political" and therefore unobjective.
The following
commentaries
news and
strive to untangle the ideology of
representations, showing
how news imagery
tural suppositions that construct the news.
its
illustrates the cul-
MERCY
AT THEIR
During the second half of 1988, the American public was subjected to a thoroughly dreadful and
some might even
say heinous
presidential campaign. Rather than trying to forget that
it
happened, however,
we
tem of party
— and political representation — that
brought us
One
politics
should take time to meditate on the sys-
this miserable travesty.
sible in this
is
how
the spectrum of the politically permis-
country runs the gamut only from
disheartening
fact,
there
Democratic and Republican analysis of large
is
A
to B. Despite
indeed a difference between the
parties, as evidenced
by pictorial
groups of people from both parties attending
their respective national conventions. Thus, even all
mind about
of the most obvious points that springs to
said party system
this
ever
acknowledging
the prevarication, hypocrisy, evasiveness, quibbling, fibbing,
faking, dissembling,
we might
still
and perversion we have been subjected
be able to discern
why we
volve ourselves in a process presided over by a less,
to,
should continue to in-
bunch of humor-
immoral numbskulls. Consider the following photographs,
taken while the author was documenting the way the news media covered the presidential campaign. Although they are simulations of political photography (the author journalist), they
tographed
at
is
not a photo-
do cover the general range of typical
conventions
sights
pho-
— and in the process, point up visible
philosophical differences between Democrats and Republicans. People
in
Funny Hats.
A
staple of political conventions
and the
photographer's best friend, few people in funny hats can escape looking like born fools. Some, however, such as this Jesse Jack-
son delegate, can convey a message of progress and optimism
with their decorative headgear. Having experienced our government
at
work, however,
this delegate also
a lifetime of
wears an
expression indicating an underlying skepticism that this political
201
process
is
ever going to do jack zip for her.
Other
hats,
such as the one worn by
this Pat
Robertson
supporter, remind you that Diane Arbus didn't invent the people she photographed. She simply waited for off their
Styrofoam campaign
hats,
over them, grab an American
flag,
them
to tear the rims
smash an old army helmet
and goosestep
in her
direction. Young People.
What
does
it
take to get a young Republican to
turn himself into a one-person billboard for death and destruction?
Not much, judging from the spooky
pily exhibited
by
this youthful enthusiast.
self-desecration hap-
Notice too the conflict
AT THEIR
he shows about his appearance.
him
to be recognized that inspires
with
"SDI"
his
modesty and the
to
wear
his
desire not
Ray Bans, along
stickers, at eleven o'clock at night?
In contrast, witness the
feed-'n'-seed cap
buttons
Is it
MERCY
young man wearing the Dukakis
and festooned with traditional
— none of them on his face.
political
Clean-cut, well-behaved,
psychologically stable, and probably working for nothing at the
Democratic convention, cans pretend
Politicians
cratic
is
he's the
type of youngster the Republi-
just like one of their children.
Who
Are Not Running for the Presidency.
governor Mario
Cuomo
New
York's
Demo-
has lots of negatives, including not
who
being the kind of leader that the people
voted for him
wanted, and not running for the presidency in 1988. Nevertheless,
he
obvious
still
has plenty of admirable attributes.
some of the most Here he officials
The most
— a cuddly, pliable face capable of squeezing is
doing his turn on the perennial disbelief
seem
On
itself into
ironic expressions ever sported by a politician. all
elected
to feel about the things people say to them.
the Republican side, however,
senator Orrin Hatch, the
we
man who went
have the likes of Utah
high profile during the
Iran-contra hearings by congratulating Oliver North for his criminal behavior, and of homosexuals."
The
who
has called the Democrats "the party
strange deathmask-like illusionism in this
203
— Carol Squiers
picture,
from
his
which makes body,
it
look as
if
the senator's face
detached
is
actually a quite realistic depiction of a
is
whose usual demeanor suggests
man
that he probably gets his skin
screwed on. CBS's Lesley Stahl looked none
Signs Bearing Political Sentiments.
too happy about being photographed holding the sign that her
objectivity
cameraman used
you could readily
predicament lay
(Silence = Death
many
it
at
No
test,
Contra Aid
the
of
shows the kind of
visible),
them problems
both parties are
vitally
myth of
many stuff
the Democratic conven-
out concern for issues such
buttons were highly
rights,
in
aside,
your hands on
tion: signs that spelled
Americans
some kind of
being the general masquerade amongst
still
journalists. Stahl's
and equal
for
as
AIDS
the environment,
that a majority of
concerned about, even
though their government has ignored or otherwise purposefully defeated
them
for
many
long years.
At the Republican convention, signs were either of the happy-faced Hallmark variety Bush!
Welcome Dan! and Ohio Loves
— or the deeply disturbed. At the river's edge rally where
George Bush sprang Dan Quayle on an expectant world, nutso conservatism manifested
itself in
anticommie sentiments and the
—
—
—
pummeling of AIDS
Of course,
protestors.
magic markers and
armed with
a decided lack of design ability, thousands of
hand-lettered signs were turned out for use
There was
entirely too
much
tions. Invocations, benedictions, Billy
the convention,
at
giving the entire corporate fiesta that homey, Prayer.
home-
the signs were
spun. Utilizing squadrons of young Republicans
hand-made
praying
Graham
at
look.
both conven-
— heads bent in
prayer during events that are essentially television commercials are a revolting sight to witness.
Once
again, though, there
was
an essential difference between the two parties. Democrats
as-
sumed
to
from unctuous devotion
a variety of pious attitudes,
barely faking
it.
Republicans, however (although they probably
span the same spectrum in terms of real attitude), treated prayer
form of revenge. Our
as a
art in
of you
heaven
name
liberals.
Sam Donaldson
father
dirty,
we'll get every last
card-carrying
Luckily, despite the
one
— who
— hallowed be thy
impediment of prayer, ABC's
always stayed on top of his job, although
when
the Republican supplication was over he inadvertently brushed past the devout
who
it
young blonde
woman
at right.
When
she saw
was, she bared her teeth, glared, and heatedly wiped off
her arm, belying the dog-eared platitude about prayer being a
balm to the Balloons.
spirit.
Like funny hats, balloons are a beloved and indispen-
sable part of
our political process. The release of red, white, and
blue inflated orbs over a nales
is
deemed
crowd during emotional convention
the festive
way
fi-
to celebrate the candidate, the
acceptance speech, and the end of four days of living
hell.
On
the night Dukakis delivered his acceptance speech in Atlanta, the
were
tricolors
a nice finishing
touch to an emotional evening
had been capped by the spectacle of every Democrat of any
that
stature taking to the
podium along with
The
down
balloons wafted
bonus to
the beaming candidate.
gently over the excited crowd, a
heartwarming event.
a
In contrast, by the final night of the Republican conven-
crowd worked
tion, the
interest
masquerading
pledge to the
flag!
more
self-
Prayer in the schools!
as morality.
Eight
frenzy of hysterical
itself into a
The
years of escalating profits! Sud-
denly huge caches of killer balloons were released from the heights of the
Superdome and somewhere
in the range of
two
hundred thousand of them dumped on the crowd. These orbs didn't waft: they ing.
came down with
vengeance, pelting and bash-
a
Giddy, the Republicans cast off their Sunday school de-
meanor and jumped and stomped on escape unbroken, they turned their
down
American
flags
upside
and, using the gold points at the ends, stabbed until
balloons
pher
their attackers. Lest any
little
were destroyed.
said,
Haiti,
all
the
one veteran campaign photogra-
standing back in disbelief.
It's
like Haiti
during the
elections.
II
These are the outlines and accessories of transgression: an
empty
chair, a
paper cup, and a used condom discarded surrep-
A A jogging hanky furtively swiped across the shriveled member. suit with easy frontal access. And a woman who was badly paid to perform a series of naughty poses and meager costumings. A titiously in
2m
shame and disgust on the carpet next
to the chair.
AT THEIR
woman detail,
with a
memory
the verbal
that
commands
had recorded,
seemingly exacting
in
given and obediently obeyed, per-
haps because they were so simple and pathetic. other televangelist,
Jimmy Swaggart
dollar gilded goose slaughtered
turbation, dirty words,
Oh
sure,
it's
MERCY
Down
goes an-
this time, a multimillion-
on the
voyeurism, mas-
altar of
and short-term motel
rentals.
easy to say in hindsight that
it all
makes
sense.
These taunting, prancing preachers, these wailing maws of
money
lust
—
it
stands to reason that they are hypocrites, scam-
Penthouse, July 1988, p. 109.
Carol Squiers
mongers, and opportunists through and through.
And
longings of Swaggart, however sad and puny, were
make
the news.
The news
that first "breaks" the story,
network newscasts,
to
in this case takes a particularly inter-
esting route through varied venues.
tional
so the
bound
it
From
the local media outlet
then progresses through the na-
daily newspapers,
and national news
magazines, and into the secondary purveyors such as newsoriented talk shows, late-night talk shows, lifestyle magazines,
and sex
rags.
Round and round
the news of Swaggart's misde-
meanors goes, swelling with conjecture and lishment.
Once hidden from
all
ridicule
and embel-
but a single observer's eyes, the
small and shameful ejaculations in hastily arranged encounters are magnified into major events that audiences across the land
could almost
see.
Events that they would lust to see, would pay
to see. Events that they, predictably, can see, for the cost of the July 1988 issue of Penthouse: The International Magazine for Men.
In
more ways than
lication.
Suspecting that
one, Penthouse its
readers'
is
a public-service
minds might be
pub-
than
less
razor sharp, Penthouse (like Playboy) helpfully characterizes each listing
on
contents page.
its
Some
pieces are called
"Comment,"
while others are "Article" or "Service." Most popular, probably, are those sections called "Pictorial."
Does Swaggart"
is,
but what
portage," a term that usually
it
was
A
pictorial
called
means "the
is
what "Debbie
by Penthouse was "React or process of re-
porting the news."
Jimmy Swaggart televangelist's
getting "done" was certainly news.
son snapped pictures of Swaggart outside
with a prostitute, evidence that placed him in position. Unfortunately,
no
original
a
a
A
rival
motel
compromising
photographs that we
know
of were taken of the encounters between Swaggart and Debra
Murphree,
a self-admitted
worker
in the sex industry
— not a
church secretary claiming wanton violation or an aspiring model/ actress
208
who
likes to
party with the powerful and randy, but a
MERCY
AT THEIR
woman who makes
men
her living servicing the unmet needs of
you wouldn't usually hear about. But
in this richly fictionalized era, just as
proof of presidential
lies is totally
documentary
ignored, so can documentary
proof of just about anything be materialized from thin
A
air.
re-
portage can be created in both words and pictures. So Debra
Murphree re-posed and
two
re-cited for
and
Penthouse writers
a
photographer the things that Swaggart had her do that brought
him down. Presented
as a
two-part package, an article included
a detailed narrative of Swaggart's "secret sex life" as described
by Debra Murphree, while
a series of black
and white photo-
graphs, isolated in a sealed section of the magazine that had to
be cut open after purchase, provided the reenactment of the sordid scenes.
— as either "reportage"
But what kind of pictures are these
or pornography? Shot in square format, they are printed
full-
frame with black borders in the self-conscious art photo
style
that
was popular
in the 1970s.
credit given, leading
Oddly, there
one to suspect
miliar with both this artful style
has taken these snaps. ing, like
1
Odder
that
and
is
no photographer's
someone
this
intimately fa-
kind of cheeky trespass
they are ironic and untitillat-
still,
medical photos or pictures from a women's
self-
examination manual. Murphree faces the camera and panto-
mimes her she
dirty deeds with a knowing,
back and demonstrates, with
lies
moves and positions
bemused expression. Or
clinical precision, the
wanted
that Swaggart
to see. Rather than
being exploited by the anonymous shooter, Murphree
is
in
cahoots with him, giving a deadpan, tongue-in-cheek perfor-
mance
that
is
cool and unseductive.
Penthouse's reasons for
producing
plexing but hardly indecipherable.
this
parodic piece are per-
The magazine's
editors
must
have realized that Murphree doing Penthouse was not going to be
convincing in the cheesecake marketplace.
A
plain
woman,
she
209
Carol Squiers
lacked both the trashy stylization and pendulous physical endow-
ments of limited
Hahn or Donna Rice and would
a Jessica
charm
for a jack-off clientele.
Still,
thus have
because she was an
upfront sex worker and not a supposed innocent trying to recover her self-respect through extortion, Murphree would feel freer to enact for the didn't
camera what had transpired
need to be portrayed,
toplessly
as
Hahn
— in healing waters and open
claimers, although she clearly judges as sick, thus separating his twisted
in private. She
was, musing soulfully fields.
— and
She issues no dis-
most of Swaggart's
needs from her
desires
own more
pragmatic motives. Unlike the typical pictorials, where Penthouse supplies brief, suggestive captions, the editors here could flesh
out the entire sordid scenario: Murphree's words printed beneath became the dirty images that defined the otherwise schematic visuals.
What portage"?
We
gart.
could Penthouse's readers gain from seeing this "re-
We
are positioned as viewers, as surrogates for Swag-
look across a car seat
at this
woman, with her
unbuttoned and her shorts pulled down rub herself.
We
take his position
him and we peer up her
skirt.
on
We
in order to display
bed
a
watch her
pull her panties
a
woman who
tells
us that this
chill, anti-
is
the
has contempt for her spectator's
And
incapacity to join in the performance. us question Swaggart's sexuality even
mock
up
these pictures, coupled with Murphree's al-
all
most condescending "memoirs," performance of
and
as she stands over
her "crack" and kneel, "doggie-like," on a bed. The erotic staging of
blouse
more
this
message makes
strongly than
we
his hypocrisy.
This might just be the rationale behind the pictures. For consider this man's television performance before his Striding back
was in
like
and forth and back and forth across
an animal
cheap-looking
in heat. Strutting
suits that
210
his stage,
he
and shouting, he appeared
weren't necessarily cheap
had money but he had to appeal to
fall.
his
(this
man
mainly lower-middle-class
AT THEIR MERCY
constituents), with their fabric often
and
his crotch.
the stage.
and
A pimp
shouts and
It
and god and
lust
A
for Jesus.
and throbs and thrusts
that walks
open and snapping
drawn
cock of the walk.
itself,
moans and
taut across his thighs
yells its incantations
and
again. But
tion, this
ramming plunging power. More than the motion
is
of sin
words are second-
What mesmerizes and what
this
cock
moving, brutal mouth pulled wide
hell, its
shut, again
ary here.
words,
A
again and again, across
convincing
really counts
is
this
mo-
logic of the
— so powerful, so demanding,
so essential.
A man man
of
of insatiable desires could have been imagined, a
many
lusts.
Yet the "truth" as
it's
staged and framed in
Penthouse presents us with a lust so diminished, so stunted, so repulsive.
More than bringing Swaggart down
preacher, these pictures bring "I don't sity
think evangelists
him down
mean
performer.
to be sex symbols," says Univer-
of Alabama historian David E. Harrell,
azine,
as a holy roller of a
as a sexual
Jr., in
Newsweek mag-
"but they are frequently handsome and highly masculine
in behavior.
swooning."
The audience response
Among
those
is
not unlike bobby-soxers
who most demanded and
elicited that
sublimated swooning was the unfortunate Mr. Swaggart. But the
boys
at Penthouse
figured
high-stepping cock.
The
stakes are higher,
found,
how
Mere
to stop the
swoon and chasten
scandal in the pulpit
is
and the market demands
more permanent psychic
a
now
that
old hat.
more pro-
disgrace.
Ill
From
all
of the newspaper images of the months-long Palestinian
uprising in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip and stands out. This small photograph, printed
West Bank, one
on page
8 of the
New
captioned "A house in the Palestinian
York Times for April 9,
is
village of Beita, in the
occupied West Bank, being blown up by
Israeli
troops."
It is
a simple
and somewhat abstract picture, be-
cause the photographer's view
is
so close to the exploding
m
Beita,
West Bank, April
8,
1988. Photo: Reuters/Bettmann News.
— either physically close or brought close by the use of a powerful lens — that besides the explosion, the smoke, and house
little
the blasted clouds of debris the picture and caption
Was
Killed by
is
is
visible in the image.
a headline:
"Army
Her Guard." And under
single sentence stands alone:
Underneath
Says Israeli Girl
that, in
boldfaced type, a
"The guard had shot
at
Arabs
before."
This refers, of course, to a much-publicized incident in
which
a teenage Israeli girl
was reported, with great hysteria and
horror, to have been "stoned to death" by Palestinian villagers.
Immediately after the
first
reports of the rock-throwing melee
that led to her death, Israel's justice minister called for the olition of
dem-
numerous Arab homes and the expulsion of hundreds
of Palestinians.
Two
days after the incident, and before
punishments could transpire, the that the girl
212
had
in fact
been
Israeli
killed not
army
some of the issued a statement
by Palestinians but by
AT THEIR
her
guard. Yet the
Israeli
army subsequently dynamited
MERCY
eight
houses belonging to families of Palestinians accused of taking part in the rock-throwing, despite
picture, then,
is its
nameless accused
who
its
own
What
did not directly cause her death.
report that the rocks
so distressing about the
is
evidence of retribution against a family of a
at least partially
vindicated by Israeli officials
nevertheless continued to carry out a punishment decreed
in the heat of hatred
Yet
it is
and
just a small
rage.
photograph that
offers this evidence, in
conjunction with the news story that accompanies
ways the picture seems even insignificant for example, than the images of
weeping
women
that have also
—
it.
In
some
far less dramatic,
it is
dead children, angry
soldiers, or
been printed. But the situation of
these people, with their grievous problems and appalling solutions,
is
essentially alien to us,
even while
them or damn them, and even while
What
emotions.
is
not alien to us
arrest, charges brought,
And what we cesses into
is
we sympathize with
pictures of
them evoke our
the idea of due process
— of
judgment passed, punishment decided.
see in the picture
is
the collapse of
all
those pro-
one immediate, and apparently acceptable, spasm of
revenge.
Under what circumstances would acceptable
on American
soil?
What
a violent street confrontation
rive at his
to ar-
— parents, wife,
his family
— and blast the house to ruins?
antinuclear demonstrators, after crawling through a fence
and damaging
a nuclear
warhead, would expect, in addition to
arrest, the destruction of their
in
punishment be
would expect the U.S. Army
home, evacuate him and
children, whatever kin lived there
What
a similar
black activist arrested during
1985 there was an
officially
homes?
It
seems unthinkable, yet
sanctioned bombing of an Ameri-
can dwelling. The Philadelphia house of a group of black Americans
who
belonged to an organization called
by the city police department, in
MOVE
a disastrous
was bombed
maneuver
sulted in the destruction of sixty other homes.
MOVE,
that re-
a radical
213
— Carol Squiers
e organization,
was unacceptably troublesome to
bors and local authorities, and officials
its
neigh-
intractability gave Philadelphia
its
an excuse to use extraordinary force against
it.
Usually, such force can only be gotten away with
when
applied to people considered too far outside the realm of society to be rendered even the
happened with the
most
their disruptive, violent,
and
had thus
far
them entree
raeli
to the
convinced the world
human
The opposition
society
commu-
from which they
their prior abstraction
much
and categorize than the PLO's bombs and
their
that
of their teenagers' stones to
guns and armored cars has proved
provoked
has
is
essentially nonlethal behavior (at
been excluded because of
into "terrorists."
human
What
Palestinians in the current insurgency
least in the events in question) has
nity to allow
basic of rights.
it is
assassinations,
a kind of sympathetic identification.
Is-
harder to label
and has
The images
of
dead children, angry women, and ruined homes have con-
veyed a tragic message that had never before reached the majority
of the American population with such force.
Out of
all
the terrible images pouring out of the occupied
territories, that picture of the
that the excuse for
sums up the frightening force Palestinian demands.
exploding house, and the news
destruction was no longer even valid,
its
It
been mobilized against
that has
also asks each
viewer to consider where
the use of unbridled force against an entire people will lead.
As the 1980s draws to
media
is still
a close, the
image of
taking a beating. In part, this
women
is
in the
orchestrated right-wing campaign against independent
Spearheaded by the attack on abortion
mass
the result of a wel.
rights,
most
women.
so-called
feminist issues have been steadily torpedoed during the Reagan era. Overall,
women made no economic gains, except for that women — mainly Anglo-Saxon Protestant
minority of genteel
who were 214
enlisted
by Wall Street during
its
"bull" market,
Jean Harris
at
1981. Photo:
Westchester County
Hedda Nussbaum
Jail,
AP/Wide World.
which only widened economic
testifying at Joel Steinberg
1988. Photo:
trial,
disparities.
But
AP/Wide World.
it
will not be
image of the successful, economically upwardly mobile
who
will stand for the eighties. Rather,
beaten, genteel
it
will be the
woman — Hedda Nussbaum — who
an
woman
image of
a
apparently will
represent the feminine status quo.
This
is
only
fitting.
The
eighties
began with the image of
another abused (emotionally rather than physically) genteel
woman — Jean Harris, who did away with randy diet doctor Herman Tarnower. In concert with the decade-long campaign against women, New York governor Mario Cuomo has decided that Harris, despite
good arguments
to the contrary,
must con-
tinue her penal servitude.
Cuomo's denial of clemency
for Harris occurred during the
Christmas holiday season for 1988, a time that seemed to breed a great
old
spasm of antiwoman
woman
fered
two heart
gerous
activity. Releasing a sixty-six-year-
with advanced heart disease,
signal.
attacks in prison,
who
has already suf-
would apparently send
Any other homicidal female might
and slaughter an unfaithful or abusive husband or
a
dan-
take up arms lover.
215
Carol Squiers
This trend,
it
seems, would interfere with a system that
firmly entrenched. In to
maul or
it,
husbands and lovers
and
their wives
kill
girlfriends.
is
feel relatively free
During
that last ex-
New Yorkers were also confronted images of two women gunned down by their estranged with husbands. At the time of their deaths, both women were under traordinary
week of
1988,
"court protection" orders because of threats and physical abuse
by their husbands. Yet the
men were
their violation of those orders.
still
on the
According to
streets despite
local police,
"hun-
dreds" of violations of court orders occur and each violation can't be considered a "top priority."
So the representation of bloodied able cultural
men
is
And
utterly taboo.
ation can be altered: the Jersey,
women remains a tolerwomen bloodying
norm, even though the image of even though proof
murder
dropped 44 percent
rate in
exists that this situ-
Bergen County,
in 1987, "five years after a
New
compre-
hensive state law took effect requiring the police to arrest violators of protective orders" (emphasis added). Reluctantly,
round up sure of
their fellow
power over
men, and
their
own
in so doing give
domestic situations.
In line with the presumption that the bloodlust of socially tolerable, the
supposed bloodlust of
nowhere more ferociously than
And
the
New
women
is
Day
on the sex
story
testing of fetuses.
"In a major change in medical attitudes and practice,
want to abort
a fetus
on the
"Even doctors who
selves will often tell
story, as
it
is
in the abortion rights struggle.
tors are providing prenatal diagnoses to pregnant
Telling
men
played out
York Times gave abortion foes a juicy present in a
front-page, Christmas
Kolata.
men
up some mea-
laid
out a sordid
who
wrote Gina
will not provide this service
women where
women where
ing trend of women
basis of sex alone,"
many doc-
women who
to go tale
them-
to go to get it."
seemed
to be the point of the
purporting to expose the grow-
decide to abort fetuses based on sexual
preference. Patiently, Kolata built up evidence against the lying,
216
MERCY
AT THEIR
who
calculating females
tions for this reason.
them abor-
tricked doctors into giving
"We've been burned," one doctor
bitterly
intoned.
Unspoken
"women from means
in the Times piece, except
India
and Asia,"
related to
it
that sexual preference usually
is
male sex and
a preference for the
where
a devaluation of the fe-
male. But neither the cultural forces that compel a
worry over the sex of her child or the
woman
to
father's role in sexual
preference were even mentioned. Clearly, the American family
women, painted
being destroyed by the country's
manipulators
who con
procedures for their
as
is
demented
innocent doctors into performing medical
own
diabolical end.
Women,
if
the Times
is
to be believed, will stop at nothing in order to control the hu-
man
race.
Control, submission, credibility, and victimization are
is-
sues played out repeatedly in the media, mainly to the detriment
of
women. Among
mur-
the most recent have been the "preppy"
der victim Jennifer Levin and the brutalized Tawana Brawley, along with Hedda Nussbaum.
And
out, poses a certain repetitious
the reportage, day in and day
and insidious
set of questions
about each of them: whether she was asking for allowed
whether she
it,
violation or beating
is
was
telling the truth,
it,
whether she
whether her death or
some sense deserved. By the way
in
the
questions are framed, the frequency with which they are asked,
and the sheer reiteration of words and images, the answer seems to be affirmative:
women
In 1980, Jean Harris
anomaly.
It
are getting what they deserve.
was represented
seemed certain
that
no
woman
as
an outcast and an
could
make common
cause with her, driven as she was by frightening self-delusion
and reprehensible versely,
is
class
philosophy. But
Hedda Nussbaum, con-
being touted as everywoman, as the victim potentially
lurking within each
woman
alive,
waiting to be abused. As
we
enter the Bush years and look toward the 1990s, the antiwoman rhetoric
— and the ghastly actions and images that result —
is
be-
217
Corol Squiers
ing played out with macabre
With every new
new
twists
day, that violation
and unabated
comes
to
ferocity.
seem more
familiar,
more common, more expected, more normal. Conditioned by the steady stream of sordid images, the injured and deformed face of a
Hedda Nussbaum begins
to look
pathetic than any smiling, self-confident
more
woman
essentially
sym-
could ever be.
Notes
1.
In his "Real Life
Greil
2i!
S
Rock Top 10" column of June
Marcus mentioned
that
21, 1988, in the Village
David Kennedy was the photographer.
Voice,
Victoria
de Grazia
THE ARTS OF PURCHASE:
HOW AMERICAN PUBLICITY SUBVERTED THE EUROPEAN POSTER, 1920-1940
On
a
summer Sunday
in 1931, a Fiat Spider
donkey path one thousand meters to Alps of Emilia. the drivers,
was the
It
two debonair youths, hopped out and
Midas Motor expert
up
reported on
it.
perplexed the
In a
town
so
chines; If
in
The only
oil.
need of lubrication thereabouts were sewing ma-
and gasoline and
nothing
Italian adver-
poor and out-of-
the-way, there was simply no market for engine
machines
to the per-
a symbolist poster advertising
Oil. This event equally
who
a
Apennine
car ever seen there. Just arrived,
first
plexity of the villagers pasted
tising
509 scrambled up
a village in the
else,
olive oil aplenty
were
available for that.
our sophisticated urbaner concluded,
documented once more the
futility
of postering.
this
episode
1
For students of mass culture, the advertiser's dilemma
—
namely, whether or not the campaign paid off by boosting markets for car oil
—
is
of slight interest.
other reasons. Not least of
all, it
The episode
is
telling for
presents in neat paradox
capitalist
market relations separate exchange from use
Here, no
less,
The
the machine had
story acquires yet
ical context.
more
come
to
significance
announce
when
social
needs!
put in histor-
in
complex
cultural
meanings; commodities come loaded with ways of
thinking about individual
it is
values.
own
Students of market cultures have emphasized that
exchange and consumption are embedded
and
its
how
and
human
relations;
and
acts of purchase foster
collective identities. 2 Accordingly,
we might
new ask
221
de Grazia
Victoria
whether
profit alone motivated this enterprise
and whether the
young men were not conscious of their own role as interpreters of culture; we might query how the villagers regarded it and what significance should be given to the motor
at
the time, as
if,
came
plains, they
modern ways commotion
that disrupted
thereafter,
others,
centers to find
as
a
leader that the donkey path
The roadbed was upgraded soon
and before long,
emptied out
from causing
Sunday mass, their deed impressed
community
transitable.
in the
bringing urbanity and
as civilizing knights,
to a rough rural backwater. Aside
made
American
from the centers of consumer culture
the local priest and
could be
oil's
young men's bravado did not go unremarked
origin. Indeed, the
this little Italian village, like
emigrants made their way
work and partake
down
in the amenities of
many
to urban
modern
consumer mores. This micro-event, interpreted both as a market ploy and for
its
social-cultural implications,
complex able
story.
The
is
a fragment of an even
variations thereon are practically
and can be conjured up with any of the myriad images
which American
cultural
and consumer
more
innumerin
artifacts set jarringly
amidst the semi-rural environs of other societies, sometimes to
be interpreted
as
representing modernity, sometimes as degener-
acy and corruption.
The Coke
plummets from
bottle that
a pass-
ing airplane onto the Khoisan, Xi, in The Gods Must Be Crazy;
the comic-pathetic scene of bleach-blond
with
a
Coke
Hamoua shimmying
bottle in Youssef Chahine's 1957 film Central Station;
the Coca-Cola-induced high of desperate 1950s teenagers in the
Hungarian Peter Gothar's Time Stands emblematic of a world-changing
Still
— these images are
set of events in this century
all
:
namely, the transposition of American models of marketing and
consumer culture beyond U.S. borders
in the last seventy or
eighty years as the United States acquired world economic
preeminence. In this essay,
222
I
want to explore some aspects of
this global
THE ARTS OF PURCHASE
process of "Americanization" by focusing on
how
in a particular
region of the world, continental Europe, and in a particular
— namely, the interwar years — conceptions of market,
period
merchandising techniques, and advertising design of American
provenance forced the development of new patterns of consumer culture
and thus came to define what
By consumer
culture,
I
mean
it
meant
modern. 3
broadly a society-wide structure of
meaning and
feeling organized primarily
chase. In the
forms we know today,
States. Since the
to be
around
acts of pur-
originated in the United
it
turn of the century, as the main circuitry of
mass commerce was established, techniques devised to promote national markets for the branded, standardized products of largescale
manufacturers were honed in
a
huge industry specialized in
preparing, placing, and disseminating advertising messages. Increasingly, the contractual relations of
market shaped notions of
community, pressures
and the modalities of po-
for entitlement,
consensus. This change was accompanied by the construc-
litical
tion of
new
social subjects,
such
as the
consumer, and of new
social mediators including the salesman, the advertising expert,
also gave rise to
new
organizations such
Rotary businessmen's clubs. Not
least
of
and the press agent. as the
a
new
It
all, it
gave rise to
language of goods. Both in the U.S. and abroad, this com-
plex system of representation cast capitalist relations in a light:
the dynamic principal was not so
tribution and consumption; the a subject
empowered by
lectivities increasingly
his or
much production
consumer was,
if
new as dis-
not sovereign,
her spending capacity; social col-
appeared to be based on choice in the
marketplace rather than the vagaries of geography or the bonds of craft or class; finally, social conflicts
seemed subject
to resolu-
tion by widening access to commodities rather than by revolutionizing capitalist society root
and branch. 4
The responses of European special
inasmuch
as
societies
were
in
some
sense
American consumer culture appeared
abruptly and in less brutal forms than in Third
World
less
areas:
223
Victoria
de Grazia
there was no colonial heritage and no physical conquest was involved.
From
the start,
American models competed with
well-
defined market cultures, which themselves had contributed
much
over the previous century to developments in the U.S.,
and that continued to produce the
finely
wrought
theless,
American consumer culture presented
local notions of market, craft,
goods
craft
held up as models of taste and quality by American
elites.
None-
a real challenge to
and modernity. Reconstructing
which certain American values and techniques
the process by
were assimilated
into
European commercial culture demonstrates
not just the power exercised by the U.S. economy, but also the process by which certain local economic patterns and cultural
were
alternatives
altered,
abandoned, or suppressed.
American business methods, with
on creating productive
which markets were
societies in
their powerful emphasis
World War
capacity, took hold after still
regarded
economic Malthusianism: markets, limited, the best policy
one's tried
and true
around old
city centers 5
in
tastes.
being naturally stick to
Commercial culture was organized
and catered to bourgeois rather than
Generally, politicians could not conceive of changes
consumption or cultural
them
a residual
was to cleave to traditions and
clientele.
mass
like resources,
in
Most
as finite.
European business firms continued to be guided by
I
habits such as
to alter their appeals. Indeed,
bound up with
class cleavages,
it
would have caused
consumer
identities being so
was hard, even
for social re-
formers, to imagine that workers would develop "needs" that
were not
strictly
class position.
economic
Any
necessities or consonant with their
ulterior desires reflected "false conscious-
ness" or "embourgeoisement." 6 In the 1920s,
American consumer culture
started to chal-
lenge these assumptions. This was especially manifest in what the specific focus of
my
essay,
namely the grande
European advertisers and commercial sent goods in the marketplace. In
224
its
artists
querelle
over
how
is
among
to repre-
most elementary form,
this
THE ARTS OF PURCHASE
debate centered on whether to pursue the editorializing copy style
used in the American mass-circulation press or to prefer
the design aesthetic associated with European postermaking traditions.
Should European promoters stake their future on
tual style that
promised
profits
a tex-
and new professional dignity? Or
should they stay loyal to pictorial representation in the hope of preserving artistic autonomy and defending local traditions?
Un-
Thus
derlying these positions, broader issues were in dispute.
the debate reflected conflicting assumptions about the operations
of the market, the extent of "communities of consumption," the logics motivating
constructing
consumer behaviors, and even the means of
human
desire.
The contending
positions also re-
flected diverse notions within the advertising sector and,
more
generally, within bourgeois culture about the relationship be-
tween
and commerce. In
art
aesthetics of representation realistically to highlight
particular, they differed about the
itself;
should goods be represented
what they did for the consumer,
as the
American practice indicated? Or should they be animated by strong symbolic and pictorial design traditions in order to acti-
European practitioners held out?
vate latent desire, as
Both the
allure
and
fear of
ing this contest reflected a
the elites in post- World
ment
that,
more
War
I
American commercialism pervasive ambivalence
Europe about
a
fuel-
among
model of develop-
while promising prodigious growth, also threatened
uncontrollable cultural and social changes. There was a kind of
unanimity
and
in favor of
economic modernity: from conservatives
liberals to the far left, the
response to Taylorism and Ford-
ism was generally positive. 7 But the implications of Americanizing trends for culture and values were judged unpredictable if
not outright pernicious. American society might well have
tol-
erated the continuous turnover in custom generated by mass
consumption. After garded
as
all, its
constitutional structures
were
re-
being sufficiently sturdy to withstand the fads and
wild fluctuations of opinion that European observers had associ-
225
Victoria de Grazia
ated with the "civilization" of the
New World
Tocqueville's travels to America. Moreover,
peared powerful enough to
sumer
American
American
capital ap-
unleashed by con-
satisfy the desires
culture. In any event,
ever since
society,
it
was argued,
— views differed as to — that the risk that novel mores would disrupt status hier-
was already so homogenized or so hybrid
which
archies, declassing the bourgeoisie
seemed minor.
ders,
and disquieting the lower or-
In Europe, by contrast, cultural tradi-
tionalism and highly stratified consumer habits appeared to stand as a
bulwark against
servatives
who most
social upheaval.
anguished about the conquest of European
American material
culture by
Thus, for the cultural con-
civilization, the
"democratization
of consumption," as conservative commentator Andre Siegfried
wrote, could "only be obtained
at a tragic price
workmen becoming automatons,
leisure ruled
.
.
.":
namely,
by standardized
products, and spiritual values forsaken for mechanistic conduct. 8
At the same time, American commercial culture seemed to offer
much
and
to professionals in quest of social
cultural legit-
imacy: this was true not just for advertising experts, but also for engineers, architects, journalists, and movie producers, indeed for
all
of the professions associated with constructing and
com-
municating in mass society. For advertising agents, in particular,
American technologies of distribution and publicity offered three opportunities:
were being made their
own
in
first,
to
America
make
big profits,
much
when
interest-group or-
ganization was firming up everywhere; and third, to
what might be described
Great
they saw
in the 1920s; second, to bolster
professional status at a time
geois order, consequent
as
manage
as a crisis of representation of the
on the
War and compounded by
bour-
social upheavals following the
the double challenge of Ameri-
canism and Bolshevism in their wake. 9 Thus modern publicity
might help overcome the zero-sum
logic of
economic national-
ism by deepening and broadening markets across national
m
THE ARTS OF PURCHASE
boundaries.
It
would eliminate
irrational
consumer choices by
applying behavioral studies and psychological testing to motivation. Above
mass appeal, and of
new
elites
and
advertising's
all,
stripped-down language,
display of business
its
human its
tempos bespoke the vigor
their endeavor to publicize the virtues of tech-
were being
nological civilization. These virtues, they argued,
contested, not least of
all
because
modern
industrial society's ac-
complishments had been furtively concealed by retrograde businessmen. Flashing the name of the French Henry Ford, Citroen,
from the
Eiffel
Tower with two hundred thousand
luminating the Milan
Duomo
bulbs, or
il-
Square with thousands of mega-
watts of publicity, or faking advertising copy to suggest
— as Le Corin the mid- 1920s — these feats
industrial patronage for innovating architecture
busier did in his journal L'Esprit
signaled the compatibility of cultural iconoclasm, technology,
and
reformed community of workers and
a
tising,
modernists saw
a
new
adver-
capitalists. In
language, the idiom of youth
em-
battled against the rhetorical conventions of the old, the sacrosanct,
and the academic. Advertising promised to become
the Esperanto of a dynamic capitalism, "the key to world welfare," to use the slogan of the
1929 Berlin World Advertising
Conference, and, as such, the guarantor of a
new
international
order. 10
Their zeal was
all
the stronger because the structure of Eu-
ropean economies and the nature of consumer habits seemed so unpropitious to promoting American-style techniques. U.S. advertisers
had the advantage of serving oligopolistic firms and
working with brand-products devised and
affluent markets.
for broad,
homogeneous,
However, in the 1920s, most European
business firms served local markets, at best regional ones. Mar-
keting consumer commodities across national boundaries was practically
unheard
of.
Domestic markets were generally
low, even in the most affluent nation, namely late
many; the European working
classes
were
still
shal-
Weimar Ger-
not regarded as
227
Victoria
de Grazia
consumers
potential
among to
in these pre-Keynesian economies.
those producers of consumer durables
in
Even
who had gone
American production systems, there seemed
between innovations
11
over
to be a real gap
production techniques and distribution
methods. Meanwhile, the most
were not the
visible advertisers
producers of consumer durables, but an ill-reputed lot of vendors of patent medicines and entertainment.
Above
all,
the organization of space and publics seemed
tle suited to the marketing practices developed to
ized brands in a relatively
sell
lit-
standard-
homogeneous and incomparably more
wealthy market, using the press and other media to reach out to increasingly suburbanized publics. Traditionally,
were dominated by major
kets
parisien,
we know,
department store vilion,
capitals of
set the dress style of all etalage, the
European mar-
consumption; the gout
Western
The
open-air market, the exposition pa-
and the grand boulevard were the typical
market culture organized around licized their
society.
institutions of a
city centers. Retailers
pub-
merchandise by elaborate displays and customers
were primarily bourgeois. Local markets might appear luxury
at
the core. But outside of the great metropolitan centers and a few
wealthy provincial towns, they were status differences,
cumstances, the poster, along with plays,
offered the major
still
need
straitened by poverty,
window and
for detail
and
cir-
shopfloor dis-
mediums of communication:
placarded kiosks, handbills, postcards cial
still
and regional fragmentation. Under the
all
signaled,
little class specificity,
imity of centers of consumption.
The mass
with no spe-
the physical prox-
press absorbed
increasing amounts of advertising revenues by the early 1920s.
Even
so,
the political character and class specificity of most lead-
ing national
news organs, the regional dispersion, and the great
jumble of rates and formats made the print medium gainly
and
still
an un-
costly undertaking for advertisers. 12
Although beleaguered advertisers banked on U.S. precedents, they
228
were not indifferent to the dangers of American-
THE ARTS OF PURCHASE
modernity. Some features of U.S. marketing technologies
style
were not readily advertising:
it
digestible.
the exploitativeness of U.S.
was with awe and trepidation
marked on American licized:
One was
from deodorants
to the afterlife.
that advertisers re-
ruthlessness. Everything could be pub-
to furs, babies to burials, the intimate
Not even
religion
was sacred,
marketing
as the
director of a French pharmaceutical concern observed in Venire, a leading
French trade journal. He
illustrated his point
with ad
copy showing a soldier offering to quaff Christ on the Cross' thirst
with
gall
and apologizing
that
it
wasn't Vinegar X. 13
intense competitiveness caused uneasiness as well.
thing to urge Taylorized
work
It
The
was one
rules for sales personnel or to up-
grade the profession by purging the
unfit;
it
was quite another to
introduce humbling competition into the ranks of the profession itself.
Above
all,
there was the giant problem of "taste." U.S. ad-
vertisers abroad
contended that there was "one best way"
vertising. Carefully studied in
qualities, their advertising pitches
pealing.
tified still
were deemed universally ap-
Hence they would need only minor tuning
local conditions.
in ad-
terms of markets and product
However, in Europe, bourgeois
to adjust to
status
was iden-
with conserving cultural traditions, and advertising was
close
enough to being considered
thetic standards alongside
art to
want
to
uphold aes-
commercial ones. Each nation
— and
in the case of Germany, each major region as well — had identifiable style of publicity. in the interest of building
clients really
up
its
own
Should these customs be jettisoned sales?
Were
advertisers
and
their
ready to foresake the old cultural alliances underly-
ing their class position to pander to the tastes of volatile mass publics?
tom
It
might be possible to argue that publicity was
just business,
opening the way to
all stylistic
at
conventions,
regardless of national provenance. Yet questions remained.
American advertising
styles
vert national traditions?
promote
Was
alien values?
bot-
Did
Did they sub-
there indeed a national "taste,"
229
Victoria
de Grazia
not just
among
advertisers but
among consumers
as well, that
should be protected and perhaps even promoted against U.S.
commercialism?
These
what
issues
were most sharply formulated
in trade journals
of the poster." In
its
in discussing
was commonly referred to
as the "crisis
heyday in the Belle Epoque urban centers
of prewar Europe, the poster was lamented to have "decayed"
and "declined"
complaint was espe-
in the years thereafter. This
strong in Italy and in France. In Germany, with
cially
tionally strong
advertising
commercial design
and commercial
art corporations,
fretted about their future
new American
excep-
and much stronger
domestic and international markets, the poster held least until the early 1930s. 14
its
traditions, well-organized
own,
its
But there, too, commercial
at
artists
and advertisers weighed the merits of
systems against the familiar
German
styles of
representation.
Was that
it
the poster really "in crisis"? Crisis
was used suggested
that the poster
is
a strong
word:
had become the focus
of a whole set of anxieties. These were perhaps spurred by fears of American competition. But they also reflected
little
under-
stood and ill-tolerated changes going on in European societies of the period. For sure, the poster had occupied pride of place in
prewar advertising. The great expansion of merchandising the turn of the century had put a
market the special
premium on
and
inventiveness.
To
article for the bourgeois trade, the stock
posters that lithographic companies kept in advertising
after
that could be
hand
for all-purpose
adopted indiscriminately for pro-
moting soap, chocolate, sewing machines, or whatever were judged ineffective. Enterprising merchants in search of specialized designs
Nouveau or
were thus hospitable
to the aesthetics of Art
Jugendstil, as well as to Arts
styles. Intensely local
and Crafts movement
schools evolved within national boundaries
or in reference to regional markets: the leading artists were re-
nowned
230
locally, like the British
Hardy, Pryde and Nicolson, or
THE ARTS OF PURCHASE
Andre Cheret,
the French postermasters the
Raffet,
Germans Hohlwein and Lucian Bernhard;
piello,
who moved between
recognition.
past:
War
Italy,
Cap-
acquired broader
15
For urban residents Great
France and
and Gavarni, or
a few, like
who
idealized the halcyon days of pre-
Europe, the poster was a soothing reminder of the
amidst social turmoil,
it
recalled the comfortable
human
dimensions of the Belle Epoque. "The cry of the posters from the concrete walls/ Proclaims a fairyland that
we
have lost,"
wrote the Dadaist poet Richard Huelsenbeck. In the bleak, chaotic cities of
cars/
And
Weimar, "Man might stand naked among tramway-
not
know
a
word of human speech/ The colored
poster-world would break secret
down
the bars/
And
own
his
heart the
meaning teach." 16
The tendency
to identify the poster with a
order heightened perceptions of
tempo of postwar commercial
how
life.
uneasily
The
politicized, having
street politics
become
with the
poster's crisis
perceived as having a threefold dimension.
become
more humane
it fit
First,
identified
was thus
the poster had
with left-wing
and mass mobilizations after the war. Second,
businessmen were increasingly uncertain about what aesthetic or style artist
was more suited to was
selling goods. Third, the
commercial
in increasingly precarious circumstances, beset
by
competition and unemployment. All of these combined to jeopardize the poster's value as commercial
art.
Thus, since the
war, and especially in the wake of the "red years," the poster
had become
a
much-debated form of mass culture (hence
Huelsenbeck's evocation of the poster's symbolic and social value). In
Germany, the revolution of 1918 and the subsequent
polarization of national political
life
had produced an outpouring
of wall manifestos. Experimental in form, often inspired by Expressionist motifs, they rally public
were designed
as
propaganda, that
is,
to
opinion rather than to market goods. Second, older
conventions very successful in the prewar years, such as Lucian
23!
Victoria de Grazia
Bernhard's emphasis on the "thing-ness" of objects (Sachplakat),
were worn to death by
imitators.
Although the exhaustion of old
formulae led to a greater variety of figurative and pictorial motifs, the conventions about
Commercial culture a scale to
what best sold goods broke down.
in the big cities
was conducted on too
permit regular contact between businessmen and the
Forced to take up their portfolios to make the rounds
arts.
large
search of clients, artists tended to pitch their sketches
in
more
loudly and cast their personal idiosyncrasies in crasser form; and
when
executed, the designs presented stronger traits of conven-
tionalization than the goal of advertising usually warranted. Finally,
young
artists
plagiarism, not to
commercial
everywhere were discouraged by the ease of
mention the
artists as
difficulty of plying their trade as
commissions declined. This insecurity fed
the fear, polemically evoked by Grosz and Herzefelde in Die
Kunst
in
Gefahr (1925), of the "dismantling of the artist in his
present form." In their radical vision, the artist
two
choices, namely, "he could
merge
or advertising man, or else he might
now had
but
in industry as a designer
become
a propagandist for
the revolution." 17
At the same time, there were growing doubts about
whether postering
itself
was an
effective
medium
of advertising.
Marketing was becoming a more complicated process, with new
new
products, vertising
and new uses of urban
publics,
consumer
space. Firms ad-
and house-
durables, including automobiles
hold appliances, as well as personal products such as soap, cosmetics, and cleansers, realized that these for explanation. city centers.
They
also sought
At bottom
postering reflected
its
products called outside of the
their concerns about the effectiveness of
high costs. Paper and color printing were
expensive, and postering was
More and
new
new consumers
encumbered by heavy
taxation.
more, local governments treated street advertising as a
luxury or a nuisance: strapped for revenues in the 1920s, town councils assessed taxes of
232
all
kinds,
and
practically
no revenues
THE ARTS OF PURCHASE
went to maintain the emplacements.
In Italy, local taxes
product, and the kind of posting (whether
it
on
size,
was on board,
metal, or concrete) added 50 percent to the price of production.
Even then,
was not uncommon
it
for
new
rulings to cause entire
print runs to be warehoused. Moreover, regulations verse that they discouraged any but the
most
local
were so
di-
marketing
endeavors. 18
But the real issue was cost-effectiveness. In most big urban centers, city
life
was changing:
in the 1920s, renewal projects
designed to ease the flow of motor
traffic
and clean out the
sign-
cluttered confusion of the old central districts cleared away
poster emplacements and speeded up the pace of urban
Among tricts ter.
the major cities, except perhaps for Paris, residential dis-
were more and more separate from the commercial cen-
New
systems of public transportation speeded up daily
In any case, the poster
was unable to target did
life.
was simply too generic
in
its
life.
appeal.
It
Nor
specific publics for particular products.
readily lend itself to provincial distribution networks
it
where prosperous small-town or found.
The bourgeois
centers had
moved
rural customers
might be
clientele formerly concentrated in city
to the suburbs. True, advertisers might study
the subway routes, as they were invited to do in Berlin, so as to
determine which led to proletarian quarters and which led to bourgeois suburbs. They might then specify the goods to be advertised sive it
on each
route.
However, the costs of
this
more exten-
coverage were high. There was also a problem of turnover:
was alleged
that the quicker pace of
more
tion spans, and
more frequent
life,
shorter atten-
postering. As a mid- 1920s Berlin advertisers'
adage, loosely translated, put
it
in
Warholian terms: "Every
ef-
— for twenty-four hours" ("Ein Plakat an der Saule macht unsterblich — fur 24
fective poster
effektvolles
urban
rapid turnover of products called for a
is
a celebrity
Stunden"). 19 Finally, the use of public space
was becoming more com-
233
Victoria de Grazia
petitive
and
The
conflictual.
garish outsize cinema posters, dis-
American
tributed by the promoters of
on giant presses cal
in the U.S.,
production. In
films
and often produced
crowded out smaller placards of
there were complaints that vandals
Italy,
ripped up the hoardings for
fuel.
New
products and leisure pas-
times vied for position. During the great
German
1923, the commercial poster was literally buried
The
ings.
situation
was
lo-
bleak.
inflation of
on the hoard-
According to the account of Pro-
fessor H. E. Frenzel, director of Berlin's refined
commercial
art
magazine Gebrauchsgraphik, "The principal space [had been] occupied by the movie poster with
high-sounding
titles,
pernicious excrescences and
its
calculated to appeal to cooks
maids. Next in importance
and kitchen-
came the numerous announcements
of offices for the buying and selling of gold and jewels, advertise-
ments of pleasure
resorts, 'beauty dances,'
go-go
girls,
etc."
These were interspersed with "red placards topped with fabu-
sums
lous
tween
in millions of
these, "small
being suffocated, [were] benefit of people as part of the
marks
for this or that criminal." Be-
and modest
who,
official state
in reality
economic
like the
life
agonized sighs of a
announcements
were no longer
spaces of
town
centers.
for the
to be regarded
of the nation." 20 In sum, consump-
tion was no longer comfortably contained within the cial
man
commer-
Those spaces were increasingly being
subverted by urban renewal and shifting networks of distribution,
by the poor from below, and by Americanism from abroad.
Ultimately the poster's apparent inability to represent the
new
world of consumer goods was brought home by the growing use of a potentially
more commercially
effective alternative. This
the newspaper or periodical insert. Throughout Europe, true, the print
medium was
already increasingly widely used for
publicity purposes by the early 1920s. But press advertising still
was
generally treated as a shabby enterprise: crowded, competing
for space, smudgily copied,
234
was
it is
with heavy black lined designs, they
THE ARTS OF PURCHASE
were often but mere announcements. used,
and nostrums of various
sorts.
For their
sale
stood or
the results of advertising. Nationwide campaigns for
newspaper
ucts treated the
black
was
namely patent medicines, quack remedies, fortune
services, ing,
Insofar as long copy
was devoted to the most heavily advertised goods and
it
as if
on white, emphatic with
name of the
it
were
a single
tell-
on
fell
new prod-
a poster: using heavy
word, displaying the
article advertised in as large a typeface as possible,
without any decoration or
illustration, publicity inserts
seemed
intended, according to the characterization of a contemporary observer, to give "a blow between the eyes, as hard as ble to deliver
The
through the
it,
medium
of printer's ink."
was an entirely new
real alternative then
advertising, identified with the
American consumer
it is
possi-
21
style of print
industry.
This was the carefully argued, meticulously designed, sometimes multicolor insert in especially conspicuous display in the masscirculation magazines of the interwar years, in particular, the Ladies
Home Journal,
Saturday Evening
Post,
Employed by American companies such Walter
Thompson
the late 1920s,
was
it
American national
European
in their also
style
and Good Housekeeping.
as
Erwin Wasey and
J.
advertising campaigns in
much-cited in European sources
as the
of advertising. In design, print ads were
densely packed, sometimes three columns of several paragraphs, illustrated
with
titles
so-called "reason
and decoration.
why"
Yet, at its best, as in the
studies of Helen Resor,
it
was unclut-
and readable;
it
combined much information
and persuasive reasoning, and
it
was backed up with ostensibly
tered to look
at
scientific data or testimonials
print," as
it
was sometimes
the attributes of goods and
Thus,
it
by social leaders. "Salesmanship in
called, the text insert
how
emphasized
the consumer could use them.
"sold the benefit instead of the product: illumination in-
stead of lighting fixtures, prestige instead of automobiles, sex ap-
peal instead of
mere soap." 22 Often the advertisement imitated
the look and layout of the
medium
in
which
it
was printed,
as if
235
Victoria de Grazia
to play
on the
indistinctiveness in a highly
between "real" reading matter and
commodified culture
editorializing for
consumer
products.
This
style,
sometimes called "stupid realism," or perhaps
with more analytical
rigor, "capitalist realism," 23
worked
through different psychological mechanisms from those in the poster
and print copy derived from
temporaries frequently pointed out publicity that
they contrasted the
worked through seduction with
worked by
evocation, or
nism, with
its
when
which
that
they contrasted American purita-
purported emphasis on interpreting the
European paganism, with like
when
European poster
its
at play
So European con-
it.
worship of the
advertising, in
idol.
with
text,
24 Indeed,
un-
which symbolic goods were
common
represented with symbolic forms, as was increasingly
in
the 1920s, the American style relied, in Michael Schudson's
words, on the
"common
understanding of
audience." 25
its
American advertising layout played on emotions and it
One
insecurities;
reassured the consumer that the sponsor was likewise a patron
of shared ideals, and the product being endorsed concretely and actively contributed to their perpetuation.
claim to represent their social
common
may not
veys that firms like
through the marketplace. American
have depended on the scientific market sur-
J.
Walter
Thompson swore
any real respect for public opinion. But if
it
temporary dose of empathy for popular
enough
its
manipulated
meanings by implying that they were individual ac-
quisitions, available solely
advertising
Democratic by
social values, this style
familiarity
did
by,
much
command
susceptibilities
less
on
a strong
and
with the qualities of the product to be able to
write persuasive copy. Just as the poster represented turn-of-the-century Euro-
pean urban commercial culture,
this advertising
form
the state of development of early twentieth-century
marketing. Text advertisements carried, as
it
reflected
American
were, heavy freight
over long distances, reaching out to diverse, nonhomogeneous
236
THE ARTS OF PURCHASE
publics at a time
when markets were
impersonal. They had a strong power of projection
medium,
to recall
and
increasingly distant
when
the
McLuhan's familiar phrase, was not yet the
message and the presentation of new brands
More
considerable explanation.
still
called for
generally, the adoption of cap-
realism seems to have responded to what Pierre Bourdieu
italist
described as the "popular aesthetic," that of people who, domi-
nated by ordinary interests and urgencies, expect the conventions of representation "to allow
things just
represented." They
from
lack of familiarity but
participation,
them
to believe 'naively' in the
reluctantly accept abstraction, "not
from
a
which formal experiment
deep-rooted demand for systematically disap-
points ..." In this sense, they behave differently from "aesthetic elites"
who
"believe in the representation
.
.
.
more than
in the
things represented" because they experience the world "freed
from urgency and through the practice of end
activities
which are an
in themselves." 26
By the 1920s, U.S.
had come around, not with-
advertisers
out conflict, to sharing the aesthetic of capitalist realism with their audience; indeed they
leadership. For
promoted
no aesthetic seemed
complex modernity of market the one hand, advertising
it
to legitimate their social
to represent so well the
was twofold.
relations. This
On
promoted an impersonal marketplace
of vast scale, stimulating the conviction that "what was desirable," indispensable to a
modern world
other hand, advertising denied
its
outlook.
new was
On
the
economic nature
essentially
as
the mass communications system of the marketplace by striving after a subjective, personal appeal.
publicity
Thus,
promoted economic modernity,
it
the uncontrollability of market operations. public to
new conveniences while
stressful competitiveness
it
the same time as
at
protected against
It
accommodated the
comforted them against the
and the cultural
strictures that
went
along with them. 27 Naturally, this conception of
how modern goods
should be
Victoria de Grazia
sold was not uncontested in the
One
European advertising milieu.
among
typical response, shared not just
bound, but even by individuals working
and trade journals was bad
taste.
cism, the
The
American copy
mix of
stylistic
that
style
was simply
methods was
to the
American
inadvisable. style,
Not
as the
premium
complex sen-
least of
low quality of repro-
space, emulation of such
all,
there was the fear that
produced by giant bureaucratic juggernauts,
would snuff out the expressivity of the advertising the
in
of the old world. Europeans would not tolerate such long
duction and the high costs of
the
tradition-
conventions were perhaps suited for a
mix would not appeal
and for technical reasons, such
texts;
more
the
Americanizing firms
grossly literal sensibility, the pretentious didacti-
"young people"; sibility
that
in
name
initiative,
of efficiency, profits, mass markets, personality
— in sum
all
it
staff itself; in
denied "fantasy,
that gives pleasure to the exis-
tence of our publicity experts [techniciens]." 28 Indeed, one reaction to this formidable rival was to defend
European poster
traditions. This defense used
ferent strategies.
One might be
associated with the
rope.
The other
it
ing a
more
egies
presumed
quite dif-
weaker commercial markets of Southern Eu-
strategy might be called reformist: this
sociated with the powerful position of
markets, and
two
described as resistance; this was
Germany
in
was
as-
European
sought to commercialize the poster by develop-
varied idiom and wider marketing appeal. Both strat-
visual signing
that
and
commodities needed only
that their uses
were
familiar
relatively simple
enough not
to re-
quire any complex system of textual signification.
The by the
strategy of resistance
Italian
was most militantly put forward
Giuseppe Magagnoli, founder and director of the
poster workshop Maga.
A
former salesman with the leading
French poster concern, Vercasson, Magagnoli had established
own
atelier just after the
his
Great War. This firm was exclusively
devoted to commercial postermaking. With showrooms centrally located in Milan and Paris and business connections as far away
238
Ball bearings
Poster advertising ball bearings produced by
and such are the "material
substructure of our civilization." Print advertising
Fiat's subsidiary Riv,
from
mid- 1920s.
Fortune, late 1920s.
as
Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires,
it
was
Maga workshop,
largely responsible
for the reputation of Italian poster art for individuality
and bold
expression. Magagnoli's contemporaries, bothered by his factiousness as they sought to professionalize their metier, charged
the firm with being "old school" and overly specialized. ter charge firm's
was true
in a way,
The
lat-
and perhaps contributed to the
bankruptcy in 1932. Magagnoli himself died the next year
of heart failure. ?9 In
its
prime, however,
Maga employed
the talents of lead-
ing French and Italian artists, including Cappiello, the Italians Nizzoli, Sinopico,
and Pozzati (Sepo), the French-born,
ianized Lucien-Achille Mauzan, and other lesser
often
unnamed
figures
working
in the
house
style. In his
organ published through the 1920s under the chio,
or Pans dans
l'Oeil
(Punch
against "all the old, rancid
and
in the eye),
Ital-
known and
title
house
Pugno nell'Oc-
Magagnoli ranted
idiotic systems
used up to now,"
239
Victoria de Grazia
and especially against the purported
and academi-
scientificity
cism of U.S. advertising. 30 Typically, Maga's posters were "materialized ideas": they
performed
as large
trademarks for goods,
though they were always unmistakably Maga products. The color
was forced by giving them
effect
a colored, black, or blue back-
ground, and the lettering, brief and the design. Indeed, the text, far design,
legible,
did not form part of
from being integrated
into the
was generally added on afterwards, once the customer
had selected the sketch for
his
product from a roster of
proposals.
The work of Lucien-Achille Mauzan was reputation.
He was not
Drawing posters according to
ventive lithographer.
of his own, directly the
method
that
crucial to Maga's
only a virtuoso designer, but also an in-
upon the stone or
zinc,
a technique
he had so mastered
he could turn out daily two press-ready posters
140 by 140 centimeters worked in four colors. Indeed, his out-
put was prodigious.
From 1906 when he
Mauzan was estimated
Maga
artists,
to have
produced 3,200 items. Like other
Mauzan played on quick
"la trovata" (the
visual wit, the
it
had to grab your attention;
it
name
of the
first Italian
British publicity expert
sound of your voice
The poster was
Clamor,
fittingly,
roadsign company). In
commented, "you have
— to be heard."
a bar-
was the voice of the object
calling out, clamoring for attention (and
the
cunning of
gimmick), the odd juxtaposition, and the
ostensibly animate qualities of the object. ker;
started through 1929,
31
In
was
Italy, as a
to increase the
common, Maga and
its
entourage eschewed any reference to the social attributes of objects or the potential
needs they might serve.
It
was through
their rendering of the object that they preserved a strong sense
of
human
was
agency; the machine, domesticated and individualized,
vivified
through representation.
The entry gued, ing
240
is
into a society of
new
distinctions,
it
has been ar-
fraught with the "anxiety of exposure" and aestheticiz-
becomes
a distancing
mechanism
to preserve social
THE ARTS OF PURCHASE
position. 32 In Magagnoli's case, but not only his, aestheticizing
means
offered a cess.
to establish control over the modernizing pro-
This claim to leadership rested on his capacity to caricature
goods rather than to communicate to new consumers about their utility.
His Americanizing compatriots contested his position as
backward, and
factious,
inefficient. Yet
Magagnoli was only being
true to what he was — a skilled craftsman plying a trade geared to older
market
circuits: to
have done otherwise would have
called for a different professional identity, a different relation-
ship with commodities,
and
a different rapport
with the mass
consumer.
By
contrast, the leading
German commercial
art schools,
being better connected both to national marketing networks and to international markets,
embarked on what might be
called a
program of reform. This was sparked by the recognition
that as
American commercial competition overran specialized markets, it
threatened to destroy the specialized design traditions associ-
ated with them.
The endeavor
to keep
German commercial
art
abreast of rapidly changing commercial and aesthetic conventions
was led primarily by Professor Frenzel, who founded
Gebrauchsgraphik in 1924. as a journal "to
promote
The Berlin-based monthly, artistic publicity"
kunstlerische reklame"), in 1928 changed
from
U.S.,
it
to
all
its
subheading to jour-
Covering design innova-
nal of "international advertising art."
tions
starting out
("zum forderung
over the world, but especially focusing on the
was an awesomely cosmopolitan
modernize German commercial
art
affair, its
mission being
by measuring
it
against
the international competition.
The
task of relating local styles to Americanizing trends
especially interesting in
options were available.
Germany, because two very
One was
is
different
the "object-ness" of the Berlin
school of Lucian Bernhard, which, in the postwar years, easily fed into the modernist experimentation of the International school. Basically, Bernhard,
and
like
him, Fritz Rosen and Wal-
241
EDISON MAZDA LAMPS GENERAL ||| ELECTRIC
What
electric lighting can
do
for the
consumer:
U.S. print advertising, Fortune, late 1920s.
Updated German poster advertising
for
Osram.
Walther Nehmer, 1927.
Face to face: the bourgeois family reacts to Lucien-Achille Mauzan's poster for
Updated poster advertising Achille
Mauzan, circa 1928.
for
Osram. Lucien-
Osram
caricature by Mauzan, displayed at a
work,
late 1920s.
in a
show of
his
"Sachplakat," for
Nehmer,
ther after
to
was
c.
name but two
Bernhard moved to
that there ing,
Osram. Lucian Bernhard,
New
1908.
of the figures
more
in evidence
York in 1925, held to the notion
rationality in the functional form;
good
advertis-
— early morning, the a bird — might construct,
by mustering symbolic representations
crowing cock; speed, an arrow;
flight,
with astonishing economy of form, an international language. Progressive, internationalist, experimental, artistically rigorous, it
seemed
in every
way an
alternative to America's capitalist
realism. 33
The other
style
was
identified first
and foremost with the
Bavarian artist Ludwig Hohlwein. Influenced by local traditions of genre painting and growing out of a vigorous local art industry, his
"amiable and soliciting" pictorial style found favor
elsewhere in Germany;
markably close in
its
spirit to
deed, prior to and
expressive sentimentality was re-
American commercial
much more
realism. In-
than Bernhard, Hohlwein found
favor in U.S. advertising circles,
though
it
was argued that
his
character types were too local and his artistic personality per-
243
Victoria
de Grazia
—
haps too strong to work on competitive accounts
not
at least
without firm guidance from an agency art director. 34
What more urge be done?
concretely did Gebrauchsgraphik's promoters
First,
they advocated a willingness to experiment;
then, a turnover in styles; finally, a greater responsiveness to
commercial pressures. To these ends, the German commercial artists
mounted extraordinary
regional and national shows, the
culminating event being held at Leipzig in 1927, on the occasion of the huge annual commercial
endeavors did not save the
moting
a critical
fair.
35
Over the long run, these
German commercial
By pro-
poster.
awareness of the aesthetic conventions under-
lying local schools, they
may even
have helped
call
these
conventions into question. Nevertheless, they did draw attention
from abroad, and they
related local traditions to the syncretic
commercial mill of American
German
artists
publicity.
were welcomed
One outcome was
that
though they did not
in the U.S.;
fundamentally alter the nature of the appeal of American publicity in
the 1930s, they significantly embellished American de-
sign traditions
with modernist motifs.
Even while the canons of commercial
art
were under
re-
view, the American-style advertising campaign was going native.
At
first
much
discussed, by the mid- 1930s,
were no longer always labeled
as such.
ments had become so familiar
as to
its
American
origins
Apparently some ele-
be taken for granted; they
had become the "natural" way of promoting goods. However,
American business was
also
becoming
As American
less visible.
firms pulled out of Europe altogether in the
Depression or cut back on their European
wake
of the Great
former em-
staffs,
ployees sought positions elsewhere, sometimes in firms of their
own, sometimes
in
branch subsidiaries of U.S.
was to be gained from identifying techniques
firms. as
As
Depression having destroyed the myth of America's
2U
American
— the
infallible
economic might — the citing of U.S. models diminished. advertising might henceforth be in the
now
less
American
style.
Local
But
it
now
passed as local production. Finally, the Great Depression,
by aggravating worry over
sales,
counseled paying close attention
to any technique or ploy that promised to build
up markets. Not
everywhere, not usually systematically, the American model was
most
closely followed for the
promotion of goods such
as auto-
mobiles, foodstuffs, and cosmetics that potentially had a mass
market, might benefit by national advertising, and were similar to
commodities already marketed successfully by American
firms. Just as in the U.S.,
tors like General
and
as a result of
American competi-
Motors and Ford on European markets, the
European automobile industry, together with car products, such as
motor
oil
and
vertisers. If for
not the rule,
tires,
many
still
were the biggest and most innovative ad-
other goods, full-fledged campaigns were
Americanisms had begun to crop up every-
where: in the heavier reliance on text, the structure of argumentation, the use of
photography, the look of capitalist realism, and
the styles of typography.
Unquestionably, trends outside of the advertising world reinforced stylistic changes. tributed
all
American movies, so widely
dis-
over the continent through the mid-1950s, and so
very influential in the popular imagination, established
new con-
245
Victoria de Grazia
ventions for female beauty; the Hollywood ing of the "thing-ness" of
such as the telephone, boudoir
sets,
pliances appear quintessentially aesthetic alternative,
its
made
renderobjects
home
ap-
modern. Meanwhile, the major
German modernist
experimentation, was sufficient here to recall
It is
ban on non-Gothic typefaces destroyed the international
German typographic
leadership of
more romanticized and This
is
it
eclectic
arts, to
American
the benefit of the styles. 36
not to argue that the poster disappeared from the
European scene art," as
with
life,
automobiles, and
destroyed by the triumph of Nazism. that the
set,
American everyday
in the 1930s. Far
from
might then have come to be
it:
commercial "high
called,
was
beautifully
represented in the modernist verve of 1930s postermaking. Yet its
a
meaning had changed
mere ploy
in the
sometimes
significantly:
gamut of means
available to
it
had become
commerce;
jus-
it
tified itself
on aesthetic grounds, concealing the hurly-burly of
commerce;
it
was used
as a
intervention in the market. vate
propaganda device, legitimating Its
state
major sponsor was no longer
commerce, but the interventionist
state of the
pri-
Great De-
pression and interest groups sponsoring collective advertising
campaigns. In this capacity, the poster advertised social messages; rather
for sacrifice
market
than
and
relations.
selling, strictly speaking,
social
the poster appealed
involvement in an effort to transcend
Thus, national governments stepped up their
promotional and welfare
activities to
compensate for the mal-
functioning of the marketplace. Thus, by appealing to citizens as
consumers of national goods and
services, they in effect rejected
the claim of American market society that individual desires and collective well-being could be satisfied tion. Like
through mass consump-
Magagnoli in the 1920s, theorists of the poster contin-
ued to emphasize the importance of focusing on the object rather than the consumer, aestheticizing
design tradition rather than socializing able" qualities. So the
it
new commodities
it
with a
still
powerful
by publicizing
its
"us-
of a society of abun-
Gbrte And,
rauAe
i
suwt und g&vtt-dundt
9Cd4tde weide*.
KALO D Ell MA- G E LE E "Mommy, Aunt
Use's
hands are
as
rough
as
i'.V^f.r,'
sandpaper
.
."
.
!,Ym,:
Americanized press
advertising from Die Woche, late 1930s.
grope 6
Die ID 00
hann johnffcin
htimtucHtfeti et tote rofdi et jooifctien
iff,
{icti
fttson
ohnen
unb 3um pusfoil
IDclctie
Beruhigung,
fity!
imm
jahnflcifcti. bis et
iochett
bringt!
bo(j es in Soiiboi
boo bet jahnfmngcfahi
batubet tiinaus
oilr
\\)t\
-
bit ojenigftcr
ousbrtitpt, wit ct
]ohn unb
mittci gibt,
fdiobfn"
Donugr
c
einet do
Soliboc entfetnt bcim 3ohnfpu*U r
lichen 3ohnftcin, ofjne
ben
3at]nf