Years of Poems and Spirits

Jon Lee Anderson: Fidel’s Heir

Just after I finished Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism, I came upon Anderson’s “extremely short” essay about Hugo Chávez. Convinced me more of my criticism of Arendt: in pursuit of an answer to the Holocaust, she stretched extreme instances of popular demagogy into “Totalitarianism”.

Chávez’s Venezuela is arguably at a midway point in the spectrum of demagogy: Chávez is not a total despot, for he does tolerate some opposition, submit himself to fair elections and accepts the results. Yet he is also very manipulative and inflamatory (e.g. how he humiliated Uribe in the Latin America summit meeting). In addition, he has two other traits Arendt would find interesting: appearing selfishless and has an international agenda.

Then there was Augusto Pinochet: who was not very popular (in a liberal sense) but very brutal. He is probably also somewhere on the spectrum. It is just very hard to demarcate what is true “Totalitarianism”. I don’t think Arendt found the right answer to Holocaust. If anything, she should have looked at the Continent during 1968 and find some solace in an emerging liberal civic culture.

To propose an alternative answer, I’d say that: for the Germans, there is always an element (however faint now) of collective romanticism and fanaticism in their cultural tradition. For the Russians, it is the Hobbesian distrust of each other and the longing for a powerful patriarch that led them to Stalin. Therefore, whether there is a countervailing force growing in each civic society is perhaps a much better indicator of how likely the past predicament will repeat itself.

A quick comment: very very painful to write again after school. But I am glad I tried.

Judith Thurman: First Impressions

Just a beautiful article. There is one paragraph talking about the short and possible interactions between the Neanderthals and Homo sapiens that is so very moving:

“They coexisted for some eight thousand years, until the Neanderthals withdrew or were forced, in dwindling numbers, toward the arid mountains of southern Spain, making Gibraltar a final redoubt. It isn’t known from whom or from what they were retreating (if “retreat” describes their migration), though along the way the arts of the newcomers must have impressed them. Later Neanderthal campsites have yielded some rings and awls carved from ivory, and painted or grooved bones and teeth (nothing of the like predates the arrival of Homo sapiens). The pathos of their workmanship-the attempt to copy something novel and marvellous by the dimming light of their existence-nearly makes you weep. And here, perhaps, the cruel notion that we call fashion, a coded expression of rivalry and desire, was born.”

Trackback URI | Comments RSS