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Terror and the Arts
Previous Edited Volumes by Matti Hyvärinen
Hyvärinen, Matti, Anu Korhonen, and Juri Mykkänen, eds. 2006. The trav-
elling concept of narrative. Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
(COLLeGIUM) http://www.helsinki.fi/collegium/e-series/volumes/volume
_1/index.htm.
Carver, Terrell, and Matti Hyvärinen, eds. 1997. Interpreting the political:
New methodologies. London and New York: Routledge.
Terror and the Arts
Artistic, Literary, and Political Interpretations of
Violence from Dostoyevsky to Abu Ghraib
Edited by Matti Hyvärinen and Lisa Muszynski

TERROR AND THE ARTS
Copyright © Matti Hyvärinen and Lisa Muszynski, 2008.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2008 978-0-230-60671-5
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
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DOI 10.1057/9780230614130
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hyvärinen, Matti and Muszynski, Lisa

Terror and the arts : artistic, literary, and political interpretations of violence
from Dostoyevsky to Abu Ghraib / edited and with an introduction by Matti
Hyvärinen and Lisa Muszynski.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Terror in art. 2. Arts, Modern. I. Hyvärinen, Matti. II. Muszynski, Lisa.
NX650.T48T47 2008
700'.4552—dc22 2007047880
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Scribe Inc.
First edition: August 2008
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Transferred to Digital Printing in 2013

Contents
List of Figures and Tables vii

Preface and Acknowledgments ix
Contributors xi
Introduction: The Arts Investigating Terror 1

Matti Hyvärinen and Lisa Muszynski
Part 1: Visualizing Terror
1 The Implicated Spectator: From Manet to Botero 25

Frank Möller
2 Art in the Age of Terror: The Israeli Case 41
Dana Arieli-Horowitz
3 The Aura of Terror? 61
Kia Lindroos
Part 2: Fictionalizing Terror
4 Dostoyevsky on Terror and the Question of the West 83

Margaret Heller
5 To This Side of Good and Evil: Primo Levi as a Truth-teller 97
Tuija Parvikko
6 Narrating the Trauma: Georges Perec’s W ou le souvenir d’enfance 113
Kuisma Korhonen
7 Too Much Terror? J. M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello 129
and the Circulation of Trauma
Matti Hyvärinen
vi ● Contents
Part 3: Governmental Terror
8 Dictators and Dictatorships:

Art and Politics in Romania and Chile (1974–89) 147
Caterina Preda
9 Inciting Mental Terror as Effective Governmental Control:
Chinese Propaganda Posters during the Cultural Revolution
(1966–76) 165
Minna Valjakka
10 The Sweet Hereafter of Machiavelli and Weber: Discussing
Community and Responsibility as Political-ethical Criteria 185
Javier Franzé
Part 4: The Terror of Theory
11 The Violence of Lying 207

Olivia Guaraldo
12 Terrorized by Sound?
Foucault on Terror, Resistance, and Sonorous Art 225
Lauri Siisiäinen
Index 243
Figures and Tables
Figure 2.1 Miki Kratsman, “Om el Phaem,” 2002. 45

Figure 2.2 David Reeb, Where are the Soldiers? 2003. 45
Figure 2.3 Gal Weinstein, Uday, 2004. 47
Figure 2.4 Gal Weinstein, Qusay, 2004. 47
Figure 2.5 David Wackstein, Swastika, 2001. 51
Figure 2.6 Dganit Berest, The Wall, 2004 (detail). 53
Figure 2.7 David Tartakover, I’m Here, Tel Aviv, 19 October 1994,
2003–2004. (Based on a photograph by Ziv Koren.) 54
Figure 3.1 Guy Raz, “Two Seconds,” 2004–2006. 76
Table 8.1 Comparative view of the two regimes 150

Table 8.2 Comparative view of artistic manifestations 155
Preface and Acknowledgments
The idea for this book grew out of a small symposium, “Arts and Terror,” held
at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, in May 2006. The arrangement of the
symposium became possible thanks to the Academy of Finland, and its new
Centre for Excellence in Political Thought and Conceptual Change. The cen-
tre has three research teams; one of them is Politics and the Arts, the organizer
of the symposium. We thank all of the participants of the symposium for the
enduring discussions and enthusiasm that helped to launch the work for this
volume. Moreover, the existence of the international Politics and the Arts
group, now a standing group of the European Consortium for Political
Research (ECPR), helped greatly in getting in touch with the people inter-
ested in the hybrid area of terror and the arts.
As in every work of this nature, the editing process is one that owes many
thanks to those individuals who enable it. We are particularly grateful to the
research team coordinator Anitta Kananen (University of Jyväskylä, Finland),
not only for practical arrangements of the event, but also for all kinds of help
during the editorial process. Moreover, Professor Michael Shapiro (University
of Hawaii, United States) was of great help at a decisive moment in the pub-
lication process. Another key person is Peggy Heller (University of King’s
College, Halifax, Canada), who jumped in to help as a coeditor, commenta-
tor, and consultant whenever and wherever this was needed; Kati Thors at the
Copyshop in Espoo has freely given of her time and expertise in all things
technical; Annikki Harris (University of Helsinki Language Services) has
cooperated at the office, providing Lisa Muszynski with the requisite freedom
to work on this project almost continuously, while our families have borne
the brunt of the systematic neglect that such focus entails. Special thanks to
those nearest and dearest who have the patience to endure us to the end:
Tuula H. and Peter, Johann, and Annie M.

Tampere and Helsinki
Contributors
Dana Arieli-Horowitz, PhD, is head of the History and Theory Unit at

Bezalel, Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem. She has published exten-
sively on arts under totalitarian regimes in the twentieth century. Among
her publications are: Romanticism of Steel: Art and Politics in Nazi
Germany (Jerusalem: Magness, Hebrew University Press, 1999); Creators
in Overburden: Rabin’s Assassination, Art and Politics (Jerusalem: Magness/
Hebrew University Press, 2005, and winner of the Israeli Prime Minister
Award); and The Totalitarian Ideal: Art and Politics Between the Wars
(forthcoming, Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press). She is currently work-
ing on the relationship between art and politics in Israel, and in particular
on art and terror.
Javier Franzé, PhD (political science), a lecturer at the Universidad
Complutense de Madrid. His field of research is the conceptual history of
politics in Western thought, on which he has published ¿Qué es la política?
Tres respuestas: Aristótles, Weber, Schmitt (Madrid, Catarata, 2004), as well
as various other articles. He also researches the relation between violence,
power, and politics, especially focused on its implications for the relation-
ship between ethics and politics.
Olivia Guaraldo, PhD, is lecturer in political philosophy at the University of
Verona. Her main fields of research are political and feminist theory,
where she has worked extensively on the thought of Hannah Arendt and
its relationship with literature and history (Storylines, 2001; Politica e rac-
conto, 2003). She has edited and introduced the Italian translation of
Hannah Arendt, Lying in Politics: Reflections on the Pentagon Papers (It.
2006), as well as Judith Butler’s Undoing Gender (It. 2006) and Precarious
Life (It. 2004). She is currently working on the relationship between vio-
lence and power in modern political thought. She is also a member of the
research team Politics and the Arts at the Finnish Centre of Excellence in
Political Thought and Conceptual Change.
xii ● Contributors
Margaret (Peggy) Heller, PhD, is assistant professor in humanities and

social science at the University of King’s College in Halifax, Canada. She
regularly teaches in two interdisciplinary programs, Foundation Year and
Contemporary Studies, the first focusing on core texts of the Western
intellectual tradition and the second on contemporary theory. She has
recently completed a doctorate specializing in intellectual and cultural his-
tory at the Union Institute and University, Cincinnati Ohio. The title of
her dissertation is “The Dawning of the West: On the Genesis of a
Concept.” She is also a member of the research team Politics and the Arts
at the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Political Thought and Conceptual
Change.
Matti Hyvärinen, PhD (political science), is an Academy of Finland
Research Fellow at the Department of Sociology and Social Psychology,
University of Tampere, Finland. His current research project is on the
conceptual history of narrative, and he leads the research team Politics
and the Arts at the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Political Thought and
Conceptual Change. Currently he is also a virtual fellow at the Centre for
Narrative and Auto/Biographical Studies, University of Edinburgh. He
has published earlier, for example, on Paul Auster (Partial Answers) and on
old Finnish novels (Qualitative Inquiry).
Kuisma Korhonen, PhD, is currently docent and research fellow at the
Institute of Art Research, University of Helsinki. He is also the leader of
the research project Encounters in Art and Philosophy, funded by the
Finnish Academy. His latest publications include Textual Friendship: The
Essay as Impossible Encounter (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2006), ed.
Tropes for the Past: Hayden White and the History/Literature Debate
(Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006), and an article “Textual Communities”
(Culture Machine 8, 2006). He will also be the guest editor for the e-jour-
nal History and Theory: Protocols (February 2008), and a coeditor for
Chiasmatic Encounters: Art, Ethics, Politics (New York: Lexington Books,
2008).
Kia Lindroos, PhD (political science), is senior assistant professor in the
Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of
Jyväskylä, Finland. She is chair/convener of Politics and the Arts Standing
Group for the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), as
well as chair of the Finnish Political Science Association.
Frank Möller, PhD, is research fellow at the Tampere Peace Research Institute,
University of Tampere, Finland, and the coeditor of Cooperation and
Conflict. He is also a member of the research team Politics and the Arts at
the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Political Thought and Conceptual
Change.
Contributors ● xiii
Lisa Muszynski holds a Master’s degree (history) from the University of

Helsinki and is currently working on her PhD thesis in the Department of
Social Science History, University of Helsinki, Finland. Her field of inter-
est is philosophy and theory of history, wherein she examines historians’
attitudes/orientations and the ways in which these, in turn, help to shed
light on the dynamics of continuity and change over time. She is an asso-
ciate member of Politics and the Arts research team.
Tuija Parvikko, PhD (political science), is Academy of Finland research fel-
low at the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of
Jyväskylä, Finland, and at the Centre of Excellence in Political Thought
and Conceptual Change. She is the author of The Responsibility of the
Pariah: The Impact of Bernard Lazare on Arendt’s Conception of Political
Action and Judgement in Extreme Situations. Jyväskylä: SoPhi, 1996.
Currently she is finishing a manuscript on Arendt, Eichmann and the
Politics of the Past. Her current research project is on the politics of the past
in the Finnish postwar context.
Caterina Preda is a PhD candidate in political science at the Faculty of
Political Sciences, University of Bucharest, with a thesis on “Dictators and
Dictatorships: Artistic Expressions of the Political in Chile and Romania
(1974–1989)” to be submitted in October 2008. She holds a Master’s
degree in comparative politics and political theory in the Faculty of
Political Sciences, University of Bucharest, as well as a Diplôme d’Etudes
Approfondies en Science Politique of the Université Libre de Bruxelles.
She is teaching undergraduate classes on Contemporary Latin America
and Art and Politics at the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of
Bucharest.
Lauri Siisiäinen is a researcher and postgraduate student of political science
in the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of
Jyväskylä, Finland. He is also a member of the research team Politics and
the Arts at the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Political Thought and
Conceptual Change and he is currently preparing his PhD thesis on the
political theory of audition and sonority.
Minna Valjakka, MA, Chinese art history researcher, is currently a postgrad-
uate student of Art History in the University of Helsinki, Finland, and a
doctoral student in the Graduate School of Contemporary Asian Studies
at the University of Turku, Finland. She is preparing her PhD thesis on
contemporary Chinese art. She won a scholarship to study in Fudan
University, Shanghai, in 2001–2002, and in the Central Academy of Fine
Arts, Beijing, in 2006–2007.
INTRODUCTION
The Arts Investigating Terror

T
he idea of this volume is not merely to investigate the arts in order to
uncover new kinds of representations of terror, trauma, and violence.
The argument and purpose of this book is a step more ambitious. Art
Spiegelman has cleverly outlined this dilemma in his In the Shadow of No
Towers (2004) by saying, “Leave me alone, Damn it! I’m just trying to com-
fortably relive my September 11 trauma but you keep interrupting . . . Like
that mind-numbing 2002 ‘anniversary’ event, when you tried to wrap a flag
around my head and suffocate me!” Spiegelman works vigorously against the
political appropriation of the trauma of 9/11 by the Bush government, claim-
ing for himself a proper space for working through and unpacking the trauma
without hasty, projective, and dubious political mobilizations. While he is
trying to relive his trauma comfortably, as he says, he seems to reflect ironically
his need for distance from the political class.1 He is a participant in the polit-
ical process by virtue of working with terror and trauma, and not just by
depicting it. This is one of the paradoxes of the political literature on terror,
wherein the first moves seem often to consist in determined resistance to
politicization, and in a demand for an entirely personal experience of loss
before wider conclusions are drawn.
Spiegelman’s ironic work also explains and justifies the scope of this book
from one important perspective. The topic of this book is not terrorism per se,
enacted by a definite group of nongovernmental actors called “terrorists.”
The author’s autobiographical character Mouse, asleep and obviously dream-
ing about the innocent world of the erotic cartoon in his hand, is approached
by two ghastly figures, and according to the text, being “equally terrorized by
Al-Qaeda and his own Government.” This thread of “equal” terror by gov-
ernments is a recurrent theme in recent films (Alejandro Gonzáles In~árritu’s
2 ● Matti Hyvärinen and Lisa Muszynski
Babel being a good example of governmental violence launched by an assumed

“terrorist” attack) and novels (for example, Auster 1987; Ondaatje 2001;
Rushdie 2005). As the chapters in this volume by Tuija Parvikko, Kuisma
Korhonen, Caterina Preda, and Minna Valjakka indicate, the most horrific
examples of twentieth century terror have been imposed by totalitarian gov-
ernments. Ondaatje’s (2001) novel on Sri Lanka and Rushdie’s (2005) work
on Kashmir indicate an even murkier reality where terrorist attacks and gov-
ernmental violence cohabit, feed each other, and sometimes lose the thin bor-
der between one another altogether.
The Repetition of Trauma

Don DeLillo’s Falling Man (2007) offers a particularly helpful study on the
relationships between the arts, terror, terrorism, and trauma. From the very
first sentence of the novel, we are set into a peacefully breathing, deliberate
rhythm. He writes, beginning the novel immediately after the attack on
Manhattan, “It was not a street anymore but a world, a time and space of
falling ash and near night. He was walking north through rubble and mud
and there were people running past holding towels to their faces or jackets
over their heads” (3). The voice is matter-of-fact, pensive, somber, and very
careful not to precipitate extraneous emotional arousals. It signals a serious
attempt to visit the past experience by carefully shifting through all the layers
of political and media rubble that has accumulated over the last few years. It
is one answer to the critical, post-9/11 question of the psychologist and
philosopher Jens Brockmeier, who writes, “Is there a vocabulary, a style, a
genre to articulate the tension between what the smell of bodies means to you
as a human being and how you feel about the political claims and actions that
try to justify themselves by referring to the same bodies? . . . Is there a lan-
guage to talk about such experiences at all?” (Brockmeier 2008).
DeLillo foregrounds his characters’ private experiences and their coping
strategies. The title of his novel already signals the possibility for multiple
interpretations. The main character, Keith, who escaped from one of the
Twin Towers during the September 11 attacks, is somehow losing his grip on
his previous life, obviously tripping him up to make him fall. People falling
from the towers, some hand in hand, is of course one of the most poignant
images of 9/11. But then there is also the performance artist Falling Man,
doing his act in public places right after the terrorist attacks. Keith’s wife
Lianne is one who witnesses the perplexing act, insofar as, “a man was dan-
gling there, above the street, upside down. He wore a business suit, one leg
bent up, arms at his sides. A safety harness was barely visible, emerging from
The Arts Investigating Terror ● 3
his trousers at the straightened leg and fastened to the decorative rail of the
viaduct. . . . There was awful openness of it, something we’d not seen, the
single falling figure that trails a collective dread, body come down among
us all” (33).
The falling act may well be redescribed in terms suggested by Dominick
LaCapra (2001, 2004) as acting out, repeating the moment of terror. The act,
in its “awful openness,” seems to be the exact opposite of DeLillo’s carefully
mediated discourse; a highly disturbing and disturbed artistic way of
approaching terror and trauma. The jumps were as painful to the artist,
David Janiak, himself, and he died at age thirty-nine, “apparently of natural
causes” (220). Because of his acts, he had “been arrested at various times for
criminal trespass, reckless endangerment and disorderly conduct” (220). We
have here an artist taking high risks, transgressing many boundaries, but at
the same time reproducing the original scene of trauma with minimal dis-
tance from it. Moreover, this is highly suggestive of the repetitive artworks of
certain Israeli artists exposed to suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv,
recounted in this volume in Chapter 2 by Dana Arieli-Horowitz. David
Janiak, as indeed some of the real-life Israeli artists as well, may be accused of
not properly taking the reactions of the traumatized audience into account.
But is this power of provocation not something that the arts are working with
constantly? There is a trace of Dadaism in the act, in the sense that Kia
Lindroos writes about in Chapter 3, Janiak ostensibly having a clear “inten-
tion,” as Lindroos observes regarding Dada, “to create a scandal and inspire
public indignation.”
Yet the figure of the Falling Man is only one element among many other
aspects of repetition in DeLillo’s novel. A group of children withdraw repeat-
edly from the adults to a room with binoculars, in order to watch if and
when the next plane will hit the towers, insisting that the towers were not yet
entirely collapsed. Keith, the man who survived, delves more and more into
the repetitive and controlled world of professional poker after having lost a
friend he used to play poker with, and so on. Yet paradoxically, Keith, who
was estranged from his wife Lianne and almost entirely incapable of
expressing his inner concerns before the events of 9/11, now had occasional
moments of closeness with Lianne between his poker playing sprees.
Perhaps the most compelling singular element of the novel is its ending.
With regard to temporality, the novel resists conventional narrative progres-
sion—the insistence on various forms of repetition being one form of this
resistance—and instead creates a loop by ending just a moment before every-
thing began. At the end, Keith is back in Manhattan, at his office, right after
the attack and working his way down through the corridor, seeing his dead
friend. This ending may be read in at least two different, yet interconnected
ways. Whatever life and vitality had returned to Keith’s life with Lianne and
his son, the traumatic moment of the collapsing towers and the smell of
death is there, and will always be there, whatever the cure. The experience is
not only in the past, but it persists in the present, and continues on into the
future. The temporary loop, in this sense, protects the novel from an overly
straightforward closure and moral elevation. Nonetheless, the ending may
also be seen, in all of its remaining horror, in a slightly more optimistic light.
After all, Keith is now revisiting the traumatic scenery; he is at least capable
of remembering, observing the details, seeing the man falling. The loop
remains, there is no fixed meaning or resolution of the consequences of the
event, yet the beginning is no longer an invisible, untouchable darkness.
Jonathan Safran Foer (2005) does something analogous by foregrounding
the traumatic reactions and disturbed world of a nine-year-old boy who had
lost his father in the terrorist attack on Manhattan. The experimental narra-
tion of the boy’s partly psychotic world is connected thematically to Kuisma
Korhonen’s discussion on Georges Perec’s work in Chapter 6. The boy’s world
is even more sanitized of public, political maneuverings, and hectic national-
ism that followed the events than even Keith’s world in DeLillo’s novel,
thereby creating space for the artistic processing of the experience. Both of
these novels systematically reject the nationalistic frame of the events of 9/11,
thus “interrupting the vicious circle of aggression and retaliation,” as Olivia
Guaraldo observes in Chapter 11. In so doing, they, of course, simultane-
ously bracket all such sweepingly broad, totalizing theories and explanations
of the attack that Peggy Heller discusses critically in Chapter 4.
Rushdie’s World of Terror

Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown (2005) chooses an entirely different
strategy than either DeLillo or Foer, and approaches the political and
national aspects of terror, terrorism, and violence directly. But in order to do
this in a properly non-nationalist way, he locates his characters within a com-
plex and changing, multinational setting, letting go of the nation-state as a
naturalized frame for the novel. One of his key characters, Maximilian Ophuls
(a name borrowed from the German Jewish film director, who emigrated to
the United States via France), begins his political career in the French
Resistance during the Nazi occupation. After the war, he moves to the United
States to become U.S. ambassador to India, but is forced to retire due to a
womanizing scandal. Later he leads U.S. classified operations in Afghanistan
and Pakistan and, because of this assignment, he is effective in the creation
and funding of the Taliban as a counterforce to the Soviet occupation in

Afghanistan. Finally, he is murdered in a personal-cum-terrorist attack in Los
Angeles. As a victim, he, if anyone, is neither an innocent bystander nor
guilty in such a grave way that his murder could appear as ethically justified.
The story has another beginning in Kashmir, in the paradisiacal time preced-
ing the division between Indian and Pakistani nation-states, in the following
era of brutish Indian military presence, and the increasingly fundamental-
ist guerrilla movements—terrorists—against Indian presence and the entire
Hindu population.
Shalimar the Clown is not one of the easiest novels to read and digest—far
from it, in fact. The complex architecture of the novel endeavors nothing less
than to capture the geopolitical complexity of the worlds of terror and ter-
rorism in one book, and the novel might well be characterized as a literary
encyclopedia of contemporary terror, even including the discussion on the
dehumanizing effects of death rows in the United States. It takes time to real-
ize, for example, that Rushdie employs an entirely different language for
events in Europe and North America versus the magical realism and compli-
cated language of Kashmiri events. He outlines the prenationalistic era of
Kashmir, a time when Pandits and Muslims are able to live freely together, eat
and cook similar fantastic banquets, and wear traditional garments without
orthodox veiling. The marriage between Shalimar the Clown, a Muslim boy,
and Boonyi, a Hindu girl, epitomizes the now long-gone spirit of peaceful
coexistence in the remote village of Pachigam. When Boonyi escapes with
Max Ophuls, for a short-term affair with the wish for a more spectacular life
than the village could offer, the embittered and unforgiving Shalimar begins
his career as a terrorist—soon to meet more orthodox fighters who originally
wanted to kill him, simply because of his history as an entertainer. He
becomes “a student, a scholar of rage” (272); and in due course he “became a
person of value and consequence, as assassins are” (275). Here, personal loss
and hatred receives a political articulation in a way that DeLillo, Foer, and
Spiegelman resist in the case of 9/11.
A number of Rushdie’s stylistic choices may, at first, be astounding. Once
the narrator reports, almost in the style of journalistic critique or testimonial,
how the fundamentalist groups come from Pakistan, force the Muslim
women to wear burkhas against their will and tradition, and frighten the
Hindu families into escaping the country by randomly slaughtering a part of
their population. At the same time, however, the province is full of Indian
troops, using similar terror tactics against suspicious civilians. All of a sudden
the author shifts from narration to political essay, and directly challenges the
Indian authorities. He writes, “There were six hundred thousand Indian
troops in Kashmir but the pogroms of the pandits was not prevented, why
was that. Three and a half lakhs of human beings arrived in Jammu as dis-
placed persons and for many months the government did not provide shelters
or relief or even register their names, why was that . . . The ministers of the
government made speeches about ethnic cleansing but the civil servants wrote
one another memos saying that the pandits were simply internal migrants
whose displacement had been self-imposed, why was that” (296; 1 lakh=
100,000 in the Indian numbering system).
For the reader, this step from the grimly outlined story-world to authorial
indictment appears emotionally and surprisingly well grounded, while the
entire gravity of war crimes and terror had become so weighty that the open
charge feels almost like a relief: someone is out there to protest the cruelties,
including the reader as a secondary witness. A bit later—after an accounting
of the brutalities enacted by both parties, that is, the fundamentalists and the
Indian army—the narrator stops for a moment to reflect upon the situation
by observing, “There are things that must be looked at indirectly because
they would blind you if you looked them in the face, like the fire of the sun”
(309). This is one of the enduring concerns about how far the arts can, or
any account for that matter, go in terms of describing—or performing, in
Janik’s case—horror without becoming part of that same horror, a theme
which is addressed further in this volume, especially in Chapters 5, 6, and 7.
Moreover, it can become an issue pivoting upon that of the dignity of the vic-
tim, as Frank Möller writes in Chapter 1, “If victims are humiliated and
abused in front of the camera for the purpose of the production of images,
then the viewer, by watching these images, becomes an accomplice of the
perpetrators.”
Rushdie’s well-trained, internationally experienced, callous and well-con-
nected terrorists seem to render some of their predecessors of no more than
two decades ago very amateurish indeed, as in Doris Lessing’s (1985) The
Good Terrorist and Paul Auster’s Leviathan (1992). Lessing’s homespun, leftist
terrorists remain nearly comically shabby figures, in spite of the tragic conse-
quences of their operations. Perhaps we now tend to think that Lessing was a
bit too optimistic about the harmlessness of the terrorist drive, by not giving
us access to their more professional endeavors. In any case, the strictly realis-
tic mode of her novel is arguably more adequate for the narration of the
youth’s everyday activities than of the terror itself, which curiously becomes
virtually normalized by the conventional narrative form, becoming just one
occasion among many others. Random deaths do not signify anything in par-
ticular to the activists, at least nothing that a quote from Lenin and a compe-
tent rationalization could not wipe away. In consequence, what we obviously
witness is exactly the early days of killing idle emotions, in order to be able to
kill without any emotions. Alice, the female protagonist, muses upon the sit-
uation after the killings: “After all, if publicity was the aim, then they had cer-
tainly achieved that! And Faye? But comrades knew their lives were at risk,
the moment they undertook this sort of thing, decided to become terror-
ists” (452).
Interestingly, Lessing points out that her activists’ way of life was not, in
point of fact, oriented to achieve any recognizable political objectives.
Instead, it was the good feelings of the narcissist-as-activist, spending brilliant
days in picketing and shouting at the police, getting kicks out of resisting and
escaping the police, or even getting arrested, the excitement of transgressing
the borderlines between the permissible and the forbidden, the legal and the
illegal. The sheer fact of escaping the police renders activists, in their own
imagination, as dangerous and important. Learning the allegedly sublime
pleasures of transgression, even to the point of enjoying killing people was, of
course, essential for the education of Nazi officers as well as the globe-trotting
terrorists of Rushdie’s novel. Crime fiction has for a long time investigated
such serial crimes as rape and murder from the perspective of the particularly
addictive and subjectivity-creating excitement generated by the transgression
of these boundaries.
Imagining with a Terrorist?

Literature has its methods of bringing fictional characters closer to the reader
than we often are able to get in normal life. The point of view, or focalization
(Genette 1980; Jahn 2007, for a more recent discussion), within a character
may be one way; letting one of the characters narrate the story is another.
Such a culturally and politically diverse, agonistic situation as the recent wave
of fundamentalist terrorism, of course, inflicts difficult challenges upon
authors. Doris Lessing’s expert narration, if mainly ironic and sardonic, on
the thoughts, action, and speech of her activists is based on a shared cultural
background and knowledge about leftist movements. As Manfred Jahn
reminds us, the whole modernist literature needed the background of an
emerging psychology to present the fictional streams of consciousness. But
how does this understanding work across violent cultural boundaries? John
Updike (2006), Don DeLillo (2007), and Salman Rushdie (2005) face a
much larger challenge, of course. Their attempts to let us, the readers, imag-
ine the thoughts and emotions of contemporary terrorists are, of course, as
tricky as they are politically relevant.
However, it is again a trap to see the world divided between the Western
“us” and the “terrorists” and their supporters. As a matter of fact, John Updike’s
Terrorist (2006) plays expertly with such expectations of the reader. In the
beginning, there is a sloppy Jew, an all-too-liberal white mother, seductive
and flirtatious American girls, and a widening Muslim front to support, edu-
cate, and manipulate the dedicated fighter. A great deal of the pleasures of
reading the novel comes from the sudden realization, by the end of the novel,
of an entirely different picture with nuances and a plurality of distinctions.
Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) is one of the bravest
attempts to see the whole issue from a not-so-self-evident North American
point of view. Hamid’s narrator, a young man coming from Pakistan to study
at Princeton (like Hamid himself ), succeeds in landing a job in a thriving
financial enterprise. It is in this line of work where economic “fundamentals”
need to be taken into account, and other—human, ecological, and what-
ever—lesser considerations to be ignored.
A politically oriented reader may still be slightly perplexed by parts of
Hamid’s novel. His narrator lives in New York City and is entirely dedicated
to his work in the financial sector. As 9/11 is about to occur, he is finalizing
his first big business assignment in the Philippines, and watches the events
unfold on television. He says, “I stared as one—and the other—of the twin
towers of New York’s World Trade Center collapsed. And then I smiled. . . .
But at that moment, my thoughts were not with the victims of the attack—
death on television moves me most when it is fictitious and happens to char-
acters with whom I have built up relationships over multiple episodes—no, I
was caught up in the symbolism of it all, the fact that someone had so visibly
brought America to her knees” (72, 73).This passage contains a few disquiet-
ing contradictions. The narrator had never before announced any reserva-
tions in his relationship with “America” (a term the Canadians, among many
other Americans, may find inconvenient in this context). On the other hand,
between the dashes he presents himself as a relatively naïve and apolitical
reader of the media. Yet he immediately knows how to react to the figures of
destruction exclusively on the symbolic level of the event. The reading of the
situation may differ from many hegemonic versions, but it certainly concurs
with the Bush administration in one regard: by seeing the event within a
clear-cut national frame. But within this chosen nationalistic frame, celebrat-
ing America on her knees, this reading again appears helplessly naïve, while
not seeing in the event itself the seeds for horrors to come as its natural con-
sequence. Later, when the “big” America attacks “small” Afghanistan, the pre-
viously light-hearted observer is full of moral rectitude. After allowing
himself a nationalistic reading of the event, the narrator becomes a purist
after returning to New York. He states, “Your country’s flag invaded New
York after the attacks; it was everywhere. Small flags stuck on toothpicks fea-
tured in the shrines; stickers of flags adorned windshields and windows; large
flags fluttered from buildings. They all seemed to proclaim: We are America—
not New York, which, in my opinion, means something quite different” (79).
Hamid’s narrator here has different political and ethical standards for New
Yorkers and himself. He can be exhilarated by the symbolic fall of “America,”
but New Yorkers should not see the event happening to or in America. In
fact, Siri Hustvedt (2006, 124) has offered quite a different reading of the
meaning of the flags as well. Brockmeier (2008), in his study of actual
responses to the trauma of 9/11, notes that patriotic and nationalist reactions,
so popular in the media and politics—and in the rest of the country—were
truly marginal among individual responses in New York City. Whereas
DeLillo, Ondaatje, Rushdie, and Spiegelman, among many others, systemat-
ically resist nationalist readings of terror and terrorism, Hamid’s position
remains problematic despite his criticism of America.
Hamid’s work is one of those that foreground the media representation as
a real political event. Rather uncannily, Brett Easton Ellis (1998) obliterated
the borderlines between film and the novel’s “real-life” events in his paranoid
terrorist world of Glamorama to the ultimate extent possible. Film crews in
this novel are mysteriously already ever-present and shooting raw footage
when bombs are delivered and exploded in Prada or Gucci bags. Is the narra-
tor Victor Ward too strung out on a combination of drugs, always including
Xanax, a medication for panic attacks, to make a difference between fiction,
glamorous show life, and a vicious terrorist plan? Or do we witness a terrorist
network of top models along with their assemblage of the best brand name
products—and nearly always in front of photographers and film crews—with
its paranoid plans to create maximum havoc? Ellis’s terrorists combine the
glamorous public presence in front of cameras, high-quality technical exper-
tise in camouflage, and terrorist attacks with a renouncement of empathy for
victims and an obvious enjoyment of torture. All players have double or triple
agendas, leaving Victor Ward and the reader betrayed in their search for final
clarity and closure.
This cursory review on parts of the recent literature on terror is most of all
meant to emphasize the relevance of studying the arts in the context of terror.
There are many other novels to consider, such as Ian McEwan’s Saturday
(2005). In his The Master of Petersburg, J. M. Coetzee (1994) revisits
Dostoyevsky’s classical crime scene, discussed more thoroughly by Margaret
Heller in Chapter 4 of this volume, that naturally evokes the nineteenth-cen-
tury genre of literature focused on St. Petersburg—originally brought to life
by Alexander Pushkin’s narrative poem The Bronze Horseman of 1833.2 There
are entire genres such as crime stories and science fiction to be examined, not
to mention film and photography. The recent artistic interest in terror is

engendering ideas, images, and dilemmas awaiting more thorough, interdis-
ciplinary investigation, quite apart from its educational potential.
Terror in our Midst

In a book penned over a quarter of a century ago, Marshall Berman elo-
quently and passionately defended The Communist Manifesto by Marx and
Engels as “the first great modernist work of art” (1983, 102). And like all
great books, Berman’s All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of
Modernity is possibly even more compelling today than when it was first pub-
lished. It is especially relevant now, when the cold war era has given way to
something that it perhaps helped to spawn in its own wake, which has now
taken its place on a global scale. Indeed, the idea of “terror in our midst” is
certainly not new; what is new about it is its seeming all-pervasiveness. It has
come out into the open, followed closely in its wake by a global media that
amplifies it, making it into something that is no longer occurring only on
the shabby back streets of a distant region, where it was ignored: unseen and
unheard.
Terror has, in any case, moved to the forefront of our collective con-
sciousness. Indeed, since the dawn of the twenty-first century, it has spread to
the downtown streets of Jerusalem, Moscow, London, and New York. As
Berman observed nearly three decades ago, the thrust of modernism(s) and
the process of modernization has carried us along the crest of a wave in time
where “modern mankind found itself in the midst of a great absence and
emptiness of values and yet, at the same time, a remarkable abundance of
possibilities. . . . It may turn out, then, that going back can be a way to go for-
ward: that remembering the modernisms of the nineteenth century can give
us the vision and courage to create the modernisms of the twenty-first”
(1983, 21, 36).
In the spirit of such an outlook, looking forward by looking back—or
something resembling a “circle” of time—what the chapters of this collection
do not attempt to do with the theme of terror and the arts is to plumb the
depths of an originating despair and emptiness that may have motivated acts
of terror, whether 150 years ago on the streets of St. Petersburg or during the
last few years on the streets of London or New York. And likewise, the
authors of this volume are not interested in examining what art and terror
may share intimately in common with one another below the surface of any
work of art. Perhaps it is DeLillo’s figure of David Janiak in Falling Man that
explores just such a tension, given that Janiak is not only an artist, but that he
is also “arrested at various times,” which both complicates and overshadows

his “art” with the illicit flavor of the terror/trauma he repeats through his hor-
rifying jumps.
Rather, from the starting points of painting, photography, literature, film,
and so on, we will explore what the arts may offer by way of different read-
ings of terror and trauma, readings that do not celebrate the violence inher-
ent in much of art, but politically motivated readings that endeavor to resist
the exploitation and persistence of violence by confronting it with courage
and the desire to “work through” it—to look it in the face and see beyond the
shattered present. The method is thus one in which “going back can be a way
to go forward”—in a circular fashion that attempts to go beyond the “mean-
ings” culled from the surface of linear time and chronological events.
In short, the method at hand is not about going “back” in linear fashion
at all, for as Eelco Runia observes, “Being moved by the past comes . . . in two
modalities: a ‘regressive’ and a ‘revolutionary’ one. In both the ‘regressive’ and
the ‘revolutionary’ mode linearity is adjourned and exposed and a primordial
‘circularity’ reclaims its rights” in an existence where “time is not a line but a
knot, not a river but a whirlpool, not progression but circulation” (2007a, 1;
Runia 2006, esp. 6–7).
At a glance, then, this volume begins with an exploration of the visual arts
in Part 1: Visualizing Terror, where each of the three chapters of this section
offer three different dimensions of the problematic relationship between ter-
ror and the visual arts, ranging from the aestheticization of violence to the
“aura” of the resulting images. The main message here is about coming to
grips with, in some cases, quite disturbing images, whereas the third chapter
offers Walter Benjamin’s aesthetic theory as a way in which to capture and
anchor the phenomenon from a theoretical standpoint.
There is, in any case, a long-standing relationship between literature and
terror, a phenomenon well known in the West since at least the mid-nine-
teenth century, represented in Part 2: Fictionalizing Terror. It is in this second
section, moreover, that the relationship between literature and terror faces
possible reevaluation in light of the “manifold and the heterogeneous” prove-
nance of events within their own times and places that have inspired novelists
on themes of violence and terror, both past and present, in an effort—as
Runia remarks—to capture something “that is absent from our own mythol-
ogy, the past that is withheld verbally, the past . . . that waits to be made sense
of ” (2006, 8).
This second section of the volume is then followed by the perspective of
governmental terror, in Part 3, regarding policies regulating the arts not only
in Mao’s China during the Cultural Revolution, but also seen in a comparative
light between the little studied nondemocratic states of Ceauşescu’s Romania

and Pinochet’s Chile—in the two decades preceding the inadvertently com-
mon downfall of their dictatorships in 1989. This third section also momen-
tarily fixes on a single work of art within the frame of Western political theory
by way of “discussing community and responsibility as political-ethical crite-
ria.” The third essay of this section thus brings out subtleties of short-sighted
policy choices to the extraordinary trauma and tragedy of an anytown, any-
where, by ordinary people in a nondictatorial setting, helping to illuminate
the ways in which we entrap ourselves in positions we might otherwise
reject—or even embrace—if we had only had the perspective of hindsight, or
foresight for that matter, to have acted differently. It is in this third section of
the book that “politics” and “the arts” stand in starkest contrast to one
another and invokes Robert Musil’s observation in Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften
(The Man without Qualities): “Only now I understand . . . why we soldiers,
who are accustomed to the greatest order, must be prepared to give our lives
at each and every moment. . . . Somehow or other, order, once it reaches a
certain stage, calls for bloodshed” (Musil in Runia 2007b, 1).
In the final section, The Terror of Theory, the point of view steps away
from the political confrontations of the previous section to an analysis of the
effects of terror for political theory tout court. As a capping stone, therefore,
Part 4 functions as a way to engage these issues in terms of unveiling hidden
consequences for political and social theory, generally, as well as how this
might work out in the lives of individual persons facing the “new reality” in
the aftermath of 9/11. This section thus addresses Musil’s sharp awareness
that “order, once it reaches a certain stage, calls for bloodshed” and seeks ways
out of such a dilemma. Thus, engagement with the photographs of Abu
Ghraib, in the very first chapter—although a recent event from a chronolog-
ical standpoint—provides the initial thread that is woven throughout all
these essays, and taken up by the two concluding essays that seek an exit from
the vicious circle of violence and aggression.
Visualizing Terror
Introducing the collection in Chapter 1, “The Implicated Spectator: From
Manet to Botero,” Frank Möller argues that, contrary to photographs of war,
famine, atrocities, and myriad forms of human suffering, the limits of pho-
tography are not the limits of art. Prefacing his argument, he begins with the
historical instance of the Edouard Manet painting, The Execution of Emperor
Maximilian (1867), “one of the finest examples ever of political art,” which
Möller characterizes as political, because it indeed complicated rather than
simplified the “facts” of the execution, and was therefore “insusceptible to

simple interpretations.” By such means, Möller argues, it maintained its
autonomy as a work of art. In identifying the nature of the tension between
art and the violence that it depicts in this historical example, he cuts to the
volatile discussion on the notorious Abu Ghraib photographs, in light of
Fernando Botero’s Abu Ghraib paintings. Möller carefully shows how art
exceeds the limits of the “real” image and subsequently provides an added
dimension that emphasizes the utility and value of the arts vis-à-vis terror, in
part due to the huge discussion that these images-as-art unleashed. Such
engagement with these images enable us to “establish a visceral sense of iden-
tification with the victims”—as human beings, and not merely as prisoners
outside the aegis of the Geneva Convention.3
Right on Möller’s heels, Dana Arieli-Horowitz offers us “Art in the Age of
Terror: The Israeli Case” in Chapter 2, where she examines the treatment of
art, in which the presence and theme of terror is understandably prominent.
In light of the ongoing acts of terror in Israel known, consecutively, as the
first and second Intifada—experienced by both Israeli and Palestinian soci-
eties over a period of four years (2000–4)—she sees the artistic response of
Israeli artists as a way of working through “cultural trauma,” following the
terminology of the noted sociologist Jeffrey C. Alexander. This move thus
allows Arieli-Horowitz to reinterpret the “aesthetization” of terror as a psy-
chological coping mechanism in which “the vast majority of artists within a
community react to a specific event,” such as the consecutive phases of the
Intifada in the Israeli case, featuring a number of these images as illustrations
for the reader. It is from such a vantage point that Arieli-Horowitz faces the
controversial question as to whether and to what extent we can view acts of
terror as containing an aesthetic dimension. Such an analysis may help to fur-
ther extend Möller’s opening chapter and, indeed, provide another dimen-
sion within which to ground Möller’s own claims for the dynamic tension
between the two registers of ethics and aesthetics.
In Chapter 3, “The Aura of Terror?” Kia Lindroos offers us a substantive
theoretical discussion on the aesthetics of historical and contemporary images
as political experiences, merged with the memories of both present and past
simultaneously. She does this, first, by opening with Roland Barthes’s engage-
ment with a photograph of his dead mother at the beginning of Camera
Lucida and, thereafter, proceeds to conduct us expertly through “the tempo-
ral epistemology of the image,” using Walter Benjamin’s concept of “aura” in
light of the systematic distribution of fear and horror that terror inspires. This
perspective allows her to maneuver toward the important question of how the
viewer is drawn to the event in the representation of terror images in the first
place and, in so doing, thus provides the theoretical anchor to the section as
a whole—bolstering and underlying the discussions of the preceding chapters
by Arieli-Horowitz and Möller.
Fictionalizing Terror
This second section offers a selection of articles on the subject of literature in
response to terror, which mirrors the previous section insofar as these chap-
ters are still coming to grips with the tension between violence and its artistic
representation. These four chapters begin with Margaret Heller’s reminder in
Chapter 4 that art and terror indeed have a long relationship in the literature
of the West, starting from perhaps the most famous example of such litera-
ture: Dostoyevsky’s—once again vogue—novel that highlights the activities
and internal dynamics of a terrorist cell in The Possessed (1872). Indeed,
Heller’s “Dostoyevsky on Terror and the Question of the West” confronts the
different types of terrorism in nineteenth-century Russia and concludes with
her own concern to reevaluate Dostoyevsky’s novel for the political ideas that
commentators, including Dostoyevsky himself, have thus far claimed for it—
thereby bringing into doubt that it now means what it used to for all con-
cerned, particularly in light of contemporary Islamic Fundamentalism. By
deconstructing the category of the “West” in this context, she problematizes
the means “through which modern evil can be externalized and essentialized.”
From Dostoyevsky’s engagement with terror, we shift forwards in time to
one of the most notorious cases of public violence and terror in recent Euro-
pean memory, that of Nazi Germany and the Jewish Holocaust. Indeed, in
“To This Side of Good and Evil: Primo Levi as a Truth-teller,” Tuija Parvikko
launches an original thesis in Chapter 5 by putting aside the usual juridical
reading of Nazi genocide and embracing, instead, a political reading. Such a
viewpoint, as it turns out, allows her to get beyond the strictly black and
white juxtaposition of “innocent victim” versus the “evil perpetrators” (the well-
explored perspective), for the express purpose of understanding both the sur-
vivors and the participants in the debate over the Holocaust as “politicians.”4
For this purpose, Parvikko takes the (Barthesian) position of Hayden
White, who interprets the Holocaust as a “modernist event,” and contrasts
this with the interpretation of Giorgio Agamben, who argues the impossibil-
ity of integral testimony, by way of Primo Levi’s reports about Auschwitz.
This strategy thus positions her to suggest that Levi can be understood as
an Arendtian “truth-teller,” on the basis of which important issues are not
necessarily coming directly out of one’s own personal experience, but rather
on the basis of seeking the truth in the fight against silence, evasion, and
lying in a world where telling the truth—as she argues—has become “politi-
cal action.”
Parvikko’s thesis thus provides a relevant departure point for the next chap-
ter, in which Kuisma Korhonen examines Georges Perec’s autobiographical
novel W ou le souvenir d’enfance (1974). Standing at the heart of Korhonen’s
study in Chapter 6, “Narrating the Trauma: Georges Perec’s W ou le souvenier
d’enfance,” is Perec’s dovetailing text, which at first appears to be a story about
an island, in one typeface, with a supposedly autobiographical text, printed
in a separate typeface on the page, as the story weaves back and forth
between what looks like that of a narrator and his straightforward descrip-
tion of a distant and unusual place. What eventually becomes clear, however,
is that ‘W’ turns out to be a metaphor for Auschwitz and the dovetailing
texts themselves (supposedly between two distinct stories) merge as a Freudian
method for dealing with childhood trauma. If we recall, in this context, the
figure of the Arendtian truth-teller from Parvikko’s chapter, we might agree
with Korhonen that, although Perec makes clear that all his childhood mem-
ories are unreliable, it is nonetheless fair to conclude the manner in which
Perec’s text serves as a guide, or map, through the labyrinth of traumatic
memories. Korhonen thus assesses “fictional truth” in this context through
the parallels and resonances of experience that is brought to bear on author
and reader alike. In this sense, Korhonen’s insight echoes that of Parvikko’s,
because this “fictional truth” (between author and reader) can be interpreted
as another way of “seeking the truth in the fight against silence, evasion, and
lying in a world where telling the truth has become political action.”
Fitting right into this vein of observation is Chapter 7 by Matti
Hyvärinen, entitled “Too Much Terror? J. M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello and
the Circulation of Trauma.” Here, Hyvärinen analyzes J. M. Coetzee’s recent
novel Elizabeth Costello and the manner in which this Nobel prize-winning
novelist sets the reader up for a straightforward and predictable, one-to-one
correspondence of the text with his “own, personal” political viewpoint—
concerning the highly charged theme of good and evil, specifically regarding
the ethical fallout around the theme of the Holocaust. However, once the
reader is nicely in hand and situated with certain basic expectations, Coetzee
then systematically undermines these expectations in manifold and surprising
ways. Hyvärinen therefore concludes that the reader is left with Coetzee’s
open-ended trajectory of “possibility” and no firm, concrete one-to-one cor-
respondence or final interpretation, leading to the distinct impression that
Coetzee’s outlook might well reflect that of Perec in the preceding chapter by
Korhonen. It would thus appear that the political nature of all three of these
analyses is that of the Arendtian truth-teller, thereby perhaps substantiating
Parvikko’s claim that telling the truth “may yet become one of the most
important modes of political action in the twenty-first century.”
If true, moreover, “telling the truth” as political action comes very close to
Andrei Bely’s symbolist solution in his novel Petersburg. Indeed, the alterna-
tive and (only) successful means for navigating around within Bely’s “city of
shadows,” suffering from (modernist) “illness and flu,” was to acquire “the
shadow passport” (Bely 1983, 206ff.; 1995, 404ff.); indeed, Berman picks up
Bely’s key insight and concludes:
The Petersburg influenza infuses the air of New York, of Milan, of Stockholm,
of Tokyo, of Tel Aviv, and it blows on and on. . . . The Petersburg tradition . . .
can provide them with shadow passports into the unreal reality of the modern
city. And it can inspire them with visions of symbolic action and interaction
that can help them to act as men and citizens there: modes of passionately
intense encounter and conflict and dialogue through which they can at once
assert themselves and confront each other . . . to become, as Dostoevsky’s
Underground Man claimed . . . to be, both personally and politically “more
alive” in the elusively shifting light and shadow of the city streets. (Berman
1983, 286)
Governmental Terror
The third section of this book addresses societies and situations justly charac-
terized as lying “in deep shadow,” in the Belian sense, where outright lies and
deception at the level of state policy, or community politics, created “unreal
cities” and environments that raises the concept of “terror” to new levels. It
opens with Chapter 8, “Dictators and Dictatorships: Art and Politics in
Romania and Chile (1974–89),” by the Romanian scholar, Caterina Preda,
who focuses on the neglected study of art and politics in the nondemocratic
cases of Latin America and Eastern Europe (Chile and Romania, respec-
tively). Preda asks two interrelated questions, “What is the relationship
between art and politics in a nondemocratic regime?” And, secondly, “How is
art used by nondemocratic regimes as a method/technique of ideologiza-
tion?” Her conclusions lead to the distinctions between art and politics in an
“authoritarian” society of the right (Chile) in contrast to that of a “totalitar-
ian” society of the left (Romania), respectively—where the ideological
“mood” (whether of the right or left) is nevertheless eviscerated by its univer-
sally violent “mode.”
This, in turn, provides timely insight for Minna Valjakka’s “Inciting
Mental Terror as Effective Governmental Control: Chinese Propaganda
Posters during the Cultural Revolution (1966–76).” Thus, in Chapter 9,
Valjakka shows that these art-cum-propaganda tools were the most favored
way of spreading the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party during the
Cultural Revolution, where Valjakka’s main aim is to inquire into how differ-
ent themes of art were used as instruments of mass manipulation in this total-
itarian society, and how the masses, in turn, reacted.
The fallout of inculcating ideology by way of mental-terror-as-govern-
ment-policy, moreover, is similar to the reaction of Israeli artists in Chapter
2, “working through” a collective trauma, where one Chinese artist reveals,
“What I have done is pull down this image from the pantheon to reality.
Working on Mao is one way to extricate myself from the nightmare; first I felt
sinful and fearful, now I feel nothing.” Such an observation goes a long way
in demonstrating the difference between random terror inflicted upon strangers
in the street, and systematic terror aimed at a populace that, in its aftermath,
can only feel “violated and used” by those purporting to lead and protect.
In Chapter 10, Javier Franzé’s “The Sweet Hereafter of Machiavelli and
Weber: Discussing Community and Responsibility as Political-ethical Criteria”
picks up on this theme and explicitly investigates it outside the authoritar-
ian/totalitarian context. On the basis of the 1997 Atom Egoyan film, The
Sweet Hereafter, Franzé emphasizes the fact that in the hypothetical “real
world” of film, we are removed from the abstract and hypothetical context of
the written word—on a two-dimensional surface—to find ourselves in the
midst of the same ethical dilemmas, among living people, in a three-dimen-
sional world where simple, black-and-white arguments no longer suffice.
Franzé thereby shows that, with film, traditional issues and their arguments
can literally be cast in a new (cinematic) light that emphasizes both the util-
ity and value of exposing traditionally textbook issues to other formats, such
as the arts—and especially film—for their detailed exploration. It is here in
Franzé’s essay that this dynamic tension between ethics and aesthetics is once
again clearly juxtaposed, again mirroring Arieli-Horowitz’s observation of the
important role of art as a channel for “working through” grief and trauma.
The Terror of Theory

This final section of the book picks up the preceding thread provided by the
chapters on governmental terror, here brought forward in the final two chap-
ters by Olivia Guaraldo in Chapter 11, and Lauri Siisiäinen in Chapter 12.
Taking the lead here, Guaraldo’s chapter, “The Violence of Lying,” boldly
sets out a critique of (Western) individualism by way of Hannah Arendt’s
reading of the leaked Pentagon Papers in introducing a story that vaguely
echoes Valjakka’s chapter on the Chinese government’s systematic campaign
to present a “false reality” for the sake of keeping up appearances. Ultimately
invoking the work of the feminist theorists Judith Butler and Adriana
Cavarero, Guaraldo calls into question the “immunitarian function” of mod-
ern politics, where the tradition of natural law (Hobbes’s “protego ergo
obligo”), that is, obedience in exchange for protection, has been made obso-
lete. Guaraldo argues with Arendt, who “attempts . . . to abandon the politi-
cal fictive entity of man, the individual, the subject,” leaving the way open for
the “irreducible differences that qualify each human being . . . related to oth-
ers.” In this manner, the isolated, atomized figure of the “immune” individ-
ual is a fictitious entity and thereby provides the basis for a new anthropological
model resituated in the Bulterian “vulnerable self ” that is necessarily con-
fronted by and exposed to others. Such an entity would provide the basis of a
new political aesthetic wherein “truth-telling” might help see its way clear in
the new century to break out of the vicious circle of violence that lying in pol-
itics engenders—as Musil observed so acutely, “order,” however established
(from the right or from the left, as Preda demonstrates), somehow always calls
for “bloodshed.”
In this final chapter of the book, “Terrorized by Sound? Foucault on
Terror, Resistance, and Sonorous Art,” Lauri Siisiäinen turns a seldom-
addressed question inside out, by challenging the idea that the ear, sound,
hearing, and music fundamentally terrorize the modern political community.
In other words, such elements are considered a threat to the Occidental tra-
dition of political philosophy, which normally prides itself as being founded
on reason and subjective autonomy. Surprisingly, however, Siisiäinen strikes a
positive note in this context. Through the prism of Michel Foucault’s late
work on “care of the self ”—which would be the sensibility of the “vulnerable
self ” of the previous chapter—suggests that far from posing a threat to the
modern political community, such characteristics offered by “auditory” or
“sonorous” politics might help to provide the departure point for construc-
tive conflict, intervention, seizure, and change. Indeed, few commentators
have picked up on this in Foucault’s work. In the end, moreover, this
embraces contingency and the unknown in a way that plays upon Parvikko’s
emphasis on the middle voice, or intransitive writing.5
What this collection therefore pursues from the perspectives of visual
studies, literature, historiography, political thought, and philosophy, is to
excavate hitherto unseen dimensions of problems of the present, not merely
the “what” on the surface of time that demands a clear “meaning” that “makes
sense,” but rather to realize that time is also a “knot” wherein “the march of
chronicity is interrupted, and past, present and future start to dance in a cir-
cle—a dance in which each of the dancers is spurred on by one of the others
and bites the tail of the third” (Runia 2007a, 1). From such a perspective, it
is possible to see the way in which the era of terror is not overwhelmingly
inevitable and irresolvable. Rather, by deliberately invoking Berman’s sense of
the “possible”—of acquiring a “shadow passport” and stripping away our col-
lective and private illusions alike—we might see this present age as having an
innate potential for shearing away the veil of logic and “sense making” that
ultimately shields us from ourselves and a deeper “sense of reality.” Indeed,
Barthes serves as an example of this “shearing process” when he looks into the
picture of his dead mother and is caught unawares and pierced to the heart,
not by any objective “meaning” that could be derived from the photograph in
his hand, but by the sudden sense of “presence” it so strongly evokes as one of
the loopholes in the circularity of time.
Reading the Arts Politically

The basic assumption informing this book has been that there are no such
self-evident entities as “political art” or “political literature.” Rather, the idea
of reading the arts politically—whatever this means exactly—and reading it
politically in nonreductive ways has guided this project. What this means in
the final analysis, and what it does not, goes beyond the present limits of this
introduction. In this vein, Susan Sontag’s critical stance against interpreta-
tion, originally from 1964, is just as acute now as it was then. She writes, “In
most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to
leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By
reducing the work of art to its content and interpreting that, one tames the
work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, comfortable” (Sontag
1987, 8).
Sontag attacks all attempts to reduce the arts to their “content” or “mean-
ing,” and qualifies all such projects as the taming of the arts. It is true, in any
case, that the structuralist narratology of the 1960s and 1970s, focusing
mainly on the form of the artwork, was able to develop far more “scientifi-
cally” oriented methods of interpretation (see, for example, Fludernik 2005).
Nonetheless, Sontag’s main point is still valid enough, if we think in terms of
political theorists. There is no direct way to the “content,” and interpretations
without sensitivity to the forms of the artwork often tend to slip into reduc-
tionism. Sontag nearly forecloses the whole possibility of political reading by
arguing that what “we decidedly do not need now is further to assimilate Art
into Thought” (14). Is this present volume of essays committing precisely this
mistake? This, again, may be read as a warning against reading the arts only
as an illustration of principles of thought, be it philosophy, social theory, or
aesthetics. However, there is hardly any reason to aggravate the modern
professional division of work between the arts and scholarship. One way out
of this dilemma may be a reading strategy Dominick LaCapra (1995) has
suggested for historians, and what he calls “dialogical.” He writes, “Basic to it
is a power of provocation or an exchange that has the effect of testing assump-
tions, legitimating those that stand its critical test and preparing others for
change” (824).
LaCapra rejects in his dialogical approach the temptation of “the redemp-
tive reading” (of Clifford Geerz or Charles Taylor) to recover the whole
“meaning” of history or artwork. A challenge, dialogue, and even a provoca-
tive testing of it may allocate the artwork the “capacity to make us nervous,”
as Sontag puts it (1987, 8). Political reading should not, therefore, aim at the
closure of “interpretation” or “analysis” of the work, but rather aim toward a
dialogue wherein the work of art retains its power to challenge the preexist-
ing theories, be they political, philosophical, or literary. Because of this dia-
logical tension, there obviously cannot be one standard strategy for reading
politically. Nevertheless, there is one apparent consequence of this metaphor
of reading the arts politically. That is, in making the political dimension of
the arts relevant, the readers themselves participate in the artistic-cum-politi-
cal process, and they do so in such a manner that makes possible the “revolu-
tion” of viewpoints that LaCapra’s dialogical conception articulates.
References
Auster, Paul. 1987. In the country of last things. New York: Penguin.
———. 1992. Leviathan. London: Faber and Faber.
Bely, Andrei. 1916/1995. Petersburg. Trans. David McDuff. London: Penguin.
———. 1916/1983. Petersburg. Trans. Robert A. Maguire and John E. Malmstad.
London: Penguin. Original translation, with notes and introduction for Indiana
University Press, 1978.
Berman, Marshall. 1983. All that is solid melts into air: The experience of modernity.
London and New York: Verso.
Brockmeier, Jens. 2008. Language, experience, and the “traumatic gap”: How to talk
about 9/11? In Health, illness and culture: Broken narratives, ed. L.-C. Hydén and
J. Brockmeier. New York: Routledge.
Burke, Peter. 2005. History and social theory. 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
DeLillo, Don. 2007. Falling man. New York: Scribner.
Ellis, Brett Easton. 2000. Glamorama. New York: Vintage Books.
Fludernik, Monika. 2005. Histories on narrative theory (II): From structuralism to
the present. In A companion to narrative theory, ed. J. Phelan and P. J. Rabinowitz,
36–59. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Foer, Jonathan Safran. 2006. Extremely loud & incredibly close. London: Penguin.
Foucault, Michel. 1972/1997. The archaeology of knowledge. Trans. A. M. Sheridan

Smith. London and New York: Routledge.
Genette, Gérard. 1980. Narrative discourse. Trans. J. E. Lewin. Oxford: Blackwell.
Original edition, “Discourse du Recit,” a portion of Figures III, Editions du Seuil
1972.
Hamid, Mohsin. 2007. The reluctant fundamentalist. Orlando: Harcourt.
Hustvedt, Siri. 2006. A plea for eros. London: Hoddon and Soughton.
Jahn, Manfred. 2007. Focalization. In The Cambridge companion to narrative, ed. D.
Herman, 94–108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
LaCapra, Dominick. 2004. History in transit: Experience, identity, critical theory. Ithaca
and London: Cornell University Press.
———. 2001. Writing history, writing trauma. Baltimore and London: Johns
Hopkins University Press.
———. 1995. History, language, and reading: Waiting for Crillon. American
Historical Review 100 (3): 799–828.
Lessing, Doris. 1986. The good terrorist. New York: Vintage.
McEwan, Ian. 2005. Saturday. London: Jonathan Cape.
Meehan, Patricia. 2007. Cruel Allied occupiers. The New York Review 54 (16): 20–24.
Ondaatje, Michael. 2001. Anil’s ghost. Toronto: Random House.
Runia, Eelco. 2007a. Can the past remember us? Paper presented at the colloquium
Moved by the Past, September 27–28, University of Groningen, The Netherlands.
———. 2007b. Into cleanness leaping: The primacy of the deed in history and liter-
ature. Invited lecture given May 31, Stanford University, United States.
———. 2006. Presence. History and Theory 45 (1): 1–29.
Rushdie, Salman. 2006. Shalimar the clown. New York: Random House.
Sontag, Susan. 1977/1987. Against interpretation. London: André Deutsch.
Spiegelman, Art. 2004. In the shadow of no towers. London: Penguin.
Updike, John. 2006. Terrorist. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Vivian, Bradford. 2004. Being made strange: Rhetoric beyond representation. New York:
SUNY Press.
Volkov, Solomon. 1997. St. Petersburg: A cultural history. Trans. Antonina W. Bouis.
New York: Free Press.
Notes
1. We thank Pekka Tammi for this observation.
2. Published in 1837, Pushkin’s (1799–1837) poem fused the mythos of the city
St. Petersburg with that of its founder, Peter the Great (r. 1682–1725), in the
image of a large, bronze equestrian statue by Etienne Maurice Falconet, com-
missioned by Catherine the Great (r. 1762–96). This statue was subsequently
unveiled at the center of St. Petersburg on the banks of the Neva River in Senate
Square in 1782. Dressed in a Roman toga and crowned with a laurel wreath,
Peter sits astride a rearing steed, the likes of which Pushkin finally immortalized
by placing at the center of his poem—a metonymy-cum-emblem that captured
all the latent ambiguity regarding the country’s destiny and the “fate of its cap-
ital,” fused together in Pushkin’s poetic imagination (Volkov 1997, xi; see also
Bely 1983, 323–24). And although Gogol and Dostoyevsky, to name just two
of the most well-known of the Russian cultural elite to follow Pushkin’s lead in
featuring St. Petersburg at the center of their works (as a metaphorical tension
between East and West), it is the Silver Age’s Symbolist poet of the 1910s,
Andrei Bely (Boris Nikolayevich Bugayev [1880–1934]), who authored one of
the twentieth century’s great modernist novels, Petersburg (1983, 1995, both
based on the 1916 Russian edition). For the purpose of the present introduc-
tion, moreover, the singular symbolic feature of this novel, framed during the
Russian revolutionary year of 1905, is that of two students posited at its “spher-
ical” center—would-be terrorists on different trajectories, echoing the different
“modernizing” trajectories of Russia herself (Bely 1983, 324). As the translators
point out, “the structure of the novel as a whole is circular . . . In short, we find
ourselves moving further and further back in time and space, only to experience
other beginnings and other returns. The ending of the novel seems ambigu-
ous . . . but there can be no real endings for Bely. The world of his novel is a liv-
ing organism, which constantly renews itself and which makes mockery of
man’s efforts to cut it to his own limited horizons” (Bely 1983, xxi).
3. Moreover, the overwhelming controversy that the Abu Ghraib photos mani-
fested has given rise to new publications that review and disseminate knowledge
of similar reprehensible behavior exhibited by American (and British) soldiers
also in the past, including Giles MacDonogh’s recently published After the
Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation, reviewed by historian Patricia
Meehan (2007). If the images from the Abu Ghraib prison had not been so
widely available and provoked such an outcry (opening up an otherwise well-
hidden topic), MacDonogh’s book might not have found its public so easily—
or found it so receptive to such a disturbing message.
4. Peter Burke (2005, 21–43) would perhaps point out here that this former, more
usual juridical viewpoint is but one way of establishing elements in a model for
one particular examination of the Holocaust. In such a light, another perspec-
tive, that of the political, is still ripe for a new construal of familiar evidence in
manifesting new observations and, perhaps, in coming to previously unantici-
pated conclusions.
5. Bradford Vivian (2004) makes the case for the middle voice from the point of
view of rhetoric (as opposed, for example, to that of literary theory), which is,
furthermore, developed on the basis of Foucault’s The Archaeology of Knowledge
(1997). Vivian’s text clarifies the common thread of Foucault’s oeuvre as being
“the status of the subject, not as an essential identity, but as a dispersion of dif-
ference” (Vivian 2004, 197n6) and, in a systematic presentation, illuminates
the value of the middle voice as a tool with which to break open discourse in any
domain, as is in abundant evidence in a majority of the preceding chapters of
this collection.
PART 1
Visualizing Terror
CHAPTER 1
The Implicated Spectator

From Manet to Botero
Frank Möller
P
hotographs of war, famines, atrocities, and other forms of human suf-
fering may aestheticize suffering and anaesthetize emotions. Quite
regardless of the photographer’s intention, they often fail to trigger a
political response to that which they depict. Indeed, photographs are often
accused of having a dulling and desensitizing effect, reflecting processes of
habituation and self-protection on the part of the viewers who might read
them as evidence of their own political and moral failure to prevent this
very suffering. However, “the limits of photography are not the limits of
art” (Danto 2006) and photography is not as limited as it is often accused
of being.1
Querétaro, June 19, 1867

The execution of emperor Maximilian of Mexico on June 19, 1867, brought
to an end a remarkable example of colonial folly: France’s policy in Mexico of
what nowadays is called regime change begun side by side with Britain and
Spain in January 1862 allegedly to make Mexico pay its foreign debt. While
Spain and Britain had sufficient wits to withdraw quickly from this adven-
ture, the French troops stayed in Mexico and were, in Puebla on May 5,
1862, utterly defeated by Benito Juárez’s forces—an event still celebrated
today in Mexico as Cinco de Mayo. In 1864, Napoleon the Third helped
install emperor Franz Joseph of Austria’s brother Maximilian—whose posi-
tion as governor of Lombardy-Venetia had become redundant after the
French invasion of Italy in 1859—as emperor of Mexico, making him believe
26 ● Frank Möller
that he would be welcomed in Mexico to represent the constitutional, hered-

itary monarchy that was established in July 1863 by an Assembly of Notables
in Mexico City after Juárez had been forced to flee to the north. Napoleon,
while refusing to guarantee Mexico’s territorial integrity, promised Maximilian
limited military support that exacerbated Mexico’s disastrous financial situa-
tion without supporting Maximilian when help was most needed. Realizing
both the increasing unpopularity of France’s engagement in Mexico and the
end of the American Civil War (that increased the danger of an American
engagement on Juárez’s side) and annoyed at Austria’s refusal to build an
alliance with France, Napoleon abandoned Maximilian in January 1866 by
withdrawing French troops from Mexico. Maximilian, to a large extent unin-
formed of Mexico’s politics and society while oscillating between liberal and
repressive policies, refused to abdicate. He was court-martialed and, together
with his generals Miguel Miramón and Tomás Mejía (long-time foes of Juárez)
and despite international protest, executed after the surrender of his remain-
ing troops to Juárez’s forces at Querétaro on June 19, 1867.
News of the execution reached Europe in early July and considerably
inconvenienced Napoleon. It was a personal defeat since it was he who, three
years earlier, had persuaded Maximilian to take the throne of Mexico. The
arrival of news of Maximilian’s execution also coincided with the prize-giv-
ing ceremony’s opening at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, surely intended
to celebrate France’s greatness. Instead, “painful news,” as L’Indépendance
Belge put it on July 1, 1867, disturbed the ceremony. The news caused, in Le
Mémorial Diplomatique’s assessment two days later, “a painful emotion in
Europe” (Elderfield 2006, 183), but also “arguably the most ambitious
work by the era’s most important artist” (Rubinstein 2007, 101), one of
the greatest achievements in nineteenth century painting, and one of the
finest examples ever of political art, Edouard Manet’s The Execution of
Emperor Maximilian.
This painting should not be considered as an important example of polit-
ical art because the painter made a clear political statement either for or
against the execution, for or against Maximilian’s installation as emperor, for
or against France’s role in the whole debacle. This is far from clear. The paint-
ing should also not be considered as an important example of political art
because it realistically and accurately depicted what had actually happened in
Querétaro on June 19, 1867. Although to some extent resuscitating the genre
of history painting, it does not seem to have been Manet’s intention to create
a traditional historical painting. He did gather and study as much informa-
tion on the execution as possible. He decided, however, to incorporate some
parts of the information into his painting while ignoring others. Information
The Implicated Spectator ● 27
on the details of the execution was ambivalent, contradictory, and unreliable

anyway. Furthermore, rather than purely aiming at a documentary approach
to the execution scene, Manet’s practice of painting and repainting was also a
lesson in intervisuality, that is, the application and alteration of the rules,
established by such artists as Francisco de Goya, governing the painting of
current and historical events. Rather, The Execution of Emperor Maximilian is
to be seen as political art because it cannot be diminished to a single mean-
ing; it complicates not simplifies (Elderfield 2006, 44), is insusceptible to
simple interpretations, and cannot be easily used for political purposes,
thereby maintaining its autonomy as a work of art.
This can also, and perhaps especially, be said with respect to what is usu-
ally considered as and diminished to an unfinished, preparatory study, a full-
size painted sketch (an ébauche) of considerable dimension (6 feet 5.125
inches ǂ 8 feet 6.25 inches / 195.9 ǂ 259.7 centimeters) titled Execution of
the Emperor Maximilian. This painting was done under the influence of early
news arriving from Mexico, subsequently to some extent adapted to newly
incoming snippets of knowledge that outlined in more detail the act of exe-
cution. The painting, currently owned by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
might be unfinished, but it is powerful all the same. However, without the
painting’s title, without additional knowledge of the events in Mexico, and
without the two following large-scale paintings that are more clearly identifi-
able as paintings of Maximilian’s execution—the one, preserved only in the
form of several fragments, on show today at the National Gallery, London,
the other at Städtische Kunsthalle, Mannheim2—it would be very difficult to
identify the object of the painting. It is a rather opaque execution scene. Only
the fact that some of the figures (most prominently one of the victims and the
noncommissioned officer [NCO] waiting for the coup de grace) appear to
have been depicted as wearing hats resembling sombreros gives some clues as
to the geographical location of the scene. Other figures are wearing kepis,
resembling caps prevalent in the French army, and others a curious combina-
tion of kepis and sombreros. This combination indicates, perhaps, a de-
Mexiconization of the painting and accusations against the French involvement
in the affair, both increasing in the course of repainting, or just reflects the
uncertainties and contradictions of the incoming information as to the sol-
diers’ headgear; the same could be said with respect to the uniforms. Except
for the lower left part of the painting (sand, perhaps; straw, perhaps), the
scene is basically dark and the number of figures cannot clearly be discerned.
The firing squad is painted as a cluster of anonymous, partly amalgamated
bodies rather than as individually identifiable people.
The role of the figure with the rifle at the painting’s front right side is
obscure. His attire, resembling that of a peasant more than that of a soldier,
is different from that of the rest of the firing squad. He is further detached
from the firing squad by seemingly looking in the wrong direction, namely,
in the direction of the beholder, thus both disconnecting himself from the
execution scene and uncomfortably involving the viewer in it, although his
eyes, hidden behind the hat-brim, cannot be seen. Next to him is a man with
a sword, presumably the sword officer, but his role in the execution is unclear,
too. Positioned behind the execution squad, he cannot possibly have given
the command for the execution that, as the smoke of the rifles indicates, is in
motion, having already affected the figure depicted on the painting’s left side,
bent forward (although it is impossible to know whether he is wounded or
dead). Thus, there is actually not much that the painting reveals clearly and
unmistakably. It would also be naïve to assume that it would actually be pos-
sible to grasp that what it does reveal by simply describing it: every descrip-
tion is the construction of something new because verbal and visual narratives
give very different accounts of the world (MacDougall 1998). Therefore, as
John Elderfield (2006, 69) puts it in the catalog of the 2006 Manet exhibi-
tion at the Museum of Modern Art, New York,3 for which he served as cura-
tor, “we should notice the impossibility of firm identification that this
painting asserts,” among other things, because the figures that in later paint-
ings can clearly be identified as Maximilian, Mejía, and Miramón are, in the
Boston painting, “nameless as well as faceless.” Furthermore, the painting’s
“blurred, irregular patches of spread, thinned, compacted, scratched, and
abraded paint are not simply representations of the smoke of the rifles or the
fall of morning light upon the execution; neither are they marks of tentative-
ness and indecision. Rather, they should be thought of as positive statements
of uncertainty . . . of someone torn between painting uncertainty and advanc-
ing a project of knowledge” (69).
Thus, without wanting to suggest that paintings and photographs operate
in similar manner, it can be said that every interpretation of this painting has
to be aware of what Walter Benjamin has formulated with respect to photog-
raphy, namely, that without captions, photographs are bound to get stuck in
the approximate (1963, 64). It also has to be aware of what Marianne Hirsch
has noted, again with respect to photography, that there is a tension “between
the little a photograph reveals and all that it promises to reveal but cannot”
(1997, 119). However, both the tension referred to by Hirsch and the
approximate referred to by Benjamin might be an asset rather than a liability.
Rather than diminishing the painting or the photograph to the depiction
and, perhaps, critique of a given, singular event, it might help acknowledge
the painting’s or the photograph’s universal relevance as an indicator of spe-

cific features of the human condition similar, arguably, to Pablo Picasso’s
Guernica and Robert Capa’s “Spanish Soldier Drops Dead with a Bullet
through His Head, July 12, 1937,” that, rather than just being artistic inter-
ventions in the Spanish Civil War, can also be seen as accusations against war
in general.4
Aestheticization of Politics—Anaesthetization of Emotions

Photography has often been accused of aestheticizing war and anaesthetizing
emotions when depicting war. There certainly is a close relationship between
photography and the aestheticization of politics: the aestheticization of mass
meetings, parades, and movements was considerably facilitated by modern
techniques of taking and developing pictures. For example, in World War I,
aerial photography aestheticized and transfigured war, violence, and death
by taking, from the air, photographs of “impersonal landscapes,” which
abstracted from human suffering and focused on “surface patterns composed
of dugouts, trenches, supply and communication lines” (Apel 1999, 81). De-
humanizing and aestheticizing war by means of aerial photography was an
attempt to legitimize war by abstracting from its cruelty and suffering. It thus
ran counter to the traits inherent in early war photography that, to some
extent, aimed at verifying the personal experiences of those who had actually
been on the battlefield. Such photography was often based on the thought
that a realistic depiction of cruelty would in itself help stop the slaughter or
prevent future warfare. Depicting details rather than grand scenes and ordi-
nary soldiers rather than generals was one of photography’s contributions to
the “democratization of images” (Hüppauf 1993, 133). Traditional battle
paintings frequently had the aim of uncritically depicting the war heroes and
confirming the way they saw themselves and the battle, whereas photographs
addressed a larger audience and a wider range of issues, among which the
details of the battle and the “image from below” (134) established a new
visual mode of representation.
However, only a few of the photographs taken, for example, during the
American Civil War that realistically documented human suffering were
actually published at that time.5 Those that were published “were embedded
in the overall image of a morally justified war” (Hüppauf 1993, 143).
Furthermore, most photographs from the American Civil War and also most
photographs from the preceding Crimean War were following the code of the
picturesque, thus helping both to aestheticize destruction and to transform
the war into one characterized “by a striking absence of war” and the
“destructive violence of the battlefield” (148). The photographs taken during

the Crimean War by Roger Fenton are criticized for depicting “soldiers
placidly sitting near their tents or allied generals in conference” (Perlmutter
2001, 82) and for not showing the realities of war. Fenton was under strict
military supervision and plagued by the cumbersome technology of the day,
rendering the taking of photographs of moving objects impossible. He is said
to have “enjoyed a good life at the dinner tables of the generals” (82). His
photographs were in accordance with the image of the war that the generals
wanted to have disseminated. Whatever their merit is, they can hardly be
considered a work of critique.
In mass meetings and in war, “the mass looks in its own face” (Benjamin
1963, 42). With respect to Manet’s Boston painting, it has been said that the
viewers participate in the execution scene through the implicit contact
between them and the NCO preparing the coup de grace: the NCO does not
seem to observe the execution but rather faces the painting’s viewers. In the
Mannheim painting, the viewers’ involvement becomes stronger still, even
inevitable, turning the viewer from a detached observer into a participant of
the scene. While “the Boston painting set the pattern for the series in placing
the viewer before both the NCO and the single soldier . . . in the Mannheim
painting Manet seems to be privileging the NCO over the single soldier by
placing our shadow in front of him” (Elderfield 2006, 133, emphasis added),
thus involving us, the viewers, directly in the execution scene.
We are not the only spectators regarding the execution scene. In the Boston
and London paintings, the execution takes place in an open landscape. In con-
trast, in the Mannheim painting—and also in the small Copenhagen paint-
ing and the lithograph—Manet used a wall to separate the execution scene
from the surrounding landscape, arguably to increase the intensity of the
unfolding drama. The conceptions of the wall are different; in the lithograph
it is designed in a corrida style with clear references to Goya’s and Manet’s ear-
lier work on bullfights, whereas later it is a plain wall. But in both cases, spec-
tators are peeping over the wall (just as they did in Goya’s A Picador is
Unhorsed and Falls under the Bull, 1816 and Manet’s own Bullfight from 1865
to 1866, another example of Manet’s practice of intervisuality). This group of
people obviously has come to see the execution. Elderfield writes,“They all
look, as well as they can from their elevated, rearward position, at what is
happening to the victims. (Their looking directs ours, from the opposite side
of the painting, and helps to set up its initial reading)” (2006, 137–38).
Although they do not seem to look in the viewers’ direction, they com-
municate with us and influence our looking. How they respond to “the pain
of others” (Sontag 2003) is hard to say; most of them do not reveal their emo-
tions and attitudes, neither sympathy with the victims nor support for the
firing squad can clearly be discerned. Simply by being there, however, they—
like us—become accessories to the execution, accomplices perhaps, not least
because, although “having knowledge of suffering points to an obligation to
give assistance” (Boltanski 1999, 20), we cannot do anything to prevent it. In
addition to the group of people watching the execution scene, there are also
two clusters of anonymous people on the hillside that cannot be dissected
into the individuals of which the groups, far away from the execution scene,
consist. These groups seem to have been Manet’s response to reports in the
newspapers of groups of poor Indians gathering on the hillside. They “are not
only too distant to see properly; they are also too distant to be heard or to
hear” (Elderfield 2006, 138). Their miniaturization corresponds with the
overall lack of importance attached to indigenous people in colonial dis-
course and practice and the colonists’ proclivity to speak and act on their
behalf and, ostensibly, in their interest. It might be interpreted as Manet’s cri-
tique of this colonial practice, but their depiction as anonymous groups of
people corresponds with the colonial practice, still observable today, of reduc-
ing individual people to “figures in the crowd” (Gregory 2004, 199).
The experience of one’s own moral failure in the sense that one has not
been able to prevent an execution or, for that matter, another form of vio-
lence is an almost daily experience for people exposed to media coverage of
wars, famines, atrocities, and other forms of human suffering. Photography is
often blamed for having a “dulling, if not desensitizing” effect (Danto 2006).
Susan Sontag has even suggested that “most depictions of tormented, muti-
lated bodies do arouse a prurient interest” (2003, 95). However, these generic
assessments seem to be inattentive to both the surplus of meaning that pho-
tographs always carry with them and the differences among viewers in
responding to them. Indeed, many photographs, shown and seen hundreds
of times and engraved on each person’s pictorial memory, still move us, touch
us, make us cry. Thus, Arthur Danto’s generic critique seems to be unfair:
while some photographs do have a dulling effect, others do not.6 Some pho-
tographs have a desensitizing effect on some viewers but not on others. Some
photographs have a dulling effect because they are shown too often; it is the
repetitive display of a given photograph, not the photograph as such that is to
be blamed for desensitivization (Möller, 2006). In addition, and often
ignored in analyses of photography, photographs not only have a visual
dimension but also a material dimension. They not only touch us, but we can
touch them with the sensitive tips of our fingers and by so doing relate to
them and to that which they depict; a corporeal relationship that can hardly
be established with respect to paintings exhibited in museums and digital
photography and the display of its products on the computer screen.
This is arguably one of the reasons for the peculiar reaction to the publi-
cation of the now notorious photographs taken at Abu Ghraib, which were
visual documents of mistreatment and torture of inmates at the U.S. military
prison in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, twenty miles west of Baghdad. Most viewers first
saw these photographs on the screens of their computers or television sets.
These photographs were taken by the jailors between October and December
2003, emailed to friends, and digitally disseminated almost in real time all
over the television, computer, and newspaper legible world. The images were
decipherable also by illiterates to whom the written accounts of the scandal
may have been incomprehensible. When published in 2004, the photographs
were seen in parts of the non-Western world as another piece of evidence of
the West’s moral hypocrisy, degeneracy, and inattentiveness to the values of
others. They appalled Western observers, although some were shocked not by
that what the photographs depicted, but rather by the fact that the pho-
tographs, in violation of U.S. law, had been taken and published.7 Since “an
existing body of facts is usually compatible with a number of separate stories”
(Ringmar 2006, 407), it is not surprising that two master narratives have sub-
sequently been constructed with reference to the images. The official U.S.
position, on the one hand, focused on “operators’ errors” and “a few bad
apples.” On the other hand, the position held by, for example, Sheik
Mohammed Bashir saw the images as “perfect symbols of the subjugation and
degradation that the American occupiers have inflicted on Iraq and the rest of
the Arab world” (Danner 2004, 28). As always, the images show both and,
owing to the surplus of meaning that every image carries with it, more.
The Western discourse revolving around the Abu Ghraib photographs was
mainly focused on the roots of the scandal that, according to Seymour Hersh
(2004b), lie in the expansion of a secret operation in the context of the fight
against al Qaeda in Afghanistan to the treatment of prisoners in Iraq. The
Western debate also stressed the role of the perpetrators, their superiors, and
commanders—the chain of command (see Hersh 2004a)—and investigated
the question of individual and collective guilt. It elaborated on the question
of whether the treatment of inmates in Abu Ghraib was torture or not
(Martin 2006, 516–17) and it discussed the question of whether the Geneva
Convention was to have been applied to Abu Ghraib or not. The Western
discourse, too, focused on the question of the extent to which these prac-
tices were, or seemed to be, covered by law and on the question of whether
or not these practices were “systemic. Authorized. Condoned. Covered up”
(Sontag 2004).
Some authors speculated “that the perpetrators of the abuse had no spe-
cific end in mind” except teaching the victims “who [they] are and what
[their] place is in relation to [the jailors]” (Ghosh 2005). However, other

authors argued that, at least in the beginning, the sexual humiliation and
posed photographs were sought to motivate the victims on the basis of “fear
of exposure . . . to gather information about pending insurgency action”
(Hersh 2004b). Others investigated the question of guilt by arguing that,
rather than understanding Abu Ghraib as a “public relations disaster,” the
“complex crimes of leadership, policies and authority revealed by the pic-
tures” should be dealt with (Sontag 2004).
Importantly, the Western discourse was curiously inattentive to the vic-
tims. Indeed, the “true focus of our curiosity here is . . . on ourselves”
(Simpson 2006, 107). Comparing the Abu Ghraib photographs with lynch-
ing photographs from the early twentieth century, Dora Apel (2005, 89)
argues, “More shocking, even, in both sets of images [than the unabashed
picturing of torture and humiliation itself ] are the proud perpetrators whose
smug gloating we do not expect to see and who flaunt an appalling shame-
lessness.” Such official investigations as the Taguba Report meticulously
listed all forms of crimes and abuse of detainees by military police personnel
but did not have much to say on the victims. However, the detainees on
whose statements the Taguba report was in part based were not reduced to
numbers but acknowledged by their names.8 In contrast, press reports and
politicians’ statements occasionally conveyed the impression that “we” are the
“real” victims; that the photographs threaten “our” fight against “terrorism”
or at least its legitimacy, that they undermine “our” values and give the wrong
impression of what “our” societies are actually about, and so on. Thus, it was
an essentially self-centered debate with some observers representing the pho-
tographs as being detrimental and damaging mainly to “us.” In some cases,
this discourse also repeated the perpetrators’ strategy of reducing the victims
to “non-persons, bare, faceless, nameless” (Vogl 2004)—occasionally reduced
to numbers—whose verbal testimony of abuse and torture was considered as
less valuable than the photographic documents provided by the perpetra-
tors. The understanding of the photographs as evidence and the preceding
ignorance of the victims’ verbal statements9 deprive the victims, in what has
been called “the era of the witness” (Wieviorka 2006), of the capacity of
giving testimony and getting heard. They monopolize the act of witnessing:
the photographs erase the victims’ testimony for a second time (Vogl 2004)
thus entmündigen the witnesses.10 As Danto (2006) has put it, “When the
photographs were released, the moral indignation of the West was focused on
the grinning soldiers, for whom this appalling spectacle was a form of enter-
tainment. But the photographs did not bring us closer to the agonies of
the victims.”
Furthermore, the viewers who decide to take a look at the photographs—

thus not opting for not looking—have already “take[n] up a position”
(Boltanski 1999, 20) and this position has moral consequences. The media
researcher Joseph Vogl (2004) argues that the act of viewing indeed contam-
inates the viewers. The perpetrators, by posing in front of the camera, call
upon the viewers to look (“Look!”) and the viewers, by following the perpe-
trators’ call, become involved in the perpetrators’ act. Comparable to what
has been said earlier in connection with Manet’s London painting, a similar
line can be argued with respect to the Abu Ghraib photographs that simply
by watching, we become accessories to the humiliation of others; we are no
longer innocent viewers but rather observing participants. Likewise, the art
historian Horst Bredekamp (2004) argues that there is an intimate relation-
ship between viewing and participating. To deliberately watch an image of a
crime is, according to Bredekamp, an act of complicity if the crime had been
committed in the first place, in order to produce images of it. Thus, if a
human being is killed so as to transfer his or her death into an image, then
regarding this image inevitably is an act of participation in the crime. If vic-
tims are humiliated and abused in front of the camera for the purpose of the
production of images, then the viewer, by watching these images, becomes an
accomplice of the perpetrators.
Art after Abu Ghraib

How to respond to this dilemma? Not watching is not really an option, not
only because we are living in a culture that is dominated by images, but also
because closing one’s eyes to the pain of others, although foiling the perpe-
trators’ intentions, would not seem to be morally acceptable behavior. Roland
Bleiker has suggested that artistic engagements “have a potential to capture
and communicate a range of crucial but often neglected emotional issues”
(2006, 78). Let us, therefore, return from the Abu Ghraib photographs to
art—without ignoring that many photographs, too, have a potential to com-
municate emotions.11 Approximately at the same time when Manet and the
Execution of Maximilian was on show at the Museum of Modern Art in New
York, the Marlborough Gallery ran an exhibition of paintings by the
Colombian artist Fernando Botero, Fernando Botero: Abu Ghraib.12 Regarding
the Manet exhibition, parallels have been established both by John Elderfield
and in the press between Manet’s execution scene and the ongoing war in
Iraq. Elderfield states that it is not accidental that “an exhibition and publi-
cation appearing in 2006 are devoted to works that depict the baleful conse-
quences of a military intervention and regime change” (2006, 23). Holland
Cotter, writing on the Manet exhibition in the New York Times on November
3, 2006, writes, “What happens when a powerful country with imperial
ambitions forces its way at gunpoint into the affairs of another, distant coun-
try, of which it has no cultural knowledge, on the pretext of bringing enlight-
ened governance? And that country meets the encroachment with violent
resistance? You get disaster.”
It is also—and despite all differences—quite obvious to compare the
paintings of the execution of emperor Maximilian with the December 30,
2006, execution of Saddam Hussein, video-phoned footage of which could
be seen on television and on the Internet. With respect to Fernando Botero:
Abu Ghraib, the parallels are even more obvious. The paintings have clearly
been inspired by what happened in Abu Ghraib. These events helped turn an
artist into an eminent political voice, who was hitherto best known not for
his political statements but “for his highly mannered, widely popular paint-
ings and sculptures of corpulent figures: nudes, personages from famous
paintings of the past, and men and women from all walks of Latin American
society” (Heartney 2007, 128).13 Botero, having resided in the United States
from 1960 to 1973 and being familiar with and appreciative of that country’s
culture, politics, and society, is also quoted as saying that the Abu Ghraib
works represent for him “both a broad statement about cruelty and at the
same time an accusation of U.S. policies” (Ebony 2006, 12). By rejecting to
sell his paintings, Botero both refuses to make money out of the victims and
implicitly criticizes the American way of life and its tendency to turn almost
everything into a commodity.
There are also parallels between Botero’s work and Manet’s in the sense
that both Manet and Botero imagined, as Elderfield puts it with respect to
Manet, “an unseen event, known only through written text” (2006, 51).
Indeed, according to Juan Forero, writing in the New York Times on May 8,
2005, Botero’s paintings are mostly based on news reports and other pub-
lished descriptions, for example Hersh’s reports in the New Yorker, and not
primarily on the photographs—although Botero, as an “admitted news
addict,” is also said to have done further research on the television and the
Internet (Ebony 2006, 13). His reliance on written accounts seems to be one
of the reasons for one of their most striking features, namely and in contrast
to the photographs, the absence of the perpetrators from most of the paint-
ings and the strong focus on the victims—a feature that the paintings share,
curiously enough, with the documentary practice of British colonial rule in
late nineteenth century India, taking photographs of prisoners in a way very
similar to the Abu Ghraib photographs but excluding the jailors from repre-
sentation (Ghosh 2005). As to Botero’s paintings, Eleanor Heartney writes,
“With a few exceptions, the prison guards are offstage or represented only by
a boot or a hand emerging from beyond the canvas edge. Instead, the focus is
on the prisoners themselves, as they suffer their torments with grimaces that
are often largely obscured by hoods or blindfolds. In the absence of fully vis-
ible faces, these naked and near naked bodies become the vehicles of emo-
tional expression” (2007, 130).
Just as Manet was rather liberal in incorporating only selected aspects of
the available information on Maximilian’s execution into his paintings,
Botero counter-factually adheres to his trademark—figures “exaggerated
principally in terms of their volumetric relationships to their surround-
ings”—so as to assign to the prison inmates “a psychological and moral
weightiness that commands, if it does not overwhelm, their confined spaces”
(Ebony 2006, 10). Although Hersh, in the New Yorker, wrote about “grin-
ning” and “smiling” soldiers, giving “thumbs-up behind a cluster of perhaps
seven naked Iraqis” (2004a), the jailors in Botero’s paintings are neither smil-
ing nor grinning. Rather, in the few paintings where their faces can fully be
seen (Abu Ghraib 13, Abu Ghraib 17, Abu Ghraib 19, Abu Ghraib 43, and
Abu Ghraib 77), they are embodiments of grim and brutal determination. In
other paintings, their faces are off the canvas (Abu Ghraib 4, Abu Ghraib 10,
and Abu Ghraib 16), their heads are painted from behind (Abu Ghraib 9) or
hidden behind arms raised in order to beat a prisoner (Abu Ghraib 2). In con-
trast to Botero’s paintings on the war in Colombia bearing such titles as
Massacre in the Cathedral and Massacre in Colombia, his Abu Ghraib paint-
ings are simply numbered from Abu Ghraib 1 to Abu Ghraib 86. Thus,
although his representational strategy of showing, in some of his paintings,
only a boot or a hand of the perpetrators reminds the viewer of Goya’s Plate
15 from Los Desastres de la Guerra (Y no hai remedio [And there’s nothing to
be done]), implying the presence of soldiers only by the top of their bayo-
neted rifles, Botero deviates from Goya by not adding textual explanations to
what is to be seen in the paintings. Thus, Goya, on the one hand, seems to
have believed that in order to lend authenticity to the etchings’ “ghoulish cru-
elties” (Sontag 2003, 44), verbal explanations were needed, “offering assur-
ances of the image’s veracity” (46).14 Botero, on the other hand, relies on the
power of the painting. In fact, no one—not even the fiercest apologists of the
U.S. occupation of Iraq—seems to have called into question the authenticity
of both the Abu Ghraib photographs and Botero’s paintings.
What Botero’s works make us realize, then, is that “we knew that Abu
Ghraib’s prisoners were suffering, but we did not feel that suffering as ours.”
The paintings, thus, “establish a visceral sense of identification with the vic-
tims” (Danto 2006)—a sense of identification that neither the photographs
nor the debate on the photographs succeeded in establishing. Roberta Smith,

writing in the New York Times on November 15, 2006, even argues that the
paintings “restore the prisoners’ dignity and humanity without diminishing
their agony or the injustice of their situation.” Nowhere is this more obvious
than in Abu Ghraib 80 and Abu Ghraib 81, concentrating on a victim’s hand
and depicting torture mainly by implication. The lack of color gives the scene
a sense of urgency. For the viewer, it is not possible to avoid the victims’ pain
by focusing attention on the jailors; we are compelled to face the victims and
their pain. We are compelled, too, to speak up because “by speaking up . . .
the spectator can maintain his integrity when, brought face to face with suf-
fering, he is called upon to act in a situation in which direct action is difficult
or impossible” (Boltanski 1999, 20). Since speech-acts are not medium-spe-
cific—they can consist of verbal, written, and visual signs (Mitchell 1994,
160)—this is exactly what Botero does.
The same can be said with respect to the work of such Iraqi artists as
Abdul Karim Khalil who, like some of his colleagues, used the Abu Ghraib
photographs as a point of departure for his own artistic engagement with the
social realities of occupied Iraq (Abdul-Ahad 2004; Blanford 2004). In his
series of marble and bronze figurines, titled A Man from Abu Ghraib, Abdul
Karim Khalil not only deconstructs the original photographs but, by using
“white marble associated with classical Greek sculpture” (Apel 2005, 99) also
critically engages with Western feelings and fantasies of cultural superiority.15
References
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22, 2004).
Apel, Dora. 2005. Torture culture: Lynching photographs and the images of Abu
Ghraib. Art Journal 64 (2): 88–100.
———. 1999. Cultural battlegrounds: Weimar photographic narratives of war. New
German Critique 76: 49–84.
Arendt, Paul. 2006. World Trade Centre memorial site opens with photos of 9/11
attacks. Guardian, August 29, http://arts.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329563426
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5–19. Munich, Germany: Prestel.
Elderfield, John. 2006. Manet and the execution of Maximilian. New York: Museum of
Modern Art.
Geyer, Michael. 1997. The place of the Second World War in German memory and
history. New German Critique 71: 5–40.
Ghosh, Amitav. 2005. The theater of cruelty. Nation, July 18, http://www.thenation
.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050718&s=ghosh (accessed July 4, 2005).
Gregory, Derek. 2004. The colonial present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq. Oxford:
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Heartney, Eleanor. 2007. An iconography of torture. Art in America, January, 128–31.
Hersh, Seymour M. 2004a. Torture at Abu Ghraib. New Yorker, April 30, http://
www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/040510fa_fact (accessed May 5, 2004).
———. 2004b. The gray zone. New Yorker, May 15, http://www.newyorker
.com/printable/?fact/040524fa_fact (accessed May 17, 2004).
Hirsch, Marianne. 1997. Family frames: Photography, narrative, and postmemory.
Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press.
Hüppauf, Bernd. 1993. The emergence of modern war imagery in early photography.
History and Memory 5: 131–50.
MacDougall, David. 1998. Transcultural cinema. Princeton: Princeton University
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Notes
1. Many thanks to Eeva Puumala for thoughtful comments on an earlier draft of
this essay.
2. In addition, Manet produced a lithograph of the scene, currently owned by the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and a small oil painting that can be
seen at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen.
3. Manet and the Execution of Maximilian, Museum of Modern Art, New York,
November 5, 2006–January 29, 2007.
4. The same can be said with respect to Goya’s Los Desastres de la Guerra and
Jacques Callot’s Les Misères et les Malheurs de la Guerre.
5. Likewise, Goya’s cycle Los Desastres de la Guerra was published only posthu-
mously and Manet’s The Execution of Emperor Maximilian was for the first time
publicly shown in Europe in 1905 (the Boston and the Mannheim paintings;
the fragments of the London painting were reassembled by Edgar Degas in the
1890s but recombined on one canvas by the National Gallery, London, not
before 1992). The Mannheim painting was privately shown in London in 1898,
however. The lithograph, when presented for official registration, was prohib-
ited (Elderfield 2006, 17–18, 116–17).
6. Thus, Sontag (2003, 105) now asks, “As much as [photographs] create sympa-
thy, I wrote [in On Photography (1977)] photographs shrivel sympathy. Is this
true? I thought it was when I wrote it. I’m not so sure now. What is the evidence
that photographs have a diminishing impact, that our culture of spectatorship
neutralizes the moral force of photographs of atrocities?” The same question can
be asked with respect to her claim, cited earlier, that depictions of tormented
bodies arouse a prurient interest.
7. “As a result of the Abu Ghraib debacle, most U.S. soldiers in Iraq are prohibited
from taking photographs and videos while on duty” (Ebony 2006, 8).
8. The “Article 15–6 Investigation of the 8ooth Military Police Brigade (the
Taguba Report)” is reprinted in Danner (2004, 279–328).
9. For sworn statements by Abu Ghraib detainees, see Danner (2004, 225–48).
10. The English equivalent to the German word entmündigen is “to legally incapac-
itate.” The German word is derived from the word Mund (mouth), so that ent-
mündigen also refers to situations in which someone is not permitted to speak
or act for him or herself. Rather, others are speaking and acting in his or her
stead. This obviously has always been an important ingredient of the colonial
discourse and practice, turning subjects into objects, and it, too, “is, funda-
mentally, a political question about who gets heard” (Couldry 2000, 57). Thus
the claim, made in cultural and postcolonial studies, that voice be given to mar-
ginalized and silenced people(s) is insufficient as long as others, in particular
“we,” are not willing to listen.
11. For example, commenting on the photographic exhibition Here: Remembering
9/11, the first exhibition to go on show at the World Trade Center Memorial in
New York City, Alice Greenwald, the memorial’s director, is quoted as saying,
“There’s literally nothing to see but a gaping hole in the ground . . . And yet
people come, as if they’re on pilgrimage. It’s as if they’re looking through these
images to the site. It’s deeply emotional” (Arendt 2006).
12. Fernando Botero: Abu Ghraib, Marlborough Gallery, New York, October 18,
2006–November 21, 2006 (see also Botero 2006).
13. Prior to the Abu Ghraib paintings and drawings, Botero had already attracted
attention as a political artist when, in the late 1990s, he started to create works
depicting the drug-related war in Colombia in shocking detail. Furthermore his
portraits of figures of authority are said to have “routinely satirized” these fig-
ures’ “trumped-up grandeur” and “air of self-importance” (Ebony 2006, 11).
14. See, for example, I Saw This (Yo Lo Vi) and And This, Too (Y Esty Tambien).
15. See http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/features/mumford/mumford10–5–17
.asp (accessed February 19, 2007).
CHAPTER 2
Art in the Age of Terror

The Israeli Case
Dana Arieli-Horowitz
Introduction
A
rt produced in relation or as a reaction to terror is the focal point of
the present discussion. This chapter centers on art in the age of ter-
ror. Moreover, I will focus on art created during the years 2000 to
2004, throughout the Al Aqsa Intifada or the Second Intifada to which both
the Jewish and Palestinian societies were exposed.1 It appears that the Israeli
artistic community unconsciously and unintentionally produced a flood of
creative work with terror at its core. Most of the artists I interviewed2 reacted
to acts of terror by depicting both Israeli and Palestinian life under the
shadow of terrorism.
Reactions of the artist community to terror are fragmented, heteroge-
neous, and intense. This chapter wishes to offer a preliminary typology that
may facilitate different readings of Israeli art dealing with terror. As we shall
see, it is possible to differentiate between various types of reactions, but on
the whole, artistic reactions may fit a spectrum that has direct media art on
one end and abstract political art on the other. The following pages discuss
both types in depth.
There are many precedents of art reacting to terror,3 and I certainly do not
claim that politics and terror force their way into art in Israel alone.
Nevertheless, the uniqueness of the Israeli case is derived from its intensity, its
all-encompassing extent, and the variety of styles that artists resort to when
dealing with terror. I believe that this intensity of creation fits the term cul-
tural trauma.4 It appears that not all national traumas produce cultural ones,
42 ● Dana Arieli-Horowitz
and that only in rare cases does the intensity of reaction in the artistic sphere
justify the term. Following Jeffrey C. Alexander, I use the term cultural
trauma, which seems appropriate only when the vast majority of artists
within a community react to a specific event.
Aesthetics and Terror: Abstract Political Art

In a recent conversation with Micha Ullman (b. 1939), a leading Israeli artist,
he claimed that the interest artists show in terror may be the result of a simi-
larity in world views; radicalism, anarchism, and the fracturing of conven-
tions are just some of the affinities between artists and terrorists. Ullman’s
statement does not seem controversial given art movements such as Futurism,
whose members supported the idea that violence and terror are legitimate
tools which must be used if artists are to gain influence. At the end of the
nineteenth century, thinkers and philosophers such as Bakunin and Le Bon
were praising terrorism, claiming that violence had an intrinsic moral value
and was a necessary implement in purifying the world of degeneration.
After September 11, the notion that acts of terror have aesthetic value
became popular. Thinkers such as Z̆iz̆ek in his Welcome to the Desert of the
Real and Paul Virilio in his Art and Fear referred to the images of the collaps-
ing Twin Towers, trying to explain the fascination they created and claiming
that terror was aesthetic (see Virilio 2004; Z̆iz̆ek 2002). These images associ-
ated with terror became powerful tools in the postmodern bank of images.
Not surprisingly, artists such as Damien Hirst in England or composers like
Stockhausen were quick to assert that September 11 was one of the most aes-
thetic visions they had ever experienced.5
Dealing with terror in art poses a great dilemma; on the one hand, there is
the threat that in choosing terror as its topic, art may be reduced to a politi-
cal banner. On the other hand, and especially in recent years, art with no ref-
erence to context may easily become irrelevant. I believe the solution chosen
by some of the artists is brilliant; they have taken themes or images from sites
where suicide bombings took place. The themes may be obvious, but taken
out of their immediate context—and treated in an abstract manner through
the process of creation—they receive new meanings. The result is thus not
too obvious. This is why I chose the term abstract political art, which I believe
is suitable for describing this kind of work, as it so perfectly mixes aesthetics
and politics; the themes are certainly political, taken from a concrete context,
yet there is an effort to leave them as abstract and as universal as possible.
Such images do not clearly indicate the exact location or time of occurrence
Art in the Age of Terror ● 43
so that, although the viewer may recognize a concrete political context, there
is always another layer of meaning.
Abstract political art reacting to terror may be classified into various types
according to the themes and iconography chosen by the artist. Some artists
deal with suicide bombing sites; others try to depict “the other.” In so doing,
these artists may be criticizing the political reality that has driven the terror-
ists to an act of suicide. In other cases, artists attempt to digest the traumatic
events of our times through the very process of creation. The constant return
to sites of terror in Israeli art might hint at a posttraumatic reaction. In the
following pages, I will present some examples of each of the categories I have
mentioned, unfortunately only a fraction of what actually exists. As will be
shown, in some cases, artistic creations may suit more than one category or
type of reaction. To my understanding, the greater the variety of layers of
interpretation the better the work is. Depending on the “strategy” chosen by
the artist, the result becomes a very sophisticated and unique form of creation
used to depict terror. The uniqueness is derived from a balanced look at a
complex political reality, one that reflects a world view that is sometimes
escapist, ironic, or both.
Abstract Political Art: Suicide Bombing Sites

Guy Raz’s (b. 1964) photos are an example of abstract political art reacting to
terror.6 In his project, Two Seconds, he indirectly relates to suicide bombing
sites. Raz appears to be fascinated with time; two seconds is what it takes for
the suicide bomber to trigger his or her explosive belt. Two seconds is also the
time that Raz keeps the aperture of his lens open.7
Raz chooses sites in Israel where acts of terror have taken place, but the
frame does not necessarily include any concrete reference or sign. If the viewer
wishes, he or she may ignore the time and the place, as these are left unclear.
Only those familiar with the Israeli vocabulary of terror images might rec-
ognize these sites. For others, the outspread buses might look like a futur-
istic experiment in motion, a phantom bus galloping through city streets,
hurrying over memory’s suppressed landscapes, fear of death evaporated.
Ironically, though his photos represent terror, the way his buses are liter-
ally spread all over the image turns the result into something surrealistically
beautiful. It is an image that maintains its aesthetics despite depicting an act
of sheer horror. Raz is no doubt trying to deal with the notion of terror as aes-
thetics; probably the same aesthetics that Hirst had in mind. But his images
do not turn into a political poster; instead he succeeds in creating art that is
both political and universal.
Carmit Gil’s bus presents another layer of abstract political art. Gil (b.
1976) participated in the 2003 Venice Biennale, where her work was exhib-
ited in the central pavilion. In 2002, when she completed her bus, no one in
Israel could have seriously taken it for a vehicle of public transportation.
Nevertheless, her interpretation differs sharply from that of Raz. The red and
fragmented remains of the bus are not taken out of any context, and may be
located anywhere. The viewer has no immediate clue as to where, if at all, this
disaster took place. The Israeli viewer, used to seeing remains along the road,
associates it with the vehicle skeletons of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War lying
along the road that leads to Jerusalem, but to other viewers no hint is given.
The artist almost urges the viewer to climb up the stairs and look at what
remains of the bus. These remains, like human remains, are cleaned up imme-
diately after “the event,” urging people to get back to daily routine. Gil may
be referring here to the activities of the Zaka8 organization, which has
appointed itself to the work of cleansing the “scene” and obsessively collect-
ing all human remains for burial.
Beyond reading Gil’s bus as a reaction to terror within an immediate con-
text, it is possible to look at it as a creation dealing with open space. When
asked about her intentions, the artist referred to Georges Perec’s writings and
particularly to his Espèces d’espaces (see Perec 1974). It is exactly the ability to
read this work on so many levels that reflects my argument regarding abstract
political art.
Abstract Political Art: The Other

A society’s bank of images is a very powerful reservoir in the process of shap-
ing a collective memory. In her article, “Regarding the Torture of Others,”
Sontag claimed that “for a long time—at least six decades—photographs
have laid down the tracks of how important conflicts are judged and remem-
bered. The Western memory museum is now mostly a visual one. Photographs
have an insuperable power to determine what we recall of events.” She then
maintains that the defining association of people everywhere with the Second
Gulf War will be connected to photographs of tortured Iraqi prisoners or the
capture of Saddam Hussein (see Sontag 2004). I believe she is right and that
these images are now part of our (Western) memory museum.
Reality in the occupied territories is at the center of activity for Miki
Kratsman (b. 1959), a committed press photographer. Toward the end of the
1980s, David Reeb (b. 1952), a leading political artist active in Israel, became
aware of Kratsman’s photojournalism. His photos became a part of the bank
of images Reeb uses in his paintings. The mutual and fascinating collabora-
tion between Reeb and Kratsman serves as an example of the process through
which photographs shape our collective memory. Reeb and Kratsman’s col-
laboration is based on an affinity of world views. It is, for example, apparent
in Kratsman’s “Om el Phaem,” “translated” by Reeb as “Where are the
Soldiers?” (see Figures 2.1 and 2.2).9
Kratsman’s image depicts everyday reality in the occupied territories where
men are stripped of their clothing so that they can be searched for explosives.
Figure 2.1 Miki Kratsman, “Om el Phaem,” 2002.
Figure 2.2 David Reeb, Where are the Soldiers? 2003.

The viewer is confronted with a colorful image of a group of teenagers, all

standing with their shirts and hands in the air and waiting for the soldiers to
come and carry out their meticulous body search. This bizarre “freeze” is
“translated” by Reeb, enhancing its absurdity through the use of color. This
process of “translation” the artist is involved in may explain why this work
would not fit the category of direct media art that will be discussed later.
Although Reeb is reworking an image taken from the media, his reaction is
characterized by a unique process of creation. It is as if the color stains
become abstract and reality on the West Bank is transformed into a harmony
of colors, thereby taking the viewer far and away from its origins. The title
“Where are the Soldiers?” is used by Reeb to stress the context so that a viewer
might not think that the young boys are dancing or fooling around. Apart
from the topic, this work is yet another example of the sophisticated interre-
lations between media and art.
Sharif Waked’s (b. 1964) “Chic Point” serves as another example of
abstract political art looking at “the other.” This seven-minute video-art clip
released in 2003 deals with the huge gap between wealthy Tel Aviv, in which
fashion shows are staged on a permanent basis, and the everyday reality of
Palestinians at the roadblocks. Although roadblocks have been treated before
by many Jewish artists as a symbol of the occupation,10 Waked’s decision to
stage a fashion show in the miserable reality of the occupied territories is
extremely ironic. His models at the “Chic Point” wear clothes appropriate for
body searches at the roadblocks.
Reflections of Posttrauma
Not only does the intensity of the art justify the term cultural trauma, it
appears that the methods, techniques, and materials sometimes chosen by the
artists hint at a posttraumatic reaction and even at a posttrauma therapeutic
treatment. Some artists feel a need to go back to all the places where acts of
terror have occurred; others try to digest horrifying images taken at the scene
either by looking at them again and again or by trying to overlook the horror
and paint them in “other” colors.
A fascinating example of a process of creation that seems to have had ther-
apeutic value comes from the studio of Gal Weinstein (b. 1970). Weinstein
took the images of Saddam Hussein’s sons Qusay and Uday. When I asked
Weinstein how he acquired the images, he replied that they were the images
of Saddam Hussein’s two dead sons, probably released by the American media
as part of its war propaganda. The materials he chose to work with hint, per-
haps unconsciously, at creation as therapy (see Figures 2.3 and 2.4).
Figure 2.3 Gal Weinstein, Uday, 2004.
Figure 2.4 Gal Weinstein, Qusay, 2004.

When the viewer looks at these 40 inches x 28 inches/100 x 70 centime-

ters images, he or she immediately feels that something is wrong; the images
are horrifying, but they do not look like photojournalism. Instead there is a
sense of blurring or disdain that hints at the method the painter was using.
Weinstein does not “just” paint them; instead he uses felt—hardly a common
material in fine arts and certainly not today. If felt ever comes to mind in a
creative context, that context is crafts or recreational hours in a nursing
home. We connect felt with therapy. This process of translation may again
explain why this work does not fit the direct media art category.
The term therapy is suitable in Weinstein’s case because a lot of work was
needed in order to achieve his results. The effect of the felt becomes even
more chilling given the long hours Weinstein had to spend with the images
of the dismembered, crushed, distorted figures of Hussein’s two dead sons.
Yet the artist does not turn away from horror—he faces it, acknowledges it,
crossing looks with the disaster and holding on.
The process Merav Sodaey (b. 1970) is experiencing while working on her
terror art is yet another attempt at art-as-therapy, resembling Weinstein’s cre-
ation in terms of the method and technique used by the artist. As we have
seen before in Raz’s and Gil’s works, Sodaey takes images of buses after they
have been blown up and translates them into her own private, imaginary,
scary fairyland.
Her Bus Line 32a is based on a press photograph of the 32a route bus after
it was blown up in Jerusalem, in June 2002. This overly familiar news-image
of the smoking skeleton of what once was a bus, with its massacred passen-
gers laid out in rows and packaged in black plastic bags, turns into a glitter-
ing, shimmering, and seductive scene. “There is a chilling contrast between
content and the form, between the subject matter and the decorative aesthet-
ics of the work, which makes it almost unbearable,” says curator Tami Katz
Freiman.11 Like the Zaka organization discussed before, Sodaey adds detail
upon detail and translates horror into kitsch. At first glance, it looks like a
beautiful pointillistic work, and indeed there are visible traces of pointillis-
tic technique when she uses felt-tip pens on silk paper. To my mind,
Sodaey’s techniques give the impression that she is not only hoping to heal
herself through art, but that she also, like Weinstein, is dealing with the
trauma hands-on.
In addition to buses, Sodaey has tackled the theme of the female suicide
bomber. Female suicide bombers are a unique political and sociological phe-
nomenon that became common during the second Intifada. Palestinian ter-
rorist organizations invest great resources in recruiting young men and
women for their jihad. They try to persuade the men that if they were to sac-
rifice their lives for the liberation of their land from the Zionist conqueror
they would gain seventy-two pure virgins in heaven. Female suicide bombers
are enticed by the promise of a wedding to be celebrated in heaven with their
betrothed—the male suicide bombers. Thus Sodaey stresses the irony in
the title of another work of art—Female Suicide Bombers for Male Suicide
Bombers. This time, she uses images from the media that she works into a
beautiful, if chilling, alienation. Her use of acrylic on canvas aims at imitat-
ing Gobelin needlework. Even though the image is one of a body hacked to
pieces, the needlework processing makes it seem detached and far away. In
many cases, Israeli art dealing with terror hints at posttrauma.
In “Aftermath,” Yoav Horesh (b. 1975) revisited, over a period of several
years, all the sites where suicide bombings had occurred. Going back to places
where everything happened appears to me to be another type of posttrauma
reflected through art. The images hardly provide any testimony to the horror
that happened there. Horesh uses clean black-and-white images that have
nothing to do with the overwhelming, messy, and red reality characteristic of
such scenes. I believe that the power these images exude comes directly from
the artist’s choice of black and white, which rather hints at the horror of ter-
ror while at the same time contradicting the overextensive use of color images
in Israeli media during the age of terror.
The choice of black and white instead of “true” colors may also be con-
nected with the obsessive tendency of Israelis to clean up the terror site and
resume normalcy immediately. This need to immediately cleanse the scene is
part of a larger phenomenon that has assumed tyrannical dimensions in
Israel—the need to completely wipe out tragedy.12 This frenetic drive to con-
ceal pain and suffering certainly does not help in recovering from trauma.
This tendency to wipe out reality reminds me of the way Jewish Holocaust
survivors were received in Israel; they too were obliged to sweep away their
past and forget everything they had left behind. As the next paragraph will
show, interrelations between terror and the Holocaust are prevalent in
Israeli art.
Reflections on Hypertrauma: Terror and the Holocaust

There is yet another form of abstract political art, one that, though based on
images and themes associated with terror, appears to serve as a late reaction to
the Holocaust. The analogy between the situation in the occupied territories
and the actions of the Nazis is not, as one might wrongly assume, the result
of hostility on the part of the European media during the time of the second
Intifada. It first appeared in Israeli art long before the year 2000 and has
many facets.
This analogy is a reflection of the artist’s worldview. In some cases, it is the

Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) that are compared to the Nazis; in others it may
be argued that the Palestinians are those described as the “New” Nazis. Avner
Bar Hama’s “Remember! From Generation to Generation” (2005) introduces
a reference to one of the most quoted images associated with the repertoire of
the Holocaust. As opposed to the historical image depicting an innocent
child with his hands raised to the sky, the contemporary image introduces a
young child whose hands are covered with blood. As far as Bar Hama (b.
1946) is concerned, a big question mark hangs over the heads of children
in Palestine.
The images of Reeb and Kratsman, discussed earlier, contain a similar ref-
erence to the image of the Jewish child of the Holocaust. However, the deci-
sion to frame Palestinian children during a search, and the fact that nothing
is found there, forges an immediate connection between IDF soldiers and the
Nazis. For Reeb and Kratsman, both left-wingers, such a comparison makes
sense. It reflects a tendency, long apparent in Israeli art, to deal with the once-
victims as gradually becoming oppressors.
A conflicting self-image of this sort appears also in David Wackstein’s (b.
1954) works regarding terror. Wackstein uses images taken from the media,
but makes an effort to disguise their origins or else uses the media in a more
sophisticated manner: his works are based on caricatures that have recently
appeared in Arab newspapers. He mainly chooses caricatures that depict
Israelis as oppressors; in most cases they are shown as Nazis, for instance,
“Swastika,” Figure 2.5, from 2001.
This mosaic depicts the former Israeli prime minister, Yitzchak Shamir, as
a walking swastika—his fists raised, ready for battle. Yet instead of admitting
his power, the prime minister manipulatively wears the yellow stripe as a sym-
bol of Jewish history, as if pleading, “I am miserable.” The fact that
Wackstein, an Israeli artist, chooses an anti-Semitic caricature from the cur-
rent Arab media as a way of dealing with terror is fascinating; it serves as yet
another example of art viewing the once-abused Jews as having, in turn,
become oppressors. The technique used by Wackstein—assembling a
mosaic—could fit his image into our previous discussion on the therapeutic
value of art. The mosaic technique, related to ancient Jewish history, intro-
duces a reference to the chosen people, thus rendering the self-irony embed-
ded in this creation even stronger.
The same is true of Wackstein’s “Settlers.” Both the IDF soldiers and the
woman settler resemble Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer, which gained a repu-
tation as Nazi Germany’s most violent anti-Semitic journal. Choosing that
specific imagery is certainly no mistake; the comparison between Israelis and
Figure 2.5 David Wackstein, Swastika, 2001.
Nazis is clear to anyone looking at these images. The fact that an Israeli artist
has chosen such images as a point of reference is both perplexing and fasci-
nating. Does he identify with the criticism, believing, as a left-winger, that
Israeli society deserves to be depicted in this manner, or does he sustain the
opposite opinion in its extreme, namely that producing and publishing such
images means sharing the Nazis’ anti-Semitic world-views? Whatever the
answer, we are looking at a sophisticated work of art that includes various lay-
ers of interpretation.
In “Man/Dog Teams,” Weinstein places straight steel wool on a wall. Wolf
dogs are being led by figures that resemble policemen or soldiers. The dogs
may be searching for explosives in what seems to be an ordinary setting
known to every Israeli. Yet there is another layer that leads beyond the imme-
diate. Choosing this imagery may trigger an association that is deeply rooted
in Israeli collective memory. The Nazis used wolf dogs to cause fear on vari-
ous occasions. Using a repertoire of images based on the Holocaust as part of
the vocabulary of contemporary everyday life in early twenty-first century
Israel can hardly pass as accidental. I believe it calls attention to the continu-
ous stress experienced by citizens whose sense of security and concepts of
home versus the front are completely shattered. This might very well be an
encounter between successive cultural traumas.
Aesthetics and Terror: Direct Media Art

The term direct media art refers to common phenomena in Israeli art, where
artists “quote” or “plant” media images in their art with hardly any interpre-
tation, manipulation, or interference. I call these nonmanipulative creations
direct media art because the viewer is confronted with an image that is almost
a twin of the original; there is hardly any adaptation or processing in terms of
technique or themes. The images chosen by the artists are in some cases
provocative and horrifying; it is as if the artist decided to waive his autonomy
and chose instead to remain “loyal” to “reality.” Before trying to explain this
fascinating phenomenon, I would like to demonstrate what I mean by direct
media art.
In 2004, Dganit Berest (b. 1949) worked on “The Wall,” which included,
among other elements, an image of a suicide bomber looking us directly in
the eye. This was not the first time Berest has dealt with terrorists. Her 1998
“TWA” or 1992 “untitled” did exactly that. However neither include the
direct image of the terrorist; instead, the viewer was confronted with a person
wearing a hood reminiscent of Ku-Klux-Klan attire. The straightforward
image she chose now appeared in the press and looked as if taken during the
interrogation of the bomber or while in the hands of the security services. It
reminds us of “wanted” ads depicting criminals’ images from the beginning
of the twentieth century. The image in question is the one of Ramez Obeyed,
the suicide bomber (and art student) who blew himself up right in the mid-
dle of Tel Aviv, at the entrance to the Dizengoff shopping mall, killing thir-
teen people on the eve of Purim, March 4, 1996; see Figure 2.6.
Such a simple and blunt image of a terrorist raises many questions, but
primarily it reminds us that there is no monster behind the “dry” terminol-
ogy the Israeli media uses. One wonders, “He is so young,” or “He probably
has no money.” The encounter with the suicide bomber is not shocking. The
viewer is looking at the face of a human being; sometimes one might even
detect a certain sense of empathy.13 In focusing on the biological fact—in this
particular case—that we are looking at a terrorist, who is also an art student,
only emphasizes Berest’s point more profoundly.
A different feeling emanates from the images of David Tartakover (b.
1944). Tartakover, a graphic designer and a politically engaged artist, knows
how to shock. The images he uses are taken directly from the media with the
photographers’ approval and with hardly any interference, yet we do not have
the faces of the suicide bombers, but rather the results of their acts; art
becomes an implement of the sensational and the shocking.
The series “I’m Here” is based on press photographs depicting acts of ter-
ror. Every image Tartakover uses was taken at the scene in the aftermath of a
Figure 2.6 Dganit Berest, The Wall, 2004 (detail).
suicide bombing. At first sight, it appears that he does not change the origi-
nal image; a closer look though reveals a green banner announcing “I’m
Here,” which is the artist’s addition, plus the place and date of the attack.
In this case, Ziv Koren took the original image, yet Tartakover always adds
an image of himself to the original, wearing a yellow vest as though he took
part in the rescue. He puts on a vest that has the word “artist” printed on it,
instead of “doctor,” “paramedic,” or “police” (see Figure 2.7).
Tartakover uses press images with very strong colors, so much so that the
play of a green banner might constitute all one sees, at first sight, in the style
of a Benetton ad, perhaps echoing the colors of the Palestinian flag.14 However,
once the topic becomes clear, the effect is chilling. “I’m Here” stresses the fact
that terror is everywhere; it might strike you in your favorite café.
In Tartakover’s case, though, choosing to be there, especially given the
artist’s radical left-wing political views, cannot be seen as a mobilization or
the desire to express empathy. There must be more to it than that. In my
opinion, Tartakover reacts here to the radical change we are all facing in the
new era of terror, where breaking news will arrive and images will engulf us
instantly and totally. Privacy-invading news generates the sensation of having
actually been there. There is certainly a very big question as to how artists can
Figure 2.7 David Tartakover, I’m Here, Tel Aviv, 19 October 1994, 2003–2004.
(Based on a photograph by Ziv Koren.)
respond to this phenomenon, as well as whether they can beat the media.
Tartakover responds by choosing to blur, narrow, and almost eliminate the
gap between art and media. He seems to be telling the viewer that in order
to stay relevant, one must react immediately, perhaps suggesting that the
artist is incapable of producing images as powerful as the ones that appear in
the media.
Michal Heiman (b. 1954) says that she has been collecting blood stains,
that is, images of blood from the media for many years, yet during the year
2002, she felt the need to take them out of their immediate media context
and presented her series of numbered blood tests. She took the stains out of
the draws and, as if they were ready-mades, doubled each of them. Thus, in
stressing the color red, she succeeded in imparting to her work a sensational
and horrifying effect. Her “Blood Test No. 5” (series A) is troubling. It
appears the artist did not turn her face away from horror but chose instead
to face it. Yet, unlike Weinstein, it is not clear whose blood is on display.
Removing the blood stain from its context confronts the viewer with its
universal, powerful essences. It is as if she wanted to declare that blood is
blood. Her reaction to terror does not reveal whether it is Palestinian or

Jewish blood.15
Israeli artists, such as Tartakover and Heiman, can be very critical of the
political circumstances, positing that it is the occupation that leads to
Palestinian terror. “Holding,” another series by Heiman, deals with the real-
ity of the occupied territories. The artist is making a very clever comparison
between those wounded “on our side” and “on their side,” simultaneously
clarifying her world-view regarding the occupation. This series fits the direct
media art category even more than the blood stain series; there she used
images taken directly from the media but chose parts of the image, sometimes
enlarging it and in other cases multiplying it, with a result quite different
from the original. In “Holding 13” (2004) and “Holding 3” (2001), she
hardly interferes with the frame; she points out very basic human activities,
such as holding and bonding, which appears on both sides.
As can be seen, she sometimes stamps the photos with the phrase
“Photographer Unknown.” This is done in order to stress the anonymity of
some of the Palestinian press photographers, as opposed to Jewish ones, who
are credited for their work.16 “Holding” includes images of both Jews and
Palestinians performing or gesticulating in the same way, and chooses specific
events where both become victims of the local madness, again insinuating the
former victim’s transformation into that of an oppressor.
News editor Doron Solomons is increasingly exposed to raw footage of
carnage and violence, and the difficulty of mediating this material to the pub-
lic is a key professional concern for him. In “Father” (2002), he expresses the
existential fears shared by parents on both sides. The “Father” is both
Palestinian and Israeli, and the voiceover simultaneously speaks Arabic and
Hebrew. Like Sodaey, he also focuses on two Palestinian female suicide
bombers and includes a poignant “silent” moment as they are about to record
the usual clip to be broadcast after the attack. The viewers see them drink and
cough during the preparation for the take. This is not the actual shot that will
be made public. These moments help the viewer understand the burden of
the moment and the tension involved (see Edelsztein 2006, 3).17 This rare
view into the moments of absurdity before death occurs greatly intensifies
this video. Another frame shows a suicide bomber, intercepted at an intersec-
tion and tackled by a robot.18 This process of neutralizing a human bomb
with a robot brings the irony of the occupation to a new level.
Tartakover, Heiman, and Solomon reduce the gap between their art and
the media to nothing. These artists underline the media as the source of their
images, exposing themselves to eventual criticism by those who may read these
images as mobilized and too close to reality. Alternatively, critics may claim
that choosing nonaltered, direct media images is at odds with notions regard-
ing the autonomy of art and art as a sophisticated channel of communication.
Rendering art immediate and concrete means taking a risk. It also means
practically narrowing, almost eliminating the gap between media and art.
Those who are not aware of the artists’ political convictions may understand
this transparency as a political manifesto.
Conclusion
A wave of terror has come over Israeli art in the last decade. Research into art’s
response to terrorism demonstrates the technical and stylistic pluralism
prevalent in Israeli art. In certain cases it also demonstrates the almost entirely
voided gap between mass media and art, thus raising troubling questions
regarding the autonomy of art. Possibly this is a fighting retreat conducted by
art in its aim to penetrate a cultural, communicative, and political agenda.
Images pertaining to the definition of direct media art insinuate an aspiration
to hold on to relevance, which is why artists have given up on art’s unique and
complex language. It is possible that we are given an opportunity to witness
art’s clear standing with regard to its failure to deal with horror in an age con-
trolled by the media’s cadence and power. It is also possible that artists fasci-
nated by the terrorist act are willing to embrace provocative and shocking
stances learned from Hirst and others, although this type of justification does
not seem to follow.
As opposed to direct media art, images of the political abstract may be
interpreted on various levels. By describing an unmediated context, they
might lose some of their political relevance, but it is doubtful whether this
will subtract from their value. The fascinating question is, of course, which of
these images will become embedded in collective consciousness throughout
the decades. It seems that this very concession might just guarantee their
place as primary shapers of collective memory in the decades to come.
References
Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2004. Toward a theory of cultural trauma. In Cultural trauma
and collective identity, ed. Jeffrey C. Alexander et al., 1–30. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Arieli-Horowitz, Dana. 2005. Creators in overburden: Rabin’s assassination, art and pol-
itics. Jerusalem: Magnes/Hebrew University Press.
Coulter-Smith, Graham, and Maurice Owen, eds. 2005. Art in the age of terrorism.
London: Paul Holberton.
Edelsztein, Sergio. 2006. Doron Solomons’s video works: Mind the gap. Tel Aviv: Center
for Contemporary Art.
Perec, Georges. 1974. Espèces d’espaces. Paris: Editions Galilèe.
Ray, Gene. 2005. Terror and the sublime in art and critical theory. London: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Sontag, Susan. 2004. Regarding the torture of others, New York Times Magazine, May
23.
Virilio, Paul. 2004. Art and fear. London: Continuum.
Z̆iz̆ek, Slavoj. 2002. Welcome to the desert of the real: Five essays on September 11 and
related dates. London: Verso.
Notes
1. Terror has always been present in Israeli art. During the early 1970s, Pinchas
Cohen-Gan (b. 1942), then an art student at the Bezalel art school, was exposed
to one of the first waves of terror in Jerusalem. In one of these attacks, he was at
the market buying bananas. A second later, a bomb split the air and the fruit-
seller’s head was blown off. Cohen-Gan has been painting heads ever since.
Dganit Berest has also dealt with terrorists. In her work “TWA” from 1998, she
used images of airplane hijackers.
2. Throughout the years 2002 to 2006, I conducted sixty open, in-depth inter-
views with Israeli artists regarding their views on the interrelations between art
and politics. Half of the interviews were recently published. Unfortunately, just
a fraction of the knowledge and information that enriched those interviews is
discussed in this paper (see Arieli-Horowitz 2005).
3. Spain, Northern Ireland, and, after September 11, the United States are just a
few examples. Recently the Rote Armee Fraktion [RAF] Exhibition Show at the
KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin precipitated a huge debate. This
exhibition focused on German art dealing with the Red Army Faction, which
was responsible for a decade of terror from 1968 to 1977. It includes depictions
of controversial individuals such as Ulrike Meinhoff of the Baader-Meinhof ter-
rorist organization, sometimes with great admiration. Gerhard Richter’s 1988
work “Dead,” exhibited as part of his 18 October 1977 series, was presented at
this exhibition. Benjamin Buchloh’s “Note on October 18, 1977” sheds light on
this debate. Literature on art and terror is just beginning to appear (see Ray
2005; Coulter-Smith 2005).
4. Alexander claims that a cultural trauma occurs when a group of people feels that
they have experienced an event that has marked them deeply. Such an event is
so powerful that it may affect their future behavior (see Alexander 2004).
5. In an interview with the BBC held one year after September 11, Demian Hirst
said that the attacks were “visually stunning” artworks and that the perpetrators
“needed congratulating.” He later apologized. Parts of the interview are quoted
in Charles P. Freund, “The Art of Terror,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 6,
2002. One can only wonder if Hirst would still have made the same claim in
London after the terror acts of July 2005. On Stockhausen, see http://www
.andante.com/article/article.cfm?id=14535.
6. Raz has been dealing with barricades since 1992. He started photographing the
roadblocks the Israeli army uses during his service as an officer in 1992. The dis-
sonance between being an artist and a soldier was so strong that he was released
from further service. The roadblocks gradually developed into the tunnel roads
that bypass roads were transformed into during the second Intifada.
7. Guy Raz, “Two Seconds,” 2004–6 (the image is on the cover of the book).
8. The Zaka organization is an ultra-Orthodox organization that voluntarily han-
dles the remains of terror act victims. Gils’s image can be seen at http://
www.archimagazine.com/rbeda.htm
9. This is one of three similar images by Reeb, all entitled “Where are the
Soldiers?”
10. Waked’s image can be seen at http://www.universes-in-universe.de/islam/eng/
2005/10/chic-point/img-05.html. It should be stressed that roadblocks have
become a commonplace theme in Israeli art dealing with the occupation from
the 1990’s onward. Raz’s project, begun in 1992 in Gaza and entitled
“Roadblock Stones,” is probably among the first to deal with the issue. Excerpts
from the project were exhibited in the Studio in the winter of 1995 [no. 67], as
well as in Ha’aretz newspaper. Since the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1987,
roadblocks have constituted a common theme, especially in journalists’ photog-
raphy. Among those who concern themselves with this theme are Miki Kratsman,
Pavel Wolberg, and Shai Kremer. Since the outbreak of the second Intifada, that
concern has flowed also into artistic photography, video art, and cinema. Thus
Ronen Shamir’s film “Roadblocks,” and Miki Kratsman and Boaz Arad’s video
piece “Untitled” from 2002. This video records thousands of Palestinians
returning to their homes in the Gaza strip through the Erez roadblock.
11. Sodaey’s image can be seen at http://hcc.haifa.ac.il/gallery/overcraft/artists/
MeravSudaey.htm
12. Here Sodaey’s work and the Zaka organization come to mind. Horesh’s images
can be seen at http://www.yoavhoresh.com/viewPhoto.php?dir=photographs/
AFTERMATH&view=large&photo=17
13. Berest’s image can be seen at http://www.harelart.com/kb35.16.jpg
14. The green banner resembles the famous Benetton campaign of the 1980s, with
Oliviero Toscani’s photographs of the banner at its center.
15. One of the bloodstains included in Heiman’s series is a very famous one; it was
found in the pocket of Israeli prime minister Y. Rabin immediately after he was
assassinated in 1995.
16. Heiman’s image can be seen at http://www.maarav.org.il/items/333/ textAreaImages/
6.jpg. In Holding 3, Moti Kimhi is the photographer. The image was taken in
Tel Aviv and appeared in the daily newspaper Ha’aretz, June 3, 2001. In
Holding 13, the photographer’s identity is unknown (AP). The image was taken
in Bido and appeared in the Ha’aretz daily news, February 27, 2004.
17. Solomons’s could be seen as paying tribute to Heinrich Böll, Murke’s Collected
Silences from 1955.
18. Solomons’s image can be seen at http://www.alondon.net/control/gfx/news/
paranoya-DORON-SOLOMONS.NO2.jpg.
CHAPTER 3
The Aura of Terror?

Kia Lindroos
R
oland Barthes’s famous insight in his La Chambre claire (Camera
Lucida) states that the horror of the photograph is that it certifies
that the corpse is alive. For him, the photograph of his mother signi-
fies that the person portrayed was alive (then), but is already dead (now). The
Barthesian gaze underlines the photograph as temporally twofold, signifying,
for instance, life of the dead. Walter Benjamin refers to the temporality of an
image as dialectical. In an image, the past has the potential to become crys-
tallized into the moment—into a dialectical image—simultaneously with
becoming a part of the mémoire involontaire. The notion of the dialectical
image remains on the historical and theoretical levels, and also on the level of
the configuration in terms of approaching the epistemological questions of
understanding the signs of the present time. My task in this chapter is to
touch on various aspects of our present time by highlighting the significance
of its images. In connection to this, I will also attempt to reveal some of its
epistemology in this sense, that is, to reveal a temporal epistemology of
the image.
In a photographic image, the flow of time is suddenly interrupted. In this
constellation of space and time, the present represents itself (at least) twice.
Firstly, every image becomes a sign of the moment in which the photograph
was taken; secondly, it is attached to the moment in which the viewer looks
at the image. Experiences of historical time, or at least specific parts of it,
might be described through vision, as series of images we have confronted
through times. In this sense, it is notable that, particularly during the last
decade, we have been increasingly bombarded by images of the global media.
We are confronted with more and more images of dead bodies, snapshots of
62 ● Kia Lindroos
women and children being carried out of the ruins of bombed houses, sui-
cide bombers who leave video messages outlining their imminent attacks.
The experience of death, which has been portrayed, for instance, by modern
artists such as Damien Hirst since the 1990s and modern philosophers such
as Martin Heidegger since the 1940s, is a reflection that seems to be repre-
sented in the public arena more startlingly and strikingly than ever before.
We have seen images from concentration camps to Bosnian mass graves, the
decomposing and dismembered bodies of soldiers and civilians left in the
wake of the attacks on civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and so on.
These images are imprinted on our minds and, as such, they are increasingly
imprinted on the visual memory of our time, as Dana Arieli-Horowitz has
well noted (Horowitz 2006; see also her chapter in this volume).
The experience of any form of temporality is inherently entangled with
the vicious circle of reasons and causes, which continues to question the
political rationality of the twenty-first century. Jean Baudrillard has repeat-
edly claimed that “postmodern” images are no longer linked to real events.
Instead, we have lost the principle of reality, and in this manner reality
becomes envy of fiction (cf. Baudrillard 2006, 45). However, it seems as
though reality has now taken the lead: the events of September 11, 2001,
were a surprising sign of the real for most of the witnesses to them. Even
Baudrillard seemed to be surprised when confronted with the terrorist attacks
in 2001; he views the images as if confronted with the possibility of such an
event for the very first time. He writes that the uniqueness of an event lies in
the fact that it extends beyond aesthetics and morality (59). It was this spe-
cific occasion that awakened his sense of the reality of an event. For him, the
sign of the connection between image and reality is the sense of fear.
Baudrillard writes, “The first moment is everything” (61).
Examining images of terror might help us to prove the point that the tem-
poral ambiguity of the now and the then is worth considering. Terrorist acts
are both a cause and result of terror itself; the political phenomenon of terror
and most of its causes lie far behind the scenes that are represented in the
images of it. The discussion of terror often moves on the level at which one
attempts to document acts of terror or reproduce elements of it through
visual images, media-shots, documentaries, or Internet blogs. However, I
begin and end my thoughts with references to terror expressed through the
concept of aura. In doing so, I pose the question of whether there is such a
thing as the possibility of shared temporal and political experience. In the
background of this question is Benjamin’s claim of the fracturing of experi-
ence during the nineteenth century (Benjamin 1933b, 214; 1936b, 439).
This split is related to the collapse of narrative forms in Benjamin’s study of
The Aura of Terror? ● 63
modern literature. The fracture relates to differentiation of homogeneous

experience of time and space, for instance in the field of history and art dur-
ing the emerging media societies (Lindroos 2001, 19–21). Benjamin notices
the diminishing of epic form of exchanging experiences (1936a, 439) and
what I am questioning here now is whether it is possible to “save” some ele-
ments of the auratic (authentic) experience, such as human suffering and the
sense of fear, that is included in the extensive imaginary of terror.
I intend to examine the concept of aura and discuss its different defini-
tions as a “dividing tool” that explicates aspects of temporality and political
experience in the contemporary visual representations of politics. Different
ways of portraying the question of aura (its different “definitions”) also relate
to the different aspects of understanding the political content of the images
of terror we are confronted with. The epistemology of images opens differ-
ently, due to the fact that each of us see/interpret/experience the images in
different ways. My examination is fueled by the fact that the question of ter-
ror itself addresses a multitude of questions that bridge a yawning gap from
issues of truth to morality, including the “originality of time,” dealt with
more later in the chapter. Indeed, over the course of this article, I will widen
my approach to include the issues of art, aesthetics, and politics, and I will
compare some of Jacques Rancière’s and Walter Benjamin’s ideas. I will then
conclude by returning to these initial thoughts by briefly considering a pho-
tograph entitled “Two Seconds” by the Israeli Photographer Guy Raz at the
end of this chapter, not merely as an illustration of the foregoing concepts,
but rather more so as their visual embodiment.
(What Is) Aura?

Toward the end of the twentieth century, it was argued that the representa-
tion of the Holocaust was approaching the limits of banality by the very nor-
malization of its horrors. Is the increasing imagery of the signs of terror just
another echo of banality that haunts our time? Susan Sontag writes in her On
Photography that when people were first confronted with the images of the
Nazi camps, there was nothing banal about these images at all. She writes,
“Nothing I have seen—in photographs or in real life—ever cut me as sharply,
deeply, instantaneously . . . when I looked at these photographs, something
broke. Some limit had been reached, and not only that of horror; I felt irrev-
ocably grieved, wounded, but a part of my feelings started to tighten; some-
thing went dead; something is still crying” (1977, 20).
However often we are confronted with the grief of the others, some-
thing is still crying. Through its countless representations, terror becomes
64 ● Kia Lindroos
the systematic distribution of fear and horror that connects “image” and
“reality,” as Baudrillard observes, for political purposes. It establishes the
political experience of the present time. As noted earlier, I intend to discuss
the possibility of reaching out to some aspects of our present experience by
examining the idea of visual representation through the concept of aura. I am
aware, however, that this question creates a rather strange paradox, and with
this paradox, I intend to point out how Benjamin opens conditions for mod-
ern aesthetic experience.
One of the early “definitions” of the concept of aura comes from Karl
Kraus. He writes, “The closer I look, the greater the distance appears between
us” (modified by Benjamin 1939, 647). This is one of the starting points in
understanding visual experience: in order to be able to look closely, one has
to create a sense of distance between oneself and the image to be viewed,
which is precisely where the “dividing tool” of aura comes into play and
opens up a space for a specific ethos of seeing (that I will specify in the next
section). Here, distance becomes a sign of reason in the midst of the irra-
tionality of the events. The impossibility, disbelief, and mythical meanings
given to the surrounding images leads us to question whether the things we
see in images are as real as the events they portray or whether they are a part
of the “imagery of terror” that is already building up a logic of its own, indi-
vidually from the spectators.
Benjamin provides another example of aura in relation to the experience
of the landscape and nature, as he describes the dualistic and simultaneous
sense of distance and presence. The thought-image refers to the simultaneous
perception of distant mountains and the branch of a tree by a relaxed
observer of nature on a Sunday afternoon.1 This describes the unique phe-
nomenon of experiencing distance, although the object of focus is right in
front of our eyes. In this case, the distance refers not only to spatial and tem-
poral distance but also to the ambiguous distance between an experience and
its possibility. By using such an example, I am not claiming that images of ter-
ror might have anything in common with the sense of relaxation and experi-
ence of nature as such. Rather, I understand the concept of aura, through
Benjamin’s example, as the ability to sense the distance of a present experi-
ence, however close the perception of the media might appear. This distance
refers firstly to the attempt to reason and secondly to the attempt to remain
conscious of the manipulation of the gaze, that is, a sign of the artificially pro-
jected aura, of which I will give an example later on.
Examining the visual representations of politics adds to our understanding
of the fact that time is the constitutive moment of representation. If we fol-
low the postmodern theory of representation, there is nothing to represent
since thinkers from Nietzsche to Foucault have presented the notion of the
disappearance of the “original” moment. Representation itself is understood
as constructive in relation to the ways in which we conceive political, social,
and aesthetic realities. Jean Baudrillard’s comments on the destruction of the
Twin Towers in 2001 imply that this specific act of terror positions the event
before the representation (Baudrillard 2006, 51). This causes a rupture in any
claim of the simulacra of media representation. The notion that the sense of
spectatorship and the object of the spectator’s gaze are supposed to move in a
new direction after 9/11 is an exception among visual representations of pol-
itics, since Baudrillard understands the visual representation of the events as
a real event in itself. Reality and representation are closely intertwined, as the
terror attack is essentially a visual experience and not part of the simulation.
In fact, the reality of death is an interruptive moment in the simulation.
An act of terror that intends to maximize the number of casualties with
the suicide of the perpetrators includes an aspect that escapes the conceptual-
ization—it escapes the rational. The contingency of the time and place of ter-
rorist attacks is even more contingent than the systematic destruction of the
Holocaust. In this sense, what we are seeing is the gap, the irrationality of the
moment, which escapes the attempts of rationalization by its very existence.2
This gap/sublime moment is something that appears quite often in politi-
cal aesthetics, since it points precisely toward the ambiguity of experience and
the impossibility of representing the moment—any moment—in its “entirety.”
When we look at Benjamin’s conceptualization, the moment becomes signif-
icant as a sign of singularity. From my viewpoint, the ambiguity of the sub-
lime moment actually reflects the character of Benjamin’s concept of aura.
In Benjamin’s early work, the idea of experience and the moment of expe-
riencing are closely related to the terms of knowledge and truth, and the
problems related to their expression.3 The issues of the truth, origins, and
limits of knowledge are also significantly present in the conception of aura.
The background of Benjamin’s approach is delineated by its philosophical
confrontation with Kantian and Hegelian aesthetics. In the following, I will
highlight only some issues related to this confrontation.
Critique as Judgment
Kant’s aesthetic theory, in which the attributes of beauty and “sublimity” are
transferred to the subject as the experience of pleasure or displeasure, occu-
pies an established position that is still valued today. In his Third Critique,
Kant describes how the “pure judgment of taste” is neither interested in nor
intrigued by the existence of the object (Kant 1799/1993). For him, free
66 ● Kia Lindroos
beauty is pleasurable, because its perception assures the subject of his or her
cognitive ability, and it is achieved only when the judgment of taste retains its
sensuous charm and moral connotations. For Benjamin, this is not the case,
since he denies the possibility of making timeless judgments. Instead, judg-
ment comes closer to the issue of critique as an intellectual attitude toward
one’s “own” time.4 Here is the moment of perception (including the possibil-
ity of critique) that I call the ethos of seeing.
Within Benjamin’s conception of critique, both the subject and object of
perception are interwoven in terms of the specific temporal character of per-
ceived time and the time of perception.5 Unlike Kant, Benjamin thinks about
the formation of judgments as “free” from nontemporal moral connotations
and instead, he includes a moment of critique, as an aspect of subjective ethos.
Thus, as a response to the Kantian exclusion of the subject, Benjamin intro-
duces subjectivity and temporality as part of the aesthetic judgment and
critique (Benjamin 1940, 1247). For Benjamin, truth exists an sich in the sin-
gular phenomena, but if and how it is perceived depends on the perceiver
(1925, 210–12). Also, the attention paid to temporality introduces a signifi-
cant element in the concept of critique: the attention to time and the
moment of history is also part of its ethos. Any judgment, for instance one
taking the form of critique, is bound with a context that is formed by visual
perception; technological means of representation; and aesthetic, political,
and historical contexts.
For Benjamin, it is possible to recover the “truth” of a moment in a way
similar to that in which he later describes historical-philosophical and tem-
poral moments—as including the possibility of the moment of salvation
(Erlösung).6 This notion adds a theological aspect to the characteristic of the
aesthetic experience. The relationship between history and redemption lacks
the aspect of mediation and thus establishes a rupture in the linearly under-
stood course of history. The moment of salvation can thus be as simple as the
mere remembrance of the past or salvation of the future. It establishes the
image of reality and meaning for events, which are otherwise seen only as flu-
ently occurring and passing with the flow of time. Particularly in his “Theses
on the Concept of History,” Benjamin emphasizes the past as being an image,
which may be associated but not identified with a graphic or photographic
image (Benjamin 1940, 695).7
For Benjamin, aesthetic judgment is a temporal matter, a moment of cri-
tique and experience. As such, it is also a transient and transforming mat-
ter, although the question of judgment does ultimately belong to the realm
of epistemology.8 The emphasis of the moment of authenticity, which is
only approachable as an image (Bild), refers to the concept of origin, which
Benjamin discussed in his research on “The Origins of German Tragic

Drama.” For him, the temporality of the concept of origins is not related to
the past, but has a strong connection with the present, as the origins of the
moment are to be localized in the authenticity of the present time. From
my perspective, the concept of aura expresses this authenticity (Benjamin
1925, 226).
The concept of image is also linked to Benjamin’s interest in analogies and
their appearance in the perception of a single moment (Benjamin 1933a,
206). The acknowledgement of the (nonsensuous) similitude is instanta-
neous. While the perception happens very quickly, it provides a glimpse into
the potential sphere of the recognition of the similitude of phenomena, a possi-
bility created by knowledge that is presumed to be transferred from the pre-
rational conception of knowledge and experience, as it emphasizes the
immediate moment of knowledge (Benjamin 1919, 32).
Benjamin notes in his discussion of Franz Kafka’s work that the only
major moral commitment an individual should have is to his or her own
time, not to a universal idea of time and history (Benjamin GS II, 1199). I
take this notion as an attempt to detach himself from the universal idea of
morality. Here, it also includes the ethos of seeing as Benjamin highlights the
ability to pay attention to the issues of specific time that require moral judg-
ment—or immanent (and speculative) critique.
The Political Image

The Benjaminian gaze requires that we pay attention to both the nonsen-
suous and sensuous meanings of an image, the invisible connections and
similarities within an image itself as well as the references to its contexts
(Benjamin 1933a, 209). This stems from his earlier thought, in which
Benjamin considers language to also contain both audio-visual and visual ele-
ments. This extended concept of language includes, for instance, the “lan-
guage” of music, images, the plastic arts, and the techniques of expressing the
spiritual content that is being mediated (1916, 140). Benjamin intends to rel-
ativize the limits between seeing, reading, and thinking, and in so doing, he
highlights various ways of experiencing phenomena through different forms
of sensual knowledge. For instance, he offers thought-images (Denkbilder) as
completing and also challenging the discursive side of thinking, as thinking
for him is not only rational/discursive, but also includes visual activity and
visual aspects of thought. What is significant here, and clearly resonates with
the observations of both Barthes and Baudrillard, is that the images used to
68 ● Kia Lindroos
express the epistemologies of the present have access to various nondiscursive

and irrational elements (memories, hopes, and fears) as well.
Consequently, when I discuss the conception of aura in connection with
the visual representations of terror, it is important to pay attention to the
broader context, which refers not only to the visible but also to the invisible
connections and similarities that are indications of the larger context. The
concept of aura highlights different aspects of the reflection on the political
sides of images. Firstly, the so-called artificial auratic projection is intended
to manipulate the subjective gaze for ideological/political purposes. This
appears in Benjamin’s discussion on the rituality cult and Fascist aestheticiza-
tion of politics that I will highlight later on. Secondly, the auratic refers to the
sense of originality as the authenticity of the moment in time. It includes
the philosophical question of the possibility of “shared” experience, closely
related to the terms of knowledge and truth, and the aspects of temporality,
related to their expression. In the political sphere, this relates to the avant-
garde, as I will discuss with the example of Dada. The aura as originality is a
sign, much in the same way as Baurillard conceived the sign of the real, that
enables the “authentic” representation of origins, in this case the moment of
fear, death, grief, and sorrow that is represented in the present moment of
seeing. This second meaning is an example of auratic presence, and the
experience of the present time is that side of the aura, which cannot be tech-
nologically transferred (Benjamin 1936a, 366). Thirdly, the decay of aura, or
its “scattering,” and its consequences brings with it a possibility to under-
stand art as an opening toward a new space of experiences (Spielraum). The
best example of this is cinema, in which the auratic distance is broken in the
way in which the “man on the street” might become a potential “actor” in
a scene. The example of cinema that Benjamin uses here has a special refer-
ence with respect to Soviet Cinema and Dziga Vertov’s films (1936a, 369,
371–72).
Nowadays, with the possibilities of immediate digital projections and rep-
resentations, this has a hugely different meaning and space of experience than
it did during the 1930s. This scattering of the auratic distance draws the sub-
ject of perception directly into the scene of an image, an idea that seems to be
linked to Benjamin’s concept of the image-space (Bildraum). The image-
space poses the question of how to conceptualize subjectivity and subjective
perception as a space of reflection in which the spatial and temporal borders
between object and subject are seen to vanish, as the limits between subject
and object merge in perception and experience (Benjamin 1929, 309). This
requires an awareness of the role of perception when examining digital or
media projections. It is also to be understood as a critique of the passive
reception and spectatorship of the overflow of images.
Benjamin describes aura as the “cover” under which the uniqueness of the
work of art is hidden (1936a, 368; 1922; 1959). With the first notion of
aura, Benjamin notes that in the transfer of a personal aura to its reception by
an audience, one can artificially, for instance, with technological means, con-
struct a feeling of identification with the presence of an actor projected on
screen. It was precisely this possibility to create aura through reproduction
that was utilized in fascist aesthetics. In the context of the 1930s, the focus
was to create mass propaganda and identification with the politicized values,
for instance, in images of nation or race.
The political interpretation of art notes an important change in the pro-
duction of art, particularly when its authenticity suffers; its social function is
seen as being overturned. Benjamin suggests that the transfer from rituals
toward politics discloses the moment of the new, from which the rituality of
aura is distinctly absent, and that art is thus brought closer to the perceiver
and brought down to earth from its mythical stance (Benjamin 1936a, 357).
The understanding of political art in terms of rituality (the first conception
of political art) is directly associated with fascist politics that, in Benjamin’s
view, continues the ritual value of art in terms of its praxis of the aestheti-
cization of politics (ästhetisierung der Politik in Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter
seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit, 1936a, 382). This interpretation out-
lines the idea of modernity as an “era” of reproducibility and the emerging
differences in political and aesthetic representation. Benjamin’s use of the
term aesthetic, particularly in his claim on the aestheticization of politics, is
notable due to its specific reference. This notion refers to the representations
of unification and similitude, which are inherent in the construction of an
ideological “mass.” It is the ideologized mass that is the object of a fascist aes-
theticization of politics.9
The German National Socialists’s use of traditional values for ideological
purposes led to the establishment of an ideological interpretation of tradi-
tion, origins, and rituals. For instance, the eternal idea of cultic art was clearly
reproduced in fascist politics. In his Theorien der deutschen Faschismus,
Benjamin describes the cultic element of war as expressed by the idea of “eter-
nal” war (Benjamin 1930, 241, emphasis added). As such, artists not only
expressed the ideals of the National Socialist aesthetics but also participated
in the creation of the new human ideal and “purified” human being, thus
playing a crucial role in the construction of the “eternal” Germany.
As Benjamin understands the cult as being essentially tied to the concept
of aura, he refers to how traditional works of art were created as props in
magic and later religious rituals. This historical origin means that if the tradi-
tional meaning of art is retained, it cannot be approached as free from its rit-
ualistic function (1936a, 356). Only by reconceptualizing art can it be
70 ● Kia Lindroos
liberated from this function, and Benjamin’s interpretation of the role of

avant-garde art from the beginning of the century is based on his emphasis on
its attempt to free itself from rituals. The detachment from tradition almost
became the main purpose of certain forms of art, for instance Dadaism,
which denied the idea of contemplation and the eternal value of art.
To highlight the second meaning of political art, I would like to point out
some of the ways in which Dada manifested this turn in the history of art.
According to Benjamin, Dada was attempting to complete something, which
painting and literature had been leading up to until the beginning of the
twentieth century. This took place in what was only a short transitional
period, yet Dada managed to capture almost all the aspects that characterized
the Benjaminian conception of the avant-garde and, as such, created a rup-
ture in the idea of art and aesthetics, thereby creating another kind of con-
nection to politics. Firstly, Dadaist art differed radically from the canon of art
history. Secondly, Dadaists did not attempt to hide historical or individual
barbarism but, rather, expressed it directly. Their intention was to create a
scandal and inspire public indignation (Benjamin 1936a, 379). Another
interesting element of Dadaism and also later Surrealism was that they did
not intend to exclude (or distinguish) the irrational and evil aspects of art, but
instead created an artistic legitimization of their presence in society. This con-
tradiction forced a change in perception that, in turn, led to scandals and the
rethinking of aesthetic values and experience (378).
Dada expressed a true example of auratic art, in the sense of its detach-
ment from contemplation and the eternity-value of art. It manifested the
destruction of that kind of aura, which can be ideologically constructed.
However, if understood as the moment of here and now, it is precisely the
aura of originality and presence that remained in Dadaist works. Dada’s most
important innovation was the identification of a potential cultural sphere,
which would simultaneously destroy the ties of the cult and through this also
the mythical idea of art.
The reaction to Dadaism was not intended to be contemplative or men-
tal, but, rather, physical, which was similar to the shocked reactions to early
cinematic experiences. It was in this immediate temporality and physicality
connected to action that Dadaism’s political component lay. Today, this idea
or concept of physically shocking art might be applied, for instance, to
Damien Hirst’s work, which examines the processes of life and death: the
ironies, falsehoods, and desires that we mobilize in order to negotiate our
own alienation and mortality. “You kill things to look at them” (Hirst regard-
ing his work in “Natural History”; see also “When Logics Die” 1991;
“Anaesthetics” 1991; “In and Out of Love” 1991).10
In this context, I would like to refer to Jacques Rancière’s conception of art

and politics, which is expressed, for instance, in the interview from 2004.
Rancière notes that:
Art is not political owing to the messages and feelings that it conveys on the
state of social and political issues. Nor is it political owing to the way it repre-
sents social structures, conflicts or identities. It is political by virtue of the very
distance that it takes with respect to those functions. It is political insofar as it
frames not only works or monuments, but also a specific space-time senso-
rium, as this sensorium defines ways of being together or being apart, of being
inside or outside, in front of or in the middle of, etc. It is political as its own
practices shape forms of visibility that reframe the way in which practices,
manners of being and modes of feeling and saying are interwoven in a com-
monsense, which means a “sense of the common” embodied in a common sen-
sorium. (2004)
Thus, Rancière also refers to the aspects of time and space as creating the spe-
cific aspects of politics in art. As he puts it, “Politics is . . . the configuration
of a space as political, the framing of a specific sphere of experience, the set-
ting of objects posed as ‘common’ and of subjects to whom the capacity is rec-
ognized to designate these objects and discuss about them” (2004). First and
foremost, for Rancière, politics seems to envelop the sphere of experience, the
reality of common objects and the capacity of the subjects.
Since Rancière makes explicit reference to Benjamin, I will compare some
aspects of both of their concepts of art and politics. There are obvious simi-
larities in their connection of the political aspect in art to the time/space
experience, rather than to the representation of political issues as such. One
of the obvious differences between the two, however, is related to the discus-
sion of the problem of the common and its relationship to the “common
sensorium.”
For Benjamin, although the problem of the common is extremely central
to his work, it is not explicitly discussed. For instance, his view of the con-
nection between the decay of aura and changes in perception was related to
how he saw the masses (die Masse) as related to new forms of perception.
Benjamin was interested in the ways in which the masses were distributed
through the changes of individual perception and experience. To highlight
this, he distinguished between that of a compact and more passive idea of the
masses and that of the revolutionary and more individual idea of the masses
(for instance, Benjamin 1936a, 370; 1939, 618). In other words, as an out-
growth of technological reproducibility (of art, but later also media)
Benjamin notes how the forms of perception change. Firstly, new forms of
72 ● Kia Lindroos
perception appear to forge a “passive” and compact mass or group whose gaze
is “easy to manipulate.” This is the critique of the Frankfurt school. However,
what makes Benjamin different is that he also points out the positive aspects
of the changed perception, the new forms of art (avant-garde) and the impact
of film/media that made one “see differently.” So, there is no homogeneous
mass perception, but the “fragmented” masses that were to see things, also in
real life, differently than before.
The problem of the sense of the common and its relation to aesthetics
appears in the work of a number of thinkers. It is dealt with, for example,
throughout Lyotard’s work in general and his discussion on Kant’s sensus com-
munis (Kant 1993, sec. 40) in particular. Lyotard deals with the sense of com-
munity by posing the question of what sensus would serve to bring a
community together. Lyotard transforms the idea of community from a feel-
ing of coherence to the question of its intelligibility (Lyotard 1992, 2). In
doing so, he provides us with a Kantian reading of the problem.
Rancière more or less seems to accept the common as something that “is
embodied in a common sensorium,” which is where he most clearly differs
from Benjamin. The idea of common experience and perception is some-
thing that Benjamin explicitly questions with his notion of aura. Benjamin
claims that the fragmenting of the feeling of the community and, for exam-
ple, the perceived sense of community emerged during modernity. The
Benjaminian reconstruction of the community and the possibility of com-
mon experience calls for the reconceptualization of both its meaning/sensus
and its feeling/coherence (Lindroos 2001). The common, as nonexistent
matter an sich, always requires legitimation, and it should be reworked in
every temporal situation. Furthermore, the “social” does not exist in Benjamin’s
work as such, but, rather, it requires legitimation in time and space. For
Benjamin, it is possible to reconstruct social coherence through tradition.
However, this leads to the problem of legitimation in an era in which the pre-
vious conception of knowledge no longer reflects the actual historical, social,
and aesthetic conditions.
The question of this legitimation of the common (or community) is prob-
lematized to a certain extent in contemporary political philosophy, for
instance by Maurice Blanchot, Emmanuel Levinas, Giorgio Agamben, and
Benedict Anderson. Yet, Jacques Rancière seems to take the community for
granted, for example, regarding his conception of the politics of aesthetics in
relation to this question. For Rancière, politics begins “when they who have
‘no time’ to do anything else than their work take that time that they have not
in order to make themselves visible as sharing in a common world and prove
that their mouth indeed emits common speech instead of merely voicing
pleasure or pain.” He calls the redistribution of times and spaces, places and
identities, framing and reframing the visible and the invisible, of telling
speech from noise, the partition of the sensible (Rancière 2004).
Interestingly, Rancière notes that “politics and art are not two separate and
permanent realities about which one should ask whether they have to be con-
nected or not”; he also refers to democracy and the theater as two forms of the
same partition of the sensible, as “two forms of heterogeneity, that are dis-
missed at the same time to frame the republic as the ‘organic life’ of the com-
munity” (Rancière 2004).
The question can also be examined from exactly the opposite perspective,
beginning from the singular and the fracture (partition). In other words, sin-
gle images can be conceptualized, for example, as temporal entities that
include the essential characteristics of both their historical and political con-
texts, yet retain their own temporality. Now, to make a temporal leap, one
might describe the war on terror as a movement that is tied to rituals and
cults. Its goal is the destruction of the “opposing forces” and this conflict
departs from the supposition that the parties to this conflict share no com-
mon ground or commonly held experiences. As such, we could ask what
“community” is actually the target of terror? My claim, modifying the
Benjaminian premises here, is that the community (the sense of the com-
mon) is created here through the opposing and conflicting activities: both the
terrorist acts as much as the military retaliations against them. The sense of
the common, as fragile and temporal as it might be, is created through the
threats, fears, and other manifestations of power. The social divisions between
good and evil, friend and enemy are constructed in order to reinforce the nar-
rative around the issue of terror.
Terror and Contemporary Imagery

Earlier in this chapter, I reversed the conception of aura and its connection to
the different forms of politics: those of the ritual and the intention to break
from it. Similarly, there are projections within the images of terror that are
auratic in the ambiguous sense of the word. Some of the images are merely
reproducing the cults, rituality, ideologically eternal values, and conflicts that
surround terror. Yet there are also images of terror that have the power to
break from this tradition of self-repetition.
Some of these projections represent a rather sad and unintelligent picture
of our times, causing the omnipresent illusion of fear. The recreation and
reproduction of the images of cultic figures seems to be one of the goals in the
“eternal war on terrorism.” For instance, the media followed military forces
74 ● Kia Lindroos
as they hunted Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 terror attacks. No one knew
whether Osama was dead or alive, and there were a number of attempts to
produce an artificial aura around him. He became a cultic figure with the
support of contemporary commercial market forces: Osama t-shirts, leaflets,
newspaper articles, and so on, which all supported the cult of bin Laden.
Despite the images that constitute cultic figures, there are plenty of indi-
cations of the authenticity of both the experiences and suffering of the peo-
ple. We could pose the very legitimate question of how the contemporary
spectator is supposed to approach the tragic drama that is being played out in
the media today. In his book Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault, for
example, has pointed out a number of different forms of the expression of
public power. Firstly, it is the theater of public, judicial torture, and execu-
tion. This is “great tragic theatre,” as Foucault describes it, and it takes place
on the public stage. Secondly, there is the theater of discipline and surveil-
lance: the former is openly displaying power at work, while the latter hides it
under layers of moral-political, legal, and philosophical justifications and
ideals. This kind of theater takes place in a number of smaller, melodramatic
theaters that are distributed throughout the society (Foucault 1980, 16–24).
Both of these forms of exercising power are present in the visual represen-
tations of terror. However, the prerequisite concerning the ethos of experienc-
ing the images is that the spectators be understood as actors, as participants
in this bloodshed, and as part of the forces of destruction. The public cannot
dominate this theater from a safe distance, but must actually and actively take
part in what is happening on the “stage.” This is a visual space of cross-refer-
ence in which every spectator is also a spectacle and every spectacle is also a
spectator. This is the image-space characterized by Benjamin. The need to
participate is visible at least in the fragile moment of critique. Indeed, one
cannot portray an image of the whole picture; rather, we must make due with
single representations that express the will to take part in the events and the
ambiguous dilemma of truth, presence, and absence.
For Jacques Rancière, the “politics of aesthetics” rests on the paradox of
the linkage of two opposite equalities as ultimately shaping the two main
forms of “politics.” I have explicitly used the conception of aura to signify this
original paradox. The first form of the political aims at connecting the two
equalities, as in Benjamin’s interpretation, highlights political art in terms
of rituality and process of identification with politically constructed values.
For Rancière, “this means transforming the freedom and equality of the
autonomous aesthetic sphere” into a collective existence in which they will no
longer be a matter of form and appearance, but will be embodied in the mate-
riality of everyday experience (2004). I see this notion as closely connected to
what Benjamin meant, by the way, in which the (illusion) of the autonomy of
art disappears already through the process of reproducibility (1936a, 362).
This means that the social and political conditions of works of art, and aes-
thetics in general, are in a process of transformation within any era of repro-
ducibility, and in fact, the aesthetic dimension in the social and political
sphere (that is already extant), becomes more apparent.
The second form of the political disconnects politics from aesthetics. For
Rancière, “it disconnects the free and equal space of aesthetic experience from
the infinite field of the equivalence of art and life. To the self-suppressing pol-
itics of art becoming life, it opposes a politics of the resistant form. . . . The
egalitarian potential is enclosed in the dissensuality of the work, in its belong-
ing to an autonomous sphere, indifferent to any program of social transfor-
mation or any participation in the adornment of prosaic life. Political
avant-gardism and artistic avant-gardism would fit together out of their very
lack of connection” (2004). Benjamin draws a similar, but not identical rup-
ture that the avant-garde manifests, especially when one tries to understand
the connection between art and politics. I have pointed out ways in which
Benjamin indicates the rupture that the avant-garde (here through the exam-
ple of Dada) creates, in which Benjamin observes that the resistance is a form
of politics per se. It is the resistance and rupture that forms the connection
between the political and aesthetic realms, and not the lack of connection, as
it seems to be for Rancière.
Guy Raz: Two Seconds?

The example I take here to outline the space of experience, as a possibility for
gaining a moment of authenticity, is from a series of photographs by Guy
Raz. In these photographs, we do not see people, as in the example of Figure
3.1. We do not see bodies or corpses or eyes looking directly into the camera.
Instead, we see a place and time, something that is simultaneously abstract
and very concrete. As I have outlined earlier, Benjamin’s concept of aura high-
lights different aspects of the reflection on the political sides of images. The
artificial auratic projection is intended to manipulate the subjective gaze for
ideological/political purposes. As I look at Raz’s image here, I would rather
highlight that connotation of aura, which refers to the sense of originality and
the experience of authenticity of the present moment in time. It is a sign that
enables the representation as well as the experience of origins, in this case the
potential moment of fear, death, grief, and sorrow.
Benjamin took the example of cinema as something in which the auratic
distance was broken down in similar manner to that of the “man on the
76 ● Kia Lindroos
Figure 3.1 Guy Raz, “Two Seconds,” 2004–2006.
street” becoming a potential “actor.” Raz’s photograph describes the possibil-

ity of the event, in which the “man on the street” also becomes a potential vic-
tim. We actually see the movement of a bus that is crossing both time and
space. The movement is toward the time to come, whose possible emptiness
contains both the past and the future as a space of disappearance, as opposed
to the horizon of expectation (Koselleck 1992). The moment is gone, but the
image remains. One might experience a sense of distance here that refers not
only to spatial and temporal distance, but also to some ambiguous distance of
a shared experience and the question of its possibility.
If one looks closer, one recognizes that the bus in the photo is just one of
many buses that might well turn out being destroyed itself. Consequently, the
time and place of the two seconds captured in the image has a very political
meaning. Following Dana Arieli-Horowitz’s interpretation, Guy Raz under-
stands his photographs as an example of abstract political art. In the project
Two Seconds, he relates directly to acts of terror. “He is fascinated with time;
two seconds is the time it takes the suicide bomber to trigger [his/her] explo-
sive belt. Two seconds is also the time that Raz keeps the aperture adjuster
open” (Arieli-Horowitz 2006, 13). What transforms the time and place of
this photograph into something political is that Raz chose specific sites in
Israel where acts of terror have occurred. This might be self- evident for an
Israeli viewer, however, if the viewer does not know the sites, he or she only
sees the abstract image. Ironically, the way his buses are “literally spread all
over the image turns the result into something that might be considered
surrealistically beautiful despite the fact that it represents terror” (Arieli-

Horowitz 2006, 13). The image maintains its aesthetic aspect of the sublime,
since it has both an interesting form and content and it focuses on the aspect
of experiencing horror.
In conclusion, I see Raz’s image as portraying an opening toward that kind
of political space of experiences I have opened through this chapter. As such,
it includes the conception of an image that requires the perceiver to be drawn
into the “image-space” (Bildraum), with the interpretation that requires the
ethos of seeing I have outlined in this chapter. To draw from Rancière’s inter-
pretation, the photograph represents the “original paradox,” linking two
forms of politics into something that connects the autonomous sphere of aes-
thetics with the materiality of everyday experience (2004). In addition to this,
the photograph itself constitutes a political time/space. It demands critique in
its very existence, as portraying both the abstract and concrete, both presence
and absence. It includes aspects of hopes and memories, without escaping
the sense of fear.
The idea of the dialectical image returns on a historical and theoretical
level in such an instance, as well as on the level of a configuration in terms of
approaching the epistemological questions of understanding the signs of the
present time in a way that, at this time, escapes the banality of merely ritual
projections from a history that has tended to normalize the horrors and suf-
fering. Guy Raz represents the “event” in the space of the political and aes-
thetic moment. What happens is simultaneously real and potential; it
represents political experience and, as such, is also a sublime representation of
the epistemology of the present time, that is, its temporal epistemology. The
political signifies both an experience of terror and something that might be
called an experience of “wounded” time and space. Namely, duration is also a
site—a space that shows the movement in and across time. The main ques-
tion regarding the conception of aura is ambiguity, which also adds the aspect
of intervisuality to each image. Making any experience of the phenomenon of
terror possible requires the extension of the limits of the concept of experi-
ence. This is the point at which the concept of aura is at its most ambiguous,
although this ambiguity and the feelings of discomfort created by it do not
justify its annihilation or complete destruction.
Perhaps there is a reason why the images of terror cause this distance and
closeness, sense of cult and ritual, and, ultimately, the uncomfortable experi-
ence of the present time and its origins. The uncomfortable feeling of the
images of terror is caused by the unambiguous experience of death that is
experienced within the viewer. There is the possibility of denial and the pos-
sibility of acceptance; to accept and approach death within life provides us
78 ● Kia Lindroos
with a level of courage that might lead us to overcome the “danger” within
historical images (Benjamin 1940, 695). From my point of view, this requires
the acceptance of the ambiguity of our times, portrayed through violence, rit-
uals, cult, and the experience of temporality in its chromatic depth.
References
Ankersmit, Frank. 2005. Sublime historical experience. Stanford: Stanford University
Press.
Arieli-Horowitz, Dana. 2006. Art and terror: The Israeli case. Paper presented at the
symposium Art and Terror, May 29–June 1, University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
Barthes, Roland. 1980. La Chambre claire. Note sur la photographie (Camera lucida:
Reflections on photography). Seuil: Gallimard.
Baudrillard, Jean. 2006. Terrorismin henki (The spirit of terrorism and requiem for the
twin towers). Trans. Olli Sinivaara. Helsinki: Tutkijaliitto.
Benjamin, Walter. 1991. Gesammelte Schriften (GS). Eds. Tiedemann, Rolf und
Hermann Schweppenhäuser. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp.
———. 1940. Geschichtsphilosophische Thesen, GS I.2.
———. 1940. Die neue Thesen, GS I.3.
———. 1939. Über einige Motive bei Baudelaire, GS I.2.
———. 1936a. Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit.
Zweite Fassung, GS VII.1.
———. 1936b. Der Erzähler, GS II.2.
———. 1933a. Lehre vom ähnlichen, GS II.1.
———. 1933b. Erfahrung und Armut, GS II.1.
———. 1932. Aus einer kleinen Rede über Proust, an meinem vierzigsten Geburtstag
gehalten, GS II.3.
———. 1930. Theorien der deutschen Faschismus, GS III.
———. 1929. Der Surrealismus, GS II.I.
———. 1925. Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels GS I.1.
———. 1922. Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften, GS I.1.
———. 1919. Der Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik, GS I.1.
———. 1916. Über dies Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen. GS II.1.
Caygill, Howard. 1998. Walter Benjamin: The colour of experience. London and New
York: Routledge.
Foucault, Michel. 1980. Tarkkailla ja rangaista (Discipline and punish: The birth of
the prison). Keuruu: Otava.
Kant, Immanuel. 1799/1993. Kritik der Urteilskraft. Felix Meiner Verlag: Hamburg.
Koselleck, Reinhart. 1992. Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten
(Futures past: On the semantics of historical time). Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp.
Lindroos, Kia. 2006. Benjamin’s moment. Redescriptions 10: 115–33.
———. 2001. Scattering community: Benjamin on experience, narrative and history.
Philosophy & Social Criticism 27 (6): 19–41.
Lyotard, Jean-François. 1992. Sensus communis. In Judging Lyotard, ed. Andrew

Benjamin, 1–25. London and New York: Routledge.
Rancière, Jacques. 2004. The politics of aesthetics, an interview with Bojana Cvejic,
August 9, 2004, http://theater.kein.org/node/99.
Sontag, Susan. 1977. On photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Other Sources
Hirst, Damien. 1997. I want to spend the rest of my life everywhere, with everyone, one
to one, always, forever, now. London: Monacelli.
Notes
1. “Was ist eigentlich Aura? Ein sonderbares Gespinst aus Raum und Zeit; einma-
lige Erscheinung einer Ferne, so nah sie sein mag. An einem Sommernachmit-
tag ruhend einem Gebirgszug am Horizont oder einem Zweig folgen, der sein
Schatten auf den ruhenden wirft—das heißt die Aura dieser Berge, dieses
Zweiges atmen” (Benjamin 1936a, 355).
2. The aesthetic gap might be approached through the concept of the sublime.
However, I refer here only generally to Kenneth Burke’s concept of the sublime,
which is further investigated, for instance, by Frank Ankersmit (2005).
3. Especially in Benjamin 1922 and 1925.
4. I would underline Howard Caygill’s interpretation of Benjamin’s conception of
“immanent Critique” here (Caygill 1998, 34–72).
5. This idea of critique may be compared to Benjamin’s concept of an image-space
(Bildraum), in which the distinctive limits between signified/signifier and aes-
thetic subject/object seem to break down in intellectual reflection (Benjamin
1929, 302, 309).
6. I discuss this concept more thoroughly in Lindroos 2006.
7. Benjamin’s concept of image is actually quite extensive, as it also refers to inter-
nal and mental images, such as images of memory or acts of knowledge
(Erkenntnis).
8. This discussion is outlined, for instance, in Benjamin’s dissertation (1919) and
in the Goethe essay (1922).
9. The ways in which Benjamin constructs the idea of aestheticization of politics
is tied to the question in which he sees the “masses” (die Masse) to be formed
during the times of technical reproducibility of art. Here, his concept of the
“masses” is quite different from that of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno.
10. Damien Hirst (b. 1965) curated the widely acclaimed “Freeze” exhibition in
1988 while he was still a student at Goldsmiths College. Hirst graduated from
Goldsmiths in 1989, and he has since gone on to become one of the most
famous living British artists. Moreover, In and Out of Love (1991) was an instal-
lation for which a gallery was filled with hundreds of live tropical butterflies,
80 ● Kia Lindroos
while The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living

(1991) at the Saatchi Gallery displayed his infamous tiger shark in a glass tank
of formaldehyde. With the latter installation, Hirst became a media icon and,
since then, has been “imitated, parodied, reproached, and exalted by the media
and public alike” (http://www.artchive.com/artchive/H/hirst.html; see also
Hirst 1997, and http://www.picassomio.com/DamienHirst/en).
PART 2
Fictionalizing Terror
CHAPTER 4
Dostoyevsky on Terror and the

Question of the West
Margaret Heller
The Terror of Nihilism
I
n the aftermath of the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, one often
heard people say that nothing would be the same again: something terri-
fyingly new had erupted, changing the political landscape forever. Yet at
the same time that this particular act of terror was experienced as the shock
of the new, there were attempts by theorists almost immediately to discover
its larger meaning by going back to the past, and since 2001, a number of
books on the subject have been published, one example being Terry
Eagleton’s Holy Terror (2005). Some have turned especially to Dostoyevsky’s
great political novel The Possessed, also called The Devils or Demons, with its
portrayal of a group of nihilists, in order to gain insight into the motivations
underlying present-day terrorists. Notable among these would be André
Glucksmann, whose 2002 Dostoïevski à Manhattan proclaims on its back
cover that “il faut sous-titrer CNN avec Dostoïevski” (we must subtitle CNN
with Dostoyevsky).
On the face of it, the relevance of Dostoyevsky to twenty-first century
Islamicist terrorism is not self-evident, for the nineteenth-century Russian
nihilists he describes were revolutionaries wanting to create a new order based
on human reason, and the members of al Qaeda are religious fundamentalists
wanting the restoration of an older order under God. Yet some evident paral-
lels do exist. One is that Dostoyevsky portrays the leaders of the Russian
nihilists as young men with privileged, even aristocratic, backgrounds. There
has been an influential analysis of September 11 within the Left, one associated
84 ● Margaret Heller
most with the work of Noam Chomsky, which holds that it was a compre-
hensible act of retribution for the economic inequalities of the world order
favoring the West. Yet this particular instance of terrorism was not perpe-
trated by the materially dispossessed. Bin Laden, as we all know, was born
into a tremendously wealthy and influential family with close connections to
Saudi royalty, and the al Qaeda terrorists often seem to have been the children
of professionals. Something else moved them, something beyond the ratio-
nality of purely economic motives. It would seem that Dostoyevsky’s novel,
through its powerful examination of the spiritual and psychic dimensions of
the modern condition, might be a better source for understanding that which
exceeds the motivations recognized by contemporary political science, depen-
dent as it is upon the calculus of rational choices for its analysis.
The psychological roots of terror are typically identified in one of two
ways, both employing the language of Nietzsche. The first is that of ressenti-
ment: terrorism is held to be fueled by envy of the success of the West and
feelings of cultural humiliation. This argument is made most notably by
Bernard Lewis. The second is that of nihilism: terrorism is held to be the con-
sequence of the loss of values in late modernity. This is claimed by Glucks-
mann himself, who argues that nihilism is characteristic of modern Western
culture and that it has spread everywhere; we are in an era of “nihilisme mon-
dialisé,” in which only death gives meaning. Even terrorism motivated by reli-
gion is an expression of nihilism, for terrorists act as if there are no limits to
human activity (Glucksmann 2003, 1). Whether ressentiment or nihilism is
the culprit, what should be remarked is that both theories entail claims about
“the West.” In the first case, terrorism is said to be a reaction against the
West’s success, the vengeance of an alien culture seeking to reassert itself. In
the second case, modern terrorism, even that of radical Islamicism, is said to
be a symptom of a West whose values have been globally disseminated by its
technology, economy, and culture. The claim that I am most concerned with
here, one that links terrorism to a nihilism arising from the impasses of
Western modernity, is an instance of the latter. But one way or another, we
find a whole range of Orientalisms and Occidentalisms, or of stereotypes of
both East and West, invoked by those who seek to discover the roots of terror.
In Dostoyevsky’s writings, there are moments that would indicate the author’s
support for both tendencies, but his views cannot be reduced to either.
Nihilism and Terrorism in the European West

The thought that terrorism and nihilism belong together is not a new one, for
there is a close connection between the history of the two terms, both in their
origins in late eighteenth-century Europe and in their elaboration during the
Dostoyevsky on Terror and the Question of the West ● 85
nineteenth century in Russia. They were, in fact, coined roughly in the same
period, the time of the French Revolution. The first use of terrorism seems to
have been in the 1790s, and it then referred to the program of the French rev-
olutionary state (Laqueur 1977, 6). While in contemporary usage, terrorism
was typically used as the label for exceptional and nonstate violence, the
Jacobins believed that terror was a legitimate tool of government. Nihilism,
in contrast, seems to have first been introduced as a philosophical term. In
1799, Friedrich Jacobi used it to characterize Enlightenment thought as a
whole and Kantian critical reason in particular, which he argued reduced
being to nothingness (di Giovanni 2006). Then a connection between the
philosophy of nihilism and the politics of terror was made by Joseph de
Maistre, a Catholic conservative, who argued that the former’s assertion of
human freedom from authority had, as its necessary consequence, the latter.
Maistre’s denunciations of theophobia, “the insurrection against God,” nihilism
(rienisme), and any belief in political progress due to human enlightenment,
were especially influential in Russia as the result of his period of exile in
that country (Billington 1970, 272). Friedrich Schlegel, another figure of
Catholic Romanticism who had a considerable impact on Russian thought,
also makes clear the practical consequences of nihilism. He writes in his
Philosophy of History that the devil, the principle of negation, “since the com-
mencement of his emancipation in modern times,” has become the spirit of
the age itself, for now eternity is devalued in relation to the temporal world
(Schlegel 1883, 475). The modern assertion of human freedom has resulted
in nothing else than “bloody warfare, and a fatal struggle of life and death,
protracted beyond a century” (475). Only religion will save us: “Christianity
is the emancipation of the human race from the bondage of that inimical
spirit who denies God, and, as far as in him likes, leads all created intelli-
gences astray” (474).
Maistre and Schlegel express, and historically helped develop, the tradi-
tionalist antimodernist narrative, which mapped the orthodox Christian
account of sin, being individual man’s preference of his own will to God’s,
onto mankind’s actions in history, and which has had enormous reach ever
since. According to this account, the Enlightenment as a whole (or the
French Revolution, or modernity, or the West) has turned away from God
and elevated humanity in His place, wrongly convinced that it could bring
about the good autonomously and, instead, bringing about evil; Glucks-
mann, who applies this to contemporary terrorism, is but a recent teller of
this tale. In fact, the traditionalist narrative has led to a number of misread-
ings of politics and art because it disregards the specificity and complexity of
historical moments. It also has functioned to deflect attention from the
extent to which religion and the reaction against modernity are themselves
implicated in a number of resorts to terror.
Nihilism and Terrorism in the Russian East

Despite the assertions of Maistre and Schlegel, terrorism in Russia during the
late nineteenth century had little to do with those who professed nihilism.
Nihilism in the Russian context was originally a label for a philosophical
position that was utilitarian, materialist, positivist, and scientific, and thus
one that recognized no tradition, authority, or hierarchy. It was used first in
1829 by Nadezhdin, a Schellingian professor, to describe philosophical mate-
rialism (Billington 1970, 312). But it came to be applied to a cultural shift
initiated by a certain generation of Russian intelligentsia that had come to
value complete sincerity and turned against all convention, which it believed
involved only superstition, manipulation, and hypocrisy. The “new men” of
the 1860s criticized even the romantic sentimentality of the previous genera-
tion of progressives in the 1840s for its mere masking of the brutality in social
relations. It was in Turgenev’s 1862 novel Fathers and Sons that the members
of this generation were first identified as nihilists, and it was as the result of
the reception of that novel that the connection between the materialist views
of the nihilists and acts of terrorism was first asserted. Turgenev paints a por-
trait of one of the new men, Bazarov, calling him a nihilist, a person “who
regards everything from the critical point of view” and “who does not bow
down before any authority, who does not take any principle on faith”
(Turgenev 1966, 17). Bazarov despises everything traditional and conven-
tional, and mutters some things about the need for destruction in order to
make a clean sweep. Valuing only what is practical, and, echoing Bentham,
preferring chemistry to poetry, he has taken up the practical sciences and
medicine. He is not shown to be politically active, finds himself thwarted in
his aspirations to make a difference in the world, and by the end of the novel
is on the way to becoming a country doctor. Russian nihilism is thus por-
trayed as more a stance of generational revolt than a program of political
violence, and Turgenev treats Bazarov as someone with great personal authen-
ticity and even heroism. But Fathers and Sons happened to be published just at
the time of the outbreak of a number of mysterious fires in St. Petersburg, and
people applied the novelist’s label of “nihilist” to those responsible for the vio-
lence—much to Turgenev’s displeasure, who found himself alienated from the
younger generation as a result (Turgenev 1966, 170).
The first proponents of terrorism in Russia were not nihilists per se, but
anarchists such as Michael Bakunin and Sergei Nechaev, whose standpoint
was somewhat different. According to Stephen Marks, in his How Russia

Shaped the Modern World, “Their anarchism was a form of underground
political warfare that battled to destroy the existing political-economic system
and prepare the ground for a new egalitarian era in human existence” (Marks
2003, 7). Bakunin and Nechaev made their mark on future revolutionary
organizations through their “Catechism of the Revolutionary,” written in
1868 (Bakunin and Nechaev 1974). The two radicals met in exile in
Switzerland, and each persuaded the other that they were emissaries of large-
scale underground organizations, which in both cases was untrue (Laqueur
1977, 30). According to Marks, Bakunin’s revolutionary activity was dis-
played more in words than deeds, and the Catechism should be regarded as a
prescriptive more than a descriptive document. Nevertheless, as the creed of
systematic revolutionary violence, it helped direct the formation of subse-
quent radical organizations. At the same time, it confirmed the worst fears of
conservatives concerning the Left’s intentions by making such proclamations
as: “The revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no interests, no affairs, no
feelings . . . not even a name” (303); he is an “implacable enemy of this
world” (304); “he knows only one science, the science of destruction”; and
“every day he must be prepared for death.” The Catechism enjoins the revo-
lutionary to be without passion or pity, to manipulate those who are useful,
and to kill those who are not. The true revolution will not attempt to salvage
anything from tradition, but will clear the ground for a new beginning (308).
Elsewhere, Bakunin uses highly spiritual terms to express his expectation that
his program for revolution will help realize a cosmic plan by which Russia will
save the world: through apocalyptic destruction there will emerge a “new
heaven and new earth” (Bakunin 1973, 58). Let us, he proclaims in an infa-
mous passage, “trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only
because it is the unfathomable and eternally creative source of all life. The
passion for destruction is a creative passion, too.”
Nechaev was a particularly unscrupulous figure, who had managed to
charm Bakunin, and he became the model for the character Peter Verkhovensky
in Dostoyevsky’s novel. In the year following the writing of the Catechism,
Nechaev returned to Russia from Europe, passing himself off as being the
agent for a substantial revolutionary organization in Europe, the “Committee
of the People’s Revenge.” He demanded total obedience from the members of
the cell he was forming in Moscow, citing the authority of the (imaginary)
secret central committee, and when one Ivanov challenged him, Nechaev had
his small group of followers murder him. While the others were soon caught,
Nechaev managed to escape to Geneva but was eventually deported back
to Russia. Before that point, however, the rest of the group stood trial.
Dostoyevsky followed the trial of Nechaev’s followers, whom he called the

“Nechaevtzi,” with great interest, and decided to make the Nechaev case
the basis of the novel he was then writing, which became The Possessed
(Slonim 1959, 6).
The true terrorists in Russia, the bomb-throwers who assassinated the
czar, belonged to the next decade; that is, they were not men of the sixties
whom Dostoyevsky criticizes in The Possessed, but of the seventies, the gener-
ation that was emerging in the period immediately following the novel’s pub-
lication. These were the Populists or narodniki, the lovers of the people. In
the early 1870s, thousands of students left the cities and went out to the land
to live in village communities in order to serve the peasants through teaching
and providing medical care. These young people felt a need to provide some
form of reparation for the old era of serfdom, which had recently passed, and
they wanted to discover a social unity that would be the basis of a new Russia
by overcoming the divisions between the educated and the unprivileged.
They also believed that the peasants were the guardians of Russia’s national
spirit and that their villages were organized according to authentic Russian
communal principles (Figes 2002, 224). But the Populists’ attempts were
doomed to failure as they discovered that the peasants were uncomprehend-
ing, fiercely loyal to the tsar, and often hostile. Many of the narodniki subse-
quently returned to the city to work with the emerging proletariat instead,
but they found themselves the objects of brutal police oppression. In response
to the hopelessness of their position, a number split off from the main orga-
nization to form the “People’s Will” in 1879. It was members of this group
who undertook a series of assassinations, including that of Tsar Alexander II
in 1881, taking advantage of the principles of organization earlier formulated
by Bakunin and Nechaev, and of the new technology of dynamite.
The Populist terrorists were not, therefore, the same as the nihilists of the
sixties—yet they were often called nihilists because the term had become the
label for all types of radicals. In any case, they did not advocate destruction
for its own sake, nor did they negate everything that was Russian, nor were
they Westernizers, interested in learning from what was taking place or being
thought in Europe. When the narodniki looked to the Europe of the nine-
teenth century, they saw class struggles, violent revolutions, terrible urban
poverty, and gigantic machinery. The ideals, which they were trying to realize
through establishing a close relation to the Russian people, were closer to
Dostoyevsky’s own than they were to the utilitarian and scientific outlook of
the nihilists he targets in his fiction. But the term nihilist became inseparable
from that of terrorist in Russia and especially abroad. And then later,
although the Bolsheviks were extreme Westernizers who distinguished them-
selves from all forms of nationalism, the Russian revolution confirmed to
European conservatives the links between nihilism, terror, and the Russian
soul (Bonnett 2004, 43). Thus, while nihilism in Russia was associated with
radical Western ideologies such as Jacobinism, in Europe it was attributed to
a certain Russian type of radicalism: characterized as Asiatic and ruthless,
nihilism became an attribute of the Slavic, rather than the Westernized, intel-
lectual. This style of culturalist or ethnocentric analysis is repeated today in
many explanations for September 11. Islamic culture and/or the Arabic char-
acter have become the key to understanding current terrorism in the way that
the Slavic soul was invoked earlier.
Dostoyevsky’s Demons
In The Possessed, it is a group of revolutionaries belonging to the generation of
the sixties who are called nihilists by Dostoyevsky. They possess no common
ideology, but rather display a range of theoretical positions. Yet the members
of this group, living in a provincial town, systematically work to destabilize
the social order by disrupting the relations between the classes, between the
generations, and between the sexes, all of which culminate in arson and mur-
der. Their leader, Peter Verkhovensky, decides to solidify the loyalty of his fol-
lowers by having them participate in the killing of one of their number whom
Peter has falsely accused of treachery, just as Nechaev did in real life. While
The Possessed is evidently Dostoyevsky’s analysis of the causes and significance
of the Nachaev conspiracy, in an issue of his Diary of a Writer, Dostoyevsky
gives a more complex account of his intentions as an author. He did not try
to recreate the actual Nechaev in Peter Verkhovensky. Instead, he writes, “I
meant to put this question and to answer it as clearly as possible in the form
of a novel: how, in our contemporaneous, transitional and peculiar society,
are the Nechaievs, not Nechaiev himself made possible? And how does it
happen that these Nechaievs eventually manage to enlist followers—the
Nechaievtzi?” (Dostoyevsky 1971b, 142–43). Dostoyevsky goes on, “And in
my novel The Possessed I made the attempt to depict the manifold and het-
erogeneous motives which may prompt even the purest of heart and the most
naive people to take part in the perpetration of so monstrous a villainy.” This
attempt was a deeply personal one, for Dostoyevsky claims that in his youth
he himself had been on his way to becoming like one of the Nechaevtzi before
he was arrested and imprisoned (147).
Unlike his other fiction, Dostoyevsky wrote The Possessed with avowedly
polemical intentions: it is what the Russians called a “tendentious novel.” He
proclaims, in a letter in 1870, that “I want to speak out quite openly in this
book with no ogling of the younger generation” (Dostoyevsky 1961, 211).
Yet in the novel, he interprets the terrorizing activities of the nihilists as the
inevitable outcome of the romantic idealism of the previous generation, that

of the liberals of the forties, who unintentionally opened the door to terror by
their modeling themselves upon Europeans and feeling contempt for the
backwardness of Russia. Their successors, or “children,” were then “contami-
nated with the ideas of the then prevailing theoretical socialism” from
Europe, which, when carried to St. Petersburg, seemed both moral and cos-
mopolitan (148). Their temptation lay in the lofty nature of the goals of uni-
versal progress and social regeneration, which, while often connected to
Christianity, caused the rejection of the normal foundations of Russian soci-
ety. The deracination of progressive intellectuals unexpectedly resulted in the
“gloom and horror” of an act of murder represented as necessary for the great
cause (149). In another letter, he seems to focus his condemnation on the
younger generation, yet not completely: “Nihilism isn’t worth talking about.
Only wait until this scum that has cut itself adrift from Russia, is quite played-
out. And, do you know, I really think that many of the young scoundrels,
decadent boys that they are, will sooner or later turn over a new leaf, and be
metamorphosed into decent, thorough-going Russians? And the rest may go
rot. But even they will finally hold their tongues, for sheer impotence” (192).
In the novel, both these attitudes come out: at some points, Dostoyevsky
treats the radicals with bitter satire, but in the end he shows most of them dis-
playing a basic humanity that prevents them from behaving completely ruth-
lessly. Except for Peter, the nihilist conspirators turn out to be “decent,
thorough-going Russians” after all.
Contemporary representations of the characters in The Possessed thus tend
to make them more “devilish” than does the author himself. Glucksmann,
for example, claims that the nihilists in the novel “share one thing in com-
mon: the right to kill, to burn, to overturn, in order to achieve tabula rasa”
(Glucksmann 2003, 1). And Andrew McKenna, in a 2002 paper called
“Scandal, Resentment, Idolatry: The Underground Psychology of Terrorism,”
writes that Dostoyevsky portrays “a whole provincial city . . . set ablaze amidst
the romantic and nihilistic synergies befuddling its inhabitants” (McKenna
2002, 20). Both Glucksmann and McKenna therefore tremendously exag-
gerate both the motivations of the characters, which are much more mixed
and less definitely destructive, and the extent to which terrorism actually
occurs in the story. The political violence in the novel is limited to one act of
arson in the suburbs, probably in any case set to cover up a murder, and the
killing of one member of Peter Verkhovensky’s revolutionary group. The
recent commentators’ extreme characterizations seem to be more derived
from the principles outlined in Bakunin and Nechaev’s Catechism than they
do from Dostoyevsky’s actual plot.
The main character of The Possessed, insofar as his story begins and ends it,
is Peter’s father, Stephen Verkhovensky, who, along with many of the others,
can be regarded as personifying an aspect of Dostoyevsky himself. Here he is
a double of the author as a representative of the generation of the forties. An
ineffectual and vain pseudoscholar and freethinker, Mr. Verkhovensky is
maintained by Mrs. Stavrogin, a local landowner who is trying to keep up to
date with modern thought. He, in common with the rest of his generation,
betrays the youth who are entrusted to him. Having spent his early years in
Europe, a fact that is significant in itself, he abandons his infant son Peter to
be brought up by distant relatives and subsequently robs him of property
willed to him by his mother. This most unsuitable teacher is chosen by Mrs.
Stavrogin to educate her son, Nicholas. As a result of the overblown roman-
ticism of his opinions, his general neglect of his responsibilities, and his inap-
propriate familiarity with both Nicholas and Peter, both boys turn out to be
monsters: Peter is full of contempt and cruel mischief, and Nicholas tries to
compensate for his inability to feel deeply through dissipation and violence.
In different ways, both “sons” are nihilists, representatives of the genera-
tion of the sixties: Peter is the Nechaev figure who claims to be the agent of a
vast underground revolutionary organization. Despite his role in instigating
both the murder and the arson, he is the only one of the group who escapes
unscathed. Nicholas is the aristocratic radical, in many ways like Bakunin,
but cold instead of passionate. He is both one of the elect and monstrous, “a
bearer of [the intelligentsia’s] prophetic hopes” (Dostoyevsky 1971a, 421)
and a great sinner who has committed terrible crimes. In the end of the novel,
Nicholas kills himself, and he reveals in his suicide note that he has come to
realize the nature of his, and his generation’s, situation. As Nicholas puts it,
“He who loses his ties with his native soil loses his gods—that is, all his aims.
One can go on arguing about anything forever, but from me nothing has
come but negation, with no magnanimity and no force. Everything has
always been petty and lifeless” (667).
Mr. Verkhovensky, on the other hand, although he also dies at the end of
the novel, is redeemable, belonging as he does to the older generation of
romantics and liberals. As misguided and harmful as his actions have been, he
has within him the capacity to love. On his deathbed, he comes to under-
stand Russia through the parable in Luke’s gospel about the man possessed by
devils. Jesus frees the man by casting his demons into a herd of swine; the
swine become maddened, throw themselves off a cliff, and are drowned. Mr.
Verkhovensky finds in this a parallel of the situation of Russia: the liberals of
the forties, such as himself, and the nihilists of the sixties, such as Peter and
Nicholas, are like the swine; they have taken into themselves all the devils
which have possessed Russia, “our great and beloved invalid,” for centuries.
This is all part of a higher plan for Russia’s ultimate purification and redemp-
tion. Mr. Verkhovensky prophesies, “We shall cast ourselves down, the raving
and the possessed, from the cliff into the sea and shall all be drowned, and
serves us right, for that is all we are good for. But the sick man will be healed
and will sit at the feet of Jesus, and all will look at him and be amazed”
(648). In this passage, it is clear that the nihilists are not themselves the
demons, as is commonly claimed, but rather are those whom demons pos-
sess. Those who have lost their connection with the Russian soil and the
Russian people by adopting foreign ideas and ways of life are dispossessed of
their proper spirituality and thus open to possession by evil. Yet this evil does
not prevail. The attempts by nihilists to destroy results only in futile self-
destruction; their passing, Mr. Verkhovensky is claiming, will ultimately free
Russia so that it can at last be itself, and even, he suggests, be a light to oth-
ers. Here, he gives voice to the opinion of the nationalist Slavophiles, one
shared by Dostoyevsky, that Russia had a world destiny to surpass and guide
the West, a civilization spiritually stunted and thus easily given over to cor-
ruption (Billington 1970, 317).
Dostoyevsky’s Occidentalism
If the demons are not the progressive intellectuals themselves but, instead,
what possess them, then does Dostoyevsky think that they are Western ideas?
In their 2004 Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies, Ian Buruma
and Avishai Margalit argue that Dostoyevsky is blinded by his “Occidentalism,”
an ideology made up of false and negative generalizations about the West.
They write, “He is convinced that the West is committed to scientism, the
belief that society can be engineered like the Crystal Palace. For him,
imported scientism and utilitarianism constitute a dangerously deluded ide-
ology. . . . We might share Dostoyevsky’s view of human behavior, but his
view of the West as . . . driven by nothing but arid rationalism, is a dehu-
manizing Occidentalist distortion” (Buruma and Margalit 2004, 98).
But this characterization of Dostoyevsky as being simply anti-Western, or
of him believing that it is Western ideas that are the source of evil, does not
really work. For Western culture is not something foreign or external to
Dostoyevsky’s characters—it is written in their souls, to the extent that they
experience themselves as being internally split. That is, the West has been
absorbed by the Russians psychologically and it cannot be excised. In his
Diary of a Writer, Dostoyevsky denies that it would be possible or even desir-
able to try to return to the way Russia was before the Westernizing reforms of
Peter the Great. He senses that, while for two centuries, the intelligentsia had
deserted Russia in their hearts, they are now returning; they have come back
after their European sojourn neither as Europeans nor merely Russians, but
as cosmopolitans comprehending both, and ready to further Russia’s world-
historical mission. He argues that “under no circumstances can we renounce
Europe. Europe is our second fatherland, and I am the first ardently to pro-
fess this; I have always professed this” (Dostoyevsky 1971b, 581).
Thus it seems not to be ideas themselves, Western or not, that are the issue
for Dostoyevsky. For he treats the problem of the evil actions committed by
those who are not evil themselves as being not only a Russian problem, but
one faced everywhere in a state of transition. He writes, “It has been so from
time immemorial, during transitional epochs, at times of violent commotion
in people’s lives—doubts, negations, skepticism and vacillation regarding the
fundamental social convictions” (149). And, even though the Russian soul
has been unmoored by the upheavals of the modern era, Dostoyevsky believes
that it contains within itself a limit, an ultimate humility and a kernel of
goodness that persists despite all the humiliations of history and degradations
of crime; the recovery of that kernel will be the basis of a true socialism and
the saving of the world. Those of his characters who attempt to act with infi-
nite freedom (most famously Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment) discover
an inner limit. This is true of Nicholas Stavrogin, although he has been cor-
rupted himself and has corrupted his followers: he recognizes himself both
as being deracinated and as a soul seeking salvation. And it is true of his fol-
lowers, who find themselves very unwilling to commit murder. The excep-
tion seems to be Peter Verkhovensky, who is closest in the novel to being
truly devilish.
In conclusion, I have argued that there is an often-repeated traditionalist
narrative that tells how the loss of a higher frame of reference in modernity
leads to terror, how humanism leads to self-destruction. Some contemporary
commentators have found that Dostoyevsky convincingly demonstrates the
linkage between godless materialism of Westernized culture and terroristic
brutality, especially in The Possessed. This reading, given by some analysts of
September 11, needs to be questioned on a number of levels. My main con-
cern here has been to show that there has not been such an equivalence his-
torically between terrorism and nihilism as is commonly asserted, and that
although Dostoyevsky himself was a promulgator of this view to some extent,
he does not give us a simple teaching even in his avowedly tendentious novel,
The Possessed. The famous slogan “If God does not exist, nothing is forbid-
den” is not a sufficient summary of what he teaches in his fiction; it is often
forgotten that it is a statement made by one character in The Brothers
Karamazov and not necessarily in the voice of the author. And, although
Dostoyevsky gives us a much more complex exploration of the roots of vio-

lence than the traditionalist narrative would recognize, this does not mean
that we necessarily should trust his account either of Russian terrorism or
nihilism. My own view is that Dostoyevsky had his own reasons—particu-
larly a desire to repudiate his own radical past—for conflating the outlook of
nihilism with the revolutionary anarchism of Bakunin and Nechaev. In fact,
neither was directly responsible for the famous incidents of terrorism in
Russia, which came out of a movement whose ideas were much closer to
Dostoyevsky’s own. To make an obvious point here, artistic works do not
have such a privileged access to truth that their representations, even of the
periods in which they were written, can avoid being subject to critique. The
arguments that The Possessed as well as the traditionalist narrative make about
the causes of terror run up against the problem that so many terrorists, both
then and now, have themselves been opposed to nihilism and have sought to
return their societies to an absolute foundation. Modernity is considered by
them to be corrupt, lacking foundations and meaning, and needing of purifi-
cation by violence.
Why read Dostoyevsky, then, if one wants to understand contemporary
terrorism? Because his novels famously seek to uncover the most real: “deep
penetration,” “from the real to the more real,” and the “restoration of every-
thing immediate” were Dostoyevsky’s formulations (Billington 1970, 416),
and his deep penetration of reality continues to be compelling to modern
readers. He reveals “the manifold and heterogeneous motives which may
prompt even the purest of heart and the most naive people to take part in the
perpetration of so monstrous a villainy” (Dostoyevsky 1971b, 142–43), not
the existence of a simple opposition between good and evil. Glucksmann and
so many others miss the extent to which the author, in his portrayal of the
“manifold and heterogeneous,” withholds a judgment concerning pure evil
that they seem to desire. They also miss the extent to which his work does not
support the focus on the category of the West for analysis. The West always
tacitly involves a theory that deals in false oppositions such as that of the
clash of civilizations, and thus it is unwelcoming to Dostoyevsky’s explo-
ration of the intellectual’s experience of an inner spiritual split. The truth
he wants to show to us lies in the common anxieties of societies undergoing
cultural transition as they are played out in a number of relationships, such
as in the estrangement between generations, and especially here between
fathers and sons.
In any case, if terrorism can be said to be either the product of the non-
West’s humiliation and weakness, or the outcome of the West’s nihilism, how
much can the category really explain? If we believe that we can look to
Dostoyevsky to help us uncover the roots of modern terror, then we should

avoid using the West as a convenient name through which evil can be exter-
nalized and essentialized.
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CHAPTER 5
To This Side of Good and Evil

Primo Levi as a Truth-teller
Tuija Parvikko
The holes of oblivion do not exist. Nothing human is that perfect, and there
are simply too many people in the world to make oblivion possible. One man
will always be left alive to tell the story.
—Arendt 1965, 232–33
F
or Hannah Arendt, Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 was a clear indica-
tion of a total collapse of the Western political tradition and its vocab-
ulary. From World War II onwards, she repeatedly reflected on the
question of how it was possible that even the analyses, made after the collapse
of the Third Reich, failed to reach the heart of the matter, that is to say, failed
to reach a political judgment on the mechanism of the birth and character of
totalitarian power.
Precisely as Arendt suggested, the problem at stake stems from the inca-
pacity of Western political thought to deal with and analyze politically
extreme events such as Nazi totalitarianism and the Holocaust. Our tradition
of political thought does not provide us with a valid and accurate vocabulary
with which it would be possible to seize the political aspect of these phenom-
ena (Arendt 1994, 302). Instead, the analysis shifts to their historical, psy-
chological, linguistic, philosophical, or juridical aspects (Agamben 1998, 7).
Genocide is an act of terror. After 9/11, we easily tend to forget that, as
such, it is not a new phenomenon. The case is rather that terror and terror-
ism often emerge unexpectedly in different contexts taking different modes
of expression. This is why each case has to be read politically separately in
98 ● Tuija Parvikko
order to understand its political meaning. In this chapter, the Nazi genocide
is understood to be one of the most important contexts of political terror and
terrorism in twentieth-century Europe. It is assumed that in order to under-
stand the political meaning of “new terrorism” of the contemporary world,
we need to understand the particular characteristics of earlier expressions of
political terror.
The lack of valid political vocabulary is most conspicuous when we try to
talk about the survivors of the Nazi genocide. The vocabulary at our disposal
is compelled to resort to the juridical tradition and its lexicon, talking about
“testimony,” “witnessing,” and “witnesses,” as if the stories of survivors were
merely testimonies given in the courtroom. Correspondingly, political judg-
ment of the genocide is reduced to an ethical reflection on the nature of evil
(on this huge literature see Felman and Laub 1992; Copjec 1996; Novick
1999; Bauer 2001; Todorov 2001). In this chapter, I claim that it is time to
return from the “other side of good and evil” (Nietzsche) to “this side of good
and evil” (Levi) to read politically Nazi totalitarianism, genocide, and the
interpretations presented of them. I claim that the analogy with old and new
terrorisms lies in the fact that terror and terrorism are always political phe-
nomena and should be read and interpreted as such. Political reading of ter-
rorisms means that the antiterrorist fight is not understood as a metaphysical
war between good and evil, but rather is understood as a political fight
between different political actors and their aims.
In this context, I suggest that the survivors might be understood as
Arendtian “truth-tellers” rather than juridical “witnesses.” In this way, it
might be possible to understand survivors and other debaters of Nazi totali-
tarianism as “politicians,” who try to interfere and affect both the present day
and the future by means of presenting interpretations and stories about past
events. It might be possible to understand that “eye-witnesses” do not have a
self-evident monopoly or primary position in the discussion and debate over
the question of what kind of conclusions we should draw about Nazi totali-
tarianism and the unique political history of the twentieth century at large.
Rather, a number of survivors may be understood as seekers of truth who are
fighting against falling silent, evading truth, and lying in a world in which
telling the truth has become a political action.
In order to show that this shift is necessary, I will contribute to the debate
about “witnessing the Holocaust” and “telling the story of the Holocaust” by
discussing and analyzing two interesting and important interpretations of it.
The first one is Hayden White’s thesis, according to which the Holocaust
should be understood in Barthesian terms as a modernist event and, as such,
its representation requires its own particular modes of expression. The second
To This Side of Good and Evil ● 99
one is Giorgio Agamben’s thesis about the impossibility of integral testimony,

which he postulates by means of a reinterpretation of Primo Levi’s reports
about Auschwitz. I will argue, with Dominick LaCapra, that Agamben
obscures and overtly dramatizes Levi’s simple remark according to which those
who went through it all did not come back to tell about their experiences.
This is precisely the knot we need to open by means of Arendt’s concep-
tion of the position and task of the truth-teller. A political truth-teller does
not only proclaim individual experience promoting private interest, but also
tries to call attention to a generally important issue, talk about which is not
entirely based on his or her own experience and understanding the impor-
tance of which is not based on personal experience. Finally, I will suggest that
both seeking and telling truth may become one of the most important modes
of political action in the twenty-first century.
The Holocaust as a Modernist Event

According to Hayden White, the Holocaust is best understood as a modernist
event. He suggests that the Holocaust is a unique event in that it cannot be
told or represented by means of traditional modes of story-telling or histori-
ography. It is an event whose nature permits it to serve as a paradigm of the
kind of event about which we can be permitted to speak only in a literal man-
ner (White 1999, 34). Consequently, the events of the Nazi genocide are
intrinsically antirepresentational, which means that they are paradigmatic of
the kind of event that can be spoken about only in a factual and literalist
manner: the genocide consists of occurrences in which the very distinction
between event and fact is dissolved (White 1999, 36).
Following Berel Lang (1990), White invokes Roland Barthes’ notion of
intransitive writing as a model for a position or a discourse appropriate to the
discussion of the philosophical and theoretical issues raised by reflections on
the Holocaust. Intransitive writing denies the distances between the writer,
text, what is written about, and the reader: an author does not write in order
to provide access to something independent of both author and reader, but
writes himself. For the writer who writes himself, writing itself becomes the
means of vision or comprehension, not a mirror of something independent,
but an act and commitment—a doing or making rather than a reflection or
description (White 1999, 37; Lang 1990, xii).
Barthes points out that modern Indo-European languages offer only two
possibilities for expressing the different kinds of relationships that an agent
can be represented as bearing within an action, those of the active and the
passive voices, while other languages, such as ancient Greek, offer a third
possibility, that of a middle voice. Whereas in the active and passive voices,
the subject of the verb is presumed to be external to the action (either agent
or patient), in the middle voice, the subject is presumed to be interior to the
action. Consequently, in literary modernism, the verb “to write” connotes
neither an active nor a passive relationship but, rather, a middle one. In the
modern verb of middle voice “to write,” the subject is constituted as imme-
diately contemporary with the writing, being effected and affected by it
(White 1999, 38).
In White’s view, this difference indicates a new and distinctive way of
imagining, describing, and conceptualizing the relationships obtaining between
agents and acts, subjects and objects, a statement and its referent, the literal
and figurative levels of speech, and therefore the factual and fictional dis-
course. Consequently, he suggests that the kind of anomalies, enigmas, and
dead ends met with in the discussions of the representation of the Holocaust
are the result of a conception of discourse that owes too much to a realism
inadequate to represent events, such as the Holocaust, which are themselves
modernist in nature (White 1999, 38–39).
In White’s understanding, modernism appears as an anticipation of a new
form of historical reality, a reality that includes supposedly unimaginable,
unthinkable, and unspeakable aspects, such as the phenomena of Hitlerism,
the Final Solution, and total war. White argues that all this suggests that
modernist modes of representation may offer possibilities for representing the
reality of both the Holocaust and the experience of it that no other version of
realism could do. This demands that our notion of what constitutes realistic
representation must be revised to take account experiences that are unique to
our century and for which the older modes of representation have proven to
be inadequate (White 1999, 41–42).
If This Is a Man
Primo Levi’s (1919–87) first book, If This is a Man (first published in 1947),
is an account of his deportation and captivity at Monowitz-Buna that lasted
ten months until the arrival of the Russians, on January 27, 1945. The sev-
enteen chapters of the book deal with certain themes and aspects of the camp
life “in the order of urgency” (Levi 1979, 16; 1958). Breaking with the tradi-
tional use of chronology is one of the special characteristics of the text, which
suggests that it might be best understood as a case of intransitive writing. Levi’s
text differs from standard storytelling, at least in the following ways. Breaking
the chronology is intensified by playing with tempi and moods that is probably
possible only in Italian and very difficult, if not impossible, to translate into
other languages. In terms of this level of play, Levi is able to manipulate the
distance of the writing voice and the reading eyes from the text. At times,
both the writer and the reader are immersed among the inmates of the camp
and their surrealist life, while at other times, Levi intentionally draws himself,
together with the reader, further away from this “anti-world” and its absurdi-
ties in order to look at it from afar. Levi’s way of using the present tense has
been described “absolute” (Sossi 1998, 175) as far as it succeeds in blurring
the temporal (and perhaps also spatial) distance between the writer and the
reader. Levi uses also other ways of breaking with traditional storytelling,
such as departing from the normal structure of sentences, the extensive usage
of the passive voice or a generic “we” when referring to the camp inmates,
blurring both the author of the text and the agent of actions so that the events
seem to take place without any clear initiative or active impact of anybody or
any normal human logic of behavior whatsoever.
In addition, there is a specific aspect in the text that is related to the past
and the present, that is, to memory and history. This aspect challenges the
widely shared interpretation, according to which the collapse of the Third
Reich was followed by a period of “collective amnesia” during which people
did not want to think and remember what had taken place in Europe during
the twelve years of the Nazi empire (Wieviorka 1999; Traverso 2004). In the
chapter entitled Our Nights, Levi describes the collective dreams of the
inmates of the camp, challenging a “realistic” approach to remembering and
forgetting and suggesting that also in this respect the surrealism of the camp
succeeded in breaking the “normal” way of shaping the past, present, and
future, and the distinction between real and imaginary. Levi writes, “This is
my sister here, with some unidentifiable friend and many other people. They
are all listening to me. . . . It is an intense pleasure, physical, inexpressible, to
be at home, among friendly people and to have so many things to recount:
but I cannot help noticing that my listeners do not follow me. In fact, they
are completely indifferent: they speak confusedly of other things among
themselves, as if I was not there. My sister looks at me, gets up and goes away
without a word” (1979, 66). This is, indeed, a dream and not a description of
a postwar situation at home. It caused embarrassment in Levi’s mind. He
continues, “I am now quite awake and I remember that I have recounted it to
Alberto and that he confided to me, to my amazement, that it is also his
dream and the dream of many others, perhaps everyone. Why does it hap-
pen? Why is the pain of every day translated so constantly into our dreams,
in the ever-repeated scene of the unlistened-to story” (66).
In other texts (see Levi 1997), Levi has reported that the reluctance of the
family members and people in general to listen to stories of survivors was a
simple fact and a widespread phenomenon in the postwar European reality.

However, the earlier quote suggests that the conception of postwar silence
might partly be a product of a specific mental confusion, frustration, and
trauma born during the period spent in the camp. It suggests that the “world”
of the camp was so surrealist and extreme that the inmates started to fear that
nobody would listen and believe them if they ever had an opportunity to tell
about what they had gone through. In the postwar experience of the survivor
it may have seemed that nobody wanted to listen, while from the viewpoint
of other people the survivors easily appeared as an annoyance that did not
want to return to normal life but preferred to go on repeating their depress-
ing horror stories.
However, despite all the intransitive aspects of Levi’s text, it cannot exclu-
sively be described as an expression of the middle voice. Rather, intransitivity
is one of the textual strategies used by Levi in order to write as “authentic” an
account as possible and to express and give testimony of the camp experience
as well as possible. It is difficult to say how consciously Levi adopted intran-
sitive aspects in his writing strategy. In his own words he aimed for objectiv-
ity and for an “ethnographic” style. His narrative is conspicuously reduced
and simple and precisely these characteristics become emphasized when he
deals with (anti)ethical and (anti)political aspects of the camp. However, it
is especially in two chapters—“This Side of Good and Evil” and “The
Drowned and the Saved”—that Levi crosses the border of intransitive writing
and hindsight assessment or judgment. The former is a description of trade
and stealing—grey markets—among the inmates. Everything possible was
for sale and everything possible could be stolen: in order to survive, one had
to accommodate oneself to these practices. Things, deeds, and people were
exclusively evaluated as “things,” that is, on the basis of their capacity to con-
tribute to the possibility of survival. In this sense, the camp life did not fol-
low any “normal” or conventional ethical patterns or rules of moral conduct.
Neither did it follow any conventional conceptions of crime and punish-
ment. Consequently, Levi challenges the reader to consider whether the camp
life can be assessed and judged according to conventional conceptions of
good and evil or just and unjust (Levi 1979, 92).
“This side” (al di qua) of the title of the chapter refers to being inside the
camp, inside the barbed-wire fence: there, Levi suggests, the normal morality
of human interaction collapses. People’s conduct doesn’t follow normal moral
or ethical patterns but “actions” and “choices” are guided by the principle of
survival. One of the reasons for this is that in the camp it is impossible to
shape causal relations between deeds and events. The punishments do not fit
the crimes and one may be punished without having done anything.
Consequently, the entire camp experience cannot be told as a “normal story”

with a plot. Things forbidden were not forbidden for some particular reason
but because everything was forbidden (Levi 1979, 35). As distinguished from
the general purpose of the camp—that of the destruction of inmates—the life
of an inmate in the camp is characterized by the lack of decipherable expla-
nations or reasons. The days are filled with purposeless, repetitive events
occurring without protagonists and “whys” that would relate the events to
each other in such a way that emplotment would be possible.
Politically, the camp can be characterized as a space without action, a space
in which contingency has been replaced by a kind of randomness in an
almost absolute sense. In other words, an inmate of the camp does not poli-
tick with contingency or jump at the chance in the ordinary sense of these
conceptions but his or her doings are rather guided by random or haphazard
attempts to stay alive. This is reflected particularly well in the fate of those
inmates who did try to politick in/with the extreme situation of the camp.
The Kapos, black market merchants, and other profiteers of the camp world
were no more able to avoid the gas chamber than ordinary inmates.
Speaking in Their Stead

While If This is a Man was written in the urgency felt by a survivor to tell and
transmit his experience immediately after the war, The Drowned and the
Saved is an account and judgment made with the hindsight of forty years.
There is no trace of intransitive writing left in it; it is rather informed by a
cool, calm, and perhaps even melancholy deliberation and evaluation. This is
well reflected also in the contents and structure of the book. Levi no longer
imagines that he is able to give an “integral” testimony, and is, at the same
time, very conscious of the unreliability of memory itself (Levi 1988, 21).
After the success of his first book, Levi became a kind of permanent wit-
ness spending a significant part of his life giving interviews and writing arti-
cles related to his own experience and to the Nazi genocide in general. It is
understandable that his stance to it changed in the course of time and that
a desire was born to give a new testimony and judgment based on “sec-
ondary memory”1 and deliberation. This change is related in large part to
the questions of witnessing, remembering, and memory. Levi also points
out—as a kind of reverse side of the unreliability of memory—that the
passing of time brings along with it a certain decantation, which means that
historical facts can be seen in perspective only with the hindsight of a few
decades (1986, 10).
Levi’s basic conviction, according to which it is our ethical and political

duty to tell and transmit the history of Nazi genocide, has not changed. He
believes that it is even easier to tell the whole story with the hindsight of a few
decades as the amount of general historical knowledge has grown. What has
changed, instead, is his understanding of the capacity of the survivor-victim
to bear witness and transmit his or her experience. Related to this is also Levi’s
understanding that the position of the survivor has changed:
I must repeat—we, the survivors, are not the true witnesses. This is an uncom-
fortable notion, of which I have become conscious little by little, reading the
memoirs of others and reading mine at a distance of years. We survivors are not
only an exiguous but also an anomalous minority: we are those who by their
prevarications or abilities or good luck did not touch the bottom. Those who
did so, those who saw the Gorgon, have not returned to tell about it or have
returned mute, but they are the ‘Muslims’, the submerged, the complete wit-
nesses, the ones whose deposition would have a general significance. They are
the rule, we are the exception. (1988, 63–64)
Indeed, the complete, “integral” witnesses, those who went through all the
phases of destruction, did not come back to tell their story and experience.
Levi writes, “We who were favored by fate tried, with more or less wisdom, to
recount not only our fate, but also that of the others, the submerged; but this
was a discourse on ‘behalf of third parties’, the story of things seen from close
by, not experienced personally. When the destruction was terminated, the
work accomplished was not told by anyone, just as no one ever returned to
recount his own death. . . . We speak in their stead, by proxy” (23).
There are two major points that Levi makes. On the one hand, he claims
that an average inmate of the camp is not necessarily the best possible witness
because, more often than not, it was impossible for him or her to shape the
entirety of the camp and the Nazi genocide. A huge number of victims did
not know where they were and what was going to happen to them. This gen-
eral ignorance transformed into a kind of illiteracy as to the entirety of the
phenomenon that was taking place. On the other hand, Levi points out that
those who would be capable of telling the entire experience of the process of
destruction are not able to do so because they are dead.
One of the most difficult aspects of understanding the phenomenon of
the camp has been the collapse of “normal” or conventional ethical and moral
patterns of behavior that took place there. It has been difficult to accept that
the inmates were not simply innocent victims of evil perpetrators. Levi points
out that the world into which one entered was not only terrible but also inde-
cipherable. It did not conform to any model of war, hostilities, or fighting,
because in the camp the enemy was not only surrounding the inmates but
also inside them: the “we” lost its limits. One could not discern any frontier
between friends and enemies, but instead, there were many confused frontiers
(1986, 25).
Levi argues that in order to understand how the camp really worked, we
should focus our attention on the analysis of a complex system of privileges
that the Nazis organized in the camps. Consequently, the Lager can be con-
sidered an excellent laboratory of privileges as far the hybrid class of prisoner-
functionaries constitutes its armature. It is the grey zone, with ill-defined
outlines that both separate and join the two camps of masters and servants
(1986, 27).
Levi divides the privileged into three categories. First, there are the low-
ranking functionaries that “formed a picturesque fauna: sweepers, kettle
washers, night-watchmen, bed smoothers . . . checkers of lice and scabies,
messengers, interpreters, assistants’ assistants” (1988, 29). Generally speak-
ing, they were poor devils like simple prisoners (1986, 31). Second, there
were those who occupied commanding positions, the Kapos. These were the
chiefs of the labor squads, the barracks chiefs, the clerks, the prisoners who
performed diverse duties in the camps’ administrative offices. Most of these
were persons who proved to be human specimens ranging from the mediocre
to the execrable (32–33).
It is the third group, the Sonderkommando, that has puzzled both the sur-
vivor-witnesses, like Levi, and other people the most. With the term
Sonderkommando, the SS referred to the group of prisoners who were
entrusted with running the crematoria. Levi argues that conceiving and orga-
nizing of these squads was National Socialism’s most demonic crime because
it was precisely this institution that represented an attempt to shift on to oth-
ers, specifically on to the victims, the burden of guilt, so that they were
deprived even the solace of innocence (1986, 36).
Giorgio Agamben and Levi’s Paradox

Mesnard and Saletti (2002, 28–29) argue that Levi ends up in racking apo-
ria. What remains is an irreducible opposition between the status of one who
was “saved,” and who is able to bear witness, and one who “drowned,” who
does not have a voice even through survivors. In other words, survivors are
not able to give integral testimonies because they did not see the Gorgon.
Consequently, the absolute experience of the camp is destined to remain
without a voice because real integral witnesses would be the inmates known
as “Muslims,”2 who remained without a voice even before their physical
death. Giorgio Agamben has come to a similar conclusion calling this aporia
Levi’s paradox.
For Agamben,3 the real problem lies in the gaps between the witness, tes-
timony, and receiver of the message. In his view, the testimony essentially
contains a hole that derives from the fact that survivors bear witness to some-
thing that cannot be witnessed. This something is the experience of death:
those who have seen the Gorgon lose their voice already before definitively
losing their physical vigor, being unable to tell what they have seen and expe-
rienced. An ideal “integral witness” can be postulated theoretically: he is the
“Muslim” who has seen the Gorgon. The problem is that the “Muslim” is not
able to bear witness, testify to what he or she has seen and experienced, but
the survivors have to do it in his or her stead. The consequence is an
unfulfilled hole between the witness and that of which he or she wants to
tell and testify.
Agamben’s thesis is problematic in the way it understands the relation
between Auschwitz and life and death, and consequently ends up mystifying
and mythologizing Auschwitz. It can be argued that the impossibility of look-
ing at the Gorgon is related not only to extermination camps but to funda-
mental conditions of human life in general: the boundary between life and
death can be crossed only once and nobody comes back to tell us about his or
her experience of death.
However, it has to be taken into account that Agamben’s idea can be fully
understood only in relation to his general thesis regarding the state of excep-
tion, within the frame of which the extermination camp is a place where the
borderline between life and death is blurred. In this environment, the
“Muslim” paradigmatically represents living dead figures (as the Nazis called
them) that have left the realm of life behind but have not yet fully died.
However, other inmates of the camp are destined to step outside the normal
realm of life, outside good and evil. The extermination camp is a nonplace,
where the inmates have ended up by the order of the sovereign who decides
on matters of life and death. It is a place in which no normal ethical values
and norms are in force or valid. Human and inhuman are blended with each
other and both prisoners and warders can act in a completely unpredictable
way. In Agamben’s interpretation, the blurring of all kinds of boundaries is
emphasized. By blurring boundaries between good and evil, and between life
and death, the extermination camp blurs also the boundary between that
which is human and inhuman. The “Muslim” is no longer a human being in
the proper sense of the word.
A careful reading of Agamben’s text quickly reveals that his interpretation
of Levi is based on two authorities, Arendt and Schmitt. A comparison with
Arendt’s analysis of a concentration camp, which she presented in the last

chapter of The Origins of Totalitarianism, reveals a conspicuous uniformity
between these two interpretations. Agamben not only represents Arendt’s
notion of the obsoleteness of the Western political vocabulary but also her
notion of blurring boundaries between human and inhuman and between
victim and executioner (1979, 453). The result is a notion of the camp as an
ethically ambivalent area that cannot be analyzed politically in terms of the
existing vocabulary. If one combines Schmitt’s thesis of the state of exception
with this notion, one gets the Agambenian frame of analysis.
As regards Primo Levi, the problem is that his texts cannot necessarily be
understood in a Schmittian or Arendtian spirit. Instead of blurring bound-
aries and differences between victims and executioners, Levi emphasizes that
although internal frontiers and borderlines of ethically ambivalent grey zone
are manifold, victims remain victims and executioners remain executioners.
This basic fact should never be forgotten. Levi’s central thesis, rather, is that
although the actions and deeds of the inmates of the camps should not be
judged in black-and-white terms, we still should continue our efforts to reach
better and more accurate assessments of them. More importantly, he was one
of the first who manage to reach a perspective of judgment that is free from
moral disapproval and disgust, as well as being able to distinguish between
ethical and political judgments or evaluations, on the one hand, and juridical
verdicts, on the other. He suggests that especially in extreme cases, such as the
Sonderkommando, we should be careful not to turn ethical and political con-
sideration into a juridical verdict (1988, 43; Traverso 2004, 185–86).
Hence, I will argue that Levi by no means suggests that the extermination
camp is a nonplace on the other side of good and evil, but rather that it is an
ethically multidimensional and multileveled place on this side of good and
evil (al di qua del bene e del male). This language game with the title of
Nietzsche’s book is decisive in understanding what Levi means. First, being
on this side of good and evil refers to being inside the barbed wire fence of the
extermination camp. Second, “being on this side” also refers to the fact that
the extermination camp is not situated outside of the human world, even if
it may seem so at first glance. We should not surrender to the Nazis and
their efforts at dehumanization, but continue to think of the inmates of the
camps as human beings, because that is what they were (Z̆iz̆ek 2001, 77).
Indeed, Levi’s reply to the question of “if this is a man” is as follows: yes, this
is a man, too.
In other words, despite its extreme and specific character, the camp
belongs to the sphere of human action and, as such, it is to be judged ethi-
cally and politically. However, because of its ethical multileveledness—due to
the complicated nature of the relations between victims and executioners—it

cannot be judged in traditional black-and-white terms by classifying people
and their deeds as either good or evil. From all this it follows that that which
Agamben understands as being Levi’s paradox is not a paradox at all. Rather,
what is actually at stake here are certain characteristics and conditions of the
human world and people living in it that inevitably shape our lives as human
beings. In other words, there is nothing paradoxical in the fact that survivors
did not see the Gorgon and cannot bear witness to the experience of those
who did see her.
Agamben’s interpretation of Levi is meant to support and clarify his own
thesis, or rather, to give a warning, concerned with the character of biopoli-
tics in the twentieth and twenty-first century. For Agamben, the present
biopolitics is not simply about the sovereign’s decision on matters of life and
death. What is at stake in the present politics is survival itself. The aim of the
present biopolitics is no longer merely to decide on who can live and who
must die but rather to produce an existence that can be completely formu-
lated and manipulated. In this context, the “Muslim” appears as a kind of fig-
ure who is not able to offer any resistance. Agamben suggests that we may be
approaching a point in which we all will be transformed into “Muslims.”
Dominick LaCapra does not accept this point of view. He admits that for
Levi, as a survivor, to say that it is not he but the “Muslim” who is the true
witness, is an acceptable hyperbole, while for Agamben to identify with Levi
and hence speak for him and the “Muslim” may be hyperbolic in an objec-
tionable sense (LaCapra 2004, 185). LaCapra suggests that writing from
within the limit situation or the state of exception in which the “Muslim” is
everyman—where Auschwitz is now seen to be everywhere, and the excep-
tion becomes the rule—is in a sense to write in extremis, as if each moment
were the moment of death. Consequently, the present Agambenian philoso-
phy becomes a postapocalyptic, post-Auschwitz perspective of conceptual
and ethical meltdown, or a radical blurring of distinctions, wherein the
threshold of indistinction, the grey zone, and the rampant state of exception
seem fully to meld (2004, 191).
As far as I can see, LaCapra wants to suggest that Agamben’s approach
eludes any political analysis of the camp and its political “message” for the
present-day world, despite the fact that he emphasizes the urgency of this
kind of analysis. Agamben is satisfied with a macro-level assessment typical in
philosophy. He gets stuck in an analysis of ethical-juridical vocabulary and
etymological observations, without being able to outline a new political
vocabulary, despite his claim that there is a desperate need for it.
Although we may reject Agamben’s vision of a world in which all human

life is reduced to a “Muslim”-like existence, we may nevertheless accept a sce-
nario, according to which political action in the twenty-first century may
become the struggle for remembering, history, and maintaining a sense of
reality (Levi 1986, 20; Todorov 2001, 139–45). As the motto of this article
shows, Hannah Arendt never believed that all the testimonies could be
destroyed, and that there will always be someone left alive to tell the story. In
the present context, it may indeed be useful to recall what Hannah Arendt
wrote about truth and politics and consider how it might help us to outline
possibilities for political action in the twenty-first century.
The Truth-teller as Politician

Only where a community has embarked upon organized lying on principle,
and not only with respect to particulars, can truthfulness as such, unsupported
by the distorting forces of power and interest, become a political factor of the
first order. Where everybody lies about everything of importance, the truth-
teller, whether he knows it or not, has begun to act; he, too, has engaged him-
self in political business, for in the unlikely event that he survives, he has made
a start toward changing the world.
—Arendt 1968, 251
Following Arendt, it may be argued that the significance of lying and telling
the truth has changed in the present-day world. While the traditional politi-
cal lie concerned true secrets or intentions, the modern political lie deals with
things that are not secrets at all but rather well-known to everybody (for an
extended treatment of this distinction, see O. Guaraldo in this volume). The
purpose of the traditional political lie was not to deceive everybody, but
rather, it was directed at and meant to deceive only the political enemy. It
made a hole in the fabric of factuality but did not destroy the entire fabric,
that is, reality. The modern political lie replaces reality with an image, which
its makers themselves begin to believe. The border between reality and fabri-
cated images begins to blur and finally hardly anyone even tries to tell the
truth (1968, 252–53).
Lying does not lead to the substitution of truth by something else; it leads,
rather, to living in a permanent lie and self-deception. It is in this situation
that the truth-teller steps on the scene. Arendt argues that to look upon pol-
itics from the perspective of truth means to take one’s stand outside the polit-
ical realm. This standpoint is the standpoint of the truth-teller.
Arendt wanted to distinguish between a politician who acts in the public

realm and the truth-teller (or the fact-finder, the witness, the reporter) who
tells or says what is the case. Although it may be difficult, if not impossible,
to take this kind of stance in an absolute sense in the present-day world, there
are at least two points in Arendt’s text that deserve to be taken seriously, even
today. First, telling what is the case still requires critical distance in the sense
of keeping a distance from collective self-deception and political expediency:
it is possible to break collective self-deception and a fabric of lies only if one
does not believe “truths” and necessities told and kept up by others. Second,
even though truth telling in Arendtian terms takes place outside of the polit-
ical realm, it still has political significance. Arendt writes, “The political func-
tion of the storyteller—historian or novelist—is to teach acceptance of things
as they are. Out of this acceptance, which can also be called truthfulness,
arises the faculty of judgment” (1968, 261–62). One may ask whether Primo
Levi ever wanted to “teach acceptance of things as they are.” However, if one
carefully reads the quote, Arendt’s argument becomes clearer. She speaks of
acceptance as truthfulness, meaning that it is not the task of the truth-teller
to manipulate facts and fabricate new facts but simply to tell “what is” or
what has taken place. It is the task of the readers, then, to judge these events
and decide about their political meaning. This is precisely how Primo Levi
understood his position and task.
For Arendt, the reconciliation with what has taken place does not mean
leaving things as they are. On the contrary, the reconciliation with unjust
events of the past means taking political responsibility for them. With respect
to Auschwitz, this means that “accepting” the fact that the genocide took
place means taking responsibility not for the atrocities themselves but for
what happens after them (Moscati 2006, 107–8). In this context, the task
of a truth-teller like Primo Levi is to tell what happened so that we—“the
rest”—can take political responsibility for what will happen now and in
the future.
I argue that the position and task of the truth-teller has been politicized
more than either Arendt or Levi was able to see or admit. I argue that in the
present-day world characterized by enormous political lies, self-deception,
and new terrorism the truth-teller becomes a politician. More precisely, mere
seeking and revealing of truth becomes political action in a world in which
the exercise of power has been organized into a web of lies and in which the
prevailing mode of protest seems to be an act of terror. Unlike the “normal
situation,” in which telling the truth remains apolitical, insofar as it does not
put anything new in motion, in the present-day world telling the truth often
changes our understanding of the world and our possibilities of judging that
which is taking place.
Although, in the present situation, it is easy to find signs of the Agambenian
state of exception becoming more and increasingly true every day, it is equally
easy to find support for the Arendtian optimism, according to which some-
body will always remain alive to tell the story. The attempt of the Nazis to
hide the traces of mass extermination never succeeded. It may be argued that
hardly any political crime or act of terror in the history of humankind has left
so many traces and stories, on the basis of which we can judge it.
In conclusion, the time of truth telling is not over. On the contrary, I
would like to suggest that seeking and telling the truth may become one of
the most important modes of political action in the twenty-first century. The
struggle for truth, memory, and history may put in motion something new
that may help us to weave a new web of reality—the common world between
people—in place of the present fabric of images.
References
Agamben, Giorgio. 2003. Stato di eccezione. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri.
———. 1998. Quel che resta di Auschwitz. L’archivio e il testimone. Torino: Bollati
Boringhieri.
Arendt, Hannah. 1953/1994. Mankind and terror. In Essays in understanding:
1930–1954, ed. Jerome Kohn, 297–306. New York: Harcourt Brace.
———. 1951/1979. The origins of totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt Brace and
Jovanovich.
———. 1968. Truth and politics. In Between past and future: Eight exercises in politi-
cal thought, 227–64. New York: Viking.
———. 1963/1965. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. New York:
Viking.
Bauer, Yehuda. 2001. Rethinking the Holocaust. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Copjec, Joan, ed. 1996. Radical evil. London: Verso.
Felman, Shoshana, and Dori Laub. 1992. Testimony: Crisis of witnessing in literature,
psychoanalysis, and history. New York: Routledge.
Lang, Berel. 1990. Act and idea in the Nazi genocide. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
LaCapra, Dominick. 2004. Approaching limit events: Siting Agamben. In History in
transit: experience, identity, critical theory, 99–119. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
———. 1998. History and memory after Auschwitz. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Levi, Primo. 1997. Conversazioni e interviste 1963–1987. Torino: Einaudi.
———. 1988. The drowned and the saved. London: Michael Joseph.
———. 1986. I sommersi e i salvati. Torino: Einaudi.
———. 1979. If this is a man/The truce. London: Penguin.
———. 1976. Appendice a “Se questo è un uomo.” In Se questo è un uomo, 327–50.

Edizione scolastica. Torino: Einaudi.
———. 1947/1958. Se questo è un uomo. Torino: Einaudi.
Moscati, Antonella. 2006. “Non sarebbe dovuto accadere.” Dal male radicale al male
banale. In Shoah. Percorsi della memoria, ed. Clemens-Carl Härle, 99–125. Napoli:
Cronopio.
Mesnard, Philippe, and Carlo Saletti. 2002. Introduction to Sonderkommando. Diario
di un crematorio di Auschwitz, 1944, by Salmen Gradowski, 7–47. Venezia:
Marsilio.
Novick, Peter. 1999. The Holocaust in American life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Sossi, Federica. 1997. Nel crepaccio del tempo. Testimoniare la Shoah. Milano: Marcos
y Marcos.
Todorov, Tzvetan. 2000/2001. Memoria del male, tentazione del bene. Inchiesta su un
secolo tragico. Bologna: Garanzi.
Traverso, Enzo. 2004. Auschwitz e gli intellettuali. La Shoah nella cultura del
dopoguerra. Bologna: Il Mulino.
White, Hayden. 1992/1999. Historical emplotment and the problem of truth in his-
torical Representation. In Figural realism: Studies in the mimesis effect, 27–42.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Wieviorka, Annette. 1998/1999. L’era del testimone. Milano: Raffaello Cortina Editore.
Z̆iz̆ek, Slavoj. 2001. Did somebody say totalitarianism? Five interventions in the (mis)use
of a notion. London: Verso.
Notes
1. Dominick LaCapra (1998, 20–21) distinguishes between primary and sec-
ondary memory. The former refers to immediate memories of events by the per-
son who has experienced them, while the latter refers to the critical working
through and adding to primary memory by information acquired later and else-
where.
2. In the jargon of the inmates of Auschwitz, “Muslims” (Muselmänner) referred
to exhausted and weak prisoners who had lost their strength and will to fight for
survival. They were doomed to death either by selection or general weakness.
3. In this section, I introduce and summarize the theses presented in Agamben
1998 and 2003, which is why I do not give specific page numbers.
CHAPTER 6
Narrating the Trauma

Georges Perec’s W ou le souvenir d’enfance
Kuisma Korhonen
A
t first sight, George Perec’s W ou le souvenir d’enfance (1975) is a
hybrid book of fiction and nonfiction, where every odd-numbered
chapter is fiction, and every even-numbered one is autobiography.
However, on a closer look, it becomes evident that both stories are linked
to a real historical event: to the disappearance of the author’s mother in
Auschwitz.
The book may serve, then, as a kind of test case in order to analyze the
difference between two different genres, autobiography and fiction, and
between the two different modes of truth that they evoke. Autobiography, as
a testimony to one’s own life, is usually read against the expectations of hon-
esty and truthfulness, the author being the ultimate witness of its topic.
Fiction, on the other hand, is read as being independent from truth-value in
the sense of correspondence between signs and referents: fiction may use real
or invented events (for example, autobiographical events), but the real signif-
icance of the story—its “truthfulness” in a larger sense—is not dependent on
any direct relationship between the narrated events and real life, but rather on
the possibilities it offers to the reader to identify with or take distance from
some perspectives in the text. As I will argue in this paper, the relationship
between the two modes might be much more complicated than we usually
think: fiction may very well give us, the readers, access to a deeper level of
reality than nonfiction.
114 ● Kuisma Korhonen
Identification in Holocaust Testimonies

In his recent book, The Holocaust and the Postmodern, Robert Eaglestone
argues that what marks Holocaust testimonies, and perhaps forces us to read
them as belonging to a genre of their own, apart from fiction, is their rejec-
tion of identification:
Where fiction utilizes, not exclusively but largely, the process of identification,
the genre of testimony both in its texts and—this is a crucial step—in the basis
for interpreting and reading those texts rejects identification. . . . The differ-
ence between testimony and fiction is at this very basic level. The attempt by
testimony texts to refuse the very strong and often taken-for-granted power of
identification is a key ‘nuts and bolts’ part of the ‘strangeness’ of testimony that
Felman and Laub highlight. The genre prohibits readings that identify and so
consume the testimonies and this generic prohibition is how, following Levi, a
‘dyke’ is erected against this, even though it is often broken. (2004, 38–39)
Why is identification so central to fiction, and why does testimony, according

to Eaglestone, reject it? Or does it reject it?
Diana Fuss writes in her Identification Papers, “Identification is the psy-
chical mechanism that produces self-recognition. Identification inhabits,
organizes, and instantiates identity. It operates as a mark of self-difference,
opening up a space for the self to relate to itself as a self, as a self that is per-
petually other” (1995, 2). Without some kind of identification, there is no
identity. We form our self-image only in continuous reflection between the
same and the other, in encounters where we both project our inside outside
and incorporate the outside as part of our inside.
By identifying with fictive characters, we both project our own properties
to them and incorporate them as models for our own self-understanding. For
critics like Martha Nussbaum (1990), it is exactly the possibility of identifi-
cation that makes literature ethically valuable: the possibility of adopting
another person’s viewpoint makes us more sensitive to other people’s pain.
So, why do testimonies reject identification, as Eaglestone claims? One
feels tempted to refer here first to the different status between the “truth” in
fiction and the “truth” in historiography that Kalle Pihlainen (2006) has
recently discussed. “Fictional truth,” to use the term of Riffaterre (1990), is
linked to the reader’s experiences about the “truthfulness” of the text, using as
a reference rather his or her own experiences of the world than any verifiable
source outside the text. Reading a fictional account of a failed love affair, for
example, the reader may think, “Oh yes, she feels and acts just like I did when
my lover left me, this is so true.” In order to reach the moment of truthful-
ness of experience, therefore, fiction has to create narrative techniques like
Narrating the Trauma ● 115
focalization that draw the reader inside the text, so that he or she can identify,
at least temporarily and playfully, with some position or perspective in the
text and thus evaluate how convincing that position or perspective is.
In historiography, unlike in fiction, the reference is outside the text and
the reader, in the world of textual documents like archives, testimonies, and
other historical studies that help us to construct a narrative about singular
events that have taken place in verifiable time and place. Therefore, in histo-
riography there is, in principle, no need to use focalization or other narrative
devices encouraging reader identification: the reader evaluates the truth-value
of the text from its relation to its outside. In textual practice, however, the dif-
ference between fiction and history is often far from absolute—as Hayden
White has argued (1978, 1987), historical studies often do use similar rhetor-
ical strategies as fiction: they are not just objective reports about “what really
happened,” but attempts to persuade the reader about the validity of a certain
perspective and interpretation of the events.
Moreover, can we really apply the distinction between fictional and his-
torical narratives to testimonies, even in principle? As Jacques Derrida has
noted, is not the very point of witnessing exactly that the witness can refer
only to his or her own experience, his or her own memories—in other words,
to something that is no longer present, neither to the audience nor to the wit-
ness him- or herself (2005, 31–32)? Or, as Paul Celan put it, “No one/bears
witness for the/witness” (1971, 240).1 Testimony defines itself as being the
opposite to fiction, but simultaneously, it must include the possibility of a lie,
or fiction, in itself in order to be testimony: if there is some definitive proof
that excludes this possibility, there is no longer need for testimony (Derrida
1996, 23). In cases where we really need a witness—when there are no other
records available of the event, when the witness is the only source we have—
we cannot take an objective stand. Testimony relies on an act of faith: we
must choose whether we believe the witness or not. We cannot stay outside
the testimony and compare its argument to some sources outside itself;
instead, we must try to adopt the perspective of the speaker, at least tem-
porarily, and see if this perspective is, in itself, persuasive enough.
But it is here that the real problem lies: can we step inside a Holocaust tes-
timony? We can here refer to Dori Laub’s provocative statement that “there
was . . . historically no witness to the Holocaust, either from outside or from
inside the event”—a statement that refers to the brutal destruction of human
value and therefore also to the destruction of the possibility for genuine
human relations. Laub writes, “There was no longer an other to which one
could say ‘Thou’ in the hope of being heard, of being recognized as a subject,
of being answered. The historical reality of the Holocaust became, thus, a
reality which extinguished philosophically the very possibility of address, the
possibility of appealing, or of turning to, another. But when one cannot turn
to a ‘you’ one cannot say ‘thou’ even to oneself. The Holocaust created in this
way a world in which one could not bear witness to oneself ” (1992, 82).
The resistance to identification in the case of testimony is thus essentially
different from the virtual lack of identification in historiography. The only
appeal that a testimony has is a plea: please, come here, listen, share this expe-
rience with me, believe me! However, it is this possibility of addressing the
reader, the possibility of sharing, even the very possibility of witnessing itself
that is called into question by the experience of the Holocaust. The reader
cannot identify with the survivor because the survivor cannot identify with
him- or herself and no longer has any positive identity that one could iden-
tify with. There is no stable standpoint, no narrative continuity that could
make sense as the “narrative identity,” the Ricoeurian ipse.
It seems to be, indeed, the case that many Holocaust testimonies do resist
the kind of easy and pleasurable identification that takes place, for example,
in reading romantic novels. There is, as Shoshona Felman has put it, genuine
strangeness in many Holocaust testimonies that disturb our reading practices
(Felman 1992, 7). Eaglestone lists some typical textual features that many
Holocaust testimonies share and that seem to interrupt the processes of easy
and automatic identification. These include, for example, temporal and logi-
cal gaps, shifts, and breaks in narrative; different metanarrative frames that
remind the reader of the reality of the testimonial act; the sheer unbearability
of narrated events; allegories of failed understanding that underline the
impossibility of comprehending the event; lack of narrative closure; and
sometimes overidentification that Eaglestone takes, paradoxically, as proving
the ultimate impossibility of positive identification. These features are most
visible in some modernist texts like in Paul Celan’s poetry, but according to
Eaglestone, one can discern them also in many seemingly realistic testimonies
of the Holocaust (2004, 42–71).
Not only is it difficult, perhaps even impossible, for us to imagine the
extreme experiences of terror that Holocaust victims and survivors went
through, many Holocaust witnesses in fact state overtly that we should not
even try to appropriate their experiences and imagine them as resembling
something even remotely familiar to us. Some commentators like George
Steiner or Berel Lang (1990) have even felt that all attempts to represent
the horrors of Holocaust victims are inevitably doomed to fail. The horror
was too extreme, too vast to be represented in any meaningful way—and,
so the argument goes, thus all Holocaust fictions that display the events as
redemptive stories of protagonists that we can easily identify with (like,
according to many critics, Steven Spielberg’s movie Schindler’s List does) are
ethically dubious.
Violence of Identification
According to the Levinasian ethics that is the starting point for Eaglestone,
identification betrays a “metaphysics of comprehension” that can be under-
stood “as both the desire for and the methods by and through which Western
thought, in many different ways, comprehends, seizes, or consumes what is
other to it and so reduces the other to itself, to the same” (2004, 4). By iden-
tification, we refuse to welcome the other as truly other; instead, we incorpo-
rate the other into a modality of the same, into something familiar and
subordinate to our will.2
There is always an element of violent mastery and possession in identifi-
cation. As Diana Fuss states, “Identification operates on one level as an end-
less process of violent negation, a process of killing off the other in fantasy in
order to usurp the other’s place, the place where the subject desires to be”
(1995, 9).
The popularity of Holocaust literature and movies may tell us not only
about our need to understand and learn from the historical events, but also
about our secret and not-so-innocent desire to identify with the victims and
thus appropriate the uncanny event as something that we can control and
even enjoy in our fantasies. In some extreme cases, identification with victims
has produced the phenomenon of false testimonies, like Benjamin
Wilkomirski’s Fragments (1996), the fraud testimony of a Holocaust child-
hood in the camps. In this particular case, it is difficult to tell whether
Wilkomirski’s book is a result of its author’s pathological identification or a
carefully calculated attempt to manipulate the readers’ pathological identifica-
tion with the victims.
The impossibility for others to understand becomes clear also in Imre
Kertesz’s Fatelessness (2004), although from a different point of view: when
the young survivor returns to Budapest from Buchenwald, many people
pity him for the hell he must have gone through, but are not able to
believe—just as we, the readers, are probably not able to believe, either—
that the young boy actually took life in the camps as more or less banal,
everyday routine, or even experienced moments of happiness in Auschwitz,
as the narrator provocatively claims. Here we can see, once again, that the
metaphysics of comprehension is working even when we try actively to avoid
it: by stressing the “incomprehensibility” of the horrors of the camps, we have
turned the Holocaust into a sublime nonplace, and we feel disturbed when
some testimony does not fit into that description. To call the Holocaust
“unique” or “nonrepresentable” may also be a technique of comprehension
and appropriation.
Given all the ethical questions that identification may raise, we must still
ask if it is possible to do without it. Why would the witness give his or her tes-
timony without any possibility for us to share it? How could we imagine the
pain and fear of victims if we are not allowed, in our imagination, to replay
some scene where we identify with the victims, and imagine “what it would
have been like, if it had happened to me”? This act of imagination may be
flawed, it may raise ethical problems, but one can always argue that without
it we could not form any relation to otherness at all. And it seems impossible
to define fiction as writing that is “using identification” and testimony as
something that is simply “rejecting it,” as Eaglestone claims in the beginning
of his book.
In fact, as Eaglestone later makes clear, the “dyke” against identification in
Holocaust testimonies is, indeed, often broken—one may even claim that all
narratives necessarily create some kind of identification between the reader
and the characters of the story. Testimonies do, in fact, share many textual
strategies with fiction as, for example, Hayden White (2006) shows in his
analysis of the use of figural language in Primo Levi’s Se questo è un uomo. In
Anthelme and Kertesz, too, to take only a couple of canonical examples, we
can discern many narrative techniques that arguably encourage identifica-
tion. It is noteworthy, for example, that the focalizer in Kertesz’s Fatelessness is
rather the young boy who is experiencing the events, and not the narrator, the
one who survived the events and is writing from his retrospective position.3
This narrative technique—to limit the knowledge to that of the young self
who did not yet know what to expect, who did not yet know that the trains
did not lead him to a nice clean summer camp as he was told—not only adds
gruesome irony to the narrative, but arguably invites the reader to identify
with the young protagonist. On the other hand, however, character focaliza-
tion may also be read as a technique that adds a level of fictionality to the text:
the artificiality of the narrator’s solution to withdraw crucial information
soon leads to the reader’s awareness of the rhetorical construction of the text,
and thus resists identification.
In fact, when Eaglestone actually begins to read Holocaust testimonies, he
states that these testimonies create a double movement of identification and
resistance to it. He writes, “The texts lead to identification and away from it
simultaneously. This stress between centrifugal and centripetal forces is
played out, but not resolved, in the texts of testimonies and it is this that
characterizes the genre of testimony” (2004, 43).
A Holocaust Orphan
The tension between “centrifugal and centripetal forces,” between identifi-
cation and resistance to identification, becomes especially crucial, claims
Eaglestone, when we deal with the testimonies of the survivors’ children
(2004, 73). Transference and identification are necessary in all parent-child
relations, so the tales of survivors’ children—such as Art Spiegelmann’s
Mauss, for example—must deal simultaneously with the natural need of all
children to identify in some period of their life with their parents, and the
very impossibility to identify with the experiences of Holocaust victims.
Moreover, this aporia is the key not only to the problems of second genera-
tion survivors, but also to all of us who are born after the Holocaust and try
to imagine how it was.
We may claim that the tension between the need and the impossibility of
identification becomes even more urgent when we deal with the accounts of
Holocaust orphans. Survivors’ children have something to work with—the
narratives of their parents—but in the case of Holocaust orphans, there is no
narrative to begin with. As a result, the whole process where the child con-
structs his or her own identity becomes disturbed: how can one identify with
an absence?
Georges Perec was a Holocaust orphan. He was born to an immigrant
Polish-Jewish family in France, but during World War II, his father died at
the front, and his mother was deported to Auschwitz and disappeared. After
he had lost his parents, Georges Perec was brought up by different relatives:
aunts and grandparents. Later he became one of the most celebrated of
French avant-garde authors, whose impact on what we nowadays call “post-
modern” literature has been crucial. He participated in the work of the avant-
garde group OuLiPo, Ouvrier de la Littérature Potentielle, and published
many novels, including, for example, Disapparition, a novel that was written
without using the letter e, and a rich chronicle of lives in an apartment build-
ing in Paris, La Vie mode d’emploi. In fact, already the playful and self-con-
scious nature of his literary works may raise some suspicions concerning the
nature of his “autobiography”: the reader may also ask if Perec, in his autobi-
ographical text, is too much a fabulist to be taken as a reliable witness. As we
will see, this suspicion is not totally ungrounded—although I will claim, at
the same time, that it is exactly Perec’s skills as a fabulist that makes his testi-
mony so truthful and valuable.
Parts of W ou le souvenir d’enfance were first published as a feuilleton in a
literary journal, then as a whole in 1974. It contains two texts that alternate
with each other. The odd chapters, printed in italics, belong to the story of
an island in Patagonia called W, a kind of totalitarian state that is totally
dedicated to athletics. As Perec tells us, this story “reconstructs” a fantasy that
he developed at the age of thirteen. The even chapters, printed in bold font,
belong to an autobiographical narrative where Perec recalls some memories of
his own childhood—or rather flashbacks that in some cases seem to be actual
memories, in other cases perhaps constructed memories or fantasies. It is also
noteworthy that in the middle of the book, where chronologically there
should be an autobiographical chapter telling about the most decisive event
of his childhood, his mother’s death in Auschwitz, there is only an empty
page with three ellipses points in parentheses.
The more one reads the fictional story of W, the clearer it becomes that
life in the dystopian world of athletes increasingly starts to resemble the topic
that has been suppressed in the autobiographical tale: living conditions in the
Nazi concentration camps. It is not a miracle, then, that Perec’s book has
been recently read in the light of trauma theory, for example, by Lawrence D.
Kritzman (2005). As Kritzman says, “W thus interfaces with the unnamed
pain of childhood memories and this suggests that what resists narration
might be recuperated through the spectatorship of a fictional world” (2005,
192). The thing that was too horrible to be told in autobiography—a
mother’s death in Holocaust—wrote its way into fantasy.
The Fantasy of W
In the beginning of the fictional story of W (with chapters printed in italics),
a person whose real name we are not told, but who has adopted a false iden-
tity under the name of Gaspard Winkler, relates the story of how he was
encouraged to go to Patagonia in search of a small child whose name and
passport he has received. The child, the real Gaspard Winkler, as the repre-
sentative of Bureau veritas, Otto Apfelstahl explains to the narrator, had
become a deaf-mute, probably because of some unhealed childhood trauma.
His mother took the child on a trip in order to heal him, but they were ship-
wrecked in Patagonia, where the mother died in a horrible way, and the boy
disappeared. Here we can already note some traces that hint at Perec’s own
autobiography: a child who is unable to speak or hear because of a deep
trauma, and the death of the mother, this time described (unlike in the auto-
biographical text) almost in graphic detail. We may here also mention, as the
narrator of the autobiographical tale reveals, that the name Gaspard Winkler
appeared in the first finished (but never published) novel of Perec, La
Condottiere, where it belonged to a forgerer of art works, thus hinting that
there might also be a forgery lurking in the story of W. After W ou le souvenir
d’enfance, the name Gaspard Winkler reappears also in Perec’s monumental

La Vie mode d’emploi (Perec 1978), where it belongs to a manufacturer of
puzzles who plays a dirty trick on his employer: Bartlebooth is found dead
with a W-shaped piece in his hand, while the last empty space of the last puz-
zle is in form of an X.
“Did you ever wonder what became of the person who gave you your
name,” asks Apfelstahl of the false Gaspard. The question actually refers to
the child, the real Gaspard, and can perhaps be interpreted as an allegory for
the task of the adult Georges Perec to discover what became of that small
child, young Georges. However, as the hesitation of Gaspard reveals, it also
contains another question: what became of the parents that once gave him his
name? The quest that Gaspard Winkler receives from Otto Apfelstahl can,
therefore, be read as an allegory for the quest of an adult narrator of the auto-
biographical story: to find out what happened to his mother and father, and
what happened to that small child who became an orphan and lost the iden-
tity he once had.
The story of the false Gaspard Winkler, written in the style of a detective
story, is interrupted in the middle of the book by an empty page with three
ellipses points. Instead of continuing the detective plot, the second part offers
a kind of pseudoethnographical description of the island of W in Patagonia
and its strange forms of life, written in an objective, nonpersonal tone.
Although the narrator of the detective story, the “false” Gaspard Winkler, says
in the end that he will go to Patagonia, it is ultimately not possible for the
reader to decide whether the narrator of the second part is still the same as the
one in the first part or not.
In the beginning of the pseudoethnographical description, the island
seems to be just a strange utopian society that has been organized around
huge sporting events, Olympics, Spartakiads, and Atlantiads. However, the
farther along the reader gets in the story, the more the daily life on the island
of W—mechanisms of humiliation, undernourishment, physical punish-
ments, destruction of most of the female children, an uncontested but unpre-
dictable and unknowable law—begins to resemble the living conditions in
Nazi concentration camps. The connection is affirmed by the last “autobio-
graphical” chapter that quotes an eyewitness report of the Holocaust, stress-
ing the omnipresence of absurd and physically humiliating “sport” in the
camps—that is, nonproductive forced labor that was aimed rather at starva-
tion and total annihilation of one’s human nature than at any concrete goals.
At this moment in the book, then, it should be obvious for the reader that the
story of W serves as an allegory for Holocaust.
An Autobiography
In the first chapter of the autobiographical story, Perec tells us that the story
of W is, in fact, a reconstruction of a story that he himself invented, narrated
and illustrated at the age of thirteen. The story as he then created it disap-
peared and was forgotten, until one evening in 1967, when he recollected it,
or at least its topic: it was a story about a society of athletes in Patagonia, and
it was “if not the story, at least a story of my childhood.” Later, Perec found
some drawings from that period—four of them have actually been recognized
from his papers. He then reconstructed the story of W and published it as a
feuilleton in a literary magazine, Quinzaine littéraire, in 1969 to 1970. It then
took four years for Perec to complete the other, autobiographical text of the
book, and publish them both in the final form, side by side, in 1974. All of
this is related by the narrator of the autobiographic story—but as we will see,
this is not the whole truth of the birth process of the book.
The narrator of the autobiographical story—let’s call him Perec—begins
by confirming provocatively, “I have no childhood memories.” Perec adds,
however, that this is really a kind of excuse: another history, the History with
a capital “hache” (letter H and “axe” in French—referring also to History as
Holocaust), had already given the response (the war, the camps), so he could
always refuse to answer any questions about his childhood. After that
provocative beginning, the narrator begins to recall and interpret those mem-
ories and flashbacks he does have. The death of his mother in the camps is
mentioned in the seventh chapter, but in a cold, matter-of-fact style without
any details or emotional impact. Most of the memories are, however, very
uncertain, fragmented, and sometimes he tells several versions of the same
memories. He adds notes to them, where he checks the facts and finds out
that many of them were probably later constructions, influenced by works of
fiction or accidents that had happened to other people. In other words, mem-
ory is treated not as a mere warehouse of direct traces from the past—instead,
it is seen as an active process in which we are constantly constructing our
identity. The care that Perec gives to recording not only those memories that
are probably genuine, but also those that are probably constructed after-
wards, reveals that the true significance of his childhood memories is not
really in their validity as reliable documents, but in the way the mind con-
structs “a past,” starting from small fragments, flashbacks, and micronarra-
tives. Especially revealing are many constructed memories, where Perec
remembers himself as having suffered some accident, but finds out that the
event cannot be confirmed. Under their factual falsity, those constructed
memories carry another, more significant truth: the experience of the child as
a carrier of an unhealed wound, a trauma.
Perec’s biographer, David Bellos, states that the autobiographical text is

“riddled with errors,” and suggests that even though the main lines are cor-
rect, many details seem to be intentionally false (1993, 546). According to
Bellos, Perec, obsessed with details, has probably left those errors consciously
as clues for the reader (a technique that Perec uses also in La vie mode d’em-
ploi). For example, the detail that the narrator repeats—that when young
Georges last saw his mother in a railway station, he saw a comic book show-
ing Charlie Chaplin as a parachutist—just cannot be true, primarily because
of his movie The Great Dictator, Chaplin was a persona non grata in the Nazi
regime, and comic books based on his character were not available at that
time. In fact, this error could be just a screen memory, meant to hide the
shameful truth of the event: that the child did not understand at the moment
that he left his mother for good, and therefore felt guilty later for not having
taken care of her. Moreover, one could also just as easily interpret the mem-
ory as representing the situation of the child as hanging in the air, without
any means of real support.
Perec’s mother’s fate was not immediately revealed to the child in all its
horror. Since there were no official records of his mother’s final death, the
family received a death certificate only in the late 1950s. Without a body,
there was no opportunity for proper mourning. This absence of loss, the
absence of the decisive moment of loss, might be reflected in the story of W,
where the “false” Gaspard Winkler tells only that his father has died, but does
not say a word about his mother.
Numerous otherwise curious details in Perec’s book can be explained
through the mechanism of repression and reworking through fiction. For
example, at the beginning of the story of W, a waiter asks—twice—if
Gaspard Winkler wants a pretzel with his beer. Gaspard says no. In the auto-
biographical story, Perec mentions that his family name comes from the
Hebrew “Peretz,” which means a “hole,” and that in Hungarian, it refers also
to what we call “pretzel”—pain that has a hole in its middle. So by refusing
to take the pretzel, Gaspard tries to deny his true identity, identity that is
nothing but a hole.
The strange appeal that the fictive world of W has for young Georges
could perhaps be compared to dream work. Here we can refer, for example,
to the way that Freud and Lacan interpret a dream that Freud’s patient once
had—readings that also Cathy Caruth refers to in her Unclaimed Experience
(1996, 91–112).
Freud tells us in The Intepretation of Dreams about the dream of a patient
who had lost his son. At night, the corpse of the son was in the next room, an
old man was watching it, and the father went to bed to have some rest. In his
dream, the father saw his son in flames, and heard the son saying, “Father,
don’t you see, I am burning.” The father woke up, and saw, indeed, that in
the next room the candle had fallen and had lit the corpse of his son on fire.
Freud interpreted that the dream fulfilled the father’s wish to see his son
awake once again, even to the point where the dream urged him to continue
sleeping while his son was indeed in flames (1981, 509–10). However, as
Lacan later pointed out, the call to wake up also took place in the dream—
the dream both fulfilled the wish of the consciousness not to awake, and the
imperative to wake up (1973, 57–58).
Perhaps fantasies and fiction function sometimes, too, as a way in which
consciousness protects itself from waking to reality. However, fiction may
also include an imperative to wake up, to leave the fiction—an imperative
that paradoxically can only be heard in fiction. We may thus think that the
young Georges tried to escape the hard reality into fantasy, but the small
pieces of information that he had received from his mother’s fate in
Auschwitz wrote themselves into fantasy.
Reading the Trauma of the Reader

In the autobiographical text, Perec makes clear that all his childhood memo-
ries are more or less unreliable. However, how real or reliable is the implied
story of the book, where trauma becomes transformed into a fantasy? After
all, as Perec tells us, by the evening in Venice 1969, he had forgotten almost
everything about the story of W. The story that we read is the reconstruction
of an adult, not the story that the thirteen-year-old boy had invented.
In fact, the story of W seems to suit trauma theory almost too well. What
Perec did not say in the final version of the book, but that he was originally
going to reveal, according to the first notes for the book that Philippe Lejeune
has later published, was that Perec created the fantasy of W originally in 1949
during therapy sessions with the young psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto, who
later became one of the most important figures in the development of ado-
lescent psychology (Lejeune 1991). We do not know much about the ses-
sions, but we do know that the starting point for them was, indeed, the world
of W, the stories and drawings that young George had made about the ath-
letes in W. It might even be that the story was not only analyzed by Dolto,
but that she actively encouraged young Georges to create it. Since Perec
admits that he does not remember any details of his original stories, where
did the idea to use the society of W as a metaphor for concentration camps
come from? From Dolto? Perhaps Freudian trauma theory suits the interpre-
tation of Perece’s book so well, precisely because the original idea for it came
from Freudian theory in the first place. We can even imagine that the case of
the adolescent Georges was discussed in the meetings of école Freudienne in
Paris that Dolto had founded with Jacques Lacan—and was thus affecting the
development of Freudian trauma theory in France.
It is certain that young Georges suffered from the loss of his parents. But
can we read it directly from his adolescent fantasies? I must admit that it is
hard to trace any traumatic content from the only original drawing that I
have seen, printed in the biography of Bellos—in the picture there seems to
be just normal athletes, not very well drawn, but not starving or humiliated
in any way.
Perhaps Dolto’s analysis was correct. Or perhaps it was produced by an
overactive Freudian imagination. We cannot say—but what we can say is that
at the time, when Perec started to “reconstruct” the story of W, he was not an
innocent witness of his childhood trauma but a highly self-conscious author
who used his wide knowledge on psychoanalysis—from therapies with Dolto
and two other analysts over the years, and from Freudian literature that he
had read—in constructing two texts and their juxtaposition. Perhaps the
name of Gaspard Winkler as the alter ego of the author is a hint that the book
itself is a kind of forgery. Or, if not a forgery, then a puzzle, or an extremely
complicated play of hide-and-seek, as we are told in the autobiographical
text. Perec writes, “Une fois de plus, les pièges de l’ecriture se mirent en place.
Une fois de plus, je fus comme un enfant qui joue à cache-cache et qui ne sait
pas ce qu’il craint ou desire plus: rester caché, être découvert” (1975, 14).
What first seems to be a fairly reliable distinction between fiction and
nonfiction becomes challenged in the book. The reader is, indeed, able to
readily recognize fiction from autobiography merely from their style, thus
partly affirming Dorrit Cohn’s (1999) theory on the “sign-posts of fiction.”
However, the manifold connections between the two, the manifold “fabula-
tions” in autobiographical text and the status of the fictional story as reveal-
ing the most essential repressed memory, suggest that we should read the
book as a whole as belonging to some third genre, beyond the distinction fic-
tion/nonfiction.
We may here return to the question of textual encounter: what kind of
positions for identification or distance does Perec’s book offer to the reader?
Or, to be more precise, what positions do (a) the story of W, (b) the autobio-
graphical text, and (c) their combination as two juxtaposed texts produce?
First of all, it is clear that Perec’s book does make a direct identification
difficult, just as Eaglestone says that Holocaust testimonies do. Should we
identify with the “false” Gaspard Winkler, someone who lives under a false
identity and carries the name of a deaf-mute child (or, if we want to follow
the intertextual links in the book, a forger or a manufacturer of puzzles)? Or

should we identify with the narrator of the autobiographical text, in spite of
his failure to provide us with a coherent and valid narrative of his childhood?
Or with that young child, Georges, who is only present as a series of highly
unreliable memories? Even though in some memories, the focalizer seems to
be Georges as a child, it is clear that the child’s experience is always filtered
through the adult’s memory and the author’s rhetorical mastery that ulti-
mately hides the child from our sight.
However, as we can also see from Perec’s working notes, it was Perec’s orig-
inal plan not just to juxtapose two texts, fiction and autobiography, but also
to provide a third text, an analytic text that would have analyzed the relation
between fiction and autobiography. Some elements of this third text, “inter-
text” as the plan indicates, may be found from the autobiographical text, for
example, descriptions of photographs and notes. It is noteworthy, however,
that in the final version, all references to Dolto and psychoanalysis are left
out. What does this omission tell us?
If there is some position that the reader is encouraged to identify with, it
is, I would like to suggest, the narrator of the third, omitted text. By omitting
the critical analysis of these two texts, Perec seems to have left the task of con-
necting these two texts to the reader. It is the reader who must analyze the
connection between fiction and autobiography, and the story about trauma
and its narrativization. At the same time, identification with this absent third
voice produces a curious effect: in the place of identity, there is a hole, a gap
between fiction and memory, between the narrated story and the real story
that resists narration.
So, what kind of truths can we find from Perec’s book? We may learn some
elements of his autobiography, although as Bellos has shown, they are not
always reliable. We may better understand the experience of a Holocaust
orphan, a second-generation survivor whose parents have died. However, it is
perhaps more important that the reader is invited to analyze the relationship
between fiction and autobiography—and thus also see the connections
between his or her own traumas, fantasies, and that textual construction that
we call autobiography, writing one’s own life. Perec’s book is a work of litera-
ture, and it is thus less a representation of his childhood trauma than a tex-
tual machine that helps the reader to acknowledge the way his or her own
memory and imagination might work in the case of traumatic memories. There
is a level of truth in Perec’s book, a valuable and touching truth. Nevertheless,
this truth is, in spite of the fact that Perec was himself a Holocaust orphan, not
so much historical truth as what Riffaterre called “fictional truth”—truth that
owes less to the accuracy in which the text represents some pretextual world
than to the parallels and resonances between the text and the reader’s own
experientiality of trauma and memory in general.
In the reading process, what is important is not so much the trauma of its
author, but the traumas of all its possible readers. We do not have to know
what details of the author’s biography are correct and what details are not,
because the true significance of the text lies elsewhere, namely, in the way in
which we all narrate our lives, both by constructing more or less autobio-
graphical story from our memories and other pieces of information, and cre-
ating fictional stories in our dreams and fantasies. And the ultimate challenge
for us is to learn to relate both kind of stories—and the truth that they both
evoke—to each other.
References
Bellos, David. 1993. Georges Perec. A life in words. London: Harvill.
Caruth, Cathy. 1996. Unclaimed experience: Trauma, narrative, and history. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press.
Celan, Paul. 1967. Atemwende. Frankfurt-am-Main: Suhrkamp.
———. 1971. Speech-grille and selected poems. Trans. Joachim Neugroschel. New
York: Dutton.
Cohn, Dorrit. 1999. The distinction of fiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 1996. Demeure: Fiction et temoignage. In Passions de la littérature.
Avec Jacques Derrida, ed. Michel Lisse, 13–73. Paris: Galilée.
———. 2005. Poétique et politique du témoignage. Paris: L’Herne.
Eaglestone, Robert. 2004. The Holocaust and the postmodern. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Felman, Shoshona. 1992. Education and crisis, or the vicissitudes of teaching. In
Testimony: Crises of witnessing in literature, psychoanalysis, and history, ed. Shoshona
Felman and Dori Laub, 1–57. New York: Routledge.
Freud, Sigmund. 1981/1900. Interpretation of dreams. In The standard edition of the
complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 4 & 5. Trans. James Strachey.
London: Hogarth.
Fuss, Diana. 1995. Identification papers. New York: Routledge.
Kertesz, Imre. 2004. Fatelessness. Trans. Tim Wilkinson. New York: Vintage.
Lacan, Jacques. 1973. The four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis. Ed. Jacques-
Alain Miller, trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton.
LaCapra, Dominick. 2001. Writing history, writing trauma. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press.
Kritzman, Lawrence D. 2005. Remembrance of things past: Trauma and mourning in
Perec’s W ou le souvenir d’enfance. Journal of European Studies 35 (2): 187–200.
Laub, Dori. 1992. An event without witness. In Testimony: Crises of witnessing in lit-
erature, psychoanalysis, and history, ed. Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, 75–92.
New York: Routledge.
Lejeune, Philippe. 1991. La mémoire et l’oblique. Georges Perec autobiographe. Paris: P.
O. L.
Nussbaum, Martha. 1990. Love’s knowledge: Essays on philosophy and literature.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Perec, Georges. 1975. W ou le souvenir d’enfance. Paris: Denoël.
Phelan, James. 2005. Living to tell about it: A rhetoric and ethics of character narration.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Pihlainen, Kalle. 2006. The confines of the form: Historical writing and the desire
that it be what it is not. In Tropes for the Past: Hayden White and the history/litera-
ture debate, ed. Kuisma Korhonen, 55–67. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi.
Riffaterre, Michael. 1990. Fictional truth. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
White, Hayden. 1978. Tropics of discourse: Essays in cultural criticism. Baltimore: Johns
———. 1987. The content of the form. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
———. 2006. Historical Discourse and Literary Writing. In Tropes for the past:
Hayden White and the history/literature debate, ed. Kuisma Korhonen. Amsterdam:
Rodopi.
Wilkomirski, Benjamin. 1996. Fragments. Trans. Carol Janeway. London: Picador.
Notes
1. In the original German: “Niemand/zeugt für den/Zeugen,” in the poem
“Aschenglorie,” in Celan 1967, 68.
2. See also Dominick LaCapra, who states, “By identification I mean the unmedi-
ated fusion of self and other in which the otherness or alterity of the other is not
recognized and respected” (2001, 27n31).
3. For focalization in retrospective, first-person narration, see Phelan 2005.
CHAPTER 7
Too Much Terror?

J. M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello
and the Circulation of Trauma
Matti Hyvärinen
T
error is an everyday occurrence in every country, township, and fac-
tory, where animal farming is practiced. The everyday life of farmed
animals is nothing less than what happened during the Holocaust.
These are but a few of the poignant claims made by the novelist Elizabeth
Costello, the main character of J. M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello (2004).
Coetzee himself might easily be recognized as a paradigmatically political
author in such texts ranging from Waiting for the Barbarians to Disgrace and
Elizabeth Costello. Perhaps in part because his books have so often been read
as straightforward political comments, and as his political comments, he
seems to distance himself from all these quick conclusions by way of this
complex, self-ironic novel. As a result, Elizabeth Costello is not only about ter-
ror, it is also about circulating and distributing terror and trauma through
language and speech. The aim of this chapter is not to reveal Coetzee’s polit-
ical opinions with regard to animals; rather, it aims at understanding how lit-
erary fiction can pose the issues of trauma and terror in new contextual ways.
Coetzee-the-author offers a series of explicit and less explicit reading guide-
lines, and these guidelines are profoundly helpful for everyone who endeav-
ors to read self-conscious fiction, or arts in general, politically.
Elizabeth Costello is quite openly a novel of ideas. To enforce this model,
and certainly not without irony, Coetzee has subtitled his book, Eight Lessons.
To start with, we do not have titled or numbered “chapters” or any other way
to chart the natural flow of events to identify with, just eight separate but
130 ● Matti Hyvärinen
intertwined lessons. In addition, we are not provided with a full account of

Elizabeth Costello’s life before or between these lessons. However, the lessons
themselves are narrative sections, organized around the life of the Australian
writer Elizabeth Costello in her mature years.
Most of these lessons feature a public talk, a lecture, either given or
attended by Costello. From the outset, the novel delineates a tension between
the public role of an author as a speaker, as giving talks, and her actual role as
an author. As we will later see, these roles do not necessarily coincide with
each other perfectly. Arguably, this infers a tension between ideas, beliefs,
talks of the flesh-and-blood author J. M. Coetzee, and the authorial perfor-
mance of his novels (on these distinctions, see Phelan 2005). Were there no
tension or difference between these two forms of expression, the talks and the
novels, there would be no particular reason to read fiction politically.
This obvious division of the roles of the author-as-character can be com-
plemented with a functional distinction suggested by James Phelan (2005,
12–13). He suggests that “character functions” can be seen on three levels,
separating “the ways in which characters work as representations of possible
people [what Phelan calls their mimetic function], as representative of larger
groups of ideas [their thematic functions in Phelan’s terms], and as artful con-
structs within the larger construct of the work [what Phelan calls their syn-
thetic functions].” It may be legitimate to argue that the mimetic function of
the main character is constrained almost to the limit of plausibility, whereas
the thematic function dominates much of the early chapters, before giving
way to an emphasis on the synthetic functions at the end of the novel.
The novel, thus, includes eight lessons and at least six separate talks in
context as embedded within these lessons. Elizabeth talks about realism, the
lives of animals—both from the perspective of philosophers and poets—and
about the problem of evil. An African writer gives a talk on “the novel in
Africa,” and Elizabeth’s sister Blanche on “the humanities in Africa.” Even
though these talks may at first appear analogous in portraying a traveler, a
new context, a talk, and a response by the audience, the lessons are narrated
on far from equal terms. The author provides access to the talks from
diverse distances, thereby leading us to assume different attitudes toward
the speakers.
Traveling Focalization
Literary theorists have used a number of terms, such as center of conscious-
ness, perspective, and focalization to describe the point of view from which
events are seen, sensed or observed. Gerard Genette (1980, 185–98) pointed
Too Much Terror? ● 131
out that the earlier visual terms “perspective” and “point of view” problemat-
ically merged the positions of the one who observes and the one who speaks.
In response, he suggested a clear distinction between focalizor (observer) and
narrator (speaker) (see also Rimmon-Kenan 1991; Herman 2002). As Mieke
Bal (1997, 143–44) notes, there is one additional merit in the terminology of
focalizing: the word is more flexible in terms of inflection. Therefore, we can
have terms for the process (focalizing), the subject (focalizor), and the object
of observation (focalized).
Some focalizors are internal or character-bound, meaning that we see and
experience everything through the senses of one or more characters; in other
cases, the focalizors are not characters of the story, and are thus called exter-
nal. It is noteworthy that focalization and narration do not necessarily over-
lap. A third-person narration may as well reveal the characters’ most intimate
thoughts and feelings. For example, Ian McEwan’s (2005) Saturday uses such
a technique in accounting for one day in the life of the neurosurgeon Henry
Perowne. A strictly internal, character-bound focalizor is naturally tied to the
perceptions of that particular character, and cannot reveal other persons’
innermost thoughts. In representing fictional consciousnesses, however, the
distinction between focalized and focalizor cannot be absolute, as Alan
Palmer (2004, 49) has noted. While Henry Perowne is Saturday’s focalizor,
he, of course, is also focalized, that is, observed by himself. Finally, works of
fiction vary remarkably as regarding how fixed or swiftly moving the focaliza-
tion is presented.
Without a doubt, focalization is an ideologically powerful tool. “If the
focalizor coincides with the character,” Mieke Bal (1997, 146) maintains,
“that character will have an advantage over the other characters. The reader
watches with the character’s eyes and will, in principle, be inclined to accept
the vision presented by that character.” John Updike’s (2006) Terrorist realizes
its strong critical edge due much to the fact that the young Islamist Ahmad is
its key focalizor.
Elizabeth Costello’s lessons vary importantly in terms of focalization. As a
rule, the speaker is not the focalizor, yet the focalizor is not just a curious or
neutral member of the audience. When Elizabeth Costello gives her talks,
either on realism or on the lives of animals, the focalizor is either external or
it is her son John. We view both the black African author and Elizabeth’s sis-
ter, Blanche, through the lenses of Elizabeth’s critical consciousness. These
solutions build distance between speakers and the reader, and help to resist
any easy identification.
Even before Costello’s first talk on realism, a good dose of skepticism is
provided by her son, who ponders, “Her thoughts would be, he suspects, as
uninteresting as most people’s. A writer, not a thinker. Writers and thinkers:

chalk and cheese” (Coetzee 2004, 10). By quoting John’s thoughts, the
author makes relevant the distinction between the roles of author-as-a-
speaker and author-as-a-writer. His mother’s weariness, her “still greasy-
looking” hair, and an outfit distantly resembling that of Daisy Duck are
features that help provide a certain distance. There is a strong resistance to
the mimetic function. The narrator bluntly foregrounds the synthetic, textual
function by following John’s thoughts, saying, “The blue costume, the greasy
hair, are details, signs of modern realism” (4). To accentuate the overall rele-
vance of John’s thoughts, we are informed that the son nevertheless follows
and helps his mother “out of love” (3). Even Costello’s closest associates do
not thus constitute a solid, like-minded community around her. There is a
crack, a distance for the reader to step in and find more space to breathe
and think.
The Animal Dilemma

The third lesson, with a complicated title The Lives of Animals. One: The
Philosophers and the Animals, begins with a particularly tense situation.
Elizabeth Costello has been invited to give two talks at her son’s college in the
United States, and stays at his house during the visit. Elizabeth initiates the
first critical scene by asking why the children are eating in the playroom, and
not at the same table with the guest and their parents. Elizabeth insists on
receiving an explanation, even though she knows well in advance that the
children are eating chicken, something she herself does not want to see at the
table. John tries very hard to find a balance between his straightforward
mother and his equally outspoken wife Norma, a philosopher of mind from
the same college. From the outset, it is clear that this will not be a happy
encounter. Norma “has never hesitated to tell [John] that his mother’s books
are overrated, that her opinions on animals, animal consciousness and ethical
relations with animals are jejune and sentimental” (61).
Elizabeth’s talk is concise, multilayered, and provocative. Even during the
talk, we are invited to take distance and look at the situation through John’s
consciousness. The narrator explains that “because of the flatness of her deliv-
ery, because she does not look up from the page, [John] feels that what she is
saying lacks impact. . . . He does not look forward to what is coming. He does
not want to hear his mother talking about death” (63). But death is what she
is going to talk about. By introducing the theme of animal lives, she makes
rhetorical use of the disnarrated. Costello declares, “I will pay you the honor
of skipping a recital of the horrors of their lives and deaths” (63). Instead, she
takes a detour through the Holocaust:
Between 1942 and 1945 several million people were put to death in the con-
centration camps of the Third Reich: at Treblinka alone more than a million
and half. The people who lived in the countryside around Treblinka—Poles,
for the most part—said that they did not know what was going on in the camp;
said that, while in general they might have guessed what was going on, they did
not know for sure; said that, while in a sense they might have known, in
another sense they did not know, could not afford to know, for their own sake.
(63–64)
The listeners, who do not properly know or are not interested in what hap-
pens to animals in their neighborhoods, are put on an equal footing with
people who lived next to Treblinka. The comparison between the Holocaust
and the treatment of animals fills the rhetorical void created by skipping
the details.
After a while, Costello discovers an entirely new dimension of her key
comparison. She says, “They [Holocaust victims] went like sheep to the
slaughter. . . . They died like animals. . . . The Nazi butchers killed them. . . .
Denunciation of the camps reverberates fully with the language of the stock-
yard and slaughterhouse that is barely necessary for me to prepare the ground
for the comparison I am about to make. The crime of the Third Reich, says
the voice of accusation, was to treat people like animals” (64–65).
At this point, Costello’s argument is perhaps at its most powerful. The talk
draws our attention to the curious fact that the unusually cruel and obscene
treatment of human beings is regularly represented by a discourse on animals.
The animal is, in this language, the absolute other, the natural site of cruelty
and instrumentality. The uncanniness of the quote may be tested by trying to
replace “animal” by any politically incorrect expression of segregation or sub-
jugation. The quote would be either implausible or so gravely prejudiced that
it would be counterproductive. But using animals in those sentences is still
dreadfully natural. It is almost as if the power of language would betray
exactly those people who resist oppression, racism, and cruelty, and as if the
capacity to express extremities would dissolve in case the decent treatment of
animals would be the intuitive presupposition. That is, in case they would
not be treated “animally” but “humanly.”
Costello proceeds next to discuss intelligence tests conducted on chim-
panzees. She foregrounds the cruelty attached to the imprisonment and solitary
confinement, but seems simultaneously to take an odd step toward humanizing
the animals. She suddenly turns to fiercely criticizing the philosopher Thomas
Nagel. Nagel had posed the question concerning what it is like to be a bat.
According to Nagel, we can only know how a bat behaves. She quotes Nagel,
“Merely to imagine what it is like to live as a bat does, says Mr Nagel—to
imagine spending our nights flying around catching insects in our mouths,
navigating by sound instead of sight, and our days hanging upside down—
is not good enough, because all that tells us is what it is like to behave like
a bat” (76).
Nagel’s thought might enable the recognition of the radical difference
between us and bats or other animals, to help us delimit the colonizing
impulse of human consciousness. Instead, Costello chooses to attack the idea
passionately. Her key reply is that she is able to imagine herself as dead. If she
can do that, why could she not imagine herself as a bat? “To be a living bat is
to be full of being; being fully a bat is like being fully human, which is also to
be full of being,” she retorts (77). From this observation, she returns to the
Nazis and their incapacity to imagine themselves in the cattle cars, that is, as
Jews. This coldness indicates the lack of any capacity for empathy. By this
means, Elizabeth Costello is ready to conclude, “If I can think my way into
the existence of a being who has never existed [referring here to her fictional
figures], then I can think my way into the existence of a bat or a chimpanzee
or an oyster, any being with whom I share the substrate of life” (80).
Can I, then, competently imagine being a Muslim woman, Islamist
fighter, or an Australian aboriginal? Are imagination and “fullness of being”
universal keys to another being’s experience? Costello is obviously mixing a
few things here. One can indeed imagine a mental world where houses and
trees act and suffer, but it is not necessarily the same thing as understanding
houses. It is extremely difficult to imagine oneself without the level of
assumed key mental capacities—and their deficiencies—of observation, feel-
ing, reflection, and language that are a characteristic feature of humans;
therefore such imagination necessarily inappropriately transfers human rea-
soning and mentalities to fictional animals. It is enough to remember the
conceptual difficulties of writing history without anachronistic exports from
contemporary thought.
Empathy, as important as it is in terms of ethics and politics, does not
offer much in the way of understanding bats. And why stop with bats and
oysters? Can we not work our imagination into that of a birch tree? Even
though I fully know that cars do not actually think and feel, there is nothing
to stop one from feeling empathy with his or her old car, and to imagine its
sufferings, wishes, or cravings for the fresh spring air.
The imagining of bats was vital to Costello for a particular reason. The
most horrendous feature in death camps was not that humans treated other
humans like lice, because that would be “too abstract,” as she reckons. The
worst thing was that the perpetrators failed to think themselves in the position
of their victims (79); the divide between “we” and “them” was too absolute.
Costello is right; to imagine the horrors of victims would have made the
crimes much harder to execute. Still we are on a slippery ground because
many theories and testimonies of the Holocaust resist the very idea of “under-
standing” the experience of concentration camps (see, for example, T. Parvikko
in this volume).
In a problematic way, we seem to come back to the human, cognitive
capacity to narrativize almost anything. To narrativize the life of animals
from the human perspective by way of an uncontrolled imagination could
well be criticized as a new form of colonization. Costello’s discussion on the
intelligence tests of chimpanzees fails precisely here. She introduces the test
animals and their dilemmas as if they were human-like thinkers, without
proper notice of the particular mental qualities of the species. In this imagi-
nation, the bats do not have independent worlds constitutive of their own
priorities, nor their own cognitive ways of world-making. Here I suggest
Yann Martel’s (2002) The Life of Pi as an alternative and intriguing attempt
to understand and honor the otherness of animals qua animals.
Animals and Concentration Camps

The strong comparison between the Holocaust and the cruelty against ani-
mals in the food industry is the key idea of Elizabeth Costello’s talk. But how
legitimate is this comparison? It is problematic both ethically and politically
if events within radical trauma and suffering are transformed into aspects of
political competition. In such a case, the position “Our suffering surpasses all
other historical sufferings and cannot be compared with any other sufferings”
becomes as problematic as its abstract counterpart, according to which “All
suffering and destruction is equally bad.” Costello herself seems to lean
toward the second alternative. She muses, “A sparrow knocked off a branch
by a slingshot, a city annihilated from the air: who dare say which is the
worse?” (159). Even though all distinctions are necessarily negotiable and
questionable, it is, however, necessary to acknowledge the ethical and histor-
ical gradations of evil actions.
In contrast to Costello’s comparison, some remarkable differences remain.
No matter how ethically problematic contemporary industrial animal farm-
ing is, the purpose of the industry is not to keep the inmates in extreme
hunger, cold, and forced labor day after day, until their death by starvation.
No known farmer is working to annihilate cows, chickens, pigs, or horses out
of existence and of natural history. The farmed animals are not hunted from
amongst a free and wild life, stigmatized, and then closed into overpopulated
and purposely cruel camps. Indeed, cruelty is hardly the conscious purpose of
animal farming, and as a counterpart, there is no such thing in nature as a
kind and stress-free way of dying at an old, dignified age. The conditions of
animal farming are thus, at least potentially, a matter of negotiation and pos-
sible reform, whereas the suffering of the Holocaust victims was exactly the
point and thus absolutely beyond reform and mitigation.
Of course, it is debatable as to how much such differences matter, and
what ethical consequences they may hold. What I find worth resisting, even
repulsive, however, is the transformation of the Holocaust experience to that
of a free-for-all rhetorical tool to boost other political and ideological issues
whatsoever, even apparently good ones. If we accept that we truly can drop
key historical characteristics of the Holocaust, in the name of abstract “evil-
ness,” and turn the figure into a generalized source of outrage, we are on the
slippery slope toward normalizing the experience itself. Following Costello,
the Holocaust is always already deeply rooted in every town. She seems to
declare a sort of “animal universalism,” and strong emotional continuity from
human beings to that of bats and oysters. This is a sound argument against
the binary opposition between humans and animals, and yet, by the same
token, it erases the significance of all differences. Shall we now renounce all
distinctions and consider eating our neighbors on equal terms with the eating
of oysters?
Against this universalistic line of reasoning arises a theme of particular rel-
evance for those who are closest to us. Norma, Elizabeth’s daughter-in-law,
grows more and more hostile toward Costello’s line of argumentation. In
addition to her more academic comments, there is one particularly important
remark made to her husband, the night before Elizabeth’s departure. Norma
bursts out, “I would have more respect for her if she didn’t try to undermine
me behind my back, with her stories to the children about the poor little veal
calves and what the bad men do to them. I’m tired of having them pick at
their food and ask, ‘Mom, is this veal?’ when it’s chicken or tuna fish. It’s
nothing but a power game” (113–14).
Costello, in turn, is herself agonized by the contradiction between her
absolute principles and nonresponse on the part of people she encounters.
On the trip to the airport, Elizabeth talks to her son. She tells him, “It’s that
I no longer know where I am. I seem to move around perfectly easy among
people, to have perfectly normal relations with them. Is it possible, I ask
myself, that all of them are participants in a crime of stupefying propor-
tions? . . . It’s as if I were to visit friends, and to make some polite remark
about the lamp in their living room, and they were to say, ‘Yes, it’s nice, isn’t
it? Polish-Jewish skin it’s made of, we find that’s best, the skins of young
Polish-Jewish virgins’” (114–15).
We may read these lectures as desperate ethical-cum-political argumenta-
tion. Some readers may find them repulsively self-righteous. The irritation
and tension between these interpretations offers the first instance of “too
much terror.” In these two lessons, Elizabeth Costello is on her moral mission
and does not hesitate to throw graphic details and wild comparisons at her
audience in order to promote her cause. She gives little thought to the peace
of her son’s family life, and she does not hesitate to evoke the imagination of
little children. Terror, shock, graphic details—they are good enough tools to
promote a good cause. In a manner of speaking, this section presents
Elizabeth Costello declaring war against terror.
Elizabeth in Africa
Lesson five, the Humanities in Africa, is given by Blanche Costello, a Catholic
nun and Elizabeth’s sister. This time we experience everything through
Elizabeth. Blanche’s talk is a provocative, dogmatically Catholic attack on the
relevance of the humanities. Her talk is indeed a hard piece to digest in a col-
lege of the humanities but, after all, it is a coolly academic talk without evoca-
tive, emotional images. Ironically, in the previous lesson, Costello did all she
knew how in order to erase the distinction between human beings and ani-
mals; now in Africa, she is affronted by Blanche’s attack on humanism.
During one of their conversations, we are informed of Elizabeth’s thoughts,
“She does not like it when her sister gets on her high horse and preaches. It
happened during her speech in Johannesburg and it is happening again. All
that is most intolerant in Blanche’s character emerges at such times: intoler-
ant and rigid and bullying” (138).
The whole setting of Elizabeth’s lessons is reversed. Now Elizabeth is—in
vain, it seems—seeking out personal closeness with her sister, “on the brink
of passing” (155). During the previous lesson, Costello hardly recognized the
feelings of her family and never missed the opportunity to preach, to project
her intolerance and self-righteousness. Is this at all the same person? What has
happened to her, and her own sermons? The effect of introducing a sermo-
nizing and dogmatic sister is to relativize the previous Elizabeth herself.
While the thematic function of Elisabeth’s character was more prominent
when she preached about animals, she now recovers a lot of mimetic credi-
bility. We are about to become more familiar with Elizabeth than previously.
The Problem of Evil

The sixth lesson, the problem of evil, marks a return of the earlier themes
while shifting the setting of narration. This is the first lesson with a speaker
who is also the focalizor. Therefore, we are ushered into Elizabeth’s inner
tremors and scruples during the preparation and execution of the talk.
Elizabeth has been invited to Amsterdam to give a talk on the problem of evil,
an offer she would have immediately rejected had she not read Paul West’s
book on the last days of the group of conspirators against Hitler. At the end
of the story, the conspirators are humiliated and hung in a cellar. She thinks,
“That is what Paul West, novelist, had written about, page after page, leaving
nothing out; and that is what she read, sick with the spectacle, sick with her-
self, sick with a world in which such things took place, until at last she pushed
the book away and sat with her head in her hands. Obscene! She wanted to
cry but did not cry because she did not know at whom the word should be
flung: at herself, at West, at the committee of angels that watches impassively
over all that passes” (158–59).
Does the name of the author Paul West imply a broader cultural criticism
against “Western” fascination of suffering and trauma? In Africa, Costello was
shocked by the case of an adept craftsman working for Blanche. The man, by
no coincidence called “Joseph,” never did anything other than wooden cruci-
fixes, day in, day out, dedicating his whole adult life to the sufferings of Jesus.
By carving and imagining such sufferings, the black Joseph was vicariously
partaking of the paternity of Jesus and the culture of suffering.
Elizabeth now considers that Paul West has gone too deeply into the soul
of the executioners. The horror of the victims is portrayed far too graphically,
from point to point, rendering them without any dignity. The evil inscribed
so powerfully has caught Paul West as well, and eventually even Elizabeth
herself as a reader. And what about us, the readers and commentators of
Coetzee? What Coetzee does here is to suddenly foreground the synthetic,
textual function. The case of animal suffering was mainly discussed on a the-
matic level, as ideas roaming in the human world, while here we are reminded
of the effects of texts, inviting us to recognize the novel and the story as artis-
tic product.
Costello is haunted by a doubt that she is herself simply too sensitive, get-
ting too old and too responsive to emotional shocks. Was not her first lesson
on “realism,” and what other than realism and freedom of speech can be con-
sidered in the wake of the horrific and repulsive facts as Paul West has docu-
mented them? Trauma studies offer a different perspective on the ethics of
representing trauma. Following the work of Dominick LaCapra (2001; 2004,
73–105), for example, I suggest the concept of transitional trauma. Like evil,
trauma is able to catch people who were not originally subjected to it. The
concept was at first used to characterize the problem of intergenerational
and interpersonal transition from the extreme traumas of the Holocaust.
Historiographers and artists often disregard the fact that in studying trauma
intensively from the perspective of victims, perpetrators, or the immediate
spectators, they are themselves exposed to the effects of transitional trauma.
To put it simply, we are not inviolable. An artist or a scholar who delves into
trauma, into the inner workings of terror, is always at risk of repeating the
original trauma and terror emotionally. Eelco Runia (2004) gives a powerful
example of such “parallel processing” in the case of the official Dutch study
to the UN/Dutch failure in protecting the Muslim population in Srebrenica.
This problem of representing trauma and terror grows out of the prob-
lematic experience of trauma as such. Often trauma seems to be entirely inac-
cessible, without any proper memory of the event. Often the cognition and
emotion appear separately: either one remembers the event coolly, without
any touch of emotion, or one experiences the shocking emotion in the form
of acting out or repeating the original scene. There is however, as LaCapra con-
tinues to emphasize, a possibility of the partial working through of the trau-
matic experience. But because working through and acting out are not binary
oppositions, which could be kept in entirely separate worlds, the process of
working-through itself assumes elements or moments of the repetition of the
traumatic scene.
Elizabeth Costello, in this sixth lesson, is indeed negotiating over how
much she is ready to receive of the traumatic imagery in the form of sheer and
raw repetition at the risk of being traumatized and harmed herself. How
much should she justifiably presume of artistic and emotional working-
through, including an artistic distance to horror? I quote, “Obscene: not just
the deeds of Hitler’s executioners, not just the deeds of the blockman, but the
pages of Paul West’s black book too. Scenes that do not belong in the light of
day, that the eyes of maidens and children deserve to be shielded from” (159).
Costello considers that West indeed is obsessed with a desire to go too
close to such evil. So we travel with her to the Free University of Amsterdam.
The day before her talk, Elizabeth learns that the writer Paul West will attend
the conference. This changes almost everything. She was prepared to talk
about an absent, unknown, and abstract novelist, and instead she has a con-
crete, flesh-and-blood author in the audience to deal with. In this rhetorical-
cum-ethical setting, the difference between implied author (Booth 1961) and
flesh-and-blood writer as a person is vital. Is she at all fair to Paul West? Is it at
all tolerable to say such things about the touch of evil to a person attending
her lecture? If I translate Elizabeth’s agony into the language I suggested
earlier, we might ask whether Elizabeth’s own strong emotional and ethical
reaction against Paul West is one more moment of acting out the trauma or
not. In reacting to evil and the trauma it has issued forth, there is no site of
absolute goodness, no solid ethical ground with which to climb onto the
moral high horse of the earlier lessons.
Elizabeth’s agony leads to a desperate attempt to rewrite her whole talk.
She hectically tries to meet West in advance. In her musings, she questions
the soundness of her whole thought. West is a writer just as she is. Yet she rea-
sons that storytelling can open the bottle, and release the genie into the
world, “and it costs all hell to get him back in again” (167). This is exactly the
way trauma will be transferred. She concludes, momentarily, “Through
Hitler’s hangman a devil entered Paul West, and in his book West in turn has
given that devil his freedom, turned him loose upon the world” (167–68).
But Costello already ponders how West receives “thousands of defenders,”
and she instead will be recognized as an old-fashioned fool. She can hear the
defenders’ voice in her head, “Paul West is not a devil but a hero: he has ven-
tured into the labyrinth of Europe’s past and faced down the Minotaur and
returned to tell his tale” (168).
Immediately before her talk, Costello finds West sitting in the back row.
Awkwardly, she tries to make peace and mitigate in advance what she is going
to say. She is a speaker in a state of full disarray, trying to claim and erase at
the same time, to resist and criticize West while understanding him. Elizabeth
Costello now works remarkably hard in order to take her audience’s emotions
into account. The self-righteous air of earlier lessons has evaporated entirely.
Nevertheless, Paul West does not respond at all. After the lecture, no dis-
cussion arises between the two authors. Elizabeth tries to perceive at least
some reaction from his face, but “there is no sign she can detect, not at this
distance, just a short man in black on his way to the coffee machine” (176).
Costello escapes to the ladies’ room to once again ruminate her argument
back and forth. She ponders the source of the nauseating energy of the
description and concludes that it cannot be anyone other than West himself.
She recalls how she did not want to read the book but West had forced her to
do so by the sheer power of his narration. The problem of evil is thus a prob-
lem of writing as well. These ponderings lead her to an important self-reflec-
tion. She realizes that “she does the same thing, or used to do. Until she
thought better of it, she had no qualms about rubbing people’s faces in, for
instance, what went on in abattoirs. If Satan is not rampant in the abattoir,
casting the shadow of his wings over the beasts who, their nostrils already
filled with the smell of death, are prodded down the ramp towards the man
with the gun and the knife, a man as merciless and as banal . . . as Hitler’s own
man (who learned his trade, after all, on cattle)” (179). Costello admits first
her complicity of writing and speaking in the same way as West, and delves
immediately into the thought again, subscribing to her old ideas but colored
now by the work of Paul West. It is remarkable that Costello is just thinking,
and not preaching. It is thus the narrator of the novel who commits himself
to the faults of West. West is thus not just an adversary; rather, he is an inte-
gral aspect of the problematic of writing.
Costello never meets West again, and she never learns of his reaction. The
image is powerful: mute and unresponsive Paul West going to fetch his cof-
fee, nervous and self-conscious Costello contemplating her talk in the shelter
of the ladies’ room. This image leaves open the possibility that West indeed is
touched by evil, knows the evil, and is unable to feel anything. Costello, on
the other hand, tries to find the answer in the peace of the ladies’ room, thus
finally missing the chance of dialogue. The image is also a perfect ending for
the section on evil, accentuating the fact that whatever we try to do with
trauma, a final peace and closure is inaccessible.
From yet another angle, the image shows the power of focalization. We are
invited to follow Costello’s inner thought but can only see the vacant exterior
of Paul West. What would have been our conclusions if we had been able to
see the possible turmoil and reflections inside West and met Costello again as
a rigid speaker disappearing soon after her talk?
The Reading Guidelines

If the reader has not yet renounced his or her wish to attach Costello’s politi-
cal statements to the author of the novel, the last lesson, At the Gate, makes
the point even clearer. In this lesson, Elizabeth Costello tries to negotiate her
way through in order to meet St. Paul, not St. Peter. The reader may at first
assume that Elizabeth is indeed at the gate of heaven but is disappointed soon
enough. Besides these few heavenly references, the setting is explicitly
Kafkaesque and rather clichéd. The content of the repeated encounters with
the gatekeepers and law court meetings is a statement of belief Elizabeth
Costello is required to make in order to pass. “We all believe. We are not cat-
tle,” maintains the guard. Elizabeth resorts to Aristotle and maintains that it
“is not [her] profession to believe, just to write” (194).
When Costello’s first statement is overlooked, she has to write another,
where she says, “I am a writer, a trader of fictions, it says. I maintain beliefs
only provisionally: fixed beliefs would stand in my way. I change beliefs as I
change my habitation or my cloths, according to my needs” (195). This
unfeigned letter is of no help to excuse her of the responsibility of belief. She
finds her situation far from elevated and rather recognizes elements of the
gulag and Holocaust in her dormitory. Before the court, she offers a new for-
mulation. She writes: “I am a writer, and what I write is what I hear. I am a
secretary of the invisible, one of many secretaries over the ages. That is my
calling: dictation secretary. It is not for me to interrogate, to judge what is
given to me. I merely write down the words and then test them, test their
soundness, to make sure I have heard them right” (199).
She reiterates her point: in her line of work, “belief is a resistance, an
obstacle” (200). Again, the judge challenges Costello’s whole humanity on
the basis that she does not believe in anything. Here, Elizabeth’s retort is an
elaboration of her position. She says, “To put it another way, I have beliefs
but I do not believe in them. They are not important enough to believe in.
My heart is not in them” (200). This last specification is important. Elizabeth
Costello does not maintain that she is entirely unlike the other humans;
instead, she once again points toward the difference of her roles as citizen and
writer. This is again to radicalize the contrast between Elizabeth-the-lecturer
and Elizabeth-the-author.
The judge eagerly takes the figure of “dictation secretary” and demands
answers about the voices she hears. What about the murdered Tasmanian
children, the almost annihilated people? Does she not hear their voices? Now
the judge is taking a more cunning position as regards the ethics of writing.
Costello has to admit that she can only dictate the voices she hears, nothing
more. Then she offers an even more questionable remark, “A word of caution
to you, however. I am open to all voices, not just the voices of the murdered
and violated . . . If it is their murderers and violators who choose to summon
me instead, to use me and speak through me, I will not close my ears to them,
I will not judge them” (204).
Costello has suddenly arrived problematically close to Paul West. If she
hears the voice of a murderer, must she also “release the genie,” without hope
of ever catching him again? Coetzee seems to accept the hearing of perpetra-
tors, but not giving them the whole energy and vividness of trauma. In any
case, Coetzee’s modest theory of writing seems to effectively cut short any
easy connection between the author and the statements of the characters. The
theory is by no means a literary whim, because similar ideas are recognizable
in his Disgrace (1999) and Slow Man (2005). However, does this theory of
writing as dictation undermine all attempts at political reading of the novel?
This is not the case. The project of Elizabeth Costello is not simply to
undermine and entirely erase Costello’s hectic talks. Recall Costello’s remark
on method: “I merely write down the words and then test them, test their
soundness, to make sure I have heard them right” (199). Assuming that
Costello indeed speaks here on behalf of Coetzee, the author brings, in a gen-
uine democratic and civil meaning, the “true” voices around, as parts of the
drama. He does not need to take a definite position, as a writer. Politically
speaking, and on my analysis, the key theme of the novel is cruelty, and cru-
elty in its unending forms. Coetzee begins with the theme of cruelty against
animals, knits it together with the worst possible cruelty against humans, but
then turns the tables around to show how cruelty may be enacted by repre-
senting and circulating cruelty too graphically. Coetzee is undeniably a fierce
critic of the cruelty enacted on animals, but, just as clearly, he outlines
Costello’s politically sterile dogmatism in preaching her message.
In presenting all of the story-world debates, the novel systematically resists
easy mimetic identifications. From the early marks regarding realistic details
to the postscript (“Letter of Elizabeth, Lady Chandos”), the implied author
keeps foregrounding the synthetic, textual function of the novel. How to
write a novel; how to hear the voices; how to be politically and ethically
responsible while writing; and how to speak about trauma are questions that
the novel foregrounds repeatedly.
The strongest ethos of the novel might ironically reside in listening, not in
lecturing. Does the Kafkaesque lesson At the Gate demonstrate a pressure to
have beliefs, opinions, solid identity, to commit to preaching a message? Do
the guards not implicate that “belief ” is that which distinguishes us from
“cattle”—from animals, and in this context, obviously from the Jews in the
cattle car? The judges and guards accuse Elizabeth of cynicism, of course,
because she does not volunteer to join the choir of having deep beliefs. In her
erasure of firm identity and firm beliefs, she privileges the performance of the
reader. She says, and here arguably reflecting the thoughts of the author, “On
my humanity? Is that of consequence? What I offer to those who read me,
what I contribute to their humanity, outweighs, I would hope, my own
emptiness in that respect” (201).
The point is no longer Costello’s humanity or virtuosity. What matters is
the complex ethical and rhetorical performance of the novel and the ways
readers react. Terror and trauma are not disease-like natural phenomena that
could straightforwardly be represented and fought against; rather, such out-
raged reactions seem problematically to partake in the cultural circulation
and expanding of trauma. The objectivistic and distanced approach of Paul
West is ethically as questionable as Costello’s originally militant stance toward
terror and trauma. The reign of terror may continue in discursive, textual
forms, but these discursive struggles are vital in (re)defining something as ter-
ror. Coetzee uses the novelistic form, indeed the novel of ideas, to resist the
wish for morally and politically absolute positions in regard to terror and
cruelty. The dilemma, for a political scientist, is then to recognize this com-
plex of narrative thinking, reevaluations, and erasures, and not merely to
identify Elizabeth Costello’s early, militant declarations.
References
Bal, Mieke. 1997. Narratology. Introduction to the theory of narrative. 2nd ed. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press.
Booth, Wayne C. 1961. The rhetoric of fiction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Coetzee, J. M. 2005. Slow man. London: Secker & Warburg.
———. 2004. Elizabeth Costello. London: Vintage.
———. 1999. Disgrace. London: Secker & Warburg.
Genette, Gérard. 1980. Narrative discourse. Trans. J. E. Lewin. Oxford: Blackwell.
Original edition, “Discourse du Recit,” a portion of Figures III, Editions du Seuil
1972.
Herman, David. 2002. Story logic: Problems and possibilities of narrative. Lincoln and
London: University of Nebraska Press.
LaCapra, Dominick. 2004. History in transit: Experience, identity, critical theory. Ithaca
and London: Cornell University Press.
———. 2001. Writing history, writing trauma. Baltimore and London: Johns
Martell, Yann. 2002. Life of Pi: A novel. Edinburgh: Cannongate.
McEwan, Ian. 2005. Saturday. London: Jonathan Cape.
Palmer, Alan. 2004. Fictional minds. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska
Press.
Phelan, James. 2005. Living to tell about it: A rhetoric and ethics of character narration.
Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith. 2002. Narrative fiction. Contemporary poetics. 2nd ed.
London and New York: Routledge.
Runia, Eelco. 2004. “Forget about it”: “Parallel processing” in the Srebrenica Report.
History and Theory 43 (3): 295–320.
Updike, John. 2006. Terrorist. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
PART 3
Governmental Terror
CHAPTER 8
Dictators and Dictatorships

Art and Politics in Romania
and Chile (1974–89)1
Caterina Preda
If politics is power, and art liberty, then art in a totalitarian state becomes not
only a provocation—as it is for any authority, but no more, nor less than the
enemy.
—Manea 2005, 51
Introduction
S
eptember 11, 1973, La Moneda, the Chilean presidential palace in
Santiago, was bombed by military airplanes; smoke rose from the debris
while democracy was annihilated. On December 22, 1989, the first-
ever televised revolution was aired; shots were fired as the last soviet satellite,
Romania, collapsed. These two powerful images (and at the same time repre-
sentations) made the tour of the world and marked international conscious-
ness. They represent the beginning of one regime and the end of another.
This chapter inquires into what happened between these two landmarks. And
even more specifically, what occurred in these two regimes in respect to the
relations between art and politics?
The main research question of this chapter concerns the transformations of
the artistic field in nondemocratic settings (both cultural policies and culture as
resistance). The question is subdivided into two separate lines of investiga-
tion: What are the strategies of the two regimes in relation to the arts? And
how does the artistic space react? These two questions cannot be entirely
148 ● Caterina Preda
separated, however, as this study does not follow a cause-and-effect type

of approach.
The broad hypothesis is that a dictatorial regime affects the artistic field in
similar ways; it always forbids those artistic expressions that are opposed to its
imaginary and replaces them with expressions that are congruent with its
own vision. The two regimes represent the extremes of imaginable studies
concerning the relations between art and politics in nondemocratic configu-
rations. Thus, in the first case—the Chilean one—the regime regarded the
arts as a potentially dangerous environment and in consequence altered their
articulations by means of several mechanisms: censorship, physical annihila-
tion, in material terms, and by imposing an alternative culture; mass culture
(with a preferred transmission means being that of television). Still, the
Pinochet regime did not attribute a specific mission to the arts (except for the
educational project set in place by the division of culture of the Ministry of
Education); rather, it was satisfied to limit their impact and to control all
access to them. In the second case, the Romanian regime decided to use the
arts to consolidate its power, its view of the world. The arts had the task to
create, and to do so in accordance with the ideological precepts; moreover,
the artists were converted into workers with a five-year plan, whereby their
creativity was to be coordinated and regulated, just as in all other domains of
activity. The soul engineers were forced to pay a public tribute if they wanted
to pursue their creative endeavors. A strong system of censorship assured that
they would do so.
I must specify that I am working with a very broad definition of the artis-
tic field: on one side lies the institutional aspect (the role of the state), vis-à-
vis artistic expressions as such (the plastic arts and architecture, literature,
cinema and theatre, music and dance). The state and the artistic field are, in
this relation, hopelessly entangled; for example, in the architectural domain,
the state plays an important role on the planning of public space (urbaniza-
tion, statues, public parks, museums, etc.). While concentrating on visual arts
(the plastic arts), given the different uses made by the regime and the charac-
teristics of artistic expressions themselves (cinema is harder to produce clan-
destinely due to the high costs, but by the same token has a higher impact),
the analysis will thus look at the entire sphere of artistic expression. While
trying to offer a broader, more comprehensive picture of what art of the dic-
tatorship and art under dictatorship meant in the two cases under analysis, the
examples chosen represent the main tendencies or the most visible manifesta-
tions. The selection is, of course, arbitrary, but this is always true when one
refers to artistic expressions that are by their very definition subjective (often
Dictators and Dictatorships ● 149
metaphorical, they use symbols to describe the present they cannot portray
directly).
Moreover, in order to deploy our analysis, the first section seeks to first
reconstruct the context by answering the broad double-question, what are the
characteristics of the two regimes? and even more importantly, what are their
main differences? In a later section, we will deal with the (dis)similarities of the
two regimes discussed here in what relates to artistic developments.
The Pinochet and Ceauşescu Regimes Mirrored

In order to address the first question presented in the introduction (what are
the strategies used by the regime in respect to the cultural sphere?), this sec-
tion sets the framework by concentrating on the subquestion, what are the
distinctive traits of the two regimes?
The approach is twofold. On the one hand, we will look at the main fea-
tures of the regimes (emphasizing the personalistic features of the two ruler-
ships), and on the other hand, we will underline the type of relation they
establish within the cultural sphere—with the arts at large. Besides the tem-
poral coincidence, since we chose to analyze the two regimes in the period
1974 to 1989, we will look at a similar set of features. As such, we will deci-
pher the type of regime (authoritarian versus totalitarian), and assess the
degree of personalization of the regime, the extent to which they rely on ter-
ror to secure their regime, the opposed ideologies they profess and their exac-
erbated nationalism, the impact they have on society, and the economic
model they impose. Finally, the end of their regimes is also compared. Table
8.1 recaptures these variables in a comparative view.
In this manner, we will see that, even though they could both be charac-
terized as modern dictatorships (authoritarian or totalitarian), the two case
studies are different because their assumed and declared ambitions remain
fundamentally divergent, contrasting.
The September 11, 1973, coup d’etat in Chile brought to power a four-
man military junta that created, as Collier and Sater noted, a “modern police
state.” The two fundamental aims declared at the outset of the Pinochet
regime were to destroy the Left and their collaborators, and engineer a fun-
damental restructuring of Chilean political institutions and political life
(Valenzuela 1999, 222). The first purpose was achieved largely in the first
year and thereafter repression extended to any divergent action or opinion,
and not merely toward communists. The second goal of the regime, to amend
the political configuration, was realized by first destroying the state organiza-
tion and then replacing it with one conforming to the desired aims of the
Table 8.1 Comparative view of the two regimes

Variables Augusto Ugarte Pinochet Nicolae Ceauşescu
Period of rule 1973–89 1965–891
Type of regime Authoritarian with personalist Totalitarian with dynastic/
features sultanistic features
Personalization of
power: Centralization Informal Both formal and informal
Ideology Anticommunism Communism
Use of terror/fear DINA/CNI Securitate
Impact on society Divided society: Economic hardship &
Economic breakthrough anemic society
Nationalism National Security doctrine Independence from Moscow
Economy Market logic Central planning
The end Negotiation: Violent rupture
Prosecuted & honored Executed
1. Formally in power from 1965, Ceauşescu was elected first president of Romania in 1974.
regime. Thus, Congress was abolished, with the junta assuming the legislative
power while the president of the junta was in charge of the executive power
as supreme chief of the nation (Cavallo, Salazar, and Sepúlveda 2001, 42).
The parties of the Unidad Popular (UP) were outlawed, while the others were
suspended—until 1977 when they were also outlawed (Collier and Sater
1999, 307; Cavallo, Salazar, and Sepúlveda 2001, 217). Furthermore, all
national institutions, from universities to the football federation, were
placed under the direct control of the military (Collier and Sater 1999,
307). Finally, the institutionalization of the regime was consecrated by the
1980 Constitution that safeguarded the enduring power of General Augusto
Ugarte Pinochet.
Conversely, upon the death of Romania’s first communist leader, Gheorghe
Gheorghiu-Dej, in March 1965, Nicolae Ceauşescu was nominated first sec-
retary of the Romanian Communist Party. The communist regime, estab-
lished with the aid of the Soviets in 1947, had meanwhile witnessed the
Stalinization of the country. This process achieved three ambitious purposes:
in the first place, the economy was transformed into one that was centrally
planned and state-owned through the nationalization of the primary means
of production; in the second place, Stalinization also meant heavy industri-
alization and collectivization of agriculture; thirdly, it implied the imposi-
tion of a soviet blueprint on the cultural sphere: socialist realism. This is the
setting in which Ceauşescu assumed power. Furthermore, his regime can be
broken down into two periods, though not so clearly demarcated: 1965 to
1971, an apparent liberalization and the establishment of the myth of
“national-communism” by his constant declarations of independence from

Moscow, and 1971 to 1989, the beginning and then strengthening of a total-
itarian dictatorship.
Both dictators undertook the gradual centralization of political power.
Thus, although the military junta was supposed to have had a rotating presi-
dency, Pinochet gradually assumed the supreme position. Indeed, 1974
marks the year of his confirmation as president of the Chilean state.2 As of
this date, Pinochet consolidated himself as the sole and exclusive leader, even
if the junta was maintained at least formally. In contrast to Ceauşescu, who
constructed a dynastic form of rulership, Pinochet constantly asserted his
supreme power in opposition to other members of the regime (see, e.g., the
plans for the 1980 Constitution). Gradually, Ceauşescu removed all his com-
petitors and replaced them with “trustworthy” personnel. Apart from the
intra-party consolidation of power, Ceauşescu commenced the “cultural rev-
olution” following his 1971 journeys to Eastern Asia, especially those to
China and North Korea, and began setting in place the dynastic or sultanis-
tic mold by promoting his family to the highest ranks of the party and
state. Thus, at the beginning, Ceauşescu created the “myth of the political
reformer” (Tismăneanu 2003, 197) to distinguish himself from Gheorghiu-
Dej and give the illusion of liberalization for some years (1965–71).
Thereafter, in the summer of 1971, Ceauşescu announced his famous “July
theses” (Ceauşescu 1971), the prelude to the transformation of Romania into
“Ceauşescu’s land.” Finally, in 1974, Nicolae Ceauşescu was elected president
of the Socialist Republic of Romania, thus becoming the first Romanian pres-
ident (Kunze 2002, 288). Linz and Stepan note in this sense that the 1974
ceremony “mimicking coronation” completed “the fusion of all key parts and
state roles” (Linz and Stepan 1996, 349).
As mentioned earlier, Romania was transformed into a centrally planned
economy in 1948. Ceauşescu did not alter this configuration. On the other
hand, the Pinochet regime accompanied its refoundational project with a
courageous economic endeavor. This plan was meant to reverse the persistent
line of state interventionism developed in Chile since the 1920s and open up
the economy, as well as impose the market model (Collier and Sater 1999,
313). Privatization of the major companies belonging to the state was under-
taken immediately and, in 1975, a monetary reform was pursued by intro-
ducing a new currency, the peso, with a fixed rate of exchange against the
dollar being added (Collier and Sater 1999, 314). This “shock treatment”
triggered, at the beginning of the 1980s, a strong recession leading to the
adoption of a different approach in the mid-1980s. The new strategy com-
bined a “limited model of substitution of imports” (the traditional 1930s
Latin American model) and the promotion of exports, leading to a new solid
growth of the Chilean economy (Collier and Sater 1999, 317).
As to the ideological level, the two regimes appeared to stand at opposite
sides of the spectrum: on the one side, the Romanian communist regime with
strong nationalistic accents, especially in the second period of Ceauşescu’s
reign of power, and on the other, the Pinochet regime professing profound
anticommunist sentiments and the salvation of Chile through an emphasis
on the nationalist mold and on the traditional values. Strong nationalism is
thus combined with two opposed ideological positions approached by the
divergent regimes.
The use of terror is undeniable in the two configurations. The establish-
ment of the tragically famous Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA),
directly placed under the control of Pinochet, led the repression to unbear-
able heights.3 Following a series of international attacks under the transna-
tional Operación Condor, DINA was dismantled in August 1977 and replaced
with the Central Nacional de Información (CNI) that inherited the personnel
of the former agency and continued, until the end of the regime, its infamous
practices: murders, disappearances, and torture.
In Romania, the Securitate (the General Direction of the People’s Security),
created in August 1948, was, until the end of the Ceauşescu regime, the arti-
san behind a general sentiment of insecurity (through the systematic use of
fear and terror, persecution, and by threat of the nonchoice of prison versus
exile—interior and exterior), and of “national pessimism,” to use Vladimir
Tismăneanu’s expression. As an effect of the action of these two parallel sys-
tems of fear, two types of societies were created. In the Romanian case, we can
identify what Mary Fulbrook has labeled “participatory dictatorship” (in the
case of the GDR), and at the other end of the spectrum, in Chile, we could
depict an “exclusory dictatorship.” Fulbrook uses the notion of participatory
dictatorship so as to “underline the ways in which the people themselves were
at one and the same time both constrained and affected by, and yet also
actively and often voluntarily carried, the ever changing social and political
system of the GDR” (2005, 12).
A different logic reigned under Pinochet: the declared aim of the regime
was to purge Chilean society of all political influence, especially pertaining to
the communist ideology but not restricted to it; this ranged from purging all
institutions of the left-wingers, dismantlement of all cultural activities (both
institutionally and physically by repressing the “opponents”) or of certain
professions. By means of exclusion and prohibition (forbiddance), the Pinochet
regime tried to consolidate an apolitical dictatorship, transforming paradoxi-
cally any act into a politically articulated one.
The two regimes end in different manners, although the date is the same,
1989. In Chile, by the 1980 Constitution, Pinochet assumed the first man-
date of president (1981–89), following which, in 1988, a referendum estab-
lished whether or not he was to remain in power for another eight years
(1989–97). The 1988 referendum, however, rejected by a margin of 54 per-
cent his duration in power. Pinochet nonetheless safeguarded, until 1997, his
role as commander in chief of the armed forces and afterwards gained immu-
nity through a mandate as senator for life. At his death in December 2006,
half of Chile celebrated, while the other half mourned the loss of one of its
greatest leaders. The Romanian regime, by contrast, was the last domino of
the communist regimes in Eastern Europe to fall in December of 1989.
Nicolae Ceauşescu was tried in a furtive manner and thereafter executed on
Christmas day.
Two Differing Strategies?

The Institutional Framework and Cultural Policies
The two models analyzed here conform paradoxically to the two paradig-
matic types of modern art, art for art (aesthetic autonomy) and committed
art (art at the service of the political, as a reflection of it). In the one case,
the state coerces the artist to create conformingly to the ideological precepts
and, in the other case, the state is absent—it imagines no specific political
project intended for the arts (it does not seek to be portrayed by the arts;
rather, it has a vision of the arts), it contents itself to control them/safeguard
a cleansed society (cleansed of all political allusion). In fact, the Pinochet
regime implicitly associated the arts with politics and chose to support aes-
thetic academism.
Moreover, it appears that the two political projects illustrate the extremes
of state-policies directed toward the arts: an omnipresent (Romania) and a
quasi absent state (Chile). Starting from the two classic models—the North
American (United States) free market model and the French welfare state
model—we can see how, in a dictatorial setting, two strategies imagined by
the state are set in place. These two models match the aforementioned
dynamics of modern art: art is set free of any interventionism (pure art) and
art is dominated by the state.
A comparison of the state cultural policies thought to suit the goals of the
political regime, in the two cases, shows us that in Romania there was cen-
tralization. All artistic manifestations were placed under the control of a cen-
tral authority whereas in Chile, the policy was one of diffusion: the lack of a
unified policy stemming from the government and leading to cultural subde-
velopment (Henríquez Moya 2004).
As such, in the Romanian case, there is a triad/totalitarian triangle of
the state-party artists that had complete control over all artistic creations
(Cârneci 2001, 20). The same applies to the situation of writers, filmmakers,
musicians, and architects; in 1947, the “communist cultural revolution” was
set by the Congress of the Union of Trade-Unions of Artists, Writers, and
Journalists. From then on, art was placed under the control of the state and
was declared to be an ideological arm, an instrument of political power
(Cârneci 2001, 17). So, was the background setting of the Ceauşescu regime
identical to that which ushered in the communist rule in Romania? Formally
yes, but the subsequent evolution and the timid artistic liberalization of the
late 1960s to the early 1970s was annulled by the July 1971 theses of
Ceauşescu that triggered the “mini-cultural revolution” à la Roumaine. Artists
were suddenly assigned new tasks that they had to achieve; moreover, they
had to create fully in the spirit of the “multilaterally developed society”
(Romania became a closed society, where artists could hardly know what hap-
pened in the western hemisphere or, even less, travel or exchange ideas with
foreign colleagues).
There is a generally accepted conclusion that the Pinochet regime did not
imagine a clearly defined project regarding the role the arts should play, what
functions they should assume (Brunner, Garretón). The policy adopted would
be a negative one, based on interdictions and exclusions (the regime denies,
forbids). Though there existed an initial program of cultural content and a
certain preoccupation relating to the artistic space, the Pinochet govern-
ment only proclaimed intentions (Política cultural del Gobierno, 1975) that
remained at the project stage and that was not concretized within a specific
policy. During the Pinochet regime, there was continuity in the actions of the
government concerning artistic creation, more precisely, in the sense of artis-
tic extension as a constant policy of the Ministry of Education but also in
the sense of the development of an apolitical art—a function delegated by the
regime to the private companies, in accordance with the impetus that the
market model imposed.
Despite this negative type of project, in the approach of the Pinochet
regime, a number of ideological references and tendencies can be identified:
nationalism looking to refound Chile on the basis of the original principles,
those of the Portalian Republic (conservatism—traditional Catholicism and
National Security Doctrine); neoliberalism promoting the market as the unique
articulator of artistic expressions; and finally a mass(-ive) culture-oriented pol-
icy supported by the market, but also promoted by the state (television is
controlled by the state by nomination of military personnel as rectors of the

universities that own the television channels). Additionally, the anti-Marxist
obsession, manifested especially in the first period but present all throughout
the regime, is associated with the Doctrine of National Security.
Parallel Artistic Radiographies: Chile and Romania

The difference in the accents placed by the political regime on specific means
of artistic dissemination has to be taken into account in this somehow asym-
metrical comparison as can be seen from Table 8.2.
First are the visual arts. They see the deployment of three distinct general
directions in the two spaces. In Chile, an official “academism” is allowed and
encouraged by the regime (art for art, purified of any politics) and at the same
time, leftist artists develop a critical, dissenting imaginary directly linked with
the previous Unidad Popular (UP) model; moreover, another type of dis-
course emerges from the opposition, a visual discourse contesting the dicta-
torship from a distinct position, other than the leftist/Marxist one—“Escena
de Avanzada.”4 The Escena de avanzada is a critical approach questioning the
significance of art in an extremely repressive society (Richard 1987, 1). A crit-
ical view of society emerges from this new direction taken by the visual arts.
Some of the visual arts projects depart from the testimonial realm and are
connected to the actions of the humanitarian agencies promoting a visibility
of the unseen desaparecidos. Art thus promotes a rupture with the institution-
alism imposed by the regime.
Under the Ceauşescu regime, in the period analyzed here (1974–89), we
have a different collage: on the one side, there is a strong and sustained develop-
ment of a visual imaginary with propagandistic purposes (chiefly developing
Table 8.2 Comparative view of artistic manifestations

Romania Chile
Proregime Antiregime Proregime Antiregime
Visual arts 1 1/1 1 1
Architecture 1 – 1 –
Literary works 1 1 1 1
Cinema 1 1 (censored) 0 1 (exile)
Music
Classical 1 0 1 0
Popular 1 0 1 1
“Modern” 1 soft pop 1/rock 1 1/rock
Theater 1 0 1 1
National festivals 1 1 1 1 (nueva canción)
TV & radio 1 0 1 1
an image of the leader and his immediate family). Secondly, we have a

“claimed as” apolitical art associated with those creators that refuse to pay a
tribute to the regime. In between there is a mixed response of those artists
that pay their dues to the regime (being obliged to or by way of oppor-
tunism), who continue their artistic endeavors independent of the official
policies. Thus, for the Romanian visual arts scene, there were three main types
of artistic creation: official(ized), independent (art for art), and another in
between the previous two, blending them. A specificity of the Romanian case
is centered, in the opinion of Adrian Cioroianu, on the “videology” of
Ceauşescu; that is, on the “ideology that tends gradually but unavoidably to
resume to the exhibition of the same effigies, to the display of an only por-
trait” (Cioroianu 2006, 251). This “obsession of the self-portrait”5 led to the
repetition of the same idealized image of the leader. This series of paintings
was in fact far from the realistic representations proclaimed by the commu-
nist regime: artists did not have the privilege of having Ceauşescu pose for
them, rather, they used already altered photos of the leader and, in the same
time, falsified his image by trying to conceal his physical defects (Cioroianu
2006, 251). The propagandistic rhetoric was identical in the case of Ceauşescu
with that of Stalin or Mao. Thus, the leader is represented as being bigger
than all the other persons in the painting (see Mao’s representations6), where
his face is smiling and luminous, and the personages are usually floating
above all others, thereby resembling gods or semigods.
Second is architecture. In this domain, the Ceauşescu regime imagines and
sets in place a totalitarian project by altering the way people lived and worked
(and, in accordance with the unachieved projects, ate). The systematization
plan included both the razing of villages (and sought to modify traditional
lodging of peasants and the creation of cities instead) and also the (re)imag-
ining of the cities by destroying the traditional architecture and replacing it
with uniform blocks of apartments. The most infamous accomplishment of
this project was the Civic Center complex that included the sadly celebrated
People’s House.
Conversely, in Chile, the capital city of Santiago was also transformed by
the Pinochet regime. The booming economy led to the creation of a new
neighborhood, “the place everybody wants to live in,” Sanhattan. The sky-
scrapers of Sanhattan are the living symbol of the success obtained by a part
of Chilean society. A similar project to the one of the People’s House is in
Chile the new congressional building of Valparaíso, “a combination of
neobabylonic and postmodernism” (Collier and Sater 1999, 325), which
Pinochet left as a heritage for the new democracy. The restored Congress he
abolished now has to move between Santiago—the seat of government—and

Valparaíso.
Third are literary works. Because of the important number of exiled writ-
ers, Chilean literature of the period designates two spaces: literature in exile
and the literature inside the country. The literature of the exiled contained,
especially in the beginning, an important number of testimonial texts or fic-
tion departing from testimonies. The literature in Chile was itself divided
into the new line imposed by the regime that installed its own competitions
and official prizes on the one hand and the literature of the opposition, on the
other (Jofre 1989, 79). Moreover if, in the first stage, certain books and select
authors were purged from libraries and then forbidden, and bookstores were
driven to bankruptcy (Jofre 1989, 79), in a second stage, an important and
prohibitive tax of 20 percent for any book publication was imposed. Thus,
publishing houses had nothing to print and were forced to close, bookstores
rarely had anything to sell and also had to shut their doors, and7 authors that
survived the censorship could only use artisan-like modes of editing and dis-
tribution. Furthermore, there was an important increase in the importation
of foreign books, as well as an increase in the selling of magazines that offered
promotional books (by means of television ads); book consumption thus
acquired a different visage (Brunner and Catalán 1985, 34–35).
Romanian literary works, for their part, could be divided into three cate-
gories: in the first category there were those works that followed party lines
and glorified the regime and its leader and adopted the new esthetic imposed
by the multilaterally developed society. The second category included the
writers who used a double-sense language and who either managed to slip
past the censorship or, then, did not (see, in this sense, the testimony of
Norman Manea and his negotiations with the censors). In the last category,
we can place apolitical works that, likewise, surpassed censorship (the works
of Nichita Stănescu, for example). The new line imposed by Ceauşescu fol-
lowing the “1971 July theses” was enforced on the literary world and, start-
ing from 1981, the Writers Union ceased to hold meetings, with the
opposition inside it thereby being annihilated. Writers could not contest the
regime, albeit in their internal forum; they had to comply or cease to create.
Fourth is cinema and theater. Not even before the 1973 coup was Chilean
cinema an important industry. Afterwards, though, it became even less
important (in spite of aborted projects aiming at creating national epopees).
Thus, in the period 1974 to 1984, only four commercial films were broad-
casted (and thirteen films exhibited in the art-circuit), while there was an
increase in the production of television ads and music videos (most of the
actors and directors that remained in Chile were redirected toward these two
new fields; Brunner and Catalán 1985, 41). Conversely, the cinema in exile
(the most important directors having left the country) produced around
ninety films in the same period with such works as It Rains on Santiago
(Helvio Soto), The Calm Reigns in All the Country (Pether Lilienthal and
Antonio Skarmeta), or The Battle of Chile (Patricio Guzman; Sarget 1996,
256). Most of the important cinematographic creations of the period were
thus found not inside the country, but among the works of the exiled direc-
tors. Finally, there was an important decrease in cinematographic consump-
tion in favor of television.
Romanian cinema, for its part, developed in an important manner with
such preferred subjects as grand historic dramas (e.g., Mihai Viteazul), per-
sonalized socialist dramas and comedies, or moralizing film series (such as
the hit cinema series portraying Commissar Moldovan). Likewise in
Romania, there were certain directors that could choose exile so as to gain
artistic freedom—such as Lucian Pintilie, whose 1971 film Reconstituirea
(Reconstitution) was censored.
Chilean theater was also affected by the institutional dismantling: theater
schools and companies were simply closed down. The regime later imposed a
return to classic theater and all references to contemporary Chile were sup-
pressed (Jofre 1989, 78). Independent theater thereafter developed in two
directions: commercial comedies (café-concert); and a critical approach to
the dictatorship, a means by which to transmit the malaise of the disadvan-
taged (testimonial theater; Jofre 1989, 78).
In Romania, no private theater companies could be created whatsoever;
indeed, all artistic creation in this sphere was dominated and controlled by
state policy. Apart from theatrical oeuvres portraying the life inside the fac-
tory, or in the villages (and the development of artistic creations stemming
from amateurs), a classic repertory was tolerated. During performances, how-
ever, actors could nonetheless slip past censorship (besides preliminary cen-
sorship, at each presentation there was also a censor in the theater hall) by
introducing lizards (the term designating the political allusions in the double
language) of the texts.
The fifth is music and national festivals. A common preferred means of
artistic expression was, in both cases, the organization of national festivals
(Cântarea României versus Festival de Viña) with a quite pronounced auto-
chthonic and nationalistic twist promoting folklore and popular culture.
Moreover, the articulation of these state-controlled artistic manifestations
was imagined so as to provide an alternative to the “subversive” cultural pro-
ductions and, simultaneously, to the Western influences as well. Conversely,
music as resistance is visible in the two spaces. In the Chilean case, this type
of music is visible both inside the country and in exile (perhaps the most
famous musicians of the period, performing in exile, include Inti-Illimani
and Quilapayún). Moreover, Chile had an important precoup local tradition
combining social and political protest songs with folklore in the form of la
nueva cancion chilena,8 later developing into the canto nuevo. In the Romanian
case, we find similar manifestations in the songs of Phoenix and the allusive
songs of Alexandru Andrieş.9 Moreover, in the Chilean case, adjacent to the
contestation coming from the nueva canción, a different type of opposition to
the regime appears, one that pertains to the youth and that was most felt in
music groups like Los Prisonieros, the most well-known group of its kind. This
generation contested the regime, but did not identify with the peñas or the
folkloric manifestations.
Sixth is television and radio. Though not strictly considered as a means of
artistic expression, television and radio as important means of mass commu-
nication are also taken into consideration here. The Pinochet regime,
through the market model it imposed, completely modified the way in which
Chileans articulated their lives. Furthermore, through the state of emergency
and the nocturnal curfew (almost permanent during the seventeen years of
dictatorship), Chileans were confined to their homes having a sole means of
escape: television. The generalization of television (the national channels cov-
ered almost 90 percent of the territory and there was a television set in almost
every home) did not reflect the surrounding reality for it offered for the most
part entertainment programs (contests, shows, and soap operas), which, in
turn, led to the alteration of the logic of sociability of Chileans (Brunner and
Catalán 1987, 21). Chilean television reflected one reality, the one the regime
acquiesced to.
If, in Chile, the Pinochet regime’s preferred channel for the official culture
was television, in Romania, the television was restricted to the two hours of
daily news programming that, every evening, presented the new accomplish-
ments of the people and, most of all, presented those of the leader himself,
Ceauşescu. It is interesting to note in this sense that, as opposed to the
restricted television programs, the official radio channel transmitted unin-
terruptedly. In the Romanian case, it also has to be taken into account that
the Munich-based Radio Free Europe, sponsored by the American State
Department, marked public consciousness in the 1980s. Romanians could
usually find out what was happening inside the country by listening to its
transmissions from Munich.
Conclusion
Our brief inquiry presented a set of considerations that allow the comparison
of two artistic spaces modified by two modern dictatorships, those of General
Pinochet and Ceauşescu. The two regimes are found to exist on opposing
sides on more than one coordinate. From an ideological point of view, it can
easily be seen that the Pinochet regime relied on an ideological sum of prin-
ciples such as the supreme market logic, a national security doctrine, and a
combination of traditional and national values. The Ceauşescu regime, on
the other hand, departing from communism (and its cultural version, social-
ist realism) imposed a new model: that of the cult of the leader (and later of
the dictatorial couple) combined with a strong nationalist variable. From the
economic point of view (and its impact on the arts), we find, on the one side,
a declared intent to impose a market model on the entire societal corpus, and
on the other side, we have the stated aim to enforce up to the extremes a
totally controlled state model. Insofar as common traits can be identified, it
can be said that both rulers gradually abandoned the principle of collegiality
that marked each of their departure points. They both assumed the supreme
titles of president and commander in chief of their nations in 1974. In addi-
tion, a higher or lower degree of personalization of power can be traced in
both cases. Moreover, the two dictators rely on the secret police to consoli-
date their hold on power and to eliminate their adversaries, as well as to main-
tain a general sentiment of fear. It would thus appear that the two who
“would have been adversaries” find themselves mirrored here.
Nonetheless, though situated at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum,
these two regimes are paradigmatic in support of the hypothesis announced
at the beginning of this essay: a dictatorial setting replaces the cultural expres-
sions with manifestations that conform to its political imaginary. Even if their
strategies as well as the reactions they trigger differ, they are comparable.
Thus, if the Ceauşescu regime set out to create a homogenous artistic sphere
where any creation was to follow the official guidelines, it did not accomplish
its goal since artists first paid their public tribute and then, afterwards, dedi-
cated themselves to their artistic endeavors in a private sphere. It can be said,
nonetheless, that by the consolidation of the myth of permanence, the regime
dissuaded any type of opposition, “national pessimism” becoming the norm
that defined the endless horizon. In its project of political cleansing and reor-
ganization, the regime of Pinochet included the artistic space. Accordingly,
this was first purged of any influence that could be traced back to commu-
nism or any variant of leftist ideology. In a second stage, all state subsidies
were cut and the market model was imposed. Furthermore, a consumer type
of culture was created—having as its official channel television. The arts were
separated from society at large and began creating an alternative space where
they contested the imposed model. By trying to annihilate the artistic oppo-
sition, the Pinochet regime encouraged (albeit involuntarily) a critical space
that was ultimately used by the political opposition.
The dimensions of the absurd that this type of dictatorial regime engen-
ders are hardly quantifiable. What this type of study attempts is to merely rec-
ollect the images, the fragments of imagined worlds, and the sounds of two
parallel time sequences (and spaces) that are found to coincide in the fine
nuances and to place them in a political science perspective, hopefully giving
rise to new patterns and ways of processing this genre of terror at the level of
the society at large.
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Notes
1. This article represents a resumé of the theme of my doctoral dissertation pre-
pared at the University of Bucharest, Faculty of Political Science, to be submit-
ted in October 2008.
2. Decree No. 806 designated as president of the Republic, the President of the
Junta, chief of the executive and supreme chief of the nation (Cavallo et al.
2001, 90).
3. Such was the case with the Estadio Nacional, one of the main places of deten-
tion during the first months. The other “landmark” of the repression was Villa
Grimaldi, one of the most important sites of imprisonment and torture in the
capital of Santiago. The international attacks were perpetrated against the exiled
Gen. Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires (September 1974), the failed attack against
Bernardo Leighton, ex-chief of the Christian Democrats in Rome (October
1975), and the assassination of Allende’s ex-ambassador to Washington,
Orlando Letelier (September 1976).
4. The term “Escena de Avanzada” is associated with the art critic Nelly Richard
(see Richard 1987).
5. Cioroianu observes that all the artistic representations of Ceauşescu’s cult seem
as if the Conducător would have painted them himself, if only he would have
known how (see Cioroianu 2006, 251).
6. See, e.g., the album: Chinese Propaganda Posters, 2003, Köln: Taschen.
7. Interview with Manuel Alcides Jofre, November 21, 2006, Santiago de Chile.
8. The symbols of Victor Jara, assassinated in September 1973, and of Violeta
Parra are still important in Chile nowadays and were the milestones of this new
direction in Chilean music.
9. Listen for example to “La Telejurnal” (from 1980) or “Mie mi-e somn” (from
1983) included in the album Interzis (Forbidden), released immediately after
1990. The album is characterized by the author himself as a “collection of anti-
communist follies”; see http://alexandries.free.fr.
CHAPTER 9
Inciting Mental Terror as

Effective Governmental Control
Chinese Propaganda Posters during
the Cultural Revolution (1966–76)
Minna Valjakka
Introduction
T
his chapter focuses on how propaganda posters were used by the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as the means of effective govern-
mental control during the Cultural Revolution (1966–76). Most of
the propaganda posters do not include images of terror but, on the contrary,
overtly beautiful and happy moments of life. Despite this, however, the
posters engendered traumatic experiences and fear among people. Therefore,
I suggest that aside from the posters’ main task in serving as an obvious means
of effective governmental control, they also provoked mental terror among
people. As a result, they can be seen as a weapon of governmental terrorism
employed against its own people.
Definitions of terror and terrorism are often complex and even controver-
sial. For example, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
states on its Web site that UN Member States have not yet agreed on their
definition of terrorism (UNODC 2007). In short, “terror” is usually meant
in terms of an emotional state expressing extreme fear; as a result, “terrorism”
is synonymous with “system of terror” (Waciorski 1939, 24–31; in Crenshaw
Hutchinson 1972, 383). Sometimes, terrorism is seen as just an act of vio-
lence, but in a broader sense, it is usually seen as a systematic method of
166 ● Minna Valjakka
action, including violence or the threat of violence used to create fear in an

audience for political purposes (Crenshaw Hutchinson 1972, 385). It can be
employed by an individual, a certain group, or by governmental actors. For
example, according to UNODC, an academic consensus defining terrorism
is as follows:
Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed

by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, crim-
inal or political reasons, whereby—in contrast to assassination—the direct tar-
gets of violence are not the main targets. The immediate human victims of
violence are generally chosen randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively
(representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as mes-
sage generators. Threat- and violence-based communication processes between
terrorist (organization), (imperilled) victims, and main targets are used to
manipulate the main target (audience(s)), turning it into a target of terror, a
target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on whether intimida-
tion, coercion, or propaganda is primarily sought. (Schmid 1988 on the
UNODC Web site; Schmid 1988, 28)
Physical acts of terror, acts of violence, are just one form of propaganda,
which aims to achieve political goals. In China, state propaganda directed
toward the people was manifested mainly through the arts. Especially during
the Cultural Revolution, omnipresent propaganda posters were an effective
system used to manipulate the masses. As Evans and Donald state, posters
“are graphic reminders of mass insecurity, arbitrary violence, and personal
trauma.” Furthermore, they tentatively mention the possibility that posters
might even endow terror to everyday life (Evans and Donald 1999, 5, 10). In
this chapter, I will argue that by subjugating recipients continuously to didac-
tic visual communication, posters clearly engendered psychological chaos and
terror among the people.
With the aid of historical research, I will discuss the relationship between
the CCP and the arts, which was officially formed in the beginning of the
1940s. This historical background is the prerequisite for the later usage of
propaganda posters. Secondly, my aim is to clarify how propaganda posters
were used as effective governmental control during the Cultural Revolution.
The main questions focus on what subject matter they depicted and, most
importantly, how they depicted it. Furthermore, I will discuss the kind of
reactions these posters provoked among people. I suggest that the propa-
ganda posters fostered chaos and mental terror employing the four main top-
ics they depicted: Chairman Mao, agitation, socialist utopia, and heroic
models. Thirdly, I will briefly show what effects art had on artists themselves
Inciting Mental Terror as Effective Governmental Control ● 167
during and after the Cultural Revolution. For example, what was their situa-
tion as professional artists? Finally, I will briefly discuss how the government’s
terror against its own people is actually visible in the art after the Cultural
Revolution. Traumatic experiences of those chaotic years are depicted espe-
cially in literature, but also in the visual arts termed scar art (shanghen yishu).
Visual and Theoretical Background

Using art as a tool of propaganda and as a governmental tool by the CCP
since the 1940s was not a new phenomenon. It has its roots in Chinese tra-
ditional thinking based on Confucius (551–479 BCE) and the philosopher
Mencius (372–289 BCE) such that people can be educated through the
intervention of positive role models. This idea about cultivating people with
positive examples has been used in China since the Han dynasty (206
BCE–220CE) when Confucianism was developed into the official state ide-
ology (Landsberger 1995, 18–19).
Communists started to enhance the relationship between the arts and pol-
itics already in the 1920s when they set up a department of propaganda to
control all cultural activities. During the Yan’an period (1936–45), the Party
systematically used different forms of art to propagate its ideology among the
people. The development of propaganda poster art is based on the traditional
wood block prints, which have been used for different purposes since the
Tang dynasty (618–907). New Year pictures (nianhua), which were one of
the most important forms of folk art, had the most significant influence on
poster art. New Year pictures reflected the collectiveness and traditional val-
ues in society and they were very popular in the countryside. Besides, New
Year pictures were easily understood by illiterate peasants, which was the
main target group of the Party’s political message. Therefore they presented a
very tempting tool in promoting the Party’s ideology. Furthermore, these
woodblock prints were easily and cheaply produced in large numbers, which
made them attainable even in poor areas (Landsberger 1995, 21–23, 33–34;
Galikowski 1998, 3–6, 24–29).
Poster art is also clearly influenced by the emergence of the New Woodcut
Movement, which reflected the unsatisfactory situation of the society in the
late 1920s and 1930s. This movement was promoted by a Shanghainese
artist-writer, Lu Xun, who aimed to combine the Western wood block tech-
niques and styles with traditional Chinese styles. In 1937 in Yan’an, the Lu
Xun Academy of Art (Lu Xun Yishu Xueyuan) was established to develop and
promote the Party’s ideas of arts. In the academy, an even more provocative
style was developed in response to the war against Japan (1937–45). The arts
were used to depict the cruelty of Japanese soldiers in order to encourage peo-
ple to resist the occupation. However, the agitation-inciting, Western-influ-
enced woodcuts did not appeal to the peasants. As a consequence, in the
1940s, the style of the pictures was renewed, indeed, to be made appropriate
for use as propaganda. This new, more easily acceptable style combined the
visual and compositional elements from New Year pictures with the more
realistic expressions of woodblock prints, which finally pushed aside the
expressionist style of the 1930s (see, e.g., Laing 1988, 9–15; Landsberger
1995, 22–23, 33–34; Andrews 1994, 16–18).
As mentioned, the CCP used the art as a powerful tool to promote the rev-
olution right from the beginning. Nevertheless, the theoretical framework of
the arts was not set until 1942 when Mao Zedong clearly defined the role of
the arts in his speeches at the Yan’an forum on literature and art (Mao 1967,
1–44; see also Chang 1980, 5–7; Galikowski 1998, 5, 21):
In the world today all culture, all literature and art belong to definite classes
and are geared to definite political lines. There is in fact no such thing as art for
art’s sake, art that stands above classes or art that is detached from or indepen-
dent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian
revolutionary cause; they are, as Lenin said, cogs and wheels on the whole rev-
olutionary machine. Therefore, Party work in literature and art occupies a def-
inite and assigned position in Party revolutionary work as a whole and is
subordinated to the revolutionary tasks set by the Party in a given revolution-
ary period. (Mao 1967, 25)
According to Mao, the aim of the forum was “to ensure that revolutionary lit-
erature and art follow the correct path of development and provide better
help to other revolutionary work in facilitating the overthrow of our national
enemy and the accomplishment of the task of national liberation” (1967, 1).
More interestingly, the aim was also “to ensure that literature and art fit well
into the whole revolutionary machine as a component part, that they operate
as powerful weapons for uniting and educating the people and for attacking
and destroying the enemy, and that they help the people fight the enemy with
one heart and one mind” (2). These statements include verbal violence and,
more significantly, clearly define the arts as powerful weapons. They incorpo-
rated violence in the arts and fashioned it to serve politics.
This definition set the main requirements for appropriate art and was the
most important guideline until the death of Mao in 1976. Accordingly, art
was to be closely related to politics, serve the masses, and depict the real life
of the people—but in an idealistic, exquisite style. The life of the people was
the only true source for the arts, but should rather be more vividly expressed
than real life. The aim was the unity of ideological content and the perfection
of artistic expression. This meant that, although the political meaning was the
most important requirement in art, the artistic values should not be underes-
timated since an artistically unqualified work did not have an ability to
express the meanings (see, e.g., Mao 1967, 30; Galikowski 1998, 5, 21–24;
Chang 1980, 7–8).
The CCP’s theory of art was influenced by the socialist realism from the
Soviet Union. The Marxist view of art is based on the theory of reflection,
consisting of two aspects. Firstly, art is meant to depict the objects in a very
detailed, scientific likeness; in other words, they were to produce a mirror
image of the real object. This approach is “material realist.” Secondly, the aim
of art is to produce a mirror image of an ideal world, not the material world.
This approach is “objective idealism,” which is based on Plato’s idea of univer-
sal form. As a result, socialist realism is an outcome of these two approaches: a
reflection of the materialistic world combined with idealistic elements, bright
colors, and dramatic compositions. Socialist realist art in China followed the
art in the Soviet Union. Art was clearly used to combine the present day’s real-
ity while following the future’s ideals (Galikowski 1998, 37–39).
After this initial phase, when the People’s Republic of China was estab-
lished in 1949, a new phase in the relationship between art and politics was
begun. The two fundamental objectives of the Party were to legitimate and
maintain its power and enlist the artists to participate in the continuing
process of socialist revolution. Most of the artworks since 1949 are politi-
cal, although not all the art was socialist realist. The monotony of artworks
was also criticized and artists tried to promote the usage of different styles.
Unfortunately, the subject matters were reiterated and artworks became
poor in both quality and expression (Galikowski 1998, 9–10, 37–41; Laing
1988, 20–23).
An essential aspect in the relationship between the Party and art was the
total control it exercised over the artists. The three main domains of control
were organizational structures, ideological scheme, and political and ideolog-
ical movements. During the years 1956 to 1966, uncertainty was the domi-
nating feature among artists and intellectuals. The Party’s policy was constantly
changing with different campaigns, which was marked by significant fluctu-
ations in the relationship between artists and authorities. The most effective
change according to propaganda posters was the Great Leap Forward cam-
paign, which was launched in 1958 to promote production. This campaign
strongly affected the arts and artists, which were strictly governed by the
Party. Art was produced directly for political needs. “Amateur artists” were
promoted to the most important roles in art production, which stressed
quantity and “popularization.” After the Great Leap Forward, the situation
calmed down temporarily and the mass production of art was reduced. In any
case, already in 1962 the atmosphere had begun to tighten up once again and
this attitude gradually strengthened until the total political control over art
during the Cultural Revolution (Galikowski 1998, 78–114).
Propaganda Posters during the Cultural Revolution

The official objective of the Cultural Revolution was to question the tradi-
tional structures and hierarchies of the society. In attacking the “Four Olds”
(old thinking, old culture, old customs, and old practices), people were
encouraged to renew society. The aim was to remove the privileged status of
the intellectuals and the leaders of the Party. Chairman Mao’s concern about
the neglect of the revolutionary cause was stated as an official reason for the
campaign. In reality it was engendered by a power struggle within the Party
itself. Mao Zedong, together with Lin Biao and the Gang of Four, tried to
oust the other leaders. In support of this struggle, propaganda posters
(xuanchuanhua) were produced with amazing speed and in large quantities.
Oil paintings, aquarelles, and photographs were made into posters and sev-
eral versions of the same picture were created. Posters were visible every-
where: in factories, offices, streets, homes, classrooms, meetings, and so on.
Furthermore, the posters were reproduced in different forms. For example,
they were reprinted in newspapers, magazines, and even as postage stamps.
Posters were also copied and painted onto the walls as wall paintings, which
were changed and repainted according to the campaign in question (Evans
and Donald 1999, 1–3; Andrews 1994, 316; Gittings 1999, 27; Landsberger
2003, 16). As a result, posters dominated the visual sphere. People every-
where were continuously ongoing targets of the government’s didactic visual
communication.
In fact, visual arts served as the main media for creating images and idols
for the masses. The posters’ main purpose was to provide examples of politi-
cally correct behavior, to educate people about current campaigns. This
didactic function was embedded in all the posters. The main goals of the
posters were strictly utilitarian and abstract: to glorify work and personal sac-
rifice for the common good (Landsberger 2003, 16). In practice, posters
simultaneously promoted many practical themes, such as education, hygiene,
production, technology, and so on. In consequence, posters were produced
on various themes and in different styles, and they are not as homogenous as
is commonly thought (Evans and Donald 1999, 3).
On the other hand, several model books for creating appropriate posters
were produced (Gittings 1999, 32). These drawing manuals are one reason
for the similar appearance and likeness between pictures. For example, exactly
the same person can be found in posters that were printed in different places
and times (see, e.g., pictures in Landsberger 1995, 57).
Previous researches have analyzed different features of the posters, but the
overall summary is still lacking. Despite the variation, I argue that the posters
do have three main features. The first important common feature is the use
of the positive role models as central figures, which, furthermore, was used to
promote understanding of the central message. Emphasizing the heroic
model was a commonly used method and is based on Jiang Qing’s idea of
“three prominences” (san tuchu) (Evans and Donald 1999, 4; Landsberger
1995, 27–28, 40).
The second main feature is the overall clarity of expression, which also
emphasized the main message. Posters had to be immediately understandable
by a large group of different types of people, so the main message of the
poster was simplified. Especially the relationship between what was accept-
able and what was not was boldly depicted, sometimes even creating rather
naïve representations. Key figures and terms were continuously repeated.
Besides these compositional means, posters included headlines or phrases,
which strictly guided the correct understanding of the message. As a result,
although the posters represented a multilevel symbolism, the main meaning
was instantly readable (see, e.g., Evans and Donald 1999, 4, 18; Clunas 1999,
48, 55–57).
The third typical feature is the realistic expression combined with ideal-
ism. Realism was emphasized and artists were sent to farms and to workplaces
in order to observe how the work was actually done. Learning from the
masses was a prerequisite for appropriate art. For example, the correctness in
depicting work was so important that artists might even consult with work-
ers before finishing sketches as paintings (Gittings 1999, 38–39; Galikowski
1998, 64–65). In spite of this, for example, Evans and Donald suggest, and I
agree, that the posters did not reflect social reality (Evans and Donald 1999,
1). Instead, the posters created a socialist utopia, which people would and
should strive for. In them, people are determined and gazing trustfully into
the future. Faces are glowing with enthusiasm, eyes are shining, and the
widely smiling mouths reveal bright white teeth. But, how real was this in
actuality? Nobody looks tired or exhausted; nothing is broken, old, or even
dirty. The pictures create a belief in a common, happy future, where nothing
is worth complaining about.
Many posters simultaneously represented various themes, so classifying

them in accordance with a subject matter is not easy. The most common sub-
jects are Mao Zedong, women, children, campaigns regarding social values,
and promoting development (see, e.g., posters in Xiao 2002, or in Min et al.
2003). Themes often reflected current social issues. For example, posters at
the beginning of the Cultural Revolution heavily promoted the social strug-
gle. The style used in these posters was often exaggerated and provocative. In
the beginning of the 1970s, depicting such struggle decreased and, instead,
posters portrayed social themes like the equality of women, solidarism, and so
on. Posters also tried to become more appealing by making reference to folk
art (Evans and Donald 1999, 9; Gittings 1999, 27–34).
Posters do not, however, reflect the real roles of gender or age in society.
Women, for example, were often depicted in posters, but actually in the roles
of men. Furthermore, most often, the socialist hero is a man. Besides this,
people in the posters are mainly young and healthy. Old or sick people were
depicted very rarely, if at all (Evans 1999, 65–75; Donald 1999, 79–80;
Clunas 1999, 57–58). Overall, the posters give a modified perspective regard-
ing the social structure. This is also an example of the way in which reality
and utopia are depicted simultaneously in the posters. The depicting of work
itself is realism, but who actually does it and how is partly unrealistic.
The number of posters depicting children grew in the 1960s and 1970s.
Moreover, they were made both for and about children. The meaning of these
posters was to present acceptable role models for education. Children are thus
depicted as red-cheeked, political actors and they were supposed to behave
accordingly. In many posters, parents are replaced by the symbols of the state.
This emphasizes the direct relationship between the state and children. As a
result, children were educated to be loyal, above all, to the nation and to its
leader, Chairman Mao, instead of to their own family members. The inno-
cence of plump, happy children appeals simultaneously to the nostalgic feel-
ings of adults and reflects the common welfare. Therefore, these pictures
reflect both the happy past and a hopeful future. And because children were
often portrayed with politically related symbols, posters of children became
manifestations of political optimism and continuity of the revolutionary
spirit (Donald 1999, 79–96).
Political posters were an integral part of everyday life during the Cultural
Revolution. The Party controlled the political discussion with messages com-
municated through posters and, as a result, posters stated demands for the
masses. They emphasized diligence, unity, and sacrifice. Posters did not pro-
vide an escape from reality, but rather they embodied political meaning,
restrictions, and even terror into everyday routines. The expressional means
had many, often overlapping functions; posters were meant to educate,
inspire, persuade, convince, decorate, promote ideologies—revolution or a

personal cult—and act as artwork, and so on. Most importantly, posters were
used as expressions of power, especially when depicting Mao Zedong or the
Party. Naturally posters could not completely control the reactions of an indi-
vidual and different emotions, from devotion to disgust, are possible. Despite
this variation in reactions, posters did create a very political public consensus
overall (Gittings 1999, 29–37; Evans and Donald 1999, 4–5, 10–18; Evans
1999, 64–65; Benewick 1999, 124). Furthermore, according to Duo Duo,
who grew up surrounded by posters, “They made sure we did not make mis-
takes” (Duo 2003, 10). This statement summarizes the power of the posters
as a means of governmental control.
Chairman Mao
It has been estimated that about 2.2 billion portraits of Mao Zedong were
produced during the Cultural Revolution. Especially at the beginning of the
Cultural Revolution, most of the posters depicted Chairman Mao. The per-
sonality cult of Mao was very strongly promoted and left no one uninformed
about Mao’s ideology. The cult was highly politicized and its main character-
istics were the mobilization of masses, violence, and the teaching of ideology.
The amount, variety, and omnipresence of the visual material were so over-
whelming that it did not leave the possibility to question Mao’s status
(Benewick 1999, 123–27; Gittings 1999, 28–35). At least one official por-
trait of Chairman Mao had to be in every home, office, and workplace
(Gittings 1999, 28).
Officially, Mao was described as the Great Leader, Great Teacher, Supreme
Commander, and Great Helmsman. As Chairman Mao, he represented all
these roles simultaneously. In addition to these characters, artists had to por-
tray Mao also as a young scholar or the inspirer of the revolution, for
instance. In many posters, Mao is depicted above the masses as the Great
Leader of the whole nation, or as the red sun whose glory will lead the people
into a bright future (see, e.g., Benewick 1999, 123–30). In these posters, I
maintain that he is often portrayed like a god guiding the people (see, e.g.,
“Chairman Mao is the red sun in the hearts of the people of every land” in
Min et al. 2003, 110).
Many times, Mao is also portrayed as a father figure, a great teacher, or as
a revolutionary hero. In these posters, he is more humanlike, although not a
commoner. One of the most famous posters, “Chairman Mao goes to
Anyuan,” belongs in this category. The poster was extremely popular and it
became the symbol of the Cultural Revolution (see, e.g., Gittings 1999, 35;
Evans and Donald 1999, 9; Benewick 1999, 124–25). In this poster, Mao’s
determined and sophisticated appearance even roused the desire to worship

and follow him without hesitation (Jiang 1998, 111).
Moreover, when Mao is surrounded by people, he is always the main fig-
ure in the composition. Interestingly, he is almost always bigger than others.
This illusion is usually created with unnaturally long legs and big hands.
Often all the people around Mao are gazing at him with overwhelming admi-
ration. In this context, the lack of physical contact to people is also used to
emphasize the mental distance (Benewick 1999, 126–29). Furthermore, Mao
is picked out by the use of light and shadow. In some posters, it seems that
the light glows from the interior of Mao himself. Although Mao is depicted
as a human among people, he is not actually one of them; distance between
him and people still exists.
In many posters, Mao is also depicted indirectly. His presence and his ide-
ology are depicted through symbols of political activism: a Mao badge, the
Little Red Book, or a slogan of Mao. These symbols were also used in the
posters depicting Mao directly in order to emphasize the effectiveness of the
poster. Obviously these symbols were expressions of power, likewise the
posters depicting Mao directly. They emphasized Mao’s omnipresence even
when he himself was not portrayed (Benewick 1999, 124–29). Moreover, just
as Mao’s portraits could radiate light, so too could Mao’s Little Red Book be
depicted as emitting red sunrays, thus becoming a nearly sacred doctrine
leading the nation.
The posters of Mao were used, in this way, as a governing tool. People cat-
egorized into five black categories (counterrevolutionaries, rightists, and for-
mer landowners, for example) sometimes had to show repentance and respect
by kneeling and bowing to Mao’s portrait (Jiang 1998, 111–20). Furthermore,
portraits were used for educational purposes, for example, in mental hospi-
tals: a photograph by Li Zhensheng shows patients making their morning
pledge of allegiance to a portrait of Mao with Little Red Books in their hands
(see Li 2003, 223). How often Mao’s official portraits were used like this is
unknown. Furthermore, a historical novel might not always be completely
tenable, but I claim that even these examples are enough to suggest that this
type of function did exist. In this way, portraits of Mao became tools of
humiliation and punishment as well. More often documented are examples
in which portraits were carried in group meetings and demonstrations (see,
e.g., Li 2003, 219). Many photographs in magazines and newspapers reveal
the way in which portraits were part of an almost religious behavior and
gained iconographical status among the masses. The same phenomenon is
also illustrated in some posters (see, e.g., “We cheer the successful opening of
the 4th National People’s Congress,” in Min et al. 2003, 26–27).
Posters depicting Mao, or symbols related to him, definitely educated the

masses: they socialized people to follow Mao and his ideology unquestion-
ably. As a consequence, they can thus be seen as an effective means of gov-
ernmental control. Besides devotion, the overwhelming omnipresence and
the multilevel roles of Mao may have caused different reactions from anxiety
to fear. Furthermore, Chen clarifies with examples that sometimes posters
could be interpreted contrary to their original meaning by evoking rebellion
against Mao (Chen 1999, 115–16). Presence through an official picture or
statue always represents power, so in practice, everyone was continuously
supervised by Mao through portraits—even though people were not neces-
sarily always conscious of this position. Therefore, I suggest that in represent-
ing the omnipotence of Chairman Mao, these posters and portraits also
provoked and induced psychological chaos, insecurity, and terror among peo-
ple, especially among those who were objects of the use of Mao’s portrait as
tools of control, punishment, or humiliation.
Agitation
A small number of the posters reveal any signs at all directly related to terror
or violence. Most of the posters depict production, agriculture, and other
nonviolent themes. In fact, this lack of violence in posters can also be
regarded as one reason for creating confusion and fear; indeed, during the
Cultural Revolution, different kinds of violent acts and terror, such as riots,
fights, and the destruction of buildings, did occur. Even beatings, humilia-
tions, and executions occurred in public places as depicted in photographs
and memoirs (see, e.g., Li 2003, 95, 101, 106, 111). This obvious conflict
between posters and reality may have induced disorientation among people
because the messages of the desired behavior were contradictory. The world
of posters mainly showed harmonious living and working together, but in
practice, this was impossible while Red Guards were on the rampage, espe-
cially in urban areas.
Posters depicting actual physical attacks scarcely exist, but different levels
of violence are present in some posters. Mental violence is depicted, for exam-
ple, in a poster where a group of people is verbally criticizing a person in the
middle (see “A bad element is publicly criticized,” in Min et al. 2003, 110).
In some posters, violence is depicted in a very vague form, as in the presence
of a gun when a member of the people’s militia is standing guard. Guns are
depicted also in posters about meetings, demonstrations, and militia training
of soldiers, women, or even children. In some posters, a brush or tools can
be depicted in threatening positions combined with angered expressions. As
such, they literally become the weapons of revolution as Mao defined them
to be.
However, violence is most clearly present in agitation posters. In some,
there is quite a distressing level of violence present: fierce expressions of
hatred portraying desired attitudes against both foreign and internal enemies.
Sometimes fists in the air are depicted as being even bigger than the face in
order to emphasize power (see also Gittings 1999, 32). Correct attitudes were
taught also to children with violence, as in the poster where children were
depicted mocking a snowman dressed as a class enemy (see “Punish the ras-
cal!” in Min et al. 2003, 63).
This kind of agitation, embedded with either hidden or obvious violence,
was easily readable at any level of expression and was distressing to the people
living in such a chaotic environment. Although most of the posters do not
show real acts of violence, the agitation can be seen to promote the violence
and even be seen as a precondition for it. Besides, for those victims who had
already been terrorized by the Red Guards, these posters could evoke similar
feelings to those they experienced during the acts of violence: humiliation
and even terror. Also for those who were supposed to act accordingly and
attack their relatives against their own will, these agitation posters may have
given rise to mental contradiction and fear. As a consequence, I suggest that,
overall, the agitation posters can be seen as causing mental violence and ter-
ror among people.
Socialist Utopia versus Reality

Another form of contradiction between pictures and reality is revealed when
one examines the posters representing a socialist utopia. These posters created
the future’s idealistic world by using unreal sceneries filled with joyful, hard-
working peasants, and divinely beautiful youth filled with revolutionary
spirit. The difference between reality and the ideal world depicted in posters
is evident if one compares the authentic photographs of the period to the
posters (see, e.g., Li 2003). In keeping with my general observation of men-
tal terror, I suggest that this obvious contradiction specifically caused distress
and confusion concerning truth among people.
In the case of students, posters created a beautiful image of the country-
side showing fellow students smilingly working in the fields or in immaculate
factories (see, e.g., “Young Red Guards learn from the workers,” “Joyfully
gazing upon the fields of wheat” or “A new sight in the frontier zone,” in Min
et al. 2003, 116–17, 194, 226). In reality, many of them might have been
badly disappointed when they noticed that working was not that joyful, but
actually very hard work in poor conditions. Everyday life was tough,
resources often insufficient, and usually even meals were meager. Anchee Min
also writes about how life was so unbearable in the collective labor farm that
many youths even injured themselves purposely so that they could claim dis-
ability and return home again (Min 2003, 5; also Duo 2003, 10–11).
Nothing like this is depicted in the posters, in which there are no maladies or
shortage of anything. Quite the contrary, everything is new, harvests are plen-
tiful and everyone works happily (see, e.g., the posters “Spring rain,”
“Planting rice by machine is wonderful,” or “What a pleasure it is not to bend
our backs while planting rice!” in Min et al. 2003, 172–73).
Facing a completely unexpected reality can be quite a traumatic experi-
ence. How does one handle the situation in which everything one is told
seems to be untrue? In such circumstances, one is easily caught up in a men-
tal conflict: whether to question “the truth” that is told, the reality in which
you live, or your own understanding of that reality.
Heroic Models
A similar contradiction could have been elicited by the posters of heroic mod-
els that were created for women, children, and men. Landsberger states that a
model should be recognizable and common enough so the viewer could see
similar elements of one’s own life in the model (Landsberger 1995, 27). I also
think that the presumed effectiveness of these role models was based on two
features that the models could be recognized and/or identified with, but these
methods are employed differently with two categories of models. Several
posters portraying well-known heroes, like Lei Feng, Liu Hulan, and Pan
Dongzi were made and distributed. In these, the recognition factor of a well-
known person made sure that the viewer would, first of all, identify the role
model correctly. Secondly, a viewer could also identify with the famous per-
son, imagine becoming like the model. On the other hand, anonymous pos-
itive role models were depicted in numerous posters. Posters showed
common people, men, women, and children, acting bravely. The common-
ness of the figure made these posters effective: anyone could and would iden-
tify themselves with these models; “anyone” could be the main character.
In one interesting poster, called “Shell horn called,” in the background,
people with guns are riding bicycles into a fight. At the front, as a central fig-
ure in the poster, is a young determined mother on her way out the door of
her home: she is going into this fight armed with a pitchfork and a sleeping
baby tied onto her back (Xiao 2002, 85). This poster rouses questions about
realistic behavior: would a mother really act like that? Were Chinese women
supposed to put the revolution first, despite the risk it posed to their children?
It seems that this was indeed the case. The posters’ main idea was to show
the model, the ideal person, devoted to the revolution regardless of any other
consideration. In other words, posters determined what one should be. By
emphasizing an identification with the main characters of such posters, they
also gave the viewer strength to believe that one day, after some diligence and
hard work, one would become “one of them,” a model for others. But if one
did not fulfill the expectations, one was to be considered at least a failure, if
not a counterrevolutionary. If one lived under this kind of governmental con-
trol for years as a teenager, how was one expected to escape being affected?
How is one’s personality shaped in such a conflict? I argue that these propa-
ganda posters, by subjugating recipients to imaginary heroic models, caused
insecurity, confusion, and even fear. Especially the main target group, the
youth, was fascinated by the heroic models and was seized with enthusiasm to
follow their example, but in the end felt distressed if they fell short of their
own expectations. Moreover, questioning the models was not actually possi-
ble. If one criticized them, one might be reported by friends or relatives as a
counterrevolutionary. So, in order to maintain physical and mental health, it
was better to follow the masses and the heroic models.
Chinese youth responded to the posters in many ways. Posters aroused
admiration, but also mental chaos, frustration, and uncertainty of the truth.
According to Chen’s memoirs, she grew up in a culture where posters
reminded, replayed, educated, and reeducated what she was and what society
expected of her. Chen wished to become like the role models and she tire-
lessly competed with her classmates who exercised the best in revolutionary
standards: diligence, obedience, and humbleness (Chen 1999, 101–19). A
similar experience is recorded by Anchee Min, who writes, “I wanted to be
the girl in the poster when I was growing up. Every day I dressed up like that
girl in a white cotton shirt with a red scarf around my neck, and I braided my
hair the same way. I liked the fact that I was surrounded by the revolutionary
martyrs, whom I was taught to worship since kindergarten. . . . I continued
to dream that one day I would be honored to have an opportunity to sacrifice
myself for Mao, and become the girl in the poster” (Min 2003, 5).
Such posters can be compared to today’s advertisements and the illusion-
ist world they create. How many of us have, at least sometimes, felt, con-
sciously or unconsciously, distressed by the role models provided by
commercials? How often have we chosen our clothing and appearance, at
least partly, based on the things we have seen in advertisements and on fash-
ion models? How many of us can really claim never to have been affected by
them? Even more important is the question regarding how we react when we
notice that we are not as beautiful, successful, rich, or capable as the role
models provided for us; are we disappointed, depressed, or even afraid of
becoming failed persons according to such social standards?
Nevertheless, there are some differences between propaganda posters and
today’s advertisements. The posters offered the only role model of that time
and everyone was required to adapt oneself to these models, going even as far
as imitating the dressing and hairstyle. Models and the socialist utopia were
meant to be real and realized by everyone; people really tried their best to imi-
tate what they saw in the posters. Nowadays at least, we know that the mod-
els and the illusionist world provided by advertisements are not real. Only a
few of us can imitate such models and, actually, we do not even have to.
Furthermore, today we also have more role models and lifestyles to choose
from provided by different media and ideologies.
From these arguments, I believe that the posters had a much stronger
effect on their audience than advertisements have today. As a side effect, they
also incited competition and frustration when people failed to meet the set
expectations. Therefore, I suggest that these posters depicting models that
can be seen as a government’s mental terror against its own people.
Artists
I suggest that the most influential way of using artwork to provoke terror
emerged when art was turned against artists by Party officials. Both art and
artists were strictly under the control of the CCP and, therefore, art that devi-
ated from the Party’s ideology was not possible to publish. After the begin-
ning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, all public artistic creation was
devoted to propaganda work. Often professional artists had to work collec-
tively in groups in order to submerge their individuality. Professional artists
were seen as a part of the elite and, for this reason, they could not be com-
pletely trusted. Instead the paintings made by peasants, who were often
taught by professionals, were highly appreciated. These “amateur painters”
were seen as a part of the masses and therefore depicting the true spirit of the
revolution (Cohen 1987, 21–22; Galikowski 1998, 78–114, 152–54).
Artworks were used, in turn, to control the artists who had created them.
They were studied carefully by officials, and were sometimes severely criti-
cized on seemingly unreasonable grounds. The artist could never be sure what
would be deemed rightist and why; no one knew where the limits were. A
work of art prized earlier could, after a few years, be interpreted as a “black
painting.” For example, in 1974, special exhibitions held in major cities put
“black paintings” on display as negative examples. Paintings were labeled as

“counterrevolutionary elements” on different grounds, for example, if the
painter had used too much black ink in it. Artists classified as rightist or bour-
geoisie were sent for reeducation to the labor camps or even to prison (Cohen
1987, 21–22; Galikowski 1998, 158–63). This uncertainty and the possibil-
ity of consequences definitely incited terror among artists.
Painting a portrait of Mao is a clear example of this control of art. The
propaganda department defined exact rules for depicting Mao. If artists devi-
ated from such rules, both the artwork and the artist could be labeled as
counterrevolutionary (Benewick 1999, 125; Evans and Donald 1999, 4). As
a result, painting a portrait of Mao became rather risky: if the painting was
evaluated as “correct,” nothing happened and the painter often stayed anony-
mous, but if the painting was “not correct,” the painter would become
known and even threatened publicly. Therefore, despite the honor of being
chosen to paint Mao’s portrait, the task undoubtedly also raised fears among
artists, especially among those whose paintings had been previously criti-
cized. To avoid criticism, some even attached official photographs of Mao to
the painting rather than painting his portrait by themselves.
Indeed, basically all artists were affected by the Cultural Revolution, inso-
far as they were criticized and humiliated both privately and publicly. Some
artists even committed suicide in these inhuman circumstances (Cohen 1987,
21–22). Especially for older artists, pictures from the Cultural Revolution
period strongly reflected the experiences of physical and mental violence
(Andrews 1994, 314-315). Without a doubt, therefore, professional artists
as a group suffered most from governmental terror during the Cultural
Revolution, since a majority of them, if not all, experienced some level of vio-
lence of a mental or physical nature, if not both.
Scar Art
After Mao’s death in 1976, the situation of art and artists slowly changed.
Post-1976 art began gradually to portray the reality of the Cultural
Revolution. Reflections of traumatic experiences can be found especially in
literature but also in the visual arts, called scar art. This art was used to rewrite
the silent history and bring out the tragedies of individuals. As such, it can be
said to function as a healing method within the society. Scar art worked as a
means of self-reflection and aimed for collective purification (Köppel-Yang
2003, 84; Galikowski 1998, 193–99).
The real scenes of violent occurrences that scar art depicts emphasize the
unreality shown in posters. Simultaneously, they provide proof of the enor-
mous contradiction between art and reality during the previous decades.
Finally, artworks since the end of the 1970s portray the images that art from
the Cultural Revolution would have depicted if it had been allowed to reflect
society as it really was. Life was not that happy at all, but rather full of con-
tradictions, fear, and terror for many. Even the smallest suspicion of misbe-
havior could precipitate serious consequences. Furthermore, the propaganda
posters strengthened and multiplied these emotions by their omnipresence,
expression, and function.
A statement from Zhang Hongtu, a contemporary Chinese artist living
nowadays in New York, emphasizes the healing function of the post-1976 art.
He writes, “I found that all the young people, including myself, were all
fooled and used by Mao. . . . For me, Mao’s image was god-like in China.
What I have done is pull down this image from the pantheon to reality.
Working on Mao is one way to extricate myself from the nightmare; first I felt
sinful and fearful, now I feel nothing” (Zhang in Wu 2005, 46).
Conclusion
Obviously the main intention of art, and especially propaganda posters dur-
ing the Cultural Revolution, was to change the society, not to reflect it. Art in
different forms was the main medium for propagating the Party’s ideology. In
order to compel people to strive for a socialist utopia as a united front, posters
clearly stated acceptable behavior and political thinking through provision of
positive role models. In other words, posters created a strict form of social
behavior in presenting values and norms. Because the ideals were set by the
Chinese Communist Party, propaganda posters served, without question, as
tools of effective governmental control.
As discussed in this chapter, posters were used in different ways to create
confusion, anxiety, fear, frustration, distress, and even terror among people.
In their memoirs, people state that they were powerfully influenced and
manipulated by this propaganda (see, e.g., Jiang 1998, 265–67; Min 2003,
5). The creating, producing, and distribution of posters was strictly con-
trolled by the government, in order to systematically change the political
behavior and thinking of the masses. As such, propaganda posters fulfill the
following part of the definition of terrorism, stated earlier, “Threat- and vio-
lence-based communication processes between terrorist (organization),
(imperilled) victims, and main targets are used to manipulate the main target
(audience(s)), turning it into a target of terror, a target of demands, or a tar-
get of attention, depending on whether intimidation, coercion, or propa-
ganda is primarily sought” (Schmid 1988, 28). In such a light, propaganda
posters during the Cultural Revolution can clearly be seen to have functioned
as part of a systematic program of governmental terror against its own people.
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CHAPTER 10
The Sweet Hereafter of

Machiavelli and Weber
Discussing Community and
Responsibility as Political-ethical Criteria1
Javier Franzé
Introduction
T
his chapter aims to analyze the problem of the relation between
ethics and politics as posed in the film The Sweet Hereafter, by Atom
Egoyan,2 rooted in the theories of Machiavelli and Weber on good
and evil in politics. It also looks to test these theories with the challenges
exposed in the film, and to see if the film can help expose the limits of this
reflection and suggest possible solutions. The Sweet Hereafter allows for reflec-
tion on the relation between ethics and politics because it raises the question
of how to understand the sense of community by questioning its future, as
seen generally through its children—the next generation of a town’s citizens.
The weave of this work is shaped by two sets of questions, which are
threaded throughout. On the one hand, where lies the good within the
quandary proposed by The Sweet Hereafter? Which is the good and ethically
desirable political solution? On the other hand, does tension really exist
between the good of the victims and the good of the community, as the char-
acter of Nicole proposes, or can both be brought into harmony with one
another, as the lawyer, Stephens, suggests? What are the consequences of not
investigating the truth? What does “saving the community” mean? Is it
enough to consider the consequences of the action itself in order to do good
in politics?
186 ● Javier Franzé
Henceforth, the central theme of The Sweet Hereafter will be presented, as

well as the two proposed possibilities that appear as solutions to the ethical-
political quandary posed by the film. Then the reflections of Machiavelli and
Weber on the relation between ethics and politics will be exposed so as to
evaluate these two proposals. This will allow for reflection on the achieve-
ments and limits of this speculation in order to analyze the question of good
and evil in politics. Lastly, there will be some commentary and conclusion.
Horrific, monstrous situations are laced throughout the story. They are
fearsome and repellent, but not because they are entirely exceptional, as they
would be in monster stories or stories about extraordinary beings. These sit-
uations deal with events lodged in the ambiguity/impurity that lies in the
interstices; not between that which is human and nonhuman, but rather on
the edge between what is habitual-exceptional, normal-abnormal, and suf-
fered by the common person. A car accident, AIDS, drug addiction, incest,
the children’s deaths, and the rupture of community life are all events close to
daily life; they sprout from it, yet at the same time entail crossing a delicate
and sensitive line, which eternally and hopelessly shake up and disturb the
existence of those involved. Extreme situations of horror are a constant, dis-
located from normality. Perhaps what lies in this threatening vicinity is the
most terrifying of all.3
The Story
On the morning of December 6, 1995, the school bus that picks up the chil-
dren of Sam Dent, a small town in British Columbia, Canada, runs off the
road and slides over a frozen lake. The weight of the bus is too much for the
ice and ends up sinking into the freezing water. Fourteen of the twenty-one
children die, threatening to rob the town of its future. The driver, Dolores
Driscoll, who has been driving this route for the past fifteen years and who
has an especially close and loving relationship with the parents and chil-
dren—perhaps because she does not have her own children—survives the
accident. Nicole Burnell, one teenage survivor, ends up paralyzed. Her par-
ents, Sam and Mary, later play an integral part in the fight for justice and psy-
chological closure sought out by some of the victims’ parents.
Mitchell Stephens, a lawyer, goes to the town to convince the grieving par-
ents to file a lawsuit. At first, he is not overly welcomed, in the midst of this
stressful and painful situation, but little by little, many families buy into his
proposal, like the Ottos and the Walkers, who both lost their only children,
and the aforementioned Burnells. Stephens promises to take a third of the
The Sweet Hereafter of Machiavelli and Weber ● 187
money awarded from the lawsuit only if they win. So either way, his services
will not cost the families anything.
However, Stephens does not convince everyone. Nicole, who ends up par-
alyzed from the waist down—and whose parents are the lawyer’s main
allies—and Billy Ansel, the town mechanic (widowed due to his wife’s fatal
cancer), who now loses both of his twins in the accident, head the group
opposed to the idea of the lawsuit. Ansel is sure that it was an accident. He
says that he himself had serviced the bus in his shop. Furthermore, he is the
only one who witnesses the accident. He was on his way to work that morn-
ing, as usual, driving his truck behind the school bus and waving to his chil-
dren who were sitting at the back of the bus.
The night before the accident, Nicole is babysitting Ansel’s children while
Ansel is with his lover, Risa Walker, in the motel she runs with her husband,
Wendell Walker, who has gone to see a hockey game. Nicole is reading The
Pied Piper of Hamelin to the children as a bedtime story. Ansel also gives
Nicole some of his deceased wife Lydia’s clothes. Nicole is wearing one of
these sweaters the next day, when the accident happens. That night, Nicole’s
father, Sam, picks her up from Billy’s house. As they arrive home, he leads her,
without a word, to the barn, which is lit with small candles. They have an
erotic encounter in this oneiric atmosphere.
The lawyer goes full force with the lawsuit: he convinces Nicole—with the
help of her parents—to testify last, and subpoenas Ansel to make a declara-
tion. Stephens’s lawsuit is not the only one, since the town is teeming with
lawyers and some families hire more than one. The legal processes multiply
and with these, so do the agreements and negotiations between the parties.
There are many scenes that exemplify the conflict between those for and
those against Stephens’s lawsuit: Nicole and her parents on the day she
returns from the hospital; Ansel and Nicole’s parents the day before she testi-
fies; Ansel and his lover, Risa Walker, who has also lost a son in the accident;
and finally, Ansel and the lawyer, Stephens, when he tries to convince Ansel
to join the lawsuit, after taking footage of the totaled bus.
The day of Nicole’s testimony finally arrives. Stephens has arranged for
Nicole to testify last, in order to favor his argument. Nicole had already
warned Stephens that she would not lie, that she would only tell the truth.
Stephens agrees with this. He expects her testimony to be brief and vague
since all throughout her recovery and up to that point she has claimed not to
remember much about the accident, and her doctors corroborate this.
However, to her father Sam and the lawyer’s surprise, Nicole claims on the
stand that she starts to remember things, and testifies that Dolores was dri-
ving very fast that day. She claims to be sure of this because she could see the
speedometer from the first seat on the bus, where she always sat. She says that
it was up to seventy-two miles per hour, but that there was no time for warn-
ing since the accident happened so fast. Her declaration ruins Stephens’s
strategy and it destroys his lawsuit, which is based on the idea that everything
was due to negligence on behalf of the bus manufacturer, the local or state
government, as well as all of the other existing lawsuits in town.
With her testimony almost over, and in the midst of Stephens and Sam’s
stupor, Nicole’s voice can be heard in a voice-over—paraphrasing The Pied
Piper of Hamelin—admitting that she has lied, but from this lie has come a
(new) truth. The scene changes to November 22, 1997, two years after the
event. Stephens sees Dolores in an airport, supposedly not far from Sam
Dent. Dolores now drives a hotel bus. She seems to have recovered the hap-
piness that characterized her before the accident. Nicole’s voice narrating,
continuing the story from before, asks if Stephens understands that now,
everyone in the town, including Dolores and the children who died, have
become citizens of a new town, with its own rules, and it lives in the sweet
hereafter, a strange and new place.
The Two Points of View: Stephens and Nicole

There are two positions on the ethical-political problem that the film poses:
that of Stephens, the lawyer, and the families in town who hire him (the
Ottos, the Walkers, and the Burnells), and that of Nicole and Ansel.
Stephens’s position can be characterized by: (a) the idea that accidents do
not happen (“The word doesn’t mean anything to me.”), but rather there is
always some negligence, someone who does not do their job, or, even worse,
someone who makes a “cynical and dark” calculation between the cost of a
bolt and that of people’s lives; (b) giving priority to the search for moral
responsibility, for the truth, in order to avoid another tragedy of the sort; (c)
the idea that the existing laws and justice system are useful instruments for
this end; and (d) the idea that the mobilization of those affected can be effi-
cient, insofar as the law channels their rage. In short, this position trusts in
securing the future of the community by means of bringing the truth about
those responsible for the accident to the surface, which, in turn, returns
honor to the community; it aspires to continuity between the past, the pre-
sent, and the future: one can only move forward by remembering.
In considering Nicole and Ansel’s position, it is characterized by (a) the
idea that accidents do happen; (b) the notion that the main issue concerns the
consequences that the investigation has on coexistence in the community;
and (c) the deduction from the latter, the idea that the existing laws and
justice system are not always useful means for attaining the end of saving the
community, since they can also destroy it: the mobilization of those affected
can be good for finding the truth, but it is precisely because of this that it can
be harmful to coexistence. The process of searching for the truth—the inves-
tigation prior to clarification—with the multiplying lawsuits and the crossing
accusations that come with them may destroy coexistence by undermining
the mutual trust and appreciation between the members of the community.
For Nicole and Ansel, coexistence is above the truth or above the pernicious
effects of the search for it. This is why they trust in the conscience of the indi-
vidual or of the community to avoid the repetition of such a tragedy. In short,
this side believes that the truth about the accident is most probably harmful
for the future of the community; it subordinates the past and even the pre-
sent, to the future: in order to move forward, one must forget some things.
The Relation between Ethics and Politics in Machiavelli and Weber

Machiavelli and Weber’s theory on ethics and politics could be useful for eval-
uating the two opposing positions on this problem in ethical-political terms.
These authors reflect on the relation between ethics and politics in the fol-
lowing premises. First, both stem from one fundamental distinction: not
between ethics and politics, but rather between classical ethics (Greco-
Roman and Judeo-Christian)4 and political ethics. There is no such thing as
universal ethics, valid for all situations in life in general. There are certain
areas of activity that put the achievement of the good at stake. One of those
areas is politics.
Second, classical ethics is characterized by a number of factors. First is the
search for good individual conduct. Therefore, being a good individual and a
good citizen is one and the same; it conceives political ethics as an extension
of individual ethics to the field of politics, and thus, politics as a branch of
ethics. The second factor is the understanding of good individual conduct as
a pure and integral fulfillment of a set of determined virtues, those which it
considers objective truths of mankind that allow a person to attain humanity.
The final factor is the vision of the world as having an inherent sense that is
ethically rational (good begets good and evil begets evil; there is no possible
contradiction between good and good, only between good and evil).
Third, political ethics is characterized by the four concepts developed
below:
(a) The affirmation that good and good individual conduct are both pre-
sent in politics, yet specific to it and dependent on political logic. Politics is
not a branch of ethics, but rather, political ethics exists on its own.
(b) The specific nature of politics, due to the ends it strives for, the place
where it searches to attain them (the world in which it works) and the specific
instrument with which it searches. Indeed, politics is an earthly activity,
which searches for ends in this world. The world does not have an inherent
sense, nor is this sense moral. Therefore, the results of an action are not deter-
mined by its moral content, rather, for purely factual reasons, among which
strength is often paramount, but also includes prestige, legitimacy, perception
of those involved, etc. The relation between good and evil is paradoxical.
Machiavelli calls this fortuna5; Weber calls it the Ethical Irrationality of the
World (Weber 1997a, 122–23). Weber delves deeper into this point than
Machiavelli, as he declares that values cannot be understood scientifically, but
rather that they are an act of faith. Science can only aid in the decision mak-
ing by clarifying thought: it helps to analyze the consistency, coherency, and
efficiency of the decision in terms of the values that it claims to be aiming to
defend. Therefore, there is no moral objective truth, but rather, the world is
inevitably open to the fight for values (Weber 1997b, 147–48). Moreover, the
good that politics pursues is a common earthly good, not an individual one.
These two goods can be contradictory, precisely because the world is a factual
reality and not a moral one: in this case, in politics, common good must be
chosen over individual good. Furthermore, this is what makes someone into
an upstanding politician/citizen. Being a good individual is not the same as
being a good citizen/politician. Saving one’s soul is not the same as saving the
city. Governing a community is not the same as governing oneself (Berlin
1981, 64). Weber adds one more detail: the way in which politics ensures the
fulfillment of common ends is through violence. In other words, what char-
acterizes the modern state is the monopoly of legitimate violence. This, along
with the ethical irrationality of the world, makes the ethics of politics one of
responsibility, based on the consideration of the consequences of the actions
taken to achieve the ends themselves, and not one of conviction, based on the
unconditional defense of one’s own values, which are seen as absolute truths.
The ethics of conviction is unpolitical because it is not able to see the para-
doxical relation between good and evil. It does not perceive the world as a fac-
tual reality, not moral; therefore, within it, there lies the possibility that an
action inspired by a value that is considered good by its bearer brings about
bad consequences for this value and for its bearer. Good can beget evil.
(c) Given these characteristics of politics (ethical irrationality of the world
or fortuna, preeminence of the common good, politics as an earthly activity,
political power based on violence), acting ethically consists in calculating the
probability of the consequences of one’s actions, not the good or bad charac-
ter of the values that guide the action, as well as in being willing to do evil in
order to achieve good, if it is necessary. Given the hegemony of classical
ethics, the latter usually manifests in two forms: as an acceptance of the fact
that even the values considered good must be mixed with violence—viewed
as an evil by classical ethics—in which politics is based, in order to be ful-
filled; and as a necessity for making a choice between the common good and
the individual good. In politics, the common good is considered over the
individual good because its logic is the defense of the community’s interests;
he or she who practices politics makes decisions that effect third parties, thus,
is obligated to consider these third parties over himself; and, finally, there is
no individual good outside of the common good: it is a requisite of this.
Because of this, when given the choice between saving one’s own soul and
saving the city, the politician must choose the second at the cost of the first.
Lastly, acting ethically consists in doing evil well: doing the least possible evil
in order to be effective. This is only done out of necessity (indicated by the
calculation of probabilities), not out of conviction. Doing evil well implies a
certain amount of lesser evil, which is derived from doing evil poorly.
(d) The criteria of ethical action in politics being that lesser evils avoid
greater evils, and not, as usually said in reference to Machiavelli, that the end
justifies the means.6 The difference between both criteria lies in the fact that
the latter does not condemn evil means, but rather it legitimates these means
in virtue of the value of the end. On the contrary, he who is guided by the cri-
teria that avoids greater evils by choosing lesser evils ethically condemns evil
means and only legitimates it in accordance with political logic as such.
The Two Ethics and the Problem of the Sweet Hereafter

These two ethics, classical and political, are not represented purely in the
film, but rather, being ideal types, are presented in an impure and combined
way. Nevertheless, according to this perspective, the two opposing positions
in the film could be understood in the following way: Nicole and Ansel’s
position would represent political ethics—as Machiavelli and Weber under-
stood it—while Stephens’s would better represent private individual ethics,
more classical and Judeo-Christian. One’s objective is to be a good citizen,
while the other’s is to be a good individual. The main difference between the
two is the place of evil in politics, which is related to the characterization of
the sense given to the world and to politics as a specific activity.
The Position of Mitchell Stephens and the Families that Follow Him
This position is closer to classical ethics because within it, the world appears
as a rationalized place, which determines the trust in the success of what is
considered moral (in this case, the truth of the matter) and certainty that the
gratuitous and meaningless cannot happen. The latter can be seen in how
Stephens, before knowing anything about the situation, starts with the idea
that accidents never happen and he has no doubt that the truth will keep the
tragedy from being repeated.
Not accepting the possibility of an irrational world in ethical terms is also
seen in Risa Walker, one of Stephens’s supporters. She tells Billy Ansel in the
motel that “she needs to believe” that something caused the accident, be it the
guardrail, or Lydia’s sweater—Ansel’s dead wife’s—that Nicole wore on the
day of the accident. Ansel responded to her by saying that he did not need to
believe in anything, “It sounds like you’re looking for a witch doctor, not a
lawyer. Maybe they’re the same thing.”
Also, from this point of view, the common good is considered to be the
sum of individual goods, without thinking that there could be any contra-
diction between two ends that are considered as being good. This is seen in
how the avoidance of tragedy is expressed in more personal terms rather than
communal terms: what they are trying to avoid is that someone loses a child
again, not that the community ends up without a future.
Nicole’s parents’ conduct is thereby driven by the preeminence of the indi-
vidual over that which is communal. They support Stephens’s lawsuit because
they are primarily thinking about obtaining compensation money for their
daughter’s treatment. Ansel even offers them, in exchange for dropping the
lawsuit, the money he has received from his twin’s insurance. “That’s what we
used to do, remember? Help each other,” says Billy, “This was a community.”
The Burnells do not accept Ansel’s altruistic offer, and when he warns them
that the community is about to self-destruct due to the increasing lawsuits,
both Sam and Mary respond, “Stay out of it.” They believe that it would be
best if everyone moved on. They say, “We’re getting on with our lives, Billy.
Maybe it’s time you got on with yours,” as they have done, without consider-
ing the fact that there is nothing personal left for Ansel—now a widower,
without children, and with his relationship with Risa now over, due to being
opposed to one another on the matter of the accident.
In short, from this viewpoint, the future and the community do not exist
without a refined moral responsibility and the attempt to avoid that a tragedy
of this nature is repeated. The future of the community appears as a logical,
almost mechanical result of these two conditions. It is not so much that the
consequences are not thought about, but how they are thought about: not
contradictory nor paradoxical, not problematic, merging what is (facts) and
what ought to be (values). This way of representing the problem impedes their
considering the possible contradictions between truth and good, or between
truth and community.
Nevertheless, there is some ambivalence here, as can be seen in the story

Stephens tells Allison O’Donnell, an old friend of his daughter, on a flight
two years after the Sam Dent tragedy. One summer morning, Stephens
noticed that Zoe had trouble breathing and her face was swollen. Her trachea
was closing up, most likely due to a spider bite; according to the doctor,
Stephens had called in his moment of desperation. The doctor also expressed
the urgency of the situation and told him to take Zoe to the hospital as
quickly as possible. The doctor told him that if they did not arrive on time,
Stephens would have to perform a tracheotomy on Zoe with any knife he had
on hand, even though it would not be sterile. Stephens took on this respon-
sibility. While his wife was driving, he kept Zoe calm by singing her a lullaby,
all the while, knife in hand, in case he had to act quickly. “I was prepared to
go all the way,” Mitchell tells Allison. “It was an unforgettable drive,” he
remembers, “I was divided into two people. One part of me was Daddy . . .
the other part of me was a surgeon.” Finally, the worst never happened. They
got to the hospital in time. Stephens’s conduct in this episode is that of some-
one who acts, knowing the factually fluid and ambiguous—and therefore,
morally disconcerting for classical ethics—relation between good and evil.
In the first place, this is seen in his experiencing the need to be willing to
do an evil without running away from it—as seen in his decision to “go all the
way”—and perform a tracheotomy on Zoe in extreme conditions in order to
reach a greater good, which would be saving his daughter’s life, all without
any guarantee of success. Secondly, in his experiencing the paradoxical deper-
sonalization sometimes required by the pursuit of obtaining good: in order to
save that which he most wants, that which is most vital to him, he must for
the most part abandon his role as a father, out of such loving intensity, in
order to become as cold and distanced as a surgeon, unavoidable prerequisites
of the nevertheless scarce chances of success. And finally, in his experiencing,
first hand, the mutation of love into hate: Stephens confesses to Allison that
the love he had for his daughter—after ten years of helping Zoe with treat-
ments, clinics, and going through all types of unpleasant episodes due to her
drug addiction, including AIDS, which she now suffers from—has turned
into “steaming piss.” In the same way that Zoe, that summer, “loved us
equally then, just like she hates us both equally now,” concludes Mitchell in
reference to himself and his wife Klara.
Nevertheless, throughout the film, Stephens seems to look at the world
through the eyes of duty, as if he believed that, if things were done as they
should be done, everything would turn out fine and no one would suffer. “I
did everything a loving father of a drug addict is supposed to do,” he says to
Allison on the plane. His face was grimacing with disconcertion and disbelief
before such an evident failure, almost inexplicable for him. “I will pursue and
reveal who it was that did not do their job,” he repeats to his Sam Dent
clients, referring to the bus. “The word (accident) doesn’t mean anything to
me,” he concludes. Stephens has experienced the ethical irrationality of the
world—in his daughter’s life, that is, going toward the future. But he does not
seem to have assimilated nor assumed it, even despite having been willing to
be guided by it.
Other traces of political ethics in Stephens are seen in that the target of his
lawsuit is not a person (Dolores), but rather, determined institutions (the city,
the school, the bus manufacturer). It can be seen also, in that his position
could, despite the ethical rationality around it, be based on a greater trust
than that of Nicole’s, for example, in the strength of the community itself to
restructure and reorganize its existence. This reorganization, however, is not
thought of as a communal act, but rather as the fruit of the sum of individual
acts; it is thought of, fundamentally, as the restitution of the sense of duty in
the people of Sam Dent.
Nicole and Ansel’s Position

Nicole and Ansel would better represent political ethics, as Machiavelli and
Weber do, for various reasons: first, they consider the consequences of the
actions they plan to take, accepting their potentially contradictory, paradoxi-
cal logic, and they regret the political price paid in terms of the lesser evil, not
in terms of an end that justifies the means. In other words, they do evil well;
they work with an economy of violence.
Nicole, also a victim, does this by placing the salvation of the community
over that of her own soul. She knows that in this case, in order to achieve
what is most important (the good, from her perspective), she must lie at least
two times: before testifying, when she assures Stephens that she will say the
truth and nothing but the truth, and during her actual testimony, when she
affirms that Dolores was driving seventy-two miles per hour, when she was
really going fifty-one. Nicole is conscious of this act. She admits it explicitly
at least two times: first, immediately after testifying, when Stephens tells her
that she would make a good poker player, she answers, “Thanks,” and sec-
ondly, at the end of the film, when she evaluates what has happened and
upholds that lying has produced a truth (“Why I lie he only knew, but from
my lie this did come true”).
Nicole does evil well when she affirms that on the day of the accident,
Dolores was driving fast. As she is lying, she is also careful enough not to indi-
cate a number that implies she was going over the speed limit. That way,
Dolores appears to have been negligent, but not to have broken the law.
Furthermore, Nicole paints Dolores as a sensitive person in her testimony by

saying that not long before, she had avoided hitting a dog that had crossed
the road.
Ansel also works with an economy of violence when he threatens the
lawyer without witnesses around—in the scene where he finds him filming
the inside of the bus—without hitting him. The lawyer’s fear is enough to
make him stop insisting on his proposition.
The second point to be mentioned here is that they accept the ethical irra-
tionality of the world or fortuna. Ansel does this by accepting it as an accident
and defending this idea, for example, in his dialogue with Risa in the motel,
as quoted before. Nicole, as mentioned, is not so concerned about whether it
was an accident or not, but assumes the need for what happened to be seen as
an accident. The accident scene itself produces the effect of proximity and
continuity between good and evil. The bus moves calmly along the road with
the children inside, playing and having fun, enveloped in the landscape of
white snow that surrounds the road on a bright sunny day. To all of this, con-
noting purity, innocence, joy, harmony, an unperceivable scene takes place,
captured with the camera pulling upward, almost shot from the zenith. This,
at the same time, presents a certain idea of destiny by suggesting a divine
point of view distanced from what is happening, converting that moment of
happiness for those who are living it, thus timeless and unique, into a deper-
sonified link in a chain whose tragic ending is just around the bend.
And finally, they conceive the contradiction between individual good and
the good of the community. Ansel does this at least two times. The first one
when he, despite being the only parent who loses two children in the acci-
dent—who furthermore represented his whole family since he is a widower—
gives privilege to the community when he runs into Stephens, who had just
filmed the totaled bus. Billy rejects Stephens’s pretensions of representing
him in the cause. And, the second one, when he rejects Nicole’s father’s sug-
gestion of “getting on with their lives,” that is to say, looking out for personal
interests (the material amends the trial would bring about) without thinking
beyond this; for example, about the fate of common coexistence.
Nicole, in turn, accepts the tension between the individual good and the
common good and leans toward the latter two times: first, when she initially
rejects the idea of the lawsuit her parents discuss with her, despite ending up
paralyzed and her career as a rock singer being destroyed; and second, when
she lies during her testimony. In short, the future and the community accord-
ing to this point of view are equal to the ability of forgetting and even forgiv-
ing, to uphold the ties of solidarity in order to reconstruct coexistence.
Nonetheless, some ambivalences or traces of classical ethics can be found in

this mindset, like in Stephens’s.
Nicole lies in order to save the community, but by doing this she knows
that she runs the risk of condemning Dolores by claiming that she was dri-
ving fast that day. This is what ends up happening. Two years later, Dolores
appears working out of town. Nicole knew her well and was convinced that
the children were the most important things in her life. Nevertheless, Dolores
is depicted in her new life as a person who has recovered the happiness she
had before the accident, and seems not to carry the weight of the collective
accusation on her shoulders. All of this contrasts with the interview scene
with Stephens, in her house, shortly after the tragedy (Dolores is still wearing
a neck brace), when she finds herself stuck in the past before the accident,
represented by the photos of the dead children that cover the large wall in her
living room.
Nicole’s position, although closer to accepting the logic of politics and col-
lective life for everything mentioned before, could, however, be viewed as
placing less trust in the ability of the community alone to rebuild itself. It acts
inconsiderately and stems from the supposed idea that the community, that
which must be saved, is what it is, as if it could only conceive this salvation in
terms of untouched preservation of what is given. For Nicole, the future, in
this sense, would be untouched continuity of the past and the present, when,
on the other hand, her act of salvation is based on burying the past and the
present so that the future can live on.
Saving the Community and Sense of Responsibility:

Its Limits as Political-ethical Criteria
The political ethics of Machiavelli and Weber seem to present few doubts
about who works in an ethical way and who does not in this case. There are
fundamentally two evaluative criteria: (1) either the individual soul is saved
or the community is saved, and (2) either one considers the potential para-
doxical and contradictory consequences of their actions in relation to the pro-
posal that motivates them, or one acts with the idea that honesty, good, and
truth will always triumph.
This relative certainty is precisely what suggests the need to think against
this conclusion. Because it intuitively seems necessary to revise both criteria,
since (a) there seems to be something not politically ethical about Nicole’s
actions, and it does not definitely consist in her lying, and something politi-
cally ethical in Stephens’s actions, which does not lie in the search for the
truth as such; and (b) the notion of “saving the community” does not seem
problematized. Indeed, “community” is too close to the classical idea of

“common good,” carrying with it the same paradoxical mix of conceptual
haziness, and at the same time the argumentative certainty with which it was
(and still is) used in the Western tradition for centuries.
The corresponding questions, then, would be, with respect to the first
point: Is Nicole and Ansel’s position politically ethical simply because it
attends to the responsibility of its actions? Is Stephens’s position not politi-
cally ethical simply because he does not consider the consequences of his
actions in terms of community life? What happens when someone upholds
some undesirable ends/values in a responsible way? What does the Weberian
ethics of responsibility tell us about this? Regarding the second point: What
does “saving the community” mean? What does “community” mean? What
or who must be saved in order to be able to affirm that the “community” has
been saved? Is the concept of “community” not, perhaps, a more controver-
sial and problematic concept in definition than the certainty with which
political ethics accepts it as a presupposition of its reflection? In short, do
Machiavelli and Weber’s political ethics allow for us to contemplate these
questions?
The Question of the Meaning of “Community”

Machiavelli and Weber’s political ethics do not seem to be able to problema-
tize the meaning itself of the concept of “community” and thus the question
of what its salvation consists in. Machiavelli and Weber relativize political
ends because they start from the idea that good can beget evil, and therefore
their ethical-political criteria is that lesser evils avoid greater evils. This rests
on attributing the value of the greater evil to the loss of the community. The
salvation of the community is identified with the supreme good because these
political ethics assume the republican supposition that there cannot be any
free individuals, nor can they achieve their ends outside of the free and
autonomous community that includes them, and therefore, the fall of the
community implies the fall of each and every individual project—even the
selfish ones—that inhabit it, thus being the greater evil. But even accepting
this republican premise and its value as ethical-political criteria does not
alone explain what saving the community consists in. The meaning of this
concept has been taken for granted, almost as if it were considered self-evi-
dent. It has not been problematized whether or not saving implies preserving
what was intact, that is, if the saved community is the same as the commu-
nity that was in danger, if it can only be saved at the cost of modifying it, or
even if modifying it is a requisite of saving it. If this is not problematized, the
concept in question remains depoliticized, neutralized in the sense that its

polysemy, its polemical content, is not analyzed.
One reason for this potential depoliticization seems to be found in that
according to Machiavelli and Weber, the ethical conflict of politics lies more
in having to choose between the individual good and the common good,
rather than being obliged to choose between different meanings of common
good. The choice between different political ends is present in Max Weber.
The fight for values is the foundation of politics. But nevertheless, for Weber,
the central problem of ethical politics does not lie there, although it forms
part of it. This central problem for Weber is, however, found in the internal
tension of the subject that decides between his or her own good and that of
the community: accepting the use of specific political means (violence and
power) and having a sense of responsibility for carrying the weight of the con-
sequences of one’s decisions. In Machiavelli, the pluralism, more than linked
to the presence of different meanings of the common good, lies in the exis-
tence of two ethical paths between which one must choose: ethics aimed
toward being a good individual and that which leads to being a good citizen
(and/or politician).
The ethical price imposed by politics, for these thinkers, seems to be con-
centrated in being able to condemn one’s own soul in the pursuit of saving
the city, of measuring up to the decision of combat and, if necessary, sacrifice
those members of the community who want to put their own individual
good before the common good, and respond with force to the other commu-
nities who want to impose their own common good on one’s community. In
other words, the ethical-political problem is posed either in the realm of sub-
jectivity, as the subject’s internal tension between the individual and the citi-
zen, or in the communitarian realm, between the citizen and others who act
as individuals rather than as citizens, and between citizens and foreigners.
But this does not exclude the other posed problem, seen less in Machiavelli
than in Weber: the ethical conflict of politics lies in facing the choice between
various common goods or between elements that all form part of the com-
mon good, and, therefore, what must be set aside or sacrificed is not only that
which impedes the achievement of the common good (saving the soul), but
rather, that which also constitutes it; in other words, in the communitarian
realm as a conflict between and among citizens. When Nicole chooses to save
the community, she is not only choosing between common interest and per-
sonal interest. The salvation of the community does not only require the sac-
rifice of the salvation of her soul (carried out through lies), that of the
individual selfish interests of the other members of the community, incapable
of prioritizing the good in this (the families that follow Stephens), or that of
a foreigner who looks to redeem himself for his personal problems at the cost
of Sam Dent (as could be the case of Stephens himself ). The salvation of the
community that Nicole undertakes demands the sacrifice of an important
part of the common good, symbolized by the character of Dolores.
Indeed, the salvation of the community supposes community life without
Dolores,7 without suffering, but also without her person, which is an impos-
sibility—her absence is painful. This fully represents the contradiction between
the common good and a part of this same good that jeopardizes the act itself
of saving the community. At the end of the film, when Nicole asks if Stephens
understands that now all the townspeople, including Dolores and the chil-
dren who have died, form a new community, she looks to solve this ethical-
political problem by means of a concept of community that reminds us of
that of Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the French Revolution, an alliance
between ancestors, the living and those to come.
Including all those who have formed part of the community within this is
equivalent to eluding its partial, polysemic, metonymic character. Indeed,
“community” and “saving the community” would form part of those con-
cepts that, like town, nation, identity, or state, cannot be perceived if not
through the rhetorical figures that name them. The central figure in political
language, that of political science as well as that of political activity as such, is
metonymy, that is to say, taking the part for the whole (Hammar 2005,
23–32). The inevitability of taking the part for the whole and, at the same
time, how this figure theoretically limits thought, in this case, on the relation
between ethics and politics, is also brought about another way. In fact, if we
start with Machiavellian and Weberian concepts, such as fortuna or the
Ethical Irrationality of the World—viewing the world as a factual reality and
not as essentially moral, without a given inherent sense, but rather one that
must be created by and given by man—then the inevitable result is that of
pluralism. This includes the meaning of the concepts of “community” and
“saving the community.” Therefore, they find themselves condemned to
being one part, one particularity, which names the whole. The whole is
unnamable as such, or it is provided that it is not a whole. These concepts,
then, do not seem to be involved in controversy and in the fight for meaning
only because there are opposite concepts put forth, in logical tension with
them, like saving one’s soul, but rather because they are also challenged by
other meanings of community and saving the community.
Eluding the metonymic character of the concept of community entails
setting aside the necessarily decisionist8 element present within its definition.
It presents the plurality of meanings as harmonizable, reducing the polemic
to mere deliberation, with which all transformation remains reabsorbed in
the imaginary permanence of the community as equal to itself. Saving and

reinventing, therefore, constitute one concept. The definition of the com-
mon good cannot be but the work of one particularity, it cannot be but one
meaning among others. This, now, does not imply taking value away from
the salvation of the city as ethical-political criteria, nor does it equate it to the
salvation of the soul, but rather calls attention to the problem implied by
deciding on what this end consists in, and to the symbolic violence that this
decision entails (see Braud 2004, 177–240). Thus, it involves placing the def-
inition of the common good in the same territory as any other political end
or value: in the void of objective groundlessness. Which, in the end, does
nothing more than increase the dramatization of the relation between ethics
and politics, since it has no predefined element, no sustaining base assured
a priori.
The Problem of Responsibility

Max Weber’s political ethics seems not to be able to respond, or at least not
in an intuitively satisfactory way, to the question: What happens when some-
one upholds undesirable ends/values in a responsible way? Is this action polit-
ically ethical? In this respect, Weber circumscribes the criteria of ethical
politics to responsibility with respect to the consequences without paying
more attention to the content of the value for that which one is responsible,
given that values are scientifically undecidable or unfounded. For Weber,
political ethics is found more in how the values are lived out rather than what
those values are.
Weber deduces from the scientifically unfounded character of values that
their content does not affect the ethical evaluation of the action: since one is
not able to know for sure if a value is good or evil, one does not consider it as
criteria for evaluating the action, and one circumscribes the responsibility
that the actor has with respect to the consequences of his acts, since one can
analyze this scientifically (calculation of probabilities). The central problem
that appears here is that political ethics does not seem to be capable of being
limited to the responsibility of the actor with respect to the consequences his
actions have for his cause. If this were the case, reasoning obliges one to say
that the action of an actor or community to consequently pursue the extermi-
nation of another is ethical, and that one who lives out peace and interna-
tional cooperation with absolute conviction is not ethical. Or, for example,
that the only criticism in terms of political ethics of a policy of systematic
extermination would be not having consequently planned out its action: the
only thing that we could reject in ethical-political terms about German
National Socialism was not having thought out the German army’s real pos-
sibilities of triumph when invading the Soviet Union.
Weber does not consider it valid to base the ethical-political rejection of
an action on the content of the value that guides it, since for him, it is not
possible to scientifically prove it demonstrative that a value is good or evil. It
is true that it is impossible to scientifically base values, nevertheless this does
not necessarily imply that we cannot say anything or that we must only speak
in terms of formal ethics, that is, circumscribed to the consequences of the
action. Furthermore, the ethical-political criteria itself of responsibility and of
the lesser evil/greater evil would require that we add to this the argument on
which values are ethical for our political action. Because only by constructing
a hierarchical table of values, although unfounded, relative and conditional,
is it possible to evaluate which evil is lesser and which evil is greater in every
circumstance and context of action.
The argument about values is key in Weber’s reflection, precisely because
they are unfounded (the fight for values channeled through a plebiscitary
leader democracy). However, the choice or preference of values as well as the
public argument around them represent a moment of freedom and individu-
alization of the subjects, not a space for scientific reflection. In other words,
what predominates in such a context is faith and belief, not a demonstrative
and conclusive rationality. Therefore, this fight is eternal and irresolvable.
Weber, in short, looks to establish political ethics on science, identified
with true knowledge. This brings him, insofar as part of the scientifically
unfounded character of values, to delimit political ethics to a sense of respon-
sibility with respect to the consequences of the actions for the value that
guides them without considering the value for which one is responsible.
Therein lies the achievements and the limits, the necessary, yet, at the same
time, insufficient character of his reflection. In the film, perhaps Stephens’s
position is defensible. What is not, however, is the way he does it. On the
contrary, Nicole’s position may not be defensible, but the way she does it is.
Conclusion
At the end of this journey, through the relation between ethics and politics, it
is possible to extract some conclusions. Indeed, (1) political ethics, according
to Machiavelli and Weber, is necessary but insufficient. It is necessary because
it more effectively grasps what type of good is distinctive to politics, what the
world in which politics takes place is like, and what politics as an activity and
as knowledge entails. It is insufficient because it does not consider some prob-
lems that arise from the relation between the traits that political ethics itself
has been able to identify as political characteristics, (a) the relation between
the common good, pluralism, and world: the question of the definition of the
sense of “saving the community”; and (b) the relation between values, the
world, and politics: the problem of the ethics of responsibility.
Moreover, (2) in order to be coherent with that which has been affirmed
in the first point, it must be shown that the insufficiencies emphasized here
are posed in the field of political ethics, not classical ethics. Regarding point
(a), it is possible to uphold that if we start with the idea that in politics, the
search for the common good prevails in a world void of inherent sense and
characterized by the plurality of values that are not objective, then the defin-
ition of common good cannot but form part of the fight for values as well.
The fight, and its consequent ethical-political tension in terms of physical
and symbolic violence, is not only apparent between the common good and
the private individual good, but also between different common goods. Here
one of the premises of the factual vision of the world that pluralism poses is
fulfilled: good things can be contradictory. Regarding point (b), it can be
affirmed that circumscribing ethical criteria of action to the evaluation of the
formal responsibility of the bearer with respect to his cause, obliges us to for-
mulate ethical-political judgments that are intuitively absurd; for example,
considering the responsible pursuit of the extermination of one community by
another to be ethical.
Finally, (3) the political ethics of Machiavelli and Weber has been prolific
and consistent, mainly in its dispute with classical ethics. In this sense, it was
and still is theoretically necessary, even while classical ethics continues to
carry important weight when viewing the world and politics. It has allowed
for the axis of the debate to change in order to lay the foundations for the
political debate on ethics by opposing the individual internal idea of the sal-
vation of the soul, the collective idea of the salvation of the community, and
the rules of a world given an inherent and ethically rational sense. This is a
clinical vision according to which the world is a factual reality devoid of
inherent ethical sense.
Nevertheless, the construction of political ethics is not resolved once the
polemic with classical ethics has been clarified. Not all of its problems can be
posed in terms of the collective/individual ethics dichotomy, but rather oth-
ers appear within collective or political ethics themselves. Both Machiavelli
and Weber reflected on political ethics in an intellectual context marked by
the hegemony of classical ethics. Perhaps this is why their main effort was
focused on strongly affirming the central pillars of these ethics. That, and cer-
tain traits common to both thinkers in terms of nationalism, statism, and the
identifying of politics with personal leadership, as well as Weber’s tendency to
take his concept of ethics only as far as science would allow, could be among
the determining factors that (respectively) minimized the issue posed inside
political ethics. This is precisely due to the extremely prolific path they paved.
From this, it can also be derived—and is worth insisting on—that the insuf-
ficiencies of political ethics do not have as much to do with the challenges
that classical ethics presents, but more so with those that appear once one
thinks in terms of political ethics.
References
Berlin, Isaiah. 1981. The originality of Machiavelli. In Against the current: Essays in the
history of ideas, ed. Henry Hardy, 25–79. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Braud, Philippe. 2004. Violencias políticas. Madrid: Alianza.
Carroll, Noël. 1990. The philosophy of horror or paradoxes of the heart. London:
Routledge.
Franzé, Javier. 2003. El criterio ético de Maquiavelo. Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos
642: 63–76.
Hammar, Björn. 2005. Teoría política, retórica y tropología. Metapolítica 9 (44):
23–32.
Machiavelli, Niccolò. 1969a. De principatibus. In Opere politiche, ed. Mario Puppo,
45–181. Firenze: Le Monnier.
———. 1969b. Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio. In Opere politiche, ed.
Mario Puppo, 185–642. Firenze: Le Monnier.
Schmitt, Carl. 1922/1985. Political theology: Four chapters on the concept of sovereignty.
Trans. George Schwab, 32. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Skinner, Quentin. 2000. Machiavelli: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Strauss, Leo. 1995. Thoughts on Machiavelli. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Weber, Max. 1919/1997a. Politics as a vocation. In From Max Weber: Essays in sociol-
ogy, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, 77–128. London: Routledge.
———. 1917/1997b. Science as a vocation. In From Max Weber: Essays in sociology,
ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, 129–56. London: Routledge.
Notes
1. Translated by Victoria Fontana. I would like to thank Benjamin Arditi and
Naomi Sussmann for helpful comments on this chapter.
2. The Sweet Hereafter by Atom Egoyan (director, producer, screenplay), 1997.
Canada, 112 minutes. Based on the novel by Russell Banks. More information
at http://www.egofilmarts.com and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120255/
fullcredits#cast (accessed March 23, 2007).
3. Loosely taken here from the concept of horror-art by Carroll (1990, chap. 1).
4. The characterization that Isaiah Berlin (1981, 25–79) made is used in order to
make this distinction. The central notion Machiavelli distinguishes is upheld,
not between ethics and politics, but between political ethics and ethics that are
inappropriate for politics. The difference for Berlin lies in the fact that he iden-
tifies this other nonpolitical ethics with “Judeo-Christian ethics,” while in this
work it is preferable, according to Skinner (2000, 35–47), to say “classical
ethics.” Classical ethics can be understood as that which was elaborated
throughout different historical eras from the reflections of Socrates, Plato,
Aristotle, Stoicism, Cicero, and the Judeo-Christian tradition.
5. Machiavelli 1969a, XXV. On the paradoxical relation between good and evil in
politics, see: Machiavelli 1969b, I, 9; II, 8, 14. On the difference between the
concept of Fortuna used by Machiavelli and that of Christianity, see Skinner
2000, 26–31.
6. Isaiah Berlin (1981, 62, 64) defines Machiavelli’s ethical-political criteria as “the
end ‘excuses’ the means” and in terms of lesser evils avoid greater evils (“The
qualities of the lion and the fox are not in themselves morally admirable, but if
a combination of these qualities will alone preserve the city from destruction,
then these are the qualities that leaders must cultivate,” 51). We believe that
both criteria involve different concepts as a prudent ethical-political rule. The
decisive factor is that “the end ‘excuses’ the means” would be the traditional
vision of Machiavelli as “Machiavellian” or “master of evil” (see Strauss 1995),
although Berlin does not use it in this sense. Indeed, the evaluation of lesser
evils and greater evils would be more representative of that which Berlin himself
presents. For a discussion on this point in Berlin, see Franzé 2003, 63–76.
7. “Dolores,” female proper name derived from the singular Latin word “dolor,”
meaning, “sorrow/pain.”
8. In the sense of Carl Schmitt, as a decision “that emanates from nothingness”
(1985, 32).
PART 4
The Terror of Theory

CHAPTER 11
The Violence of Lying

Olivia Guaraldo
The Pentagon Papers Scandal
I
t was 1971 when Hannah Arendt first published in the New York Review
of Books her essay “Lying in Politics: Reflections on the Pentagon Papers”
(Arendt, in Arendt 1972, 3–47). The essay commented on the recent
publication of the forty-seven-volume “History of U.S. Decision Making
Process on Vietnam Policy” (commissioned by Secretary of State Robert S.
McNamara in June 1967 and completed a year and a half later). The scandal
at the core of the publication of this report had to do with the fact that it was
not meant to be published, at least not in the way that the New York Times
(NYT) got hold of it. The above report became widely known as the
Pentagon Papers and was, in fact, a “top-secret, richly documented record of
the American role in Indochina from World War II to May 1968” (Arendt
1972, 3). The embarrassment of the Nixon administration—which, shortly
thereafter, had to deal with another, more infamous scandal—in receiving the
news that the public had become informed of the years of lies and deception
in Vietnam was observable in its futile attempt to silence Daniel Ellsberg (the
Pentagon “expert” and member of the Rand Corporation who was responsi-
ble for leaking the report to the New York Times). The NYT scoop of the
Pentagon Papers preceded the Washington Post revelations on the Watergate
Building infraction, with the consequences that we are all familiar with.
Those were the days, we could say, when the revelation of a scandal mattered,
when public opinion was still receptive, aware, and able to respond and react
to lying, deception, and misconduct of those in power.
But what did these forty-seven volumes tell the American public?
Surprisingly, they did not reveal any hidden information, any secret complot,
208 ● Olivia Guaraldo
anything that was not already known to the majority of the citizens. As in fact
Arendt herself notes, the report “contains nothing to support the theory of
grandiose imperialist stratagems,” and again, the “Pentagon Papers revealed
little significant news that was not available to the average reader of dailies
and weeklies” (Arendt 1972, 45). One of the moral qualities of the report
consisted instead in the will of the so-called Pentagon experts to produce an
impartial self-examination and an objective analysis of their deeds. These
experts or “problem solvers”—who were asked to evaluate the policies they
had been proposing and implementing—had been “drawn into government
from the universities and the various think tanks” (9–10), they were men of
science, learned experts “in love with theory.” One of their main peculiarities,
in fact, was their reliance on game theories and system analyses, and they
were “eager to find formulas, preferably expressed in a pseudomathematical
language, that would unify the most disparate phenomena with which reality
presented them” (11).
What was at the core of the scandal, according to Arendt—who reports
the words of Daniel Ellsberg, “How could they?”—was the systematic denial,
on the experts’ side, of factual reality as it came to them from intelligence
information. The lying that was to be found at the foundation of the U.S.
Vietnam policy did not consist in hiding some secret plans from the
American public, but in neglecting substantial factual information, in pre-
tending that theory could prevail over facts. In order to remain consistent
with their theories—based on mathematical calculations, game theories, and
other abstract criteria—the problem solvers neglected simple and solid facts.
For example, they neglected the absence of any connection between China
and the Soviet Union (which would have been a justification for the Vietnam
War as a containment of China, and a proof of the existence of a solid and
consistent Communist block). In addition, they also neglected the absence of
any strategic interest in “liberating Vietnam” from the “Communist menace”
(intelligence reports told President Johnson in 1964 “with the possible excep-
tion of Cambodia, it is likely that no nation in the area would quickly suc-
cumb to Communism as a result of the fall of Laos and South Vietnam”).
Further along these lines, the “global” provenance of the South-Vietnamese
insurgency—another justification for the war as being “imported” to South
Vietnam by foreign communists—had been dismissed by the CIA, which
reported in 1961 and in 1963 that “the primary sources of Communist
strength in South Vietnam are indigenous” (Arendt 1972, 25, quoting the
Papers).
The Violence of Lying ● 209
Facts and Theories

What is at stake here, according to Arendt, is not simply the traditional use
of lying in the sphere of power, the use of secrecy in order to achieve specific
political ends, the well-known practice of arcana imperii, but the construc-
tion of a reality that is, so to say, fictitious, deprived of its basic elements—
facts—in order to comply with a theory, according to which the experts and
decision makers should have been able to discover “laws by which to explain
and predict political and historical facts, as though they were as necessary,
and thus reliable, as the physicists once believed natural phenomena to be”
(1972, 11).
The problem, says Arendt, is that political science, in contrast to the
natural sciences, deals with contingent facts, and “reality never presents us
with anything so neat as premises for logical conclusions” (12). Therefore
the scientific, or pseudoscientific attitude with which the Pentagon experts
neglected facts in order to make a theory or hypothesis come true resembles
the philosopher’s will to “eliminate the accidental,” as Hegel would say.
Hannah Arendt’s entire body of work has been devoted to fighting this
“speculative” attitude—that which desperately seeks to eliminate the acci-
dental—in the sphere of politics. The problem of the Western political tradi-
tion is that it does not have what Arendt calls a “pure notion of the political,”
thereby meaning that every attempt at interpreting, understanding, and
changing political reality has always been characterized by an excessively the-
oretical approach. The Pentagon Papers in this respect represent the govern-
mental, scientific, up-to-date version of the Hegelian aversion to contingency.
The philosopher reflects ex-post upon reality (according to Hegel’s famous
definition, philosophy is like the owl of Minerva, which “spreads her wings
only with the falling of the dusk”) and aims at comprehending it in “his” sys-
tem in order to posthumously eliminate contingency, while the political the-
orist and expert is not only a “man” of thought but also a “man” of action. He
has neither the contemplative attitude of the philosopher nor the meticulous
loyalty to factual, given reality of the natural scientist, who deals with matters
that are not necessarily man-made (the sexist language here is deliberate and
is clarified toward the end of this chapter). The political scientist deals with
matters that are man-made and, more often than not, is tempted to not sim-
ply observe the world of human affairs, but also to change them, to make
them conform to a certain theoretical model he has in mind. The man of
action who is also a man of thought because he deals with accidental things—
things that could have been otherwise—is constantly tempted to eliminate
the potential contingency of political reality by means of making it fit into
theory. These basic reflections brought Arendt to consider the issue of lying
in politics not as a moral question, but as an epistemological one. Arendt’s

implicit message seems to hint at the following judgment: willful and delib-
erate ignorance of facts, rather than being mistaken in their evaluation, is
much more dangerous than willful lying.
Politics and the Freedom of Lying

As a matter of fact, Arendt, following Aristotle, considers politics as the
sphere of contingency, of things that “could be otherwise.” It is therefore an
eminently political possibility to undo that which exists in order to start
something new. Not differently from the great father of the strategic use of
lying in politics, Machiavelli, Arendt is persuaded that there is a strict link
between politics as the art of changing reality and lying as the art of imagin-
ing things that are not there. Arendt writes, “We are free to change the world
and to start something new in it. Without the mental freedom to deny or
affirm existence, to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’—not just to statements or propositions in
order to express agreement or disagreement, but to things as they are given,
beyond agreement or disagreement, to our organs of perception and cogni-
tion—no action would be possible; and action is of course the very stuff pol-
itics are made of ” (1972, 5–6). Politics, in other words, has nothing to do
with stable criteria, rigid and unchangeable, according to which one should
govern reality. On the contrary, politics is the constant attempt to elaborate
visions of reality that are different from the existent ones. Imagination is the
instrument through which the political agent can obliterate a given reality
and produce a vision of the new. “In other words, the deliberate denial of fac-
tual truth—the ability to lie—and the capacity to change facts—the ability to
act—are interconnected; they owe their existence to the same source: imagi-
nation” (5). To act and to lie are therefore strictly interrelated, insofar as pol-
itics is the sphere of contingency, of things that “could be otherwise.”
On the other hand, though, politics has to do with facts, with the concrete
and material taking place of events, that, as such, can hardly be ignored or
dismissed. In a previous essay, entitled Truth and Politics, Arendt reports a
sentence uttered by French Prime Minister Clemenceau, who said, when
asked about the responsibilities for the initiation of World War I, that is, what
the historians would eventually report, “This I don’t know. But I know for
certain that they will not say that Belgium invaded Germany” (Arendt 1968,
239). Politics, in other words, has to do with the radical possibility of change—
through imagination and action—and the equally strong persistence of
events, facts that happened and as such cannot be denied. Political actors
must be aware of this duplicity, and must, so to say, act accordingly.
Imagination, according to Arendt, is connected to human freedom, inso-

far as it is a mental faculty that relies upon human spontaneity. By reinter-
preting Kant’s Critique of Judgment, Arendt refers to imagination as the most
“political” of our mental faculties, in that through imagination we can prac-
tice what she calls “enlarged thinking,” namely the possibility to make pre-
sent in our minds different standpoints and reproduce mentally the different
perspectives that constitute political reality (1982). Imagination can give us
the possibility to broaden our individual perspective by assuming a different
standpoint, by accepting within our mental framework possible heteroge-
neous paths of meaning. Politically speaking, we could say that if imagination
gives us the opportunity to imagine things that are literally not there—to
deny factual reality in order to change it—it does so not by shaping a ficti-
tious reality that should work as a substitute, but simply by making us aware
of the contingent nature of political reality. It can help us understand differ-
ent standpoints, allowing us to think with others and not in solitude—and by
so doing it can produce nonexistent visions of reality that can guide us in our
political actions. In fact imagination—as Arendt understands it—is linked
to the plurality of humankind, to the fact that each being is unique and dif-
ferent from every other, and offers the chance to practice this plurality in
one’s mind.
It is not by chance that Arendt considered storytelling as a means to
understand past political events by virtue of its capacity to offer a fictional
rumination on events that often allowed a better understanding of reality
than simple historiographic cause-effect explanations. Political reality—the
sphere of human affairs—ta ton anthropon pragmata—in its plurality and
contingency, is the sphere of the unexpected, of the unpredictable, and as
such cannot be accounted for in mechanical terms for the result may be too
simplistic and reductive. Storytelling, instead, offers us a different way of
understating such political reality, a way that respects its contingency and
unexpectedness. Imagination, in this respect, plays a crucial role, since it can
help us build stories that, as such, are more faithful to reality than any objec-
tive and therefore scientific report. Creative literary imagination, for exam-
ple, can help us understand decisive political phenomena better than a causal
explanation based on a supposedly scientific argument: Conrad’s Heart of
Darkness tells us more about imperialism than any history textbook, Proust’s
Recherce is more significant than any sociological interpretation on the role of
the intellectual in nineteenth-century France, and so on. The political use of
fiction, as Arendt adopts it, has to do with the necessity of elaborating differ-
ent means of understanding reality that do not reduce it to a stereotype, to a
muster, nor to statistical data, but seeks instead to come to terms with its
essential unpredictability (for good and for bad; Arendt 1951; 1958; see also
Disch 1994; Guaraldo 2001). Whereas imagination literarily performed can

be politically interesting and useful, fictive productions that are based simply
on calculated schemes and theories can be politically disastrous.
The Physiology and Pathology of Lying

There is, in fact, a different use of fiction that, as such, is politically danger-
ous, and it comes down to the abuse of another mental faculty, that of logical
reasoning. When shaped in order to radically deny reality in its factuality
and contingency, logical reasoning can produce nonexistent visions of real-
ity that, as such, are ready and packed, uncontestable in force of the pur-
ported cogency of the scientific method. The fictions produced by this type
of mental activity radically violate the principle of contingency that informs
the political sphere. In the first case—that of imagination, a faculty radically
alien to the proceedings of logical reasoning—the fictions of the mind guide
political actors in their will to modify the present iuxta propria pincipia,
namely, respecting the contingency and plurality of politics. In the second
case—that of logical reasoning—the fictions of the mind are meant to sub-
stitute reality and its contingency. This is to say that there can be a physiolog-
ical use of lying in the sphere of politics that relates to the possibility of
change and novelty (for Arendt, the very essence of the political) and a patho-
logical one, where what is at stake is not the instrumental and occasional use
of lying, but a systematic, deliberate production of a fictive reality, disregard-
ing both contingency and factuality.
The scandal of the Pentagon Papers, in other words, testifies to this
pathology, which, in the end, can be defined as the systematic abuse of fiction
in the sphere of politics. Imagining a different world does not equate to build-
ing a fictitious one. There is, in other words, a radical difference between inno-
vative—even revolutionary—political actions and the totalitarian experiment
of fabricating a new reality, through ideology, propaganda, and terror.
That is to say, given the Arendtian framework, the “revelations” of the
Pentagon Papers told the American public then, and tell us still today, two
major things. First, the theories of the problem solvers, surprisingly enough,
were not concerned with the pursuit of some decisive national interest in
South Asia, nor did they have to do with the welfare of the nation, but rather
simply with its image. In fact, what strikes the reader is that among the ever-
shifting justifications for the war, what remains stable is the question of
American “credibility,” its image as a world superpower. What emerges,
therefore, is an interesting new kind of “banality of evil” where what is at
stake is not the normal, ordinary nature of evildoers (as it had been in the case
of the many Eichmanns under Nazi rule in Germany), but the ignorant,
mediocre political quality of the officials leading the United States of

America. The reason for twenty years of war, massacres, and destruction was
not the greedy and imperialistic policy of the superpower, but its stubborn-
ness in following the game theories of some think-tank experts. The parody
of a cold war conflict, as depicted in Stanley Kubrick’s Doctor Strangelove,
seems more plausible than reality itself.
Second, what emerges from the report is the fact that no free country is
immune from what one could call a totalitarian drive, which consists not
only in the desire to manipulate public opinion through deliberate lies, but
also in fabricating a new reality in which facts are manipulated either by
being inserted into a general scheme of explanation that “eliminates the acci-
dental” or by being constructed anew. This was what ideology did under
totalitarian rule: it offered an image of reality that contained no element of
contingency, but instead, inserted every single fact into the logic of an idea,
fabricating a consistent reality that as such did not exist. (For extended treat-
ments on this state of affairs in the totalitarian regimes of Romania and Chile,
and China, respectively, see the chapters of C. Preda and M. Valjakka in this
volume.) People seemed to be satisfied with a view of reality that “made
sense” while the world outside seemed to have lost its sense. The totalitarian
abuse of fiction is well known, and that political experiment warns us of the
difference between simple, occasional lying—as some sort of indispensable
instrumentum regni—and a systematic denial of facts, which opens up the via-
bility of a violent substitution of reality with a consistent fictional scheme.
One could even say that totalitarians abused fiction to the point that what
they constructed as ideology was then implemented by terror, and the fiction
eventually became true.
Even if one should be very cautious about comparing totalitarian regimes
and democratic government, it is nevertheless palpable that Arendt, when
speaking of the Pentagon experts, detects in them a very dangerous totalitar-
ian inclination. What in fact emerges at the end of Arendt’s reflections on the
Pentagon Papers is that the political scientists who were in “love with theo-
ries,” mostly theories substantiated by calculations and numbers rather than
views of the world, had been the disciples of the cold-war ideologists, the
anti-Communists who determined the comprehensive ideology of Washington
since World War II. They had been former Communists, and this is why, says
Arendt, they “needed a new ideology by which to explain and reliably foretell
the course of history” (1972, 39). The love for theory stems not simply from
a scientific approach to reality—that of the Pentagon experts—but from
familiarity with consistent manipulation of facts, as was the case of the anti-
Communists at work in Washington. For Arendt, anti-Communism is no
less an ideology than Communism, and as such, it contains all the failures of
a monolithic, simplistic, yet appealing view of reality. The political use of a

monolithic view of reality—the ideological fiction—is treacherous because it
goes far beyond mere lying, or hiding of the truth. Another mechanism is at
work here: in order to comply with a consistent view of reality, the ideologi-
cal interpretation tends to accept as factual truth that which instead is part of
a theory, a logical construction that covers reality. The banality of the theories
at work in the U.S. Vietnam policy—the theories of the problem solvers,
who, unlike their former teachers, did not have any ideologically compre-
hensive view of history but simply dealt with the image of the United
States—does not diminish their politically lethal effect. “Sheer ignorance of
facts, deliberate neglect of postwar developments” became the hallmark of the
cold war anti-Communist doctrine first and then of the so-called problem
solvers of the Vietnam War: “They needed no facts, no information; they had
a ‘theory’ and all data that did not fit were denied or ignored” (1972, 39).
At the core of this love of theory, be it an ideological view of the world or
simply a domino theory according to which the situation in Vietnam would
determine the situation in the neighboring countries, is the inability to cope
with contingency, to deal with factual experience as a source for decision
making. The banality of evil reached in Vietnam a new level of absurdity: the
goals of the war as such were as hypothetical and volatile as the policies that
implemented it.
Does this story tell us something more? It tells us that that level of absur-
dity, of deliberate manipulation of facts was insane, lethal, and politically
wrong. Game theories and system analyses caused heavy losses in terms of
human lives and economic resources, not to speak of the hundreds of thou-
sands of civilian Vietnamese who died. Yet it tells us more.
Lying and Violence

Arendt always warned against easy analogies in the sphere of political history,
since she believed that politics and history both had to do with the new and
the unexpected, for which there can be no comparison to or assimilation of
precedents. The temptation is too strong, since those reflections seem to offer
a way that enables us to read the present. One could therefore say that com-
parisons with the past are useful insofar as they simply allow us to detect dif-
ferences and discover novelties, shifts in that contingent reality of which politics
is made. Besides the fact that now, as then, what seems to be at stake is the
“unbelievable example of using excessive means to achieve minor aims”
(instead of the intended “limited means to achieve excessive ends”), using
Arendt today can help us in understanding that the political abuse of a
fictional mental construction, or ideology—which negates existent factual

information and produces non existent ones—can reach an even more absurd
level of banality of evil, or worse, in its potential effects, than that of the
Pentagon “expertise” on Vietnam. (Parenthetically the domino theory would
probably be more adequate now than previously to explain the effects of the
Washington policy in the Middle East.)
The mental attitude of today’s Washington experts—more familiar per-
haps with the anti-Communist ideology of the cold war than with the
problem solvers’ mathematical attitude—is no less irresponsible, no less
defactualized, no less ignorant of facts, no less disregarding of information
and experience collected by the intelligence in the Middle East. Nevertheless,
those game theories and system analyses, the tools of the political scientists
of the prestigious think tanks, are nothing compared to today’s innovative
awareness of the political importance of a systematic abuse of fiction.1 In an
unprecedented coalition of media, governments, informed public, and ter-
rorists what is at stake today is not only the act of defactualizing reality and
deliberately ignoring stubborn facts, historical situations, and regional speci-
ficities, but a much more creative act of invention: that which fabricates evi-
dence together with visions of the world, and homogeneously and innocently
broadcasts them.2 If the problem of the Vietnam War was that of ignoring the
facts that stood against a successful conclusion of the conflict, and pretending
that goals had been achieved, now the political use of deception has reached
a new level: the justification for war relies on facts that, as such, are made up,
fabricated since they do not exist in reality. Fictitious evidences go along with
fictitious terrorist alliances, where the power of logical reasoning, based on
fake causes but engendering powerful real effects, has literally swept away
complex political situations, different religious contexts, and contingent pos-
sible effects of a strategically wrong invasion.3
There is an even more lethal abuse of fiction in the Islamist ideology that
conceives of the West as a monolithic empire of sinners and apostates. The
pathological use of fiction is evident in those attempts to trace a monolithic
history of both “East” and “West”—two opposite fictional entities fabricated
as internally homogeneous. On both sides of the fence there are elements that
seem to coalesce together in making the prophecy of a clash of civilizations
come true. The relationship between theory and reality, though, is reversed,
and the latter is not simply adjusted to the former—through lying, decep-
tion, neglecting of facts—but the former dictates the means by which to fab-
ricate the latter. It goes without saying that both these fabrications lead to an
endless destruction.
Domesticating Dissent
Yet there are compelling differences between past and present situations, and,
historically speaking, today’s ideological impetus is essentially different from
the ideologies and theories that informed the Washington administration at
the time of the Vietnam War. “The problem solvers did not judge, they cal-
culated” (1972, 37), says Arendt, but what made their calculations differ
from the ideological purports of today’s neoconservative ideology is essen-
tially this: the former relied on the evidence of mathematical, purely rational
truth while the latter has transformed the rational choice argument into a
religious, moral one. Truth no longer reveals itself as a mathematical formula
but through moral statements, blatantly colored with vague religious under-
tones.4 The fabrication of reality relies upon unverifiable truths, and this is
why perhaps today, differently from the times of the Vietnam War, the
importance of facts, and their acknowledgment, does not play any major
political role. The pathology of contemporary political lies no longer depends
on simple logical reasoning, violently applied to reality, but on the combina-
tion of moral, religious premises and instrumental, cause-effect system analy-
ses. The fictions become more powerful in the face of the religious premises
on which they are construed.
Moreover, the principles of Western democracies, virtuously embodied by
American democracy, become matters of faith; they undergo, so to speak,
some sort of essentialization: the expansion of democracy, the liberation of
Islamic women, the infinite detention of suspects at Guantanamo. All these
instances are examples of a religious belief in American, Western values, and
a subsequent criminalization of those who do not comply with them.
Democracy transformed into a religion still implies a secular use of its imple-
ments of violence: both symbolic and material. Therefore, in spite of the reli-
gious rhetoric of its leaders, Western politics continues to act according to its
essentially modern structures. In the current global disorder of violence, state
sovereignty has not renounced the secular premises on which it was founded:
the monopoly on violence, the final decision on the state of exception, the
claim to legitimate authority. To what extent these premises can still function
and produce order—as in modernity—is easily discernible. (On this, see
Guaraldo, forthcoming.)
One further significant difference, in fact, and perhaps the most telling,
has to do with the way in which public opinion has become—so to speak—
domesticated, ceasing to exercise a significant role. Public opinion has pro-
gressively become a passive subject, unable to become outraged, even after the
evident lies have been revealed. It is as if today, differently from then, we were
witnessing a much more efficacious and successful fictional construction able
to substitute for reality. It is as if, in other words, the optimistic conviction

Arendt expressed at the time, that no fictitious construction can be as great as
to cover and conceal reality in its totality, would have really faded away. What
we are witnessing today is the political effectiveness of fictions—ideological
and mediatized—even in the face of the revelations of their falsity. The pub-
licity that should characterize the public sphere—the Kantian and Haber-
masian öffentlichkeit that should guarantee correctness and transparence of
information and decision processes—is still effectual insofar as the lies and
fictional constructions of the Bush and Blair administrations have come to
the fore. Public opinion has, now as it did then, the possibility to verify facts
but the revelations of the lies do not have meaningful consequences.5 In the
case of the Pentagon Papers scandal, the role of public opinion—and most of
all of the press—was decisive and Arendt herself wrote, “So long as the press
is free and not corrupt, it has an enormously important function to fulfil and
can rightly be called the fourth branch of government.” But she seemed to
perceive the frailty of that so-called fourth branch. She wrote, “Whether the
first amendment will suffice to protect this most essential political freedom,
the right to unmanipulated factual information without which all freedom of
opinion becomes a cruel hoax, is another question” (1972, 45).
Today, on the contrary, public opinion has ceased to exercise its critical
role, has been reduced to a mediatized form of acquiescence that takes the
shape of the “opinion poll.” Political activism has been substituted with
the passivity of the consumer of opinions and news, and apparent total infor-
mation—every hour, everywhere, on everything—eventually coincides with
a total lack of political action. The passive news-consumer is falsely con-
vinced of participating in the flow of events, while she is simply enjoying a
media spectacle.
Arendt, at the time of the scandal, criticized the “Madison Avenue men-
tality” of the Pentagon experts, their “public relations” attitude, concerned
with the image, rather than the real needs of America. Today that “public
relations” mentality seems to have colonized entirely our public sphere, as if
all of us would be content with a glossy, magazine-style version of the war and
its justifications. The media representations, which have accompanied the
beginning and the official conclusion of the war, seemed to be forged accord-
ing to entertainment criteria. “Showdown Iraq” was the obsessive refrain that
CNN had chosen to describe the preinvasion phase; “Shock and Awe,” the
slogan that should have condensed in two words the “spirit” of the first
bombings; “Mission Accomplished,” the triumphant yet humble celebration
of the victory with President Bush surrounded by happy and good-hearted
marines. All of these instances, their images and their short but effective
sentences aimed at rendering the Iraqi conflict—a war that was tremendously
lacking in juridical, political, and strategic legitimation—spectacular, excit-
ing, and above all media-friendly, or, to put it differently, entertainment-ori-
ented. One might dare to say that Madison Avenue’s manipulative techniques
have been replaced by those of Hollywood, insofar as it is to the cinemato-
graphic imagery that today’s propaganda refers, in order to entertain the pub-
lic, which hardly has other parameters to refer to. Every mission is a Mission
Impossible, every soldier a Private Ryan, every pilot a Top Gun, every enemy
a dark-skinned, less-than human being with no face and no name.
The relationship between politics and fiction seems to have reached a level
Arendt could have not imagined, since she knew little or nothing of the pow-
erful effects of spectacularized politics and violence. It is not by chance that
such spectacularization has been initiated by the media-event par excellence,
namely the Twin Towers terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, a decisive
threshold between an obsolete Realpolitik and a new, unreal Fiktionpolitik. A
politics based on the systematic abuse of fictions, which opens the way to the
ecstatic fulfillment of the “clash of civilization” prophecy. The fact that such
prophecy is based upon a fiction that is as vague (and vast) as it is appealing
makes it readily disposable for ideological ends; but thanks to the spectacu-
larized means of both terrorist and “legitimate” violence makes it also plausi-
ble. The ideological fiction—the clash of civilizations—becomes real by
virtue of the violence that performs it, making it happen.
The Vulnerable Reality of Politics

There is, and this is the Arendtian lesson we could still learn, a dangerous
affinity between opposed views of the world that reduce reality to a dis-
countable datum, manipulable, and, as such, superfluous. It is by virtue of
this supposed superfluity that systematic lying, fictional constructions that
presuppose a reality that is in itself coherent and therefore similar to a theo-
retical model, can be implemented, and concretely realized. No ethical or
moral considerations—even less utilitarian ones—can win the confrontation
with a logical construction that systematically negates any factual truth.
It was in fact Arendt who constantly accused the Western political tradi-
tion of founding itself, since its beginning, on a clamorous fictive entity,
namely that of man in the singular. She points out how, from Aristotle up to
modernity, political models have always been constructed upon an ontology
centered on fictitious entities: man, the individual, the subject. As Adriana
Cavarero notes, “Man, the Aristotelian anthropos, inaugurates a tradition in
which the plurality of unique beings appears from the very beginning as an
insignificant and superfluous given” (2005, 191). The famous zoon politikon,
as Arendt claims, is founded on a clamorous falsification of the plural and
antihierarchical matrix of politics. In fact, the given that “Man” stands for and
therefore neutralizes the plurality of human beings, necessarily implies that
he cannot be political since, in this horizon, there is no plurality and thus no
relation. In the economy of the One—a mirror image of the economy of the
Same—there is no in between, no common space to share. Thus, “what the
Western tradition calls politics is in reality a model of de-politicization that
excludes the plural and relational foundation of politics” (Cavarero 2005,
191). Arendt tried, during her lifetime, to go beyond this fictitious entity of
man in the singular, attempting a phenomenology of the human, which is
rooted in a plural context. Plurality, she affirms, is “the law of the earth.”
Such a condition of plurality has to do with the fact that we all come to life
as unique beings and have the possibility to realize such uniqueness only in
the political sphere. She attempts, in other words, to abandon the political
fictive entity of man, the individual, the subject—whose tradition, she claims,
is not immune from ambiguous involvement in totalitarian regimes—and
come closer, so to speak, to a concrete condition in which humans do come
to life as distinct from one another, unrepeatable, irreplaceable, unique. But
for this uniqueness to be recognized, each human being needs, in order to
exist, the presence of others. Plurality therefore is the name given to irre-
ducible differences that qualify each human being, who is at the same time
undeniably related to others. Politics is the relational sphere in which such
plurality can become manifest.
Recently, there has been an interesting, albeit not openly Arendtian, refor-
mulation of these themes carried out by Judith Butler, who, in her recent
book Precarious Life (Butler 2004), has reflected upon the political impact of
mourning and loss in the United States after September 11. In her book, she
affirms that the shock of the terrorist attack should have been an occasion for
the United States to reflect not only upon the effects of their foreign policy,
but also upon the loss of their “First World privilege,” namely the privilege
of perceiving themselves as secure, safe, prosperous, and in charge of their
own destiny:
To be injured means that one has the chance to reflect upon injury, to find out
the mechanisms of its distribution, to find out who else suffers from permeable
borders, unexpected violence, dispossession, and fear, and in what ways. If
national sovereignty is challenged, that does not mean it must be shored up at
all costs, if that results in suspending civil liberties and suppressing political
dissent. Rather, the dislocation from First World privilege, however temporary,
offers a chance to start to imagine a world in which that violence might be
minimized, in which an inevitable interdependency becomes acknowledged as

the basis for global political community. I confess to not knowing how to the-
orize that interdependency. I would suggest, however, that both our political
and ethical responsibilities are rooted in the recognition that radical forms of
self-sufficiency and unbridled sovereignty are, by definition, disrupted by the
larger global processes of which they are a part, that no final control can be
secured, and that final control is not, cannot be, an ultimate value. (Butler
2004, xii–xiii)
Acknowledging the unavoidable precariousness of life that we all experience

(a precariousness that affects everyone today, not only Third World citizens)
is what has become most necessary, and such precariousness is what forces us
to recognize the interdependence that shapes our lives as humans. This con-
stitutive dependence upon others—or the relationality of which also Adriana
Cavarero speaks—can be seen as a positive occasion to reflect on the evanes-
cence of the political “fictions” of man in the singular. Butler, in this respect,
has fiercely criticized the way in which the United States has tried to misap-
prehend their exposure and vulnerability after September 11 by restoring
their masculinity and their expanding sovereignty. What has been lacking,
she says, is a way of recognizing vulnerability and thereby taking violence dif-
ferently, making it an undeniable part of our human condition of depen-
dence and precariousness.
The shift, in this respect, has to do with a displacement of politics away
from the immune individual—a fictitious entity that, as such has nowadays
been swept away by the virtually nonexistent state—in order to relocate it in
the vulnerable—and therefore exposed to others—self. Politics and ethics
must be thought of within the context of an undeniable violence that, at the
same time, is the cipher of an undeniable relationality.
To sum up, politics in the age of globalization, the clash of civilizations,
instead of producing spectacularized and violent fictions of the human con-
dition, should humbly attempt to start anew from the undeniable fact that
we come to the world in relation to other beings, and that such relationality
does not simply mean to recognize that we are all doomed by total destruc-
tion. To take relationality seriously means to recognize our mutual depen-
dence, now that the “protective” forms of modern politics are withering away,
together with state sovereignty. To recognize such dependence does not entail
a simple ethics of good will. It means to deconstruct any attempt at con-
structing a fictional narrative with a clear-cut distinction between good guys
and bad guys. It means to recognize that relationality has to do with the
undeniable acceptance of an unpleasant reality for which there can be no sub-
stitute. This is why Judith Butler theoretically shapes this relationality in the
form of vulnerability: relationality means to depend upon others also in the

form of being violently exposed to them. Each human being is exposed to the
violence of a relationship. Needless to say, politics, in the age of globalization,
has to come to terms with this vulnerability by interrupting the vicious circle
of aggression and retaliation, trying to found the community on the common
condition of loss, injury, and mourning.
The fictions that have justified the war in Iraq, just as the fictions that
continue to produce “martyrs,” neglect, obliterate, and disguise the human
condition of plurality and relationality, and the implicit vulnerability this
entails. It goes without saying that the level of fakeness we have reached has
come to endanger even our own survival—which, to some extent, will more
and more depend on the way in which we will deal with this undeniable
vulnerability.
References
Arendt, Hannah. 1982. Lectures on Kant’s political philosophy. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
———. 1972. Crises of the republic. New York: Harcourt, Brace, & Jovanovich.
———. 1972. Lying in politics: Reflections on the Pentagon Papers. Revised and
extended version in Crises of the republic, by Hannah Arendt, 3–47. New York:
Harcourt, Brace, & Jovanovich.
———. 1968. Between past and future: Eight exercises in political thought. New York:
Viking.
———. 1951/1966. The origins of totalitarianism. 3rd ed. New York: Harcourt Brace.
———. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious life. The powers of mourning and violence. London:
Verso.
Butler, Judith, and Adriana Cavarero. 2005. Condizione umana contro “natura.”
Micromega 9: 25–35.
Dean, Jodi. 2005. Evil’s political habitat. Redescriptions 9: 51–79.
Disch, Lisa Jane. 1994. Hannah Arendt and the limits of philosophy. Ithaca and
London: Cornell University Press.
Guaraldo, Olivia. 2001. Storylines. Politics, history and narrative from an Arendtian
perspective. Jyväskylä: SoPhi Academic Books.
———. n.d. Disobedient state and faithful citizen: Re-locating politics in the age of
globalization. In The Ashgate research companion to democratisation in Europe
(Politics, concepts and histories), ed. K. Palonen, T. Pulkkinen, and J. M. Rosales.
London: Ashgate.
Klein, Naomi. 2004. The year of the fake. Nation, January 26, http://www.thenation
.com/doc/20040126/klein.
Mann, Bonnie. 2006. How America justifies its war: A modern/postmodern aesthet-
ics of masculinity and sovereignty. Hypathia 21 (4): 147–63.
Mueller, John. 2005. The Iraqi syndrome. Foreign Affairs (November/December):

44–54.
Salter, Lee. 2005. Problems of politics, media and truth: The BBC’s representation of
the invasion of Iraq. Paper presented at the symposium Truth, Representation,
Politics, May 25–27, University of Verona, Italy.
Notes
1. For a compelling analysis of the “war on terror” as characterized by a “masculine
postmodern aesthetics,” see the article by Bonnie Mann, “How America
Justifies its War: A Modern/Postmodern Aesthetics of Masculinity and
Sovereignty” (2006).
2. In an article, “The Year of the Fake,” which appeared in the Nation on January
26, 2004, Naomi Klein highlights how the phobia for facts has reached an
almost comical level of absurdity. According to an FBI alert, reports Klein,
police patrols—while carrying out routine investigations on drivers pulled over
for traffic violations—were asked to keep their eyes open for people carrying
almanacs around with them. Klein writes, “Why almanacs? Because they are
filled with facts . . . [a]nd according to the FBI Intelligence Bulletin, facts are
dangerous weapons in the hands of terrorists, which can use them to ‘assist with
target selection and preoperational planning’” (2004). Klein concedes that “the
blacklisting of almanacs was a fitting end for 2003, a year that waged open war
on truth and facts and celebrated forgeries of all kinds. This was the year when
fakeness ruled: fake rationales for war, a fake President dressed as a fake soldier
declaring a fake end to combat and then holding up a fake turkey.” What we are
dealing with is no longer a political use of lying, nor the imaginative use of fic-
tion in order to change reality, but a systematic abuse of fiction, which becomes,
eventually, a farce, and it is not by chance that Klein uses the word “fake.” Klein
concludes, “I’m no longer convinced that America can be set free by truth alone.
In many cases, fake versions of events have prevailed even when the truth was
readily available. . . . Bush is actively remaking America in the image of his own
ignorance and duplicity. Not only is it OK to be misinformed, but as the
almanac warning shows, knowing stuff is fast becoming a crime” (2004).
3. See, for a detailed analysis of public understanding of the invasion of Iraq, Lee
Salter, who, in a paper on the BBC representation of the war, reports some
interesting data. He writes that tenuous—and unlikely—links between the
Iraqi government and al Qaeda asserted by the U.S. government must have con-
tributed to some “70% of Americans believing, against ‘factual truth’, that the
Iraqi government had something to do with the terrorist attacks on New York
and Washington in September 2001 (Washington Post, 6 September 2003: p.
A01). Even by 2005 47% of Americans believed that former President Hussein
‘helped plan and support the hijackers’ [Harris Poll #14, 18 February 2005],
which was largely inferred in President Bush’s speeches [Christian Science
Monitor, 14 March 2003].” I would like to thank Lee Salter for having provided
me with the unpublished manuscript of this article.
4. On the political use of the term “evil” in presidential discourses from F. D.
Roosevelt to George W. Bush, and its progressively moral and religious connec-
tions, as well as vagueness, see the article “Evil’s Political Habitat,” by Jodi Dean
(2005, especially 69–75).
5. For a relatively critical assessment on the relationship between war and public
opinion in the United States during the wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, see
John Mueller (2005).
CHAPTER 12
Terrorized by Sound?
Foucault on Terror, Resistance, and Sonorous Art
Lauri Siisiäinen
Introduction
T
his chapter focuses on Michel Foucault’s late studies (in the early
eighties, until his death), on issues of the art of living (tekhnē tou
biou, un art de vivre) and aesthetics of existence (l’esthétique de l’exis-
tence). I intend to show how, in these studies, the issues of terror and fear—as
well as their “opposite pole,” courage and audacity—occupy a central political
significance for Foucault.
My aim here is not to evaluate the accuracy of Foucault’s reading of the
corpus of late ancient Greco-Roman philosophy, above all Stoic, Cynic and
Epicurean.1 My aim here is, rather, to show firstly how Foucault, using the
corpus of late ancient philosophy, presents an interesting conception on the
significance of terror and fear as the adversary (if not the most central adver-
sary) of the ethics and aesthetics of existence, and thus as central targets of
resistance and struggle. Fear and terror become, in this manner, an urgent
political issue, a relevant one also in Foucault’s own contemporary situation.
Secondly, I attempt to show that—surprisingly, perhaps, and contrary to the
established picture of Foucault as a thinker not much interested in issues of
“sensory difference”—he tackles, in this context, the question concerning the
particular significance of sound, voice, sonority, audition, and auditory effects,
that is, sonorous art. What is emphasized as well is the relation of these to logos
(discourse, speech, linguistic signification, etc.), their position in relation to
the ethics and aesthetics of existence and, finally, also their relation to fear
and terror.
226 ● Lauri Siisiäinen
Terror, the Adversary of Art and Aesthetics

It is quite clear that Foucault considers the overcoming and prevention of ter-
ror or fear to be of utmost importance in the art of living, in the care of the self
(le souci de soi). Actually, it is a central (if not the most central) aim and task
of “philosophizing,” that is, of the practicing of philosophical discourse and
philosophical thinking as constituting an art of living. Philosophical “know-
ing” is supposed to help us overcome fear and terror, and to protect us (or our
soul) from these states. Foucault writes, “It is a matter, says Demetrius, of
knowing that a human being has very little to fear in other human beings,
that he has nothing to fear in Gods . . . that he knows that ‘death generates
no anguish and terminates plenty’” (2001a, 226).
Of course, the actual content of philosophical knowledge and truth can
vary substantially. Whether it concerns human beings, nature (as phusiologia
does), or gods, what is expected from this truth and knowledge is precisely
protection against fear and terror, in other words, courage in face of all the pos-
sible dangers, hardships, sufferings, loss, and even (and especially) death,
whether they are of human or nonhuman origin.
Why then is the extermination, the “cure” from fear and terror, such an
important task, and what is the actual significance of truth and knowledge in
this task? First, let me briefly summarize what I consider to be the central
points in Foucault’s conception of the aesthetics of existence and art of living,
ones that provide the reasons for his taking fear and terror as such serious
adversaries.
As we know, what particularly interests Foucault in ancient Greco-Roman
philosophy is the significance of practicing philosophy (of the philosophical
way of life) as an art of living (tekhnē tou biou, un art de vivre), in other words,
as a set of arts, techniques, equipments, and exercises having life or existence,
as such, as its “object.” Moreover, life or existence is taken as an “object” to be
formed, shaped, and modified (not primarily as an object to be theoretically
contemplated). More specifically, this means that for Foucault, the primary
task of philosophy is to give a form (forma, une forme) to life or existence.
Philosophy in this sense is more than anything else an art of creating and
shaping a manner; a way of existing, a style of life, or a form of life. In other
words, the task is to make one’s life into a work (une œuvre) that is beautiful
and good (belle et bonne) (there is apparently no significant difference here
between “good” and “beautiful”), to make oneself into an art object (l’objet
d’art) or a work of art. This is the kernel of Foucault’s idea of the unity of
ethics—as self-relation, self-government, care of the self—and the aesthetics
of existence (l’esthétique de l’existence; 2001a, 405–6; 2001b, 1221–22,
1430, 1443).
Terrorized by Sound? ● 227
Furthermore, Foucault emphasizes that the liberty of artistic creation—

“the liberty and choice (la liberté et le choix) of the one who uses his tekhnē”
or “this liberty of the subject” (cette liberté du sujet)—is nothing less than a
necessary condition for the aesthetical-ethical creation of self. Secondly, the
aesthetic-ethical liberty of self-creation and self-government is given quite a
specific and, one might add, a rather demanding sense. Foucault equates the
liberty with self-sufficiency, or autarchy (autarkeis), with radical indepen-
dence or autonomy in the self-creation/self-government, both of the choices
and decisions, and of the actual practice/activity of creation (2001a, 230;
2001b, 1442).2
The liberty (la liberté) in this sense is, for Foucault, the ontological condi-
tion of ethics and aesthetics, whereas ethics and aesthetics are the reflective form
taken by this liberty. Perhaps there is no need to even stress that the liberty
Foucault is talking about, the autonomy and self-sufficiency of self-creation
and self-government, is liberty without any determinate content (it is inde-
terminate liberty). It does not mean the actualization of (or reconciliation
with) some pregiven law, essence, nature, identity, foundation, or origin of
the human being (universally or particularly). Liberty, as autonomy of artis-
tic creation and invention of the self, must be taken in a rather literal sense, as
autonomy from any such pregiven “facts.” And in the reflective use of this lib-
erty, in the care of the self, what in the end seems to be of the highest value is
precisely the protection, perfection, and practicing of this indeterminate,
artistic liberty. The care of the self, so it seems, becomes somewhat equal to the
care of liberty (le souci de la liberté) (not the “self ” as person, self-identity, etc.)
(Foucault 2001b, 1531–33; see Deleuze 1995, 92–118). The circularity in
Foucault’s argumentation is quite explicit and self-conscious.
Inimical to this liberty and, consequently, to the possibility of the aesthet-
ics of existence and ethics as such, are all the various states of passivity and
dependence, or different modalities of “being acted upon,” of being affected,
moved, influenced, “permeated,” overpowered, and governed by a power,
action, or event of some kind. Here, Foucault’s primary target is not the effect
or impact on the body as such, but rather the threat to the (active/creative,
ethical, and aesthetical) liberty of the subject. If an event of some kind is
allowed to permeate and overpower the subject, to influence and govern the
choices, decisions, and actions, the result is a state of passivity and depen-
dency where the liberty, the central condition of ethics and aesthetics, is anni-
hilated. It is important to notice that Foucault considers not only negative
influences (prevention, constraint, limitation, and so on), but also “positive”
modes of influence (such as stimulation, enticement, attraction, excitement,
solicitation) as leading to passivity and, hence, as inimical to liberty.
Consequently, the art of living and care of the self—in order to protect the
liberty—imply, or better yet, become inseparable from a continuous and
irreconcilable struggle (une lutte) of the subject against becoming intruded,
permeated, and overpowered by various actions or events, whether in positive
or negative manner (Foucault 2001a, 230, 306–8, 405).
To protect our liberty, we need to perform specific sorts of activities, with
their own arts, techniques, and equipment. Foucault believes that we need
philosophical discourse or logos, precisely as such equipment of protection and
preparation (paraskeuē). What this discursive protection/preparation does is
nothing less than make us sufficiently armed, in order to win the constant
struggle against the threats to liberty, to make possible our successful resis-
tance against our being influenced, affected, and overpowered (Foucault
2001, 230). With this agonistic character of philosophical discourse (and
philosophical art of living as such) in mind, Foucault can call the person
engaged in this discourse the athlete of the ancient spirituality, one who is con-
stantly engaged in “a struggle (une lutte), struggle in which his adversary is all
that may emerge from the exterior world: the event (l’événement). The
ancient athlete is an athlete of the event” (Foucault 2001a, 306–8; emphasis
added). In this struggle, so it seems, there is no other sort of equipment that
can really help us (at least not one mentioned by Foucault), except logos, that
is, the practice of philosophical discourse.
Without this discursive equipment at one’s disposal, the human being
remains vulnerable, unprotected, and unprepared in the face of the affective,
intrusive, and overpowering tendency of events. It is now that we explicitly
come back to the issue of terror and fear. Namely, Foucault mentions the
events of hardship, suffering, lack and loss (together with their counterpart,
pleasure and gratification), as forming the most serious threat—as well as the
“test”—to ethical-aesthetical liberty. As a result, the preparation for these
kinds of events, for our confrontation with them, needs special attention and
effort. The discursive equipment mentioned are, perhaps more than anything
else, needed to protect our liberty, our basic ethical-aesthetical self-mastery,
from becoming affected, intruded, permeated, troubled, overwhelmed, and
overpowered by hardships and sufferings:
This human being does not have at his disposal the discourse-aid (le discours-
secours), the discourse-recourse (le discours-recours), which would allow him
to react as he must, not to let himself be troubled, to remain master of himself.
And, in default of this equipment, he is going to be in a way amenable to the
event (perméable à l’événement). This event is going to enter into his soul (va
entrer dans son âme), troubling it (la troubler), affecting it (l’affecter), etc.
Hence, he will find himself in a state of passivity (en état de passivité) in
respect to this event. So, one must prepare oneself for the events that arrive,
one must prepare oneself for the hardships (se préparer aux maux). (Foucault
2001a, 450)
As it turns out, the actual threat to the freedom or liberty of the ethical-
aesthetical activity is to be found in our confrontation with events of hardship,
in accidents of various kinds, and in our reaction to these. To prevent our
becoming seized and overwhelmed, it is necessary to prepare ourselves with
discursive equipment. And, if we want to find names for these states of pas-
sivity and nonfreedom, in which the subject becomes intruded on by hard-
ship, these are nothing other than fear and terror. In the last instance, the real
and most serious adversaries of liberty, and of the possibilities of ethics and
aesthetics, are fear and terror. In the last instance, the discursive equipment
(logos, philosophical truth and knowledge) of preparation are indispensable
because they offer us protection by overcoming and doing away with fear
and terror. Foucault writes, “It would be the knowledge of nature, of phu-
sis . . . also in so far as it is susceptible of transforming the subject (de trans-
former le sujet) (who was, in face of nature, in face of what one had been
taught about the Gods and the things of the world, totally filled with fears
and terrors [tout rempli de craintes et de terreurs]) into a free subject (en un sujet
libre), a subject who will discover in himself the possibility and resource of
his inalterable and perfectly tranquil pleasure” (Foucault 2001a, 231;
emphasis added).
Resistance, Terror, and Courage

By now, I hope it has become clear that the issue of fear and terror—their
adversity to the very fundamental conditions of the aesthetics of existence, as
Foucault understands these in his late thought—is anything but irrelevant to
Foucault. Moreover, we also already know the central, political consequence
Foucault draws from the irreconcilable antagonism between the ethical-aes-
thetical liberty and fear/terror: the task of taking care of and protecting lib-
erty becomes intrinsically related to, even inseparable from, the practice of
resistance against fear and terror. Absence of fear and terror, of the inclination
toward these—in other words courage, intrepidity, audacity, unruliness, or
stubbornness—fostered by the appropriate discursive equipment and exer-
cises, are states in which the subject becomes “impermeable” and “unyield-
ing,” impossible to become seized and overwhelmed. In this manner,
courage—the absence of fear and terror—is a state that protects our autarchy,
our liberty of self-government and artistic self-creation, against various
attempts to influence and govern us. Foucault writes, “Phusiologia gives the
individual an audacity (une hardiesse), a courage, a sort of intrepidity allow-

ing him to confront not only the multiple beliefs (les croyances multiples) that
someone has wanted to impose on him, but equally the dangers of life and
the authority of those who want to order him about. Absence of fear (absence
de peur), audacity, a sort of stubbornness (sorte de rétivité), unruliness (fringance)
if you will: that’s what phusiologia will give to the individuals who learn it.
Secondly, these individuals will become autarkeis” (2001a, 230).
As we learn from this quotation, courage (absence of terror), and the
related discursive equipment, occupy a political significance: they allow us to
resist authority and orders, different attempts to govern us. Furthermore, the
significance of fighting against fear and terror is not limited (contrary to what
one might be inclined to suppose at first) to resistance against violence, or
against the modes of power operating through a threat of violence. The exer-
cises and equipment of overcoming terror occupy a far more central, far more
extensive significance for the practices of resistance, also for the ones targeted
against forms of power or governance operating in positive or productive fash-
ion, that is, by enticing, stimulating, soliciting, and so on. As the quotation
already shows, courage allows us to resist and struggle (successfully) against
what Foucault calls the imposition of beliefs. Although Foucault does not, on
this occasion, specify what sort of activity—of influence, of rhetorical per-
suasion or the like—he means by this, it is evident that it is a relation of posi-
tive/productive power. It is evident as well that to be able to resist this, what
is needed is (again) absence of fear and terror and, consequently, the appro-
priate discursive equipment.
Besides, imposition of beliefs is a practice and technique that can well be
(and of course historically speaking, has been) significant in the functioning
of those productive/positive, both individualizing and totalizing forms of
power, on which Foucault has focused some of his most influential genealog-
ical analyses. I am referring, above all, to Foucault’s studies on subjection (l’as-
sujettissement)—the power of fixing an individual to his/her “proper identity”
(la propre identité)—and pastoral power (le pouvoir pastoral), the power oper-
ating through the obligations and stimulations to self-examination, self-con-
sciousness, and “speaking the truth” about oneself (see 2001b, 953–80,
1046–51, 1614–18, 1624). To be sure, we should remember that it is not
only sovereign power that operates by means of terror: also (and perhaps even
most importantly in the modern context) normalization functions by invok-
ing, maintaining, and (so it seems) by making us internalize an aptitude for
terror and fear (I will return to this later).
So, there is all the more reason to see the protection from fear and terror
as a central task also in resistance against modern, disciplinary/normalizing
modes of power. If this is the case, does it mean that the protection against
fear and terror—and the related, indispensable discursive equipment of

“counterknowledge” and “counter truth,” as one might call these—are, in the
end, something similar to the general conditions of resistance and struggle as
such, just as various and heterogeneous as the contexts, situations, targets,
and agents of the struggles might be in other respects? Although Foucault
does not articulate this conclusion, it seems rather difficult to avoid it, if we
follow the line of argumentation presented earlier.
It is certainly clear that Foucault’s interest in the ethics and aesthetics of
the self, in the philosophical art of living, including their political sense, is
rather far from a strictly contextualist approach to history (to history of phi-
losophy, cultural history, history of ideas, or concepts). He never attempts to
hide the fact either that his study’s disposition, its problematics, its choice of
focus, among other things, might be conditioned by his own contemporary
situation, above all by certain political issues he (personally) considers of
utmost urgency. The reflection on the aesthetics and ethics of living, on the
techniques of the self, and on the equipment to overcome terror, is such an
urgent task “if it is true after all that there is no other point, the first and ulti-
mate, of resistance against political power, except in the relation of self to itself ”
(Foucault 2001a, 241; emphasis added). Because, according to Foucault’s
diagnosis, in the contemporary situation, the struggle against the forms of
subjection (les formes d’assujettissement) or against the submission of the subjec-
tivity (la soumission de la subjectivité) is the most urgent one; thus it is under-
standable that the resistance is situated above all in relation of the self to itself.
And, correspondingly, it is understandable as to why the (re)discovery and
elaboration of practices, techniques, and equipment of the self in particular
becomes such an urgent political task for Foucault (2001b, 1047–51).
In this manner, in his analyses of the art of living, Foucault is able to
approach the question of resistance in terms more specific than before to
tackle the issue of the constitution of the resistant subject(s), or of the resis-
tant subjectification, also at the level of its arts, techniques, and equipment.
And, as I have tried to show, it is precisely the necessity of protection against
fear and terror, as well as the exercises and equipment indispensable for this,
which occupy a major significance in Foucault’s thought on the matter.
Sonorous Art and the Terror of Sound

Next, after having examined Foucault’s basic juxtaposition between fear/ter-
ror and aesthetics of existence, it is possible to turn to the second question of
the chapter: what, then, is the particular role of the ear(s), sound, audition,
and sonorous art or music in this constellation? In the second part of the
chapter, it is this question that will occupy my attention. As I intend to show,
Foucault does indeed tackle the question about auditory perception and
sound in this context. This may appear surprising, though, as in general
Foucault is not perhaps portrayed as a thinker who would really have been
interested in this sort of thing.
When it comes to reading Foucault’s late studies on the art of living, on
aesthetics and the ethics of existence, the importance of discursive practices,
techniques, and equipment has been duly noticed. However, the issue of dif-
ferent “materialities” of media, the body of discourse (so to speak), and the
related different perceptual/sensory qualities (visual, auditory, etc.), and the dis-
tinctive arts and techniques of sensory effects, has not really been pondered in
this context. Perhaps it has been assumed that what actually matters for
Foucault in his discussion on the techniques, practices, and equipment of the
self, is the meaning-content or “message” of discourse, taken as somewhat
independent and abstracted from the sensory/perceptual specificities of
media. Hence, the resistant subjectification, the politics of fostering courage
and terminating terror, would be reducible to the level of linguistic significa-
tion, to meaning-generation, communication, interpretation, and so on (see,
for instance, Nehamas 2000, 157–88). Somewhat paradoxically, then, the
aesthetics (and ethics) of existence becomes (strangely) an aesthetics indiffer-
ent and neutral toward the question of perception, sensation, and to differ-
ences in the materials (if this is the case, is there any specifc reason to even
speak of “aesthetics” anymore?).3
Yet, I would like to argue, in the second part of the chapter, that the case
is not quite as simple as that. Foucault begins to reflect on the significance of
sound when he is discussing the relation between the art of living and paideia
(which is somewhat roughly the Greek word for education):
This paideia, it is what one notices among people, who are, as the translation
says, ‘verbal artists (des artistes du verbe)’. It is, to put it exactly: phōnēs ergastik-
ous. Ergastikoi, they are the artisans, the workers, that is to say, people who
work not for themselves, but to sell and make profit. And what is the object,
on which these ergastikoi work? It is phōnē, in other words, speech in so far as it
makes noise (la parole en tant qu’elle fait du bruit), but not in so far as it is logos
or the reason (mais non pas en tant quelle [sic!] est le logos ou la raison). They
are, I would say, the ‘makers of words (les faiseurs de mots)’. They are the peo-
ple who fabricate, to sell these, a certain number of effects that are bound to the
sonority of words (d’effects qui sont liés à la sonorité des mots), instead of being
people who work for themselves at the level of logos (au niveau du logos), which
is to say, of the rational frame of the discourse (de l’armature rationnelle du dis-
cours). So, one has paideia, defined . . . as that which is the object itself of these
artisans of the verbal noise (de ces artisans du bruit verbal). (Foucault 2001a, 229;
emphasis added)
We might notice here the way in which Foucault constructs a juxtaposi-

tion in this passage. On one side, there is the art of living, the care of the self,
and the ethical/aesthetical liberty, together with their indispensable discursive
equipment (logos) of preparation and protection, of fighting against terror
and fostering courage. In the first part of the chapter, the meaning of these
has already been examined in some detail. On the other side of the juxtapo-
sition, there is the constellation formed by paideia, together with the art as
well as the artists or artisans of verbal noise, that is, the art and artists of the
sonority of voice, and of the sonorous and auditory effects, as separate from
semantics, from linguistic signification and the meaning-content of dis-
course. Between these two poles, there seems to be a relation of conflict.
Now, let me focus on the latter side of the juxtaposition and try to clarify
what actually is at stake in the antagonism between the two. First, as Foucault
points out, there is the intertwinement of paideia and sound, sonorous/audi-
tory effects, and the art of these. In this manner, by equating the sonority
with noise—as forming the specific object of the artisans’ skill, and (appar-
ently) also the instrument or equipment of the dubitable sort of education—
Foucault highlights the juxtaposition between the two poles. On one side,
we have the sonorous/auditory event of voice or sound as such, without sig-
nification, with all the sonorous/auditory qualities (such as timbre, tone,
melisma, rhythm, volume, and so on) in all their independent richness and
variety. On the other side, we have logos or meaningful discourse, and the
voice that has been submitted to and conditioned by the demands of lin-
guistic signification.
Foucault seems to think that the sonorous art, or the art of noise, is the art
of mastering sound or voice precisely in all the rich variety of its sonorous
qualities and, consequently, mastering the rich variety of auditory effects on
the listener, without being satisfied (or interested) in just fulfilling the basic
needs of linguisitic signification (clarity in the articulation of understandable
speech, etc.). Hence, we can understand what Foucault means by equating
the art of sonority with the art of nonmeaning (or, at least, with linguistic
nonmeaning), namely, with the art of noise. Foucault does not further spec-
ify what he means by the sonority of voice or sound, or what sort of sonorous
qualities he actually believes to form the definite object of mastery of the
artists/artisans of noise. Perhaps we could just take sonority here in a rather
common sense of the term, including qualities such as volume, timbre, pitch,
inflection, melody, rhythm, resonance, attack, and so on. In this sense, what
Foucault calls the art of sonority approximates music, and vocal music in par-
ticular. Similarly, he does not specify the quality of the auditory effects pro-
duced by this art and its artists. All we know is that sonority—its art and its
effects—are separate from and irreducible to logos and, consequently, the

philosophical art of living.
How, then, should we understand the auditory/sonorous effects produced
by the artists of noise, and what is the reason for establishing such a strong
linkage between these effects and paideia, and juxtaposing these with the
philosophical care of the self? Perhaps the best known and most seminal
depiction of ancient Greek paideia, in which the significance of sound and
music is highlighted, can be found in various dialogues of Plato. Curiously
enough, however, when Foucault explicitly analyses the sense of paideia in
the Platonic dialogues, he does not take up the question of music there (or
the question of voice, sound, sonority, etc.), but instead concentrates, in
more general terms, on the significance of the Socratic imperative (know
yourself/connais-toi toi-même/gnōthi seauton). Only, when it comes to the
Pythagorean tradition, does Foucault briefly mention the fact that music
actually had importance there as a technique of purification (2001a, 43–76).
On the other hand, as we already saw, when Foucault does explicitly dis-
cuss (in a negative tone) sonorous paideia (the art of noise, etc.), juxtaposing
this with the aesthetic-ethical art of living, he does not further explicate what
his actual historical referent is. Yet, I see no reason to presume either that
Foucault’s remarks on paideia examined earlier, in which the sonorous tech-
niques are given such a central role, should exclude the reflections on this
topic to be found in Plato’s dialogues. Indeed, I see no reason why we should
not turn to the dialogues in order to further clarify the meaning of the
sonorous/musical art in education, its techniques and effects (as well as the
negative sense given it by Foucault), or what could be a textual source more
appropriate for this task. Nonetheless, in this chapter, I cannot focus on the
Platonic ideas of paideia in any more detail.
Modern Elaborations of the Ancient Model:

Sonorous Techniques of Fear and Terror
When Foucault, in L’Herméneutique du sujet (2001a), explicitly discusses the
significance of sonorous art in paideia, he does not specify what he means by
the sonorous/auditory effect, and how these are related to the practices of
education. However, this does not mean that Foucault would have been igno-
rant or uninterested in the more specific senses of paideia as the government
of affects. On another, earlier occasion (a discussion in 1977), he points out
the significance of Plato’s dialogues in their presentation of such rational tech-
nologies of power, which in a positive/productive (nonrepressive) manner take
control over the irrational realm (of instincts, drives, desires, impulses,
affects, etc.) (see Foucault 2001b, 396).
We can easily see how Foucault’s depiction of these “Platonic” techniques
or technologies of power (rational technologies of the irrational) relates to
some of the most central points in Foucault’s genealogical analyses of modern
forms of power. The significance of these sorts of technologies, if we want to
situate them in the framework of Foucault’s thought, is anything but a
curiosity of ancient political thought. The description of these technologies
that stimulate, direct, organize, instrumentalize, and “functionalize” drives,
desires, and instincts, that in turn produce aptitudes and dispositions, and by
these means take care of the usefulness and productivity (as a resource) of the
irrational, seems to fit well into Foucault’s well-known account of the basic
mechanisms of the modern disciplinary apparatus. We can also find one quite
concrete point of affinity between the Platonic account of mimetic paideia
(the musical-imitative governing over affects) and Foucault’s conception of
modern discipline. Discipline makes the individuals (their forces, their capac-
ities, their energies) useful and productive especially by shaping and organiz-
ing their manner or aptitude of orientation in time, the manner in which
their activity unfolds in the temporal axis. This is done by making them
internalize (educating and teaching them) an obligatory rhythm, a model or
pattern, which divides movements into punctual series of discrete, calculable
units, assigns them a definite direction and prescribes their order of succes-
sion (see Foucault 1979, 143, 151–52, 170, 187, 195–97, 200–3, 216–17;
2001c, 1486–90).
Also, in Foucault’s presentation, the technologies of the irrational—fur-
ther developments of the ancient “prototype” of paideia—would appear to be
particularly functional for the normalizing mode of modern power. As we
know, Foucault’s idea is that normalization aims at the correction and regu-
larization (making socially nondangerous) of the individual, not only (or
even primarily) at the level of actual behavior, but more essentially already
at the level of virtualities, that is, of possible behavior and capacities.
Normalization aims at detecting and correcting—and thus defending the
society against—the dangers to be found in the individual’s affects, impulses,
instincts/desires, motives, aptitudes, attitudes, and habits. Special attention is
focused on the direction and organization (or their lack) in the economy of
the irrational, precognitive, prelinguistic, and involuntary processes, and on
the “character” constituted by these. Hence, for normalization to be success-
ful, the rational technologies of the irrational are of particular importance
(see Foucault 1999, 23–24, 46, 84–86, 119–47; Foucault 2001c, 1461,
1471, 1474, 1482; Foucault 2001b, 452–64).
And now, we finally come back again to the issue of terror and fear. As
Foucault insists, both fear and terror have quite a significant role to play in
normalization as well. The force of a norm (and of law made to function as a
norm), the effectivity of guaranteeing compliance or conformism together
with the concomitant difficulty of resistance or subversion rests (at least for a
significant part) on the affects of terror and fear. Not, however, on the fear
and terror of sovereign violence, on the fear of punishment or anything of the
sort. Instead, the force of the norm rests on the fear, terror, and aversion
related to and aroused by the abnormal and socially dangerous as such, that
is, by the criminal, the pathological, the perverse, the subversive behavior,
affect, desire or person/character (without leaving any need for an exterior
threat of punishment or sanction). The technologies of the irrational—
among which the sonorous art has already been given its significance—are
precisely the ones used to provide the norm with this “motivating” force of
internalized fear and terror, to relate perversity to danger, fear, and terror
(Foucault 1999, 33; Foucault 2001b, 139).
If paideia is understood as something like the prototype of the power over
the irrational, it is not surprising that Foucault should construct the juxtapo-
sition, in which we find, on one side, the ethics/aesthetics of existence with
its protective discursive equipment (logos), and, on the other side, paideia, with
its arts and techniques of the irrational, the art of noise and sonorous/audi-
tory effects. As it has been emphasized, the equipment of true discourse is
needed to protect us—our liberty of self-creation and self-government—from
terror, and by these means to make us resistant to various attempts at govern-
ing us. In opposition to such discursive equipment, as we have noticed,
paideia with its sonorous arts, techniques/technologies seems to have its role
precisely in the affective government of the “soul”: “so, the function of phu-
siologia is to paraskeuein, to give the soul the equipment necessary for its com-
bat (son combat), for its objective and for its victory. As such, it is opposed to
paideia” (Foucault 2001a, 230).
Interestingly, when it comes to fostering courage—the absence of terror
that makes us resistant, unyielding, impermeable, and unruly—the sonorous
arts and techniques (in rhetoric or music) do not seem to have anything pos-
itive to offer. They can only stimulate, direct, organize, and shape our apti-
tude for pleasure and suffering, and the related aptitudes for fear and terror,
thus in the end only maintaining or enhancing our submission to these pas-
sive affects. And, as it turns out, it is precisely with paideia, not with the dis-
cursive protection of aesthetic liberty, that Foucault so strongly relates the art
of sonority, the art of noise, and the production of sonorous/auditory effects.
Sonority is not given any positive function when it comes to taking care of
and protecting our liberty, to overcoming fear and terror, and to embracing
the arts of resistant subjectification. It appears as if music were, in somewhat
essential terms, depicted as the art that can only serve apparatuses of power,
not practices of resistance and freedom (a conclusion not exactly coherent
with Foucault’s basic ideas of genealogy; see, e.g., Foucault 2001c, 1004–24).
To this, I would like to add that the affinities between paideia and mod-
ern discipline/normalization can be found not only at the general level of
objects, goals, and strategies (in the control of the irrational, etc.). Moreover,
we could speak of modern elaboration/variation of the ancient model of
paideia (more or less explicitly, of course) also when it comes to the specific
technologies of power being used in this “positive” control of desires/
instincts. I am speaking of the use of music and sonorous techniques more
generally in modern discipline and normalization (albeit Foucault himself
does not really argue this point explicitly). There are various historical exam-
ples of the significance of musical/sonorous techniques of affective control,
even surpassing the significance of linguistic and visual techniques, in differ-
ent phases of development of modern forms of power. And, to be sure, the
examples I refer to here could be considered as being quite central also in the
light of Foucault’s genealogical studies.
First, I could point out various (rather well-known) examples of the
importance of music in the history of the Renaissance and the modern art of
war and military discipline, with the strong homage paid to the ancient mod-
els (see for instance the discussion of Machiavelli 1989, 621). Moreover, one
could take the French Revolution and the explicit attempt of the Jacobin gov-
ernment to return to the Greek and Roman models on the use of certain
musical modes, rhythms, and instruments in order to generate and maintain
a passionately patriotic, militant, self-sacrificial, and law-respecting citizenry
of the new Republic (see Johnson 1995, 116–53). Or, going ahead still fur-
ther in history, I could point out how in the modern psychological/psychi-
atric discourse and practice (in Foucault’s terms psy-function, la fonction psy),
music, and in particular rhythm and volume, has been given significance as a
mimetic instrument for controlling the normality and abnormality of indi-
viduals, as defined in terms of the order of durations, dynamics, and intensi-
ties of both bodily and mental processes (see, e.g., Condon 1986, 55–57,
58–75; Evans 1986, 266–73; Rider and Eagle 1986, 229–42). The ancient
musical paideia is, perhaps, not so remote and alien to us after all.
As we know, in his analyses of discipline and normalization Foucault’s
explicit focus is, in general, rather exclusively on the visual/optical (pan-opti-
cal) or discursive techniques, which makes him vulnerable to accusations of
certain visual bias, and of ignorance concerning the potentials and actual
historical significance of other sorts of techniques of power.4 However, as we

have seen, when it comes to paideia, Foucault does acknowledge the central
significance of the art of sound, sonority and sonorous/auditory effects,
although, admittedly his explicit discussion on this point remains rather
scarce and limited to the historical context of ancient Greco-Roman culture.
Conclusion: Philosophers and the Terror of Sound

In this manner, Foucault actually does acknowledge the possibility, as well as
the actual historical role, of sonorous (and also musical) power. On this basis, I
consider the charge of Foucault’s ignorance of the political potential and sig-
nificance of sonority (and music) to be, to say the least, too harsh and cate-
gorical. For its part, this fact also requires us to revise the established portrait
of Foucault as a thinker with an exclusively visual or linguistic focus, as one
who denies or ignores the political potentiality of the use of sound, sonority,
auditory perception, and music, together with the historical significance of
these. Thus, the possibilities opened for sonorous genealogies, for political
genealogies of music, are only waiting to be actualized.
As we have seen, Foucault’s approach to the sphere of sonority and audi-
tion appears to have a rather strong negative quality to it. The art, technology,
and equipment of sound and voice, music, and auditory effects (and also
rhetoric, in so far it deals precisely with auditory effects) seem to be suitable
only to subjecting us to pleasure, suffering, and, most importantly, to fear
and terror. In this chapter, it has been my intention to show that, for
Foucault, fear and terror are perhaps the most serious adversaries of the ethi-
cal/aesthetical liberty of the creation of self as a work of art. Consequently, pro-
tection from terror is also an urgent (if not the most central) task, if we intend
to take care of this liberty. Apparently, the sonorous/auditory technologies
cannot help us in “taking care of ourselves.” In Foucault’s opinion, the latter
task appears to be reserved exclusively to the discursive equipment, to logos.
Does this indeed mean that sonority and audition are defined by a list of
“functions” (also political functions), which themselves are not understood as
politically constituted, contestable, and historically changeable (contingent),
but instead as something like prepolitically given, inherent, and invariable?
I’m referring to the presupposition of the inherent passivity of audition and
the “ear,” and of the overwhelming, penetrating, and affective “natural
power” of sound and music?
This presupposition has certainly been a popular one throughout the his-
tory of Occidental philosophy, variations of it ranging from Plato to diver-
gent modern philosophers, such as Hegel, Nietzsche, and Bergson, all the
way to Phenomenology and even to thinkers labeled poststructuralist. It is, so

it seems, the adoption of this idea that has also led, as one might say, to the
common reaction of fear and terror by the philosophical tradition in respect
to audition, sound, and music, to fear and terror about the threat posed by
music to subjectivity, liberty, and self-mastery (of course, those hoping for the
liberation from the rational/autonomous subject have celebrated music for
the very same reasons). Is it not strange that Foucault should, in the end (con-
trary to his own basic orientation), uncritically succumb to this idea of a fun-
damental (ontological, one could say) threat, fear and terror of music,
without any attempt to politicize it, or to even reflect on the possibilities of
different and conflicting political uses of music, sound, sonority and so on?
Actually, I believe that this is not all Foucault had to say on the issue, but to
this question I must return on another occasion.
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———. 2001a. L’Herméneutique du sujet. Cours au Collège de France. 1981–1982.
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———. 2001b. Dits et écrits II, 1976–1988. Paris: éditions Gallimard.
———. 2001c. Dits et écrits I, 1954–1975. Paris: éditions Gallimard.
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———. 1979. Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan.
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Hadot, Pierre. 1992. Reflections on the notion of the “cultivation of the Self.” In
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———. 1994. Downcast eyes: The denigration of vision in twentieth-century French
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———. 1989. In the empire of the gaze: Foucault and the denigration of vision in
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———. 1988. The rise of hermeneutics and the crisis of ocularcentrism. Poetics Today
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Nehamas, Alexander. 2000. The art of living: Socratic reflections from Plato to Foucault.
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Notes
1. For the criticism of Foucault’s interpretation targeted, among other things, on
his tendency to aestheticize, I recommend a review chapter by Pierre Hadot
(1992).
2. Foucault’s elaboration of this conception of aesthetic-ethical liberty—in partic-
ular its relation to Nietzsche—in his late thought has been discussed quite a lot
(see Foucault 2001b, 1211–12, 1436–37; see also Nehamas 2000, 157–88). To
point out certain differences between Nietzsche and Foucault on these issues
(and to problematize Foucault’s self-proclaimed “Nietzscheanism”) see, for
instance, Nietzsche 1950, §296; Nietzsche 1974, 25/385; Nietzsche 1969 (Ecce
Homo, Warum ich so gute Bücher Schreibe), §4.
3. Of course, one (prejudiced) reason for regarding these issues as being unimpor-
tant for Foucault might be the fact that they have been so closely related to
Phenomenology. Interestingly, Bennett (1996) speculates on whether Foucault’s
techniques of the self might have a special proximity with the “hand” and the
sense of touch, but the grounds for this conclusion remain somewhat obscure.
4. For examples of the strong visual emphasis in Foucault’s genealogies of modern
power (see, e.g., Foucault 1979, 187, 200; Foucault 2001c, 718, 741; Foucault
2001b,190, 197–98, 373–74; Foucault 2003, 71, 75–79, 103–4, 248,
300–301; Foucault 1999, 41–44). For the various critical arguments accusing
Foucault either of a reductive/essentialist account of vision, or of his neglect of
the role of audition and other senses (see Howes 2005; Law 2005; Sterne 2003,
14–19, 127–28; Schmidt 2003; Schafer 2003; Jay 1988, 307–26; Jay 1989,
175–205; Jay 1994, 6–7, 1–26, 381–416, 587–95; Jay 1996, 1–15; Flynn
1993, 273–86; Bal 1993, 379–405).
Index
9/11, 1–5, 8–9, 12, 65, 74, 97. See also And this, too, 40
September 11, 2001 animals, treatment of, 133
Anthelme, Robert, 118
abstract political art, 41–44, 46, 49, 76 Apel, Dora, 33
Abu Ghraib, 50 architecture, 5, 148, 155–56
Abu Ghraib 80, 37 Arendt, Hannah, 17–18, 97, 99, 106–7,
Abu Ghraib 81, 37 109–10, 207–14, 216–19
acting out, 3, 139–40 on modern political lie, 109–10
working through, 1, 13, 17, 112, 139 Aristotle, 141, 204, 210, 218
advertisements, 178–79 Art and Fear, 42
aesthetics, 13, 17, 19, 42–43, 48, 52, art and politics, 16, 57, 71, 75, 147–48,
62–63, 65, 69–70, 72, 74–75, 77, 169
222, 227–29, 231, 233, 234 art of living, 227–28, 230, 233–36
aesthetics and politics, 42, 63 audiovisual
aesthetics of existence, 227–29, 231, television and radio, 159
233, 238 audition, 227, 233, 240–41, 243
Afghanistan, 4–5, 8, 32, 62 Aura, 11, 13, 61–65, 67–75, 77, 79
Africa, 130, 137–38 Auschwitz, 14–15, 99, 106, 108, 110,
Aftermath, 63 112–13, 117, 119–20, 124
Agamben, Giorgio, 14, 72, 99, 105–9 Auster, Paul, 6
on biopolitics, 108 author, 1, 5, 7, 10, 15, 32–33, 84,
on Levi’s paradox, 105–8 89–91, 93–94, 99, 101, 113, 117,
on the state of exception, 106–7 119, 125–27, 129–32, 138–43,
agitation, 166, 168, 175–76 157, 163, 189
Alexander II, 88 author-as-character, 130
Alexander, Jeffrey C., 13, 42, 57 authoritarian, 16–17, 149–50
All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The autobiography, 113, 119–20, 122,
Experience of Modernity, 10 125–26
Al Qaeda, 1, 32, 83–84, 222
amateur artists, 169 Babel, 2
America, 5, 8–9, 16, 213, 217, 222 Bakunin, Michael, 42, 86–88, 90–91,
American Civil War, 26, 29 94
Andries, Alexandru, 159 Bal, Mieke, 131
And there’s nothing to be done, 36 Bar Hama, Avner, 50
244 ● Index
Barthes, Roland, 13, 19, 61, 67, 99 censorship, 148, 157–58

Bashir, Mohammed, 32 Chambre claire, La, 61
Battle of Chile, The, 158 Chaplin, Charlie, 123
Baudrillard, Jean, 62, 64–65, 67 character functions, 130
Bellos, David, 123, 125–26 Chen, Xiaomei, 175, 178
Bely, Andrei, 16, 22 Chic Point, 46
Benjamin, Walter, 11, 13, 28, 57, children, 3, 50, 62, 84, 90, 119, 121,
61–72, 74–75, 79 132, 136–37, 139, 142, 172,
Berest, Dganit, 52–53, 57–58 175–78, 185–88, 192, 195–96, 199
Bergson, Henri, 240 Chile, 12, 16, 147, 149, 151–59, 163,
Berlin, Isaiah, 204 213
Berman, Marshall, 10, 16, 19 China, 11, 151, 166–67, 169, 181, 208,
Biao, Lin, 170 213
Bin Laden, Osama, 74, 84 Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 17,
Black Painting, 179–80 165–69, 179, 181
Blanchot, Maurice, 72 Chomsky, Noam, 84
Bleiker, Roland, 34 Cicero, 204
Blood Test No. 5, 54 cinema, 58, 68, 75, 148, 155, 157–58
Bolsheviks, 88 Cioroianu, Adrian, 156, 163
Botero, Fernando, 12–13, 25, Clemenceau, Benjamin Georges, 210
34–37, 40 Coetzee, J. M., 9, 15, 129–30, 138,
Bredekamp, Horst, 34 142–43
Brockmeier, Jens, 2, 9 Cohn, Dorrit, 125
Bronze Horseman, The, 9 Collier, Simon, 149
Brothers Karamazov, The, 93 Communism, 150, 160, 208, 213
Bullfight, 30 Communist Manifesto, The, 10
Burke, Edmund, 199 community, 12–13, 16–18, 41–42,
Buruma, Ian, 92 72–73, 109, 132, 185–86, 188–92,
Bush government, 1 194–200, 202, 220–21
Bush, George W., 217, 222–23 saving the community-saving the soul
Bus Line 32a, 48 relation, 185, 189, 196–99, 202
Butler, Judith, 18, 219–20 Condottiere, La, 120
Confucius, 167
Callot, Jacques, 39 Conrad, Joseph, 211
Calm Reigns in All the Country, The, 158 content/form, 48
Camera Lucida, 13, 61 Cotter, Holland, 34–35
campaigns, 169–70, 172 courage, 10–11, 78, 227–28, 231–32,
Capa, Robert, 29 234–35, 238
Carroll, Noël, 203 Crime and Punishment, 93
Caruth, Cathy, 123 Crimean War, 29–30
Cavarero, Adriana, 18, 218, 220 Crime fiction, 7
Ceauşescu, Nicolae, 12, 149–57, critique, 5, 17, 28, 30–31, 65–68, 72,
159–60, 163 74, 77, 79, 94, 211
Celan, Paul, 115–16, 128 Critique of Judgment, 211
Index ● 245
cruelty, 29, 35, 133, 135–36, 143–44, Egoyan, Atom, 17, 185, 203
168 Eichmann, Karl Adolf, 212
cult of the leader, 160 Elderfield, John, 28, 30, 34–35
cultural policies, 147, 153 Elizabeth Costello, 15, 129, 131, 142
Cultural Revolution, 11, 16–17, Ellis, Brett Easton, 9
165–67, 170, 172–73, 175, 179–81 Ellsberg, Daniel, 207–8
cultural trauma, 13, 41–42, 46, 51, 57 Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, 25
Engels, Friedrich, 10
Dadaism, 3, 70 Escena de Avanzada, 155, 163
Danner, Mark, 40 Espèces d’espaces, 44
Danto, Arthur, 31, 33 Ethical Irrationality of the World (rela-
death, 4–6, 8, 29, 34, 43, 55, 62, 65, tion between ends and means), 190,
68, 70, 75, 77, 80, 84–85, 87, 104, 194–95, 199
106, 108, 112, 120, 122–23, ethics
132–35, 140, 150, 153, 168, 180, classical, 189, 191, 193, 196, 202–4
186, 227–28 political, 189, 191, 194, 196–97,
DeLillo, Don, 2–5, 7, 9–10 200–204
depoliticization, 198 ethics and politics, 134, 185–86, 189,
Derrida, Jacques, 115 199–201, 204
Desastres de la Guerra, Los, 36, 39 ethics of conviction, 190
development, 124–25, 149, 154–55, ethics of responsibility, 197, 202
158, 167–68, 172, 214, 237, 239 ethnic cleansing, 6
Devils or Demons, The, 83. See also ethos, 64, 66–67, 74, 77, 143
Possessed, The Evans, Harriet, 166, 171
Diary of a Writer, The, 89, 92 evil, 14–15, 70, 73, 85, 92–95, 97–98,
dictation secretary, 142 102, 104, 106–8, 130, 135,
dictator, 16, 123, 147, 151, 160 138–41, 185–86, 189–91, 193–95,
dictatorship, 12, 16, 147–49, 151–52, 197, 200–201, 204, 212, 214–15,
155, 158–60 223
didactic function, 170 lesser evil/greater evil relation, 191,
direct media art, 41, 46, 48, 52, 55–56 197, 201, 204
Disapparition, 119 Execution of Emperor Maximilian, The,
Disgrace, 129, 142 12, 26–27, 34
Doctor Strangelove, 213
Dolto, Françoise, 124–26 Falling Man, 2, 10
Donald, Stephanie, 166, 171 Fatelessness, 117–18
Dongzi, Pan, 177 Father, 55
Dostoievski à Manhattan, 83 Fathers and Sons, 86
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Mikhail, 9, 14, 16, fear, 13, 33, 42–43, 51, 55, 62–64, 68,
22, 83–84, 87–95 73, 75, 77, 87, 102, 118, 150, 152,
Duo, Duo, 173 160, 165–66, 175–76, 178,
180–81, 195, 219, 227–28,
Eaglestone, Robert, 114, 116–19, 125 230–33, 236, 238–41
Eagleton, Terry, 83 Felman, Shoshona, 114, 116
246 ● Index
Female Suicide Bombers for Male Suicide Good Terrorist, The, 6

Bombers, 49 governing tool, 174
Feng, Lei, 177 governmental control, 16, 165–66, 173,
Fenton, Roger, 30 175, 178, 181
Fernando Botero: Abu Ghraib, 34–35 governmental terrorism, 165
fiction, 7, 9, 62, 88–89, 93, 113–16, Goya, Francisco de, 27, 30, 36, 39
118, 122–26, 129–31, 141, 157, Great Dictator, The, 123
211–18, 220–22 Great Leap Forward, 169–70
film, 1, 4, 9–11, 17, 58, 68, 72, Greco-Roman, 189
157–58, 185–86, 188, 191, culture, 240
193–94, 199, 201 philosophy, 227–28
five black categories, 174 Greenwald, Alice, 40
flesh-and-blood author, 130, 139 Guernica, 29
focalization
point of view, 7, 115, 118, 128, Hamid, Mohsin, 8–9
130–31, 141 Heartney, Eleanor, 35
Foer, Jonathan Safran, 4–5 Heart of Darkness, 211
folk art, 167, 172 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 209,
fortuna, 190, 195, 199, 204 240
Foucault, Michel, 18, 22, 65, 74, Heidegger, Martin, 62
227–41, 243 Heiman, Michal, 54–55, 58
Four Olds, 170 Here: Remembering 9/11, 40
Fragments, 117 Hersh, Seymour, 32, 35–36
France, 25–26, 119, 125, 211 Hirsch, Marianne, 28
Franz Joseph, 25 Hirst, Damien, 42–43, 56–57, 62, 70,
Freiman, Tami Katz, 48 79–80
French Revolution, 85, 239
historiography, 18, 99, 114–16
Freud, Sigmund, 123–25
Hitler, Adolf, 97, 138–40
Fulbrook, Mary, 152
Holding 13, 55, 58
Fundamentalism, 14
Holding 3, 55, 58
Fuss, Diana, 114, 117
Holocaust, 14–15, 22, 49–51, 63, 65,
genealogy, 239 97–100, 114–22, 125–26, 129,
Genette, Gérard, 130 133, 135–36, 139, 142
genocide, 14, 97–99, 103–4, 110 as a modernist event, 14, 99–100
Germany, 14, 50, 69, 210, 212 Holocaust and the Postmodern, The, 114
Gheorghiu-Dej, Gheorghe, 150–51 Holocaust victims, 116, 119, 133, 136
Gil, Carmit, 44, 48 Holy Terror, 83
Glamorama, 9 Hongtu, Zhang, 181
Glucksmann, André, 83–85, 90, 94 Horesh, Yoav, 49, 58
good, 14–15, 73, 85, 94, 97–98, 102, horror, 4, 6, 8, 13, 43, 46, 48–49, 54,
106–8, 170, 185–86, 189–202, 204 56, 61, 63–64, 77, 90, 102,
common good-individual good rela- 116–17, 123, 133, 135, 138–39,
tion, 190–92, 195, 197–200, 202 186
Index ● 247
How Russia Shaped the Modern World, Janiak, David, 3, 10

87 Jesus, 91–92, 138
Hulan, Liu, 177 jihad, 48
humanism, 93, 137 Johnson, Lyndon B., 208
humanities, 130, 137 Juarez, Benito, 25–26
humanity, 37, 85, 90, 142–43, 189 Judeo-Christian, 189, 191, 204
Hussein, Qusay, 46 July Theses, 151, 157
Hussein, Saddam, 35, 44, 46, 48, 222
Hussein, Uday, 46 Kafka, Franz, 67
Hustvedt, Siri, 9 Kant, Immanuel, 65–66, 72, 211
Kashmir, 2, 5–6
identification, 13, 28, 36, 69–70, 74, Kertesz, Imre, 117–18
114–19, 125–26, 128, 131, 143, Khalil, Abdul Karim, 37
178 kitsch, 48
Identification Papers, 114 knowledge, 7, 22, 27–28, 31, 35, 57,
If This is a Man, 100, 103 65, 67–68, 72, 79, 104, 118, 125,
image, 2, 6, 10–11, 13, 17, 21–22, 201, 228, 231
29–30, 32–34, 36, 40, 42–46, Koren, Ziv, 53–54
48–59, 61–64, 66–69, 73–79, 109,
Kratsman, Miki, 44–45, 50, 58
111, 114, 137, 141, 147, 156, 161,
Kraus, Karl, 64
165, 169–70, 176, 181, 212–14,
Kritzman, Lawrence D., 120
217, 219, 222
Kubrick, Stanley, 213
imagination, 7, 22, 118, 125–26,
Ku-Klux-Klan, 52
134–35, 137, 210–12
I’m Here, 52–54 Lacan, Jacques, 123–25
implied author, 139, 143 LaCapra, Dominick, 3, 20, 99, 108,
Inarrítu, Alejandro Gonzales, 1 112, 128, 138–39
India, 4, 35
Landsberger, Stefan R., 177
integral testimony, 14, 99, 103
Lang, Berel, 99, 116
integral witnesses, 104–5
language, 2, 5, 56, 67, 84, 99, 101, 107,
Intepretation of Dreams, The, 123
118, 129, 133–34, 139, 157–58,
In the Shadow of No Towers, 1
199, 208–9
Intifada, 13, 41, 48–49, 58
Laub, Dori, 114–15
intransitive writing, 18, 99–100, 102–3
Lebanon, 62
intransitive aspects of Levi’s text, 102
Le Bon, Gustave, 42
Iraq, 32, 34, 36–37, 39, 62, 217,
221–23 Lejeune, Philippe, 124
irrational, 68, 70, 192, 237–39 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, 6, 168
I Saw This, 40 Lessing, Doris, 6–7
Israel, 13, 41, 43–44, 49, 51, 76 Levi, Primo, 14, 97, 99–100, 107, 110,
Israeli art, 41, 43, 49–50, 52, 56–58 118
Leviathan, 6
Jacobi, Friedrich, 85 Levinas, Emmanuel, 72
Jahn, Manfred, 7 Lewis, Bernard, 84
248 ● Index
lie, 16, 109–10, 115, 187–88, 194–96, Mesnard, Philippe, 105

198, 210, 216–17. See also lying; Mexico, 25–27
truth Min, Anchee, 177–78
Life of Pi, The, 135 Miramón, Miguel, 26, 28
literature, 1, 7, 9, 11, 14, 18–19, 57, Misères et les Malheurs de la Guerre, Les,
63, 70, 98, 114, 117, 119, 125–26, 39
148, 157, 167–68, 180 model books, 171
Little Red Book, The, 174 Moneda, La, 147
logos, 227, 230–31, 234–36, 238, 240 music, 18, 67, 148, 155, 157–59, 163,
lying, 15, 17–18, 98, 109, 194, 196, 233, 235–36, 238–41
207–10, 212–15, 218, 222. music and paideia (Platonic concept of ),
See also lie 234–40
Lyotard, Jean-François, 72 Musil, Robert, 12, 18
Machiavelli, Niccolò, 17, 185–86, Nadezhdin, Nikolai, 86
189–91, 194, 196–98, 201–2, 204,
Nagel, Thomas, 134
210, 239
Napoleon III, 25–26
Maistre, Joseph de, 85–86
narrative, 3, 6, 9, 28, 32, 62, 73, 85,
Man/Dog Teams, 51
93–94, 102, 114–16, 118–20, 126,
Manea, Norman, 147, 157
130, 144, 220
Manet, Edouard, 12, 25–28, 30–31,
narrativization, 126
34–36, 39
narratology, 19
Man from Abu Ghraib, A, 37
Manhattan, 2–4, 83 narrator, 5–6, 8–9, 15, 117–18,
Mann ohne Eigenschaften, Der, 12 120–23, 126, 131–32, 141
Mao badge, 174 nationalism, 4, 88, 149–50, 152, 154,
Mao’s portrait, 174–75, 180 202
Mao Zedong, 11, 17, 156, 166, 168, Nazi genocide, 14, 98–99, 103–4
170, 172–76, 178, 180–81 Nazi Germany, 14, 50
Margalit, Avishai, 92 Nazis, 49–51, 105–7, 111, 134
Marks, Stephen, 87 Nechaev, Sergei, 86–91, 94
Martel, Yann, 135 New Year pictures, 167–68
Marx, Karl, 10, 155 New Yorker, The, 35–36
Massacre in the Cathedral, 36 New York Review of Books, The, 207
Master of Petersburg, The, 9 New York Times, The, 35, 37, 207
Mauss, 119 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 65, 84, 98, 107,
Maximilian, 25–28, 35–36, 39 238, 241
McEwan, Ian, 9, 131 novel, 2–9, 14–16, 22, 83–84, 86–91,
McKenna, Andrew, 90 93–94, 116, 119–20, 129–30, 138,
Mejía, Tomás, 26, 28 141–43, 174, 203
Mémorial Diplomatique, Le, 26 Nussbaum, Martha, 114
Mencius, 167
mental terror, 16–17, 165–66, 176, 179 Obeyed, Ramez, 52
mental violence, 175–76, 180 Occidentalism, 84, 92
Index ● 249
Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its political art, 12, 19, 26–27, 41–44, 46,
Enemies, 92 49, 69–70, 74, 76
Om el Phaem, 45 political judgment of the genocide, 98
Ondaatje, Michael, 2, 9 political language, 199
On Photography, 39, 63 political logic, 189, 191
Orientalism, 84 political power, 151, 154, 190, 233
origins, 46, 50, 65, 67–69, 75, 77, politics, 9, 12, 16, 18, 26, 29, 35,
84, 107 41–42, 57, 63–65, 68–75, 77, 79,
Origins of Totalitarianism, The, 107 85, 108–9, 134, 147–48, 153, 155,
167–69, 185–86, 189–91, 196,
painting, 11, 26–30, 34, 36, 39, 57, 70,
198–202, 204, 207, 209–10, 212,
156, 179–80
214, 216, 218–21, 234
paintings, 13, 27–31, 34–37, 39–40,
Populists (narodniki), 88
44, 156, 170–71, 179–80
positive role models, 167, 171, 177, 181
Pakistan, 4–5, 8
Palestine, 50 Possessed, The, 14, 83, 88–91, 93–94.
Palmer, Alan, 131 See also Devils or Demons, The
Pentagon Papers, The, 17, 207–9, posters, 16, 165–66, 169–81
212–13, 217 posttrauma, 46, 49
People’s Republic of China, 169 power, 3, 20, 36, 44, 49–50, 56, 73–74,
Perec, Georges, 4, 15, 44, 113, 119–26 97, 109–10, 114, 133, 136,
perpetrators, 6, 14, 32–36, 57, 65, 104, 140–41, 147–48, 150–54, 160,
135, 139, 142 169–70, 173–76, 190, 198,
Petersburg, 16 207, 209, 215, 229, 232–33,
Peter the Great, 21, 92 236–40, 243
Phelan, James, 130 Precarious Life, 219
photographs, Abu Ghraib, 13, 32–37 Prisonieros, Los, 159
potential to communicate emotions, 34 professional artists, 167, 179–80
Western discourse on Abu Ghraib propaganda posters, 16, 165–66,
photographs, 32–33 169–70, 178–79, 181
photography, 10–12, 25, 28–29, 31, Proust, Marcel, 211
58, 63 Pushkin, Alexander, 9, 21–22
aerial photography, 29
desensitizing effect of, 25, 31 Qing, Jiang, 171
war photography, 29 Quinzaine littéraire, 122
Picador is Unhorsed and Falls under the
Bull, A, 30 Rancière, Jacques, 63, 71–75, 77
Picasso, Pablo, 29 rational, 65, 67, 84, 189, 202, 216,
Pied Piper of Hamelin, The, 187–88 234, 236–37, 241
Pihlainen, Kalle, 114 Raz, Guy, 43–44, 48, 58, 63, 75–77
Pinochet, Augusto Ugarte, 12, 148–54, reading, 8–9, 11, 14, 17, 19–20, 30, 41,
156, 159–61 44, 67, 72, 93, 98, 101, 104, 106,
Pintilie, Lucian, 158 114, 116, 123–24, 127, 129,
Plato, 169, 204, 236, 240 141–42, 187, 227, 234
250 ● Index
realism, 5, 100, 130–32, 138, 150, 160, Skinner, Quentin, 204

169, 171–72 Slow Man, 142
reality, 2, 12, 16–17, 19, 43–46, 49, 52, Smith, Roberta, 37
55, 62, 64–66, 71, 94, 100, 102, socialist hero, 172
109, 111, 113, 115–16, 124, 159, socialist realism, 150, 160, 169
169–72, 175–77, 180–81, 190, socialist utopia, 166, 171, 176, 179,
199, 202, 208–20, 222 181
Recherce, 211 society, 16–17, 26, 35, 44, 51, 70, 74,
Reconstituirea, 158 89–90, 92, 121–22, 124, 149–50,
Red Guards, 175–76 152–57, 161, 167, 170, 172, 178,
red sun, 173 180–81, 237
Reeb, David, 44–46, 50, 58 Socrates, 204
Reflections on the French Revolution, 199 Sodaey, Merav, 48–49, 55, 58
regime, 16, 25, 34, 123, 147–61, Solomons, Doron, 55, 59
213, 219 sonorous art, 18, 227, 233, 235–36,
Reluctant Fundamentalist, The, 8 238
Remember! From Generation to Sontag, Susan, 19–20, 31, 39, 44, 63
Generation, 50 sound, 18, 134, 136, 161, 227, 233–36,
resistance, 1, 3–4, 18, 35, 75, 108, 116, 240–41
118–19, 132, 142, 147, 159, 227, Spanish Civil War, 29
230–33, 238–39 Spanish Soldier Drops Dead with a Bullet
revolutionary hero, 173 through His Head, July 12, 1937, 29
revolutionary literature and art, 168 spectator (subject position of ), 12, 25,
Riffaterre, Michael, 114, 126 30, 37, 64–65, 74, 139
Romania, 12, 16, 147, 150–55, 158, Spiegelman, Art, 1, 5, 9, 119
213 Spielberg, Steven, 117
Runia, Eelco, 11, 139 Stalin, Joseph, 156
Rushdie, Salman, 2, 4–7, 9 Stănescu, Nichita, 157
Russia, 14, 22, 85–94 Steiner, George, 116
Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 42
Saletti, Carlo, 105 stoicism, 204
Sater, William F., 149 Streicher, Julius, 50
Saturday, 9, 131 Stürmer, Der, 50
scar art, 167, 180 subject, 14, 18, 22, 39, 48, 65–66, 68,
Schindler’s List, 117 71, 79, 83, 94, 100, 115, 117, 131,
Schlegel, Friedrich, 85–86 158, 166, 169, 172, 198, 201, 216,
Schmitt, Carl, 106–7, 204 218–19, 229–31, 233, 241
September 11, 2001, 1–2, 42, 57, 62, suicide bombing(s), 3, 42–43, 49, 53
83, 89, 93, 149, 218–20. Swastika, 50–51
See also 9/11 Sweet Hereafter, The, 17, 185–86, 203
Se questo è un uomo, 118
Settlers, 50 Tartakover, David, 52–55
Shalimar the Clown, 4–5 temporality, 3, 61–63, 66–68, 70,
Shamir, Yitzchak, 50 73, 78
Index ● 251
terror, ix, 1–6, 9–19, 23, 41–44, 46, truth-teller (as politician), 109–10
48–50, 52–53, 55–58, 61–65, 68, Levi as a truth-teller, 14–15, 97–99,
73–74, 76–77, 81, 83–86, 89–90, 109–10
93–95, 97–98, 110–11, 116, 129, standpoint of the truth-teller, 109
137, 139, 143, 145, 149–50, 152, Tsar Alexander II, 88
161, 165–67, 172, 175–76, Turgenev, Ivan, 86
179–82, 205, 212–13, 222, TWA, 52, 57
227–28, 230–36, 238–41 Twin Towers, 2, 8, 42, 65, 218
terror (governmental), 11, 16–17, 145, Two Seconds, 43, 58, 63, 75–76
180, 182
Ullman, Micha, 42
terrorism, 1–2, 4–5, 7, 9, 14, 33,
United Nations Office on Drugs and
41–42, 56, 73, 83–86, 89–90,
Crime (UNODC), 165
93–94, 97–98, 110, 165–66, 181 unpolitical, 190
terrorist, 1–2, 4–9, 14, 22, 42–43, 48, untitled (Dganit Berest), 52
52, 56–57, 62, 65, 73, 83–84, 88, Updike, John, 7–8, 131
94, 131, 166, 181, 215, 218–19,
222 values, 10, 32–33, 69–70, 73–74, 84,
Terrorist, 8, 131 106, 152, 160, 167, 169, 172, 181,
testimonial, 5, 116, 155, 157 190–92, 197–98, 200–202, 216
theater, 73–74, 155, 157–58 fight for, 190, 198, 201–2
Theorien der deutschen Faschismus, 69 science, 190, 201
Third Reich, 97, 101, 133 Vie mode d’emploi, La, 119, 121, 123
time, 2, 5, 10–11, 14, 18–19, 22, 32, Vietnam, 207–8, 214–16, 223
42–43, 61–68, 71–73, 75–78, 85, violence, 1–2, 4, 11–14, 17–18, 29–31,
103, 111, 115, 161, 171, 179, 237 42, 55, 78, 85–87, 90–91, 94, 117,
Tismăneanu, Vladimir, 152 165–66, 168, 173, 175–76,
totalitarian, 2, 16–17, 97, 119, 147, 180–81, 190–91, 194–95, 198,
149–51, 154, 156, 212–13, 219 200, 202, 207, 214, 216, 218–21,
totalitarian governments, 2 232, 238
totalitarianism, 97–98, 107 Virilio, Paul, 42
visual arts, 11, 148, 155–56, 167, 170,
trauma, 1–3, 9, 11–13, 15, 17, 41–42,
180
46, 48–49, 51, 57, 102, 113, 120,
visual studies, 18
122, 124–27, 129, 135, 138–43,
Vogl, Joseph, 34
166
voice, 2, 18, 22, 35, 40, 92–93,
trauma, transitional, 138–39
99–102, 105–6, 126, 133, 140,
Treblinka, 133
142–43, 188, 227, 235–36, 240
truth, 14–16, 63, 65–66, 68, 74, 94,
98–99, 109–11, 113–14, 122–23, Wackstein, David, 50–51
126–27, 176–78, 185, 187–92, Waiting for the Barbarians, 129
194, 196, 210, 214, 216, 218, 222, Waked, Sharif, 46, 58
228, 231–33. See also lie; lying Wall, The, 52–53
Truth and Politics, 210 Washington Post, The, 207
252 ● Index
Weber, Max, 17, 185–86, 189–90, 194, witnessing the Holocaust, 98

196–98, 200–202 women, 5, 35, 48, 62, 172, 175,
Weinstein, Gal, 46–48, 51, 54 177–78, 216
Welcome to the Desert of the Real, 42 working through, 1, 13, 17, 112, 139;
Where are the Soldiers?, 45–46, 58 acting out, 3, 139–40
White, Hayden, 14, 98–100, 115, 118 World Trade Center Memorial (New
Wilkomirski, Benjamin, 117 York City), 40
Winkler, Gaspard, 120–21, 123, 125 World War I, 29, 210
witness, 6–7, 9, 33, 56, 98, 103–6, 108, World War II, 97, 119, 207, 213
110, 113, 115–16, 118–19, 125, W ou le souvenir d’enfance, 15, 113,
187, 195 119–21
integral witnesses, 104–5
Xun, Lu, 167
Levi as a permanent witness, 103
survivors as witnesses, 104–6, 108 Yan’an period, 167
witnessing, 33, 98, 103, 115–16,
216–17 Z̆iz̆ek, Slavoj, 42

Terror and The Arts Artistic Literary and Political Interpretations of Violence From Dostoyevsky To Abu Ghraib

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Terror and The Arts Artistic Literary and Political Interpretations of Violence From Dostoyevsky To Abu Ghraib

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Terror

Edited by Matti Hyvärinen and Lisa Muszynski

First published in 2008 by

PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave

ISBN 978-1-349-37405-2 ISBN 978-0-230-61413-0 (eBook)

Hyvärinen, Matti and Muszynski, Lisa

1. Terror in art. 2. Arts, Modern. I. Hyvärinen, Matti. II. Muszynski, Lisa.

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.

Design by Scribe Inc.

First edition: August 2008

Transferred to Digital Printing in 2013

List of Figures and Tables vii

Introduction: The Arts Investigating Terror 1

Part 1: Visualizing Terror

1 The Implicated Spectator: From Manet to Botero 25

Part 2: Fictionalizing Terror

4 Dostoyevsky on Terror and the Question of the West 83

Part 3: Governmental Terror

8 Dictators and Dictatorships:

Part 4: The Terror of Theory

11 The Violence of Lying 207

Figure 2.1 Miki Kratsman, “Om el Phaem,” 2002. 45

Table 8.1 Comparative view of the two regimes 150

Matti Hyvärinen and Lisa Muszynski

Dana Arieli-Horowitz, PhD, is head of the History and Theory Unit at

Margaret (Peggy) Heller, PhD, is assistant professor in humanities and

Lisa Muszynski holds a Master’s degree (history) from the University of

The Arts Investigating Terror

Babel being a good example of governmental violence launched by an assumed

The Repetition of Trauma

Rushdie’s World of Terror

and funding of the Taliban as a counterforce to the Soviet occupation in

Imagining with a Terrorist?

to mention film and photography. The recent artistic interest in terror is

Terror in our Midst

is also “arrested at various times,” which both complicates and overshadows

light between the little studied nondemocratic states of Ceauşescu’s Romania

simplified the “facts” of the execution, and was therefore “insusceptible to

The Terror of Theory

Reading the Arts Politically

Foucault, Michel. 1972/1997. The archaeology of knowledge. Trans. A. M. Sheridan

The Implicated Spectator

Querétaro, June 19, 1867

that he would be welcomed in Mexico to represent the constitutional, hered-

on the details of the execution was ambivalent, contradictory, and unreliable

the painting’s or the photograph’s universal relevance as an indicator of spe-

Aestheticization of Politics—Anaesthetization of Emotions

“destructive violence of the battlefield” (148). The photographs taken during

[their] place is in relation to [the jailors]” (Ghosh 2005). However, other

Furthermore, the viewers who decide to take a look at the photographs—

Art after Abu Ghraib

nor the debate on the photographs succeeded in establishing. Roberta Smith,

Art in the Age of Terror

Aesthetics and Terror: Abstract Political Art

Abstract Political Art: Suicide Bombing Sites

Abstract Political Art: The Other

Figure 2.1 Miki Kratsman, “Om el Phaem,” 2002.

Figure 2.2 David Reeb, Where are the Soldiers? 2003.

The viewer is confronted with a colorful image of a group of teenagers, all

Figure 2.4 Gal Weinstein, Qusay, 2004.

When the viewer looks at these 40 inches x 28 inches/100 x 70 centime-

Reflections on Hypertrauma: Terror and the Holocaust

This analogy is a reflection of the artist’s worldview. In some cases, it is the