Saturday, September 03, 2005
(10:49 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Agamben, with discussion of New Orleans
From Remnants of Auschwitz (pg. 162):Just as in the starry sky that we see at night, the starts shine surrounded by a total darkness that, according to the cosmologists, is nothing other than the testimony of a time in which the stars did not yet shine, so the speech of the witness bears witness to a time in which human beings did not yet speak; and so the testimony of human beings attests to a time in which they were not yet human.It is important to me that a philosopher be able to make reference, in a matter-of-fact way, to Heidegger, Benveniste, and St. Paul in one coherent work -- that they be not examples or illustrations, but part of a continuous movement, even if that movement, taken in itself, turns out to be fragmentary.
He also frequently brings out a quote from Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister, that seems appropriate to our age: politics is "the art of making what seems impossible possible." Pulling out such quotations is perhaps the only consolation that we poor observers, relegated to the much-lauded reality-based community, can rely upon -- even as we observe that whatever the relationship between Bush's brand of right-wing extremism and Nazism (and even if we reject that facile equation of the two, there is a relationship), there is an unquestioned disjuncture that renders this repetition of history a farce to match the true tragedy of Nazism. The Nazis had a basic competence, a basic logistical know-how -- they ultimately lost because they over-extended themselves, but they over-extended themselves in a field in which they fundamentally knew what they were doing. That is the horror of it, this thought that they could have pulled it off. Now, we have a form of fascism in which the trains don't even run on time -- the war in Iraq, for example, was unwinnable from the very beginning.
If the consequences weren't so serious, we would laugh in the "president's" face -- that would be the only possible human reaction. If he were not exercising power, we could only muster a scornful guffaw -- as he is exercising or (in New Orleans) failing to exercise power, the only possible human reaction is disgust. To be disgusted with Bush, to despise the man, is the only possible human reaction, the only "nonpartisan" reaction.
In all fairness, however, we have to say that the primary reason that the neo-conservative desire for a Churchillian moment is so farcical is not simply that Bush doesn't live up to the greatness of Churchill -- it's that "the terrorists" are, finally, so pathetic. I live in a big city and thus could potentially die in an attack by al Qaeda, but fundamentally, I do not fear bin Laden -- the man is living in a cave, releasing his pathetic videos to the world, having begun a task that he is fundamentally unable to complete. What did he think was going to happen? The fall of the US government? Unilateral withdrawal of all US troops within our own borders? A new caliphate? He managed to pull together some crazy, unrepeatable stunt, using box-cutters, killing off 19 of his most highly-trained men -- for what? For nothing. Even if his goals were worthwhile (and they're not), they can't be achieved. The same goes for the Iraqi insurgency. It's possible, indeed inevitable, that US troops will leave "voluntarily" or be driven out, but the window for reestablishing Sunni control over Iraq is long since past. And it's this same kind of thing that so disgusted me about the London bombings and the attempted follow-up -- so amateurish, so pathetic, and yet with such serious consequences for those people who happened to be standing in the path of this worthless acting-out. Even the name of the organization is ridiculous.
Just farcical -- people are dying out there for a farce, just as people in New Orleans who are suffering and dying have become a prop in a farcical attempt by this administration to cash in on a disaster. Everyone sees through it this time. Hopefully everyone sees through it. Hopefully they will all retire to private life and be laughing-stocks, fodder for third-rate talk shows -- somehow even the impossible war-crimes trial seems to lend them a dignity they don't deserve. These are people who are not worth talking about, not worth thinking about, the braggart guy a couple tables over in the restaurant who helps one to smooth over an awkward first date with a conspiratorial chuckle -- this is how the world ends.
