Two pieces on silence

"Camus has been forced to become silent because everything about North Africa paralyzes him…. It must be understood that his situation is by no means easy; it is not intellectually or emotionally easy to have all of one’s family on a side that is morally condemned" Albert Memmi in the New York Review of books


Regarding Virginia Woolf's writing, "[w]hen your power is limited, when you cannot vote, when your opinions and contributions are dismissed solely because of your gender, then the disgrace of witnessing your own people butcher and be butchered must not only cause you to revisit everything you assumed about human nature but also asks you to view it from the distance of the outsider... Sebald was [also] an inheritor of a dark history, interested in the shame of the progeny. Like the South African author J. M. Coetzee, his contemporary, Sebald was concerned with how to convey not savagery and guilt but their inheritance. Woolf, excluded from the vote and therefore from politics and the decisions that lead countries to war and peace, shared with them the condition of being implicated in the actions of others. It seems every great novelist is conscious of being both implicated in and subject to history... Still, she was heavily criticized for what was perceived as an evasion. She was subjected to passionate calls by noted figures. She kept her poise, Hers is a singular example of literary independence. And now we can see that her decision of expressing the tremors of the masculine epic of war through domestic life was poignantly subversive, true, and truly free... With each book she became more obsessed with language and how when we speak we often fall short of or else exceed what we intended to express. Talking as a betrayal: saying too much, or not enough... How fortunate that our thoughts do not dance in visible letters above our heads. If they did, any contact between human beings, even a harmless social gathering such as this, could easily become a convocation of murderers... All great writing is infected with silence, but it is very rare indeed to observe a master wielding that vacuum blankness of the unsaid with such elegant precision. Part of the effect is that you feel you are inside a mind, inhabiting another’s interiority... Everything out there is unknown, and the lighthouse has no hope to illuminate where we are heading. All it does is call attention to itself and the rock it stands on. It is a perpetual circular warning, a white scream..."

PhD dissertation published on the LSE website

In the following link.

Ofer Engel - new position

Dr Ofer Engel became a Research Officer in CATS

Dr Ofer Engel and Professor Peter Abell's visit to Gothenburg in January 2014 as part of the CELSIUS project generated some local media attention: The CELSIUS Insider and Vårt Göteborg (here in the original)

Singing Tamino in the Neue Synagoge, Berlin. Three ladies come to rescue me from the mighty dragon.

After vanquishing the mighty dragon, the three ladies need to choose who will stay with the handsome prince, while the others go off to tell the queen that Tamino was saved. Of course each of the ladies wishes to send off the others, so she might stay alone with the young prince.

 

LIBRETTO - ACT ONE

The scene is rocky, here and there overgrown with trees, on both sides are smallish hills; there is also a round temple. Tamino descends from a rock to the right, in splendid Japanese hunting-costume, carrying a bow but no arrows; a serpent pursues him.

TAMINO
Help me! oh, help me! or I am lost,
condemned as sacrifice to the cunning serpent –
Merciful gods! It’s coming closer!
Ah! save me, ah! defend me!
(He faints; immediately the door to the temple
opens; three veiled ladies come out, each carrying
a silver spear.)

THE THREE LADIES
Die, monster, by our power!

Victory! Victory! Accomplished
is the heroic deed! He is free,
thanks to our bravery.

FIRST LADY (observing him)
A pleasing youth, gentle and fair!

SECOND LADY
The fairest I have ever seen.

THIRD LADY
Yes, that’s true, pretty as a picture.

ALL THREE
If I ever gave my heart away,
it could be to none but this youth.
Let us hasten to our Queen
and report this news to her.
Perhaps this handsome man
can restore her peace of mind.

FIRST LADY
You go and tell her, then;
meanwhile, I’ll stay here. –

SECOND LADY
No, no, you go ahead;
I’ll keep watch over him!

THIRD LADY
No, no, that may not be;
I’ll protect him!

FIRST LADY
Meanwhile, I’ll stay here...

SECOND LADY
I’ll keep watch over him...

THIRD LADY
I’ll protect him myself...

FIRST LADY
...I’ll stay...

SECOND LADY
...I’ll keep watch...

THIRD LADY
...I’ll protect him...

FIRST LADY
...I!

SECOND LADY
...I!

THIRD LADY
...I!

ALL THREE (each to herself)
Then I must go! Aha, very nice!
They want to be alone with him.
No, no, that’s out of the question!
What would I not give
to live with this youth!
If only I had him to myself!
Still no one goes; it is not to be.
I had better go.
O youth so fair and loveable,

O faithful youth, farewell
until I see thee again.
(The Ladies depart. Tamino comes to, and sees
the dead serpent at his feet; but hearing someone
else approach, he hides.)

Controversial strategy to fight racism in Germany - Gesicht Zeigen in English

Under the slogan: Gesicht Zeigen, Mut Proben, Germany launched a campaign a few years ago to counter racism and right wing extremists.
This is one of the clips they showed.

 

Hilarious, but not entirely uncontroversial, the clip associates the problem of racism with other issues of social concern, the integration of minorities and deviants, people with disabilities or convicted criminals. It is true that racism is a social problem, afflicting more people among low socio-economic classes, just like crime, violence and certain forms illnesses. The idea of making them look ridiculous is a creative (but only arguably effective) way of fighting racism, while reaffirming the norms of a tolerant, liberal and open society. But some will be taken aback by this. Should we show murderers, pedophiles, drug dealers and convicted criminals in a laughable manner? Is it apt to compare between the way society deals with racists, convicted criminals and persons with disabilities? What about other minorities, those seen by some to take a toll on society - foreigners, the old, the ill, the uneducated, the unemployed, the eccentric etc? What does it say about us, about the way we define what it means to be 'normal,' if we fight racists by comparing them to other forms of deviants? Are we, in some subtle way, adopting and perpetuating certain dimensions of racism by doing so? And if we are, is that bad?

Facing racism on the London tube

A friend witnessed a verbal racist attack on the London Tube. He witnessed it but did nothing, and though he claimed he didn't care, he made the effort to tell me about the event. He told me about the firing rage in the eyes of the attacker, while she was yelling hysterically "go back to the place you came from!!!" He told me about the helplessness in the eyes of the lady in headscarf, in vain looking around her for some sort of solidarity or support, shaking her head and muttering something like, "this woman, she's completely crazy."   We talked about the issue of intervention. "Why should I intervene?", he asked, "I am myself a foreigner." We were thinking whether is it good, necessary, beneficial for a bystander to intervene? Isn't there a danger that intervention might have an opposite effect to the one desired? What are the costs and what are the benefits of intervention? Why put oneself in danger? Isn't it a bit vain to believe that one could change the world, if things like that happen all the time? 

In an anti-racism campaign that ran in Germany a couple of years ago, a group of people enters a train wagon, and Julia is asked to imagine that in place of the instructor there are in fact three Nazis who are attacking a foreigner/black/Muslim person. Her job is to practice her courage: "Mut proben"


She says: Leave the man in peace, he's done nothing to you!!

She does this three times. First, her voice quivering, she seems awkward and almost embarrassed of having to call people's attention to her own presence. She is instructed to try again, this time with a little more passion. The second time she is a bit louder, but approaching the imagined racists, her instructor warns her that she mustn't come too near because that might put herself in danger, possibly becoming a victim herself. The third time she is assertive, convincing, full of rage, her eyes menacing, her presence now grounded.

She made it, and as she smiles, one of the passengers in the train asks if he can try it too. Intervention is no longer a burden, no longer controversial, but a skill one desires to perfect, an achievement that, if done well, is rewarding and something to be proud of. And for those who claim - why should I intervene? why should I put myself in a dangerous situation? who cares if I did nothing? For those who believe that we would all be better off if everyone minds their own business, for those there is a second video:

Would you like some more? Asks the docile, de-sexualized mother, as she pours some artificial flavored drink out of a bottle and into the cup of her daughter. The family affirms all the secondary virtues the Germans are so famous for: discipline, cleanliness, politeness, plenty, quiet, peacefulness, avoid unnecessary talk, avoid arguments. Each of them focuses on their own thing, each fulfilling their expected role in a system that must function reliably, like a perfect machine. Flames erupt in different parts of the room, but people seem to notice first when the butter catches fire, slightly sliding the butter away, first the father, then his son. But ignoring does not make the flames of racism and hate go away. In fact, they seem to spread. Like in Goethe's poem, the sorcerer's apprentice,  a system, finely tuned to maintain stability and regularity in times of peace, now ruptures when confronting unexpected situations.  Finally, the flames catch onto the skirt of the mother. Why she? one might ask. She, of all people, she, who has served her family, her community and society with dedication and servitude, she, who has done everything expected of her without ever raising her voice, why must she be the one whose skirt is now on flames?

Obliquity