Cordial Old Mates: Adorno-Marcuse Exchanges
Correspondence on the German Student Movement Theodor Adorno/Herbert Marcuse Prof. Dr. Theodor W. Adorno 6 Frankfurt am Main Kettenhofweg 123 14 February 1969 Dear Herbert I wrote to you on 24 January and enclosed for the dean of your faculty an official English invitation from the Institute. Since I have still not received a response, I am rather afraid that, due to some sort of catastrophe—be it natural or social—the letter has gone astray. I am requesting a rapid response, in case I need to send you carbon copies.By the way, I committed an error of form: an invitation from the Institute can de jure only originate from Friedeburg, Gunzert or me, but not Habermas. Though he is the co-director of the sociology department, he is not formally part of the Institute; and the two things must be kept separate from each other in organizational terms. I need not say that the invitation met with Jürgen’s full approval. Things have been terrible again here. A SDS group led by Krahl occupied a room in the Institute and refused to leave, despite three requests. We had to call the police, who then arrested all those who they found in the room; the situation is dreadful in itself, but Friedeburg, Habermas and I were there, as it happened, and were able to guard against the use of physical force. Now there is a whole lot of lamentation, even though Krahl only organized the whole stunt in order to get taken into custody, and thereby hold together the disintegrating Frankfurt SDS group—which he has indeed achieved in the meantime. The propaganda is presenting things entirely back to front, as if it were we who grasped at repressive measures, and not the students who yelled at us that we should shut our traps and say nothing about what happened. This is just to put you in the picture, in case rumours and rather colourful accounts should filter through to you. In spite of everything, my book is progressing quite well; I almost feel like saying unfortunately, because the events leave me quite unmoved in a way that I can hardly explain to myself. I do not even feel the fear to which I am entitled. On the other hand, the intensity with which I am throwing myself into my work may be steeling me a little bit. I hope to get far enough in the rest of the so-called vacation weeks that whatever remains to be done is of a more or less technical nature. I also want to let you know that Max has every intention of being here too on the same days as you. I am in quite good health, apart from a chronic lack of proper rest. And we survived the winter—which has taken on such a frightful form again in the last few days—without catching Hong Kong flu. Much love to you both—from Gretel too. Your old friend Theodor * * * 125 Herbert Marcuse Dept. of Philosophy University of California at San Diego 5 April 1969 Dear Teddy I find it really difficult to write this letter, but it has to be done and, in any case, it is better than covering up differences of opinion between the two of us. Since my last letter, the situation has changed decisively for me: for the first time, I have read more detailed reports about the events in Frankfurt, and I have also received a face-to-face report from a Frankfurt student who ‘was there’. Of course, I am aware of the attendant bias, but what came to light at no point contradicted what you wrote to me. It simply expanded it. In short; I believe that if I accept the Institute’s invitation without also speaking to the students, I will identify myself with (or I will be identified with) a position that I do not share politically. To put it brutally: if the alternative is the police or left-wing students, then I am with the students—with one crucial exception, namely, if my life is threatened or if violence is threatened against my person and my friends, and that threat is a serious one. Occupation of rooms (apart from my own apartment) without such a threat of violence would not be a reason for me to call the police. I would have left them sitting there and left it to somebody else to call the police. I still believe that our cause (which is not only ours) is better taken up by the rebellious students than by the police, and, here in California, that is demonstrated to me almost daily (and not only in California). And I would even take on board a disruption of ‘business as usual’, if the conflict is serious enough for that. You know me well enough to know that I reject the unmediated translation of theory into praxis just as emphatically as you do. But I do believe that there are situations, moments, in which theory is pushed on further by praxis—situations and moments in which theory that is kept separate from praxis becomes untrue to itself. We cannot abolish from the world the fact that these students are influenced by us (and certainly not least byyou)—I am proud of that and am willing to come to terms with patricide, even though it hurts sometimes. And the means that they use in order to translate theory into activity?? We know (and they know) that the situation is not a revolutionary one, not even a prerevolutionary one. But this same situation is so terrible, so suffocating and demeaning, that rebellion against it forces a biological, physiological reaction: one can bear it no longer, one is suffocating and one has to let some air in. And this fresh air is not that of a ‘left fascism’ (contradictio in adjecto!). It is the air that we (at least I) also want to breathe some day, and it is certainly not the air of the establishment. I discuss things
Sexuality, Identity and Censorship
Charu Gupta What I am going to say is nothing new. While exploring the linkages between sexuality, identity and censorship, I want to talk about certain key elements, which reveal the intersection of the three. There are multiple sites of censorship, which of course is done by the State over and above all, but there is explicit and implicit censorship done in India by dominant castes, majority communities and patriarchies. I am interested here in this kind of censorship, which is done to silence and marginalize alternate sexualities, ambiguous religious identities, sex workers, certain languages, people, symbols and culture. Such censorship of sexuality has historical roots. My examples come largely from a colonial context and from contemporary India, exploring how sexuality becomes a key arena for the imposition of censorship by the moralist Hindu brigade particularly, in literary genres, print and visual media, and in actual practices. I would also like to ponder how identity politics, in a manner, contributes to a different kind of censorship. I want argue that in the construction of a homogenous Hindu community identity, which operates and works through a reworked and updated patriarchy, censorship becomes a critical tool, as it helps to control sexualities on the one hand and impose a fixed identity on the other. In fact escalation of sexually repressive censorship is intricately tied to heightened assertion of a Hindu community identity. The pogrom in Gujarat has brought home to us how implicit censorship imposed by dominant religious communities and castes operates in tandem with State censorship. The influential work of Michel Foucault has revealed how propagation of disciplinary regimes requires an intensification in the management and policing of sexuality, which further leads to distinctions of identity. It has been also asserted that obscenity also emerged as a distinct regulatory category in the modern period, and was subject to intense censorship particularly in Europe, in part due to the rise of literacy, the spread of print and a wider dissemination of written texts, and in part due to Victorian notions of chastity. Combined with this of course, this debate has extended to pornography. Sharp lines have been drawn between anti-pornography and anti-censorship feminists in the West. Catherine MacKinnon in her powerful critique of pornography claims that it institutionalises the sexuality of male supremacy, fusing the eroticism of domination and submission with the social construction of male and female. However, feminists like Judith Butler question the pervasive power of pornography. She builds a case for performative contradiction, whereby utterances cannot be assigned a consensus of meanings. Divisions often made between legitimate erotic art on the one hand and obscene pornography on the other, where the latter is subject to censorship, have been attacked, linking it to debates on high and low culture. It has also been pointed out that distinctions need to be made between sexually explicit representations and sexism. Consensual and coercive sex cannot be collapsed. Some even say that pornography actually reflects male anxieties and fears. Moreover, it is argued that while women are victims of violent crimes, the persistent foregrounding of pain and political correctness marginalises women’s sexual pleasures and desires. In India, feminists have pointed out that there has broadly been a ‘conspiracy of silence’, combined with censorship, regarding sexuality. In recent years examples of such censorship abound, be it the attack on songs like ‘choli ke peeche’ or M.F. Hussain painting Saraswati or the withdrawal of the 1997 Delhi Tourism Diary due to the protest by BJP for the inclusion of a representation of the bronze statue of the nude Yakshini or ‘Dancing Girl’ from Mohenjo-daro. There is a long history of such censorship, and in the colonial period particularly, moral and sexual worries of the British combined with those of an aspiring indigenous Hindu middle class. There was a moral panic of sorts that gripped a section of the British and the Hindu middle classes, creating anxieties regarding questions of sexuality, which was reflected in various arenas. Implicit and explicit censorship was used here for a coercive and symbolic regulation of women, which helped in replenishing colonial authority, updating indigenous patriarchy, and proclaiming a collective identity. In north India for example, there were endeavours made particularly by the Hindu publicists to redefine, control and censor literature, entertainment and domestic arena, especially pertaining to women, to forge an empowering Hindu identity. The discursive management and control over sexuality was essential to project a civilised and vibrant sectarian Hindu identity. Regulation and censorship of sexuality thus was, and continues to be, central to identity politics, be it fundamentalist, racial or nationalist. It is needed in order to control women, justify domination and subordination, and uphold community honour. However, sexuality, pleasure and love have been expressed in diverse ways. Through various mediums women and men have found ways to undermine implicit assumptions about gender systems and to negotiate codified sexual relations. We have a rich variety of experiences and practices, which are indifferent to and sometimes even subvert the tyrannies of respectability and standardisation. Such transgressions have precluded the crafting of a master narrative, and ‘disorder’ has crept into the ‘moral order’ of the censorship brigade. In dominant narratives of love and sexuality, monogamous, heterosexual, same community/caste marriages and relationships continue to be the predominant ideal. In colonial period too same-sex attractions or inter-religious love represented a dangerous breach to nationalist ideals and Hindu community assertions. Deviance from ‘normal’ codes of behaviour revealed the possibility of diversion from the accepted and the expected. I want to first explore a book written in this period on male-male sexual bonding, which became a major target of attack by the Hindu publicists and faced severe censorship and condemnation. This was a period when efforts were being made at linguistic standardisation of Hindi, combined with attacks on any hints of eroticism and obscenity in Hindi literature, which were seen as hallmarks of a decadent, feminine and uncivilised culture. There was a growing fear of romance, of sexual and bodily pleasure, seen as a transgression
No Hideouts Found
Avishek Parui Dialogues “Say something” you throat across our table where three plates of grapes and the leftovers furl a forest between us in which something had been lost or maybe cleverly hidden like a leak… And as the butterflies in our tablecloth begin to soak all that we had spilled sauce, juice, wine lies, grease, guilt; You stretch your strategic smile as I see the silhouettes sink… and think of the words that drop Waves. Dredge. Pills. Bridge. Edge. Brink… The rituals would stay the patterns will remain but this time when our eyes meet I hope to cut across to you with another strip of silence that the glass I broke after they had left wasn’t really slippery and the blood that curled my fingers thereafter was not very red… But guess you’d stop me midway slit across the stillness I would have built and say “I knew.” ******** Guy Fawkes’ Night As the boys outside were trying to set fire on the Guy they’d built you were thinking of a way to say sorry to mum for telling papa when he had asked over the phone that she had been out all afternoon… You know lying is a bad thing Mrs. Teresa says that in class that God is very angry when you lie but you think now maybe it would have been OK to say sorry to God later than to see papa scream “rotten bitch” and throw his big bad bottle at mum so hard that you could hear the glass hitting her eye and then the cringe and the cry when the blood that began to spread started to chase you…as you ran into your room so that mum could just feel the pain and not be ashamed… “The guy won’t catch fire”, you hear Tommy shout “It’s the freaking wind that blows it out” You stare at your colours and the page where you’d been trying to draw a house that’s become a birdcage… across the room papa is watching TV now where someone’s speaking on how the world could be turned to a better place by fighting terrorism together with love, care, faith while there’s still time you think it would be a good idea now to go to your mum’s room and show the big cage you’ve drawn with all the red crayons you have maybe you should write “SORRY” beneath it as well just in case mum doesn’t understand… ******** Quo Vadis After the torchlights had frisked through my wet insides and whistled away into the greasy night you came in to stay having walked through the heaviness of grey chimneysmoke in nightair and shrieks in radio plays despite the moons and purring cars you must have met… I had doubled down my stakes by then with the knowledge that I would crash again all signposts would be strewn across my tart taste… guess most of us cave in sometimes when the cold grows frills across the tiles and the rosebud shows the sled… But you showed up with your hair tied back too neatly into something like a bun… You smelled like someone who had stared at the whole of last night till the rhododendrons screamed a sunrise between them… I’m here to stay, you voiced till the claptrap is over and all the axioms flake off or die I looked out and saw the frisbees flying the stars that had dripped across were drying of course I knew you lied… ******** Spectres The twilight shrinks as each day dies from the cold rooftops the blood-red tiles that purple fast under changing moons. The hours slide beneath the lies the walls cave in against the tides the lovers fall way too soon. The hotdogs sell and the salad’s free see how Afghans die in flat TV-s no hideouts found in the end the hunters coughed… Apologies? Our eyes meet in guilty streets white stripes align strangers’ feet as the swishing cars race across the green-eyed gods who count clock-beats. Between love-songs the RJ says “Very soon the nation-heads would meet to plan a perfect world where every man is free.” You stare out at the lonely stars that drink your guilt and hide your scars from all that should not see. ******** Avishek Parui is completing doctoral studies at the Department of English, The University of Durham. He is the winner of The Short Fiction Competition 2010 by Platform Magazine, India, the winner of the Poetry Competition titled Journeys by Sampad, Birmingham, UK. He features in the anthologies of best poetry for the years 2009 and 2010 by Forward Press, UK. adminhumanitiesunderground.org
Armies Are Now Obsolete
The 19 th century history of the Internal Wars of the New Zealanders is fascinating and gruesome. Tens of thousands of Maori died in the intertribal Musket Wars of the opening decades of the 19th century. On a per capita basis the estimated casualty figures for these wars is equivalent to around 200,000 New Zealand deaths in the First World War (instead of the 18,000 lives actually lost). As expected, these events remain shadowy, as if they were almost exclusively the concern of Maori with European participation largely confined to the supply of weapons. Ron Crosby’s The Musket Wars (1999) and Angela Ballara’s Taua (2003) are two significant works that have attempted to shed more light on the causes and consequences of these devastating campaigns. HUG has been looking systematically into the history of these wars and especially tracking the international debates on the very idea of muskets during the period of 1839-1945. We reproduce two short articles and a letter to the editor from three leading newspapers of New Zealand. ARMIES ARE NOW OBSOLETE Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 53, 30 August 1930, Page 24 “Future wars will be fought and decided by civilians, not by soldiers. Present-day armies will be superfluous— useless.” That is the sensational prophecy of Lieut. Colonel Mayer, one of Frances’s leading military experts, expressed in a forthcoming book, advance excerpts of which, appear, in ‘ the Neues Wiener Journal. Chemistry, and aircraft will fight future wars, and; both these elements will be directed, chiefly by civilian experts, not by soldiers, asserts the French military expert., Four, thousand aircraft, high explosives, and gas-bombing ,’ planes, will represent a greater offensive arid: destructive power than an army of a million soldiers, according to Lieut.-Colonel Mayer. Organic chemistry has produced more than five thousand different gases, with many new ones being discovered or invented every year, he says. The world conflict swept away the alleged eternal truth and principles of classical, strategy, and at the close of the way, convinced of this, and that Germany would not be able to attack for at least fifteen years, Lieut.-Colonel Mayer’ suggested that the French army be completely demobilised and disbanded for ten years. He was told that his suggestion could not be taken seriously. “Notwithstanding that it is clear that a handful of civilian experts can, with combined gas and air attacks, destroy the largest and best-trained army in the world,” he says. In support of this theory, the French military expert cites Napoleon; who wrote during his last year on St. Helena: “Every victory of my troops was the triumph of new ideas. The time will come when neither cannon nor bayonets will be necessary for victory.” He declares that H. G. Wells is right when he says that the wars of the future will be fought by civilians. War operations of to-morrow will be sudden surprise attacks, unexpected in time and place. They will demoralise and intimidate the enemy. Forts, barracks, and present-day armies arc as irrevocably doomed to pass away as were tho bow, arrow and spear at the first shot from a musket. It is quite natural that the heads of the armies to-day are interested in seeing that no radical change takes place in the present system and order of things, declares Lieut.-Colonel Mayer, adding: “That Governments and General Staffs close their eyes to the truth does not alter the might and power of the facts.” AMMUNITION TO THE NATIVES. Colonist, Volume XII, Issue 1222, 11 June 1869, Page 2 Often than once we have noticed the fact, or probable fact, that outside white men, men of our own civilised Caucasian race, have supplied the rebels with ammunition. An incident has occurred in the North which gives conviction to the charge. We learn by the Hawke’s Bay Herald that Ensign Witty, in marching to join the force, found, near Putere, in Napier Province, a keg which had contained powder, with a maker’s name in Boston on it. American whalers have frequently been suspected of engaging in this disreputable traffic, by means of which cannibal savages are enabled to destroy peaceable and law loving white men. We hope, if there is any possible clue by which to trace the mercenary men who can thus trade in the blood of peaceful settlers, that the Colonial Government will prosecute the search for evidence to the utmost, and appeal to the American Government to take measures to stop such iniquity. There is no civilised Government in the world which knows better than the Government of the United States, the evil effects of such doings; for their frontier wars with the Indians are replete with parallels of the Poverty Bay massacres of helpless settlers, and the cruel use of the tomahawk and musket on the bodies of men, women, and children, who, indiscriminately, have been the victims of the savage. It may be difficult to trace the real culprits, but the maker’s name in sanctimonious Boston, may aid the Government of President Grant in discovering the wicked dealers, who thus at once Bets the laws of war and of civilised humanity at defiance. Treat this as a definite lesson to the settlers in New Zealand. The Musket. To the Editor of the Times. Daily Southern Cross, Volume VIII, Issue 522, 29 June 1852, Page 3 Sir, — Every military man will concur in the justice of your remarks on the subjects of the inefficiency of our regulation musket, thank you for making them. But we needed not this miserable “little war” in South Africa to demonstrate the inefficiency of which you so justly complain. “It is necessary, “as you say, ”that our soldiers should hit the enemy with their musketballs,” and that “this one thing they unfortunately -cannot do,” was too often proved in the course of the unhappy war in Afghanistan. The British musket was no match for the Affghan jezail. Even in fair open fight, when the enemy were not sheltered behind their precipitous rocks,