Pessimism of the Reality, Optimism of the Ideal
José Carlos Mariátegui José Carlos Mariátegui is one of Latin America’s most profound and yet overlooked thinkers. A self-taught journalist, social scientist, and activist from Peru, he was the first to emphasize that those fighting for the revolutionary transformation of society must adapt classical Marxist theory to the particular conditions of Latin America. He also stressed that indigenous peoples must take an active role in any revolutionary struggle. This article is an excerpt (p. 395-398, footnotes omitted) from José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology (edited and translated by Harry E. Vanden and Marc Becker) —————————————————————————————————————————————— I. It seems to me that José Vasconcelos has found a formula on pessimism and optimism that not only defines the feeling of the new Ibero-American generation in the face of the contemporary crisis, but also corresponds to the absolute mentality and sensibility of an era in which, despite the thesis of José Ortega y Gasset on the “disenchanted soul” and “the twilight of revolutions,” millions of people are working with mystical courage and a religious passion to create a new world. “Pessimism of reality, optimism of the ideal,” is Vasconcelos’s formula. “Do not ever conform, always be above and beyond the moment,” writes Vasconcelos. “Reject reality and fight to destroy it, not for a lack of faith but by an excess of faith in human capabilities and the firm conviction that evil is never permanent nor justifiable, and that it is always possible and feasible to redeem, purify, improve the collective condition and the private conscience.” The attitude of people who intend to correct reality is certainly more optimistic than pessimistic. They are pessimistic in their protest and in their condemnation of the present, but they are optimists in their hope for the future. All great human ideals have started with a denial, but they also have been an affirmation. Religions have always perpetually represented this pessimism of reality and optimism of the ideal that this Mexican writer is now preaching to us. We are not content with mediocrity, let alone do we settle for injustice. We are often described as pessimistic, but, in truth, pessimism dominates our spirit much less than optimism. We do not believe that the world should be fatal and eternally as it is. We believe that it can and should be better. The optimism we reject is the easy and lazy Panglossian optimism of those who think we live in the best of all possible worlds. II. There are two kinds of pessimists, just as there are two kinds of optimists. The exclusively negative pessimist is limited to gestures of helplessness and hopelessness, the misery of things and the vanity of effort. That person is nihilistic and melancholy, waiting for the final disappointment. As Artzibachev said, “The extreme limits.” Fortunately, this kind of person is not common. This type belongs to a strange hierarchy of disenchanted intellectuals who are also a product of a period in decline or of a people in collapse. Among the intellectuals, it is not uncommon that a simulated nihilism is a philosophical excuse for refusing to cooperate in any great effort of renovation or as a means to explain their disdain for any mass work. But the fictional nihilism of this type of intellectual is not a philosophical attitude. It is reduced to a hidden and artificial disdain for the great human myths. It is an unacknowledged nihilism that does not dare to come to the surface of the work or life of a negative intellectual, who approaches this theoretical exercise as a solitary vice. The intellectual, nihilistic in private, is likely to be a public member of an anti-alcohol league or a protector of animals. Their nihilism is only intended to guard and defend themselves from the great passions. In the face of petty ideals, the false nihilist behaves with the most vulgar idealism. III. It is with pessimistic and negative spirits of this nature that our optimism of the ideal refuses to let us be confused. Negative attitudes are absolutely sterile. Action is made of negations and affirmations. The new generation in our America and around the world is, above all, a generation that shouts its faith, sings its hope. IV. A skeptical mood prevails in contemporary Western philosophy. This philosophical attitude, as its critics so pervasively stress, is a gesture peculiar to a civilization in decline. Only in a decadent world would a disillusioned sense of life flourish. But not even this contemporary skepticism or relativism has a relationship, or any affinity, with the cheap and fictitious nihilism of the impotent, nor with the absolute and morbid nihilism of the suicidal madmen of Andreiev and Artzibachev. Pragmatism, which so effectively moves people to action, is in fact a relativistic and skeptical school. Hans Vainhingher, the author of Philosophie der Als Ob, has been justifiably classified as a pragmatist. For this German philosopher, there are no absolute truths. But there are relative truths that govern people’s lives as if they were absolute. “Moral principles, just like aesthetic ones, legal criteria, just like those upon which science operates, the very foundations of logic, have no objective existence. They are our fictitious constructions that serve only as regulatory precepts for our actions, which are conducted as if they were true.” Thus the Italian philosopher Giuseppe Renssi defines the philosophy of Vainhinger in his Lineamientos de Filosofía escéptica, which, as I see in a bibliographic note in Ortega y Gasset’s journal, has begun to attract interest in Spain and hence in Spanish America. This philosophy, therefore, does not call us to abandon action. It only seeks to deny the Absolute. But it recognizes in human history the relative truth, the temporal myth of each time, the same value and the same effectiveness as an absolute and eternal truth. This philosophy proclaims and confirms the need of the myth and the usefulness of the faith. Although it then entertains the thinking that all truths and all fictions, in the final analysis, are equivalent. Einstein, a relativist, behaves in life
‘The Daily Passengers: Some Portraits & Other Reflections
Aritra Chakraborti Aritraspeak: These pictures were taken on a broken mobile phone while commuting on local trains between Howrah and Chinsurah– a major station located on the Howrah-Bardhaman main line in West Bengal. Being an one-time daily passenger, and the son of two people who have been doing the same for more than three decades, I have observed these fascinating characters closely for a very long time. I have always wanted to study them in their own environment. However, having never received any formal training in conducting ethnographic studies, I felt that photography would be an easier medium for me to observe them in their most unguarded moments. Daily passengers are fascinating people. Easily irritated, mercurial, quarrelsome and often really annoying, they are extremely conscious of the square-foot of plywood on which they sit, or the even tinier space on which they stand in overcrowded, claustrophobic train compartments. Everyday, they commute to the dilapidated metropolis of Kolkata to try to eke out a livelihood. Most of them do not have steady jobs: some of them run small businesses from tiny rooms in some rundown building in Barabazaar, some of them go to work in small or big shops in dingy markets. The lucky ones spend their days in government offices or in flashy MNCs which make them work at least ten to twelve hours, everyday. They are not too keen to be photographed, either. So, I had to be very careful while using my camera. I also had to be extra careful to avoid taking photographs of women. Although very few women travel on general compartments during office hours, if anyone catches you taking pictures of women while standing on a train, you could get lynched. The mobile camera gave me a sort of anonymity and allowed to me to take photos while the subjects remained unaware of the camera’s existence. However, it also made sure that if I were ever confronted–and that did happen a few times-I could never prove that I was actually trying to do a photo essay. For surely, what kind of a photographer works with a mobile camera? [Please click on each photograph to get an enlarged view.] ————————————————– You are a human bullet shot into the tunnels, hoping no one will block the light far ahead, each station one minute’s reprieve―Maya, Karen Greenbaum. ***************************************************************************** ***************************************************************************** Do you remember the long orphanage of the train stations We crossed cities that turn-tabled all day. And vomited at night the sunshine of the day.The Voyager―Pierre Albert-Birot ****************k************************************************************ Mrs. Limaye, wherever you are/ Please come to Mulund Station/ Your husband is awaiting you there—An Announcement for Mr & Mrs. Limaye, Manya Joshi ***************************************************************************** Eons arrive, eons pass us by/ Aloft Mashi, aloft O Pishi—those rice filled sacks/Aloft onto the belly of that Kolkata bound Lalgola, Bongaon…–Joy Goswami ***************************************************************************** ***************************************************************************** They’d torn the couch!’ wailed the station-master. ‘Ripped the station-master’s couch in half! That is what comes of it when there’s nothing above folks any more! Neither God nor myth, neither allegory nor symbol … We’re on our own now in this world, so everything’s allowed. But not for me! For me there is a God! But for that grunting pig nothing exists but pork, dumplings and cabbage …Closely Watched Trains, Bohumil Hrabal, ***************************************************************************** ***************************************************************************** As the engine slows down, the triangle, I mean the crank, connective rod and slide: the form of the engine also changes/slow and inevitable/so, one can now say that the triangle is alive and kicking. Triangle, Benoy Majumdar ***************************************************************************** ***************************************************************************** And between the jamb-wall and the bedroom door/Our speed and distance were inestimable./First we shunted, then we whistled…A Sofa in the Forties, Seamus Heaney ***************************************************************************** ***************************************************************************** Ah, Junction, where the rail stops long/ To quench its thirst for a longer trip/ I seek my old flame there.–Junction, Alok Dhanwa —————————————————————————————————– Aritra Chakraborti is a doctoral student at the Department of English, Jadavpur University. He is working on chapbooks and street literature in Colonial Bengal. Aritra is especially interested in people who hawk chapbooks in trains and buses. He considers himself to be an amateur photographer, his principal area of interest being street photography. adminhumanitiesunderground.org
The 10,000 Moment: HUG Pauses. To Look Back & Ahead
humanitiesunderground “There are two kinds of poets. Poets and local poets. Those who write in big and reputed magazines are poets. The rest are local poets.” Prasun Bandyopadhyay, Poet’s Preface, Collected Works This is a fine moment. On facebook, we are now 10,000 of us, and counting. And many more outside: those who routinely visit, interact and send us feedback. We receive good wishes and messages from the tiniest of towns in India as well as from such far flung places like Uganda and Chile. We started with 300-odd kindred souls. Then this platform gradually became animated and acquired a life of its own. It grew far wider in scope and participation than we had ever imagined. This continues to surprise us pleasantly. This is a space for all of us and this is an opportune moment for us to collectively acknowledge, without being self-congratulatory, that we have, in fact, been silently doing something here, howsoever small its scope might be. And that we are growing and evolving. Disagreeing on details about the many ways one can think about the humanities as a vocation, as a passion and as a way of living, but keeping the argument going—an impulse we had felt in the originary instant (and still feel) that certain other kinds of people—powerful people—are ill at ease with. These people abhor the flight of imagination and fear the biting edge of invested analytic thought. But this is also possibly a moment to take stock of things. For once, we are also mildly worried about the growing numbers on this platform. Does it take away from the underground spirit which is also kind of sectarian in temperament? And yet it is democratic to get on board as many members as possible. We simply wish every single one of us to have a larger sense of what humanitiesunderground stands for. And we think it is incumbent on us to clarify that aspect anew, to and for ourselves. This moment of introspection and speculation comes after taking into consideration what we have learnt over the past few years, once the site was open to everyone, and it is primarily based on the feedback that we have been receiving steadily from all of you. The second aspect that we need to consider is the actual content and quality of the humanitiesunderground site and the corresponding space on facebook too. Again, there is a democratic proposition that one needs to be catholic and broad; accept ideas from far and wide and debate over them. But is this a space merely to air our brainwaves, a space for indulging in mental jousting and announcing talks and seminars? Or to let lose our solitary flights of fancy? We think we need to highlight emphatically the partisan nature of this endeavour. We have, interestingly enough, received a great deal of feedback from members of our facebook group-page about what should or should not go on it, in order to sustain the brazen edginess that many say they are drawn to HUG for. It was in response to very strong urging from many of you that we changed the character of the group from ‘open’ to ‘closed’, since the increased number of members meant that posts that were irrelevant or even downright opposed to the spirit of the group were creeping into our space. Now, post the ‘closing’ of the group, while we do sift out advertisements and so on, we have still been putting the rest up on the page as long they speak widely to the humanities. But we have begun to agree with many of you who have indicated to us that our facebook page may eventually be in danger of losing its distinctive character by indulging too far a certain democratic sense of ourselves. We have been told by you that we would do better by HUG if we were to be rigorous and even autocratic in choosing what does, and does not, address directly our passionately shared beliefs and concerns, and in fact, if we were to remain bold and intrepid by declaring – through our sieving of what goes on the HUG page and what can be left for many other worthy pages/groups to carry – what our politics are. This emboldens us as we move forward across the 10,000 mark into possible future centuries to play the bat on the front foot, as it were – to give ourselves the guiltless right to collectively decide that announcements and posts that are perfectly valid and relevant for humanities questions at large may in fact dilute the rather more diabolical, quixotic or irreverent issues/ideas we love to juggle with in our humanitiesunderground blog, its facebook page and our margHumanities outfit. Henceforth, therefore, encouraged by you all, we shall try to streamline our contents by being more alive to the nuances of posts and notices, and upload only those which we think are challenging us to think productively along the paths we have chosen to tread. In other words, what we all believe to be part of a borderless broad humanities, however laudable, is irksome, and will no longer find a space on our page. We hope that this will answer the demand for a more rigorous humanitiesunderground group-page post this 10,000 member mark. It is important to clarify the very nature of humanitiesunderground—based on our perception and your feedback—because there is just no use having one more watered-down, all-encompassing space for the humanities people. Just as it is useless to carp on the regressive and self defeating ‘humanities in crisis’ story—a stimulus we had abandoned right from our inception. Those ways may gain us a wider audience but this is surely not a popularity contest we are in. In fact, our whole endeavour is to steer clear of
“Before There Used To Be Romantic Politicians”
Alfonso Daniel Rodriguez Castelao was a Spanish politician, writer, painter and doctor. He is one of the fathers of Galician nationalism. Here is a selection from his series of drawings titled Cousa Da Vida, also recently published as Matters of Life by Monfokira. In these drawings we see the true soul of Galicia, especially in the context of the horrifying civil war (1936-1939), which still has its sequels in Spain. ———————————————————————————— –the man who knows the most in this world is our teacher. it remains to be seen how much he knows –for you it’s one year more; for me it’s one year less –by the souls of your dead forefathers give me money sir, to see film, as I am seeing one and can’t leave it. –it’s good to sleep; then you can dream that there’s justice. –no mummy: tell him not to pour coffee on my sugar. –yes, man, yes! four and two are six. –don’t tell me! that’s three and three. –what are you looking at? –how they eat. –they say that price of stamps is going to rise. –how nice that we don’t know how to write. –i love you very much, but i can’t tell you. –why? –because only the old say it still. –poor mothers who are not guilty!… –what’s this about “liberty, fraternity, equality” ? –it must be something…”like believing in what we don’t see.” –everybody says the Galicia is beautiful. —yes, man; but the landscapes can’t be eaten. –before there used to be romantic politicians. –there also used to be generous bandits. –but man, why do you speak so ill about Mr. Philip? –because he is still alive. –i am dying, have you heard it? and i’ll give you an advice: run from those who talk of democracy. –well, i tell you that the immoral officers are intelligent, hard-working, and they go to office everyday. –men don’t want to be donkey. –they want to be lion, tiger, panther, elephant… frog: the cocks think that the day comes because they sing. –how tiny men are! adminhumanitiesunderground.org