Ottos Weblog Juni 2004

Sunday, June 06, 2004

Ronald Reagan ist im Alter von 93 Jahren gestorben und CNN überhäuft den US-Präsidenten, der anscheinend Michail Gorbatschow davon überzeugt hat, die Mauer zu öffnen, mit viel Lob. Sein Tod hat beinahe die Feierlichkeiten zum 60. Jahrestag des D-Day in der Normandie überschattet. Aber nur beinahe, denn natürlich waren sich alle einig, daß er ein "großer" Präsident war, dessen Bedeutung in erster Linie im Hinblick auf das Ende des Kalten Krieges zu sehen ist. Schröder und Chirac sind viel zu sehr bemüht, transatlantische Einigkeit zu demonstrieren und George Bush kann man ja nicht absprechen, daß er die UNO wirklich wieder an den Entscheidungen beteiligt, nachdem er eingesehen hat, daß er ohne UNO und Europäer im Irak vor einem neuen Vietnam stehen würde.

Der Journalist Dan E. Moldea setzt sich in seinen Büchern und auf seinen Webseiten kritisch mit Reagan und dessen Verganganheit bei MCA (Music Corporation of America) und der Schauspielergewerkschaft auseinander. Auf der Third World-Traveller Webseite finden sich interessante Links zum Thema.

Friday June 11, 2004

Während sich der "normale" Fussballfan hierzulande mit Bier zufriedengeben muß, haben die Portugiesen den während der Euro 2000 praktizierten pragmatischen Ansatz der Niederländer übernommen, um Schlägereien und anderen gewalttätigen Auseinandersetzungen zuvorzukommen:

"Portuguese police officers will turn a blind eye to England supporters who openly smoke cannabis during Euro 2004, having decided that a stoned crowd is easier to control than a drunk one. Lisbon police confirmed yesterday that England fans will not be arrested for puffing on joints on the streets of the Portuguese capital, following a recommendation from the Dutch authorities responsible for policing the English during Euro 2000. Four years ago England’s match in Eindhoven, ironically against Portugal, passed off peacefully as many supporters took advantage of the Netherlands’ liberal drugs laws. By contrast the game against Germany in the Belgian town of Charleroi was marred by violence, much of it fuelled by alcohol. (…) Eindhoven police spokesman Johann Beelan said cannabis was a positive influence on public order at Euro 2000. "Cannabis … was part of the conditions which meant everyone had a good time," he said." — Paul Kelso, The Guardian: It’s OK to smoke dope, England fans told

Friday, June 18, 2004

Unter dem Titel "The Father of Modernism" diskutieren die jungen Schriftsteller Jim Lewis und Jeffrey Eugenides ("Middlesex") bei MSN per E-Mail anläßlich des hundertsten Bloomsdays über James Joyce und Literatur.

"You and I were initiated, directly or indirectly, by a generation of writers for whom formal innovation was the starting point. (…) But what did I actually learn—from Barthelme or Pynchon, or for that matter Beckett or Raymond Queneau, or for that matter Joyce or André Breton? That writing has infinite possibilities, yes; but not all of them are equally worth exercising. (…) Perhaps the problem is this: We were taught, all too readily, to think of literature as progressing within the context of historical forces. Joyce leads to Beckett, Borges leads to Barth, Pynchon begets DeLillo, and so on. But of course, things don’t work like that. You can tell the story that way, and it’ll make some sense, but not for long." — Jim Lewis

"It changed my life and removed the other possible lives I might have had. (…) We knew the basic story: On a single day in June of 1904, Leopold Bloom takes a walk through the city of Dublin, while back at home, his wife, Molly, awaits her lover, Blazes Boylan. We could have charted the mock-epic correspondences between Ulysses and Homer’s The Odyssey. We knew that this novel was "experimental," but since it was the first novel we’d ever taken super seriously, its experimental qualities came to us not as elements of a revolutionary literary method but as established doctrine. Lack of punctuation, word combinations (as in the phrase "scrotumtightening sea"), discontinuities of narrative, formal shifts, and stylistic metamorphoses—this was literature." — Jeffrey Eugenides

"Look at it this way: Has there been a movie as great as Apocalypse Now (1979) in the years since it was released? Has there been an artist as significant as Warhol (who died in ‘87, but flourished a decade earlier)? Have there been poems as profound as John Ashbery’s "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror" (1975) or James Merrill’s The Changing Light at Sandover (published in 1982, but mostly written in the late 1970s)? Photography as groundbreaking as William Eggleston’s Guide (1976) or Cindy Sherman’s Film Stills (1977-80)? Reportage as new and fresh as Dispatches (1977)? Theater as revolutionary as Einstein on the Beach (1976)? Belles-lettres as brilliant as The Lover’s Discourse (1977)? Or even: rock music surpassing Never Mind the Bollocks (1977)?" — Jim Lewis

"Nevertheless: I’m struck by your idea that we can get along fine without an avant-garde. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard it put quite so bluntly before. Joyce was writing Ulysses in the aftermath of World War I, when Europe and the European dream of progress and Utopian rationalism lay in ruins. I can imagine, in such a desperate, broken time, wanting to read books that were in no way like the books that had come before, books that, by the sheer destructive force of their aesthetics, spoke to the real destruction of war and, at the same time, began to show a way ahead by virtue of their grand experiments." — Jeffrey Eugenides

Sunday, June 20, 2004

Counterpunch ist ein von Alexander Cockburn und Jeffrey St. Clair herausgegebenes linkes amerikanisches Magazin, das ich durch die Pynchon Liste kennengelernt habe. Hier kann man nachlesen, was das Amerika denkt, das nicht mit dem Kriegskurs der Bush-Regierung nach dem 11. September 2001 einverstanden ist und regelmäßig als unpatriotisch diffamiert wird. Mit St. Clair bin ich auch schon einmal aneinander geraten, während mein E-Mail Austausch mit Cockburn recht nett war. Manchmal hat mich die etwas platte Bush-Kritik gestört, aber im Grunde stimme ich mit den Herausgebern darin überein, daß der Irak-Krieg ein schwerer Fehler war. Counterpunch bietet einer ganzen Reihe von recht intelligenten Kommentatoren ein Forum, das beweist, daß in der Tat nicht ganz Amerika hinter dem Präsidenten steht. Aber ich habe hier auch schon Artikel gelesen, die kritisch mit Michael Moore oder John Kerry umgegangen sind.

In einem langen Essay untersucht Walter A. Davis, emeritierter Englischprofessor von der Ohio State University, was der umstrittene Mel Gibson-Film The Passion of the Christ mit den Vorgängen in Abu Ghraib zu tun hat. Beide Ereignissen ("Events"), die Davis als historische Singularitäten im marxistisch-historischen Sinn verstanden haben will, eint seiner Meinung nach das Geheimnis, das sie verbergen: sie sind psychologisch identisch und enthüllen, was mit der amerikanischen Psyche nach dem 11. September geschehen ist:

"The task of the leftist or dialectical critic of ideology is to find those images that lay bare, in its historical development, the disorder at the heart of the American psyche. Image reveals the dream life of a culture. And in our time, as I’ll show, it reveals that life to be a psychotic one."

Davis versucht, diese Krankheit zu beschreiben, indem er die Bilder analysiert, die uns, dem Publikum, von Film und TV-Nachrichten geboten werden.

"Always historicize, this is the first and last commandment of leftist, Marxist inquiry. Its cardinal implication: historical inquiry is the search for those Events that are singular because they reveal something new under the sun, something that cannot be subsumed under "human nature" nor explained as a continuation of the hegemonic principles of a given social order. (…) I here want to argue the same not only with respect to Gibson’s film and the Abu Ghraib but in terms of a larger argument: that there is a necessary connection between these two events in the development of a single disorder. Its articulation is my overarching goal."

"The goal of Gibson’s film is not purification or faith or love or piety. His goal is the sado-masochistic bludgeoning of the audience so that they will become abject subjects on their knees, but full of rage, eager to find some way to "do unto others" the violence that has been done unto them. There is no contradiction here; rather an insight into the way in which eros and thanatos become one in Gibson’s film. The libidinous and the violently aggressive are fused in a new constellation. Sado-masochistic spectacle is now the condition of cinematic pleasure. Contra Laura Mulvey the gaze of the camera is now fixated not on eroticized (though passive) women but on suffering male bodies in extremes of excruciating pain. The Nazi pleasure dome is achieved. In the Christ Gibson finds the homoerotic ur-text behind the Nazi love of the beautiful blonde boy his taut body blossoming with his own blood at each bite of the whip."

IV. Apologies to Pynchon or "The Late Late Late Show"

The last image was too immediate for any eye to register.
Gravity’s Rainbow, p. 760

Paranoia is the ability to make connections.
From the sayings of Thomas the Elder

"We are unable to understand contemporary history and the psychotic bases of American ideology because we have not yet learned how to read Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. I hope on another occasion to offer an extended discussion of all that this seminal work offers the student of ideology, the revolutionary nature of its insight into the capitalist mind and how it teaches us both to read and to practice the discipline of the image. For now I must condense that contribution into three concepts: (1) Pynchon reveals the constitutional stupidity of official rationality and its underlying madness; as in the fetishizing of any and all information (as if there was a precious secret that each inmate of Abu Ghraib could render up to Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Perle et al). (2) The excessive actions that official rationality necessarily gives birth to are a result of the underlying paranoia and the desire for omnipotent control that results. (3) This disorder is fatally wedded to the effort to transform eros into thanatos so that there will finally only be one thing—the imposition of technoscientific rationality on the entire globe. Such is the categorical imperative of late capitalism in its Empire phase. Study of the image remains the way to combat it because the image reveals what it conceals." — Walter A. Davis: The Bite of the Whip: Passion of the Christ in Abu Ghraib

Monday, June 28, 2004

Zwei Nachrichten beherrschen den Tag, über die ich mich freue. Zum einen ist Präsident Bush den "Terroristen" zuvorgekommen und hat die Übertragung der Souveränität an die irakische Übergangsregierung um zwei Tage vorgezogen. Ein cleverer Schachzug oder auch: gefickt eingeschädelt! Tja, liebe "insurgents," Sprengstoff noch nicht fertig, Taxen noch nicht bestellt—alles zu spät!

Zum anderen hat der Oberste Gerichtshof der USA endlich entschieden, daß auch die Guantanamo-Gefangenen Anspruch auf den Schutz der US-Gerichte haben:

"WASHINGTON, June 28 — The Supreme Court ruled today that people being held by the United States as enemy combatants can challenge their detention in American courts — the court’s most important statement in decades on the balance between personal liberties and national security. (…) Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote that the campaign against terrorism notwithstanding, "a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation’s citizens." — David Stout: Supreme Court Affirms Detainees’ Right to Use Courts