4/28/2023 as bestas (part 1): uncanny subaltern others, postimperialism, and neoliberal españoladasRead Nowthis blog has been deleted as it will appear in a forthcoming book entitled España postimperial: aproximaciones a la persistencia del imperio restaurativo.
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The Guardian just published an article stating that Graham Hancock’s documentary series on Netflix, Ancient Apocalypse, “is the most dangerous show on Netflix.” It turns out that this program is also the top documentary on Netflix. It has captured the popular imagination with shots of several megalithic ruins around the world. Yet, rather than just condemning it as outright conspirational prehistory ---which it is, as it postulates an advanced civilization that perished with the last ice age 12.000 year ago at the beginning of the Neolithic--- I believe it is more productive to compare the series with the most popular book on the Neolithic published last year: David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything. The comparison is most productive because they both emphasize a new hypothesis: the key historical event to understand our present is not 1492, 1789, or 1917 but the apocalyptic beginning of the Neolithic, which challenges any renewed call to revolution (Traverso) or a new master of the Left (Zizek, Badiou). These two texts present that period in complementary ways. Hancock insists that there was an advanced pre-neolithic civilization that disappeared with the last glaciation as a result of the ensuing cataclysmic changes. He connects that culture with the mythic of a universal flood told by several cultures and adds that, before disappearing, it traveled the world teaching the rest of the “primitive and underdeveloped world” all the technologies that would flourish in the Neolithic: the wheel, agriculture, metallurgy, etc. Heroic mythic characters such as Prometheus or Quetzalcoatl would be the last survivors of that advance civilization which were responsible for passing on their technology to the rest of our “primitive” ancestors, and thus becoming the origin of “our” Neolithic “history.” Obviously, his theory is “bonkers,” to add another British term to the Guardian’s denunciation, but it has captured the popular imagination with great photography and digital reconstructions of some of the most impressive Neolithic constructions and temples, from Indonesia’s Padang to Turkey’s Göbekli Tepe. I must admit that I thoroughly enjoyed the images, and specially the digital reconstructions, as they are some of the best out there. Yet, what this “crazy, conspirational” show has captured, in a very realistic, “historical,” and pragmatic way, is the apocalyptic tension we face today vis-à-vis the impending ecological and technological collapse we are about face in our near future, an apocalypse that, unlike Hollywood’s numerous renditions, will not take us to a Mad Max postapocalyptic scenario, but will nevertheless change, reverse, or nullify the centrality of global capitalism in ways that we still cannot fully grasp. The show emphasizes the fact that we actually originated in aNeolithic apocalypse and we survived it, and, by doing so, it shows a political engagement with history that, as I will argue in the following, is most necessary and progressive today, for the contemporary Left in is incapable of thinking the apocalypse as a historical and political event or development, and instead, is stuck in an old-fashioned paradigm that, at the least, is simply nostalgic and, at the most, is non-operational: the revolution. The ghost of the revolution haunts the Left but, unlike in the Marx and Engel’s manifesto, only points to the past, wherein the left continues to be stuck.
Similarly, and as I stated in a previous blog (A Neolithic Anti-Oedipus), the Neolithic emerges in The Dawn of Everything as a very historical (no longer prehistoric) laboratory of political experimentation and thinking that surpasses our own in the present and, what is more important, challenges and deconstructs every single believe in which our contemporary capitalist and global society is built upon, which, Graeber and Wengrow, group together under the myth of the “Origins of Inequality:” progress, centralization, urban complexity leading to hierarchical politics, agriculture as necessary revolution towards civilization, etc. This is the great political potential of the book if we are ever to challenge Mark Fisher’s “capitalist realism.” For Graeber and Wengrow, the Neolithic is precisely the political field/period in which we can see reflected a political future that will emerge, not after a political Revolution à la Marx, but rather, in the aftermath of an ecological and civilizational apocalypse that will unleash a social and political heterogeneity that today we cannot imagine except as Neolithic prehistory (whose diverse biopolitical arrangements probably contained a diversity that heteropatriarchy has buried almost completely for us). The only shortcoming of their book is that they do not clearly formulate an answer to the initial question posed by the: “[I]f human beings, through most of our history, have moved back and forth fluidly between different social arrangements, assembling and dismantling hierarchies on a regular basis, maybe the real question should be ‘how did we get stuck?’ [in contemporary rigid global capitalism]” (2021: 127). For Graeber and Wengrow, unlike Hancock, the real apocalypse from which we emerge is that of the consolidation of a single global capitalist world-system: history, no Neolithic prehistory, is the real apocalypse that peaks in contemporary capitalism but triggers an earlier colonial apocalypse after 1492. But what Hancock and Graeber/Wengrow emphasize with all their limits and contradictions, and this is the point to which I wanted to get, is the fact that the Left does not have a political discourse to articulate what the impending apocalypse of capitalism represents (climate change, pollution, mass migrations, 6th extinction….). The Left continues stuck in the paradigm of the Revolution (and its many variations), and so unless there is a theoretical paradigmatic change, it will not be able to intervene in contemporary and future politics. In this respect, the much-praised book by Enzo Traverso, Revolution: An Intellectual History, seems to me a step back rather than one forward. The uprisings that continue to emerge from Chile to Iran and China, are closer to the Middle-Age and Ancient-Regime protests than to post 1789 revolutions, of which the Soviet one in 1917 still remains the paradigm (see my Globalizaciones: la nueva Edad Media y el retorno de la diferencia). The heterodox Benjamin and Mariátegui, among others, provided a way to think the impending apocalypse and this is where we need to start off. this blog has been deleted as it will appear in a forthcoming book entitled España postimperial: aproximaciones a la persistencia del imperio restaurativo.
Elkano eta trauma koloniala: euskal Errenazimentuaren bikoiztasun politikoaz Elkano inperialista den ala ez, azken aldiko elkarrizketa fetitxista da. Bibliako shibboleth-aren antzera, Elkanoren alde egiten baduzu inperialista eta españolista zara eta kontra egiten baduzu euskal tradizio ezkertiar anti-inperialistaren zertifikatuari eusten diozu. Baina eztabaida hauek hutsalak dira, izan ere euskal Errenazimentuaren historiatik kanpo egiten baitira, testuinguru orokor historiko bat definitu eta ulertu gabe eta, gainera, testuak berak irakurri gabe: oraindik ere ez dakigu badagoen euskal Errenazimentu bat eta, baldin badago, zer esan nahi duen, edo “Errenazimentu” eta “Humanismo” deitu behar diogun. Orain artean euskal historiografiak segi baino ez dio egin Europa zentralean (Frantzia, Ingalaterra, Alemania) sortu den historiografia errenazentistari, haiek sortutako norma Euskal Herrian zuzenean inposatuz eta beti ere emaitza bera ekoiztuz: bai, badaude euskal Errenazimentu baten zantzuak, baina bere hartan ez dugu Errenazimenturik. Emaitza honek gauza bakarra esan nahi du: Europa erdiko (gehi Italia) Errenazimentua ez dela gertatzen Euskal Herrian, guri ez dagokigun molde erteuropar bat indarrez inposatzen diogulako. Historiografia erteuropar honek, gainera, inperio hispaniko edo gaztelauaren lekune zentrala beti saihesten du, 1492an hasten den konkista inperialista bigarren mailara bultzatuz, errepublika italiarretatik Herbehereetara kapitalak egiten duen lekualdatze eta mutazioa lehenetsiz. Giovanni Arrighik berak bere XX. mende luzean dio Gaztela zela Veneziarren eta Florentziarren Indiak, hala Ameriketako konkista osoa afera barne-europar bihurtuz (2010). Elkanori buruz hitz egiten hasi aurretik, inperialismo gaztelau, hispaniko edo habsburgotarrarekiko (hiru hitzak elkar-trukagarri bezala erabiliko ditugu hemen) euskaldunek izan duten kokatzea ulertu behar dugu lehenik. Neure Babel aurretik-en baietz diot baina bertako elite eta jauntxoek gorte gaztelauaren (frantsesaren) eta bertako herri subalternoaren aurka beren estrategia politiko propioa bilakarazten dutelako (2020: 133-146), batez ere Nafarroako erresumaren armaz hartzea eta gero (1512). Eta beraz, euskal Errenazimentua ez da inperialista edo anti-inperialista, baizik eta inguruko inperioen kontsolidazioarekiko bertako elite klaseek hartzen duten joera eta estrategia lokalagoa, zeina, beharren arabera, inperialista edo anti-inperialista izan daitekeen, klase subalternoen aldeko edo aurkako. Zentzu horretan, euskal klase subalternoek inguruko inperioekiko zuten erlazioa, gehienetan, eliteek tartekotutako edo mediatutakoa zen. Beraz, euskal Errenazimentua bere bikoiztasun estrategiko inperialistak definitzen du.[1] Bikoiztasun horren testuinguruan bakarrik ulertu daitezke Esteban Garibai, Katalina Erauso Lope de Agirre edo Tomas de Zumarraga bezalako pertsonaia konplexuak, hala nola euskal eliteek tartekotutako “sorginen” aurkako jardun inkisitorialak. Beraz, testuinguru honetan, eta goian azaldutako hipotesi orokorrarekin, orain bai, heldu diezaiokegu Elkanoren eztabaidari. Hasieratik esango dut, fetitxistak, batez ere ezkertiarrak, lasai geratu daitezen: bai, Elkano inperialista zen.[2] Baina, testuinguru historikoa eta testuak zehatz irakurtzen baditugu, beste bigarren Elkano bat irakur edo deszifratu daiteke, lehenengoaren kontrakarrean, euskal eliteek berek izan duten joera estrategiko bikoitzaren irudi, baina era berean, elite horiek inoiz eragingo ez duten inperialismo gaztelauaren kritikaren bozeramaile traumatiko eta subalterno bezala. Beraz, Elkano, bere jatorrizko subalternitatea dela medio, inperialismo gaztelauaren lehen kritikoa ere badugu, Bartolomé de las Casasena baino errotikakoagoa. Baina Elkano kritikoa da, baina ez kristautasunaren, humanismoaren edo arrazionaltasunaren izenean indigenen eta esklabuen eskubideak aldarrikatuko dituelako, baizik eta Joseph Conraden eta bere Heart of Darknesseko Kurtzen antzerago, inperialismoaren gogorkeria berak sufritu eta gero, uko egingo diolako, bakearen balio absolutua aldarrikatuz, itxuraz ikutu oso morotarra eta utopikoa (Tomas Moro) duen testu batean, baina azkenean trauma kolonialak eragindako fantasia baino ez dela errebelatzen duen testu aurrekari gabean. Eta hain zuzen, kritika hau estrategikoa eta traumatikoa zelako, Elkanok, aukera izan zuenean espedizio berri baten buru izateko, Garcia Jofre de Loaisa kidearekin, berriro jo zuen itxasora, Ozeano Barera, koroa gaztelauaren izenean, saio horretan hil zelarik 1525an, “itsasoaren ilunaren bihotz” conradiarrean. Horrelako aldarrikapenek zentzurik ez dutela neu banaiz ere lehena onartzen, balio pedagogiko bat badutenez, derradan erarik soil eta zuzenean: Elkano da inperialismo europar errenazentistaren lehen kritikoa historian. Errenazimentu humanista, kolonialismoa eta nekropolitika Hemendik gutxira argitaratzea espero dudan liburu batean (Apokalipsirantz: geroaren historia politiko bat), postulatzen dut Errenazimentu europarra Ameriken kolonizazioarekin hasten dela eta beraz modernitatearen muinean gogorkeriazko kolonialismoa dugula, edo termino teknikoagotan, “nekropolitika koloniala” dugula (Mbembe 2019). Nekropolitika koloniala subjektu indigena eta esklabua esplotatu eta hiltzeko jardun politiko-ekonomikoa da, zeinak helburu bezala duen subjektu kolonialari bere gizatasuna ukatzea eta, ukatze horren ondorioz, kapitalismoaren metaketa primitiboa sortzea —emakume europarren domestikazioarekin batera—. Hala, nekropolitika kolonialak “humanismoaren” ideologia hedatzen du, aldi berean subjektu kolonialak “humano”ez direla aldarrikatuz. Hipotesi hau Michel Foucaultek (1976) eta Giorgio Agambenek (1998) bilakatu dutenaren aurka doa, berentzat modernitateak inauguratzen duena biopolitika baita: Estatuak bere hiritarrak edo subjektuak iraunarazteko baliatzen dituen kontrol teknika berriak. Alegia, Estatuak, bere boterea hedatzeko, hiritarren bizitza bera kontrolatzea bihurtzen du bere zeregin nagusi. Erdi Aroan kontrakoa zen nagusi, Estatuak bere boterea edonor hil ahal izateko eskubidean oinarritzen baitzuen. Beraz Errenazimentuko humanismo eta arrazionaltasunaren muinean —modernitatearen jatorrian— neuk, nekropolitika koloniala datzala proposatzen dut.[3] Beraz Elkanoren testua eta bizitza, modernitate kolonial nekropolitiko baten testuinguru errenazentistan kokatzetik abiatuko naiz, Euskal Herriko eliteek erantzun estrategiko “kontraesankorrak” kolonialismo honi ematen dizkietela gehituz, zeinek klase subalternoen erantzunak ere tartekotuko dituzten. Noblezia titulurik ez zuen Elkano merkatariak bazuen barku baten jabetza, baina Magallaesen espedizioan ez zuen kargu nagusirik izan; are zuen bakarra kendu zion Magallaesek liskartia zelako. Honen heriotzaren ondoren hautatu ziren hurrengo kapitainek kargua utzi zuten arte, Elkanok marinel bezala lan egin zuen. Horregatik, kapitain izendatu eta ondoren bakarrik hartu zuen Elkanok barku-liburua idazteko ardura eta, lurreratzean, barku-liburuan oinarrituriko bidaiaren kronika. Zoritxarrez bi dokumentuak galdu dira. Elkanoren idazkiak eta testigantza kontutan hartu zuten bi dokumentu iritsi zaizkigu, Maximiliano Transilvanoren kronika (1523) eta 30 urte beranduago Fernando González de Oviedok idatzitakoa, zeina hildakoan (1557) amaitu gabe utzi zuen eta XIX. mendera arte argitaratu ez zen (Historia general y natural de las Indias). Biak dira antzerakoak. Antonio Pigafettak, Magallaesen idazkari eta mundu-bira Elkanorekin batera osotu zuen veneziarrak, idatzi zuen hirugarren kronika bat, The Relazione del primo viaggio intorno al mondo, zeina euskuizkribu bezala irakurri zen Europa zabalean eta, geroago, 1550-1559an argitaratu zen liburu bezala. Azken kronika ezaguna Pietro Martire d'Anghierarena da (Pedro Martir Anglería), zeinak bere Décadas liburu seriean —1523ko bostgarren liburuan hain zuzen— eman zuen bere bertsioa historialari bezala. Kronika eta historia guzti hauetatik garrantzitsuena Elkanoren kasua erabakitzeko Transilvanorena da. Izan ere, eta Ekai Txapartegik dioen bezala (2020a), Enrique Santamariaren hipotesi bati jarraikiz, bi zati oso desberdin detekta daitezke kronika transilvanoarrean. Lehenak, ofizialistagoa, Magallaesen barku-liburuari jarraikiz idatzia dela dirudi eta bigarrenak, askozaz heterodoxoagoa, Elkanoren idatzietatik eratorrita dirudi. Bigarren parte honetatik abiatuta Txapartegik Elkano humanista, bakezale eta errenazentista bat irakurtzen du, orduan Europan humanismoak besarkatu zituen balioe utopikoei atxekitzen zaiona. Txapartegik hala zerrendatzen ditu Elkanoren balio humanistak:
Errenazimenduaren balioztatze baikor bat eginez gero —hots, modernitatearen, humanismoaren, arrazionalismoaren eta bakearen aldekoa— orduan Txapartegiren irakurketa da egokiena eta egundainoko historiografiak gehien onartuko duena. Baina Errenazimentuaren eta modernitatearen balioztatze ezkor bat eginez gero —azkenean proiektu nekropolitiko eta kolonial bat dela azpimarratuz— Elkanoren testuak beste irakurketa desberdin bat eskatzen du, datuetan eta erreferentzietan bat banator ere Txapartegirekin eta, are, bere azalpen zehatzagoa informazio iturri nagusi bezala erabiltzen dudalarik. Alegia, hemen bigarren irakurketa posible bat baino ez dut proposatzen, abiapuntu historiografiko desberdin bat hartuz. Biak dira beraz zilegi. Transilvanoren kronikaren bigarren partean, Borneora iritsitakoan, Elkanok hango gizartearen ikuspegi utopiko bakezale bat ematen du, hain zuzen urte gutxi lehenago Tomas Morok idatzi zuen Utopiaren (1516) oihartzunak dituena.[4] Txapartegik humanismo europarraren balioekin erkatzen du goiko utopia erdi-morotarra eta, beraz, Elkano ere humanista eta bakezalea zela argudiatzen du:
Alabaina, bada beste erkaketa posible bat, zeinak Elkano conradiar bat ematen digun eta euskal Errenazimentu estrategiko eta bikoitzaren ideia indartzen duen. Elkanoren utopia Mororenarekin edo beste humanistenekin erkatu beharrean, testuko beste pasarte ez-utopikoekin alderatu daiteke, Elkanoren eta eskifaiaren alegoria bezala eta, orokorkiago, espedizioaren eta jardun inperialista europarraren alegoria bezala —bertatik Conraden Heart of Darknessekiko erreferentzia—. Irakurketa conradiar honetan, jardun inperialista nekropolitikoaren izate konplexua aztertu behar dugu, Elkanorenean ere gertatzen dela baieztatuz. Edozein kronika inperialistan bi alde kontrajarri ditugu: Beste koloniala konkistatzeko desira eta Beste horrekiko beldurra. Lehen partean, Magallaesen barku-liburuan oinarritutakoan, inperialismoaren bi alde kontrajarri horiek batera doaz konkista inperialaren izenean, baina bigarren partean, Elkanoren barku liburuan eta kronikan oinarritzen denean, bi alderdiok kontrajarri egiten dira, eta kontrajartze honek esplikatzen du goiko Elkanoren utopia borneotarra. Elkanorena ez da utopia humanista eta errenazentista, baizik eta konkista inperialistaren kronika traumatikoa, zeinaren fantasia “bake unibertsalezko lurraldea” bihurtzen den, hots, konkista inperialista-kolonialik ez dagoen fantasiazko lurralde postraumatikoa.[5] Lehen parteko desira/beldur koloniala: Magallaesen barku-liburua Lehen partean gerra- eta konkista-desira diren buruak edo liderrak ditugu, kolonialismo gaztelaua Ozeano Atlantiko eta Barean gogorkeriaz inposatzeko prest daudenak: Magallaes eta, bera hil ondoan, Juan Serrano. “Beste” edo ezezagun kolonialarekiko beldurra ere badago hasieratik, baina desira inperialistari makurturik. Adibidez, kanibalak aipatzen dira kronikaren lehen zatian, ez hauen aurka gerra egiteko, baizik eta, beldurra izatera ailegatzen ez den prudentziaren izenean, saihestu eta hegorago jotzeko:
Bigarren pasarte batean ere, beldurrari gainezarriz, izpiritu kolonialista nagusitzen da. Magallaesek Argentina hegoaldeko San Julián golkoan egiten duen egonaldi luzean, bertako indigenak behitzea du helburu, espedizioan laguntza bezala erabiltzeko, “gigante” direla gehitzen badu ere. Azkenean, hiru indigena bakarrik atxilotzen dituzte; bik eskapo egiten die eta hirugarrena hil egiten da ontzian (257-60). Halere, beldurrak segitzen du. Urak jota itsasontzi edo nao bat galdu eta gero, hotzak asaldatzen ditu Antartikatik gertu. Hala, Ozeano Barerako igarobidearen bila esplorazioan ateratzen diren hiru itsasontzietatik batean eskifaia matxinatu egiten da: kapitain bezala doan Magallaesen iloba atxilotzen dute eta, ontziaren kontrola bereganatuz, buelta egiten dute Espainiara:
Esan bezala, lehen partean, Beste kolonialarekiko beldurra eta Beste hori konkistatzeko desira, batera doaz, inperialismo-kolonialismo nekropolitiko ororen ahurra eta ifrentzua bezala. Beranduago, Ozeano Barerako pasartea aurkitu eta lehen uharteetara iritsitakoan, geraldi bat egiten dute gaur egun Filipinetako Zebu uhartea denean, testuan “Subuth” bezala aipatzen dena. Magallaesen erretorikak konkistakoa izaten segitzen du, Hernán Cortes bera aipatuz inspirazio iturri bezala. Zebuko erregearen morrontza lortzen du Magallaesek haren iloba bat “mirakuloski” sendatzean. Alabaina, konkistako izpirituak bultzatuta, inguruko erreinuak ere menderatu nahi ditu Magallaesek. Ondoko Mauthan erreinuko erregeak koroa espainiarraren menpekotasun edo morroitza onartzeari uko egiten dioenean, haren aurka jotzen du Magallaesek, Zebuko erregearen laguntza harrotasunez errefusatuz. Hernán Cortés bera gida edo eredu bezala aipatuz, 40 espainiarrekin jotzen du Mauthaneko 3000 laguneko ejerzituaren aurka. Hala hitz egiten die bere tropa murritzeko soldatuei konkistazko desira ezin harroagoz:
Harrokeria koloniala Magallaesek heriotzarekin ordaintzen du. Baina hau da lehen aldia, era berean, troparen beldurra, desira konkistatzailetik dibortziatzen dena, eta hari kontrajartzen eta gainezartzen zaiona. Are, ikusiko dugun bezala, hemendik aurrera konkista desira desagertuz joango da eta Beste kolonialarekiko beldurra haziko hurrenez-hurren. Tropa espainiarrek ihes egingo dute panikoak jota: “E finalmente , andando ansi trabada la batalla, fue muerto en ella el capitán Magallaes y siete españoles, lo cual visto por los otros, y que era imposible vencer á tanta multitud de indios tan belicosos y tan bien armados, se comenzaron á retraer, juntándose todos y poniéndose en ordenanza” (271). Magallaes hil ondoren, kapitain ordeko bat aukeratuko du eskifaiak, Juan Serrano, zeinari buruz Transilvanok ez duen informazio gehiago ematen. Serranok ere, Magallaesek bezala, Mauthango erregearen kontrako gerra egitea erabakitzen du, oraingoan Zebuko erregearen laguntzarekin. Alabaina, Serranoren desira koloniala eta harrokeria konkistatzailea, oraingoan esklabu baten tratamenduan azalduko da. Magallaesek itzultzaile bezala esklabu bat ekarri zuen espedizioan, zeinak Malakakoa izanik jatorriz, bertako hizkuntza hitz egiten zuen. Zebuko erregeak ere “indio” bat zuen Malakako hizkuntza hitz egiten zuena eta, beraz, bi itzultzaileren bidez, Malakako hizkuntza erdibide bezala erabiliz, elkar ulertzea lortu zuten. Serranoren esklabu itzultzailea Magallaesek egindako erasoan zauriturik suertatu zenez, ez zen gauza itzultzeko, baina halere Serranok bortxatu egin zuen ohetik atera eta itzulpen lanak egitera. Hala, esklabuak, mendeku bezala, Serrano saldu zion Zebuko erregeari, hain zuzen konkista hispaniarraren egia azkena azalduz. Merezi du pasartea aipatzeak, koroa gaztelauaren menpekotasuna onartu duen erregearen eta esklabu itzultzailearen artean komunikazioak ez baitu arazorik, egia koloniala desestaltzen baitute:
Eta Zebuko erregeak bere soldatuak espainiarren aurka altxatzen dituenean, konkistazko desira koloniala erabat desagertzen da kronikatik eta hemendik aurrera beldurrak definituko du Elkanoren bidaia, beldur horrek trauma eraginez, hots, gaur egun PTS edo Trauma Osteko Estresa bezala ezagutzen duguna. Azpimarratzekoa da beldurraren adierazgarririk garrantzitsuenetako bat: marinel-soldadu kideak, eta kasu honetan kapitaina bera, ugartean abandonatzeko barkuko eskifaiak dudarik gabe egindako hautua. Serranok erreskata dezaten erregutzen die itsasertzetik, baina ontziratutako eskifaiak bertan abandonatzen du:
Eraso kolonial hauek eragindako beldur traumatikoa gainera erruduntasun konplexu eta paranoia ere bihurtzen da espedizioko kideentzat. Izan ere Zebuko soldatuek Serrano hondartzan erakustea eskifaia harrapatzeko tranpa edo jukutria izan daitekeela ere pentsatzera ailegatzen baitira. Horrek beren ihesaren izaera traumatikoa handitu egiten du, tristezia, erruduntasuna, paranoia eraginez. Ondorioz, ordura artean Bestearen konkista desira zena, eragiten dituen gertakari traumatikoen bidez, trauma bilakatzen da, baina jada ez bakarrik gertatu denarekiko trauma, baizik eta esplorazio misio osoarekiko trauma, hots, geroarekikoa, hala, depresio orokor bilakatuz:
Geratzen den eskifaia anitz urritu izateak ere beldurra eragiten die, geroak oraindik murrizketa gehiago (heriotza gehiago) ekarriko diela adierazten baitu. Bigarren parteko desira/beldur koloniala: Elkanoren barku-liburua eta kronika Serrano abandonatu ondoko erabaki guztiak kapitain berriak, Elkanok, eskifaiarekin kontsultan, hartuko ditu, beldur kolonialaren arabera; ez dago desira kolonialik hemendik aurrera. Esanguratsua da, era berean, Elkano kapitain hautatzearen ekintza ez dela kronikan aipatzen, Elkanok duen posizio berria dela medio: ez da nobleziaren seme, ez da lehen edo bigarren aukera izan kapitain kargurako, eta bere erabakiak, aurrekoenak ez bezala, ez ditu konkista desirak gobernatuta hartuko, baizik eta aitzitik, konkistaren desira saihetsiz edo errefusatuz. Elkano hau ez da konkista kolonialaren subjektu eta buru (kapitain), baizik eta merkataritzarena, berak lehendik ezagutzen zuen jardun batera, merkataritzara, espedizio osoa murriztuz. Hau da Elkanoren trauma kolonialaren biraren lehen adierazgarria: merkataritzarako itzulera; Elkanok dagoeneko proiektu inperialista-koloniala irauli du, baina ez ideal humanista batzuen izenean, baizik eta trauma kolonialaren ondorioz. Txapartegik gainera alderdi oso historiko bat eransten dio trauma kolonial honi. Izan ere trauma honek eragindako erabakien ondorio da Elkanoren mundu-bira, izan ere, Carlos V.ak emandako ordenek etorritako bidetik itzultzea agintzen baitzion, munduari birarik eman gabe:
Adibidez, Elkano kapitain ezarri eta gero lurreratzen diren lehen ugartean, egungo Quipit filipinarrean, “indioak adiskidetu ezinak” beldurra sortarazten die eta beraz, aurrera jotzen dute hurrengo ugartera, “indio adiskidegabetuengandik ihesi”:
Hemen itzultzen gara hasieran aipatu dugun utopia elkanotarrera, zeina Quipit utzi eta hurrengo ugartean aurkitzen duen kapitain berriak: Borneo. Baina hain zuzen, utopia hori goian azaldu dugun trauma kolonialaren testuinguruan ulertu behar da, trauma horri ematen zaion erantzun fantastiko bezala, eta hain zuzen merkataritzarako jira elkanotarrak ahalbidetzen duen fantasia bezala, Bestea ez baita jada subjektu kolonial eta konkistazko bezala ikustatzen. Elkanoren fantasiak luzaz aipatzea merezi du, gure gogoetaren erdigune baita:
Utopia honetan hiru elementu garrantzitsu deskribatzen dira, politikatik ekonomiara eta antropologiara hedatzen direnak:
“Utopia” hau, Mororena ez bezala, ez da alegoria inperial bat: izan ere Mororen Utopia ugarteak bere inguruko tribu eta nazioen gainean hegemonia osoa du eta “jabetza pribaturik ez badago ere” naziorik aberatsena da, gerrarako ere soldatuak kontratatu baititzake. Elkanoren “utopia” borneotarra pobrea da eta bere inperialismo ezak markatzen du, ez bakarrik politikan baizik eta baita ere eguneroko bizilagunen jardunean (adiskidetzearen garrantzia) eta inguruko herriekiko merkataritzan. Beraz, utopia ez den fantasia hau lehen-lehenik Elkanoren eta bere eskifaiaren alegoria bat da: Magallaes eta Serrano “errege gerra-gosetiak” gerran hiltzea lortu dute eta, ondorioz, bakea eskuratu dute Elkano “errege baketsu eta merkatariaren” agintepean. Bigarren maila batean, Elkanorena konkista kolonialaren desiraren aurkako alegoria bat da, eta zentzu horretan, alegoria anti-inperialista-koloniala da, baliorik gorena nazioarteko eta nazio-barneko bakea duena. Beraz alegoria anti-inperialista-kolonial hau, trauma kolonialak eragiten duelako hain zuzen, jardun inperialista ororen kondena eta kritika bilakatzen da, ez arrazoiaren edo humanismoaren izenean diarduelako, ezta giza eskubide unibertsalak defendatzen dituelako, baizik eta jasandako trauma kolonialari erantzun fantastiko bat damaiolako. Bestela esanda, Elkanoren alegoria fantastiko eta ez-utopikoa postraumatikoa eta postkoloniala da. Hor dago Elkanoren kritikaren garrantzia eta berritasuna. Edward Saiden lanaz gero, eta batez ere bere Culture and Imperialismez gero (1993), Joseph Conraden Heart of Darkness (1899) irakurri da inperialismoaren lehen kritika postraumatiko bezala, inperioa barnetik kritikatzen duen eta era berean inperioa bera gainditu ezin dezakeen lehen idazki bezala. Alabaina, Elkanorena ere Heart of Darkness bat dugu, ez inperialismo britaniarrarena, baizik eta hispanikoarena. Eta beraz, genealogia traumatiko eta anti-inperialista horretan, Conraden aurretik Elkano jarri behar dugu. Bestela esanda, Elkano ez dago Mororen Utopia humanista baina inperialista eta nekropolitikotik gertu, baizik eta Conraden Heart of Darkness inperio barneko kritika anti-inperialista eta traumatikotik. Elkano Kurtz errealistago eta kronikazkoagoa dugu. Gauza bat gehitu behar da irakurketa honetan: Borneoko herriaren pobrezia, ez bakarrik ekonomikoa baizik eta erlijosoa ere dena. Hala, eta hau litzateke irakurketa errotikakoena baina era berean arriskutsuena, Elkanoren alegoria bere Euskal Herriaren fantasia bat ere izango litzateke, sasoiko Euskal Herria oraindik ere erabat kristaututa ez zegoen herri pobrea baitzen, eta Ahaide Handien Erdi Aroko gerra zibilen ondoan, bakezalea zen, gehienaz ere inguruko inperioen gerratan parte hartzen zuena, ez botere inperialista-kolonial bat inposatzeko, baizik eta proiektu inperialista horietatik merkataritza etekin handiena ateratzeko, ontzigintzatik espedizio inperialistetara. Hala Elkano Moluka ugarteetara ailegatzean, konkistazko bidaia koloniala tratu merkatari huts bihurtuko da eta, hemen ere, Elkanok bigarren fantasia post-traumatiko-kolonial bat azalduko du, pobreziaren eta bakearen nahasketa fantastiko bera itxuratuz. Are, eta hemen bigarren fantasia honen garrantzia, Mendebaldeko inperialismoaren kritika zuzena egiten du, ironikoki, Magallaesen esklabuak Zebuko erregeari kontatu zionaren bigarren bertsio bat irudikatuz. Hala Elkano Magallaesen esklabuarekin lerratzen da inperialismo europarraren egia desestaltzeko, zeina “grandisima maldad, grandisima avaricia, insaciable gula” den:
Moluka ugarteetan merkataritzari ekingo diote Elkanoren ontzikoek, traumak eragindako beldurrak jada ez baitu konkistarako lekurik ematen. Merkataritza gaia (espezieak) nola lortu zuten ez dago argi “ciertos dones” orokorregiak ez baitu trukea esplikatzen. Hala, truke hori zilegitzeko (agian lapurketa ere izan zena), Elkanok “kolonialismo magikora” joko du, bertako ugarte emankorreneko erregeak jada beren etorrera amestu duela gehituz eta beraz “Rey de las Españasen” menpeko izateko prest dagoela argudiatuz. Kolonialismo magiko honek ez du funtzio inperialista-koloniala, baizik eta merkataritzazkoa: iltze espeziaren erosketa ez oso garbia zilegitzea.
Iltze espeziea eskuraturik, berriro ere beldur inperialak markatzen du Elkanoren itzulera Europara, oraingoan beldurra Portugalekikoa bada ere. Are, Portugalek kontrolatzen dituen lurralde eta kostaldeetan sartzeko beldurrak, urrutiratu egiten ditu bertatik, jakia eta ura eskuratzeko aukerak gutxituz eta beraz eskifaiaren gehiengoa heriotzaraino ahulduko duen egoera traumatikora berriz ere bultzatuz. Gainera, itsasoan luze nabigatu ondoan, ontziak ura hartzen hasten dira barrenean eta beraz egoera egiazki traumatikoa bihurtzen da. Azkenean Cabo Verde kolonia portugaldarrean lurreratzen dira. Esklabuak ala jakiak nahi dituzten argi ez badago ere, hemen ere bidaiak beste jira traumatiko bat hartzen du eta, beldur hutsez, beste hamahiru marinel abandonatzen dituzte bertan, hemezortzi bakarrik ontzira itzuliz:
Ekai Txapartegik argi azaldu duen bezala, zaldun ez zen Elkano plebeioa ia historia eta kronika gaztelau guztietatik desagertu zen; are, bere kronika, bere idatzi nagusia, ere desagertu zen. XIX. mendean bakarrik berreskuratu zuten Elkano historialari espaniarrek, ez bakarrik karlista liskarti eta gudazaleen aurka umiltasun inperialaren gorpuzte zen marinel gipuzkoarra hobesteko, baizik eta galera kolonialak definitzen zuen mende horretan, historia espainiarrak, konpentsazioz zituen sinbolo inperial guztiak mobilizatu zituelako, desagertzear zen inperio materiala sinbolo fantasmatikoz betetzeko. Elkano, inperialismo gaztelau-hispanikoaren porrotaren gorpuzte eta subjektu Gure irakurketaren arabera, Elkanoren desagerpenak badu beste arrazoi bat: XIX. mendean burutuko zen galera kolonialaren igerle profetiko ere bazen. Berak gorpuzten zuen, beste ezein “subjektu inperial hispanikok” baino hobeto, proiektu inperial-kolonial hispanikoaren zentzugabetasuna eta porrota. Hots, Elkano bera zen inperialismo gaztelau-hispanikoaren porrotaren mezua eta kritika gorpuzten zuen subjektua. Elkanok gorpuzten du, beste edonork baino hobeto, inperialismo gaztelauaren trauma koloniala. Eta horrek, beste ezerk baino hobeto definitzen du euskal Errenazimentu baten historia pentsatzen hasteko abiapuntua. Elkanok inperialismo hispanikoaren barnean kokatzen du bere burua eta, ondorioz, bere kritika ez da humanista edo arrazionala. Alabaina, Elkanorena inperialismo horren kritika lehen eta gogorrena bihurtzen da, traumatikoa delako eta proiektu inperialista-kolonial barrutik sortzen delako. Hala, Elkanok berriro ere itsasoratuko da bigarren espedizio batean koroaren faborea lortuta, baina bertan hilko da. Hala, inperialismo gaztelauaren barnetik oraindik ere posizio bikoitz bati, posizio euskaldun bati, eutsiko dio. Txapartegik ondo azaltzen du hasieratik zein bikoitza zen Elkano:
Joxe Azurmendik (2020: 125-27) azaldu duen bezala, euskal Errenazimentua Ameriketan (Zumarraga…) ez dago ondo ikertuta. Baina Elkano, Lope de Aguirre edo Erauso bezalako subjektu traumatiko inperialista-kolonial euskaldunek, beren bikoiztasun posizionalean, definitzen dutela argudiatzeak baluke zentzurik. Bibliografia
Oharrak [1] Edonork argudia dezake, edozein gutxiengok (juduak, romaniak…) beti izan dutela erlazio bikoitza inperioarekiko eta egia da. Alabaina, euskal bikoiztasunak oso itxura berezia eta zehatza du, beste gutxiengoengandik bereizten dituena, arazo arrazial-erlijioso gaztelaua (pureza de sangre) dela medio. Ikus nire Babel Aurretik (2020: 133-46). Blog hau idazterako momentuan ezin izan dut Elkanori buruzko Joseba Sarrionaindiaren eta Axier Lopezen liburua kontsultatu. [2] Hemen aipatu ere ez dugu egingo XIX. mendetik aurrera nazionalismo espainiarrak egingo duen saioa “El Cano” inperialismo gaztelauaren heroi zintzo eta esaneko bezala berreskuratzeko. Aurrerago aipatuko ditugu arrazoiak. [3] Proposamen honek nire kide ezkertiar arrazional eta humanista asko txundituko ditu, “anti-inperialismoaren” politikak era berean “anti-moderno” izan “behar” dela eskatzen duela proposatzen baitut. [4] Txapartegiri egindako elkarrizketa batean gai aipatzen du: “[Galdera]: Zein eragin izan zuen Elkanoren pentsamenduan Tomas Mororen ‘Utopia’-k (1516) eta Rotterdamgo Erasmoren ‘Eromenaren laudorioa’-k (1511)? [Erantzuna]: Ez dakigu. Europan oso hedatuta zeuden. Hiru urte iraungo zituen bidaia batean abiatzerako garaian, agian Elkanok berak ez, baina beste norbaitek eramango zituen liburu horiek, Magallanesek berak, adibidez. Ez litzateke harritzekoa izango” (2020). [5] Hipotesi honek oraindik esplikatu beharko luke trauma eta fantasia arteko erlazioa psikoanalitikoki. A Neolithic Anti-Oedipus: D. Graeber and D. Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything (2021) I must begin by confessing that I had lost faith in anthropology long time ago, probably after I read James Clifford’s The Predicament of Culture (1988) sometime in the 1990s, when postcolonial and decolonial critiques began to offer a different perspective. And since one cannot read everything, I chose to devote my time to other disciplines. So, I must begin my review by stating that I was very pleasantly surprised by this long book, which is a hybrid of anthropology and archaeology. Although it has many problems, I have to say without hesitation that The Dawn of Everything has restored my faith in anthropology. It is a book everybody should read, especially if they are interested in alternatives to Jameson’s ill-fated claim that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than that of capitalism.[1] A claim that was further elaborated in 2008, even though in a more critical way, by Mark Fisher in his Capitalist Realism: Is There Not Alternative? Echoing Debord and Baudrillad, Fisher still stated in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis that: “[C]apitalism is what is left when beliefs have collapsed at the level of ritual or symbolic elaboration, and all that is left is the consumer-spectator, trudging through the ruins and the relics” (2008: 11). Yet, this form of general nihilism vis-à-vis capitalism, which, in an inverted image, mirrors Francis Fukuyama’s celebration of “universal liberal capitalism” (The End of History and the Last Man, 1992), is precisely what Graeber and Wengrow’s book allow us to challenge, even if, in order to do so, we have to time-travel to a “historical period”[2] about which we know very little: the Neolithic. That is why I have labeled their book, with a grain of humorous salt, “a Neolithic Anti-Oedipus.” Mutatis mutandi, Graeber and Wengrow’s work might have the same effect Deleuze and Guattari’s The Anti-Oedipus had in the early 1970s. It is unfortunate that David Graeber’s untimely demise will not allow them to continue to produce other volumes, as they intended to do, in what would amount to Deleuze and Guattari’s second installment, A Thousand Plateaux (1980).[3] Allow me first to explain Graeber and Wengrow’s main achievement. Nowadays, we visit neomedievalist fantasy worlds, such as Game of Thrones (2011-2019) or See (2019-), to experience alternative worlds outside capitalism while, at the same time, anchoring ourselves in our very capitalist present by choosing highly hierarchical and violent worlds so similar to the one global neoliberalism has created since 1989. The goal of our contradictory visual exercise is to experience our current desires and anxieties otherwise, in an alternative way, or, as Zizek would put it, to enjoy our symptom otherwise. The Dawn of Everything has the same result of transporting us to another world: the Neolithic, a time that, for most readers, is just as unknown and fantastic as that of Lord of the Rings. Thus, the book has a similar effect to that of neomedievalist, neoliberal narratives but in reverse: we enter and explore Neolithic worlds we knew almost nothing about, but in order to rethink the present in political ways, so that all our assumptions about capitalism are torn asunder and reversed, beginning with the myth of the “Origins of Inequality,” which Rousseau and Hobbes deploy in order to justify the capitalist ontology of the modern State and private property (chapter 1). Here, and unlike in the case of neomedievalist narratives, our current desires and anxieties begin to find an object, a way out. In this respect, the book is a cognitive revolution against capitalism but in a retroactive way that takes us back to the Neolithic. The “fantastic” Neolithic places we revisit in The Dawn of Everything are as numerous and as potentially revolutionary as the most political locations and revolts of our recent history (2008-), if not more so. Let me mention few: the hunter-gatherer burial sites of Sunghir in northern Russia 34,000-26,000 years ago (technically the Paleolithic), the monumental temples and structures of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey 9,000 years ago, the city of Uruk in Iraq 3,200 years ago, and Caral in Peru 3,600 years ago. Even other more familiar places, such as Teotihuacan (active 2400 years ago), appear under a very different light, as if they were part of a world of which we thought we knew something about but we actually realize we did not. By revisiting these places and times, most of the grand narratives upon which contemporary capitalism is built (which the authors cypher on the myth of the origins of inequality), come undone. In short, the Neolithic allows us to think future possibilities in which we actually can put capitalism behind and imagine other political and economic scenarios. One could even claim that the new Communist Manifesto of the 21st century turns out to be Neolithic. Or to put it in another way, The Dawn of Everything is an archaeology of capitalism and its ideology, which allows us to peel away every layer of its ideological consolidation and, by doing so, also allows us to see the very real, material, and historical limitations of capitalism. Let me list several of those archaeological layers in a very short format, so this review remains succinct while revealing the book’s potential. After revisiting the stereotype of the Upper Paleolithic and Lower Neolithic as inhabited by “hunter-gatherer societies divided in small nomadic groups, which were egalitarian but void of technology and cultural sophistication,” Graeber and Wengrow introduce a network society that already traded “globally” across vast territories spanning Asia to Europe and developed a sophisticated culture, which nevertheless, did not serve as the foundation for the Neolithic revolution of agriculture and the centralized State. Furthermore, they present societies that were capable of erecting huge monuments, but, nevertheless, were not organized as populations living permanently on hierarchically organized agricultural settlements: “[I]nstead, over tens of thousands of years, we see monuments and magnificent burials, but little else to indicate the growth of ranked societies, let alone anything remotely resembling ‘states’. (2021: 103). What is most interesting is that the authors’ long and rich descriptions of places such as Göbekli Tepe reveal a very political reality: several societies opted to live seasonally in different places precisely in order to avoid political hierarchies and centralization (chapter 3). In short, societies that were culturally and technically advanced and expansive chose ---made a political choice--- to avoid permanent agriculture and urban settlements (and even the formation of the State) in order to live in a more egalitarian and freer political order. These societies shifted between two different seasons, two geographies, and two different social organizations, while building immense monuments, precisely in order to retain a level of freedom that to us seems unthinkable today. As the authors conclude: if human beings really have spent most of the last 40,000 or so years moving back and forth between different forms of social organization, building up hierarchies then dismantling them again, the implications are profound. For one thing, it suggests that Pierre Clastres was quite right when he proposed that, rather than being less politically self-conscious than people nowadays, people in stateless societies might actually have been considerably more so. (2021: 124) Similarly, Graeber and Wengrow present other cases that escape the Neolithic narrative that justifies capitalist progress and inequality to our days: agriculture > settlement > private property > accumulation > technical progress > hierarchical politics > the State (what they call the Origin of Inequality myth). They describe in detail a very different organization of later Neolithic societies that chose agriculture as a way to avoid political hierarchy and private property. Furthermore, they even make the case for the origins of bureaucracy as a way to develop more egalitarian agricultural societies, i.e., as a technology to avoid hierarchies and centralized forms of politics and ownership (and thus also the State). In short, they describe a retro-history whereby the 20th-century failed communist attempts to collectivize agriculture in the Soviet Union and China actually had succeeded back in the Neolithic (chapter 4). I could go on describing the hundreds of cases discussed in The Dawn of Everything, which counter our understanding of our own (Western, capitalist) origins, but just let me add two final examples. According to Graeber and Wengrow, the State, the sacred and theological foundation of all modern political thinking, did not emerge from centralized, settled, bureaucratic agricultural societies with well-defined hierarchical political structures. The two authors actually make the case for what they call “cities without kings” (chapter 8) and, moreover, show that, even in the case of what we retrospectively consider the first “clear” case of a political State (the pharaohs’ Egypt), the latter originated as a result of religious practices that had nothing to do with either agriculture or large urban enclaves. The cases of Teotihuacan and Talca (Peru) finally add a newly found “historicity” to the late Neolithic, where urban societies that began processes of centralization with a clearly defined aristocracy were demolished by active political revolts that opened their cities to more egalitarian and communal forms of living which, nevertheless, continued to have a great cultural and political influence thousands of miles away in other regions and geographical areas (chapter 9). In short, the Neolithic emerges in The Dawn of Everything as a very historical (no longer prehistoric) laboratory of political experimentation and thinking that far surpasses our own in the present and, what is more important, challenges and deconstructs every single believe in which our contemporary capitalist and global society is built upon (the myth of the Origins of Inequality: progress, centralization, urban complexity leading to hierarchical politics, agriculture as necessary revolution towards civilization, etc.). This is the great political potential of the book if we are ever to challenge Fisher’s “capitalist realism.”[4] A short list of grievances must be added though. The two authors do not avoid the anthropological trap of what used to be called “denial of coevalness” (Fabian), by which contemporary non-Western indigenous societies were denied their present historical status or ontology and, instead, were relegated to some past ladder, stage, or branch of a human evolution whose sole apex was Western society and its technological progress. In The Dawn of Everything, the denial of coevalness is perpetrated in reverse: the North American indigenous tribes and populations of the 19th and early 20th centuries are used to read the Neolithic in ways that reduce them to the living extension of that prehistoric period. In Graeber and Wengrow’s analysis, North-American indigenous people live in a sort of extended contemporary Neolithic that only serves to confirm and explain the other “non-contemporary Neolithic” that started after the last glaciation, sometime around 12.000 BC. Furthermore, their recourse to North American indigenous people to extend the old Neolithic all the way to the early 20th century makes, in retrospect, the old Neolithic very American-centric. One could even suspect some kind of unconscious American imperialism at play in the book at the epistemological level. I also believe that this “unconscious epistemological American imperialism” is what keeps bringing back up a central question that the book posits but never answers: “[I]f human beings, through most of our history, have moved back and forth fluidly between different social arrangements, assembling and dismantling hierarchies on a regular basis, maybe the real question should be ‘how did we get stuck?’ [in contemporary rigid global capitalism]” (2021: 127). Finally, this type of book tends to show the human limits of its authors, as nobody can encompass the entire world. Sub-Saharan Africa and China remain marginal to The Dawn of Everything’s entire argument; they only receive passing references in the book. Discussions of gender/sex are also present throughout the book but also in passing. In one section, there is an attempt to make sex/gender the central subject of analysis (Minoan culture; 2021: 448-454), but, I must confess, not very successfully. However, I do not present these grievances as lessening or paralyzing errors, but rather as desiderata for this kind of analysis to be extended to the missing areas and subjects (including a brief, promising but disappointing discussion on the origins of war; 2021: 519-21). Since the time Levi-Strauss, and especially on the Left, this type of ambitious and globalizing studies has not been attempted; specialization has been the ultimate sign of serious scholarship and merit (think for example of E.P. Thompson). Yet, I believe, we need more of them. Welcome to our Neolithic future! [1] “Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. We can now revise that and witness the attempt to imagine capitalism by way of imagining the end of the world.” Fredric Jameson. “Future City,” New Left Review 21 (May-June 2003): 76. [2] Although not directly, they also make a case for the use of the word “history” for a period that is not in any ideological way “pre-historic.” [3] I will not make references to Graeber’s previous Debt: The First 5000 Years (2011), because, to a certain extent, it remains within the traditional boundaries of anthropology I criticized above. [4] I do not have time to review the second chapters, which adds another critical dimension to the book. Herbert's Dune After reading the unfinished six-volume Dune saga written by Frank Herbert, I gave up on tackling the two concluding volumes his son, Brian Herbert, and Kevin J. Anderson wrote, following the drafts Herbert Sr. left at the time of his death. The first volume, Dune (1965), broke new ground in science fiction as an ecological reflection on human competition for natural resources, allegorized by the precious spice found in the planet Arrakis. This compound, also known as mélange, structures and supports the geopolitical organization of the universe, which is ruled by a decadent emperor and a corrupt aristocracy. The rest of the series managed to turn the great sci-fi world of Dune into a boring and pseudo-intellectual reflection on power. The second volume Dune Messiah (1969) still could be considered a successful mediation on the necessity to annihilate imperialist power institutions centered on religious messianic figures, such as count Leto Jr. Yet, the next three installments are only a testament to Herbert’s inability to offer a convincing utopian narrative that would overcome to universal messianism. The innovations brought by Dune are well known and have been widely discussed by many critics and commentators. It managed to allegorize efficiently different parts of contemporary culture, politics and history that were missing in sci-fi till that point. Herbert’s novel succeeded in turning a desertic harsh environment into the most fascinating landscape of science fiction of the time. Moreover, through its desertic representation of ecology and geopolitics, Dune managed to announce, with uncanny prescience, the oil crisis of the 1970s prompted by the OPEC and the growing global importance of the Muslim world. The psychotropic culture of the 60s was also allegorized by Herbert through the physical properties of the spice, which, in the story, was also able to give longevity to its users and, in some cases, even time prescience and travel. Herbert appears to have borrowed from Asimov a concern for advancing a utopian solution to the problem of governing the universe ---or, in a smaller scale, our galaxy--- beyond any form of imperial formation, which, in their respective narratives, always leads to civilizational corruption and decadence. Furthermore, the former’s first novel was a refreshing departure from the latter’s non-psychological and affectless narratives where scientific or technological progress still dictated humanity’s future in its expansion throughout the universe. Herbert’s novel is full of intense psychological intrigue and political struggles, which are further enhanced by the effects of the spice. The internal monologues and the descriptions of physical appearance as a means to read the characters’ political and religious agenda reaches almost the status of science (or craft). However, if in the first two novels of the Dune saga, the delicate balance between psychology, power struggles, and war strikes a very nuanced and effective equilibrium, in the last four volumes, any sense of balance disappears and is reduced to endless boring dialogues, reminiscent of Plato’s Republic, whereby long discussions about power and government ensue. Moreover, the resulting dialogic universe is narrowed down to few agents: Leto II the emperor, the Ixians, the Bene Gesserit, the Tleilaxu, the Spacing Guild, and the Honored Mothers. Rather than engaging narratives of universe-size wars and battles for power (psychological and political), the four last novels become static theater: a single stage, with few alterations, allows the characters to engage in long and complicated dialogues wherein affect becomes inflationary and, in turn, history and action are relegated to mere background. The most important historical changes are narrated at the beginning or at the end of the novel as afterthoughts or as settings for dialogic performance among few actors. The monstrous transformation of the emperor into a worm-human hybrid, which can no longer move or act without help, becomes an allegory for the narrative body of the last four installments of the saga. The novels themselves become this monstruous enlarged hybrid of endless dialogue and inaction. In the last two installments of the Dune saga, the narrative focus on the Benet Gesserit religious order and its unnarrated battles with its arch nemesis, the Honored Matres, further increases the theatrical and dialogic structure of the non-action. The reverend mothers monopolize the dialogues and bring action to a halt in what begins to sound a lot like the Jesuit order or a Jesuit baroque drama: similar rhetoric and techniques can be observed in the two novels. It remains to be analyzed why Herbert ended his powerful reflection on universal power ---a universe-size utopia that was meant to surpass Asimov’s technocratic fantasies--- with a Jesuit stage drama. My tentative hypothesis is that fame and recognition allowed Herbert to forsake his original narrative for what was all along his obsession: a religious and political discourse, which, unfortunately, had no intellectual insight or depth. this blog has been deleted as it will appear in a forthcoming book entitled España postimperial: aproximaciones a la persistencia del imperio restaurativo.
On Asimov’s Foundation: a Stalinist Hypothesis Isaac Asimov’s (1920-1992) trilogy Foundation published in the early 1950s (1951-53) and, then, expanded as a heptalogy in the 1980s and early 1990s (1982-1993), was a foundational work in the science fiction of the time. In the series, a hard-science approach, whereby interplanetary travel met atomic energy, was combined with unprecedented historical and spatial sophistication, whereby the impending collapse of a galactic empire was scientifically dissected with narrative precision. This combination took place a time the nuclear and spatial race between the USA and Soviet Union raised similar fears of decadence and collapse among the two cold-war rivals. The first Soviet atomic bomb was tested in 1949 and the Sputnik 1 satellite was launched in 1957, few years before and after the publication of Foundation respectively. It was also the time when Stalin, as leader of the Soviet Union (Chairman of the Council of Ministers, 1946-1953), consolidated his power after engaging in murderous ideological purges in the 1930s and massive population exterminations during World War II, which showed the internal corruption of Soviet-style communism (Hungary’s invasion in 1956 being the other defining historical event of the continuity of Stalinism after his death). During the same period and in the name of democracy, the US embarked in a more traditional but bloodier imperial campaign that spanned throughout Latin America and East Asia. Asimov is known for being a traditional liberal who opposed the Vietnam War, was anti-Zionist, and also collaborated in the translation and publication of Soviet science fiction in the US. He even developed an early ecological doctrine about the decadence of human civilization, based on his Malthusian believes about unregulated population growth. Somewhere between cold-war anxieties and Malthusian ecological fears, Asimov found the idea of civilizational collapse worth exploring in what was to become his most famous trilogy, Foundation. The idea of civilizational (and imperial) decadence was present in the West, at least since Edward Gibbon’s influential The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1789) and, especially, after World War I with the publication of Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West (1918-1922). Yet, the idea of communism, in Asimov’s own singular version of “neuronal communism” (all beings connected mentally in a single democratic community), shows that the Foundation series struck a rather complex compromise among all the civilizational anxieties of the 1950s, which were further expanded in the 1980s, at the dawn of the computer revolution, in the last four installments of series. At the end of the last chronological sequel, Foundation and Earth (1986; later he wrote two prequels), humankind and its galactic expansion are about to embark in a neuronal communist voyage that will solve its contradictions and tendencies to self-destruction. Yet, at the core of this "neuronal communism," Asimov places a human-technological hybrid subject in order to marry rational-technological enlightenment and communism. Moreover, this marriage follows a historical logic that, as I will argue below, has its closest correlate in Soviet Stalinism and, ironically enough, is also the true heir to the European Enlightenment. Stalinist communism, rather than Western liberal capitalism, emerges as the culmination and teleology of the Enlightenment in my reading of Asimov’s series Foundation. The cult of personality was perhaps one of the most defining characteristics of Stalinist communism. In Asimov’s Foundation, Hari Seldon becomes the founder of a science, psychohistory, which predicts the end of Empire; yet, in order to dampen imperial fall, he resorts to a solution that makes impossible to deploy his science to continue predicting history. Seldon, this foundational Marx of sorts, whose “historical materialism” is invoked several times throughout the novel, becomes the personality that cannot be questioned and must be followed with religious blindness. Yet, and unlike in Marx’s account of capitalism's demise, in Asimov’s novels, a galactic-level capitalist system, the Empire, has already fallen, and thus, just like in the Soviet Union, the historical duty of Seldon's project to start a new community of scholars and scientists, Foundation, is to expand its small social experiment to the entire galaxy, by resorting to the galactic “historical materialism” of psychohistory, and thus arrive to some sort of democratic communism. Moreover, and unlike in Marxism/Soviet communism, Foundation’s experiment of “communism” is carried out by resorting to science and technology, i.e., to reason, without the trappings or violent revolutions—only calculated and defensive violence in moments of provoked crises—. In this respect, Foundation follows the older Kantian credo and doctrine that defines the Enlightenment: reason will set you free. Yet, there is another feature of Stalinism that organizes Asimov’s Foundation series, which also helps us rethink the hidden connection between Stalinism and the Enlightenment: conspiratorial history and politics. Asimov stated several times that he liked detective novels: their investigative structure around crime mysteries helped him organize his science-fiction novels. It is the case of Foundation, as most installments end up with a “whodunit” type of revelation. Yet, if Foundation's knowledge is organized as a canonical discourse (psychohistory), which cannot be challenged but revered (as in the case of the Stalinist take on historical materialism), the subject responsible for this knowledge is articulated by Asimov as a hidden actor who generates and organizes a paranoiac politics of knowledge. Although, at first, it appears that there is a single Foundation in a single remote planet called Terminus, later on a second Foundation emerges among the ruins of the galactic capital, Trantor. Furthermore, the most unsuspected character, a plain looking folksy farmer, turns out to be the mastermind of the second Foundation: Preem Palver. He helps the second Foundation defeat the Mule, a mutant who is able to influence anybody’s mind and desires so that he ends up controlling the entire galaxy for few years. The two Foundations’ fear towards the Mule embodies the same paranoia Soviet Stalinism had towards capitalism, i.e., that its communist citizens secretly desired capitalist consumerism and, thus, an outside subject, such as capitalism/the-Mule, organized and controlled their true desires. In the Foundation series, not only is there a second hidden Foundation behind the first one, but also the latter eventually discovers that there is a “third Foundation of sorts” hidden behind it: the planet Gaia, from where the Mule originally hailed. Gaia represents a neuronal communism where all beings are mentally connected and, thus, they act communally so that the well-being of the entire planet-community prevails over most of their actions. Moreover, at the end of the series, the reader finds out that the entire Foundation project initiated by Seldon as well as the community of planet Gaia were controlled from the beginning by a robot-computer hidden inside the Moon: R. Daneel Olivaw. The fact that Olivaw controlled the actions of Gaia and the second Foundation, which in turn, controlled those of the first Foundation, shows that, rather than the indivualistic detective novels Asimov claimed as inspiration, we are dealing here with complex geopolitical groups and entities that, in a hidden conspiratorial way, determine the future of humankind at a galactic level. Even though it could be argued that the robot-computer Olivaw is an individual, the novel presents it as the culmination of a communal technological effort. This effort is even more communal and complex as R. Daneel Olivaw is about to die and the human protagonists decide to transfer its neuronal structure to a child rescued in Solaris who is sexually and psychologically self-sufficient and has even greater computational powers than Olivaw. In short, this is a complex communal robot-human hybrid in charge of expanding communism across the galaxy. And indeed, this also was the “foundation” for the political purges Stalinism carried in the Soviet Union: the fear that groups outside Stalinist control, always defending false or corrupt interpretations of historical materialism, could determine the future of the Soviet Union and, thus, of communism worldwide (or galaxy-wide, as it is the case of the computer-child hybrid). Asimov’s genius lies on the fact that, in the last chronological installment of the series, Foundation and Earth (1986), he solved the problem between Stalinist paranoia towards political conspiratorial groups/subjects and the promise of an inclusive planetary (galactic) communism. On the one hand, Asimov resorted to unquestioned faith in reason, science and technology, which hailed from the Enlightenment but only survived as such in the Soviet Union to represent the ultimate technological-rational subject, the robot-human hybrid, as the legitimate subject of the largest conspiracy ever perpetrated in human history. After all, in the aftermath of the Holocaust and the atomic bomb, the West shifted its believe in reason to consumerism and, thus, to the consumption of individual technological commodities (from cars to electric kitchens) where conspiracies only pointed to the Soviet Union and aliens. On the other hand, Asimov revealed a robot-computer-human hybrid, which was entrusted with technologically expanding “neuronal communism” to the entire galaxy. This communist project was called Galaxia (Gaia + galaxy) by the protagonists of the series. In this way, Asimov presented the ultimately subject of political conspiracy and paranoia as the only capable of disseminating efficiently and rationally neuronal communism throughout the galaxy. In short, and unlike Stalin, Asimov managed to combine, in his series Foundation, the possibility of paranoiac political conspiracy with the scientific-technological neuronal expansion of communism across planets. In Asimov, the continuity from Enlightenment to Stalinism is rescued and solved through techno-neuronal communism. Western liberal capitalism, ironically, is excluded from Foundation’s galactic utopia. The reason remains to be determined in another post. bong joon ho's parasite: on neoliberal gothic comedy and western working-class nostalgia
Bong Joon Ho's Parasite has been globally praised for presenting a new perspective on class conflict and for placing the precarious working class at the center of it. Prestigious awards such the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Festival or the unprecedented Oscar for the Best Film of the Year only corroborate this global consensus. But I think it's the opposite. Parasite is an overworked and convoluted narrative about the impossibility of overcoming, dismantling, or exiting neoliberal capitalism. Literally, the Korean film is a cinematic version of Fredric Jameson's infamous dictum that "it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism."[1] Therefore, the interesting thing to analyze is how we all have enjoyed globally, in almost ecclesiastical communion, our last cinematic surrender to the ideology of late capitalism. And at that, it must be admitted, Parasite is a work of genius. From British and American Gothic to Global Comedy The fact that the film breaks genre limits and reorganizes them in a new fashion enhances its global novelty and reception: Parasite mixes violence and slapstick humor à la Tarantino but reorganizes them according to Gothic horror conventions. So, we need a new name for this new hybrid genre: neoliberal Gothic comedy. If it were not too long, I would call it “global oriental neoliberal Gothic comedy.” If I denounced above Parasite’s "overworked and convoluted narrative about the impossibility of overcoming, dismantling, or exiting neoliberal capitalism," it is precisely because the film is rendered in a Gothic fashion, following the conventions of the British Gothic horror genre of the late 18th and early 19th centuries (The Monk, Melmoth the Wonderer, The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Castle of Otranto, etc.). At least since Eve Sedgwick's The Coherence of Gothic Conventions, we know that the main rule of the Gothic genre is precisely that one cannot escape from the castle or the mansion. The Gothic genre uses claustrophobia to generate universal horror. In Parasite too, two unconnected working-class families are trapped, in a very British-Victorian way, by having their respective patriarchs imprisoned in the neoliberal and architecturally fashionable new castle of the global capitalist elite. Thus, the castle emerges again as the center of this new global allegory. But in the British Gothic convention, it is the colonialist-imperialist Protestant class in power that experiences the anxiety of entrapment by portraying Spanish, Irish, and Italian nuns and monks as well as nobility freaks. It is an entrapment anxiety that is further exacerbated in later narratives such as Dracula, as the narrative evolves to what Stephen D. Arata has called "reverse colonization:"[2] Dracula travels from the peripheries of the British Empire in Transylvania to London to eat and colonize the British. In short, Gothic anxieties of claustrophobia (of not being able to leave the castle) are always a sign of hegemony, of power, of privilege and, therefore, of fear of losing an elite status.[3] But, in Parasite, it is rather the opposite: the working class is the one who suffers from anxiety—an anxiety that is presented as the latest sign of the new affective technology of neoliberalism: insecurity, fear of precarization, terror of becoming homeless and destitute. In other words, the conventions of the Gothic genre are reversed in the film so that no one can dream of leaving or overcoming neoliberalism.[4] This represents a return to older Gothic conventions, but in a global fashion, as the film goes beyond what could be characterized as the most recent refashioning of the filmic Gothic, the Hollywood horror film of mid-20th century, articulated by Hitchcock as both middle class and North American. In Pyscho, for example, Slavoj Zizek observes a triple middle-class spatial organization, whereby the maternal superego is on the first floor, Norman's ego on the ground floor, and the unconscious, embodied by the mother's corpse, in the basement (The Pervert's Guide to Cinema).[5] Working Class Compulsion, Picaresque, and Spectatorial Gothic Parasite's reversed Gothic logic—the hegemonic ideology of neoliberalism—is integrated into its filmic narrative core to such an extent that, once the son of the working family becomes an English teacher for the rich daughter, the rest of his family has no choice but to follow suit compulsively—as if guided by a mysterious but infallible Gothic logic—and enter a castle that they do not know yet they will not be able to leave. This working class acts with an "unethical logic" and a "universal dishonesty"[6] that aligns the poor family with the Spanish picaresque genre of the 16th-17th centuries, rather than with any subsequent social discourse (socialism, anarchism, solidarity, etc.), so that the castle becomes the Gothic-uncanny space the entire family thinks can invade parasitically and leave unscathed at will. Here again, picaresque is combined with a comic and ironic touch that, nevertheless, does not become social commentary or critique. Yet, it is precisely at that point, when the neoliberal elite owners of the castle leave in a camping trip to exorcise the haunting that even they can indirectly perceive through their youngest child, that the working-class family meets their future fate in the form of the husband of the previous caretaker whom they have managed to have her fired. From this point on, the film goes into a violent frenzy of narrative accidents, coincidences, and fortuitous encounters that are simply designed to entrap the audience, so they cannot leave the film either. This is the most manipulative and forced part of the film, where coincidences are piled up with the sole objective of making the public feel the ghostly effect of neoliberalism at the cinematic level: I, as a spectator, felt manipulated and forced, pushed into the dungeons of the film, so that even I could not leave a manipulative and affectively painful film that was clearly going nowhere. The film manipulates even nature, the weather, so that the working family cannot return home: after the initial fiasco, the whole family manages to escape from the neoliberal Gothic castle unscathed, but torrential rains flood their underground home and, as a consequence, the next morning, they have no choice but to return to the neoliberal castle. Only the birthday party and its surreal and violent celebration of working-class resentment, always attenuated through comic touches of hilarious excess à la Tarantino, liberates the audience from their cinematic-Gothic entrapment, and finally allows them to watch the movie for what it is: a celebration of the neoliberal Gothic, which shows a working-class family trapped in a distant land, in the new global Orient of Hallyu (Korean popular culture). Deplorables, Racial Working-Class Resentment, and Progressive Orientalism But, the film also creates an effect of distance, so that the audience can view and enjoy working class entrapment but ultimately walk away from it unscathed, i.e. as if the entrapment ultimately was that of an Other, of another class elsewhere. In order to do so, the film relies on a sophisticated system of affectivity and neorientalism. Since Parasite introduces the new (South Korean) neoliberal elite class, at best, as naive, gullible, narcissistic and, ultimately, as not even intelligent enough to defend its status and wealth (represented primarily as female through the role of the credulous wife), the film creates a sense of anger, of resentment, which is not articulated politically but affectively. It is no accident that the son of the working family, at the end of the film, fantasizes about amassing a great fortune to buy the house in order to free his imprisoned father. The film gives rise to the same affectivity that the neoliberal right of the West (with Trump as its epicenter) has been able to deploy successfully against what Nancy Fraser has called "the progressive neoliberal elite," from Bill Gates to the Hollywood liberals.[7] But Parasite has done so, in a very subtle way, mixing picaresque comedy and Gothic horror violence, so that class resentment is codified in a very benign, intelligent, and humorous way, and, as a result, a global progressive audience can celebrate and enjoy it without guilt. Deep down, this respectable audience tells itself, "this is a satire, it is dark humor." That is, the film is a global fetishistic representation of class conflict, so that the audience can identify with the poor working class, feel their resentment and entrapment, enjoy their violence, but, at the end disconnect from them, without realizing that the film places the viewership in the position of the neoliberal progressive elite that supposedly attacks. It is no coincidence that Parasite represents a South Korea devoid of immigrants and, therefore, as ethnic and/or racially homogeneous, for this allows a global progressive audience to enjoy class resentment through a very old-fashioned working-class representation that no longer is prevalent in the West: "a working class constituted by a traditional, racially homogeneous, heterosexual nuclear family with two children." Thus, the film ends up creating, in Europe and North America, a nostalgia for the old white national working class that has nothing to do with the new precarious class of the present, where postcolonial immigrants, racial minorities, or non-nuclear families headed by working women are becoming the new norm. It is not a coincidence that, at the end of the film, father and son, separated by the house-prison, resort to one of the oldest instantaneous forms of long-distance communication: the Morse code, an anachronistic form characteristic of incipient Western industrialization. This would explain the universally acclaimed sense of class vindication that everyone has enjoyed in the film: as a spectator, you can become—or identify with—the entrapped and outraged precariat (racially homogeneous and morally conservative) whom Hilary Clinton dismissed in the United States as “deplorables” and, yet, you can remain part of the progressive global upper middle class viewership who can enjoy the spectacle of a political film about a "real working class" without North American or European postcolonial-migratory-precarious-feminized conflictivity. It is no coincidence that the father of the elite family despises the chauffeur and father of the working-class family repeatedly by referring to the latter’s "deplorable low-class odor," so that, in the final scenes of the film, when the "deplorable" working-class father knives his “deploring” Clintonesque elite employer-father, the audience celebrates this murder, motivated by class resentment, in all its abject violence. The viewership enjoys class resentment (that is, the resentment of a racially homogeneous, traditional low class, always on the edge of racism and hatred against any ethnic, sexual, or gender minority). It feels good to be class-resentful. In short, this film allows the audience to enjoy the conservative Trumpian resentment of the working class in a deplorable way and, at the same time, to hate (and stab) the neoliberal elite from the distance that the couch and the television set create, thus, ensuring that the viewers remain progressive and liberal enough to see and enjoy "real" class conflict and entrapment, as it has not been represented before in the West. This is the political enjoyment (sublimation) achieved by Parasite through a global neoliberal version of progressive Orientalism: we believe we recognize ourselves in an oriental mirror of Gothic class entrapment and resentment better than in any Western reflection. In my analysis, Bong Joon Ho would be the native informant (Asian, Oriental) who simulates or imitates the racially homogeneous patriarchal[8] representation of the (South Korean) working class for the global West, for its main audience, by resorting to nostalgic Trumpian resentment coded as Gothic entrapment.[9] Hallyu and Bong Joon Ho’s Globalization In short, Parasite allows the viewers to feel all the thrills of class conflict, but without being contaminated by them, in a film that is ultimately an oriental mimicry of Western old-fashioned white working-class conflict.[10] Bong Joon Ho was known for two of his previous films, The Host (2006) and the Hollywoodesque blockbuster Snowpiercer (2013). It seems that what in The Host was a clear denunciation of US imperialism and the South Korean government's complicity against a working class that had to fend for itself, but managed to prevail in the end, once it has been filtered by the Hollywood conventions of Snowpiercer, has ended up becoming, in Parasite, a very sophisticated vindication of global neoliberal capitalism.[11] [1] “Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. We can now revise that and witness the attempt to imagine capitalism by way of imagining the end of the world.” (“Future City,” New Left Review 21 (May-June 2003): 76. [2] “The Occidental Tourist: ‘Dracula’ and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization.” Victorian Studies 33 (1990): 621-45. [3] See my "Geo-bio-politics of the Gothic: On the Queer/Inhuman Dislocation of Spanish/English Subjects and their Others (For A Definition of Modernity as an Imperialist Geobiopolitical Fracture)." 1616: Anuario de literatura comparada 4 (2014): 153-67. [4] At the end of the film, the main tension and fantasy is reduced to an old-fashioned (Morse) dialogue between father and son. Women (the mother and the dead daughter) as transitional and secondary characters are dismissed or pushed to the background. [5] The Freudian triad, now, would have to be posited geopolitically, so that the superego is the global audience and film industry (including festivals such as Cannes), the ego would be the narrative and images of the film, and the Id would be located at the level of all the protests and revolts that have emerged since the Arab Spring of 2011, unleashed by a middle-class on the verge of precarization and by the precariat itself. [6] I owe the expression to my colleague Elizabeth Scarlett. [7] And as I will argue below, it has also been deployed against any non-national alien (racially or ethnically marked minorities, domestic, il/legal, or migrant). [8] Only the youngest kid of the rich family experiences the Gothic conventions in the correct historically way. [9] I have not looked into the reception of this film in China or India yet. It would be important to compare the reception of the film in South Korea before and after the awards it has received in the West. [10] The references to the Western film genre and to “Indian” representations (from the teepee in the yard, to the murderous toy-size tomahawks) are the sign of an intelligent native who inscribes the West as a childish game that eventually turns traumatic and murderous. [11] Further analysis would require a comparison with films such as The Joker (2019), I, Daniel Blake (2016), Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017) and Us (2019) as well as the latest Tarantino film Once upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). For a short history of previous foreign films nominated to the Best Picture Oscar category, see Sara Aridi, “These 10 Foreign Language Films Have Been Nominated for Best Picture.” The New York Times. Feb. 3, 2020. www.nytimes.com. There are also two more readings that would require further elaboration. First, there is an allegorical reading that would posit the film itself, Parasite, as becoming a parasitic subject in the monopolistic castle/mansion of Hollywood cinema. In short, Parasite as a parasitic film in Hollywood. The second reading, would require reading this film against the Hallyu tradition of female-based historical dramas, which are the most successful in South Korean television. They are the reason South Korean media production has become known internationally and specially in Asia. In this case, the gender/plot structure of these historical dramas (female, successful-happy-ending-based) would be denied by a male/unsuccessful-unhappy-end film that reaches a bigger global audience and thus acts as a neoliberal Hollywoodesque correction-supression to the South-Korean historical-drama tradition. the platform: netflixization, the global gothic, and its neoliberal death drive (or why reactionary ideology has been the only enjoyable one until now) One must begin situating The Platform (2019, Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia) before analyzing it in detail. This placing or locating act is difficult and challenging, but I think it can be narrowed down to three terms that already have some currency: “netflixization,” “global Gothic” (or “neoliberal Gothic”), and the “pandemic” (this film was the top “tending film in Netflix” during March and April of 2020, precisely at the moemnt the pandemia spread globally). The goal is to determine if this film is celebratory or critical of neoliberalism, or something more complex, for the references of the film are allegorical but not subtle. The Platform’s allegorical complexity can be advanced in its connection to the coronavirus infection. The pandemic has become a horror show in real time: a competition for survival where late capitalism has tested any community and turned it against itself. However, since this horror show has become global, the collapse of the particular (the film The Platform) and the universal (the pandemic “show”) has important repercussions for the logic of netflixicized global Gothic films such as The Platform: the film allegorizes the spectatorial seclusion of the viewers, forced into a Gothic confinement similar to that of the 333 cells that compose the hole (original title of the film in Spanish, El hoyo), while the ever-increasing loss of jobs and decreasing economic activity hint at the ultimate Gothic horror of the film: we all will end up at the bottom of the hole in cell 333 with no subject that will bring us up back, after we step on the platform, to the surface. The ultimate irony of this netflixization is that the film could not have been shown in this other streaming platform, which is Netflix, at a better time: this company’s captive audience has increased exponentially during the lockdown imposed by many countries as a result of the covid-19 pandemic. In short, The Platform is already an allegory of the Netflix streaming platform. Yet, the thesis of this article is that netflixicized Gothic films such as The Platform point to the end of a form of ideology that authoritarian populisms, such as Trump or Bolsonaro’s, have made hegemonic in both the Global South and North. Before global Netflix hits such as The Platform and overnight non-American Oscar-winning films such as Parasite (2019, Bong Joon Ho), there was a very precise term in Spanish to refer to a similar phenomenon: overnight best-selling literature that came from new unknown authors in unexpected regions (meaning, not in Barcelona, Madrid, Mexico DC or Buenos Aires) was known as alfaguarización (Barrera Enderle 2008). Which meant that one of the biggest publishers of Spanish literature, Alfaguara, could turn an unknown novel by a new writer into an overnight global best seller. At a more global scale, the triumph of a Spanish writer like Ruiz Zafón (The Shadow of the Wind, 2001), thanks to Planeta and Penguin Books USA, pointed to the same phenomenon—although there is no better term for this other more general development, except the generic “globalization.” Unlike the García Márquezes or Salman Rushdies of the 1960-1980s, this newer phenomena of overnight literary global success (alfaguarización or/and globalization), was not carried by the idea of the nation or of the region (Colombia, India, Latin America, South-East Asia…), but by non-geopolitical categories, such as fantasy or children (the Harry Potter phenomenon is an English-language version of this; the Bolaño phenomenon, in turn, would be a transitional case, half “new-Garcia-Marquez,” half “intellectual thriller-mystery”). Moreover, the phenomenon of alfaguarización/globalization would run against the norms that Pascale Casanova (2007), following Pierre Bourdiue, had delineated for modernist literature and for the global republic of letters. So, the first thing to emphasize when analyzing The Platform is the new global logic in which is inscribed and of which is a result. No other Basque text has ever had this type of global success and acclaim, not even the by-comparison modest novel published by Bernardo Atxaga: Obabakoak (it does not sell well globally). The first temptation, which I will not avoid for the time being, is to resort to a cheap nominalization, “netflixization,” which is a cheat or a bandage until we better understand this filmic-streaming version of alfaguarización. Keep also in mind that Netflix does not publish the real hard data on the reception of its films and shows, and so when claiming the global success of The Platform, we are walking on sociological eggshells. The film was released in 2019 in Spain, following the traditional channels, and even the Spanish academy of cinema awarded it a single Goya for special effects. The Platform has become itself, a global hit and allegory, in 2020 with Netflix (and the Spanish filmgoers will have to connect it with the all-time top Spanish box-office hit Spanish Affair, 2014, which did not create any global interest outside the Spanish state, unlike its nineteenth-century progenitor, Carmen). Although the critical literature on the genre is vast, it is clear, at least for me, that the most interesting forms of representing global capitalism and its neoliberal ideology come from a genre that I personally hate but whose importance I must acknowledge: the Gothic genre in its new global transmutation, which Linnie Blake and Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet denominate “neoliberal Gothic” (2017). Although the territory, in which this new Gothic is inscribed, is more general (the horror genre) and it overlaps with sci-fi (specially with zombie and postapocalyptic films/tv shows such as The Walking Dead or The Matrix trilogy), fantasy (Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings….), neonoir (The Bourne Identity, Blade Runner 2049, Inception…) and reality shows (Survivor, The Apprentice…), the logic of the global Gothic seems to be the most provocative, the most thought-inducing, and, in the genuine sense of the term, the most intellectual these days; just think of the multicultural representation of the characters of The Platform (a transexual, several Sub-Saharan immigrants, a Middle-Eastern woman, a Basque retired man…), the references to Don Quijote, the religious references to the Jesus and the Virgin Mary, or the subtending debates on the nature of human interaction and individuals, which, at one point, seem to reference Rousseau, Hobbes, or Locke, etc. Parasite and The Platform are good examples of this global Gothic (sub)genre born at the intersection of a more general trend that could be called “the return of the global repressed” (which would stand ultimately for the repression of a non-class, the precariat, as defined by Guy Standing, 2011). In that sense, the global Gothic is defined by its emphasis on an involuntary claustrophobia, on an obsession with enclosed spaces such as mansions or jails (originally castles and monasteries in Gothic literature), and so it would be more accurate to say that the logic of the global Gothic is precisely claustrophilic. The issue of this new neoliberal Gothic, as it is also the case, more generally, for horror, is whether it is libidinally and ideologically progressive or reactionary. I am emphasizing its libidinal aspect, because it is the thrill provoked by the death drive of these films that makes this question so complicated and, for that reason, so challenging and compelling. Freud’s “return of the repressed” (now global and precarized in scope, hence my “global return of the repressed”) can be read both ways. And so, the question remains: is The Platform a reactionary or progressive film in its full deadly-libidinal and intellectual complexity? A tentative hypothesis that would require further elaboration would posit that films such as The Platform are already an allegory of the Netflix streaming platform and point to the end of a form of ideology that authoritarian populisms, such as Trump or Bolsonaro’s, have made hegemonic in both the Global South and North. What I call “the neoliberal death drive” would thus consist in the ideological maneuver to reduce any enjoyment to a claustrophobic setting and discourse that suppresses any other drive but that of death. |
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AuthorJoseba Gabilondo. Publications Archives
April 2023
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