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. euskal etnizitate berria: denok gara etorkinak, denok gara migrazio subalternoaren ondorio
Nire Before Babel: A History of Basque Literatures amaitutakoan, oraindik ere gogoeta garrantzitsu bat erantsi behar niola konturatu nintzen. Liburuan diot, euskal literatura bi tradizio diskurtsiboren, bi literaturen, talka diglosiko eta oprimatzaileren historia eta ondorio dela. Alde batetik, klase subalternoek tradizionalki euskaraz, eta batikbat ahoz, bilakatu duten tradizioa dugu eta, bestetik, klase elitekoek eta aristokratikoek Euskal Herriaz erdaraz idatzi dutena, zeinak euskara izan duen oinarri eta erreferentzia, ezaugarri diferentzial nagusi bezala, eta, beti ere, eliteen interesak bertan eta Gaztela/Aragoi/Madrilgo korteetan zilegitzeko balio izan duen ("el oasis vasco" eta "la nacion foral" dira bere azken formulazio garaikideak). Eleizak eta euskalgintza militanteak ere euskaraz idatzi du, baina diskurtso honek, dena den, ez du euskararen estatus subalternoa erabakiorki aldatu. Euskal literaturaren historia, eta orokorkiago "euskal identitate/nortasunaren" historia, zeina euskal literaturaren materia errotikakoena eta oinarrizkoena den, bi literatura/diskurtso/kultura hauen artean mendetan eratu den egitura diglosiko eta zapaltzailearen kronika da. Euskal literatura borroka eta zapalketa horren historia eta lekukoa da. Horregatik, euskal literatura "euskaraz idatzitako literatura" izatera mugatzeak zapalketa hori ezkutatu eta desitxuratu egiten du. Eliteen literatura/diskurtso zapaltzaile erdalduna ere barneratu eta inkluitu behar da euskal literaturan, zapalketa soziala literaturaren historiaren ardatz bihurtu dadin. Abiapuntu hau kontutan hartuta, eta hasieran esan bezala, gure etnizitateaz gogoeta garrantzitsu bat erantsi behar diot Before Babel-i. Izan ere, XIX. mendean hasita, eta gero 1960ko hamarkadan, euskal langileria berria dena da etorkina: Andaluziatik, Galiziatik, Estremaduratik, eta abar, etorria. Izan ere elite burges euskaldunek Madrilgo gobernuaren konplizitatez, Espainikao nekazari pobre eta gosetuak Euskal Herrira etortzera bultzatuko ditu (Kataluniarekin batera). Etorkin talde hau da euskal nortasun moderno eta subalternoaren beste ardatza; ezin dugu enoratu. Orain artean, "gazteleraz mintzatzen ziren kanpoko etorkinak" bezala deskribatu dugu talde hau eta euskal langileriaren borrokan onartu baditugu ere, anaia eta arreba bezala, kulturaren ekarpenera eta, orokorkiago, euskal gizartearen diskurtsura pasatakoan, talde hau mututu egin dugu, ez dugu kontatu hartu. Oraindik ere eliteen euskal jatorriaren diskurtsuak itsutu gaitu: euskara da gure historiaren lekukorik zaharrena, diferente egiten gaituena, nortasun bat ematen diguna, eskubideak ematen dizkiguna, Espainiako biztanle jatorrizkoak garela frogatzen duena, eta beraz la hidalguia universal, los fueros eta abar zilegitzen duena. Lehen begiratu batean, ez dirudi goiko kontraesana erraz konpon daitekeenik. Baina, neure esperientziatik abiatuta, uste dut gure nortasun/etnizitate/jatorria birdefinitzeko garaia iritsi dela, izan ere, neu ere nekazari pobreren seme naizen aldetik, Gipuzkoan bertan izan bada ere, biografia etorkon bat dut. Alegia, nire gurasoak Bergaratik atera, lanik gabe, eta Orbegozo fabrikari segika, langile industrial bezala (aita langile, ama etxekoandre) lehenengo Urretxura joan ziren eta gero Errenteriara. Mugimendu honek hasieran "naturala" eta "euskalduna" dirudi, izan ere Euskal Herri barruan gertatutakoa da. Dena den, esperientziaz dakit, mugimendu hau traumatikoa izan zela gurasoentzat (eta neuretzat) eta etorkinen esperientzia klasikoa adierazten duela (Errenterian topatu nituen lehen aldiz euskal burgesiaren seme-alabak ikastolan). Orokorkiago, XIX. mendean hasi eta baserria utzi eta kalera, Ameriketara edo beste nonbaitera atera behar izan zuen euskal nekazal saldo subalternoaren historia ere etorkinaren, migratzailearen, historia da (neskameak, artzainak, langile industrialak....). Alegia, eta lekukoak ugari dira, baserritik kalera jaistea ere migrazio traumatiko eta behartu baten kronika da.(1) Eta uste dut, hemen jarri behar dugula gure etnizitatearen eta nortasunaren jatorria: gurea migrazio bortxatuaren historia da. Denok gara (eliteak kenduta) migrazio kronika baten seme-alabak. Batzuok Estremaduratik etorri dira, beste batzuok Gipuzkoako mendi puntetako baserrietatik, baina denok gara migrazio formaren baten emaitza. Gertakizun traumatiko horrek definitzen gaitu. Jada, Garan esan nuen (2) gaztelera subalterno migratzailea ere euskalki bat dela, euskal hizkera bat, eta hala erreibindikatu behar dela. Etorkin horien lekukoa ez du ia inork jaso eta, hil baino lehen, beren historiak jaso behar dira. Jon Maiak belodromoan 2016an egin zuen bertso/performantze elebiduna (ez nahikoa elebiduna nire iritziz) eta harrez gero argitatu duen liburua, Berriak jaio ginen (2017), gure etnizitate migratzailearen adierazpenik argienetako bat da. Are gehiago, neoliberalismoak eta 2008ko krisiak berriro ere tradizio migratzaile bortxatu hau martxan jarri du eta oraingoz gehiengoak beren buruak salbu daudela penstatzen badu ere, guztiok migratzaile bortxatu bihurtzeko arriskuan gaudela onartu behar dugu. Azkenik honek esan nahi du esukara ez dela normalizatzen ari eta subalterno izaten segitzen duela. Interbinde bakarra euskaldun/basko guztiek euskara jakin beharraren (ez erabiltzearen) normatiba pasatzea da. Kanada eta frantsesa eredu onak dira. (1) Hau baieztatu beharreko hipotesi bezala botatzen dut. Emakumeentzat ere, baserriko lana gogorra bazen ere, kalera eta pisu/apartamentu txikitara joateak beste trauma batzuk ekarri zituen: emakume sare baserritar zabalagoak utzi eta etxekoandre bakartiago eta deskonektatuagoa (familia nuklearra) bihurtzea. (2) https://www.naiz.eus/en/hemeroteca/gara/editions/2017-07-23/hemeroteca_articles/euskal-politika-gehien-definitzen-duena-bere-irrazionaltasuna-da the lingering ghost of postmodernism
The orthodox left (and right) has, since the 1980s, launched attacks against a ghost that has no clear reality; is a moving target; and is reshaped negatively, so that it remains a coherent and "attackable" object: postmodernism, postmodern theory, poststructuralism, which is equated with French theorists such as Foucault and Derrida. Even in the Basque Country I have become part of the postmodern ghostly cluster and have been attacked by the orthodox nationalist left. So, let us begin with a short reflection. The main accusation against postmodernism is that is anti-modern, irrational, anti-universal and, therefore, has enabled the expansion and consolidation of neoliberal ideology and late capitalism, for it has taken down the only discourse that could fight it: rational modernity. Postmodernism is the culprit of the irrationality-postruth-authoritarianism unleashed by neoliberalism. The supposed irrationality is the first ghostly feature that must be analyzed. According to this accusation, postmarxist Lacanian theory should also be denounced as postmodernism: Zizek, Badiou, etc. But ironically enough, even these two authors use the ghost of postmodernism to attack what they think is American multiculturalism. The second accusation, that of anti-universalism, faces a very real situation for which it does not have an answer: feminism, postcolonialism, and ecology (just to name three), refuse to be assimilated into a single discourse of universalism, for good reason: universalism is always a particular, and the first globally imposed form of universalism was North-American-European imperialism. Therefore, to attack the "ghost" of what the orthodox left assumes to be postmodernism as a negation of universalism, requires to be anti-feminist, racist, etc. The final conclusion is that, had the "ghost"of postmodernism not risen, had we continued with North-American-European modernity, the expansion of neoliberal ideology and late capitalism would have been greater, more universal, and would have created a greater "postmodern" backlash against neoliberal globalization. In short, and this is the Borgesian and innovative part of my analysis, the orthodox left would have become the great new creator and defender of a "postmodernism" of their own. jemisin's apocalyptic imagination
Amazing trilogy that requires serious analysis. But the first claim is that our time is postapocalyptic, it has to be written in the future perfect tense: we will have lived. We already are in Jemisin's time. Everything we do in the present is defined and conditioned by an inevitable ecological catastrophe that capitalism has unleashed and is incapable to stop (and no amount of voluntarism or politics will fix). The most compelling aspect of the trilogy is time itself: the initial catastrophe unleashed by the Syl Anagist tens of thousands of years ago is followed by several new catastrophic periods, known as Seasons, which interrupt the normal cycle of life, and push many communities and civilizations to extreme survival and, many times, to the brink of extinction. The other interesting aspect of the novel is how literally the entropic scene is represented. Most geological aspects of the planet are controlled by characters known as Origins. They are born by genetic mutation randomly. However, the power to control the geology of the planet is feared by the rest of the population and, so, the Origins are enslaved. Therefore, Jameson's representation of slavery, not by biological difference but by random genetic mutation, makes slavery a universal category. Slavery can happen to anyone. Therefore, in the novel, there is a very unprecedented combination of slavery, secrecy, non-biological randomness, and power. Although humans created the first catastrophe in their pursuit for an endless source of energy, their attempt triggers the subsequent Seasons or ecological apocalypses. The origins do not have the power to fix these catastrophes; they can only prevent them from happening more often. Only Nassan can. She loses three (step) fathers along the way, and finally her mother. In short, it is this seamless combination of slavery, literal Anthropocene, and post-apocalypse spanning close to 40,000 years, which makes the novel such an interesting and informative piece of literature. What is the most disappointing part of the trilogy is the end. After so many cataclysms, the hero, a little girl known as Nassun, manages to restore the Earth to its pre-apocalyptic balance. I know the end is utopian, but it undoes the temporal richness of the trilogy. At the end of the third novel, we are back to a restored Earth where humans can restart from scratch, as if nothing had happened. The true apocalypse of this trilogy, the true catastrophe of the imagination, is precisely this disappointing restoration, so that we can ignore global warming, the Anthropocene, and the incoming apocalypse: we will be alright¡ capitalism's ecological damage will be fixed¡ In this sense, the end of the trilogy is very "American" in its most ideological sense: it is the melodrama of manifest destiny in a post-apocalyptic version. America will fix the world. isaac rosa: feliz final (an emotional archaeology of hetero limits and boredom)
Feliz Final (2018), Isaac Rosa has managed to pull a very interesting narrative feat that reminds me of Pierre Menard and is also the way history should be taught. He has told the story of a heterosexual middle class romance backwards: from the present divorce filings to the moment they met. What is most commendable is the effort to write the story of a regular couple hit by the recession, without any idealization. He even has tried to to bring to the periphery of the narrative political problems of the present: from refugees crossing the Mediterranean sea to the historical memory of the husband's grandmother or feminist debates across different generations of women. The use of two different fonts allows him to bring the voices of the two protagonists without an artificial "he said" "she said" quotational system. Yet, I believe that the main success, the most interesting result, of the novel is unintended: it shows how boring, how predictable, how mechanical, how scripted is the inner life of a couple. Not because the text is boring, but rather the opposite, because the text masterfully exhausts most of the possible scenarios of the life of the precarized middle class, without sounding the panic alarm against neoliberalism. This Foucaultean archaeology of European middle-class heterosexual romance is also its most successful indictment. It is also a monument to the way couple life depoliticizes even an author who is really trying to politicize it. 2005 aurrekoak
1985 Hamaseigarrenean aidanez (1985, Lertxundi, Andu, 1985, film ertaina) 1986 Ehun metro (Hungría, Alfonso, 1986, film ertaina) Zergatik panpox (Elorriaga, Xabier, 1986, film ertaina) 1989 Ke arteko egunak (Antxon Ezeiza, 1989) 1992 Offeko maitasuna (Izagirre, Koldo, 1992) 1993 Urte ilunak (Lazkano, Arantxa, 1993) 2005-ez geroko luzemetraiak bakarrik. Animazioa ez dut kontutan hartu. Beñat Doxandabaratz Otaegi-ren zerrenda batetik abiatuta. Ataun of the Dead sartu dut, luzemetraiak ez badira ere, trilogia bezala film baten luzera dutelako. 2005 Aupa Etxebeste! (Altuna, Asier and Telmo Esnal, 2005) 2006 Kutsidazu bidea Ixabel (Bernués, Fernando and Mireia Gabilondo; 2006) 2009 Ander (Castón, Roberto; 2009) Zorion perfektua (Elortegi, Jabier, 2009) Sukalde Kontuak (Goenaga, Aitzpea, 2009) 2010 80 egunean (Garaño, Jon and Jose Mari Goenaga, 2010) Izarren argia (Rueda, Mikel, 2010) Zigortzaileak (Ibarra, Arantza, 2010) 2011 Arriya (Gorritiberea, Alberto J., 2011) Urte berri on, amona! (Esnal, Telmo, 2011) Bi anai (Rayo, Imanol 2011) Mugaldekoak (Bernués. Fernando and Mireia Gabilondo, 2011) Ataun of the Dead (Iturrioz, Beñat and Xabier Padin, 2011) 2012 Dragoi ehiztaria (Barko, Patxi, 2012) Bypass (Telleria, Patxo and Aitor Mazo, 2012) Baztan (Elizalde, Iñaki, 2012) Xora (Cachenaut, Peio, 2012) 2013 Amaren Eskuak (Gabilondo, Mireia, 2013) 2014 Loreak (Garaño, Jon and Jose Mari Goenaga, 2014) Lasa eta Zabala (Malo, Pablo, 2014) Joxean´s Hil Eben (Ataun of the Dead trilogy, Iturrioz, Beñat and Xabier Padin, 2019) 2015 Amama (Altuna, Asier, 2015) 2016 Igelak (Telleria, Patxo, 2016) 2017 Handia (Arregi, Aitor and Jon Garaño, 2017) 2018 Oreina (Almandoz, Koldo, 2018) Errementari (Urkijo, Paul, 2018) Dantza (Telmo Esnal, 2018) Soinujolearen semea (Fernando Bernués, 2018) 2019 Agur Etxebeste! (Esnal, Telmo and Asier Altuna, 2019) Napardeath (Ataun of the Dead trilogy, Irazu, Jaione, Oskarbi Sein and Beñat Iturrioz, 2019) 2020 Erlauntza (Gabilondo, Mireia, 2020) |
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AuthorJoseba Gabilondo. Publications Archives
April 2023
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