Categoria: joys – what we usually take for it

that’s mad … – sure, but what?

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, joys - what we usually take for it, thoughts on life and its philosophy

Greetings from the ivory tower of academia 😉
Off now to theatre: ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ – Leaving ivory tower to see the real world

Of course, it had been meant to be a joke when I wrote in an e-mail, before leaving office yesterday.
And being there in Munich’s Volkstheater, sitting next to the director, I read the short text accompanying the program, written by Manfred Lütz – only a few sentences and paragraphs being reproduced here in translation:

Watching as psychiatrist and therapist the evening news, one is frequently irritated. You hear about war mongerors, terrorists, murderers, white collar criminals,  stone-cold accountants and bare-faced egomaniacs – and nobody is treating them. Well, such guys are even considered as completely normal. Thinking then about those people I am the entire day dealing with, touching dementia sufferers, sensitive addicts, highly sensitive psychotics, harrowing depressive people, thrilling maniacs I am often caught by the a suspicion. We are looking afer the wrong people! Our problem are not those who a considered as mad – our problem are the normal people.

Oiginally I thought about reproducing Lütz’s entire text, on a few pages bringing back to mind all the experiences, the work, the protests …., all the things from the time way back, when I worked in a psychiatric hospital. Following the excellent performance I thought how much changed over the many years: open wards, community care, modern therapeutic approaches rather than a psychiatric clinic with about 2,000 patients, two therapists, many psychiatrist and ball-rollers end one key, for every door. – We, a few of the people working there, had been fighting, in the spirit and at the side of Basaglia, Laing …, fighting like Don Quixote against windmills, but also having some success: some clear successes and some that are more on the dubious (just the day before I discussed with a colleague here in the institute over lunch the huge difficulties we have [had] in Sweden: opening doors is not establishing social spaces).
Sure, there is still tremendous maltreatment, ignorance and breach of human rights in particular in psychiatric hospitals and also in the way of non-integration of people in ordinary every day’s life.

But what may be more worrying is how uncontested we have to state the truth of something else Manfred Lütz highlights, writing about the ‘normal madness’ and not least the ‘madly normal’, those who are obsessed by normality:

No wonder then that everything that does not comply with the norm is a terrible nuisance for this extraordinary normal people. Sure, nobody dares disrespecting the norm against those who are at the top, being a small grey mouse. So every furious feeling against those at the top turns easily to aggression against those at the bottom.

Sure,  we see ‘occupants’, can nearly celebrate an increasing protest in different veins – globally. But we are equally witnessing increasing nationalism, xenophobia and narrow-minded elitism, going hand in hand with number-crunching in search for evidence.

We need more though: not opening doors, but demolishing walls. We do not need a tamed capitalism, but a thorough analysis of what this new capitalism actually is about: the shift from accumulation to appropriation; the replacing of capitalist accumulation on grounds of the metabolism between human beings and nature, the relationality with the four dimensions of

  • auto-relation
  • group-relation (as general sociability)
  • ‘other’-relation (as ‘institutionalised and ‘defined’ socialbility – including class relationships etc.) and
  • environmental (‘organic nature’) relations,

moving to a new mode of production, generating value on grounds of the dominance of abstract processes in the sphere of distribution and circulation. The organic whole, Marx had been talking about in the Grundrisse is … – is it dissolved? Turned on its head?

Only then, with a clear analysis, we will be able not restricting ourselves on another interpretation of the world’s surface but on finding a way to change the world’s essence.

– Presidents should rethink what they are doing. Rather then talking to chamber members about the loss of elitism the Mister Murphys should talk to people who gained their expertise from life and it’s anomalies. Normality is dangerous as long as it is the normality of accepting what temporarily may (have) work(ed).

Well, there is occasionally indeed more realism in theaters than we can find in ivory towers, being the heavy oak furniture of today’s high level officers. We only have to bring it from ‘Luhmann’sche’ background noise’ to the main speech on the stage. not by radicalist action, but by truly radical analysis.

Death is Dancing (by Rayen Kvyeh)

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in joys - what we usually take for it, Peter's Log, quotes

The other day, Rayen Kvyeh sent me some poems – they have their own beauty and I feel sorry that the translation cannot fully transport it. I met Rayen recently – it had been an event organised together with and by Kurds – I am greatful to Orhan who invited me to join for this event.

It is this own beauty that nearly forces me to translate another of the poems (one can be already found here) – but it is also the …, well: work, engagement that is currently occupying much of my thinking. And determining my life – permanently crossing borders, making me aware of the limitations, permantly being caught in the cage of my own life, evoking to burst the chains open, crossing the borders.

And encouring me …

All this is also about the experiences made: working in Taiwan; in Australia, being so close to the question of aborigins and PNG; having been in Japan …, but also being involved in “our daily Western struggles” – for me now from Benno Ohnesorg to the fires today.

… and hopefully encouring you ….

Thank you both, Rayen and Orhan! And Thank You, the other …

______

Death is dancing

At the table

Of the powerful round

They applaud and remain silent,

Remain silent and applaud

In the shadow

Of White Laws

               *

Silence is interrupted

Within the walls of bars.

The hunger strike

Is vibrating through the veins

Of the Mapuche, imprisoned on political grounds

Patricia Troncoso’s

In her black plaits

The silence ensnarls –

The silence of the voices of the ancestors

*

Death is Dancing

… dancing across the Christmas trees

Trees of artificial snow

And colourful light

*

Silence is broken

The hunger strike

Vibrates along the ways

Solidly united

Crossing borders

Breaking through barriers

*

The Llaima bursts.

Disrupts the silence.

Spitting the fire.

*

Spitting the stones.

The red bellow

Of the fervent magma

Razing the mountains.

*

Death is Dancing

On the Libra of justice

Of the powerful round.

The laws are dancing.

New Year.

New weapons.

Hard hand – white hand

Terrorist – white mind

Hard valuta – gain for the white.

Death is dancing.

The Laws are dancing

Drunken in champagne and wine.

*

Silence is broken.

The hunger strike

Is riding across captured roads

Is riding across the territory of the Mapuche

*

Death is dancing

At the desk

Of the powerful round

Dancing – the weapons.

Death is dancing.

The killing bullet

Aiming on the back.

Matías Catrileo is dead.

*

Death is dancing

On the table

Of the powerful round.

The terrorists are dancing

The last Cueca.

The laws are dancing

Singing the anthem.

CASE COMPLETED

*

Patricia Troncoso’s

In her black plaits

The silence ensnarls –

The silence of the voices of the ancestors.

The silence breaks

Through the wind’s voices

Lemun, Catrileo, Epul

Rising

From the four corners of the earth.

*

Matías Catrileo is falling

Kissing the soil.

The voices of the winds

Are breaking the silence

His eyes close

And illuminate

The wide and narrow paths

Of the MAPUCHE NATION

The voices of the ancestors

Are breaking through the silence

Matías Catrileo walks

Across the four potencies of the earth.

Again: Thank you both, Rayen and Orhan! And Thank You, …, the other.
The melancholy is just its opposite: the power gained for moving on.

The World is a Stage or Felix Krull Enlightening the View on Capitalism Today

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, contemporary socio-economic situation, general, joys - what we usually take for it, thoughts on life and its philosophy

And frequently it is suggested that the sociologist Erving Goffman coined this phrase. Without disregard: what my great colleague Erving did, is nothing more than sociologising what William Shakespeare outlined already around 1600 in his comedy As you like it, (first published in 1623).

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women, meerely Players;
They haue their Exits and their Entrances,
And one man in his time playes many parts,

And before Erving Goffman presented his Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (published in 1959), Thomas Mann dedicated time to this topic, writing the Confessions of Felix Krull (the genesis of this unfinished novel spans between 1905 and the middle of the 1950s).

In some respect one may say, it is all one topic: the roles we play, the images we present – a reality that is fictive by presenting its reality in certain images as much as it is real to the extent to which it is a combination of fictions, stories we tell and combine in different ways. Own stories and our stories, interweaving with the narratives told by others.

The Seven Ages to which Shakespeare refers, in 1838 depicted by William Mulready; the confidence, which is a misleading English translation of imposture about Thomas Mann, is actually talking: the mendacity of a time that at the first instance moved towards WWI, and later, when Mann took up the work again, lost itself in the emerging German post-WWII economic miracle; everyday life Erving Goffman has in mind when analysing a society that suggests its own modernity in Rostowian sense as archetype of development’s ultimate goal.

All the Same – All Being New.

The Basic Rules of Capitalism in a World of Change are surely not a novel or a play for the stage of any theatre let alone a comedy.
Nevertheless, the supposed fictive character that seems to provide the foundation of today’s economy shows exactly the withdrawal not into an illusionary world but on the contrary the establishment of a real world that follows entirely different rules: the rules not of a fictive accumulation but the rules of a real appropriation.
The theory becoming a material power (as Marx mentioned it in his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right from 1843/1844) can only merge into this new realm if it fully acknowledges this seemingly small difference between accumulation and appropriation.

________________

Bastian Kraft staged his version of Felix Krull in Munich’s Volkstheater in a masterful way, showing exactly this difference. Felix – the ‘three Felix’ – appear smart like today’s economy, likable and handsome – and they do it to such an extent that some kind of participation offers immediate conciliation. And only leaning back allows to recognise that all the camouflage is a seductive play, not allowing us to escape or forcing us to abscond completely.

There is not much that has to be added to Michael Weiser’s critique in the Kukturvollzug, a digital feuilleton for Munich:

It is Felix Self-Threesome, a Krull-trinity, that orders power onto the stage: one may say Mühlenhardt, Fritzen and Fligg embody different facets of Krull’s real character. The three do not agree in their respective version of their own history; again and again they interrupt each other and repeat scenes of the story of imposture. … . What is the essence, the true character of the human being? This is the question one poses again in the next story which probably again doesn’t lead anywhere. It may be already revealed that at the end the three show real intuition before Felix Krull’s imposture ends in a complete crash.

(Here the German original text)

Es ist ein Felix Selbdritt, eine Krullsche Dreifaltigkeit, die Kraft auf die Bühne beordert: Mühlenhardt, Fritzen und Fligg verkörpern quasi verschiedene Facetten des Krullschen Wesens. In den Variationen ihrer Geschichte sind sich die Drei durchaus nicht einig, immer wieder fallen sie sich ins Wort und spielen zur Selbstvergewisserung Szenen jener Hochstaplergeschichte nach. … . Was ist des Menschen Kern? Das fragt man sich und ist schon wieder in der nächsten Geschichte, die vermutlich wieder nirgendwo hin führt. Im Finale, so viel sei verraten, beweisen die furiosen Drei nochmals richtig Fingerspitzengefühl, bevor Felix Krulls Lügengebäude einstürzt.

This crash, its charcter and cause, are important. It is the crash of a tower, erected in a sensible way by putting block on block, changed in a seemingly reasonable way: taking one block away from the bottom and putting it onto the top and taking one block away from the bottom and putting it onto the top and taking one block away from the bottom and putting it onto the top and taking one block away from the bottom and putting it onto the top … and, yes: towers, societies and economies are not established in a way that they can survive without the foundation they stand on ….

And the performance had been nothing of a crash – and exciting adventure, the music by Arthur Fussy adding to an experience of a sociological didactic play that makes for a most pleasant …, learning.

_________

Coming briefly back to the title of Erving Goffman’s book: The Presentation of Self ….

The Presentation, living in a world of presentation is as such not the problem. The real problem is the presentation of presentation, the duplication of the process.

And as much this is a matter of the economic development, it is also a matter of academic life today: the thinking in models, the suggesiton of blueprints as reality …. –

– … the European model worked, until it distructed its own foundation …; the liberal economy suceeded as long (well: as short) as it could claim to a reasonable extent its liberalism …; finance capitalism could maintain its profitability as long as it managed to pretend to have its foundation in the real economy ….

But fiction remains fiction – even if it develops by griping the masses.

Ode of Joy and the Tragedy of Europe

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, joys - what we usually take for it, social quality, works, projects, publications

In the tragedy Fiesco, or the Genoese Conspiracy Schiller’s Moor says at the end of the fourth scene the words

The Moor has done his work – the Moor may go.

And perhaps the times we are asked to say the same to the masterpiece chosen to be the EUropean anthem.

A piece of music, bringing together the genius of Beethoven as composer and the Schiller as poet.

For Beethoven it had been the culmination of his work, for the first time bringing the human voice into the tonal language. And for the listener it is at first glance an impression of the utmost humanist idea.

Beethoven as composer made an important step in the history of music – and surely expressing a fundamental change of society: Rather than being composer to the court or to the church, he had been free composer, realising his music for a market, following his own gusto, following but as well shaping the Zeitgeist – which at the time had been surely sparked by revolutionary ideas. And it is this new freedom reflected in the ‘Ode to Joy’ – humanist in the deep understanding of the values of the time:

Liberty – Equality – Fraternity

Words, however, are not much more than empty notions.

Looking at those values at the time we also have to consider time – that time. And that time had been very much about the celebration of the individual, responsible to him-/herself (though she had been very much oppressed, considered as ‘not-existent), seen as rationally and morally responsible. However, this responsibility had also been founded in the idea of independence: not the relational personality as we may interpret it in the spirit of Aristotle. But the individual whose action is only later compounded by an ‘invisible hand’. We may say the hierarchy up to hitherto given ex ante by god(like beings) emerged now ex post by the new godlike law of the market. An interesting feature is developing from here, full of tensions – and looking at the Ode of Joy we can see the joy of independence, the new freedom of the artist who did not need a mediator between the self, the emotions and the world but could act immediately: express immediately the feelings. On the other hand we know too well that a new mediator came up: the unknown other, competitor on the market or customer.

But the laws that had been mentioned before had been ‘created’ not only by following the laws of the market but also by permanently creating the market: production on demand and production of demand. An endless circle, though a circle in need of overtaking itself, the production of demand coming out on top.

And then, on the formal level, we can still claim that EUrope follows this ambitious notion of  Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

Translated into 2011-plain text:

Free movement of capital, goods and services and workforce – Equality of participants on the market – conspiracy of the governing bodies

No doubt, analytically each of them is a complex field, often also a minefield.

* The free movement is surely limited by ‘converse economies of scale’: though we usually discuss economies of scale as matter of an exorbitant growth of seize, reaching a level that is beyond operational scope, we find in particular the advantage of large scale operations when it comes to such ‘free movement’ …;

* of course it is not only the equality of participants o the market(s) – equality is not less relevant for the non-participants: in all countries their number grows, we find the equality amongst those in precarious situations, the equality of an increasing number of people whose basic human rights as for instance the right to organise themselves in trade unions is limited ….;

* and we find many in fact joining the conspiracy fair while claiming fundamental opposition.

And of course, we find other movements too:

* major efforts to control the freedom by way of social responsibility and even social obligations …;

* the equality amongst those who are ready to live together by way of examples of what a better life could look like …;

* and the fraternity of those who stand together: in their protest and their visions … .

At least we can be sure that today Beethoven and Schiller would be an unhappy couple, seeing what ‘their Europe’ looks like. She lost …. – he gained. She had been the Europe of vision and passion, bringing together ευρύς (width) und οψ (sight). He left a state of actual weakness – severely hurt by the one-sided orientation on a single market and single currency which became end in itself, serving the perpetuation of a system that lost its own foundation. We may of course characterise the situation as crisis of finance capitalism – and that is surely correct. However, we may also say that this is actually only the technical side. Behind this we find a more fundamental crisis of the capitalist mode of production – and we surely have to go a ling way to fully understand its meaning.

___________________

At least something from a recent mail to a colleague in England (slightly modified):

“Thank you both, your formulation is little misleading I suppose

the worst (for capitalism) is still ahead of us

Let us hope it is still ahead – the worse for capitalism is its end and that can only be good.

You are surely right, saying that we have to question existing institutions. And moreover we have to question certain ideologies. But all this means we have to be even more careful and mind thinking about bating water, endangered little children, hens and chicken …, and not least we have to look for the tap from which the water comes and the egg that surely plays a role too.

What I want to say is the following: I am frequently afraid that there is one issue that remains dealt with in a very casual way: the role of politics, polities and economics.

* Two examples. Reading in a Wagenknecht/Geissler interview in Die Zeit

Geißler:

This is what my world would have to look like: priority of politics over the finance world and economy. Furthermore: a global Marshall Plan by the rich countries and an international market society, based on the ethical foundation of the social, ecology and peace. (1)

I am getting alert, at least having a question, though not claiming to have the answer as well: A major progress of capitalism (an ECONOMIC formation) has to be seen in its ability to overcome arbitrariness and violence of all systems hitherto.

* The debate about Human Rights, the rights of indigenous people is in my opinion to a large extent misleading as it is very much based on the idea of individualism … . And we surely have to look for ways of defining truly social rights. This is in some respect simple: sufficient material resources etc. And of course, it is also about the right to choose the “own” productive/economic system. So far so simple. But then we are confronted with the question of how to reconcile this with communitarian oppression and ‘nationalist exclusiveness’ of the traditional systems. And there still is a question which I may put forward in a cynical  way: Talking about different life styles, modesty etc. is rather simple …. as long as we can be sure that it does not mean to die with 40 or 50 (average). Recently I had been talking to a well-known human rights activist from Turkey – and it had been so difficult to look into her face and to say: Yes you are right, you have to claim your right as a people. And nevertheless, you are wrong with all your nationalism … . A discussion, now more moderate, we have also in Ireland; and in some respect one can see it also here in Germany where apparently the difference between Ossis and Wessis is still more important (for many) then the “difference between rich and the poor” (an expression that only captures part of the surface).

May be I am too much structuralist and also too much idealist that …. – that I do not see that we actually may need a “morally different capitalism”: the “patrons of the good”, a new Gaius Cilnius Maecenas alias Bill and Melinda Gates … – this is what I mean with “fundamentally reconsidering the mode of production”. It would be too simple to mean talking about “New Princedoms” literally; but I think it is also too simple to see an Economic Leviathan. Sure, the “abnormal normality” (or normal abnormality?) is frightening and remarkable: people begging, people falling outside of health protection … . What is not less remarkable is the “new normality”: indeed, the small (“Tafeln”, soup kitchens …) and the large (B&M-Foundation …) good doers, the permanency of “sales”, closing down (and immediately opening again or not) sales, the 1-Euro-shops, discount bakeries, book-shops with permanent special offers (“returned books sale” …), “swap markets” based on lack of resources …but as well: the raise of biologic/organic food, fair trade (yes, also in the large chain shops and supermarkets) ….

Short stories if we take them on their own; I guess long stories if we take them as chapters of a book, perhaps a new volume of world history.

Questions only …, but I suppose important enough to be asked and to be answered at some stage.

____________________

And to be clear again, at least trying to be clear: I am convinced that we cannot move on by simply using the old concepts: seeing a development from liberalism to neoliberalism to ultra(neo)liberalism. I am convinced that more has changed, that we are not concerned with a “fundamental alteration” of the previous stage. I am conventionalist in so far that I think we are still facing a capitalist system. And as such, the system is – amongst others – characterised by (i) the production of surplus value, somewhat independent of the production of the production of exchange value; (ii) the need of the production of use value, which is under the conditions of  capitalist production however “added value”, not necessarily depending on exchange value (iii) and in many cases actually independent of it as it emerges in spheres outside of the market, (iv) providing the foundation of a rather fundamental division of labour (and power) within societies and between societies. And as much as these fundamental patterns remain in place as true seems to be that the relationship between them are socially dislocating their relational positions, “crossing borders” like undergoing a tectonic movement without actually breaking at their core. This is at least one of the major reasons behind the limitations of moral appeals and small-scale solutions in the search for a better world. And it is equally a major reason behind the limitations of a morally-based corporate social responsibility. The concept of an ongoing accumulation by dispossession may be one of the entrance doors for further consideration. Paul Boccara reflected on this under the heading of a modele anthroponomique. And I published some considerations in the my chapter in the book I edited under the title All the Same – all Being New and also in the chapter I wrote together with Sibel Kalaycioglu in the book we edited under the title: Precarity. More than a Challenge of Social Security. The problem remains to find a fundamental origins and shortcomings of methodological individualism of life.

In an interview with Federica Matteoni, Michael Hardt has a simple answer: The current crisis did not arise from the separation of the real economy and a fictive sphere of the finance capital as real- and finance economy are today inseparably linked. Such insight seems to be trivial and/or ignorant especially if we read further:

What seems to be new and challenging for me in connection with this crisis is that the capitalist production in general moved towards taking a a fictive character.

This sounds good and is surely in some way true – but it does not help us any further. As said, one point may be that looking at an ongoing accumulation by dispossession is sufficient to explain what is going on. The important point is that it really and fundamentally sticks to value production, thus allowing to analyse surplus value as surplus value, i.e. as moment that is inherent in the economic process, i.e. the process of production. Hardt, contrary to this, suggests to leave this area half way: fictive capital is one thing, fictive value another, and a fictive real economy will remain a hoax. Possibly it works for a while but only to fall even deeper – and here we arrive at the current crisis as it is: the separation of the real economy and a fictive sphere of the finance capital.

If we want to turn the notion of a move towards a fictive character of the economic process productively, we may speak indeed of the re-appropriation of politics by those forces who have control over economic resources rather than controlling the economic process as productive process which is based on the commodification of labour power and the with this possible production of surplus value. If we really move further down this road of interpreting the current situation as re-appropriation of politics by those forces who have control over economic resources we have to be aware of the fact that we can actually not continue with ease speaking of capitalism. At least concepts as neo-liberalism or as well the proposed shift from a fordist to a post-fordist accumulation regime, including the shift Towards a Schumpeterian Workfare State as proposed by Bob Jessop would not have sufficient power for explaining the current situation and development.

At this stage this cannot be discussed further – the aim being only to table the question in which way we can utilise Marxist analysis, be it by way of analysing the current capitalist system or by way of looking for the fundamentally new character of capitalism, focusing on the economic question, i.e. the question of value production.

A short remark may be added. Suggesting at least for some time that the thesis of re-appropriation of politics is correct, we can actually explain the hype around topics as greed, the ‘new interpretation’ with which people like Sarah Wagenknecht approach the ‘social market economy’ but also the queer developments of capitalists like Bill Gates presenting themselves as revolutionaries. Not least important as with all this we easily arrive again at claiming rights as matter of being good like god – rather than rights being derived from a society based on the production of goods, i.e. commodities.

Remains a double-A: accumulation versus appropriation. And remains the search for a triple-A: overcoming accumulation not by appropriation but by acknowledgement: the acknowledgement of

Fraternity, Equality and Liberty

or in other words

People’s Liberty – Equality – Fraternity

____________________

In this context it may also be worthwile to revisit the concepts that had been discussed at earlier times in history – and that may be especially meaningful when it comes to discussions on legislative systems. Interestingly, the French revolution introduced the principle of fraternity – and it is important to note that that it had been the last in a row, after emphasising liberty as the core value, interpreting it as a matter of equality which would lead to a ‘modern brotherhood’. In actual fact, it had been very much a brotherhood with two connotations: the one merging into the paternalism of the enterprises, the capitalist patron replacing the earlier master of the guild-system; the other merging into the solidarity based system of the working classes. Subsequently, solidarity – and it had been solidarity in the second meaning – had been seen by some as synonym for fraternity. And subsequently refers to the terminological synonymisation but also to the fact that only some used it in this way. And there had been a good reason for being split on this topic, indeed. Originally solidarity – as juridical rather than as social and political concept – had been the commitment of members of a group to cover the dept of one of their members. In other words, the new understanding based the social and political meaning on an economic concept, carried economy into the socio-political realm. This means that we are facing a radical shift, a radical approach as well to the economy.

Pierre Leroux, in his work De l’Humantié from 1840 elaborated this, positioning solidarity against the principle of charity and also against contractualist approaches as they had been put forward for instance by Hobbes and Rousseau. In his understanding he rightfully argued against the latter by highlighting their principal stance of seeing people as in principal atomised individuals; where as charity had been characterised by forcefully putting the individual under a community, continuing the view on the community as given by the almighty will of god rather than seeing it as genuinely human and humane. Following Leroux consequently to the end, we see the tyranny of the secularised individual versus the tyranny of the divine community. Tertium non datur? Leroux saw the ‘third way’ in solidarity: a just society based in genuine social existence. Taking up what had been said before (at the end of the previous paragraph), we see that solidarity in this perspective had been a germ for an ‘alternative’ economy: an economy based on common property – the germ of socialisation its its true meaning.

Surely a long way to go, from the joy, where we still ask for approval of the creator

Be embraced, millions!
This kiss for the whole world!
Brothers, above the starry canopy
Must a loving Father dwell.
Do you bow down, millions?
Do you sense the Creator, world?
Seek Him beyond the starry canopy!
Beyond the stars must He dwell.

Leroux’ creator could only be the self-creator, the social authority emerging from true social existence.

____________________

Coming back to Europe then, and the efforts to permanently ignore this depth of the crisis it does not make a difference if He enters the stage as Iron Lady, frankly stating that

One cannot rely on the fact that things that are said in advance of elections, is maintained afterwards (Angela Merkel in 2008) (2)

and ready to claim:

that we will not allow that something being technically possible is not utilised by the state (Merkel in 2008 during a canvassing event in Osnabrueck on the topic of surveillance) (3)

But even she, i.e. Merkel knows

Democracy is not always a matter of individuals deciding but it usually is the business of opinion making by many. (4)

Occupy? Sure, but not simply by building a wall of defence. What we need is a positive outlook – a new approach to understanding

Liberty – Equality – Fraternity

As

People’s Liberty – Equality – Fraternity

Sure, there had been the version of history where Europe appears only as victim – and this is what she was.

Fighting against this is a matter of thoroughly thinking about strategies and we all have to acknowledge what Merkel said in 2007 (mind, she is scientist and in this case she definitely knows what she is talking about)

Banging the head against a brick wall won’t work. It finally always means that the wall will win. (5 [see photo 19])

But equally sure, she had been also the one looking further and following this Europe is not least a matter of joining Frigga Haug in the debate and work on a Four-in-One-Perspective.

And surely this is well linked into the ongoing work on Social Quality

The latest step of which is the publication of Foundations 3rd Book

Social Quality. From Theory to Indicators

_______________________________

There remains, at the end of 2011, and looking for ways in 2012 surely also an outlook which fits well under the

Ode to Joy

And when the announcement on the website to yesterday’s performance of Beethoven’s work states

on occasion of the turn of the year it is nearly a must

we may join in it: It is a ‘must’ to look for the positive power of its suggested

Liberty – Equality – Fraternity.

It is a ‘must’ to remember these two great and idealist German thinkers.

And it is also a ‘must’ to remain alert – referring to Slavoj Zizek, writing in the New York Times – we see that

at Bar 331, the tone changes totally, and, instead of the solemn hymnic progression, the same “joy” theme is repeated in the “marcia turca” ( or Turkish march) style, a conceit borrowed from military music for wind and percussion instruments that 18th-century European armies adopted from the Turkish janissaries.

The mode then becomes one of a carnivalesque parade, a mocking spectacle — critics have even compared the sounds of the bassoons and bass drum that accompany the beginning of the marcia turca to flatulence. After this point, such critics feel, everything goes wrong, the simple solemn dignity of the first part of the movement is never recovered.

But what if these critics are only partly correct — what if things do not go wrong only with the entrance of the marcia turca? What if they go wrong from the very beginning? Perhaps one should accept that there is something of an insipid fake in the very “Ode to Joy,” so that the chaos that enters after Bar 331 is a kind of the “return of the repressed,” a symptom of what was errant from the beginning.

Sure, looking at what we (too easily) call neo-liberalism should not be underestimated – and we surely have to criticise positive historicism, its representatives as Comte, Mill, Buckle and much later Rostow for their short-sighted utilitarianism; but we should equally be aware of the dangers of metaphysical historicism, reaching from Plato over Hegel and Toynbee to … those who remain in the marcia turca of carnivalesque parades. – Comte and Plato, Mill and Hegel, Hayek and Habermas …., all shaking hand with each other.

Only when put back on its feet, when freed from all the bombastic pomp, the joy will be a real one, one for all of us and one we find in very day’s life, without the danger of turning into tyranny. Until that day we may simply enjoy such events, taking the greatness they have as animation for acknowledging the part we can take – acknowledging the claim to participate.

We may like it or not, the way leading us there will still be a stony one, overcoming the bombastic pomp depending on solidarity amongst different, overcoming the artificial divisions rather than pretending equality where it does not exist. Yes,

Be embraced, millions!

But there is still a way to go – and a question to ask:

Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Somewhere beyond the barricade
is there a world you long to see?
Do you hear the people sing?
Say, do you hear the distant drums?
It is the future that they bring
when tomorrow comes…
Tomorrow comes!

_______________

(1) So müsste meine Welt aussehen: Priorität der Politik gegenüber Finanzwelt und Ökonomie. Außerdem: ein globaler Marshallplan der reichen Länder und eine internationale Marktwirtschaft, deren ethisches Fundament das Soziale, Ökologische und Friedenspolitische ist

(2) Man kann sich nicht darauf verlassen, daß das, was vor den Wahlen gesagt wird, auch wirklich nach den Wahlen gilt

(3) Wir werden nicht zulassen, dass technisch manches möglich ist, aber der Staat es nicht nutzt

(4) Aber Demokratie ist nicht immer eine Sache von einsamen Entscheidungen, sondern in der Regel ein Geschäft der Meinungsbildung vieler.”(Interview with the Berliner Zeitung (7//11/07)

(5) Mit dem Kopf durch die Wand wird nicht gehen. Da siegt zum Schluss immer die Wand.

Academic Strangulation – or …

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, joys - what we usually take for it, works, projects, publications

… what is the parallel between modern academic life and fox hunting?

Much had been written on the effect of bureaucratisation, the emergence of an ‘iron cage’, contributing to the ‘specialist without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of humanity (Menschentums) never before achieved’ as Max Weber developed it in his work on the protestant ethics. A process of rationalisation, entering into all pores of life. As such this bureaucracy is not much more than the political-administrative complement of what Karl Marx analysed as the penetration of daily life by the complete commodification of the capitalist economy- the hegemonic system with the two firm legs.
And in academic life we complain frequently about managerialisation as principle that brings these two legs as crutches into the university. We complain about the administrative burden and also about the requirements defined by cost-efficiency of research and the need of applicability of research results.
Surely, there are good reasons to ask researchers to show that what they are doing is ‘good’, is useful for society and not the waste of money in ivory towers.

But most part of the weeks work here in Barcelona – on PERARES (Public Engagement with Research and Research Engagement with Society) – overall surely an exciting enterprise, not least due to a highly committed team that runs the overall project – showed a dimension we do not take sufficiently into account, we easily forget by the more or less short-term orientation of the complains: the shift to ‘project’ financing of academic work and research is not just an administrative burden and a permanent threat – for many an existential threat. Beyond that – and reaching much deeper – is the adaptation of a narrowed thinking, not really reaching much beyond the three (or the like) project circle and instead even looking for ‘real questions’. Action plans instead of research plans – accountable and calculable … action research rather than search for sound social practice. Researchers being more politicians than anything else.
But politicians not in the sense of generalists with spirit, activists led by their heart; but like politicians of the mainstream ‘democracies’ of Western shape: hunting success measured in lack of substance: sentences written in figures and letters forced into calculations.

Thinking in particular about young colleagues, growing up in the environment of good-will hunting: projects – at least a desk for some time, some kind of title …. – and …
… it reminds me a little bit of the life in the part of the world where I live, where fox hunting is still alive. In these hierarchies every member of the community has  a place. And everybody knows about the place: its opportunities and limitations …. – and as long as there is a fox we can hunt everybody is ‘better off’.
It is a little bit like researching about social exclusion: as long as we, the researchers know the terms and (claim to) define them we are better off. So it keeps all us busy, running like the fox: hoping for the ditch where we can hide, knowing that it will allow us only minutes of rest; hiding behind the next tree, allowing us to avoid for short times at least to face the barrel of the hunter, fleeing into a kennel, forgetting about the pack of hounds waiting for us at the exit.

When will we learn how to run together …? And when will as well younger colleagues learn again that are asked to do research and not write sentences rather then filling in forms …

… – at the end the experience of the week’s work shows: it is surely not a question of age and it is not true that all is and all are the same. There are even bright lights, also making shadows more visible.

Perhaps that made it especially enjoyable to visit before all this work started the Liceau, listening  to Scenes from Goethe’s Faust. Isn’t most important who is the last to break out in joyful Mephistophelean laughter?

New Perspectives ….

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, joys - what we usually take for it, works, projects, publications

One advantage, or should I say privilege of moving around, working in different places, is that it allows to easily take up new challenges, finding new opportunities to make life difficult. Well, at least I challenged myself, and now I am allowed doing so in an official framework. For my stay in Budapest in my role as visiting professor at Faculty of Economics, Department of World Economy and also as fellow of the Balassi Institute, Budapest (late spring/summer 2012) I had been invited to give an additional course for PhD-students.

Then, accepting challenging students means to stretch things a little bit. And also thinking about globalisation and looking at the repeatedly point made in this context: gobalisation is a complex and multifaceted matter motivates to think about a different approach, providing an insight of how globalisation is actually lived. And isn’t one way of defining culture as exactly this: the way in which we live our daily life, now the life in a globalised and globalising world?

My personal interest in what is called the fine arts, developed some years ago with beginning some arts studies during a lengthy stay in Rome, and furthered by several smaller exercises over the following periods put a stumbling block into the way – to be used as stepping stone. So, having been asked for this additional course I proposed

New economic philosophies. Its reflection in 6 paintings since the Renaissance

I now got the clear way for this – and so I am thinking about six paintings … And I am sure, Flemish painters like Hals, van Rijn will be amongst them. And I am equally sure that a look into the workshops of some of the artists will tell quite a lot of what the life had been like – that life about which we learn little about textbooks like on Macroeconomics as for instance that by Abel/Bernanke/Croushore (just randomly taken, one of the books frequently used).

It would surely be exciting to develop this further: … in six paintings, six novels, six poems … – sure, this is in many cases about the fine arts, also as arts of the fine people. Still, it looks like an interesting challenge …

Before that I will try a little pre-exercise: when going with my social-policy students on a study trip during next month I will try myself in a guided tour through two arts galleries: the old and the modern Pinaktothek. On the program amongst others Duerer’s Apostles, Boucher’s Portrait of the Marquise de Pompadour and Marc’s Mandrill– just an indulgence of grand narrative of history.

Max Weber wrote on the state

Every state is founded on force,’ said Trotsky at Brest-Litovsk. That is indeed right. If no social institutions existed which knew the use of violence, then the concept of ‘state’ would be eliminated, and a condition would emerge that could be designated as ‘anarchy,’ in the specific sense of this word. Of course, force is certainly not the normal or the only means of the state–nobody says that–but force is a means specific to the state. Today the relation between the state and violence is an especially intimate one. In the past, the most varied institutions–beginning with the sib–have known the use of physical force as quite normal. Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. Note that ‘territory’ is one of the characteristics of the state. Specifically, at the present time, the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it. The state is considered the sole source of the ‘right’ to use violence. Hence, ‘politics’ for us means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state.

Max Weber, 1919: Politics as a Vocation

And it is exactly here where Antonio Gramsci stepped in, developing this legitimacy further, elaborating from a Marxist perspective the meaning and working of hegemonic power systems. – Fine-arts – in many cases also an idol for mass-culture but also a source of fracture – have surely a role to play here. And exploring these expressive means may also mean that we can understand in a much clearer way in which way political economy is very much also a matter of the Zeitgeist: the spirit of the times.

Not an easy task, not a simple work to be accomplished – but surely more exciting as following the beaten track of downplaying lived arts as artefact.

PS: Actually, a first attempt into this direction: of bringing in fine arts as point of reflection had been undertaken in the working paper on

Rethinking Precarity in a Global–Historical Perspective

Four Apostles

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in joys - what we usually take for it, Peter's Log, thoughts on life and its philosophy

The usual reading – better to say: viewing – is the Christian one. And there it is a rather affirmative one: Duerer, the time of reformation and the apparent personal inner disunity – a universal artist, comparable in so many ways with Leonardo, remaining Catholic and nevertheless sympathising with the upcoming movement as promoted by Luther.

One of the well-known paintings is the one mentioned in the title: Four Apostles. And as much as it the artists appreciation of these key figures of Christianity and their specific merits for this social movement, as much it can be seen in a more psychological way, as representation of the four humours or four temperaments … – though surely not referring to the scientific works on these topics. I took a couple of times the opportunity to visit during a short break the Alte Pinakothek, just a couple of minutes walk from the office at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy in Munich’s Amalienstrasse.

There may be another reading – a more sociological interpretation; or even better: a socio-demographic perspective of its own kind.

One may say four temperaments is about four allowed temperaments, ‘roles’ defined societally and determining what we are allowed to do and what we are not allowed: expectations, though not written in stone being carried on the strong pillars of hegemonic systems.

Frequently over the last days and weeks I had been thinking abdout it – travelling through different worlds: Poland, Turkey, Russia, Germany. Travelling in and moving on different ‘national scenes’ – though often not really knowing in which ‘representative role’; or being excitingly lost with others in floating spaces, cosmopolitan, referring to roots as  something that …, I try to recall the way I expressed it talking today with my Bolivian colleague:

accepting the difference as something from which something new, a new unity emerges which does allow, creates new differences. Relationships not as being in relationship with others but being relationship as such.

Frequently over the last days and weeks I had been thinking of it: me, being the junior,  the senior, the cosmopolitan or the country-boy, the weird person from the little island, by many still seen as laid back, parochial …

And with all not least the person representing different ages, and engaging with different ages: young people, engaged, striving for change, innovation … standing up with their visions – sanguine as apostle John. Having visions and looking for what is in the widest sense ‘formally possible’, what appears to be possible even if only by way of thinkable.

The middle aged, here the younger striving for positions: individual careers, looking for options: realism if one wants, the dictatorship of the presence …, somewhat choleric, trying ‘to get there’, as they didn’t have a choice from where to start … Choleric at times like St. Mark. And then moving towards a somewhat phlegmatic stage – St. Petrian: standing in life where life out them – striving for standing: like a stone – unswerving, the ‘vision of fulfillment in the given framework. Tribulation as price paid for …, hope. In some way the protestant who once elevated him/herself, convinced of having reached the utmost possible, convinced that all the rest is about performance – and hiding the acrimony.

Old age then: vision merging with experience now, the ongoing strive for a better world, now based on at least more knowledge, the knwoledge as acknowledgement: freedom as insight, based on the acknowledgement of facts and on acknowledgment of the value of knowledge as value in itself. Vision as  following the latency and tendency which is inherent in the presence in its elementary form. Melancholy … – possible just about the consciousness of being part of an ongoing movement, knowing about the fruit and knowing that one will now be able to take part in the harvest. Paulean – or Platonic?

In any case, having been in  contact with so many different colleagues, it is always again interesting to see how we ‘define our roles’ by accepting hegemonic expectations: ‘roles’ and standards of behaviour: change – in a ‘jestery way’ – obvious left for those who are changing themselves: growing ideas for and from those who are obviously themselves growing; stability: doggedness – the subservience, the servility of those who stopped living,  how are alive, kept on the leash like dogs, the lead taken by the master. Freedom seems to be with the elder: old, grey and not looking for permission. Permitting themselves by following experience and allowing themselves to be a little bit like … jesters. – Let us all be jesters, at least to some extent. To the extent and in the way in which Ernst Bloch spoke

of four different kinds of possibilities, allowing us with this an informed approach to understanding them in their objectivity. He points on (i) the formally possible – what is possible according to its logical structure; (ii) the objectively possible – possible being based on assumptions on the ground of epistemologically based knowledge; (iii) the objectively possible – possible as it follows from the options inherently given by the object; (iv) and the objectively real possible – possible by following the latency and tendency which is inherent in its elementary form.*

***************

The Pinaktohek – the long building – standing in front of Duerer’s painting and turning the back to it, one sees at the the other end another painting: Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, épouse Le Normant d’Étiolles, Marquise de Pompadour – the painting  by Francois Boucher. Another time looming – not envisioned  by the tame Duerer, envisioned by people, much younger …, much older … than this great artist.

***************

Four temperaments – for dimensions of production to: the manufacturing in the strict sense, the distribution, the productive consumption and finally the exchange? I think I will leave that for another time.

***************

And of course, there is a rights perspective entailed. It is easy to speak of rights, saying that some are fundamental, indivisible and universal.

The Declaration of Human Rights states in article 23

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

Is that then all? The right can be easily seen as obligation – though this is surely debatable. But even if we do not see it as obligation, it sets a certain norm: work as employed, ‘paid’ work – and thus as part of a capitalist economy as norm.
And in fact, from here we come nolens volens back to Christianity: the founding stone and at the same time the later established pillar: either way the stronghold of the system with which inequality and subordination is intrinsically linked** – looking at the Second Epistle to the Thessalnoians in the  New Testament where we read
For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. (2 Thess., 3:10)

***************

The last evening, after the concert in the cathedral I sit down at the Odeons-Square fro an espresso – music from the other side, strange: in its remoteness determined, determining and reminding that there are new tasks ahead, on already now planned for the collaboration with a colleague from the colleague at the institute. Sure not three tasks, not a Trinity. But will I just Take Five instead?

 

The way will have to show …. – perhaps here, perhaps there – today here, tomorrow there.

________________________

* with reference to Bloch, Ernst (1959) Prinzip Hoffnung; Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp [written in 1938‐1947; reviewed 1953 and 1959]: 258-288 from: Herrmann, Peter, 2011: ‘New Princedoms‘: 197)

** I know, I discussed liberation theology as well the afternoon of the other day – and there are many different kinds of ‘liberation theology’, not all even under such name and explicit ambition …

Yes We Can

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in joys - what we usually take for it, Peter's Log, thoughts on life and its philosophy

Friday I received a nice postcard from Eva, showing the Øresund Bridge

What can be more correct than saying

in these times full of terror I think it is important to build bridges between people.

Sitting Saturday evening in the Brunnnenhof of the Munich Residence, Adrasteia sitting next to me – we arranged to meet at the entrance as I had to working during day time (what is new). It is good being together for a while. I am asking myself what is in a name, in her name, meaning “inescapable” and also “not running away”. Like my thoughts: The time here in Munich is coming to its end now – and though I will be soonish back at the Institute I have piles of work on my desk: piles that are waiting to be cleared before I leave rather than staying here, looking forward meeting me later the year.

My thoughts are not employed by the work – but by bridges, strange bridges, bringing spotlights of life, of personal and general history together that are seemingly much further apart than Malmö, Skåne län, Sweden and Copenhagen, Hovedstaden, Denmark.

Being here for the concert of Maria Farantouri I am of course thinking about Greece: The long history, suggesting Greece as one of the main cradles of our European civilisation – the medium historical level: only in 1974 chasing the regime of the colonels, which established its despotic rule in 1967 by a coup d’état, away: establishing democracy, now facing another turmoil: the coup d’état by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF. – Though saying it this way is possibly a little bit unjust as this most recent coup had been prepared for some time: the generals left, and as many democrats came as much they had been embraced by the lethal kiss of the viper, darting its tongue in and out: the stick and carrot policies of a (now) European Union (Greece joint in 1981). My mind is caught in a whirlwind of history: The Homeric epics of the Iliad and Odyssey

written in the form of ‘cantos’, the songs, the unforgotten Canto General and the recent socio-economic developments, events and also protests which I discussed so many times with Ioanna with whom I am still in touch since she asked me to write the article (“Greece and Ireland in the same crisis shaken boat”), and, which is of course frequently popping topic here with the Greek friends.

Bridges … – before coming here to Munich I worked in Ankara – and arriving there I looked for ‘local music’, and leaving Dede Efendi and also the excellent new Turkish Jazz aside, I frequently listened to the music by Zülfü Livaneli – his music as insightful and challenging as the books I red some time ago already.

As said, sitting there, a mild late summer evening, waiting for the open air concert to begin, my flickering mind is building bridges much linger than the one spanning between the two countries in the North. Greek dictatorship cam to an end in close connection with the invasion of Cyprus and thus the intensification of the conflict between Turkey and Greece ….

… on the other hand Livaneli and Farantouri showing the harmony, tensions striving towards solution …, productive tensions building bridges.

Other things floating in my mind, from the recent terror in Norway to the ongoing crusades: crusades between Rome and Mecca and Mecca and Rome, between Westminster and the Oireachtas and Oireachtas and Westminster …  – and though I am not thinking of it in terms of work now, I briefly think about last week’s discussion with Lorena, and the book she mentioned – a small, short text by Rudolpf von Jhering. He rejects the Savigny-Puchta approach that claims a pre-existing harmony from which law, rightfulness, right emerges like a result of Platonic love. In his work on “The Struggle of Law” he sees sword and scale as inextricably linked. Right needs to be fought for. And this is an eternal effort, a striving for the permanent ‘renewal’.

Law can only rejuvenate by doing away with its own past. A concrete right, which, after once emerging claims unlimited, this eternal persistence, is equal to a child, that raises the hand towards his/her mother. It ridicules the idea of law, by calling to her as the very idea of law is permanent becoming, but what once emerged has to open a space for new becoming.

Recently, when presenting to the Institute my ideas about Human Rights, Law and Economics a colleague from the audience said after I finished, during the discussion:

But aren’t these rights we are talking about today very much still the same rights that had been claimed – and breached – 50 years, 500 years, and even longer times ago?

Of course, many old debates – also the history that seems to be repeating on a personal level. Sitting here for the concert with Maria – after having listened to her 20, 30 of even more years ago. – Did really nothing change?

I turn to Adrasteia – “inescapable”, “not running away”.

Maria, comes onto the stage – not hiding that she has difficulties to walk, not hiding her age. But the voice still full of power …, moved and moving, full of power and empowering. I look around – the typical audience: the ‘old left’, surely rebellious at times and many now civilised, settled, sedated. One may say, reaching the end of their life’s fight. Many clearly showed

Yes we can

trying to hide a tiny disguise, the mutation of the we, having been swiftly transposed to the I – the letter I and the Roman figure I as the sole unity.

Maria is captivating, enchanting:

Yes we can

As long as we face the inescapable, as long as we don’t (allow) to run away.

Maria’s long silk orange shawl moves in the light wind, hides and leaves the view on the purple dress, a long necklace – simple and good looking. The voice is strong, behind it the devotion and warm passion for another world that is possible.

And Still Not Found The Answer

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in joys - what we usually take for it

May be it is as simple – perhaps not telling the entire story though at least a major chapter. Tantalus and Eros – Sigmund Freud and his followers first excited us with the analysis of the adversaries, and reached boredom with the exaggeration of such claim to sole representation. The entire life subordinated under the unconsciousness and the fight of these apparently insoluble contradictoriness.

And still, we come across it again and again – and if we are open enough we see it not so much and not primarily as personalities (and the lack) but also and predominantly as matter of social interests, of social patterns reflecting different interests and powers. Sure, the short version is the individual interest against the interest of social interests. The dissoluteness, set free at a stage where people lost any hope, where they draw back from a society which lost the capacity of providing anything: Like the pure lust of the seven young women and three young men, who wanted to escape the black death, left Florence and emerged in the telling of stories, overcoming the restrictions of a society that lost the power over them, positive and negative, supporting and controlling power … .This apparently generic struggle of the two different patterns of control: instinctive acting on one’s feelings, standing in such detrimental way against society can also be seen the other way round: the oppression of individual lust by a society that actually lost control over itself – I quoted earlier Immanuel Kant and his rejection of pure reason.

It may look far-fetched and may still be also reasonable – the pure reason as control of a society that lost any true reason, that lost cognition in a wider sense. This gives another background then for the vendetta of which we learn in Alighieri’s canto 6 of the Purgatorio: two families, Montecchi and Cappelletti, standing against each other and the tension overshadowing the love of a couple that we may consider today as one of the most famous couples in literature: here in the purgatory we find the origin of Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare, surely without that we should accuse him of plagiarism, took up a story that originated in Italy – and he took up a topic that went much beyond the love of the couple, went beyond a family feud, reflecting the different patterns, the different leading morals that up to then and thereafter shaped in totally different ways the process of civilisation.

By way of soci(et)al development and personal sensations alike we can see Romanticism as one of the forces taking up the ‘spiritual level’, frequently reappearing and not least carrying with it egocentric notions: like George Gordon Byron: Don Juan of his time, living the lost paradise and making it up for himself, rejecting any claim as it is still brought forward in Milton’s Paradise Lost where we read:

What in me is dark

Illumine, what is low raise and support;

That to the highth of this great Argument

I may assert th’ Eternal Providence,

And justifie the wayes of God to men.

Milton looking for the solution in God (1667), Bryon suggesting the ego as the ultimate solution (in the early 1800s) and today the new romanticism in painting, perhaps a little bit reflecting 19th-century impressionism in the widest sense – from Goya to Cézanne, as a frequent guided tour in the New Pinakotek shows. – But let us not forget the difference. May one see impressionism as a specific reflection of romanticism (though one does not have to follow this interpretation) looking very much for a retreat, whereas today’s romanticism being more an audacious, desperate cry for help of those who lost hope?

And although these romanticisms in their different appearances and meanings are not simply about the too often kitschy love relationships, they find a battleground that expresses the entire story from an unexpected side: finding its one pole in the mariage de convenance and its counter-pole in the emotional devotion – both actually very specific, very different expressions of both: equality and otherworldliness in the here and now. The formal equality of the law, the otherworldliness of an entirely formalised system of pure reason on the one hand – the equality of love, of understanding, going hand in hand with the otherworldliness of absorption by the rapture of blinding affection. – Una poetica della meraviglia as Rudolfo Celletti termed it, bringing together the contradictions in only one tense time. And expressing it in the compositions by Bellini: mellifluous melodies, still absorbing us in permanent tensions.

A ‘timeless’ piece: Vincenzo Bellini’s I Capuleti e I Montecchi obviously something that gains its value, its inspiring character not least by being inspiring for so many times.

And We Still Did Not Find The Answer

Surely Provocative – The Staging of ‘Rusalka’

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in joys - what we usually take for it, Peter's Log

A Retrospect – surely provocative (and from my side I mean it quite positive) – the staging of ‘Rusalka

by Marin Kušej, part of this year’s Munich Opera Festival.

And joining the guided exhibition on Rusalka – ‘watch and listen’ – the afternoon brought me into a specific mood to take up the provocation.

Generally it is seen and emphasised as a kind of psychodrama, focusing on the incestual rape as such. Surely a serious enough topic.

1901 is the year of the first staging – in Prague. It would take less than 15 years that in that region the first world war would find its point of departure: initiated by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, the heir to the thrown of Austria-Hungary. Here is not the space to discuss details – as for instance the meaning of initiating the war by the deed of a Yugoslav nationalist. A bit more interesting is that it had been the first war that had been explicitly called world war, thus understood as ‘global’. It took about 13 years from the rape to the war – a ‘bewitched rape’ if one wants: the husband of the witch, with the knowledge of his life, had been the perpetrator. Rusalka became speechless, mute – and debarred: after having been exposed to, touch by a human being the other mermaid did not allow her to return. The division between worlds clear-cut, rigid and becoming more rigid again: the political and more: the economic opening, emerging from the young industrializing, capitalist world smothered by the new nationalism. More and stronger again than before.

– The son of the emperor dead …

Much earlier stood a ‘divine rape’ – the abducted young Europe, taken and raped by Zeus:

According to the Greek myth, Zeus, the Thunder-God residing on the Olympus, in the shape of a bull abducted Europa, the daughter of the Phoenician king Agenor and carried her over the sea to Crete. Agenor sent his sons out to search for their sister. One of them, Kadmos, landed in Greece and was told by the oracle of Delphi that he should wander around, armed with his spear till he reached the cowherd Pelagon in the land of Phokis. He should kill Pelagon – the man of earth, “born to die” – and choose the cow with the sign of the moon on both her flanks and follow her, till she would lie down, with her horns on the ground. On this hill he should kill and sacrifice her to the earth Goddess and then found a big city on this spot, Thebes.

Kadmos followed the oracle and became the founder of Thebes. He married Harmonia, the daughter of Ares, the War God, and Aphrodite (…). It is not clear from the myths whether he killed the moon-cow, obviously his sister Europa, or not. In any case, one does not hear of her again. She, the raped and abducted woman was only the means to lead the warrior and new culture hero into the foreign land and to his greatness.

(Maria Mies: Europe in the Global Economy or the Need to De-Colonize Europe; in: Peter Herrmann (Ed.): Challenges for a Global Welfare System: Commack, New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc.; 1999: 153-171; here: 160 f.)

A ‘divine rape’ – bringing unity: by exclusion and oppression and division. It is in some way the emergence of the world system that finds its roots here – also in some way of ‘the other’. Please note: the other within which is different to the total exclusion: the slave as ‘non-being’, ‘non-human’ gained (though surely not absolutely) a new status: being human and gaining a quasi-citizen status. Of course, all this needs qualification – the US maintained slavery (in historical terms) until recently; the ‘total exclusion’ had not been overcome just by establishing the then new European order …. – but it surely had been a ‘divine rape’ with the major consequence of establishing a new world order.

– The emperor, not yet born, had been conceived.

So far raped individuals, generations to suffer. This reversed: a generation had been raped – it had been a purely secular rape, and one that tried to disguise itself: seductive promises after WWII: reconstruction (sic!) at least in the Western hemisphere, development at least as promise. On the other hand, demon and Lord standing outside: actually already after WWI the emperor had to go – Dr. Franz Matfried had been born; at birth his name had been different: Seine Kaiserliche und Königliche Hoheit Franz Joseph Otto Robert Maria Anton Karl Max Heinrich Sixtus Xaver Felix Renatus Ludwig Gaetan Pius Ignatius, Kaiserlicher Prinz, Erzherzog von Österreich, Königlicher Prinz von Ungarn (His imperial and Royal Highness Franz Joseph Otto Robert Maria Anton Karl Max Heinrich Sixtus Xaver Felix Renatus Ludwig Gaetan Pius Ignatius, imperial prince, archduke of Austria, royal prince of Hungary).

Had he been god or demon? On the other side, the constructed god or demon: communism as danger of becoming real, playing at least as such an important role as incitement: “we” have to be better – we the West, we, the capitalist, now striving for what had been advertised as social market economy and welfare state (somewhat a contradiction in terms as the welfare state had been a child of Mr. Keynes, whereas Ludwig Erhard and Alfred Mueller-Armack had been children of Mr. Smith, their children and grand-children fro instance Mr. Friedman and Mrs. Thatcher.

With latest with the succession of those mentioned just before, the debauchery mutated, became pure self-rape. For some possibly and for a while bearing the virtual pleasure of masturbation on form of consumerism, the success of ‘young-egomaniac professionals’ and masochist self-exposure of a new mannerism oft post-modernist freedom without democracy, without society. After a while – and from the beginning for most people a real self-exploitation: alienation, loss of confidence and moreover: loss of any foundation on which confidence could be erected. ‘There is no such thing as society …’

In analytical terms surely not entirely wrong …

 – The emperor, chased out of office after WWII … – his son is buried now, and hopefully his spirit left.

Rusalka – A Lyric Fairy-Tale. Let us be that … – a provocation in its positive sense, encouraging to a new Kandinsky, a new Composition V.

Sure, much can be discussed on Kandinsky, the Blue rider and The Almanac and the transcendence (actually I did this today during a couple of hours in the Sammlung Schack attending a course. But equally sure is the need of courage to look in a constructive way forward rather than moaning about past and presence.

Friday, after the afternoon’s exhibition I talked on the way back to the guide – she asked me what I am doing – I told her a bit about this and that: economics, law, social policy and occasionally traveling  a bit here and there. “Such a variety. And then you still go to such an exhibition -make such a distinct step into an entirely different world …” – Not really though it looks at first glance – it allows me to look upon the forest – the vast area and array – and I step back then into the forrest, its different parts, touching the single trees. Don’t believe if anybody wants to tell you: “You cannot have it all.” It is the other way round: You cannot have one only, without taking all, without delving into the entirety.

Yes, she asked me what I am doing – the shorter answer: just enjoying life of work – just working through life ….