La violencia en la cultura

En los estudios culturales las nociones de singularidad y universalidad son tan solo abstracciones, coordenadas cartesianas sobre un paisaje fractal. Hablar pues de la cultura de la violencia no implica la aceptación trágica de una condición irredimible. Supone, sin embargo, el reconocimiento de hechos violentos que logran desprenderse por momentos de las condiciones histórico materiales con las que dialoga [1]. 

No solo el lenguaje contribuye a la autosuficiencia de la violencia, también su apropiación de los medios de producción social [2]. La violencia puede servir de eje estructural para una variedad de funciones sociales: estrategia pedagógica, criterio de autoridad, mecanismo de resolución de conflictos, etc. En otras palabras, la violencia intenta y logra perpetuarse tejiendo su telaraña sobre las funciones sincrónicas de una sociedad. Deconstruir la violencia en este sentido significa desmitificar la idea de que es el único mecanismo efectivo para satisfacer las necesidades sociales –similares argumentos se esgrimieron para defender las monarquías–. El reto pues es el de inventar, descubrir, visualizar y reproducir contraejemplos.

P.D. Señalo un énfasis en replantear el medio antes que el fin, habrán sin embargo asuntos que requieran lo contrario.

[1] La palabra diálogo es clave pues supone una complementariedad en la perpetuación de las prácticas sociales. Existe más de una forma de lograr una función social. Cada uno de estos caminos posee subproductos diferentes. 

[2] Acaso la violencia merezca todo un tratado epifenomenológico aunque ella misma sea una colaterialidad del poder.

La violencia en los Medios: Arcadi Espada

"La paz tiene su momento en este asunto: el gran momento en que el crimen empieza a relativizarse por obra y gracia de los hechos consumados y entonces aparece un ferviente, un anhelante, un desesperado deseo. Este deseo de paz tiene, desde el punto de vista de la moral, el inquietante propósito de equiparar contendientes. Es una urgencia muy histérica: resuelvan esto de una vez por todas, no podemos permitir esta orgía de sangre, resuélvanlo.

En ese momento de la paz se producen muchos malentendidos. Uno de ellos es la dialéctica entre guerra y paz, y terrorismo y ley. Lo que el terrorismo pervierte es la ley, y lo que el poder democrático y la ciudadanía debe de preservar es la ley. No va la paz a cambio de la ley."

Arcadi Espada nos ofrece una magistral sesión sobre la semiótica del terrorismo y los retos de su cobertura mediática: La violencia en los medios. Por una cobertura responsable. Revista Letras Libres.

Alain de Botton - On Pessimism from The School of Life on Vimeo.

Lars Von Trier, a lyon out of the zoo

This post is motivated by the recent declarations of Lars Von Trier, in the presentation of his film Melancholia.

I decided to write this post as a way to address the issues of political correctness and the ethical challenges of the artist. Despite these general motivations I find the declaration of Lars Von Trier not the declaration of any person or any artist; his filmography shows a meticulous exploration of the moral dimensions of humanity through a variety of micro-political scenarios. His doses of irony are high enough as to separate them from the neurotic but low enough as not to fall in the bed of nihilism. I find improbable that a person responding to the latter description would give a declaration of such caliber in a simply reactionary not to mention neurotic way.

I refuse the society which allows the artist to say whatever he wants. That is a society where artists are meaningless together with everything they represent. If we allow the artist to cause any impact, we should request from him an ethical responsibility. Wondering what that responsibility may be is the subject of this post.

Is it fortuitous that the freedom of the artist is still confined to the golden frame? An armed soldier out of duty is an armed civilian. The frame matters, it is the difference between imagination and reality. One of the applications of imagination is to understand the evil. But hermeneutics is the art of understanding the other without becoming the other. The former reflections are motivated by Von Trier issue, but the judgment of his act is an adjacent matter. Should the declaration of Von Trier be taken as evil? his films are certainly evil. But they are framed and that makes them good evil, they allow us to identify and necessarily to understand the many forms of evil. His declaration, though, was under a different frame. The press conference is where the people expects to see the person behind the artist, the mask of a person the least.

Despite my outsider condition, being a colombian, I try to understand some of the attitudes of postwar germans towards WWII. I wonder if they see it as a burden similar to that of colombians with regard to drug cartels. If the holocaust is a possibility of humanity, why should they be more responsible than any other postwar generation? If the french youth is allowed to be anti-Zionist, why can't they be so? Many of them see that burden as a taboo and the first enemy of taboo is the artist. It is worthless to say that modernity is an enemy of taboo. It just rather to hide in the light than in the darkness. It does so by depuration of meaning or by its commodification. The notable think about commodification is that it looses touch with history, a especially sensible matter when it comes to the holocaust. Perhaps that is what Von Trier was looking for. I don't know, but I suspect that what is important, rather than the motivation for his utterance is the way society responds to it.

La izquierda y la derecha en la democracias modernas

A propósito de la columna de Antonio Caballero (Revista Semana).

Uno puede distinguir dos izquierdas. Una marxista la cual comparte con la tradición republicana su vocación de poder. Y otra que podríamos llamar a la Walter Benjamin o cultural, la cual encuentra en el poder su antítesis. La primera es pragmática y la segunda es estética. La primera es una propuesta política y la segunda una propuesta crítica. Son excluyentes en tanto la política contiene a la crítica y viceversa. Ambas conciben a la izquierda como una forma estática, ya sea desde el poder o desde la marginalidad. Mientras la izquierda cultural delata la contradicción de una izquierda con poder (contradicción imputable desde el mismo materialismo dialéctico), la izquierda marxista delata la construcción hegemónica de la cultura y al mejor estilo de Nietzsche revela la dudosa genealogía de la marginalidad estetizada. Y es aquí donde entra la democracia moderna a romper con esta dialéctica infructuosa. El sufragio fue concebido como ejercicio republicano, acto mediante el cual el pueblo soberano ha de elegir a sus representantes. Sin embargo en la modernidad, el sufragio toma otro cariz. Los partidos, ya no aspiran a proyectarse como representantes de la voluntad del pueblo en su totalidad, sino que representan nichos o clanes. Así que el sufragio en la democracia liberal se convierte en un sistema rotativo del poder para las diferentes facciones políticas mientras que los aspectos universales (republicanos) son progresivamente trasladados al terreno jurídico-constitucional. La rotación del poder derechiza a la izquierda pero, a diferencia del marxismo, también izquierdiza a la derecha. En este nuevo escenario la izquierda clásica (estática) representa aquellos grupos sociales que aún se encuentran marginados del sistema rotativo del poder. Defenderla es tan católico como defender la pobreza. Se debe procurar su integración soberana dentro del sistema político rotativo.

Libya and the International Community

These are some coments about the military intervention of Libya by the Security Council of the United Nations (U.N.S.C.). I will let aside any discussion about the strategic motivations behind the intervention although the latter allow us to understand why Libya, why not say Bahrain where similar repression has taken place. The latter is a discussion about how justice from the international community is applied in discriminate ways as to serve interests ranging from corporative to internal politics. Instead, I will address the rather isolated issue of the suitability of U.N. military intervention in Libya in the context of the defense of human rights and the recognition of the freedom of locals to drive their own political history.

When rebels are few, the international community doesn't bother to make military interventions. When rebels are the clear majority  and they are in military disadvantage the "international community" does not hesitate to intervene as long as the ideological identity of the rebels is sympathetic. The situation in Libya seems slightly more complicated. Although fear has certainly shrink the number of civilians participating in the Libyan revolts (military prevention was crucial in Egipt), it is seems probable that pro-Qaddafi forces are roughly as much as the opposition. Very little international attention has been made to this point perhaps because military asymmetry quickly became the leading criteria to question Qaddafi's respond. Nevertheless the former is an issue that sooner or later will be decisive in the legitimacy of the international military intervention. Another important point is the uncertain ideological composition of the rebels. Although from an humanitarian perspective this should not be a strong criteria, in practice it is because the precedent of a new Qaddafi brought by the grace of western force is becoming an increasingly frustrating scenario. We should not forget that this has been used before to mobilize the west while at the end expectations has not been fulfilled (see Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran).  To which extent is legitimate to intervene in a civil war taking side for the ideologically sympathetic? a fare fight is crucial in the process of legitimizing the outcome. Losers might not be happy but if the fight is balanced they will accept it at least to a greater extent than for an unbalanced fight. Qaddafi's indiscriminate use of military power created an unbalance fight. To this situation the U.N.S.C. can respond by using its superior military power to make the war more balanced, but ideally, not to the extent of making it unbalanced in the opposite direction. The ideal sceneario is unlikely; if the war becomes balanced and after "withdrawal" of international forces the pro-qaddafi forces approach victory; then the genocide threat which motivated intervention in first place will probably happen after all. This is a scenario that the U.N.S.C. will never accept. After the strong attacks from the french and the americans, it is unlikely that the U.N.S.C. will dissimulate successfully his resolute support to the Libyan rebels, especially in a war whose outcome has already been written.

Lecciones de Egipto (?)

Mauricio García, en su columna de El Espectador, interpreta la Revolución Egipcia como una prueba de la tesis del cambio progresivo de Alexis de Tocqueville. La contextualiza en el caso de la actitud recelosa de algunos miembros del Polo Democrático Alternativo frente a la Ley de víctimas y de Reparación de tierras del gobierno de Unidad Nal. de Juan M. Santos.