not so high
Stefano Terzi
Roberto Moro
Chronicles of Manhattan II
The iconography of this article comes from the cycle of paintings "The bullfighting" Michele Cannae kindly made available by the author of History in Network
Terrorism bacteriological media and poisoning - The war, the front of the first victories -
The Phantom of otherness and the conflict among Civilizations - From the Middle Ages with no return -
Rebirth, reform, revolution ... metamorphosis
in Network History's director informs me that "The Chronicles of Manhattan" published in The chair showed considerable interest from the readers of our magazine, I personally effective and positive feedback from the surveys on the site lastoria.org. I thank the readers and I conclude that the history and current events, narrative short and instant news and communication have now crossed the boundaries between them in a sort of globalization governed by the media (ie hetero) that every strictly predefinsce our consumption and the ' together communicate the same reason; predefines content, emotions, the very fabric of every possible story. The story is written "here and now, minute by minute, in a press release, service to service, article in the article (including this magazine) in a sort of pitched battle (which is probably true of this war new century) between events in the struggle for their survival momentary as random. How to avoid all-out event, which dominates the system of historical and political communication: the world war of the twenty-first century? The shock wave of the war in Afghanistan has not yet quenched, rather, new variants, new events in the event, held at the waist and swell beyond all measure that should be the starting point of the story of a whole century. A media storm to get caught in act that confuses true facts and creative imagination, propaganda and political analysis, commentary and petty historical research, one gets the impression that what we are, willy-nilly, speaking not of our present, but of our future: the origins of the event appear at all irrelevant to their future outcomes. History has reversed its course, there is pressing and now goes from present to future. How to resist this trend? What other story if you do not write every morning that the world starts to move from the media and that all accounts (ancient history, modern contemporary history of the future) in a story maybe instantaneous, but really universal?
readers will excuse me therefore if I return to my diary off September 26 (a date now remote given the acceleration of inflation and events) to propose a few thoughts in hopes of breaking from the pack, offering a break, maybe to go a little farther ...
In addressing this issue now inflated, who lives in Italy at least has an advantage there. No real foreign policy (unless the obvious one of a passive loyalty Atlantic and a European vocation hypocritical), an eccentric than in Europe, engaged in an uncertain (and frustrated) and pro-Arab Mediterranean policy that was never built, equipped of a mediocre political class but talkative until the uproar, Italy, even more than other countries in this war knows little or nothing. In general, nobody knows naiente (the U.S. government imposed strict censorship and bought all the rights of broadcasters on Afghanistan), but at least we know we did not know. We know that it passes over the head as for centuries, and involves little or nothing upsets us: without too many tragedies expect the night before.
way out of the media obsession which, like addictive drugs, intoxication, and then progressive narcosis? What, do so to break the cycle of current speed and win the time information "to lose"? The arguments of course there are. Let to talk together, to think about.
conclude my reflections in the previous article with the statement that with this event (more than a war) we really turned the corner, turn of the century. It also makes the assumption that Bush, like Gorbachev, appeared and presented himself as the liquidator of American power in the "new world" and in the new century. The facts, as they are told, seems to confirm this intuition.
The war is now a month now. Cleaning, shelling, mobilization of alliances, formidable media campaign and propaganda, investments, general anxiety, state of crisis and economic stagnation (economics of war), hoarders and speculators, the intelligence services in action, innocent people die, heroes are not born. It 's a real war of the "new world" such as those in Iraq and Yugoslavia (and many others that have not made audience in the last three decades of preparation of the final event) and also its outcome may seem obvious. A new government (which is in preparation at the international level), will replace the TELEBISTA, his purges and will kick off the inevitable process of reconstruction (modernization and democratization) that will manage the development funds with-compensation ' unfailing help of Swiss banks and tax havens. Or so we hope. This procedure, however, some offers significant variation compared to the previous clichet: first, the Northern Alliance (which resembles the Desert of the Tartars of our Buzzati) is not a movement of people (or classes and social strata), but a set of tribal groups and ethnic groups in competition, and secondly the basis of the new political structure should be offered by the restoration of an ancient tribal assembly (a sort of States-General without states, without representatives of the medieval diet orders) moderated by a monarch (84 years!) in exile for nearly thirty. We are far from the canons and paradigms of modern European history and, above there are none in this historical process that the media and historians try to interpret.
The front of this war is really unprecedented with respect to models of the recent past and all the past. Declaration against "international terrorism" (though you can not define either conceptually or political science), this marks the global war prevail on the home front and externally. In the U.S., shocked by the threat of anthrax and the hunt for terrorists, is passing legislation on security and control that is clearly at odds with the cultural traditions of the country, in Europe there appears a current warmonger who, if not a prelude to reset is certainly an alternative to the options for developing political and democratic Union, the Middle East has opened a front domestic terrorist between Jews and Palestinians that the world order is no longer able to control and that upsets the balance of the Alliance and the "forces of good" in Asia (Pakistan, India, Malaysia and even China), this the war is already fighting on the front of most internal and external. These new elements become even surprising if you put in account the fact that this war has identified its enemy in a band of about thirteen thousand psychopaths in the pay of a billionaire illegal. The enemy we now know everything (or so we believe you): consistency, location, weapons, funding, type of training and tactics, in short, we know enough to know that the systematic destruction of Kabul and other cities (in fact already heaps of rubble before being bombed), the possible infiltration of special forces, the terrestrial distribution of orthopedic implants and pre-packed lunches, they have nothing to do with the type of traditional warfare. The first to say so are the soldiers who now denounce the unexpected news event, the inadequate training and inadequate resources and the old policy options. The face is invisible, the enemy is unlikely and its representation in terms of media, the story is impossible (it seems as if we invented it there).
probably is a war of spies, infiltrators, turncoat, blackmailers, in fact a war between organizations (criminals) bureaucratic business model. Probably all that is happening and a casus belli for the redistribution of world power among new entrants. Probably ... But on this point we will return later, for now the one on which it is worthwhile to consider is that this general concern, this climate of confusion and uncertainty in the judgments in the procedures followed expands the home front up to our inner face, right inside us, deep in our consciousness. The increase because, even doubts, distrust towards any kind of information will be won only by a stage of growing media narcosis and intoxication.
However, in light of these elements novelty of the first victories, it is painful to say, can be attributed to the enemy. I think on this and at this point of the story we can all agree. First OLB (such as bin Laden is bureaucratically called in code) and its audience have achieved and maintain a "historic", they speak and write more of them than we have ever done a miracle, a great scientific discovery, a new detergent or model automobile. All the world must confront them, we had to listen to them and we are forced to endure them every day, and is to be hoped that other religious and ethnic minorities-ideological or policy does not follow the example of the communications system to conquer the world with new hits hand. Secondly, a small core of criminals, a captain and a band of mercenaries have provoked, not a police operation, but a world war and undermined the balance of power in the United States of America. They are then held responsible for the worldwide recession and, on the military are far from defeated: for now have not lost a battle because he still has not fought, but the hypothesis of a catch of OLB and the top of its organization seems set aside. Finally, most importantly, the Taliban have gathered and are gathering consensus in the world (and not just Islamic) and try to stand as guardians of the oppressed of the "new world". If there is an unfolding alliances against OLB is also a movement, perhaps barely visible but no less important to an antediluvian world and the darkness that is based only on the strength of a paranoid blind intolerance. Well for now these enemies are ghost-writing the history, our history. It is they who held the bank. What's more, much more.
not only our media had to take place, and show him every day, this war is also and perhaps above all a symptom of our contradictions, and a sudden, brutal policy of developed countries (Bin Laden have invented, financed and supported the U.S.) for an exclusive government of the world, but our cultural information and our own mass culture took place, beyond the media simplifications, that there is possibly an otherness Western man and the citizen-consumer, that there is or there may be a kind of socialism other than the entertainment media , holidays in exotic countries and shopping centers are dear to the prose and the inventiveness of Saramago. That under the anesthesia of the information revolution and the information market and hatching can be "reborn" something new, different, alternative that has the flavor of the "revolution." For now, we have called Islam and this has given rise to a season of cultural information on the religion of Muhammad, on the tradition of Islamic learning on the political geography and morale of about eight hundred million inhabitants of the planet, but also opened the gate to a simplistic and dangerous interpretation of the event.
This war without borders, without boundaries, without peoples and nations, no flags, anthems and medals heroes, no enemies credible (maybe we should look within ourselves or in the contradictions of our system), this war will be long and that for now We're losing has led for a moment as the interpretive key to a clash of civilizations: the civilization of Islam on the one hand and from the other ... but still we can not know. It is a model of interpretation of the event entirely misleading, regressive and difficult to establish both historically and politically (and thus morally). The idea of \u200b\u200ba confrontation between civilizations (in the absence of better could also be taken) is of itself most fundamentalist of Islamic fundamentalism, there is nothing secular, scientific, and nothing brings to life a conception of the history of nineteenth-century mark which, like nationalism, has had its day (and disasters consistent).
Today, in the new world of the twenty-first century, there are multiple systems (or models or blocks) of civilization in competition with each other, and what, if anything, there is a growing cultural diversity within a single civilization (if we call it) and this is the cosmopolitan culture of tolerance, pluralism and open the emergence of technology, mobility, exchange of thought and of human beings and globalization have generated and at the same time threatening. This civilization, intuitively and in some ways invented by the eighteenth century European culture, is neither East nor West, neither Islamic nor Christian, nor structurally democratic or theocratic structurally. It is simply a process of secularization forced modernization fatal to humans that poses the problem of coexistence not only among themselves but also with the means of destruction (material and moral) that the technology generates and that humans do not show know how to govern. These means of destruction and self-destruction are not only nuclear arsenals or the monopoly of information (hence the possibility of their manipulation), but also the rampant exploitation of the power-destruction of human and natural resources, the gap and the multiple speed of development, the gradual decay of Local The crisis state of the organization, the overwhelming emergence of supranational powers and multinational free from any control and, in DefInt alien to the law from which we felt protected and secure. So rather than a clash of civilizations this event seems to leave us a glimpse of otherness, something new (but unknown) and different (but in some ways revolutionary) which from its Misuraca from our home front.
What may be the resounding victory of OLB is the monopoly of an alteration to the global system as it is (unable to regulate itself) and that is to offer a "politico-ideological," a range of myths and mythologies antisystemic winning the vast market of emotions and expectations of emancipation and life. In this case, fundamentalism in all its variations, far from being a residual phenomenon, a blast from the distant past, it would be something totally new and as such quite a competitor to the residual culture of modernity in full decline.
But the idea of \u200b\u200ba clash of civilizations is not only alien, is also stubborn, grips, and even if disproved theoretically and semantic, is emerging in the media and their language has infected a bit 'all made it easy (as weak), war propaganda and the interpretation of 'Event. What we are witnessing is the emergence of a language and a set of metaphors regressive and vaguely medieval. We have gone from "infinite justice", but there is ended at the Justice durable. "Civilization" and "barbarism," "just war" and "holy war", "forces of good" against those "evil", "punishment" and "just vengeance", "defense of civilization" and "operation of international justice "," solidarity with the American people " and "wounded nation", "humanitarian mission" and "civilizing mission" on one side and on the other "infidels" and "satanic", "rich" and therefore "guilty," "atheists" and therefore "sinners", " Islamic brotherhood "and" martyrs. " These are the building blocks of an existing syntax of the curve north of San Siro or ultra of urban ghettos, but heads of state, analysts, political scientists, strategists, and even intellectuals. A festival general policy of intolerance and ignorance that threatens to turn this event into a dramatic entertainment (so to speak) by the square and concealing the true extent of our eyes. This is a train that seems to take the semantic route from the Middle Ages no other destination to return. It 's a mix of hard drugs, a comparison between models of all-out rude and primitive culture that depresses and discourages any attempt at analysis.
This communication is established through a sort of schizophrenia narrative of this history and daily snapshot of the technological level, cold, and the legendary, passionate and emotional. On the one hand the imagery of sophisticated and innovative (and therefore by definition positive and successful) means of war and other violence pure unbridled inobitori that the war itself and raises legitimate. 'S "surgical operation" of the bombing (which in fact to be that affects hospitals and Red Cross) and street demonstrations, that television news. What is worrying is that this elementary model of propaganda, with his slogans and stereotypes irresponsible vaguely suggest a lack of control, mental order: it is groping in the dark, anchored in an uncertain past and an uncertain identity, with language cheap and a political culture that is at a very low degree of moral temperature. Just in case this re-enactment of medieval political emotions, Bin Laden may indeed make history, to write him our story. How did we get here? Why the past does not teach us anything better? And why is it so hard to find in the paradigms of history inspiration to interpret and govern the events of this?
Because maybe it is the history as a teacher of life, as an arsenal of human experience, that in this new order of civilization made up of many cultures to live for, is a resource too fragile and perhaps because, as I said at the beginning, it has reversed its course and start from present to future models of leaving orphans and the teachings of all our past. Compared to the acceleration and compression of the time of this twenty-first century and for the right to citizenship of a plurality of cultures this great invention of Western culture that has been the engine and the interpreter of modernity has perhaps had its day.
Here it is: we got perhaps to the vanishing point, the way out of the media storm and the poisoning of information "to lose".
Only from this set of considerations, I think it possible, as history and historical enthusiast, to abandon the emergence of current and contemporary to bring the event of war in the twenty-first century and a longer cycle horizons expanded over time. Inspired by these thoughts and questions about which readers and students ask me, I decided to address this year, the theme of the paradigms of interpretation of historical change that European culture has developed over the centuries of modernity . Who knows if this procedure may offer some interpretive key "strong" to the events in progress? However, this very text itself as the introductory lesson to a whole series of lectures for the current academic year. The very function of the Chair of History in our network is fully respected, and hopefully to the satisfaction of the Director.
I wondered if, to explain these political events in their proclaimed global dimension, the historical experience of modernity can be of some help.
Rebirth, reform and revolution (the topic of course I'm focusing thanks to the exercise of which leads me to the chair of the History Network) are the paradigms of interpretation of historical change developed by the Western culture in the centuries of modernity (XIV-XIX). Metaphors become "strong" and universally popular, these paradigms have fallen into the common language and up to establish itself as a widespread feeling of political thought and mythology as the basis of theoretical calculations of power. The history of these metaphors is ancient and fascinating in many ways. The idea of \u200b\u200brebirth
automatically connects to that of death and the awareness of a world, a civilization gone forever (the old) but can rise from the ashes a new, after a pause, a real-archiving of the suspension historical time. The Renaissance was in fact time and the rebirth of politics and coincided with the founding of the State and that the sovereign power whose task was to ensure justice, human justice and founded a sull'humanitas over and above the religious faiths and ethnicities.
The idea of \u200b\u200breform, the experience that certain principles of the Reformation, namely the struggle for modernization and adaptation of European religious beliefs and practices to the changing needs of economic and social framework of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, has become dominant in During the eighteenth century and proclaimed the only final secularization of politics. The men of the eighteenth century believed that power in fact, sovereign and absolute, not only would ensure order and justice, but even happiness to his subjects and that the state was an agile instrument to reshape the new demands posed by the progressive movement of history. And the the Enlightenment was precisely the great century of reform and modernity.
Finally, the idea of \u200b\u200brevolution, which was originally derived from the astronomical language, represented a new way of understanding the historical change and the government motion to allow the humans to put hand to build their future through radical and violent break with all burdens of the past. The objective of the power and the rule was thus established not only in justice and the need to ensure happiness to living under one common law, but above all to guarantee every citizen the right to participate in the construction and the Government of future society in a state of equality and of equality and without mediation: citizenship. The state could thus take on the task of ensuring the development of its material and moral citizens.
Now in this long period of time that is our history and the history of modernity, revival, reform and revolution represented the patterns of historical change and marked the different speeds of time, put him in motion and has set the rhythms to be able to govern. But even in these major differences in these metaphors and rhythms, the purpose of the passage of time and the final goal of history, has always been that of a civilization cosmopolitan based peace (ie tolerance) and the universal brotherhood (and therefore on the plurality of cultures). The political thought and feeling of modernity were and are always looking for a paradise here and not there. This is why the heroes and martyrs of our history are profoundly human. For this and for no other modernity itself as an efficient model of civilization. And today you can still use these paradigms to interpret and govern the course of time? The emergency
technology that characterizes the twentieth century, the profound change in the system of human communications as a result of network signaling the beginning of the twenty-first century-globalization and integration processes cultural thereto, appear to have filed the use of these traditional metaphors and propose interesting questions.
E 'possible to imagine a renaissance man in an age in which man himself seems to be a product of technological manipulation? What reforms are possible in a society that assumes technological innovation, with its accelerated pace and increasingly ungovernable, like a natural event and therefore as a canon of order and stability? The idea of \u200b\u200ba revolution, understood as a violent rupture of the political and social awareness and to build a better world is possible in a civilization that has control and repressive as powerful as universal? In the presence of the crisis has long proclaimed ideologies (and values) as a responsible role in the "new world" of the twenty-first century, thought and political engagement? And finally, as we are concerned, which model to include the set of events that, from what happens in Afghanistn are changing the face of the world?
The paradoxical situation of this war of all-new twenty-first century, the difficulty of using conceptual arsenal put in place by modernity to interpret and govern it, let me suggest that perhaps our time is not the rebirth of the reforms and revolutions but large, mysterious metamorphosis, changes instant, unexpected, random, amazing (Even monsters). In short, we really turned the corner and the story forces us to new challenges, new adventures fascinating.
Homepage
0 comments:
Post a Comment