1 Schizophrenic Culture, 1945-1975 Week 14 – Lecture 1 29 April 2008
2
Picasso, Guernica [1937]
•26 April 1937: German saturation bombing of Guernica (Spain)
Trains: Frankenstein’s creature
3
Controversy: does telling the truth about Allied bombing “lessen” Germany’s / Hitler’s guilt? Does it make you “unpatriotic”? A “traitor” to the nation?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
4
20th Century: percent of direct casualties that were civilians
1914-1918: World War I 05 %
1939-1945: World War II 50%
1965-1973: Vietnam 80%
1990s: Balkans/Persian Gulf 85-95%
Working for Reconciliation: A Caritas Handbook (Vatican City: Caritas Internationalis, 1999)
5
B. Schizophrenic Liberalism: Cold War Culture
(1) Philosophical Expression: Existentialism
Jean-Paul Sartre Albert Camus
6
Jean-Paul Sartre: Existentialism
•Problem for Existentialists: How to reconstruct liberal values --reason, progress, heroism, individuality -- in post-1945 culture?
• "Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth." – From L'Être et le Néant / Being and
Nothingness, 1943
a. Existence is fundamentally absurd
8
• ABSURDISM: RANDOM: Reality defies comprehension: no timeless truths• Universe is indifferent to us. No way to avoid fate/ Fortuna/ death.• Meaning comes through facing this fact.
– NB: identical to Freud’s conclusion in Civilization and its Discontents (1927)
a. Existence is fundamentally absurd
9
Sartre 1940s
b. Human being is paradoxical and indefinable
Cannot generalize; each person is uniqueNB: Schizophrenic Liberalism: both continuous with and yet innovative from early “subjective individualism”
a) Hold onto radical individualism [creativity];
b) but leave behind the rational individual andthe rational world
NB: Influence of Nietzsche [1844-1900]:1. Absence of universal truths2. Radical individualism: go “against the herd”Übermensch --- the “overman” or “Superman”
c. Hence: Radical individualism: “Existence precedes essence”
We must create ourselves “from scratch” we are nothing than what we self-create
Ethic of “authenticity” --- imperative: “affirm one’s own uniqueness”“Bad Faith”: depending on another’s rules/definitions;
handing responsibility for your actions over to another [cf. Sartre’s No Exit: cowardice]
14
Pollock, Lavender Mist, 1950
Two responses to cultural devastation: 1920 --- 1950
Abstraction: De Stijl
Abstract Expressionism:
“The New York School”
15
• Cultural significance of Abstract Expressionism?
• Schizophrenic Liberalism:– 1) Hold onto radical
individualism [creativity];
– 2) but leave behind the rational individual andthe rational world
• <“cult of the irrational”>
18
Dangers: “passing for human!!!”
“a malignant disease spreading through the whole country”
Dangers: “passing for human!!!”
“a malignant disease spreading through the whole country”
19
Dangers: Communists “passing for Liberal!!!”
Krzysztof Penderecki, “Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima” [1959-1961]
• “Threnody”: song of lamentation for the dead
• Sounds imitate drone of airplane as it delivers bomb; air-raid sirens; general chaos / meaninglessness: FORTUNA
• NB: Penderecki is Polish/Catholic: Auschwitz is in Poland
• Using Western music to end it; end of melody.
• From “a-tonal” to aleatoric [alea= dice] --- “chance”
20
Krzysztof Penderecki, “Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima” [1959-1961]
Think of “the problem of representation” post-1945
How can you “represent” evil / horror?
Abstraction vs. “realism / naturalism”
21
Think of “the problem of representation” post-1945
How can you “represent” evil / horror?
Abstraction vs. “realism / naturalism”
…in an absurd world.
26
“De-colonization”
• Problem with the word: it implies that you return to something that had been…
• e.g., “decontaminate”; “de-ice”
Two-fold dilemma:
a) Cannot recover political identities of pre-conquest times [tribes; kingdoms]
b) Cannot make artificial new boundaries seem “natural”
27
Decolonization: “French Indochina” --- > “Vietnam”
• Former modes of organization no longer available, e.g.:– local families; – hereditary tribes; – “kingdoms”
• How do these newly-invented nation-states organize their self-identities?
• What will fill this vacuum of identity???
SOUTHEAST ASIAPost-1945 dilemma of “decolonization”:
19th-century pre-conquest structures don’t exist; new boundaries not easily made “natural”
28
ANSWER: East vs. West Bipolar Cold War World: Liberalism vs. Communism
Developing country becomes a “local theater” in East-West “Cold War”Cf. USA 1840s-1850s: new “state” either “slave” or “free”
←←←←←←←←←←←← NB: China 1949!!!
• 1945: Ho Chi Minh declares “independent Vietnam”– educated in France– Paris 1919, p. 59: “a young
kitchen assistant at the Ritz”• i.e., WILSONIAN “SELF-
DETERMINATION”– trained in USSR– “Vietnam” identity
constructed around Leninism: a peasant / agrarian society needs a “vanguard”
• French:– committed to staying in Indochina
• French identity tied up in late 19th-c. imperialism
29
September 1) USSR explodes bomb --- ends USA monopoly on atomic weapons
2) Two Germanies created3) October 1, 1949:
Proclamation of People’s Republic of China by Mao Zedong
1949
• 1949: “Who lost China?” and Stalin gets the bomb1950: U.S. pledges financial support to France
– eventually spends $4 billion– 1950-1953: Korean Conflict– 1950-1952: McCarthy Hearings– 1953: Rosenbergs
• NB: IDEOLOGICAL PROBLEM:• A) Vietnamese want “independence”
from colonial power (19th-c. arrangement)• B) In principle, U.S. committed to Liberal
[Wilsonian] ideals of a “people’s” “self-determination”
• C) However: Liberal principles over-ridden by post-1945 bipolarity: democracy v. communism
• KURDS TODAY???
30
1954: Ho Chi Minh defeatsthe French at Dien Bien Phu
Only 73 of 15,000 French troops escape
1954-55: Vietnam divided in two: Communist North and Democratic
South[1950-1954: McCarthy Hearings
1954: Brown v. Board]
O'Neill Media PN1993.5.F7 T475 1990
31
1959: Cuban Revolution1960: JFK president1961: Bay of Pigs Fiasco /
Berlin Wall built in August1962: Cuban Missile Crisis1963: JFK Assassinated1964: Civil Rights Act /
LBJ landslide /Tonkin Gulf incident / resolution
33
•1961:
•April: Bay of Pigs •August: Berlin Wall
•NB: 600 American “advisors” in Vietnam
1961: 13 August
35
– End result: promise not to invade Cuba [--> Elian!]– WWIII narrowly averted
1962October
Cuban Missile Crisis
"There are some who say that Communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin.”
-- President John F. Kennedy, West Berlin, West Germany, June 26, 1963
36
November 1963: 1st: Diem assassinated; 22nd: JFK assassinated
Civil Rights Act
July 2, 1964
Height of LBJ’s “Great Society”
Lost Southern Democrats 44 years ago
Act of “memorialization” to JFK as martyr
37
• 1964: Gulf of Tonkin incident (August 2) and Congress resolution– November: LBJ Landslide
• 1965: Vietnam Escalation– Assassination of Malcolm X
1964-65: Turning Point in “The Sixties”
1965 [February 22]
Assassination of
Malcolm X
38
• 1964: Gulf of Tonkin – Incident: August 2nd
– Resolution: August 7th: The President could "take all necessary measures to repel armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression."
– USSR: Kruschev ousted by conservatives; – USSR: Brezhnev appointed to restore “order” and pride to USSR
The Domino Theory
39
1967LBJ fear of provoking China …
a “guerilla” war ---i.e., North Vietnamese located in and
“passing” as South Vietnamese;also: civilian suicide bombers
“Hardware”: LBJ destroys the country
he’s trying to “save”
“Mentality” shift: savagery / futility
[cf. The Great War: what’s the sacrifice for???]
←←←←←←←←←1967: B52s bomb near Saigon
Napalm: a jellied gasoline; melts skin so that cannot be removed. Thus: slowly roasts victims to death. [Dow Chemical]
40
“Civilization”? 8 June 1972; Children fleeing napalm
http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Napalm-Recycled.htm
41
Agent Orange: Defoliant composed of dioxin; intended to destroy jungles where guerillas hidden [Dow Chemical]
Destroying homes in “northwest triangle” north of Saigon
43
http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0401/pjg_thumbs.html
“I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”
Apocalypse Now (1979)
44
An impossible War?Military needs
v. Geo-Political demands:
• 1) BREZHNEV: Vietnam a way of reviving USSR pride after Cuban Missile Crisis
• 2) MAO: China on border—and stealing USSR tanks!
• 3) JOHNSON: afraid of provoking either into nuclear exchange bombs the South!
• SUM: a “civil war” that is actually a very hot battle in the Cold War
45
Problem: How to explain the sense of Vietnam as a “dirty” war?Cf. Mary Douglas: “Dirt is matter out of place.”
47
A common explanation: Pacifism / War is immoral…South Vietnam, May 1968: The country we’re trying to save?
HOWEVER: Hamburg, 1945 --- Civilian bombings in the last “clean” USA war.
Isn’t war always “dirty”?