SHIVERS #2
Portuguese Germanophiles, Frankfurt School Fight Club, and article recommendations
Why are we SHIVERing?
We shiver because we can’t/don’t feel like writing a full article this week. That’s why. We would also like to have more ‘informal’ conversations with our readers. That’s another reason. We shiver because it’s midnight, and we’re scared. That’s the truth.
1.
The Portuguese Germanophiles
by JRF
Please excuse my choice for the moment that I am invoking and starting this digression with – it’ll be undecipherable for non-Portuguese readers and wildly boring for Portuguese ones.
When Rui Rio – the then leader of the Social Democratic Party – failed in his bid for Prime-Minister a second time he announced his resignation in the hotel hosting his campaign HQ. Apparently, the sentence “I don’t see how I can be useful as leader of the party after this result” was not sufficiently clear to the dozens of journalists present, who then asked in chorus: “Wait, but are you resigning from the leadership of the party?”
Mr. Rio – who had been bullied by the media ever since he got elected to his position in the main opposition party – was probably tired from a long night and of journalists asking stupid questions. In an evidently irritable fashion he responded:
“Ich habe auf Portugiesisch gesagt? Ich muss es nur auf Deutsch sagen. Soll ich Deutsch sprechen? Ich spreche Portugiesisch gesagt. Hier spricht jeder Portugiesisch. Ich spreche Portugiesisch gesagt.”
Ever since then the former party leader responds to redundant questions such as those in German – showing that despite mocking and criticism he’s not embarrassed or sorry for having proffered German that night. In fact, in all of his – now rare – media appearances he mentions something about German culture. Even when the police searched his house he said that the only explanation for the occurrence was a “German-style moralization of the political system” as he had done nothing wrong. Of course, his German education background was already well-known to miserable enthusiasts of Portuguese politics, but it was when he answered that question in an impeccable German that the general public got to know that Mr. Rio was indeed a completely peculiar figure in Portuguese politics. I am not saying all of this because I think Rio is the saviour of the country: the man is as fundamentally mediocre as he is honest. I’m just noting how his and other politician’s foreign education shapes the way they rule and see their country.
I take a lot of interest in knowing my country’s elites. I like to know what they think and how they think (and you should too!). A game that I like to play is finding out if politician-X is:
a Francophile (almost all of them)
an Anglophile
a Germanophile
This ‘triad’ follows Hegels and Žižek’s perception:
“Hegel was among the first to interpret the geo-graphic triad of Germany-France-England as expressing three existential attitudes: German reflective thoroughness, French revolutionary hastiness and English moderate pragmatism. In terms of political stances, this triad can be read as German conservatism, French radicalism and English liberalism. In terms of a predominating social sphere, it is German culture versus French politics versus English economy. Ash observes that today this trinity has undergone a strange displacement: The French are preoccupied with culture (How to save their legacy from vulgar Americanization); the English focus on political dilemmas (Should they join the European Monetary Union?); the Germans worry about the sad inertia of their economy.”
– Slavoj Žižek, in Plague of Fantasies
Despite the fact that Portuguese Germanophiles have a bad reputation for having the tendency of kow-towing to Germany through the European Union, I’ve always found them the most interesting and necessary. I like the Germanophiles, and I enjoy the Germanophilia.
José Pacheco Pereira, the only columnist in the country who writes articles actually worth reading, is a Germanophile (and a good pal of Rio) for example.
In the University of Porto “Famous Alumni” website it reads:
“Pacheco Pereira was intellectually influenced by his friend Eugénio de Andrade from the age of sixteen, who introduced him to classical literature and poetry, namely of writers such as Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Marguerite Yourcenar and Rainer Maria Rilke.”
Where else would Pereira get his cold analytical powers and his appeals to ‘know thyself’? German culture of course.
And how telling it is that Pacheco Pereira, Rio and many other Germanophiles, members normally associated with the old line from the Social Democratic Party, are attacked by both sides of the political spectrum: the reactionary Observador, revanchist heir of the Anglophilic O Independente from Paulo Portas (a tory mistakenly born in Portugal) and Miguel Esteves Cardoso (literally an Englishman); and the jacobin left with their distinctively Francophile pulsations?
The caste of Germanophiles, however, has a fatal flaw. By many times opposing the revolutionary palpitations coming from the dominant Francophiles they felt the necessity of imposing German-style order. This happened in the Portuguese First Republic, when the Francophile Republicans and the interventionist Anglophiles dug the country in such chaos that a Germanophile stepped in with force.
Sidónio Pais, was a former minister plenipotentiary to the German Empire and a Differential and Integral Calculus Professor in the University of Coimbra that became the country’s ruler through a coup in 1917. He was an anti-interventionist, a populist, an authoritarian, and loved. In an unmistakably Portuguese folklorical fashion he is still to this day sort-of revered: some older people still call free meals for the poor Sopa do Sidónio (Sidónio’s Soup).
He was a precursor to Italian fascism, to Salazar, and in many ways resembles the current populist instinct – but he is still underexplored.
Here are some quotes on Sidónio Pais, by Manuel Villaverde Cabral writing for the journal Análise Social.
“Another new element, modern even, that composed this anti-plutocratic populism and that is reflected in Sidonismo, especially in the beginning of the regime, is the intention – in reality never materialised, this ambiguity being, we believe, one of the main characteristics that allow to see Sidonismo on a proto-fascist lens – of proposing as an alliance with the labour movement, against the plutocracy, and in the name of the “pure bourgeoisie”, that one, yes, would be productive and not speculative.”1
…
“Even the apparently anecdotic sex-appeal of the dictator reminisces myths of latin virility, which would then be used and abused by the likes of Primo de Rivera and Mussolini.”2
…
“With effect, Sidonismo, as a decisive episode in the process of the fascising recomposition of the landowner classes in Portugal, does not surpass, however, the stage of the dictatorship over the political mechanisms of representation and arbitration of traditional liberalism, never seeing the necessity of substituting these mechanisms by the mechanisms of cooperative vertical representation, …”3
– Manuel Villaverde Cabral, in A Grande Guerra e o sidonismo (esboço interpretativo)
Because I do not have any more time to write or translate, I'll also leave you with a poem (more of an ode actually) by Portugal’s greatest poet for Sidónio Pais (Yes, Fernando Pessoa fiercely supported Pais and his regime and nicknamed him President-King).
And two essays on the question if Fernando Pessoa was perhaps himself a Germanophile:
One written by the man himself.
Another one written by another guy.
2.
Review of Aesthetics and Politics
by LB
What makes art popular and proletarian?
Aesthetics and Politics is a collection of writings between Ernest Bloch,György Lukács, Bertolt Brecht, Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin. It is divided into four parts, including a presentation which gives preliminary information of the exchange which follows. By the end, an afterword is provided by Frederich Jameson.
Although they are officially entitled ‘Presentations’, the four exchanges in the book function as four ‘matches’ between the Germans. Firstly, Ernst Bloch goes up against György Lukács where they weigh Expressionist versus Realist Art.
Next up, Bertolt Brecht, who is very upset by Lukács rants at Benjamin, who critiques and consoles him.
Then, Adorno and Benjamin go face to face discussing what would come to be “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” and Adorno proposes edits and gives advice.
Finally, Adorno talks to himself. First about Lukács, then about Brecht. He gives a great analysis of the two most opposed figures of these debates.
Although much discussion is given to the specificities of different essays to which the writers are responding, the book principally calls into question the ‘ideal’ current of art for a proletarian movement. The Marxism of each participant is apparent to the point of being stifling, Adorno’s main criticism of Benjamin’s work is how ‘undialectical’ it is. Their ardent defence of their own Marxism is obviously funny. It is nice to know that the intellectual and ideological competitiveness of leftists has always been there, and will probably never disappear.
Benjamin is, in my opinion, the “best” (if that is a word allowed) in this topic. I would argue that Adorno and Lukács are the strongest in these exchanges (especially Lukács, he is razor-sharp), but Benjamin’s contribution in the field of aesthetic and art theory is undeniable. Although it is clear that he is on the expressionist side of the debate – an argument which the book leaves unresolved – his general observations, which have become a cornerstone of 20th-century cultural criticism through “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” are unparalleled.
Brecht and Lukács are the central figures of the text. They are the most dissimilar to each other (Benjamin and Adorno’s debate is in reality a series of kind letters in which the latter is nicknamed “Teddy” by the former) and their disagreements propel the less interesting parts of the book forward.
Lukács is no doubt the most socially conservative participant. Even as the work does not bring up social issues extensively (typical of being pre-’New Left’), his conception of ‘decadence’ through art being a threat, comes off as (like Bloch states) a bit fascistic. It is unfortunate that Lukács view bites him in the ass considering the degenerate art movement. It is hard to argue that Expressionist art is the weapon of Fascism when it has become its object of derision.
“But what if Lucaks’s reality – a coherent, infinitely mediated totality – is not so objective after all? What if his conception of reality has failed to liberate itself completely from Classical systems? What if authentic reality is also discontinuity? Since Lukács operates with a closed, objectivistic conception of reality, when he comes to examine Expressionism he resolutely rejects any attempt on the part of artists to shatter any image of the world – even that of capitalism. Any art which aims to explore the real fissures in the surface inter-relations and to discover the new in their crevices, appears in his eyes merely as a wilful act of destruction. He thereby equates experiment in demolition with a condition of decadence.”
– Ernst Bloch, in Discussing Expressionism
Lukács takes on some particularly contemporary arguments. This is certainly due to his position as a counter-force to the avant-gardist ideological aestheticism of the rest of the thinkers in the debate. In one exchange, he berates ‘snobs’ for collecting, or appreciating African art. He would do great in today’s culture wars.
“It focused attention on the drawings of children and prisoners, on the disturbing works of the mentally sick, and on ‘primitive art’. Such a view of popular art succeeds in confusing all the issues. Popular art does not imply an ideologically indiscriminate, ‘arty’ appreciation of ‘primitive’ products by connoisseurs. Truly popular art has nothing in common with any of that. For if it did, any swank who collects stained glass or negro sculpture, any snob who celebrates insanity as the emancipation of mankind from the fetters of the mechanistic mind, could claim to be a champion of popular art. [...] Thus it is by no means always progressive simply to collect old folk products indiscriminately. […] Retrograde traditionalisms, such as regional art [Heimatkunst], and bad modern works, such as thrillers, have achieved mass circulation without being popular in any true sense of the word.”
– György Lukács, in Realism in the Balance
The disagreement over what designates ‘popular’ art is fundamental to the first half of the book. All the men engaging in these debates consider themselves Marxists, or at the very least left-wing. They are certainly functioning in several gradations of Marxism, Lukács being the most conservative, or ‘classical’. This characterisation is nevertheless retrospective; as those who we today pinhole into an orthodox Marxism tend to be those of social conservatism, portrayed as more serious and principled than the infantile New Left. I am surprised that he hasn’t been more reclaimed by the new wave of dirtbag leftist, as his vanguardist politics would seem to me as being appealing to them. But perhaps he was too close to the Frankfurt School to be untainted enough.
Brecht – who becomes his arch-nemesis – takes so obviously the position of the artist. While the other four certainly have a great interest in the philosophy of art, their conclusions which follow their reasoning come from a more distant place than Brecht’s does. His arguments are imbued with a fervour typical of the artist when he has to defend his work – and the ideology behind it – to a slew of critical, yet very intelligent onlookers. Although the book is not a continuous critique of Brecht’s plays, the exchanges feature a great deal of dissections of other artist’s works. From Kafka, Becket, Mann, Baudelaire to Zola and Dix; scrutinization of great artists takes place. Brecht becomes immediately defensive, as anyone would in his place.
I am not sure if his position makes him the most authoritative in this exchange, it renders him passionate and flustered and defensive, countered against the cultural critics. Despite this, it makes him the most appealing (in my view). Brecht achieves a position of bravery which the other members cannot possess. To make, and defend art takes a particular kind of honesty as well as a strength of ideological conviction which transforms Brecht – despite his weakness in the debate – into the most compelling and sympathetic party in the exchange.
3.
Comments on some pieces
by JRF
I forgot to add links to some articles that I wantedrecommend in the last post. So here are three interesting essays with a couple of personal takes about each of them.
As Girard already perceived in 1999, we live under the reign of “victimism, which uses the ideology of concern for victims to gain political or economic or spiritual power.” But victimism isn’t merely a cynical smokescreen for power. Instead, the rise of victim power signals a genuine and troubling exhaustion of all other sources of authority and legitimacy. This points to the real problem with this new ideological regime: Beneath its benevolent rhetoric, its implications are apocalyptic, accelerating the collapse of any sustainable order.
– Geoff Schullenberger, in René Girard and the Rise of Victim Power (Compact Magazine)
A wonderful piece on how ‘victimism’ has gone from being a mere argumentation technique to a fully fledged ideology with a remarkable grip on society and public discourse. The ‘victim’ as the sole source of authority (authority meaning an abstract concept whose power is not and should not be questioned) is a development that might go unnoticed unless someone states it. It is such a transparent development which reveals so much concerning our contemporary societies that it should be a phenomenon more widely understood.
Schullenberger’s piece can be seen as an addendum to Irving Kristol’s work, which likewise reported the dissolution of seemingly all sources of authority in Western democratic societies. Indeed, as George Hoare wrote in another Compact article: we live under an ‘Authoritarianism Without Authority’.
Good introduction to René Girard’s work too.
* * *
Something in the nineties had gone calamitously, tragically, but invisibly wrong. The United States had endured setbacks: the Los Angeles riots of 1992; various mid-decade standoffs, shoot-outs, and bombings, from Waco to Ruby Ridge to Oklahoma City; and the dot-com equities crash at century’s end. Yet there was scarcely an instant in the whole decade when the country’s strength, stability, and moral pre-eminence were questioned, at least in mainstream media outlets.
– Christopher Caldwell, in The Fateful Nineties (First Things)
Considered one of the best essays of the year by New York Times columnist David Brooks, the piece is a detailed – although insufficient – exploration of the decade’s legacy. I am grateful that Mr. Caldwell did not arrange his article around the ‘aura’ of the nineties, and instead focused on specific events and works to discuss precisely ‘what went wrong’. However, the allure that the era undoubtedly transmits, both to liberals and conservatives not only lacks mention, it lacks explanation. I understand that the writer is attempting to deconstruct the nostalgic ‘perception’ that populist-conservatives might have towards the decade. But Caldwell does this by blaming the Clinton’s and neoliberals from Friedman’s economic school of ruining the previous order – without explaining what the ‘order’ even consisted of in the first place. And so, although a wonderful piece of analysis (“America’s discovery of world dominance might turn out in the 21st Century to be what Spain’s discovery of gold had been in the 16th — a source of destabilisation and decline disguised as a windfall”) and exploration on the meaning and legacy of the decade, the article still leaves much to explain and discuss.
* * *
An interview with David Shor, the Obama data whiz who has been warning Democrats of a looming electoral disaster, is instructive. “Working-class people,” he tells Jacobin, “aren’t reactionaries. But they are much more moderate on social issues.” Take any of the day’s febrile cultural issues—biological men competing in women’s sports or gender ideology in pre-K—and what Shor calls the “moderate” position is framed as reactionary by the Jacobin left. This alienates lots of ordinary Americans (and Europeans). Shor knows this. So does Sunkara. But they have to break the news to readers gently. Very gently.
– Sohrab Ahmari, in The Many Agonies of Jacobin Magazine (Compact Magazine)
Although not a thinker, Sohrab Ahmari is gifted with an acute perceptivity. In a light article he succinctly describes the ills of ‘The Left’, as explored in a recent Jacobin issue. Despite the leftist outlet calling the thematic issue ‘The Left in Purgatory’, the examination looks at ‘The Left’ as a purely electoral phenomenon (as noted by the illustrations of Bernie Sanders, A.O.C., and Ilhan Ohmar on the cover). From the outset, it is baffling to see Jacobin treat the leftist ideological project as set. The magazine presupposes that ‘The Left’ as a contemporary project is, indeed, what has been seen since 2012 or so: Very liberal and progressive on social & cultural issues (‘liberal’ as in its laissez faire disposition, and ‘progressive’ as its political drive), and economically… utterly uninterested. The result is that the issue cannot satisfy a genuine interrogation of “What’s The Left’s Future?” as it is merely asking how can our current project be electorally successful? It doesn’t take many articles to understand that: it can’t. All the suggestions given by people who want ‘The Left’ to win elections directly clash with the project that the readers of Jacobin understand as being the leftist canon. What Shor and others are talking about is how ‘A Left’ can be successful, – and it surely can – the matter being that ‘a’ left that abandons the cultural territory and campaigns solely on economics will probably not get the votes or the contributions from Jacobin readers. Being ‘moderate’ on social issues is not just leaving them to the dogs – it is firmly saying ‘no’. The problem is that saying ‘no’ is halting what is universally viewed by the Left as Progress, which would be an unequivocal attack on an idea that replaced God. Not only that, a ‘moderate’ approach would probably involve blocking trans legislation when in power, setting limits on immigration (deporting people, turning visas down, …), and just being silent on social issues most of the time. Would any reader of Jacobin rally around that? Of course not, and the question that lacks both in the Jacobin issue and in Ahmari’s article is why would they?
Assuming that things will proceed around the lines of how they’ve been developing, and a quick look into the sprouting left-wing bien-pensants is enough to figure out how the current trajectory will be maintained for at least the next 10 years or so, the ‘Future’ of the left will look something like this:
Non-existing – or essentially meaningless – in terms of electoral representation (just like old-Marxists of today), even more concentrated in urban centres than it is today, an even more upper-class phenomenon, still holding a firm grip on academia, and… comfortable.
By then the impossibility of any kind of electoral success will be a given fact, with ‘leftists’ not voting or desperately voting for liberal/centre-right parties & politicians (in the words of David Shor: “So if the left is ‘dealigning’ from workers, it’s worth asking whom leftists are aligning with: ‘My guess is that 30 percent of the people who worked on Romney’s campaign in 2012 identify as Democrats now.’”). The authoritarian governments that will be solidly in power by then won’t like these leftists too much, but just by seeing its small size and declining numbers probably won’t antagonise them. ‘The Left’, meanwhile, will be screaming into voids: writing opinion columns for newspapers that nobody outside a university will read, showing up at demonstrations that nobody outside a city will hear of, posting stories on Instagram that nobody outside their friend group will know about…
Wanna bet?
(Translated) Outro elemento novo, moderno mesmo, que faz parte deste populismo anti plutocrata e que se descortina no sidonismo, sobretudo no início do regime, é a intenção - na realidade nunca materializada, sendo esta ambiguidade, cremos, um dos principais traços que permitem ver no sidonismo um carácter proto-fascista - de propor como que uma aliança ao movimento operário, contra a plutocracia, em nome da «verdadeira burguesia», que essa, sim, seria produtiva e não especuladora.
(Translated) Mesmo o aparentemente anedótico sex-appeal do ditador remete para os mitos da virilidade latina, de que mais tarde fariam uso abundante Primo de Rivera e Mussolini.
(Translated) Com efeito, o sidonismo, como episòdio decisivo no processo de recomposição fascizante das classes possidentes nacionais, não ultrapassa, todavia, o estádio da ditadura sobre os mecanismos políticos de representação e arbitragem do liberalismo tradicional, nunca entrevendo a necessidade de substituir esses mecanismos pelos mecanismos da representação vertical corporativa, …