Doctor Zhivago
Finished reading Doctor Zhivago few days back. It took me about 4 months to read the the first 100 pages, and 4 days to finish the remaining approx 400 pages. It is a surprisingly fast paced novel, and like all such novels, there is much sentimentality and a lack of critical substance. Though there was much politics around this novel securing Paternak the Nobel, Doctor Zhivago is not a political novel. Its a love story, which is sometimes quite cheesy and often quite melodramatic, and the revolution happens in the background. In a somewhat reductive but still justifiable reading, one could also say that Paternak was dismissing the Revolution because a couple in love – both cheating on their marriages – could not happily conclude their relationship. Soviet authorities were pissed because Paternak did not appreciate the revolution – but his true problem was that he did not understand the revolution.
What is Transgressive? What is Offensive?
There is this collection of short stories called “Little Birds” which is quite explicit in its treatment of sex and sexuality. And there is one particular story where a woman describes being taken by a man in a crowd as she goes to witness a public execution, without the man ever asking for her consent; she first submits passively, and eventually enjoys it. Then there is this other story of a bisexual woman more or less drugging her lesbian friend to get the latter to have intercourse with a man. And another about a married man fantasizing about and eventually exposing himself to schoolgirls. Other stories too are filled with stuff which would greatly offend the campus liberal’s mind.
Here is a thought experiment: should one introduce this collection to a lib-left student crowd and say that it was written by Bataille, there would be explicit disgust, if not outrage at coarseness and vulgarity and, of course, white cis-gendered male entitlement.
But reveal that these stories were written by Anais Nin, and the stories become transgressive feminist erotica.
Should art be evaluated by its content or by the identity of the artist? Can transgressive content be only the prerogative of those who have had the actual experience of transgression? Can artistic creativity be reduced to one’s immediate or obvious identification? If one’s representation of others is constructed, isn’t one’s representation of self equally so? And if representation is to be critiqued, again, shouldn’t the focus be on the content and form of the art rather than on which race or gender the creator was born into?
Istvan Meszaros
Istvan Meszaros, one of the most important Marxist philosophers of our times, passed away on 1st October. I was introduced to his writing through his “The Work of Sartre: Search for Freedom”, one of the finest theoretical commentaries on Sartre, which I engaged with in my thesis. His prose was dry and often obtuse, but rich with critical insights. This book is also a good example of how to do intellectual history. I had planned to read his “Marx’s Theory of Alienation” earlier this year, but owing to other projects, this was put on the back-burner. I hope to begin that soon in Meszaros’ honor.
In an interview about 2 years back he said “There can be no such thing as “historical inevitability” in the direction of the future. History is open-ended, for the better or worse” and further that “The greatest and most perilous irony of modern history is that the once championed “productive destruction” has become in the descending phase of capital’s systemic development an ever more untenable destructive production, both in the field of commodity production and in the domain of nature, complemented by the ultimate threat of military destruction in defence of the established order. That is why the socialist alternative is not only possible – in the earlier mentioned sense of its historical sustainability – but also necessary, in the interest of humanity’s survival.”
Let us work towards that socialist alternative. Even better, let us properly theorize it.
Rest in Power Istvan Meszaros. See you in communism.
Confession
In Absolute Recoil, Zizek makes extensive reference to Hayden White’s Metahistory. I recollected that this was a core reading in my MA history course at JNU. However, JNU was an ‘infantile disorder’ phase for me (a phase that several of my ex-comrades have been unable to grow out of). To me at that time, White along with several other critical historiographers were bourgeois and I studiously avoided studying them, gorging instead on Mao. To be honest, anyone whose language was too complicated was bourgeois to me. Though I grew out of juvenile ultra-leftist leanings by the last semester at JNU, this anti-intellectualist leaning continued into my PhD. Fortunately, a good friend and a great activist advised me to take theory seriously – in quite harsh words. It was the sting I required, without which I might have been immersed in effete activism and not have finished my PhD in time. Of course, I do not regret the experience gained by activism, but I think I got that at the cost of valuable knowledge in the classroom. Of my very few regrets in life, the top most would be not reading Lacan when I had the time and chance! I guess I understood my true calling a bit late, but early enough to make amends. I am an academic with a cause, not an academic in a cause. And as my guru Zizek advised many a time, I have fully overcome the seduction to act! So I think…
A little tribute to Vidrohi
I believe there are two really smart decisions I have taken in my life – joining JNU for my Masters, leaving JNU immediately after my Masters. Jawaharlal Nehru University is always a Dickensian scenario. You meet the best of people and the worst of people there; inevitably both will be from the left. Imagine 1968 Paris being repeated over and over again – the slogans, the sexual liberation, the orgasmic enthusiasm for revolution, the wild dreams… and just like the 1968 revolutionaries, the Guevaras of JNU too succeeded in doing absolutely nothing to change the system. But then, JNU’s biggest magic trick is the illusion that it gives you that you are actually doing something. Much like the five star hotel in Chennai that promises to give you an authentic fisherman’s cuisine, JNU too allures you with the promise of being part of an authentic revolutionary event.
But once a while you run into a really genuine character who really believes in the JNU dream. Vidrohi was one of those rare characters. This humble unassuming man was a powerful poet, speaker and a treasure-trove of knowledge. Vidrohi could be seen at several protests, offering his poetry to add color to the demonstrations. His admirers would clap and cheer. But most of his admirers had clear career plans. To them, JNU was a stepping stone to something higher. I know quite some ultraleftists who believed armed struggle was the only way who later joined NGOs, earning good money. But Vidrohi’s universe was the university.
Vidrohi genuinely believed in the JNU dream. He died poor.
Reflections in a Second-hand Bookstore in the UK
Walking back to the bus stop from Colchester Castle Park, I stumbled on a second-hand bookstore. Bookstores in general pick my curiosity – this one claimed to sell “Rare and Secondhand” books. I had to take a peek.
Exchanging greetings with the person at the desk, a warm old lady who I believe is also manager and owner of the bookstore, I proceeded to browse through the store’s wares. Rare collections indeed! It had books of Dickens that I could not recognize. Works of Dante that I have not encountered on any other shelf before. The finest Greek tragedies of Euripides, Sophocles, Aeschylus and of course, Homer, and Roman epic-poetry of Virgil and Ovid. The plays of Beckett and Ibsen. A breathtaking assortment of the finest English poetry, be it those of the classical romantic tradition of Byron or those in the free verse styles a la Whitman. And yes, the entire works of Shakespeare. (Is not any good book collection incomplete without him?)
I was compelled to buy something.
The bookstore is of two floors, divided into sections according to subject. The collections on history and politics are decent, but can be expanded. I found some pretty interesting books there – ancient social and economic history specialist M.I. Finley’s The Ancient Greeks for two quid, R.H. Barrow’s The Romans for 1.50, JS Mill’s ‘Three Essays’ for 3… and I even bought Robert Service’s Lenin, only because the founder of the USSR was the only big guy in the Marxist-Leninist pantheon on whom I did not have a biography on and because it was being sold for the absurd price of 5 quid. The philosophy section didn’t have much to offer – the only book I found to my liking was Patrick Gardiner’s Kierkegaard, a concise work on the core aspects of the Danish intellectual’s philosophical thought.
The literature section is the star of the store, having an entire room unto itself. The first thing I noticed when I entered the room was the smell. The distinct musty odour that one gets from old or aging books was dominant in the densely packed room. If a bibliophile’s love for old books included the smell they emit, this room was a wet dream. Books collected over 30 years, the manager told me. ‘How could they bear to part with it?’ I thought instinctively. Yes, I have always loathed even lending my books, even to close friends. It would have been a nightmare for me to be on the desk of such a shop and watch on as books such as these are taken away, lost to my touch forever.
When reading a good book, for me at least, physical touch is important – especially if it is a work of philosophy or literature. No greater pleasure than sitting down with an engrossing text that reflects on humankind, with a cup of fine tea, in a pleasant evening, in the company of fresh air, in solitude, in tranquillity. Holding the book, folding pages, leaving notes, scribbling in the margins, underlining, all of these gives the owner an intimacy with not just the content of the book, but its physicality as well. That sort of intimacy is needed when one reads literature or philosophy, which can of course never be experienced while reading a pdf file on a computer screen or on gadgets like kindle, no matter how much they try to make it appear ‘book like’. Those who understand the difference between making love and what Zizek calls “the usual masturbation with a living partner” will understand this difference as well and, I hope, will share my righteous indignation at a friend of mine who told me that he read Crime and Punishment on his laptop.
From the perspective of possessing books as a passion, I categorize book collectors of this age of late modernity in two camps – the faithful and the infidel. The former adhere to certain rules in the manner of receiving and reading a book while the latter are indifferent to the same. Note that these categories are fluid and at times the faithful, are persuaded by circumstances to step into the other camp, even if they do it unwillingly. Isn’t it the case that the pure has the greatest potential to be corrupted? Anyway, the friend of mine who read Dostoevsky on a laptop is, and I would like to believe that others agree, an infidel of a particular type. The uncaring disciple – that is, one who would love to the read the work of a great master but is not concerned about the medium through which the master’s message should reach him.
Similar to the uncaring disciple is the copier. The copier’s case is rather sad. He does not have the resources to get the original copy of the classic or the time to sit in a library to read. But he would not read a classic on a computer screen, because he loves the feel of paper. So, he goes for the next best thing to the original. A photocopy. Again, the difference between a photocopy and the original will not be evident to those but the faithful – the feel of the binding, the cover, and the smell of the original is always lost in a copy. To confess, I have also been guilty of this type of infidelity. I read Goethe’s Faust in photocopy.
The first book that caught my eye as I stepped into the literature section in the bookstore was Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, a brilliant tale of terrible vengeance of an individual who had been treated badly by people and circumstances. It was being sold for 3 pounds! Not far from Dumas was a hardbound early 20th Century copy of Upton Sinclair’s A World to Win. Being familiar with his more famous novel The Jungle and intrigued by the title of this book and its smell of an age that I have only read of in history books, I took it – for a fiver. Near it was the Victorian-age English novelist Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh, which was also published in the same period as the former. The novel came out in public posthumously because of the controversial anti-establishment tenor of the prose. Flipping through the pages I found something like a visiting card which contained only a message, but a message that was rather ironical considering the book it was in – “His majesty greatly loveth courageous souls. St. Teresa.”
Browsing the collection, I hopped on from one delightful author to another, from Chesterton to Flaubert, from Somerset Maugham to Solzhenitsyn, Sophocles to Ovid via Virgil, and so, purchasing their classic works for a pittance. And yes, as I reached the Shakespeare section, I took a copy of Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra, the latter purely for the paper it was printed on. Shopping for books in a good store or browsing in the library is a pleasure in itself. Not only do you find other books in the area of your interest, you also stumble upon other interesting books that would elicit attraction in the bibliophile – the journey enlightens you as much as the destination. The faithful appreciates the art of book shopping/browsing. Even if he cannot buy all that interests him, he takes in the titles, authors, scrambles through the book, appreciates words and sentences, absorbs the essence; and the memory of the book, its feel, its touch, its soul is locked away in the head of the faithful, subject to recall at a later date.
Yes, there is a feeling of ‘fear and trembling’ that the faithful feel as they leave a library or a bookstore. The pain that the place you are leaving has a lot more than you can fully appreciate, the apprehension that you are missing out on many other hidden treasures, the pang of jealousy that your collection will always be incomplete without the dozens of books that you are leaving behind, the melancholic sensation of a desire unfulfilled. All bibliophiles undergo this feeling every time they step into a place that has a book collection larger than theirs. Umberto Eco, a bibliophile I admire, envy and hope to equal one day (his collection is of over 50000 books. If we were to allot a day in a person’s life for one book, Eco’s life span would be over 135 years!), opined in an interview on diacritics that to him, libraries were paradise but that he kept away from them as they drove him crazy if they ensnared him. Thus, the faithful book collector is always an unsafe browser. Every minute he is in a bookstore, he places great risk not just to his purse, but also to his senses. His eyes wander all over, his mouth goes dry while picking some work he adores but whose price he cannot afford, his heart pulsates being surrounded by objects of his desire, many of which he cannot possess. It can be said that no bibliophile ever leaves a library or a bookstore without a heavy heart, but he accepts this risk before stepping in.
So here’s the other infidel – the safe browser. He has a book in mind about which he has heard of from elsewhere and he is interested in getting that book alone. Years earlier, he would have had no option but to visit a bookstore and search for the object of his pursuit, but now, with the proliferation of online retailers, his purchase is but a few clicks away. What is wrong with this? Simply that you are not exposed to as many other books as you would be in a bookshop or library which, of course, is a risk as mentioned in the above paragraph. The safe browser does not appreciate the delight of that risk and is saved the tensions that the faithful endure. His options, however, are not vast. The best online retailer can at most give you a list of related books that you might be interested in. But only in a library or bookstore can you find non-related books that you would be interested in. The limited options provided online place you in a comfortable box which you will not cross. Pray, do tell me, how many sites are there that would take you from an autobiography of Sartre to the history of medieval South India? A little bookshop in New Delhi did that for me.
All bibliophiles, at some point of time in their lives, do run into a particular breed of philistines – I have been fortunate to have been visited by only one till now. I refer to the ones who drop by on a fine day, look at your book collection and ask you that insipid question “Have you read them all?” I found the apt reply to this question in the following lines
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Suffice it to quote the answer which Anatole France gave to a philistine who admired his library and then finished with the standard question, “And you have read all these books, Monsieur France?” “Not one-tenth of them. I don’t suppose you use your Sevres china every day?”
That was Walter Benjamin, another admirable bibliophile, citing a bibliophile he admired.
Of the books I purchased, I don’t think I’ll be reading any one fully any time soon. Should time permit, I might try to read The Theban Plays sometime next year. The rest are for much, much later. There is one I will never read fully, CS Lewis’ The Four Loves, an annoying liberal Christian interpretation of love. I’ll probably glimpse through a few pages to remind myself that such annoying opinions and such annoying people exist. I do possess other books, some extraordinarily mundane, in my collection which I will never read. For instance, books like The Private Life of Chairman Mao by Li Zhisui, who was supposedly Mao’s close friend and physician, and The Immortal Contributions of Chairman Mao by Bob Avakian, American Maoist and ‘Chairman’ of Revolutionary Communist Party, two extreme accounts on the same person.
I should state that neither do I have anything against extreme positions nor do I shun books with such positions as useless – I don’t think there is anything called a ‘useless book’. Even right/liberal/left propaganda pamphlets have something to be analyzed and even something as intentionally naive and childish as Harry Potter has implications to be read into. Just that the tediousness of certain texts gets to me, and if I will not read them fully, I might ruffle their pages on occasions to humour myself. Book collecting is a passion, but needn’t always be a serious one.
It requires fidelity though.
A Grave in Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris
It’s a place where famous personalities are buried. A renowned writer and his, if I may take the liberty of using the term, ‘soul mate’ were also interred there. Rebels throughout their lives, they challenged established norms of relationships and family. Probably, they were the most famous polyamorous couple in modern times. They felt that the ‘normal’ monogamous relationship restricted individual freedom, lovers of the concept that they were when they were alive. When the female died six years after the male’s passing away she was buried together with him. Posterity would care less for their other relationships. The grave makes us ponder the intensity of the love and respect they had for each other (that far surpassed the feelings they had for other people in their lives). That is how I shall remember Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, as theorists of freedom who were bonded to each other in life and in death. Sartre said that the living choose the dead. So do we choose the images of death and give it meaning. The stone grave of Sartre and Beauvoir reminds me that love, freedom and responsibility are not empty terms, not matter how hard cynics may try to conceive of them as such. They are lifestyles.
Together in Life and Death
John Gerassi called Sartre the hated conscience of his century. This was a man, to use a clichéd phrase, that all loved to despise. The Catholic Church passed an order prohibiting the reading of any of his works in 1948. Around the same period, a church of a different kind, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union also banned Sartre’s works, irked over his play Dirty Hands that was critical of the functioning style of the Communists. French nationalists made two attempts on his life owing to his vocal support of the Algerian cause. Liberals like Raymond Aron and Camus, who eventually became hits in the US academia, hated his guts. Structuralists like Strauss, who stood for completely depoliticized academics, condemned him. Foucault and Derrida, the grand champions of anti-humanism, rejected Sartre. So did defenders of a kind of Marxism, that kind that believed in structures like an astrologer believes in stars, like Althusser and co. Sartre’s rejection of the Nobel Prize in 1964 on ethical grounds also added him to the hate list of many others.
Sartre really didn’t care. He knew the intellectual-academicians and the politics that they upheld. He knew that people who treated humans like ants in their study would never take their message beyond a classroom of elites. And he was right. Imagine a mass movement or radical activism propelled by an Althusserian or Foucauldian understanding of politics. Besides, he had his own crowd too. In his heyday, Sartre’s name was popular in the costliest restaurant in Paris and in its cheapest brothel. His books were carried by students of the best universities in town and by blacks working on pavements. And wherever he was, he shocked and he stimulated. One of the foremost theorists of decolonization and identity, referred to Sartre as ‘a living god’ – probably the greatest compliment a thinker could get from a contemporary who was also his critic, an iconoclast like Frantz Fanon.
When Sartre died, his funeral was attended by about 50,000 people, probably the largest in history for a philosopher. It was attended by students, activists, intellectuals, writers and poets. Frenchmen, Germans, Blacks and Mulattos participated. The crowd contained homosexuals, transvestites, prostitutes, petty criminals and all those ‘abnormals’ on whom Foucault gave extensive lectures on in his career, along with large numbers of Althusser’s beloved working class. Few of these people would mourn Foucault’s or Althusser’s demise. The loss of these intellectuals was felt only in the spaces where they had created most impact – among NGO activists and academics – while the loss of Sartre’s was felt by a diverse section of people even after his political thought fell out of fashion in academic circles. That a philosopher should have left such an impact should speak volumes about the dynamism of his philosophy.
If one considers an intellectual to be someone who has written and reflected on a wide variety of complex issues, in a complex manner, then probably Foucault is the better intellectual than Sartre. One can spend years studying the works of Foucault but manage to grasp only a part of his thought. One needs to spend twenty minutes reading Sartre’s preface to The Wretched of the Earth, with something akin to a conscience, for one’s own thoughts to be radically altered. Foucault may be the better intellectual; Sartre was the better man.
And what a preface it was! A better text to claim humanity for the oppressed could not be found and a better preface could not have been written. Sartre’s words to French citizens condemning their silence on their state’s crimes in Algeria “It is not right, my fellow countrymen, you who know all the crimes committed in our name, it is really not right not to breathe a word about them to anybody, not even to your own soul, for fear of having to pass judgements on yourselves” are still as applicable to citizens of so many oppressor regimes today. Sri Lankans, Indians, Turks, Israelis, Chinese can place this statement in the right context today, provided they have an iota of sensitivity. One can see the Sartrean spirit operating through a Jude Fernando or a Viraj Mendis, Sri Lankan intellectuals who faced death threats and had to undergo exile for standing by the struggle of the Eelam Tamils. But the world that we live in now, such intellectuals who have made enormous personal sacrifices to stand by an ethical position are rarely highlighted in the news. Only the shrill-tone empty-content kind catch eyes and ears. Maybe this is somewhere connected to the general amnesia prevailing among the intelligentsia of the existence of a man called Sartre…
I have told quite some of my friends that there are no post-modern intellectuals. Only post-Sartrean intellectuals. You had those post-structuralists who talked about everything but took a position on nothing. You had those on the ‘left’ taking positions only on those issues that would give them instant attention in the media. You had those Marxists giving moral lectures on the bankruptcy of capitalism and imperialism but rarely turning a critical eye towards themselves and their own positions in society. Intellectual activity became a matter of convenience when it should have been of responsibility. Sartre, with the kind of intellectual courage that only an anarchist could possess, was never shy of making his position clear. Even should it alienate him from his fellow people. A trenchant critic of capitalism, Sartre, along with his partner, knew that socialism was meaningless without individual freedom. He realized that irrationality and emotions were as powerful forces as reason and logic in driving political movements. He gave theoretical justification to the violence of the oppressed, even if it was on identitarian lines, and acted in their support while others on the left were toying with terms or were just weak-kneed to take a stand. He had neither the comfort of a party like the communists nor the company of the elites like the liberals. As a person, he was alone but for Beauvoir. And that was his integrity.
We need to remember Sartre today. We need to remember him to remind intellectuals of their role in a world where there is such rampant oppression and few credible solutions. We need to remember him if we are ever to understand why in certain circumstances terrorism needs to be defended. We need to remember him to frame out a human and humane alternative to a world pillaged by capitalist machinery, an alternative that would not further dehumanize man under the illusion of taking him to some predestined goal. We need to remember him to make ethical choices in politics, in life and in literature.
We need to remember Sartre because we writers live in his shadow.
To his memory…
UNCEASING WAVES 
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