On 4/4/05 2:38 AM, "MJ Walker" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> In a way he's one of the
> Left's lost leaders, yet his clear-eyed sense of palpable earthrooted
> mystery (Musil's "tageshelle Mystik") in life & literature (Jakob
> Boehme, Lawrence, Platonov) seems like a signpost on the way forward,
> free of the theoretical ballast of politologists, towards possible
> survival. Isn't he funny? - "I would like to be with Brecht" while
> ruefully accepting his leaning more to the Lukacsian inclination for
> "the good old things". Then again, he stresses that striking ingenuity
> found everywhere & in everyone that can make use of those good old
> things. To be, not a keeper, but a protector of the flame, ah...

Yes - he's one of those who is, absolutely and without sentimentality,
genuinely about a "culture of life". I liked that quote, because it said
something about that quintessentially humane patience and gentleness that
seems to exist at the heart of his work. Since the Schiavo furore and the
Pope's death and the rhetoric that surrounds these events, it's good to
remember what a "culture of life" might actually mean. Part of it is, of
course, the clear-eyed acceptance of death, which he seems to have, with a
particular largeness of understanding, in its particular, material sense as
well as in other ways. One thing that really sticks in my mind is the
description of the pig slaughter in Pig Earth. That particular cycle of
books is astounding, I think -

As an aside, Juan Cole has a couple of interesting insights posted on his
blog about these issues - he's posted some of the statements the Pope made
that don't fit so well with the US right (statements against the Iraq war,
environmental degradation, &c). I think it's worth quoting Cole's comments
too on a recent press conference by Bush:

http://www.juancole.com/

"Bush's bizarre press conference on Thursday was according to the Washington
Post "on Terri Schiavo and Weapons of Mass Destruction." That US newspapers
report this bewildering juxtaposition without so much as a "Huhn?" tells you
to what estate political discourse in this country has fallen.

It should be obvious that Bush was cynically using the Schiavo tragedy to
draw attention away from his massive intelligence failures with regard to
alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Just as the Right employed the
deaths of innocent Americans on 9/11 as a cover to pursue an unrelated war
in Iraq, so Bush is using the death of an innocent woman to direct attention
away from a supremely embarrassing report on US intelligence. Back when
people used to put gold fillings in their teeth, it gave burglars an
incentive occasionally to rob graves. This news conference was a sort of
Public Relations grave robbery, and among the blackest moments in the
history of the presidency.


"BUSH: Thank you all. Please be seated.

Today, millions of Americans are saddened by the death of Terri Schiavo.

Laura and I extend our condolences to Terri Schiavo's families.

I appreciate the example of grace and dignity they have displayed at a
difficult time. I urge all those who honor Terri Schiavo to continue to work
to build a culture of life where all Americans are welcomed and valued and
protected, especially those who live at the mercy of others.

The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the
weak.

In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption
should be in the favor of life.

The most solemn duty of the American president -- come on up, guys -- is to
protect the American people.

Since September 11th, 2001, we've taken bold and vigorous steps to prevent
further attacks and overcome emerging threats.

We face a new and different kind of enemy. The threats today are
unprecedented. The lives of our citizens are at stake. To protect them, we
need the best intelligence possible, and we must stay ahead of constantly
changing intelligence challenges. "


The doublespeak of the Christian Right oozes up between his words. Poor
Terri Schiavo's body, which had lost sentient brain function years ago, is
being equated here to a fetus, and her death to an abortion. It is a
monstrous analogy, and 70 percent of Americans think Bush should have stayed
out of the whole affair.

What is interesting about the analogy, however, is that it seems to turn on
its head the central underlying values of the anti-abortion lobby.

Anti-abortion activism is essentially patriarchal. It insists that the
woman's egg, once fertilized, is immediately a person and that the woman
loses control over her body by virtue of being impregnated by her husband's
sperm. It is men who dictate to the woman that she must carry the
fertilized egg to term, must be a mother once impregnated by a man. For
extreme anti-abortionists, even a woman who has been raped or is in danger
of losing her life if she tries to give birth must be forced to bear the
child. A rapist can make a woman be a mother whether she likes it or not,
because his maleness gives him prerogatives not withdrawn by his mere
criminality.

The Schiavo case, in contrast, appears on the surface to be
anti-patriarchal. The activists in this case attempted to deprive Ms.
Schiavo's husband of his status as her legal guardian and of his ability to
decide, with the physicians, not to make heroic efforts to keep her alive in
a vegetative state. The activists sided with his mother-in-law, thus
appearing to support matriarchy over patriarchy. Why Tom DeLay thought that
would be a way of beating up on the Democratic Party is a great mystery.
But an even greater mystery is why his conscience would let him play
politics with an issue that had touched him personally, when he let his own
brain-damaged father die .

Bush then pitifully segues into the sharply critical report on US
intelligence failures, which pointed out that the administration was
absolutely and completely wrong about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass
destruction.

Bush's response?


"The work of our intelligence community is extremely difficult work. Every
day, dangerous regimes are working to prevent us from uncovering their
programs and their possible relationships with terrorists.

BUSH: And the work intelligence men and women do is, by nature, secret,
which is why the American people never hear about many of their successes.
I'm proud of the efforts of our intelligence workers. I am proud of their
commitment to the security of our country. And the American people should be
proud too.

And that's why this report is important. It'll enable these fine men and
women to do their jobs in better fashion, to be able to more likely
accomplish their mission, which is to protect the American people. And
that's why I'm grateful to the commission for this hard work."


It is like a parody of himself. He stresses that intelligence work is a)
hard and b) secret.

That is supposed to make it all right that we sent a high-tech army into a
poor, weak country and turned it into a failed state, killing 40,000
innocent Iraqis and suffering over 1500 coalition troops dead and over
10,000 US troops wounded, many maimed for life, and spending $300 billion on
it? For no reason? When the poor weak state did not in fact have the
weapons of mass destruction that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz
insisted it had? When they bullied anyone who questioned their evidence for
all this, and got their billionnaire buddies who own the media to have their
anchors and editorialists also bully any dissidents?

Because intelligence work is hard and secret?

How does Bush square all the violence he has unleashed in the world with his
praise of "life?" What is the link between war-mongering and being
"pro-life?"

It turns out that anti-abortionism is not about life at all. It is about
social control. It helps establish a hierarchical society in which men are
at the pinnacle and women kept barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.
Likewise, the Schiavo case was in part about the religious Right dictating
to Michael Schiavo how he must lead his private life.

This campaign is not really about life at all, as the examples of the raped
woman or the woman whose pregnancy puts her life in danger demonstrate. It
is about control, and the imposition of a minority's values on others.

And that is why the Iraq war is the perfect symbol for the
anti-abortionists. Colonial conquest is always a kind of rape, but now the
conquered country must bear the fetus of Bush-imposed "liberty" to term.
The hierarchy is thus established. Washington is superior to Baghdad, and
Iraq is feminized and deprived of certain kinds of choices.

And that is also how the Schiavo case makes sense in the end, because the
religious Right feminized Michael Schiavo, made him into the pregnant woman
seeking an "abortion," and wished to therefore deprive him of choice in the
matter. If hierarchy is gendered, then the persons over which control is
sought are always in some sense imagined as powerless women. Powerful
non-fundamentalist men and uppity Third World countries that won't do as
they are told are ultimately no different from feminist women seeking an
abortion. All must be subdued, in the view of the Christian Right.

It is about hierarchy, power and control. It is not about life. "

Cheers

A


Alison Croggon

Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com