While I was participating in protests against the Bush
administration's war, those who opposed us protesters almost
invariably yelled "remember 9-1-1" (which event, we know well, had
nothing to do with Iraq). Is Rob Dyer's response more or less
"remember St. Bartholomew's Day"? Here it is:
0000,0000,DEDEThis is an unbelievable exchange
among people many of whom we have loved
and respected all our academic lives. Let us not forget the relentless
mission of Elizabeth's court to defend its new faith against the
encirclement of catholicism. St. Bartholemew's Day was not an ancient
event. We should not ignore the degree of religious fervour that had
animated the two sides during her reign, and the fact that Sidney had
been involved in her attempts to create a holy alliance in Europe.
Dyer's activity is often well described as a secret service agent.
Spenser's creative life cannot be separated from the lives and ideals
of
his friends.
0000,0000,DEDERob Dyer,
Paris, France.
I think this is very like the abuse of our memories of the attacks on
the World Trade Center to justify a badly judged violent response.
Dyer's response assumes that Elizabeth I sought to "create a holy
alliance in Europe"--while in fact, Elizabeth reacted cooly, to say
the least, to Philip Sidney's 1577 embassy to the Imperial court
during which he seems to have broached the topic of a Protestant
League with some of his Continental friends. This isn't to deny the
horror of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre or of the attacks on the
World Trade Center: it is to urge that we understand the complexity of
the circumstances surrounding them, and that we use our understanding
to work to break the cycle of violence and retribution and the
ceaseless recriminations that rationalize further cycles of violence
and retribution. Moreover, we need to understand and demystify the
mechanism by which recriminations invite people to reduce real
understanding to a reactive counterattack.
Accusations (even though they're true) of atrocities committed by
Hussein are the rhetoric that distracts us while the Bush
administration kills off young American & British men & women, offers
violence & starvation to an already starved and violated Iraqi people,
flouts the U.N., and enriches companies like Halliburton (of which
Dick Cheney is a former CEO) with a genuine pig-trough of contracts to
"rebuild" Iraq to be paid for by the sale of Iraqi oil and by American
taxpayers (see
1A1A,1A1A,FFFFhttp://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/23/business/23REBU.html?ex=1049473422&ei=1&en=d19c8fb46243f064).
By crying "remember 9-1-1," the Bush administration and its dupes
activate the recriminations that rationalize violence, and worse, they
collapse into one hated (Arab?) identity the one enemy that may pose a
real threat to civilians worldwide, Al-Qaida, and a horrible man who
poses no direct threat to the United States, Saddam Hussein. By
crying "remember St. Bartholomew's Day," Dyer's argument encourages
the same kinds of confusions (Catherine d'Medici & the Guise for the
Irish?!) and, even worse, promulgates the same kind of reflexive
accusations that rationalize violence. Dyer's argument encourages the
kind of muddled thinking that Bush, Hussein, Sharon, and other killers
rely on to misrepresent their bloody power-and-money grabs as
"national defense." I think we should be trying to expose and refute
such rhetoric always and everywhere: that, to steal a phrase from
Heaney, would be a "salubrious role" for criticism "within the body
politic." I suspect Spenser, whose creative life, as Dyer rightly
points out, can't be totally separated from the lives and interests of
his friends, would have wanted his art to serve a more reflective role
than merely to justify English attacks on Catholics everywhere.
Respectfully,
Joel B Davis Assistant Professor
Department of English Stetson University
421 N Woodland Blvd Unit 8300
DeLand, FL 32723 386.822.7724
