LEFT CURVE No. 31 EDITORIAL

As this new century moves toward the end of its first decade, words that come to mind to try to describe it are: banal, surface, noxious, loud, numb, repetitious, schizoid, floating, virtual, obscene, placeless, swarming, atomized bubbles in maniacal conflict or beaming in narcissistic feigned adulatory hugs and strokes for different folks—packaged, repackaged, cycled, recycled by the invisible circulation of pure exchange in an endless feedback-loop which—irrespective of constant change—remains the same. Simultaneously, weaving through it all is a global sense of ominous foreboding, objectless subterranean anxiety, actual and potential catastrophes (from the hellish nightmare of the Iraq war to the looming environmental crises). It’s out of control, but, what is it? Nevertheless, precisely because of our baleful times, it’s essential to confront the world with eyes wide open, without self-delusion or succumbing to cynicism or despair. Anyway, such an awareness informs the backdrop within which this issue has been put together.

Apart from the above, anadmittedly impressionistic attempt to describe our world today, a prominent feature of contemporary life is the almost complete absence of principled, reasonable, dialogue concerning the vital issues of the day, with the aim of approaching truth not confined to subjective positions. This is so regardless of ideological affiliation. What we have instead are strident denunciations of one’s opponent, subtle psychological maneuverings or obfuscations, or, at best, a “let’s be nice” attitude that ignores the issues at stake for the sake of a strained accommodation to what is. But all in all, the underlying motivation is to “win,” rather than to advance clarity or understanding. The most egregious example of this in recent times has been the Bush administration’s tactics, particularly the lies and fabrications used to “justify” the invasion of Iraq—none of which have been called to account by the complicit mainstream media; instead, it’s just “explained” away as the result of “faulty intelligence.” The lead article in this issue, by Laurie Calhoun, is thus a refreshing demonstration of the possibility of well-reasoned argumentation through proper use of logic—particularly as it concerns arguments used for the justification for war, with the lives of thousands of innocent people at stake. As Ms. Calhoun states, “‘The Evil and Irrational Enemy’ is an extraordinarily effective rhetorical device which serves not to protect people, but to promote war.” Jason Miller also employs cogent argumentation, as well as a sharp wit, in “Piercing the Simulacrum…” of this “democracy.” He writes, for example, that Americans “are not even aware that their enslaved psyches condemn them to an existential hell of spiritual vacuousness, blind loyalty to a ruthless empire, and obsessive devotion to a predatory economic system.” Phil Rockstroh’s succinct and probing article, “Selling Satan: Iraqi War Dead & the Collateral Damage to America’s Soul,” addresses the complacent, clinical, denial of many Americans in face of the horror in Iraq, asking why “we, as a people, cannot or will not connect the needless deaths of well over half-a-million Iraqis with the oversized motor vehicles in our driveways…”, while writing: “We are uniquely ourselves; yet, we also contain all of existence. To lose our dreams is to lose our soul. Hence, to have the verities of our inner selves twisted and distorted towards the selfish ends of corporate capitalism and the dishonest agendas of mass media-driven political discourse is to become estranged from passion, empathy and imagination…” That the U.S. government has manipulated public opinion in order to forment war is nothing new. A prime example was the Spanish-American War of 1898, as Clifford T. Manlove’s article, “‘Remember the Maine!’; ‘Remember 9-11’: Correspondences in the Wars of 1898 and 2001,” demonstrates. Mr. Manlove also delineates interesting parallels between the nascent global U.S. imperialism of the late 19th/early 20th centuries and the current “war on terrorism,” the latter launched as a means to halt the decline of a world empire.

All is not hopeless, however. As the insanity of the Iraq war drags on, resistance has also grown, even from within the active military, as Susan Galleymore’s article, “Resistance R Us – Then ... and Now,” demonstrates. Susan also contributes, “Don’t send your sons,” in which she relates her experience in interviewing victims of Israel’s recent massive bombing campaign against the Lebanese people. Judith Palmer Harik’s article, “How Radical is Hezbollah Today?” clearly dispels the Islamophobic U.S./Israeli lies about the Lebanese resistance. Among the other works in this issue concerning the crises in the Middle East, I’d like to point to Ilan Pappe’s short story, “The Best Runner in the Class,” in which Mr. Pappe, an important scholar of the Middle East and long-time Israeli anti-Zionist, displays a genuine understanding and empathy for the plight of the Palestinians. A humane resolution to the Israel/Palestine conflict would be much advanced if enough Israelis come to embrace Mr. Pappe’s courageous position. Also worthy of note is Ann Rossiter’s “Nothing but the Same Old Story? Britain’s Wars on Irish & Islamic Terror” in which the author explores the historical parallels between the British reaction to the “Irish Question” in the past to that of the “Muslim Question” of today. She notes that it is “depressingly similar in both cases: heterogeneous groups of people summarily designated cultural ‘others’ cast in the mould of criminal and suspect communities and exhorted to look no further than themselves for the source of ‘the problem.’” Ms. Rossiter, well steeped in the historic Irish spirit of colonial resistance, is acutely sensitive to the treatment many Muslims are subjected to, and her view is a refreshing counter to the myopic prejudices frequently found even among otherwise “progressive” people.

That it’s difficult to grasp the nature of the world today is a truism hardly worth repeating. So, we find the work by Alex Foti, “The Grid & the Fork: Critical Dynamics of Advanced Capitalism from the Second to the Third Industrial Revolution,”—which delineates technological, economic, sociological, political and ideological developments since the 1890s—a particularly useful tool to thoughtfully come to grips with our current situation. Mr. Foti, in the last column of his grid, “2010 -2020, Antidystopian Future,” even avers to project a (hopeful) future which, as with all prognostications, can’t help but be more problematic than reflections on the past.

This issue is packed with a lot of work, all of which is worthy of the reader’s attention; since it’s impossible to comment on all of it, I’ll just refer to a few. E. San Juan, Jr.’s, “Charles Sanders Peirce’s Semiotics, Terrorism and Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost,” is a densely-argued treatise—contra-postmodern nominalism and the practical relativism to which it leads—on the problem of interpreting, not just “texts,” but the real world within which all human thought is imbedded.

In this past year, Jack Hirschman has finally received the much-deserved recognition for his decades-long, steadfast, principled work. Appointed San Francisco’s poet-laureate in 2006, that year also saw the publication of his major life’s work, The Arcanes, a thousand-page poetry collection spanning over three decades. Jack remarks, in his interview published here by Thomas Rain Crowe: “The Arcanes are driven by a rage to remember human beings and values in their finest dignities, and struggle for the monumentality of their finest revolutionary moments of being and being together.” Jack’s recent work has been much influenced by his study of Heidegger. His translation of Heidegger’s little known 1945 essay, Poverty,—in which Hölderin’s phrase, “To us, everything is concentrated on the spiritual, we have become poor in order to become rich,” is given a thought- provoking exegesis—is a continuation of that study.
I’d also like to draw the reader’s attention to the many fine writings and poetry throughout this issue, of particular note are the poems of John Berger (p. 76) and his “Twelve Theses on the Economy of the Dead” (p.77), as well as the poems of the Spanish poet, Leopoldo Maria Panero (p. 78), translated by Arturo Mantecón.

Since the (thankfully) passing of the various post-structuralist/post-modernist academic fads, there has been a renewed interest in the theoretical re-examination of the legacy of Marx’s work and its potential applicability to contemporary conditions. In Germany, the debate about Marx goes back to the 1970s. A good current example is Michael Heinrich’s article, “Invaders from Marx: On the Uses of Marxian Theory and the Difficulties of a Contemporary Reading.” While point ing out that Marx’s work “is a gigantic body of fragmentary theoretical work… [that]…remained largely unfinished,” the author proceeds to critique Italian Operaismo (an important source of Antonio Negri’s work) and contemporary German theorists, such as Karl Heinz Roth, by emphasizing the importance of carefully navigating between the general categories of capitalism as analyzed by Marx and the specific empirical conditions at any given time, without over-privileging one pole or the other. All in all, Heinrich demonstrates the continuing relevance of Marxian approaches to contemporary capitalism.

Gene Ray’s contribution, “On the Conditions of Anti-Capitalist Art: Radical Cultural Practices & the Capitalist Art System” offers a critical historical sketch of art under capitalist conditions and posits three models of anti-capitalist art practices (critically affirmative, avant-garde and nomadic) that presume to confront the capitalist art system (“art world”) and its underlying assumption of idealist aesthetics and “artistic autonomy,” while aiming to undermine capitalist relations. Whether the latest forms of “anti-capitalist art” that Ray points
to will be able to overcome the short-comings of earlier activist and avant-garde attempts to liberate art from
the commodity form is an open question, given the resiliency of the “art market” to absorb a necessarily select few of the “anything and everything goes” into luxury commodities.

We are pleased to feature another installment of PUBLICity [pp.103-122], edited by our Associate Editor, John Hutnyk. The thirteen articles cover wide-ranging local and global issues from diverse places and perspectives. Feedback and submissions for future issues (@1000 words) are encouraged: http://hutnyk.blogspot.com/
The socio/economic conditions of the Haitian people are undoubtedly among the worst in the Americas, and this is tragically so despite of the two centuries-long struggles for emancipation, as succinctly chronicled by Franck Laraque’s article, “The Relentless Struggle of the Haitian Masses for Liberty & Their Survival.”
Michael Ray Fitzgerald’s “Television Portrayals of Native Americans: From Tonto to Uncle Ray,” is a commendable study of how TV molds and reinforces stereotypes.

The issue closes with a meditative poem, “All That’s Left,” by Jack Hirschman, which cuts through any and all ideological crutches as it intones the ever-present force, which if not purely embraced leaves us prey to external contingencies:

“Join death to life and you will live
as if there were no drum to march to.”

As always, we welcome critical feedback, submissions and orders. —the editor editor@leftcurve.org