jane dark's sugarhigh!

no love is not dead

"Ideological purity" is indeed an impossible fantasy. But not a fantasy of some radical leftist position; rather, it's a fantasy that aligns the liberal-progressive with the corporate-conservative — appearing not as a demand, but as a twin foreclosure of thinking. One the one hand, it's longhand for "Stalinism," generalized such that the insult can be used to smear anyone who doesn't accept the supposed choices on offer from the current order. On the other, it's the shorthand of the whisper campaign concerning the lack of this supposed ideological purity, a negative seduction which always runs something like, you're complicit too, we saw working to pay your rent, we saw you buying a Coke, you're not so pure are you, nobody likes a hypocrite so why don't you just accept it and accept the supposed choices on offer from the current order? The fact that some turn this accusation against themselves as a justification of their activities proves nothing other than the proposition that Althusser really had a point when he wrote of the "Ideological State Apparatus."

In its very form, it proposes a Manichaean worldview of the pure/impure — stacked against the former, who are inevitably elites, tyrants, messianic crackpots, and/or hypocrites. However, even if it leaves these suggestions at the level of the implicit, it negotiates the binary via a second binary of impractical/pragmatic, with its rhetoric about striving for possible gains, actual alleviation of suffering, along with the usual apologetic promises to change things from the inside. It's the boilerplate, that is to say, that valorizes the idea of "the lesser of two evils," and proposes its apparent content.

Ironically, such Manichaean thought is at great hazard of finding itself quite contentless. If one first accepts the terms of the decision as being between "two evils" (having foreclosed the only remaining possibility, that of "ideological purity"); and if one will always choose "the lesser" regardless of the content of that position (regardless, that is to say, of its avowed stance on, e.g., military spending, universal health care, or capitalism); then the decision turns out to be purely formal. It finds itself on a slippery slope without any method of slowing its descent; there's no mechanism for knowing when one should stop preferring the lesser of two evils, and think about the entire system of choice in some different way.

An unceasing preference for the lesser of two evils, and for the worldview in which that seems like an accurate description of the choices, would mean that, for example, one would support the Vichy government, insofar as they would be likely to treat the population better than the National Socialists would, even if many concessions would have to be made. Indeed, this was how the case was presented, and it was persuasive to many.

History, alas, has judged these persons harshly: "collaborator" is the term that springs to mind. This is not by way of hurling further invective at the current avatars of "the lesser of two evils," but rather of noting that history is rather clear in showing more than two choices on offer. There were at least three: Nazi occupation, Vichy collaboration, or resistance. History suggests that, as a general principle, there are at least three choices; there is no crypto-ethical binary. History teaches as well that it requires no ideological purity, nor claim of same, to make the third (or any other) choice; that such choices are humanly (if not ideologically) open to everyone; and that such choices might be seen as supremely pragmatic. They require no test of purity at all, but the merely posing of the question, What would refusal look like, what would negation look like in this intolerable situation?

No matter how gracefully one might distinguish that political constellation from our current conjuncture, this final question presents itself with no less force.

It is perhaps also to-the-occasion to point out that every member of the resistance died (or will die all too soon), just like every Vichy sympathizer, and every Nazi. This includes the poets. Some are buried in Père Lachaise cemetery, or Montparnasse; some are not. Some are remembered; some are not. These are some poets who did not choose the lesser of two evils: Philippe Soupault was imprisoned and Breton fled; Rene Char, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, and Robert Desnos fought and wrote in the resistance.

No, love is not dead in this heart and in these eyes and in this mouth

hereby announcing the opening of its own requiem.

Listen, I've had it with picturesqueness, colorfulness, and charm.

Love's what I love, its tenderness and its cruelty.

Still, the one whom I love has but one name and form.

Everything's transcient. Mouths may plaster themselves against my mouth

But still, the one whom I love has but one name and form.

And if some day you happen to think of it

Oh you, exact form and name of my love,

Some day, on the seas between America and Europe,

When the last ray of sunlight is flashing off the surface of the tossing waves,

or on a stormy night beneath a tree in the country, or in a speeding car,

One spring morning on the Boulevard Malesherbes,

Or on some rainy day

At dawn just before getting into bed,

Tell yourself, I insist of your innermost soul, that I loved you more than any

other man did, and that it's a shame that you didn't realize it.

But tell yourself, too, that there's nothing to regret: long before me Ronsard and

Baudelaire sang of the sorrows of old women and thoroughly dead

women who despised even the purest love.

But as for you, when you die,

You'll still remain both beautiful and desirable.

I may already be dead by then but incorporated in your timeless and immortal body, in your incomparable

image present forever among the wonders of human life and eternity, on the other hand

should I outlive you

Your voice and its intonations, your gaze and its radiance,

The fragrance of you and of your hair and many, many other things about you,

will still go on living in me

Yes in me, a poet who's neither Ronsard nor Baudelaire,

Just Robert Desnos who, for having known you and loved you so well

Have become their equal.

Just me, Robert Desnos who except for loving you, doesn't want to be remembered for doing anything else

he's ever done while walking the surface of this miserable, despicable earth.

Posted by jane at November 14, 2006 09:00 PM | TrackBack