Ferrante I

“Bunlar hep geçmişin karanlığında olup bitmiş işlerdi. Don Achille doğasındaki canavarlığını biz doğmadan önce sergilemiş olmalıydı. Önce. Lila bu formülü çok sık kullanırdı, hem okulda, hem okul dışında. Öte yandan bizden önce olup bitmiş şeyleri pek önemsemediği gibi –büyüklerin ya sustuğu ya çekinerek dillendirdiği şer yüklü olaylar– gerçekten bir “önce” olup olmadığını da önemsemezdi. O dönemde onu kararsızlığa iten hatta kimi zaman sinirlendiren de buydu. Biz arkadaş olduğumuzda şu saçma şeyden –bizden önce– o kadar çok söz etti ki sonunda sinirini bana da iletmeyi başardı. Bu, bizim içinde olmadığımız, çok uzun bir dönemdi; Don Achille’nin herkese ne mal olduğunu gösterdiği zamanlardı: belirsiz bir mineral-hayvan fizyonomisi içinde kötü bir yaratıktı ve o –sanki– herkesin kanını dökmüştü ama onun hiç kanı akmamış, onu tırmalamak bile mümkün olmamıştı.”

Ferrante, E. (2015) [2011]. Benim Olağanüstü Akıllı Arkadaşım, Eren Yücesan Cendey (çev.), Everest Yayınları, s. 47.

Hedda Gabler I | Adorno

Hedda Gabler üzerine metinler ve imajlar istifleyeceğim.

”

Hedda Gabler’in gerçek yaşamı. – On dokuzuncu yüzyılın estetizmi, düşünce tarihinin içsel bir konusu olarak değil, toplumsal çatışmalar içindeki gerçek temeline bakarak kavranabilir ancak. Ahlak dışılığın temelinde rahatsız bir vicdan yatıyordu. Eleştirmenler, burjuva toplumuna sadece ekonomi alanında değil, ahlak alanında da o toplumun kendi kurallarıyla karşı çıkmışlardı. Bu da yönetici tabakanın savunma seçeneklerini kısıtladı: Eğer saray şairleri ve devlet romancıları gibi iktidarsız bir yalancılığa razı olmayacaklarsa, toplumun yargılanmasını sağlayan ilkenin kendisini, demek kendi ahlakını reddetmekten başka çare yoktu. Ne var ki, radikal burjuva düşüncesinin ona saldırmak için benimsediği yeni konum, ideolojik yanılsamanın yerine kendi kendini tahrip eden ve sonunda teslim olan öfkeli bir isyanın benimsenmesinin de ötesine geçmişti. Güzelliğin burjuva “iyi” kavramına karşı ayaklanışı, iyiliğe karşı da bir ayaklanmaydı. İyilik, iyinin çarpıtılmasıdır: Ahlaki ilkeyi toplumsaldan ayırmak ve kişisel vicdan alanına kaydırmakla onu iki bakımdan kısıtlamış olur. Ahlak ilkesinin öngördüğü biçimde insanlara yakışır bir düzeni gerçekleştirme yükümlülüğünden böylece sıyrılır. İyiliğin bütün eylemlerinde belli bir kabulleniş ve acunma vardır: Hastalığın tedavisini değil de hafifletilmesini amaçlıyordur ve tadavinin imkânsızlığının bilinci de sonunda imkânsızlığın safına geçirir onu. Böylece iyilik kendi içinde de kısıtlanmış olur. Suçu, mahremiyettir. İnsanlar arasında dolaysız ilişkiler kurulabileceği sanısını yaratır ve evrenselin tecavüzlerine karşı bireyin tek savunması olan mesafeyi yok sayar. Birey, giderilmemiş farklılığın en acılı bilincini tam da en yakın ilişkiler içindeyken duyar. Yabancılaşmanın tek panzehiri, yabancılığın konurmasıdır. İyiliğin rehavetle benimsediği o pek kısa ömürlü uyum imgesi, budalaca yadsıdığı uzlaşmazlığın acısını daha da şiddetlendirir. İnce zevke ve hak gözeten düşünceliliğe saygısızlık etmeyecek hiçbir iyilik edimi yoktur; ve bu saygısızlık da o güçsüz güzellik ütopyasının karşı durmaya çalıştığı düzleşmeyi tamamlar. Böylece, kötülük öğretisi, sanayileşmiş toplumun başlarından beri, sadece barbarizmin habercisi değil, iyinin de maskesidir. İyide değerli olan ne varsa kötüye aktarılmıştır – o kötü ki, kötülüğünü tam vir gönül rahatlığıyla yapabilmek için iyiyi de kendi saflarına katmış bir düzenin bütün nefretini kendi üstüne çekiyordur şimdi. Hedda Gabler, Julle Teyze’nin generalin kızı onuruna satın aldığı gülünç şapkanın alında hizmetçiye ait olduğunu kasıtlı biçimde iddia ederek o çok iyi niyetli teyzenin kalbinde onulmaz bir yara açar; ama tatminsiz kadının böylece yaptığı, acınası evliliğinin acısını savunmasız bir kurbandan çıkarma sadistliği değildir sadece: Kendi yaşamındaki en iyi şeylere karşı da sıç işlemekte, çünkü en iyiyi iyinin alçaltılması olarak görmektedir. Beceriksiz yeğenini taparcasına seven yaşlı kadına karşı, bilinçsizce ve saçma bir biçimde, mutlakı temsil ediyordur. Hedda’dır kurban, Julle değil. Hedda’nın sabit fikri olan güzelliğin ahlaka karşı çıkışı, onu alaya alışından bile öncedir. Çünkü genel olan her şeyden uzak durur ve yalnızca varoluşun belirlediği bütün farkları –şunu değil de bunu kayırmış olan rastlantıyı– bir mutlak olarak görür. Güzellikte, inatçı ve nüfuz edilmez tikellik, norm olarak öne sürer kendini: Sadece o geneldir, çünkü normal genellik fazla saydam hale gelmiştir. Böylece meydan okur o normal genelliğe, özgür olmayan her şeyin eşitliğine. Ama bunu yaparken kendisi de suçlu durumuna düşer: Genelle ilişkisini koparırken, o olumsal varoluşu aşma imkânlarını da tümüyle bir yana atmıştır – oysa tikel varoluşun nüfuz edilmezliğinden yansıyan da aslında sadece kötü genelliğin hakikatsizliğidir. Böylece doğruya karşı yanlışın yanında bulur kendini güzellik: Doğruya karşı haklıyken bile. Güzellikte, narin gelecek, şimdinin Molok’una kendi kurbanını veriyordur: Şimdinin evreninde iyi diye bir şey olamayacağı için, kendini kötü kılar; böylece kendi yenilgisiyle yargıcı da mahkûm etmiş olur. Güzelliğin iyiye karşı isyanı, trafik kahramanların aldanışlarının laik burjuva biçimidir. Toplumun her türlü alışkanlığın berisinde kalan bugünkü hali, kendi olumsuzluğunun bilincini de engellediği için, ancak soyut olumsuzlama hakikatin yerini tutabilir. Anti-ahlak, ahlakta ahlaksız olan şeyi, baskıyı, reddederken, ahlakın en derin tasasını da devralmıştır: Her türlü sınırlanmayla birlikte bütün şiddet ve tecavüzün de ortadan kaldırılması. Ödünsüz burjuva öz-eleştirisinin itici güçlerinin materyalizminkilerle örtüşmesinin nedeni budur – birincisi kendi bilincine ancak ikincisine geçerek ulaşabilir.

” (s. 98-9)

Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Sakatlanmış Yaşamdan Yansımalar, 2009 [1951], Metis.

Achille Mbembe, on necropolitics and colonial occupation

I was reading Achille Mbembe’s Necropolitics a few days before Hamas attacked Israel and Israel started bombings and blockades in the Gaza Strip. In the book, Mbembe takes the Gaza Strip as a central example, showing the continuities of colonialist practice in the contemporary world. I’ll note it down not to forget.

Mbembe, A. (2019). Necropolitics. Duke University Press.

—

“To return to Fanon’s spatial reading of colonial occupation, the late modern colonial occupation in Gaza and the West Bank presents three major characteristics concerning the working of the specific structure of terror that I have called necropower. The first involves the dynamics of territorial fragmentation—the sealing off and expansion of settlements. This process has a twofold objective: to render all movement impossible and to implement forms of separation on the model of an apartheid state. The occupied territories have thus been divided into a web of intricate internal borders and various isolated cells. According to Eyal Weizman, by departing from a planar division of territory and embracing a principle of creation of three-dimensional boundaries within a territory, dispersal and segmentation clearly redefine the relationship between sovereignty and space.

These actions, for Weizman, constitute “the politics of verticality.” The resultant form of sovereignty might be qualified as “vertical sovereignty.” Under a regime of vertical sovereignty, colonial occupation operates through schemes of over- and underpasses, a separation of airspace from the ground. The ground itself is divided between its crust and the subsoil. Colonial occupation is also dictated by the very nature of the terrain and its topographical variations (hilltops and valleys, mountains, and bodies of water). Thus, high ground offers strategic advantages not found in the valleys (better vision and self-protection, a panoptic fortification enabling the gaze to be directed in multiple directions). As Weizman puts it, “Settlements could be seen as urban optical devices for surveillance and the exercise of power.” Under the conditions of late modern colonial occupation, surveillance is oriented both inwardly and outwardly, the eye acting as weapon, and vice versa. Instead of the conclusive division between two nations across a boundary line, Weizman claims, “the organization of the West Bank’s particular terrain has created multiple separations, provisional boundaries, which relate to each other through surveillance and control.” Under these circumstances, colonial occupation not only amounts to control, surveillance, and separation but is also synonymous with isolation. It is a splintering occupation in keeping with the splintering urbanism characteristic of late modernity (suburban enclaves or gated communities).

From an infrastructural point of view, a splintering form of colonial occupation is characterized by a network of fast bypass roads, bridges, and tunnels that weave over and under one another in an attempt to maintain the Fanonian “principle of reciprocal exclusivity.” According to Weizman, “the bypass roads attempt to separate Israeli traffic networks from Palestinian ones, preferably without allowing them ever to cross. They therefore emphasize the overlapping of two separate geographies that inhabit the same landscape. Where the networks do cross, a makeshift separation is created. Most often, small dust roads are dug out to allow Palestinians to cross under the fast, wide highways on which Israeli vans and military vehicles rush between settlements.”

Under these conditions of vertical sovereignty and splintering colonial occupation, communities get separated along a y-axis. The sites of violence duly proliferate. Battlegrounds are not located solely at the Earth’s surface. Underground and airspace are transformed into conflict zones as well. No continuity exists between the ground and the sky. Even the airspace boundaries are divided between lower and upper layers. Everywhere, the symbolics of the top (of who is on top) is reiterated. Occupation of the skies therefore acquires a critical importance, since most of the policing is done from the air. Various other technologies are mobilized to this effect: sensors aboard unmanned air vehicles, aerial reconnaissance jets, early warning Hawkeye planes, assault helicopters, an Earth-observation satellite, techniques of “hologrammatization.” Killing becomes precision-targeted.

Such precision is combined with the tactics of medieval siege warfare adapted to the networked sprawl of urban refugee camps. An orchestrated and systematic sabotage of the enemy’s societal and urban infrastructure network complements the appropriation of land, water, and airspace resources. Critical to these techniques of disabling the enemy is bulldozing: demolishing houses and cities, uprooting olive trees, riddling water tanks with bullets, bombing and jamming electronic communications, digging up roads, destroying electricity transformers, tearing up airport runways, disabling television and radio transmitters, smashing computers, ransacking cultural and politico-bureaucratic symbols of the proto-Palestinian state, and looting medical equipment—in other words, infrastructural warfare. While Apache helicopter gunships are used to police the air and kill from overhead, armored bulldozers (the Caterpillar d-9) are used on the ground as weapons of war and intimidation. In contrast to early modern colonial occupation, both weapons establish the superiority of the high-tech tools of late modern terror.

As the Palestinian case illustrates, late modern colonial occupation is a concatenation of multiple powers: disciplinary, biopolitical, and necro-political. The combination of the three grants the colonial power absolute domination over the inhabitants of the occupied territory. The state of siege is itself a military institution. It allows for a modality of killing that does not distinguish between the external and the internal enemy. Entire populations are the target of the sovereign. Besieged villages and towns are sealed off and isolated from the world. Daily life is militarized. Local military commanders have the discretionary freedom to decide whom to shoot and when. Movement between the territorial cells requires formal permits. Local civil institutions are systematically destroyed. The besieged population is deprived of their means of income. Invisible killing is added to outright executions.” (p. 80-3)

Javier Cercas, on fiction, faking, and Enric Marco

I’ll use the introductory paragraph for Enric Marco article in Wikipedia first:

“Enric Marco (12 April 1921 – 21 May 2022) was a Catalonian impostor who claimed to have been a prisoner in Nazi German concentration camps Mauthausen and Flossenbürg in World War II. He was awarded the Creu de Sant Jordi by the Catalan government in 2001 and wrote a book on his experiences. In 2005 he admitted his claims were false and returned his medal, after his deception was revealed by university researcher Benito Bermejo.”

Javier Cercas takes the case of Enric Marco as intriguing material for a novelist and tells both Marco’s story and the story of the novelist from the moment he encounters Marco. The passage below is one of the examples where the novel adopts an essayistic mode.

Cercas, J. (2017). The Impostor (F. Wynne, Trans.). Maclehose Press.

”

Like Marco, the novelist does not create his fiction out of nothing: he creates it from his own experience; like Marco, the novelist knows that pure fiction does not exist and that, if it did exist, it would not be remotely interesting, and no-one would believe it, because reality is the basis, the fuel that drives fiction: and so, like Marco, the novelist creates his fictions by painting and distorting historical and biographical truth, by mixing truth and lies, what actually happened with what he wished had happened, or what would have seemed interesting or fascinating if it had happened, but did not happen. Like Marco, who studied history and listened carefully to the central characters of history and assimilated their stories, the novelist knows that he needs a foundation for his lies and this is why he researches thoroughly, so that he can thoroughly reinvent reality. Marco, moreover, has all the qualities required of a novelist: energy, fantasy, imagination, memory and, more than anything, a love of words; almost more so for the written than the spoken word: from the first, Marco has not only been an indiscriminate reader, he has also been a compulsive writer, author of countless stories, poems, articles, biographical fragments, manifestos, reports and letters of every kind that clutter his archives and have been sent to countless people and institutions. Vargas Llosa is right: Marco is a genius because he succeeds at everything, in real life and for many years in what great novelists only partly achieve in their novels, and even then only for as long as it takes to read them; that is to say, he deceives thousands and thousands of people, making them believe that he was someone that he was not, that something that did not truly exist actually existed and that what is actually a lie is in fact the truth. But Marco’s genius, of course, is only partial. Unlike great novelists, who in exchange for a factual lie deliver a profound, disturbing, elusive, irreplaceable moral and universal truth, Marco delivers only a sickly, insincere, mawkishly sentimental story that from the historical or moral point of view is pure kitsch, pure lies; unlike Marco, great novelists make it possible, through their paradoxical truth – to know and recognize the real, to know ourselves and recognize ourselves, to gaze into the reflecting waters of Narcissus without dying. So, of Marco is a genius, is he also monstrous? And if he is, why is he?

The answer is obvious: because what he did is something that can be done in novels, but not in life; because the rules of a novel are different from the rules of life. In novels, it is not only acceptable to lie, it is obligatory: the factual lie is the path to literary truth (and this is why Gorgias says that he who deceives is more honest than he who does not deceive); in life, on the other hand, as in history or in journalism, lying is “an accursed vice”, to quote Montaigne, a baseness and an act of violence and a lack of respect and a violation of the first rule of human coexistence. The result of mixing a truth with a lie is always a lie, except in novels, where it is a truth. Marco deliberately confused fiction and life: he should have mixed truth and lies in the former, not the latter: he should have written a novel. Perhaps if he had written a novel he would not have done as he did. Perhaps he is a frustrated novelist. Or perhaps he is not, and perhaps he could not settle for writing a novel but wanted to live it. Marco turned his life into a novel. This is why he seems monstrous: because he did not accept who he was and had the audacity and the effrontery to invent himself out of lies; because in life, lies are a bad thing, whereas they are a good thing in novels. All, needless to say, except a novel without fiction or true story. All novels other than this one.

” (pp. 204-5)