Still more from my Critic

My Critic critiques further:

Nationalism and fascism are flattened into a-cultural, a-historical, universal ideological or political manifestations (which, of course, they are not): where did Germany's NSDAP party start if not in particularly enculturated versions of a staunchly felt "nationalism"? As a culturally situated historical mode, Benét's nationalism must be more deeply critiqued and, I suggest, contrasted with anything roaming the old world (Europe) in a similar moment in history.

One can almost always critique an analysis for not going far enough, but I think that I do not commit the error attributed to me. Indeed, civic nationalism is contrasted with ethnic nationalism. And "Germany's . . . staunchly felt 'nationalism'" was an ethnic nationalism. Do I have to go back to Germany's loss in WWI and the experiences of a certain Austrian soldier as background? My concern is with Benét.

My Critic again . . .

My Critic refers to "a so-called 'ethnic nationalism,'" as if he'd never heard the expression - note the scare quotes and the words "so-called" - but he then turns about and claims I've gleaned both ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism from an encyclopedia, as if I were too stupid to know such things already and on my own.

The downside to all this is in being treated like an idiot. The upside is that everyone can see who the real idiot is.

Munus Defined

The Oxford Classical Dictionary defines munus: "Munus, a gift or service, given or rendered freely (a lover's gift, or the gifts of gods to men) or, more commonly, out of a sense of duty (burial of the dead, sacrifices, or funeral games)."

Hmm . . . yeah, I guess I can see how this munus concept would be really helpful in distinguishing between civic nationalism and ethnic nationalism. Well, actually, I can't.

Nationalism: Ethnic and Civic

My critic mentions Foucault and Foucault's views on "privileging and legitimizing power/knowledge discourses," and accuses me of being "willing to ignore the civic community as a 'munus,'" a term he borrows from Esposito, and he says all that to say this:

The author seems unwilling to tackle these complexities, and instead simply appropriates/promulgates the ethnic/civic paradigm (gleaned from an encyclopedia) without analysis.

Well, my critic seems not to realize that I didn't need that level of analysis for my paper in its original form, though I might need to do more now that my paper has grown, but what I find most disagreeable is my critic's assumption that I needed an encyclopedia to know the difference between ethnic and civic nationalism and that I simply gleaned the distinction from an encyclopedia.

I don't gotta glean nothin if I don't wanna, and I don't wanna cause I don't need to.

Ronald Granieri
Executive Director
FPRI
Center for the Study
of
America and the West

For the FPRI, in The American Review of Books, Blogs, and Bull, Ronald J. Granieri, writing "Whose West is Best?" (July 10, 2017) in response to President Trump's pro-Western speech in Poland, offers some criticism of Western nationalism and some praise for the EU. This excerpt will give you a sense of his argument:

The intensity of the disagreement on the Trump speech obscures a larger point that bears repeating. The difference here is not about the value of the West per se, but rather about which West is best - the West built on a specific Euro-centric Christian vision, which seeks to build walls around itself to preserve its purity, or one based on the Enlightenment principles of individual freedom, secularism, equality before the law and democracy, which is ready to learn from the world and grow stronger with the new knowledge. One could of course embrace both, recognizing the universal appeal of ideas that were originally nurtured in the West, and celebrating the culture that produced them within the eternal triangle of Jerusalem (representing monotheism and the ancient biblical heritage), Athens (representing Greek philosophy and the humanism at the root of Western thought), and Rome (representing the Christian and European political/cultural synthesis). For all the angry rhetorical jabs on both sides, this debate is taking place on terms that are themselves the product of Western civilization - the tension between local identity and intellectual freedom, between the universal and the particular. The West is not on one side or the other in this debate, it is the very arena within which the debate occurs.

I'm also skeptical of European ethnic nationalism. While this nationalism may be a source of strength at our current juncture, Europe's nationalisms will one day turn on each other over historical claims to territory that has belonged to different 'nations' at different times. Remember the Balkans in the early 1990s? That's what it will be like . . .

PS to yesterday's entry . . .

Stephen Vincent Benét
- an older and wiser man -

Google Images

A different, more grounded, but equally "disdainful" reviewer also panned my paper on Stephen Vincent Benét. I say "disdainful" because of this remark to my citation of an encyclopedia to ground the distinction between ethnic and civic nationalism:

The author . . . simply appropriates/promulgates the ethnic/civic paradigm (gleaned from an encyclopedia) without analysis.

I didn't "glean" this from an encyclopedia. I simply cited a clear distinction offered by an encyclopedia because the audience in a session on literature and national identity - for whom I initially noted the distinction between ethnic and civic nationalism - seemed utterly unaware of this distinction and found the distinction difficult to fathom. My citation was a courtesy to that initial audience after a question-and-answer session revealed the confusion.

That should clarify the context, but the deep "disdain" is the assumption that because I don't expound upon some aspect of critical theory or literary theory in my writing, then I must be ignorant of it.

Therefore, listen, you doubters, disdainers, you double-down deniers, I studied under Martin Jay at UC Berkeley, and I understand critical theory. I've read plenty of literary criticism since then, and I know the connections between the two. I edit for various journals, and I know what you're talking about, so don't assume that I'm ignorant.

Read my writing with at least a modicum of humility . . .

Byeng-ju Lee Hadong International Literary Festival 2014

Lee Byeng-ju
Google Images

I'm currently at a conference on "Literature and National Community" being held in conjunction with the Byeng-ju Lee Hadong International Literary Festival 2014, and I presented a paper yesterday:

Literature and National Community: The United States and the Case of Stephen Vincent Benét

Horace Jeffery Hodges

Ewha Womans University

Introduction

I am informed that my presentation on "Literature and National Community . . . . will be representing the English speaking countries." That's a lot of countries, and I can probably only manage to represent myself, but since I'm American, I'll pretend to represent the United States. Still . . . what am I to say? I suppose I can start with Benedict Anderson's famous view of a nation: "In an anthropological spirit, . . . I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign." Limited, because there are other nations. Sovereign, because not under the rule of another nation. Community, because of a "deep, horizontal comradeship." And imagined, because members do not know most of their fellow-members, yet have a mental image of their communion (Anderson, 6-7). Where does this mental image come from? Partly, at least sometimes, from literature. Which brings me to my subject: Stephen Vincent Benét.

A Forgotten Man?

Stephen Vincent Benét was born in 1898, began writing professionally when only thirteen, in 1911, and from the publication of his bestselling epic poem John Brown's Body in 1928 to his death at the height of his fame in 1943, he was perhaps the best-known American poet living. His poems were read even more than those of the ever popular Robert Frost, and his books of poetry sold in the tens of thousands, receiving good reviews. He wrote not only poems, but also short stories, novels, dramas, radio scripts, screenplays, book reviews, lectures, and speeches, and he edited dozens of book-length manuscripts per year in the mid-1930s. He was one of the eminent American men of letters throughout the thirties and very early forties (Griffith). In the 2002 book Stephen Vincent Benét: Essays on His Life and Work, the editors David Garrett Izzo and Lincoln Konkle thus note the irony that Benét's "work is not widely known today" even though when he "died in 1943 at the age of 44, the loss was felt by an entire country to whom Benét was a national hero" (1). Twelve years later than Izzo and Konkle wrote, nowadays, in 2014, Benét is still little remembered.

Ironically, he has been neglected due to one of the reasons for his prior popularity, his nationalism. In the 2009 Companion to Literature, edited by Abby H. P. Werlock, the entry on Stephen Vincent Benét says the following:

His work is characterized by his interest in . . . American themes . . . . [but t]he patriotic . . . themes of Benét’s work . . . became less fashionable after his death and led some critics to label him an old-fashioned, quaint, and chauvinistic writer who wrote "formula stories" designed to appeal to mainstream readers. ("Stephen Vincent Benét" 80b-81a)

If his works became "less fashionable after his death," one can imagine how unfashionable they were in the rebellious decades of the 1960s and 1970s. The Left objected to his nationalism and didn't much read him, so as Leftists came to dominate academic discourse in the 1980s and beyond, Benét's writings were less and less taught (Izzo and Konkle "Stephen," 4). No doubt his nationalist writings have also not fared well in our time of political multiculturalism and literary fragmentation, both of which celebrate ethnic and cultural diversity to the detriment of Benét's own imagined community of national unity, as in his epic poem, John Brown's Body: "So, from a hundred visions, I make one, / And out of darkness build my mocking sun" (Benét John, 6). The term "mocking" is likely intended here as imitation for non-frivolous purposes, e.g., "mock exam" ("Mock"), or as with "mockingbird," i.e., "[f]rom its skill in mimicking other birdsongs" ("Mockingbird"), though I wouldn't exclude a bit of self-deprecation on Benét's part. But even in his own time, Benét's work was sometimes criticized for its nationalism. An April 5, 1943 editorial in Life magazine on Benét's recent death (March 13, 1943) acknowledges that "[b]ecause of his strong American utterance, Steve Benét has sometimes been accused of chauvinism or narrow nationalism" ("Stephen Benet" p. 22, col. 3).

In His Own Time

In his own time, Benét offered Americans a vision of themselves that could serve as their imagined community. In Jackson J. Benson's book Wallace Stegner: His Life and Work, we find this remark about Benét:

Benet . . . was interested in native materials and the importance of bringing forth (as Emerson had advocated a century earlier) a uniquely national literature divorced from the influences of Europe. (Benson 64-65)

The so-called "influences of Europe" alludes to a long-held American belief that Europe was corrupt and corrupting. Benét therefore offered a national literature of moral uplift, as we find in Joan Shelley Rubin's 2009 book, Songs of Ourselves:

"I have no way of telling you the place in my life your [book] has found," a Texas man declared in a letter to Benét. "Let me say this – it is the book I pick up when I am frayed out, disgusted, exhausted – and it always brings back my balance." (Rubin 231)

Reviewers compared Benét to Walt Whitman due to their common scope and subject, but readers responded with an enthusiasm not seen since the public adulation for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Rubin 231).

What He Offered

As we saw earlier, Benét was sometimes accused of "narrow nationalism" ("Stephen Benet" p. 22, col. 3). A "narrow" nationalism would be exclusive, so we should ask if he excluded some groups from belonging to the "nation." Perhaps a longstanding distinction is useful here: ethnic nationalism versus civic nationalism. The former limits membership to a community characterized by an 'imagined' shared ethnicity, the original meaning of "nation." The latter extends membership to any individual – regardless of ethnicity – who is willing to embrace the shared values of the imagined community (Miscevic). Which of these two nationalisms did Benét extol? Rubin tells us:

One passage [in Benét's poem "Nightmare at Noon"] succinctly reiterates the principle of civic nationalism: "You can be a Finn or a Dane and an American. / You can be German or French and an American, / Jew, Bohunk, Nigger, Mick – all the dirty names / We call each other – and yet American." (Rubin 233)

We Americans may not always speak politely to one another, admits Benét, but we're still Americans, he insists, every one of us. Indeed, he was very generous in extending membership within his imagined community of Americans. Rubin tells us that he "acknowledged the suffering of both North and South" (Rubin 234), even going so far in his 1937 story "The Devil and Daniel Webster" as to insist that in the making of America, "everybody had played a part in it, even the traitors" (Benét 177)! Hard to be more inclusive than that. But, of course, membership in this imagined national community was limited to Americans, as Anderson's definition of community entails (Anderson 1), and hence "divorced from the [corrupting] influences of Europe" (Benson 65).

His Anti-Fascism

With his hugely inclusive conception of America as a nation imbued with civic nationalism, Benét can likely be expected to have taken a dim view of ethnic nationalism, especially the aggressive ethnic nationalisms of Europe's fascist states in the 1930s and 1940s, evidence of a corrupt and corrupting Europe that must be resisted. The scholars Izzo and Konkle confirm his opposition to fascism:

During the late 1930s Benét, just as many other Americans, was alarmed at the tragedy of fascism in Asia and Europe. He took seriously his role as national spokesperson and began to write poems and stories as warnings to the American people. Among these were "The Blood of the Martyrs," "Into Egypt," "The Last of the Legions," "Nightmare at Noon," and "By the Waters of Babylon" . . . . Benét wished to reach more Americans and realized radio was the way . . . . What followed would be the most astonishing output of original works for radio by a literary author ever produced, and more importantly, ever listened to over a four-year period. Benét was a natural writer for radio . . . . His mastery of poetry and the short story suited the need for compactness with a singular effect; his reputation as a man of conscience and a patriot who loved his country was exactly right for an America facing the threat of fascism that was already producing killing fields abroad. (Izzo and Konkle, “Benét” 225)

Benét's 1937 short story "The Blood of the Martyrs" is an especially powerful piece of anti-fascist literature, and all the more significant for its relatively early date, two years before WWII began and four years before America's forced entry into the war. Benét tells the story of an apolitical scientist who is imprisoned and tortured by an unnamed European fascist state, tortured partly because being apolitical is itself a position of suspicion under fascism. The scientist is offered a Faustian bargain. He can have his university job back if he will just agree to publically support the state by giving nationalist speeches and even use his scientific work to undergird the state's belief that its people are racially superior to all other peoples. I won't provide any further details of the plot since some of you might want to read the story, and I don't want to give away any plot spoilers. Just trust me that the story is powerful. It is also short and can be read in half an hour if your English is good.

His Generous Civic Nationalism

Another story published in 1937 was the famous tale of the devil already mentioned in this talk, "The Devil and Daniel Webster." The story is a Faustian one partly inspired by Washington Irving's own Faustian story, "The Devil and Tom Walker." Irving’s story lacks a champion, but Benét's story of Jabez Stone has the famous senator, orator, and lawyer Daniel Webster defend the New Hampshire farmer named Stone who had sold his soul to the devil in exchange for better luck. In the course of a legal argument between Webster and the devil, the latter insists that he himself is American, at which point Webster persuades the devil to let his client have a trial by jury:

"I stand on the Constitution! I demand a trial for my client!"

"The case is hardly one for an ordinary court," said the stranger, his eyes flickering. "And, indeed, the lateness of the hour–"

"Let it be any court you choose, so it is an American judge and an American jury!" said Dan'l Webster in his pride. "Let it be the quick or the dead; I'll abide the issue!" (Benét 173)

The devil agrees to the conditions, but fills the American jury with traitors, criminals, and other unsavory men nursing a grudge against America. Webster, however, rises to the challenge:

He started off in a low voice, though you could hear every word. They say he could call on the harps of the blessed when he chose. And this was just as simple and easy as a man could talk. But he didn't start out by condemning or reviling. He was talking about the things that make a country a country, and a man a man.

And he began with the simple things that everybody's known and felt – the freshness of a fine morning when you're young, and the taste of food when you're hungry, and the new day that's every day when you’re a child. He took them up and he turned them in his hands. They were good things for any man. But without freedom, they sickened. And when he talked of those enslaved, and the sorrows of slavery, his voice got like a big bell. He talked of the early days of America and the men who had made those days. It wasn't a spread-eagle speech, but he made you see it. He admitted all the wrong that had ever been done. But he showed how, out of the wrong and the right, the suffering and the starvations, something new had come. And everybody had played a part in it, even the traitors. (Benét 177)

And by his eloquence and gentle manner, Webster reminded those twelve damned men of their innocent childhoods in what came to be America, and of the mistakes that men make, and he even succeeded in getting Stone released from the conditions of his contract with the devil – all by reminding men of what being free Americans felt like, even if the twelve had gone on to err in their adulthoods. Benét's vision of a civic nationalism was thus a very generous one.

Civilizational Literature?

In fact, Benét's civic-national 'Americanism' – despite his aim of composing a uniquely American literature – moved toward broader horizons. This is evident from his attack on fascism in the 1930s, wherein he extended American civic nationalism to Europe no longer simply as judgment but more as solution and assistance. Broader horizons are also notable in his choice of the Faustian theme, for the story of a man making a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for knowledge and power, entails a basic mythos of Western Civilization, the original sin of mankind having been precisely this sort of bargain, namely, one's soul for knowledge and power. Unlike the original mythos, however, but like in Goethe's Faustian reinterpretation, Benét gives the story a twist, such that the devil is defeated. Civic nationalism in America can even overcome 'sin'! It can also therefore – as in "The Blood of the Martyrs" – help purge the extreme corruption of European fascism! Such optimism!

Conclusion

Well, I seem to have gone beyond "Literature and National Community," beyond the nationalism defined by Benedict Anderson, and even beyond English-speaking countries generally, all the way to Western Civilization as a whole! I hope you don't mind. I’m new to this theme. But I wonder if a uniquely national literature is actually possible. Even ethnic nationalism borrows stories from other nationalities, perhaps mostly from stories of other nationalities within its own civilization, though not solely. Stephen Vincent Benét had an American vision for a national literature, but his feeling for Europe, his opposition to fascism abroad, and his re-telling of Western Civilization's fundamental mythos offer a broader perspective on his work, a perspective that ought to orient literary scholars toward a reinterpretation of his oeuvre as greater than American "chauvinism or narrow nationalism."

Works Cited

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso: 2006.

Benét, Stephen Vincent. John Brown's Body. Doubleday, Doran, 1928.

Benét, Stephen Vincent. "The Blood of the Martyrs." Thirteen O’Clock: Stories of Several Worlds. New York and Toronto: Farrar and Rinehart, 1937.

Benét, Stephen Vincent. "The Devil and Daniel Webster." Thirteen O’Clock: Stories of Several Worlds. New York and Toronto: Farrar and Rinehart, 1937.

Benét, Stephen Vincent. Thirteen O’Clock: Stories of Several Worlds. New York and Toronto: Farrar and Rinehart, 1937.

Benson, Jackson J. Wallace Stegner: His Life and Work. University of Nebraska Press, 2009.

Griffith, John. "Stephen Vincent Benét, 1898-1943." Poetry Foundation.

Irving, Washington. "The Devil and Tom Walker." Tales of a Traveller. Carey and Lea, 1824.

Izzo, David Garrett and Lincoln Konkle. "Benét as Dramatist for Stage, Screen, and Radio." Stephen Vincent Benét: Essays on His Life and Work. McFarland: 2002. 215-232.

Izzo, David Garrett and Lincoln Konkle. Stephen Vincent Benét: Essays on His Life and Work. McFarland: 2002.

Miscevic, Nenad. "Nationalism." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2010 Edition). Edited by Edward N. Zalta.

"Mock." The Free Dictionary Online.

"Mockingbird." The Free Dictionary Online. Cf. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2009.

Rubin, Joan Shelley. Songs of Ourselves. Harvard University Press, 2009.

"Stephen Benet: The Ultimate Objectives of Free Men are to be Discovered in their Arts and Letters." Life. April 5, 1943. 22.

"Stephen Vincent Benét." Companion to Literature: Facts on File Companion to the American Short Story. Abby H. P. Werlock, ed. Infobase Publishing, 2009.

That's the entirety of my presentation - well, I didn't read out the references aloud, but they were in the individual copies possessed by everyone present.

I now have to get ready for today's discussions . . .

Inexplicable Data on Hate?

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
NYT

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz is an economist with a PhD from Harvard (2013), and he offers some intriguing facts on Stormfront users in his article "The Data of Hate" (NYT, July 12, 2014). What's Stormfront, you ask? This:

Stormfront was founded in 1995 by Don Black, a former Ku Klux Klan leader. Its most popular "social groups" are "Union of National Socialists" and "Fans and Supporters of Adolf Hitler" . . . . The white nationalist posters on Stormfront have issues with many different groups. They often write about crimes committed by African-Americans against whites; they complain about an "invasion" of Mexicans; and they love to mock gays and feminists. [They find Asians "repulsive," though also seem to envy them.] But their main problem appears to be with Jewish people, who are often described as super-powerful and clever -- the driving force, generally speaking, behind the societal changes they do not like.

One might therefore expect Stormfront users to be uneducated. Not so:

The top reported interest of Stormfront members is "reading." Most notably, Stormfront users are news and political junkies. One interesting data point here is the popularity of The New York Times among Stormfront users. According to the economists Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse M. Shapiro, when you compare Stormfront users to people who go to the Yahoo News site, it turns out that the Stormfront crowd is twice as likely to visit nytimes.com.

Dr. Stephens-Davidowitz admits to being baffled:

Perhaps it was my own naïveté, but I would have imagined white nationalists' inhabiting a different universe from that of my friends and me . . . . Why do some people feel . . . [hatred toward African-Americans, Mexicans, gays, feminists, Asians, and Jews, among other groups?] I have pored over data of an unprecedented breadth and depth, thanks to our new digital era. And I can honestly offer the following answer: I have no idea.

Maybe he should ask them. They seem to have given some reasons. Concerns about the crime rate among African-Americans. Concerns about illegal immigration from Latin America being out of control. Those are two genuine issues, whatever one's stance might be. But what about gays and feminists? Dr. Stephens-Davidowitz writes only that Stormfront users "mock" these two groups. He might consider these points: gay rights are a topical issue, as the debate over homosexual marriage shows, and feminism is widely perceived by many men as being an anti-male ideology. As for beliefs about Asians and Jews, the view that they are "super-powerful and clever" -- a belief Dr. Stephens-Davidowitz cites about Jews, but it also tends to be a belief about East Asians -- might stem from the fact that both Asians and Jews are statistically over-represented in positions of power and prestige.

But why the hatred expressed toward these groups? From the points just noted, we might hypothesize that each of these hated groups represents ways in which white nationalists feel that they have lost control over their country. But why the hatred? Dr. Stephens-Davidowitz seems to assume that hatred is an unnatural emotion, one that requires an explanation. But what if that's incorrect? What if it's people's default position when confronted by difference?

What if hatred is easy?

Scott Burgeson on Korea's Anti-Democratic Left

2008 Anti-FTA Protests

(Image from Wikipedia)

Long-time Korea resident Scott Burgeson has published an online article, "A Stranger in Chongno" (hat tip, Robert Koehler), analyzing the anti-democratic character of the Leftist street protests of 2008, which were aimed at reversing the Free Trade Agreement between South Korea and the United States and at bringing down the pro-American Lee Myung-bak administration. Burgeson's explication of the Korean Left's irrational anti-Americanism is particularly persuasive because he himself is on the Left and in fact started out covering the protests as a sympathizer, a position made clear in a letter to the International Herald Tribune (cf. NYT) on June 19, 2008:

As a long-term American resident of South Korea, I have often been perplexed by extreme manifestations of Korean nationalism on both sides of the demilitarized zone. However, I think Philip Bowring missed the mark in 'A potent, troubling nationalism' (Views, June, 16), by overstating the anti-American and nationalistic aspects of protests over resumption of U.S. beef imports in South Korea.

Fears of beef tainted with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or BSE -- while legitimate to a certain extent -- were merely the spark that set off a much wider firestorm across the Korean Peninsula.

In effect, U.S. beef was used as a kind of stealth weapon by opponents of the newly installed president of South Korea, Lee Myung Bak, in order to put a check on his neo-liberal policies, which include the privatization of numerous state companies and services.

Speaking as someone who has attended the protests daily, they are largely about internal Korean politics and social divisions, with nary a whiff of anti-U.S. sentiment to them.

As a regular reader of the IHT and also a long-time resident of Korea paying close attention to the anti-beef protests, my reaction at the time was one of incredulity, and I wondered how Mr. Burgeson could be so blind. Well, eventually, so did he. His article serves the double purpose of explicating not only the Korean Left's unreasonable blindness but also how his own eyes were opened.

Burgeson's article is fascinating but a hard read. Most difficult for many readers will be the liberal sprinkling of Korean expressions throughout the text -- in Korea's own Hangul alphabet! Granted, these are mostly translated in footnotes, but few readers will be able to wade through them without losing patience and giving up. Second in difficulty is the heavily theory-laden character of Burgeson's writing, even somewhat distractingly overtheorized. If you're not up to snuff on critical theory, you'll find his analysis nearly impenetrable. This doesn't mean that his writing is abstract or stilted. Indeed, he has a tough, vigorous style that kept my attention. Personally, I enjoyed much of the theoretical aspect (a quirk of mine) and thought that some of the material on myth worked fairly well -- though I wonder if Benedict Anderson might not have been more relevant than Roland Barthes. Nevertheless, I learned something about Barthes on myth, and that appeals to the historian of ideas in me.

Where Burgeson really stumbles, I think, is in the analogy that he makes between the anti-US beef protests in Korea and the pro-war sentiment in America leading up to the invasion of Iraq. Burgeson finds in both a profound complex of deception and irrationality. I agree that the anti-beef protests were deeply deceptive and irrational, but the pro-war sentiment seems to me to have been fundamentally sincere and rational, which isn't to say that I was pro-war. Let me explain. Even though the chant "Bush Lied, People Died" has become a meme of the Left, I don't think that the Bush Administration did lie about its intelligence on Saddam. Rather, the intelligence was faulty and incomplete, as intelligence often is. The mistaken conclusion that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction was understandable, for the man acted like he had something to hide. He did in fact have something to hide, to wit, the fact that he had nothing, as Burgeson acknowledges:

Saddam Hussein could not have simply come straight out and admitted in public to having no active WMDs program, since such a naked admission would have left his country dangerously vulnerable to his enemies in the region, Iran most of all.

Absolutely correct . . . in hindsight. That explains why the weapons inspectors could find no hard evidence but simultaneously felt compelled to keep searching. Saddam had nothing, but acted like he had something. Prior to the invasion, the belief that Saddam had WMDs was reasonable and widely held, not just among conservatives, and remained to be disproven. I thought that he had them, though I was also in favor of continuing the weapons inspections and not in favor of invasion to rid Saddam of WMDs unless there were no other choice.

The anti-beef protests, however, were based upon 'evidence' that was demonstrably false at the very moment that the 'evidence' was cited. Belief that US beef posed a high risk of Mad Cow Disease in human beings who ate it was clearly, empirically unreasonable.

Burgeson's analogy thus appears flawed to me. A comparison to the current "Tea Party" has been suggested instead by other readers, citing the widespread "Birther" views among those attracted to its protests (or the belief that Obama is a "Secret Muslim). I suppose that Burgeson's Iraq analogy, however, could serve to establish his street cred among the Korean Left and leave them more open to considering his critique of their irrationality . . . though that same irrationality might preserve them against any rational critique even from others on the Left.

Burgeson's article, as I've noted, is a hard slog, but it's worth the intellectual hike and serves as a manifestation of his basic honesty and willingness to follow pretty much where the facts lead him. He might be rather overstating his case in arguing that the hard Left leading the protests was aiming an an coup d'état (why not a revolution instead?), but he is surely on the mark in noting this Left's undemocratic attempt to bring down the then recently elected Lee Myung-bak government.

Martin Heidegger: Nazi Philosopher?

Martin Heidegger

(Image from New York Times)

In a recent article for The New York Times (April 29, 2010), "The Jewish Question: Martin Heidegger" (perhaps better titled "The Nazi Question"), senior editor for The New Republic, Adam Kirsch, reviews two recent books on this tarnished German philosopher, who joined the Nazi Party, served as rector of Freiburg University from 1933-34, and told the student body, in a November 1933 speech, that "the Führer and he alone is the present and future German reality and its law."

The more interesting of the two books would appear to be the one originally in French by Emmanuel Faye, The Introduction of Nazism Into Philosophy in Light of the Unpublished Seminars of 1933-1935 (translated by Michael B. Smith), for Kirsch writes that Faye argues not just that that Heidegger was a philosopher who happened to join the Nazi Party, nor that Heidegger was a Nazi who just happened to be a philosopher, but that Heidegger was, crucially, a "Nazi philosopher":

Faye, an authority on Descartes, is driven to this pitch of accusation by his study of the seminars, till now untranslated or unpublished, that Heidegger taught during 1933-35, in the first flush of his Nazi enthusiasm. In these classes, Faye proves beyond doubt, we do witness "the introduction of Nazism into philosophy," the outright transformation of Heidegger's thought into a tool of Nazi indoctrination. The more familiar a reader is with Heideg­ger's work, the more shocking it will be to see him employ his key terms -- being, existence, decision -- as euphemisms for nationalism and Führer-worship. Thus we find him, in the winter of 1933-34, declaring that "the question of the awareness of the will of the community is a problem that is posed in all democracies, but one that of course can become fruitful only when the will of the Führer and the will of the people are identified in their essence." At the same time, Heidegger tells his students -- "many of whom," Faye points out, "were to become combatants at the beginning of the following decade on the Eastern front" -- that "to a Semitic nomad," the "nature of our German space" is inherently foreign.

This is complex material, for a proper critique demands that one deal not merely with nationalist ideas, ideologies of blood, and the concept of the leader, but that one engage in philosophical thinking and its distortion, not an easy labor. At the conclusion of his article, Kirsch suggests a similar task:

[W]hat makes Heidegger's Nazism a challenge -- as opposed to merely a scandal -- is the fact that he did not drift into evil, but thought his way into it. And once we acknowledge the powerful attraction of his work, we are morally and intellectually bound to explore what part of that attraction is owed to ideas with a potential for evil . . . . [T]hat more difficult questioning . . . asks us to confront not just Heideg­ger but ourselves.

I'd be interested to know what my philosopher friend Bill Vallicella thinks about this matter, for I can mostly just direct attention to a matter outside my expertise. Heidegger's personal culpability is beyond question, but the question concerning the culpability of his philosophy remains, and I think it an important one, intellectually, for Heidegger the philosopher is considered a major thinker of the 20th century, and his ideas have influenced the intellectual left, continental philosophy, literary criticism, theology, and many other fields.

As noted, I can mostly just call attention to this matter of culpability, but I'm still willing to hazard a guess. In a statement quoted above, Kirsch observes:

The more familiar a reader is with Heideg­ger's work, the more shocking it will be to see him employ his key terms -- being, existence, decision -- as euphemisms for nationalism and Führer-worship.

Kirsch isn't being very precise here in reporting on Faye's evidence, for he offers three different Heideggerian terms used for two different fascist characteristics, but none of the former seems to correspond with either of the latter. Perhaps Kirsch means "euphemisms associated with nationalism and Führer-worship"? But even if "being, existence, decision" are used by Heidegger in his seminars from 1933 to 1935 as euphemisms for Nazi concepts, Kirsch's term "euphemism" suggests that Heidegger is employing some intellectual sleight of hand, using more innocuous terms to hide something less reputable, a form of equivocation. If Heidegger is equivocating in his use of key terms from his philosophy, then his core concepts might not be essentially evil but merely corruptible.

But I haven't read Faye's book, and I would be in deep waters even if I had, so I leave this intellectual sea for better, more experienced sailors to navigate and chart . . .

UPDATE: My friend Bill Vallicella has offered his view of the matter.

Japanese Nihonjinron an Influence on Korean Hanguginnon?

Robert N. Bellah

(Image from Robert N. Bellah)

Over the past decade or so, my old UC Berkeley advisor Robert Bellah has been writing his magnum opus, a deeply thought-out work on religious evolution that applies a Durkheimian-inspired, comparative, diachronic analysis to the several great world religious systems. I've read every chapter and offered some suggestions (mainly editorial), and therefore could let the cat out of the bag by revealing all of Bob's secrets . . . but I'll stay mum.

I can, however, reveal that he's nearing completion. Just yesterday, I read his 135-page chapter on India and admired his skill in analyzing the characteristic details and synthesizing the systemic features of a religious civilization that he freely admits approaching as an scholarly outsider. That chapter is his final one focusing on a single religious civilization. Basically, he needs only to write a conclusion, and the entire work will be finished, though he tells me that he's working on a preface and touching up one of the earlier chapters.

Anyway, I wrote him a note thanking him for letting me read the India chapter and apologizing for my six-month delay in doing so. As part of my explanation for being so tardy, I mentioned my own recent Daesan readings and scholarly writings, which have kept me busy above and beyond my teaching -- including my essay on Korean identity, which I linked to for him to take a look at. He read it quickly, and responded:

Your piece on Korea was interesting, especially since I have never really studied Korea. My only comment is that the recent ethnocentric nationalism that you describe is an almost exact copy of what is happening in Japan, where it is call nihonjinron, the theory of the Japanese, also unique, homogeneous by blood, and going back long before the imported religions. I wonder if the exposure of Koreans to Shinto, the religious expression of ethnocentric nationalism in Japan, did not influence the Koreans to develop their own counter version, that turns out to be structurally just like the Japanese.

I've heard of nihonjinron but know little about it. Bob's remark reminded me of the thesis proposed by Brian R. Myers concerning North Korean ideology, namely, that it is a blood-based fascism modeled upon Japanese fascism.

Be that as it may, I searched for a scholarly article on the question of Korean nationalism's debt, if any, to Japanese nationalism, and I found a paper by Han Kyung-Koo (Han Gyeong-gu), a professor in the Division of International Studies at Kookmin University. The paper is titled "The Anthropology of the Discourse on the Koreanness of Koreans" (Korea Journal, Vol. 43, No.1, Spring 2003, pp.5-31) and can be read online by clicking the underlined title.

Han's article looks at what is called "hanguginnon, the discourse on the Koreanness of the Koreans or hanguk munhwaron, the discourse on the Koreanness of Korean culture in modern Korea," and an entire section bears the heading 'The Influence of Nihonjinron on the Making of Hanguginnon' and states in its opening paragraph:

Many Korean writers of hanguginnon have been heavily influenced by nihonjinron in one way or another. Hanguginnon writers of the late Joseon period and of the colonial period tried to respond to Koreans' deepest desire for independence and modernization. In the process of supposedly defending Koreans' minds and souls in the age of imperialism and colonialism, they found it useful to adopt, consciously or unconsciously, many of the points and arguments of the nihonjinron writers of prewar Japan, which were also the outcome of Japan's troubled search for a new identity as well as the struggle against the West to regain self-confidence. Thus, in challenging Japanese colonialism, many Korean intellectuals ironically ended up consciously or unconsciously emulating the arguments of nihonjinron writers.

The article, at least in part, answers Bellah's question, as to whether "ethnocentric nationalism in Japan . . . influence[d] the Koreans to develop their own counter version," by offering a complex affirmative.

I'll leave the rest of the article for the interested to read, for it's a relatively brief and easy paper.

Korean Identity: Follow-Up

The Korean People

(Image from Wikipedia)

Since I had a late night out with a Korean friend whom I've known since my time in Germany back in the early 90s, I'm not really clearheaded enough for a genuine blog entry, so I'll just inflict upon faithful readers another passage from my lightweight article on "Korean Identity?" This passage follows a longer one on Christianity in Korea, but it argues against a broadly significant Christian cultural influence here yet:

In the longer run, Christianity tends to reshape society from a shame culture to a guilt culture, for the real value of an individual is found not in what others think but in what God knows. Christian influence in Korea, however, has been of significance for only a very brief time, and Confucian values continue to predominate, maintaining a society where that which matters most of all is one's hierarchical status, undergirded by honor and threatened by shame. Confucianism would thus seem to be the dominate quality in Korean identity, though the long Buddhist presence on the peninsula has left an underlying substratum, and Christianity is growing in its significance. Korean identity would therefore appear to be what Brague calls "eccentric," centered on places that -- to its own geo-cultural sphere -- are external, namely China, India, and the West. But not all is as it appears. Koreans experienced thirty-five years of Japanese colonialism, and the post-liberation period has seen an exponential rise in Korean nationalism, a surge of feeling that pervades society and infuses the political right, left, and middle. Especially North Korea has emphasized Korean nationalism of an extreme form, for what is the North's ideology of juche other than a radically nationalistic elaboration of exclusively Korean identity? Hostility to the US and Japan, and distrust toward Russia and even China characterize the North's ethnically based ideology. The North Korean case is extreme, of course, but South Korea shares some degree of the North's ethnic nationalism and still claims Korean purity of blood as the basis for this nationalism. Koreans therefore appeal to an indigenous Korean identity that would predate Western Christianity, Chinese Confucianism, and Indian Buddhism, thereby centering Korean identity in nativist ethnocentrism.

I follow this passage with a longer one on the meaning of the Dangun myth, but I'll spare you that.

Now for some needed rest . . .

Park Wan-suh in Colonial Modernity in Korea

Colonial Modernity in Korea

(Image from Amazon.com)

In ranging about the internet yesterday in search of Pakchŏk Village, Park Wan-suh's birthplace, I came upon an article about another of her novels, this one in the book pictured above, Colonial Modernity in Korea, edited by Gi-Wook Shin and Michael Robinson. The article, by Kyeong-Hee Choi, is titled as follows:

Neither Colonial nor National: The Making of the "New Woman" in Pak Wansŏ's "Mother's Stake 1"

Note yet another variant on the romanization of her name: Pak Wansŏ. This sort of problem happens all the time with Korean names, and one must remain alert to possible variants on a name or else miss out on translated books and literary-critical articles. I'll stick to Park Wan-suh except when quoting.

At any rate, the novel treated -- Mother's Stake 1 (Ômma ûi Malttuk 1, 엄마의 말뚝 1) -- is the first in a trilogy, each volume of which is distinguished merely by a number: 1 (1980); 2 (1981); and 3 (1991). I note it here because it seems to be much the same story as Who Ate Up All the Shinga?, albeit perhaps more 'fictionalized'.

Anyway, Kyeong-Hee Choi makes the observation -- obvious also to any reader of the Shinga book -- that Park Wan-suh's trilogy hardly mentions any Japanese characters. Park seems not to share the intense nationalism with which so many Koreans now look back upon the colonial period, seeing constant oppression everywhere, but rather presents a more complex picture of colonial Korea. Choi cites Anne McClintock at the onset of her article, perhaps as representative of Park's apparent neglect of Korean nationalism:

All nationalisms are gendered, all are invented, and all dangerous . . . . Nowhere has feminism in its own right been allowed to be more than the maidservant to nationalism.

Park, however, also isn't explicitly feminist, at least not in Who Ate Up All the Shinga?, though her autobiography -- and moreso many of her fictional works, apparently -- leaves room for feminist interpretations.

I suppose that one could even frame Park's oeuvre in nationalist terms if one wished, but that would take a more nuanced nationalism than many Koreans are willing to concede when looking back upon the colonial past.

But I'll leave things at that for now.

Ethnic Nationalism vs. Civic Nationalism

Virginia Tech Candlelight Vigil

(Image from Wikipedia)

Kyonggi University professor Kim Gi-bong has written a generally insightful article, "Bright, dark sides of civic nationalism in the U.S.," published in yesterday's Korea Herald (May 7, 2007).

Kim begins by observing that "[t]he way Americans responded to the massacre perpetrated at Virginia Tech on April 16 was quite different from the way average Koreans did." As did the rest of us observing the differing reactions, Kim notes that Koreans not only "focused on the fact that the murderer was a Korean" and felt sorrow for Americans, they even felt "a collective sense of shame and guilt." Moreover, says Kim, in their reflections on the killings, Koreans hope that Americans will "put it behind them as soon as possible."

By contrast, Kim points out, Americans regarded the shootings "as a social problem unique to them," i.e., as the expression of a systemic problem in a society that allowed someone so deeply disturbed as Seung-hui Cho "to buy a weapon with no difficulty." Although Koreans would like for Americans to put the shootings behind them, "Americans show an attitude of wishing to have it serve as an occasion to remedy the structural problems of their society by remembering it."

Moreover, one way in which Americans chose to remember the shootings was most surprising of all to Koreans:

[Americans] put a total of 33 memorial granite stones, including one for the murderer, in an oval shape on the center lawn of the Virginia Tech campus. Later, the stone for the murderer was taken away, but letters forgiving what he did and showing compassion for what he suffered were placed where his stone was. The university held a memorial service one week after the case. The bell was tolled 33 times and 33 white balloons were sent into the sky. They appeared to remember the murderer as a victim.

"How," Kim asks concerning the American response, "do they have such a mature sense of citizenship?"

Kim gives some reasonable suggestions for this fact. American society, he argues, "came to have its unique civic nationalism in the form of a secularized political religion as a result of combination of Christian love and forgiveness mixed with patriotism." Combined with this are some Enlightenment principles (though Kim doesn't identify them as such) that stem from the foundational period of the American republic:

As the phrase E pluribus unum ("one from many") included in the Great Seal of the United States shows, it is a community comprised of immigrants from all over the world. The [American] people's greatness lies in the attitude recognizing even such a murderer as Cho Seung-hui as part of them. The source of such greatness is their willingness to keep universal values of humans, such as life, liberty and happiness.

Although Kim doesn't use the expression "ethnic nationalism," that is the sort of nationalist response that Koreans were expecting because it characterizes Korean nationalism. But Americans are not a people of a single ethnicity. Americans' "civic nationalism" surprised and mystified Koreans because that was not how they would have reacted.

Kim, however, finds a limit to American civic nationalism, a "dark side" that can be seen by contrasting the response to Cho's shootings with the response to the 9/11 terror:

At the time of 9/11, Americans did not regard the terrorists as victims because the terrorists were not part of their society. The limitation that the American civic nationalism has is that only American compatriots are eligible for their love and forgiveness.

This different response, Kim suggests, should lead "Americans to have self-reflection concerning their mental barriers with regard to nationalism."

On this point, I think that Kim is mistaken. The 9/11 terror was an unprovoked act of war and thus elicited a response according to the logic of war. Since the terrorists had lived among Americans, all the while plotting the horrifying attack, Americans were first and foremost fearful about the possibility of further attacks by an Islamist enemy. That fear, I think, accounts for the great anger toward Muslims in the wake of 9/11. Yet even so, hostile acts toward individual Muslims were rare and always roundly condemned by most Americans.

Be that as it may, Kim offers a 'solution' to the 'limits' of America's civic nationalism:

[T]o have the "soft power" with which they can spread ... universal values throughout the world, ... Americans should form a salad dish that contains multi-ethnic peoples and cultures as they are, rather than a melting pot mixing them into one. That must be the manifest destiny given to Americans in the era of globalization.

I'm not sure of precisely what Kim is suggesting here, but if he's thinking in terms of a radical multiculturalism, then his suggestion, if acted upon, would have precisely the opposite effect than what he expects. Americans do already accept multiethnicity and even a degree of cultural variety within America. Call it moderate multiculturalism. A radical multiculturalism, however, would lead to a fragmented America in which a multitude of ethnic nationalisms would compete. Imagine, in that case, a very different 'American' response to the Cho shootings.

Moreover, it is not correct -- as Kim claims -- that for Americans, "only American compatriots are eligible for their love and forgiveness."

After all, Americans did forgive the Japanese.