Download Horror and Modernity

Tibor Dessewffy
Horror and Modernity
When in the course of our lives we run up against the crisis of choosing between
our own death or the destruction of others we are doubly cursed, a curse not
lessened by humility. In the case of the death of our loved ones in a car crash or a
terrorist attack we are initially overcome with waves of pain. The elementary
feeling of emptiness from the loss of one we loved, the feelings of sympathy for
others' suffering, and the shock at seeing crushed objects and destroyed buildings
are the first emotions to overcome us. But then, struck in shock, we suddenly will
realize that everything has been broken, that the tissue of understanding has
dissolved, that the never-questioned self-evident nature of everyday practices has
been broken, the crutch of routine breaks in two, and the world no longer operates
as we had known it.
On September 11th we were witness to an unprecedented horror. This horror was
not unprecedented from the point of view of destruction or human suffering. We
who live in the neighborhood of Srebrenica, Vukovar and Sarajevo know that evil
has not been on vacation over the past years. But the collapse of the infernal towers
was different. It was different in part because this horror became a global media
event. In all of human history there has hardly been a series of images that caused
such a degree of dismay worldwide. This globally synchronized shock now calls
for explanation, and we strive to reach a catharsis, we search for a narrative that
can reorder the world that fell apart.
No-one can claim to have the discursive cure, that they can provide 'the real'
explanation for what is inexplicable. We need to carry out our intellectual grieving
process to be able to keep living in this world, to have a reason to get up in the
morning, to work, to love somebody, to have and raise children. As is so often the
case, sociology is accused (and not without reason) of being irrelevant, of offering
no assistance in the analysis of real problems. In preparing for cognitive grieving
however we might recognize that the best of contemporary sociologists have
worked out theories that fit these events quite well. A sociological approach is
important now because, since the terrorist attack, the popular demand to search for
a culprit in the form of an individual, a group or even a country , and the desire for
their just punishment has passed. In addition to the punishment awaiting the crime
and the criminals, more and more analysts wonder about the structural faults that
brought about the terrorists' actions, and what their motivations might be. And if
we speak of structures, sociology can provide us with some guidance.
Here we can refer to Manuel Castells oft-cited theory which unfortunately
diagnoses these events, this terrible tragedy. According to Castells the information
revolution, the oil-crisis of the seventies, and the transformation of identity and
values associated with 'new social movements' has led to a new social formation: a
Network Society based on information. In the New Network Society the structure
of production, power and personal experience has changed significantly, as has the
role played by economic actors, the state and the family. In this Network Society
distance has been reduced, a continuous present rules, and an inconceivable
amount of money, power and knowledge is transferred between nods in the global
web. Two basic contradictions bound this world: the first is what Castells calls the
contradiction between 'Net and Self', or that the capital and information circulating
at the global level continuously runs up against individual possibilities and lives
that can only be comprehended at the local level. By closing an unprofitable
factory, capital can rapidly move, but factory workers cannot follow their
managers to the new plant in Malaysia; the second basic contradiction is between
those within the network, and those outside it. The Net's logic enables it to
disregard those people, groups or continents that it - with its own logic - finds to be
without value. Castells' theory offers a conceptual framework for the evaluation of
current global inequalities. He is not alone in providing such an evaluation.
However, due the complexity of his theory, and because of its comprehension of
power and cultural factors, it offers us important analytical tools.
The first of these is the "exclusion of the excluders". Here Castells means that one
of the common signifiers of anti-globalizers, and fundamentalist groups is that in
their exclusion from the net society they decide that they themselves will
intentionally exclude those whom they blame for their marginalized position. The
new terrorism takes this one step further in that it does not attempt to exclude the
excluders, but calls for their extermination. It is easy to see that compared to
traditional military formations, terrorists form the net-army par excellence in that
they are everywhere, and nowhere at once, or (to borrow a turn from Senator
Charles Schumer), there is no address or zip-code to send our declaration of war to.
It would be impossible to summarize Castells' 1,400 page opus here. However,
there are two chapters in his three-volume work that we must examine. First, in his
overview of the new social movements against globalization - including the
Mexican Zapatistas, the American Militiamen from whose ranks Timothy
McVeigh arose, and the Aun Shinkrikyo sect responsible for the sarin gas attacks
in the Tokyo metro - Castells points out a few common characteristics of all these
groups. For one thing, these groups can be characterized by their mastery, and
maximum use of new technologies. As a result their members, or at least some of
their members, are highly-educated experts who are able to put technology to
innovated new uses. Although over the past few days Hungarian analysts have
tried to convince us that flying a Boeing 747 requires no special training, the
"sophisticated organization" (to use a phrase from CNN) to plan and carry out the
attack shows that those responsible for it are not to be found among stone-throwing
Arab children. The second unique characteristic of anti-globalization movements,
the intentional attraction of media attention, and attempts to control the pictures
shown by the media, hardly needs to be argued for in the case of the attack in New
York. Yet another important factor identified by Castells is that these movements
have social characteristics from their own local societies. Furthermore, the
operation of secret and illegal networks is particularly easy in a network society.
Surprisingly Castells stops here and although he does hint at it, he does not develop
a theory of the dangers of a global anti-globalization movement. He does so,
however, in another chapter where he deals with perverse globalization - with the
internationalization of crime. It would surely be worthwhile to know how the
Sicilian Cosa Nostra, the American Mafia, Colombian Cartels, the Russian Mafia,
Japanese Yakuza and Chinese Triads have come to cooperate, or rather how these
criminal organizations are connected to international anti-global terrorism (The
Hungarian internet news-service Origo has already published an account of the
connections between the Russian Mafioso Sergei Mogilyovich who spent some
time in Hungary, and Osama Bin Laden)
However, it might be more interesting to examine what Castells did not consider,
that the global system does not develop through cooperation between local
organizations, but rather becomes enmeshed worldwide through ideological
inspiration. Over the past few days arrests made in (among other places) Hamburg
Germany, Florida, Boston, Holland, Belgium and Canada suggest that we are truly
faced with an organization spread throughout the world, though estimates of the
organizations membership range from only 3,000 to a maximum of 30,000.
However, it would be a mistake to imagine this organization as operating on the
model of the Bolshevik Party. As the Director of Europol Jürgen Storbeck stresses,
this organization operates as a flexible web. Storbeck believes that "Bin Laden may
have been informed about the preparations for the attack, and he may also have had
some influence on the direction the attack took, but he certainly did not control the
attack nor did he develop the detailed plans for it." Storbeck also stated that he
strongly doubts that Bin Laden could have directed the final stages of the attack
from Afghanistan. The Director of the police organization based in The Hague said
that Osama Bin Laden could not automatically be considered the intellectual father
of all attacks carried out in the name of Islam. He believes that there is a string of
individuals similar to Bin Laden who perhaps are from Bin Laden's camp, but who
do not carry out his orders. This net-like operation is also suggested by the Spanish
secret service when it states that five terrorist groups operate in the south of the
country "that are financed by Bin Laden...these groups are not organized in a
pyramidal structure, but rather horizontally, independently of one-another,
although the may be brought into operation not as individual groups, but all at
once." To summarize: The Net Global System creates global forces against
globalization as well. Certain Islamic sects show a particularly strong elective
affinity (to use Max Weber's phrase) toward a certain religious fundamentalism
that serves as an ideological basis for terrorism. By utilizing technology and their
fanaticism, these movements have become uncontrollable. The inequalities and
frustrations arising therefrom, and the ideological contradictions of the globalized
world-order continuously provide them with new recruits.
There are those of course who, using Castells' model, have visions of positive
scenarios in which the net society takes us on an upward spiral, where global
solidarity and the norms of social responsibility rule, and through investments in
education and a new more just system of redistribution, we are able to moderate
those inequalities that are the deeper causes of terrorism. Such theories are often
supplemented with pragmatic prescriptions for improvement. The problem is that
there is practically no demand to apply such cures. We cannot begin to describe the
lack of this demand without reconsidering the characteristics of modernity.
A Hungarian analyst Béla Galló is right when he says that: „… the new terrorism is
in fact not a secret-service problem, but a problem with the world system. While
we uncompromisingly condemn such attacks that intentionally violate basic human
values, it would be a serious conceptual mistake to place this new type of terrorism
beyond the bounds of our civilization in the realm of darkness, Satan and evil. For
this evil, although it has violated every civilized norm, has not come from without.
Quite the opposite." After the attacks in New York and Washington the question of
how to evaluate the relationship between Horror and Modernity should be raised
by every sociologist, if not everyone involved in the 'reflection industry'. In this
regard Zygmunt Bauman has laid down the standard in his classic work
"Modernity and the Holocaust". According to Bauman the view generally
supported since the Holocaust (and supported by mainstream sociology as well) is
am insupportable fiction that the 'civilized' societies of modernity stood
unblemished against underdeveloped, backward powers of Evil. The genocide
carried out by the Nazis (and that carried out by Stalinists) developed precisely
through the application of the main characteristics of modernity: the widespread
use of industrial technologies; the spread of instrumental rationality and the
operation of bureaucratic organizations. The Holocaust happened not in opposition
to modernity, but by using its unique characteristics, not as an intentional result of
modernity, but as an unavoidable consequence of it. Although horror itself may not
wreak havoc, the background that bring it forth are at work in our seemingly
innocent everyday lives. Imre Kertész's work "Fateless" (’Sorstalanság’) is a
fantastic work of art because in it he places the roots of the Holocaust in everyday
life, and shows how the strangling banality of Evil burns itself into us. In Castells
Network Society something similar happens: the elements comprising the essence
of the system produce the horrors the system means to prevent and control. This
internal absurd paradox is emblematically displayed in Bin Laden's case as well: at
23 years of age he was trained by the CIA by order of President Reagan.
Furthermore, if we can believe the story from Le Figaro "In 1998 the Bin Laden
family was granted the $150 million contract to repair the American military base
in Dhahran that Bin Laden is believed to have destroyed" (cited in Magyar Hírlap.
Sept. 15, 2001). It appears that in this tremendous disfunctionality both of Castells'
contradictions tragically come together. The individual struggling in the cultural
schizophrenia created by the tensions between the Net and the Self, the opposition
between those embraced within and excluded from the Net are as much a part of
this world as the wealth, glamour and pleasure produced by the new structures of
magnificent flexibility.
To return to the social implantedness of the attacks: if we say "we are also
victims" then, no matter how painful and difficult it is, we must also add that "we
are also terrorists". This is not some sort of mushy, misty mysticism. We are
simply part of the global system that evokes these structural tensions that, along
with the preconditions listed above, have come together to produce these awful
attacks.
To be able to alter the world order of Castells' Network Society the essence of the
global system needs to correct itself - to redistribute the unbelievable material and
intellectual capital gathered in the Network's centers, and to make them available
to people who are left outside the Network Society today, who are not even
exploited any longer, but instead who have been shoved by the Net Society into the
quagmire of irrelevance. But there is little hope of this happening. We can search
world history in vain for cases when an elite, practicing nearly unlimited control
over power, will voluntarily give up this power, or at least significantly reduce its
own privileges. What's more, technological development that is the motor of the
Network Society can neither be reversed, nor stopped. It seems much more likely
that networks will simply close, that it will become much more difficult to join
them, and that entry fees will be significantly raised for those who have remained
outside the networks, and who will have even tougher regimes set against them. If
I am correct, the historian András Gerô also predicted this when he saw that some
sort of paradigm change is happening in the field of cultural norms. . According to
Gerô the centuries-old principle of 'an eye for an eye" is being replaced by the
logic of preventive strikes which the Israeli state has been compelled to apply since
1967 (Népszabadság, Sept. 15, 2001). That could be so, but if it is so it will be
awful, and not only because we can see through the example set by Israel the sort
of series of tragedies such logic leads to. No matter that some would argue in
Israel's case that the failure to follow this logic would lead to an even greater
tragedy. As Gerô correctly points out, if this model is followed by the only
remaining superpower, the U.S.A., the results will be even more disastrous.
Preventive strikes initiated because of suspicions, or supposed intentions will bring
us face to face with terrible losses, with masses of dead. But even if we put moral
worries in parentheses (and can we put them in parentheses?) the system has an
even greater problem in that such steps will not solve and cannot resolve anything,
for the problems have structural causes. Villages, cities, and even entire countries
can be blown away, but this will only increase levels of anti-Americanism in the
Third World, will only - if you like - fan flames of fundamentalism. Global
network capitalism has no alternative, and I see little chance of it correcting itself.
To do we would have to stress precisely those values and norms that have been
shoved to the background by the flexible New Capitalism. And what will the future
bring? We have nothing to expect: we must suffer and love and work on through
the hopelessness for a better future.. But how can we do so in the fateless structures
of the Net Society? To keep on living we need to rebuild the world that fell apart in
our personal or collective catastrophes, we need to give new meaning to our
meaningless lives. We will surely rebuild our world after this last apocalypse as
well. But in the rush of daily life we will always hear a quiet whisper, the sound of
Colonel Kurtz hidden in each of us. We will hear his hoarse, wise and embittered
voice describing the entire world in one word. And the word that will ring in our
ears is: the HORROR.