unguided tour

Etwas stimmt nicht in Deutschland, wenn ein Boulevardblatt eine der klügsten, mutigsten und  verantwortungsvollsten Politikerinnen Deutschlands wegen des Überfahrens einer roten Ampel nach 3 Glas Wein erpressen und schließlich zum Rücktritt zwingen kann. Etwas stimmt nicht in Deutschland, wenn weiblichen Politikerinnen die Solidarität verweigert wird, ohne die niemand (auch ein Mann nicht) eine Kampagne der Bildzeitung überstehen kann.

Parallelen zu Heinrich Bölls Erzählung DIE VERLORENE EHRE DER KATHARINA BLUM drängen sich auf. Während Männer, die ein politisches Amt innehaben,  Korruption, Steuerhinterziehung, Psychoterror gegenüber Untergebenen beinahe mühelos überstehen (und sich mit der Bildzeitung bestens verstehen),  fühlt eine Frau sich nach einem Verstoß gegen die Straßenverkehrsordnung, bei dem niemand zu Schaden gekommen ist und der nicht das Geringste mit ihrem Amt zu tun hat, zum Rücktritt gedrängt. Dagegen sieht  der hessische Ministerpräsident und CDU Vorsitzende Roland Koch — um einen bekannten kriminellen Politiker beim Namen zu nennen — seine Glaubwürdigkeit durch die jahrelang von ihm selbst aktiv unterstützte Verschleierung illegaler Parteispenden an die CDU (Stichwort: “jüdische Vermächtnisse), mit der die Partei sich im Wahlkampf Vorteile verschaffte,  eher bestätigt als beschädigt.

Wenn wir schon in Hessen sind: Manchmal bedarf es nicht einmal eines Gesetzesverstoßes. Als Andrea Ypsilanti 2009 ankündigte, ihr ambitioniertes Programm für mehr soziale Gerechtigkeit entgegen ihrer Aussagen im Wahlkampf mit den Stimmen der Linkspartei zu realisieren, bekam sie ein “Glaubwürdigkeitsproblem” und sah sich kurze Zeit später zum Rücktritt gezwungen. Auch hier hat die Bildzeitung kräftig nachgeholfen.

Wann hat die Bildzeitung jemals gegen Roland Koch und seine korrupte Ministerriege “Aufklärung” betrieben? In einem Land in dem  Alkohol am Steuer bei einer Frau moralisch schwerer wiegt als die Anstachelung zu Rassismus (Stichwort: “Wo kann man hier gegen Ausländer unterschreiben?”) und das Eintreiben illegaler Parteispenden im großen Stil sind die Werte  falsch justiert. Alexander Schwabes Kommentar in DIE ZEIT legt den Finger auf die Wunde — eine Wunde, die mit Margot Käßmanns Rücktritt nur fürs erste und scheinbar geschlossen ist.

“Wie mündig und erwachsen sind wir eigentlich, dass es noch Bischöfen und Bischöfinnen bedarf, vorzuleben, was und wie etwas richtig ist? Ist nicht frei nach Luther jeder aus sich heraus verantwortlich dafür, was er glaubt und was er tut? Eine Gesellschaft wäre reifer, wenn sie keine makellosen Helden an ihrer Spitze bräuchte. Wenn es genügte, dass das Führungspersonal einfach nur den Job gut macht. Der Ruf nach lupenreinen Vorbildern ist allzu sehr Ausdruck einer infantilen Sehnsucht.”

Was Schwabe nicht erwähnt, ist die Tatsache, dass es vornehmlich Frauen sind, die sich mit dieser infantilen Sehnsucht nach lupenreinen Vorbildern auseinandersetzen müssen. Männliche Politiker werden mit anderen, scheinbar erwachseneren Sehnsüchten belegt. Von ihnen erwartet man nicht mütterliche Geborgenheit (eine Form von “Lupenreinheit”), sondern väterliche Autorität. Laut, populistisch, unduldsam.

Margot Käßmanns Mut, eben diesen Autoritätsdiskurs in Frage zu stellen, sich gegen Homophobie, soziale Ungerechtigkeit + Krieg auszusprechen und sich dabei auch von als politisches Argument getarnten Verleumdungen (siehe Ralf Fücks) nicht einschüchtern zu lassen, ist vorbildlich, ohne dabei infantile Sehnsüchte zu befriedigen.

Liebe Margot Käßmann, ihre Stimme wird auch im Ausland gehört. Ich hoffe Sie werden sich auch in Zukunft in die wichtigen Debatten einmischen.

On June 20, 2009 Neda Agha-Soltan, a student at Teheran’s Islamic Azad University is shot by Iranian police on her way to join an antigovernment protest march. She is 26 years old. Someone films her dying on the street, and immediately uploads the video on Youtube making Neda Agha-Soltan the symbol of the student protests and a martyr for democratic reform in Iran.

On June 20, 2009 Neda Soltani, a lecturer of English literature at Teheran’s Islamic Azad University, is in her office revising a book manuscript. She does not join the protesters on their march. It doesn’t matter that Neda Soltani does not know Neda Agha-Soltan, the identities of the two women are about to merge.

Western media hungry for images need a face to go with the story — they find it on Neda Soltani’s facebook page. To our disinterested ears the names sound close enough. Why double check the spelling? It is the icon we’re interested in, who cares about the identity of the individual woman? CNN, BBC, CBS, ARD, ZDF, major newspapers — they all use Neda Soltani’s portrait. Sometimes her name is given with Neda Agha-Soltan’s image. For several weeks — until the government breaks down the opposition — Neda Soltani’s portrait can be seen on banners and posters mourning the shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan.

Neda Soltani tries everything to reclaim her image. She calls TV stations and news channels, she writes follow-up emails and letters explaining the mix-up, demanding that her image be removed, stating over and over again that she is neither dead nor Neda Agha-Soltan. It’s too late, her image has become the face of a brutally crushed struggle for freedom.

Neda Soltani’s photograph has been circulating in the mass media and on social networking sites for over a week when the Iranian government pressures her to denounce the shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan as a hoax instigated by the student protesters in conjunction with Western media. Frightened she flees the country for Germany where she seeks political asylum. Since her arrival in July Ms Soltani has been confined to a dismal refugee detention center waiting to be granted refugee status. No one has apologized to her.

To be robbed of one’s image can destroy a life. Neda Agha-Soltan’s publicized death and Neda Soltani’s loss of control over her image demonstrate how difficult it is for women to protect themselves from the intrusion + manipulation of Western media and their shameless consumers? We condemn the burkha as symbol and instrument of female oppression, we advocate the forced unveiling of Muslim women, we assume we alone know the truth. When will we explain to them we consider their naked faces our property?

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links

The New York Times reports on June 22, 2009 getting the facts right;

The Guardian reports on June 22, 2009 the death of Neda Soltani using Neda Agha-Soltan’s photograph;

An article in the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung tells Neda Soltani’s story of how the ‘false’ image destroyed her life;

A Wikipedia entry on Neda Agha-Soltan’s death.

The role of his life! A ghost, somewhere between dream and waking. A corpse, frozen into speechlessness.  The trial against John Demjanjuk exhibits for the world to see what has been daily routine in most German families since the end of World War II: silence.

If anything, the ghastly presence of John Demjanjuk — charged with murder of more than twenty-seven thousand Jewish prisoners at Sobibor — in a German courtroom proves that regarding the Holocaust the law has little power over the conscience of perpetrators. No judge, no lawyer will make them break their silence. They didn’t speak much of their crimes in Nuremberg and they remained mostly silent in Frankfurt, and so far we haven’t heard a word from Demjanjuk in Munich either. Deeds without doers. Genocide without perpetrators. A German way of life.

The law may fail to make the perpetrators admit their crimes, perhaps because it doesn’t always need their collaboration. In all likelihood, Demjanjuk will be convicted based on circumstantial evidence. But there are ways to end the silence. Why did it never occur to anyone to travel to Ohio where Demjanjuk lived for decades? Not to interrogate. Just to talk, to ask a few questions, to begin a conversation. Isn’t that what civilized people do?

The question is a rhetorical one, of course. For more than six decades Germans have been more than reluctant to talk with former Nazis — and who of my grandparents’ generation wasn’t one? — about their deeds and motives outside of the tightly regulated discourse defined by the law. What is true for the Holocaust is also true for the infamous State Security (Stasi) of East-Germany — which, by the way, had several thousand West-Germans on their payroll. While other countries emerging from a dictatorship have installed Truth Commissions to help resolve conflicts between victims and perpetrators, Germany  has sponsored memorials.

Freedom means the right to remain silent. Silence can be therapeutic, purifying. But silence is also a form of aggression — directed at oneself and at the other. Often silence provokes aggression: the desire to hurt, to crush, to elicit a reaction through the infliction of pain.

In the 1970s Germany defeated the terror of the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF). Why should Germans change their minds now?  Because very soon, when the last perpetrator will has passed away, the silence will be that of a graveyard. And then what?

Der Rest ist Schweigen?

The silence of the perpetrators has created a void.

The victims who remember fall into the void.

And the descendants of the perpetrators? — We’ve become tourists in everyone else’s past.

Could it be otherwise?

“Is this the way into the monastery?”

1
I’ve been many things to many people: the most beautiful woman in the world, the icy blonde, “the face that launch’d a thousand ships;” a myth, a phantom, a star; the daughter of Zeus; abused, exploited, exposed; a whore, a victim, a virgin; the torch that burns men’s desire, the shining moon; the primal scene of female beauty. Yet no one can say where I come from and no one knows who I am. Despite the tireless efforts of generations of linguists, my name is an enigma still. Did you know that I have the gift of ubiquity, the ability to be in more than one place at once? Here and not here; there and not there; good and bad; possible or impossible. Paris thought that I was his, although I never was — an idle fancy! To Troy I never went; that was a phantom, an image endowed with life … made … out of the breath of heaven. You think you know me but you shouldn’t always believe what you hear or see. continue reading »

This photograph of John (Iwan) Demjanjuk being wheeled into a German courtroom in Munich reminds me of my grandfather shortly before he died: an old man, ill and barely conscious; an old Nazi who lived a full life, had children, grandchildren, a nice house in the suburbs; a perpetrator who saw himself as victim; a typical “Mitläufer” who for fear of his and his family’s life joined the NSDAP,  avoided resistance,  hung a photograph of Hitler in his living room, and somehow forgot to take it down when the Nazis no longer officially ruled Germany — that’s how I remember my grandfather. continue reading »

Monuments are sites of symbolic exchange.

Last week Granada’s monument to José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder + leader of the anti-republican, fascist Falange party, was decorated with a laurel crown, the symbol of victory and invincibility. Thus decorated the monument speaks about the future (rather than the past or the present) for Primo de Rivera was neither victorious nor invincible — found guilty of anti-republican conspiracy and insurrection he was sentenced to death and executed on Nov. 20, 1936.

Today someone left a reply.

"Granada será la tumba del fascismo," (Granada will be the grave of fascism), monument to Josè Antonio Primo de Rivera, Nov. 26, 2009

Ambiguity. “Oh please!” I whisper to myself impatiently. I don’t like this film. I find it boring, contrived, superficial. I’m relieved when the credits appear. One hundred and seven minutes of pseudo conflicts and superficial propaganda — no depth, no subtleties, no space for interpretation. And yet, ever since I left the movie theatre this mellow summer night in 2003 I’ve been strangely drawn to DER DRITTE. Why? Perhaps because DER DRITTE is not just one film, but two. The first one I forgot about quickly; the other one has lodged itself in my unconscious (now and then short scenes, like flashbacks, force themselves upon me). Everyone who has seen DER DRITTE knows the first one; I may have been the only one who registered the other one. The first one tells a story; the other one does not. It’s time to examine my double vision: DER DRITTE. continue reading »

Translation is like a sex change operation: to change the form in order to make shine the essence, the beauty, the truth of that which lies within. And yet no form or shape is ever adequate. continue reading »

My eyes free what the page imprisons:
the white the white and the black the black.

(Ibn ‘Ammar, d. 1086)

On the flight to Granada I made a vow: not to complain about the disappointments of Spain’s cuisine and its wine. (The notable exception is a Moscatel from Horacio Calvente:, subtly bitter-sweet, gently graced by the moon. A delight from Granada’s mountains.) continue reading »

i’m falling in love with her
hopelessly smitten
and strangely driven
to stop and stare and wonder
how have i been before?
and why do i want more and more?
each into the other, this
plainly forbidden
fruit that has given
form to what was private bliss
upon reflection i find
i’m losing myself and my mind
can I woo her through the looking glass
this refraction of light i see?
in the pool face to face we match
like ghosts, like family,
like angels
translucent and
in-between
i’m falling in love with her
brazenly object
willingly subject
as sunlight through the moon
like a soliloquy or two
forever as one, me and you
(Patricia Barber, Narcissus, from the album Mythologies) continue reading »

If you ever wish to escape the colonizing power of visual images (or need proof of its reality) — go to the Alhambra. I promise it will be a liberating experience,  a revelation of sorts — even among the scores of tourists.

The architecture is stunning. Marvelous. So beautiful it brings tears to my eyes. continue reading »

A king in a land without frontiers.
A postmodern solver of riddles, seduced 
by a masculine conceit.
Diffèrance.

I’m allergic to roots, eradication is my profession. continue reading »

All my life I have been a poor go-to-sleeper. People in trains, who lay their newspaper aside, fold their silly arms, and immediately, with an offensive familiarity of demeanor, start snoring, amaze me as much as the uninhibited chap who cozily defecates in the presence of a chatty tubber, or participates in huge demonstrations, or joins some union in order to dissolve in it. Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals. It is a mental torture I find debasing. … I simply cannot get used to the nightly betrayal of reason, humanity and genius. No matter how great my weariness, the wrench of parting with consciousness is unspeakably repulsive to me. I loathe Somnus, that black-masked headsman binding me to the block… (Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory)

I’m sorry you feel that way. Try and look at it with my eyes. continue reading »

La Plaza del Campillo is a busy square in the center of  Granada. Ice cream parlors, souvenir shops, restaurants. In the afternoons natives + tourists come here to relax on the benches by the fountain. Kids running around, dogs sleeping in the sun.

Mornings are different.  continue reading »

Charges have been dropped against German artist Ottmar Hörl accused of displaying Nazi symbols in public. Authorities were not amused by his installation of an array of silver and golden garden gnomes, their right arms raised in Hitler salute. continue reading »

It’s lunchtime and the city goes to sleep for four hours. I don’t normally eat lunch (I prefer dinner) nor do I take a nap during the day. With no one to talk to, I read.

In the inside there is sleeping, continue reading »

In Spain October 12 is colonization day (el Dia de la Hispanidad). A day-long fiesta. Something to be proud of? I’m not Spanish.

Here’s the Granada rap: continue reading »

Granada,  city of the sleepless.

When I fall asleep, you wake me up. continue reading »

Granada is the capital of beauty.

The tourists who come to the city long to see with their own eyes the “green-purple moon appear in the bluish mist of the Sierra Nevada;” hear with their own ears Granada’s purest voice: “the sound of hidden water, like the pulsing of an ever-living mystery;” feel on their skin the “breeze that comes from the old hills of the Alhambra — from the bonfire of saffron, deep gray, and blotting paper pink of its walls,” “an air so beautiful it is almost thought.” continue reading »

At Penn State, the nation’s No. 1 Party School, the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts has every reason to be worried. The recent death of a freshman and minor after drinking heavily at a frat party may tarnish the University’s reputation. In a contribution for the October issue of the college’s Liberal Arts Times the Dean explains how faculty are supportive of students’ harmful and irresponsible drinking rituals. continue reading »

continue reading »

Down the deserted street
goes a black horse
the wandering horse
of bad dreams.
(FG Lorca)

Perhaps the best way to get to know the ghosts of a city is by looking for an apartment. A sucker for historical settings I begin my search in the Albayzin, the city’s oldest quarter and for almost eight centuries the heart of muslim Granada. continue reading »

For those in power the transition from one absolute ruler to another is a moment of great anxiety precisely because it reveals the gap between the dictators ordinary mortal body and his claim to extraordinary immortal power. Francoist Spain is no exception. continue reading »