[Nettime-bold] Eagleton

[eldorra mitchell <manynotone@yahoo.co.in>]

y Eagleton
                 Dublin
                 It's Islamic fundamentalism, not The
Satanic Verses, that
                 represents a blasphemous version of
the Koran. Most
                 ideology, however, works by a
distinction between what one
                 does and what one says one does, such
that the one does not
                 impinge too embarrassingly on the
other. There is thus no
                 conscious contradiction between faith
in Allah, God of justice
                 and mercy, and murdering innocent
American citizens or
                 dismissing a woman's testimony of
rape as ipso facto invalid.
                 Similarly, there is no conscious
hypocrisy in believing yourself
                 the great bastion of freedom while
massacring Cambodians,
                 financing terrorist thugs like the
Contras, embargoing Iraqi
                 children to death and being in effect
a one-party state, since
                 the belief and the deeds belong to
incommensurable realms.
                 Phrases like 'freedom-loving peoples'
can't be invalidated by
                 anything as ingloriously mundane as
the facts.
                     This is one reason why there is
only a faint hope that the
                 US, in the wake of the moral
obscenity wreaked on it, will
                 recognise that the question of who
one is is always dialogical,
                 and stop behaving like the man in
Wittgenstein who, when
                 asked how tall he was, responded by
placing his hand on top
                 of his head. In Planet of the Apes,
the gung-ho American hero
                 arrives at the inconceivably remote
planet to find some of the
                 younger apes playing basketball. It's
a bit like those dwarfish
                 American citizens with oddly
triangular eyes who regularly step
                 out of UFOs grounded in Nebraska.
                     America's only hope is to see
itself in the eyes of others,
                 but globalisation, which means that
one of the most fearfully
                 parochial nations in the world now
stretches to every corner of
                 the earth, shatters the mirrors in
which it might contemplate its
                 own estranged visage. As the globe is
flattened into a single
                 space, it is by the same stroke
carved rigorously down the
                 middle. Civility now confronts
barbarism - which is to say,
                 among other things, that the
fundamentalist fanatics of Montana
                 are pitched against the wisdom of
artists like Naguib Mahfouz
                 or 'Abd al-Hakim Qasim.
                     In the conflict between
capitalism and the Koran, or a
                 version of it, one transnational
movement confronts another.
                 For the moment, in its atrocious
suffering, the US has the
                 moral advantage over its equally
frontierless foes. Shortly, no
                 doubt, it will squander even that.
                 ^ back to top



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