martyrdom, repudiation

Tony,

--- Interesting. In my view, the martyr as such is a certain
signal point or baroque high point, and certainly not the
only one, in and of violence, revenge and the enforcement of
illusions of justice. It bears many of the basic structures
of violence (totalization, violence itself,
hystericalization, generalization, de-substantialization,
physicalism, sheerness of force, revenge, violent negation,
etc.) The maintenance in nonviolence would reveal these
structures. It may be a necessary product of violence, but
violence is not necessary in certain important ways.

Is the martyr authentic? He or she can be: authentic,
inauthentic, alienated or ruptured. But then, Hitler was in
certain ways very authentic. Does "authentic" mean "good"
for you here? The possibility of the questin of the good is
suspended in Heidegger, I believe. So suspended, as I have
suggested, this good is not de-activated, but operates as
necessary things do when in suspension and systematic
silence. Systematic silence is a bad ground. It is a ground
of violence.

The lesson of the martyr as: personal answer to violence and
requirement of examples? It depends, I suppose. The
impression I get concerning martyrdom is that it operates as
a kind of mechanization of violence into the system of
"stars". The martyr-as-example constitutes above all the
distinction between the one and the many, and is as much an
evidence of the shortcomings of the many as well the
authenticity and possible moral integrity of the martyr. The
many often have "passed the buck" and dumped responsibility
on the martyr. In this respect, the "exemplary" function
serves not to underscore the necessity of personal response,
but the possibiltiy of displacing responsibility into a
certain theatrical field: a capitalization on the "martyr"
by both the violent and the nonviolent. The "star" mentality
and the whole "regime of the proper name" sets up a vastly
disproportionate and also disempowering systm of individual
and central actors, and ties in with several dominant
structures: dictation (the one speaking to the many without
dialogue, non-dialogical dictation, of which Heidegger's
"hearkening" appears to be an example), centralization and
hierarchicalization of power and violence, seizure of truth
through the convenience of the focus on the one, over- and
mis-constitution, the effective use of the pan-optical, and
diffuse and generalized condition of the tecnnology of the
threat. The height of religious discourses, with their
martyrs, might represent the congealed, first phase of the
discourse on violence which is naively nonviolent,
psychologically immature,and non-transvalutional. The star
mentality has rendered the Haitian population of 5 million
impotent against a band of 10,000 thugs. It is rendered the
discourses of "martyrs" like Gandhi and Martin Luther King
all but incomprehensible by putting these people on a plane
different from our own. This "putting on a different plane"
is precisely what President Aristide of Haiti did (see his
autobiography), and in so doing he foreclosed the only
viable route for resistance in Haiti: nonviolence, and
instead had to give in to hypocracy. Yet, poignantly, it was
the nonviolence of Randal Robinson's fast which sparked the
critical mass of concern about Haiti. And we are left with
Haitian labor union leaders, as the one I met at a
conference, asking how there can be *more* Aristides. There
can be more precisely when the star phenomenon as such gives
way to a more universal empowerment. That empowerment, in so
far as it can be released by the academy, lies in the
question of *how*, which is systematically foreclosed
through the capitalization on performance. This at the same
time prefigures the reduction of the moral real to choice,
and essentially partipates in the naive and
nontransvaluational morality constituting "martyrdom" as
such. Nonviolence, in the Gandhian sense, which was highly
effecitve, constitutes above all a radical rupture with the
"star" mentality, and in stead the direct employment of
"experimental" thinking. This is in certain ways a nearly
perfect parallel to the anti-dogmatism and posture of the
scientist of phenomenology, although Gandhi's progression
took place on the hybrid order of ahimsa satyagraha.

The conditions of naive and non-transvaluational morality
appears to me to have lead to the flight from "the
positivities" into the independent and de-moralized
ontologies we encounter here. It accounts for the
characteristic scoffing "disregard" for the moral one can
easily find in the philosopher. The emergence of
thoughtaction disrupts in the process both the original
moral field/condition of which the martyr is a signal
occurance and the major division between thought and action
by which the discourses of, in and on thought occur. The
philopher as thinker does not go far enough and becomes
alienated. This alienation permates many aspects of the
humanities.

In so far as martyrdom constitutes punishment, which is
largely the case, at the same time it represents the falling
of nonviolence into revenge as punishment, which
systematically disrupts the inner integrity and ownmost
functions of Dasein. It is surprising to me, and really only
an "unverified" suspicion on my part, that many "academics"
vascillate between a retreat from the moral and a repressed
or silenced, and hence bad, and seemingly often seething
version of the very same morality from which it has taken
flight. In any event, as deploying guilt and punishment, the
condition of nonviolence is lost in the process, for this
reason: punishment constitues the illusion of remorse.
Punishment may be the primary falling of *moral* Dasein.
"Beware all those in whom the desire to punish is strong".
(not exact quote) Nonviolence knows that remorse is the true
conditin of justice. Punishment is the attempt to satisfy
the need for justice through the artificial imposition of
suffering, whereas remorse is the authentic suffering of the
one who cares who as commited a violence. In so far as
martyrs take their place in the dominance of the illusion of
punishment, they are not *authentically moral* at all,
though they may be existentially authentic, though really
the whole discourse might break down here. Heideggerian
guilt is in no way a phenomenologically adequte description
of the maintenance of Dasein in nonviolence. There is
empathy and genuine care for others. Guilt is the
identification of the commision of violence. As "guilt" it
is the determination by self and others. The experience of
the "guilty!" as responsible includes no conception, in
Heidegger, of co-suffering. Indeed, Heidegger negates co-
suffering. Yet this condition of co-suffering is that within
which every healthy intimate relationship maintains itself.

The current trend to bring back the death penalty is a good
example of how we are losing this contact with authentic
remorse. Gandhian justice, as was Gandhi's practice even as
a lawer, is to bring about reconciliation and remorse, not
to exact punishment. The Grameen bank of Bangladesh handles
non-repayment of loans in a similar justice principle,
rather than through the exacting of penalties, and has a
very high payback rate (98 percent!). When there is a severe
death penalty, we are, perhaps, not murdered. We look into
the face of the other, but do not know whether the other is
*not* murdering us out of fear of retribution or out of fear
of co-suffering. There is a big difference. A project I'm
trying to initiate, the Thoughtaction Collective reparative
justice project, aims to critique the criminal justice
system according to the history, within that system, of
reparative justice. Reparative justice is closer to
developing authentic remorse. Remorse has been identified as
a strong component in the effectiveness of the Japanese
justice system. Minimally dependable lowering of recidivism
rates through reparative sentencing are stastically
projectible. If so projected, we can project the dependable
possibiltiy of saving X amounts of lives and lowering the
crime rate by X amount. If you are interested in this
project, you are invited to contact me about it.

Those who I have seen who maintain themselves predominantly
in guilt as an orgainzing principle appear to me to be,
morally, profoundly inauthentic. As founded on martyrdom,
his writing might constitute a high-point of the technology
of guilt and punishment.

The question of repudiation is interesting: if the Christian
Church tortur(es)(ed), then it already fully repudiates
itself, unless its cheif constitutive element is alliance
and not nonviolence. Repudiators would come in two classes:
those who are violent and those who are not. Repudiation in
the name of nonviolence would be an affirmation of such a
church in so far as it's grounding principle is nonviolence.
I think that if it says its grounding principle is not
nonviolence, it is anyways, because that is the nature of
nonviolence as a fundamental "law", as Merton quotes Gandhi,
"anti-law", or condition of being. The activation of this
condition is what would happen in "the discourse on
(non)violence".

There can be no question that the anti-Christianity of both
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche constituted "repudiation", yet
both discourses were inbued fully with highly "Christian"
principles of love and nonviolence. So go figure...

---
There is no path to peace. Peace is the path.

Tom Blancato
tblancato@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Eyes on Violence (nonviolence and human rights monitoring in Haiti)
Thoughtaction Collective (reparative justice project)




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