The phrase belongs to Theodor Adorno, who also wrote:
No universal history leads from savagery to humanitarianism, but there is one leading from the slingshot to the atomic bomb.
Carl von Clausewitz argued that war is a continuation of politics by other means. He also argued that war is a prime example of the universal tendency of plans to fail, and of the intentions of action to misfire and backfire. The “noise” of war was of prime concern to Clausewitz.
Politics is about the creation and contestation of meanings, and about the distinction between friends and enemies. War has a substrate of lived experience – and of the experience of death, often the death of innocents. The continuation of this war requires that meaning overwrite the bodies of the dead, Lebanese, Palestinian or Israeli. It requires that politics inscribe justifications and rationalisations on death. War is also about the violent inscription of narrative signification on the stuff of life and death.
Universal narratives are mobilised as well as divisions – “the global war on Terror”, “anti-semitism”, “a new Middle East”, “the clash of civilisations”. War makes it more vital that we employ a hermeneutics of suspicion, precisely in the service of truth and undeconstructible justice.
Another way of making sense and assigning meaning to fragmented events exists aside from their inscription in rhetorical totalities. Music.
Trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj improvised some music over a recording of his lived experience – the sound of bombs falling on Beirut. You can listen by clicking this link. In doing so, perhaps Kerbaj can provide you with a counterpoint to grand abstractions.
“It is freaking for the nerves but I quickly understood that if I play music while it is happening, it is much better than just hearing it happening. Somehow my brain shifts and I focus totally on the music.”
Asked if he thought his composition was in questionable taste, he said: “Throwing bombs on buses with kids escaping from their villages is in much more horrible taste.”
He said the recording was a way of making people listen to what Beirut was facing. “It’s not like on CNN. It is not a Hollywood movie, it is really happening.”
A very interesting mp3.
Clausewitz presented the thesis that war is a continuation of politics. He then concurrently presented the antithesis that war is mere mindless brutality. He proceeded to argue both sides as a means to bring the debate around to his actual belief, that war is a mixture of both.
I know it doesn’t fit with your post, but war can and has had meaning.
And what songs did Mazen compose in Lebanon over the last 6 years as he and the UN observers watched Hesbollah installing all those lovely rockets and fundamentalist institutions of theirs. A bit of Blues Brothers or perhaps he played Fiddler on the Roof as Nero? Ah those creative types. Always out there at the cutting edge of social consciousness, asking the tough questions and challenging the conventional wisdom. Where would the Lebanese be now without them eh?
Are there any claims of Hisbollah rocket installations in Beirut? I know that they have “fundamentalist institutions” such as clinics and schools there, and quite possible were moving munitions through there in trucks, but were they actually setting up rockets there? (I really don’t know and am willing to be corrected on this)
I’m not sure how a musician who works at night and sleeps half the day was going to see much of what Hisbollah were doing in closed trucks heading through town towards the southern hills. After all, I have no idea which trucks carrying cargo containers are carrying official army ordinance through Sydney, let alone any illegal arms imports. If someone set up a rocket installation in the courtyard of the warehouses a few blocks away, I would never see it.
It’s also amazing how easy some people find it to blame UN observers, who aren’t allowed to use weapons, for failing to stop what people a long way away surrounded by other people with lots of guns are doing. It’s the UN Security Council, not the UN as a whole, which acts on the reports of UN observers, and it’s the USA that dominates the Security Council, refuses to allow the Security Council to implement any UN resolutions it doesn’t like, and then blames the UN for inaction.
Which one is it, Ave Imperator or Oy Gevalt?
That’s what they all said at the AWB, Enron, Ansett, HIH, OneTel, etc when the manure hit the propellor tigtog.
Perhaps a creative man in crisis now should stick to Ghost Dancing?
http://americanthinker.com/comments_print.php?comments_id=5668
Observa, you’re weird, dude.
The issue is not the UN Observers; it is the fact that they are observers only. The UN should give them teeth as no one to my knowledge has ever been forced into compliance by the site of a blue beret. Resolution 1559 called for the disarmament of Hezbollah and that should have been enforced instead of just positioning the poor observers so they can report every 6 months for two years that everybody is ignoring it or doesn’t have the backing or sufficient power itself to to impliment it (Lebanon).
The US blocks resolutions that are just plain stupid and generally tabled by the Arab collective that make demands of Israel and none of the other parties. Some quick research on the US veto also suggests they don’t actually use it often and when they do, it is mostly concerning the Israel-Palestine conflict.
I wait patiently for a reolution that condemns Hezbollah for deliberately siting weapons amongst civilians to exacerbate the non-military casualties to feed the press; as well as condemning Israel for her mistakes.
waiting……waiting….
I’ll spell it out for you Pavlova. Spare us the Sergeant Schultze defence about what Hesbollah were doing in Lebanon crazy left people.
Yes I know. LPers happen to think Hesbollah is only interested in making the trains run on time, while I think they mean death by a thousand cuts to all infidels.(Israel is not having a bar of that strategy of course) Consequently anyone here who treats Hesbollah and their cheer squads as the latter is a ‘weird dude’. Naturally, we weird dudes also have a view about you Ghost Dancers(see link for definition). Might also be a case of Dancing with Wolves if you get my drift. I suppose that’s the problem with being ‘out there’ a bit too long. You can forget what civilisation’s all about and it can seem a little weird after a while. I promise to be civil and patient with you all though.
Kev:
This whole show mught be the straw that breaks the camel’s back so far as the UN is concerned. After what happened to UN people in Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Lebanon and a dozen other places, the Rules Of Engagement are probably heading for a swift and radical overhaul. Fire returned immediately. CounterBombardment to do a really cracker job on anyone who even thinks of firing on a UN post. And a few nasties to make the pilot of an attacking aircraft become the late pilot of a descending cloud of airframe bits and engine fragments …….
I suggested, on another thread, that the US and Israel might end up getting expelled from the UN …. now that’s looking more likely.
Back to the topic: If musicians use music to cope with the harsh realities of war, then good luck to them. Playing music is a lot better than getting boozed or stoned …. and there’s the added benefit that it would distract and cheer up anyone around them who could hear their music. What’s wrong with having a little touch of normality in an abnormal sutuation?
It is not your position, Obs, disagree with it as I may (though as a matter of fact I am deeply conflicted about this war, and certainly totally anti-Hisbollah as most if not all LPers also are — as you would know if you read the posts).
No, it’s not (always) what you say wherein the weirdness resides, Obs; it’s the gnomic way in which you say it.
What’s much more interesting is this point of Tigtog’s, which can’t be made often enough:
‘it’s the USA that dominates the Security Council, refuses to allow the Security Council to implement any UN resolutions it doesn’t like,’
Rubbish! The US has the same veto power as any other Security Council member. How can it dominate it? That’s not to say I agree with any such veto power, providing the UN voting comprises only liberal democratic nations. While it doesn’t, it is all too often a podium for a gaggle of gangsters and their cheer squads running the show. Naturally a liberal democracy like the US will be objecting most to that with its veto power. So would Australia in their position.
Graham Bell
I agree and it follows that if the UN ever do get the balls to strike at aircraft attacking them then they would presumably be sufficiently revved up beforehand to enforce Resolution 1559 by evicting Hezbollah from Lebanon, thus obviating the need to defend themselves in the first place.
‘I suggested, on another thread, that the US and Israel might end up getting expelled from the UN …. now that’s looking more likely.’
I can’t wait for that Graham. Then we can cut loose the gangsters and join them in a United Liberal Democratic Nations. We won’t be alone for long and then the rest can please their bloody selves whether they want to sign on to our values and vote, or piss in each other’s pockets along with the Mugabes, Ahmadinejads, Assads, Jong Ils Castros, etc.
That’ll be sweet music to my ears then!
The “Screw you guys, I’m going home” approach. To be taken exactly as seriously as the idea that the US and Israel would be expelled from the UN. As observa pointed out, this is an organisation so reflexively democratic as to allow Mugabe to hang around and Sudan to be on the Human Rights committee.
‘TEHRAN (AFP) – The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said he hoped the Islamic republic could one day “avenge the blood of innocent people in Palestine, Lebanon,Iraq and Afghanistan”.’
“We have to keep this sacred hatred of the enemies of Islam alive in our hearts until the time of revenge comes,” General Yahya Rahim Safavi was quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars news agency.
“I hope our nation can one day avenge the blood of innocent people in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said, adding: “I ask God to arouse the dignity of Muslims and destroy America, Israel and their associates.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060730/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflictiran_060730202102
Did you all get the bit about avenging the UN venture in Afghanistan from our Hesbollah mate? Yes Helen Clark, Tony Blair, AmenJihad and Mugabe all deserve one vote one value at the idyllic international moral repository of the left.
Thanks, avocadia, that’s interesting. I guess what I was talking about was the political meaning of war – particularly at a distance. If that makes sense.
I’m more or less know what you were talking about Mark. I do feel though that the Clausewitz quote should never be used without the context that Clausewitz himself argued against the idea that war is simply politics.
Fair enough, avocadia. I just had the feeling we were talking a little at cross purposes.
Mark, I don’t want to be rude, but your post encapsulates much that I heartily dislike about modern social science — the use of high-falutin’ language to say nothing very much.
“War has a substrate of lived experience …” How frakkin’ pretentious that sounds! And how basically trite that is. Of course war is experienced by real people; of course people interpret events through narrative structure, and try to impose political/moral meaning on what happened. Mark, I don’t think you’re going to get the Nobel prize for that amazing insight.
“War makes it more vital that we employ a hermeneutics of suspicion, precisely in the service of truth and undeconstructible justice.” Congratulations, I haven’t read such a pretentious sentence for ages! Why not just say: “In wartime, we should be suspicious of what the warring parties tell us.” But that doesn’t sound so erudite, does it?
I reserve my greatest “hermeneutics of suspicion” for social scientists.
[/rant off]
P.S. Mark, just to finish, please define “undeconstructible justice”, and tell me how you distinguish it from ordinary (deconstructible?) justice.
I’m referring to the ideal or concept of justice, Paulus. Sorry you find my language pretentious. I wasn’t claiming any amazing insight. Just some insight. It is worth pointing out in my view that violence, suffering and death need to be written into narratives to justify them. And it’s also worth pointing out the similarity of suffering whether the victims are Israelis or Lebanese or Palestinians. That’s part of my point too.
Just an editorial note – can I ask people please to post any general comments about the crisis on the general thread – it helps to keep the conversation together rather than having a few threads going where people are essentially saying the same thing.
I’d hoped people might want to talk more about the music and the issues raised by it here.
But if you want to make a comment unrelated to the post, please do so here:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/07/27/more-debate-on-lebanon/
Ok, I might close this thread and ask people to post general comments on the general Middle East thread. If anyone has a great desire to discuss the subject matter of this post, email the LP address (contact details on the sidebar) and we can re-open it.