I finished the first chapter of Shlomo Sand's Invention of the Jewish People. Many thoughts are going through my mind. First thought. Shit! I wish I had written that. It is an excellent summary of various thoughts and history I've been trying to figure out in my mind and just couldn't organize them.
My next thought was this chapter should be re-issued separate from the rest so it could be used in history and social sciences courses without the controversy associated with the rest of the text. The last thing most people in teaching need is some asshole neocon coming after them. If I was my imaginary art history teacher, I would go to a copy center and have the first chapter copied for hand out reading. Most art students and no doubt art historians do not understand the social cultural function of art. Sand explains it. I would use the French painter Jacques Louis David to illustrate how David created the concept of a republic and then an empire, and therefore the modern legend of France as a nation state built on classical principles from Rome (Not! It was the legend of the Enlightenment you idiots). Next I would use some of the sculptors and architects of the period who invented neo-classicism to be the mythological carrier of both the American and French legends of state, the myth of state. Look at the god damned buildings in Washington DC---fake Roman Temples---George Washington, our father, a fake Roman Senator.
This whole concept (for me) comes from Ernst Cassirer, in his Myth of State, but also in his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. The former was an application to political theory of the latter, which applied across the whole cultural-mythological world or the dimension of cultural anthropology, and partly from Levi-Strauss et al. Sand doesn't know (or doesn't mention) these origins of most of his hypothesis---but it doesn't matter. He gets the same ideas from historians and marxist influenced scholars, writers----and most importantly summarize them in very condensed ways that bring out the most important aspects, i.e. people invent themselves as part of their social make-up and their myths of state are now an integral part of our mental-social landscape. And yet we walk down the street (my street anyway) and rarely see the Jungian archetype American---like in those US Army ads. There are a bunch of giggling Chinese girls, or a bored Yemini at the corner store reading a paperback in the middle of the day, or what looks like a bunch of Sikh holy men driving cabs, not to mention the Mexican flooring contractors, with Mexican polka music on their audio gizmos.
Now there is a reason. Sand went to school in France where a lot of these `relativistic' ideas were current at about the time he was a student.
Which leads me to meditate on the US culture wars. The think-tanks and political blather, and the historian lies fabricated out of some mythic America that dominates our socio-political life are an attempt to re-inscribe the national myth as the central doctrine of state combined with some nonsense coming from the Christian right ... What is this insanity? Finklestein wonders if Israel has gone lunatic fringe. Hell, I wonder about the States. Terrorist state armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, if there ever was one. Pakistan is an island of reason?
Here are some quotes.
``There has never been an organized society, except perhaps in the early tribal stages, that did not produce intellectuals. While the noun `intellectual' is a fairly late one, born at the end of the nineteeth century, the most basic divisions of labor had already seen the rise of individuals whose main activity or livelihood was the production and manipulation of cultural symbols and signs. From the sorcerer or shaman, through the royal scribes and priests, to the church clerics, court jesters and painters of cathedrals, cultural elites emerged in all agrarian societies. These elites had to be capable of providing, organizing and disseminating words or images in three major areas: first, the accural of knowledge; second, the development of ideologies that would preserve the stability of the social order; and third, the provision of an organizing metaphysical explanation for the seemingly magical cosmic order.'' (54-5p)
Now a slight modification. There has probably always been an intellectual. It was the story teller, who could tell the story best. Who could make it the most compelling, create out of the nothingness a manifest form, a primordial occupation. This is the whole essential feature of an oral tradition. which was the cultural carrier---well according to the cultural anthro I was taught. I think I belief it. I know if you can hold somebody, especially a child in awe for a time, you've got the stuff. (Also useful for dates. And political gatherings. Lately, Obama for example.)
``Universal education and the creation of agreed cultural codes were preconditions for the complex specializations demanded by the modern divisions of labor. Therefore every state that became `nationalized,' whether authoritarian or liberal, made elementary education a universal right. No mature nation failed to declare education compulsory, obliging its citizens to send their children off to school. This institution, which became the central agent of ideology---revaled only by the military and by war---turned all subjects into citizens, namely, people conscious of the their nationality. If Joseph de Maistre maintained that the executioner was the mainstay of social order in the state, Gellner's provocative insight was that the decisive role in hte state belonged to none other than the educator. More than to their rulers, the new national citizens became loyal to their culture'' (60p)
In other words you swear allegiance to the myth. Here is the pledge allegiance I first learned:
``I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands; one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all.''
Then I was supposed to learn the Mexican Pledge of Allegiance. This was away too complicated. I mumbled it following along. (It sounds a little like a prayer, nuestros this, nuestros that...) You salute with your hand palm down straight against your chest with your elbow bent which was the same as it was in the US. Here is a picture of Vicenti Fox:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Civil_Salute_Mexican_Flag.jpg
I later saw this in movies as a Roman salute---in those grease paint spectaculars MGM loved to produce, starring Victor MATURE. (What is this guy, older than God? I shouldn't be so snotty. I liked VM as a kid. He did heros good. Later he was very funny imitating himself as an actor.) I only found out tonight the Nazis borrowed this salute from the US and the Communists (including Mexico), adapting it to their myth of state.
Then everything changed once we got back to the states. New myth, new salute the whole nine yards. Now I had to learn a new one and put my hand on my heart, palm flat on chest. I was supposed to believe this more or something:
``I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, *one nation under God*, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.''
In my version of art history, I would bring in the flag on a portable pole and have the whole class stand and pledge alligance, just like grade school, maybe a Microsoft slide on the screen with the words so they got it right. What's it called? Oh, yeah, PowerPoint. (kiss my ass)
Sure it all sounds so silly. But it isn't. It's the stuff, the blood, the being of human nature. Nobody is immune.
CG
