On an as-yet unpublished postscript

 

I do not normally write about political matters on this blog, but every once in a while circumstances compel me. Today, after the disastrous election results in the United States, is such an occasion.  

This blogpost is no analysis or in-depth commentary. There are far better voices and pens than mine for such texts. Rather, what I write here is a touchstone of the times, something that is meant to reflect a particular sentiment at a particular historical juncture.  

Yesterday, I was working on a draft for an article I'm co-authoring. I spent most of the day moving between two cafés on campus, drinking tea and writing by hand, knowing that my self-imposed deadline is too near for comfort. In-between two such writing sessions, I was checking mail and social media, and I happened to catch a clip of the coming US president at a rally in Georgia, where he spoke frankly and as clearly he is capable of doing, that the transition would be "nasty". The quotation was alarmingly unvarnished, uttered in a matter-of-fact way that left no room for doubt about whether he was just giving the audience what they wanted. Rather, the foreshadowed nastiness had hard ring of evil truth to it. 

What I found most arresting about this clip was not so much the words or the matter-of-fact frankness with which they were said. What hit me the hardest was to hear these words at a time when I was writing about violence and utopian thinking. This is a subject I have written about before on this blog, namely in this blogpost, and this. The ubiquity of violence in how people have imagined their ideal societies is something that continues to astound and fascinate me, and I have spent a lot of time these past two years trying to think of the topic in a more coherent way. And, unfortunately, yesterday's comment by the future US president was a reminder of how relevant this kind of research is. Because however abhorrent and evil the plans of US Republicans are, these plans - as exemplified by the roadmap of Project 2025 - do comprise a utopian vision for the future of the United States. Granted, this is a utopia for a select few, but that is precisely one aspect that fits squarely with the tradition of utopian thinking. The selection involves violence, which also fits with this tradition. The promise of violence that has marked the whole Republican campaign points to a period of pain and suffering, because this is how some people imagine their ideal conditions need to be achieved. 

Having heard these horrifying words, having heard them over and over again as I wrote them down for future reference, I sat down and began writing a postscript to the article I am co-authoring, a postscript intended to catch the tenor of the evening before the election, with the promise of violence hanging in the air like smoke after a devastating fire. I do not know whether the postscript will be published. I suppose it will not. But it felt like a necessary thing to write, a kind of memorandum, something to read calmly in a future where things might be better. And, above all, a reminder that for some people, violence is both desired and actively sought out in their quest for what they believe to be a better world, no matter how dark and dreadful that world is. 

Achronology as a cultural force, part 2

 

In my previous blogpost, I described how achronology’s ability to blur and obfuscate people’s understanding of the past could impact cultural, social and political decisions in the present. This ability to influence decisions and currents makes achronology a cultural force. Achronology in its purest form means the merging of the past into a single unit where periodisations do not matter. However, achronology rarely, if ever, operates in its purest form. Moreover, since achronology usually operates in conjunction with other forces, impulses and factors, achronology is also very malleable. And, in addition, achronology both creates and thrives on vagueness. For these reasons, it can sometimes be difficult to detect how achronology enacts its influence in current events. One of the most complicated, but also best, examples is how the past was used during the presidential campaign of the forty-fifth president of the United States from 2015 onwards. The infamous slogan “Make America Great Again” exemplifies precisely how achronology impacts current events. In this blogpost, I aim to make a case for how this campaign slogan should be understood as achronology.        

From the beginning, it must be emphasised that I absolutely loathe the entire campaign of the forty-fifth president, as indeed I loathe any Republican politician. I emphasise this because this present blogpost will also explain why the slogan “Make America Great Again” is a stroke of rhetorical genius. The genius of the slogan must be acknowledged, much as one must acknowledge the rhetorical genius of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph des Willen, while at the same time one can, and should, detest both Fascism and Nazism.          

The core message of “Make America Great Again” has very deep roots. The message evokes the idea of a glorious past that is lost and must now be recovered, a golden age that has to be made anew. Several versions of this concept exist, most famously the story of Adam and Eve, and also in Greek mythology from which the concept of the golden age was mediated to the Romans and onwards to the medieval imagination. A modern version can be seen in various secularist movements that hold up the so-called Enlightenment era as the apex of historical progress, and argue that we need to return to this apex. In essence, the concept of a golden age is the sublimation of nostalgia, very often a false nostalgia, and it serves as a perpetual mirror where contemporary flaws are accentuated and magnified in seriousness.    

The concept of a golden age is, of course, not per definition achronological. Indeed, in several versions the vision of a lost golden past necessitates other historical periods, especially if we follow the traditional scheme of a degradation with the passing of time, where history moves from the golden to the silver to the bronze to the iron age. However, there is also a very common distillation of the idea of a golden age, namely the expression “things were better before”, something very familiar to Norwegian ears, for instance. This expression demonstrates how the idea of a golden age can take on achronological properties. “Before” is not a precise chronological unit, and its main point is that it is not here and now. When people state that things used to be better, they might very well have a clearly defined period in mind. But just as often it expresses a belief that things have become worse than they used to be. In either case, the golden age is somewhere in the past and when that past is not clearly defined it is up to whomever listens or utters this idea to imagine when that past was and how that past was. The ambiguity of the unstated timeframe of the past which was so much better is, in essence, a form of achronology, because it turns the past into a uniform canvas onto which people can paint and pinpoint the golden age wherever and however they wish.      

When people utter variations of the idea that things were better before, they tend to have a specific period in mind, usually the time of their childhood. However, because the past is mythologised in popular culture, in education, and in public discourse, it is also possible that people have other historical periods in mind. As mentioned, for certain so-called rationalists that period was the Enlightenment, notwithstanding the many horrors that unfolded in that period, horrors which were rationalised by thinkers or with recourse to intellectual discourse. For those who fetishise masculinity, it can be any time when “men were men”, be it the Viking Age, the Roman Empire, or the Stone Age. For pathological individualists, it might be the Wild West, or the age of European colonisation. Other candidates for the lost golden age also exist, and since the past is lost to us every part of it is up for grabs whenever someone wants to turn it into something more glorious than it actually was.            

Individual ideas of the golden age are usually time specific, in that people tend to select that part of the past which they know or have mythologised. It is not simply the past in all its vast irrecoverability, but a specific part of it. In this way, the golden age is not in and of itself achronological. However, because the golden age can be placed in so many different places on a timeline, the concept also carries in it something achronological. Because it can be placed at any point in time depending on who places it, the golden age depends on a vague understanding of the past and the chronological progression of time. In effect, the idea of the golden age carves out a space in time that is immutable, which is the very opposite of what history is. Because the golden age becomes preserved like a bug in amber, locked in one motion that makes it recognisable to those who seek it, the golden age is also achronological: it is then, not now, and this is its most important defining feature.          

The concept of the golden age thrives on, and indeed requires, a blurred understanding of history, of the passing of time, and of the complexity of humanity’s shared and entangled history. In this way, achronology – which simplifies and blurs the distinction between parts of history – is a key component in sustaining visions of any piece of the past as golden. Moreover, since the golden age is unfixed in time but shared by so many as a general idea, it can be talked about and agreed upon by several individuals who all have very different visions of that golden age, but who can communicate the idea through shared features and common reference points. The most important feature is that the golden age is in the past. Because people can agree about the existence of a golden age without agreeing, or even describing, when that golden age was, the rhetoric about the golden past is in effect achronological.           

Now that we have established, more or less, that the golden age has achronological properties, we return to the slogan “Make America Great Again”. This slogan has three important features that together make it a very successful tool of manipulation. First of all, it states that America, or the US, rather, once was great. Secondly, it implies that America is no longer great and that its greatness must be recovered. (Yes, these are two points but they work jointly and cannot be separated.) And thirdly, the greatness is to be found again in the future. The last point is important here, because the slogan does not suggest to move back in time, to retreat into the past. In so doing, the slogan avoids the connotations of degeneration that lies in a similar expression, “back to the Stone Age”. The past is lost, we are not moving back there, we are moving forward. The slogan, then, preys on the idea that we progress not only chronologically but also qualitatively, and the best is yet to come, as one Republican spokesperson once screamed at a national convention. Even though this slogan implies a return to the roots, it avoids the negative connotations of a return, or going back to something, and instead of retreating or deteriorating, things are moving up, forward, onward, upward. This distinction is enormously important to the imagination, especially in a country like the US, where the national mythology has trumpeted the idea of progression and improvement more or less since its beginning as an independent political unit. 

The first point of the slogan, that America was once great, is of course the key component, and this is where achronology is enacting its force. Because the question inevitably becomes. When was America great? The answer depends on whom you ask, and it is very likely that you will get a wide variety of answers, even though some of those will be more or less the same given the country’s very young age and therefore lack of periods to choose from. But the important thing is not when America was great, but that this greatness, this golden age, can be found whenever one seeks it, and whenever one wishes to find it. Also, the greatness is not here and now, as stated by the second point of the slogan. In this way, the slogan is on the one hand very precise: America was great before this point in time. But because it is completely open in its vagueness about when it was great, stating only that this greatness lies in the past, everyone can receive this message according to their own visions, fantasies and frames of reference. And in this quality, the slogan is achronological.        

When we consider the consequences of the 2016 presidential election in the US, it is clear that the slogan “Make America Great Again” was as successful as it is contemptible. It is also clear that the reason why it was successful is that it leaves an unspoken space that can be filled by whomever listens, and is therefore achronological: the greatness is in the past and not now, and this is a problem. Because achronology played such a key role in the presidential campaign, I argue that it serves as a clear example of how achronology – in conjunction with other factors – can work as a cultural force.        

           

On statues, and how not to defend them

 
June last year, I wrote a blogpost in response to the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol. Since then, I have followed the ongoing discussion concerning statues and whether they should be kept or removed, and from time to time there are new incidents where protests usher in new removals. Earlier this month, for instance, statues of Queen Victoria and Elizabeth II were brought to the ground in Winnipeg, in response to discoveries of mass graves of indigenous children at the sites of residential schools in Canada. As I’m writing this, reports from protests in Brazil show that in the city of São Paulo, protesters have set fire to a statue of the explorer Borba Gato (1649-1718). No doubt, there will be more statues to add to the roster in the coming weeks.

The debate about the role of statues is, as we see, still ongoing, and will remain ongoing for the foreseeable future. In some cases, the debate is ongoing precisely because the statues have not fallen. One such example can be found in Oxford, where Oriel College decided not to remove the contentious statue of the imperialist Cecil Rhodes.

There are many ways to approach the question about statues and whether or not to keep them standing. I have, I hope, made my own thoughts quite clear in my previous blogpost, and they have not changed since I wrote it. However, I do think that the public discourse benefits from disagreement and differing views, and I am therefore always interested to hear the arguments put forth in favour of keeping the statues in place. Last autumn, I had a seminar with two groups of first-year students on the use of history, and since the seminar was part of a module on early modern history, I decided to focus on the statue debate. My students were asked to find a statue, research any controversies – actual or potential – concerning the person in question, and then we discussed the individual cases. The students responded very well to the assignment and had found a number of interesting examples. Since this course was in Sweden and since I was the only foreigner in the virtual room, it was particularly educational for me, both to see the statues they had chosen to discuss, and also to see how they responded to the global discussion from a Swedish vantage point. To my surprise, and indeed dismay, I noted that most of them accepted some of the most frequently presented arguments in favour of keeping the statues in place. The argument that the people in question were products of their time, and the argument that removing a statue is to remove history were both invoked quite frequently. While I disagree with this, I limited myself to presenting a general rebuttal of the core of each argument, while also explaining why these arguments were not very good. Some of the students did indeed come around to a different point of view towards the end of each seminar, but as I felt that this was a discussion they needed to develop further on their own, I did not insist on the matter. This was one of those cases where I was very glad that the students were not graded according to their efforts, because if so, it would be easy for the students to adopt my view and ostensibly agree with it. Since all that was required was attendance, they were at full liberty to agree and disagree as they saw fit, and I came away from the seminars with a lot of impressions and food for thought about how this discussion is viewed through eyes different from my own.

I have not changed my views about statues, but I am always looking for good counterarguments in the event that I will be discussing this issue with future groups of students. For this reason, I was interested to find a link to an interview with a scholar at Oriel College who was not in favour of removing the statue of Cecil Rhodes, and I was curious about the arguments that would be put forth. Unfortunately, I found that the website that had conducted and published the interview regularly publishes pieces that seem to take a lot of left-wing issues in very bad faith, and I also found that the interview was couched in a similar vein of bad faith, dismissive and misrepresentative language, and I saw that neither the interviewer nor the interviewee had really grasped the core of the debate. For these reasons, I will not link to the interview, nor will I name the site or the scholar. Should you wish to read the interview, I imagine that some efficient googling should produce the required results.

I am not linking to the interview, because this blogpost is not really about the interview itself, but rather about the tendency that I saw represented there. This is a blogpost first and foremost about how not to argue in favour of keeping statues of problematic historical persons.

As I mentioned above, when talking about my experience with Swedish students, the arguments of being of one’s time and removing history are both unacceptable arguments. The first argument is based on the expectations that humans are homogenous in different epochs, and that human nature changes. There have always, in each epoch of recorded history and also before that, been a plurality of opinions about important issues. While many previous historical eras are now known for their violence and instability – often a reputation caused by the interpretation of future generations rather than an accurate representation of the time – we should also keep in mind that ideas that it is wrong to kill people, and that one should not treat others the way one would not wish to be treated, are thousands of years old. We also know that dissent has been one of the key themes of recorded history, and that revolts, revolutions, rebellions and riots have flared up in the face of injustice or abuse of power as long as power has been wielded. We therefore need to abandon the argument of someone being of their time.

Similarly, the idea that removing a statue is to remove history is wrong. History is recorded in many forms, especially in our current times, and while there have been cases where removal of statues had the deliberate purpose of removing people from history through the so-called damnatio memoriae, statues are not vehicles for learning about history. David Olusoga has written very well about this already. Another version of this argument is that the statues are products of a historical period and are therefore imbued with some degree of venerability. This is a better version of the argument, but it is nonetheless deeply problematic. There is a reason why we do not have statues of some historical transgressors, namely because there is a sufficiently wide consensus that the people in question have committed crimes too monstrous to allow for statues. Granted, there are some historical persons whose crimes are still not subject for sufficient consensus as to facilitate the removal of their statues, but this consensus might change, and then there is a very good reason for removing the statues in question. For instance, it was only two days ago, July 23, that a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first grand wizard of Ku Klux Klan, was removed from the Tennessee capitol building in Nashville. We then see that it might take time before a requisite number of people acknowledge the crimes of historical individuals, but once those crimes are acknowledged we also see why it is unacceptable to keep statues of those people in place.

The main reason why these two aforementioned arguments are insufficient is that statues are by their very nature celebratory. As history progresses, we change whom we choose to celebrate, and it therefore makes little sense to celebrate people who are acknowledged as transgressors. We should of course have a lively discussion about who gets to stay and who has to go, but for any such discussion to be in place it is crucial to be aware of the fact that the primary purpose for a statue is celebration.

Another argument that I have often seen levelled – and which had a central place in the interview I mentioned earlier – is that toppling these statues are acts of hysteria, that they are tantrums and overreactions. This is a disingenuous response, and it is not so much an argument in favour of keeping the statues in place as it is a thinly veiled ad hominem attack. We should of course acknowledge that such protests that have resulted in the felling of statues have a degree of group effect to them, that those who commit these acts are energised by being part of a large group of people. But this in itself is not the same as hysteria. There are often long-running tensions that come to the surface in such moments, and these reactions must be understood against backdrops of social inequality, racism, imperialism and the long-felt effects of past injustices. It is simplistic to dismiss such actions as the toppling of statues as mere tantrums, especially because in those groups that pull down the statues there are numerous people whose combinations of incentivising factors are different from person to person. If we are to treat the matter of statues with nuance, we cannot lazily label large groups of individuals with derogatory terms such as “hysteria” or “tantrum”.

There might be good arguments for keeping statues in place, and this is why we need to have a thorough discussion for each statue. However, I have not yet been convinced by any such arguments that I have encountered, and if we are to move this discussion in a fruitful direction, it is at least important that none of the three responses listed here are brought into play. Once these rhetorical cul-de-sacs are discarded, we might find good arguments in favour of keeping statues in place. I am not holding my breath.