Jorge Luis Borges - Story of the Warrior and the Captive Maiden (Argentina, 1945)

Jorge Luis Borges, “Historia del guerrero y la cautiva” (1945), it first appeared in 1949 in the short story collection El Aleph. For this translation the following edition was considered as a base-text: Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones - El Aleph - El informe de Brodie, Editorial Biblioteca Ayacucho, Caracas (Venezuela), 1993, pp. 113-115. Collaborative translation from Spanish into English by Anastasia Manvelyan, Justin Tran, Cecile Diroll, Samson Le, Arianna Davalos, and Nate Leizerowicz, in the context of Spanish 4 Course taught by Gonzalo Díaz-Letelier at University of California Riverside (Fall Quarter 2024).  

Story of the Warrior and the Captive Maiden

Jorge Luis Borges

On page 278 of his book The Poetry (Bari, 1942), Croce, abbreviating a Latin text by the historian Paul the Deacon, narrates the fate and cites the epitaph of Droctulft; both these moved me in a singular way. Later I understood why. Droctulft was a Longobard warrior who, during the siege of Ravenna, abandoned his own people and died defending the city he had previously been attacking. The people from Ravenna gave him burial in a temple and composed an epitaph which manifested their gratitude (“contempsit caros, dum nos amat ille, parentes”)[1] and the peculiar contrast that was visible between the atrocious figure of that barbarian and his simplicity and goodness:

Terribilis visu facies mente benignus,

Longaque robusto pectores barba fuit![2]

Such is the history of the destiny of Droctulft, a barbarian who died defending Rome, or such is the fragment of his history that Paul the Deacon could preserve. I do not even know when it took place: whether in the middle of the sixth century, when the Longobards desolated the plains of Italy; or in the eighth century, before the surrender of Ravenna. Let us imagine (this is not a historical work) the former.

Let us imagine Droctulft, sub specie aeternitatis; not the individual, who was without a doubt unique and unfathomable (all the individuals are), but the generic type that tradition has made of him and many others like him, a tradition that is the work of oblivion and memory. Through a dark geography of forests and marshes, the wars brought him to Italy, from the riverbanks of the Danube and the Elba, and he may have not known that he went south and he may have not known that he waged war against the Romans. Perhaps he professed Arianist faith, which maintains that the glory of the Son is a reflection of the glory of the Father, but it is more congruent to imagine him devoted to the Earth, Hertha, whose covered idol went from hut to hut in a cow-drawn cart, or of the gods of war and thunder, which were crude wooden figures wrapped in homespun clothing and laden with coins and bracelets. He came from the inextricable forests of the wild boar and the bison; he was light-skinned, courageous, innocent, cruel, loyal to his captain and his tribe, but not to the universe. Wars bring him to Ravenna, where he sees something he has never seen before, or at least not in its entirety. He sees the day and the cypresses and the marble. He sees a whole that involves multiplicity not falling into disorder; he sees a city, an organism composed of statues, temples, gardens, rooms, amphitheater steps, vases, column’s capitals, and regular, open spaces. None of these artifacts (I know) impress him for their beauty; they affect him as a complex machinery would affect us today—one whose purpose we do not understand, but whose design hints at an immortal intelligence. Perhaps seeing a single arch with an incomprehensible inscription in eternal Roman letters is enough for him. Suddenly, this revelation blinds and renews him: the City. He knows that in it he will be a dog, or a child, and that he will not even begin to understand it, but he also knows that it is worth more than his gods and his sworn faith and all the marshes of Germany. Droctulft abandons his people and fights for Ravenna. He dies, and on his tomb, they carve words he would not have understood:

Contempsit caros, dum nos amat ille, parentes,

Hanc patrlam reputans esse, Ravenna, suam.[3]

He was not a traitor (traitors rarely inspire pious epitaphs); he was an enlightened man, a convert. A few generations later, the Longobards who condemned the defector followed his example; they became Italians, Lombards, and perhaps one of his descendants—Aldiger—could have engendered those who engendered Alighieri… Many conjectures may be applied to Droctulft’s act; mine is the most economical. If it is not true as fact it will be so as symbol.

When I read the warrior’s story in Croce’s book, it moved me in an unusual way, and I felt as though I were rediscovering, in a different form, something that had once been my own. Fleetingly, I thought of the Mongolian horsemen who wanted to turn China into an endless grazing field and then grew old in the cities they had longed to destroy; but this was not the memory I was searching for. I found it at last: it was a story I once heard from my English grandmother, who has passed away.

In 1872, my grandfather Borges was the commander of the northern and western borders of Buenos Aires and the southern ones of Santa Fe. The command post was in Junín; beyond it lay a chain of outposts, spaced four or five leagues apart; and beyond that, what was then called the Pampa [the Pampas], or Tierra Adentro [the Interior or Hinterland]. Once, half in wonder and half in jest, my grandmother commented upon her fate as an Englishwoman exiled to those ends of the earth. They told her she wasn’t the only one and, months later, pointed out a young Indian woman slowly crossing the plaza [the square]. She wore two red mantles and was barefoot; her hair was blonde. A soldier told her that another Englishwoman wanted to speak with her. The woman nodded and entered the command post without fear, though not without mistrust. Her coppery face was painted in fierce colors, but her eyes were that pale blue the English call gray. Her body was lithe, like a deer’s, and her hands were strong and bony. She came from the desert, from Tierra Adentro, and everything seemed too small for her: the doors, the walls, the furniture.

Perhaps the two women felt like sisters for a moment; they were far from their beloved island and in an incredible country. My grandmother uttered a question; the other woman answered with difficulty, searching for the words and repeating them, as if amazed by an old taste. She had not spoken her native language for nearly fifteen years, and it was not easy for her to recover it. She said she was from Yorkshire, that her parents emigrated to Buenos Aires, that she had lost them in a malón [an Indian raid], that the indios [the Indians] had taken her and that she was now the wife of a chieftain, to whom she had already given two sons; and that he was very brave. She said this in rustic English, interwoven with Araucanian [Mapudungun language] or Pampan [Tehuelche language], and behind the story a feral life could be glimpsed: the awnings of horsehide, the bonfires of manure, the feasts of charred meat or raw entrails, the stealthy departures at dawn; the assaults on corrals, the hooting and the looting, the war, the devastating raids on farms by naked horsemen, the polygamy, the stench and the magic. To such barbarity an Englishwoman had lowered herself. Moved by pity and scandal, my grandmother urged her not to return. She swore to protect her, and swore to rescue her children. The other woman replied that she was happy and returned, that night, to the desert. Francisco Borges was to die shortly after, in the revolution of seventy-four; perhaps my grandmother, then, could perceive in the other woman, also held captive and transformed by this implacable continent, a monstrous mirror of her destiny...

Every year, the blonde Indian woman used to come to the pulperías [country grocery stores] at Junín, or at Fuerte Lavalle, in search of trinkets and “vices”; she did not appear, since the conversation with my grandmother. However, they saw each other once again. That day my grandmother had gone hunting; on a ranch near the wetlands, a man was slaughtering a sheep, he was disgorging it. As if in a dream, the Indian woman passed by there, riding a horse. She threw herself to the ground and drank the warm blood. I don’t know whether she did it because she could no longer act otherwise, or as a challenge and a sign.

A thousand three hundred years and the ocean mediate between the fate of the captive woman and the fate of Droctulft. Both these are, now, equally irrecoverable. The figure of the barbarian who embraces the cause of Ravenna, the figure of the European woman who opts for the wilderness, may seem antagonistic. Nevertheless, both were seized by a secret impetus, an impetus deeper than reason, and both heeded that impetus that they would not have known how to justify. Perhaps the stories I have referred to are one single story. The obverse and reverse of this coin are, for God, equal.

 

For Ulrike von Kühlmann.

---

[1] [TN: “He despised his beloved parents, while he loved us”].

[2] [TN: “A face terrible in sight, kind in mind, / His beard was long and reached his robust chest”]. Gibbon (Declive and Fall, XLV) also translates these verses.

[3] [TN: “He despised his beloved parents, while he loved us / Considering this homeland, Ravenna, his own”].

Baldomero Lillo - The Devil's Pit (Chile, 1904)

Baldomero Lillo, “El Chiflón del Diablo”, in: Armando Donoso (comp.), Algunos cuentos chilenos, Editorial Espasa-Calpe, Buenos Aires, 1945, pp. 19-31. Collaborative translation from Spanish into English by Nathan Azarrati, Anthony Ascencio-Carvajal, Andrew Bobadilla, Gloria Cepeda, Arianna Davalos, Ben de Santiago, Cecile Diroll, Aaliyah Escobar, Thanh Ho, Samson Le, Nate Leizerowicz, Anastasia Manvelyan, Rose Naveed and Justin Tran, in the context of Spanish 4 Course taught by Gonzalo Díaz-Letelier at University of California Riverside, section Capitalism and Colonialism in the 19th Century: Gold Rush in California, Coal Rush in Chile (Fall Quarter 2024).  

BALDOMERO LILLO

 The Devil’s Pit

In a low, narrow room, the foreman on duty sat at his work table, with a large open register in front of him, watching the workers descend on that cold winter morning. Through the doorway, the elevator could be seen waiting for its human load, which, once complete, disappeared with it, silently and quickly, through the damp opening of the mine.

The miners arrived in small groups, and as they took down their already lit lamps from the hooks attached to the walls, the clerk kept a penetrating glance at them, tracing a short horizontal line with his pencil besides each name. Suddenly, turning to two workers who were hurrying towards the exit door, he stopped them with a gesture, saying:

ꟷYou, stay.

Surprised, the workers turned around, and a vague uneasiness appeared on their pale faces. The youngest, a boy barely twenty years old, freckled, with abundant reddish hair, to which he owed the nickname of Copperhead, by which everyone designated him, was short, strong and robust. The other one, taller, somewhat thin and bony, was already old, with a weak and sickly appearance. Both held the lamp in their right hands and in their left their bundle of small pieces of string, at the ends of which they had tied a button or a glass bead of different shapes and colors; they were the tantos or signs that the miners attach inside the coal carts to indicate the origin of the minerals to those who received them above.

The bell of the clock on the wall slowly struck six. Now and then a panting miner would rush through the door, take down his lamp, and in the same hurry leave the room, casting a timid glance as he passed the table at the foreman, who, without taking his lips off, impassive and severe, marked the name of the straggler with a cross.

After a few minutes of silent waiting, the employee motioned to the workers to come closer, and said to them:

ꟷYou are carters from the Alta, aren’t you?

ꟷYes, sir ꟷreplied those being questioned.

ꟷI’m sorry to tell you that you’re fired. I have orders to reduce the staff in that vein of the mine.

The workers did not answer and there was a deep silence for a moment. Finally, the oldest one said:

ꟷBut will we be employed elsewhere?

The individual slammed the book shut and, leaning back in his seat in a serious tone, replied:

ꟷI see it difficult; we have plenty of people in all the mine sites.

The worker insisted:

ꟷWe accept any work that is given to us, we will be turners, formwork prop installers, whatever you want.

The foreman shook his head negatively.

ꟷI have already said it, there are too many people and if the coal orders do not increase, we will have to reduce the exploitation in some other veins as well.

A bitter and ironic smile contracted the miner’s lips, and he exclaimed:

ꟷBe frank, Mr. Pedro, and tell us once and for all that you want to force us to go to work at Devil’s Pit.

The employee, outraged, sat up in his chair and protested:

ꟷNo one is forced here. Just as you are free to refuse work that you do not like, the Company, for its part, is within its rights to take the measures that best suit its interests.

During that tirade, the workers with their eyes downcast listened in silence and upon seeing their humble demeanor the foreman’s voice softened.

ꟷBut, although the orders I have are strict ꟷhe addedꟷ, I want to help you out of the situation. There are two vacancies for miners at the New Tunnel, or the Devil’s Pit, as you call it, you can fill them right now, because tomorrow it would be too late.

The workers exchanged intelligent glances. They knew the tactics and knew in advance the result of this skirmish. However, they were already resolved to follow their fate. There was no way out. Between dying of hunger or being crushed by a landslide, the latter was preferable: it had the advantage of speed. And where to go? Winter, the implacable enemy of the helpless, had converted the feeble streams into torrents, leaving the fields desolate and barren. The lowlands were full of swampy waters and, in the hills and mountain slopes, the leafless trees displayed the nakedness of their branches and trunks under the eternally opaque sky.

In the peasants’ huts, hunger showed its pale face through the faces of its inhabitants, who were forced to knock on the doors of workshops and factories in search of the piece of bread that the withered soil of the exhausted countryside denied them.

It was therefore necessary to submit to filling the gaps that the fateful corridor constantly opened in his ranks of defenseless and helpless, in perpetual struggle against the adversities of fate, abandoned by all, and against whom all injustice and iniquity was permitted.

The deal was done. The workers accepted the new job without objection, and a moment later they were in the cage, falling straight down into the depths of the mine.

The Devil’s Pit gallery had a sinister reputation. Opened to give way to the ore from a recently discovered vein, the work had initially been carried out with the required care. But as the rock was dug deeper, it became porous and inconsistent. The leaks, which were rather scarce at the beginning, had increased, making the stability of the roof very precarious, which was only supportable by solid coverings. Once the work was finished, as the immense quantity of wood that had to be used for shoring increased the cost of the ore considerably, this most essential part of the work was gradually neglected. It was always covered, yes, but loosely, economizing as much as possible.

The results of this system were not long in coming. Continuously it was necessary to extract from there a bruised person, a wounded person and sometimes a dead person crushed by a sudden collapse of the roof without enough formwork support, which, treacherously undermined by the water. It was a constant threat to the lives of the workers, who, frightened by the frequency of the collapses, began to avoid work in the deadly passage. But the Company soon overcame their reluctance with the lure of a few cents more in wages and the exploitation of the new vein continued.

Very soon, however, the increase in wages was suppressed, yet this did not halt the work, the method put into practice by the foreman that morning being sufficient to obtain this result.

Copperhead arrived at his room later than usual that evening. He seemed serious and pensive, responding in monosyllables to his mother’s affectionate questions about his day’s work. In that humble home there was a certain decency and cleanliness, uncommon in those lodgings where, in repulsive promiscuity, men, women, children and a variety of animals mingled, each of those rooms evoking the Biblical vision of Noah’s Ark.

The miner’s mother was a tall, thin woman with white hair. Her very pale face held a resigned and gentle expression, which softened even more the gleam of her moist eyes, where tears seemed always ready to fall. Her name was María de los Ángeles.

Daughter and mother of miners, terrible misfortunes had aged her prematurely. Her husband and two sons had died, one after another, from cave-ins and gas explosionsꟷa tribute her people had paid to the insatiable greed of the mine. Only that young boy remained, for whom her still-young heart lived in constant dread. Always fearful of a misfortune, her imagination never strayed a moment the darkness of the coal seam that consumed that existence that was her only good, the only bond that held her to life.

How many times in those moments of contemplation had she thought, without being able to explain it, about the reason for those hateful human inequalities that condemned the poor, to the greater number, to sweat blood to support the magnificence of the useless existence of a few! And if only one could live without that perpetual anxiety about the fate of loved ones, whose lives were the price, so often paid, of the daily bread!

But these thoughts were passing, and, not being able to decipher the enigma, the old woman drove them away and returned to her chores with her usual melancholy.

While the mother gave the last hand to the dinner preparation, the boy sat by the fire, stayed silent, lost in his thoughts. The old woman, anxious by this silence, prepared to interrogate him, when the door turned by its hinges and a face of a woman stuck out from the opening.

ꟷGood evening, neighbor. How is the patient? ꟷMaría de los Ángeles asked caringly.

ꟷThe same ꟷthe woman replied, entering the roomꟷ. The doctor says that the bone in his leg hasn’t healed yet and that he should stay in bed without moving.

The newcomer was a young morena face woman, emaciated by vigils and deprivations. She held a tin bowl in her right hand and, as she responded, she tried to divert her eyes from the soup steaming on the table.

The old woman reached out and took the jug and while she was emptying the hot liquid into it, she continued asking:

ꟷAnd did you speak, daughter, with the bosses? Have they given you any help?

The young woman murmured with discouragement:

ꟷYes, I was there. They told me that I had no right to anything, that they had done enough by giving us the room; but that if he died, I should go and get an order for four candles and a shroud to be delivered to me in the office.

And with a sigh she added:

ꟷI hope in God that my poor Juan will not force them to make that expense.

María de los Ángeles added a piece of bread to the soup and put both gifts in the young woman’s hand, who headed for the door, saying gratefully:

ꟷThe Virgin will repay you, neighbor.

ꟷPoor Juana ꟷsaid the mother, tending to her son, who had pushed his chair up next to the tableꟷ, it will be almost a month since they pulled your husband out of the pit with a broken leg.

ꟷWhat was his job?

ꟷHe was a driller miner at the Devil’s Pit.

ꟷAh, yes, they say that those who work there have their lives sold!

ꟷNot so much, mother ꟷsaid the workerꟷ, it’s different now, a lot of shoring work has been done. There have been no accidents for over a week.

ꟷPerhaps that is what you say, but I could not live if you worked there; I would rather go begging in the fields. I do not want them to bring you back one day like they brought your father and your brothers.

Thick tears slid down the old woman’s pale face. The boy was silent and ate without lifting his gaze from his plate.

Copperhead left for work the next morning without telling his mother about the change of duty that had been decided the day before. There would always be plenty of time to give her the bad news. With the carefree attitude that comes with his age, he did not attach much importance to the fears of an old woman. Fatalistic, like all his comrades, he believed it was useless to try to escape the fate that each one had already designated.

When an hour after the departure of her son, María de los Ángeles opened the door, she was delighted by the resplendent clarity that flooded the fields. It had been a long time since her eyes had seen a morning as beautiful. A golden halo surrounded the disk of the sun that rose over the horizon, sending its vivid rays in torrents onto the damp soil, from which blueish and white vapors were released everywhere. The sunlight, soft like a caress, brought down a breath of life on the still-life nature. Flocks of birds crossed the calm blue sky in the distance, and a rooster with iridescent feathers, from the top of a mound of sand issued a strident warning every time the shadow of a bird slid next to him.

Some old men, leaning on canes and crutches, appeared down the dirty corridors, attracted by the glorious glow that illuminated the landscape. They walked slowly, stretching their numb limbs, eager for that warm heat that flowed from above. They were the disabled of the mine, the defeated by the work. They were very few who were not mutilated or already lacked an arm or leg. Sitting on a wooden bench that receives the sun’s rays, their exhausted pupils, sunken in their sockets, had a strange fixity. Not a word passed between them, and from time to time, after a short, deep cough, their closed lips parted to give way to a spit black as ink.

It was approaching noon and, in the rooms, busy women were preparing the lunch baskets for the workers, when the brief ringing of the alarm bell made them abandon their work and rush out of the rooms in panic.

In the mine the ringing had ceased and nothing foreshadowed a catastrophe. Everything there looked ordinary and the chimney let out, without interruption, its enormous plume that widened and grew, carried by the breeze that pushed it towards the sea.

María de los Ángeles was placing a bottle of coffee in a basket meant for her son, when she was startled by the sound of the alarm and, dropping those objects, she rushed to the door, past which groups of women with their skirts raised were rushing, followed closely by hordes of children who ran desperately in pursuit of their mothers. The old woman followed their example: her feet seemed like they had wings, the sting of terror galvanized her old muscles, and her whole body was shuddering and vibrating like a bowstring at its maximum tension.

Very soon she was in the front row, and her white head, wounded by the sun’s rays, seemed to draw and rush after it the somber mass of the ragged flock.

The rooms were deserted. Their doors and windows opened and closed impulsively from the wind. A dog, tied in one of the corridors, sat on its hind legs, raised its head and let out a mournful howl as if to respond to the plaintive clamor that reached him, waning over the distance.

Only the old men had not left their sun-warmed bench, and mute and motionless, they remained in the same attitude, with their murky eyes fixed on an invisible beyond and oblivious to anything other than that fervent radiation that infiltrated into their stiff organisms a little of that energy and that warm heat that revived life in the desert fields.

Like chicks, which, suddenly perceiving the swift descent of the hawk, run around chirping desperately, seeking refuge beneath the ruffled feathers of their mother, these groups of women with disheveled hair, whimpering with terror, soon appeared beneath the fleshless arms of the derrick, pushing and pressing together on the damp platform. The mothers pressed their little children, wrapped in dirty rags, to their half-naked bosoms, and a clamor that had nothing human about it issued from their half-open mouths contracted by pain.

A strong barrier made of timber protected the opening of the shaft on one side, and part of the crowd crashed into it. On the other side, a few sullen-looking, silent, taciturn workers held back the tight ranks of the crowd, which was deafening with their cries, demanding news of their relatives, the number of dead, and the location of the catastrophe.

At the door of the engine rooms, one of the engineers, a corpulent Englishman with red sideburns, appeared with his pipe between his teeth, and with the indifference that comes with the customary, he glanced over the scene. A formidable imprecation greeted him, and hundreds of voices howled:

ꟷMurderers, murderers!

The women raised their arms above their heads and showed their fists inebriated by rage. The one who had provoked this explosion of hatred blew a few puffs of smoke into the air and, turning his back, disappeared.

The news that the workers gave of the accident calmed the excitement somewhat. The event didn’t have the proportions of catastrophes of other times: there were just three dead, whose names were still unknown. Besides, and there was hardly any need to say it, the misfortune, a collapse, had occurred in the Devil’s Pit gallery, where work had already been carried out for two hours to extract the victims, and the signal to hoist them up was expected at any moment in the engine room.

That report gave hope to many hearts devoured by worries. María de los Ángeles, leaned on the barrier, felt the pincers that were biting at her insides loosen their iron claws. Hers was not hope but certainty: surely, he wasn’t among those that were dead. And, concentrated on herself with that fierce selfishness of mothers, she heard with indifference the hysterical cries of the women and pleas of desolation and agony.

Meanwhile the hours flew by, and beneath the arches of lime and brick the motionless machine let its iron limbs rest in the gloom of the vast chambers; the cables, like the tentacles of an octopus, rose quaveringly from the deep shaft and coiled their flexible, viscous arms around the coil; the tight, compact human mass, throbbing and moaning like a bleeding and dying animal, and above, over the immense countryside, the sun, now past its meridian, continued to cast the sparkling beams of its warm rays, and a celestial calm and serenity came from the concave mirror of the sky, blue and clear, by no cloud tarnished.

Suddenly, the women’s crying ceased: a bell rang, followed by three others, slow and vibrant: it was the signal to hoist the rope. A shudder shook the crowd, who eagerly followed the oscillations of the cable that rose, at the end of which was the terrible mystery that everyone longed and feared to decipher.

A mournful silence, interrupted only by the occasional sob, reigned on the platform, and the distant howl spread across the plain and flew through the air, wounding hearts like a presage of death.

A few moments passed, and suddenly the great iron ring that crowned the cage appeared over the curb. The elevator swung for a moment and then stopped on the hooks on the upper rim.

Inside it, some bare-headed workers surrounded a black wheelbarrow blackened by mud and coal dust.

An immense clamor greeted the appearance of the funeral cart; the crowd swirled around and their mad desperation made it extremely difficult to extract the corpses. The first one of them to appear before the eager gaze of the crowd was covered in blankets and only his bare feet, stiff and stained with mud, were visible. The second one, which followed immediately after the previous one, had his head bare: he was an old man with a beard and grey hair.

The third and last one appeared in turn. From between the folds of the cloth that wrapped it, some locks of red hair appeared, which cast a reflection of freshly melted copper in the sunlight. Several voices cried out in horror:

ꟷCopperhead!

The corpse, taken by the shoulders and feet, was placed with difficulty on the stretcher that was waiting for it.

María de los Ángeles, seeing that livid face and that hair that seemed soaked in blood, made a superhuman effort to rush at the dead man; but pressed against the barrier she could only move her arms while an inarticulate sound emerged from her throat.

Then, her muscles relaxed, her arms fell down along her body, and she remained motionless on the spot, as if she was struck by lightning.

The groups moved away, and many faces turned towards the woman, who, with her head drooped over her chest, plunged into an absolute numbness, seemed absorbed in contemplation of the abyss opened at her feet.

……………………………………………………………………………………………

No one ever knew how she crossed the barrier. Held by the level cables, she was seen for an instant waving her bony legs in the void, and then, without a cry, to disappear into the abyss. A few seconds later, a dull, distant, almost imperceptible sound arose from the hungry mouth of the pit, from which puffs of faint vapours escaped: it was the breath of the monster, sated with blood in the depths of its lair.

 

 

 

 

Gonzalo Díaz-Letelier - La economía como cultura / Economy as Culture

LA ECONOMÍA COMO CULTURA. Lo que está en juego no es la mera cuestión culturalista de unas “identidades” o “cosmovisiones” amenazadas o distorsionadas por otras, sino una cuestión filosófica radical que afecta al “hombre moderno” en su relación ontológica al ser. Aquí la alienación tiene que ver precisamente con la “propia” cultura fetichizada como tal, y no con la “impropiedad” (a lo Heidegger, Uneigentlichkeit), pues la misma cultura, en su valorización fetichista, abastece con su singularidad a la maquinación total del capital (movilización total de la ley del valor, fetichización de la propia singularidad, conversión de la singularidad a la forma-mercancía). Al punto que la misma “espontaneidad” del sujeto, categoría curiosamente sobrevalorada cuando se trata de pensar la “creatividad” y la “autonomía”, se revelaría como marca propiamente ideológica –los comportamientos ideológicamente determinados se realizan sin ningún esfuerzo, de la manera más “natural”, lo que permite en el extremo la conjunción de la máxima candidez con la máxima violencia. Tal marca coincide con el punto en que se atraviesan “la cultura” y “la política”: el sentido de lo colectivo como dispositivo idólatra de organización técnica del mundo (culturas políticas del estalinismo, fascismo, nazismo, democracia liberal, gubernamentalidad cibernética, etc.). Quizás podríamos decir, en un registro al uso, que no se trata tanto de la “cultura” de los hombres/mujeres/disidencias sexuales, sus etnicidades, nacionalidades, sus subjetividades económicas o lo que sea en sentido subjetivo-identitarista, sino que a partir de allí (y no negando ni recusando esas singularidades y/o pertenencias) se trataría de la existencia como erótico y conflictivo estar-en-común, y de la esencial indecidibilidad de su queerness.[1]     

[1] David Griffiths, “Queer Theory for Lichens”, en UnderCurrents Journal of Critical Environmental Studies, Vol. 19 (2015), “From Queer/Nature to Queer Ecologies: Celebrating 20 Years of Scholarship and Creativity”, pp. 36-45. Agradezco a Jessica Maccaro y la comunidad indecidible del Salon por las discusiones sobre esta cuestión, pues la misma experiencia de la transdisciplinariedad e indisciplinariedad ha jugado en ese espacio como una suerte de “reforma agraria” del campo universitario, para trastornarlo en tierra de uso común mediante la erosión de los cercos disciplinarios entre les estudiantes doctorantes, postdoctorantes e investigadorxs de University of California Riverside que allí se encuentran –no para alcanzar una “lengua común” a partir de la multiplicidad de lenguas naturales y disciplinarias que convergen en tal espacio, por supuesto, sino para que salgan de sí alterándose mutuamente. Véase Jacques Lezra, «On the Nature of Marx’s Things. Translation as Necrophilology», Fordham University Press, New York, 2018. Véase también Einstürzende Neubauten, “Die Interimsliebenden” (álbum «Tabula rasa», Potomak Label, Berlin / Mute Records, London, 1993, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhtIBdIeJWc); versión en inglés: “Interim Lovers” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEcWY2WlJuI).

ECONOMY AS CULTURE. What is at stake is not merely the culturalist question of certain “identities” or “worldviews” threatened or distorted by others, but a radical philosophical question that affects “modern human” in its ontological relationship to being. Here alienation has to do precisely with “own” fetishized culture as such, and not with “inauthenticity” (à la Heidegger, Uneigentlichkeit), since culture itself, in its fetishistic valorization, supplies with its singularity the total machination of capital (total mobilization of the law of value, fetishization of one's own singularity, conversion of singularity into the commodity-form). To the point that the very “spontaneity” of the subject, a curiously overrated category when it comes to thinking about “creativity” and “autonomy,” would reveal itself as a properly ideological mark – ideologically determined behaviors are carried out without any effort, in the most “natural” way, which allows, in the extreme, the conjunction of maximum candor with maximum violence. Such a mark coincides with the point where “culture” and “politics” intersect: the sense of the collective as an idolatrous dispositive for the technical organization of the world (political cultures of Stalinism, fascism, Nazism, liberal democracy, cybernetic governmentality, etc.). Perhaps we could say, in a conventional register, that it is not so much about the “culture” of men/women/sexual dissidents, their ethnicities, nationalities, their economic subjectivities or whatever in a subjective-identitarian sense, but that from there (and not denying or refusing those singularities and/or belongings) it would be about existence as an erotic and conflictive being-in-common, and the essential undecidability of its queerness.[1]

[1] David Griffiths, “Queer Theory for Lichens”, in UnderCurrents Journal of Critical Environmental Studies, Vol. 19 (2015), “From Queer/Nature to Queer Ecologies: Celebrating 20 Years of Scholarship and Creativity”, pp. 36-45. I am grateful to Jessica Maccaro and the undecidable community of the Salon for discussions on this question, for the very experience of transdisciplinarity and indisciplinarity has played out in that space as a kind of “land reform” of the university field, to turn it into common ground by eroding the disciplinary fences between the doctoral students, postdocs, and researchers at the University of California Riverside who meet there—not to reach a “common language” out of the multiplicity of natural and disciplinary languages ​​that converge in that space, of course, but so that they can emerge from themselves by altering each other. See Jacques Lezra, «On the Nature of Marx’s Things. Translation as Necrophilology», Fordham University Press, New York, 2018. See also Einstürzende Neubauten, “Die Interimsliebenden” (album «Tabula rasa», Potomak Label, Berlin / Mute Records, London, 1993, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhtIBdIeJWc); English version: “Interim Lovers” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEcWY2WlJuI).

Gonzalo Díaz-Letelier / Antropomorfosis del capital, guerra civil y supervivencia III (bilingual Spanish-English)

 

3.- EL DISPOSITIVO COMO ECONOMÍA. El cruce entre tecnicidad y lógica de la propiedad efectúa una economía. La autonomización de la técnica humana como maquinación total y consistente avanza en los textos de Cesarano la traída a escena de la cuestión de la función biopolítica del lenguaje (tecnicidad de la vida, formas de vida) como interfaz devenida sacrificial (“alienación lingüística”, thanatopolítica, necropolítica). En su traducción cristiano-moderna de la antropogénesis, el aspecto thanático o sacrificial de la técnica, como función de separación entre lo propio y lo impropio en el seno de lo humano (y no sólo como marca de su diferencia con animales de otras especies), estaría dado por su lógica de “dispositivo” (Gestell en el léxico de Heidegger, más tarde traducido como dispositif en Foucault y dispositivo en Agamben). En cuanto dispositivo antropológico de decisión de la diferencia entre lo propiamente humano (alma, psyché) y lo animal (lo alien subyugado y sacrificable), se trataría de una máquina que captura los horizontes de significación en una estructura de correlación intencional sujeto-objeto –la intencionalidad en una de sus derivas a partir de los textos aristotélicos, la de la “derecha aristotélica” según Ernst Bloch– cuyos polos modernos son, por una parte, el sujeto soberano (señorío, dominación) y, por otra, el horizonte objetivante del gobierno, un régimen de producción del orden de las palabras y las cosas, y de la traducción de eventos, objetos y sujetos –economías de la significación y de su traducción como “transición”. Cesarano: “El nexo de determinación mutua que siempre ha vinculado la producción de la máquina social o comunidad ficticia con la producción de la persona o ser ficticio está en funcionamiento hoy más que nunca”. No hay “máquina social” sin “personas ficticias”, y viceversa. La persona y la sociedad, el sujeto como máscara y los aparatos automatizados de gobernanza: la vieja y fea oikonomía (producción de subjetividad ad hoc), pero ahora en su traducción moderna, bajo régimen capitalista de producción como determinante del borde inherente a la forma de “lo humano”, de lo humano como propiedad privativa de determinados animales: el borde de “lo humano como tal”, o de “lo propiamente humano”, fundamento de los sucesivos modos de haber-propiedad que esa primera propiedad autoriza. Cesarano:

La economía política, transformada en cuerpo y alma en una psicología política, produce la personalidad como la Cosa que es Dicha, la representación acuñada del valor crediticio, la tarjeta de crédito que vuelve, en cada giro-ronda circulatoria del día-ciclo, aumentada por una ganancia de ausencia. Estar en el círculo: subsistir en la figura de sí mismo –entregarse a ella coedificándola–, ese producto colectivo que es la personalidad de la ausencia.

Cuando el dispositivo captura la vida en la ratio o funcionalidad de una economía (es decir, cuando se convierte en un sistema de la necesidad y crédito social que angosta todo deseo de “ser más allá de la necesidad”), y cuando se despliega como una economía totalitaria que antropomorfiza el comando mismo en el sentido de la “autonomía” humana, entonces ya no se tratará de liberar al Yo, sino de liberarse del Yo en cada caso, así como, por extensión, dado que ya no hay separación entre pueblo y capital, es el pueblo el que tendrá que liberarse de sí mismo (de la máquina del capital que se efectiviza en el dispositivo persona/sociedad que le permite su extractivismo de vida psíquica). Aquí las categorías de “autonomía” y “espontaneidad” quedan en entredicho. La carne imaginante de los animales, civilizatoriamente recluida en el “inconsciente”, en lo reprimido, hace crisis despabilando ante el apremio de la facticidad capitalista de la dominación y la amenaza de extinción. Lo hace entregándose a la pérdida de control, o a la desistencia respecto a su propio “conocimiento pragmático de la persistencia artificialmente prolongada de la alienación”, respondiendo con la indocilidad reflexiva de la “crítica radical” y la “locura”, gestos de sufrimiento, rebeldía y aventura que anuncian una “revolución biológica” que descarrila y desbarata, como se pueda, los proyectos teológicos y cibernéticos que devienen religiones de la muerte y privatizaciones idiosincráticas del mundo (fascismos).

Anthropomorphism of capital, civil war and survival III

THE DISPOSITIVE AS ECONOMY. The intersection between technicity and the logic of property effects an economy. The autonomization of human technique as a total and consistent machination advances in Cesarano’s texts the bringing into scene of the question regarding the biopolitical function of language (technicity of life, forms of life) as an interface that has become sacrificial (“linguistic alienation”, thanatopolitics, necropolitics). In its Christian-modern translation of anthropogenesis, the thanatic or sacrificial aspect of technique, as a function of separation between the proper and the improper within the human (and not only as a mark of its difference from animals of other species), would be given by its logic of “dispositive” (Gestell in Heidegger’s lexicon, later translated as dispositif in Foucault and dispositivo in Agamben). As an anthropological device for deciding the difference between what is properly human (soul, psyche) and what is animal (the subjugated and sacrificial alien), it would be a machine that captures the horizons of meaning in a structure of intentional subject-object correlation–intentionality in one of its derivations from Aristotelian texts, that of the “Aristotelian right” according to Ernst Bloch–whose modern poles are, on the one hand, the sovereign subject (lordship, domination) and, on the other, the objectifying horizon of government, a regime of production of the order of words and things, and of the translation of events, objects and subjects–economies of meaning and of their translation understood as “transition”. Cesarano: “The nexus of mutual determination that has always linked the production of the social machine or fictitious community with the production of the fictitious person (...) is at work today more than ever”. There is no “social machine” without “fictitious persons”, and vice versa. Person and society, the subject as mask and the automated apparatuses of governance: the old and ugly oikonomia (ad hoc production of subjectivity), but now in its modern translation, under a capitalist regime of production as a determinant of the edge inherent to the form of “the human,” of the human as the private property of certain animals: the edge of “the human as such,” or of “the properly human,” the foundation of the successive modes of having-property that this first property authorizes. Cesarano:

Political economy, body and soul turned into a political psychology, produces personality as the Thing that is Said, the minted representation of credit value, the credit card that returns, in each circulatory turn-round of the day-cycle, increased by a gain of absence. Being in the circle: subsisting in the figure of oneself – giving oneself to it by co-building it –, that collective product that is the personality of absence.

When the dispositive captures life in the ratio or functionality of an economy (that is, when it becomes a system of social need and credit that narrows all desire to “be beyond need/necessity”), and when it unfolds as a totalitarian economy that anthropomorphizes command itself in the sense of human “autonomy,” then it will no longer be a question of liberating the Self, but of liberating oneself from the Self in each case, just as, by extension, since there is no longer a separation between people and capital, it is the people who will have to liberate themselves from themselves (from the machine of capital that is realized in the person/society apparatus that allows its extractivism of psychic life). Here the categories of “autonomy” and “spontaneity” are called into question. The imaginative flesh of animals, civilizingly confined to the “unconscious,” to the repressed, goes into crisis, awakening before the urgency of the capitalist facticity of domination and the threat of extinction. It does so by surrendering to the loss of control, or by giving up on its own “pragmatic knowledge of the artificially prolonged persistence of alienation,” responding with the reflexive indocility of “radical criticism” and “crazyness,” gestures of suffering, rebellion, and adventure that announce a “biological revolution” that derails and disrupts, as best anybody can, the theological and cybernetic projects that become religions of death and idiosyncratic privatizations of the world (fascisms).

Giorgio Agamben / Exile and the Citizen

Giorgio Agamben

Exile and the Citizen

It is good to reflect on a phenomenon that is both familiar and unknown to us, but which, as it often happens in these cases, can provide us with useful indications for our life among other humans: exile. Historians of law continue to debate whether exileꟷin its original form, in Greece and Romeꟷshould be considered as the exercise of a right or as a penal situation. To the extent that it is presented, in the classical world, as the faculty granted to a citizen to escape a punishment (generally capital punishment) by fleeing, exile seems in fact irreducible to the two great categories into which the sphere of law can be divided from the point of view of subjective situations: rights and punishments. Thus, Cicero, who knew exile, was able to write: “Exilium non supplicium est, sed perfugium portumque supplicii” (“Exile is not a punishment, but a refuge and a way of escape from punishment”). Even when over time the State appropriates it and configures it as a punishment (in Rome this happens with the lex Tullia of 63 BC), exile remains de facto a means of escape for the citizen. Thus, Dante, when the Florentines instituted a process of banishment against him, did not appear in court and, preempting the judges, began his long life as an exile, refusing to return to his city even when offered the opportunity. Significantly, in this perspective, exile does not imply the loss of citizenship: the exiled effectively excludes himself from the community to which, however, he formally continues to belong. Exile is neither a right nor a punishment, but rather escape and refuge. If it were configured as a right, which in reality it is not, exile would be defined as a paradoxical right to place oneself outside the law. From this perspective, the exile enters a zone of indistinction with respect to the sovereign, who, by deciding on a state of exception, can suspend the law; he is, like the exile, both inside and outside the order.

Precisely to the extent that it presents itself as the faculty of a citizen to place himself outside the community of citizens and thus places himself in relation to the legal order on a kind of threshold, exile cannot fail to interest us today in a special way. For anyone with eyes to see, it is indeed evident that the States in which we live have entered into a situation of crisis and of progressive and unstoppable disintegration of all institutions. In these conditions, in which politics disappears and gives way to the economy and technology, it is inevitable that citizens become de facto exiles in their own country. It is this internal exile that must be reclaimed today, transforming it from a condition passively endured into a way of life chosen and actively pursued. Where citizens have lost even the memory of politics, only exiles in their own city will engage in politics. And only in this community of exiles, dispersed in the shapeless mass of citizens, can something like a new political experience become possible here and now.

Translation from Italian into English by Gonzalo Díaz-Letelier. Giorgio Agamben, "L’esule e il cittadino", in Quodlibet (https://www.quodlibet.it/), November 7, 2024:

https://www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-l-u2019esule-e-il-cittadino

A Spanish version is also available in Ficción de la Razón:

https://ficciondelarazon.org/2024/11/07/giorgio-agamben-el-exilio-y-el-ciudadano/?fbclid=IwY2xjawGZ8YlleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHcdvCDh8Tnc9lt6Zmy5t5AHn2GOEbeXJBnspfkfuazcEru8o18v2RwK4lw_aem_IJeOrOZpTa_4gjJmtIyCmg

Gonzalo Díaz-Letelier / Antropomorfosis del capital, guerra civil y supervivencia II (bilingual Spanish-English)

2.- TÉCNICA Y DISPOSITIVO. La tecnicidad del animal humano ha devenido “históricamente” dispositivo, pero no puede ser reducida a ningún dispositivo. La de Cesarano no se trata, pues, de una tesis tecnofóbica, pero sí de una hipótesis atenta a las lógicas dispositivas de dominación técnica en curso. En cuanto modo de ponerse en juego el viviente ꟷy no sólo como algo ahí-delante a la mano, o no en cuanto meras objetivaciones de la tecnicidad en herramientas, máquinas y sistemas automatizados de gobernanzaꟷ, la tecnicidad del animal abre "imaginalmente" –en el caso de los animales con interfases predominantemente fotológicas, como la del mamífero humano– virtualidades, espaciamientos y temporalizaciones en el medio material de lo viviente, precisamente a partir de una carencia instintiva radical (en un sentido próximo al que entiende Samuel Butler: el “instinto” como estabilización del “hábito” hermenéutico, práctico y declarativo mediante la posición de un fundamento hermenéutico, por contraste con el desfondamiento ontológico del “pensamiento”, que se jugaría más bien en la interrupción y metamorfosis del hábito). De modo que la paradoja de esta suerte de trampa semiótica es que, autonomizándose el aparato protésico de las tecnologías y lenguas epocales, “sacralizándose”, extrañándose y separándose de los cuerpos vivientes rizomáticamente enmarañados e imaginantes, termina aislándoles y domesticándoles para productivizarles e, incluso, amenazándoles con la extinción ꟷcomo si fueran “enemigos externos” cuando osan descarrilar el gigantesco sistema de clichés intencionales que llamamos “mundo” o “cultura” al interior de una burbuja de “civilización” (en la que en cada caso nos subjetivamos en principio: facticidad hermenéutica). El dispositivo del capital contemporáneo sería tendencialmente totalitario, pues consiste en su antropomorfización, en la identificación entre pueblo y capital. La relación entre vida humana y capital ya no se jugará en relaciones marcadas por la heteronomía, como en el caso de la esclavitud o el trabajo asalariado, sino por la “autonomía” de la persona (introyección de la obediencia y funcionariato) como capital humano socialmente automatizado. Esta abstracción nihilizante, la alienación y aislamiento que sufre el viviente en la sociedad capitalista, según Cesarano daría cuenta del capitalismo como una lógica de “organización y planificación de la nada”, de funcionalización en el “impecable automatismo de las comunidades ficticias del nihilismo”.   

Anthropomorphism of capital, civil war and survival II

2.- TECHNIQUE AND DISPOSITIVE. The technicity of the human animal has historically become a dispositive, but it cannot be reduced to any dispositive. Cesarano's thesis is not, therefore, a technophobic one, but rather a hypothesis attentive to the dispositive logics of technical domination in progress. As a way of putting the living into play ꟷand not just as something there-in-front at hand, or not as mere objectifications of technicity in tools, machines and automated systems of governanceꟷ, the technicity of the animal "imaginatively" opens up – in the case of animals with predominantly photological interfaces, such as that of the human mammal – virtualities, spacings and temporalities in the material medium of the living, precisely from a radical instinctive lack (in a sense close to that understood by Samuel Butler: “instinct” as the stabilization of the hermeneutic, practical and declarative “habit” through the position of a hermeneutic foundation, in contrast to the ontological anarché of “thought,” which would rather be played out in the interruption and metamorphosis of habit). Thus, the paradox of this kind of semiotic trap is that, by autonomizing the prosthetic apparatus of epochal technologies and languages, by “sacralizing” itself, by estranging itself and separating itself from the rhizomatically entangled and imaginative living bodies, it ends up isolating and domesticating them in order to productivize them and, even, threatening them with extinction ꟷas if they were “external enemies” when they dare to derail the gigantic system of intentional clichés that we call “world” or “culture” within a bubble of “civilization” (in which in each case we subjectivize ourselves in principle: hermeneutic facticity). The dispositive of contemporary capital would be tendentially totalitarian, since it consists of its anthropomorphization, in the identification between people and capital. The relationship between human life and capital will no longer be played out in relationships marked by heteronomy, as is the case of slavery or wage labour, but by the “autonomy” of the person (introjection of obedience and funcionariat) as socially automated human capital. This nihilistic abstraction, the alienation and isolation that the living being suffers in capitalist society, according to Cesarano, would explain capitalism as a logic of “organization and planning of nothingness”, of functionalization in the “impeccable automatism of the fictitious communities of nihilism”.

Gonzalo Díaz-Letelier / Antropomorfosis del capital, guerra civil y supervivencia I (bilingual Spanish-English)

1.- ESPECIE, TÉCNICA Y ALIENACIÓN. En «Critica dell’utopia capitale»  de Giorgio Cesarano (1928-1975), libro compuesto de fragmentos escritos desde 1969 y publicado póstumamente en 1993, el poeta, escritor, traductor y activista anarquista, cercano a luddistas, situacionistas y comunistas obreros de la escena de Milán del “pensamiento radical italiano” de los años sesenta y setenta –participa y testifica de la revuelta de marzo a junio de 1968 en Milán (la “primavera milanesa”, el mayo del 68 italiano)–, ofrece una interesante hipótesis sobre la alienación contemporánea como antropomorfización del capital, siguiendo algunos vectores del pensamiento de Jacques Camatte.  Se trata de una suerte de hipótesis antropogenética que consta de tres enunciados básicos: 1) que el desarrollo de la “especie humana” ha sido la historia de la sumisión de la especie al trabajo y la producción de utensilios-prótesis que se hacen cargo cada vez más del cuerpo viviente, progresivamente reducido a la condición de apéndice alienado y subyugado; 2) que el desarrollo de la “psyché individual”, separada del cuerpo, como pensamiento que se piensa a sí mismo, deviene Ego colonizado por el capital, es decir, “persona” en su forma tendencial moderna, en cuanto dispositivo de introyección de la obediencia (autonomización funcional) e interiorización de la ley del valor en proceso (movilización total de la ley del valor, hoy diríamos “capital humano” e “identitarismos” ya sea universalistas o particularistas); y 3) que la producción del lenguaje, tecnificado como “conjunto de señales autonomizadas”, se acumula como trabajo muerto y termina por constituir un aparato-medio tecnificado de comunicación, de modo que los vivientes pierden la potencia común e inapropiable del lenguaje en la medida en que éste se apropia privativamente en un aparato intencional ꟷen el sentido de la “concepción burguesa de la lengua” apuntado por Walter Benjamin. De tal modo que, como corolario, la “cultura” o (in)coincidencia entre cuerpo y técnica, que abriría mundo en cuanto potencia de tecnicidad experimental del viviente, se convierte en una forma de alienación, en una coincidencia entre cuerpo y técnica que se quiere total.  La cultura como alienación consistiría así, por una parte, en un cierre operativo-funcional de los vivientes, y por otra, en una sacrificialidad de la expresividad y de la vida misma de aquellos que no se dejan reducir a la operatividad del comando ontológico del caso ꟷmodernamente el capital, como comando de la economía de la presencia y teleología trascendental en sentido historicista.

Anthropomorphism of capital, civil war and survival I

1.- SPECIES, TECHNIQUE AND ALIENATION. In “Critica dell’utopia capitale”, a book by Giorgio Cesarano (1928-1975) composed of fragments written since 1969 and published posthumously in 1993, the poet, writer, translator and anarchist activist, close to Luddites, Situationists and worker communists of the Milanese scene of “Italian radical thought” from the sixties and seventies – he participated in and testified the revolt of March to June 1968 in Milan (the “Milanese Spring”, the "Italian May of 68") – offers an interesting hypothesis on contemporary alienation as the anthropomorphization of capital, following some vectors of Jacques Camatte’s thought. This is a kind of anthropogenetic hypothesis consisting of three basic statements: 1) that the development of the “human species” has been the history of the submission of the species to work and the production of prosthetic tools that increasingly take over the living body, progressively reduced to the condition of an alienated and subjugated appendage; 2) that the development of the “individual psyche,” separated from the body, as a thought that thinks itself, becomes an Ego colonized by capital, that is, a “person” in its modern, tendential form, as a dispositive for the introjection of obedience (functional autonomization) and the internalization of the law of value in process (total mobilization of the law of value, today we would say “human capital” and “identitarianisms,” whether universalist or particularist); and 3) that the production of language, technified as a “set of autonomized signals,” accumulates as dead labor and ends up constituting a technified apparatus-medium of communication, such that the living lose the common and non-appropriable potentiality of language to the extent that it is privately appropriated in an intentional apparatus ꟷin the sense of the “bourgeois conception of language” pointed out by Walter Benjamin. In such a way that, as a corollary, the “culture” or (in)coincidence between body and technology, which would open up the world as a potentiality of experimental technicity of the living, becomes a form of alienation, a coincidence between body and technology that is intended to be total. Culture as alienation would thus consist, on the one hand, in an operational-functional closure of the living, and on the other, in a sacrifice of the expressiveness and life itself of those who do not allow themselves to be reduced to the operativity of the ontological command of the case ꟷmodernly capital, as command of the economy of presence and transcendental teleology in the historicist sense.

Emmanuel Haddad / Gaza: “¿A partir de cuántos muertos pasamos de la indignación a la indiferencia?” (15 de julio de 2024, L’Orient-Le Jour, Beirut, El Líbano)

Traducción del francés al español por Baptistine Guevart de un artículo de Emmanuel Haddad publicado el 15 de julio de 2024 en el periódico francófono L’Orient-Le Jour de Beirut, El Líbano, bajo el título “À Gaza, la banalisation de l’horreur. Les atrocités perpétrées par Israël se suivent et se ressemblent dans l’enclave occupée, mais l’attention médiatique s’estompe. Nous sommes-nous habitués au pire?”:

https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1420319/a-gaza-la-banalisation-de-lhorreur.html

Republicado el mismo día en París, Francia, por Courrier International, bajo el título “Gaza: À partir de combien de morts passe-t-on de l’indignation à l’indifférence?”:

https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/guerre-gaza-a-partir-de-combien-de-morts-passe-t-on-de-l-indignation-a-l-indifference

Gaza: “¿A partir de cuántos muertos pasamos de la indignación a la indiferencia?”

Emmanuel Haddad

En Gaza, la banalización del horror. Las atrocidades perpetradas por Israel se suceden con intensidad en el enclave ocupado, pero la atención de los medios de comunicación está disminuyendo. ¿Nos hemos acostumbrado a lo peor?

“Son niñes, niñes de 7 a 12 años de edad, el mayor estaba en primer año en la universidad, eran todos civiles”, grita con desesperación Aya Al-Agha, una de les sobrevivientes de la masacre perpetrada por el ejército israelí que produjo noventa muertes y más de 300 herides el sábado 13 de julio en el campo de Al-Mawasi de Khan Younès, en el sur de la franja de Gaza, según el Ministerio de Salud del enclave ocupado. Casi un centenar más de asesinades. En Gaza, el conteo macabro no para de crecer ni un día, ni una hora. Unas horas después de este ataque que tuvo como objetivo militar una “zona humanitaria” supuestamente segura según los propios criterios del Estado israelí, otro ataque aéreo asesina veinte civiles en el campo de refugiados de Al-Shati, en el oeste de la ciudad de Gaza, según la Defensa Civil palestina. El balance de la ofensiva israelí en el enclave es ahora de 38.584 palestines asesinades y 88.881 herides, según las autoridades locales, mientras la revista médica británica The Lancet —medio de reconocida seriedad— evoca al menos 186.000 muertes tomando en cuenta las causas “indirectas” relacionadas al conflicto. Por lo tanto, en la medida en que el balance se agrava, la emoción de la opinión pública mundial parece agotarse.

¿A partir de cuántos muertos pasamos de la indignación a la indiferencia? Esta pregunta rancia y sórdida surge inevitablemente cuando, en la medida en que una guerra se instala prolongándose en el tiempo, los medios se convierten en contabilizadores de lo peor y la amplitud del desastre se vuelve tan grande que humanizar a cada víctima se torna un desafío. El Líbano, Irak, Siria y otros países en guerra en el Medioriente vivieron en carne propia la cita cínica del escritor alemán Kurt Tucholsky, a menudo atribuida erróneamente a Stalin, “La muerte de un ser humano es una catástrofe. Cien mil muertos, es una estadística”.

“Lamentablemente, en los países árabes, donde la guerra se coloca constantemente a nuestras puertas, nos habituamos muy rápido a un alto nivel de violencia. Mi primera experiencia de normalización de la violencia tuvo lugar tras la invasión americana (sic) a Irak, cuando el país estaba sumido en el caos, y donde cada día traía su cuota de atentados y muertes”, recuerda Hayat El-Hariri, investigadora libanesa de la relación entre medios y política.

“El crimen más odioso es que te habitúen a ello”

Más allá de Medioriente, los sufrimientos de les habitantes de Gaza no parecen tener el mismo eco en los medios internacionales, más de diez meses después del inicio de la ofensiva israelí lanzada en respuesta a la “operación Inundación de Al-Aqsa” de Hamas, el 7 de octubre de 2023, en la cual se dio muerte a 1.195 israelíes. “El crimen más odioso es acostumbrarse a todo esto y callarse”, escribe en X (ex-Twitter) el poeta palestino Mosab Abu Toha, el 4 de julio recién pasado. No es el único en deplorar que el horror en Gaza parezca haberse vuelto la nueva norma.

“Los Palestines de Gaza informan que anoche fue una de las peores desde el comienzo del genocidio. Vaya un recordatorio: que la cobertura mediática del genocidio haya disminuido en los grandes medios no significa que las cosas se hayan calmado”, escribe el 8 de julio en X la co-fundadora del centro de investigación palestino Al-Shabaka, Yara Hawari.

La caída del interés de los medios occidentales refleja, según ella, “el racismo estructural” que considera que “para Palestina y les palestines, la muerte y la destrucción son un estado normal de las cosas, inherente a nuestra parte del mundo”. La escritora y politóloga palestina cree que es necesario precisar que:

No hay nada normal en que les niñes deban recoger pedazos de sus padres después de un ataque aéreo, o que la gente sea hambreada a la fuerza y que asistamos a un genocidio en directo.

El martes 9 de julio, los ojos están clavados en la semifinal de la Eurocopa 2024 entre Francia y España. En ese mismo momento, palestines desplazados por los repetidos bombardeos patean la pelota en el patio de la escuela Al-Rawda, al este de Khan Younès. Un espectador filma la escena. Repentinamente, un misil israelí aterriza sobre la escuela y una enésima masacre aparece en las redes sociales de los espectadores del mundo entero.

“Las imágenes de niños pulverizados mientras jugaban fútbol están frente a nosotros, pero el mundo mira para otro lado”, reacciona Pierre Haski, uno de los pocos periodistas del Hexágono [Francia continental] que mencionó esta nueva masacre. ¿Pero hacia dónde miramos, y por qué?

Al igual de Yara Hawari, el político palestino Khalil Sayegh denuncia que “el racismo está impidiendo a los medios occidentales conmoverse con lo que pasa en Gaza de la misma manera que en Ucrania”. Y agrega, sobre la tendencia de los medios a saltar siempre de una crisis a otra : “El conflicto de Gaza fue cubierto durante unos meses, pero de ahora en adelante las elecciones en Francia, Reino Unido y Estados Unidos está desviando la atención”, dice.

Respecto de las redes sociales y el desencanto creciente entre las opiniones occidentales y los medios tradicionales, Hayat El-Hariri recuerda que, a pesar de la moderada cobertura mediática, las demostraciones de apoyo a Gaza más importantes ocurrieron en los países occidentales. Si éstas cesaron, sería en parte por una razón prosaica: “Las manifestaciones pro-palestinas que han sacudido las universidades del mundo entero tuvieron lugar durante el período de los exámenes de fin de año. Ahora son las vacaciones de verano e Israel saca provecho de ellas para actuar en medio de una indiferencia aumentada”, dice.

“La franja de Gaza ha devenido un cementerio”

A la inversa, en el mundo árabe, a excepción de las gigantescas manifestaciones en Jordania y en Yemen, la opinión se mostró más timorata. Khalil Sayegh admite que esperaba "tal vez más del mundo árabe, especialmente cuando las masacres ocurrieron durante el Ramadán”. ¿Pero es esta aparente indiferencia el reflejo de la opinión pública? Según él, ante tal nivel de horror “el mundo árabe se hubiera incendiado” antes de la “Primavera Árabe”. Pero “los nuevos regímenes nacidos de la represión de la Primavera Árabe ahogan toda libertad de expresión”, explica.

¿Otro factor que explique esta sensación de caída del interés actual de la opinión pública? La necesidad de preservarse a sí mismo del abatimiento. “Hay dos opciones: o seguir continuamente los horrores con el riesgo de derrumbarse, o dar a veces un paso atrás, pero trabajando todavía por la causa palestina”, resume Hayat El-Hariri. El agotamiento puede así resultar de la sensación de fracaso en la perspectiva de cambiar las cosas sobre el terreno. “Las masas del mundo entero están todavía al lado de Palestina”, reconoce Yara Hawari. Pero “ninguna presión ha forzado al régimen israelí al cese del fuego. Pienso entonces que la gente está frustrada con esta situación”.

No obstante, “hacer la vista gorda es un error", estima Hayat El-Hariri, para quien, aunque el cambio toma tiempo, “la resiliencia de les Palestines de Gaza merece más y mejor que nuestro abatimiento”. Para estos últimos, resignarse no es una opción. Habiéndose ido de la franja de Gaza después de seis meses filmando el horror, Yousef D. Hammash, cineasta nativo de Jabaliya [ciudad del norte de la franja de Gaza], continúa ahora sus esfuerzos desde Londres:

Tengo una responsabilidad como narrador de historias, porque todo reposa sobre nosotros, los periodistas palestines. La única herramienta de la que disponemos para defender nuestra causa es nuestra cámara.

En el último reportaje que produjo para Channel 4 [cadena de televisión británica] el 9 de julio, un hospital de la ciudad de Gaza vio llegar decenas de niñes herides o muertes después de un bombardeo israelí, en la ciudad de la cual el Estado israelí ordenó nuevamente la evacuación a los civiles el 10 de julio. Una mujer se acerca, con su niña muerta en brazos. “Esperé catorce años antes de lograr darle luz”, grita. “¿Dónde vamos a enterrarla?”, pregunta su hermano, antes de reiterar: “Toda la franja de Gaza se ha vuelto un cementerio”.

El anterior es un testimonio que interrumpe la deshumanización de las víctimas de Gaza, dado que tal deshumanización también está ligada al hecho de que las masacres se llevan a cabo cada vez más a puerta mediática cerrada. Pues, además de la cobertura en descenso de los medios occidentales, empujada también por la prohibición de penetrar en el enclave en ausencia del ejército israelí, los ataques reiterados contra periodistas palestines amenazan con transformar a Gaza en un hoyo negro de la información. El 6 de julio, cinco periodistas murieron en veinticuatro horas, elevando a 158 el número de periodistas de Gaza asesinados desde el 7 de octubre de 2023, según la oficina de los medios del gobierno local, mientras el Comité para la Protección de los Periodistas deplora la muerte de 108 periodistas palestines.

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 Traducción del francés al español por Baptistine Guevart. Revisada por Gonzalo Díaz-Letelier.