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Schizophrenic Culture,1945-1975

Week 14 – Lecture 1

29 April 2008

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Picasso, Guernica [1937]

•26 April 1937: German saturation bombing of Guernica (Spain)

Trains: Frankenstein’s creature

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Controversy: does telling the truth about Allied bombing “lessen” Germany’s / Hitler’s guilt? Does it make you “unpatriotic”? A “traitor” to the nation?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

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20th Century: percent of direct casualties that were civilians

1914-1918: World War I 05 %

1939-1945: World War II 50%

1965-1973: Vietnam 80%

1990s: Balkans/Persian Gulf 85-95%

Working for Reconciliation: A Caritas Handbook (Vatican City: Caritas Internationalis, 1999)

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B. Schizophrenic Liberalism: Cold War Culture

(1) Philosophical Expression: Existentialism

Jean-Paul Sartre Albert Camus

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Jean-Paul Sartre: Existentialism

•Problem for Existentialists: How to reconstruct liberal values --reason, progress, heroism, individuality -- in post-1945 culture?

• "Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth." – From L'Être et le Néant / Being and

Nothingness, 1943

a. Existence is fundamentally absurd

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• ABSURDISM: RANDOM: Reality defies comprehension: no timeless truths• Universe is indifferent to us. No way to avoid fate/ Fortuna/ death.• Meaning comes through facing this fact.

– NB: identical to Freud’s conclusion in Civilization and its Discontents (1927)

a. Existence is fundamentally absurd

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Sartre 1940s

b. Human being is paradoxical and indefinable

Cannot generalize; each person is uniqueNB: Schizophrenic Liberalism: both continuous with and yet innovative from early “subjective individualism”

a) Hold onto radical individualism [creativity];

b) but leave behind the rational individual andthe rational world

NB: Influence of Nietzsche [1844-1900]:1. Absence of universal truths2. Radical individualism: go “against the herd”Übermensch --- the “overman” or “Superman”

c. Hence: Radical individualism: “Existence precedes essence”

We must create ourselves “from scratch” we are nothing than what we self-create

Ethic of “authenticity” --- imperative: “affirm one’s own uniqueness”“Bad Faith”: depending on another’s rules/definitions;

handing responsibility for your actions over to another [cf. Sartre’s No Exit: cowardice]

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Religious Existentialism

(2) Abstract Expressionism: [“The New York School”]

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Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock, Stenographic Figure [1942]

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Picasso 1937 --- Pollock 1942

Jackson Pollock, Number 1A, 1948

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1942 ---- 1948

“action painting”

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Pollock, Lavender Mist, 1950

Two responses to cultural devastation: 1920 --- 1950

Abstraction: De Stijl

Abstract Expressionism:

“The New York School”

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• Cultural significance of Abstract Expressionism?

• Schizophrenic Liberalism:– 1) Hold onto radical

individualism [creativity];

– 2) but leave behind the rational individual andthe rational world

• <“cult of the irrational”>

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(3) Cold War pop culture: individual as REBEL!!!

1954

1955

1957

1956

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1956

Popular culture: individualism vs. communalism (Communism)

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Dangers: “passing for human!!!”

“a malignant disease spreading through the whole country”

Dangers: “passing for human!!!”

“a malignant disease spreading through the whole country”

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Dangers: Communists “passing for Liberal!!!”

Krzysztof Penderecki, “Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima” [1959-1961]

• “Threnody”: song of lamentation for the dead

• Sounds imitate drone of airplane as it delivers bomb; air-raid sirens; general chaos / meaninglessness: FORTUNA

• NB: Penderecki is Polish/Catholic: Auschwitz is in Poland

• Using Western music to end it; end of melody.

• From “a-tonal” to aleatoric [alea= dice] --- “chance”

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Krzysztof Penderecki, “Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima” [1959-1961]

Think of “the problem of representation” post-1945

How can you “represent” evil / horror?

Abstraction vs. “realism / naturalism”

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Think of “the problem of representation” post-1945

How can you “represent” evil / horror?

Abstraction vs. “realism / naturalism”

…in an absurd world.

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C. “Decolonization”: Post-1945

1975: American Embassy roof29 April

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April 30, 1975

1975: 30 April --- Tanks crash through presidential palace gates

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How did we get to 1975…?

1939: Colonial Possessions

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Africa and Asia post-1945

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“De-colonization”

• Problem with the word: it implies that you return to something that had been…

• e.g., “decontaminate”; “de-ice”

Two-fold dilemma:

a) Cannot recover political identities of pre-conquest times [tribes; kingdoms]

b) Cannot make artificial new boundaries seem “natural”

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Decolonization: “French Indochina” --- > “Vietnam”

• Former modes of organization no longer available, e.g.:– local families; – hereditary tribes; – “kingdoms”

• How do these newly-invented nation-states organize their self-identities?

• What will fill this vacuum of identity???

SOUTHEAST ASIAPost-1945 dilemma of “decolonization”:

19th-century pre-conquest structures don’t exist; new boundaries not easily made “natural”

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ANSWER: East vs. West Bipolar Cold War World: Liberalism vs. Communism

Developing country becomes a “local theater” in East-West “Cold War”Cf. USA 1840s-1850s: new “state” either “slave” or “free”

←←←←←←←←←←←← NB: China 1949!!!

• 1945: Ho Chi Minh declares “independent Vietnam”– educated in France– Paris 1919, p. 59: “a young

kitchen assistant at the Ritz”• i.e., WILSONIAN “SELF-

DETERMINATION”– trained in USSR– “Vietnam” identity

constructed around Leninism: a peasant / agrarian society needs a “vanguard”

• French:– committed to staying in Indochina

• French identity tied up in late 19th-c. imperialism

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September 1) USSR explodes bomb --- ends USA monopoly on atomic weapons

2) Two Germanies created3) October 1, 1949:

Proclamation of People’s Republic of China by Mao Zedong

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• 1949: “Who lost China?” and Stalin gets the bomb1950: U.S. pledges financial support to France

– eventually spends $4 billion– 1950-1953: Korean Conflict– 1950-1952: McCarthy Hearings– 1953: Rosenbergs

• NB: IDEOLOGICAL PROBLEM:• A) Vietnamese want “independence”

from colonial power (19th-c. arrangement)• B) In principle, U.S. committed to Liberal

[Wilsonian] ideals of a “people’s” “self-determination”

• C) However: Liberal principles over-ridden by post-1945 bipolarity: democracy v. communism

• KURDS TODAY???

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1954: Ho Chi Minh defeatsthe French at Dien Bien Phu

Only 73 of 15,000 French troops escape

1954-55: Vietnam divided in two: Communist North and Democratic

South[1950-1954: McCarthy Hearings

1954: Brown v. Board]

O'Neill Media PN1993.5.F7 T475 1990

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1959: Cuban Revolution1960: JFK president1961: Bay of Pigs Fiasco /

Berlin Wall built in August1962: Cuban Missile Crisis1963: JFK Assassinated1964: Civil Rights Act /

LBJ landslide /Tonkin Gulf incident / resolution

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1960

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•1961:

•April: Bay of Pigs •August: Berlin Wall

•NB: 600 American “advisors” in Vietnam

1961: 13 August

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Escape from East Berlin

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– End result: promise not to invade Cuba [--> Elian!]– WWIII narrowly averted

1962October

Cuban Missile Crisis

"There are some who say that Communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin.”

-- President John F. Kennedy, West Berlin, West Germany, June 26, 1963

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November 1963: 1st: Diem assassinated; 22nd: JFK assassinated

Civil Rights Act

July 2, 1964

Height of LBJ’s “Great Society”

Lost Southern Democrats 44 years ago

Act of “memorialization” to JFK as martyr

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• 1964: Gulf of Tonkin incident (August 2) and Congress resolution– November: LBJ Landslide

• 1965: Vietnam Escalation– Assassination of Malcolm X

1964-65: Turning Point in “The Sixties”

1965 [February 22]

Assassination of

Malcolm X

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• 1964: Gulf of Tonkin – Incident: August 2nd

– Resolution: August 7th: The President could "take all necessary measures to repel armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression."

– USSR: Kruschev ousted by conservatives; – USSR: Brezhnev appointed to restore “order” and pride to USSR

The Domino Theory

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1967LBJ fear of provoking China …

a “guerilla” war ---i.e., North Vietnamese located in and

“passing” as South Vietnamese;also: civilian suicide bombers

“Hardware”: LBJ destroys the country

he’s trying to “save”

“Mentality” shift: savagery / futility

[cf. The Great War: what’s the sacrifice for???]

←←←←←←←←←1967: B52s bomb near Saigon

Napalm: a jellied gasoline; melts skin so that cannot be removed. Thus: slowly roasts victims to death. [Dow Chemical]

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“Civilization”? 8 June 1972; Children fleeing napalm

http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Napalm-Recycled.htm

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Agent Orange: Defoliant composed of dioxin; intended to destroy jungles where guerillas hidden [Dow Chemical]

Destroying homes in “northwest triangle” north of Saigon

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Denuded hills of Quang Tri Province [triple-layer jungle before war]

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http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0401/pjg_thumbs.html

“I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”

Apocalypse Now (1979)

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An impossible War?Military needs

v. Geo-Political demands:

• 1) BREZHNEV: Vietnam a way of reviving USSR pride after Cuban Missile Crisis

• 2) MAO: China on border—and stealing USSR tanks!

• 3) JOHNSON: afraid of provoking either into nuclear exchange bombs the South!

• SUM: a “civil war” that is actually a very hot battle in the Cold War

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Problem: How to explain the sense of Vietnam as a “dirty” war?Cf. Mary Douglas: “Dirt is matter out of place.”

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A matter of numbers …???

Perhaps ….

May 9, 1960

Birth control pill

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A common explanation: Pacifism / War is immoral…South Vietnam, May 1968: The country we’re trying to save?

HOWEVER: Hamburg, 1945 --- Civilian bombings in the last “clean” USA war.

Isn’t war always “dirty”?

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1972

1945

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Factors

extrinsic to the war itself?????