vector 2_1.cdr - Universitatea de Arte "George Enescu"

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If we had a detached look on things (like the Martian imagined by Thierry
de Duve, still uneducated at contemporary schools), we could see that the
people of Planet Earth invoke modernity in very different ways. They appeal to it
and blame it at the same time, with a sometimes raving rage. Some of them
recognize it inside themselves, but seek to overcome it. They are precisely
those same people who promoted and realized it: the Westerners, European
and non-Europeans alike. Others feel its hideous tentacles stretched over most
of the world, and revolt against it. It is the case of the Muslim, Latin American,
and some Asian countries. Finally, there are those who look for the benefits of
progress, without anticipating its shortcomings. The former communist states
fall under this category. Let us see what their situation is like, in the particular
context of Romania.
Without having had the advantage of an early cultural modernity like the
West, Romania happened upon a few modern ideas by chance. That is why its
journey toward modernity after 1848 was socio-political and cultural at the
same time, the new ideal of national unity being bolstered both by social
movements and cultural means. The process of the establishment of a sociopolitical
modernity seemed to be unfolding irreversibly between the two World
Wars. The political system was half-democratic, the capitalist economy started
to work and to generate modern, contractual social relations. Anticipating its
abstract universalism, some intellectuals fiercely affirmed the local and adopted
the ideal of defining a Romanian cultural identity. In fact, this remained a
frequent theme in Romanian culture and populated with multiple symbols and
phantasms the minds of numerous generations, some of them still alive today.
What has since then remained constant is this task of defining an identity in
relation to the western world, perceived as homogeneous and univocal. Given
this context, from the Romanian point of view, modernity is universalistic and
particularistic at the same time. However, the particular has come to be present
itself as a “strong”, irrefutable truth.
The full realization of modernity was discontinued by the communist
experiment. Paradoxically, modernity somehow started anew, though in a
negative way this time. All its evils were turned into a terrifying and insane
reality. From a social point of view, communist modernity amounted to the
annihilation of society. Individuals had to be reeducated, made to understand
what “true” society really was. Their lives were programmed, not by
themselves, but by someone else. Everything was reduced to a cynical calculus
that excluded any personal projects. The progress of the nation had to unfold
according to the scientific laws of history, revealed by dialectical materialism.
And those who mastered these rules, at least as certain as those of the
immutable course of nature, felt the obligation to reveal them to the others.
Isn't it the case that he who knows the laws of history also claims to be its
master? In this regard, the scenario is as modern as it can get.
Communist power created another type of universal, controllable space,
within which one had the right to say only what one “ought to”. In the process of
destroying communities and annihilating society, communism put to work a
huge apparatus of linguistic mystification. Everything was redefined. Reality
was modified “with one stroke of the pen”. The sense of those phenomena that
did not fit in with the official ideology was inverted. Here are a few examples:
true society could not be but communist, they said, while the rest of the world
was still lagging behind in an obsolete, “bourgeois”, and “exploitative” period.
The human being, the ordinary individual, was either a “new man”, or both a
“fascist” and an “imperialist”. Naturally, freedom could exist only within the
communist state, which had already victoriously overcome the differences
among social classes. Conversely, individual freedom could only be
propaganda of “the rotten West”. The communist state claimed to do something
more for liberty: it granted it. You could still receive it, but only conditionally.
Since they could not participate in social life, human beings assumed a new
type of individualism. The fear of the others, potential informers of the Securitate,
as well as the primacy of personal interest (one had to “handle the situation”)
perverted the significance of society and transformed it into a sum of isolated
monads, “with no doors or windows”. Their relation, as in Leibniz's monadology, was
only an ideal one. It unavoidably passed through the image of the Party and the
Securitate, which pervaded the gestures and the words of the other. In the 80's,
suspicion was generalized. Most probably every individual experienced a huge inner
cleavage, a profound duality. Communism created terrified selves, who looked for
shelter, who nestled in niches that were often allowed so that the world would know
that there was liberty in Romania after all. We can thus understand how the idea of
public space was perverted. In the communist view, social space became “public”
only at the point where each individual ended up living with the vivid sensation that
he was followed. Each individual had to believe that he was a prisoner inside a
generalized panoptikon, whose guardians were not only at the center, but
everywhere. Central power had to be visibly present even in the slightest details of
the periphery.
I sometimes wonder how far the phantasms of the communism have
stretched and to what extent we still wear their late masks. To what extent has it
pervaded our senses? We are often tempted to label “communist” certain attitudes
that are simply human deviations for others. Unavoidably, we perceive modernity
through a communist grid, even where that is not obvious in the least. It may be a
deficiency of perception, a deviation of understanding. The context of our lives,
divided (even temporally) between communism and post-communism, still makes
us count on history to a large extent. After all, it is only now that we rediscover it.
We are at last becoming aware of the historical constitution of things and of our
lives, of the ways in which good and evil occur in society. But we are still unable to
relate to history in a playful, ironical, and detached manner. We need it yet as a
shield, to protect us from false “truths”. And we also need it in order to be capable of
unfolding our critique of the hidden masks of modernity, both inside and outside
ourselves, as well as in order to learn its good parts, in a lucid and relaxed manner.
Now, we are about to rediscover the delights of the periphery.
Translated by Cristian Nae