<< NAMES NAMED ~ MAIN ~ DEMOCRACY ON THE MARCH >>
ABUNDANT LIFE ALL ROUND
Terry Eagleton is professor of cultural theory at Manchester University, which possibly explains his attraction to suicide:
While insurgents have been blowing themselves apart in Israel and Iraq, a silence has prevailed about what suicide bombing actually involves. Like hunger strikers, suicide bombers are not necessarily in love with death.
Their head-removing comrades respectfully disagree.
They kill themselves because they can see no other way of attaining justice; and the fact that they have to do so is part of the injustice.
Got the interview transcripts to back this up, mate? As well, suicide bombers don’t merely kill themselves; they kill others. At what point will Eagleton consider the murders of those targeted by his human justice-seeking missiles?
It is possible to act in a way that makes your death inevitable without actually desiring it. Those who leapt from the World Trade Centre to avoid being incinerated were not seeking death, even though there was no way they could have avoided it.
You might think this the single most revolting comment you’ll likely read all year. Perhaps it is, although Eagleton immediately attempts a yet more disgusting observation:
Ordinary, non-political suicides are those whose lives have come to feel worthless to them, and who, accordingly, need a quick way out. Martyrs are more or less the opposite. People like Rosa Luxemburg or Steve Biko give up what they see as precious (their lives) for an even more valuable cause. They die not because they see death as desirable in itself, but in the name of a more abundant life all round.
Abundant life for all! Through the gift of suicide bombing!
Suicide bombers also die in the name of a better life for others; it is just that, unlike martyrs, they take others with them in the process.
Key phrase: “It is just that ...� Such a minor distinction. Why quibble?
The martyr bets his life on a future of justice and freedom; the suicide bomber bets your life on it. But both believe that a life is only worth living if it contains something worth dying for.
Teenage poetry meets Islamofascism. Sweet.
On this theory, what makes existence meaningful is what you are prepared to relinquish it for. This used to be known as God; in modern times it is mostly known as the nation. For Islamic radicals it is both inseparably.
On the contrary; for Semtex-swathed Islamic radicals, separation is inevitable.
The bomber forces a contrast between the extreme kind of self-determination involved in taking his own life and the lack of such self-determination in his everyday existence. If he could live in the way he dies, he would not need to die.
Living in the way he dies would require the rest of us to die.
At least his death can be his death, and thus a taste of freedom. The only form of sovereignty left to you is the power to dispose of your own death.
Eagleton has already forgotten the suicide bomber’s primary aim.
Suicide, as Dostoevsky recognised, means the death of God, since you usurp his divine monopoly over life and death. What more breathtaking form of omnipotence than to do away with yourself for all eternity?
To remind Terry: they kill other people. Children. The elderly. Innocents.
Suicide bombers and hunger strikers are out to transform weakness into power.
The Melbourne Age, by running this obscene piece, has transformed “mainstream broadsheet� into “fiesty new competitor for tiny pro-terror niche market�. Send a letter.
Wonderful. Nihilism in its ultimate form. Used to justify suicidal maniacs blowing people just to give the suicidal puke meaning to his/her life.
Makes me wonder why he doesn’t strap on a semtex suit and go dance with the devil.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 01 27 at 02:30 PM • permalinkIt is so totally false to compare those who jumped from the WTC to “suicide bombers”.
Who knows what was going through the minds of the people who jumped, but essentially their choices were stripped from them (even if they did have one final choice to make, it was one they never should have had to).
The term “suicide bombers” is deeply problematic (Cultural Studies 101 there) since it leaves open the possibility for terrorists to garner the sympathy that is given the person who takes their life for more “prosaic” reasons.
In the latter instance, sympathy is given because it is presumed that something unbearable drove the person to it. Just one distinction is that “normal” suicides usually don’t take anyone with them.
What a horrible romanticism of the selfish, the brutal and the murderous.
Leaving aside that the taking of the lives of others is a “power” of itself, Eagleton’s thesis that they do it to “transform weakness into power” may not be far off the mark.
This is meant purely in the sense that sometimes these people do achieve their aims by governments ultimately succumbing to their demands.
Posted by Major Anya on 2005 01 27 at 03:00 PM • permalinkAlong similiar lines, LGF had a post about one dispicable individual by the name of Dr. Ward Churchill who calls the victims of 9-11 “Little Eichman’s”. The “good” Dr. is evidently headlining as a guest of New York’s Hamilton College.
Posted by Bucky Katt on 2005 01 27 at 03:17 PM • permalinkBoth Rosa Luxemburg and Steve Biko were murdered (although the Spartacist Luxemburg was no loss).
Eagleton has been at the forefront of the progressivist educational movement in the UK for many years. If one were to seek a culprit for the destruction of the British educational system, Eagleton would stand head and shoulders above other contenders. He’s vermin.
Posted by David Gillies on 2005 01 27 at 03:59 PM • permalinkthat is the stupidest thing i have ever read by someone not named Chomsky or Zinn. And both of those individuals are a rare combination of ideologically blindered and structuraly dishonest.
The Ward Churchill piece referenced above is learing and evil, like an apologist for sex with minors. But it is not stupid, per se. Eagleton shows an epic inability to grasp the obvious fused with an affection for ignoring the true.
As long as the parties of the broad left—the Democrats, ALP and British Labor—have to draw intellectual sustenance and partisan succor from the likes of these academic wankers, there will be Republicans in the Whie House.
This shows why the humanities schools in the universities have become a major problem for the survival of decency and even civilisation as we know it. Over the top? Well how long can we keep exposing generation after generation of students to this kind of thing without serious downstream effects?
There is a need for a systematic review of university courses, not to limit freedom of speech but to make people outside realise fully what is going on. I am looking for helpers in Australia to pursue this project.Taken from a purely philosophical, analytic perspective, he’s actually not very wrong, about most of it. (He is wrong about the “not desiring death” part, though, unless the bit about potential bombers going on about their reward from Allah and all the Houris waiting for them is just my imagination or a clever front.)
Making fun of his word choices doesn’t make them wrong; the Islamist bombers really do think they’re making a “more abundant life”, more or less, in doing what they think God commands, and trying to bring the world (again, in their minds) into accord with God’s will. They’re completely wrong about it, but that doesn’t mean they don’t believe it, or that Eagleton is wrong to remind us that they do.
I do think he whitewashes (or simply is ignorant of) the current of nihilism running through the suicide bomber “culture”, but a lot of these attacks on him seem to be based on ... well, nothing he seems to have actually said, just the assumption that he must be trying to make the Islamoboomers look good. (And he’s wrong about despair, too, but that doesnt’ look to be the core of his argument.)
(Further, Darlene, he did not “compare” the Twin Towers jumpers to suicide bombers, really. His point was that the jumpers did not jump to die, but to not die in a fire. Islamoboomers don’t blow themselves up to die; they blow themselves up to kill infidels, get in God’s good graces, or both.
He was making a valid and, I think, clear point about the difference between wanting to die and doing something that will make you die, for other reasons. There really is a difference, and his example is a crystal-clear expression of it.)
Final note: With his quote on Dostoevsky, he points out that suicide bombing is anti-God (which is not exactly something the bombers would agree with), and that it’s (in his own word) pyrrhic, to the extent it’s a “victory” at all.
“It is an assault on meaning as well as on the flesh - an ultimate act of defamiliarisation, which transforms the everyday into the monstrously unrecognisable.” does not, to me, sound like the words of a man justifying or celebrating the thing in question.
It sounds like Eagleton would really like to have the huevos to off himself creatively, but, lacking them, he settles for sick little apologetics lessons for mass murder.
Hey dumbass, it’s not a “breathtaking form of omnipotence” to kill oneself. It’s a breathtaking form of hubris. He should have moved on to a little Chesterton - in <u>Orthodoxy</u> he painstakingly goes over the differences between the martyr and the suicide.
As for Ward Churchill, he should stop disgracing that magnificent last name and start calling himself Ward Guevara or something.
This has probably already been linked to but I think it’s a really insightful analysis of what makes the Islamofascists tick, and why attempts to rationally understand their “grievances” are futile:
http://www.policyreview.org/AUG02/harris_print.htmlEagleton doesn’t consider suicide-bomber cynics. These would be people who find suicide bombing superficially attractive, what with ... I forget the attraction and don’t feel like scrolling up ... but feel it won’t do any good. Something always goes wrong, they think.
In fact there’s a fellow like this reported in an old Radio Japan clip [url=http://rhhardin.home.mindspring.com/japancut.bad.ram]http://rhhardin.home.mindspring.com/japancut.bad.ram [/url] a guy who rammed his car into a railroad station waiting room, jumped out and started stabbing people. He said later that everything he does turns out badly
Don’t you just love these academic arseholes and their little theories?
The best one is the now generally accepted as discredited theory that poverty and marginalisation drives these poor souls to do the terrible things they do. Let’s see, we’ve had numerous medical professionals and medical students…God only knows what oath they took!
We’ve had architects, engineers and multi-millionaires. The ‘brains’ behind al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, is a paediatrician for Christ sake! The cretin responsible for the recent Mosul mess-tent attack was a young Saudi medical student who specifically went to Iraq to kill. So much for that theory ‘eh? NEXT!Golly, Perfesser! So being blown up by a suicide bomber is an honor! A glimpse of the awesome pageant of self-determination that we blind, selfish westerners will never truly understand! Fantastic! I’ll celebrate their transition to a higher plane as the shrapnel and flames punish me for my many sins!
You go first!
It may be that Eagleton is echoing Stockhausen who said that 9/11 was “the greatest work of art of all time.�
Stockhausen cant tell good art from bad.
Both Eagleton, Stockhausen and Bin Laden are linked by their belief in a fantasy, one in which the poor suffering innocents (this time devout humble muslims) are mercilessly crushed by the greedy capitalist philistines (this time represented by Bushitler and the neocons.)
Time they got out of their ideological and mythological caves .
Eagleton half-registers what he’s saying in that poles-crossed way that so many people like him have. He knows and he doesn’t know. People who know and don’t know that Amiri Baraka wants them dead, & that Jean Genet means what he says about the beauty of evil. Then along comes Bin Laden & they fall in love. Only horror movies seem to capture these half-register personalities, like the character in Hellraisers II who deals pseudo-cleverly with a thing from hell only to become a thing from hell.
People like Rosa Luxemburg or Steve Biko give up what they see as precious (their lives) for an even more valuable cause
- their egos.
Posted by Jim Geones on 2005 01 28 at 04:19 AM • permalinkSigivald, you are indulging in the same nonsensical style as Eagleton.
First, nihilism assumes that there are no values. Eagleton does this (for example) by equating suicide bombers who have a choice of living or dying with people leaping from the WTC, who prefer to die by falling instead of burning to death. Or when he says “Suicide bombers and hunger strikers are out to transform weakness into power.” He equates Ghandi with a typical Pali-sploder. Pathetic logic.
Second, “...nothing he seems to have actually said, just the assumption that he must be trying to make the Islamoboomers look good…”. Huh? Note my above comment about Ghandi. Eagleton is justifying their choice of death by suicide/homicide.
Don’t be an apologist for an apologist of terrorism, Sigivald. It turns your argument into a farce, and makes me wonder about your own values.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 01 28 at 05:34 AM • permalinkOh come on, its not that bad an article. Its certainly not fair to label it a “pro-terror” piece either.
He is wrong in saying that they dont seek death - they believe they will get into heaven if they die in such a way - but he is right in that their own and others deaths are not their sole aim, they are trying to achieve other, wider goals too. The comparison to martyrs is also a valid one, as they also are fighting for something they believe is bigger than themselves.
Like I said, hes wrong in one of his premises, but its not a bad article, and definately not “pro-terror”.
We have heard from the so-called academics. These comments are keyed somewhat to the extracts Tim has listed:
1.Justice? The catchcry of justice must be sheeted home where it belongs. Tribalism is about power, not justice. Plato fudged in The Republic by pretending to identify the elements of society and by a process of elimination define justice. The Arab street fudges all the time in its attempts to move the argument away from their injustices and onto some perceived injustice by others.
2.To attain justice you first need to correctly identify it.
3.The Arab world may be acting in a way which makes deaths more certain.
4.Lives are made to feel worthless by regimes within not without the Arab world.
5.Suicide bombers die in a power play. They are not martyrs, and the description of them as martyrs is blasphemy in any worthwhile religion.
6.Meaningful existence must be with knowledge of God’s love or at least hearsay of it. Islamic radicals have been distanced from God to such an extent that neither is possible.
7.Living with self-determination is called Democaracy. Radicals living in the way described by this so-called academic is an abomination.
8.Sovereignty is or should be owned by the people and the head of state is the figurehead of the people. Many nations exercise sovereignty usurped from the people and they are still in the UN with voting rights. Shame!
9.Dostoyevsky was talking about the Christian God, but the prerogativesof no god, be it Jewish, Christian or Islamic, can be taken over by mere men. To even hint at that is ridiculous in the eyes of all, or should be. It is a breathtaking form of vanity to even contemplate the idea.
10.The last bit about power – Sigisvald take note – that is the bit he got right.Manchester (city and university), unfortunately, as the historic home of The Guardian newspaper where this article also appeared, still sees itself as a bastion of liberalism, and therefore this sort of repulsive nonsense will be tolerated in the name of academic freedom. Indeed, the university failed to condemn the discrimination by faculty members a couple of years ago against Israeli academics. In my 4 years studying there I may have been fortunate enought not to slip on this pile of excrement that is Eagleton, but there are very unpleasant leftist and islamist-sympathising tendancies among certain departments. The Islamists also are very highly represented amongst
the student body and have always felt very comfortable peddling their filth and hatred despite official restrictions, and every few years, like clockwork, there is an attempt to close down the Jewish Society.I also had a look at the article
http://andrewiandodge.com/index.php/archives/2005/01/26/2859/Nic White, I extracted a segment from your post above, and edited it slightly (as noted). I only changed single words:
“He is
wrongright in saying that theydontdo seekdeathlife - they believe they will get into heaven if theydielive in such a way - but he isrightwrong in that their own and othersdeathslives are not their sole aim, they are trying to achieve other, wider goals too.”This is now a statement that supports everyone in the Middle East who are anti-terrorist, Iraqi, Isreali, Coalition, whatever.
Since all that I put in words of opposite meaning, this is a clear demonstration that your argument is at least anti-Western, which is one shade of grey from pro-terrorist. As you are defending Mr. Eagleton, by using his rhetoric, and you are toning his argument down, it’s a short leap to the conclusion that he is pro-terrorist.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 01 28 at 07:27 AM • permalinkAnd another thing:
The martyr bets his life on a future of justice and freedom?
Read this and remove the scales from your eyes!!!
http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16800You are right about Manchester. Coming from Liverpool, I have an inbuilt dislike of the place anyway, and Eagleton is a born and bred Manc. He is a real tosser and always has been. He doesn’t have an e-mail address, as he prefers real letters, apparently. I’ve just written him one, and it would be good if as many others as possible could. The address will be on the Manchester Univ web site http://www.man.ac.uk
Crap, Nic White. The article boosters terrorism in every respect. Look at the stupid heading. Look at the stupid sub-heading. Look at the cartoon with the clenched fist which says to every idiot leftie with half-closed eyelids drooling over their caffe lattes ‘revolutionary hero’.
Duh.
Get a grip, Nic White. The article is pro-terrorist in exactly the way it wants to be. The dishonest backed up by the misleading.
Rog: Please note that I said Eagleton was not wrong about what he said. I said nothing about the rightness or wrongness of suicide bombing itself (by the way, I agree, it’s utterly immoral and wrong, at least suicide bombing of the sort we have now, aimed at innocent people. Suicide bombing a military target durign a war would be another matter.)
(PS. Stockhausen says, and I’m inclined to believe him, that that quote was taken out of context. In the context he says it was actually in, it was, while tone-deaf, not vile.)
Ilibcc: Did Eagleton write the headers and pick out the illustration? From what I understand of publishing he probably didn’t. Shall we conflate the Age’s editorial slant and the writer?
Blogstrop: The Islamist really does believe that killing infidels is Allah’s work, and thus is inherently “just” (and “free” to the extent that they value “freedom” at all, which appears to be “free to be Wahhabist, or else”). That he is completely wrong about it being just does not mean that justice is not his goal; it means he’s wrong (and doing vile things). There is a difference, even if the outcomes are identical.
Jeff: You can doubt my values all you want, though I suspect they’re strikingly similar to yours. I read Eagleton’s article as akin to philosophy, since it’s obviously written to be such, and I have actual academic “expertise” in that area (and, no, I utterly reject postmodernism and nihilism, before you ask).
I do not see the “equation” of 9/11 jumpers and islamoboomers that you do. They are compared, and found to be similar in one very specific and, in my analysis, TECHNICALLY CORRECT area. I suspect that the belief that he’s attempting moral equivalence here (which would be reprehensible, if true), is based more on preconception than what he actually said.
If one simply assumes from the start that his goal is odious, one can read in any number of odious things. I rad Tim’s excerpts, and noticed that his ineferences didn’t seem to be matched by implications in the text. Then I looked at the whole article, deliberately avoiding preconception of Eagleton’s goals, and I still didn’t see those implications.
Everyone I’ve seen saying “Eagleton is defending or justifying terrorism”, well, hasn’t, that I’ve seen, been able to show me where he actually does it, without adding something extra-textual to the words in question. Maybe Eagleton really is trying to be a badthinker, but I don’t see how you can rationally say so from the text available.
I disagree Sigivald, I see such articles as examples of pure fantasy transcending reality, much like Bin Ladens concept of the US. Ditto Europes concept of the US.
Stockhausen may say he was taken out of context, but who cares? Here is the context
“Minds achieving something in an act that we couldn’t even dream of in music, people rehearsing like mad for 10 years, preparing fanatically for a concert, and then dying, just imagine what happened there. You have people who are that focused on a performance and then 5,000 people are dispatched to the afterlife, in a single moment. I couldn’t do that. By comparison, we composers are nothing. Artists, too, sometimes try to go beyond the limits of what is feasible and conceivable, so that we wake up, so that we open ourselves to another world.”
Asked by a journalist whether he equated art and crime, Stockhausen replied: “It’s a crime because those involved didn’t consent. They didn’t come to the ‘concert.’ That’s obvious. And no one announced that they risked losing their lives. What happened in spiritual terms, the leap out of security, out of what is usually taken for granted, out of life, that sometimes happens to a small extent in art, too, otherwise art is nothing.”
Sigivald, you claim “academic expertise”. This probably explains why you are apparently incapable of thinking clearly.
Eagleton says about these islamofascist murderers: “They kill themselves because they can see no other way of attaining justice; and the fact that they have to do so is part of the injustice”. The <u>fact</u> that they <u>have to</u> do so. Either Eagleton is a very, very bad writer or he means what he says - these poor little oppressed murderers have no choice if their voices are to be heard.
He goes on to say “If he could live in the way he dies, he would not need to die”. So the cause of the behaviour is externalised - to some set of circumstances which prevent the poor little oppressed murderer from exercising a tolerable degree of self-determination.
If this crap isn’t an apology for terrorism, I don’t know what is. And if you can’t see it yourself, you probably work in academia. You wouldn’t be able to cut it with such muddle-headed thinking in many other places.
Hmmm, seems I have been “corrected” somewhere up the way. Still think the inference of comparison is there.
Not going to knock academic expertise (other than to say most of my lecturers seemed like they were either drunks, neurotics or ego-maniacs) and certainly have no philosophical training.
It has been interesting to read the responses to this post, by the way.
Posted by Major Anya on 2005 01 29 at 01:58 AM • permalinkDarlene the fault lies in the premise that these 9/11 characters and their mates were “seeking justice”.
My premise is that these “unfulfilled” youths should have been dealt justice. Should have been made accountable for their actions. Bastards couldnt face the music so they ducked out. And others are left to clean up the mess.
And some see this as a challenging work of art, a spiritual symphony. Some spirit.
Jeffs, clever but what is your point? I was refering to the terrorists, not everyday Arabs. You should note that I was disagreeing with him for half of that.
ilibcc, however stupid you think the titles are, they are valid. We all disagree with the reasons for the actions of suicide bombers, but that does not mean they dont have justification in their own minds that what are doing is right. I dont think its fair to call them solely vindictive monsters - they have reasons other than mass murder, its more like a means to an end - an unacceptable one at that.
In short, Eagleton is not trying to “apologise” for terrorism, but more to understand the terrorists.
“They are compared, and found to be similar in one very specific and, in my analysis, TECHNICALLY CORRECT area. ”
Sigivald, you do an excellent job of distancing yourself from Eagleton’s crap while still confirming his “logic” supporting terrorists. Really nice analysis!
It must be great a feeling to remain completely neutral on the concept of fanatics strapping Semtex onto their bodies for the express purpose of killing other people to make a political statement.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 01 29 at 04:17 AM • permalinkAgree, Rog2. You say it much more eloquently than I could.
There is a certain section of the population who see anyone who is against the United States as someone who has a just cause.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend if you will.
Attacking civilians is never acceptable.
Speaking as a woman, I find it bloody galling that some feminists and others who are supposed to be for equality are so loath to say anything against those whose belief systems would not only kill us, but if we survived would have us draped from head to toe and bereft of rights.
Posted by Major Anya on 2005 01 29 at 04:25 AM • permalinkGood point, Nic. I was in error.
However…...
“In short, Eagleton is not trying to “apologiseâ€? for terrorism, but more to understand the terrorists. ”
Eagleton is certainly role playing to justify suicide bombing from the perspective of the suicide bomber.
Killing innocent people is not justified, which is a major mantra against the Iraq War. So then, why is Eagleton not presenting the message that “I am role playing here, and don’t agree with suicide bomber tactics”?
This article reads like a Sunday supplement explaining how nuclear power works, and how it benefits the individual.
At the very best, Eagleton posted a half written composition. At the very worst, it justifies the actions of the suicide bomber, which effectively apologizes for the actions of the suicide bomber.
And, Nic, while you may be playing the devil’s advocate here, but please note that suicide bombers kill people. Period.
Indeed, I have to wonder how you can say “We all disagree with the reasons for the actions of suicide bombers…”, followed by “...but that does not mean they dont have justification in their own minds that what are doing is right.”
It’s obvious that they think it is right. D’oh! The point here is to understand the enemy without sympathizing with them. Clearly, Eagleton does that. Which means he crossed the line….and is apologizing for the terrorists by justifying their actions.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 01 29 at 04:43 AM • permalinkThe illustration of the clenched fist and the heading and sub-heading amplify and confirm Eagleton’s worm-like terrorist simpatico, Sigivald. Pathetic that you try to get him off the hook by saying the accompanying broadsheet space - and god knows there is enough of it - do not count in any way as part of the message. Equally dishonest - too - as I pointed out before - for an academic who knows only too well the power of imagery.
Nic White - crap again. The titles were stupid, the illustration was the height of irresponsibility, the article was outrageous by any decent standards and you are clearly still struggling with logic and understanding lessons not learned in past wars in which the goalposts have moved, i.e, every war known to man.
Never try to ‘understand’ the motives for evil. Never.
Only wipe it out. It is harsh justice but it true and it is proven by history.
Page 1 of 1 pages
Members:
Login | Register
| Member List
The relevant bit on the Dostoevsky is a classic half-quote or cherry picking of ideas. Like when someone says “money is the root of all evil” in order to make the problem an external “root cause” rather than the real quote which is “the love of money…” which makes the flaw within.
The discussion about suicide from Dostoevsky (found in “The Possessed” or “Devils” as it is sometimes known) he is using also includes this about the killing of others: “To kill someone else would show the lowest degree of self-will.”