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12/10/2005 Archived Entry: "Pinter"

Pinter
Lots of folks on the Web (academic and other) have gotten excited about Harold Pinter's acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature. I don't know much about Pinter's work. More contemporary literature I am oblivious to.
The focal point of his acceptance speech which is gaining interest is his critique of the U.S. and its post World War II global policies.

The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.

The critique of a country's global decisions to support another country or invade another country (in this case the U.S.) doesn't need to be countered because a good deal of the critique may, in fact, be accurate. And I don't want to enter into an argument of accuracy or historical readings – such arguments are limited binary displays of right and wrong and do little to explain events. Instead, it is the question of global behaviors that interests me more and the rhetorical contention that countries act on

1. The claims that they publicly declare to support (we side with democracy/we oppose imperialism/we support global revolution/we are fighting evil)
2. Some spirit of goodness or justice

I don't think either is often the case. Countries act for all kinds of reasons (economic, political, against third parties, insanity, greed, desire) but seldom because of anything that can logically be explained (why do we support country X when its leader is a dictator/why do we support country Y when it oppresses Z population). Yet, knowing that, we construct critiques based on logic, critiques which explain the world rhetorically as logical. So the Bush administration struggles to find justification for its current war (weapons, democracy, stability) and the critiques point out the fallacy of each justification as if it really matters which is true. They are false. They are efforts to be logical, but they both fail. The administration knows its excuses are false. The public knows these excuses are false. Public response is often no more than superficial observation; the administration sees the public response as superficial as well. The circle of logic is not based on logic but the image of logic. And - no behavior or policy changes. So why enter into the critique? Why be obsessed with logical explanation when behavior is driven by much more?

When Pinter writes

The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

my thinking is: yes, of course, but so what? Which country does not engage in such rhetoric? Which country does not pose its aims as "good" while exploring all kinds of policies which are often detrimental to some entity elsewhere? Where is this fantasy country? Is global critique merely the expression of fantasy (in a psycho-analytical sense as well)?
There is much in Pinter's address which is on target (maybe all of it; it doesn’t really matter) but still, I find the gesture futile and lacking. And I find it merely a cliché of global critique. It explains nothing. It produces a rhetoric which satisfies the already believers (so it is epideictic). And while the believers feel great satisfaction for pointing out this great injustice, injustice exists everywhere and anywhere; it is generated by every country on this globe. So, Pinter’s address is an empty rhetoric as well, for it has solved nothing other than a pleasure no different than a good meal or quick sexual encounter (ah…you made us feel good with your critique).
Without saying that one cannot critique the U.S. or any other entity, but at the same time while desiring a different model of exchange which recognizes that these gestures fail to acknowledge the complexity of global relations and rhetorical exchange, is there something else to work with or from?
I ask that as I also find myself over and over again returning to Vitanza’s critique of cultural studies, that it produces cynics more than it produces “awareness.” I am aware of much. But I am deeply cynical of the public rhetoric surrounding geo-politics. It is a rhetoric which demands the taking of sides in a never ending process of logical failure and little to no policy changes. This economy feeds on itself in ways the best Marxist critiques have observed capitalism doing with desire and exchange value. There is much more here to what I am trying to say…but blog space is limited.

Posted by Jonathan @ 12/11/2005 01:21 PM EST