ANGELAKI journal of the theoretical humanities volume 19 number 4 december 2014
n a speech delivered in Belfast on 5 March I 1981, Margaret Thatcher famously remarked: “There is no such thing as political murder, pol- itical bombing or political violence. There is only criminal murder, criminal bombing and criminal violence.”1 The visceral and deeply moving por- trait of Bobby Sands – the first of the ten men who starved themselves to death in their struggle for “political status” in the infamous Maze Prison – in Steve McQueen’s critically acclaimed movie Hunger provides an excellent exposition of the untruth of Thatcher’sstatement.2 In Hunger, we are dragged into the prison of banu bargu a liberal-democratic state, a prison where the only law is the sovereign will, performing and reproducing itself through the security forces’ ODYSSEUS UNBOUND labor of intimidation and vengeful violence. sovereignty and sacrifice in This sovereign will is donned with the legiti- macy of the law, but the law now appears like hunger and the dialectic of a bad copy of itself, a broken façade that scar- cely hides the duel between an existing sover- enlightenment eign in whose hands it is used to criminalize, discredit, and thereby neutralize its opponents, criminal. Unable to bend the prisoners to its on the one side, and a movement whose own will, the state folds back upon and crimina- violent struggle for national liberation is no lizes itself, in the face of the moral and political less than its own law, on the other. And yet, indictment put forth by the violent self-destruc- Downloaded by [Banu Bargu] at 12:14 22 December 2014 even with the help of special legislation directed tion of the prisoners themselves. If Hunger at terrorism – one of the pioneers of the kind thereby chronicles how sovereignty and democ- that has come to define securitized states in racy enter into a frontal collision in the con- the post-September 11 world – the mighty ditions of the high-security prison, its sovereign is able to punish but unable to disci- immanent critique of British politics raises the pline. The violent clash of the wills takes on a question of whether it is not democracy that decidedly corporeal form in the claustrophobic thereby self-destructs with the hunger strike atmosphere of the high-security prison, mov- and eventual death of its political prisoners. ingly depicted by Hunger, where the contrast While the movie centers on what McQueen between the repetitive violence of the forces calls “the most important event in British “upholding” the law and the self-destructive history in recent times,”3 it actually speaks to resistance of those “breaking” it is soon revealed the present: it stages a principled intervention to be the reversal of what is political and what is into our political landscape where the question
ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/14/040007-16 © 2014 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2014.984429
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of hunger strikes hovers as urgently as ever, movie, as a genuine work of art, calls for hailing most notably (but not only) from deeper philosophical reflection. Its stunning Guantanamó Bay Prison. As of 1 May 2013 (at beauty, due as much to McQueen’s keen aes- the time of writing), 100 of the 166 prisoners thetic as it is to the excellent performance of held under “indefinite detention” have been Michael Fassbender in his role as Bobby starving themselves.4 Unlike the Maze Prison, Sands, augments the force of what I take to be however, no death by self-starvation occurs in the movie’s most central question: how far are Guantanamo.́ 5 This is because prisoners are con- we willing to go in order to dominate, how far tinually resuscitated by nonconsensual medical in order to be free? Hunger thus speaks to a intervention, most notoriously by the insertion nexus defined not only by the lavish excesses of nasal feeding tubes while they are tied to of securitized state sovereignty but also by the restraint chairs.6 Even though Obama has pub- quest for freedom and the role of sacrifice in licly disowned Guantanamo,́ in contradistinc- the struggle for its attainment. Embedding us tion to the late Thatcher’s position on the in a life-and-death struggle, it forces us to recon- Maze Prison, he has not kept his long-standing sider the meaning and implications, the potenti- promise to close the prison and has turned a alities and limitations of our agency, especially blind eye to the violation of international when that agency takes a sacrificial form. human rights laws as well as the global ethical Indeed, Hunger is a movie about sacrifice as standards of medical practice that condemn much as it is about sovereignty, but it would forced feeding as “cruel, humiliating, and be wrong to conclude that it is unequivocal in degrading treatment.”7 its approach to either. The movie does not Guantanamó may be the most conspicuous equate the critique of the British state with an example of the “liberal” exceptions taken from unquestioned espousal of the Provisional IRA, fundamental human rights, but it is hardly the nor does it abstain from depicting the human only one. “Special” prisons and detainment tragedy involved in the everyday enactments centers have proliferated around the globe, a of the claim to sovereignty from either side. proliferation which lends evidence to the With great attention to the complexity of the thesis that exceptional regimes – perpetuated conflict, the movie chooses to depict it through executive decrees, counter-insurgency through individuals on opposing sides: both tactics, or the outright suspension of liberties the prison guards and the prisoners emerge as as part of counterterrorism measures – are fast non-identical to the roles that their structural becoming recurrent and normalized, if not con- positions in the asymmetry of power relations stitutive, features of liberal-democratic states.8 require them to play. On the one hand, the In parallel, hunger striking has become a recur- prison guards who are the laborers of the Downloaded by [Banu Bargu] at 12:14 22 December 2014 rently utilized form of resistance as part of an state’s security apparatus are themselves emergent necropolitical repertoire of struggle.9 without security; they live in fear of their Regrettably, the experience of Irish political lives. Meanwhile, they have to dehumanize the prisoners continues to hold important resonance prisoners in order to brutalize them on a recur- for the present, exposing the dark side of liberal- rent basis, but they too lose something of their democratic states that can no longer be written humanity in the process.11 On the other hand, off as exceptions.10 Hunger, therefore, is not the prisoners in the Dirty Protest, living in only about Bobby Sands; it is about the the midst of bodily excrements and smearing hunger strikers of our time whose names we their shit on the cell walls, reduce themselves do not even know. to “animality” in order to reclaim their human dignity.12 Meanwhile, they, too, must bear the sovereignty and sacrifice cost of their claim to sovereignty, which comes most painfully through the protracted labor of If the immediate political resonance of Hunger dying they carry out on the hunger strike. does not exhaust its power, it is because the However, it is worth noting that while pointing
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to the shared humanity of the prisoner and the goes a long way in courageously and thought- prison guard, McQueen nevertheless avoids fully portraying the wealth of troubling moral, “repeating liberal humanism’s common personal, and political dilemmas and difficulties mistake of flattening the differences in power that surround the choice of pursuing self- relations.”13 Hunger thereby sustains an uneasi- destructive acts in political struggle, without ness until the very end, which amplifies its necessarily lionizing or vilifying the endeavor, powerful effect. and they should be commended for this Like its equivocity to sovereignty, the movie achievement.16 is far from an unhesitating endorsement of sacri- As the hunger strike takes Sands to the limits fice in the struggle for freedom. While the sym- of biological existence, it also provides an pathies of the movie toward the prisoners’ cause implicit commentary on the liberal foundations is clear, Hunger is far from being a work of pol- of the Western political imaginary, which, cen- itical propaganda aiming for a crude glorifica- tered on the presupposition of the primacy of tion of self-destruction.14 Despite its realistic self-preservation, sustains a deep contradiction conveyance of the conditions of the high-secur- with self-sacrifice. This tension is most force- ity prison, the movie avoids presenting the fully recognized by Max Horkheimer and decision of the prisoners to go on hunger Theodor Adorno, who present it as a fundamen- strike as an inevitable outcome, and more trans- tal tenet of civilization as such, in their parent and obvious than it actually is. Hunger renowned Dialectic of Enlightenment: makes room for agency; in fact, an uninter- rupted twenty-two-minute sequence in the [t]he history of civilization is the history of fi middle of the movie stages a heated conversa- the introversion of sacri ce. In other words: the history of renunciation. Everyone who tion between Bobby Sands and a West Belfast practices renunciation gives away more of priest (played skillfully by Liam Cunningham), his life than is given back to him: and more in which Sands gives an account of the moral than the life that he vindicates.17 and political reasons for embarking on this journey of self-destruction, defends his decision Stated differently, the predicament of civiliza- against the priest’s effort to convince him to tion is precisely that the way to sublate the negotiate with the British government instead contradiction between self-preservation and (which, not incidentally, is also the position of self-sacrifice is the condemnation of everyone the outside leadership of the Provisional IRA), to a system of perpetual repression in which and presents a rebuttal of criticisms. One does the renunciations made to stay alive outweigh not have to agree with Sands’ reasoning to the benefits. Self-destructive protest challenges understand that his decision is a well-contem- this imaginary based on renunciation because Downloaded by [Banu Bargu] at 12:14 22 December 2014 plated and difficult one, made with the knowl- it shifts the dictum that life is the highest edge of its consequences and the awareness value toward the question of what kind of life that there is little chance of its success. If the is worth living. priest’s refusal to support the fast unto death From this perspective, Hunger shares a sig- does not cast sufficient doubt on the movie’s nificant commonality with Horkheimer and championship of sacrifice, its final part, which Adorno’s interpretation of Homer’s Odyssey. follows Sands in the painful corporeal deterio- Both advance a strong critique of the enligh- ration of his last days, most certainly does. As tened Western civilization and its consequences. the director puts it: “In the end we are alone They do so by redefining civilization on the basis with one man, living out his last days in the of the constitution of subjectivity in a dual most extreme manner possible – but only one process of subjectification and subjection, decision away from choosing to surrender and which they situate in the entwinement of sover- live. The simplest physical action becomes an eignty and sacrifice. Both works, I would like to odyssey.”15 Indeed, the award-winning movie, argue, problematize the sacrificial subjectivity co-authored by McQueen and Enda Walsh, of enlightenment and its instrumental
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rationality while they also interrogate the con- critiquing enlightenment ceptions of time that go into their making. For Horkheimer and Adorno, Odysseus’ In their formidable and controversial work, adventures, and especially his encounter with Horkheimer and Adorno begin from a simple the Sirens, can be read as a formative moment yet crushing observation regarding the relation- for the constitution of the identity of the ship of reason and power; namely, that while the modern subject because they point to the entan- process of humanity’s enlightenment by the use glement of myth and reason: myth is already of reason contains the ambition to dissolve dom- enlightenment and enlightenment reverts to ination (or, at the very least, to question and myth. Homer’s Odyssey is an epic whose struc- unsettle the supremacy of those who wield ture forebodes the very dialectic of enlighten- power and reveal the precarity of their power), ment; it sketches out how freedom from the it acts as the handmaiden of power instead, domination of nature creates new forms of dom- which reduces the masses to passivity and ination that are destructive to the self and blind obedience. This observation, aiming to others. With Hunger, the odyssey of Bobby make sense of the experience of fascism and Sands can be read as a modern epic, which skill- subject its technological-instrumental ration- fully situates our contemporary moment within ality to critique, is based on the view that the dialectic of enlightenment. If the high-secur- fascism is not an aberration of enlightenment, ity prison can be read as the political culmina- an exception from its otherwise liberating tion of the self-destructive tendency of course, but rather internal to its development. enlightenment, wherein democratic sover- Expressed more sharply, fascism is nothing eignty’s promise of liberation from arbitrary less than the culmination of enlightenment’s and violent domination has become a new course and an index of its self-destruction. form of domination, self-destructive resistance Horkheimer and Adorno define enlighten- emerges not only as a response to this domina- ment as the process by which men are liberated tion but also as the interruption of the dialectic from fear and transformed into sovereign sub- itself. The figure of Sands is the dialectical jects (sovereign over nature, both external to reversal of the figure of Odysseus, supplanting them and their own). In order to avoid being the sacrificial subjectivity of enlightenment subjected to the forces of nature, humanity with one that is re-constituted by insurgent learns how to dominate nature but denies and sacrifice. subjugates its own nature in the process.18 Reading Horkheimer and Adorno’s excursus Enlightenment proceeds with the acquisition on Odysseus in the Dialectic of Enlightenment of knowledge and the dissolution of myth, but together with McQueen’s Hunger, my intention that knowledge, while it allows freedom from Downloaded by [Banu Bargu] at 12:14 22 December 2014 is to draw attention to the ways in which modern fear, does not necessarily bring justice.19 subjectivity – a philosophical problem common Instead, the mastery of nature and other to both works and central to furthering the criti- “men” in the service of self-preservation now cal project of reason – is being politically chal- becomes the ultimate end imposed by domina- lenged and reconfigured in the present. In this tion and a new source of subjection.20 The rever- light, I want to pose Hunger as a response to sal of sovereignty to subjugation is the reversal the enlightenment narrative proposed by Hor- of enlightenment to myth. Rationality kheimer and Adorno, one that not only validates becomes deeply engulfed in myth even as it their observations but also points to some of tries to escape from and destroy it.21 This dual their limitations. Such a reading takes art character of enlightenment defines a dialectic seriously as an independent grounding for the between liberation and domination in the mael- self-critique of reason and attends to how the strom of which the subject is forged into being. aesthetic can bring into sharp focus the political As reason attempts to dominate nature, within contradictions of the present and their impli- and without, through struggle and labor, it cations for liberation. helps construct a unified self. It is not just
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that subjectification proceeds hand in hand with conditions of possibility, he also recognizes subjection, however. It also prostrates its that the aporetic qualities of the text do not bearer, irrevocably transforming the self necessarily render Horkheimer and Adorno’s toward something less that it could be – mutilat- critique invalid. For it is precisely the ability ing, sacrificing, damaged and damaging, leaving of the text to operate in such a “performative behind it a trail of unrealized hopes and contradiction,”26 one that Habermas himself disappointments. notes, which enables it to provide a critique of The reason for the overarching pessimism of an unreasonable truth by recourse to reason – the text has generally been attributed to the thereby locating the contradiction in the con- implicit negative teleology that informs the ditions that give rise to their critique – and to reconstruction of enlightenment as culminating call for a necessary self-reflection of enlighten- in “totalitarian capitalism.” Horkheimer and ment.27 The problem hinges, at least in part, Adorno’s radical critique of rationality, it has on whether or not Horkheimer and Adorno con- been argued, especially by Jürgen Habermas, sider the process of self-destruction that they not only overlooks the achievements of moder- find in enlightenment’s trajectory to be inevita- nity in scientific knowledge, universalism, ble. There are many moments in this text that democracy, and aesthetics but also puts forth a warrant such an interpretation and Habermas reductive understanding of modernity itself. is certainly not alone in taking that to be the Habermas maintains: “The critical ability to text’s ultimate position.28 However, there is take a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ stand, to be able to dis- also much to suggest in the text that it is tinguish between what is valid and invalid, is Horkheimer and Adorno’s goal to salvage undercut by the unfortunate fusion of power enlightenment from itself, for example, when and validity claims.”22 Horkheimer and the authors write: “If enlightenment does not Adorno’s conflation of power and validity accommodate reflection on this recidivist claims, or reduction of reason to instrumental element, then it seals its own fate.”29 In this rationality, also undermines the text’s ability light, Richard J. Bernstein argues that despite to ground its own criticism in reason. The “tota- the pessimism regarding enlightenment, lizing critique” put forth by Horkheimer and Adorno’s thought contains a utopian promise, Adorno in “their blackest, most nihilistic “the vision of a nonantagonistic, nonhierarchial, book,” Habermas asserts, “turns against nonviolent, and nonrepressive society.”30 Such reason as the foundation of its own analysis.”23 a hope perhaps also sheds light on the risk Habermas considers this aporia problematic that Horkheimer and Adorno have taken in because it ignores the “rational content of cul- occupying that aporetic position Habermas tural modernity,” which Horkheimer and underscores, as a gesture that attempts to Downloaded by [Banu Bargu] at 12:14 22 December 2014 Adorno’s critique takes for granted even as bring enlightenment’s self-destructive process they indict reason for its complicity with domi- to a halt by critical reflection whose grounding nation.24 If the distinction between power and is precarious, if not altogether dubious. reason is obfuscated, asks Habermas, how can As Benhabib points out, the way Horkheimer reason retain a critical potential that can be and Adorno navigated this paradox was an used for an analysis of itself – is it not always- appeal to the logic of non-identity, which already part of power? In a similar way, Seyla could be found in the aesthetic.31 Indeed, the Benhabib argues, if domination is built into aesthetic constituted a refuge for the critique the structure of Western reason, “then the of rationality in which one could (hope to) theory of the dialectic of the Enlightenment, escape the complicity of reason in its own which is carried out with the tools of this very demise.32 According to Horkheimer and same reason, perpetuates the structure of domi- Adorno, art is the only form in which the past nation it condemns.”25 can be rescued without being reduced to an While Habermas is right to insist on the instrument of progress: “The compulsion to necessity of critique to account for its own rescue what is gone as what is living instead of
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using it as the material of progress was appeased than that of the “fall.” In this dialectic, there only in art, to which history itself appertains as a is room for contingency. But contingency presentation of past life.”33 This recuperative depends on the struggles for freedom that, not dimension of Adornian aesthetics provides the having been successful, wait as ever-present possibility of a memory of the past against the potentialities even though they are relegated progressive historical narrative of enlighten- to history. The problem for the critical theorist, ment. It also provides the possibility of enlight- then, “is not the conservation of the enment’s self-critique.34 past, but the redemption of the hopes of the A different way to approach the text’s pessi- past.”39 mism, then, one enabled by art, is to disentangle If this interpretation is correct, then Horkhei- its implicit negative teleology from a story of the mer and Adorno’s text not only leaves the door “fall.” When Horkheimer and Adorno read open for change but also gestures to indicate a Odysseus as the “prototype of the bourgeois way to achieve it. Their work teaches the neces- individual,”35 they clearly suggest that the sity of recuperating the emancipatory promise modern subject is no less immune to the of enlightenment, but it also performs this struggle between reason and myth than its pre- teaching by engaging in a reading that criss- historic counterpart might have been. Homer’s crosses different temporalities, interweaving text, which the authors call the “basic text of the present and the past. For Horkheimer and European civilization,” offers “eloquent testi- Adorno, Homer’s Odyssey sheds light on their mony of the mutual implication of enlighten- present while the present casts a new light on ment and myth,” an implication that lies at the past.40 In Christopher Rocco’s words, the origin of Western civilization and continues to characterize it.36 If they thereby oppose the [t]heir strategy thus works in two directions fi conventional, progressive, and triumphalist at once: it aims to free us from a rei ed present in which political and economic enlightenment narrative that posits the ultimate structures of domination appear natural and overcoming of myth by reason, they do not it works against any nostalgic return to a necessarily suggest demise as the inevitable falsely idealized past.41 telos of this process. In fact, the authors unset- tle the very conception of a “golden age” that The tragedies of the authors’ present allows lies at the origin of civilization when they take them to excavate the past for opportunities away the classical world as a safe haven. missed and potentialities lying dormant, which Instead, they posit the classical world as a pre- in turn help unsettle the conclusion that what monition of the catastrophes to come.37 At the has become was predestined and cannot be same time, they put into question the necessity changed. Repeating their gesture, as it were, Downloaded by [Banu Bargu] at 12:14 22 December 2014 of history’s unfolding toward catastrophe. It is we can theorize the predicaments of subjectivity their polemical intent, according to Susan today through a similar practice of a transtem- Buck-Morss, that animates the juxtaposition of poral reading, but this time through the ancient Greece to the “most barbaric, most mediation of their text. Horkheimer and irrational phenomena of the present,” a juxtapo- Adorno’s method may allow us to understand sition which sought to “demythologize the that the self-destructive reconfiguration of present and the past’s hold over it.”38 Horkhei- modern subjectivity in the forceps of domina- mer and Adorno construct a genealogy of the tion is not the end but an attempt to realize subject that stretches the limits of a historiogra- the unfulfilled promise of freedom. In this phy that claims fidelity to facts, but they do so in reading, the aesthetic continues to provide a order to expose what they see as a fundamental fruitful, engaging site for grounding critical truth; namely, that the history of the formation reflection. However, as I hope to show, the of modern subjectivity, which is dependent on refuge of art is bound to remain inadequate the dialectic of enlightenment in which it is and utopian if it cannot address political forms forged, is a story of unfulfilled promises rather of resistance to domination.
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sacrificial subject and sovereign the sacrificial contract from within. Calculation time within the sacrificial relation provides a way to overturn the asymmetry because it injects a It is well known that Horkheimer and Adorno logic that tries to salvage what is commensurate situate sacrifice at the heart of the Odyssean to or more than what is being forgone in the journey to constitute the self. The struggle exchange. “By calculating his own sacrifice, with myth is fundamentally asymmetric and [Odysseus] effectively negates the power to dangerous; the self is always less powerful whom the sacrifice is made. In this way he than the frightening mythical powers that threa- redeems the life he had forfeited.”44 ten to destroy it. Sacrifice becomes a form of Horkheimer and Adorno make it clear that exchange with the mythical powers and gods while Odysseus renders the element of decep- because it grants the possibility of self- tion in sacrifice more visible, he neither preservation.42 invents nor exhausts it. In drawing a historical Crucial to the process of subjectification line stretching from the immortality attributed through sacrifice is the element of deceit to the deified victim in ancient rituals of embedded within the exchange relation charac- human sacrifice, whose blood is to flow back terized by asymmetry. Deception, Horkheimer into the community as some form of primordial and Adorno point out, is a rational survival energy, to the sacrifice of individuals to modern strategy: it allows the subject to exercise collectivities, especially in warfare, Horkheimer agency from a position of powerlessness before and Adorno posit deception as integral to sacri- the gods. Odysseus’ success depends on his fice. However, while in the first case the gods are ability to “outwit” the gods through the very being outwitted, in the latter case it is the indi- medium of exchange that honors them. His viduals who are being outwitted by the state, cunning depends, in turn, on the calculability which has become the new god. And yet of sacrifice. Appeasing the gods with gifts is modern sacrifice need not be fatal; it takes on not only to acknowledge their power but also subtler forms. The struggle to free oneself to demand something in return, such as protec- from bondage to nature becomes a struggle tion, which turns the gift into a calculated act. If that leads to one’s own bondage in the form of the gods accept the sacrifice, they confirm their self-denial, sublimation, and repression. Hor- divine status before which the individual has kheimer and Adorno contend that the domina- bowed in recognition; however, by that very tion of the self in the effort to master nature acceptance, they have also been cajoled into and others becomes destructive of the subject; serving the individual’s ends, especially the it destroys what it is supposed to preserve. end of self-preservation. Horkheimer and The path laid out by domination is a sacrificial Downloaded by [Banu Bargu] at 12:14 22 December 2014 Adorno argue: “All human sacrifices, when sys- contract that has outlasted its necessity; uphold- tematically executed, deceive the god to whom ing the contract, originally intended to protect they are made: they subject him to the life, becomes its own rationale. The irrationality primacy of human ends, and dissolve his of domination reaches its extreme point with power.”43 “totalitarian capitalism”–in order to uphold The element of calculation within the act of it, one must go down the path that leads to the sacrifice exposes sacrifice in its essential charac- “extermination of mankind.”45 In the regulated, ter: a relation of exchange, a contract. An rationalized form of sacrifice that is constantly exchange of equivalents is never completely demanded by the system – a mastered and “mas- equal; however, when this exchange is terful” renunciation – deceit is now directed to embedded within a structural asymmetry, the the self. It is those thus dominated who are power differential among the parties of the being cheated by the new god, and “the sub- exchange cannot but vitiate any semblance of jected repeat upon themselves the injustice equality. And yet, in that very inequality, that was done to them, enacting it again in deceit carves a space of reversal and implodes order to endure it.”46
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Horkheimer and Adorno locate a turning subject. The fear of subjection to nature point in the development of the cunning of lingers in the definition of civilization.51 It is reason in Odysseus’ encounter with the Sirens, the remainder that cannot be subsumed into whose temporality is revealing and constitutive. civilization, nor can it be destroyed. This encounter takes place in “mythic time,” Sacrifice appears in dual form in the sol- the temporality characterized by repetition for utions for escaping the lure of the Sirens’ the mythical powers – the Sirens must lure song. Either their song must not be heard at every traveler – and the suspension of ordinary all or a way must be found to resist its tempta- time for the mortals. Repetition is the curse that tion. Odysseus finds the first solution fit for the the Sirens cannot break, but it also lies at the laborers on his ship. Because their ears are source of their lure.47 Deceit is in the Sirens’ waxed, the oarsmen are left to labor in silence offer when they act as the voice of history: and submission to Odysseus’ will, without any they deliver the knowledge of the past but at conflict between the Sirens’ lure, their own the expense of the future, for “the promise desires, and the rationality of self-preservation. of the happy return is the deception with The deceit in their sacrifice is simple: in order which the past ensnares the one who longs for to avoid being engulfed by nature, they agree it.”48 Their temporality is that of sovereignty; to submit themselves to the domination of they control time. By contrast, Odysseus has sovereignty. For the oarsmen, sovereignty little in the way of his own temporality; that is takes on a dominant, repetitive temporality, why his adventures are spatially, rather than which brings survival at the cost of not only temporally, separated and serialized through their freedom but also the knowledge and the image of voyaging or wandering. Where experience of the Sirens’ song. The second sol- “historical time is detached from space” and ution is for Odysseus who has himself bound to suspended, Odysseus is subject to the Sirens’ the mast of the ship while he listens to the temporality as much as he is subject to their Sirens. Even though he tries to cast off his lure: “their allurement is that of losing oneself bonds once he hears the song, he struggles in in the past.”49 vain since the oarsmen cannot hear him The song of the Sirens, dangerous as it is either. Here, the conflict between desire and beautiful, is Odysseus’ test of subjectification, reason is resolved by a different sacrifice, one of achieving the internal development of the that is more controlled and calculated. In yield- self-preserving, centered, and instrumentally ing to the power of the Sirens, or displaying rational subject of enlightenment. Mythical only a rationalized resistance, Odysseus “has time requires that the subject has no indepen- found an escape clause in the contract, which dent relation with history but loses itself in enables him to fulfill it while eluding it. The pri- Downloaded by [Banu Bargu] at 12:14 22 December 2014 the suspension of temporality in which the meval contract does not provide for the possi- mythical powers can endlessly repeat and repro- bility of the seafarer listening bound or duce themselves. However, Odysseus’ emanci- unbound to the bewitching voices.”52 Cunning pation from myth relies on the transformation means taking charge of one’s own subjugation of nature into history. Thus, while he can enter- not only for safe passage but also for the advan- tain the knowledge he has acquired from the tageous use of knowledge and the enjoyment of past to ensure his survival, he cannot tolerate the Sirens’ song. If the oarsmen’s sacrifice is the appeal of a return to what has passed.50 their submission to Odysseus’ will and to repeti- Odysseus must dissociate the past from the tive labor, Odysseus’ sacrifice is subduing his present and the present from the future, instincts to the discipline of instrumental grounding the unity of his nascent self in the reason, or giving up the nature in himself in “now.” His success requires a narrative of order to dominate nature and the oarsmen. history as progressive rationalization and instru- Odysseus thus internalizes and re-rationalizes mental knowledge – otherwise the memory of sacrifice; it becomes a controlled “renunciation” natural history is strong enough to engulf the that appears to neutralize his subjection. This is
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also the appropriation and internalization of a than this very life as functions of which the sovereign temporality of repetition, ensuring achievements of self-preservation find their the fixity of time for the emergent subject. sole definition and determination: it is, in 55 Cunning thus allows Odysseus to navigate the fact, what is to be preserved. asymmetric relation of exchange and transform the inevitability represented by the power of myth to his own advantage: “his rationality hunger’s siren song necessarily assumes a restrictive form – that 53 Odysseus listens to the Sirens’ song while he is of an exception.” As Odysseus takes excep- bound to the mast, but his cunning attempt to tion from myth, he embarks on the path that overcome its lure results in the neutralization renders the exceptional form of rationality the of the aesthetic that is thereby transformed rule of enlightenment. into a mere source of pleasure rather than a This encounter is symptomatic for showing way of experiencing the world. However, how deceit used toward the goal of self-preser- against the self-destructiveness of enlighten- vation vis-à-vis nature ends up eating away at ment and the reversal of reason to myth, true the subject’s own nature, deceiving the deceiver art is the source of a redemptive critique.56 in the process. The domination achieved According to Robert Hullot-Kentor: through this very denial or the internalization fi fi of sacri ce renders Odysseus the gure of the In art, domination is able to become liber- sacrificial subject. This subjectivity is consti- ation, the truth of the whole, because the tuted through a dialectic between nature and same process of the domination of nature history, a dialectic in which sovereignty over that society carries out occurs within the art nature is achieved through the negation of work; the same sacrificial act of reason is human nature as part of nature, and sovereignty carried out by art through its construction … fi over time is achieved through a controlled and However, whereas the sacri ces required self-imposed subjection of desire. Odysseus’ by self-preservative reason in the actual dom- ination of nature are silenced by the sem- submission to renunciation defies the truth of ’ blance of necessity woven by the principle the subject s hard-earned sovereignty, implicat- fi “ ” of identity, art mourns the sacri ces it ing him in the logic of equivalent exchange, carries out.57 which entails the preservation of life by forgoing a fulfilling life. After all, “the annulment of McQueen’s Hunger is precisely such a work, death,” argue Horkheimer and Adorno, “consti- which offers sensory experience as a critical per- tutes the very core of all antimythological think- spective from which to evaluate the dialectic of ing.”54 Consequently, the song of the Sirens can enlightenment and the non-identical as a Downloaded by [Banu Bargu] at 12:14 22 December 2014 be heard for what it really is: the mythical inter- refusal to forget what is sacrificed. It offers pellation of the sacrificial subject into a sover- knowledge of the past not as a practical tool of eign subject. In this light, we can understand self-preservation in the present but as the remin- Horkheimer and Adorno as presenting a com- der of a moment of unfulfilled promise, as the pelling critique of sovereignty, in which domi- constituent element of a memory against nation over nature and others is always-already history as well as a form of mourning of loss. domination over oneself. The dialectic of The movie can therefore be interpreted as an enlightenment is a dialectic of sovereignty and engaged response to Horkheimer and Adorno’s sacrifice in which: critique of modernity, which it shares and advances. Like the Dialectic of Enlightenment, Man’s domination over himself, which grounds his selfhood, is almost always the Hunger attends to the dialectical constitution of destruction of the subject in whose service modern subjectivity and problematizes instru- it is undertaken; for the substance which is mental rationality. Similarly, it transtemporally dominated, suppressed, and dissolved by gestures to unsettle the present by salvaging a virtue of self-preservation is none other precious moment of the past from oblivion,
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without, however, overlooking its contradic- cunning of Odysseus. Sands’ actions are not tions or idealizing it. However, just as the Dia- about outwitting the powers that threaten him lectic of Enlightenment enables us to arrive at but silently confronting the challenge, taking a new appreciation of Hunger, the movie also moral responsibility, and suffering the repercus- enables us to point to some limitations of Hor- sions of his actions. Subjectification is not cen- kheimer and Adorno’s analysis. tered on self-preservation but on putting an end The figure of Bobby Sands as depicted in to suffering and the preservation of friends. Hunger presents a strong contrast to the figure The contrast between Sands and Odysseus of Odysseus as interpreted by Horkheimer and becomes most vivid in the prison encounter. Adorno. Odysseus hears the Sirens’ song, but Here, the struggle for subjectivity is no longer he cannot let himself listen freely. He is inter- about the conquest of an external nature. pellated as a sovereign subject, but the cost of Unlike the Odyssey where nature remains the his sovereignty is his ongoing renunciation. unconquered “other” of civilization, in Hunger On the other hand, Sands, too, hears the we are deep in the bowels of civilization, in a Sirens’ song, but not only does he listen to it, “civilized” prison where domination has he also lets himself be taken by it, by transform- become second nature. The mythical powers ing his renunciation into self-destruction. If that Odysseus struggled against have mutated Odysseus is the allegory for the constitution of into the “enlightened domination” of the sover- the modern sacrificial subject defined by instru- eignty of the state. Nature’s mythical powers are mental reason, Sands can be read as its fruition, no longer a threat to the survival of the self but inversion, and ultimate destruction. Sands’ nature is a source of freedom from civilization. interpellation by the Sirens’ song in order to On the one hand, an idealized nature naively redeem the unfulfilled promise of freedom protrudes into the movie with the suffering from domination radicalizes sacrifice and turns foal, the fly that visits the prisoner’s cell, the it against the self. However, the destruction of rat that accompanies the prison guard smoking the logic of domination based on a regime of in the yard, and the birds that fly away to renunciation for the sake of survival is only signify Sands’ eventual yielding to death. possible through the destruction of Odysseus. McQueen’s projection of freedom on nature, Sands is the self-destruction of Odysseus, juxtaposed against civilization as the index of whose advantageous contract with sovereignty humanity’s alienation from itself, appears cur- implodes to reclaim a free subjectivity. iously romanticized and nostalgic from the per- The distance between the two figures can be spective afforded by Horkheimer and Adorno. found in Sands’ account of a childhood On the other hand, Hunger recuperates its criti- moment when he ventured deep into the woods cal perspective when it turns to depict how Downloaded by [Banu Bargu] at 12:14 22 December 2014 with a group of friends while preparing for a human nature already objectified and colonized cross-country race. In the woods, they encoun- by civilization can be turned back against civili- tered a little foal in pain with a broken leg. The zation in the form of resistance to domination: other children deliberated what to do without in the naked bodies that refuse clothing them- doing anything. Sands tells how he drowned the selves in prison uniforms, the excrements that foal, exactly at the moment when they were are smeared on the cell walls, the urine that is seen by one of the priests, who reprimanded poured from the cell doors, the transformation them for the death of the foal. Sands takes the of the body’s cavities into vessels of political blame in everyone’s name. The lesson is clear: messages, and the sustained refusal of food. in order to alleviate the suffering of others, he Just as the most basic corporeal functions of will act without fearing its consequences. If human nature become objects of oppression, Sands’ encounter with the foal is a test of subjec- they can be reversed into the means of resistance tification, a challenge he must overcome to against oppression. Radicalized self-domination become the self that he is, it already indicates in the form of the repression of the desire to eat the possibility of a different pathway than the is forged into a weapon against the domination
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of the state. Nature is once again pitted against and advantageous. But there is a problem: the civilization, but now as the source of its internal prisoners refuse the Odyssean strategy; they or self-critique and the possibility of its reject wearing the prison uniforms, they do transformation. not clean themselves, they rebel against the If Hunger thereby charts the dialectic of sub- sacrificial contract with power, dictated by jectivity suggested by the Dialectic of Enlighten- instrumental rationality. Already in sovereign ment, it attends to what Horkheimer and Adorno time, or the eternal repetition of mythical vio- tend to overlook: resistance. Hunger situates the lence, prisoners become non-identical with present as part of this dialectic but draws upon their roles, beginning to point beyond the resistance to show how the dialectic can be inter- rationalized and deceptive resistance of Odys- rupted: the modern self built on the renunciation seus toward the refusal of domination. The of nature can radicalize renunciation into self- assassination of the prison guard outside of the sacrifice. It does so not only by its transtemporal prison marks the beginning of the end of sover- gesture to critique the present but also by inter- eign time, by acting as the symbolic destruction weaving different temporalities within the of the possibility of rowing in silence for the movie, temporalities that resonate with those of oarsmen. It also acts as a segue way to the Odysseus. The temporality of sovereignty is second part of the movie, hailed by critics as chronicled in the movie’s first part through the its heart – the long conversation between juxtaposition of the experience of a new prisoner Sands and the priest, in which the two debate and the prison guard who enter into the same Sands’ proposed course of action as resistance prison. This is time organized, regulated, and comes to its own by articulating its self-con- dominated by the power of the state. Ordinary sciousness. This is the moment in which the his- time is suspended. The only evidence of the toric rupture from the dominant temporality is passing of time for the prisoners is the rhythm articulated through the decision on the hunger of recurrent beatings, forced haircuts and strike unto death and its justification in political baths, cavity searches.58 The prison guard’s and moral terms before the tribunal of the recurrent relief from the beatings he gives to priest. Pointing to the failure of the first the prisoners by soaking his bruised knuckles hunger strike, which was called off when the in water shows how the guards’ labor is subject government agreed to prisoner demands but to the same rhythmic organization of time. never kept its promises, Sands argues that pris- Both the prisoners and the guards are rooted in oners end up being cheated when they negotiate the “now,” without any real connection to the with the state. Stated differently, the controlled past or the future. Like the “mythic time” in renunciation of the prisoners, in which they the Odyssey, sovereign time is abstract and think they are utilizing the situation to their Downloaded by [Banu Bargu] at 12:14 22 December 2014 detached, and characterized by compulsory rep- advantage, ends up in deception: it destroys etition. Only, the power of the Sirens has now the possibility of achieving their goals while it been supplanted by Odyssean sovereignty – threatens to diminish, if not erase altogether, Odysseus’ ability to achieve domination over the prior work of resistance. Echoing Horkhei- myth by reason has been objectified in the mer and Adorno’s critique of the sacrificial modern state, which reproduces itself through subject symbolized in the figure of Odysseus, the repeated labor of violence. Sands refuses the reconciliatory line, which The only way to survive this temporality is implies conceding to the sovereignty of the through renunciation. The prison guards must state as a strategy of renunciation in which have their ears waxed and keep on rowing self-preservation is bound to end up undermin- while the prisoners must remain tied to the ing the very life to be preserved. Instead of a mast. Like Odysseus, they must formally negotiating tool for gaining leverage or conces- subject themselves to the state, recognize its sions, the proposed hunger strike unto death laws, make compromises, do their time in sub- is the expression of a staunch rejection to be mission. Their resistance must be calculated determined and dominated by the state. This
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is an absolute and insurgent form of sacrifice, reduced to bed. But the material traces of self- fundamentally at odds with controlled and cal- starvation – the blood in the toilet, the vomit, culated renunciation. Regardless of its chances the stains on the bed sheets from the ulcers of of success, this strategy is seen as the only way his skin, the muffling of voices, the blurring of to achieve freedom. Against the priest’s objec- vision – document the invisible: glimpses of a tion that such self-destructive action amounts new subjectivity in defiance of the destruction to suicide, a disregard for life, Sands responds of the body, in the form of an inextinguishable that it is necessary to lay down one’s life for a spirit of freedom that resists both the domina- dignified life, one lived in line with the tion of the state and the fear of death itself. deepest moral and political convictions. Sands This is the temporality of refusal that, on the argues: “My life means everything to me. one hand, gestures toward an indefinite futurity, Freedom means everything … Putting my life a time of ultimate redemption to come, while, on the line is not just the only thing I can do, on the other hand, it connects back to the Dom. It’s the right thing.” past. We see a young Sands staring at his Sands’ position thus radicalizes the critique dying self and the dying Sands merging with of the sacrificial subject by proposing a break his young self, freely running in the wilderness. with instrumental rationality. Self-preservation The temporality of insurgent sacrifice breaks no longer dominates the terms of an exchange the cast of a partitioned time between the past, with the powerful, in which cunning would be present, and future, which made possible the necessary to transform the asymmetry of the nascent subjectivity of enlightenment in the exchange from within. Since there is no “equiv- figure of Odysseus. In Hunger, these three tem- alent” that can be exchanged for self-imposed poralities intertwine and re-merge in a new death, such action refuses compromise and whole, which comes to define the new self deceit and obliterates the possibility of renun- claimed through a struggle against one’s ciation being translated into further domina- former subjectivity, as well as the domination tion. The subjectivity entailed by the that rendered it damaged and lacking. Odys- radicalization of renunciation to the limit is an seus’ price for self-preservation was continual insurgent subjectivity fundamentally at odds self-denial and the introversion of sacrifice into with that of Odysseus. In Hunger’s temporality renunciation. Sands resorts to self-destruction of the decision for resistance we therefore in order to reclaim his freedom. As the sacrifi- encounter the articulation of the desire to cial subject of enlightenment is subverted, we break free from one’s bonds, not in order to encounter the flickering vision of a new subjec- ensure survival but in order to upend domina- tivity, reconfigured by the radicalization of tion and destroy the sacrificial subjectivity internalized sacrifice. Insurgent self-sacrifice Downloaded by [Banu Bargu] at 12:14 22 December 2014 brought into being in the dialectic of enlighten- interrupts sovereign time, bringing the dialectic ment. The consequences of such a decision, of enlightenment to a halt. In this new tempor- however, are far from clear: it can lead to the ality, Odysseus is no longer bound to the mast. collapse of enlightenment or open an opportu- Sands is Odysseus unbound. nity for its recuperation. fi This brings us to the nal part of the movie, dialectic interrupted which narrates the corporeal journey that takes Sands to his death and where a novel tempor- Reading Hunger with the Dialectic of Enlight- ality is introduced. This temporality, radically enment allows us to arrive at a new appreciation alien to the coming into being of sovereign of both works as commentaries on subjectivity time that dominates Horkheimer and Adorno’s in modernity as constituted by sovereignty and interpretation of Odysseus’ encounter with the sacrifice. Read transtemporally alongside the Sirens, is scatological time, the temporality of “primal history of subjectivity” put forth in corporeal deterioration.59 Hunger painfully por- the Dialectic of Enlightenment, the figure of trays the famished body of Sands as he is slowly Bobby Sands in Hunger provides a history of
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the present: he emerges as the inversion of The embodied and fatal critique of Sands – Odysseus and reveals how the subversive poten- and of those individuals in prisons and deten- tialities embedded within our subjection can be tion centers around the world whose names are activated in a staunch resistance against domina- much less known – resounds from those “civi- tion. At the same time, he shows how the dark lized” sites in which the line between the politi- side of our rational self-domination involves a cal and the criminal is blurred to remind us that violence that is directed against the self, made the struggle for freedom and the desire to bring visible by the self-imposed and willed corporeal domination to an end are ever present, however decay of the subject, deconstructing itself as it bleak and violent are the forms they take. This rejects the sacrificial subjectivity of enlighten- critique interrupts the dialectic of enlighten- ment. In contrast to the insurgent sacrifice epit- ment, even if it does not eliminate it, not only omized by the figure of Sands, Odysseus of the by providing an opportunity of self-reflection Dialectic of Enlightenment appears as a concerning the predicaments of modern subjec- cautionary tale of the trajectory of reason that tivity but also actively opening new trajectories surrenders itself to domination so absolutely for enlightenment. As such, Hunger is a rejoin- in its struggle against nature and myth that der to Horkheimer and Adorno, perhaps not its redemption comes at the cost of self- amending their pessimism but at least showing destruction. that the self-destructive resistance of subjects If Hunger thereby pressures the Dialectic of who politicize life to its limits are also part of Enlightenment toward its logical conclusions in the legacy of enlightenment and its promise of bringing it to bear on our present, it also throws liberation. It gives a nod to the later Adorno some of its limitations into sharp relief. While who argues that the “subject’s nonidentity Horkheimer and Adorno are right to diagnose without sacrifice would be utopian”60 by the self-destructive tendency in enlightenment, seeking to destroy the sacrificial subject perpetuated by the reversal of the struggle to through radicalization of sacrifice. The radical break free from nature into a cage of domination temporality of insurgent sacrifice points, and repression, reproduced by asymmetries of however briefly, to a dignified life beyond dom- power and calculated renunciation, their call ination but one it cannot sustain. for enlightenment to engage in critical self- Rather, it sings to us, lures us, reflection in order to counteract its destructive and brings us to a halt, long dynamic appears to be a curiously feeble sol- enough that we might not just ution. There are moments when self-reflection listen to the Sirens’ song but is not sufficient, both because it can remain iso- begin singing our own. lated from action and because that self-reflection Downloaded by [Banu Bargu] at 12:14 22 December 2014 is also subject to the same dialectic, which tends notes toward its own demise. The aesthetic provides a 1 Thatcher. refuge from which to criticize this self-destruc- tive tendency, but change requires the political 2 Hunger, directed by Steve McQueen. struggle of those subjects who are shaped by 3 McQueen, “Video Interview.” and who in turn shape that self-destructive ten- 4 Savage. dency. If Horkheimer and Adorno’s text is per- vaded by a deep pessimism, this is also because 5 On the adoption of force-feeding not as an ad radical resistance is absent from it. Such resist- hoc but planned tactic of the Guantánamo base ance does not completely overturn the devastat- clinic under the guise of a discourse on the protec- – ing account of enlightenment proposed by the tion of life, see Anderson 1729 36. authors, but it militates against its inevitability 6 See, for example, al Hasan Moqbel. and renews our faith in the possibility of 7 World Medical Association. change as well as our commitment to bring it about. 8 Agamben.
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9 Bargu. history that presents the trajectory of enlighten- ment as one of decay. See Brunkhorst 133–40. 10 For an in-depth account, see Feldman esp. 147– 217. 29 Horkheimer and Adorno xiii. 11 McNamee. 30 Bernstein 197. 12 Ibid. 31 Benhabib 1443. 13 El-Khairy 191. 32 Hullot-Kentor 23–44. 14 However, the movie was chided for its political 33 Horkheimer and Adorno 32. sympathies. See, for example, O’Toole; Tookey. 34 For an insightful account on the role of art for 15 McQueen, “Director’s Statement” 2. Adorno, see Wellmer, “On the Dialectic of Mod- ernism” 337–62. 16 However, Hunger generated mixed responses: while celebrated for its ability to provide a truthful 35 Horkheimer and Adorno 43. portrait of the dirty protest and the hunger strike, 36 Ibid. 45–46. the movie was also criticized for glossing over the broader historical context of the Troubles. Cf. 37 On Horkheimer and Adorno’s interpretation O’Hagan; Brown 73. of Homer in relation to its cultural significance for the German philhellenic tradition, see Fleming 17 Horkheimer and Adorno 55. 107–28. 18 For a critique of Horkheimer and Adorno’s 38 Buck-Morss 61. reading of enlightenment in Homer exclusively as the attempt to master nature, which leads them 39 Horkheimer and Adorno xv. to overlook the spiritual dimension, see Ruderman 138–61. 40 On the allegorical dimension of their reading, see Owens. For the link between Horkheimer 19 Horkheimer and Adorno 17. and Adorno’s allegorical reading and that of Walter Benjamin in his The Origin of German 20 Ibid. 22. Tragic Drama, see van Reijen. 21 Ibid. 12. 41 Rocco 77. 22 Habermas 18. On Habermas’s rift with Hor- 42 Horkheimer and Adorno 10. kheimer and Adorno, see Hohendahl. 43 Ibid. 50. 23 Habermas 13, 22. For a counterargument to Habermas claiming that the fragmentary structure 44 Ibid. of the Dialectic of Enlightenment resists the charge Downloaded by [Banu Bargu] at 12:14 22 December 2014 of “totalizing critique,” see Rocco 81–97. 45 Ibid. 55. 24 Habermas 23. 46 Ibid. 51. 25 Benhabib 1442. 47 Much has been written on the sexual identity of the Sirens, its implications for the 26 Habermas 22. constitution of gender relations and the patriar- chal order, which I will have to sidestep in this 27 Honneth captures this aspect of Horkheimer discussion. See, for example, Comay; Salecl; and Adorno’s critique, which he calls “world-dis- Hewitt; Love. closing” and defends as a form warranted by a par- “ ” ticularly pathological type of social disorder. See 48 Horkheimer and Adorno 33. Honneth 116–27. 49 Ibid. 32. 28 In this line, for example, Brunkhorst identifies an ambivalence in the text, which oscillates 50 Ibid. between utopian critique of domination and the 51 Ibid. 31. rationality that is in line with it, and a fundamental- ist critique, based on a metaphysical philosophy of 52 Ibid. 59.
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53 Ibid. 58; my emphasis. Bernstein, Richard J. “The Rage against Reason.” Philosophy and Literature 10.2 (1986): 186–210. 54 Ibid. 76. Print. 55 Ibid. 54–55. Brown, Matthew. “Cities under Watch: Urban 56 For an interpretation that locates the emer- Northern Ireland in Film.” Éire-Ireland 45.1/2 gence of self-reflexive aesthetic contemplation in (2010): 56–88. Print. Odysseus’ encounter with the Sirens, see Brunkhorst, Hauke. “The Enlightenment of Wellmer, “Death of the Sirens” 5–19. Rationality: Remarks on Horkheimer and 57 Hullot-Kentor 43. Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment.” Constellations 7.1 (2000): 133–40. Print. 58 According to Melvin, the sonic motifs of the movie, especially the rhythmic pulse (i.e., the Buck-Morss, Susan. Negative Dialectics: Theodor banging of dustbins that opens the movie, the Adorno, Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt Institute. batons of the prison guards, the water in New York: Free, 1977. Print. the sink, and the soft breathing of the hunger Comay, Rebecca. “Adorno’s Siren Song.” New striker near his end), drive the narrative forward. German Critique 81 (2000): 21–48. Print. See Melvin 26, 28, 29. El-Khairy, Omar Assem. “Snowflakes on a Scarred 59 Feldman 165. Knuckle: The Biopolitics of the ‘War on Terror’ 60 Adorno 281. through Steve McQueen’s Hunger and Kathyrn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker.” Millennium – Journal of International Studies 39.1 (2010): 187–91. Print. bibliography Feldman, Allen. Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland. Adorno, Theodor. Negative Dialectics. Trans. E.B. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991. Print. Ashton. London and New York: Routledge, 1973. “ Print. Fleming, Katie. Odysseus and Enlightenment: Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialektik der Agamben, Giorgio. State of Exception. Trans. Kevin Aufklärung.” International Journal of the Classical Attell. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 2005. Tradition 19.2 (2012): 107–28. Print. Print. Habermas, Jürgen. “The Entwinement of Myth and al Hasan Moqbel, Samir Naji. “Gitmo is Killing Me.” Enlightenment: Re-reading Dialectic of New York Times 14 Apr. 2013. Web. 19 Oct. 2014. Enlightenment.” Trans. Thomas Y. Levin. New Downloaded by [Banu Bargu] at 12:14 22 December 2014 ger-striking-at-guantanamo-bay.html>. Hewitt, Andrew. “A Feminine Dialectic of Anderson, Patrick. “There will be No Bobby Sands Enlightenment? Horkheimer and Adorno in Guantánamo Bay.” PMLA 124.5 (2009): 1729–36. Revisited.” New German Critique 56 (1992): Print. 143–70. Print. Bargu, Banu. Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Hohendahl, Peter U. “The Dialectic of Human Weapons. New York: Columbia UP, 2014. Enlightenment Revisited: Habermas’ Critique of Print. the Frankfurt School.” New German Critique 35 (1985): 3–26. Print. Benhabib, Seyla. “Critical Theory and Postmodernism: On the Interplay of Ethics, Honneth, Axel. “The Possibility of a Disclosing Aesthetics, and Utopia in Critical Theory.” Critique of Society: The Dialectic of Enlightenment Cardozo Law Review 11 (1989–1990): 1435–48. in Light of Current Debates in Social Criticism.” Print. Constellations 7.1 (2000): 116–27. Print. Benjamin, Walter. The Origin of German Tragic Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor Adorno. Dialectic Drama. Trans. John Osborne. Intro. George of Enlightenment. Trans. John Cumming. Steiner. London: Verso, 1998. Print. New York: Continuum, 1972. Print. 21 odysseus unbound Hullot-Kentor, Robert. “Back to Adorno.” Savage, Charlie. “Amid Hunger Strike, Obama Things beyond Resemblance: On Theodor Renews Push to Close Cuba Prison.” New York W. Adorno. New York: Columbia UP, 2006. Times 1 May 2013. Web. 19 Oct. 2014. Downloaded by [Banu Bargu] at 12:14 22 December 2014 ulst.ac.uk/victims/docs/newspapers/irish_times/otoo le_it_221108.pdf>. Owens, Clide. “The Allegorical Impulse: Toward a Theory of Postmodernism.” October 12 (1980): 67–80. Print. Rocco, Christopher. “Between Modernity and Postmodernity: Reading Dialectic of Enlightenment against the Grain.” Political Theory 22.1 (1994): – 71 97. Print. Banu Bargu Ruderman, Richard S. “Odysseus and the Department of Politics Possibility of Enlightenment.” American Journal of New School for Social Research Political Science 43.1 (1999): 138–61. Print. 6 East 16th St. Suite 711 Salecl, Renata. “The Sirens and Feminine New York, NY 10003 Jouissance.” Differences: A Journal of Feminist USA Cultural Studies 9.1 (1997): 14–28. Print. E-mail: [email protected]