2017 THE BERLIN JOURNAL all f A Magazine from the American Academy in Berlin Number Thirty-One Fall 2017 NUMBER 31

THE BERLIN JOURNAL THE BERLIN

Crescent among the Stars by Nancy Foner

Bad News by Jill Abramson

Artist Portfolios Ran Ortner, A. L. Steiner

Listening through the Iron Curtain by Peter Schmelz

Fiction by Carole Maso, V. V. Ganeshananthan, and Thomas Chatterton Williams

Digitalization and Geopolitics The Holbrooke Forum We are deeply grateful to

TELEFÓNICA DEUTSCHLAND HOLDING AG

and

STEFAN VON HOLTZBRINCK

for their generous support of this issue of the Berlin Journal. CONTENTS

focus features notebook 4 36 74

6 Nicole’s Father Is Not German 38 Listening through 76 Remembering by Kristen Monroe the Iron Curtain Anna-Maria Kellen by Peter Schmelz 12 Crescent among the Stars 78 The 2017 by Nancy Foner 42 Performing Sound Henry A. Kissinger Prize an Interview with Raven Chacon 16 The Mythology of 82 Al Gore the Sectarian Middle East 44 The Names at the American Academy by Ussama S. Makdisi by Carole Maso 84 Kerry James Marshall 20 ARTIST PORTFOLIO 46 ARTIST PORTFOLIO at the American Academy A. L. Steiner; text by Boychild Ran Ortner; 86 wELCOMINg New Trustees text by Michael Cunningham 24 Undercover Oughts 87 dEdication of by Jacqueline Ross 52 The Autobiography the Fellows Pavilion Studies of Solomon Maimon 28 In a Name Translation by Paul Reitter 89 Profiles in Scholarship by Thomas Chatterton Williams 58 Gardening 91 Book Reviews 32 The Tide Was Always High by V. V. Ganeshananthan by Norman Naimark, Paul Guyer, by Josh Kun and Andrea Orzoff 61 “They, the People” by Dilip Gaonkar 96 Alumni Books 64 Bad News 97 sUPPORTERs and Donors by Jill Abramson 67 THE HOLBROOKE FORUM Eberhard Sandschneider; A Conversation between Stephen Hadley and Christoph Heusgen CONTRIBUTORS

Jill Abramson teaches nonfiction Minnesota. She is the fall 2017 Heyden in Fiction. Kristen Monroe at Urbana-Champaign, and the writing at Harvard University. Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow is Chancellor’s Professor of Politi- Daimler Fellow in fall 2017. A former executive editor of the in Fiction. Dilip Gaonkar is Profes- cal Science at the University of Peter Schmelz is Associate Pro­ New York Times, she was the spring sor in Rhetoric and Public Culture ­California, Irvine, and the spring fessor of Musicology at Arizona 2017 Fritz Stern Lecturer at the at Northwestern University, and a 2018 Dirk Ippen Fellow. Yitzhak Y. State University, and a fall 2017 American Academy in Berlin. fall 2017 Bosch Fellow in Public Melamed is a professor of philoso- Anna-Maria Kellen Fellow. Boychild is a performance artist Policy. Paul Guyer is Jonathan phy at Johns Hopkins University. A. L. Steiner is a multimedia artist living and working in Los Angeles. Nelson Professor of Humanities Norman Naimark is Robert and living in Los Angeles and Brooklyn, Michael Cunningham is a senior and Philosophy at Brown University. Florence McDonnell Professor in and the Ellen Maria Gorrissen lecturer at Yale University and the He was a spring 2017 Daimler East European Studies at Stanford Fellow in fall 2017. Eberhard Pulitzer Prize-winning author of six Fellow. Josh Kun is Professor of University. He was an Axel Springer ­Sandschneider is the former direc- novels. Raven Chacon is a com- Communication and American Fellow in spring 2011. Ran Ortner tor of the research institute of the poser, performer, and installation Studies and Ethnicity at the Uni- is an artist living in Brooklyn. German Council on Foreign Rela- artist living in Albuquerque, New versity of Southern California, He is the spring 2018 Ellen Maria tions. He holds a chair in Chinese Mexico. He is the spring 2018 Inga and a spring 2018 Bosch Fellow in Gorrissen Fellow. Andrea Orzoff politics and international relations Maren Otto Fellow in Music Com- Public Policy. Ussama S. Makdisi is Associate Professor of History at Freie Universität Berlin. Abraham position. Nancy Foner is Distin- is Professor of History and at New Mexico State University. P. Socher is director of the Jewish guished Professor of Sociology at Arab-American Educational Foun- Paul Reitter is Professor of German studies program at Oberlin College. Hunter College and Graduate dation Chair of Arab Studies at and the director of the Humanities Jan Techau is the director of the Center, City University of New York, Rice University, and the spring 2018 Institute at The Ohio State Uni­ American Academy in Berlin’s and the fall 2017 Berthold Leibin- Siemens Fellow. Carole Maso is a versity, and a spring 2018 John P. Richard C. Holbrooke Forum. ger Fellow. V. V. Ganeshananthan writer and Professor of Literary Birkelund Fellow in the Human- Thomas Chatterton Williams is a is a writer and Assistant Professor Arts at Brown University. She is the ities. Jacqueline Ross is Professor writer living in Washington, DC. of English at the University of spring 2018 Mary Ellen von der of Law at the University of Illinois He is a fall 2017 Holtzbrinck Fellow.

the berlin journal the american academy Mathias Döpfner, Marina Kellen support in berlin French, Hans-Michael Giesen, Number Thirty-One, Anthony T. Grafton, C. Boyden The Academy is entirely funded by Fall 2017 president Gray, Vartan Gregorian, Andrew private, tax-deductible donations. Michael P. Steinberg S. Gundlach, Florian Henckel Contributions may be made: publisher Michael P. Steinberg chief operating officer von Donners­marck, Wolfgang A. in germany editor R. Jay Magill, Jr. Christian U. Diehl Herrmann, Stefan von Holtzbrinck, by bank transfer to: managing editor Johana Gallup Dirk Ippen, Wolfgang Ischinger, American Academy in Berlin advertising Berit Ebert Am Sandwerder 17–19 Josef Joffe, Michael M. Kellen, Berliner Sparkasse design Susanna Dulkinys, 14109 Berlin Michael S. Klein, John C. Kornblum, BLZ 100 500 00 Julia Sysmäläinen Tel. (49 30) 80 48 3-0 Regine Leibinger, Pascal Levensohn, Account: 660 000 9908 Fax (49 30) 80 48 3-111 Vincent A. Mai, Wolfgang Malchow, IBAN: Copyright © 2017 americanacademy.de Nina von Maltzahn, Kati Marton, DE07 1005 0000 6600 0099 08 American Academy in Berlin Julie Mehretu, Nader Mousavizadeh, BIC: BELADEBEXXX ISSN 1610-6490 14 East 60th Street, Suite 604 Michael Müller (ex officio), Sandra New York, NY 10022 E. Peterson, George E. Rupp, Volker in the united states cover image Ran Ortner, Invert, Tel. (1) 212 588-1755 Schlöndorff, Peter Y. Solmssen, by check payable to: 2002. Back wall, mirror, Fax (1) 212 588-1758 Michael P. Steinberg (ex officio), American Academy in Berlin platform, 1,000 pounds of sand Christine I. Wallich, Maureen 14 East 60th Street, Suite 604 founder Richard C. Holbrooke White, Ulrich Wilhelm, Andrew New York, NY 10022 Printed by Ruksaldruck, Berlin founding chairmen Thomas L. Wylie, Pauline Yu by bank transfer to: Farmer, Henry A. Kissinger, JPMorgan Chase Richard von Weizsäcker chairman emeritus 500 Stanton Christiana Road chairman Gahl Hodges Burt Karl M. von der Heyden Newark, DE 19713 co-vice chairmen Manfred Account: 967 33 12 77 The Berlin Journal App Bischoff, Gerhard Casper trustees emeriti ABA: 021 00 00 21 co-secretaries Stephen Burbank, John P. Birkelund, Diethart SWIFT CODE: CHASUS 33 John C. Kornblum Breipohl, Richard K. Goeltz, Wolfgang Mayrhuber, The American Academy in Berlin’s latest trustees Manfred Bischoff, Leon Norman Pearlstine financial report may be obtained by Botstein, Martin Brand, Stephen writing to The American Academy in Berlin, 14 East 60th Street, Suite 604, New York, B. Burbank, Gahl Hodges Burt, executive director emeritus NY 10022, or to the Charities Bureau, 120 Gerhard Casper, Roger Cohen, Gary Smith Broadway, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10271. PRESIDENT’S NOTE

The Promise of Dialogue

Welcome to the 2017–18 issue of the Berlin Journal, an in- Maria Gorrissen Fellow, will work on a history of medieval tellectual yearbook that mirrors the concerns and conver- Lampedusa and its near-millennial past as a European re- sations enlivening the Hans Arnhold Center this academic ceiving-point for African migrants. “Race in Comparative year. From the literary, musical, and visual arts to some of Perspective” will serve as the Academy’s second focal the most pressing issues facing politics and societies, the theme; the comparison involves both transatlantic and in- commitments outlined in this issue combine distinct disci- terdisciplinary dialogues, as is so strongly implied in and plines into a panoply of incisive work and thought. among the contributions by Foner, Monroe, and Thomas The fellows represented herein are members of our thir- Chatterton Williams in this issue. ty-ninth and fortieth classes, marking the beginning of the In a brief address to the opening-night audience of the twentieth year of our fellowship program, which began in Berlin Konzerthaus Orchestra on September 8, music direc- the autumn of 1998 and included playwright Arthur Miller, tor Iván Fischer remarked that every rehearsal begins with a poet C.K. Williams, and architecture critic Diana Ketcham. traversal of a chorale by J.S. Bach. What a resonant com- That same year saw the publication of American Academy ment for the cultural analyst—and an invocation of what founder Richard Holbrooke’s To End a War, his memoir of composer and spring 2018 Inga Maren Otto Fellow Raven conflict and peacemaking in the Balkans. Anticipating this Chacon celebrates as the “soft pace of the city.” Fischer’s anniversary, our Holbrooke Forum will convene a gathering disclosure affirms how and why Berlin’s legacy has inspired of policymakers and scholars this October to explore what so many American Academy scholars over the years to Holbrooke and his team accomplished in resolving that war study music’s interface with politics and religion. and consider the challenges that persist in the region. TheKonzerthausorchester, founded in East Berlin, in 1952, In describing the Balkan turmoil of the 1990s as a polit- alongside its much older sibling, the Berlin State Orchestra, ical crisis, Holbrooke challenged the popular notion and re- or Staatskapelle, founded in 1570, carries subconscious mem- curring claim that the region was fundamentally resistant ories of cultural life in the German Democratic Republic, to diplomatic intervention. Specifically, he took issue with where musical communities of players and audiences ser- Robert Kaplan’s 1993 book Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through ved also as displaced religious communities—surprisingly History, “which left most of its readers,” Holbrooke wrote, analogous to what Felix Mendelssohn had in mind in 1829, “with the sense that nothing could be done by outsiders in a when he observed that the vocalists of his secular revival region so steeped in ancient hatreds.” The “ancient hatreds” of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion “sang with a devotion as if claim remains aggravating to both historical and policy an- they were in church [Sie sangen mit einer Andacht, als ob sie alysts, and in the pages ahead we address this frustration in der Kirche wären].” No less devotional were the decidedly head-on: historian and spring 2018 Siemens Fellow Ussama secular politics of Cold War German music, which histori- Makdisi echoes Holbrooke’s critique in “The Mythology of an Peter Schmelz, a fall 2017 Anna-Maria Kellen Fellow, trac- the Sectarian Middle East,” emphasizing the historical con- es via “an intimate history of musical exchange” between tingencies that define current enmities. Political scientist and West Germany and Soviet Ukraine. Spring 2018 Axel Springer spring 2018 Dirk Ippen Fellow Kristen Monroe argues how Fellow Christian Ostermann will complement Cold War stud- “many of the most frequently discussed political cleavages ies with his biographical project on master-spy Markus Wolf. in America—race, religion, ethnicity—assume immutability The cohabitation of intimacy and terror has made its about [. . .] in-group/out-group distinctions and the hostilities way uncannily through successive incarnations of German associated with them.” And sociologist Nancy Foner, the fall history and society. In today’s Germany, however, the so- 2017 Berthold Leibinger Fellow, stresses historical contingen- lidity of political debate and civil society-based initiatives cy over essential differences in attributing Europe’s anxiety proves both impressive and admirable to visiting American about Islam both to demography and to the degree that sec- scholars. At the same time, their scholarly and creative ularity is assumed to define European public spheres. commitments, flexibility, and imagination—and the ex- Foner is one of three 2017–18 fellows whose research changes they enable—testify to the resourcefulness, vigor, focuses on questions of political migration and social in- and diversity of American intellectual and cultural life. tegration—the topic the American Academy has iden- These are anxious times for the health and future of tified as a theme of collective interest over the coming transatlantic dialogue, the robust brokering of which de- years. Ethnomusicologist Josh Kun, whose thoughts on fines the core mission of the American Academy in Berlin. the Mexican sound and identity of Los Angeles follow in For this reason, our drive, momentum, and contributions the pages ahead, will be the spring 2018 Bosch Fellow in carry more promise than ever. Public Policy, and Amy Remensnyder, a spring 2018 Nina Michael P. Steinberg FOCUS Identities and Realities

Nicole’s Father Is Not German By Kristen Monroe 6

Crescent among the Stars By Nancy Foner 12

The Mythology of the Sectarian Middle East by Ussama S. Makdisi 16

Artist Portfolio A.L. Steiner text by Boychild 20

Undercover Oughts By Jacqueline Ross 24

In a Name By Thomas Chatterton Williams 28

The Tide Was Always High By Josh Kun 32

Aerial photograph of Repellent Fence/Valla Repelente, 2015, a large-scale, temporary, collaborative monument located near Douglas, Arizona, and Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico, created by the artist collaborative Postcommodity. The two-mile-long land-art installation was comprised of 26 tethered balloons, each 10-feet in diameter, floating 100 feet above the desert landscape. Enlarged replicas of an ineffective bird-repellent product, the balloons also display the colors of indigenous medicines and iconography as well as a graphic that has been used by indigenous peoples from South America to Canada for millennia. Photo by Michael Lundgren, courtesy of Postcommodity. 6 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

NICOLE’S FATHER IS NOT GERMAN

What difference does difference make? by Kristen Monroe

My daughter Chloe and her friend Nicole were playing one “Because I know your mother’s mother is French and day, when the subject of ethnic background arose. Nicole your dad is part English and part German.” was in a different classroom than Chloe, so her class had not Nicole’s face froze, her retort sharp and indignant. yet done the ancestry study, where students trace their fam- “My father is NOT German! He’s art history! He’s chair of ily tree, but Nicole was interested in the topic nonetheless. the department!” “Chloe’s a mutt,” I told Nicole. Raised in an academic ghetto, by a father who indeed “What’s a mutt?” Nicole demanded, her 12-year-old was chair of the art history department, and a mother who mind not familiar with the concept. was both an art history professor and associate dean of “It means she’s got a lot of different nationalities roam- humanities, Nicole and her outraged protest reflected her ing around her background. Part Greek from her daddy’s particular worldview, her knowledge of what was import- father. English and Scots from his mother. And just about ant for academics’ kids: academic disciplines. Nicole did everything from northern Europe, plus a teeny bit of not care a hoot about ethnic, racial, religious, or nation- Cherokee on my side.” al backgrounds. But little Nicole—so seldom party to the Nicole thought about this a moment. social-science dinner-table conversations that too often “You’re a mutt, too,” I continued. bore children of political scientists—illustrates several im- Now Nicole was paying attention. “How do you know portant concepts that all academics and, indeed the popu- that?” she asked. lace as a whole, should incorporate into their discussions Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 7

of race, ethnicity, and group politics more generally: the “natural”—to a child from University Hills looks quite differ- concept of moral salience, or the psychological process ent than it does to most of the rest of the world. by which differences between people and groups become Indeed, Allen phoned his parents his first year at college deemed ethically and politically relevant. Fleshing this out to tell them that there were “none of my people” at Yale could have profound effects on our discussions of differ- when he first arrived. ences, making us more aware of the social construction “What do you mean?” they asked. of the significance of differences, and how the framing of “There are no Asians here,” Allen explained. our discussions of such differences will shape prejudice, His parents assured Allen that there were, in fact, prob- discrimination, and the treatment of such different groups. ably a fair number of Asian students at the university; there Let me expand, beginning with my experience with Chloe just weren’t as high a proportion as there were in his honors and Nicole. or AP classes in high school, or on UCI’s campus itself, with its 54 percent Asian population. Then they gently reminded Allen, “You’re not Asian.” His rejoinder was quick and to the point. “I know. But they’re my people.” And so, they were, with Allen, eventu- ally majoring in East Asian History. Allen was able to choose “his people,” choose the group with which he wanted to affiliate, the people with whom he For an academic’s kid, disciplines matter. Disciplines are wished to associate, to spend time with. That’s as it should what allocate resources. Few in American academia even be. We should all be able to choose how we define ourselves, notice, let alone care, if their colleagues are French, or Bra- and should not be restricted in this self-definition, as long zilian, or Chinese. as how we do that does not hurt ourselves or others. Nor do academics care much about religion anymore— even if a religious colleague tells us she is reluctant to talk about her Roman Catholic faith, and Islam has now become controversial on many campuses, as it has in the country at large. So perhaps the bad old days are not behind us. But, overall, one’s area of specialization—and perhaps meth- odological approach—is what is most salient in academia. Faculty brats are thus not raised to think in terms of racial, I wish our political discussions of identity in American pol- ethnic, religious, or national prejudice. These differences are itics could reflect such concern for individual freedom and simply not relevant for them. They carry no moral salience. self-definition. Even in American political science, I find an A close friend’s son went off to a summer program at odd confusion between group politics and identity politics. Yale the summer before his senior year. He was approached There is a surprising tone in our discussions of differences, by a young fellow student. She told him her name and in- one that implies that the group distinctions that currently troduced herself as being from New York City and “just your dominate American politics exist because they reflect some ordinary JAP.” immutable difference between groups in our society. My friend’s son looked taken aback. Although Allan had I accept that variations among people do exist, and that been born in Manhattan, he had been raised in California some of these distinctions indeed may even be immutable. and had no idea what JAP meant. “Ah, you don’t look But this is not the critical factor in ethics or in politics. What Japanese,” he stammered. “Why would you call yourself matters is the political and moral salience we accord these that?” the sweet young man asked, not realizing how naïve differences. he sounded. The salience—the ethical or political relevance of a dif- “Jewish American Princess!” the young woman threw ference—is what is central in how we treat others. Why do back at him. “What planet are you from?” certain societies sometimes judge religion to be relevant for Like my own children, this young man had been raised how we treat people? Why not make it mathematical abili- in a university ghetto. A bubble, Chloe used to call it, pop- ty? Why does the color of my skin matter, but not my ability ulated by children from all parts of the globe and compris- to speak a language or manage money? Why are linguistic ing most of the ethnicities, languages, religions, and skin differences sometimes politically relevant, while athletic tones known to man. So the view of the world—what is abilities are not? There are so many ways in which people 8 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

differ; why do we as a group decide some of these differenc- es carry political or ethical significance, but not others? The THE DESIGNATION OF designation of one characteristic as politically important is totally and artificially constructed by society; in reality, the ONE CHARACTERISTIC treatment of a difference is often constructed by a small group within that society or culture. AS POLITICALLY To be clear, social constructions are not necessari- ly easy to break. We speak of countries—such as France IMPORTANT IS TOTALLY or Germany—as if they had always existed. Yet when we consult any historical atlas, it is immediately evident that AND ARTIFICIALLY countries come and go. Even the very concept of a nation is socially constructed, a concept created by human beings. CONSTRUCTED BY States do not exist in the same way mosquitoes exist. And we speak of race as if it existed, with skin color denoting SOCIETY. some kind of difference that is permanent, immutable. Yet from a biological point of view, we are all members of the same race: homo sapiens sapiens. personal reasons for wanting to understand what had al- Kids get this. Both Nicole and Chloe at some point in lowed the Holocaust to happen, especially in Germany. Other their early years came in and asked if they were black. They postwar scholars joined him in their response. They were simply had no clue what it meant to speak of a “black per- aghast at what had happened and attempted to determine son.” Try explaining to a five year old why some people got why and how such an event could happen in Germany, pre- to designate some physical differences as ones that justi- viously considered a wonderfully civilized nation with a fied oppression and inequality. When you attempt that, it great tradition of learning and culture. is immediately clear how foolish it is to assume that the Much of the first work on this question, “Why did the differences we grow up assuming are ethically relevant are Holocaust happen in Germany?” came from philosophers— cast in stone, and must condemn us as a society to ongoing such as Theodor Adorno—who stressed personality factors. prejudice. One of the best social science theories I know The Germans, so the theory ran, were more authoritarian that speaks to the important question of prejudice against than were other nationals, and hence would be more in- other groups—reflected so concisely by Nicole—is social clined to follow orders. identity theory. Tajfel rejected this explanation. His personal experience had shown him how large numbers of Germans—not just Germans with personalities of a particular type—happily supported Nazism. To Tajfel, the Nazis would not have been successful were it not for the support of “ordinary” Germans. His work on social judgment led him to ask whether the roots of prejudice might originate not in extreme personal- Social identity theory was formulated by Henri Tajfel, a ity types but rather in the “ordinary” processes of thinking. ­Polish Jew born in 1919. Interested in studying chemis- Thus began thousands of studies, by Tajfel and his students try, Tajfel, being Jewish, was prohibited from studying in such as John Turner, designed to try to decipher the psy- ­Poland, so he went to France and studied at the Sorbonne. chological basis of the kind of prejudice and discrimination When World War II broke out, he enlisted in the French at the heart of the Holocaust. The first step, for Tajfel and army and was captured by the Germans. Miraculously, he his students, was the belief that people naturally categorize. survived, but after the war, he returned to Poland to find all Tajfel noted an inherent psychological need to even- his family and most of his friends had perished in the Ho- tually identify and associate with certain “in-groups.” locaust. Deeply affected by this loss, Tajfel initially worked Associating with a particular group plays an important psy- for the United Nations, helping resettle Jewish orphans. Af- chological function in bolstering our sense of who we are ter Tajfel married Anna-Sophie Eber—herself a German Jew and how we feel about ourselves. We have complex identi- who had moved to Britain before the war—he, too, relocat- ties and sort ourselves and others into categories. We label ed to Britain. people as members of diverse groups. These groups are then In 1951, Tajfel enrolled at Birkbeck College, University juxtaposed in pairs. We classify people as men or women, of London, where he studied psychology. He graduated young or old, rich or poor, friend or foe. Or, in the instance and worked as a lecturer, first at that university and then that initially motivated Tajfel’s work, Jew or Aryan. at Oxford, where he examined several topics in social psy- As part of this process by which we think about our- chology: nationalism, social judgment, and the cognitive selves, we compare our in-groups with other so-called aspects of prejudice. out-groups, and demonstrate a favorable bias toward the Coming of age during the Holocaust, Tajfel’s person- group to which we belong, just as Nicole’s outrage stemmed al and professional life was changed by it. He has deeply from the fact that her father was being re-categorized out of what she had been taught to think of as a de- sired group: art historians. Tajfel’s social identity theory thereby roots prejudice, discrimination, and the violence that can result from it in an innate psychological need for distinctiveness, self-esteem, and belonging. We naturally form groups and then we desire our group identity to be both distinct from and com- pared positively with that of other groups. The critical intellectual traction of social identity the- ory lies in establishing a clear link between the psychological and sociological aspects of group behavior, in effectively linking the micro-lev- el psychological need to distinguish, categorize, and compare ourselves with the broader social phenomenon of group behavior.

The theoretical claims of social identity theory have been substantiated empirically in thou- sands of experiments conducted by Tajfel and his students, in what became known as the Bristol School of social psychology. The classic experi- ment takes a group of previously unconnected individuals and randomly assigns them to Group A, B, or C. Everyone in Group A is then offered Option 1 or 2. Option 1 would give all members of Group A $5, all members of Group B $10, and all members of Group C $15. Under option 2, all members of Group A would lose $5, Group B $10, and Group C $15. As we might expect, most members of group A (roughly two-thirds) choose Option 1, which gives money both to their group and the other groups. Everyone gains in Option 1. But with a CONNECTING AIRLINE STRATEGIES surprising consistency, roughly one-third of the members of group A choose Option 2, the op- WITH FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE tion that costs them money. Tajfel’s explanation is that even though under Option 2 members of group A lose money, they do better than all the other groups because they lose less. Their need www.avinomics.com to do better than others, to feel superior in some way, trumps their need to actually do better in objective terms. The key here is less the gain or loss and more the arbitrary assigning of people to groups. The groups themselves are not “real” or inherent or immutable. But once you are put into a group, you find shared interests and identity. There is nothing inherently in common you share; the collective sense of identity is artificially created

anzeige für Druck.indd 1 25.07.17 15:10 10 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

by the external experimenter. But in the “real world,” these Beyond this, what makes neighbors—people who are categories are often just as artificial. Who was a Tutsi and members of different religious or ethnic groups but who who a Hutu in Rwanda-Burundi during their ethnic cleans- have lived together in peace, often for centuries— suddenly ing? Who was a Jew and who an Aryan in the Third Reich? find these differences politically and ethically germane? This This distinction was often quite artificial, particularly when was the case with many Jews and their Aryan neighbors one considers the fact of intermarriage, the many people during World War II. It occurred in the former Yugoslavia, classified as Jewish who were utterly secular, and those where Muslims, Orthodox Christians, and Roman Catholics for whom Jewish identity played only a minor part of their suddenly found these differences mattered, in this case be- pre-Nazi period identity. It is important to remember here cause of events that had occurred over 500 years in the past. that groups do not automatically flow from differences; -ar The interesting point for us is the extent to which tificially created groups precede the discovery of difference many of the most frequently discussed political cleavages and the creation of its political and ethical salience. in America—race, religion, ethnicity—assume immutability about the in-group/out-group distinctions and the hostil- ities associated with them. Yet we all know that there is one human race and that—as the news media repeated- ly reminded us during the 2008 presidential campaign—a man from Africa can wed a woman from Kansas to produce a child who can become president of the United States of America, just as a Catholic and a Jew can marry, or a German The Tajfel framework provides a valuable starting point for and a Japanese, a Serbian Orthodox wed a Roman Catholic, understanding how important both real and perceived dif- a Hutu and a Tutsi, and so on. There can be friendship, affec- ferences can become when encounters between individuals tion and love across these “differences.” Hostilities across are conceptualized as encounters between group members. the divides are not necessary. For Nicole and for Chloe, the relevant out-group would be those greedy people in the biological or hard sciences, as they hear their parents grumble about resources going to the biological or the physical sciences. Or, worse: the med- ical school! Fortunately, most members of the schools of human- ities or the social sciences don’t rise up and slay all the hard scientists on campus. So why do others kill, or at least en- This returns us to the initial question little Nicole picked up: gage in prejudicial treatment of some “different” groups, as the political relevance of categorization. The central nature opposed to others? Why did the Nazis pick the Jews? The of racial encoding as a marker for in-group versus out-group homosexuals? The gypsies? Why not choose the munitions status results from particular theoretical models of cate- makers? The Lutherans? Why do these—but not other—­ gorization and learning. The social scientist in me would differences get selected as politically relevant? tell my class of graduate students that a classical model of behavioral conditioning, or learning, would argue that any conditioned stimulus—like race—can be associated with any unconditioned stimulus—like fear—simply through FORTUNATELY, repeated associations between the two. Such linkages can be learned vicariously, by watching the reactions of oth- MOST MEMBERS OF ers, such as one’s parents, or leaders who wish to exploit our fear of those who are “different” for the leader’s own THE SCHOOLS OF political gain. Chloe and Nicole can learn to react with outrage to out- HUMANITIES OR THE groups who are faculty members in the biological, medical, or hard sciences by witnessing their parents’ reactions to SOCIAL SCIENCES them as “others” who are hogging scarce university resourc- es. Just as white men can be told by politicians that this DON’T RISE UP AND country is no longer theirs, that their political power and economic well-being are being threatened by “the others” SLAY ALL THE HARD who are coming to our country. This kind of model not only assumes the equipotentiality that suggests that any two SCIENTISTS ON stimuli are equally likely to be associated, but also assumes that fear acquisition becomes easily linked to certain cat- CAMPUS. egories—race, ethnicity, religion, or academic disciplines— in the encoding of out-group status. □ Wie viele persönliche Daten würden Sie preisgeben? Für weniger Stau, besseren Klimaschutz oder die Heilung von Krankheiten … Zukunft braucht Haltung_

Diese Haltung müssen wir entwickeln. Als Gesellschaft, Debatte über die Zukunft der digitalen Welt. Das aber auch jeder für sich persönlich. Dafür brauchen Telefónica BASECAMP in Berlin dient hierfür als wir eine öffentliche Debatte. Telefónica Deutschland Zentrum. Hier treffen Philosophen auf Pragmatiker, ermöglicht als Telekommunikationsunternehmen Datenspezialisten auf Demokratieverteidi ger, Nutzer nicht nur die Digitalisierung, sondern fördert diese auf Nerds – jeder kann daran teilhaben.

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TEL17_6340_Druckanpassung_BEL.indd 1 16.08.17 14:41 12 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017 CRESCENT AMONG THE STARS

Is it harder being Muslim in Western Europe than in the United States? by Nancy Foner

slam has created greater challenges—and barriers— as an external threat from outside the country. In Western for immigrants and their children in Western Europe Europe, although fears of terrorist networks are a compo- I than in the United States. This may seem strange to nent of anxieties about Muslims, civilizational threats—for say, especially in light of recent developments in the Unit- example, threats to what are seen as core European liber- ed States. But the fact is that Islam has become a great- al values of free speech, gender equality, and equal rights er source of contention and conflict in Europe and a more for homosexuals—have loomed much larger and become a central divide between immigrants and the native majority prominent theme in political discourse and debates. population. Nor have cultural practices associated with Islam Of course, there is considerable anti-Muslim sentiment aroused the same kind of controversy in the United States in the United States, with many cases of discrimination, as they have in Western Europe. In France, a 2004 law bias incidents, and hate crimes, including vandalism of banned the headscarf in French public schools because it mosques and even occasional violence against Muslims, as was seen to threaten the principle of laïcité, or state secular- well as state surveillance since the attacks of September 11, ism. Everywhere in Europe, the black head-to-toe veiling— 2001. Most recently, anti-Muslim statements have be- the niqab—that leaves only slits for the eyes, has been the come common in public discourse at the highest levels of subject of public debate, with France, once again, banning American society. Not long after taking office, President it in public places. Arranged (or “forced”) marriages among Trump issued an executive order banning visitors from sev- Muslims have also come in for considerable criticism in eral Muslim majority countries. Europe, but in the United States they have led to hardly Despite these challenges, Islam in the United States has any public discussion or concern. not become a major cleavage between long-established res- In addition to worries in Europe about the allegiances idents and a large segment of the immigrant-origin popu- of second-generation Muslims to jihadist causes—and sus- lation. Nor has it become as frequent a subject of public picions that they will commit acts of terrorism on European debate about immigrant integration and assimilation as it soil (as they have in Paris, London, and Brussels)—there is a has in Western Europe. In other words, immigration debates widespread concern that a strong Muslim (or ethnic) identi- in the United States have not been Islamicized or system- ty competes with, or may even replace, feelings of belong- atically connected with anti-Islamic rhetoric in the same ing to the national community. Public debates in the United way or degree to which they have been on the other side States about immigration are less focused on national iden- of the Atlantic. In the United States, hostility to Islam has, tity and fears about cultural fragmentation than in Europe, to a large extent, focused on security issues and on Islam where anxieties about Muslims’ identities are a larger issue. Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 13

hy is being Muslim a more significant marker of breaking of many links between church and state and the a fundamental social division for immigrants high degree of secularism, the ways that Christian religions W and their children in Western Europe than it is have been institutionalized and historically entangled with in the United States? One reason certainly has to do with the state have made it hard for Islam to achieve equal treat- the different demographics of immigration. A much larg- ment. (To be sure, European governments have begun to er proportion of immigrants and their children in Western make some accommodations for Muslim religious prac- ­Europe are Muslim (about 40 percent of all immigrants from tices such as granting permission to build mosques and, outside the European Union). In the United States, ­Muslims in some countries, establishing national or local “Islamic are a tiny proportion of the immigrant population, an esti- Councils.” Still, the institutional context continues to favor mated four to eight percent, and only one percent of the Christianity in many ways, and thus marginalizes Islam.) total population, compared to five to eight percent in major In Germany, according to the 1949 constitution, the European countries like France, Germany, and Britain. Also, state must be neutral in religious matters, but there are still Islam in Western Europe is associated with large immigrant strong links between church and state. Long-established groups, which are among the most disadvantaged minori- Protestantism, Catholicism, as well as Judaism—but not ties in terms of poverty, unemployment, and education. In Islam, the third largest religion—are recognized as public the United States, a substantial proportion of Muslim Amer- corporations entitled to federally collected church taxes icans are well-educated and middle class. and the right to run state-subsidized religious services and A second reason why Islam is more problematic in hospitals. Western Europe has to do with the place of religion in con- Throughout Europe, magnificent churches and cathe- temporary society. Americans are considerably more reli- drals dot the landscape, but few mosques can compete in gious than Western Europeans. About half of Americans in appearance. In France, for example, where the exclusion of a national poll a few years ago said that religion was very religion from the affairs of state is the official ideology, the important in their lives, more than twice the proportion in 1905 law on the separation of church and state designated Germany, Britain, or France. all religious buildings built before then as property of the A secular mindset dominates in most Western European French state; the same law prevents the state from contrib- countries. In Western Europe, those who worship regularly uting to the construction of new ones. The state therefore and hold strong religious beliefs, including Christian ones, owns and maintains most Christian churches and allows are a small minority, and claims based on religion have them to be used for regular religious services. Most French much less acceptance. When the religion is Islam, with its mosques are makeshift structures in converted rooms in particular demands on how followers conduct their lives, housing projects, garages, or even basements. these claims often lead to public unease, sometimes dis- Government support for religious schools has created dain, and even anger, and, not surprisingly, tensions and other inequalities in Western Europe between long-estab- conflicts. lished religions and Islam. In Britain and France, the state Europeans often feel that their societies should not tol- provides support for religious schools as long as they teach erate religious practices or cultural customs that conflict the national secular curriculum. While seemingly fair to all with liberal secular norms and widely accepted views on, religions, this arrangement favors the established churches. for example, the equal role of women. At the same time, The British government funds more than 6,500 Church of they expect religious conservatives, including Muslims, to England and Catholic faith schools, but, as of 2017, only 27 tolerate behavior that they may consider morally abhorrent, Islamic faith schools in a nation of three million Muslims. In such as open displays of sexuality. France, about 20 percent of French students go to religious Americans, on the other hand, give more legitimacy to schools (mostly Catholic) that receive the bulk of their bud- religiously based arguments in the public sphere. Political gets from the government, but, as of 2009, there were only demands made on the basis of religion are a common fea- two Muslim schools funded in this way. ture of American life, put forward most vocally by evan- gelical (primarily white) Christians, who comprise about a quarter of the US adult population. As the scholarly liter- s we look ahead, are there any signs of change? ature on immigrant religion emphasizes, becoming more ­Predicting the future is always risky, but it is worth religious is a way of becoming American. It is often seen as A sketching out some factors that may, on the one a problem in Western Europe. hand, exacerbate and, on the other, reduce the barriers Third, and related, is the historicalrole of religion in so- facing Muslim immigrants and their children in both the ciety. The American history of religious pluralism, shaped United States and Western Europe. In the United States, the by foundational principles of religious freedom and sepa- historical record provides some optimism that eventually ration of church and state, and its success in incorporating Islam will come to have a more established place. It may Judaism and Catholicism into its predominantly Protestant have taken more than a century, but America overcame the national narrative—and into the fabric of mainstream in- fear of the “Catholic menace” and widespread views of Ca- stitutions—provide a platform for the easier integration tholicism as an anti-modernist religion incompatible with of non-Christian religions. In Western Europe, despite the democracy. Perhaps in the decades ahead we will be talking 14 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

about America as an Abrahamic civilization, a phrase join- Moreover, the prospects for relatively high rates of unem- ing Muslims with Jews and Christians. As the historian Gary ployment and stalled social mobility among many sec- Gerstle has written, “America, at present, is a long way from ond-generation Muslims will provide fodder for those who that formulation of American national identity, but no fur- will continue to argue that Muslims will never fit in or suc- ther than America once was from the Judeo-Christian one.” cessfully adjust to European society. Moreover, in the context of the American color line—and a While most second-generation Muslims in Western society where color-coded racial cleavages are more prob- Europe do not support a politicized Islam, a minority of lematic than divisions based on religion—phenotypically them do. The aggrieved sense of exclusion felt by some white and light-skinned members of the Muslim second second-generation Muslims has created a pool of poten- generation who are economically and educationally suc- tial recruits for fundamentalist doctrines and extremist cessful and culturally assimilated may come to be seen and Islamist groups. This development, along with terrorist accepted as part of the dominant white population. incidents by “homegrown” Muslims, could reinforce ten- In both the United States and Europe, it is likely that, sions with long-established Europeans and fuel anti-Mus- over time, more second-generation Muslims will have lim hostility and rhetoric. This has already been happening routine contact and interactions with long-established over the last few years, as several thousand second-gener- Europeans and Americans in a range of social settings, in- ation European Muslims have gone to fight with Islamist cluding workplaces, schools, and universities. This kind of groups in the war in Syria. Fears and anxieties about Islam intermingling can increase comfort with people of Muslim have also been heightened by the violent terrorist attacks background, reduce prejudice, and lead to friendships and involving European-raised Muslims in Paris, London, and even intermarriage. Brussels, as well as by the recent European refugee crisis, In Western Europe, as the number and proportion of with a massive surge in the number of asylum seekers en- the second and third generations rise, the participation of tering Western Europe, many of them Muslims from Syria, Muslims in mainstream European political and economic Iraq, and Afghanistan. The refugee crisis has had political life, including the upper tiers of the occupational ladder, is repercussions, increasing support for anti-immigrant and bound to become more common and increasingly normal. anti-­Islam parties such as Alternative für Deutschland in Those in the European majority population are also likely Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel came in for to grow more accustomed to Islamic religious observance, heavy criticism after opening the country to a huge refugee particularly as Islam becomes more Europeanized, or, giv- inflow. en internal divisions within Islam, “European Islams” take root. As members of the second generation take over reli- gious associations and institutions, many will strive for a t is hard to predict to what extent the divisions be- more liberal version of Islam than their parents practiced, tween the majority population in Western European and that is viewed more positively by the wider population. I countries and Muslims will deepen in the near future, Already, a substantial number of the second generation or become less pronounced over a longer period. It does holds views in sync with mainstream Western ideas about seem likely that Muslims in Western Europe are poised to the separation of state and religion, and gender equality in continue to experience greater challenges to inclusion than education and the labor market. their counterparts in the United States. In this context, pol- But some dark clouds loom on the horizon. In the icies that reduce the stigma and disadvantages confronting United States, unforeseen issues, events, and controversies Muslims should be high on the agenda. In Germany, for ex- may arise that significantly increase hostility to American- ample, recognizing Islam in the corporate structure of the born Muslims and political attacks on them. Who, after all, German state would put Islam on an equal footing with would have predicted the September 11 attacks on the twin other major religions. In France and elsewhere in Europe, towers of New York’s World Trade Center? Or the extent to providing more public space to Islamic institutions would which Republican presidential hopefuls in the 2016 cam- give those of Muslim background greater representation in paign would use anti-Muslim rhetoric to rally support? Still, public life. Government policies cannot ensure greater ac- if Muslim Americans’ rights to religious freedom are threat- ceptance for Muslims, but they can go a long way toward ened, they have the Constitution as well as civil liberties ad- lessening the barriers they face and encouraging their vocates and liberal politicians on their side. Also, the small smoother integration. □ size of the US Muslim population makes the group seem less threatening, even though this small size can contrib- This essay draws on material and analyses in ute to the general population’s lack of personal exposure Richard Alba and Nancy Foner’s Strangers No More: to Muslims, which can lead, in turn, to an easy fueling of Immigration and the Challenges of Integration in negative sentiments toward them. North America and Western Europe, published by In Western Europe, although the trend of Western Princeton University Press in 2015. European governments to make accommodation for Muslim practices is likely to continue, there is a long way to go before Islam achieves parity with mainstream religions. PFIZER_Anz_GetOld_170817_210x280_gb_AA.qxp_Layout 1 17.08.17 10:47 Seite 1

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Iranian glazed-ceramic tiles, ceiling of the Tomb of Hafez, Shiraz, Iran. Photo: Pentocelo, Wikimedia Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 17 THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE SECTARIAN MIDDLE EAST

Divisions within, divisions without by Ussama S. Makdisi

he term “sectarianism” is inherently elas- salient around a European-dominated world. The t tic and ambiguous. It is used to denote advent of secular political equality did not go un- pervasive forms of prejudice, historic contested in any multireligious, multiethnic,­ or solidarities, the identification with a religious or multiracial society of the nineteenth ­century. ethnic community as if it were a political party, Recall that revolutionary France sought to re-­ or the systems through which political, econom- impose slavery in Haiti after slaves there had ic, and social claims are made in multireligious liberated themselves, in 1804; the emancipation and multiethnic societies. The term “sectarian- of enslaved blacks raised enormous controver- ism” is also used to indicate the favoring of one sy in the United States; and the defense of slav- group over another, whether in hiring practices, ery was at the heart of its bloody Civil War. Jim renting, job allocation, or the distribution of state Crow “separate but equal” segregation was legal- resources—that is to say, behavior akin to racial ized across the American South in the 1890s and discrimination and profiling. “Sectarianism” is was maintained until the mid-1950s. In Europe, also used to describe sentiments that propel stri- modern racialized anti-Semitism followed the dent communal mobilizations, intercommunal emancipation of Jews and found its most terri- warfare, and genocidal violence perpetrated by ble expression in the Holocaust. one group against another. Finally, “sectarianism” The Islamic Ottoman Empire (1299–1922), for can also be thought of as a colonial strategy of its part, struggled with the question of the politi- governance insofar as Britain, France, Israel, and cal equality of non-Muslim subjects. Under enor- the United States have routinely manipulated the mous European pressure in the mid-nineteenth religious and ethnic diversity of the region to suit century, the sultanate decreed a revolution- their own imperial ends. ary equality between Muslims and non-Mus- Historically understood, “sectarianism” was lims. This shift was met with resistance—often first identified as a modern problem in the nine- described by historians as “sectarian” because teenth-century Ottoman Empire and in the unprecedented anti-Christian riots occurred in post-Ottoman Middle East at exactly the moment Aleppo and Damascus in 1850 and 1860. when the questions of equality, coexistence, cit- But this political transformation of unequal izenship, imperialism, and nationalism became subjects into supposedly equal citizens also 18 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

produced the modern idea of “sectarian fanaticism” and as the same mandate period, the great pan-Arab pedagogue the antithesis to “true” religion and civilization. Whereas Sati’ al-Husari established a secular national educational the former was seen as undermining national unity, the system in Iraq. He referred to his Iraqi detractors as sec- latter were at the heart of national modernization proj- tarian. He believed that those who opposed his vision for a ects in the late Ottoman Empire and in the post-Ottoman modern, secular Arab-nationalist Iraq under the Hashemite Middle East. The concern with sectarianism in the modern monarchy represented reactionary elements in society. Arab world thus does not simply indicate a political space contested by competing religious and ethnic communities, espite this evident politicization and ideological it also presupposes a shared political space. In this sense, D framing, Arab understandings of “sectarianism” rhetoric about “sectarianism” as insidious in the Middle have often considered it both an internal and ex- East emerged in the late nineteenth century as the alter ego ternal problem. These interpretations have frequently con- of a putatively unifying nationalist discourse. nected internal “sectarian,” “tribal,” and “feudal” obstacles Sectarianism is a diagnosis that makes most sense to progress and development with the reality of Western when thought of in relation to its ideological antithesis— interventionism in the region. Throughout the twentieth much like racism in the contemporary United States: to century, citizens of the Middle East have been haunted not identify and condemn racism in America, one presumably only by the possibility of internal fragmentation in their so- upholds an idea of equality and emancipation. To identify cieties, but also by the prospects of foreign manipulation of and condemn sectarianism in the Arab world, one presum- the region’s religious and ethnic diversity. Self-criticism, in ably upholds an idea of unity and equality between and short, does not preclude being anti-colonial, or recognizing among Muslims and non-Muslims. For this precise rea- the dangers of both domestic and foreign threats to national son, it was only in the early twentieth century, in Lebanon, sovereignty. that the Arabic term for “sectarianism”—al-ta’ifiyya—was Indeed, the Western idea of a “sectarian” Middle East coined, as a negative term in relation to national unity. has been inextricably bound with modern Western domi- The origin of this specific Arabic term emerged out of nation over the region; the idea of an innate Middle Eastern political debates about the nature of the post-Ottoman or Islamic sectarianism serves to absolve Western powers Lebanese state. More broadly, prominent intellectuals of the from their complicity in creating, encouraging, or exacer- twentieth-century Arab world—Amin Rihani, Sati’ al-Husari, bating divisive political landscapes. A recent manifestation Antun Saadeh, Constantine Zurayq, Zaki al-Arsuzi, Edmond of this obfuscation and such ideological deployment of the Rabbath, Munif al-Razzaz—all discussed sectarianism as a idea of the sectarian Middle East occurred in 2003, when major internal impediment to modern development and L. Paul Bremer III, the US administrator of the Coalition sovereignty. A secret Arab society, which included Zurayq, Provisional Authority in Iraq—who spoke no Arabic and, by was founded in Beirut in 1935 and developed branches in his own admission, knew very little about the country—ra- Syria, Palestine, Iraq, and Kuwait. It condemned “sectarian, tionalized the sectarian effects of US interventionism by in- racist, class, regional, tribal, or familial” solidarities that di- sisting that Iraqis only “vaguely understand the concept of luted and weakened “Arab solidarity.” freedom,” and pleaded for US guidance. In his view, sectar- Nationalist intellectuals, in other words, recognized ianism in the region was endemic, so much so that Bremer real social and economic problems within their societies, described parts of Iraq as “the Sunni homeland.” including that of sectarian affiliation. Yet, they also created This description reduces Iraqis to a single sectarian af- a trope about sectarianism as a negative, reactionary hold- filiation as if it were primordial and as if it trumped kinship, over from a pre-modern age. In the 1950s, Zurayq, who was history, geography, national affiliation, ideology and so on. deeply opposed to mixing religion and politics, inveighed It is the equivalent of granting a non-American enormous against “sectarian fanaticism” in evocatively modernist power to reshape the United States and having him de- terms. He regarded sectarianism to be a problem “cascading scribe the area between Boston and New York as the “white from the past into the present,” and thus as an anachronism homeland,” other parts of the United States as the “Latino “in the age of nationalisms, and indeed in the age of the homeland,” and still other parts as the “African-American atom and space.” For him, sectarianism constituted the an- homeland,” with all the violence that such grotesquely tithesis of an ideal of a secular, national modernizing state. reductive descriptions entail. The aftermath of the US in- Even the Lebanese political elites, who created the first vasion of Iraq in 2003, of course, witnessed not only the formal sectarian power-sharing government in the Arab destruction of what remained of the secular Baathist Iraqi world, accepted constitutionally that “political sectari- central state; it also created a new Iraqi Governing Council anism” had to be a temporary measure (Article 95 of the along explicitly sectarian lines. This fateful decision to di- Lebanese constitution). Proponents saw “political sectari- vide Iraqi government along “Sunni,” “Shiite,” and “Kurd,” anism” as a necessary evil until such time as the Lebanese or to invent a “Sunni triangle,” was not predetermined ob- people were able to cast off allegedly innate sectarian sol- jectively by the diversity of Iraqi society. It was principally idarities and embrace a modern secular Lebanese identity. a US imperial interpretation of this diversity. Opponents saw “political sectarianism” as a disease bound More blatantly, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza to weaken, if not destroy, the national body politic. During Rice confidently declared, in 2006, amidst Israel’s devas- Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 19

tating US-backed assault on Lebanon, that the world was In this way, the “sectarian” Middle East does not sim- observing the “birth pangs of a New Middle East.” This, too, ply exist; it is imagined to exist, and then it is produced. displayed how Western interventionism and imperialism Yet the strong association of the term “sectarianism” with in the region not only exacerbates “internal” problems, but the Middle East repeatedly suggests that the region is more also creates new conditions and contexts that define the negatively religious than the “secular” West. This is an ideo- very nature of what is internal. logical assumption woven into how the Arab and Muslim In 2016, President Barack Obama said of the Middle worlds are generally depicted as having fundamentally re- East, “[Its] only organizing principles are sectarian,” and ligious landscapes. Not only does this assumption gloss that the conflicts raging there under America’s watch “date over how religious the West actually is, it also pretends that back millennia.” But Obama’s assertions were both deeply what is occurring in the Middle East reflects an unbroken injurious and self-serving. Injurious because they discount arc of sectarian sentiment that connects the medieval to the the rich, twentieth-century history of the Arab world that modern. Modern politics, in short, is transformed into lit- underscores the numerous social and political bonds in the tle more than a reenactment of a medieval drama between region which are manifestly not sectarian; self-serving be- Sunni and Shi‘i, rather than being a geopolitical struggle in cause they affirm an imperial self-righteousness that pre- which Western states are deeply implicated. sumes that the problems of the Arab world, including those I am for this reason in sympathy with Syrian histori- that affect the United States, are due to the persistence of an Aziz al-Azmeh’s criticism of the “over-Islamization of immutable sectarian solidarities. This assertion casts the Islam.” This fixation with the study of Islam, the Muslim, the problem of sectarianism as principally and essentially an Muslim woman, and Islamic piety has ignored and relegated Arab one. We have tried to help them, the message goes, but as historiographically and analytically unimportant secular they are hopeless. Arabs, or Muslim Arabs who do not necessarily flaunt their Of course, it would be absurd to insist that there are piety in ways that conform to Western stereotypes. It also not local and regional actors who play the complex mod- effaces the agency and histories of non-Muslim Arabs, Turks, ern sectarian game along with Western powers. It would Iranians, Armenians, and others who have lived, interacted be absurd, as well, to deny that religion and religious dif- with, and shared a culture with Muslims across the Middle ferences are not salient features in the history of the Middle East. Most of all, this Western fixation with the allegedly East as they are in many other parts of the world as well. medieval and fixed nature of religiosity in the Middle East For centuries, the Ottoman Empire used religious catego- distracts scholars and the general public from understand- ries to classify and discriminate against its vast and diverse ing the modern roots of the “sectarian” Middle East. subject population. The so-called millet system established I am not suggesting that we think of sectarianism as ecclesiastical and communal autonomy for Greek Orthodox, only, or even primarily, a question of colonial “divide and Armenian, and Jewish subjects in the empire. Islamic law rule.” But I am saying that we should stop pretending that unquestionably distinguished and discriminated between the so-called internal dimensions have not themselves been Muslim and non-Muslim. The ruling Ottoman dynasty and massively affected, exacerbated, and even transformed by its elites proclaimed themselves repeatedly to be defenders the West. When the noted political scientist Fouad Ajami of Islam, locked in a struggle against heretics and infidels. tendentiously insisted that the “self-inflicted” wounds One can, therefore, discuss sectarian outlooks, actions, and “matter” more than foreign ones, he obfuscated the degree to thoughts in the Middle East in a manner similar to how which the foreign has long shaped the landscape in which one would talk about racial (and racist) outlooks, actions, the “local” plays itself out. Rather than assume sectarian- and thoughts in the United States. Yet just as American ism to be a fixed, stable reality that floats above history, it is scholars have gone to great lengths to challenge the notion far more important to locate and identify—to historicize— of singular, age-old racial identifications, whether black or each “sectarian” event, moment, structure, identification, white, so too should scholars of the Middle East reject the and ­discourse in its particular context. facile, monolithic, and ahistorical interpretations of sectar- What is needed urgently, therefore, is a new research ian identity so beloved by academics, pundits, think tank agenda to study the dialectic—the complex, constant, and “experts,” and politicians. unequal relationship between local and foreign—that makes up the modern Middle East. We also need to appre- ectarianism is far less an objective description of ciate the dynamic between tradition and transformation, s “real” fractures in a religiously diverse world and far between history and politics, between self-identification more a language about the nature of religious dif- and orientalist representation, and between discourse and ference in the Middle East. It is a discourse that has been de- action that makes up the substance of what we call “sec- ployed and expressed by both Middle Eastern and Western tarianism.” □ nations, communities, and individuals to create and justify political and ideological frameworks in the modern Middle This essay is derived from a February 2017 article East within which supposedly innate sectarian problems published by the Center for the Middle East at are contained, if not necessarily overcome. Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.

A. L. Steiner

Artist Portfolio

it multiplicitous, “unstable,” roving, and we as viewers are TO SHARE not just looking in, but are being looked back at. inside and outside are no longer separated but connect- ed. windows within the frames are ulterior stories and OBSERVATIONS places. the invisible boundary dissipates. the glass of the window, the glass ceiling, is broken not shattered, rather, metaphorically disintegrated as an illusion of solidity of matter.

Love Changes the Lover. Lovers Love Loving Love. Change Loves Loving Change.

the sun, again. screams from behind a juicy cumulous On the work of A. L. Steiner cloud. just below it, again, another sun, or maybe it’s the same sun in another moment looks at a person look- by Boychild ing back. a reflection of the sun’s halo wraps around the subject’s head. a moment of grace comprised of two mo- ments that are normally fissured by the snapshots cut/ splice. another labyrinth. we are implicit.

looking mimics Deleuze’s folds, univocal instances reso- nate and dance amongst each other, a quantum particle How can violence be such a balm? The crim- leap through the plenum, a conversation, intra-dialogical. inal animation of a more than natural law, the rearview mirror of a past, forgotten or released back anajuridical movement in theater’s interstitial to time. a radical, devotional, observational commitment space, an experimental acting out of ancho- to both. the blurry distinction between love and hate, ritic cell and cause. The secret life of things collaboration and treachery. the blurry distinction. the is open—made plain, phenomenal ding-hiss, blurry existence of queer presence and futurity, of being. this thing we are, all these things we are that oscillating life form, Deleuze’s pleats. we keep trying to get to, that we can’t get back to, because they’re miles ahead in noth- Who you looking at falls to where you look- ingness. Maybe the problem is simply looking ing from, when you looking. Ask and you can at, which is to say listening to. How can you cut when and where. You can not remember show the out circularity of that perception, where or when. its difficult pleasures of (re)turn and syntax, its embedded, imperceptible hesitations and – excerpt from “Sudden Rise at a Given Tune” miniature seismic events, its (dys + ­hyper)lexic ­performance, by Fred Moten and Wu Tsang scratches and scars?

– excerpt from “Sudden Rise at a Given Tune” ­performance, by Fred Moten and Wu Tsang memory is all wrapped up in time. disparate moments of peoples’ lives nestle against one another, belong to one another. i’m in this field, in this living room, on this bed, at this beach, on the couch next to, this person, these people. bodies, flesh, skin, gaze, melding into the scenery. the layers are the periphery of memory and love emanates from these moments. some- how the precariousness of the shared intimacy. it is devo- tional. the repetition reveals a many of life, a multiplicity [previous spread] Smart & final, teile eins und zwei (sketch), 2017. Color jpegs. of queer life. repetition as a tool that connotes infinity. Courtesy Deborah Schamoni Galerie/München a laugh is evoked from the liminal place where wanting to [left] Love Changes the Lover, 2015. Framed color-pigment cry begins. the trappings of the thermodynamic arrow of prints, 221 × 143.8 cm, unique collage. Courtesy Blum & Poe/ time collapse. the personal has fractured the line, making Los Angeles. Photograph by Joshua White 24 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

UNDERCOVER OUGHTS

Social surveillance and moral reform by Jacqueline Ross

caricatured in dozens of films of and about the Undercover investigators operated in teams of two, As early American century, crackdowns on late nine- paying tenement house prostitutes for their services and teenth and early twentieth century saloons, dancing halls, then filling out pre-formatted reports that were signed by a brothels, and gambling parlors were often pursued by re- notary public and could serve as sworn testimony admis- ligious activists and undercover entrepreneurs. Fired with sible in a court of law, with the aim of suggesting reforms the zeal of social improvement, these enthusiastic agents to housing conditions that would decrease the incidence of were hired by Progressive reformers—and often against the prostitution. Undercover agents would pay prostitutes in wishes of the police. the presence of an investigating partner; the reports were But the agenda of these undercover moral reformers used not only against the women but also against the own- was not limited to cracking down on vice. Their bigger aim ers of tenement houses who allowed their buildings to be was to change the social conditions that underlay these vic- used by prostitutes. Not incidentally, these investigations es—and, not least, to keep an eye on the leisure habits of re- exposed the graft, complicity, and corruption of the local cent immigrants. In New York, prominent social reformers police department, which tolerated the presence of “dis­ like Lillian Wald and Jacob Riis, supported by organizations orderly houses” in immigrant neighborhoods. such as the Tenement House Committee and the Committee Similar undercover operations targeted saloons and of Fifteen, solicited recommendations from organizations gambling halls in immigrant neighborhoods, as well as such as the Central Federation of Churches and Christian dance halls where white and black New Yorkers mingled. Workers, and the Church Association for the Advancement In her fascinating study New York Undercover (2009), so- of the Interests of Labor. They did so for “insider investiga- ciologist Jennifer Fronc has documented the extent to tors” who were familiar with the neighborhoods and lan- which these operations—undertaken by social reform or- guages of recent immigrants and could serve as undercover ganizations like the Committee of Fourteen and anti-­saloon investigators of prostitution in tenement housing. activists such as the Anthony Comstock Society for the Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 25

Prohibition group, September, 1922. Print from glass negative. National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress. Call Number LC-F81-20369

Suppression of Vice—represented efforts by “nativist” re- 18 served as a pretext for shutting them down, even though formers committed to racial segregation and suspicious of New York State had passed strong anti-discrimination laws recent immigrants to police the sexual and leisure habits of in 1895, 1905, and 1909. Fronc describes the Committee of immigrants and racial minorities. Fourteen’s undercover tactics as an effort “to protect [. . .] Many of these reform societies used volunteers from the morality of white women, [who] were portrayed as ‘vic- immigrant communities to serve as undercover agents, and tims’—of alcohol or seduction, or of their own bad judg- they hired private detectives to gather evidence about sa- ment,” gathering evidence of “intoxicated white women in loons that were selling liquor outside of approved hours, all black-owned establishments as justifications for sanction- with the aim of shutting down these ing black proprietors.” establishments. “NATIVIST” REFORMERS Social reformers were able to But moral entrepreneurs like COMMITTED TO RACIAL use undercover tactics success- Anthony Comstock also used un- fully because they were allowed dercover tactics to investigate the SEGREGATION AND to conduct their own raids, make Art Students’ League, in New York, SUSPICIOUS OF RECENT their own arrests, and use their for selling catalogues that featured sworn affidavits and reports as -ev artistic representations of nudes. IMMIGRANTS [POLICED] idence, pursuing primarily a strat- The Committee of Fourteen would THE SEXUAL AND egy of attacking the liquor licenses engineer interracial encounters in of the establishments they target- saloons and dance halls known to LEISURE HABITS ed, alongside criminal sanctions welcome black and white custom- OF IMMIGRANTS AND against individual purveyors of vice. ers. Documentation of liquor being This not only kept a state monopo- served to women under the age of RACIAL MINORITIES. ly of undercover tactics from taking 26 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

root; it also meant that moral entrepreneurs could circum- the burgeoning underclass. Undercover journalists posed vent an unwilling police force. These private actors actually as sweatshop workers, harried waitresses, and insane-asy- often ignored the police entirely, though they sometimes lum inmates, writing about their experiences in these and either served or competed with its local representatives, other roles with which the public could empathize. Social and sometimes deployed undercover tactics against them, scientists, writers, and reformers frequently went under- by exposing police corruption in cit- cover across class lines and various- ies dominated by powerful political AMERICAN UNDER- ly configured racial divides—from bosses. COVER TACTICS OF the late nineteenth century through In New York City during the the 1950s—to develop vivid accounts Pro­gressive era, for example, pros- THE EARLY TWENTIETH of the lives and struggles of workers, ecutors who wanted to fight pros- CENTURY WERE tramps, the unemployed, and of eth- titution hired Pinkerton undercover nic, religious, and racial minorities. agents, in the face of a recalcitrant A FORM OF SOCIAL Such accounts were themselves and complicit police department CONTROL THAT strategies for breaking down social that tolerated brothels in exchange barriers, as female sociologists in for bribes. Periodic scandals and SUPPLANTED OR the late nineteenth and early twen- reform commissions brought the SUPPLEMENTED THE tieth centuries used undercover tac- likes of Theodore Roosevelt to pow- tics to gain entry to male-dominated er as a New York police commis- EXERCISE OF POLICE fields—including academia itself. sioner in 1892. Roosevelt took it as POWER IN MANY Jennifer Fronc writes that this un- his mandate to eliminate brothels dercover technique “allowed them and to strictly enforce liquor regu- SPACES THAT WERE to do the work for which they were lations, including, most controver- UNDER-POLICED, AND trained in graduate school. [These sially, those that prohibited the sale women] succeeded in authoring of liquor on Sundays. In the face of WHERE LAW ENFORCE- and publishing important articles resistance from the police rank and MENT’S PRESENCE WAS that appeared in leading profession- file, Roosevelt allied himself with so- al journals, and they preceded the cial reformers such as the Reverend OFTEN INEFFECTIVE, Chicago School of Sociology by a de- Parkhurst, who himself had gone un- CORRUPT, OR BOTH. cade.” Examples include the work dercover to document many brothels of Annie MacLean, who published that New York police had claimed to know nothing about. “Two Weeks in Department Stores” in the American Journal Roosevelt was celebrated in the press for going undercover of Sociology in 1899, after a stint as a shop-girl in a Chicago himself on midnight rambles with Jacob Riis and others department store. to investigate and surprise police officers who frequented Undercover tactics like hers eventually became main- saloons and brothels while on duty. stream in academia but were later rejected as “unscientif- Seen from a sociological point of view, American under- ic.” In the 1950s, the Chicago School of sociology became cover tactics of the early twentieth century were a form of known for pioneering new immersion methods of urban social control that supplanted or supplemented the exercise ethnography and interpretive sociology through the work of police power in many spaces that were under-policed, of Everett Hughes, Lloyd Warner, and Herbert Blumer, who and where law enforcement’s presence was often ineffec- championed the now-classic methods of urban ethnog- tive, corrupt, or both. Sometimes the private and public sec- raphy and interpretive sociology. Beginning in the 1950s, tor worked together, sometimes in parallel, sometimes one American sociologists started going undercover to observe used the other, and sometimes there was conflict between gay sexual mores in public bathrooms; the practice of them. Still, these two forces were always in dialogue. speaking in tongues in Pentecostal churches; and various millennial cults. Once conceived of as a form of participant observation known as “complete participation,” the under- features of American policing had roots cover method’s fall from grace began in the late 1950s, even These in the undercover tactics of other cul- though deep immersion methods—without the use of de- tural milieus of the time, namely those of cultural elites ception or disguise—have been used more recently by so- who deployed undercover tactics for a variety of purpos- ciologists such as Sudhir Venkatesh (2008), who has written es, most unrelated to the search for evidence or criminal about what it is like to be a gang leader, and Alice Goffman prosecution. American sociology and journalism of the (2014), who has written about what it is like to be on the run late nineteenth century was practiced by the “down and from the police in the high-crime inner-city neighborhoods outers,” most famously Stephen Crane, Hutchins Hapgood, of Philadelphia. Jack London, and Nelly Bly, who dressed up as prostitutes, In the United States, deep immersion and participant waitresses, and factory operators in order to secretly inves- observation continue to be used widely both in journalis- tigate and then write about what was happening among tic and ethnographic investigations of inner-city life, from undercover discrimination testers to under- cover “field experiments” that social psycholo- gists use to study, for example, the prevalence of cheating, as in the work of Dan Ariely. There are also American restaurant critics who don elaborate disguises to simulate the experience of ordinary restaurant customers, or, in the case of former New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni, go undercover as waiters in order PROUD PARTNER OF THE to tell the public about what it is like to work in a restaurant. The list goes on: secret shop- pers, TV shows like Undercover Boss, and private AMERICAN ACADEMY anti-crime initiatives—such as the TV show To Catch a Predator—use undercover tactics either to mimic the experience of ordinary members of the public; to reveal to the powerful what the workplace looks like to their employees; or to respond in an entrepreneurial manner to moral panics about sex offenders who prey on gullible children on the internet. Across the pond, the German journalist Guenther Wallraff became famous for using undercover tactics to expose the working conditions of Turkish mi- grant workers, and for taking a job with Bild to expose its muckraking tactics.

from being the preserve of the state, Far American undercover tactics are an established technique for obtaining and re- vealing an “insider’s view” of a variety of social milieus. They can be used by cultural elites to make the experiences of the underprivileged, the unsophisticated, or the ordinary accessible to others, and to invite identification and em- pathy across ethnic, geographic, cultural, and class lines in a heterogeneous society. The mor- al history of this kind of fondness for surveil- lance in America simultaneously highlights that Europeans view undercover tactics as a form of state surveillance—as a form of trickery prac- ticed by the powerful against the weak. This is particularly poignant as issues of digital priva- cy remain at the fore of European minds, espe- cially in Germany. Americans, more lax in their view of digital privacy, view undercover tactics not just as mineable sources of television enter- tainment, but also as an epistemological strat- egy to be deployed across all sectors of society, as the state struggles to keep pace with private variants of similar methodologies. □

This essay is derived from a chapter entitled “Undercover Populism,” in the edited volume Contemporary Organized Crime, published by Springer in summer 2017.

www.kpm-berlin.com 28 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

IN A NAME

Fiction by Thomas Chatterton Williams

hen the invitation came to spend the final “C’est un bateau, Papa.” weeks of spring at the Fuissé-Pouilloux lit- “Yes, it’s also a boat, though.” erary retreat in Catalonia, it could not have “Eetz ah bote. Hahaha. Eetz ah boooottte.” seemed a more fortuitous proposition. I was “And over there, do you see those birds?” W 33 years old, a father, and barely hanging on “Oui, je vois les oiseaux.” in Paris. It had been a long and dismal winter, and I had I’d kiss Shaniq’wa’s forehead and put her down inside thought my second book would have sold the previous the main house and light the stove for the first pot of cof- summer. The first of the “mixed reactions” came in August, fee. She’d adapted well to the hard cheese and flatbread while we were staying with friends on an island in the ar- that was the Swedes’ traditional breakfast. I’d set her up chipelago south of Stockholm. I was still optimistic then, at the long table then walk out the back of the house, past almost foolishly so, and—in moments that are now embar- Bjornsson’s mother’s canvasses stacked against the wall, rassing to recollect—had allowed myself to count my next past the rows of suede chaises, and the collection of large advance before it’d been cashed, let alone drafted. wooden bowls overflowing with bird skeletons (the house We had been in Sweden for about a week. In the morn- was made of glass, and they broke their necks against it ings, Shaniq’wa would start to stir and call out earlier than almost daily), out across the unvarnished deck and huge at home. I’d shush her softly and crawl out of bed so as not flat rocks, down to the edge of the water, where I’d piss to wake Clotilde. With my toothbrush and toothpaste in my and brush my teeth—not in that order. It was oddly de- pocket, I’d coax Shaniq’wa from her crib, lifting her out of lightful, the slight brine of the Baltic with the sweet mint the blackened cabin and out onto the porch, the sunlight of the toothpaste. I’d move on and splash my face until it bright in the sky already. She’d squint and wipe her eyes as felt freshened, and watch Shaniq’wa, already big now and if she’d never seen daylight, and then bury her head in my so conscientious in her tasks, through the immense glass shoulder. I’d keep her up high like that, in my arms, all the panes as I rejoined her. way to the main house, so tics wouldn’t get to her. Clutching the little ebony baby doll my mother had bought her for Those were happy and, in retrospect, carefree days. When Christmas, at my suggestion, its dark brown skin contrast- Ingrid and Bjornsson and their little girl, Oona, and, last of ing so demonstrably against her own chalky complexion, all, Clotilde, woke up, we’d employ the village mentality my daughter would reach around my neck and gesture at of childrearing, taking turns feeding ourselves and rubbing the electric blue waves lapping all around us. sunscreen on the girls and checking for tics and reading “Regarde, Papa! Ça, c’est un bateau!” and eating some more, and, later—when the girls were “Yes, that’s a big black boat, baby.” napping or, after so many bedtime stories, asleep for the Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 29

evening—we’d hand-wash the dishes at the pump, the I looked up from my book, a slim volume by James brackish water so cold the soap clotted, and barbecue and Baldwin. “Even Bjornsson has that kind of income?” Poor drink and sweat out the day’s liquor in the sauna until, one Clotilde, she couldn’t invoice me even if she wanted to. She by one, we dove nude into the freezing seawater. Even in held me in her eyes and smiled gently. “We don’t care,” she the middle of August, it took your breath away. But when whispered. “It’s not so sexy, a contract.” We kissed, and I felt you climbed back on the jetty, stars on every patch of black very grateful to my wife in that moment. Through the net- above, your skin would tingle and the last thing you’d want ting of the Pack n’ Play, I could see Shaniq’wa’s perfect little to do was put on a thread of clothing. When you did, you’d head of golden cotton candy, the head we’d made together feel new again, and that sensation lingered. We’d sit there which had always surprised me, resting motionlessly in the and talk about what we hoped to achieve through the ab- distance. I lifted Clotilde’s nightgown and lowered myself surd work of telling stories. Ingrid and Bjornsson were film- slowly on top of her. makers. Clotilde was also a writer. The next morning, after breakfast, while Shaniq’wa At some point, we’d say our goodnights and pair off back played with Oona and Ingrid by the water, I used Bjornsson’s to our cabins at separate ends of Bjornsson’s mother’s island. mobile broadband to check my email. There was a message As we were reading in bed one night, Clotilde mentioned from my agent in New York. I had been waiting for it with that Ingrid had told her she’d been invoicing Bjornsson for impatience for the better part of two weeks, but now I had

Tommy Hilding, Turner View, 2016. Oil on linen, 70 × 100 cm. Image courtesy Galleri Magnus Karlsson her time and labor as the family’s primary caregiver, and an ominous feeling. Until then, it had been like when I was also for the opportunity cost—all those lost wages and even a teenager applying to Harvard—so long as the application retirement plan contributions she was not making—every was pending, I could still be accepted. My chest clenched at month since giving birth to Oona. “T’imagine? She goes: ‘He the salutation, the formality of which let me know I would can’t just fly to China making documentaries while I raise not be back in the black, at least not that autumn and prob- our daughter and lose my body and my foothold and then ably not even that winter. one day, when he gets bored, he’ll leave me for someone I closed my laptop and wandered into the woods be- younger.’” Clotilde cackled. “C’est hallucinant!” yond the outbuildings, up the hillside where you can survey 30 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

most of the island, through plots of wild blueberries and sure that this affected my demeanor. I must have struck her chanterelles, and down onto the far, rough, and uninhab- as a man who was going places and had options. I do not ited section. The views when contemplated in high spirits hold any of this against her. I had drawn the same prema- were stupendous. Even in a depression, they were compel- ture conclusions. ling. Bjornsson’s mother’s taste was impeccable, and her “America is crazy!” she’d marveled. “You can just sell ex-husband was loaded. She’d left the island mostly as na- a book like that, and they pay you like that!?” She looked ture had forged it, but here and there, she’d made some at me with real admiration. “In France, that could never improvements: tree-branch sculptures, black teepees, and happen.” stacks of heavy boulders; the rational effect was both grat- Though she’s a writer, she’d been raised differently, with ifying and gratuitous amidst all that natural splendor. It’s servants and even a stint in England. She’d had the kind of strange what you can notice even in the middle of a disaster. childhood that accustoms a person to certain things—and I lay down in a thatch of purple moss where I could not be insulates them from others—on the inside, certain habits seen and began to worry. and reflexes that cannot just be discarded, not even when I did the familiar tally. For the foreseeable future, there the outer situation changes. When Clotilde’s father left her would continue to be more going out than coming in. Since mother for his mistress, she was seventeen and fully mold- moving to France, I had become inured to juggling credit. ed. Her circumstances would not look like that again, but When the AmEx was due, I’d pay it with Discover then shift some bells won’t unring. a chunk of that balance over to Bank of America whenever When we started getting together, Clotilde did not earn they were offering 18 months at zeroA PR. At some point, very much money, and she did not know the true price of a President Obama changed the law, and lenders were forced drink, for example. She didn’t seem to care, either—a genu- to disclose the payback timescales; I was, in turn, forced ine insouciance so strange to me it was intoxicating. On our to confront the alarming math that dictated if I continued first “date”—she laughed at that American word—she wore making minimum payments, the original sum I’d borrowed a sleek black dress she admitted was Balenciaga, and or- would balloon and get settled somewhere between when dered Ruinart blanc-de-blancs by the glassful. I was in Paris Shaniq’wa was driving and graduating from college. All of and feeling like it really was a feast, awaiting the publica- my own student loans were in deferment. Clotilde did not tion of my first novel, for which I’d been almost laughably understand this, not really. And anyway, my credit situation overpaid, earning supplemental money as a social media was very much my own problem. It had nothing to do with consultant for a giant luxury conglomerate that put me up the small inheritance she lived on. in a five-star hotel in Saint-Germain-dès-Pres. It suddenly struck me that I would have to explain to I met up with Clotilde in the neighborhood she’d grown the others at lunch that my novel hadn’t sold, and they up in, between the Tour Montparnasse and the Luxemburg would induce that I was a failure. I did not want to think Gardens. We thought it funny to have drinks at the Closerie about that, because I did not want to think of them feeling des Lilas, where a man plays the piano in a white dinner sorry for me. After I collected myself and began the walk jacket and everything is priced triple because, once upon a back to the main house, I used my phone to take what I time, Hemingway wrote this or that story on the veranda. I knew would be a gorgeous photo of Bjornsson’s mother’s was expensing our dinner. Afterward, we went back to my boat, an all-black Finnish number with a jet-propulsion en- room and spent an electric night in each other’s arms, even gine. It was a remarkably fast and good-looking boat parked though she was on her cycle. It was chaste in a way that ac- lengthwise along the jetty. In landscape view, I could get the tually brought us closer. For the next week we went out ev- boat, a portion of the sauna, and the high grass and wild- ery night, and she smelled like perfume and cigarettes and flowers surrounding our minimalist Swedish cabin. The sky, wore incredible outfits. When my work ended, we moved like the water, was intensely blue and golden. I picked a fil- out of my hotel into her modest walk-up on the other side ter that made the colors richer and adjusted for shadow. As of the river, in a side street off of the one with all the aging I continued on, it sounds so stupid to say, my spirits lifted a prostitutes in fishnet stockings. When I went to turn on the little thinking about the likes I would garner for this picture. lights in her flat, nothing happened. She had not paid the utilities, but in the summer in France the sun doesn’t set, have had, for some time now, an abiding fear that not fully, until almost eleven—and in a few days she’d be my wife fell in love with me at an artificial high- with friends in Sardinia anyway. Would I like to come along point, a stage in my life that seemed like a natural with her? Lying in bed, sweating in the dark with no fan but enough progression, but which, in retrospect, was with the big windows pushed all the way open, I bought a I really a stark aberration. She would not put it this ticket to Alghero on my phone that same evening. way, not yet, but that doesn’t make it less factual. It had seemed, for a brief moment when I met her, as though my An education, I’ve half come to believe, is a disorienting and first book might even be made into a movie! I can’t even artificial—possibly even a devious—imposition. It snatches stand to remember that now. At that juncture, I was also you out of one place and slaps you down in another, wheth- having unusual success with women. The same week that er or not you’re supposed to be there. It gives you permis- I met Clotilde, I had had sex with three other people. I am sion to admire certain things, and leaves you suddenly, alarmingly dissatisfied with and cold toward oth- ers, whether or not you are ready to live the con- sequences. My flaw, the main one—or this is how I flattered myself to perceive it—was that my own schooling, especially what transpired outside of the classroom, had left me overly fond of words and ideas—“new perspectives” I romantically learned to call them—and underwhelmed with stability, climate-controlled offices, and the laws of compound interest: all things that other peo- ple’s parents, I’ve slowly come to understand, val- ue even when their children pretend not to. I did not blame my own people who had done the best they could for me, but from time to time, I did fear I’d already not done my best for Shaniq’wa. Shortly after she’d been born, my parents asked us—out of genuine bewilderment, and, I fear, also visceral disdain—why the hell we’d named our daughter Shaniq’wa. They were de- scended from sharecroppers, before that human chattel who worked plantations in Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Georgia, and God knows where else, to be honest. Judging from both of their tawny complexions, and my father’s freck- les and Shaniq’wa’s blue eyes, they were also de- scended from some of the slave-owners. We know about as much about that branch of the family as we know to which tribes we’re kin in Africa. Mama and Pop were of a generation of hard- working new-to-the-North, barely middle-class blacks who had accumulated more than anyone had before them, but who were nonetheless two missed paychecks removed from having to file for welfare—people for whom respectability and self-presentation were matters of life and death more than snobbery. “It was just a way of remem- bering,” I told them. “We named her that so she won’t forget where she comes from.” “That is not where she comes from,” my fa- ther—a quiet man who never to my knowledge took a vacation—protested. “We wanted to challenge society’s oppressive conventions,” I ventured weakly, but already I no longer really believed in what I was saying. I could not have explained how the name was also ironic. “That girl’s going to have a hard time applying to colleges,” my mother cautioned. “On the contrary,” Clotilde said, trying to leaven the situation. “From what Thomas”—she always pronounced my name the French way, toe-mah—“tells me, it may even help her!” Mama cut her a look that happily I do not think she noticed, because she was nursing. I saw it, though, and it was one more of those times when I wondered where my education had left me. □ 32 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

THE TIDE WAS ALWAYS HIGH

Listening to Los Angeles by Josh Kun

Music and musicians from Latin America are inextricable from the development of Los Angeles as a modern musical city. The musical life of this dispersed and dynamic metrop- olis has been and continues to be shaped by immigrant mu- sicians and migrating, cross-border musical cultures. They have not only helped determine the sonic landscape of the city’s musical urbanism; they have also been active partic- ipants in the making of the city’s modern aesthetics and modern industries. The music of Los Angeles and the music of Latin America have been interwined since the very birth of the city, in the eighteenth century. As the American ethnomusicologist Sidney Robertson Cowell reminded, back in the 1930s, there was, in fact, no Anglo-Saxon music in Los Angeles until the mid-nineteenth century; before then, “Americans were numerically few and transient.” The original music of Los Angeles belonged instead to Gabrielino Indians, Mexican vaqueros, and Spanish friars and mission bands long be- fore it began sounding like anything else. “Twenty years af- ter the discovery of gold,” the mid-century journalist Carey Vlanka, Calaveritas, 2015. Courtesy Creative Commons Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 33

Vlanka, Calaveritas, 2015. Courtesy Creative Commons 34 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

McWilliams wrote, “Los Angeles was still a small Mexican century—the mariachi cadence of American culture, the town.” mambo cadence, the samba cadence—but within the his- For all of the demographic and cultural shifts that were tory of Los Angeles, the Latin American cadence is hard to to come over the next hundred years, to make music in ignore: among the city’s most consistent beats, its most in- Los Angeles—whether it be surf rock, bebop, gangsta rap, fluential set of rhythms and melodies are those that have or cosmic canyon folk—has always borne an echo of that arrived after traveling through a century or two of cultural small Mexican town and has always meant, to some de- contact and musical creativity in the Americas. gree, engaging with the sonic traditions and experiments In John Fante’s classic Los Angeles novel Ask the Dust, of Latin American music and the musical histories of im- published in 1939, the Italian immigrant protagonist Arturo migrant Latin American musicians. This is both by virtue Bandini struggles to survive LA and its one song that never of its location and history (Mayor Eric Garcetti likes to call leaves him alone: “Over the Waves.” Played repeatedly in LA “the Northernmost city of Latin America”) and by virtue the novel by a small group of musicians at the downtown of its multi-immigrant populations (a city that has always Columbia Buffet restaurant, it scores his embattled relation- been a key hub for immigrants from across Latin America). ship with the waitress Camilla—a “Mayan Princess”—and, There is no music of Los Angeles without mariachi and by extension, his embattled relationship with the Mexican banda and son jarocho, without bossa nova and samba, roots of the city. It’s the soundtrack to his awakening to Latin American Los Angeles and to his own position as a down-and-out writer living on oranges in his Bunker Hill To make music in apartment. The only other hint of music in the novel is also tinged with Latin America: a Central Avenue nightclub Los Angeles—whether called Club Cuba. “Over the Waves” began its life as “Sobre Las Olas,” a it be surf rock, bebop, European-style waltz written in Mexico by the composer and violinist Juventino Rosas. As scholars Gaye T. Johnson gangsta rap, or cosmic and Raul A. Fernandez have documented, Rosas took the song to New Orleans for the 1884 New Orleans World canyon folk—has always Cotton Centennial Exposition sugar expo and both he and the song stayed on, introducing the latter’s cross-border, borne an echo of that cross-continental swells to both the classical and jazz rep- ertoires of early-twentieth-century New Orleans. As “Over small Mexican town. the Waves,” it became a staple for the city’s working musi- cians, and most likely found its way to Los Angeles as New Orleans and other Southern musicians—such as Jelly Roll without mambo and cha cha cha and salsa, without Latin Morton (who went on to play in Tijuana, Mexico) and Leon jazz helping West Coast jazz and its sound, without R & B Rene (who wrote “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South” be- and rock tuning “south of the border” or “South American neath the palm trees)—began to migrate west in the 1920s Way.” How could we listen to LA (Los Angeles) without the and 1930s. music of LA (Latin America)? How could we listen to Latin By the time Bandini couldn’t escape it, “Over the Waves” America without the music of Los Angeles? The city’s dis- was a migrant song that had become an LA staple, music tinctive musical urbanism is unthinkable without Latin from Latin America that had traveled over borders and rep- American migrant sounds and migrant musicians. “Boom resented, however covertly, the histories of all those who in Latin rhythms bigger than ever in LA,” the jazz magazine traveled over the waves to make Los Angeles their home. Down Beat declared in 1954, but the truth is that the boom Even though Fante didn’t point it out, “Over the Waves” was was always booming, the tide was always high. a musical prompt to ask the dust, to ask history for answers, Los Angeles, we might say, has a Latin American ca- to listen to what decades later the Chicano-led band Rage dence. Inspired by Ralph Ellison’s now famous aside in Time against the Machine would call the Battle of Los Angeles: magazine that America is “jazz-shaped,” Robert G. O’Meally, the music of empires clashing. the celebrated founder of Columbia University’s Center No wonder that of the few city statues in Los Angeles for Jazz Studies, has convincingly written that there is a dedicated to musicians, three are from Mexico: revered “jazz cadence” embedded within the experiences of twenti- composer and singer Agustín Lara and ranchera idols eth-century American culture—a jazz “effect” or jazz “factor” Lucha Reyes and Antonio Aguilar. While Lara’s statue hear- that has informed speech, style, dance, poetry, film, and pol- kens back to the 1930s and 1940s, when he was beloved by itics to such a degree that jazz emerges as “the master trope Mexican and Mexican American audiences in Los Angeles, of this American century: the definitive sound of America the statues of Aguilar and Reyes are in direct dialogue with in our time.” There is a wider argument to be made else- the contemporary moment. The working-class and immi- where that the musical styles of Latin America have similar- grant-conscious genres that they helped popularize in their ly “shaped” American culture and politics in the twentieth songs and feature films—ranchera, banda, norteño—are among the most popular and most commercial- ly successful in twenty-first-century Los Angeles among both immigrant communities and Latina/os born and raised here. Beyond Mexican Los Angeles, though, the wid- er story of the musical interconnection between Latin America and Los Angeles has been less ro- bustly told. That the city’s rock, pop, jazz, funk, and hip-hop cultures all can trace some roots to Latin German America is an open secret among musicians and fans, but one that has been little documented by scholars and journalists. Much of that other his- tory lives in the liner note essays of LPs, in band perfectionism personnel credits and musicians’ union session archives, in the oral histories and memoirs of la- bel execs and musicians, and in the small print of is demanding. So much of the music we have come to know And very as belonging to Los Angeles [. . .] has come successful over the waves and over the borders of the internationally. Americas.

Billboard magazine calendar blurbs, nightclub ads, and micro concert-reviews. What they collectively reveal is that so much of the music we have come to know as belonging to Los Angeles, as being of Los Angeles—be it Ritchie Valens work-shopping “La Bamba” in a Silver Lake home studio (belong- ing to Del-Fi Records’ Bob Keane) or Lalo Schifrin putting bongos at the foundation of the Mission: Impossible theme, or even the Beach Boys wearing huarache sandals—has come over the waves and over the borders of the Americas. □ We ensure that your growth will never be This essay is adapted from the Introduction to constrained by limits of any kind – especially The Tide Was Always High: The Music of Latin by national borders. We can assist your America in Los Angeles (University of California company in national and international M&A Press, 2017), edited by spring 2018 fellow projects and assume the legal project Josh Kun. A collection of essays, interviews, photo­graphs, and album covers, the volume management as International Lead Counsel. is a companion to six public concerts that In that, we not only bring lots of expertise but Kun has curated across Los Angeles, as well always a bit of German thoroughness, too. as a series of online playlists, as part of the Strong characters make strong partners. Getty Foundation initiative Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA. For more information, visit noerr.com ­tidewasalwayshigh.com FEATURES New Work by Academy Fellows and Friends

Listening through the Iron Curtain By Peter Schmelz 38

Performing Sound an Interview with Raven Chacon 42

The Names By Carole Maso 44

Artist Portfolio Ran Ortner text by Michael Cunningham 46

The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon translation by Paul Reitter 52

Gardening by V. V. Ganeshananthan 58

“They, the People” By Dilip Gaonkar 61

Bad News By Jill Abramson 64

The Holbrooke Forum Eberhard Sandschneider; A Conversation between Stephen Hadley and Christoph Heusgen 67

Ran Ortner, Element No. 32 (detail), 2016. Oil on canvas, diptych, 182.8 × 419 cm. 38 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017 LISTENING THROUGH THE IRON CURTAIN

An intimate history of musical exchange by Peter Schmelz

uring the tensest days music in Europe and America, among of the Cold War, from 1961– them Igor Stravinsky and the Austrian- 1968, a German musicolo- born Ernst Krenek. Blazhkov held gist and Südwestfunk radio particularly high hopes for his friend Djournalist named Fred Prieberg corre- the composer Valentin Silvestrov, who sponded actively with the Ukrainian was just then beginning to compose conductor Igor Blazhkov. The two men using Arnold Schoenberg’s twelve- had found common cause in their tone system, which he and his fellow interest in the newest, most difficult composers had gleaned from books of contemporary music, from serialism they had received from further West— to aleatory devices and everything primarily from West Germany but also René Wirths, Stuhl (2-parts), 2007. Oil on canvas, 135 × 200 cm. Photo: Jochen Littkemann. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Michael Haas. in between. Prieberg, based in Baden- from Poland, thanks to the Warsaw Baden, had caught wind of young Autumn festival. Blazhkov and composers experimenting with these Prieberg wrote often about Silvestrov, avant-garde techniques in the Soviet and Prieberg did all he could to ar- radar. They frequently used code, Union, and had heard that Blazhkov range performances and publications referring to Silvestrov as “your friend, was the man to contact about them. of Silvestrov’s music, often on West the young composer,” but just as often Blazhkov was certainly a prime German radio stations. they did not. Their correspondence mover and shaker in the unofficial The exchanges between Blazhkov shows the assumptions on both sides musical scene in Kiev at the time—in- and Prieberg stand out from other about the power of music and the deed in the USSR as a whole. Possessed moments of cultural exchange during messages it could and did convey of seemingly boundless curiosity and the Cold War. Evidence suggests that during the Cold War. And in so doing, energy, he maintained ties with the officials in Moscow were aware of their unique exchange illuminates leading figures in Moscow, Leningrad, the contact between the two men, what I call an “intimate history,” an and Tallinn, and he corresponded with but often it seems that Prieberg and unofficial personal connection encour- towering figures of contemporary Blazhkov’s activities flew under the aged by the peculiarities of life during Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 39

René Wirths, Stuhl (2-parts), 2007. Oil on canvas, 135 × 200 cm. Photo: Jochen Littkemann. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Michael Haas.

the Cold War, a conflict played out as impede all the rest.” Prieberg’s “the also encountered, for the first time, often in the imagination as in official rest” implied the dangers of excessive criticism of their compositions from political interactions. foreign interest in Soviet artists, which non-Soviet sources, much of it betray- had been clear since Boris Pasternak ing the larger sociopolitical and aes- We join Prieberg, Blazhkov, and was awarded—and ultimately forced thetic assumptions lurking behind the their friends in August 1963, when by the Soviet leadership to decline— ostensibly “purely musical interest.” Prieberg wrote to Russian pianist the Nobel Prize for literature in 1958. More specifically, the new music was Maria Yudina about Silvestrov. Prieberg The interest of Western listeners was consistently heard in relation to the observed, in a letter, “Gradually here never purely musical. Cold War. Representative is the letter they are beginning to be interested But as Silvestrov and other of September 4, 1964, from Prieberg to in the music of Valentin [Silvestrov]; young Soviet composers were heard Blazhkov, which reports on recent and it is purely musical interest, I try to more widely outside the USSR, they upcoming performances of Silvestrov’s 40 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

music, notably at the Berliner Fest­ But how weak is my foundation “aleatorics” that Prieberg so severely wochen, where “no undue publicity if Valentin goes to the extreme scorned. is made, and for the program book I of composing in the short-lived Undeterred, Prieberg reported still have written but few sentences in the trend of aleatorics that cannot be seeking a publisher for Silvestrov’s form of a short biography stating quite justified by any critic. I want him music in his January 8, 1965, letter to optimistically that it is possible to to understand me correctly, and Blazhkov: “As for publishing Valentin’s compose like this in the USSR and that this is a cordial and friendly advice works I am in contact with a publish- ‘Western influence’ means influence due to my experience with our er; if I could be sure to get more and from Warsaw and Prague . . . (I hope musical scene. all of his compositions, I myself would this will be true in the long run).” The found a publishing agency for young bulk of this letter concerned the judg- Prieberg then advised Silvestrov music from USSR . . . a nice idea, isn’t ment of someone who loomed large through Blazhkov “to concentrate on it? But, of course I would have to have in the German debate over new music, the development and intensification also works by the other composers, so Theodor Adorno, whose influential of the style of the trio [Silvestrov’s Trio that expenses are not higher than the Jargon of Authenticity was published for Flute, Trumpet, and Celesta, 1962], reward.” (Market forces consistently that year. Relaying his critique of for instance; this seems to be a good tempered Prieberg’s ambitions.) Along Silvestrov’s music, Prieberg continues, point of departure.” (Not coincidental- with the letter, Prieberg included a ly, Silvestrov had dedicated the trio to tape of the “Bremen performance” of Adorno wrote me about his piano Prieberg.) Prieberg then warned, “No Silvestrov’s music (presumably Five pieces. He thinks that Valentin is imitation, please; at his musical stan- Pieces for Piano) by Maria Bergmann, extremely gifted yet he feels that dard there are no great models for him a staff pianist for Südwestfunk radio. it would be a pity if Valentin would to be found here. For Valentin, there is Blazhkov replied, in his letter of repeat for himself the musical a personal way of development.” The February 28, 1965: “We listened [to] development after Schoenberg. letter conveyed Prieberg’s assump- the tape with a great joy. And Valentin This is exactly what makes me tions in capsule form: about musical was glad as a child. It is an enormous uneasy. He should by no means modernism, history, innovation, audi- stimulus for his creative work.” imitate the idiotic fads of certain ence expectations, Cold War cultural Through Prieberg and Blazhkov, of our young composers, e.g., in competition, and authentic “Russian” Silvestrov was able to gain something regard to “aleatoric” techniques. or “Ukrainian” music. Blazhkov passed that he and many other young Soviet Musical creation has certain limits. along Prieberg’s (and Adorno’s) com- composers lobbied for whenever they To go beyond these is artistically ments to Silvestrov. could in the 1960s: performances. irresponsible and, in his situation, Though it is unclear what either In fact, the “first public performance even unwise as it might provoke Ukrainian musician made of them, of Silvestrov’s works in the USSR” rage in Mr. Tikhon [i.e. Khrennikov, the combined responses of Prieberg came only on December 8, 1965, when the head of the Union of Soviet and Adorno trapped the young Soviet Blazhkov conducted the premiere of Composers]. between two competing models of Spectrums (Spektry, 1965) for orchestra. artistic production, West and East. The young Soviet composers wanted to Following this capsule summary of Criticized from all sides, Silvestrov hear their music in order to continue Adorno’s 1955 essay “The Aging of the apparently adopted the attitude rec- developing artistically, but because of New Music,” Prieberg launched into ommended by fellow Russian com- their perceived stylistic indiscretions his own evaluation of Soviet musical poser Edison Denisov (named by his they had few opportunities. As a politics. Here, he further reflected his radio-physicist father after the great result, they stuck to less noticeable own preconceptions about his role American inventor), who wrote in a forms—for piano or smaller ensem- as musical “importer” of advanced 1965 letter to Blazhkov of the reviews bles, precisely those groupings that Soviet music: of his own Paris premieres: “All of Prieberg and Western publishers found them are of a very low professional so unmarketable. For on January 25, For the time being, [Silvestrov’s] standard (although also positive-con- 1963, Prieberg had noted to Blazhkov pieces and their quality have descending). Tell Valya [Silvestrov] that he was shopping Silvestrov’s provided me with the reasonable not to pay them any mind.” In early scores around, but that the publisher foundation to tell the public: the September 1966, Denisov went further, “Dr. [Hermann] Moeck seemed to me USSR has composers who can writing to Blazhkov, “I don’t trust more interested in orchestral pieces be superior to ours in the field of Prieberg very much. He writes about which have a better market here.” contemporary music, and surely our music in a way that plays right Yet perhaps because of this this is what Tikhon [Khrennikov] into Khrennikov’s hands.” Apparently prodding from Prieberg, mediated by would like to hear. Perhaps this Silvestrov heeded the advice: his Blazhkov, Silvestrov began writing is the way to induce him to grant compositions from the mid-1960s to larger compositions in the second half “export licenses” for partitions. the early 1970s made ample use of the of the 1960s. One of these, his gigantic Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 41

Symphony no. 3, Eschatophony, was as with the UE [Universal Edition]? initiated changes that had become awarded a Koussevitzky Prize in 1967 I think [Silvestrov’s] The Spectrums, irreversible—Blazhkov suffered severe- and was performed in Darmstadt the [Denisov’s] The Sun of the Incas [1964], ly. In 1968 things turned tragic for him following year; his Hymn, for orches- and [Volkonsky’s] The Laments of and Mokreeva, in no small part due tra (1967), won second prize at the Shchaza could adorn their business.” to their advocacy of new music. He International Gaudeamus Composers’ Universal Edition published the was fired from his post for performing Competition in 1970. Eschatophony Laments of Shchaza in 1970, and the difficult works by difficult composers, had to wait another eight years for a Sun of the Incas in 1971; Spectrums was Silvestrov among them. Later that performance in the Soviet Union, on only recently published by Belaieff. year, Mokreeva, feeling increasingly October 2, 1976, in Kiev. Silvestrov’s Serenade from his hemmed in and depressed, committed Triad (Triada, 1962) appeared in 1968 in suicide. In the years that followed, the collection New Soviet Piano Music, Prieberg and Blazhkov gradually lost rieberg pushed the edited by Rudolf Lück and published touch. Prieberg’s idealistic precon- apolitical message of Soviet in Cologne by Gerig. Upon hearing ceptions about freedom of expression music in West Germany, of Prieberg’s (limited) involvement and musical style were counterpoised but in the USSR, Blazhkov’s with the project, Blazhkov urged him by Blazhkov’s hopes about foreign Ppromotion of Silvestrov was not (in vain) to cut the works by Reinhold publication and performance as well without political pushback. In Gliére, Dmitry Kabalevsky, and Georgy as by naïve official Soviet ideas about 1963, Blazhkov and his wife, Galina Sviridov from the collection: “These acceptable and unacceptable music Mokreeva, had been forced out of pieces are very mediocre and, in and the results of criticism, just or their positions in Kiev. Blazhkov addition, they have nothing in com- not. How else to explain the missteps fortunately found employment in mon with the title ‘New Soviet Piano Soviet officials made with Estonian Leningrad as an assistant conductor Music.’” Blazhkov also asked (again in composer Arvo Pärt and Russian of the Leningrad Philharmonic, under vain) that the other two movements composer Volkonsky? Denunciations Yevgeny Mravinsky. Mokreeva had of Silvestrov’s Triad be included, in that attempted to silence them only begun graduate work in music theory addition to Volkonsky’s Musica Stricta drew the eager attention of foreigners at the Leningrad Conservatory, re- and Zahortsev’s Rhythms. Prieberg such as Prieberg. searching a dissertation on Stravinsky. justified the “several really mediocre But this was the little-mentioned By mid-1965, Blazhkov had become pieces” that Blazhkov had noted, flip side of the “Pasternak effect” that extremely active in his new post in demonstrating an awareness of the Prieberg cited so frequently. The Iron Leningrad, and his correspondence musical market similar to that in his Curtain had become rather porous by with Prieberg became more sporadic. January 8, 1965, letter: the publisher the 1960s, and information, although Although Khrushchev had been forced “had some business reasons, one of intermittent, flowed nonetheless. out of office in 1964, ending the Thaw them being the idea that the Russian Competing worldviews collided and by some reckonings, Blazhkov was State Publisher should be pleased fed one another as acceptable en- feeling optimistic: he had already had (for some intended cooperation the sembles, techniques, and styles were success programming new, unofficial nature of which I do not know), the heatedly debated. Yet the Cold War Soviet music, including the landmark other being the expectation that and its rhetoric of freedom suffused premiere of the pioneering unofficial not all of the buyers are friends of everything, rising to the forefront in composer Andrey Volkonsky’s import- avant-gardistic styles nor able to play many of Prieberg’s pronouncements, ant song cycle Laments of Shchaza, in complicated music.” For perhaps the as we have seen. The intimate side of late April 1965. first (but not last) time, the young musical exchanges filtered and fused In his lengthy letter of September Soviet modernists were stymied by the larger concerns about agency, 28, 1965, Blazhkov updated Prieberg the fickle tastes of the open market. identity, self, and other that fueled on the creative and personal lives of The world was not black and white: the broader conflict. Private networks his confréres and urged him to adopt what was condemned in the USSR was of exchange reveal the malleability of a new project: “It seems to me that not necessarily welcomed with open seemingly hard and fast distinctions, you must work at new book on young arms in Europe. chief among them those separating Soviet composers solely.” By the political and apolitical, freedom and letter of September 10, 1967, Blazhkov What happened next? The year constraint. Networks like those be- apparently had taken on that hitherto 1968 was a crucial turning point in tween Blazhkov and Prieberg uncover uncompleted task himself. In his Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. hidden contours of the Cold War and letter from October 5, 1966, Blazhkov The promises of Khrushchev’s Thaw inform our understanding of the fluid reminded Prieberg of his intent to came crashing down with the Soviet networks of informal information find publishers for the young Soviets: invasion of Czechoslovakia. Although exchange becoming increasingly, and “Could you renew your negotiations the musical chill did not last long—­ alarmingly, powerful today. □ with Dr. Hermann Moeck as well exchanges like Prieberg and Blazhkov’s 42 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017 PERFORMING SOUND Photo: Trevor Duke Trevor Photo:

An Interview with riginally from the Navajo Nation, Raven Chacon Raven Chacon is a composer of O chamber music, performer of experimental noise music, and installation artist. He is a member of the Indigenous art collective Postcommodity, founded in 2007, and has also served as composer­ in-residence for the Native American Composer Apprentice Project, where he taught string-quartet composition to hundreds of American Indian high-school students on reservations in the Southwest. In spring 2018, Chacon is the American Academy’s fellow in music composition. Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 43

Berlin Journal: In reference to your thousands of people to descend upon I prefer to work in collaborative situa- 2001 work Report, you speak of the Standing Rock in opposition. You were tions, as these allow me to experiment weapons used as mechanisms for among the protesters. Why was this in different mediums, to constantly musical resistance. What does today’s such a meaningful event? learn new technologies, and to find musical resistance look like? What new ways to use or not use sound. can it do? Raven Chacon: I was at the Oceti Sakowin camp this fall, among the Berlin Journal: With your artist coop- Raven Chacon: Today’s musical resis- water protectors, but not necessarily erative Postcommodity you created tance looks like a stage with a diverse as a protestor. I needed to go there Blind/Curtain (2017), an installation ensemble of performers. People of as an Indigenous person alive in the for the Neue Galerie at documenta14 color and women performing sound. twenty-first century. I had to go be- that acted as a threshold for audiences It does not matter if the instruments cause I am not sure when that many to “cleanse themselves of the outside are violins, drums, or shotguns, nor Native people will congregate again. world, and prepare their hearts, minds, does it matter which end of the dy- I am not sure when that many Native and spirits for engaging the transfor- namic spectrum they are performing. people will eat together in my lifetime. mative experience of documenta14.” Their very presence on the stage, when I am not sure I will be able to attend, Please tell us a bit more about what there was no place for them before, if and when that many people from so motivated the work—and if it worked. is the ­resistance. And even more so many places are bought into the same when the sounds they make aren’t for space to pray. For the first time in a Raven Chacon: Blind/Curtain is a everybody. long time, the world remembered how welcoming for all visitors into one of The effect is different for different many of us there can be. the main venues of documenta14. It is audiences. Some are afraid or confused a border, existing for those who are as to why these people are making Berlin Journal: You have created a conscious of borders, and invisible to music. They have not seen people like body of work that is astounding in those people who are usually oblivious this produce such challenging sounds. its variety, including chamber music to them. While acting as a cleansing If they accept what they are seeing pieces for traditional instrumentation, portal for those who enter, it also de- and hearing, they may want to assign land art, noise pieces, and work on marcates the line that exists in all art extra-musical meaning for why these instruments of your own creation, as institutions that implies inaccessibility people are onstage. There should be no well as a wide array of collaborations. to what is housed inside the building. questioning of why they are onstage. How would you describe the elements Art museums, concert venues, and They may try to link the performers’ uniting your oeuvre? Or does such lecture halls are not always welcoming. identities or heritages to the sound, a question overvalue aesthetic co- but this is not always necessary. herence over diversity of expressive Berlin Journal: What are you looking And yet others will see new means? most forward to in Berlin? worlds by seeing these performers (who look very similar to themselves) Raven Chacon: Almost every work I Raven Chacon: I have visited Berlin a onstage, performing music most peo- am involved in utilizes sound as its few times and I am in awe at the soft ple would consider to be “noise.” New primary carrier of metaphor. I have pace of a city with so much creative possibility will be revealed to younger been fortunate to collaborate with energy. I look forward to connecting musicians and composers, who have a variety of artists so that sound with the multiple music and art com- always been told that every sound and music can align with the forms munities that exist in Berlin. I look has already been made, but are now that they are working in. There is no forward to learning from the diverse seeing that that has been a lie. conscious (to me at least) effort to presences of people who will be unite these works visually or formally; attending American Academy. I look Berlin Journal: Speaking of protest, the making sound or sometimes even forward to creating new work that Dakota Access Pipeline inspired tens of more specifically, noise, is the end goal. can only be created there. □ 44 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017 THE NAMES

Fiction by Carole Maso

I named my child Mercy, Lamb. Durga—unattainable. Olwynn—white footprint. Monica— Seraphina, the burning one. solitary one. I named my child Babette, that is stranger. I named my child the One Who Predicts the Future I named her Claudia: lame—without realizing it. though I never wanted that. How are you feeling Ava Klein? I named my child Pillar, Staff. Perdita. Henry, from the Old High German Haganrih, which I named her Thirst. And Miriam—Sea of Sorrow. means ruler of the enclosure, how awful. Bitterness. And Cendrine—that’s ashes. But I am feeling I named my baby Plum, Pear Blossom, Shining Path. better now, thank-you. I named my child God is With Thee, I named my child Rose Chloe—that’s blooming horse. though I do not feel Him. I almost named her Rose Seraphina, and that would have I named her Isolde—Ruler of Ice. Giselle—Pledge and been a horse on fire. Hostage. Kami, which is tortoise. The name denotes long life. Harita, a lovely name, derived from the Sanskrit Kameko—tortoise child. ­denotes a color of yellow or green or brown, a monkey, Kameyo—tortoise generation. the sun, the wind and several other things. So she might live forever. I named her Clothed in Red, because I never stopped And Tori—turtle dove. bleeding. I named my child Sorrow, inadvertently, I did not mean I named my son Yitzchak—that’s He Will Laugh. to. In the darkness I named her Rebecca—that is noose, And Isiah, Salvation. to tie or bind. In the gloom, I named my baby Mary—which I named him Salvation. And Rescue. And Five Minutes means bitter, but I am happier than before and name my to Midnight. baby Day and Star and Elm Limb. I named my daughter Esme, the past participle of I named my child Viola, so that she might be musical. the verb Esmer, To Love. I named her She has Peace, and And Cecilia, patron saint of music, so she might play the Shining Beautiful Valley. I named my baby Farewell to violin. Spring, just in case. Vigilant was the name of my child. Daughter of the I named my child Ocean, for that vast, mysterious Oath. Defiance. I name my child Sylvie so that she will not shifting expanse. I named her Marissa-that’s of the sea— be frightened of the sunless forest. because naming is what we do I guess—there is a silliness I named my child War, by mistake. That would be to us. Marcella or Martine. I named my child Ulrich—Wolf Power. I named my child Cusp and Cutting Edge and Renegade, Oh my son! After awhile though I wised up and passed to protect her from critics. on Brunhilde, Helmut, Hermann, Walter. And Egon— I named my child Millennia, because the future is now the point of the sword. I did not value power in battle —whether we like it or not. and so skipped over Maude. It is a distinct pleasure to be here on this earth naming Instead I named my child Sibeta—the one who finds with you. They lift a glass: a fish under a rock. Sacred Bells, and Ray of Light. And Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 45

New Year’s Eve and the revelers. Dizzy, a little more And we are charmed. I named my baby The Origin of than tipsy. At the edge of what unbeknownst to them has Song— and then The Origin of Tears. Angel Eyes and Angel already happened, is already happening. It gives them a Heart. And Sweetie Pie and Darling One. sepia tone. In their paper hats and goblets and blowers and We’ve relished the naming—eased by it. And all the confetti. Happy—that old sweet and hopeful New —there is other games we made up, and all the things we thought to not one day that I have not thought of you my child—Year. do. New Year’s Eve and the revelers… And time passes. As if we had a choice. At the end of the century a whisper. The Berlin A strange photographed feeling. The black hood Philharmonic plays seven finales in a row. over the box on its legs. That wobbly feeling comes from And the year 2000 is issued in, scraps of story and ­champagne and last things, as the new century moves sound. That beautiful end-of-the-century debris. into us—1900. We were working on an erotic song-cycle. It was called: Time immemorial—so they say. The Problem Now of the Finale. What is to come unimaginable. Now where the sense of key is weaker or absent I named my baby Many Achievements, Five Ravens, altogether, there is no goal to be reached as in earlier fina- Red Bird. I named her Goes Forth Bravely. Beautiful Lake. les—as a closing gesture then, what, what now?—a joke, Shaking Snow, Red Echo, Walking by the River. a dissolve, a fast or slow tearing, intimations of a kind of And we relish the saying. While we still can. And in the timelessness, the chiming of bells, a wing and a prayer— saying, inhabit our own vanishing, in the shadow language, Perhaps, a solemn procession toward—what then? its after image, a blue ghost in the bones, the passage New Year’s Eve and the revelers. of time, intimacy of the late evening—seated by a fire—­ Another sort of progress. embers. I named my child Farewell to Spring, just in case. Pipe smoke when you were a child comes from under How strange the dwindling—pronounced as it is on the crack in the door, letting you know that Uncle Louis this night where we deliberately mark its passage. Happy was near. The distant sound from your nursery of the rev- New Year. Lost in the naming, in the marking of time as it elers—they come in to peer at you in your crib in the eerie slips—distracted from the strangeness for a minute. masks of Victoriana on the dying year’s last eve. Louisa It’s been a privilege. And how quickly all of a sudden . . . and Herman move toward the lamplight. Oohs and aahs Pipe smoke when you were a child. and then quiet. All disperse: a proper German gentleman, Or the alarming forced jollity of a Shostakovitch finale— an American with a handlebar moustache, a chorus girl, Where are you going? a rabbit-faced widow, a bursar or stationmaster, a man in Where have you gone? a turban, a geisha—a chic Orientalism. A sultry gypsy girl. I named her Century. I named her Bethany—House They meander through the Ramble, weaving a little, with of Figs. I named her Lucia to protect her from the dark. the odd premonition that they are all playing their parts— And Xing—which is Star. Dolphin, Lion, Lover of Horses. on this elaborate stage, the world hurtling forward, the I named her Arabella—Beautiful Altar, and year on the verge of turning. Snow begins to fall. The lights Andromeda—Rescued. twinkling. They lift a glass. My child was made almost entirely of blood in the New Year’s Eve and we dream—of a music, a book end. She slipped like Birds through my hands. They say never seen before, at the edge of its obsolescence—the light ­ordinarily such a child is not named. pale opal. On the shards of story and sound. What is left A Flock of Birds. Bells that Descend. A Rose on the now. Open Sea. On the last day of the last year of the last one thousand. The pages of the baby name book ragged. And the dead stream by with their names. And all the Nevertheless—I could not pass up ways they tried to say— Mercy. Clint Youle, 83, Early Weatherman on TV Tenderness. H.S. Richardson, Heir to Vicks Cold Remedies Lamb. Hazel Bishop, an Innovator Who Made Lipstick Kissproof I wish I could decipher the Silence. Understand its Linda Alma, Dancer in Greek Movies Whims. The century a Chalice of Heartbreak. We put our Walter O. Wells, a Pioneer in Mobile Homes lips to it and whisper. The future is already with us, whether we like it or not. What now? Its advance implacable, and the revelers, having rested up What then? that afternoon begin their foray. To play out the passing of And Bela—derived from a word that means wave— time—thrilled, a little frightened, tinged with melancholy, or a word that means time—or a word that means limit. struck as they leave now by the intense desire to stay. It is also indicative of a type of flower, or a violin. □ “To earn one’s death,” writes Mary Cantwell, 69, Author, “I think of it as a kind of parlor game. How, I shall ask my This work first appeared in Conjunctions: 34, friends would you like to earn your deaths? And how would “American Fiction: States of the Art.” I like to earn mine?” Ran Ortner

Artist Portfolio

[1]

[2] [3] These, This

Considering Ran Ortner

by Michael Cunningham

We’re talking about wonder and obliter­ Aren’t we witnesses, all of us, to our own ation. vanishing worlds?

We’re talking about how it can be difficult Ran said to me the other night, when we to distinguish the one from the other. were in his studio together, “It’s not the ocean, it’s the ocean seen.” “Our age not only does not have a very sharp eye for the almost imperceptible It’s the ocean contemplated as intently as a intrusions of grace, it no longer has much monk contemplates the Holy Word. It’s the feeling for the nature of the violences ocean worked and reworked until it looks which precede and follow them.” more like itself than it would if we were – Flannery O’Connor standing on the beach, looking right at it.

Artists are here to tell us that we do in fact It’s the ocean so furiously remembered that see what we think we see, and, at the same it’s kept alive. time, that what we think we see is always more complex, more remarkable, more Ran wrote to me, in an email: “I feel I am ­terrifying than our eyes are able to admit. looking very directly at the heightened mo- ment, at the moment that’s fully insisting. “There is one knows not what sweet It’s the insistence of beauty, the dispas- ­mystery about this sea, whose gently awful sionate nature of this insistence, and it just stirrings seem to speak to some hidden keeps coming, like a freight train.” soul beneath.” – Herman Melville It just keeps coming. It seems that the oceans will be the first to signal our last end. Like a freight train. It seems that, even now, the water is ­beginning to take us back. [spread, pages 46–47] And yet, there’s beauty in it. Strange, Drift, 2000. Fan, bag, 1000 pounds of sand don’t you think? Or, maybe, not so strange: [pages 48–49] the allure of submergence, our desire to be [1] Element No. 3, 2011. Oil on canvas, triptych, ­devastated, to be freed even of our bodies. 182.8 × 594.3 cm. [2] Element No. 27, 2016. Oil on canvas, 53.3 × 83.8 cm. [3] Element No. 24 (detail), 2017. Oil on canvas, diptych, 121.9 × 264.2 cm Those are, after all, pearls that were his eyes … [right] Release, 2001. Five-hundred pounds of sand pouring from the wall Aren’t we at least a little bit in love with that which would pull us under? All images courtesy the artist.

52 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SOLOMON MAIMON

Introduction by INTRODUCTION Contemporary readers of Yitzhak Y. Melamed and Maimon’s autobiography included Abraham P. Socher Midway through George Eliot’s last Goethe and Schiller, but it made the novel, Daniel Deronda (1876), the title greatest impression on nineteenth-­ Translation character, a Jewish orphan raised as century Eastern European Jewish an English aristocrat, wanders into a readers who had suffered a similar by Paul Reitter secondhand bookshop in East London crisis of faith and were struggling to and finds “something that he wanted modernize Jewish culture or find their —namely that wonderful piece of feet outside of it. Mordechai Aaron autobiography, the life of the Polish Guenzberg (1795–1846) and Moshe Jew Solomon Maimon.” Eliot, who Leib Lillienblum (1843–1910) both had translated those more famous saw Maimon as their great prede- Jewish heretics, Benedict Spinoza cessor, the archetype of the modern (who Maimon had read closely) and Jewish heretic who had described Heinrich Heine (who had read Maimon the pathologies of traditional Jewish closely), left an annotated copy of society and made a successful—or Salomon Maimons Lebensgeschichte in almost successful—break with it. her library. Both of them patterned their own Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 53

William Arndt, Salomon Maimon, pre-1814. Originally published in The Jewish Encyclopedia. 54 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

influential Hebrew autobiographies Solomon Maimon, it is generally even hilarious account of his life as after Maimon’s Lebensgeschichte, as agreed but still subject to some dis- a Talmudic prodigy from—as he put did the Yiddish philologist Alexander pute, was born in 1753, in Sukoviborg, it in a letter to Immanuel Kant— Harkavi (1863–1939), a generation later. a small town on the tributary of the “the woods of Lithuania,” a literally When the soon-to-be radical Niemen River, near the city of Mirz, in preadolescent husband, an aspiring Nietzschean Zionist Micha Yosef what was then the Polish-Lithuanian kabbalist-magician, an earnest young Berdichevsky (1865–1921) left the great Commonwealth. Since Jews of that philosopher, a bedraggled beggar, an Yeshivah of Volozhin, in the 1880s, one time and place did not commonly take urbane Berlin pleasure-seeker, and, of the first books he turned to was surnames, his given name was simply eventually, the philosopher of whom Maimon’s autobiography. Prominent Shelomo ben Yehoshua (Solomon son Kant would write, “None of my critics German-Jewish readers included of Joshua). Indeed, he did not take understood me and the main ques- the novelist Berthold Auerbach, who the name of the great twelfth-century tions so well as Herr Maimon.” In fact, based a character upon him, the pio- Jewish philosopher Moses ben Maim some of the incidents and encounters neering historian of Hasidism Aharon (Maimonides), until he was close to Maimon narrates are so entertaining Marcus (Verus), and the twentieth-­ thirty years old, and studying at the and incredible that one is tempted to century thinkers Hannah Arendt, liberal Gymnasium Christianem in read his book as a picaresque novel, Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem, Altona, and then only in more or less a Jewish Tom Jones. Yet, in virtually and Leo Strauss, all of whom had their formal German contexts, although one every instance in which it is possible first serious exposure to Maimonidean such context was the present auto- to verify an incident, source a quo- philosophy in the pages of Maimon’s biography, with which he fully intro- tation, or identify a figure to whom autobiography. Arendt went on to list duced himself to the literary world. he has coyly referred only with an Maimon as the first modern Jewish The autobiography, simply titled initial—the drunken Polish Prince intellectual to adopt the role of the Salomon Maimons Lebensgeschichte, R., the charismatic “New Hasidic” “conscious pariah,” a role she saw as was published in Berlin in two vol- preacher B. of M., the supercilious later having been taken up by Heine umes, in 1792 and 1793. It was edited Jewish intellectual H., the censorious and Franz Kafka, among others. As an by his friend Karl Philipp Moritz (1756– Chief Rabbi of Hamburg, as well as far editor at Schocken, Arendt also helped 1793), with whom he collaborated in less famous individuals—Maimon’s bring Maimon to English readers editing a unique journal of psychology, account checks out. by publishing an abridgement of an parapsychology, and the social scienc- The only previous English trans- already-abridged nineteenth-century es, Gnothi Sauton, oder Magazin zur lation of Maimon’s Lebensgeschichte version of Maimon’s autobiography. Erfahrungsseelenkunde als ein Lesebuch appeared in 1888. The translator, a pro- When the Jewish loss-of-faith genre für Gelehrte und Ungelehrte (roughly: fessor of Moral Psychology at McGill was Americanized by Chaim Potok, “Know Thyself, or the Magazine for University named J. Clark Murray in The Chosen (1967), he explicitly Empirical Psychology for the Learned elided a few difficult passages in the modeled his brilliant, troubled Hasidic and the Unlearned”). Maimon’s au- first volume of the autobiography and protagonist on Maimon. Potok had tobiography began as a contribution cut the preface and ten chapters on read the Schocken edition as a young to the journal, as an anonymous case the philosophy of Moses Maimonides man and then gone on to write a study of a Polish Jew named “Salomon with which Maimon had prefaced philosophy dissertation on Maimon ben Josua,” focusing on the social the second volume. He also cut the before turning to fiction. and economic arrangements under comical, puzzling allegory with which Historically speaking, Solomon which he grew up as the grandchild Maimon concluded his autobiography. Maimon stood at the cusp of Jewish of a Jewish leaseholder of the leading These chapters were, Murray wrote modernity; he passed through virtually Polish-Lithuanian aristocrat, Prince in his preface, not “biographical” and all of the spiritual and intellectual Karol Stanislaw Radziwill (1734–1790). “excite just the faintest suspicion of options open to European Jews at It was only after writing these “frag- ‘padding.’” Although Murray’s transla- the end of the eighteenth century. ments” of his life that Maimon found tion has been reprinted, pared down, Literarily speaking, he is the first to himself composing an account of how, excerpted, and anthologized for well have dramatized this position and in “striving for intellectual growth [. . .] over a century now, Paul Reitter’s new attempted to understand it—and thus amidst all kinds of misery,” he had translation is, astonishingly, the first himself. His autobiography is not only become an influential, if idiosyncratic, complete accurate English translation the first modern Jewish work of its contributor to the philosophical of Maimon’s autobiography into kind, it also combines an astonish- literature of the German and Jewish English. ingly deep knowledge of almost every enlightenments. branch of Jewish literature with an As the Autobiography’s many acute and highly original analysis readers over the last two centuries of Judaism, its political dimensions, will attest, it is by turns a brilliantly and its intellectual horizons. vivid, informative, searing, and witty, Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 55 ALMOST

TRANSLATOR’S 1 IN 3 PEOPLE NOTE DIE FROM Maimon was a linguistic shape-shifter whose level of German proficiency CARDIO- changed according to the occasion and who was very aware of the sort of scru- VASCULAR tiny to which his German was subjected, especially from German Jews. Indeed, DISEASE one of the most famous scenes in the Autobiography involves Maimon recount- ing how upon reaching Berlin for the first time, his broken speech, unpolished OUR manners, and wild gesticulations result- ed in his cutting a bizarre figure, like a “starling” that “has learned to say a few SCIENTISTS words.” What breathes out of Maimon’s evocation of the scene isn’t so much WON’T resentment as an air of superiority and passive-aggressive delight. Having slyly ACCEPT THAT alluded to Aristotle’s definition of man (i.e., the “talking animal”), Maimon tells of how he, the underdog, bested Markus Herz, his cultivated and thoroughly stunned Jewish partner in debate. For Maimon himself, though, the outcome should not have been surprising. While his outsider status caused him no small measure of hardship, and while the Autobiography frequently ridicules the Eastern European Jewish culture into which its author was born, Maimon was also critical of the Jewish acculturation he encountered in Berlin, seeing it as in- tellectually limiting. It may be in part for this reason that there can be something mocking in Maimon’s use of German colloquialisms and formal expressions. Language was the key vehicle of accultur- ation, and Maimon’s, as Hannah Arendt suggested, was a pariah’s acculturation. One could even say that it has elements of what other theorists would call colo- nial mimicry. In the translation, I have tried to convey this. I have also tried to avoid the great temptation that attends retrans­ lation. Or, more specifically, I have tried to avoid the temptation that attends retranslation when, as is the case here, According to the World Health Organization (WHO), cardiovascular diseases are the a key text has been translated just once number one cause of death throughout the and without as much fidelity as one world. might reasonably hope for: to write That’s why we’re investigating treatments in reaction to the existing translation. to manage heart failure, as well as prevent myocardial infarctions and strokes. Whether I have succeeded, or to what Which heart patient wouldn’t love to benefi t degree, is of course for readers to judge. from that? To fi nd out how our innovations are helping to change lives for the better, visit www.bayer.com/cvd1902.

4725_Bayer_Ad_CVD_105x280_Portrait_BerlinJournal.indd 1 22.07.1629 15:06 56 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

CHAPTER 18: kneaded, the cooking and baking are man’s mouth. After that, the Russian LIFECHAPTER AS A TUTOR 18: being done, the cow being milked, etc. poured his marvelous mush down the LIFE AS A TUTOR In this splendid dwelling, farmers innkeeper’s throat and raged on until would sit on the bare floor—you he was overcome by his drunkenness, wouldn’t want to sit any higher if at which point he collapsed to the you didn’t want to die of smoke ground in a stupor. My first job as a family tutor was an inhalation—and drink brandy and Such scenes were common all over hour away from where I was living at make a racket, while the people doing Poland. Whenever the Russian army the time. I worked for the miserable housework would sit in a corner. passed through a place, they took a farmer I., in the even more miserable I would sit behind the oven with my guide, whom they kept until the next town of P., for a salary of five Polish dirty, half-naked students, translating town. Instead of having the mayor or thalers. The poverty and ignorance an old and tattered Hebrew Bible into a local magistrate choose one, they of the population were indescribable, Russian-Jewish dialect. Taken together, tended to grab the first person they as was the crudeness of its lifestyle. they made up the most magnificent saw. Young or old, male or female, The farmer was a man of about fifty, group in the world. It deserved to be sick or healthy—it didn’t matter, since whose whole face was grown over drawn by a Hogarth, sung by a Buttler. they already knew the way from their with hair ending in a thick, dirty, My readers can easily imagine special maps and were simply looking coal-black beard. His speech was a how terrible this place was for me. for another chance to brutalize people. kind of muttering, comprehensible Brandy was the only means available If the person they took didn’t know only to the farmers with whom he to help me forget my troubles. On top the right way, they wouldn’t let them- had dealings every day. He not only of all else, the Russians—who were selves be steered off course. But they spoke no Hebrew, but also not a word rampaging through Prince R.’s lands at would beat the poor guide until he or of Yiddish; he could only speak a the time with an almost unimaginable she was half dead, just for not knowing Russian dialect, the common language brutality—had a regiment stationed in the right way! of farmers in the region. Add to this the village and neighboring areas. The scene a wife and child cut from the house was constantly full of drunken I, too, was once snatched up to be a same cloth and also his home, which Russians engaging in every possible guide. Even though I didn’t know the was a sooty shack, blackened inside act of excess. They smashed tables right way, I managed to guess what and out, with no chimney. Instead and benches, threw glasses and bot- it was. Thus I arrived at the correct there was just a small opening in the tles at the maids’ and housekeepers’ place feeling fortunate, having been ceiling that served as a smoke vent. heads, etc. punched and elbowed in the ribs The hole was carefully closed as soon To cite a single example, a many times, and also given the warn- as the fire was extinguished, so that Russian was stationed as a guard in ing that if I led the soldiers off course the heat wouldn’t escape. the house where I was working; he they would skin me alive (something The windows were narrow strips was charged with making sure that the Russians were capable of). of pinewood laid over each other the house wasn’t plundered. One All the other jobs I had as a family crosswise and covered with paper. The time, he came home very drunk and tutor were more or less the same. dwelling had one space: living room, demanded something to eat. He was During one of them, a remarkable drinking room, dining room, study, given a bowl of millet that had butter psychological event took place, with and bedroom all in one. Imagine, as mixed into it. He pushed the bowl me as its protagonist. I will describe well, that it was kept very hot, and away and shouted: It needs more what happened when I reach the that the wind and the dampness— butter. A large container full of butter right point in my story. But an event ever-­present in winter—would send was brought. He shouted: Bring a of the same kind—which occurred at the smoke back into the room, filling second bowl of food. Another bowl a different time, and which I merely it with fumes to the point of asphyxi- was brought immediately, whereupon witnessed—should be recounted here. ation. Blackened laundry and various he dumped all the butter into the The tutor in the neighboring filthy articles of clothing are hanging bowl and then demanded brandy. He village was a sleepwalker. He rose one from rods placed along the length of was given a whole bottle, which he night and went to the churchyard with the room, so that the vermin suffocate emptied into his food. Next, he called a volume of Jewish ritual laws in his from all the smoke. Over here sausages for large quantities of milk, pepper, hand. After spending a while there, he have been strung up to dry, their fat salt, and tobacco, which he dumped returned to his bed. The next morning, steadily dripping down onto people’s in and began to devour. After he had he woke up remembering nothing heads. Over there are tubs of bitter eaten several spoonfuls, he started about what had taken place during the cabbage and red beets (the staple of swinging his fists wildly. He grabbed night. He went over to the chest where the Lithuanian diet). In a corner, the the innkeeper’s beard and repeatedly he always kept the volumes locked up, jugs filled with drinking water stand smashed his fist into the innkeeper’s with the intention of getting out the next to the dirty water. Dough is being face, causing blood to gush out of the first part, the Orach chayim (The way Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 57

to life), which he read every morning. To his astonishment, only three of the four parts, bound as separate volumes, were there, the missing part being the Jore deah (Teacher of wisdom): All four had been locked safely in the chest. Because he was aware of his condition, he looked for the missing part everywhere, until he finally searched the churchyard and found the Jore deah opened to the chapter Hilchoth Eweloth (Laws of mourn- ing). He saw this as a bad omen, and he went home deeply disquieted. When asked why, he related what had happened, add- ing: “God only knows how my poor mother is doing!” He asked his employer for a horse and permission to ride to the next town, where his mother lived, so that he could find out how she was. To reach the town, he had to pass through the place where I was working as a tutor. When I saw him riding in a state of dismay—he wouldn’t dismount even for a short time—I asked him what was wrong. It was then that I heard the story I have just described. I was struck not so much by the par- ticular circumstances of the incident as by the general phenomenon of sleepwalking, which I hadn’t known about. The other tutor assured me, however, that sleepwalk- ing is common, and that one shouldn’t necessarily attach a deeper meaning to it. Only the episode with the Hilcoth Eweloth chapter of the Jore deah had filled him with foreboding, he said. He rode off, and when he got to his mother’s house, he found her sitting at her loom. Never stop starting! She asked him why he had come. He said that he hadn’t seen her in a while Discover something new with passion, inspiration and enthusiasm. and simply wanted to visit. After resting Keep on reinventing yourself. Never lose the courage to take the first a while, he rode back without incident. step. But he remained uneasy and could not stop thinking about the Jore deah, Hilcoth By adopting this attitude, we have co-written 150 years of engineer- Eweloth. Three days later, there was a fire in ing history. From the beginnings of industrialization to the internet – the town where his mother lived, and the Voith technologies were and still are part of it. We are a technology poor woman died in the blaze. When the group, 150 years young. Reason to be proud? Definitely. But above sleepwalker heard about the fire, he cried all: the perfect reason for continuing. Starting something new. out in anguish over her horrible death, then Today. Here. Now. rode straight to the town to see what he had foreseen. □ Welcome to the next 150 years!

This article is derived from spring 2018 fellow Paul Reitter’s forthcoming translation of The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon, to be published by Princeton University Press in spring 2018. 58 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

GARDENING

Fiction by V. V. Ganeshananthan

Nooriyah Ali, Crack Me Up, 2015. Courtesy tookapic.com Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 59

he boy in the rough-grown They have returned here after garden near the well, run- some years away, the house having ning after the vanishing been occupied by the movement snake, stumbles over the and also by the army, so it is not a T bone instead, and his first instinct is to house that he is old enough to know, tell his older sister, who always knows although someday the job of keeping more than him and is kind enough it will fall to him. Perhaps the house to share her knowledge, who knows belonged to this garden-person while who to tell and when to keep quiet. his family was gone. He pushes his toe The rules are the rules are the rules— at the dirt and scratches until he has meant to be broken, meant to be uncovered more. He has just begun ignored, meant to be a mosquito net to excavate the jaw when his mother of protection over some other, secret calls him from across the way, where system, he is beginning to learn. she has drawn her bucket of water and He could tell her, and that would handed it to his sister. They don’t think be one system of rules. Or, he could anything of him playing in the sand, step to the left and keep going and which has always been his habit. As never say a word, and that would be he gets up, he tries to catch his sister’s another. He could tamp soil down over eye, but she does not see his question- the exposed curve that isn’t a twig ing look. and isn’t a fallen rake and isn’t a stone. Come, his mother says, and as the He could keep following the snake two women walk across his path his and singing the snake-song he has just sister reaches out for his hand, and now composed, but he has paused he walks away from the head in the for too long, and now the snake is dirt without so much as a backwards gone around the bend, and his toe has glance because although he would already discovered this undeniable gladly ask his sister what to do, he obstacle, the edge of which he recog- does not want his mother to see what nizes as part of the same scaffolding he has found. At least not yet. Years that holds his own head together. He from now, he will recognize this as has seen the bones of a fish and the the first time he truly lied to her. His bones of a dog but not the bones of a omissions before this were childish, person, and yet, he is certain, this is a unimportant ones: the extra rice gone human skull, at the edge of the land from the pot, the spoon liberated to that belongs to the well near the house become a childish cricket bat. This lie, that is now his family’s home again. a lie with good intentions, is different. 60 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

That night they eat rice and vege- is hurt, you tell your mother—but his his mother and to his sister, a soldier tables and his mother and sister talk sister looks uncertain and troubled. came to check on them and to offer about eating chicken. His sister, seven She retrieves a fallen branch from a help. His mother refused. Them, she years older than him, talks about how nearby palm. Laying it over the skull hissed later. Them! she likes to suck the marrow from the gently, she lets the leaves drape over The soldier had smiled at him, and bones. There are different words for the brow like hair. Come away, she he had not been able to help smiling different kinds of bones—he recalls his says. back, although he saw the man’s gun mother chiding him to be careful not Later that night, in the room resting on his skinny shoulder. Don’t to choke on the small fish ones—and they share, they lie hot and restless. smile at soldiers, his sister told him fumbling, he asks if there is a special He can hear her shifting back and after, and then added, or, you should way to name the bones of the human forth. Should we tell Amma? he asks smile, but not too much. Which was it? head. again. He thinks the answer is no, he wondered. What do they want? he His sister looks at him strangely. but he wants to know why. He isn’t asked. We don’t know, his sister said. The human head? she asks. old enough to know why, he guesses. You or me or Amma or the house, or My head, he says, tapping it. Maybe it is someone from their family, nothing. We never know. We just wait Are you going to be a doctor? his or maybe it is someone from the to see what they will do. mother asks laughingly. army, or maybe it is someone from the What happens if someone sees He hadn’t thought of such a thing. movement, or maybe someone from this? he asks again now, looking at the Yes, he says, smiling, and her smile the movement or the army put that bones. gets bigger. Why not, he says, and it person there. He doesn’t know what I don’t know, his sister says, and gets smaller again. Through the closing the other possibilities are. He is about looks up and meets his eyes. Soldiers door of her contracting mouth he sees to ask her when she turns over in the might come here. They might dig. They that she knows something about his dark and turns away from him so that might say the movement did it. They future. she faces the wall. He flickers his torch might even ask us to leave again so at her, playing the dim light on the that they can investigate. wall above her head. What if, what if the body belongs he next day, when they Don’t, she says, and when he asks to someone we know, he asks his return to the well, a stray why, she doesn’t answer. sister. dog is licking at the skull The next day, he is resolved to tell It might, his sister said sharply. and he has to shoo it away. his mother, but his sister offers to go to Would you go? Play somewhere else? T The flat, damaged top of the head is the well by herself, so that their moth- Instead he comes around the tongue-wiped clean and pretty. He er can pay a visit to an old neighbor. curve of her arm and starts digging begins again: the jaw, the neck, a few And when he goes to walk with his beside her. fingers rising out of the dirt in the sister, she is already gone. Ahead of Where are we going to put it? same fashion that he sometimes sees him and longer-legged, she has beaten She puts her hand, like a soft, trees reach out of lagoons after rain. him to the spot. Go, she instructs him muddy paw, on his arm, and for a sec- He puts his own fingers next to these gruffly when she sees him. She kneels ond they are both stopped in the dirt. fingers and both sets are the same size. in the dirt, her old skirt’s black fogged We can burn it, she says softly, and A child, then, perhaps one about his with dust. He refuses, sticking to her when he looks over, there are tears own age. side. She is bigger and stronger than in her eyes. She is remembering their Because he doesn’t hear his sister him, and digs furiously. She huffs as father probably, his pyre burning. He calling, she comes up behind him and the breeze blows grime back off the doesn’t remember their father. Their catches hold of his wrist. What are you skeleton into her face. Why has she mother is all the boy has ever known. doing? she asks. He stands up quickly stolen his discovery? She is already at The only law he wants to follow. between the skull and his sister, but the shoulder, the elbows, the collar- You don’t want to tell her, he says. she yanks him forward. Come, she bone. Was he so far behind? A ribcage His sister is weeping now, but still demands, and then her jaw falls as she grows from the ground like a bush. working at the body, the little limbs so sees his discovery. Aiyooo, she says What are you doing? he cries. like his own. She has moved the palm softly, drawing it out. Come away from We have to move it, she says, a branch to a pile of small sticks. Rolled that, thambi. Amma won’t like for you fearful determination on her face. Do up pieces of newspaper underneath. to touch that. Come away! When did you know what happens if someone It’s the beginning of a fire, he sees. you find this? sees this? They could take our house She knows, his sister says finally. He admits everything as though again. She knows. I told her. Go back to the he is the one who has put the skeleton Who? house. She asked me to burn it. □ there. Should we tell Amma? But she doesn’t answer. It should have been plain to him When they returned to the house, before, he sees now—when someone which was new to him but familiar to Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 61 “THEY, THE PEOPLE”

Overlooking the populist complaint

by Dilip Gaonkar

irst, it has been called a Second, it has been cast as a and remains anti-institutional even parasite: it feeds on its host, shadow (by political theorist Margaret when it partakes in electoral politics democracy—especially liber- Canovan) that accompanies democ- and aspires to seize the state. It begins al democracy, the normative racy; more ominously, as a specter with a “demand” in the name of the Fdefault mode of being democratic (by political theorist Benjamin Arditi) people against a “wrong” festering today. The Italian political scientist that haunts it; or, as a pharmakon— within the body politic (Ernesto Nadia Urbinati has described it as a the poison/drug that both debilitates Laclau). It is not directional; it is not pathology, a perversion that disfigures and cures democracy when it strays cumulative. It has no grand narratives. liberal democracy, a disease for which from its promise to serve the people in It comes and goes but never fully there is no cure. This is because it their three constitutive avatars—the disappears. It is agonistic. It is politics pays no heed to liberal constitutional sovereign, the common, the national. understood as rhetoric. It is politics values: the rule of law, separation Political scientist Paul Taggart has imagined as a sensuous, performative of powers, and minority rights. It is described it as a chameleon, adept at aesthetics that makes the “missing impatient with liberal institutions and taking on the shape and colors of the people” visible, the “silent people” procedures; it prefers acclamation to national–cultural context in which it audible (Jacques Rancière). It is an un- deliberation. It is deeply suspicious manifests. It is so historically mutable wieldy repertoire of democratic forms, of the representative system that and culturally variable, it is said to styles, rituals, and practices to hail and engenders a gap between the elected have an unresolved Cinderella complex to constitute the people defiantly in and the electors, the governors and (Isaiah Berlin)—a shoe in search of foot the face of the paradox of self-autho- the governed. It sees this gap as the to fit. It is an empty shell (Yves Mény rization (Jason Frank), the paradox of mechanism that corrupts the ruling and Yves Surel), filled with shifting constitution making (Carl Schmitt), the elite, the power elite, and makes them social content and volatile public paradox of the peoplehood as such. indifferent towards the “common peo- passions dictated by a given political Such are the mystifying formula- ple” and the common good. It wants to conjuncture. It is a “thin-centered tions and characterizations of popu- bridge this gap with a transformative ideology” (Cas Mudde and Cristóbal lism, especially of the resurgent “new leader who would embody the will of Kaltwasser) with a single core con- populisms,” offered by some of the the people, the “real people.” It longs ceit: “the people,” whose referent leading political theorists of our time. for the unity of one people, of the sons remains elusive, an empty signifier Alas, despite their variety, all of these and daughters of the soil. Hence, its (Claude Lefort). orientations tend to understate a ma- rhetoric is moralistic, exclusionary, Finally, it is the political, not “pol- jor concern: the social question—the and anti-pluralist. itics as usual.” It is counter-hegemonic actual widening wealth and income 62 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

inequality between the elites and the now-ruling Syriza party in Greece, led with a few interlocking propositions. masses, especially those whom imag- by Alexis Tsipras. There are also assort- First, the invocation of the doctrine ine themselves to be the hardworking ed hybrid formations like Italy’s Five of popular sovereignty: people are and patriotic middle-class. And who Star Movement started by Beppe Grillo, the sole source of political authority might they be? For, unlike liberals, a comedian and blogger. and legitimacy in a democracy. The socialists, or conservatives, populists The shared temporal horizon for rationale for the existence of any polity, today rarely self-identify as “populists.” these new populisms, both from the especially one democratically elected, Hence, “populism” and “populists” Right and the Left, is the current phase is to serve the people as a whole by are designations bequeathed by their of globalization and its discontents, promoting the common good and political opponents, liberal critics, popularly imagined as beginning with collective welfare. Second, the current sociological analysts, and historical the fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1989. government and the ruling elites have interpreters. The below adumbrates Their resurgence is directly linked to failed over an extended period of time some of the durable tenets and origins how globalization has transformed to discharge their duty. Instead, they of these “new populisms,” and a what the political and cultural landscape have subverted the democratic system its critics neglect. in advanced democratic societies in itself, including the constitution, to Europe and the United States, and how promote their own class interests, ince populism is said to be it has made many people on the Right chameleon-like, the critical feel, to borrow a phrase from sociolo- discourses that analyze gist Arlie Hochschild, like “strangers in “Populism” and “popu- populist movements tend their own land,” while many others on Sto be highly situated. Currently, one the Left feel like a new class of “pre- lists” are designations speaks of “new populisms” rather cariats,” spawned and ignored by the than populisms as such, even though neoliberal gospel of global free-market bequeathed by their such preoccupation with the latest and nation-centric governmentality. political opponents, sightings of the populist specter nar- The populist complaint has rows our historical understanding. The remained remarkably unchanged liberal critics, socio­ newest manifestations are obviously despite its varied historical manifesta- Brexit and the 2016 US Presidential tions. To begin with, the social ques- logical analysts, and election campaigns of Donald Trump tion today, while rooted in growing and Bernie Sanders. But the temporal economic inequality, has additional historical interpreters. frame of “new populisms” is, of course, cultural, political, and affective rami- somewhat wider. In Europe, especially fications. Declining income has been in the economically advanced and compounded by deeply felt status at the expense of the general public democratically mature countries, anx- anxiety, especially among white interest. Third, it is time to take the ieties about resurgent populisms have men, which is often accompanied by government back from the conniving been palpable since the beginning of racist, ethno-national, patriarchal, and elites and to restore the primacy of the this millennium. There is an extensive hetero-­normative rhetoric. Finally, people. The power of the elites, to the scholarly literature on movements there is a pervasive sense of power- extent it is not eliminable, should be mobilized by ultra-right ethno-na- lessness, the loss of political agency severely curbed and carefully moni- tionalist groups and parties that pivot and citizen efficacy, for many living in tored. on opposing market globalization complex Western societies dominated The populist complaint is thus driven by new technologies, finan- by high finance, smart technology, and decidedly anti-elite, even though most cialization, and liberal immigration expert knowledge. Anger and resent- of its demagogic leaders come from policies, movements led by figures like ments are palpable. They are directed the elites, as has been the case since Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter, not only at minorities and immigrants the time of the Roman Tribunes. There Marine (of FN), in France; the late Pim who are allegedly “cutting the line” are two complementary aspects to this Fortuyn (of now-defunct PFL), in the and “stealing the jobs,” but also at anti-elitism: the generic and the socio- Netherlands; the late Jörg Haider (of ruling elites, with their cosmopolitan historical. Generically, populists harbor FPÖ), in Austria; and Nigel Farage (of tastes and technocratic mindset, and an abiding suspicion that a representa- UKIP), of the Brexit campaign. The list who seem indifferent to the plight of, tive democracy in a complex modern can be extended to include anti-glo- to borrow Paul Taggart’s phrase, the society has inexorable oligarchic ten- balization and anti-austerity protest “people of the heartland.” dencies. It serves the elites, protecting movements from the Left, such as Even though populism is said their privileges and property before those initiated by the Indignados, in to be chameleon-like, rhetorically attending to the needs and demands Spain, which has given rise to a new adept at adjusting to variable sets of of the common people. Further, these political party, Podemos, partly led sociohistorical exigencies, its idea­ oligarchic tendencies become acute by Pablo Iglesias Turrión, and to the tional content can be simply stated and highly visible in periods of major Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 63

socioeconomic transition and transfor- not warned from time to time that opulism and the social ques- mation, as is the case today under the their people preserve the spirit of tion have had parallel careers long, unfolding shadow of capitalist resistance?” since the near-­universal globalization. Predictably, the new No political theorist writing about acceptance of the doctrine of populists of every ilk and persuasion the new populisms can avoid the Ppopular sovereignty, in the aftermath stand opposed to the globalization social question. But, often enough, of the great late-eighteenth-century endorsed and promoted by the ruling the focus of much contemporary revolutions. Populist movements, elites. They dismiss pro-globalization analysis shifts from the sociohistorical whether as embryonic eruptions or as arguments that promise enhanced contexts that spawn these movements full-fledged political campaigns, rarely prosperity via growth and enlarged to a critique of their rhetoric: what materialize in the absence of serious freedom via mobility and accessibility populists, especially their demagogic socioeconomic upheaval, resulting as a self-serving hoax perpetrated by leaders, say and do. The shadow/spec- in unmistakable duress for a sizeable the elites. They don’t exactly deny that ter thesis is intrigued with mapping portion of the people. Lawrence there has been massive worldwide the unresolvable tensions between Goodwyn’s masterful history of the growth in productivity and services. the promise of popular sovereignty agrarian revolt in the United States But, because the dividends from and the functioning of a representa- during 1880s and 1890s, The Populist tive system. The political-agonistic Moment (1978), unequivocally estab- thesis takes the social question as its lishes this causal link, which has been Predictably, starting point, but quickly leaves it reiterated in many other historical behind to theorize what it takes to be and sociological studies of populisms the new populists the “political,” the quintessential act of the past. What constitutes a state of making people visible and audible, of socioeconomic duress might vary of every ilk and of which populism is a paradigmatic significantly across time and place, persuasion stand vehicle. In both cases, the social especially in contemporary affluent question—a thoroughgoing analysis of Western societies, which are witness- opposed to the glob­ the underlying factors that give rise to ing a resurgence of populisms in their populism—fades into the background, midsts. alization endorsed and the critic is held captive to the Political theory cannot contribute nasty oratory he is somehow satisfied much to our understanding of new and promoted by the to deconstruct as a disfiguration of populisms if it remains content to ruling elites. the democratic endeavor. In so doing, simply disclose and deconstruct what the social question that initiates and we already know about populism: propels populist movements on a its ideational thinness, its normative that growth have been distributed so recurrent basis is both acknowledged emptiness, and the variability of unevenly, the populists don’t have to and ignored. its social contents. Political theory resort to their typical hyperbolic, some- To be sure, the social question, must instead give an account of times ugly, rhetoric to make their case whether conceived narrowly, in terms the structural tensions inherent in against the self-­aggrandizing elites. of widening social inequality, or broad- representative democracy, the ines- In the last instance, the rationale ly, in terms of the rapid unraveling capable tension between the elite for the populist complaint, how it of the existing order of social stratifi- and the masses—not simply in terms is framed and reframed at a given cation, is very much at the forefront of disciplining the volatility of the time and place, rests on the intensity of macroeconomics, sociology and latter with constitutional mechanisms of the social question and how the the social sciences generally. Thomas (as proposed by James Madison in elites are addressing or evading that Picketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First The Federalist Papers), but in curbing question. Populism is a reliable and Century (2013) unleashed a massive relentless encroachments by the indispensable mechanism for curbing cross-disciplinary discussion of wealth former of what was once deemed and regulating the power of the elites, and inequality in academia, which common, an encroachment permitted a mechanism looked upon favorably was quickly picked up and amplified by law, facilitated by governmetality, by some classical Republican thinkers in policy circles and in the public and encouraged by markets. In an age like Machiavelli and Jefferson. The sphere—and, of course, all over social when elites have inured themselves latter famously said that the well-being media. But such amplification can be to critique, often under the alibi of of a republic depends on periodic reductive: the political slogan used meritocracy, we are in urgent need of revolutionary outbursts by the people during the Occupy movement, “We a theory of elite formations and their to control the elites: “What country are the 99 percent,” gives a distorted formidable powers. □ can preserve its liberties,” Jefferson picture of elite formations: they are wrote to William Stephens Smith, far greater than one percent and their from Paris, in 1787, “if the rulers are composition is much more varied. 64 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017 BAD NEWS

Thoughts on a fragmented media by Jill Abramson

his first book, The common bonds and understanding— Politics of Cultural are more the culprit fueling extremism Despair: A Study in the and polarizing the electorate. The Rise of the Germanic advent of so-called fake news is a InIdeology, published in 1961, the symptom of this polarization, where German-American historian Fritz Stern common agreement over what con- stressed the importance of what he stitutes a verified fact has been lost, called a new type of “cultural malcon- and people who want to exploit the tent,” which brought “the intrusion extremes or simply make money off into politics of essentially unpolitical of it, manufacture false news stories. grievances.” How prescient he was, Explosive headlines make these fake considering what would happen on stories go viral—shared en masse by the night of the 2016 Presidential people with a propensity to believe election. the ridiculous if it conforms to their Stern focused on the role of particular political bias. intellectuals in creating the climate Most of the news junkies gravi- and framework for totalitarianism. tate toward the ends of the political But today, the new technologies of the spectrum. Liberal America turns internet—which had such promise to CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, to connect the world, and create Washington Post, and the Guardian. The Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 65

Right turns to Fox News, the Daily Caller, and Breitbart, a conservative news site that was ­relatively unknown until the last election and was headed by Trump adviser Steve Bannon, one of the leaders of the American ­nationalist right-wing. During the election, Fox and Breitbart saw their audiences explode because Locally Based. of their singular focus on Donald Trump. Though neither side can understand the views of the other, they do have something in Globally Connected. common: their interest in, or commensurate horror over, how Donald Trump is making the WilmerHale provides legal counsel to clients news media a fortune. Over the span of the ten days that saw FBI director James Comey in and around Germany’s key financial, political fired, and the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, the Times and Washington Post and industrial centers. With offices across the globe, both published investigative scoops that drew we are strategically positioned to provide counsel millions of clicks, breaking all recent records. Magazines that put Trump on the cover fly off on complex international matters affecting your business. the shelves. This gets the attention of advertis- ers, who then spend more of their money on news. For better or worse, “Trump equals profits” is the powerful equation that took hold during the campaign. The head of one of the US broad- casting networks was quoted as saying, “Trump may not be good for America, but he’s great for CBS.” As he stepped up attacks on “the failing New York Times,” the newspaper added 308,000 new paying digital subscribers.

When Fritz Stern was writing his first book, there were only three television networks in America: NBC, CBS, and ABC. Americans got their news each night from more or less the same place. This created a common meeting place for folks in living rooms across the county, a com- mon experience from which to draw material to debate and discuss. Television became what was then known as “the cool fire.” Today, the news media has wildly frag- mented. The audience for broadcast news has fallen dramatically, cable does not have nearly as many viewers as it once had, and a lot of people have turned off the news altogether. In print, local newspapers have gone out of business, regional ones have shed both staff and quality, and the few with global reach, like the Times, have been battered by disappearing print-ad revenue, losses for which digital rev- enue does not compensate. This grim picture BEIJING | BERLIN | BOSTON | BRUSSELS | DAYTON | DENVER | FRANKFURT forced the Graham family to sell the Post to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, an internet billion- LONDON | LOS ANGELES | NEW YORK | PALO ALTO | WASHINGTON DC aire. (He’s been a wonderful steward so far, but there aren’t many like him.) But where have the advertising dollars gone that used to support newspapers? Primarily wilmerhale.de

©2017 Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr llp 66 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

to Google and Facebook. Forty-four More broadly, this means society other in order to reestablish some percent of Americans use Facebook no longer operates according to a com- measure of comity between the two as their main source of news, and it mon or agreed upon set of facts. In the parties. There should also be required has very quickly become the world’s era of social media, everyone can live town hall meetings so that lawmakers biggest and hungriest news platforms. with the illusion that the world sees hear real constituents, not only their Almost every news organization wants things his way because one’s person- wealthy contributors. Voting should to distribute its content to Facebook’s alized pipe of inputs makes it seem be allowed on weekends to enhance 1.28 billion daily users. that way. turnout. Restrictive voter laws must be But when articles unfurl, chosen overturned. Gerrymandering must be by an algorithm that shows you only outlawed. news you will like, readers are no a time when a frag- Finally, technology. The big social longer getting their news from a single, mented populace platforms like Facebook and Google trusted outlet where human editors distrusts the legiti- are the biggest publishers the world choose the hierarchy of what’s import- macy of all authority has ever known. They are not neutral ant. This feeds a syndrome called “the Atand institutions, especially the news platforms. They must police fake filter bubble” where news is shared on media, what can be done? news and violent content, which they social media by friends, family, and For one, quality news can survive are beginning to do. They should be other like-minded sources only. Some and prosper if readers pay for it. required to give financial support to say this is democratizing the news Reader-based revenue is a far better the news organizations that support and putting choices in the hands of business model than advertising. The them. They have sucked billions in ad readers. But it also means that most “news must be free” dogma of the revenue away from all news organiza- citizens paying attention to news are early internet must be overruled. The tions, so perhaps it’s time to pay them getting only a very narrow band of success of the New York Times’ digital back. If the big tech companies don’t information that conforms with their subscription plan is proof that if you show better citizenship and support pre-established thinking. This means create a unique, superb news product, for the institutions necessary for the common ground where people with stories that can’t be found every­ democracy to survive, it might be wise once tried to understand differing where else, people will indeed pay to have them broken up, much in the points of view is drastically shrinking. for it. way muckrakers forced the breakup The constriction in the number of Second, because commodity news of Standard Oil in the last century. quality news organizations has fueled isn’t valuable, news organizations fragmentation of what’s left of the should stop duplicating daily news These ideas are no panacea. But industry. coverage, crowding into the same gov- positive change does usually come The term “filter bubble” stems ernment press conferences to record after times of trouble—something from the title of a book written by the same, canned statements. Instead, Fritz Stern knew all too well. He had Eli Pariser, a founder of MoveOn.org use and fund wire services; focus on lived through five of Germany’s worst and the website Upworthy.com. It original reporting; collaborate more. years and then lived the best kind concerns how personalization features, Some competition is healthy, but the of American life. Although one of his especially on Google and Facebook, best news organizations can work masterworks is entitled The Politics of use algorithms that feed users only the together on difficult investigations. Cultural Despair, he himself was no information they want to see based (Imagine if the Times and the Post were pessimist. He wrote searchingly about on personal information about the working together to get to the bottom Germany’s darkest moments and user, such as what they like to read of how Russia interfered in the 2016 the cultural and intellectual poisons and how they vote. This means many election.) Have town hall meetings that caused a catastrophic political people only see or get information where readers can talk directly to sickness, but he did more than almost from news sources or people who see editors and reporters so that journal- anyone to promote American-German the world like they do. A person who ists don’t miss underlying trends in reconciliation. Fritz would want us believes that Barack Obama was born the country, like the rage that fueled to suggest some things we can do in Kenya may never see the news that the election of Donald Trump. Connect to improve political and cultural life, his birth certificate says otherwise. with readers via social media. and so we should. □ Someone involved in MoveOn.org will In the political sphere, the gov- never be exposed to the conservative ernment must be reformed, starting This essay is derived from arguments against immigration or with outlawing the secret dark money the 2017 Fritz Stern Lecture, tax reform. This not only stokes a that’s almost succeeded in creating “Protecting and Preserving polarized population, it means people Republican, right-wing hegemony in Quality News and Information,” can get false information and see Washington, DC. Lawmakers should delivered by the author on it validated time and time again by be forced to live in the capital so that May 23, 2017, at the American like-minded sources. they actually see and talk to each Academy in Berlin. Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 67 THE HOLBROOKE FORUM

Questions about the future of sovereignty, and concerns about what strategic impact the new political order were at the heart privacy in the liberal West. president would have on trans- of projects and events hosted atlantic relations and European by the Richard C. Holbrooke Subsequent to this robust security. This issue is ultimately Forum over the past year. The discussion, the project was one of survival for Europeans, Forum’s flagship Global Triangle renamed the Digital Diplomacy who rely on the US to guarantee Project took off with a one-day Project, and it will continue in their security in the Old World seminar at the Academy on autumn 2017 with a high-level and to uphold a global, rules- May 5. Comprised of two dozen seminar in Talinn, Estonia, one based order they themselves international participants from of the most highly digitalized are unable to keep intact. What academia, business, and foreign countries in the world and which if the US security guarantee, policy, the workshop examined sits on one of the world’s most administered through NATO, how the expanding world of visible geopolitical fault lines, becomes obsolete? Panelists digitalization is altering tradi- between Russia and the West. were cautiously optimistic that tional geopolitical balances of Among the outcomes of this Trump would not question such a power, notions of statecraft, workshop were several articles, basic tenet of US foreign policy, and standards of legitimacy. one of which is featured here, but a degree of uncertainty Participants included represen- by Eberhard Sandschneider, of remained. taives from the newspaper China Freie Universität Berlin, who Daily, the Mercator Institute discusses the major trends that Similar questions were analyzed for China Studies, Chatham will shape the future of inter­ by Stephen Hadley, former US House, Nokia Networks, Stanford national affairs. national security advisor, and the and Fudan universities, the Holbrooke Forum’s Distinguished Council on Foreign Relations, On the eve of Donald Trump’s Visitor in June. In a conversation and PricewaterhouseCoopers. January 20 inauguration, the with Christoph Heusgen, chan- In a wideranging discussion, led Holbrooke Forum hosted a cellor Angela Merkel’s principal by former US ambassador to conversation entitled “Post- foreign-policy advisor, Hadley Germany and Academy co-sec- Atlantic Europe,” with Vali Nasr, gave important insights into retary John Kornblum, key topics dean of the School of Advanced American politics under the new centered around the movement International Studies (SAIS) at administration. Excerpts of their of China into global digital net- Johns Hopkins University, and conversation can be found in work-building, the global supply Thomas Bagger, then-head of the pages ahead. chain, blockchain technologies, policy planning at the German cloud-optimized connectivity, IT foreign office. The question was – Jan Techau 68 the bberlinerlin jjournalournal · thirty-one ·· FaFallll 20172017

Nothing is given: neither the survival bipolar order is being replaced by a of democracies, nor the persistence world order many regard as multi- of autocracies. Both democracies and polar. Indeed, multipolarity is often Drivers autocracies still operate on the basis of praised as the solution to pending enduring political structures, decades difficulties of military, economic, and of Global old and unable to absorb the exponen- political cooperation. Things may, tial increase in technological change. however, turn out to be different— Change Creating and maintaining legitimacy, and much more dangerous. as a requisite of political stability, pro- It is not only the usual suspects What happens when vides a fundamental challenge to both —the US, China, Europe, and perhaps types of political systems. What at first Russia—that might form the backbone digital disruption may seem Darwinistic translates into of a future stable world order. Many meets geopolitics? numerous fundamental challenges to other regional powers are increas- be discussed below. ingly acquiring the capacities to by Eberhard First, we will look at major aspects irritate existing power arrangements. Sandschneider of the world order presently under- Asymmetry and the negative effects of going a transformation. After a brief globalization form the background of a analysis of both geopolitical trends transformation that, in the end, might and expected impacts of disruptive produce a polycentric world order. In recent years, black swans seem technologies, we turn to the core ques- Polycentrism means that actors to be everywhere. No wonder, then, tion of what happens when geopolitics traditionally never counted as import- that in the face of accumulating crises meets digital disruption. ant players in international relations and unexpected shocks, the debate have developed the capacity to about the state of global affairs has influence global relations in an un- been gaining momentum. Uncertainty Towards a Polycentric expected and over-proportional way. and unpredictability seem to prevail. World Order Power centers thereby multiply and Asymmetric security risks, conflicting add to the plethora of new risks and economic interests, growing social Ever since the end of the Cold War, challenges. Emerging economies form cleavages, and the unpredictable global power structures have encoun- the core of these new power brokers, effects of digitalization add up and tered major changes. In 1989, the while disruptors like North Korea, require new approaches to managing third breakdown of global order in the Iran, Saudi Arabia, and perhaps even global risks. twentieth century (after 1918 and 1945) countries like Venezuela and Qatar The current world order is falling did not lead to a major restructuring are further examples of this type of apart, and it is challenging political of global institutions. The combination newly influential actor. And, of course, and business leaders alike. This paper of democracy and market economy the traditional powerbrokers—former offers a perspective on the core drivers seemed to form the conceptual basis global or regional hegemons (such as of these developments. It argues that for economic and political success China, Russia, the US)—are still around the post-1989 world order is in an well into the twenty-first century. and unwilling to be replaced in their interstitial stage of transformation; Nearly three decades later, things power positions. it is characterized by the rise of new have turned out to be fundamentally The challenge lies exactly in this powers and the relative decline of different. Contrary to the high-flying polycentric structure of a global and established powers. Perhaps more hopes of 1989/90, about the beginning networked world. How do we manage importantly, these developments are of an era of Western supremacy after a global order that has a dozen or driven, inspired, and accelerated by the defeat of communism, the vulner- more regional power centers, all in two major trends in change: geopolit- ability of Western democracies has more or less open competition with ical ambitions and digital disruption. been continuously rising, leading to one another? By definition, structures That we must deal both of these trends insecurity, growing economic uncer- that are hegemonic, bipolar, or lim- against the background of accelerat- tainty, intensifying social unrest, and ited-multipolar are easier to control, ing complexity is clear. Though the a potential domestic destabilization in and can be kept more stable at lower solutions are less obvious, they will many countries hitherto regarded as costs than the almost incalculable be decisive factors in the future global unshakable. effects typical of polycentric struc- order that is still taking shape. Today, we realize that the world tures. Unpredictability is not only a Moreover, the developments aris- order we believed victorious in the characteristic of Donald Trump, it also ing at the crossroads of both of these Cold War has been subtly dissolving applies to the upcoming new world trends will be decisive for the future over the last two and half decades. This (dis-)order. Polycentrism is nothing performance of all political systems— process has reached a point where we to hope for; it is the problem, not the democracies and autocracies alike. must acknowledge that yesterday’s solution. FallFall 20172017 ·· thirty-onethirty-one · the berlinberlin journaljournal 69

These structural changes in global connectivity that are based on infra- of digital disruption in other parts of politics can only be understood prop- structure. It also entails markets, value politics and society. erly if the mutually enforcing effects of chains, strategic partnerships, and, two dominating trends of our time are not least, security aspects that stretch taken into account: developments that from the Chinese Pacific coast to the Digitalization and the reinforce each other at the crossroads European shores of the Atlantic. In Effects of Disruption of geopolitics and digital disruption. other words: OBOR is China’s geopolit- Where both trends intersect, they ical strategy to outmaneuver the US, “Digital disruption” has become one of create a jolt to traditional thinking the West, and any other competitor on the most favored catchphrases of our that will help create a new set-up of the country’s path to global leadership. times. Driven by exponential change, power and order in a networked world. China’s focus on the Eurasian nearly all aspects of human life will be Wherever they clash or collide, they landmass is just one indicator that, directly or indirectly affected by digital will change the face of global politics despite all aspects of globalization, developments that are at once easy deep into the twenty-first century. geography still matters and competing to describe but difficult to assess and geostrategic interests are core drivers understand. Most experts on digital of conflict. At the same time, the scope technologies agree that their impact Geopolitics and the of OBOR’s ambitions underlines the on human development will be as Transformation of Power need to understand new mechanisms decisive as the invention of language, of power. printing, or electricity. Geopolitical thinking was a defining Beyond the individual level, element of the containment policies “Comprehensive Power” policies that will be mostly and characteristic of the Cold War period. While many geopolitical debates fundamentally affected by digitalized Today, we have to face the conse- still refer to “power” as traditionally technologies run the spectrum of quences of new forms and levels of defined, the effects of digitalization human life: food production and competition between global powers, have a complementary effect: power nutrition (GMO), environmental protec- which are typical of intensified is morphing into a more complex set tion, energy production and storage, geopolitical competition. Here’s the of determinants. Though power and in- water supply, security, health, disaster most prominent example: While terests remain the major driving forces relief, communication, learning, and, President Trump declares his intention of nation states even in the twenty-­ last but not least, all aspects of global, to “make America great again,” his first century, power currencies—the national, and local governance. In all Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, has basic ingredients of the credibility and these fields, disruption will challenge proclaimed the same ambition for his exertion of power—have been under- existing structures of decision-mak- own country—calling it, more mildly going dramatic change. ing. Permanent upgrading, sharing, but certainly no less decidedly, the Power used to flow predominant- filtering, and interacting in a hitherto “Chinese Dream.” Both presidents ly from military capacities. Today, unprecedented way will fundamental- underline their respective ambitions other factors form the basis for global ly influence the functionality of tradi- to compete for global dominance. impact: economic performance, inno- tional political and social institutions. But whereas the American president vation capacities, financial stability, It is exactly here where new forms of prefers to concentrate on the “US market size and access, political and power and their digital drivers demon- alone,” seemingly negligent of major social stability, and digital-commu- strate their explosive impact. aspects of America’s global interests nication capacities. In order to grasp The debate about digital disrup- and ambitions, his Chinese counter- the geopolitical shifts of our time, the tion is driven by an extreme amount part does precisely the opposite. traditional understanding of power of semantic overlap and technological China’s Silk Road initiative—One has to be extended towards a notion of uncertainty. In Silicon Valley, repre- Belt, One Road (OBOR)—is a clear indi- “comprehensive power,” formerly not sentatives of tech companies pretend cator of these ambitions. Interestingly, regarded in a security or power per- to be able to change the world for the China seems to be concentrating spective. This argument is augmented better—if only the world was willing on a Eurasian, land-based strategy by the fact that communication is to listen. Tech optimists concentrate to balance the US dominance of the becoming an ever more important primarily on the potential positive oceans. But China also concentrates on part of political power—both in its effects, neglecting the negative cyber and space in order to improve domestic and global effects. What tra- consequences any technology might its asymmetric capacities of power ditionally used to be propaganda has lead to if misused by perpetrators of projection. At a closer examination, morphed into media control, hacker ill intent. The world is thus ever more OBOR is more than just a twenty-first attacks, and fake news. Indeed, com- skeptical about the loss of jobs due century version of the traditional Silk munication technologies are bridging to robotics, the loss of human control Road. Instead, it is a highly ambitious the gap between traditional power due to artificial intelligence, and the network of land and sea-based lines of arrangements and the growing effects loss of reliability due to the growing 70 the bberlinerlin jjournalournal · thirty-one ·· FaFallll 20172017

speed of complexity, not to mention in a sea of noise à la Nate Silver has For both democracies and autocra- risks like terrorism and cyber-attacks, become a mission for media consul- cies, the basic rule is simply this: only which take advantage of these new tants, think tanks, and intellectuals change provides stability and survival. technologies. Concerns over the dis- the world over. Individuals and leaders While democracies have been much rupting effects of data and algorithms alike seek increased orientation, and better than any other type of political are an integral part of the big hopes for spend a lot of money and energy on system to manage these challenges, a technologically improved future. the desperate attempt to forecast the there is no guarantee for the future. Of course, in the Schumpeterian future so that they might make the Caught between the Scylla of authori- sense, technological innovation could right decision in the present. While tarian competition and the Charybdis be a highly welcome instrument to thinking out of the box—via alter­ of popular dissatisfaction with the promote economic development. native expectations and strategies— output performance, democracies will Certainly, any technology today, as is a permanent necessity in times have to deliver convincing solutions in the past, has both strengths and of upheaval, accelerating complexity if they want to survive in a polycentric downsides. And it is exactly these turns the future into a permanent world. Many may not like the idea, downsides that are responsible for the present. Exponential developments but performance and efficiency will negative effects of rogue players, pro- transform possible events tomorrow be more important in the future than tectionists, populists, and nationalists into real risks and opportunities today. legitimacy, mass participation, and a who pretend to offer simple solutions A reversed strategy might make more rules-based decision-making system for highly complex problems and their sense: instead of desperately trying were in the past. effects. to forecast future risks, a more prom- Based on these considerations, Managing accelerating complexity ising strategy should be to train and four core challenges, explained below, thus becomes a preeminent task for strengthen present reaction-capacities, stand out as drivers of global change. political and economic actors around adaptability to unexpected devel- As they originate at the crossroads of the world. Both geopolitical and opments, and attempts to improve geopolitics and digital disruption, the technological changes are inspired sustainability and resilience. strategies to deal with them will be by speed. Reaction time to crises and In a world driven by accelerating decisive factors for the positioning of unforeseen events is practically zero, complexity at the crossroads of digital nation states, the survival of political adding to the strain of making the disruption and geopolitics, the core systems, and framing of the upcoming right decisions at the right time. That’s ingredients to maintaining social and world order. the big difference between the past political order are speed, resilience, and the present: unprecedented ac- and adaptability to exponential 1. Competition for the rules of the celeration caused by digitalization has change. Whether democracies are best game. The competition about rules become the primary factor for under- prepared to meet these challenges is of the game (starting with trade, but standing and managing global risks. one of the biggest challenges of our also affecting security, development, times. Few things are certain in this climate, etc.) is gaining relevance as a respect. As the strategic thinker and direct effect of the world order’s mor- In Need of Adaptive technologist Banning Garrett writes, phing towards polycentrism. China Capacities “The worlds of 2025 and 2035 are likely certainly is the first and foremost to be discontinuous with the present, candidate to challenge Western values The widespread belief that politicians especially as a result of new technol- and rules. But China is not alone: will be able to better foresee upcoming ogies such as artificial intelligence Russia, India, Brazil, and many others events with the help of digital tech- and robotics, which will be applied also want to have their share of global nologies, especially big data, is also to a huge variety of businesses and decision-making. And none of these an illusion. This is one of mankind’s other technologies as AI becomes a countries is automatically willing to oldest wishes: to foretell the future. utility and the world is wired up by accept the rules, values, and interests Most likely, it will come to pass. While the Internet of Things. These and other of the West (if the latter still exists at technologies may soon be able to pre- technologies will be hugely disruptive all). As one Brazilian diplomat put it, dict individual human behavior and throughout society, from the lives of “If you do not give us a seat at the de- derive successful marketing strategies, individuals to the fate of businesses, cision-making table, we will build our the same expectation does not neces- the restructuring of cities, and the own tables.” The process of alternative sarily apply to global developments. activities and organization of govern- institution building is in full swing. The Polycentrism does not permit for the ments.” ¹ Societies and governments Asia Infrastructure and Investment prevention of unpredictable shocks. seeking to respond effectively to these Bank (AIIB) is just one prominent It is understandable that fore- challenges will have to develop new example demonstrating how China sight exercises, scenario-building adaptive capacities to use the positive is challenging the supremacy of the workshops, and trend forecasting are and mitigate the negative effects of West by creating institutions in com- very much en vogue. Finding signals these developments. petition to Western-dominated IMF FallFall 20172017 ·· thirty-onethirty-one · the berlinberlin journaljournal 71

and World Bank. In the field of security will be a challenge for political sta- many observers and parts of the public cooperation, the Shanghai Cooperation bility and successful statecraft in all since the election of President Trump. Organization (SCO) demonstrates a types of political systems. Here, de- Against this backdrop, the Richard C. similar purpose. There is no guarantee mocracies still may have advantages, Holbrooke Forum brought together that Western rules and values will but those who offer simple solutions Stephen Hadley, former national securi- prevail in this competition. are actively challenging the very basis ty advisor to President George W. Bush, of (not only) Western values: racism, and Christoph Heusgen, chief foreign-­ 2. Understanding the importance of nationalism, ideologies, and, last but policy advisor to the German chancellor, value chains. A second challenge rarely not least, fundamentalist religions, are to discuss the challenges facing the mentioned in this context: the man- thus undermining the foundations of transatlantic partnership today. The agement of value chains, based on free a rules-based global order. following is an edited excerpt from their trade and open markets, will gain im- June 1 discussion at the American portance—despite President Trump— In sum, the world will have to live Academy, “National Security at Risk: and not only in an economic but also with unstable structures, increasing Order and Disorder in the Atlantic a geopolitical perspective. In this volatility, and likely also a further Space.” respect, China is rapidly moving into a decline of global, regional, and nation- leading position and again OBOR may al security. The answer to managing Christoph Heusgen: When you and I serve as the most striking example. these new global risks will not be worked together, back in 2005, during The ultimate goal of the Belt and Road found in a new grand strategy of the second Bush administration, when Initiative is the establishment of global whatever origin, but rather in the will- one talked to someone in the White value chains. This initiative attempts, ingness and ability of decision-makers House and then to someone else in the as Bruno Macaes writes, “to create a to pragmatically deal with risks as State Department, you would more set of political and institutional tools they arise. Pragmatism is perhaps the or less get the same response. It is with which China can start to reor- only answer to geopolitical upheaval my impression that the White House ganize global value chains and stamp and digital disruption. □ works differently now: what kind of its imprint on the rules governing answer you get depends on whom you the global economy.” ² And China—as talk to. Do you think this can work? initiator and promoter of the strategic How should we deal with it? concept—is uniquely positioned to 1 Banning Garrett, Technology’s Impact on Jobs. Manuscript, August 2016, 45. use OBOR in order to pursue its own Stephen Hadley: The Trump admin- interests. What we may see here are 2 Bruno Macaes, China’s Belt and Road: istration has been in power less than the first steps towards a transnational Destination Europe. Carnegie Europe, four and a half months. It came in as industrial policy. The competition for November 9, 2016. a political insurgency and a populist the best model of regional integration movement that believed most of the has already begun—without the EU policies over the last two decades were even realizing it has. a mistake, and that the elites in the country had betrayed the American 3. The need for continuous innovation. people. The current White House has On the micro-level, capacities of a variety of power centers: there’s the innovation will be the major driving Bannon faction, which is the keeper forces of global power. Based on a new Trump and of the commitments of the campaign. and comprehensive understanding There’s a chief-of-staff function; there’s of power, future great powers will the vice president; there’s the NSC; have to live up to the requisites of Transatlantic there’s the National Economic Council; innovation and technology. Access to and then there’s the family, Jared and innovative capacities will be a decisive Security Ivanka. Lots of different voices are factor for the positioning of nations, speaking to this president, and he likes while innovation cycles are becoming it; that’s clearly part of his manage- shorter and shorter, again challenging New challenges and old grievances have ment style. the adaptability of political systems put the transatlantic security partner- President Trump is pretty com- and their capacities to regulate (mostly ship under considerable strain in recent fortable firing people when things exponential) technological progress. years. Terrorist threats, hybrid warfare, aren’t working. He went through three cyber security, and traditional issues campaign teams. He’s going to throw 4. Seeking identity despite growing such as deterrence and territorial de- people out until he gets a group of complexity. Finally, providing orien­ fense dominate the agenda. At the same people that works for him. So, with tation in an ever more complex world, time, Atlanticism seems to have lost the transition for this new admin- based on identity, history, and culture much of its political self-evidence for istration, which usually takes six or 72 the bberlinerlin jjournalournal · thirty-one ·· FaFallll 20172017

Christoph Heusgen and Stephen Hadley. All photos: Ralph K. Penno

eight months, it is going to take a year to really refocus on the aspirations of presidents tried but could not achieve: before we really know how it is going the European Union? Recommit to it reforming the French economy, the to operate. and then really take it to the people of French labor market, the pension Europe and get them to recommit to system. So if Macron succeeds in Heusgen: But while they are testing it, too? The only politician in Europe putting Germany and France again at things out, what happens to transat- I know who could do that would be eye-level, I think that would make it lantic relations? Are they in danger? Angela Merkel, and she has a potential much easier to convince the Germans partner in Macron. to say, “OK, we are ready to deepen the Hadley: I read the speech President monetary union and have a European Trump gave at NATO in Brussels, which Heusgen: There are a few things we monetary government, or something everybody said did not reaffirm the have to do on Europe. One thing is the along those lines.” Article 5 commitment—that an attack bureaucracy of Brussels. The Brussels on one is an attack on all. Well, he institutions are doing a very good job Audience member: Let’s assume all the spoke at an event to celebrate Article at managing the European Union. The pundits are right, and leadership of 5, and NATO’s invocation of Article 5 problem is that the people in Brussels the West is turning from America to that was triggered after the 9/11 attack are sometimes totally detached from Germany. What chances of success do on the United States. So, the presi- reality in member states. you give them? dent’s appearance there, I would have We have to concentrate on the is- thought, was by itself an indication of sues people are most concerned about, Hadley: I think being president of the his support for Article 5. The fact that such as security at home. We have United States is one of the toughest he didn’t say it should not raise any to work so that the people in Europe jobs in the world, but being chan- doubts in anybody’s mind about this feel secure. Everyone believes that the cellor of Germany is right up there administration’s and the American Schengen Agreement, which keeps our with it. Chancellor Merkel will have people’s continued commitment to borders open, is fantastic, but to keep the challenge and opportunity to try NATO and to Article 5. them open we have to be sure that we and put the future of Europe on a But I will also say that I thought protect our external borders. This is a firm foundation. To ask her to also your chancellor got it right. She was project that everybody will agree to become the leader of the free world, committed to the transatlantic rela- do. on top of that, is not going to happen. tionship and to a good relationship Foreign and security policy is the It’s unfair to ask. I don’t think the with the United States, but that second issue where people also say, apparent American step-back is going Europe needs to do more and take “Yes, there’s an advantage if Europe to go to the point of abdication. I may more responsibility for its own future. works together.” This is the next be wrong, but I don’t think it will get I agree with that. I think you agree ­project we have to work on together, to the point where Angela Merkel has with that. Donald Trump would agree and the French are very open to it. to lead both Europe and the free world with that. The third is economic and mon- at the same time. My question to you, Christoph, etary union. We hope that President is this: could this be an opportunity Macron will be able to do what many Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 73

Audience member: I’m interested in Audience member: But isn’t the real order based on free markets, freedom, the supposed Russian strategy of problem that some of the new US and democracy. We did that, at enor- meddling in elections and supporting administration is thinking the same mous cost, for seven decades, and populist movements. How should ways Russians do, with its explicitly I would argue it brought a period of transatlantic partners deal with this? pro-Russia policies? Isn’t that echoed unprecedented peace and prosperity. in the “America first” slogan? That’s the conversation I would like Hadley: What would be a good day to have with President Trump and the for Vladimir Putin? He wakes up and Hadley: I don’t know what “America people around him. That’s what I am he learns that a fissure has opened up first” means, and I don’t think, quite worried is at risk. There are people between the United States and Europe. frankly, a lot of the people that use around President Trump who under- He shows that the Article 5 guarantee that phrase do either. Does it mean, stand that in their bones. But there of NATO is a paper tiger, and the EU “It’s going to be American first,” as are also some people around him who breaks up. Russia basically signs up in: I’m going to defend American reject it and who talk about disman- some sympathetic regimes in some interests? Well, what leading politician tling the international order. That’s of the central and eastern European doesn’t tell their people they’re going very worrisome. countries and, before you know it, to defend their country’s interests— That’s one of the reasons it is Russia has reestablished a sphere German interests or French interests? terribly important for European lead- of influence in Central and Eastern That’s what we all say and what we ers to come and talk with the admin- Europe. That would be a great day for all do. istration, President Trump, and people Vladimir Putin. I don’t think it will President Trump talks about at all levels. You know, these values happen. The United States and Europe values, but then he steps away from matter, and this international system together are taking steps to ensure standing up for freedom and democra- of rules, alliances, and institutions that it does not happen. cy on the grounds that we don’t want has kept the peace. One of the reasons Our counterparts in Russia now to impose on other people’s national we have disorder now is because that say Russia is an alternative to the decisions. That’s not the United States. system is fraying; it’s under attack West. Lavrov, as foreign minister, My worry is not the “America first” from the new authoritarians and from spoke about moving into a post-West- slogan; my worry is what Trump nar- transnational threats like ISIS. We need ern world. I think Putin really believes rowly considers American interests: to come together and create a revised he is the defender of conservative protecting America from attack, eco- and revitalized rules-based interna- orthodoxy in the face of a declining nomic growth, and creating American tional order. That’s the conversation I West. That means a more problem- jobs. Well, that is a very short-term think we need to be having with this atic Russia over the long term, and view of American interests. It’s not the new administration. □ managing Russia is going to be a huge view of its interests that America had challenge going forward. Neither the for the last 70 years, which was a more United States nor Europe is going to be long-term and more enlightened view: able to do that successfully on its own. working with our European allies to We’re going to have to do it together. maintain a rules-based international NOTEBOOK News from the Hans Arnhold Center

Remembering Anna-Maria Kellen (1918–2017) 76

The 2017 Henry A. Kissinger Prize 78

Al Gore at the American Academy 82

Kerry James Marshall at the American Academy 84

Welcoming New Trustees 86

Dedication of the Fellows Pavilion Studies 87

Profiles in Scholarship 89

Book Reviews by Norman Naimark, Paul Guyer, and Andrea Orzoff 91

Alumni Books 96

Supporters and Donors 97

Spring 2017 fellow and sound artist Thessia Machado in her Academy residence testing the electronics for her work telix, a composition for wall-mounted, photo- sensitive sound modules that are conducted by light patterns from a graphic score traveling on a mechanical apparatus. Photo courtesy the artist. 76 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

Photo: Annette Hornischer

benefactors. Throughout the as a member of the City of REMEMBERING years, they have provided New York’s Commission for support for the Academy’s Cultural Affairs from 1978 to ANNA-MARIA KELLEN programming, including fund- 1988, and was also a co-chair ing for Anna-Maria Kellen for the New York Mayor’s (1918–2017) Berlin Prize and upkeep of the Award for Arts and Culture villa’s grounds and gardens. from 1983 to 1988. A fellow n Sunday, April 9, to Paris and then to New York, Anna-Maria’s personal care of the Frick Museum, Kellen 2017, the American in 1939, where she was reunit- for the Academy was also also served as a member of O Academy in Berlin lost ed with her future husband, expressed in more subtle the Director’s Roundtable its founding benefactor and Stephen M. Kellen, whom ways, from her selection of of the Morgan Library, The primary source of inspiration, she had met and courted in the institution’s logo to her Circle of the National Gallery Anna-Maria Kellen, who died Wannsee, and who was now meticulous arrangement of of Art, the Chairman’s in New York City, at age 98. a banker in her father’s firm, centerpieces at Carnegie Council of the Lincoln Center Her enormous philanthropic Arnhold & S. Bleichroeder. The Hall fundraising dinners. Her for the Performing Arts, support of the American two married in New York City legacy of giving continues Metropolitan Opera, and Academy—housed in her in 1940. through her daughter, Marina L’Association des Amis des childhood home—has, from The American Academy Kellen French, and her son, Art Decoratifs, in Paris. In the outset, been a cornerstone was founded in 1994. The Michael M. Kellen, as well as Berlin, she was known for of this institution, its mission, Kellens became the driving through her grandson Andrew her financial support of the and its programming, and the force behind the transforma- Gundlach, and niece, Nina Berlin Zoo, the Französisches Academy mourns her passing. tion of Anna-Maria’s childhood von Maltzahn, all of them Gymnasium (her husband’s Anna-Maria Kellen is survived home into the Hans Arnhold Academy trustees. alma mater), and the Berlin by her two children, Marina Center. After being contacted Anna-Maria Kellen’s Philharmonic. For her decades Kellen French and Michael by former US Ambassador to support of the American of philanthropic leadership, M. Kellen; four grandchildren, Germany Richard Holbrooke Academy is but one example Kellen received a Spirit of Andrew Gundlach, Annabelle and Professor Fritz Stern, of her enormous civic and the City Award from the Garrett, Christopher Kellen, they immediately grasped cultural philanthropy: she Cathedral of St. John the and Caroline Kellen; and the importance of a lasting was the chairman of the Divine, the Distinguished eight great-grandchildren. American cultural and Third Street Music School Service Medal from The New Anna-Maria Kellen intellectual presence, as the Settlement, a regent of the School for Social Research, (née Arnhold) was born in last of the Berlin Brigade Cathedral of St. John the and the Chevalier de l’ordre Berlin in 1918. She attended departed the reunified capital. Divine, and an honorary trust- des Arts des Lettres by the the Mommsen Lycée and The Anna-Maria and Stephen ee of the Parsons School of French Republic. In 2009, she continued her studies at the Kellen Foundation donated Design and The Metropolitan received the Verdienstorden University of Lausanne, École the founding gift of $3 million Museum of Art. She was des Landes Berlin, from de Louvre, and Sorbonne. to refurbish the Wannsee on the Cancer Research then-governing mayor Klaus Nazi Germany forced her and villa, and they would remain Institute board of trustees Wowereit. □ her family to flee in 1933, first the Academy’s primary from 1962 to 2009, served Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 77

Richard von Weizsäcker and Anna-Maria Kellen, 2006. Photo: Annette Hornischer

Anna-Maria Kellen, Sir Simon Rattle, Marina Kellen-French, John French, Carnegie Hall, 2006. Photo: Michael Dames

Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen at the Rotes Rathaus, Berlin, 2002. Photo: Mike Minehan

Anna-Maria Kellen at the American Academy, 2006. Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen at the dedication Photo: Annette Hornischer of the Hans Arnhold Center, 1998. Photo: Joachim Schulz

THE AMERICAN ACADEMY Chancellor Helmut Kohl Kurt Viermetz IN BERLIN MOURNS THE 1930–2017 1939–2016 PASSING OF DEAR FRIENDS AND SUPPORTERS 78 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

Wolfgang Schäuble and Henry A. Kissinger Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 79

THE 2017 HENRY A. KISSINGER PRIZE

Honoring Wolfgang Schäuble

n the evening of June 20, responsibilities in Germany and in 2017, the trustees of Europe,” Schäuble said, “not only O the American Academy for our own future, but because awarded the 2017 Henry A. the stability of a globalized Kissinger Prize to Germany’s world is a precondition for the federal minister of finance, success of any nation state and Wolfgang Schäuble. The prize, any continent.” His speech un- awarded annually to a renowned derscored the importance of the figure in the field of international transatlantic relationship and the diplomacy, recognized Schäuble efforts necessary to galvanize the for his decisive role in fostering values of liberal democracy: “We transatlantic dialogue, shaping an should continue, even in difficult increasingly integrated Europe, times,” Schäuble said, “to stand and effectively responding to together, to know we have these Academy chairman Gahl Hodges Burt today’s global challenges. It also common values. Who else stands honored Schäuble’s four decades for human rights, the rule of law, of political engagement, which separation of powers, represen- has significantly shaped German tative democracy, social stability, reunification, advanced the and environmental sustainability? European idea, and promoted the The West is inconceivable without European-American partnership. these values and principles. These “As a national leader for three values connect us together, of this decades,” Henry Kissinger said I am sure. If you look all around in his remarks, “Wolfgang has the world, why are dictators so contributed wisdom, perspective, nervous when they are confront- and decisiveness to his country, ed with some wind of change? to his continent, and the world. Because they know that Western He has done that with a personal values enjoy high attractiveness warmth his reserved nature tries all over the world. Therefore, we to obscure but never succeeds in need to stick to our values a little obscuring.” Former US treasury bit more. [. . .] I have to underline secretary Lawrence H. Summers that it is only by taking a mul- delivered the evening’s laudation, tilateral approach that we have remarking that he was “optimistic any chance of solving the major that with the kind of indomitable problems in the world.” □ spirit that Wolfgang brings to everything he does, that the The 2017 Henry A. challenges of this moment will Kissinger Prize was be met. [. . .] His enduring values generously supported by and character are an inspiration to us all.” Bloomberg Philanthropies, Minister Schäuble delivered a Robert Bosch GmbH, stirring acceptance speech before Ceberus Deutschland the audience of 350 distiguished Beteiligungsberatung guests, which began with a Euro­ GmbH, and BMW Group. pean refrain heard often during the run-up to the G20 meeting in Hamburg: “I think it’s really Lawrence H. Summers

All photos: Annette Hornischer Annette All photos: important that we know our 80 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

Nicola Bruning, Richard Gaul, Josef Joffe Maggie Bult and Jan Techau

John C. Kornblum, Christian Schmidt, C. Boyden Gray Martin Indyk and Wolfgang Malchow Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 81

Wolfgang Schäuble and Henry A. Kissinger

Lawrence H. Summers and Wolfgang Schäuble Henry A. Kissinger, Katharina Galor, Michael Steinberg All photos: Annette Hornischer Annette All photos: 82 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

AL GORE AT THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

n the evening of August 7, the American Academy in Berlin hosted O a reception and dinner for former-US vice president Al Gore, who was in Berlin for the European premiere of his film An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. The film was screened for 800 guests at Zoo Palast the following night, followed by a panel discussion, moderated by Dirk Steffens of ZDF, with Mr. Gore, Academy co-secretary John C. Kornblum; actor Hannes Jaenicke; head of the World Wildlife Fund Germany, Eberhard Brandes; and Barabara Hendricks, Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety. The screening and discussion were organized by Paramount Germany, in part- nership with the environmental ministry, WWF Germany, and the American Academy. The private dinner at the Academy on August 7—highlighted by a screening of the film’s trailer and a discussion of pressing environmental issues—included, among a dozen additional guests, trustees John Kornblum, Nina von Maltzahn, Volker Schlöndorff, and Christine Wallich; Sandra Breka of the Berlin office of the Bosch Foundation; founder of Plant-for-the-Planet, Felix Finkbeiner; former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer; co-managing di- rectors of Paramount Germany, Tobias Riehl and Florian Ritter; David Mike Reinert from the US Embassy; Rita Schwarzelühr-Sutter and Jochen Flasbarth, from the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety; and Konstantin Mettenheimer, whose generosity helped to make the evening possible. It was especially meaningful for the American Academy to host Mr. Gore at the Hans Arnhold Center: not only did he screen his 2006 environmental documen- tary, An Inconvenient Truth, at the Academy, a day before the official German premiere; as vice president of the United States, he announced the founding of the American Academy in Berlin, on September 9, 1994, via satellite from Washington, DC, at the conclusion of the New Traditions Lothar and Nina von Maltzahn, Volker Schlöndorff, Al Gore, John C. Kornblum

Conference. □ K. Ralph Penno All photos: Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 83

Felix Finkbeiner and Al Gore

Al Gore, Hannes Jaenicke, and Volker Schlöndorff 84 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017 , 2015. Acrylic panel, 152.4 × 152.4 cm. , 2015. on PVC Collection. Private Painter) (Toe Untitled Kerry James Kerry Marshall, London the artist and David Zwirner, Courtesy

KERRY JAMES MARSHALL auction, with the support of Beckmann’s granddaughter AT THE AMERICAN ACADEMY Mayen Beckmann; artworks were generously donated by eminent American, British, rom April 21 to May 1, Marshall, whose cele- visit and gave a talk at the and German artists, among 2017, the American brated retrospective MASTRY Universität der Künste, and, them Richard Artschwager, F Academy in Berlin had travelled from The Met on April 28, he sat down Tacita Dean, Thomas Demand, hosted Chicago-based artist to LACMA by late April, led a at the the auction house Jenny Holzer, Alex Katz and Kerry James Marshall as the master class at the American Grisebach with Chris Dercon, Julie Mehretu. inaugural Max Beckmann Academy on April 21, with art the new artistic director of On the occasion of Distinguished Visitor. In the students from Bard College the Volksbühne, for a public Marshall’s inaugural visit— spirit of Max Beckmann, who Berlin, Freie Universität, and discussion about his body of which resulted in extensive spent the final years of his life Universität der Künste; on work and contemporary art coverage in the German teaching in the United States, April 26, he delivered a lecture in America. media—Grisebach exhibited the visitorship was conceived to a private audience at the Grisebach was a major two of the artist’s recent to bring to Berlin eminent Academy that included the force in making the Max works—Untitled (The Toe visual artists from the US for visitorship’s key donors and Beckmann Distinguished Painter) and Untitled (Pink sustained interaction with organizers, followed by a Visitorship a reality. On Towel)—generously loaned students, the art world, and dinner in Marshall’s honor. November 30, 2012, they to the American Academy by the general public. On April 27, he made a studio hosted a fundraising gallerist David Zwirner. □ Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 85

Kerry James Marshall with art students and professors from Bard College Berlin, Freie Universität, and Universität der Kunste

Angela Choon, Mary Ellen von Schacky-Schultz, and Mayen Beckmann Kerry James Marshall speaking to the audience at Grisebach All photos: Annette Hornischer Annette All photos:

Autumn Auctions

in Berlin 29 November – 2 December 2017

Fasanenstraße 25, 10719 Berlin grisebach.com Max Beckmann. “Braunes Meer mit Möwen”. 1941. Oil on canvas. 55.5 × 95 cm. Göpel 566. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017. Estimate EUR 1,200,000–1,500,000 86 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

Members of the board of trustees at the spring 2017 meeting. Photo: Annette Hornischer

Practice (2011) with Professor WELCOMING Liu Manhong of Renmin University of China (2011). In NEW TRUSTEES 2016, Levensohn joined the advisory board to the rector of the University of Applied t the fall 2016 and the portfolio manager of an University College of Sciences Salzburg, where spring 2017 board offshore US equities fund and Physicians and Surgeons. he is also a guest lecturer A meetings, the trustees later served as director of Pascal Levensohn is on entrepreneurship. A life of the American Academy research, sales, and trading. the founder and managing member of the Council on in Berlin elected four new In 1987, Kellen co-founded the partner of Levensohn Venture Foreign Relations, Levensohn members: Michael M. First Eagle Fund of America, Partners LLC and the CEO of is a former co-chairman of the Kellen, Pascal Levensohn, a US registered mutual Generation Strategic Advisors Socrates Society Forum of the Nader Mousavizadeh, and fund, which he managed LLC, where, since 1996, he Aspen Institute (2007–2009) Andrew Wylie. until 1991. In addition to has advised a select group and a former chairman of Michael M. Kellen is his current supervisory role of multi-generational fam- the San Francisco Jewish the son of Anna-Maria and in the conduct of the asset ily organizations on direct Community Federation’s Stephen Kellen, the founding management business, he technology investments and Business Leadership Council benefactors of the American also manages the Kellen philanthropy. Levensohn (2007–2008). Academy in Berlin. He is Family Office and its invest- was elected to the board of Nader Mousavizadeh currently the director of First ments. He is also president the National Venture Capital is co-founder and co-CEO Eagle Holdings, Inc., and of the Anna-Maria and Association (NVCA) from of Macro Advisory Partners. vice chairman of its subsid- Stephen Kellen Foundation 2007–2011. He is also a faculty He has spent the past twenty iary First Eagle Investment and the Denise and Michael member and mentor of the years working in leadership Management LLC. Prior, until Kellen Foundation, a trustee Kauffman Fellows (2006– positions in global insti- January 1, 2016, Kellen served of the Cancer Research present), where he teaches tutions at the intersection as co-president and co-chief Institute, a member of the best practices for VC-backed of geopolitics, policy, and executive officer of Arnhold board of overseers of Weill company board members. markets. From 2010 to 2013, and S. Bleichroeder Holdings, Cornell Medical College, and He is the co-author of the Mousavizadeh was chief Inc. (as of April 15, 2016, First a member of the board of first Chinese college textbook executive of Oxford Analytica, Eagle Holdings, Inc.). He advisors of the Department of on venture capital: a leading global analysis 投 学 joined the firm in 1978 as Ophthalmology at Columbia Venture Capital: Theory and and advisory firm. Prior, he Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 87

was an investment banker 1997–2003. Mousavizadeh co-chaired the Richard C. literary agents and the pres- at Goldman Sachs, in the has published articles and Holbrooke Forum workshop ident of the Wylie Agency, Financial Institutions group essays in the Financial Times, “The Global Migration Crisis,” which he founded, in 1980, in New York and in the exec- New York Times, Times of with Harold Koh and Michael in New York City. The Wylie utive office in London. Before London, and Foreign Policy, Ignatieff, and he is a member Agency, which has had a entering the private sector, he and writes a regular column, of the Geopolitical Risk London branch since 1996, served at the United Nations, “Compass,” for Reuters. In Council of the World Eco­ represents nearly one thou- first as a political officer in 2012, he authored, with Kofi nomic Forum, which elected sand writers, statesmen, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1996, Annan, Interventions: A Life him as a Global Leader for estates, and advises com- and, subsequently, in the ex- in War and Peace, and is the Tomorrow. panies internationally. A list ecutive office of UN Secretary- editor of the Black Book of Andrew Wylie is one of of clients is available at General Kofi Annan, from Bosnia (1996). Mousavizadeh the world’s most influential www.wylieagency.com. □

Walter Benjamin (A. Michael DEDICATION OF THE Hoffman), and Hannah Arendt (C. Boyden Gray); a FELLOWS PAVILION STUDIES politician: Helmut Kohl (Kurt Viermetz); a former president ollowing the spring extends a special thanks to work of art and learning that of the American Academy: 2017 board meeting, on trustee Regine Leibinger and takes place inside.” Guests Gerhard Casper (C. Boyden F May 16, the Academy’s Frank Barkow for their invalu- were then invited to tour Gray), and the Academy’s trustees and spring 2017 able support and professional the studies, each of them— founding executive director: fellows convened at the expertise. thanks to the generosity of Gary Smith (Manfred Bischoff, lakeside Fellows Pavilion for At the ceremony, Regine their funders, below in paren- Stephen B. and Ellen C. an early-evening unveiling of Leibinger and Academy theses—dedicated to an array Burbank, Gahl Hodges Burt, its seven named studies. The chair­man Gahl Burt addressed of figures important to the Hans-Michael & Almut Giesen, pavilion, designed by archi- guests and recited from a Academy, two of whom were Dirk and Marlene Ippen, John tecture firm Barkow Leibinger, letter from spring 2017 fellow present, Gerhard Casper and C. Kornblum, Kati Marton, based in Berlin and New York, Harry Liebersohn—a Uni­ Gary Smith. Volker Schlöndorff, and Peter was made possible by the versity of Urbana-Champaign The studies were Y. Solmssen). Thanks to these Ellen Maria Gorrissen Stiftung, cultural historian and one named after four German donors and to the pavilion’s the descendants of Hans of the many fellows who has writers and philosophers: generous funders, fellows and Ludmilla Arnhold, and been able to enjoy a pavilion Harry Graf Kessler (Sal. have a quiet space by Lake fourteen additional benefac- office space—who wrote that Oppenheim-Stiftung), Erich Wannsee for independent tors. The American Academy the building “enhances the Kästner (Henry Arnhold), scholarship. □

Architect and trustee Regine Leibinger speaks to the board and fellows about the Fellows Pavilion. Photo: Annette Hornischer 88 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

Gahl Hodges Burt and Gerhard Casper Molly Antopol, Hans-Michael Giesen, and Stephanie Harrell

Mark Pottinger and Almut Giesen

Nina von Maltzahn All photos: Annette Hornischer Annette All photos:

GET SMART n 2017–18 the American archives. Since 2012, Daimler’s Academy’s library service support has contributed to I and Daimler go bold: since the success of many research August 2017, a vibrant red projects pursued at the smart forfour has provided American Academy, which is a means of transport for the grateful for this meaningful library team to retrieve books commitment. Look out for and documents for Academy the Academy’s smart heading fellows from Berlin’s prodi- to libraries and archives

Photo: Sophie Maaß Photo: gious network of libraries and throughout Berlin. □ Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 89

DIRK IPPEN FELLOW PROFILES IN SCHOLARSHIP Kristen Monroe (Spring 2018) Chancellor’s Professor of Political Science, University of California, Irvine ANNA-MARIA KELLEN following Stalin’s rise to pow- Since Plato, Gaonkar argues, Monroe asks how Germany’s FELLOWS er. She argues that, despite Western discourse has har- twentieth-century experience Peter Schmelz (Fall 2017) the stringencies of “totalitar- bored a deep anxiety about can help illuminate the warn- Associate Professor of Musicol­ ian art,” they succeeded in collective political agency— ing signs for democracies ogy, Arizona State University radically expanding pictorial the demos. His Academy under stress, and how people Schmelz is studying the roles means with their ideals of project charts the trajectory can learn about democratic of non-state networks in movement and mobility, of persistent anti-democratic threats and respond positively cultural exchanges of music including across national and thought about political to them. Based in part on in- across the Iron Curtain during ideological borders. crowds in the West, while terviews with German-Jewish the Cold War. He reveals how also exploring the extent to exiles from Hitler’s Europe, various cultural figures—in- Christian Ostermann which non-Western thinkers, her project explores the cluding Russian pianist Maria (Spring 2018) including intellectuals in importance of the narratives Yudina, Ukrainian conductor Director, History and Public the global South, have been people construct to both help Igor Blazhkov, and West Policy Program; Woodrow drawn to these long-held them understand politically German musicologists Detlef Wilson Center suspicions. traumatic experiences, and Gojowy and Fred Prieberg— Ostermann is working on compose a meaningful life worked within and around a biography of Markus Wolf Josh Kun (Spring 2018) after political trauma. the systems of their respec- (1923–2006), the longtime Professor of Communication tive countries to advance their foreign intelligence chief and American Studies and ELLEN MARIA GORRISSEN own political and aesthetic of the German Democratic Ethnicity, University of FELLOWS agendas. Republic. Based on newly Southern California A. L. Steiner (Fall 2017) available sources, the biog- From the US-Mexico border­ Multimedia Artist, Los Angeles Kira Thurman (Fall 2017) raphy will provide a unique lands to contemporary and Brooklyn Assistant Professor of History prism to explore important Europe, Kun’s project explores A self-described “skeptical and Germanic Languages facets of German and inter­ what he calls “the migrant queer eco-feminist andro- and Literatures, University of national history in the second sound”—the impact of gyne,” A.L. Steiner is working Michigan half of the twentieth century: displacement, relocation, on the first monograph of Thurman’s project traces the German-Russian relations, deportation, and immigration her body of work, which history of black classical mu- the Cold War in Europe and on the aesthetics, communi- ranges from collaged digital sicians in Central Europe from the global South, and the cation networks, and formal photographs to installation, the 1870s to the 1960s, includ- development of the GDR. and informal industries and videos, and performances. ing the Afro-Cuban Jimenez markets of contemporary To produce the monograph, Trio playing Mendelssohn in BERTHOLD LEIBINGER global music practices. What, Steiner—who ethically 1870s Leipzig; Afro-Caribbean FELLOW he asks, has been the impact objects to the systems and Rudolph Dunbar conducting Nancy Foner (Fall 2017) of an estimated one billion resources of the traditional the Berlin Philharmonic’s Distinguished Professor of migrants on the way music publishing industry—will first post-WWII concerts; and Sociology, Hunter College is made? How is immigration use digital print-on-demand African-American soprano and Graduate Center, City to Berlin shaping the city’s systems and biodegradable, Grace Bumbry, who, in 1961, University of New York cultures of music? post-consumer supply-chain became the first black singer Foner examines how materials. at the Bayreuth Festival. post-1965 immigration has DAIMLER FELLOW Thurman argues that the pres- reshaped the demographic Jacqueline Ross (Fall 2017) Ran Ortner (Spring 2018) ence of black musicians per- contours and social life of Professor of Law, University of Artist, Brooklyn, New York forming the works of “great the United States. Though Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Ortner is taken by our pri- German masters” complicated focused on contemporary Ross compares how the mordial underpinnings—the audiences’ understandings life, her project is infused United States, Germany, Italy, fundamental, the elemental, of national identity—and who with a historical sensibility and France conceptualize and the traces of time, the rever- had the right to express it. for how changes generated execute covert policing oper- berating insistence of life. His by past immigration help to ations. Drawing on 300 inter- work finds physical forms of AXEL SPRINGER FELLOWS explain transformations in views with law-enforcement these preoccupations in the Aglaya Glebova (Fall 2017) the US ­today. officials conducted since 2001, oceanic and its infinite repre- Assistant Professor of Art History her project focuses on investi- sentations. Ortner will work and Film and Media Studies, BOSCH FELLOWS IN PUBLIC gations into organized-crime on large paintings on the back University of California, Irvine POLICY rings and emerging areas of of coarse rugs, and sculptures Glebova examines five iconic Dilip Gaonkar (Fall 2017) undercover policing: sting made of base materials, in- yet little-studied projects com- Professor of Rhetoric and operations against suspected cluding steel, glass, and sand. pleted by Soviet avant-garde Public Culture; Director, terrorists, cyber-infiltration, artists—El Lissitzky, Vladimir Center for Global Culture and and the use of undercover Tatlin, Vera Mukhina, and Communication, Northwestern tactics against human traf- Boris Ender—in the years University ficking. 90 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

HOLTZBRINCK FELLOWS JOHN P. BIRKELUND FELLOWS war hurtles to a brutal conclu- crisis by tracing the genealogy Özge Samanci (Fall 2017) IN THE HUMANITIES sion, the lessons of her history of the outsized role played Assistant Professor, School of Barbara Nagel (Spring 2018) move her to a questionable in that emergency by small Communication, Department Assistant Professor of German, act of political theatre. islands that politically belong of Radio, TV, and Film, Princeton University to Europe but that geograph- Northwestern University Nagel takes up the study of Carole Maso (Spring 2018) ically hug the coasts of North Samanci is working on a new affect in order to develop a Writer; Professor of Literary Africa and Turkey. graphic novel, “Not Here but historically nuanced, formal- Arts, Brown University Everywhere,” which sees two ist argument about German Maso is working on a SIEMENS FELLOW characters develop in parallel: emotions. Through the prism novel-in-progress called Ussama S. Makdisi on the odd pages of the book, of realist and modernist writ- “The Bay of Angels,” which (Spring 2018) it tells the story of Helen, a ers such as Adalbert Stifter, incorporates a myriad of Professor of History and 40-year-old American pro- Theodor Fontane, Robert forms: fiction, essay, memoir, Arab-American Educational fessor of art history currently Walser, and Franz Kafka, she poetry, and graphics (draw- Foundation Chair of Arab teaching in Istanbul. On the seeks to understand German ings, photographs, maps). It Studies, Rice University even pages, it tells the story realism as a literary phe- is an encyclopaedic project, Makdisi disputes two narra- of Deniz, a 25-year-old Turkish nomenon and as part of the traversing time and space and tives about tolerance in the graduate student in bio- cultural history of social utilizing a variety of genres modern Middle East: the first chemistry at a small college sublimation in nineteenth-­ and strategies to create idealizes harmony between in Athens, Ohio. With each century Europe. resonant and overlapping Muslims and non-Muslims; turn of the page, the charac- narrative fields. the second stresses a conti- ters’ stories progress, in two Paul Reitter (Spring 2018) nuity of sectarian strife be- different cities, side-by-side, Professor of German, Director NINA MARIA GORRISSEN tween allegedly antagonistic each in relation to the other. of the Humanities Institute, FELLOWS OF HISTORY religious­ communities. By The Ohio State University Andrew Hicks (Spring 2018) historicizing both, Makdisi Thomas Chatterton Williams Humboldt Universität’s Assistant Professor of Music provides historical perspec- (Fall 2017) archives provide Reitter’s and Medieval Studies, tive on the contemporary sec- Writer, Washington, DC project the material to exam- Cornell University tarian tragedy—including in A frequent contributor to ine interactions between the Hicks’s Academy project war-torn Syria, Lebanon, and major American publications, humanities and bureaucratic seeks to reframe the history Iraq—uncovering a complex Williams explores what it rationalization, seculariza- of medieval Persian musical but now obscured culture of means to be a black man of tion, and democratization in culture through a focus on social coexistence in a region mixed-race heritage with a nineteenth-century Germany. the technical vocabulary, rich in religious diversity. white-looking toddler daugh- From a set of specific histori- poetic imagery, artistic visu- ter. In Berlin, he will continue cal reconstructions detailing alizations, and philosophical work on a personal narrative the ways in which German metaphors of music and Fall 2017 Distinguished Visitors that will offer a powerful administrative and academic musical experiences in medi- and Guest Lecturers argument against the way orders helped or hindered one eval Persian literary traditions. race is defined in the United another, Reitter aims to better It spans the period from the JOHN W. KLUGE States. understand contemporary disintegration of the Samanid DISTINGUISHED VISITOR crises of the humanities in Empire, at the end of the Roger Cohen INGA MAREN OTTO FELLOW American universities. tenth century, to the rise of Author and Op-Ed Columnist, IN MUSIC COMPOSITION the Timurids, near the end of New York Times Raven Chacon (Spring 2018) MARY ELLEN VON DER the fourteenth century. Composer, Performer, HEYDEN FELLOWS IN FICTION KURT VIERMETZ and Installation Artist, V. V. Ganeshananthan Amy Remensnyder DISTINGUISHED VISITOR Albuquerque, New Mexico (Fall 2017) (Spring 2018) Nicholas Eberstadt Navajo Nation composer Writer; Assistant Professor Professor of History, Royce Henry Wendt Chair in Political and music educator Raven of English, University of Family Professor of Teaching Economy, American Enterprise Chacon will begin the work of Minnesota Excellence, Brown University Institute composing a series of collab- Ganeshananthan is working Remensnyder is writing orative works for Indigenous on her second novel, Move­ a microhistory of the tiny RICHARD VON WEIZSÄCKER woman musicians. His work ment, which draws on a Mediterranean island of DISTINGUISHED VISITOR during the residency will also decade of research on the Sri Lampedusa to explain how, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak include writings on the role Lankan civil war, as well as over the centuries, it became University Professor, of sound at the Standing Rock her experience as a member a space of Muslim–Christian Columbia University camp and other recent and of the Sri Lankan Tamil cooperation and trust. Relying current protest demonstra- diaspora. The novel tracks upon a wealth of primary Visiting Artist tions. In addition to this work, its protagonist, Sashi, from sources—sailors’ logs, porto- Saleem Ashkar Chacon will also be develop- her time as a young medic lan charts and maps, chroni- Pianist ing new sound installations in northern Sri Lanka in the cles, epic poetry, and consular and performance systems. late 1980s to her career as an correspondence—the project Writer-in-Residence emergency room doctor in offers deep historical perspec- Kati Marton New York City in 2009. As the tive on the current refugee Author and Journalist Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 91

BOOK REVIEWS

her many years living in and writing timing of the attack on the Ukrainian about Eastern Europe have sharpened national elite, the arrest, deportation, her sensitivities to what is important and shooting of Ukrainian writers, in the history of Soviet-Ukrainian politicians, and educational figures relations. All of these elements have (some 200,000 altogether), which combined to produce an exceptionally took place concomitantly with the readable book that evidences mas- Holodomor, in 1932–33, was not coinci- tery of the recently published rich dental. It reflected rather a concerted Ukrainian historical literature and effort on the part of Stalin and his document collections. cronies to curtail what they felt were Applebaum’s tack in understand- dangerous trends towards Ukrainian ing the Holodomor is to follow two independence that had emerged interrelated, sometimes indistinct initially during the civil war but that stories that dominate relations had, in their view, accelerated during between Moscow and Ukraine in the the period of collectivization. post-revolutionary period. One is the The second story Applebaum development of Ukrainian national explores is Moscow’s war against the consciousness after 1917 Revolution peasants of the Soviet Union, especial- and the civil war that ensued. The ly against Ukrainian peasants. From shift in Soviet policies towards “in- the communists’ point of view, during RED FAMINE: STALIN’S digenization”—in the case of Ukraine, the civil war, the Ukrainian peasantry WAR ON UKRAINE Ukrainianization—after the fierce aligned with a variety of “count- fighting during the civil war was er-revolutionary” forces. Villages were BY ANNE APPLEBAUM viewed by Moscow as a way to gain subjected to the Ukrainian variety Ukrainian loyalty to the Soviet cause. of “war communism,” which meant Doubleday The promotion of Ukrainian language, forced requisition of their grain by September 2017, 464 pages culture, and history in the mid- and “committees of the poor” (komnizamy A review by Norman Naimark late 1920s was meant to bring Ukraine in Ukrainian, kombedy in Russian). into conformance with Moscow’s Violence in the Ukrainian countryside, With the publication of Red policies while allowing Ukraine the indeed throughout the Soviet Union, Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine, chance to proceed to modernize, was fierce and unremitting; the les- Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, journal- guided by a Ukrainian Communist sons that the Bolsheviks—above all, ist, and historian Anne Applebaum has Party that represented its people and Stalin—drew from peasant rebellions inaugurated a new stage in the his- their road to socialism. was the need to crush, once and for toriography of the 1932–33 Ukrainian When Stalin seized control of all, the peasants’ ability to resist. Only famine, known as the Holodomor— the Soviet political machine and this would ensure the future of the literally “the hunger-­extermination.” inaugurated the “Second Revolution” proletarian state. Her elaborately documented, compre- (collectivization and the First Five-Year In 1928, the forced-collectivization hensive history has benefited from Plan), in 1928, and when his plans ran campaign was meant to safeguard Ukrainian and Russian archives on into obstacles in Ukraine and else- the productivity of agriculture, based the subject, which since 1991 have where, Ukrainianization was perceived on more efficient, large collective been accessible, for the most part, as a threat to Moscow’s goals. Stalin, farms and machine tractor stations, to Ukrainian and Western scholars, as was his wont, launched an attack where peasants could share the and from Harvard’s resource-rich on his alleged Ukrainian opponents: benefits of technology. But it was also Ukrainian Research Institute. Like Ukrainian political and cultural leaders based on the desire to destroy the Robert Conquest’s 1986 masterpiece were removed from office; Ukrainian kulaks (in Ukrainian, kurkuli), who Harvest of Sorrow, which set the stan- cultural institutions were closed the Bolsheviks claimed were the dard for understanding the Holodomor, down; and even the newly formulated ringleaders of peasant resistance, and Applebaum’s study is written in seem- Ukrainian alphabet was banned from to transform the peasantry itself into ingly effortless, accessible prose, and use. Applebaum makes clear that the controllable agricultural workers on 92 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

Soviet collective farms. Applebaum Penza district of Russia were also hit demonstrates that the resistance to hard by mass starvation. But only collectivization was notably more in Ukraine did the requisition quotas widespread and intense in Ukraine rise when the incidence of sickness, than in other parts of the Soviet Union. death, cannibalism, and necrophagy Part sincere, part feigning, Stalin also became more evident. Death rates expressed worries to his comrades in Ukraine were higher; Moscow’s that the Ukrainian uprisings in the indifference to, indeed resentment of, countryside would attract Polish re- Ukrainian peasant suffering was more vanchist intervention. “We could lose pronounced. One reads Applebaum’s Ukraine,” Stalin wrote to his deputy for moving account of the famine and suf- Ukrainian affairs, Lazar Kaganovich, fering with deep sadness and a feeling in August 1932. The result, then, in of historical mourning. There was no Applebaum’s narrative, was a fierce, need for four million Ukrainians to bloody, and brutish attack on the perish in that dreadful way. She writes, Ukrainian peasants, sometimes by ex- “The history of the famine is a tragedy ternal forces, sometimes by Ukrainian with no happy ending.” brigades of Komsomol, policemen, and Applebaum leaves the “genocide local ne’er-do-wells, which resulted in question” to the book’s epilogue. Was the peasants’ collectivization and the the Holodomor an act of genocide? is a ideological and physical “elimination question she calls “wearyingly con- of the kulaks as a class.” troversial,” especially in the Russian I, ME, MINE: BACK TO By early 1932, collectivization had and Ukrainian context. She does not KANT, AND BACK AGAIN wreaked havoc in the countryside, believe that an answer to the question BY BÉATRICE disrupting regular agricultural cycles is important to the historical under- LONGUENESSE and destroying well-established standing of the Holodomor. At the methods of planting, harvesting, and same time, she makes apparent that Oxford University Press distribution. In the face of brutally she does think the Holodomor and the January 2017, 257 pages forced requisitions of their grain and events surrounding it were a targeted property, the peasants sometimes attack by Stalin on the Ukrainians and A review resisted by denying the state their their national existence. In this sense, by Paul Guyer meager belongings: slaughtering their she does agree that the 1932–33 famine own animals, burning their own grain, was genocide. And, in any case, the In the Philosophical Investigations, and destroying their own homes, all “facts” of the Holodomor are becoming §89, Ludwig Wittgenstein quotes St. while trying to flee the villages to find more widely accepted: “That the fam- Augustine: “What is time? If no one relief. The horrific famine of 1932–33 ine happened, that it was deliberate, asks me what it is, I know; but if I am throughout the Soviet Union was the and that it was part of a political plan asked to explain it, I do not know.” result. to undermine Ukrainian identity.” (Confessions, XI.14) The idea is that we The two crucial questions in It goes without saying that the can use a concept perfectly well—for connection with the Holodomor are: Ukrainian translation of Red Famine example, tell time—without being 1) Was the famine in Ukraine worse will be of the utmost importance for able to give a perspicuous account of than in the rest of the Soviet Union? the development of the Ukrainians’ it, but that the task of philosophy is to 2) Did Stalin and the Kremlin leader- ongoing attempts to absorb the provide the latter. The same might be ship intentionally target Ukraine for lessons of these terrible events into said about the concepts of the self and harsher treatment than other parts of their sense of national purpose. But, of self-consciousness: we refer to our- the Soviet Union? Applebaum engages as Applebaum rightly insists, the selves all the time, but that does not these questions patiently and system- Holodomor was not about Russians mean we have a perspicuous account atically, and answers both in the affir- versus Ukrainians; it was about the of what the self is and what it is to be mative. In November and December perfidy of the Stalinist Soviet state conscious of oneself. So the nature 1932, Stalin, she writes, “twisted the and its resentment of and inability of self-consciousness is a puzzle for knife further in Ukraine, deliberately to accept Ukrainian distinctiveness. philosophers. creating a deeper crisis,” launching Applebaum did the besieged Ukrainian In her challenging new book, “a famine within a famine, a disaster nation a great favor in publishing this Béatrice Longuenesse aims to solve specifically targeted at Ukraine and fine book. Maybe even the Russians this puzzle, with the aid of several Ukrainians.” Kazakhstan and the will learn from it. □ writers, among them Jean-Paul Sartre Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 93

and Sigmund Freud, and, above all, “ego” and “id,” although I do not her French roots in treating Kant’s Immanuel Kant—an interpretation myself think that Freud’s ego is a theory as an exercise in phenomenol- of whose thoughts about the self and consciousness of thinking as such— ogy—the philosophical school led by self-consciousness in his epochal rather, it aligns with Kant’s empirical Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Critique of Pure Reason (1781, revised self-consciousness; the challenge for and Sartre—the aim of which is a 1787) forms the heart of her work. the Freudian patient is to bring the careful description of the structure of Unlike Augustine on time, how- suppressed memories, desires, etc. of our consciousness of objects and of ever, Longuenesse is not talking about the id into the light of that ego. Second, ourselves. But, in my view, Kant was our ordinary conception of self-con- and here Longuenesse draws again not aiming at a complete description sciousness. In ordinary language, upon Freud, she aims to naturalize of self-consciousness for its own sake. saying that someone is “self-conscious” Kant’s account of self-consciousness, Rather, like the founder of modern might mean that he is somewhat that is, to present Kant’s theory as a French philosophy himself, René embarrassed, by, say, having shown scientific rather than metaphysical Descartes, he wanted to use what he up in jeans to an event where others theory. In the final chapter of the book, took to be a self-evident fact about are wearing tuxedoes or formal gowns, she also argues that because Kant self-consciousness to prove a further or perhaps that someone is unusually develops his moral philosophy as a point. Descartes wanted to use what self-aware in a positive sense, e.g. kind of theory of self-consciousness, he took to be the fact that one cannot more than normally sensitive to her attempting to derive the fundamental be wrong in thinking that one is effect on others. Longuenesse is not principle of morality (what Kant thinking, because even doubting that talking about self-consciousness in ei- calls the “categorical imperative”) as one is thinking is an act of thinking, ther of those senses, but of something entailed simply by thinking of oneself to derive a standard of certainty— more general: namely, being conscious as a rational being, the principle the “clearness and distinctness” of an that one is a particular conscious being of morality must also be at bottom idea—to show that our belief in the and being aware that one is the partic- an empirically grounded principle existence of God is also certain, and ular conscious being that one is, with accessible to science rather than one then from the benevolence of God to the particular history of mental states that can only be defined and estab- derive the reliability of our (mathe- that one has had. We may suppose lished by a special “metaphysics of matical) representation of nature. Kant that unimpaired human beings are all morals,” as Kant himself claimed in instead wanted to use the fact that self-conscious in this sense, although his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of self-consciousness takes the form of whether every such human being has Morals (1785). This is the most radical judgment and the further fact that the concept of self-consciousness, with of Longuenesse’s claims, although she we are conscious of the unity of our a name for it in their native tongue, is makes clear that the present book only mental states (“apperception”) to show another matter. introduces this claim without fully that all of our consciousness is subject About this topic, Longuenesse developing or defending it. to judgment and therefore to the makes two main claims. First, and Longuenesse focuses on two characteristic forms of judgment and this is the point of her extensive sections of the Critique of Pure Reason: the categories associated with them, discussion of Kant, she argues that “Transcendental Deduction of the Pure such as the categories of quantity and we all actually enjoy two forms of Concepts of the Understanding” and quality, but, above all, the relational self-consciousness: on the one hand, the “Paralogisms of Pure Reason.” In categories of substance, causation, what Kant calls “transcendental apper- the first of these, Kant tells us some- and interaction—what he needed to ception,” a consciousness of ourselves thing about what self-consciousness accomplish his self-appointed task as thinking, or a consciousness of the is, and in the second something about of refuting what he took to be David activity of thought itself, which must what it is not, namely consciousness Hume’s skepticism about the rational be the same in all of us, and, on the of a simple and indissoluble, therefore necessity of these categories. other hand, what Kant calls “empirical immortal substance—in Kant’s view, Thus Kant needed to say only so self-consciousness,” a consciousness we have moral grounds for believing in much about self-consciousness as is of the particular conscious states— personal immortality, but no theoreti- necessary to prove this point, and this perceptions, thoughts, feelings—that cal knowledge or proof of such a thing. did not require him to claim that we we each have, and of their history. This However, Kant’s aim in the positive are always conscious of ourselves as is part of what differentiates us from phase of his argument is limited. thinking, as Longuenesse supposes. each other, along with our different Longuenesse, who has taught In the first edition of the Critique of bodies and their histories. in the United States for many years, Pure Reason, Kant did indeed hold Longuenesse finds a similar indeed at such bastions of analytic that we must be aware of a “function” two-level theory of self-conscious- philosophy as Princeton and NYU, was that unites our various mental states ness in Freud’s distinction between educated in France, and she shows into single experience (A 108). But he 94 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

eliminated this remark in the second methodology can be reconciled with two Cold War Germanies’ engagement edition of the Critique, replacing it Kantian ambitions, and she has indeed with their responsibility for Nazism. with the claim that it must always promised that for future work. One Perpetrators needed to be punished, be possible for one to add the thought thought that might be pursued here but how many, and how to contend “I think . . .” to any particular represen- is that science itself includes non-­ with the quiet masses of collabora- tation, which does not imply that one empirical methods—namely, mathe- tors, however defined? How to grant always does or must, and does not matics—so perhaps science’s reliance justice to victims? Perhaps most imply that one must do this on the upon mathematics might be a model importantly, how to shape a collective basis of an awareness of the activity for understanding its reliance on understanding of that past so that of thinking. Elsewhere, Kant explicitly other non-empirical principles as well. the coming generations understand denied that it is an “experience that Longuenesse’s further thought on this both what their elders did and how to we think,” implying that we may have issue will be of great interest. □ avoid repeating their errors? An early some sort of concept of ourselves as 1990s truism about post-communism thinking beings but not an immediate offered a homespun variant on this awareness of ourselves as thinking. theme: it was easy to make fish soup The claim that we are conscious out of an aquarium, and very difficult of the activity of thinking is thus to make an aquarium out of fish soup. omitted from Kant’s final argument The soup was generally understood to that the categories must apply to our be communism, or sometimes dicta- experience of all objects, because that torship; an often vaguely understood turns on the supposition that it is a liberal democracy was the aquarium. judgment that all my mental states “Mastering the past” was to be part of comprise the unity of a single self the murky transition from one to the and that all judgments must employ other. certain logical forms that can in turn Ellen Hinsey’s concise, evocative be applied to their objects only if the new book offers flashes of insight objects are conceived or conceptualized into the journey from the joyous days in certain ways. of 1989 to the increasingly tenuous This is important, because it bears state of democracy today in the on Longuenesse’s second project, loosely defined region understood as namely that of “naturalizing” Kant’s Eastern Europe’s “northern tier,” or theory of self-consciousness and, East Central Europe: Poland, Hungary, beyond that, his derivation of the and Czechoslovakia, with Ukraine, moral law. This project is key, because Germany, and Russia looming on the the tenor of contemporary philosophy, edges. Her text combines reportage at least in the US, is decidedly natural- MASTERING THE PAST: with interviews, essays with histor- istic. But we must also be clear about CONTEMPORARY ical narrative, without hewing to a what the project is, because natu- standard chronological format. Yet ralism can mean at least two things: CENTRAL AND the reader is never disoriented. Rather admitting no entities not allowed by EASTERN EUROPE than updating the book or trying natural science, or using no methods AND THE RISE to draw a more standard historical not allowed by natural science. OF ILLIBERALISM timeline, Hinsey has maintained her Excluding theoretical proof of a sepa- work as a set of snapshots, something rate soul, as Kant did, is a step in the BY ELLEN HINSEY of a time capsule, preserving each former direction. But Kant’s attempt to moment’s confusions and fragility. Telos prove that the fundamental principles The author’s observations shed March 2017, 208 pages of natural science itself as well as of light on the larger structural shifts that morality are what he called “synthetic A review these countries have shared over the a priori,” that is, universally and neces- by Andrea Orzoff past twenty years. Post-communist sarily true but also informative, seems East Central Europe’s process of “mas- to go beyond what might be assumed Readers of the Berlin Journal will tering its past” has been slowed by a to be the empirical methods of natural no doubt know the origins of this collective historical hangover. Outside science, which never yield more than elegant book’s title. Vergangenheits­ of Poland, the region lacks a history of probability. Here, Longuenesse owes bewältigung, or the process of “master- widespread democratic civic engage- us a fuller account of how naturalistic ing the past,” initially referred to the ment. But in Poland, as elsewhere, the Fall 2017 · thirty-one · the berlin journal 95

urban–rural divide is significant: the international NGOs, and a carica- but just a few will do: The Czech current ruling party, Law and Justice, tured version of liberal democracy. general whose ability to converse with gained power in part by aligning itself Liberalism is viewed as inherently Hinsey in French is overwhelmed by with Radio Maryja, a popular far-right destructive, decadent and relativistic, his memories of the Velvet Revolution, radio station affiliated with a larger set allowing the dangerous thought that echoed by her own recollections of of organizations and institutions, most all nations (and peoples) are inherently sooty 1989 Prague versus the shiny of them outside Warsaw and Krakow. equal. Thus anti-liberalism is recast as surface of today’s beautifully reno- These rural areas were disproportion- the defense of the nation. Since the vated jewel-box of a city. Two near-si- ately affected by the economic difficul- autocrats identify themselves with the multaneous conversations in Moscow ties of the transition from communism, nation, in what Heller refers to as a before the 2012 election, with one and eventually abandoned what “tribal conservatism,” anti-liberalism is interlocutor proud of Russian freedom Hinsey calls “the political economy of their only refuge. Viktor Orbán be- and the other recounting stories of patience” to vote for far-right parties. comes a useful example of the leader Putin’s party offering bribes and rides Widespread corruption throughout who tries to craft a “central political to the polls. The near-collision of two the region slowed Central and Eastern field of force,” or utterly unified power military orchestras, both playing Europe’s ability to modernize; an ab- in the hands of a single party, yet Chopin’s Marche funèbre, before the sence of transparent institutions and with an external façade of democratic gates of Warsaw’s Presidential Palace, regulations limited ordinary citizens’ practices and institutions, allowing as the country mourned the death of abilities to participate fairly in the new that party to claim a popular mandate. Lech Kaczyński and the 93 others who economy, while privileging members Speedy constitutional changes, control died in the 2010 crash of the presiden- of the Communist nomenklatura, even of the media, increasingly brutal and tial plane at Smolensk airport. Václav under capitalism. Democracy was xenophobic public discourse, and Klaus’s Salieri-style efforts at Havel’s tainted by the oligarchs, organized endemic corruption become frustrat- funeral to laud himself as the wiser crime groups, and ex-Communists ingly ingrained. politician. These and other powerful who used it to vie for power. The hopes of organizers and anecdotes linger in the imagination. Hinsey’s interlocutors emphasize intellectuals throughout the region Not since the 1930s have analyses the importance of Geschichtspolitik, are similar. Their goals are to craft a of “the rise of illiberalism” seemed so the politics of history, in which ten- new political system based on trans- urgent, whether in the United States dentious victim-narratives about the parency and professionalism, which or in Central and Eastern Europe. past are used by would-be leaders helps citizens by “enlarging the scope Hinsey works to avoid pessimism or to mobilize a sense of shared resent- of democratic freedoms.” They seek dismissal, ending each of her narrative ment and, often, xenophobia. Pyotr an unflinching, realistic assessment of chapters on something of a hopeful Stolypin, the Katyń Massacre, the their countries’ histories, warts and all, note. But the book’s revealing last different visions of Poland voiced by and, in particular, a blunt engagement words are those of a tipsy German Józef Piłsudski and Roman Dmówski, with the horrors of the twentieth anchorwoman celebrating the twen- the Jedwabne atrocities, the Treaty century. They hope for a greater range tieth anniversary of the fall of the of Trianon, and the legacy of Václav of political parties and a free media. Wall at the Brandenburg Gate in 2009: Havel are only some of the historical They describe this as wanting “normal” “History and justice, we live with those flashpoints mentioned here, shaped politics, elections, a “normal” gov- subjects every day. In fact, we are sick and reshaped by antidemocratic ernment and judiciary. Critics hope of them.” □ leaders and thinkers. In a set of con- the international community will aid versations at the heart of the book, them from the outside by forcing their Hungarian philosopher and dissident states to comply with the internation- Ágnes Heller highlights the danger of al agreements they have signed, and imposed historical truth: “Cultural with what they term “international memory can be manipulated, and norms of behavior.” Yet the road one’s personal myths become en- towards those goals is long. “We are twined with the collective myth.” trying to encourage civic participation Unsurprisingly, the region’s [. . .] in general, so that a new political would-be autocrats have various class can emerge. The problem is that shared tendencies as well. They have we have to start from the ground up.” a relatively uniform set of enemies, Hinsey’s gift for the telling detail for one thing: the EU, often person- deepens her readers’ engagement with ified by disparaging references to these places and peoples. There are too “Brussels,” joined by the United States, many examples to list in a brief review, 96 the berlin journal · thirty-one · Fall 2017

ALUMNI BOOKS

Samuel Adler Elizabeth Goodstein Anthony McCall Building Bridges With Music: Georg Simmel and the Solid Light: Performance Stories from a Composer Disciplinary Imaginary and Public Works Pendragon Press, July 2017 Stanford University Press, Poligrafica Ediciones, January 2017 April 2017 Hilton Als Alice Neel: Uptown Stephen Hill Mitchel B. Merback David Zwirner Books/ Die Start-up-Illustion. Perfection’s Therapy: Victoria Miro, May 2017 Wie die Internet-Ökonomie An Essay on Albrecht Dürer’s unseren Sozialstaat ruiniert Melancolia I Karen J. Alter, Knaur Taschenbuch, Zone Books, November 2017 Laurence R. Helfer May 2017 Transplanting International Dean Moyar The Work-Shy Courts: The Law and Politics Ellen Hinsey The Oxford Handbook Blunt Research Group of the Andean Tribunal of Magnetic North. Conversa- of Hegel (Wesleyen Poetry Series) Justice tions with Tomas Venclova Oxford University Press, Wesleyen, 2016, 160 pages Oxford University Press, University of Rochester June 2017 May 2017 Press, June 2017 Fall 2012 alumnus Daniel Norman M. Naimark Tiffany is one of the master- Anne Applebaum Paul Hockenos Genocide: A World History minds behind The Work-Shy, Red Famine: Stalin’s War Berlin Calling: A Story of Oxford University Press, described by publisher on Ukraine Anarchy, Music, the Wall, and January 2017 Wesleyan University Press as Doubleday, October 2017 the Birth of the New Berlin Lance Olsen “a poetic archive of subcul- The New Press, May 2017 Mary Jo Bang Dreamlives of Debris tures rooted in the lives and A Doll for Throwing: Poems Philip Kitcher, Evely Fox Keller Dzanc Books, April 2017 language of the unsettled.” Graywolf Press, August 2017 The Seasons Alter. How to The Work-Shy painstakingly Jed Rasula Save Our Planet in Six Acts reconstructs a chorus of Benjamin R. Barber Hectic Pigment Liveright, April 2017 voices rescued from her- Cool Cities: The Urban Fix Opo Books & Objects, metic “colonies” and fragile for Global Warming August Kleinzahler April 2017 communes, from the first Yale University Press, Sallies, Romps, Portraits, Susan Stewart youth prison in California to April 2017 and Send-Offs: Selected Cinder: New and asylums for the chronically Prose, 2000–2016 Daniel Boyarin Selected Poems insane (voices mined, for Farrar, Straus and Giroux, The Talmud – A Personal Graywolf Press, example, from the Prinzhorn May 2017 Take. Selected Essays February 2017 Collection, in Germany, and Mohr Siebeck, March 2017 Hari Kunzru the Creedmoor Psychiatric Hans Rudolf Vaget White Tears Center, in New York). Painful Hillary Brown, Byron Stigge “Wehvolles Erbe” Richard Knopf, March 2017 facts emerge about “steril- Infrastructural Ecologies. Wagner in Deutschland. ization mills” in California, Alternative Development Wendy Lesser Hitler, Knappertsbusch, Mann where thousands of indi- Models for Emerging You Say to Brick: S. Fischer, Mai 2017 viduals became subject to Economies The Life of Louis Kahn James Q. Whitman compulsory eugenics proce- The MIT Press, July 2017 Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Hitler’s American Model: dures, and about the terror March 2017 Beatriz Colomina, The United States and the of solitary confinement. Mark Wigley Béatrice Longuenesse Making of Nazi Race Law Interpretive poems in The Are We Human? Notes on I, Me, Mine: Back to Kant, Princeton University Press, Work-Shy “translate” these an Archaeology of Design and Back Again February 2017 fragments into a wider field Lars Müller, January 2017 Oxform University Press, of social conflict, excavating Peter Wortsman January 2017 the voices and fugitive W. S. Di Piero Footprints in Wet Cement knowledge of the repressed The Man on the Water Pelekinesis, April 2017 anew. The Work-Shy is pub­ Madhat, January 2017 lished under the collective, anonymous authorship BLUNT RESEARCH GROUP. SUPPORTERS AND DONORS

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