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The End of the World As We Know It September 2009 | Vol. VIII No. 1 One Civilized Reader Is Worth a Thousand Boneheads The End of the World as We Know It The Center for the Humanities The media declare any number of the changes we of conflict we used to reserve for the thing we called Advisory Board see around us as “the end of the world as we know war. At the same time, for those of us lucky enough 2009–2010 it.” There are certainly enough potential crises at to live in peaceful and relatively prosperous places Nancy Berg present to place the way of life we have known dur- in the world, we know only that there is warfare in Associate Professor of Asian and Near ing the past five decades at a critical turning point, faraway places we see on televised news reports, or Eastern Languages and Literatures Ken Botnick but I doubt that we will see all or even the majority read about having occurred in the distant past. In Associate Professor of Art of these media-driven emergencies come to pass. My our time and place, we experience only peace, itself Gene Dobbs Bradford Executive Director reference to the end of the world, however, comes built on the ashes of war. We are safe in our homes Jazz St. Louis from the changes war brings, and, as philosopher with our families. We are safe enough to forget. As Lingchei (Letty) Chen Associate Professor of Modern Chinese George Santayana declared, only the dead have seen Andy Chih-ming Wang noted in his presentation Language and Literature the end of war. at the conference, we are “a Elizabeth Childs Associate Professor and Chair of Warfare was the generation rich with memory Department of Art History and sticks in gigabytes, [but] Archaeology topic of an interna- Mary-Jean Cowell tional conference held our remembrance [of war] Associate Professor of Performing Arts is thin and shallow.” Thus Phyllis Grossman in Seoul, South Korea, Retired Financial Executive this past summer (June there was no better place for Michael A. Kahn this conference than South Author and Partner 3-5). The full title of Bryan Cave LLP the conference, co-or- Korea, a land still divided by Chris King a war that has never officially Editorial Director ganized by the Center The St. Louis American Newspaper for the Humanities at ended and that all too often Olivia Lahs-Gonzales threatens to resume. Director Washington Univer- Sheldon Art Galleries Paula Lupkin sity in Saint Louis and The Korean War, often Assistant Professor of Architecture Yonsei University in called the forgotten war, was Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts Erin McGlothlin Seoul, was “The End of actually the end of the world Associate Professor of German the World as We Know as Koreans had known it, Steven Meyer A Sculpture at the Demilitarized Zone, South Korea Associate Professor of English It: War, Representa- and the ongoing danger to Joe Pollack tion, and Memory.” what is left of their world is Film and Theater Critic for KWMU, Writer The conference was meant to examine war and the real. In fact, our planned visit to the Demilitarized Anne Posega meaning of remembrance: how memory and the Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea was Head of Special Collections, Olin Library Qiu Xiaolong formal construction of historical narrative shape the originally canceled after North Korea carried out Novelist and Poet cultural and political representations of war through several nuclear tests and fired a few missiles out to Sarah Rivett art, public institutions, and our concept of justice in sea. We were, instead, scheduled for a day at a spa. I Assistant Professor of English Henry Schvey providing restitutions to the victims of war. was disappointed, but dutifully bought a new swim- Professor of Drama What do we think war is? Is it any conflict? In a suit, which in the end I did not need. Prompted Wang Ning by a number of emailed requests from Washington Professor of English, Tsinghua University time when in some parts of the world, as Professor James Wertsch University participants, the decision to reschedule Marshall S. Snow Professor of Arts and Early noted in his opening remarks on the first day Sciences of the conference, it is “easier to get an AK47 than a our visit to the DMZ was made only hours before Director of International and Area Studies we arrived in Seoul. Ex Officio clean glass of water,” we have democratized the kind Zurab Karumidze Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia Edward S. Macias Provost & Exec VC for Academic Affairs Gary S. Wihl visit our blog site at http://cenhum.artsci.wustl.edu/pubs/blog.htm Dean of Arts & Sciences editor’s notes continued be as many as 20 other such and some of the food the villagers served tunnels as yet undiscovered. us: cold noodles with dog meat. I was Our next stop was a large told that only the most honored guests observation tower overlook- could have dog meat with their noodles. ing the DMZ. This tower (Almost every member of our group, serves as a reception center however, politely pushed the meat aside for tourists, and from it one because dogs are co-workers and com- can see into North Korea. rades of Mongolian shepherds. We could The DMZ is a long scar not eat the flesh of our friends.) across the land at the 38th The coin-operated binoculars timed Parallel. This boundary, 2.5 out, and my view of North Korea and miles wide and 155 miles the DMZ went black. As I walked back long, is marked by a jagged to the bus, I thought about how the line of barbed wire fences peaceful world of those North Korean and is dotted with military peasants I met so long ago had also run posts continuously manned out of time, and had turned darker with Once past the military checkpoints, by well-armed soldiers. each retelling of the political signifi- we began our tour of the DMZ at a site cance of the Korean War. And then I that seemed more like a theme park than As I looked north through the coin- wondered how the media of the future a military strong point. Large colorful fed binoculars available in the tower, I would treat our country’s involvement letters topped with larger than life hel- remembered a very different representa- in the two wars we are helping wage in mets and barbed wire spell out “DMZ.” tion of North Korea. Nearly 30 years Western Asia right now, and whether There is also a sculpture of Korean adults ago I visited North Korea for the first “once they too faded from public atten- and children trying to push together time. It was a strange coincidence that tion” other such conflicts would follow. the two halves of a divided globe. Inside had led me there. During the Cultural Perhaps they might not if, as James the globe is a map of North Korea on Revolution in China (1966-1976), I Dawes noted in his presentation, we one side and South Korea on the other, spent a number of years as a “reedu- begin to create a collective moral archive with the people trying to join the two. cated youth” among the herders of the of the degrading reality of such conflict. Despite this optimistic sculpture, visit- Horqin Grassland in Mongolia. The For the most part we avoid looking at ing the DMZ, as Washington University Jirim League Cultural Troupe, a collec- the crimes of war, the torture, rape and Professor Henry Schvey noted in his blog tion of local writers, had created a play massacre of civilians, and the destruction about our trip, is “like watching two de- entitled “The Red Grassland,” to tell the of their homes and livelihoods. cades collide: the 1950s and the 2000s.” story of the people living in the Horqin Nowhere was this more evident than in a area of Inner Mongolia. In addition to We choose to forget. Professor Dawes South Korean propaganda film vilifying the actual writers, the Troupe wanted is taking the confessions of Japanese war the North. This film, which creates the to include members of other classes, so criminals and, in the face of continuing atmosphere of a World War II newsreel they invited some farmers to “judge” cultural and political denials, creating an with modern production techniques, is the political “correctness” of their work. accurate representation for future genera- not just for foreign tourists. It is a field Other than the authors themselves, tions. He warns us that demonizing war trip destination for South Korean school the group of “reeducated youths” from criminals is itself a moral failure because children, and is meant to teach them the Beijing were the most likely candidates doing so prevents us from getting at the cultural and political significance of the living in the village, so, in another nod reasons behind these acts—acts that we Korean War. I wondered what lessons to political correctness, I was selected to are all capable of under certain circum- were taught in the North, where there be an “honorary author” in the travel- stances. Rather than demonizing war was no counterbalancing freedom of the ing group. We visited many places; one crimes and their perpetrators, we have press or access to world opinion. The dif- of the stops along the way was Ji’an on the responsibility to turn such crimes fering representations of that war may be the border with North Korea. We also into something we can understand, and too disparate to permit dialogue between visited a neighboring village whose name hence learn to avoid and among generations.
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