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Anali 2012.Indd THE NAMELESS HERITAGE OF THE RÉSISTANCE Wolfgang Heuer Otto-Suhr-Institut für Politikwissenschaft, Freie Universität Berlin Pregledni rad Primljeno: prosinac 2011. Summary The author is analyzing the significance of the Résistance as one of the ‘hid- den traditions’ of European history. Invoking pre-WWII debates on pan-Europeanism and Hannah Arendt's political theory, the author argues that the heritage of the Résistance is divided between the preserved idea of a united Europe and a lost ideal of the politics of spontaneity, councils and deep reforms of European politics and economy. Keywords Résistance, hidden traditions, Arendt, pan-Europeanism n the pamphlet Indignez-vous (Cry By his essay, Stéphane Hessel declares Iout! – Hessel, 2010), the reason the implicitly that the heritage of the demo- author Stéphane Hessel gives for the ne- cratic Europe is based not only on the cessity for public indignation makes us horror of the Holocaust, as Dan Diner listen attentively: it is the “heritage of the called for (Diner, 2001: 65) – to which, I Résistance” which obliges us to protest think, we should also add the horrors of against contemporary grievances. The Stalinism. This heritage is not imagina- heritage of the Résistance – this is the ble without the civil actors of the fight emotion of indignation, but it is also the for freedom, without the Résistance. freedom of democracy, accompanied by However, we are concerned here with social justice and the common good of a hidden tradition which does not have the welfare state. And the contemporary a slogan like “Auschwitz never again”. grievances – these are the false promises This hidden tradition is marked by its of a neoliberal politics, the arbitrariness namelessness, by the absence of the right of the international financial markets, words. At the moment of the refounda- increasing state debts, the spectacles of tion of freedom in Europe, the resistance populism, and the infamousness of xe- movements were substituted for the rule demokracije promišljanju izazovi Konceptualni nophobic debates and movements. of the parties which at best administered 75 a myth of the Résistance whose disman- thought begins with remembrance, it is tling years later dismantled also the Ré- also true that no remembrance remains sistance as such. secure unless it is condensed and dis- In what follows I will first talk about tilled into a framework of conceptual the problem of the namelessness of ex- notions within which it can further exer- periences, then describe the heritage of cise itself. Experiences and even the sto- the Résistance as a divided heritage pre- ries which grow out of what men do and served only in the idea of a united Eu- endure, of happenings and events, sink rope, while the other part, the politics of back into the futility inherent in the liv- spontaneity, councils and deep reforms ing word and the living deed unless they of European politics and economy, near- are talked about over and over again” ly got completely lost. Finally, I will (ibid.: 222). mention some of Arendt’s conclusions To this forgotten heritage belongs for political theory. the forgotten experience of the revolu- tionary societies at the beginning of the 1. The Unnamed New French Revolution which were annihi- lated by the leaders of the Revolution, Hannah Arendt spoke of a ‘hidden as well as the republican heritage of the tradition’ in modern times. The con- councils during the Russian Revolution scious rebellious Jewish pariah as van- and in Hungary. guard of his own people (Arendt, 2007; see also Heuer, 2007), the sudden events When the French poet and Résis- of spontaneous political action in revo- tance fighter René Char wrote: “Our heri- lutions from France 1789 to Hungary tage is not preceded by any testament”, 1956, and the forms of creating power this does not only mean, as Arendt in local associations. This political heri- wrote, the challenge of the break of tra- tage is a nameless heritage, in the case of dition for our capacities to understand, the United States a “Failure to remem- to judge and to act, and the challenge to ber and, with it, failure to understand” find new words and concepts for a com- (Arendt, 1963: 219) (in her German pletely different world with totalitari- translation Arendt wrote: “catastrophic anism, Holocaust and war of extermi- deficit of capacity of judgment” [Arendt, nation. It was rather about the fact that 1963a: 279]), which made the US forget the revolutionary experiences were for- its own revolutionary heritage. “When gotten which could have been helpful we were told that by freedom we under- for the resistance fighters. Thus, the la- stood free enterprise, we did very lit- ment about the missing testament be- tle to dispel this monstrous falsehood” comes a lament about the forgetting of (Arendt, 1963: 219). No wonder, because a tradition which only occasionally but to realize this as non-truth would have time and again lights up: the tradition of afforded not only to know the truth of spontaneous self-organisation. the revolution but also to be able to live Thus, the recovery of the hidden tra- it. Obviously, together with this memory dition becomes a recovery of forgotten Anali Hrvatskog društva politološkog 2012 also the capacity got lost to understand experiences which themselves consisted freedom not only as the freedom of mar- in understanding something new. The ket economy but as political freedom. important problem of naming some- 76 “For if it is true”, wrote Arendt, “that all thing new is described among others by Brice Parain, philosopher and friend of happens to the Red Army soldier after Albert Camus, and the Hungarian writ- the mute rape, when she can think “he is er Sándor Márai. Both knew not only the ashamed about something, therefore he problems to find the right words for the is hiding his face ... He is ashamed of be- new but also the incapacitation of previ- ing a man ... Now when formulating this, ous concepts based on other experiences the trembling in her body ends” (ibid.: or concepts based on lies and hypocrisy. 181). With her capacity to understand Parain begins his Studies about by articulating in her own words what Function and Nature of Language with happens, the woman can understand re- speechlessness when facing a new world: ality and recovers her inner balance. like “the farmer returning to his village” But words can be full of ambigui- and not being familiar anymore with ties, false images and lies. In a review human noises, “we made the acquaint- of Parain’s writings, Camus pointed out ance of this surprise when we returned that sometimes we are lacking the right from war. A long experience of distrust words, and sometimes words are deceiv- in talks and books had finally repelled us ing us, even when our heart is talking to our own elementary impulses. Only in with utmost honesty, e.g. when sayings the moments without images and words like “to fulfil someone’s duty for society” when we were nothing else than a sheer or “to die on the field of honour” are to joy – as if just being born – or a natu- hide experiences which make us despair ral sorrow – as if just about to die – we (Camus, 1981: 1672f). were sure not to dream” (Parain, 1969: To say what is (Herodotus), to tell 9f). But we cannot live without words: the truth, and to narrate – those ac- “Whenever we are in misery it is the lan- tivities for Arendt are not only the key guage which brings us the right solution. to find sense and to understand, but at There is no other one. ... The absurd is the same time are inseparably bound to named. The despair is being sung. All naming. For it is not sufficient to tell sto- wears off in words and revives in them” ries as such even if they are the basis for (ibid.: 16f). all future memory. The new must also Only by defining the new we can find be called the new, otherwise totalitari- our place. Sándor Márai’s novel Libera- anism remains misunderstood as one tion about the liberation of Budapest by of the brutal forms of domination of the the Red Army is told by a woman hiding past and the Résistance as a series of ac- in a basement, where a Russian soldier tions of armed resistance. The norma- enters. She offers him her confidence tive power of the de facto, the rule of the and is raped by him. Like Parain, Márai victorious, leads straight to oblivion, es- describes the distrust in words and expe- pecially when the defeated remains un- riences, the fact “that there is something named. How little the rebellions in the which is more than party and politics, GULags of Nowoscherkassk, Kengir, and this is the authentic, most extreme Sachalin and Workuta were of interest action: countenance” (Márai, 2010: 36). to the West though described by Solzhe- “Words are not reliable and therefore su- nitsyn, how little effect had the decla- perfluous” (ibid.: 39), reliable is only the ration of the Polish historian and poli- glance examining the face of the other. tician Bronislaw Geremek in 2000, that demokracije promišljanju izazovi Konceptualni But only when the woman can tell what the West does not even have the slight- 77 est bad conscience for having left Poland of the Russian military dictatorship and in the sphere of influence of the Soviet the Charybdis of the American financial Union! (Spinelli, 2002: 15f). dictatorship”, only a small path lead to In the same way, the essence of the the future: “This path is called Pan-Eu- Résistance as a spontaneous form of rope and means: self-help by uniting Eu- self-organisation of the people was not rope to constitute a political-economical framed in words, but left to oblivion in partnership of convenience” (ibid.: XI) the light of the power of the de facto, the from Portugal to the borders of the Sovi- victory of the allied forces, and the sub- et Union, including the African colonies, sequent elections of old parties into new but excluding Great Britain because of parliaments.
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