Impossible, Yet Real! 187

TRUA CLU CULTURA INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE AND AXIOLOGY CULTURA Founded in 2004, Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology is a semiannual peer-reviewed journal devoted to philosophy of culture and the study of value. It aims to promote the exploration of different values and cultural phenomena in regional and international contexts. The editorial board encourages the submission of manuscripts based on original research that are judged to make a novel and important contribution to understanding the values and cultural phenomena in the contemporary world. 2011 1<ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">2011 </li><li style="flex:1">Vol VIII </li><li style="flex:1">No 1 </li></ul>ISBN 978-3-89975-251-9 TRUA CLU CULTURA INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE AND AXIOLOGY CULTURA Founded in 2004, Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology is a semiannual peer-reviewed journal devoted to philosophy of culture and the study of value. It aims to promote the exploration of different values and cultural phenomena in regional and international contexts. The editorial board encourages the submission of manuscripts based on original research that are judged to make a novel and important contribution to understanding the values and cultural phenomena in the contemporary world. 2011 1<ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">2011 </li><li style="flex:1">Vol VIII </li><li style="flex:1">No 1 </li></ul>CULTURA INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE AND AXIOLOGY Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology E-ISSN (Online): 2065-5002 (Published online by Versita, Solipska 14A/1, 02-482 Warsaw, Poland) ISSN (Print): 1584-1057 Advisory Board Prof. dr. Mario Perniola, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Italy Prof. dr. Paul Cruysberghs, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium Prof. dr. Michael Jennings, Princeton University, USA Prof. Emeritus dr. Horst Baier, University of Konstanz, Germany Prof. dr. José María Paz Gago, University of Coruña, Spain Prof. dr. Maximiliano E. Korstanje, John F. Kennedy University, Buenos Aires, Argentina Prof. dr. Nic Gianan, University of the Philippines Los Baños, Philippines Prof. dr. Alexandru Boboc, Correspondent member of the Romanian Academy, Romania Prof. dr. Teresa Castelao-Lawless, Grand Valley State University, USA Prof. dr. Richard L. Lanigan, Southern Illinois University, USA Prof. dr. Fernando Cipriani, G.d’Annunzio University Chieti-Pescara, Italy Prof. dr. Elif Cirakman, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey Prof. dr. David Cornberg, University Ming Chuan, Taiwan Prof. dr. Carmen Cozma, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Iassy, Romania Prof. dr. Nancy Billias, Department of Philosophy, Saint Joseph College, Hartford, USA Prof. dr. Christian Möckel, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany Prof. dr. Leszek S. Pyra, Pedagogical University of Cracow, Poland Prof. dr. A. L. Samian, National University of Malaysia Prof. dr. Dimitar Sashev, University of Sofia, Bulgaria Prof. dr. Kiymet Selvi, Anadolu University, Istanbul, Turkey Prof. dr. Traian D. Stănciulescu, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Iassy, Romania Prof. dr. Gloria Vergara, University of Colima, Mexico Editorial Board <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Editor-in-Chief: </li><li style="flex:1">Co-Editors: </li></ul>Prof. dr. Nicolae Râmbu Faculty of Philosophy and SocialPolitical Sciences Alexandru Ioan Cuza University B-dul Carol I, nr. 11, 700506 Iasi, Romania <a href="mailto:[email protected]" target="_blank">[email protected] </a> Prof. dr. Aldo Marroni Facoltà di Scienze Sociali Università degli Studi G. d’Annunzio Via dei Vestini, 31, 66100 Chieti Scalo, Italy <a href="mailto:[email protected]" target="_blank">[email protected] </a><ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Executive Editor: </li><li style="flex:1">PD Dr. Till Kinzel </li></ul><ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Dr. Simona Mitroiu </li><li style="flex:1">Englisches Seminar </li></ul>Human Sciences Research Department Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Lascar Catargi, nr. 54, 700107 Iasi, Romania <a href="mailto:[email protected]" target="_blank">[email protected] </a> Technische Universität Braunschweig, Bienroder Weg 80, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany <a href="mailto:[email protected]" target="_blank">[email protected] </a>Editorial Asssitants: Radu Vasile Chialda, Adina Romanescu, Marius Sidoriuc, Daniel Ungureanu Designer: Aritia Poenaru Editorial Office Address: Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Faculty of Philosophy and Social-Political Sciences, The Seminar of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology, Carol I, nr. 11, 700506, Iasi, Romania, Tel.:0040/232/201054; Fax: 0040/232/201154; e-mail: [email protected] Indexing and Abstracting: Thomson Reuters (ISI) – Arts & Humanities Citation Index; EBSCO Humanities International Index; EBSCO Humanities International Complete; SCOPUS (Elsevier); MLA International Bibliography; The International Consortium for the Advancement of Academic Publication (ICAAP); Summon by Serial Solutions; Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology Vol. 8, No. 1 (2011) Editor-in-Chief Nicolae Râmbu Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet <a href="/goto?url=http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar" target="_blank">über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. </a>© 2011 Martin Meidenbauer Verlagsbuchhandlung, München Umschlagabbildung: © Aritia Poenaru Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Dieses Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der Grenzen des Urhebergesetzes ohne schriftliche Zustimmung des Verlages ist unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Nachdruck, auch auszugsweise, Reproduktion, Vervielfältigung, Übersetzung, Mikroverfilmung sowie Digitalisierung oder Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung auf Tonträgern und in elektronischen Systemen aller Art. ISBN 978-3-89975-251-9 Verlagsverzeichnis schickt gern: Martin Meidenbauer Verlagsbuchhandlung Schwanthalerstr. 81 D-80336 München <a href="/goto?url=http://www.m-verlag.net" target="_blank">www.m-verlag.net </a>CONTENTS DEBATES and DIRECTIONS. AFRICAN STUDIES Anton CARPINSCHI, Bilakani TONYEME Cultural Minorities and Intercultural Dialogue in the Dynamics of <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Globalization. African Participation </li><li style="flex:1">7</li></ul>Jacob Ale AIGBODIOH Stigmatization in African Communalistic Societies and Habermas’ <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Theory of Rationality </li><li style="flex:1">27 </li></ul>Justina O. EHIAKHAMEN The Practice of Inheritance in Esan: the Place of the Female Child 49 Nicolito A. GIANAN <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Delving into the Ethical Dimension of Ubuntu Philosophy </li><li style="flex:1">63 </li></ul>Uyi-Ekpen OGBEIDE, Lambert Uyi EDIGIN Military Establishments and The Stability Of Nigeria’s Fourth <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Republic: Toward The Realization Of Vision 2020 </li><li style="flex:1">83 </li></ul>93 Elvis IMAFIDON Rethinking the Individual’s Place in an African (Esan) Ontology Francis Xavier GICHURU Creating a New Society, New Nation and New Leadership Quality in <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Kenya through African Traditional Education Principles </li><li style="flex:1">111 </li></ul>127 Solomon A. LALEYE Democracy in Conflict and Conflicts in Democracy: The Nigerian Experience VIEWS upon ETHICS, TRUTH and LANGUAGE Jim I. UNAH <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Self-discovery: Who am I? An Ontologized Ethics of Self-mastery </li><li style="flex:1">143 </li></ul>159 Seungbae PARK Defence of Cultural Relativism Simona MODREANU A Different Approach to the “Theater of the Absurd”. With <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Special Reference to Eugene Ionesco </li><li style="flex:1">171 </li></ul>187 Mario PERNIOLA Impossible, yet real! Simona MITROIU To collect in order to survive: Benjamin and the necessity of collecting 213 Radu Vasile CHIALDA <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Weak Barbarism </li><li style="flex:1">223 </li></ul>10.3726/975251_187 Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology 8(1)/2011: 187–212 Impossible, yet Real!1 Mario PERNIOLA Dipartimento di Ricerche Filosofiche Università di Roma “Tor Vergata” Via Columbia 1 00133 Roma, Italy <a href="mailto:[email protected]" target="_blank">[email protected] </a><a href="/goto?url=http://www.marioperniola.it/site/index.asp" target="_blank">http://www.marioperniola.it/site/index.asp </a>Abstract. In order to properly understand the period which begins at the end of the '60s last century, this must not be described anymore using the traditional categories of culture and politics. Facing events like those in May '68 in France, the Italian revolution in 1979, the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, the attack against the Twin Towers from New York in September 2001, we are all tempted to say “impossible, yet real”. These events had immense consequences upon the individual and collective life, provoking radical upturns of traditional values and of the way people relate to these values. Thus, a new form of historicity was born, having as characteristics the perception of some phenomena both as miracles and traumas, because they seem impossible to explain rationally. In this text both the axiological mutations that occurred in the history of the last decades and the meanings of these mutations are presented in a personal way. Keywords: Cultural Studies, advertising imperialism, communication miracles and traumas, cultural memory, Georges Bataille Rarely, and only in very recent times, has humanity asked itself the question of the sense of what it is to live individually and collectively: a vast majority of human beings in the past have been absorbed by the concern of being able to survive and possibly live with less effort and more available goods. The sense of individual and collective life was not a problem, because the answer was already provided by the social condition in which it was born, and from handed down knowledge and rituals. Still, in modern times, especially in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, in the West, especially by the classes that had reached well-being through the exercise of administrative, commercial and industrial, the tendency to look also at the unfolding of individual and social life of the existence of rational principles developed. In addition, the laws, similarly to what happened in the sciences, would have allowed not 187 Mario PERNIOLA / Impossible, yet real! only to understand what was happening, but even to foresee what would have happened without resorting to divination and magic arts. The great flowering of literal fiction and historiography in the nineteenth and twentieth century responded to the pretension to grant a new and original sense to the lives of individuals and communities in order to insert them in a development plan that could identify, with relative reliability, the signs of progress or regress in the conduct of personal affairs, family, institutional, economic, political, social and cultural rights in order to allow the possibility of a capable action that could intervene effectively on the course of events. All this immense work of private and collective rationalization of life, on which Western civilization is founded and that has ensured the world’s conquest, worked well enough until the end of the Second World War, finding its fulfilment in the victory over the Nazis and Fascism and in the enslavement of a great culture that was able to subtract itself from the Euro-American colonization, the Japanese one. Despite the countless horrors, murders, massacres, genocides and various disasters that punctuated this period of history, there are a number of explanations for these events, different and even opposed to each other, which provide a plausible key to the reading. The generations that grew up after the end of the Second World War did not inherit this idea of the world being based on the vital importance of individual and collective action and on the rational and progressive nature of history; such a conception has become more alien to them as their birth was at the end of the Second World War. They were witnesses to unpredictable events, whose significance is still opaque and indecipherable as long as it uses the concepts and notions that have dominated the first half of the 19th and 20th centuries. These generations are therefore now in the condition that they have not yet understood anything about the events they have lived through and in which, sometimes, they have even considered playing a leading role. Since the end of the Second World War, four unpredictable events have happened in the West that surprised even the most informed members of the public: the French protests in May 1968, the Iranian revolution of February 1979, the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the attack on the Twin Towers in New York in September 2001. In relation to these facts, the vast majority of people have made of their property a phrase by French writer Georges Bataille, impossible et pourtant là, “impossible, and yet here”. In fact, many had predicted that the revolt of 188 Mario PERNIOLA / Impossible, yet real! the Parisian students would have led to the largest wildcat strike in history? That a monarchy supported by the strong Americans and a ruthless repressive system would be overthrown in a few months after a popular uprising led by clergy? That a regime built on a dense network of police informers and spies would dissipate so quickly? That nineteen suicide bombers would be able to successfully carry out a devastating attack on American soil? It is known that contemporaries are not the best experts of their present; most people do not live in actuality, and even the most informed can be wrong. The example of Lenin became proverbial, that a few weeks before the outbreak of the Russian revolution, he said to the Swiss workers that it would have died before it would take place. In principle, the sense of what was experienced individually and collectively was discovered at the end. It has always been difficult to predict the future; nevertheless, the subsequent events, up to the 1960s, have a more refractory aspect that make use of modern historical and ideological categories. These events appear to be more like miracles as fulfilment processes for which you know the performance or achievements of utopias; more like traumas than like tragedies or disasters of which it is possible to elaborate the mourning. Certainly, it is when human society seems to become more rational, thanks to extraordinary scientific technological inventions, burst into the individual experience and historical facts that seem to belong on the horizon, characterized by irrationality that belongs to the religious and scientific horizon more than to the scientific and philosophical, more to psychotic syndromes than the explosion of contradictions or to crises that can be overcome. If you look at the real truth of things, the four facts that have been discussed are less important than they seem at first sight. In 1968, after the wildcat strike, everyone went back to work. The Iranian revolution did not spread itself to all of Islam and remained confined to a single country. The socioeconomic status of East Germans is still much lower in respect to the West Germans. The damage caused by the attack to the Twin Towers were, from a military point of view, insignificant. These facts, taken one by one and isolated from their consequences, are ironic. About the French protests in May 1968, a philosopher said: le sang n'a pas coulè,, donc rien s'est passé (“blood has not poured, then nothing has happened”). In the Iranian case, a lot of blood poured, but the revolution did not achieve what was 189 Mario PERNIOLA / Impossible, yet real! proposed. As to the fall of the Berlin Wall, a famous aphorism, made by Stanislaw Lec, is considered: “A better tomorrow does not give the certainty of an even better day after tomorrow.” As for the Twin Towers, it is still Lec that helps us: “Who knows? Perhaps the walls of Jericho collapsed because of too much trumpeting inside?” It is tempting to share the ironic attitude that the German historian Jakob Burckhardt had against the historical process. But yet, who can deny the imaginative and emotional impact that these four events have unleashed? We must deepen the notions of miracle and trauma to understand how much they are far from sensitive and philosophical, political and social categories, of the 19th and early 20th centuries. For Bataille, miracle defines the experience of sovereignty that appears when we can get away from the world of utility and access a full experience of the present. This occurs, according to Bataille, in a series of events that include art and the sacred, laughter and tears, sexuality and death. The meeting with these events generates a kind of exhilaration, a miraculous sensation, the entrance into an extraordinary condition that emancipates from the everyday life chains. Therefore, the end must not be considered with exclusive reference to transcendence. For Bataille, the words miracle and miraculeux are considered in a literal sense, from the Latin mirus, which means wonderful, amazing and surprising. The context to which Bataille refers to in the miracle is connected with the etymology of mirus that has affinities with the IndoEuropean root from the Greek µειδιώ, which means smile. Moreover, only human beings smile. If in other books Bataille was the founder of erotic anthropology, which saw precisely the distinctive character of human beings in eroticism, here the direction seems to go towards a smiling anthropology: in fact, the miraculous instant is when waiting ends in nothing! Bataille seems to repeat Kant’s famous definition, that laughter is a condition resulting from a tense expectation, which all of a sudden vanishes. The French expression impossible et pourtant là, shows a peculiarity of the French language which is very significant. It affects primarily the fact that the French là is equal to the Italian qui. For example, the expression Que fais-tu-là? means “What are you doing here?”. Les faits sont là means “These are the facts”. Impossible et pourtant là! This French expression is untranslatable into other languages, but it expresses very well the strangeness of these four events. It implies a certain shift, a décalage, a shift compared to the real truth of things because in French you use là instead of ici. The French adverb there is ambivalent; it implicates both 190 Mario PERNIOLA / Impossible, yet real! presence and distance. It is a very important nuance. In fact, it refers to another that does not end with the fact itself, but involves a vastly wider variety of memories and expectations, illusions and interests. So it is not wrong to attribute to these facts a paradigmatic meaning that transforms and divides the four different epochs: the age of communication, of deregulation, of challenge and finally of assessment. As known, for Bataille, the sovereign moments for excellence, in which an unexpected thing occurs, hitherto considered impossible, those are the ones in which death and sexuality approach until they merge with each other. But here we are dealing with facts that regard, not only private experiences but also collective ones, “the story” so to say. Certainly, also for Bataille, the story was the subject of a constant and persistent reflection; yet he thought of sovereignty almost always with reference to ancient times in space or time. It’s the anthropology and antiquity that provide references and examples of public sovereignty, not the world of his time: the potlatch, the pyramids, the sacrifices, the great art of the past. Capitalism and communism, the two models of society that were opposed in his time, for him remain submissive to the slavish logic of labour and of utility, and therefore an inaccessible raid of the impossible et pourtant là. Bataille died in 1962 and a few months later, the world’s order of the victorious powers of the Second World War seemed to show some signs of abating. Because of the installation of missile bases in Cuba, where Castro had established a communist regime, relations between the United States and the Soviet Union seemed on the verge of irreparable rupture. A third world war seemed imminent, but it did not occur! However, instead of the logic of economy and work, which was the subject of criticism of Bataille, on the horizon appears the aesthetics of consumerism and entertainment. The homo ludens, who had been placed into the corner by the homo laborans from 19th century rationalism, makes his big return, and expects his well-being from the goddess Fortuna: miracle takes the place of the programmatic plan, the expectation takes the place of the unexpected, and the wonderful takes that place of the interesting. Surrealism no longer has any reason to exist because it is fulfilled: what is wonderful is available to all. Western society slowly began to be pervaded by a miraculous mindset, which spread to a vital contribution and was, by the development of a techno-science, seen as a science fiction about to take place, significantly accompanied by a decline in the main part of the population of elemen- 191 Mario PERNIOLA / Impossible, yet real! tary scientific and technical knowledge. A more important contribution to the advent of a miraculous mindset was given by the means of mass communication that since the early 1960s had played a much greater role than in the past, for the spread of television and the feedback effect exerted on those that acted. It is impossible et pourtant là to say there are not only spectators but also actors in the events, who are the first to be amazed at the emphasis placed by the media on their performance the and interest with which they follow the developments. Their words and their communications immediately become an essential part of the event, influencing in a very relevant way its development, the real effectual truth of what is submerged and disappeared under a huge amount of words and images broadcasted all around the world. This “mediatic miraculousism” generates in everyone an absolute outof-proportion excitement with respect to the effective weight of the events that occur and that are often actually unheard of, but hides a historical situation that stopped at the end of the Second World War. There are, however, the winners of the Second World War, who firmly keep in their hands the destiny of the world through the polling station votes, with the right of veto that the occupy at ONU, and a dense financial, economic and military network that are not so transparent. When this balance seems to be endangered, it is more or less promptly recovered. For example, in 1971, in a period of great financial uncertainty because of the collapse of the international monetary system established at Bretton Woods in 1944, the United Nations polling station votes with the right of veto occupied by Taiwan was given as an American initiative to China. Similarly, in the years after 1991 it was in the interest of the other four great powers to avoid the collapse of the Soviet Union, as it could have led to a civil war and permitted Russia to return to be a great nation. Considering all, even in that way it went wrong! The Cold War never became hot, the conflicts remained local, the successes of Islamist terrorism, soaking America and Europe into a climate of fear, have so far prevented that the alternative globalization movement (Seattle in December 1999, Genoa in July 2001, London and hundreds of other cities in the world in February 2003) achieving a real political significance, creating uncontrollable scenarios and letting other countries and continents into the game. Also on the horizons and prospects of individual lives, it is worth asking whether what happened was really important: the life of the

Impossible, Yet Real! 187

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