Talking Tongues

 

Canada is frequently branded as a multicultural country, but what exactly this multiculturalism means and how does it apply in practice, we rarely read or talk about. At least outside the Canadian realm. 

The Art of Leaving by Ayelet Tsabari was one of my favorite memoirs I´ve read in 2019 and therefore,  I refused to wait any longer for getting my hands on Tongues. On Longing and Belonging Through Language, co-edited with Eufemia Fantetti. The book. which was published in the second half of 2021, is a collection of 23 literary voices based in Canada sharing their experience with their mother tongue, as well as with languages - loaned, owned, forgotten etc.

Although the essays are not necessarily equal, there are interesting aspects pertaining to languages which are important for understanding the existential value of words, mother tongues and languages. As there are over 260 million people not living in their country of birth, the ways in which one can operate - or fail to - in a second language, need a throughout and detailed investigation. The personal accounts are very important for understanding the multiple impact of languages on everyday life and even mental health and health in general.

As Kamal al Solaylee testifies, he had to give up Arabic because this language was lacking ´the vocabulary and textual resources to help me accept who I am´. A new language was the safe place for building up an authentic life. As Logan Broeckaert observed, gender is ingrained into the language therefore, not innocent. For Karen McBride, returning to her original native culture and language was a return to herself: ´It has taken a long time to find the confidence to live in the body and the skin I´ve been given´. Those learning their mother tongue - as in the tongue spoken by their mother and ancestors - may have a different mental and life experience, as shared by author Jenny Heijun Wills whose newly learned Korean language was part of the connection she started to build with her family of birth, she was separated from through adoption. Another - yet different - Korean linguistic experience is shared by the translator Janet Hong. For Rebecca Fisseha, her experience as a writer brought her closer to her Ethiopian heritage and language.

Languages are experienced differently and are supposed to be loved differently. Melissa Bull explained how not only her voice and demenour change when switching from English to French. As a political refugee from El Salvador, Leonarda Carranza ended up figuring up that in fact, what she used to called ´mother tongue´, the Spanish language, was in fact a tool of domination that deterred her from her natural connection with her native culture. In same cases, as Teochew-Chinese-Persian author Sahar Golshan explained the efforts of recovering lost languages can turn into a ´lifelong obsession with the accumulation of missing vocabulary´. Therefore, there is a certain loss of self that comes with the loss of a language, as argues Téa Mutonji. 

We need language, and words, as much as we need air and water. In Kai Cheng Thom´s words - in the beautifully titled essay Language is the Fluid of Our Collective Bodies - ´I believe that language is the fluid within the collective body: like plasma, like blood, like spinal fluid, it carries nutrients and information from one unit to another´. Thus, the painful process of returning to languages stolen through various political processes, as explained by Rowan McCandless: ´I mourn the many languages that were taken from me, the possibility of not being viewed as an outsider or defined by the colour of my skin´. 

But language means more than simple grammar and vocabulary. Indeed, as Amanda le Duc explained our way to refer to people with various disabilities is a language in itself which labels and discriminates. ´We say that we don´t actually think that people who are less intelligent are worthless, but our language reinforces these ideas´. Tongues can also be without words, as it is the case of the sign language, whose linguistic power is explained in the contribution by Adam Pottle. Being a writer with a learning disability, as shared by Jagtar Karn Atwal, makes the writing and the language experience even more painful from the existential point of view: ´Reading makes me feel as if I´m drowning in a sea of moving words´.

Languages are love, and by learning one, it is not only possible to gain a new life, but they bring one close to the source of life, love. Sigal Samuel asks, thinking about her father: ´does my dad learn foreign languages to gain access to women he loves, or is falling in love an excuse for him to learn another language? Either way, I looked at it, the answer was yes´. ´They say the language you speak shapes your thoughts, and so it does´, outlines Ashley Hind.

Ayelet Tsabari experiences languages in very different ways. Obliterated for various nation-building reasons, the Arabic of her Yemen family resurges when she, like many other second or third generation of Israeli with roots in Muslim lands, assume this part of their identity. ´A language, I want to believe lies dormant in my body, genetically encoded into my cells, waiting to be awakened, activated´. As a writer, she is represented by English, and switching between Hebrew and English, may be worrisome: ´Writing in a second language (...) is like wearing someone else´s skin, an act akin to religious conversion´. ´Whenever my Hebrew flows, I worry my English is at risk´ - this is a thought many of us, writing in a second or third or fourth language are very worried about because coming back to the source of words can be so difficult, while leaving it, the easiest thing on Earth. 

The pandemic is a guest star of many contributions to the collection, as the months-long lockdown and the isolation, may have tempted some of the authors to return to their original, lost languages or just learn a new linguistic skill. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. 

The personal experiences doubled by the everyday writing challenges makes Talking Tongues an important collection for both writers and language lovers. In addition to revealing more or less problematic aspects of linguistic policies in Canada, it also contributes to the ever growing bibliography on languages and multilinguism in general.

Should/Can Sex be Equally Distributed?

Our choice of sexual partners is a construct. It is made up of our cultural expectations, personal and society-level, of family pressure, of race policies, of race representations...actually, once you start thinking about it, the list of the criteria gets even longer. Never shorter.

Amia Srinivasan collected a couple of very important essays raising fundamental questions about the genesis and the basis of the politics of desire. The Right to Sex raises a couple of very important aspects, discussed in separate essays, all placing sex in the frame of a political phenomenon, framed by decisions fuelled by power - from male supremacy to issues defining the ´f*ckability´ based on very narrow, ethnically-oriented criteria. Although the perspective is mostly philosophical, I appreciated the realism of the approach, which takes into consideration the great extent of political involvement in defining private choices like sex.

Sex turns to be a very explosive political issue though. Being refused the right to sex, for various considerations - physical, mental health, racial - the so-called incels - involuntary celibate, because no one likes them - can fuel a wider frustration that may, in the end, combined with other elements like joblessness, a dangerous case for isolated or mass attacks. 

In a philosophical vein, the essays raise many questions but elegantly refuse to take a stance or another. But sometimes, the questions are enough to play the role of a conclusion. My mind-challenging essay for me is where the sex policies in universities are discussed because putting a certain mental habit into question is a strong statement in itself. 

Probably, a ´redistribution of sex´ is as utopic as a fair redistribution of wealth. However, being aware of what stays behind our body and sex choices it a deconstructivistic step towards eventually looking for alternatives. From the gnoseological point of view it is a very useful philosophical approach that, at least for me, opened my mind a lot of more concepts and approaches I hope to be able to further explore through other essays and further reading.

Bad News about Media and Democracy

 

Media is going through a serious identity crisis for over a decade now, not only in the US, but all over the world. Journalists turned into a caste and media are becoming important stakeholders and even part of the political decision-making. They are serving audiences and evaluate their competencies based on how many clicks and comments their articles gathered. What about the public they are supposed to serve? Who are their readers they are expecting to pay for their articles.

Journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon analyses in her latest book Bad News. How Woke Media is Undermining Democracy the radical switch to the left of the American media catering for an educated and rich/middle-class audience. 

´We need a journalism that exposes the class divide in America rather than concealing it; whereby it continues to grow, and not because the working class is worthy of your pity or your compassion´. 

Based on interviews, facts, figures and personal observations, Ungar-Sargon outlines the evolution the journalism in America went through, from a lucrative endeavour aimed at informing a wide range of readers to a corporate enterprise whose survival depends on advertising for products affordable for middle to high-classes. Therefore, this kind of audience should be attracted with a content which is expected from this audience. ´Journalists today are an American elite, a caste that has abandoned the working class and the poor as it rose to the status of American elite´. Therefore conservative institutions as FOXNews made the switch serving the working-class and their agenda. ´Today´s meritocratic elites subscribe to the view that not only wealth but also political power should be the province of the highly educated´. 

The book, although offers an unique and documented overview of the historical evolution of journalism and its lack of diversity in terms of coverage and approaches, it does not consider a couple of elements inherent to the American society - at least, among which a general corporatist orientation which touches upon other professions as well, but also a professionalisation of many other domains, among which journalism as well. Being a journalist, as well as a real estate agent or a shop keeper may require a high degree of professional preparedness, which includes a high-education diploma. An important question would have been at what extent journalism schools do prepare the future journalists to deal with a variety of topics of interests, including adherence to certain ethics´ code. Relevant would have been also the positioning of different journalists´ associations on topics regarding professional standards and ethnic diversity. What about alternative publications and initiatives that may maintain - online particularly - a diverse list of approaches and reporting?

Is journalism completely dead? Can it be revived? 

Batya Ungar-Sargon predicts that ´We must begin to listen to each other again´ without delving too much into details.

I personally think that publications like NYT and other classical sources of information in America are, indeed, biased and not necessarily interested in informing the public opinion. However, I am hopeful that besides the algorithms who literally infested the media reception and the simplistic, copy-pasted like approach to race and ethnicity, there are individual voices that may revive the interest in information and would answer the need of the public opinion of being informed. After all, it is how democracy - no matter where - will survive. 

 

World War C by Dr. Sanjay Gupta

 

American surgeon and CNN correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta outlines in World War C the further influence the pandemic may have on our everyday life. Is it too early to make predictions? In fact, the speed the world changed and adapted to the restrictions of the virus is tremendous and based on those observations only it is not too risky to assume at least a low level predictability of future trends and patterns.

When the first details of the virus were revealed, Dr. Gupta was having a glass of wine with Francis Ford Coppola assuming casually that an Apocalypse Now was still far from happening. As a reporter who covered the SARS outburst in Asia, he, as many others - including the humble writer of this book review who survived SARS in Asia in a very easygoing way - thought that the new Corona Virus outbreak is either an isolated or easy to contain phenomenon. But it was far from it.

This virus was and continue to be considered like no other pathogen ´the humanity ever seen´. Particularly its transmission pattern defy any other previous model, with a rather random-basis risk of transmission affecting severely affected immune systems. 

Relevant for the times of online conspiracies and anti-scientific feelings, there are extensive chapters dedicated to scientifically explaining the power of vaccines - any vaccines - and the opportunities open up by it for a medically safer realm.  

What I really appreciated in World War C, besides the relatively easy language appealing - hopefully - to many of those not yet sure about the advantages of vaccination - is the reference to the society impact and references. Thus, the recent Corona crisis is not only a medical crisis, but it displays the signs of a system struggle therefore the need of a comprehensive reconsideration of the state policies in this respect, but also a health crisis of the American public - among others - affected by unhealthy eating habits. It involves as well various economic, cultural, social and psychological aspects that may be taken into consideration for a better understanding of the mentality shift we are experiencing in the last year and a half, as well as its impact on our everyday life.

World War C by Dr. Sanjay Gupta is an useful book for students and readers interested in health policies and particularly the ways in which the Corona Virus crisis is challenging our daily lives. As the situation is further under development, this book is relevant for a specific moment in time and resumes intelligently reactions on both sides of the power spectrum in America and the future implications for the rest of the world. 

About Caste, in America

The first thing I´ve noticed from the first until the last page of Caste by Isabel Wilkerson is the beauty of the writing. It is not common sense to associate the fine choice of words and refined paragraphs with academic writing. Rather the opposite, as the point of nonfiction is, among others, to prove various points of views and analyse specific topics. The search for beautiful words though is the last priority of a nonfiction writer as the choice and use of neutral, simple words and clear sentences may serve the purpose of exposing and explaining a certain reality.

However, in this case, the beautiful writing makes the topic more approachable and easier to understand. Caste is a well documented book which uses the author´s personal observations as well as surveys and other academic articles and books on the topic, with a particular focus on India, Germany and the US.

Caste is not necessarily a comparative book but it uses comparison in order to outline the specificities of the American class and caste system. Although the references to the Indian - Hindu-oriented - caste system may provide useful information about how the caste system really works, particularly in issues regarding the main caste pillars, the frequent mention of Nazi Germany and the ostracization of its Jewish population, as compared to the situation of African-American, during and beyong the slavery is fortuitous. For a very simple reason: Nazi Germany wanted to make the Jews dissapear through systematic killing. The discrimination, the cruelty and terror, the purity laws all were aimed to lead, sooner or later, to the disappearance of Jews. An aim which was not endeavoured by the American political system.

´Just as DNA is the code of instructions for all development, caste is the operating system for economic, political and social interaction in the United States, from the time of its gestation´. The American caste system started in 1619, after the arrival of the first Africans to Virginia colony. One of the first decisions of the representatives of the colony was to decide who could be enslaved for life and who could not. Together with race, the caste system is the very basis of the American society: ´Caste is the bones, race is the skin´. Through caste power, resources, respect, authority and ´assumption of competence´ are reproduced on a daily basis. It creates social and political habits and the set the ground of further social and political stability. It combines elements pertaining to evolution and biological laws, but also to theology - the divine Will who designed the society and its members in certain ways - and professional choices. Its heritability enforces a system over and over again, particularly through a legal system which is race-based oriented.

Members of the lower caste - in this case the African-Americans - may end up behaving as they are expecting to: assuming the role assigned, avoiding conflict and delaying the moment when the system may be challenged. Actually, by keeping the members of this caste at a non-educated, uninformed, weak level. They are powerless because they were meant to be this way and even ended up assuming this status themselves.

Although I agree that the election of an African-American president was ´the greatest departure from the script of the American caste system´, only the election in itself did not change, Isabel Wilkerson fails to explain in detail the lack of a clear plan to empower the African-American community. The election of Trump was probably the counter-reaction of the caste system, but things would have been considerably smoothly with a different set of policies aimed to challenge the caste system. After all, Obama had eight full years to do it.

Caste is a fundamental book for understanding the historical and social basis of the caste system in America and its impact of other (non-white) communities, particularly the African-Americans.

BILD´s Lost Honour

 

BILD´s AXEL Springer whose yellow media tactics inspired in the 1970s Heinrich Böll to write a novel, The lost honour of Katharina Blum - turned into film as well - went at the beginning of this week through a turmoil, following an article published in the NYT disclosing the sexual misconduct and other misadventures of the then editor-in-chief Julian Reichelt. The stories surrounding the sex, drugs and money rolls in the Bild´s headquarters were well known for over a year, but the decision to suspend Reichelt was prompted by the latest disclosures in the English-speaking media. The fast answer prompted some bitter yet completely appropriate comments in the German-speaking social media saying that maybe in order for the local authorities to take decisions in sensitive cases - such as, the neo-Nazi networks among the Police and the military - international media should first report about it.

One day after Reichelt was put on leave, AXEL Springer put the dot on the acquisition of POLITICO, a major investment in the English (American) - speaking media. 

Bild´s modus operandi is well known long before Hamburg-born Reichelt - a former war correspondent in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon - whose both parents worked for Axel Springer was put in charge of the newspaper. The aggressive and sometimes misleading journalistic style, with a propension for disclosing personal information for purely sensationalist aims, was a main feature of the newspaper from the very beginning. This style that does not have anything to do with the journalistic ethics and the desire to inform the public was eventually translated to other media outlets the company purchased in Eastern Europe, promoting its brand of (non)journalism. 

In political terms, Bild - and Axel Springer in general - was a trouble maker with its own agenda. From sending balloons on the other (red) side of the Berlin Wall to its support for the state of Israel, and the open opposition to Putin they made many enemies. But when you are in such a sensitive constellation, being very careful with your internal ethics and the people representing you is more than an image move. It automatically connects with the values you assume to represent.

Mate Schönauer and Moritz Tschermak documented with journalistic attention to detail the emotional take on information that Bild started to play, particularly during Reichelt´s reign. Accusations of voyeurism and grotesque mishandling of data, use of personal information posted on Facebook for sensational aims. Selling emotions and feelings instead of information. While playing the game of sexual favors with the female employees, particularly young interns picked up based on their degree of ´fuckability´...(excuse my French, but journalists may be rough sometimes).

One of his many professional failures? Enjoying the power given by information. And I´ve seen it in the case of too many journalists that once being offered access to secrets of power they are dreaming of being power brokers, changing governments and eventually becoming part of a game that may end up in blackmail if the personal favors are not answered properly. In Bild´s case, the attitude regarding the state-imposed Corona restrictions are an example of an attempt of manipulation of the public opinion with serious health risks, both personal and at society level.

Some of the examples offered in the book, bringing the Bild very close to the AfD mainstream opinion, especially when it comes to immigration and the promotion of a very traditional image of Germany, but also the abusive and misleading public campaigns are nauseating and shameful. Reichelt´s dismisal will not change this line. Personally, I am very curious when and where the former editor-in-chief will reappear. And how long will it last until a new NYT article will warn about another German disgrace, everyone in Germany is well acquainted with.

´Inside Facebook´s Battle for Domination´

 

I often complain that there are so many non-fiction books, many of them dedicated to current phenomena, such as far right outburst and the wave of conspirationist theories. Many of them do have relevant information and share interesting details, probably less known to the wider public. However, what is unfortunately missing from many of those accounts is the courage of taking a stance, of reaching conclusions, of making clear statements. 

An Ugly Truth. Inside Facebook´s Battle for Domination by Sheera Frankel and Cecilia Kang, a NYT bestseller, is a poignant testimony about a project that outperformed even its most optimistic expectations. From a network aimed at connecting friends, it reached a country-like following and an equally impressive budget. The nation Facebook, which meanwhile added to its empire the very popular messenging system of WhatsApp and the predominantly photo app Instagram, has market dominance nowadays. 

Its dilemma, as outlined by the authors, both tech writers at NYT: connecting people while taking advantage of them. The costs of an expansion without limits are paid by the users whose information are often used for political purposes or for market researches without their will. Indeed, the users do have their dilemma too: of being out or in a popular social network, helping them to be in touch with relatives and friends while the network is abusing the information shared. 

From many respects, the Golem-esque Facebook redefined completely the social media landscape. If it haven´t existed someone should have need to invent it. Facebook redefined the way in which we connect, made possible a shift in terms of our relationship with the others as well as how we set up our story. However, it could not exist by itself, and the trade-oriented interests not only turned prevalent, but endangered values as democracy and freedom of speech.

Maybe Mark Zuckerberg was so naive to believe that by offering all the possible options on the table, people will rationally chose the best ones. Maybe he couldn´t care less. Maybe there is the millennial indifference of having it all without making any choice. Which is largely irresponsible and at least the episodes involving Facebook during Trump administrations were a counter-example strong enough to outline the dangers of this informational danger. ISIS recruitment projects and extreme right movements, alongside with charitable initiatives and cute cat photos. Hard to make a choice? Is it so hard to say ´no´ and simply ban those entities who should be out of public sight?

The book uses a lot of inside sources - to Sandberg and Zuckerberg´s horror - without getting lost into the sea of details and trivia. It follows a direction of research, therefore the information is organised along those lines. 

Indeed, truth can be ugly, but not openly declare it in its nakedness and uglyness is even uglier.

Book Review: Republic of Lies by Anna Merlan

 

Was Trump presidency the source of the recent wave of conspiracy theories? Or rather the high frequency of conspiracy theories was, in fact, a symptom of times of change and of deep societal fracture. Former Jezebel journalist, currently Motherboard (VICE) Anne Merlan spent hours talking with and in the company of conspirationists of all colours. 

Republic of Lies. American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power is collecting and explaining the major obsessions of untruth, from UFO believers to Birthers and Pizzagate. They are politicians, simple people, opinion breakers and self investigators. There are even conspiracy entrepreneurs. Many of them anti-semitic, Holocaust deniers.

The advantage of having been directly in touch, as a participant to different meetings or through direct discussions with conspirationists´ of all colours, is that a wide range of issues and the complexity of the conspiracy theories as such is offered. The collection of data and the different takes on conspiracies is very useful for a full picture of the conspiracy landscape. It is a very useful selection, updated with the latest state support perpetrated through Trump´s latest presidency which gives a very clear perspective of the phenomenon, although mostly as seen in American - but with reverberations in other part of the world as well, where authoritarian phenomena are a political reality lately.  

However, despite the impressive accumulation of information, the critical approach is lacking. There is no stance - definitely, a journalist should not, but a book is more than a media report. But you have so many symptoms and there is no disease? No one asked for the medicine, anyway, but the disease is there and one should know what exactly is going on, at the big society level, in order to figure out how to preserve what is still left in a relatively healthiest state. 

Rating: 3 stars

Visiting Dictatorland(s)

 

Although it does not have an academic approach per se, Dictatorland. The Men who Stole Africa by award-winning journalist Paul Kenyon may offer to academic researchers a good basis for figuring out the stakes of the research.

As I am often more journalist than academic, I dare to say that good journalism always leads to outstanding academic research. However, even well written journalistic pieces of information are not enough for making it into a serious academic research. Mostly, because although journalism is supposed to use a variety of sources, it may lack the proper critical approach and tools. This is due to lack of time sometimes, but also because it is not that the mission of the journalist: to compare and analyse and refute. A journalist will just be sure that he/she checked all his/her sources properly and offers in the end a quality piece of information reflecting the variety of points of views and approaches. Instead, a good academic article has the voice of the academic represented, as its framework is represented by the critical apparatus and the choice of one or another theoretical approach.

Dictatorland is, from this perspective, rather a collection of direct interactions and personal accounts while touring various countries in Africa: Libya, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea among others. Mostly, there are countries recognized for their rich resources but curses with corrupt governments leaded by dictators with a taste of both cruelty and lack of any contempt for their people. They mostly use the generous resources for peacock themselves - sometimes, literally. As for now, there are many African countries who remain enslaved by their leaders. 

Part of this situation is due, as mentioned in several occasions in the book, to the colonial history, but also to the Cold War tribulations when US preferred to support some paws only because it was useful in the front against the expansion of the Soviet Union. Nowadays though, and those aspects are not so well portrayed in the book, there are many more interests at stake, China being only one of the many main actors involved in using and abusing local resources. 

Each and every one of the cases featured are explained in the smallest details, with many information regarding the cases of dissent as well as the international games at play. However, although there may be a pattern in various situations and taking overs, it is important to avoid making comparisons which risk erase the specificities of the cases. For instance, the comparisons with Middle East, particularly Iran and the Mossadegh case can be useful for having a full picture, but does not necessarily make sense for the logic of the comparisons in itself. 

Books like Dictatorland are reminders not only that there is so much we ignore to know about the African diversity, but also how much share the former colonial powers do have in the current state of dependency and corruption. The problem is that new colonialist, non-Western powers are ready to use this context and deepen further the crisis while stealing the reminder of the resources left.

Rating: 3 stars

Living under White People

 

Germany-educated Mohamed Amjahid adds his testimony to the other informative accounts of what does it mean to be non-white in this country and abroad, like Alice Hasters, for instance. From the everyday encounters between him and the everyday residents of a village to the top management of the German media, the haughty attitude of superiority is widespread. The fact that the ´biodeutsche´ - those born and breed in Germany, with a white lineage - are mostly reluctant towards foreigners is not surprising and not news but the more it is outlined the better for raising awareness. It is a fact that should be acknowledged but even more than that: there should be a change - one day, some day, at a certain extent.

Sometimes, being labelled ´a good migrant´ or ´cool migrant´ (tooler Migrant, in German) may have its advantages, as giving a voice to the voiceless. Without those ´good migrants´ who stay aware of their identity and do not prefer to be trend followers, the story of hate, discrimination and narrow-mindness will never be heard.

This is important especially given the limited number of journalist with non-German background allowed to enter the ranks of the main media outlets. After all, isn´t it so cool to talk about diversity only from the position of generosity afforded by the priviledges of belonging to the majority? What about taking into consideration the real needs of real people who are experiencing every single day discrimination and everyday racism?

Importantly, Mohamed Amjahid sets his story into a wider European context - at the opposite ends of the European geography and history too, France and Hungary are faced with similar experiences. The ways in which the ethnic differences are internalised in Morocco, where his parents, once Gastarbeitern in Germany are currently living, outlines a much complex phenomenon that has to do with human perceptions and internalized stereotypes.

I only wish many many more such books that will keep alive the debate about (mis)treating non-white humans living in Germany. There is so much to share about and hopefully one day, voices of minorities living and contributing to the generous German wealth - think about all those IT experts and engineers invited to come to the country for their skills - will be heard strong enough to make more and more people aware of the need of a structural change of discourse and, on the long term, mentality.

Deciphering the Cultish Language

 

I promise myself over and over again to do not have high expectations on books. After all, very often, the good reputation of a book (as well) is based on reviews and wordsmitten words not necessarily innocent.

Cultish. The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell is an anaylitical research into what makes a belief ´cultish´ and what are the triggers for our critical thinking in order to detect the manipulation in due time and eventually resist it.

One of the takes that I appreciated about this book was the richness and uniqueness of the examples provided, particularly the intersection between various domains, such as health and various New Age belief. Taking the premise of religous, Protestant vocabulary and applying it to, for instance, the bubbling American workout culture is an interesting yet not extensively explored approach before although it is largely a result of the fundamentals of capitalism, in America and elsewhere.

Introducing nuances into the discourse which may avoid easy labelling as ´cult´ only for creating dissent and establishing spiritual monopoly Montell has also a nuanced approach when it comes to issues like ´brainwashing´ and the individual choice of joining or leaving a cult. However, it delves not into the complexities of group thinking and behavior as well as of the functioning of the human brain under peer pressure. 

Actually, my overall impression of the book is that in most of the cases it avoids proceeding to conclusions and quantitative/comparative analysis. Spotting the similarities between the religious language and the vocabulary of the ´positive thinking´ and influencers is not new and Roland Barthes and many others offered brilliant examples in this respect when writing about the language of advertising. Talking about ´followers´ reminisces of cults and religious fervor, but at what extent and how it is reaching the level of ´fanaticism´ we are left to figure out by ourselves, if ever.

The title promises too much, at least happened in my case, but it´s a pity that such a good material was not treated in a more throughout consequential way. Maybe because we are so exposed to radical language that we are unable to figure out how exactly the language of fanaticism really operates and how can it be countered or translated.

Cultish. The Language of Fanaticism is an useful read for its contemporary references although it does not go beyond some of the ´positive thinking´ kind of books it refers to. 

Rating: 2.5 stars

 

It´s All About the Language

 

Everything starts and ends with the language. Wars, discrimination, crimes, but also education, relationships and social and political change. This duplicity of the language brings not only risks but also responsibility and hope. Because actually there is a chance that once we acknowledge what a powerful tool we acquire - through education, birth priviledges or disadvantages, family and social interactions, to name only a few - we can realise the shortcomings and proceed to the changes.

German journalist Kübra Gümüșay is a patient observer of the German everyday complex relationship with identity. Sprache und Sein is an excellent work of reflection and applied hope for redefining the power of words. The everyday words we are using, not necessarily fully aware of the meanings those words are carrying. Painful meaning for some. 

One of the things that in a way suprise me in Germany is, on one side, the curiosity towards other religions, languages and identities - I don´t remember how many times people were in awe upon being informed about the number of languages I do speak - but without a real awareness about what really means to be different. It´s like you are asked where you are coming from but once you mention the exact geography, you are in fact talking about a place hardly someone can figure out where it is on the map. Thus, you are requested to rather find a place in the safe geography of your place/country of residence.

It´s not superficiality the word that may describe this situation. It´s also not mind laziness. But what it happens for sure in the case of the person whose identity is on a display in a very carnavalesque way is that after a while you are getting tired. You may be asked more than once by the same person the same amount of classical questions, and the reaction will be as the first time. No one asks you about what is the name of the food you like, or what is your favorite poetry or about your fashion sense. Such questions are not on the list.

Gümüșay is an excellent social doctor, spotting the paradigms of conservative refusal of identity but at the same time searching to identify and set new realms for discussing and recognising the difference(s). It´s a spin change which on the long term will definitely challenge the German post-war paradigm. But it took two generations - at least - for verbalize the need to end the intolerance of words. The diverse reality of nowadays Germany request a new vocabulary of freedom.

About Women in Journalism

Women journalists do have much more challenges to cope with than men, especially when dispatched in areas with a high potential of conflict. Journalists everywhere are at increased risk of being replaced by kind of Artificial Intelligence production of news where all should look good, neutral and eventually copy-pasted from agencies´ websites.

I believe in the power of words, in the power that journalists do have to change and say the truth to power. No matter what power. Journalists are not made to be a cozy comfortable presence. Power should be afraid of them and the pressure of the opinion public represented by journalists should be strong enough to force politicians and other public appointees to never forget whose interests do they represent.

Theoretically. In reality things are more complicated...

Former head of the ARD Studio in Tehran, Munich-born Natalie Amiri took the risk(s) - literally - of becoming the voice of those unheard in Iran. In addition to the everyday news reporting, she is also is able to seize the nuances and distinctions between different layers of power and the social reflections. Her successful book - Zwischen den Welten. Von Macht und Ohnmacht im Iran (In my approximate translation: Between Worlds. About Power and Powerless in Iran) - is not only a love story to Iran but also an example of why and how journalists should be knowledgeable of the culture, language and history of the countries they are reporting from.

The book includes dramatic episodes from the recent history of Iran, including the 2009-Green Movement as well as profiles women like Nasrin Sotoudeh who are a model of strength and accountability. Amiri´s encounters with the representatives of the security aparatus are horrible and terrible but it shows the high risks journalists are exposed when on assignments in countries ruled by repressive regimes. 

The book is a must read from everyone interested to understand more about the everyday life in Iran, beyond the simplistic black-and-white portrayals.

Photojournalist Julia Leeb is on the forefront of conflict reporting. She was in about to be killed in Libya and escaped an aggressive mob in Egypt during the ´Arab Spring´. She reported from North Korea, South Sudan and the state-who-does-not-exist: Transnistria. Her visual stories - some of them published in the book - are looking deep into the soul of the people, the pawns who are making everyday history.

One may start respecting more journalists and the risks some may take for every single bit of information. The reports from the war fronts by Julia Leeb are a reminder that good work still can be done but everything comes with a risk. Especially for women. 

About the National Writer

 

A round up of the different aspects related to the inclusion of literature and the writer as part of the national identity, La fabrique de l´écrivain national by Anne-Marie Thiesse can be used as a support handbook for the various cultural identity processes from the 18th century onwards.

Literature and its creators, the writers, are an important part of the re-writing, reconstruction and (re)creation of identity narratives. Either in France or the USA, in the Middle East or Africa, the writer is assigned an institutional role in the identity building process. A role which means not only being assigned a prestigious role and the incumbend priviledges but equally restrictions and limitations. Once the writer is bold enough to touch upon - even with the softest critical take required by the intellectual status itself, the national narrative is not only ready to expell him or her, but also to accuse him or her of treason. Which means often the expelling from the national historical narrative. 

The book is rich in arguments and situations as well as in information that help to trace long-take historical processes. However, the focus is rather on the chronological mapping of the phenomenon than on the critical evaluation. Equally, it does not refer extensively on the eventual relationship between what does it mean being a writer with the intellectual status, particularly as a critical take on contemporary facts - Dreyfus case, anyone.

Therefore, it contributes to the debate by the systematic outline instead of pushing forward new interpretations and critical points of view. 

Writing about Iran´s Foreign Policy

 

Iran´s Foreign Policy. From Khatami to Ahmadinejad a collection of articles edited by Anourshiravan Ehteshami and Mahjoob Zweiri is an useful read for someone interested to know a little bit about the diplomatic endeavours of the Islamic Republic. The articles are written about academics, current and former diplomats, political appointees and cover from very general aspects related to the foreign policy theories applied to the case of Iran to the relationships between Iran on one side, and European countries, US and UK, on the other side. It also includes various details about the relationship between Iran and Iraq, as well as the neighbouring countries and the Gulf countries.

The generous insights shared by some people with years of direct contact with the Iranian realities. However, diplomatically, there are so many very important aspects that are willingly or not omitted from those otherwise very interesting articles. 

For instance, what are the decision making mechanisms in matters of foreign policy. At what extent the Foreign Ministry has the capacity of taking decisions in this respect, and if yes, what kind of decisions and if not, what other institutions are involved in the process and at what extent. Also, when it comes to the nomination of diplomats, is the Foreign Ministry the only institution with attributions in this respect? 

Also, what exactly is the diplomatic program of Iran? How does Russia - and China - outplay their interests in Iran and how does this connect with other international players interested in engaging, such as Arab countries and European countries?

The situation of the human rights is tangentially mentioned in some of the articles but not as a serious impediment in pursuing the foreign policy goals but the situation of dual citizens imprisoned under various accusations is for a long time a matter of distrust in bilateral relations. 

I would have expected more applied analysis of the Iranian revolutionary export abroad, not only in Iraq - which is extensively covered - and Lebanon - less than it deserves but also, for instance, in Africa, or Syria, or Yemen. 

Last but not least, the Iran-UK relations are analysed and commented by two experienced diplomats. However, for obvious politeness reasons, the situation of the debt owed by UK to Iran which is a serious element of wariness in the bilateral relations is absent from the otherwise interesting evaluations.

Overall the book is useful, but would give to many of the articles for various non-diplomatic reasons with the benefit of the doubt. The take is ambitious but it delivers much less that it promises. Still, it is better than nothing and given that Iran will probably keep the first page of the news for a lot of reasons in the next months, it´s good to dedicate some time to this edited volume. 

Colonialist Stories, Told Differently

As we are more and more talking about colonisation and colonizers in different contexts, it is useful to keep in mind that the process as such encompasses more than one part of the world and surprinsingly, reveals the simple reality that various countries and empires at specific historical moments were involved in colonization processes. 

Histoire des Colonisations by Marc Ferro covers seven centuries of European expansionism, completed and/or complimented by other expansionist adventures: China, Russia - both as a capitalist and a communist empire -, Japan and even Egypt. The approach follows the French historical take of placing events and encounters in the long duration in order to obtain patterns and read mentalities. Although such an approach is not always appropriate as it obliterates important concrete events for the sake of the vague perspective setting, in the case of colonizations, Marc Ferro take is very relevant for outlining various processes and individual features of different stages of colonization or national patterns. From the 13rd century onwards, colonizations were used as a tool for religious outreach, search for new territories and economic resources, lately cheap resources and workforce, as in the case of France, among others, in North Africa. 
The author explores not only historical facts and events, but also connects with intellectual movements, cultural works and the construction of national elites and the birth of the concept of race.

Although it was written in 1994, it maintains valid perspectives for the recent discussions regarding colonialism, as it frames the right trends and matrix. It is dense and one can easily read it as a passionate journey across ages and continents. 

The only weakness of the book is that given the impressive amount of information, it rather limits the space for critical discourse and theoretical comparisons. The critical part is significantly missing which is a pity due to the tremendous volume of information featured that clearly needs more than a ´neutral´ storification.

Book Review: When We Cease to Understand the World

´The night gardener used to be a mathematician, and now speaks of mathematics as former alcoholics speak of booze, with a mixture of fear and longing´. 

When We Cease to Understand the World by the Chilean writer Benjamin Labatut, shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize is first and foremost a great example of science history writing. Covering the most dramatic episodes of scientific discovery since the end of the 19th century through the tormented personalities of its authors - Fritz Haber, Grothendieck, Schrödinger, Karl Schwarzschield, Heisenberg etc. - it is a realistic landscape of how limited is human knowledge. Sounds as an oxymoron but drunken from the sea of knowledge we sip from every single moment we may forget this basic knowledge. 

The book is rich in information and full of details, portraying more or less known scientific personalities - like, for me, Shin´ichi Mochizuki - focusing more on their personalities and struggles than on their achievements. It succeeds at a great extent to insert the complex knowledge - especially pertaining to quantum physics and complex mathematical equations - into a mentality frame and a specific historical sequence.  

We are extolling the power of mind and of scientific discoveries as such, but it´s our Enlightment expectations which take over sometimes, and sometimes it is just the lack of proper information about what we are praising. But really was Enlightment such an Enligtened time in the history of humanity? As any good book - no matter the topic - When We Cease to Understand the World is raising questions after questions about science, humanity and human decision-making and responsibility. 

We can read the book as a novel - and it is mostly written as such - but also as a popular science book, when the attribute of ´popular´ does not mean necessarily mediocrity. It is a book abour our present and the power we have to both use our mind for good or for bad, although most probably we don´t have too much control over our own achievements. Those who realize it, like the mad mathematician Grothendieck, ended up out of time. Like the author´s gardener featured in the last chapter of the book for whom talking about mathematics is like the memory of a booze for an alcoholic. Therefore, Voltaire´s ´cultiver notre jardin´ acquires a very different meaning.

Within the Mind of A Daesh Follower

 

A Cameroon-born teacher who relocated to France and worked as an educator with underpriviledged children in Paris, Sophie Kasiki takes the radical decision to join the Islamic State, without actually being aware what she is doing. At least, this is what she confessed in her post-escape memoir, Dans la Nuit de Daech. Confesion d´une repentie, published by Robert Laffont. 

Recently converted to Islam, Kasiki was convinced to go to Rakka, by two young men she met at the center where she was working. As she was going through a stage of soul searching, at a very personal and family level, she thought that by ´helping´ in Syria she would be part of something bigger than her. As many other women who joined the Daesh whose testimonies I´ve read or listen to, she was promised comfort and relative luxury, a cheap life and a community of like-minded people (what exactly this means it´s a completely different subjective story). Kasiki takes her son with her telling to her husband that she is actually doing some volunteering work in Turkey. 

Once taken to Syria, her nightmare and the plan to escape is started. She will encounter there a different reality that she naively not even imagined: of abuse and extreme brutality, perpetrated by a bunch of radicalized foreigners utterly disrespectful when not openly aggressive against the local Syrians. An army of strangers took over Syrian teritory. 

As she succeeded to connect with her husband several times, he got in touch with the France anti-terror experts and despite the slow down and the bureaucratic asperities, Kasiki and her son will return to France. After some interrogation sessions and a couple of months of prison, she is free and able to share her story.

The book is an useful testimony for anyone trying to better understand the recruitment methods and the overall functioning of Daesh. It can be added as a psyhological handbook about the type of personality usually attracted to such deadly extremist adventures.

Dans la Nuit de Daech has a very simple writing, the linear kind of story from A to B, lacking any kind of serious introspection and eventually a critical evaluation of her own decisions and risks encountered. It is an useful bibliographical source - especially for the French-speaking realm - but needs a serious critical add-on.  

Book Review: Fascism, a Warning by Madeleine Albright

 

The last decade registered an increasing frequency of authoritarian regimes all over the world, from the USA to Hungary. Some countries never experienced properly a democratic regime, but rather switches from an authoritarian variation to another. In some cases, representatives elected democratically abused in a totalitarian way democratic institutions and values. For instance, America under the Trump presidency. 

There are different variations on the anti-democratic scale, which are rather individual cases based on very specific historical, geographical, social and intellectual circumstances. 

There are big operational categories the political science operate with, like Fascism, Communism, Nazism, but it is very important to keep in mind the specificities of the system we are dealing with. Generalisations of any kind and gross comparisons are obliterating relevant details of the case-study. Instead of trying to find out the typical details, it focuses on the general lines without trying to identify the very specific information which may outline the differences.

Fascism, a Warning, by the ex-secretary of state during Clinton Administration Madeleine Albright, the first woman in America to hold the position of top diplomat, was written during the mid-term of president Trump. It was a time when America and the whole world was trying to understand what exactly this Trump administration was all about. Some may had the final revelation during the the very last weeks of the mandate when the Capitol Hill was under threat. Some, among which Albright, figured out long before. ´More generally, I fear that we are becoming disconnected from the ideals that have long inspired and united us´, wrote Albright, and the current US administration is way too ´green´ to make us hope that this values-oriented connection is restored.

Albright is uses her own personal history - as the daughter of a Czechoslovak diplomat forced to leave the country during the communism - when reading some of the cases presented: Chavez´s Venezuela, Milosevic´s Yugoslavia, Putin, Erdogan, Orban Viktor in Hungary. ´Repressive governments from across the globe are learning from one another´, and this is indeed, true, but mostly because the authoritarian regimes are not admonished in due time by using the complex international mechanisms. Orban Viktor, for instance, leads a party - Fidesz - with non-democratic tendencies, until recently member of the European People´s Party. The withdrawal in the end was Orban´s decision not the result of some outrage on behalf of the respectable parties part of the alliance.

The conceptual reference Albright used is fascism, as practiced by Mussolini. In her acception, ´a fascist is someone who claims to speak for a while nation or group, is utterly unconcerned with the rights of others, and is willing to use violence and whatever other means are necessary to achieve the goals he or she might have´. In full honesty, I may say that this theoretical basis does not stand a critical approach to the book in its entirety. I considered valuable - especially for further analysis and evaluation - the specific cases outlines, but the theoretical framework is very superficial and does not creates a good basis for understanding the phenomenon in its amplitude. In fact, the situation may be more serious than presented in the book, with autocrats from all over the world out and free from their caves. 

In 1975, Hannah Arendt wrote: ´To look to the past in order to find analogies by which to solve our present problem is, in my opinion, a mythological error´. Entropy, the level of disorder within a specific system, is only increasing with time. Coping successfully with the current authoritarian wave can be done only through a straigthforward analysis of its risks and specificities, as well as the overall system-errors and disfunctionalities (mostly related to institutional mishapes). Generalisations and uniform translations are deemed to fail the path towards clarity.

Rating: 3 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Chuck Norris versus Communism

Dictators of any colors and the enormous system supporting them don´t want their humans happy. They want to keep their people they took captive in ignorance, cut from the rest of the world. They want to enjoy the priviledge of playing with their mind and even stomachs, to portion their food with the same minutiae they are portioning and distorting the everyday truth and reality.

My childhood memories are very fuzzy. I remember vaguely relative saying ´good bye´ late at night, warning to not share anything was talked about in the home with neighbours and practically anyone, my stepfather being red of fury after he caught my brother listening to Radio Free Europe, the radio elegantly set on the heating system - thus, allowing the resonance of the sound down to the upper apartments, it seemed. I was afraid of not being caught in the elevator during the sudden electricity shortages. The visits of the food smugglers, late at night. A horrible doll, looking like a Golem with blue eyes, that I was finally allowed to have, bought from my neighbour, who used to steal it regularly from the toy factory he was working. Sometimes I remember a bit more, what I cannot forget is the feeling of leaving behind everything on the very first days of 1990. Like the magic stick made all those bad people and their bad lives disappear all of a sudden. No regrets, but for our wasted years in a place of no-belonging. Memories are very subjective, also when it comes to enormous historical encounters.

Part of my fuzzy mental album, there were the movies. We had a TV and at a certain point even a video player. Once in a while we were allowed to watch some cartoons, Woody Woodpecker was for sure, also Tom&Jerry. I was an expert in imitating Woody´s hysterical laugh. I was recently remembered about the woodpecker a couple of months ago, when I was walking through the snow-covered forest with my bf and heard it. Tried to share with him my very personal childhood story but I bet he didn´t get it fully but it´s damn hard to explain such intimate stories when political restrictions are meet and seen through the world-ignorant children eyes. There were some ´good night, children´ Bulgarian cartoons with a rabbit able to fly using his long ears as a hellicopter. I´ve learned some words in Bulgarian that helped me when I was flirting with learning the language and/or was trying to impress a guy who was speaking it fluently. And there was another cartoon made in the communist east, with the villain wolf trying to catch the rabbit - Nu zayetz, nu pogodi. We love it, and I remember that once my mom used the word ´perestroika´ while we were watching. Was it because of the jeans the wolf used to wear? Have no idea if it was a very direct connection with the changes that Gorbachev started in the Soviet Union that made the cronies in Bucharest fear for their tug life. 

But, as I was reminded during watching the movie Chuck Norris versus Communism, directed by Ilinca Călugăreanu - this specific Soviet cartoon was on the list of must-watch&must-cut list of movies of the censors. A commission made of people with certain cultural affinities was supposed to vision in advance all the films and productions to be aired during the 4-hour TV program aired daily by the Romanian TV. Given that the discourses of the president and his wife - both illiterate in the alphabet and Marxism, it´s good to remind for the background story - were very long, the so-called entertainment should to be short. The censors were busy identifying a lot of images and dialogues that were considered dangerous: no swearing, no religious mentions, no Gd, no luxury, no decadent capitalism, not too much food on the table. As they were trying to create an experiment erasing from the human Romanian brain of some the references to things that they, Communist People´s Party were enjoying regularly. 

They were not able to do it, for a very simple reason. As usually in communist/closed societies, there is a parallel society which is created, where people are getting in touch, illicitly mostly, sometimes through the help of some people part of the system - doing it for money or just because they realize the absurdity of their everyday life. In the case of Romania, there were the power of images from the American movies that succeeded to help people survive. It´s not a cultural survival, as many of those movies were hardly identified as a high-cultural concept, but it was a survival through images. Rambo, Pretty Woman, Top Gun, Doctor Zhivago...they were brought to 20 million Romanians through a network that, surprise, was tolerated and even encouraged by people with connection in the upper echelons of the Party and ´Intelligence´ (the so-called Securitate). A total of around 3,000 movies, as Irina Margareta Nistor, the voice behind those movies confesses in the movie.

Irina Margareta Nistor was working by day as part of the state TV censorship commission. After work, she was ´recruited´ by a certain Mr. Zamfir, who was the manager of the network sharing VHS tapes all over the country. At a certain moment, somebody else, apparently a double agent, joined the team. According to the details shared in the movie - made exclusively from various testimonies of people involved in the network or who enjoyed in different part of the country the experience brought to them - a well-oiled sytem was operating throughout the country, distributing the VHS tapes on the black market, and further displaying for smaller audiences. Irina Margareta Nistor was translating - sometimes betraying the original script a bit - on her own, almost everything. Her voice was associated with those images of freedom and well-being, the Romanians were hoping for eventually while waiting in a long line in front of empty stores. 

During those times, in the 1980s Romania, having a video player and a TV set was the equivalent of using a VPN in countries where Internet is under the strict state control. In some cases, there were group auditions - some with an entrance fee. From my fuzzy yet awake child brain, I remember my mom mentioning watching Dr. Zhivago alongside with some machers from the cultural decision fora of the party, and maybe 1-2 ´intelligence´ guys. In very closed societies, you need a serious protection to play the brave, even the naughty kind of brave, and maintain your freedom.  

Irina Margareta Nistor, who seems to be a recluse person and with a relatively shy presence in the brutal vulgarity of the post-communist Romania, was apparently left alone to do her job. Definitely, not because no one was watching. The extension of the network reached such a degree that it´s impossible to believe that it was not allowed to extent from the upper echelons. The Zamfir guy who managed capitalistically kind of skillfully the entire enterprise mentioned in the movie that once, one of the dictator´s sons requested a special movie and he refused it. Let me have a laugh on that. It´s a task for the historians of Romanian communism - still unknown to me - to document this very interesting cultural development that may serve as a model of understanding how dictatorships of all kinds can be actually shaken. 

Chuck Norris was not able to replace communism and those wo did it were not heroes, but the power of images and the resilience of people who were just having enough, so enough, of the miserable life, can prepare people for a life after. A life when at least people do have the freedom to take that airplane to a better, drama-free life.

 

For the historians of communist Central and Eastern Europe, as well as for those curious to understand the everyday life suvival in dictatorships, the movie Chuck Norris versus Communism is an useful source of information, although not complete, comprehensive or clear enough for having an analytical macro-society picture. 

Book Review: Intellectuals and Fascism in Interwar Romania. The Criterion Association by Cristina A. Bejan

I vaguely remember a distopyan intellectual landscape in post-communist Romania: after being ruled for decades by a non-elite of (mostly) illiterate individuals - Party and secret police - who pretended to be communists and patriots, lately by a grotesque couple, the Ceaușescus, with a doubtful genealogy, displaying an inimaginable greediness and cruelty towards their own ´people´, the countrymen enjoyed the illusion of the institutional and mind-chaotic freedom. Only one year before the changes, some used to get under the counter versions of the History of Religions written by the exiled scholar Mircea Eliade, or acquired some obscure translation of Heidegger done by a pupil by a recluse scholar that used to be friend with Eliade, Constantin Noica. Now, the book and newspapers stands were overnight full with all kind of books - from porn to writings by authors previously forbidden, due to their non-communist beliefs, as Constantin Noica or Emil Cioran. It seemed that the public wanted books and bread and nothing else... 

The changes of mind of the censorship during communism, in charge with deciding which books should be allowed to be published and which not, were moody, with decision to take a book out of the market occuring within days after the official publication day. The literary value of the book was irrelevant, and the subversive message was relatively unclear, as everything depended on personal sympathies - or antipathies - or the sudden subjective interpretation - and fears - of a censor. I remember how intellectually surprised I was when after reading a book that mom had hidden under a row of children books - Drum fără pulbere/Road without dust by Petre Dumitriu, covering in the ´socialist realistic vein´ the works for setting up the megalomanic Danube-Black Sea Canal, inaugurated in 1984 - I realized that the book has in fact no subversive message at all. There were just some references that maybe, maybe a new political regime may have considered problematic but it was nothing really serious and anti-communist in this book, except that the author fled Romania in 1960. 

The catalogues of the post-communist publishing industry were overwhelmed in the first revolutionary years by an enornmous amount of titles and Romanian authors whose names where on the black list of the censorship - for very very diverse reasons. There were a lot of authors from the exile, there were religious texts - especially pertaining to the Christian Orthodoxy - there were authors that spent time in prison. A big part of those titles were authored by authors that belonged openly to the interwar far right. The publishing houses went a bold step further and started to publish the writings of those ideologues, but also the writings of their German counterparts, that in most cases were the sources of their pride and ideas. Instead, when the Journal of Mihail Sebastian, a Jewish author and playwriter, was published, it ignited a scandal among the nationalist thinkers, as the author reveals the clear oportunism, anti-Semitism and fascism of those considered the luminaries of the Romanian elites. In addition to Noica and Eliade - whose far-right orientation, never publicly assumed, was already the topic that a young researcher, Ioan Petru Culianu openly revealed, to be shortly thereafter shot dead - it was another figure that was re-tuned from the deep disposable Romanian intellectual memory: Nae Ionescu. An oportunistic and hedonistic teacher, whose attributed writings were in fact recollection of notes by some of his students or even various discussions, he enjoyed playing the role of the mandarin at the court of the far right characters of the time. Educated, with university studies abroad, particularly to Germany, he probably enjoyed the game of trading his knowledge for some visibility and power-broking, for being in the end the victim of his own intellectual rapaciousness.

Another very much appreciated author, the French-writing essayist E.M.Cioran, wrote a book Schimbarea la Față a României/The Transfiguration of Romania - that he later dismissed as a youth accident - where he maturely elaborated his expectations for a religious-like change over of his country of birth. Among others, he wrote: ´In everything, the Jews are unique; they don´t have a match in the wold, /they are/ under a curse for which only God is responsible. If I were a Jew I would commit suicide right here´. This version of his book was very fast published after 1989, being followed with an altered variant, omitting the problematic statements.

All those characters, and many many more, populated the intellectual realm of Romania in the early 1990s. Teenagers, keen to find their own intellectual way, separated from the communist world of their parents, avidly enjoyed those writings, the revelation of a national spirit and the freedom of attending religious masses on the occasion of Orthodox Church holidays. Which in itself, is a laudable activity, unless one realized that besides the Orthodox Church, there are also other Christian denominations in the country, co-existing with non-Christian ones. 

But this is exactly what was missing from the Romanian intellectual landscape: a critical approach of the sources and of the history in general. Things moved so fast - this is the pace of the sudden political and social changes, nothing to do about it - and the people with a proper intellectual decency and honesty were missing at the time. Thus, an important critical stage was unfortunately dearly missed.

Intellectuals and Fascism in Interwar Romania. The Criterion Association by US-based historian, poet and playwriter Cristina A. Bejan is, according to my knowledge, the first ever attempt in the English language to analyse critically the biographies and activities of the member of the group that aimed at shaped the intellectual future of interwar Romania. 

Trying to capitalize a ´unique moment in the history of the country´, Criterion was in the early 1930s an important medium of discussion of a large spectre of issues, trying to reflect as many as possible different perspectives. Practically, the most important voices of the cultural realm for decades in Romania had a longer or shorter presence at the events organised between 1932 and 1935. One needs 30 days to create a habit, therefore 3 years of intense intellectual dialogue make it as a long-life habit. 

Minutiously, Cristina A. Bejan is studying biographies and events, interactions and topics approached, displaying an impressive diversity of characters and group dynamics. At a larger scale, it reflects the inner conflicts of a society that for decades was - and in certain respects still - looking for an unyielding intellectual ground. 

Caught between cosmopolitanism and intellectual models from abroad - French, German particularly - they tend to emulate and replicate them at home - with the high rate of failure such an attempt always has. 

The book is a comprehensive work of displaying - and subsequently translating - information not available for the English-speaking researchers. Although attempts to diagnose and evaluate critically the roots of Romanian nationalism and the problematic references they embraced - some were valuable, as the studies of Marta Petreu or the late Zigu Ornea - , this study focused on The Criterion Association is the first of this kind. The fact that after so many years of ´intellectual freedom´ only one such study was published is revelatory for the state of the art of the critical thinking in Romania. But the information that Cristina A. Bejan professionally assembled and analysed made it into a good start to further and further researches on this topic. 

The most recent political and historical developments on the world stage is a proof of how important critical thinking is nowadays. Being at the same time intellectually clear in terms of the set of values to belive in and alert when those values are transgressed may prevent following in the footsteps of the pattern so well described in the 1920s by Julien Benda as ´la trahison des clercs´. 

Thoughts inspired by ´The Colonizer and the Colonized´

A classical book read from a new perspective. Some writings do maintain their availability thanks to their capacity of being adapted to new contexts and situations. Although they may prove obsolete in their initial application, the frame offered might be operational in a completely different area. The intellectual sparkle ensued...

After so many years, I stole some time to re-read again The Colonizer and the Colonized by Albert Memmi. My initial aim was to refresh some of the ideas and try to connect the dots of a project I am working on aimed at featuring intellectual voices from North Africa and the Middle East who wrote against colonialism and about social revolution. Voices like Fanon, Memmi and - the least known Ali Shariati - are some of the authors I am interested to (re)discover in various contexts.

Born in Jewish La Hara suburb of Tunis, Memmi analysed in this beautifully written book the dynamics between the colonizer and the colonized, with a specific interest for North Africa, particularly Tunisia. My edition was published in 1965, with an introduction by J.P.Sartre and a new introduction by Nadine Gordimer. 

There are two main parts of the book, figuring out the ´Portrait of the colonizer´, followed by the ´Portrait of the colonized´. The colonizer mostly speaks French and comes from Europe, while the colonized is usually described as ´lazy´, ´cheap labor´ and ´kept away from power´. I really appreciated the good balance between the economic and social aspects projected against a very complex intellectual background. Thus, Memmi is overcoming the usual Marxist perspective typical for the times of writing the book.

However, although the description of both elements of the power binome is accurate, it does not reflect the realities of the globalization, for instance. In some hot spots in the Middle East, Europeans are moving in search of tax heavens and a high - yet rewarding - salary. They will never be accepted as citizens of their respective countries and not even able to purchase properties there, however, they stay there for the advantages that were built especially for attracting their skills and knowledge to contribute to building societies they will never be part thereof. 

Another thought that inspired me a further development of the ideas exposed in The Colonizer and The Colonized has to do with the power dynamics within a specific - non-democratic - society. A dictatorship - of the proletariat, military, religious elites - is operating as a colonizer against its own people, particularly those who are excepted from the ruling elite. For them too, ´(...) the colonized means little to the colonizer´. They are also presumed unreliable, thieves as well, and often evicted from their own history - as the history of the internally colonized country is constantly re-written in order to answer the expectations - of self-agrandisement too - of the elites. The colonized should as well resemble the colonizer, in an effort of uniformization and brain washing on behalf of the colonizer. 

´Colonization distrusts relationships, destroys or petrifies institutions, and corrupts men, both colonizers and the colonized´, said Memmi. This thoughts can be easily apply to any dictatorship whose terrific impact on the society damages on long terms the chances of a healthy return to normality of an post-democratic new world.

To be continued...