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| Ivan
Dodovski
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| NATIONAL
LITERATURES AND GLOBALIZATION
What else are the nations of the new ages
if not influential fictions of the reading public,
which - by reading common texts - has
become an association of concordant friends?
Peter Sloterdijk
What else are the nations of the new ages
if not influential fictions of the reading public,
which - by reading common texts - has
become an association of concordant friends?
Peter Sloterdijk
Apart from the clearly philosophical implications of the so-called
and already scandalously known ?dispute over Sloterdijk?, the lecture
by Peter Sloterdijk given at a philosophical seminar in Bavaria,
in June 1999, entitled ?Regulations on the Human Garden?, provokes
a reflection over the status of literature as well. Namely, referring
to the humanism of the new ages, which he defines as ?a model of
literary association? or ?a sect ? of those who are chosen to be
literate?, Sloterdijk announces the thesis that the time of literature
(writing, Fr. ecriture) as a medium of humanisation (taming, raising,
educating, Züchtung) has ended. ?With the establishing of the mass
culture through the media in the First World War, in 1918 (radio)
and after 1945 (television), and subsequently with the current revolution
of the network building, the coexistence of the people in the present
society is fixed on new bases. Those bases, as one can unquestionably
display, are resolutely post-literary, post-epistolographic and,
consequently, post-humanistic ? the massive modern societies only
marginally produce the political and cultural synthesis trough the
media of literature, writing, humanism. Literature has in no way
come to its end because of this reason, but it has secluded itself
in a subculture sui generis, and the days when it was valued as
a conveyor of the national spirit have ended long time ago. The
social synthesis is not - even under false pretenses ? primarily
a question of books and writings. The supremacy has been seized
by the new media of political and cultural telecommunications?.1
Defining the bestialization as a human disposition, Sloterdijk thinks
that so far it has been tamed trough the medium of writings, i.
e. literature. Since the antiquity, there is ?a basic clash between
the letter and the amphitheatre, the humanism and the industry of
entertainment?. (59) The issue, says Sloterdijk, is especially relevant
today. ?In the contemporary culture, too, there is an ongoing titanic
battle between the impulses of taming and bestialization, on one
hand, and their media, on the other.? (33) However, in the informational
society of telecommunications and in the mass culture, the old media
of humanism are ineffective. The very humanism of the new ages,
with its lectures, executes a domestication of the human and his/her
transformation in a ?small human?. Such lectures of the humanism
of the enlightenment should be changed by the possibilities of the
genetic technology, with which support an optimization of the human,
raising not of humanists, but of super humanists would be accomplished.
As an answer to the challenge, Sloterdijk proposes constituting
of ?a codex of anthropo-techniques?, which would apparently set
the basis for ?the genetic reforms of the human kind? and for ?the
explicit planning of the human dispositions?. (33) The spiritual
elite, the Plato?s emperor-philosopher is supposed to be in charge
of the implementation of such biopolitics. Regarding the delicate
ethic implications of the contemporary genetic engineering and especially
the Nietzschean arguments and terms that Sloterdijk uses (staring
with the key word Züchtung, especially frequent during the nazi
era), it is no wonder that the reactions against Sloterdijk can
be summarised to accusations for fascism.
Nevertheless, let us get back to the question of literature. I will
start with Sloterdijk?s arguments in order to focus on several aspects
of the question over the status of literature in the era of Globalization.
The process of Globalization, as well as the process of European
integration, led to a change of the mental habits of thinking about
the concept nation. Hence, the concept national literature will
also undergo important changes. Sloterdijk defines the nations of
the new ages as ?influential fictions of the reading public, which
- by reading common texts - has become an association of concordant
friends?. (22) The nation, thus, is a construction or a fiction
of the readers united by common ?canon of reading list?. (22) The
reading list inspires and in the same time carries the national
spirit. However, in the modern mass society, the common canon of
reading list is insufficient to carry out the political and cultural
synthesis. Today, the identity of the nation can not be established
outside the identity of the individual that communicates with other
individuals through the new, contemporary media. Consequently, the
old concept of national literature as a conveyor of separate, authentic
and perceptible ethno-psychological data will end. The contemporary
informational society, trough the new media, integrates, combines
and to a great extend levels the different, until now present ?canons
of reading list?, establishing thus a new, common canon. The Globalization
necessarily directs to constituting of a new, common system of values,
which levels ? with the same inevitability ? the separate (previous)
and authentic systems of values. The term world literature, firstly
used by Goethe to denotate the relation among different national
literatures, today can signify ?a subculture sui generis? (Sloterdijk),
in which triumphs not the enunciation of each separate ?national
spirit?, but the enunciation of each individual from the global
village. The marginal status of literature, which - according to
Sloterdijk - is no longer a medium of political and cultural synthesis,
does not necessarily mean abolition of literature. As I have stated
in other occasion2, the literature achieves its meaning as a struggle
in the language, a struggle which final aspirations are a perfect
anamnesis of the divine logos. As such, the literature will exist
even in the era of the new media and, quite surely, it will use
their advantages.
Nonetheless, the essential shift of the concept national literature
towards the concept world literature, as elaborated above, has one
disturbing aspect: the language. Namely, the national literature
is written in certain national language. Today, however, the small
nations, literatures, and languages feel upon themselves the pressure
of Globalisation, especially evident in the Internet communication,
as a terror by the English language. The market regulations, which
also conduct the literary production and distribution, will legitimize
this terror irresistibly. Plainly, the worst prognosis say that
hundreds of languages undergo a process of extinction, while for
fifty years there will be only three languages spoken on the Earth:
English, Spanish, and Chinese. Let us conjure that these are only
unreasonable predictions.
Yet, the question remains open: does the Globalisation, the new
global system of values, the new concept of world literature ? imply
one, global, common, world language? Which are the consequences
of such unification, firstly for the literature, but also for the
cultural and political order? Are we headed to a new Babylon tower
presented in the face of the New World Order? Moreover, can the
?terror of the differences?, apparent in the numerous national,
religious, social and other conflicts, be converted into ?a terror
of the sameness?, which will find its expression as a violence over
each different and irreplaceable person?
1 Peter Sloterdijk. ?Pravila za coveckata gradina/Regulations
on the Human Garden?, in: Margina 48- 2/2000, Skopje, p. 23 (in
Macedonian language). This issue of the magazine is thematically
dedicated to the ?dispute over Sloterdijk? and presents: an introductory
essay, the lecture by Sloterdijk, his correspondence to Habermas,
the reactions by Thomas Assheuer, Manfred Frank and Walter Ch. Zimmerli,
as well as an interview with Sloterdijk. All further references
appear in the text.
2 Ivan Dodovski. ?Stranstvuvanjeto vo jazikot/On Being a Stranger
in Language? (essay read at the International symposium Pontes 98,
held in Krk, Croatia, August 23 ? 30, 1998), in: Kulturen zivot
3/98, Skopje (in Macedonian language)
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