Book Review
Jane Anna Gordon and Lewis R. Gordon, Of Divine
Warning; Reading Disaster in the Modern Age
(Paradigm Publishers, 2010)
14 December, 2010 | Teodros Kiros (Ph.D)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
originators and deposits of disasters. Their very existence as blacks is a warning
of disaster-at any time, any place and for a preordained event.
Their blackness itself is regarded as a sign of doom, a sight where disaster is
hatching and monstrous events, such as the American Katrina are born, and blacks
in particular are portrayed as looters, as criminals, versus the virtuous white
victims, who are finding food, and not stealing it. The blacks are thus portrayed
as evil, and the whites as virtuous and pure. In the middle of tragedy, blacks had
time to loot, because they are innately criminal, monsters.
Blacks are simply disastrous beings. (Pp1-3). They are ‘ problem people”, and
disasters are the times during which their monstrous composition is nakedly
visible. Their blackness itself connotes the absence of values, of ethics. Blackness
is presented to the world as a myth of terrifying monsters, which we can never
understand, which is beyond transparency; very much like myth is treated. Blacks
are mythological beings.
Blacks and Afro-Jews are modern monstrous creatures. They have been allowed
to speak, but as monsters, whose manners have now been appropriated by popular
culture, in which everybody is now a monster.
The monster, however, refuses to be silent. The black speaks, and fights for the
construction of a political space, from which he and she launch a vision of Blacks
as new signifiers of freedom, of presence, of communicative rationality, which
refuses to be a monster, a creature, a problem.
The table is now turned against the previous signifiers. The radically new feature
of the black monster, now- is action combined with speech and mediated through
revolutionary collective self-defense, as Malcolm signified. Martin Luther king
signified moral speech, communicated through Ethics, and Malcolm signified
violent resistance.
The mute monster now becomes a political subject, who speaks and is ready to die
in defense of dignity. The new black speaks, acts and legislates his people’s
future. Along with the changed subjects of popular culture, the modern monster is
a strategist and a fearless articulator of political truth, most particularly visible in
the sophisticated language of hip-hop, which turns truth inside out. In these ways,
popular culture disarms monstrosity, the signifier of the life chances of the
condemned.
The condemned ignore the warnings and seek to change the conditions of their
oppression. They are condemned to emerge out of invisibility to the ruin of
freedom. The new monsters live out the existential signifier that humans are
condemned to freedom. They seek to free their culture from death, fully aware
that we are condemned to live only because we are condemned to die; yet, we
have a responsibility to ruin disastrous culture, so that we can create a new future
as imaginative beings.
The future is a new dawn.
The Gordons write,
“ A humanity that refuses to answer encomia to mature is destined to
destroy itself in a game of children playing with deadly weapons. In
maturation are the necessities of life, of treating mistakes as
opportunities from which to learn instead of dreaded signs of
imperfection. Efforts at purification foreclose the future by presuming
the return of the sanctified origins." (P, 115)
We must learn from the monsters, for they might show us the way, as the beings
who pray to be beings who question, beings who can turn a new leaf, envision a
future, condemned to a radically new future, a function of our natality, as the
harbingers of change.
Each new generation has a responsibility to create a new future, and no one has
the right to foreclose this possibility.
I agree with Jane Gordon and Lewis Gordon that I hope we have not run out of
time, to witness the death of moribund cultures and the birth of new cultures for
the human condition.
The cultures of the future can only come out of the living activities of those whom
we have relegated to be bearers of destruction and the absence of ethics.
--------------------------------------------------
Teodros Kiros Professor of Philosophy and English (Liberal Arts)
Berklee College of Music, is also a Senior Editor at Ethio Quest News.
His weekly column appears here
Jane Anna Gordon and Lewis R. Gordon, Of Divine
Warning; Reading Disaster in the Modern Age
(Paradigm Publishers, 2010)
14 December, 2010 | Teodros Kiros (Ph.D)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Jane Gordon and Lewis Gordon have produced
a masterpiece on reading disasters in the
modern age. The book is at once analytic,
historically sensitive and imaginative, feature
that we have come to expect from these two
committed writers, each time they collaborate
and produce books of enduring quality.
- Their primary concern is to illuminate the
meanings of disasters when they occur to
blacks, which they aptly call, “ Black
Signification”, as a foundational locus of
disasters and their signification.
- Blacks are first put in invisible places. Only,
when disasters occur are they made visible, as
sources of trouble that bring calamities on
themselves, and the world has to be burdened
originators and deposits of disasters. Their very existence as blacks is a warning
of disaster-at any time, any place and for a preordained event.
Their blackness itself is regarded as a sign of doom, a sight where disaster is
hatching and monstrous events, such as the American Katrina are born, and blacks
in particular are portrayed as looters, as criminals, versus the virtuous white
victims, who are finding food, and not stealing it. The blacks are thus portrayed
as evil, and the whites as virtuous and pure. In the middle of tragedy, blacks had
time to loot, because they are innately criminal, monsters.
Blacks are simply disastrous beings. (Pp1-3). They are ‘ problem people”, and
disasters are the times during which their monstrous composition is nakedly
visible. Their blackness itself connotes the absence of values, of ethics. Blackness
is presented to the world as a myth of terrifying monsters, which we can never
understand, which is beyond transparency; very much like myth is treated. Blacks
are mythological beings.
Blacks and Afro-Jews are modern monstrous creatures. They have been allowed
to speak, but as monsters, whose manners have now been appropriated by popular
culture, in which everybody is now a monster.
The monster, however, refuses to be silent. The black speaks, and fights for the
construction of a political space, from which he and she launch a vision of Blacks
as new signifiers of freedom, of presence, of communicative rationality, which
refuses to be a monster, a creature, a problem.
The table is now turned against the previous signifiers. The radically new feature
of the black monster, now- is action combined with speech and mediated through
revolutionary collective self-defense, as Malcolm signified. Martin Luther king
signified moral speech, communicated through Ethics, and Malcolm signified
violent resistance.
The mute monster now becomes a political subject, who speaks and is ready to die
in defense of dignity. The new black speaks, acts and legislates his people’s
future. Along with the changed subjects of popular culture, the modern monster is
a strategist and a fearless articulator of political truth, most particularly visible in
the sophisticated language of hip-hop, which turns truth inside out. In these ways,
popular culture disarms monstrosity, the signifier of the life chances of the
condemned.
The condemned ignore the warnings and seek to change the conditions of their
oppression. They are condemned to emerge out of invisibility to the ruin of
freedom. The new monsters live out the existential signifier that humans are
condemned to freedom. They seek to free their culture from death, fully aware
that we are condemned to live only because we are condemned to die; yet, we
have a responsibility to ruin disastrous culture, so that we can create a new future
as imaginative beings.
The future is a new dawn.
The Gordons write,
“ A humanity that refuses to answer encomia to mature is destined to
destroy itself in a game of children playing with deadly weapons. In
maturation are the necessities of life, of treating mistakes as
opportunities from which to learn instead of dreaded signs of
imperfection. Efforts at purification foreclose the future by presuming
the return of the sanctified origins." (P, 115)
We must learn from the monsters, for they might show us the way, as the beings
who pray to be beings who question, beings who can turn a new leaf, envision a
future, condemned to a radically new future, a function of our natality, as the
harbingers of change.
Each new generation has a responsibility to create a new future, and no one has
the right to foreclose this possibility.
I agree with Jane Gordon and Lewis Gordon that I hope we have not run out of
time, to witness the death of moribund cultures and the birth of new cultures for
the human condition.
The cultures of the future can only come out of the living activities of those whom
we have relegated to be bearers of destruction and the absence of ethics.
--------------------------------------------------
Teodros Kiros Professor of Philosophy and English (Liberal Arts)
Berklee College of Music, is also a Senior Editor at Ethio Quest News.
His weekly column appears here
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