You’re not Supposed to Be Here, Ma’am
You’re not Supposed to Be Here, Ma’am!
Offside!
“In a position in a game…on the opponent's part of the field where you are not allowed to be,” that is how Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines the word ‘offside’. It is also the title of a 2006 Iranian movie. The storyline of the movie is simple: It’s about some girls who try, individually, to sneak into a stadium during an important game of soccer. They do not succeed, though, and are taken into custody. Why? Because women are not allowed in the stadium where men are playing, according to Islamic Republic laws. The movie is directed by the internationally acclaimed director, Jafar Panahi. Quite naturally, it was banned from screening in Iran, where it made sense most.
The storyline above doesn’t reveal anything of the depth of the social, as well as political, implications of the movie. Most of the movie is dedicated to a negotiation between one of the girls, or a couple of them, and the soldiers who are in charge of detaining them; whom one should be wary not to take as merely the pawns and tools of the state. The characters, the storyline, and the stylistic aesthetics of the movie persuade the viewer to delve deep into the definition of the public sphere in the Iranian civil life. Is it enough to go along with the state defined civil society? Is it adequate to persuade the state into introducing formal social liberties? Does ‘the private’ matter as much as ‘the public’? Which one of the scholarly definitions of the public sphere fits more appropriately with the one depicted in the movie? These and many other questions are among the issues that the movie touches upon in both its form and its content.
Women in the Public, and in Cinema
In an article on women and sexual love in Iranian cinema, Mir-Hosseini mentions three phases in the participation of women on screen in Iran.[1] In the first phase, which is also the oldest one, women were rarely willing to stand in front of the camera and play, since what happened to Sadiqeh Saminejad, the first Muslim Iranian actress to play a role in an Iranian talkie, was so devastating to her life that she decided to seclude from the cinema and society all at once. Mir-Hosseini speaks of the sexual harassment she received in the public whenever she stepped outside, while the male actor of the movie, Sepanta, rose to stardom. This is perhaps a very good illustration of how the society saw the limits of the presence of women in Iran, back then.
The advent of the Pahlavi dynasty and the infamous, forced de-veiling phenomenon, which was the translation of feminism for Reza Shah[2], had a direct role in the increase of the public presence of the women even in posts as high as a judge or a minister. But most of it went up in smoke in 1980, when Khomeini, ‘the Imam of the nation’ after the so-called Islamic revolution, declared forced veiling. During the Iran-Iraq war, lasting from September 1980 to August 1988, the role of women in front of the camera was virtually limited to that of a chaste wife or mother.
There have been movies in the 1990s which tried to circumnavigate the stereotypes of women by emphasizing on the rights of women as mothers and wives, specifically the oppressed ones. Tahmineh Milani’s movies are full of these trials. There were other female directors who tried to emphasize the role of women in the society in a more profound way; e.g. by depicting women who are more resilient in the face of oppression than any female persona depicted thus far. Rakhshan Bani E’temad is quite a staggering figure in this trend. Mir-Hosseini’s example for the second of her tripartite phases mentioned above, is Bani E’temad’s Nargess. The movies of this trend were significant in the sense that they were reflecting the tensions troubling the minds of the officials who had already been witnessing the increase of the public presence of women in the post-war and the reform era.
The third phase which Mir-Hosseini titles “debating the taboo,” came along at the height of the reform era. The leash on the film makers’ liberties was loosen a little bit and some movies dared take up issues which had commonly been considered forbidden before. Showkaran (Hemlock; 2000) is the movie that Mir-Hosseini chooses as the archetypal example of this period. There were other movies which had a more vitriolic take on the plight women were suffering. One of the most acerbic critiques of the oppression of women, Nasle sookhteh (Burnt Generation; 1999) was a harbinger in holding both the patriarchal society and the state responsible. It was in this atmosphere that Offside was created.
The Stadium: A Public Sphere?
The movie Offside is about the oppression of women in general, and their efforts to take up a more prominent role in the public sphere, and the civil life of the country, in particular. Panahi uses the soccer stadium and the public celebration in the streets that follows the match as a symbol of the spheres that women in Iran are not supposed to step in. His heroines engage themselves with the very people who are so keen on implementing the patriarchal rules and male-dominated cultural taboos on women. These girls see it as their right to be able to take part in the social activities that involves national interests such as the rare event of publicly celebrating an international sport achievement.
Let us see how (and how come) Panahi considers the soccer stadium a public sphere. At approximately the beginning of the movie, there is a scene on a minibus where some football fans are riding. An apparently mild clash begins between two of the passengers. Later on we find out the whole thing had started because one of the passengers felt offended when he was asked why he was taking his ‘blind’ dad to the stadium. The blind man gives a peculiar answer to the curious guy. He says that he believes the stadium is not just for a soccer match. It’s a place to talk, shout, and reveal your true colors; where you can say whatever you want; you can even curse at anybody and everybody; it’s a place to feel excited among other people.
If one knows how politicized the atmosphere in the Iranian soccer stadiums is, no doubt they will agree with what the blind character of the movie says. It is a place where people chant highly politicized slogans, especially in provinces of Iran where people generally believe they have been neglected by the central government for so long. This happens on a regular basis in cities like Abadan and Tabriz. Even in Tehran, especially when the national soccer team is not playing in harmony, protestation shows itself in the form of chanting slogans in favor of the rival team. In another incident, when six of the players of the national team wore a ‘green wristband’ in an international match outside Iran (apparently in support of the Green movement), they got immensely popularized; for months they got cheered by the football fans in the stadiums regardless of the team they were playing for or against. Right when the Green movement was in its height, many of the matches were reported on the state TV without the live sound of the stadium whose amateur videos on the internet showed a great deal of chanting in favor of the movement. The soccer stadium in Iran is definitely more than a place for watching a game of soccer, as ‘the blind man in Offside’ says. It’s a public sphere in its own uncharacteristic manner.
This brings us to an age-old debate on the definitions of the public sphere and its features. Two somewhat competing approaches toward the public sphere that this paper is going to elaborate on are the Habemas’ conceptualization of public sphere and Gandhi’s Indian variants of it.
Habermas’ Public Sphere and its Critiques
Let us now review very briefly the tenets of the Habermasian conception of public sphere and its critiques. In a way public sphere is defined as “a modern institution and a set of values which brings private persons together in public to engage in the context of reasoned debate.”[3] It is "a discursive space in which individuals and groups congregate to discuss matters of mutual interest and, where possible, to reach a common judgment."[4] Habermas’ notion of public sphere “designates a theater in modern societies in which political participation is enacted through the medium of talk...in which citizens deliberate about their common affairs.”[5]
Though still looked upon as a determining theory, Habermas’ notion of the public sphere has come under some critique. Fraser, in her article, Rethinking the Public Sphere, attacks some of the assumptions which a masculinist and bourgeois conception of the public sphere - the way Habermas defines it - possesses. She asserts that this kind of public sphere actually excluded women and lower social classes. Fraser believes that the idea that “the institutional confinement of public life, to a single, overarching public sphere is a positive and desirable state of affairs”[6] has also proved inadequate. The other aspect of the Habermas’ definition of the public sphere which Fraser finds problematic is the boundary he draws between the private and the public, saying that there are no “naturally given, a priori” boundaries there. On the whole, Fraser believes that “Habermas stops short of developing a new post-bourgeois model of public sphere.”[7]
Gandhi and His Indian Variants of Public Sphere
Gandhi’s effort were directed at getting his message beyond the literary elites to a non-literate mass public. In his very first experiments in creating a public sphere, Gandhi tried out “organizational forms that could be used to attract new constituencies as politics – a very different function than the coffee house’s deliberative exchange among the politicized.”[8] Gandhi started a movement which only later got to be called Ashram. People who lived there learned to become trained resistance professionals who were so influential in some of India’s greatest social movements, such as the Delhi Satyagraha, and the legendary salt march.
In elaborating the characteristics of Gandhian ashram that makes it different from the Habermasian coffee house - both representative of a public sphere - the Rudolphs, in Coffee House and the Ashram, name these traits as the most significant differences: The ashram “sought to draw uneducated: urban and rural, working and farming people into the public sphere in the context of mass politics.” And “…Gandhi’s ashram deliberately challenged the differentiation between private and public that characterizes the modernist public sphere.” Also, “[Ashram was] dedicated to social and political change in a polity where illegal political action is the only action possible for a free person.”[9] The transgression of the borders between the public and the private, the writers believe, is what gives the Gandhian public sphere its revolutionary quality. Let us now see how these traits work into the Iranian public sphere and Panahi’s representation of it: the soccer stadium atmosphere.
Offside, A Transgressive Illegal Act!
Offside begins its story with a dad who is looking for his daughter. He believes she has gone to the stadium to watch the Iranian national team’s soccer match with Bahrain. It’s an important match and Iran’s team will go to the World Cup if it wins. Thousands of people – and by people in this situation, one means ‘men’ – are heading towards the stadium. The story doesn’t linger on the dad, though, and we come to know of a girl, cross-dressing as a boy, sitting among male football fans on a minibus. A boy finds out and tries to inform a friend of his, another boy on the same vehicle. The friend’s reaction comes as a shock, “I know. And guess what! She is not the only one. A lot of them sneak into the stadium all the time.” Right there, Panahi draws a line between the people who tacitly agree with the participation and presence of women in public events and those who don’t; and he doesn’t try to hide his suspicion and contempt for those who don’t. Later on in the movie, we even see some young people helping a detained girl run away.
Soon enough, the aforementioned girl gets caught by a soldier. Panahi shrewdly depicts the arrest of the girl as an unusual effort a soldier goes through when he gains no apparent benefit in doing so. Therefore, the pressure on women’s public presence is still, up to this point, from people, and not necessarily an iron fist of the state; especially evident when the very same soldier asks the detainee to lend him her cell phone to call a certain person who is obviously the soldier’s girlfriend. In this sense, the long negotiation between ordinary individuals and the soldiers which takes up most of the time of the film is emphasized as a necessary part of the public sphere. What it means is that, in order to be free, to be normally considered as an individual who wants to be a member of the public sphere, the girls have to negotiate their presence.
The illegality of the girls action – being present in a sphere which is considered forbidden for women –is consistently emphasized since the location where this girl, and the others like him, are kept becomes the main location of the film for almost two-thirds of the film. Panahi chooses a place within the stadium, close to a large gate where the soldiers can watch the soccer match, but the girls can’t, as a symbol of the absurdity of the situation. The place is not a prison; it’s a small restricted area with a rather short fence around it. The prisoners and the soldiers are in constant contact. All of them, and us as the viewers, can hear the cheers of the fans who are in a situation where they can watch the game. However, once again in a clever decision, Panahi abstains from screening the actual sight of the match. This makes the viewer of the movie more sympathetic towards the fate of the girls who, like the audience, are deprived form watching the match they were willing to risk their neck on watching.
As mentioned before, one of the characteristics of Gandhi’s ashram was to ‘deliberately challenge the differentiation between public and private’. This is a strong motif in the movie which is repeated over and over. The first instance of this is when one of the girls tries to smooth talk a young officer into being less aggressive. The officer, who we later find out is from an economically neglected rural area of Azerbaijan, is initially depicted as an agent of the state; a hegemonic tool who is doggedly inflexible to the point that he doesn’t let a girl go and use the bathroom, while she obviously needs it. He is blaming the girls for his own obligatory stay in Tehran while his mom is sick and needs him. Instead of asking the very structure of the state that is responsible for his plight, he decides to take out his rage at the detainees. Then comes the dialog: the girl, who is as adamant in defending her presence there as the officer is in reprehending her, manages to get to the soft side of the officer and ask him some pretty serious questions about the credibility of his ideas. She doesn’t give up even after hearing some tired clichés about the chastity of women. She keeps pushing until she persuades the young officer to think over his prejudices.
Panahi chooses civil disobedience, the way it was practiced in Gandhi’s movement, as the core strategy that the girls of his film capitalize on, not only against the state, but also their own families. For instance, one feature much favored by the ashram movement was to peacefully break the rules and regulations which they saw as unjust, simply because it was the only action they could take. The role of women was also significant: in Gandhi’s civil disobedience movement “[t]he uncommon appearance of women as political mobilizers…and outrage at ‘the insult offered to our womanhood’ caused their call to spread like fire.”[10] Like those women, the girls in Offside are already guilty as charged for their presence there, but they are far from accepting that guilt. They see it as their unquestionable right to be at the stadium; and even at times they make fun of their situation there and laugh about it. They see transgression of the rules as the only method of getting what they consider to be their neglected right.
Gray People, Black Officials!
It is probably worth mentioning that Offside uses a range of diverse features in order to highlight the universal quality of the specific situation it is depicting. The first and foremost is the lack of classic character building which is an indispensible part of a mainstream movie. The characters do not bear names. We do not know who they are, or what their personal stories are. Their political worldviews, except for the brief dialog between the girl and the young officer, is not revealed to us. All we know about the characters is the hunches we can make based on their rural accents and more importantly on their exchanging of their viewpoints on soccer and on the legitimacy of their own actions. Although the scenes in which one or two members of each group tries to defend him/herself are lengthy and numerous, rarely can we pick any personal information about the characters.
At the beginning of the movie one gets the feeling that it’s a standoff between the oppressed women and ‘the state’ with the police force as its apparatus. Before half of the movie is elapsed, we find out that the gravity of the problem that the movie is portraying goes well beyond a simple political message. The movie claims that there is a fraction of the male society which is still against the presence of women in some spaces of the public sphere. In all fairness, I should add, that at the end of the movie Panahi alludes to how very hopeful he is that keeping up the dialog with this fraction of the society, even in the problematic and impaired form of the public sphere, will bear fruit in changing them. However, Panahi has never been famous for making compromises. The only high rank officer of the movie is also the only character which is portrayed in solid black; a rude unorthodox alpha dog who shouts at everyone, and doesn’t care a fig about what happens to the other people. He is a person who sees it right to impose his own private ideas on the public. Panahi’s reaction to this is clear-cut and unambiguous: “Coercion, presumably including lawful coercion by states, vitiates the civil society.”[11] Panahi remains uncompromising in holding the state as the most responsible body for the plight of women.
Stylization of the Public Sphere
Jafar Panahi belongs to a generation of film makers who introduced the Iranian cinema to the world. The most significant attribute of this coterie is the unique language they devised in portraying their society under a repressive régime with a firm system of censorship. The language they came up with was unprecedented in the history of cinema.[12] In Offside, one can witness a mastery over the medium of cinema in the service of a socially amenable mind. Panahi takes his camera into a public sphere as the audience’s invisible eye. He uses the cinema vérité techniques to make us believe that the situation depicted in the movie is true and happening right then. He refrains from allocating preference or significance to any of the characters in order not to make it a personal story. He makes the viewer ponder on the social structures that makes the two otherwise congenial groups of people, the soldiers and the detainees, antipathetic. The movie makes you wonder whether there ever is any logical reason to exclude women from the public spaces and social life on the whole, for that matter.
And finally the way Panahi suggests out of this deadlock is through individual efforts to change the patriarchal minds of the fraction of the society that thinks what they consider as private is the outline of the standard legitimacy for the public. By taking an active role in challenging the unjust rules, and by physical presence in the spheres of the public life traditionally forbidden to women, they can change the social structures of the society they live in. And on this path the characterization of the public sphere of which Gandhi’s movement is the greatest manifestation seems to be the most plausible aim.
Panahi proves, via his cinematic genius, that any change in the social structure that we might wish for will come along through social activism. Change is possible and for Panahi, following Gandhi, it comes in the form of “a societal act engaging subjectivities as well as social structures.”[13]
P.S., As of the time of writing this paper, Jafar Panahi, has been sentenced to 6 years of imprisonment and 20 years of not making movies or leaving the country, based on the allegation that he was “planning for” making a movie against the Islamic Republic.
[1] Mir-Hosseini, Ziba. Negotiating the Forbidden: On Women and Sexual Love in Iranian Cinema. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Volume 27, Number 3, 2007, pp. 673-679: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/cst/summary/v027/27.3mir-hosseini.html
[2] Bahramitash, Roksana. The War on Terror, Feminist Orientalism and Orientalist Feminism Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 14, No. 2, 223–237, Summer 2005.
[3] Gheytanchi, Elham. (2001) Civil Society in Iran : Politics of Motherhood and the Public Sphere. International Sociology, Vol. 16(4): 557-576
[4] Hauser, Gerard (1998), Vernacular Dialogue and the Rhetoricality of Public Opinion. Communication Monographs 65(2): 83–107
[5] Fraser, Nancy. (1992) Rethinking the Public Sphere. Cited in Elliot, M. Carolyn. (2009) Civil Society and Democracy: A reader p. 84
[6] Fraser, Nancy. (1992) Rethinking the Public Sphere. Cited in Elliot, M. Carolyn. (2009) Civil Society and Democracy: A reader p.89
[7] Ibid p. 85
[8] Rudolph, Susanne and Rudolph, Lloyd. The Coffee House and the Ashram. Cited in Elliot, M. Carolyn. (2009) Civil Society and Democracy: A reader p. 391
[9] Ibid p. 399-400
[10] Satyagraha in South Africa p. 251 ff. Cited in Rudolph, Susanne and Rudolph, Lloyd. The Coffee House and the Ashram. Cited in Elliot, M. Carolyn. (2009) Civil Society and Democracy: A reader p. 39
[11] Rudolph, Susanne and Rudolph, Lloyd. The Coffee House and the Ashram. Cited in Elliot, M. Carolyn. (2009) Civil Society and Democracy: A reader p. 380
[13] Rudolph, Susanne and Rudolph, Lloyd. The Coffee House and the Ashram. Cited in Elliot, M. Carolyn. (2009) Civil Society and Democracy: A reader p. 404
Well-Put
Based on her work in Egypt, Jordan and Morocco, Ellen Lust-Okar argues that, in some cases, political concessions are deliberate manoeuvres to preserve the regime. That is to say, ‘authoritarianism need not sustain itself primarily through repression’, but through the structuring of government–opposition relations in ways that give privileged opposition elites incentives to join with incumbent elites in excluding other groups by denying them the power to mobilize. In some countries, at certain points, opposition groups may fear each other; in others, or at other times, they may not.
Naomi Sakr, Arab Television Today p. 16-17
Where Philosophy Meets Poetry I
Everydayness as closure, as Verborgenheit, would be unbearable without the simulacrum of the world, without the alibi of participation in the world. It has to be fuelled by the images, the repeated signs of that transcendence. As we have seen, its tranquility needs the vertiginous spin of reality and history. Its tranquility requires perpetual consumed violence for its own exaltation. That is its particular obscenity. It is partial to events and violence, provided the violence is served up at room temperature. The caricature image of this has the TV viewer lounging in front of images of Vietnam War. The TV image, like a window turned outside-in, opens initially on to a room and, in that room, the cruel exteriority of the world becomes something intimate and warm – warm with a perverse warmth.
Jean Baudrillard: The Consumer Society (p.35)
If this is not pure poetry, then I don't know what it is.
Consumer Culture
Since Karl Marx argued the fetichization of goods and services made by the capitalistic economy,[1] consumer culture has often been accused of surrounding people with commodities and attracting them to identify with the objects they consume. They have been described as the over-worked and over-shaped consumers with no engagement in the civic life. Unlike this conventional criticism against the consumer culture and according to Michel de Certea, it can be said that the consumers do take part in the creation of social and cultural meanings by giving the commodities other meanings and using them in other way defined or thought by their producers. According to Michel de Certeat, “In a society that is increasingly written, organized by the power of modifying things and of reforming structures on the basis of scriptural models (whether scientific, economic, or political), transformed little by little into combined "texts" (be they administrative, urban, industrial, etc.), the binominal set production—consumption can often be replaced by its general equivalent and indicator, the binominal set writing—reading.”[2] That’s to say, the system of artefact (as a disordered text) will be given meaning by the reader (consumer), who fills his/her interpretation, and “creates something unknown in the space organized by their capacity for allowing an indefinite plurality of meanings.”[3] Thus, our world of consumer culture looks like a new novel (nouveau roman), a new cinema (nouveau cinéma) or a form of art with an open interpretation, which requires the active participation of the readers (consumers) to rewrite and reconceptualise it. The result will be a new work, which embodies a different meaning, transforming the consumer into an active producer-writer of social and cultural text.
1- http://archiv.sicetnon.org/artikel/historie/fetishism.htm
2- De Certeau, Michel. (1984) the Practice of Everyday Life. P.168.
3-- Ibid,P.170.
Media and democracy
The fact that media has became a new way of life is so obvious that nobody dares challenge it. It provides people with the information that can influence their daily life and keep them in touch with the national and international events. Since its emergence, media has facilitated the constitution of state-nation. Life is a combination of new habits and this newcomer gives people the new habits, and links the private and social life: people watch a movie, read a book, hear a piece of news and discuss that at work with others. It’s an omnipresent power which has been leading private and public discussion. Even the new political life has been changed since media has emerged. Media underlies the political debates, challenges politicians, and stimulates people’s participation on the political scene. The question is, can media pave the way for democracy in the Middle East or will it restrict any passage to it? And what’s its role in shaping the public sphere and in the strained relation between state and public sphere?
Media emerged in the Middle East when Modernity set foot in this part of the world. At its early stage, media was in some wealthy enterprise’s hands in the modern world and under state control in the Middle East. Newspapers appeared before other mass media and were strictly government-owned. Despite the high state surveillance, Middle Eastern elites dared to challenge their state-run media by establishing their own newspapers. The first Arab press was Christians, but it became Islamic, too, after a while, and the first Islamic press, Al-Menar in Cairo had an important role to mobilize the Muslim against the European Modernity. The press of other Middle Eastern countries were dealing with the same issue more or less. The same as Arab countries, newspaper was government-established in Iran, in its early emergence. The first ones date back to the Naser-Aldine Shah, one of the shahs of the Kajar dynasty which ruled Persia since 1794-1925. These newspapers were usually published outside of the country by the elites who were against the state policies. The more important one, Akhtar, published in Istanbul, could mobilize the Persians against the British who were given the Concession of Tobacco, a contract which enabled the British to underbuy the tobacco from the Persian farmers and oversell it to its interior and exterior clients. The British and Shah were obliged to cancel the contract after consecutive uprisings mobilized by the Ayatollahs and the press.
Consider the role of media in deepening the role of citizenship, one must say that by the flows of information across nations and boundaries, citizen become aware of their human rights and will demand being granted those rights. I have to add here that citizenship, individual or collective, whose primary rights involves the notions like freedom of speech, thought, the right to take part in a fair election, and so on, finds its meaning in a democratic framework. And because these notions have always been a dream for Middle Eastern people, it’s better to put this citizenship into a general category emerging in the Middle East, which is civil society. The wary civil society is, as Sorenson says “defined as the place where a mélange of groups, associations, clubs, unions,” and the other components “provide a buffer between state and citizen.” Sorenson’s development of civil society underlies this fact that civil society prepares the base for implementation of required institution for reaching democracy and suppression of this class by the regimes is a reason for not having achieved democracy. That the civil society can be the prerequisite condition for democracy is undeniable, but without elites and military forces collaboration, democracy can’t be achieved in the Middle East. I have to say the study of the new vague of democratization since the democratic passage in Portugal in 1974 shows that the more sustainable democracies are those achieved through a coalition between the elites in powers. But when it comes to the Middle East, as Sorenson pointes out “many of elite actor models use as their template military regimes.” These kinds of regimes always backfire and follow the establishment of another authoritarian regime.
To sum up, I reckon that the development of the new media, especially internet, can activate the process of democratization by making a new public sphere, in which any citizen is given the right to share the flow of information , go beyond the boundaries and be aware of his/her rights. The civil society, required to challenge any tyranny and the base of any democracy, has been revived in this new world .This new media, especially the internet, has put the non-democratic regimes in the Middle East on the world spotlight and it’s for sure that they will, sooner or later, grant the citizenship rights to their people.
West and Others
“I have come to restore your rights, to punish the usurpers, and that I respect God, his prophet, and the Qur’an.”
Napoleon after the invasion of Egypt, 1798
“We are in Egypt not merely for the sake of the Egyptians, though we are there for their sake, we are there also for the sake of Europe at large.”
Arthur James Balfour, 13 june 1910, House of Common
You know, the saddest thing about these western leaders is that they have taken us for the nomads who don’t know a bit about their welfare in that without them we can’t survive. They started colonizing us, remapping our countries, and supporting fundamentalist groups for their own benefits. Take for example a terrorist group like Taliban which was shaped to prevent the spread of communism in the region, and when Soviet Union collapsed it turned against those who were fighting for freedom once and it became a strong enemy of the great West; hence a false image of ‘Muslims’. Yes, it might be right that without its colonialism the Middle East couldn’t taste modernity, but do you think we’re modern now? We went through two required stages of modernity but are stuck in the third one, which is the grant of human rights. To justify its colonialism, western missionaries, according to Hamid Dabashi, made the notion of the West versus the East, or according to Edward Said its Others. Then, they easily managed to spread the Islamophobia across the world. The Western missionaries depicted us as ‘the Others’, like the Others of the Lost Series, always threatening and never seen. We know what democracy is, what our rights are, and how to fight for it. If the West cared for it, it could support us instead of depicting a frightening image of us. It saw us fighting for our rights last year in the streets of Iran, but stayed aside watching us. If you’re really going to change something, just try to fathom what we are and not what the idiotic Islamist groups are trying to depict.
همه ی مردان جمهوری اسلامی!
"بر خلاف نظر بقیه، من معتقدم زنان گیلانی در کنار کار و تلاش روزانه، حریم عفاف و ناموس خود را هم حفظ میکنند."
"تکمله: این کشفیات را جای دیگهای مطرح نکنید؛ چون چشمتان میزنند! البته اگر چنین سخنی در تبریز و یا زنجان در مورد زنان آذربایجانی ایراد میشد، چه بسا مردم با همان «چاقوی زنجان» درسی بهصاحبسخن میدادند تا هرگز آن را فراموش نکند!"
جمله ی اول از افاضات احمدی نژاد و دومی جوابیه ی اعلمی به اوست.
واکنش من با خواندن این مطالب این بود که:
الف) جناح چپ و راست جمهوری اسلامی در این یک زمینه، دست کم، هم نظرند که جایی مناسب تر از بدن زن برای عرض اندام خودشان و رجزخوانی ها پیدا نمی کنند.
ب) حقش این است که از قباحت سخنان این دو "همه ی" ما مردان ایرانی کلاهمان را بالاتر بگذاریم.
پ) دارم به این می اندیشم که چه بی رنگ شده است امیدهایم به اصلاح این نظام، حتی از راه شکیباترین خشونت پرهیزی ها.
Ginny Lowe Connors
On his arm he is drawing two snakes;
his fingers are busy and Green.
His beautiful eyes are great salt lakes.
and his mind is a submarine.
His fingers are busy and green
and I ask for his homework in vain.
This boy's mind is a submarine
and his book was left out in the rain.
I ask for his homework in vain.
His sister ran off last night
and his book was left out in the rain.
He says there was some kind of fight.
His sister ran off last night.
He's pouring a puddle of glue.
He says there was some kind of fight
but the things that were shouted aren't true.
He's pouring a puddle of glue.
His beautiful eyes are great salt lakes
and the things that were shouted aren't true.
On his arm he's drawing two snakes.
Ginny Lowe Connors
تجدد و دشمنانشII
من بعد بساط کهنه برچینید و طرح نو در اندازید[1]
همانطور که در نوشته پیشین تحت عنوان تجدد و دشمنانش اشاره کردم با آغاز فرمانروایی صفویان، به ویژه با حمله مغولان، عصر انحطاط در ایران آغاز گشت و به تدریج تمام حوزه های فکری، هنری، سیاسی و فرهنگی را در سیطره خود درآورد. بی شک جهد وزیرانی با کیاست چون خواجه رشیدالدین فضل الله همدانی در دربار مغولان، خواجه نظام الملک طوسی در دربار سلجوقیان و دیگر وزیران ایرانی مانع از سقوط کامل ایران به پرتگاه انحطاط گشت. اما وجدان ایرانی آگاه از بحران نگشت. با آغاز فرمانروایی قاجار و تشکیل دارالسلطنه تبریز، انتقال عباس میرزای ولیعهد به دارالسلطنه و صدارت میرزا عیسی و پس از او قائم مقام، نطفه آگاهی از بحران در حوزه های گوناگون شکل گرفت. در این مقال به اختصار به بیان تلاشهایی که برای برون رفت ادب فارسی از بحران صورت گرفت خواهم پرداخت.
تامل در انحطاط زبان فارسی در دارالسلطنه تبریز آغاز گشت و بزرگانی چون قائم مقام به ایجاد شیوه ای نو در ادب فارسی همت گماشتند. زوال زبان فارسی از عهد صفویه آغاز گشته بود و حمله مغولان و نا آگاهی ذهن ایرانی روند این انحطاط را سرعت بخشید. اگر بخواهیم نقطه شروعی بر این انحطاط ذکر کنیم، به عصر صفویه باید اشاره کرد. بر خلاف توجهی که به معماری ، شهرسازی و دیگر هنرها در عهد صفوی صورت می گرفت، به ادب فارسی اهتمامی نمی شد. لذا مهاجرت اهل ادب به دول دیگر و از جمله هند آغاز گشت و هند محفل هنرمندان و ادیبان ایرانی گریخته از وطن شد. با آگاهی از الزامات دنیای جدید، بزرگانی چون قائم مقام به احیای زبان فارسی پی برده بودند چرا که بیان اندیشه جدید نیاز به زبانی نو داشت. تلاش قائم مقام بر ساده کردن زبان فارسی، پالودن آن از نثر مصنوع و معنایی دوباره دادن به زبانی بود که با حمله مغولان فاقد هر گونه معنا شده بود. "از این حیث، منشآت قائم مقام را باید با سیاستنامه خواجه نظام الملک طوسی، ترجمه کلیله و دمنه نصرالله منشی، تاریخ جهانگشای عطاء ملک جوینی سنجید."[2] با مرگ قائم مقام تلاشهایی پراکنده جهت احیای زبان فارسی صورت گرفت، اما همچنان طرح قالب تفکر سنتی بود و رهایی از سنت قدمایی غیر ممکن.
با آغاز سلطنت ناصرالدین شاه و شکل گرفتن هسته روشنفکری ایران روند احیای زبان فارسی با روشنفکران و نویسندگانی چون آخوند زاده، طالبوف، میرزا آقا تبریزی، مجدالملک و دیگران شکل تازه ای به خود گرفت. لازم به ذکر است که روشنفکری در اروپا با آغاز مباحثات بین پیروان نظام سنت قدمایی و متاخرین شکل گرفت و تجدد، ظهور بزرگان فلسفه، نویسندگان و پیدایش آثاری جاودانه را در پی داشت. اما روشنفکری در ایران در نیمه های عصر ناصری و خارج از حوزه سنت شکل گرفت. متاخرین آگاهی سطحی از سنت داشتند و می پنداشتند با ورود مفاهیم نو از غرب می توان تجدد را در ایران بنا نهاد . غافل از آنکه پشت این مفاهیم نو سالها تفکر و مباحثه بین پیروان دو نظام فکری بوده است و ورود این مفاهیم به ایران بی ایجاد بنیاد و نهادهای مربوطه دوامی نخواهد داشت . اهل سنت نیز که خود را در برابر رقیبی قدرتمند دیدند و آگاهی و اعتقادی نیز به الزامات دنیای جدید نداشتند میدان را خالی نمودند. لذا کوششهایی که از سوی برخی از روشنفکران و نویسندگان ایرانی برای دمیدن جانی دوباره در کالبد زبان و ادب فارسی صورت گرفت در بیرون حوزه مناقشه بین پیروان سنت قدمایی و متاخرین صورت گرفت. برای نخستین بار در عهد ناصری لزوم همگام کردن زبان فارسی با دنیای جدید، و گسستن از ادب کهن فارسی توسط آخوند زاده مطرح گردید. نیمه های عصر ناصری همزمان بود با تسلط زبان رمان و نمایشنامه نویسی در اروپا . و این زبان مکان جدید بیان تکامل اندیشه اروپایی گشته بود . اغراق نیست که میلان کوندرا اروپائیان را" فرزندان رمان" می خواند. نمایشنامه نویسی و نقد ادبی در ایران با آخوند زاده و با نمایشنامه هایی چون تمثیلات ترکیّه و وکلای مرافعه آغاز گشت. آنطور که در مکتب تبریز و مبانی تجدد خواهی جواد طباطبایی آمده است آخوندزاده نخستین کسی بود که "فرد" را آنطور که در اروپا تصور می شد وارد ادب فارسی کرد. این فرد نقش عمده ای در مناسبات اجتماعی عصر جدید داشت و ناظر خیالی و بیرونی نبود. او برای نخستین بار زن را وارد نوشته های ادبی ایرانی کرد و فردیت زن را به عنوان عامل عمده ای در تعیین مناسبات اجتماعی وارد نمایشنامه های خود کرد. این کار آخوندزاده خود گامی بلند جهت گسستن از سنت قدمایی بود، چرا که تا پیش از آن زن در ادب فارسی نقشی نداشت و اگر هم بود یا عامل فلاکت بود و یا معشوقی غایب. آخوند زاده معتقد بود که زبان فارسی قبل از اسلام زبانی بود با شکوه و تجلی آن در فرهنگ و اند یشه ایرانشهری هویدا. و برای برگرداندن آن شکوه سابق می بایست زبان فارسی از واژگان عربی تصفیه می شد. لذا او و عداه ی دیگر از نویسنگان به پالایش زبان فارسی پرداختند. اما این نکته را باید مد نظر قرار داد که هیچ زبانی معاف از لغات وارداتی نیست و به خودی خود از همه توان لازم برای بیان مفاهیم ادبی، فلسفی، اجتماعی و غیره برخوردار نیست و اگر کلمات وارداتی در قالب قواعد زبان مقصد درآیند چه بسا که آن زبان را برای بیان مفاهیم و علوم جدید تواناتر کنند. چنانکه در قرن 16 میلادی گروهی از شاعران فرانسوی گروه پلیاد و در راس آنان پیر دو رنسار به این نتیجه رسیدند که برای غنای بیشتر زبان و ادبیات فرانسه باید واژگان وارداتی را در قالب زبان فرانسه درآورده و حتی کلماتی از زبان لاتین و یونانی بدان افزود.
جهد نویسندگان و روشنفکران ایرانی در راستای غنای زبان فارسی تنها معطوف به نمایشنامه نویسی و نگارش آثارانتقادی-اجتماعی نبود. اواخر قرن 19 که رمان تمام مرزهای اروپا را به سیطره خود درآورده بود، میرزا حبیب اصفهانی، که به خاطر تحت فشار بودن در ایران از سوی عمال حکومتی به استانبول مهاجرت کرده بود، اقدامات ارزنده ای در بازگرداندن عظمت زبان فارسی داشت. او نه تنها به تدریس زبان فارسی و فرانسه در آنجا مشغول بود که همانجا کتابی برای دستور زبان فارسی نیز نگاشت که می تواند از نخستین آثار در باب قواعد زبان فارسی باشد. به عقیده جواد طباطبایی هم او بود که برای نخستین بار واژه "دستور" را معادل گرامر به کار برد و نیز به ترجمه آثار غربی پرداخت از جمله سرگذشت ژیل بلاس اثر آلن لساژ فرانسوی و سرگذشت حاجی بابای اصفهانی اثرجیمز موریه. من این دو اثر و ترجمه میرزا حبیب را نخوانده ام اما با خواندن گزیده هایی از ترجمه این آثار در مکتب تبریز نکته ای توجهم را جلب کرده که در کتاب نیز بدان اشاره شده است. زبان ادب ایرانی زبان شعر بوده است، چه قبل از انحطاط اندیشه و چه آن زمان که تندباد حوادث فرهنگ ایرانی را در سراشیبی زوال قرار داد؛ ذهن ایرانی با شعر عجین بود و آن را قادر به بیان روح و اندیشه ایرانی می دید. معروفترین نثر فارسی ما گلستان شیخ اجل است که آن نیز مزین به نظم است. با آگاهی از این مورد میرزا حبیب در گزیده های ترجمه ای که از او خواندم به فراخور اثر نثر ساده و روان فارسی خود را به شعر آراست تا برای ایرانی ناآشنا به رمان و نثر، زبان جدیدی بیافریند که ترکیبی از نثر و نظم بود. نثر میرزا حبیب در این گزیده ها نثری است روان و ساده. نثری که زبان فارسی بدان مشهور بود و با آغاز انحطاط جای خود را به نثری متکلف داد تا پوششی بر بی معنایی شده باشد که مدتها بود ادب فارسی را به احاطه درآورده بود. همزمان با میرزا حبیب اصفهانی و آخوند زاده بودند دیگرانی که کمر همت به رهایی ادب فارسی از ابتذال پرداختند. از آن جمله می توان اشاره کرد به میرزا آقا تبریزی که بنیانگذار تئاتر و نمایشنامه نویسی بود و مرید آخوندزاده؛ میرزا علی خان امین الدوله که با نثر ساده و نو خود به بیان نقاط ضعف ساختار اجتماعی-سیاسی عصر ناصری پرداخت؛ میرزا محمد خان مجدالملک که به لزوم تطابق زبان فارسی به دنیای جدید پی برده بود و رساله مجدیه که اثری انتقادی از حاکمیت بود را با آگاهی از این تطابق نگاشت. و دیگر بزرگانی که ممکن است از قلم افتاده باشند و الگویی شدند برای آنانی که احیای زبان پارسی را گامی دیگر به روشنگری و اصلاح طلبی می دانند.
با سپاس فراوان از استاد طباطبایی که تالیفاتش نگرشی نو از تاریخ کشورم را به من آموخت.
سرباز صفر آزادی
سیاوش جان از من خواست چیزی در مورد حوادث ششم دی ماه هشتاد و هشت بنویسم. راستش خودم هم می خواستم که از همان غروب دلگیر عاشورای نمی دانم چه سال نکبتی در تقویم قمری چیزی بنویسم، ولی مگر می شود؟ مگر نگفته بزرگی که پس از آشویتس دیگر نمی توان شعر سرود؟ اما از آنجا که اعتقادم بر این است که در گنجینه ی شعر پارسی کمتر احساسی مربوط به ایرانیان است که متناظری پیدا نکند، این ابیات از حضرت ملک الشعرا را به این دوست عزیزم تقدیم می کنم:
با شه ایران ز آزادی سخن گفتن خطاست
کار ایران با خداست
مذهب شاهنشه ایران ز مذهبها جداست
کار ایران با خداست
شاه مست و شیخ مست و شحنه مست و میر مست
مملکت رفته ز دست
هر دم از دستان مستان فتنه و غوغا به پاست
کار ایران با خداست
مملکت کشتی، حوادث بحر و استبداد خس
ناخدا عدل است و بس
کار پاس کشتی و کشتینشین با ناخداست
کار ایران با خداست
پادشه خود را مسلمان خواند و سازد تباه
خون جمعی بیگناه
ای مسلمانان! در اسلام این ستمها کی رواست؟
کار ایران با خداست
باش تا خود سوی ری تازد ز آذربایجان
حضرت ستار خان
آن که توپش قلعه کوب و خنجرش کشورگشاست
کار ایران با خداست
باش تا بیرون ز رشت آید سپهدار سترگ
فر دادار بزرگ
آن که گیلان ز اهتمامش رشک اقلیم بقاست
کار ایران با خداست
باش تا از اصفهان صمصام حق گردد پدید
نام حق گردد پدید
تا ببینیم آن که سر ز احکام حق پیچد کجاست
کار ایران با خداست
خاک ایران، بوم و برزن از تمدن خورد آب
جز خراسان خراب
"هرچه هست از قامت ناساز بیاندام ماست"
کار ایران با خداست
سرباز صفر آزادی
جریده ی عالم
آیت الله منتظری درگذشت. برای من این خبر شوک آور بود، مثل خیلی ها. اولین آگاهی من از این نام همراه بود با این داده ها: که انقلاب اسلامی چقدر خوب و به موقع بوده؛ که ما چقدر خوشبختیم که این افتخار نصیبمان شده است که فرزندان انقلاب لقب بگیریم؛ که اگر نبودند مردانی چون "امام خمینی" و "آیت الله منتظری" ما چه سرنوشت شومی نصیبمان می شد.
مثل تصاویر دیروز، مثل روز، به یاد می آورم آن روزی که مدیر مدرسه مان سر صف آمد و گفت که دیگر از امروز نگوییم، "درود بر منتظری / قایم مقام رهبری." در همان عالم بچگی احساس می کردم که یک جای این کار می لنگد. و به گفت قدیمی ها کاسه ای زیر نیم کاسه است. ولی چه حیف که خود سانسوری و خفقان باعث می شد که هیچ کس به ما نمی گفت اوضاع از چه قرار است. هیچ کس به ما نمی گفت که مطرود شدن و مهدور شدن سرنوشت کسانی خواهد بود که در زمانی که نباید لب به گفتن حقایق می گشایند. هیچ کس به ما نگفت که مایی که همه چیز به نظرمان سرراست می رسید، اشتباه می کردیم. که دست بر قضا همان آیت الله بود که راست فکر می کرد و درست می گفت.
البته حالا که گذشته و من هم به خیل کسانی پیوسته ام که پس از مرگ بزرگی شروع می کنند به مدحش. و از فرش به عرشش می برند. کار از کار گذشته و حالا دیگر "ساعت پنج عصر است" و "باران به دهانش می بارد."
اسمش را بگذارید تصادف یا هر چه، که من امروز، سی ام آذر هزار و سیصد و هشتاد و هشت، تازه فهمیدم که اسپینوزا- نه جان لاک- اسپینوزا را پدر واقعی لیبرال دموکراسی می شناسند. اسمش را تصادف یا هر چه می خواهید بگذازید که من، هم امروز، فهمیده ام که شیرین عبادی، شیرزن عرصه ی قضا، نه تنها آیت الله را پدر، که "پدر حقوق بشر ایران" خطاب می کند؛ که من همین امروز فهمیده ام که آیت الله را از چپی و کمونیست تا حجت الاسلام همگی می ستودند. که من تا چه حد می توانستم از آزادگی این "شیر-آهن-کوه- مرد" بیاموزم و فرصت از کف دادم.
ولی می دانید به چه می اندیشم؟: به احساسی که بزرگترین ترجمانش این است:
هرگز نمیرد آن که دلش زنده شد به عشق
ثبت است بر جریده ی عالم دوام ما
Auf der anderen Seite
Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,
Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place,
Spares but the cloudy border of his base
To the foiled searching of mortality;
Matthew Arnold
Yeter, a Turkish prostitute in Germany, finds a way to escape her predicament and takes it. Ali, a Turkish émigré in Germany, finds a way to make a change in someone's life and takes it. Nejat, Ali's son, gets the feeling that he has a duty toward a perfect stranger and embraces it. Ayten, Yeter's daughter, tries very hard to find her way in life and is thwarted in every possible way. Charlotte, a German student of English and Spanish, falls in love with Ayten and finds a way to manifest her love and takes it. Susanne, Charlotte's mother, finds out, in a shocking revelation, that whatever she has tried her daughter not to be is exactly what she herself had been; so, instead of being angry with her daughter decides to follow her way.
II.
In Persian poetry, one can rarely find the word journey carry one meaning. It almost always has the dual meaning of physically taking a trip and mentally reaching a new place within one's psyche. It almost always means change. And change is what Fatih Akin reveals in his breathtaking movie, "Edge of Heaven." All the characters in this movie are shown traveling to another country. And also there are moments in which all the protagonists show metamorphosis. What's more, they often learn how to do this the hardest way possible. It seems like you have to lose your dearest beloved to be able to take the final leap of faith. And don't get me wrong here. I'm not talking about the religious aura which is attached to the word faith. It has nothing to do with that. It's the faith in humans. The leap occurs when the protagonists start to believe that there is something they can do to help out someone else, another human being, who is, by the way, a stranger. The characters are looking for the exactly same person to help, without knowing it; without being bestowed the opportunity to really help the one they crave to help. Susanne seems to be the only person who gets the chance to help someone, but again at a very high personal cost.
A gay man finds himself loving a girl, and two straight girls find themselves in love with each other. An old woman finds out she has been running away from her youth's interests in vain, and goes back to them. Even when the director doesn't have the time to show how one of the characters, Ali Aksu, has changed in character, he shows us his new face, with a mustache.
Change is a theme that happens to the movie itself, too. At the beginning of the movie Nejat goes into a supermarket and hears a piece of music and asks about it. The salesperson says something about the singer. In the middle of the movie, we see the exact scene again, with the exact dialog, but this time the singer is different; this time a woman is singing the song. At the end of the movie we hear the same song again, and this time it seems that someone else, an old man, is singing the same song. Nothing remains unchanged here.
III.
Faith Akin seems to be living in two worlds. Well, you might say, it doesn't take a genius to see that, since he is a Turk born and brought up in Germany. But what makes him different, in my opinion, is the fact that he is not a Turk who lives and works in Germany. Nor is he a German with a Turkish descent. He is 'both' at the same time. Like his characters, Nejat in "Edge of Heaven" and Cahit in "Head-On", he seems to be torn apart between these two beings. You might say he is more Turkish (he accepted his Cannes prize on behalf of Turkish Cinema), but just for the sake of example look at Charlotte and Susanne in this movie, and Cahit's therapist in "Head-On", and then you can obviously see how he feels about the German side of his being.
Akin has shown his responsibility as an "Engaged Artist" both in his life and in his cinema. He was once investigated by German police for wearing a T-shirt with a Swastika on it in place of the "S" in the word Bush to show that the Bush Administration is like the Third Reich. In a scene of Edge of Heaven two Turkish fundamentalists try to lead Yeter back to the path of Allah, but ironically the way they choose to do this is to threaten her. For yet another example of how Akin believes in humanity and not religion or any other kind of ideology, let's remember that Ayten finally repents from being a member of what seems to be a terrorist leftist group.
IV.
I have seen movies in which the director tells you, in advance, what is going to happen next. Or when the narrator confides in you a secret which the protagonist should know but doesn't (the most surprising revelation of this kind to me is still what happens in Hitchcock's "Vertigo"). But what the director does here is quite innovative. He divides the movie into three parts and at the beginning of the two first ones, he tells you which one of the main characters is going to die. Then he goes on and kills those characters in a way that is still shocking to the spectator who already knew it was going to happen. The trick is that he doesn't dramatize it. In both cases the one who dies is not even in front of the camera. We see the one who kills and not the one who dies. And both deaths are mere accidents.
There is also this obscure matter of non-linear narration. I've said before that in my opinion this matter is turning out to be a popular toy for most directors to play with. But Akin is definitely not playing with it. He repeats some scenes twice. One of the times seems to be anachronistic, and the other, right in its proper place in the plot of the movie. And each time he does it, he 'mentally' takes you back to the first time you saw that scene. This time everything is different, not that what you see is different, but that you, as the spectator, are a different person now; because in the second time, you know things which you didn't, and got feelings for the characters which you couldn't conceive of.
V.
For me Fatih Akin is already in the pantheon of the greatest directors. After watching "Head-On," I told a friend that his movie somehow reminded me of Fasbinder and he told me I was exaggerating. But after seeing Hanna Schygulla shining in the role of Susanne I got the feeling that I was right.
One thing is for sure, Akin is not comfortably numb. He sees the pain, feels it, and shows it in a graceful manner for us to understand. And I salute him for that. After all his first name means the conqueror, doesn't it?
Ibsen
These days I can hardly concentrate on anything except the humans and their primary rights to be on the earth: freedom. I can't read books, just looking for a well-established context in a well-shaped form anymore. The only fact I am concerned with is Humanity. I don't know how freedom tastes and smells, because I've never experienced it, but at least I have figured out how to fight for it since the beginning of presidential election aftermath in Iran. These days watching Head on and The Edge of Heaven by Fatih Akin, Vengo by Tony Gatlif, Listening to the extraterrestrial voice of Yasmin Levy and reading Llosa, Kundera and Ibsen presses my spirit: how they can give such a comprehensible, concrete and touchable feeling of humanity! Don't worry! We can feel them easily; not only because they are the prophets of their world, but especially because we are on the same track; because once in their world, we can identify ourselves with the tortured personages who are deprived of their liberty in a world where the respect for humanity has been stifled.
Sometimes we hear a lot of a writer, we see the tributes pouring around them all around the world, but we put off discovering their globe. Ibsen is one of these masters. I blame myself for figuring out his humanistic world so late. Such a great importance to the humanity's freedom! I'm not a specialist of New Novel but I've read so many of them, and at least I've worked on it as my M.A thesis. But honestly I understood nothing of it. Please tell me what the hell it means that art can stand on its own feet? Can't you feel that in our world nothing can be considered alone and there's an interaction between all the things? Don't you think that literature has a responsibility toward humanity? Of course my thoughts are due to the situation which we're living in Iran. But any way, I believe that not only literature but also other arts should help us see the reality of being human and being free. And I admire Ibsen for his sense of responsibility to reflect a cold world from where freedom has gone away. In Ibsen's plays nobody can make an acceptable decision when being in a prison and their primary rights restrained: Ellida in the Lady from the sea, Regina in Ghosts, and Dr.Stockmann in The enemy of people are looking for their lost freedom out of their family and the corrupt world made by the politicians. Who cares about your rights and liberty? Your family or your pretended-democratic government? Nobody except yourself. Having been aware of their power to get rid of all the yokes foisted on them, these characters start fighting for their beliefs and freedom, and find a way to get out of the limbo. This is the life which dawns on them.
Evil
The true source of Evil is the very neutral gaze that perceives Evil all around.
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit
گربه و پرتگاه
احتمالن بسیاری مقاله ی جالب ژیژک در مورد ایران (لینک زیر) را خوانده اند.
Rokhdaad/2009/9-September/30/WILL THE CAT ABOVE THE PRECIPICE FALL DOWN - رخداد.htm
در این مقاله ژیژک اوضاع چند هفته ی پس از انتخابات ایران را بررسی می کند، و پیش بینی هایی نیز می کند. نکته ی جالب مقاله همانی ست که در نام مقاله به آن اشاره می رود. نویسنده مثالی را از کارتون هایی نقل می کند که همگی دیده ایم. گربه در تعقیب موش چند قدمی ازلبه ی پرتگاه گذر می کند، ولی چون این را متوجه نشده است به راهش ادامه می دهد. پس از لحظاتی وقتی زیر پایش را می بیند (وقتی دو زاری اش می افتد که کجا ایستاده) شروع به "بازگشت" یا "سقوط" می کند. در کتاب کژ نگریستن این قضیه بسط می یابد. در آنجا این مثال در مورد "بعضی دم و دستگاههای ایدئولوژیک" هم مصداق می یابد که "اگرچه به وضوح زمانشان سر آمده است، باز می پایند چرا که آن را نمی دانند."
توجیه ژیژک از این پدیده خواندنی ست. وی معتقد است که "امر واقعی" (بر اساس تقسیم های سه گانه ی ژاک لکان: امر خیالی، امر نمادین، امر واقعی) از خود معرفت نشان می دهد. امر واقعی "بر می گردد، پاسخ می دهد، می تواند از طریق خود صورت نمادین جلوه نماید." این که چقدر این نظریه را خیالی یا حتی متافیزیکی بیابیم، به نظرم، در اصل قضیه چندان توفیری نمی کند. نکته اینجاست که این نظر در مورد نظام های توتالیتر، در اواخر عمرشان، صادق است. واقعن به نظر می رسد برای اکثریت جامعه و اصلن در خود "امر واقعی" پادشاه لباسی بر تن دارد که لابد ما نمی بینیم. اما به محض فریاد مستا نه ی بچه ای بازیگوش مبنی بر اینکه پادشاه برهنه است، همه چیز به یکباره رنگ عوض می کند. یعنی خود امر واقعی هم می فهمد که پادشاه لخت است.
نکته ی جذاب دیگری هم در کتاب هست که به گفتنش می ارزد. ژیژک معتقد است که نظام های تمامیت خواه، از قبیل نظام استالینی، ذاتن منحرفند. بر طبق روایت او از لکان فرد منحرف " در راستای لذت خودش فعالیت نمی کند بلکه قصد کیف رساندن به دیگری را دارد – او کیف را دقیقن در این ابزار و آلت دست شدن می جوید، در کار کردن برای کیف دیگری." می دانید که، در روانکاوی دیگری بزرگ یک سیستم فرا انسانی است – جامعه، ایدئولوژی، دین، سنت، و غیره. بدین ترتیب فرد ذوب در تمامیت خواهی مردم عادی را مدام شکنجه می کند و می کشد ولی این همه را " در مقام آلت دست دیگری بزرگ انجام می دهد... کمونیست استالینی مردم را شکنجه می دهد، اما این کار را در مقام خادم صادق و وفادارشان انجام می دهد، یعنی محض خاطر خودشان و به نمایندگی از هم آنان، همچون مجری اراده ی خودشان ("علایق عینی حقیقی" خودشان)."
این قسمت آخری – علایق عینی حقیقی خودمان (که لابد مسئولین ما آنها را بهتر از ما می دانند) – را تا به حال چند تریلیون بار از دهان آنها شنیده باشیم خدا می داند. یک مورد خنده دارش برای من آن بود که احمد خاتمی در تریبون نماز جمعه گفت، "من به صراحت عرض کنم که این مردم گوشت و روح و جانشان با ولایت فقیه است" (نقل به مضمون) جالب است که این را طوری می گوید که گویی ما باطنن دوست داریم این چنین باشد ولی بر اثر عاملی مرموز و ناشناس نمی توانیم آن را "به صراحت" قبول کنیم و حضرت ایشان قبول زحمت کرده و خطر را به جان خریده اند و "به صراحت" ما را متوجه چیزی که علاقه ی عینی حقیقی ماست فرموده اند. دستشان درد نکند.
پی نوشت: نقل قول ها همه از کتاب کژ نگریستن از اسلاووی ژیژک، ترجمه ی مازیار اسلامی و صالح نجفی است. مانده است تشکر از دوست عزیزم ، قاسم، که این کتاب را به من معرفی کرد.