The offices of homeland security, or, Hölderlin's terrorism

Critical Inquiry

Volumn 31, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 874-902

  Bajorek, Jennifer ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 61249156063     PISSN: 00931896     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/444518     Document Type: Review

References (50)

1. Gayatri Spivak used this phrase, and very explicitly placed such emphasis, at a teach-in organized by students and faculty of Columbia University held at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City on 20 September 2001. Others who have focused on the symbolic nature of the events in their analyses include Geoffrey Galt Harpham, "Symbolic Terror," Critical Inquiry 28 (Winter 2002): 573-79: "Terror is a feature of the symbolic order" (p. 573);
2. John Frow, "The Uses of Terror and the Limits of Cultural Studies," Symploke 11, nos. 1-2 (2003): 69-76: "The event of 9/11 worked so powerfully because it was an extraordinary - an exemplary - piece of symbolism" (p. 72);
3. and Homi K. Bhabha, "Terror and After...," Parallax 8, no. 1 (2002): 3-4.
4. Although Bhabha does not speak directly of the symbol, he mobilizes the language and logic of the symbol in his analysis of the events' spectacular and even cinematic echoes and effects. Both Paul Virilio and Jean Baudrillard have made much of the symbolic dimensions of the Twin Towers, although not to the exclusion of theorizing a more general symbolism of terrorist violence. See Paul Virilio, Ground Zero, trans. Chris Turner (London, 2002), p. 82
5. and Jean Baudrillard, "The Spirit of Terrorism" and "Requiem for the Twin Towers," trans. Turner (London, 2002). Baudrillard writes: It is probable that the terrorists had not foreseen the collapse of the Twin Towers (any more than had the experts!), a collapse which - much more than the attack on the Pentagon - had the greatest symbolic impact. The symbolic collapse of a whole system came about by an unpredictable complicity, as though the towers, by collapsing on their own, by committing suicide, had joined in to round off the event. In a sense, the entire system, by its internal fragility, lends the initial action a helping hand. [Pp. 7-8] And again: "The terrorist violence here is not, then, a blowback of reality, any more than it is a blowback of history. It is not 'real'. In a sense, it is worse: it is symbolic. Violence in itself may be perfectly banal and offensive. Only symbolic violence is generative of singularity" (pp. 29-30).
6. Finally, see Jacques Derrida's nuanced and suggestive discussion of still other symbolic dimensions in his 22 October 2001 interview with Giovanna Borradori: Right at the level of the head, this double suicide will have touched two places symbolically and operationally essential to the American corpus: the economic place or capital "head" of world capital (the World Trade Center, the very archetype of the genre, for there are now - and under this very name - WTCs in many places of the world, for example, in China) and the strategic, military, and administrative place of the American capital. [Jacques Derrida and Giovanna Borradori, "Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides," in Philosophy in a Time of Terror, ed. Borradori (Chicago, 2003), pp. 95-96]
7. Derrida's whole discussion of September 11 as a "date" and an "event" (a "major event") is relevant here; see Derrida and Borradori, "Autoimmunity," pp. 85-91.
8. See Stéphane Mallarmé, L'Action restreinte, in Oeuvres complètes, ed. Henri Mondor and G. Jean-Aubry (Paris, 1945), pp. 369-73.
9. Paulhan was, among other things, extremely well versed in Mallarmé's work. For his best known and most sustained treatment of Terror, see Jean Paulhan, Les Fleurs de Tarbes; ou, La Terreur dans les lettres (Paris, 1941). An English translation of this volume by Michael Syrotinski is forthcoming. See also Paulhan's early texts on rhetoric, especially Paulhan, "Rhetoric Rises from Its Ashes," trans. Jennifer Bajorek, in A Larger Language: The Theoretical Writings of Jean Paulhan (forthcoming).
10. It has been widely reported that, in choosing this word to refer to the scene of the events of September 11 already on 20 September 2001, in his address to a special joint session of Congress, Bush was essentially cribbing from the 1997 Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review. See George W. Bush, "We Are a Country Awakened to Danger and Called to Defend Freedom," 20 Sept. 2001, www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html. For the earliest official usage on record, see William S. Cohen, Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review (May 1997), www.defenselink.mil/pubs/qdr.
11. Although the 1997 Pentagon report has been documented as the first occurrence of the word homeland and of the phrase homeland defense in an official administrative context, it is generally thought not to have come into its current usage until the February 2001 publication of the Phase III Report of the U.S. Commission on National Security for the 21st Century by former Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman in which it was recommended that Congress establish a special body to deal with "homeland security" issues; see Gary Hart et al., Road Map for National Security: Imperative for Change: The Phase III Report of the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, 15 Feb. 2001, permanent.access.gpo.gov/nssg/www.nssg.gov/PhaseIIIFR.pdf.
12. This is the same report that, in the months immediately following September 11, the Bush administration was repeatedly accused of not having read well or closely enough. On 12 September 2001, Rudman went on record as saying, "I just have to say, 'We told you so'" ("Commission Warned of Such Attacks," Associated Press, 12 Sept. 2001). Quite apart from its historical value in view of this inaugural usage, the 1997 Defense Review report is not without interest to scholars and theorists of literature. Then Secretary of Defense Cohen opens the document with a call to "separate fact from fiction" and concludes his introduction with a quotation from the Greek rhetorician Gorgias on "the great challenge of choosing when the choosing is most difficult 'to speak or not to speak, to do or leave undone'" (Cohen, Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review).
13. The difficulty of every such decision - in light, precisely, of the (hyperdifficult) relation between speaking and doing - has been a major preoccupation of literary theory in recent years. See, for example, Critical Encounters: Reference and Responsibility in Deconstructive Writing, ed. Cathy Caruth and Deborah Esch (New Brunswick, N.J., 1995)
14. and Thomas Keenan, Fables of Responsibility: Aberrations and Predicaments in Ethics and Politics (Stanford, Calif., 1997).
15. Oh! when I have hung Above the raven's nest, by knots of grass And half-inch fissures in the slippery rock But ill sustain'd, and almost, as it seem'd, Suspended by the blast which blew amain, Shouldering the naked crag; Oh! at that time, While on the perilous ridge I hung alone, With what strange utterance did the loud dry wind Blow through my ears! the sky seem'd not a sky Of earth, and with what motion mov'd the clouds! (William Wordsworth, The Prelude, ed. Ernest de Selincourt [London, 1969], bk. 1, ll. 341-50, p. 10)
16. On the problems surrounding the interpretation of homeland as a translation of the German word Heimat in particular, see Peter Blickle, Heimat: A Critical Theory of the German Idea of Homeland (Rochester, N.Y., 2002), esp. pp. x, 2-5. Note that Blickle, despite these cautions, accepts this translation in the title of his book.
17. Also instructive here is Elizabeth Becker, "Prickly Roots of 'Homeland Security,'" New York Times, 31 Aug. 2002, p. A10. After quoting Tom Ridge, who acknowledges that the Office (now Department) of Homeland Security had received complaints that the word sounds "un-American," Becker goes on to endorse the interpretation of "homeland" as a translation of Heimat, as does the spokesman for the German Embassy, Hans Dieter Lucas. Whereas Lucas speaks freely of Nazi associations ("'The term was used by the Nazis - the notion derives from 19th-century Romanticism, to mean your roots, the region where you grew up, your identity, where you belong'"), Ridge ducks the question of the word's origins altogether: "'Etymology unknown, don't have a clue.'" Becker's source in the Pentagon, on the other hand - who offers that "no one can remember" who came up with the phrase "homeland security" - agrees that "it does sort of have Germanic implications to it, and from that standpoint, it may carry unfortunate baggage."
18. On the more general question of Americans' responses to the use of homeland in public discourse post-September 11, see Mark Feeney, "At Home, Uneasiness over a Word," Boston Globe, 26 Sept. 2001, p. D1
19. and Paul Richard, "For Americans, Homeland Is Down the Road a Piece," Washington Post, 22 Sept. 2001, p. C1.
20. That Feeney in particular is attuned to a certain uncanniness of the word is legible in his title, as well as in his quotation of Deborah Tannen: "'My main feeling of discomfort with it is just that it's so unaccustomed. You want something that feels safe and secure and familiar, and this sounds foreign, as if it's another country they're talking about.'" See also Barbara J. Fields, letter to the editor, New York Times, 7 Sept. 2002, p. A14.
21. On the contrary, I hope it will be clear that my argument has sympathies with, and at points directly crosses, this critique. See, for two very different examples, Amy Kaplan, "Homeland Insecurities: Reflections on Language and Space," Radical History Review 85 (Winter 2003): 82-93
22. and Muneer Ahmad, "Homeland Insecurities: Racial Violence the Day after September 11," Social Text, no. 20 (Fall 2002): 101-15. It is an important achievement of Ahmad's analysis that it allows us to pinpoint the deep complicity between the hate violence unleashed in the days immediately following the events of September 11 and the disturbing state practices that have been on the rise ever since, including the restriction of immigration of men from Muslim countries and the racial profiling and detention of so-called Muslim-looking people.
23. (To which would now have to be added the criminal abuses of Iraqi civilians by American soldiers in Iraqi prisons.) See also, for a recent and exceptionally powerful intervention in the post-September 11 literature, Judith Butler, Precarious life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London, 2004).
24. Bush, "Securing the Homeland, Strengthening the Nation," 24 Nov. 2002, www.whitehouse.gov/homeland/homeland-security-book.html
25. See Kaplan, "Homeland Insecurities," Ahmad, "Homeland Insecurities," and Blickle, Heimat. Blickle prefaces his study of the word and concept of Heimat with the observation that "the regressive aspects of the idea - variously translated as 'home,' 'homeland,' 'hometown,' 'homestead,' 'native region,' or 'native country' - are troubling to us now. Any concrete interaction with the idea of Heimat in the political realm has, historically speaking, served sooner or later to further sharp exclusions of certain groups - usually ethnic minorities, less-propertied classes, or both" (p. x). Also telling in this respect is the attempt to recuperate a pre-German "etymology" of homeland: In fact, "homeland" has far older origins in the Hebrew language-back to the book of Genesis. "Moledet," or "homeland" in Hebrew, first came out of the mouth of God, when he told Abraham to lead his people to the molodet. "It is a biblical word, not part of the popular vernacular," said Mark Regev, a spokesman at the Israeli Embassy. But it is part of the political vocabulary in Israel. "One of the right-wing parties has chosen that name - the Molodet, or Homeland, Party." [Becker, "Prickly Roots of 'Homeland Security,'" p. A10]
26. Friedrich Hölderlin, "Heimkunft: An die Verwandten," Sämtliche Werke, ed. Friedrich Beissner, 8 vols. (Stuttgart, 1946-85), 2:96-97;
27. hereafter abbreviated "H." In English, I quote Keith Hoeller's translation in Martin Heidegger, Elucidations of Hölderlin's Poetry, trans. Keith Hoeller (Amherst, N.Y., 2000), p. 27; hereafter abbreviated EH.
28. See, for example, Beissner's commentary on the poem: "Hier ... ist es [der Gegenstand] eine wirkliche Heimkunft (von Hauptwil im Frühjahr 1801), mit allen Einzelheiten des Wegs und des Ziels" ("At issue here is a real homecoming [from Hauptwil in the spring of 1801], with all the details of the route and the destination") (Beissner, commentary on "Heimkunft," in Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke, 2:413).
29. See also Peter Härtung, "Heimkunft," Hölderlin- Jahrbuch 25 (1986-87): 1-11
30. and Cyrus Hamlin, "Hölderlin's Elegy 'Homecoming': Comments," in Friedrich Hölderlin: An Early Modern, ed. Emery E. George (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1972): The elegy was composed in 1801 and was occasioned by Hölderlin's return to Nürtingen from Switzerland. The title thus refers to this event. The dedication is similarly specific, indicating the members of his immediate family who welcomed him at his mother's home. The elegy describes his journey from the Alps across Lake Constance to Lindau, from there by foot northward to the Neckar valley, and finally to Nürtingen. [P. 234; my italics] Even Heidegger opens his commentary with a version of this itinerary: "The poem tells of a trip across the lake 'from the shady Alps' to Lindau. In the spring of 1801, Hölderlin, then a private tutor, left the Thurgau village of Hauptwil near Constance and traveled back across Lake Constance to his Swabian homeland" (EH, p. 32);
31. "Das Gedicht erzählt eine Fahrt über den See 'von schattigen Alpen her' nach Lindau. Der Hauslehrer Hölderlin ist im Frühjahr 1801 aus dem thurgauischen Ort Hauptwyl bei Konstanz über den Bodensee nach seiner schwäbischen Heimat zurückgefahren" (Heidegger, Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung, in Gesamtausgabe, 90 vols. [Frankfurt am Main, 1976], 4:13).
32. Here, as always, it is worth noting that the famous line from "Brod und Wein" ("Bread and Wine") is less a question than a statement of ignorance and so syntactically complex as to inflect the whole question of the poet's vocation with a powerful negativity: "und was zu thun inde und zu sagen, / Weiß ich nicht, und wozu Dichter in dürftiger Zeit" (Hölderlin, "Brod und Wein," Sämtliche Werke, 2:94).
33. One possible reading of the line is "and what to do and what to say, / I don't know, and I don't know what poets are for in a time of need." It is symptomatic of Heidegger's interpretation of this passage that it blots out this reading, posing in its place a question to the poet's text ("Wozu Dichter?" ["What are poets for?"]) to which it already answers, "I don't know"; see Heidegger, "What Are Poets For?" Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York, 1971), pp. 89-142.
34. Hence Beissner's note to "helle Nacht": "Das Oxymoron bezeichnet recht den Zwischenzustand, da die Tiefe des gähnenden Tals vom vollen Licht des Morgens noch nicht erreicht ist" ("The oxymoron accurately marks the intermediate state, in that the depths of the yawning valley have not yet been reached by the full light of morning") (Beissner, commentary on "Heimkunft," in Hölderlin, Sämlichte Werke, 2:414).
35. I am alluding here to the controversy over the authorship of "In lieblicher Bläue..." (In lovely blueness...), the text that "... Poetically Man Dwells..." purports to be reading; see Heidegger, "... Poetically Man Dwells..." Poetry, Language, Thought, pp. 211-29;
36. hereafter abbreviated "P." For a concise yet rigorous account of the questions about the status of the text (a fragment, not written in verse, and not written by Hölderlin) and the crisis they open in Heidegger's commentaries on Hölderlin, see Peter Fenves, "Measure for Measure: Hölderlin and the Place of Philosophy," in The Solid Letter: Readings of Friedrich Hölderlin, ed. Aris Fioretos (Stanford, Calif., 1999), p. 418 n. 13. I am grateful to Fenves for emphasizing the interest of this problem in his response to an earlier version of this essay.
37. Heidegger, "... dichterisch wohnet der Mensch...," Gesamtausgabe, 7:192; hereafter abbreviated "D."
38. In Parmenides, Heidegger writes: "Demnach müßte das Sein auch eine 'Utopie' sein. In Wahrheit aber ist das Sein gerade und es allein der topos für alles Seiende" ("Being must be a utopia." It must be, and yet it can't, insofar as "Being, and it alone, is precisely the topos for all beings") (Heidegger, Parmenides, in Gesamtausgabe, 54:141; trans. André Schuwer and Richard Rojcewiecz, under the title Parmenides [Bloomington, Ind., 1992], p. 94).
39. See Sigmund Freud, "The Uncanny," Writings on Art and Literature (Stanford, Calif., 1997), p. 234.
40. In this respect, the Hölderlin that emerges in "... Poetically Man Dwells..." - quite apart from the controversy over the authorship of the fragment it interprets - does not fundamentally differ from that which emerges in Heidegger's other commentaries on the poet. Paul de Man, in an important but little-known essay on Heidegger's interpretation of Hölderlin, "The Temptation of Permanence," emphasizes what is achieved by what later becomes in Heidegger a three-fold differentiation between earth, world, and sky, while at the same time calling our attention to the dialectical temptations of this schema. See Paul de Man, "The Temptation of Permanence," trans. Dan Latimer, Critical Writings, 1953-1978, ed. Lindsay Waters (Minneapolis, 1989), pp. 30-40.
41. Jean-Luc Nancy, "The Calculation of the Poet," trans. Simon Sparks, in The Solid Letter, pp. 71-72;
42. see also Nancy, "Calcul du poète," "Des lieux divins" suivi de "Calcul du poète" (Mauvezin, 1997), p. 85.
43. Heidegger writes, in "Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry": "We never find the ground in the abyss" (EH, p. 59). Elsewhere, he quotes Hölderlin: "Hölderlin speaks of the servants of the heavenly, that is, of the poets: 'Their step is toward the abyss / Of men.'"
44. See EH, p. 32
45. and Heidegger, Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung, in Gesamtausgabe, 4:13.
46. Maurice Blanchot, "La Parole 'sacrée' de Hölderlin, " La Part du feu (Paris, 1949), p. 118.
47. Bush's own analysis of this problem in "Securing the Homeland, Strengthening the Nation" makes this clear: There are two inescapable truths about terrorism in the 21st century: First, the characteristics of American society that we cherish - our freedom, our openness, our great cities and towering skyscrapers, our modern transportation systems - make us vulnerable to terrorism of catastrophic proportions. America's vulnerability to terrorism will persist long after we bring justice to those responsible for the events of September 11. Second, the technological ability to launch destructive attacks against civilian populations and critical infrastructure spreads to more and more organizations and individuals with each passing year. This trend is an unavoidable byproduct of the technological, educational, economic, and social progress that creates jobs, wealth, and a good quality of life. The combination of these two facts means the threat of terrorism is an inescapable reality of life in the 21st century. It is a permanent condition to which America and the entire world must adjust. [www.whitehouse.gov/homeland/homeland-security-book. html]
48. "Only a God Can Save Us: Der Spiegel's Interview with Martin Heidegger," trans. Maria Alter and John Caputo, Philosophy Today 20 (Winter 1976): 281.
49. For a reading of this exchange that brings it provocatively to bear on the larger problem of Heidegger's Hölderlin interpretation, see Andrzej Warminski, "Monstrous History: Heidegger Reading Hölderlin," in particular the prefatory note that accompanied the essay on its first publication in Yale French Studies 77 (1990): 193-95.
50. There would be much to say here about the poem's supposed reference to the Treaty of Lunéville - and so to the spirit of two peoples, or of "the German" in relation to "the French." (The Treaty of Lunéville, marking the cession of the territories on the left bank of the Rhine to the French Republic, was signed in February 1801, just a few weeks before Hölderlin's journey from Hauptwil.) On the question of the poem and the treaty, see Beissner's commentary ("Hölderlin meint hier einen ganz bestimmten Friedenschluß" ["Hölderlin means a very particular peace treaty here"] [Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke, 2: 415]), as well as Rolf Zuberbühler's "Hölderlin: 'Heimkunft,'" Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 19-20 (1975-77), both of which depend, in addition to historical and autobiographical data, on the "holy rainbow of peace" in stanza 5 as well as on certain thematic and linguistic similiarities between "Heimkunft" and another poem by Hölderlin, "Friedensfeier." Lurking in the background here - as in so many of Hölderlin's poems about peace and freedom - is also the figure of Rousseau, who stands, if not for the spirit of the Swiss, then for a kind of popular spirit tout court.