[spectre] shock waves

[Timothy Druckrey]

"Happy the man who can talk himself into believing that culture can=
 safeguard society against violence." (Hans Magnus Enzensberger)


In the mid 1960s the area around what became the World Trade Center was the=
 subject of a photographic project funded by the NY State Council of the=
 Arts. Photographer Danny Lyon documented the transformation of an=
 architecture that dated before the Civil War. The book that was published=
 in 1969 was The Destruction of Lower Manhattan. The images and text=
 recorded a landscape that Lyons describes is those in which "whole blocks=
 would disappear." The streets, Wall, Duane, Reade, Pearl, Chambers, etc.,=
 remain and are echoed in the reportage of the rubble that now resides in=
 the WTC plaza. The images, in the blunt style of Charles Marville, Lewis=
 Hine, Eugene Atget, Bernice Abbott, Walker Evans, documented the eerily=
 evacuated streets in which a small neighborhood that retained the history=
 of a downtown slowly being consumed by the wrecking-ball and the boom of=
 the downtown market. The book was a protestation for loss of the oldest=
 neighborhood in the city and an attempt to situate the laborers and=
 lingering human presence as heroic in the face of the grim demolition. 

The second destruction of lower Manhattan came without nostalgia or=
 reflection, but with horror. Grim demolition crews were replaced by the=
 appalling image of jets transformed into cruise missiles, of buildings=
 nearly decapitated by the velocity and inertia of passenger planes turned=
 into kamikaze flights. But this is not the Pearl Harbor that we were=
 forewarned about by a clear enemy, but a different act in which internal=
 security failures are exploited, in which vulnerability is turned into=
 aggression, in which uncertainty is the rule rather than the exception. 

The immediate establishment of a war footing seems exactly the wrong=
 response. It belies reason and reveals desperation. The scenes of Manhattan=
 patrolled by National Guard, of F-16s maintaining no-fly zones over NY and=
 Washington, the militarization of the airports, the mobilization of=
 authority in a city that has become a crime-scene. Already we are being=
 prepared to accept the inevitability of more and more social control, more=
 and more surveillance, more and more limits. 

Last night, after an entire day of live and replayed attacks, I re-read Hans=
 Enzensberger's Civil Wars. The preface is titled Ghastly Exception, Ghastly=
 Rule. It's first line is:

"Animals fight, but they don't wage war. Only man-unique among the=
 primates-practices the large scale, deliberate and enthusiastic destruction=
 of his fellow creatures." The essay ends, in part, with: "It's not just=
 that the mad reality eludes formal legal definition. Even the strategies of=
 the military high commands fail in the face of the new world order which=
 trades under the name of civil war. The unprecedented comes into sudden and=
 explosive contact with the atavistic. Old anthropological questions come to=
 the fore. Which is stranger: killing people you know, or destroying an=
 opponent you have absolutely no conception of, not even a false one? ...=
 There is an unexplained linkage between hating one's neighbor and hating a=
 stranger. The original target or our hatred was probably always our=
 neighbor; only with the formation of larger communities was the stranger on=
 the other side of the border declared an enemy."

In chapter XII, Little Miracles, he writes (again in part): 

"Not everyone is running amok. Not everyone wants everyone else extinct. ...=
 After the street battle, the glazier arrives; the telephone in the=
 vandalized kiosk is reconnected by two men with pliers and connection=
 blocks. Emergency doctors work through the night in overflowing clinics to=
 save the survivors. 

The persistence of these people is close to miraculous. They know they=
 cannot put the world to rights. Only a corner of it-a roof, a wound. They=
 even know that the murderers will be back, in a week or in a decade. Civil=
 war doesn't last forever, but it constantly threatens to start again. 

They wanted to make Sisyphus an existential hero, an outsider and a rebel of=
 tragic proportions, larger-than-life and crowned in diabolical glory.=
 Perhaps that is wrong. Perhaps he was something much more important, an=
 everyday figure. The Greeks interpreted his name as the grammatical=
 superlative of sophos, clever. Homer even called him the cleverest of men.=
 He wasn't a philosopher, he was a trickster. The story goes that he caught=
 Death and bound him hand and foot. And death remained defeated until Ares,=
 the god of war, freed him and handed Sisyphus over to him. But Sisyphus=
 overcame Death a second time and managed to return to earth. They say he=
 reached a ripe old age.

Later, as a punishment, he was condemned to push a heavy boulder up the side=
 of a hill for the rest of time. The name of this stone is peace."

The incessant briefings have a strikingly grim atmosphere, the=
 administration has become conspicuously, even frighteningly, defensive, the=
 rhetoric is strikingly grave, the ominous clock that distinguishes rescue=
 from recovery ticks, the debris has become evidence, the forensic=
 archaeologists are poised for their traumatic digs, the images have become=
 imbedded in social history, the harrowing stories of the 'walking wounded,'=
 the hospitalized victims, the choking, exhausted emergency workers are=
 survivor tales that devastate a reality television that can never match=
 reality on television. Virilio rightly understood during the Gulf War that=
 "images have become munitions." But the opposite has also become true, that=
 munitions have become images. This  must be supplemented with a comment by=
 Regis Debray that "no more than there is any innocent medium can there be=
 any painless transmission." It is also with a dark realization that the=
 financial district now stands as a crime scene.  

Perhaps we are no longer innocent, but as Albert Camus once wrote: "When we=
 all all guilty, that will be true democracy."