Kim Stanley Robinson is one of my favourite storytellers, stretching from Californian light to Mars explorations, and he does not disappoint, this time. The book travels a difficult terrain for a sf writer, the historical novel, but there, Robinson excels, giving Galileo flesh and blood, a very good (and possibly quite accurate) portrait. The weakest parts of the book are actually the sf parts, although they do serve their main function of dragging Galileo into a wider debate on enlightenment and democratization. What if Galileo had been burned at the stake? The threat was very real. The world could have been much more religious-dogmatic than it became. Robinson’s speculations here are high value even if his sci-fi concept is a bit thin. This is a good historical novel “plus”.
Programming, by my work research method, is like living in a house being renovated. For doing something simple one must move fifteen things and find three. Or, a car that is being fabricated, with modifications between each turn.
– Øystein Gullvåg Holter
OK I admit I am guilty. I put this book on the shelf for two years, despite getting a copy as a gift (from Preben Z. Møller). I am a delayed reader of this bestseller. Why?
I did not want a muddle of postmodern thinking and real fact (I thought). I already had a large shelf, three meters total, literature from World War II, including much on Hitler and the German build up. It was only when I got the same book this Christmas, from my son, that I got round to actually read the thousand pages block of a book. I had practical family experience also – my mother, having to flee to Sweden, my uncles, one of them successfully fleeing persecution to join the Norwegian resistance, the other not. My uncle Johan was caught and almost perished in Sachsenhausen.
So did I have to read all this again?
Turned out, yes. I could no longer put it on hold.
The book is so good that it complements rather than detracts from my collection of war histories and memories. It goes into the head of an SS officer serving at the Eastern front, becoming a specialist in the killing of people. It is mainly very realistic, not sensationalist, and when it does go in with a literary angle, it is thought out and demarcated.
My uncle Johan who served in Sachsenhausen is dead now, as is my uncle Eric who joined the resistance, but I feel this book would have been important for them. Also personally, in the way that Littel goes into the social psychology of the violence, and the inner resistance against the Nazi thinking. This inner resistance existed – although it was overwhelmed.
My mother Harriet Holter, fleeing to Sweden because of Nazi persecution, often said, later – never forget, the struggle was against the Nazis – not Germans as such. My father, Ingemund Gullvåg, serving in allied convoy protection to Murmansk, a lifeline in the war, agreed. The Nazi system was the enemy, not the Germans.
Norway did not want violence. We were announced as Arians, a white billing, and yet attacked by the Germans in April 1940. It was a shock. Norwegian scholars, especially Kristian Ottosen, have recorded the makeup of the Nazi punishment system, perhaps more clearly than anyone else.
Littell’s work does not give any easy answer “why did Germans support the Holocaust”. Instead, it gives a view of the whole context – including not only revenge-tuned society, but also a “black pedagogy” in Alice Miller’s terms. The Holocaust was a result not only of bad social structure but also of authoritarian socialization. Much can be said about this – but Littel’s picture is convincing.
It is both a pain and a pleasure to get through this book, as it should be. What amazes is that there is scarcely a word too much, or a paragraph without a purpose. A crash course in aggression, in regressive politics, and the male mind – with women contributing too.
Many people, after World War 2, kept silent. Littell puts the silence frequency to the extreme, so to speak, portraying a Nazi officer as a killer, hidden in the background. The truth, or just some of it? History will judge, but there is evidence e g regarding the “Reichsfuhrer” Himmler pointing in the same direction. Himmler, Eichman and Littell’s fictious officer Aue were all very rational killers, not emotional at all, but their killing did have a personal dimension. This is where Littell goes a bit ahead of the currently established evidence, with mixed results, though his attempts to lead the way in this dark and obscured landscape are very important and worthy.
Amazing sound
Check out the Nik Bartsch Ronin: Lllyria, recent ECM vinyl album (2 x 180 g LP). The music is good. But what catches the ear is that the sound is outstanding.
I never had this much dynamics from an ECM LP before. Something must have happened in the studio. Listening to the album from my kitchen, playing in the living room next to it, I several times thought: “someone must be there”, “what is this”, “sounds coming up more immediate”. In my setup and home, this means an outstanding sound. I think you would get the effect also. There is a substantial sound quality improvement.
I congratulate ECM, who have been a forwards force in music and sound quality for many years. I also congratulate Nik and his group, which I did not know before, for an excellent album. There is some pentatonal work here, and I am reminded of works in the same wholistic direction, like Zappa, mentioned earlier in this blog, and also Ardley, Neil: Kaleidoscope of rainbows, some Can, some Kratwerk, even some Butterfield Blues Band East/West. Time scales brought to the fore – a pure joy, with this kind of great sound.
I am not sure about the best albums of 2010 and won’t say anything about that. This text is only about music that I have enjoyed, that has grasped out to me, in some way.
Gayngs: Related, a great album for pursuing some central pop ideas. Some work out quite good, others so and so.
Tom Petty: Mojo. Graced by its in-room collective playing.
From 2008: Mew: No more stories. Patricia Barber: Mythologies.
Earlier albums enjoyed in2010:
Opeth Blackburry Park, Damnation and others.
Mastodon: Crack the skye, Blood Mountain.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, first album.
I also has a bucket of older classics at hand, among these giving good listening last year, e g Steely Dan: The Royal Scam.
Despite his puerile, provocative and sometimes sexist lyrics, there is no escaping that Zappa remains a musical giant. Give him the right (underpaid) orchestra, and he would perform on his guitar like a time machine. Amazing fact: I steered ar0und Zappa for fifteen years, 80-95, after an early interest, having got tired of the man’s monochromatic output. Turns out, I was wrong. I started listening seriously to his modernist music about fiften years ago, enjoying greatly his LPs Hot Rats and Waka Jawaka, and others, on the way. Strange that such a megalomaniac didn’t see his own greatest mission as guitarist, but then again, the pieces for his guitar work were not written when he played them, so he had to start the whole thing himself.
Zappa was not a giant, for me, but more like a bit older contemporary, who often took off in odd directions, in the late 60s and 70s, though I loved parts on his early LPs like “We’re only in it for the money”. All the more enjoyment, therefore, for reassessing these albums anew and getting the taste for his concert work, like Zappa: Guitar (2 x LP from concerts 89-84) and Shut up and play your guitar (3 x LP). Zappa’s instrument work is sometimes too insistent, perhaps too coffein-driven, to my ears, but the musical innovation factor is very good. For biography, cf Miles, Barry 2004: Zappa – a biography, Grove Press, New York
Noe av det mest spennende, når man får tid, er å lese bøker. Her er noe nytt, kort fortalt, selv om jeg ikke har lest dem fra perm til perm ennå.
Judith Bennetts History Matters – Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism (2006)
er et varmt og klokt forsvar for “women’s history” som disiplin, for å se på kontinuitet og ikke bare forandring (særlig på hennes spesialområde, fra sen middelalder til tidlig moderne tid), og for å utvikle bedre historisk forståelse av diskriminerende strukturer.
Bennett skriver: “Patriarchy does have a history, one that is inherent to the feminist project of women’s history. Patriarchy might be everywhere, but it is not everywhere the same, and therefore patriarchy, in all its immense variety, is something we need to understand, analyze and explain. If we have the courage to make patriarchy – its mechanisms, its changes, its forms, its endurance – a central problem of women’s history, we will not only write better history but also history that speaks more strongly to central feminist concerns.” (s. 54) Ikke overraskende, med dette utgangspunktet, skriver hun “I emphatically believe feminism is in their [men’s] interest too.” (11). Hun gir en klar og vittig gjennomgang av sex vs gender-debatten, og merker seg, at med Laqueur “even sex itself is gender”…”what a muddle!” (17).
Markus Dirk Dubber: The Police Power – Patriarchy and the Foundations of American Government (2005).
Pussig med “patriarchy” – en visstnok utbrukt term, som likevel dukker opp igjen. Her brukes den på en utdypende måte i forhold til makt, ikke postmoderne alment, men historisk presist – hvordan den moderne maktstrukturen ble formet ut fra kongemakten i tidlig moderne tid (”kongens fred”). Det er interessant at han legger vekt på germansk, ikke bare romersk, historisk tradisjon i oppbyggingen av rettsvesenet i Europa og USA, datidas ”eurosone”. Han gir interessante videretolkninger av bl.a. Focault, og har fått med seg Carol Pateman’s seksuelle kontrakt og den problematiske, delvis villedende og iallfall sterkt kjønnete skillelinjen mellom ”offentlig” og ”privat”.
Men – hvorfor gidder en forsker trekke inn den angivelig foreldete glosen “patriarkat” i en studie av politimakt? Dubber skriver: “By patriarchy I mean, quite literally, government of the family, as household, by its head (ordinarily the father), as householder, and, more loosely, the power associated with this form of government.” (s. 220). Her kan vi sette strek under “the power associated with”. Dubber bygger på den bredere forståelsen som ble utviklet i feministisk teori, som Sylvia Walby’s Theorizing Patriarchy. Andre har ment at patriarkat bare kan brukes om direkte familiemakt, ellers blir det empirisk uforsvarlig (jfr. Gøran Therborn’s Between Sex and Power, og paper på STK symposium, Juni 2008). Dubbers bok er et argument mot dette. Det er ikke tilfeldig at han skriver om Carol Pateman’s “classic account of patriarchy” (220), selv om man nok kunne ønsket at denne tråden var mer tydelig sentral i forståelsen.
Har man først gitt fanden lillefingeren – begynner man å interessere seg for ”patriarkat”, kommer debatten om ”verdi” opp igjen også. To gode nye bøker om dette, er David Graeber: Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value, og Stephen Gudeman: Economy’s Tension (2008). Begge er myteknusere i forhold til neoliberal verditeori; Gudeman er mest “hardcore”, Graeber mest kjønnsbevisst. Graeber skriver f.eks.: “Rather than “economizing” their efforts, Trobriand men are actively trying to perform unnecessary labor; then they give the products away to their sister’s families.” (s. 7). Han kritiserer Bourdieu for et “formalistic view of economic action”, “pretense of generosity hides self-interest”, og hevder at Bourdieu ender opp med “a sort of across-the-board principle of Sartrean bad faith” der “gifts are always part of a game of dominance” og egoismen hersker. Graebers diagnose er at Bourdieu tok “the ‘unmasking’ of the critical project too far” (s 27-30).
Gudeman nevner Zizek og “the Hegelian logic of retroactive reversal of contingency into necessity” (s. 25), og går på noen måter dypere ned, selv om den er mindre tydelig kjønnsbevisst – snarere, reduserende (se f eks. s 102, der kjønn nærmest ”stikker innom” økonomien). Samlet tror jeg begge forfattere hadde hatt nytte av å ta mer sentralt inn det perspektivet som Bennett (og Pateman, Walby og andre feministiske forskere) har utviklet. Norsk kjønnsforskning teoretiserte verdi og patriarkat, produksjon og reproduksjon allerede på 1980-tallet; det er interessant at trenden går i retning av at dette kommer opp igjen.
Today, Norway’s largest newspaper Aftenposten published the following debate article from the Conservative party’s (Høyres) leader, Erna Solberg, celebrating former prime minister Jan P. Syse, who would have been 80 this day, 25 November 2010.
Syse, Solberg remarks, was very much located in the conservative tradition. Syse argued that the private property is the fourth right (beyond the French revolution values of freedom, equality and brotherhood), securing the right of the individual against the state. Solberg also describes Syse as a cooperation man, and notes his idea of “co-property democracy” (medeierdemokrati).
This blog is for research, not politics, but these ideas are interesting for research. The co-property democracy idea strikes a broad chord for example in working life research, although it is hard to achieve.
Honours to a good man, and to a woman for making the point.
For many years I had a web homepage made with Ventura Publisher. Much as I love that program, especially for long paper publications, I have switched to WordPress, thanks to the help of my son Lasse Gullvåg Sætre. The new solution allows blogging, and other facilities.
If you find this page useful, have comments, or problems, please post a blog comment under Technology.
Searching this page you can find a lot of research material. Some links may not work yet, images not show, etc.
